Dog Days of August

~Mitch McConnell STILL has not been seen since I last wrote. There have been a couple of "updates" provided by his press team, including some suspected Photoshopped (at best)/ AI (at worst) pictures. Questions abound as to why he's pictured wearing street clothes in a rehab facility. Meanwhile, back at the office, his vote or lack of may become critical in confirmation of Todd Blanche as Attorney General. Little Susie Collins has already declared she is a "No" on this one, keeping with her attempt to protect herself from the big bad Dems who want to retire her. We'll see how the rest of her accomplices vote. ~Maine officially replaced Graham Platner with Troy Jackson a couple of weeks ago and the Super-PAC attack ads have been relentless already, along with the sensationalized stories of violent outbursts and alleged children with a second cousin. Per Maine Revised Statutes Title 19-A, §701: Prohibited marriages; exceptions it is NOT illegal for second cousins to marry. So there! ~Other than schmoozing with Dr. Oz the other day, Paul Lepage has been silent/absent from the political scene so far. His opponent, Matt Dunlap is out and about doing meet and greets and town halls. I suspect LePage will not do many if any because he has shown himself to be not very adept in those arenas. ~Governor candidates are out and about - GOP candidate Bobby (where did HE come from?) Charles has been vocal and inconsequential. Independent Rick Bennett (formerly GOP) has some good ideas and is worrisome. Hannah Pingree is all over the state. ~Primaires in other states have shown that the country's voters are looking for change. No one is happy about still being at war with Iran, about the price of everything, and the messes Trump is creating in DC. HIs latest vanity project is a hellipad on the White House lawn (so he doesn't get his feet wet in the grass) that he has ordered ripped up because he doesn't like the way it looks. I wonder how many of these contractors will end up getting payed? How many will he stiff? How many will sue and a future administration will have to find the money to make it right? Oh and how much time and money is it going to take to remove his name and silliness from all of this? ~In other craziness - Rand Paul decided he'd go after Dr. Anthony Fauci last week over his handling of the COVID pandemic. This after Rand conspired with RFK Jr. to harvest Dr. Fauci's personal diary from the internet, which he then made public. To his credit, Fauci did not take the bait and plead the fifth at every opportunity, including the most basic of questions. He was correct when he opined in his opening statement that the only reason for the hearing was to force him to say something/anything that they could use to indict him. ~Wildfires are raging in Washington state and Oregon and California, as well as France and Spain. The world is burning and this adminstration keeps attacking the environment in every way possible. I have absolutely no confidence in anyone in charge to do anything to protect us from any threat, be it from another country, the weather, another pandemic, or an as yet unimagined enemy. I also worry about the rush to AI in all things. Two companies last week admitted that their models escaped in testing and hacked other systems. We cannot live like this! I'm at the point where I do not read the AI summary when I Google something, and I''m ready to not do business with people who use AI in their advertising or social media. I consider it lazy and personally insulting. Those who claim it's legitimate for anyone to use it to create art or music or literature are wrong. If you do not possess the talent and knowledge to create without AI how do you know what you are creating is any good? You are discounting those who have put in the time and effort to learn the techniques and have spent the money on the materials and created bad art to get to where they are today.