Tomorrow USA

We've touched on this just a few days ago. Thanks to AI, the prices of electronic goods are soaring.

Yes, cheap laptops have become an endangered species. Without the excellent $600 MacBook Neo, they’d be on the precipice of extinction. But halfway through 2026, our hopes that the rising prices would be contained to cheap laptops have been washed away by reality. Today, price increases have come for every tier of the laptop market — and plenty of other consumer tech products, as well. Midrange laptops are priced like premium options from last year. High-end devices are arriving with price tags that are making our eyes water. Game console prices have gone up by hundreds of dollars, too.  Usually price increases are difficult to attribute to a single cause, but that isn’t really the case here. These price hikes are because of AI.  Data-center construction by big AI players and a rush to manufacture the hardware to fill those data centers is creating unprecedented demand and diverting components across the supply chain. Because of that, the parts necessary to build laptops are now more scarce and more expensive. [ ... ] AI companies are building new data centers to grow and improve their products. The processing requirements, or “compute” demands, for AI are increasing by 4.5 times per year, according to the Epoch AI research institute. To meet that demand and keep up with the competition, companies have to build more data centers full of servers, and constructing them requires the same kinds of materials as building any other computer. 

It's bad enough that big tech wants to build monstrosity data centers in your county and drive your electric bills up in the process. But those data centers are also sucking computer chips out of the market causing the prices of electronics to soar. Multi-billionaire tech broligarchs get even more filthy rich at your expense.

Most people want greater regulation of AI.

Voters of both parties want tighter AI regulation, poll finds

Of course Trump is siding with his donors in Big Tech. He doesn't care what you pay for electronics.

How big tech got its way on Trump’s AI executive order

Over this holiday weekend, members of House and Senate will be spending more time back home. If you see your Congress creature at some festivity, demand a moratorium on new data centers and tighter regulation of AI.

^^^ It's a good thing Abe doesn't know what Trump did to his reflecting pool.

When your local reflecting pool or pond turns green with algae, don’t reach for chemicals – nature has better solutions

If you want an alternative to the disaster zone which Trump has created in DC, visit Lincoln's tomb in Springfield, Illinois.

Lincoln's Tomb is not huge and not kitschy – so Trump wouldn't like it. But it is dignified and is open to the public all but seven days a year. And it's even free.

Springfield is also the home of the Old State Capitol where Lincoln gave his 1858 "House Divided" speech. Barack Obama in 2007 announced outside the building that he was running for president.

^^^ When you're a billionaire getting even richer through graft, you don't have to care what regular Americans are going through.

Trump doesn’t have any conflicts of interest. That’s because he really has only one interest: himself. »

— Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, on Donald Trump having conflicts of interest. At The Guardian.

Ethics Experts Sound Alarm After Trump Reports Shocking $2.2B Income Driven by $1.4B Crypto Windfall

John Oliver devoted his main focus this week to redistricting. You get an excellent idea of just how irredeemably racist the Republican Party is.

True, Republicans have given themselves a modest advantage this cycle by drawing maps which screw Blacks. But in a wave year, that electoral advantage could be minimized.

Democrats need to flip both chambers of Congress this year to restore balance to the country. Doing that requires two things:

Getting out the vote at the grassroots level by talking with neighbors one at a time. Zohran Mamdani got elected mayor largely because volunteers asked people in the neighborhoods what their main concerns were and then pointed to Mamdani's proposals relating to those concerns. If people agree with 80% of what you say, they are allies – not opponents. Don't make it difficult for people to agree with you.

A unified party is a winning party. Spending more time vilifying other Democrats than defeating MAGA Republicans is a sure way to guarantee GOP control for years to come. And yes, I'm talking about ALL sides involved. Once the primaries are over, it's time to shift the focus to winning the Midterm Elections. Purity is essential with food safety but it is poisonous when building winning coalitions.

Péter Magyar is now prime minister of Hungary because he won despite severe gerrymandering and media manipulation by authoritarian Viktor Orbán. Not only did the Tisza Party win, it even has enough power now to amend Hungary's constitution. This is the result of people to people power. We can learn from the Hungarians.

If we really want change, we need to work hard for it at both the state and federal levels. To push through the reforms suggested by John Oliver near the end of that segment, we need TWO good cycles in a row. While Trump and Capitol Hill Republicans will try to obstruct Democratic majorities in House and Senate in the 120th Congress, we can use their anti-reform obstructions against them in 2028.

^^^ Looking for a quiet place to get away from it all? Try Donald Trump's Great American State Fair at the National Mall.

Another account of Trump's low-energy fair for LOSERS.

I Went to Trump’s Great American State Fair So You Don’t Have To

A child rolled around in the grass, crying and screaming, “I. WANT. TO. GO. HOME!!!” Creed’s “Higher” blared over the loudspeakers, and a sparse crowd milled about the various exhibitions. The bare-bones setup—flimsy, fake two-dimensional columns that looked like something Wile E. Coyote would run into while chasing the Road Runner—left much to be desired, as America’s 250th anniversary was celebrated with kitsch and ennui rather than grandeur and appreciation.  [ ... ] More than anything, the event lacked energy—and people. There wasn’t any line or wait to get in. The vibe was more conference-like than celebratory, and the state exhibits varied wildly in effort and presentation. Utah and Guam had particularly involved setups, while others like South Carolina felt totally sterile. Connecticut and Maine shared a space that looked like the waiting room of a pediatrician’s office, while Hawaii and Alaska didn’t have anyone attending to visitors. There were $25 pretzels, an AI George Washington, an interactive “Loyalist or Patriot?” test, and a whiteboard wall full of messages from attendees, one of which read “a felon and predator resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave!!”

So far, the most exciting thing about the Trump fair was that a MAGA influencer got arrested for jerking the turkey.

If you choose to attend this spectacle over the next few days, be aware that DC is under an Extreme Heat Warning through Saturday evening.

If you are from outside the US and are unfamiliar with our quaint way of measuring temperatures, 103° F = 39.4° C.

EDIT: Some of our friends at The Bulwark made a return visit to the Trump fair. But before Tim Miller spoke with Jared Poland and Brendan Hartnett, he played footage of a chunk of the stage at the fair suddenly crashing to the ground. Nobody was hurt, but this is the same stage where Trump is supposed to give his pre-fireworks 4th of July harangue on Saturday.

— Frank Bruni at the New York Times.

One feature of Orwell's dystopia in Nineteen Eighty-Four was the Two Minutes Hate. Trump's political career has produced a Two Decades Hate.

Trump electrifies the disturbed, the bigoted, and the easily duped with his negative violent energy.

Trump is an outrage factory who invents new targets when he needs them. His framings need not be reality based.

^^^ The perfect metaphor for this July 4th.

Trump doesn't care that you know he is using his office to enrich himself.

Of course this isn't normal. Did you expect Trump to act ethically and above board?

Just for comparison, Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm into a blind trust before he became president. He wanted to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

Trump claims he has nothing to do with his money these days. But he also claims he won the 2020 election and didn't know Jeffrey Epstein very well. So...

Crypto is one of the biggest sources of Trump's newly acquired wealth. Never mind that the president has some say about how crypto is regulated.

He's crooked and greedy AF and operates the government as a self-enrichment device for himself and his crime family.

Happy Canada Day! 🇨🇦 Bonne fête du Canada !

It must be nice to have a rational leader who isn't the head of a dodgy crime family.

Elbows up!

[ ... ]

The Great American State Fair is exactly what you’d expect from Donald Trump. It’s a real life manifestation of Trumpland. An attempt to buy goodwill with more bread, and more circuses. He’s slapped together some cheap, gaudy crap and then thrown a giant flag on top to hide the glue and tape for the chumps and suckers. »

— Dominic Gwinn at Wonkette reporting on his visit to Trump's tacky fair at the National Mall.

Any real state fair is better than Trump's depressing shit-hole in DC. Here's are some of the best...

Top 5 State Fairs

There's a good reason most state fairs are not held during the hottest weeks of summer. Here's the weather for the next few days at the DC MAGA Fair:

Extreme Heat Watch URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE National Weather Service Baltimore MD/Washington DC

An excerpt...

IMPACTS...Heat related illnesses increase significantly during extreme heat and high humidity events. Hot temperatures and high humidity may cause heat illnesses.

On Tuesday the US Supreme Court just barely upheld the right of birthright citizenship. It doesn't get any closer than a 5 to 4 vote at SCOTUS.

At least for now, the Donald Trump-Stephen Miller vision of an ethno-nationalist US lies in ruins. But don't think they won't try this again in some form.

After Chris Hayes denounced the Trump-Miller assault on the US Constitution, he spoke with constitutional scholar Sherrilyn Ifill.

^^^ Trump wants "American flag blue".

If we work for the next 18 weeks, we can give Trump more blue than he could ever imagine.

Trump's fair on the National Mall is doing so pathetically poorly that they had to edit out the sunglasses of a guitarist who was performing there.

The reflection from the sunglasses revealed that there were fewer than a dozen people in this gigantic space who were attending a concert there.

When word spread about the tiny number of people there, the organizers cropped the photo to exclude the guitarist's sunglasses.

First of all, they basically confirmed that Donald Trump is a rapist.

Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Latest Attempt to Avoid Paying E. Jean Carroll

The Supreme Court has issued a raft of recent decisions benefiting Donald Trump. But on Monday, the justices rejected his latest effort to avoid paying E. Jean Carroll millions of dollars a jury awarded her after finding Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation. Carroll had accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s. Carroll successfully sued him in 2023, after he not only denied the allegation—calling it a “hoax” and a “conjob”—but mocked Carroll as “not my type.” A federal jury found Trump liable for $5 million in damages in May of 2023, after which Trump immediately denied the assault and once again mocked Carroll, leading to a second similar lawsuit, in which a jury quickly found that Trump owed an additional $83.3 million. Trump appealed both jury decisions, but a federal appellate court ruled against him in 2024. He took the initial case to the Supreme Court last summer. On Monday, the court declined to hear the case, leaving the initial judgment in place.

On a much different matter, SCOTUS ruled that location data on mobile devices is protected by the US Constitution.

Justices say Constitution protects people’s location history

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that people have an expectation of privacy from the government as their mobile devices track them throughout their daily activities, even when that information is shared with companies like Google and Apple. The 6-3 decision in Chatrie v. United States extends Fourth Amendment protections to data that people hand over to tech companies, meaning police need a warrant to obtain it. Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas dissented. The Trump administration argued that users did not have an expectation of privacy after voluntarily sharing their location data with companies like Google.

The Australian Labor Party is arguably the most successful center-left party in the West today. It's won two general elections in a row, the last one gave them a thumping majority in Parliament.

Earlier this year the One Nation Party, roughly similar to far-right Reform UK, had been making inroads. One Nation surpassed Labor in a couple of polls. But the latest poll puts Labor back out in front. And in two-party preferred polling, Labor is ahead of both One Nation and the Liberal-National Coalition (center-right despite the name). The Greens have also gained a couple of percentage points and could eventually tie the floundering Coalition before long.

Pauline Hanson is the leader of One Nation. After a xenophobic outburst, she was criticized by Australian legend Paul Hogan.

Paul Hogan has reportedly called Pauline Hanson a ‘pelican’. Please explain?

In one swift rhetorical blow, Crocodile Dundee has disarmed Pauline Hanson’s latest attack on multiculturalism. But his weapon of choice has left some scratching their heads. Australian politics has spent a week recovering from the rightwing One Nation leader’s attempt to explain her controversial concept of “Australian monoculture”, first introduced at this month’s National Press Club address. On Wednesday, in a Senate speech, the One Nation leader said: “Bring back Paul Hogan and Norman Gunston. These are the essential features of Australian monoculture, and there’s nothing remotely exclusionary about them.” In response, Crocodile Dundee star Hogan, tracked down by the Australian Financial Review to Venice Beach, California, reached for a bird metaphor. “She’s a pelican, yeah,” he reportedly said (adding that Hanson “sounds very much like this stupid boofhead over here, Trump”).

Can't say I ever heard "pelican" used in this context. Though I do recall "boofhead" being used to describe Joffrey Baratheon when Game of Thrones was in production.

So going back to “pelican”, what does he mean exactly? Well, Hogan has prior form. In 1986’s Crocodile Dundee itself, his titular character tells a New York driver: “Get on the right side of the road, ya pelican!”

No matter which time frame you use for measuring it, heat is the leading cause of weather fatalities in the United States. (source of chart)

One estimate put the death toll during Chicago's 1995 killer heat wave at 734.

This is a timely stat because of an extreme heat event which will affect much of the US later this week.

A 'heat dome' is driving dangerous heat across the U.S. into the July 4 weekend

Extreme heat this week will blanket a majority of American states through the July 4 weekend, according to forecasters. The National Weather Service on Sunday said "dangerous to record setting heat will expand across the eastern two-thirds" of the country. In areas including Ohio, parts of North Carolina and Washington, D.C., the extreme temperatures and humidity will be especially threatening for people with respiratory issues and the elderly. "With the combination of high humidity, heat indices may reach 100-110 Degrees," said the NWS. "Much of the central and eastern U.S. is under a Moderate to Major HeatRisk, which can pose health impacts on those without hydration or cooling." [ ... ] Heat exhaustion, heat rash and heat stroke are a few types of heat-related illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nausea, headache, confusion and dizziness are each possible symptoms. New York City Health Commissioner Alister Martin on Saturday said heat strokes are "fast, deadly, and almost always preventable." "As an ER doctor, I watched heat stroke come through the doors on days exactly like the ones ahead," Martin wrote in a social media post.

This comes as a similar hot spell has been frying Western Europe.

The hot spell will continue through the weekend before letting up a bit.

This vid provides an excellent explanation of heat domes.