August 25, 2026: Pluto Is More Than Just A Planet

Twenty years ago today, our solar system lost a planet when Pluto was demoted to the status of dwarf planet. In 1906, amateur astronomer Percival Lowell began searching for a possible ninth planet in our solar system, which he called Planet X. Pluto was discovered in 1930, fourteen years after Lowell’s death by then 23 year old astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. But Pluto’s size was much less than scientists expected for a ninth planet, and continually downsized over the years until, on August 24, 2006, its status as a planet shifted. Many of us were and remain saddened by this reclassification. I don’t think Pluto itself cares. It just does its thing out there, deep in space.

The name “Pluto” comes from the Roman name for the God of the underworld. The Greeks called him Hades. For me, however, “pluto” has a different meaning as well, as short for “plutocracy.”

The definition of “plutocracy” is simple. It means a system of government or society controlled directly or indirectly by its wealthiest individuals. Government by the rich, of the rich, and for the rich. The word comes from the Greek “ploutos,” wealth, and “kratos.” power or rule. Why is this important to me now? I have been thinking for a long time that the United States is being run by the very, very rich people, families and corporations who control the economy. I have mentioned before C, Wright Mills’ 1956 book, The Power Elite, that expresses the same theory. If you just follow the money, the conclusion seems inescapable. If there is profit to be made, the super-rich will do whatever it takes to get more.

What’s happening in Gaza? The West Bank? Ukraine? Syria? Venezuela? Our attention has been fully co-opted by Donald Trump’s war of choice. While we bluster and push against Iran and Israel pushes itself deeper into Lebanon, other key issues disappear from our thoughts. But they still go on. Children face starvation. Refugees seek shelter. People are being killed.

Trump loves it. In his tiny but expanding bubble, he loves to bully and threaten. He loves us to be confused and terrified of what he will do next. Meanwhile, he is lining his pockets and pushing his ultimate one-word agenda, oil. Forget Jeffrey Epstein. Forget the 2026 midterms. Look at me—Donald Trump, King of the World, owner of Venezuela and the Strait of Hormuz and a percentage of every gas pump in America and the world.

And yet, for all his increased wealth while President over the last year and a half, Trump still ranks only 201 on the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans. There are 200 entities who have more than him. For them, Trump is the distraction, the clown show the rest of us are watching while they steal us blind. Between oil and Artificial Intelligence and the Crypto Ponzi scam, they all are getting richer at the same exponential rate he is. If democracy collapses in the bargain, they stand to profit from the collapse. And, like the dwarf planet Pluto, these plutocrats don’t care. 

August 20, 2026: Wrong Thinking

 

War has changed. Massive, expensive, what former Defense official Dr. Jerry McGinn called ‘exquisite’ military hardware can be taken out by relatively cheap drones. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is demonstrating this new reality, because despite Russia’s military might Ukraine is not buckling under, and instead is taking the war to the Russians with their superior knowledge and use of drone technology. All the hardware the United States has been throwing against Iran has not crushed Iran’s will to survive. Instead, the Iranians have learned that the Strait of Hormuz is a weapon of blackmail, and they have learned how to use it. Now they are using their allies to expand the threat to other key commercial bottlenecks.

It makes me wonder, looking at the world situation, just how much Trump is actually enjoying the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. If you follow the money, Trump and Iran could be thought of as intentionally manipulating the oil market by controlling the Strait. If the price of oil per barrel goes up worldwide but American oil refiners don’t actually face increased costs, then they make more profit themselves. And so does Donald Trump. Just saying.

In fact, American oil companies reported their greatest profits ever during the second quarter of 2026, just after Trump’s war of choice began. According to The Guardian, the biggest companies in the world made about $700,000 profit per minute. But oil is a dirty and finite commodity. Human beings are moving away from fossil fuel dependence. Trump knows the inevitable. So do the oil tycoons. Trump has pushed back against alternative sources of energy against all logic. Why? Because there is a great opportunity to cash in big before the industry collapses. There’s money to be made, and Trump and those who control him don’t care about the consequences as long as they get theirs first. And if one of those consequences is bankrupting America by fighting a war nobody asked for with a dwindling supply of obsolete weapons, it will encourage the military-industrial complex to go into high gear. As is his wont, Trump is doubling down on wrong thinking.

It comes down to this. Trump wants a military budget of one and a half trillion dollars for the next fiscal year. He wants more high-end missiles and the delivery system to deploy them. He needs to replace all the ones his military has shot off over the past few months and will have to keep on shooting off for the foreseeable future. In today’s changing world, it’s a colossal waste of money. On 9-11, 2001, nineteen zealots and about $500,000 crippled the world for a time. The new reality is filled with people who know how to fly under the radar and strike hard, and no stockpile of Tomahawk or Patriot missiles can stop them. It’s wrong thinking to believe that money and munitions can solve our problems. We need intelligence, which today seems to be seriously lacking anywhere in our government.