Before the carers call to put Meg to bed each evening, after Meg and I had a little supper and her evening pills, we often flick over to YouTube to see if there is a concert or bit of comedy with which to round off the day. Yesterday, we did this as usual and the first item we were presented with was an MSNBC news channel item about Donald Trump. MSNBC is one of the two leading 'liberal' i.e., not right-wing, news channels in the USA, the other being CNN. What we saw was an MSNBC anchor arguing that America always used to be a leader of the 'free' world i.e. a force that led the fight against dictatorship and free speech when this was exhibited across the globe. The anchor man was saying that the USA had just abandoned its role as leader of the free world by siding in the United Nations with Russia, Belarus and North Korea in not condemning the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. 'Trump became the first American president in history fully humiliated on the world stage by instantly getting caught and corrected in his lie (by Macron),' he continued. But this was not all. The channel then showed whilst Trump was raging against his predecessor for signing such terrible trade deals with Mexico and Canada, it was actually Trump himself, which the videoclip demonstrated, who had actually signed the deals in his first presidency. Keir Starmer is due to meet with Trump in a 'make or break' meeting with Trump on Thursday and the political commentators are speculating that Starmer will probably not have the nerve to publicly correct Trump's rants and lies when we will be subjected to these after the visit of the UK Prime Minister. It is being reported today that a deal has been done between USA and the Ukraine over access to mineral and rare earth rights in deposits in Ukraine which just happen to be quite near the Russian border. At first sight, one would have thought that the Americans had enforced a deal on the Ukraine which was exploitative and massively in the interests of the USA and not the UK. But it might be that the totality of this deal works to the advantage of the Ukraine in the long term as it ties the Americans into a trade deal in which they will wish to protect their investment, and this might act as a deterrent to Russian incursions in the future. The Russians are reported to be unhappy about the new trade deal so having been rejoicing over the past few days that they have got everything they could have wished for in the Ukraine conflict, they now have a cloud on their horizon. Whether this is the case or not may well become clearer when details of the grade deal are actually published and the world as a whole had a chance to mull over it. Mr Trump, however, views the minerals transaction with Ukraine as a fair way to recoup the billions of dollars that the US has given Kyiv - via weapons and financial support - to assist the armed forces in their fight against Russia's full-scale invasion over the past three years. The document also does not provide a commitment from Washington to give security guarantees to Ukraine in the wake of any ceasefire deal with Vladimir Putin - something that Kyiv desperately needs and has been asking for. The accord, once signed, could unlock a new long-term partnership between Kyiv and Mr Trump's White House after weeks of increasingly tense exchanges.
This morning, we had a new carer as part of the double that gets Meg up in the morning. The 'new' carer was an ambulance worker as well and thus was well used to handling patients of all types and this is evidently tremendously useful in her additional job with the care agency. Later in the morning, our domestic help called around as Wednesday is now her preferred day and I was particularly pleased that she managed to rescue i.e. find, one of my favourite mugs which I had put on a high mantlepiece where I could not immediately see it. This morning, the weather was particularly windy and unpleasant and I was more than pleased that we did not plans to go out today. When I put the bins out this afternoon ready for an early collection and emptying first thing in the morning, the wind seemed to persist and to seem particularly cold to me and my weather app told me that the 24 mph gusts of wind would make the 8° feel like 3°. Meanwhile, there seems to be a backlash developing to the Elon Musk DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) swinging budget cuts. Three different federal judges delivered legal setbacks and slap downs to President Donald Trump in the span of an hour and a half on Tuesday in a series of cases challenging controversial moves taken during the early days of his second term. The upshot of these legal setbacks is that various of the swinging cuts, including to the US Aid budget, have been declared illegal and the cuts are having to be reversed. At the same time, an even bigger scandal is emerging in which Elon Musk, a 'Special Government Employee' has been given exclusive access to the whole of US Treasury financial systems, including details of Medicare payments. In theory, this is to root out corrupt payments but in practice , Musk and his acolytes are crawling all over sensitive financial data which is causing utmost alarm in Democratic circles. It must be pointed out that Musk and his acolytes have just been 'appointed' to their positions and is akin to opening up a bank's internal books to a group of friends of the manager of the bank. Some commentators on the MSNBC channel are even suggesting that Musk and his colleagues might have access to, and may be copying, all the social security, Medicare and taxation details of most individuals within the Unites States - and all of this quite illegally. The point is that only Congress can authorise access to these systems and not the President and his appointees and we may be witnessing the biggest data breach in the world. Elon Musk is said to have 'Read Only' access to this data but this does not mean that data cannot be copied and then sold on to the highest bidder.The Republicans are absolutely supine in the face of this Trump onslaught as, no doubt, they fear the consequences of opposing Trump as they may face the electoral consequences.
I personally cannot wait for the month of February to be over and for March to commence and, in particular, I am getting impatient for the cold spell that we are experiencing to move away. But it looks as though we are going to have a period of cold winds yet and, of course, as the old expression has it that 'March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb'.
© Mike Hart [2025]