My wife and I spent 20 days in September in France, traveling through the country from Trouville-sur-Mer to Dijon, Chamonix, Nice, Avignon, Albi, Aix-en-Provence, and many far away villages and small towns, spending time in Paris two days when we arrived and three days when we left France. Being in that many cities and countryside, an impression was formed and I started understanding the feelings and emotion of the white billionaires especially those who came to the U.S.A. from abroadand made it big here.

    We were on a tour staying at good hotels and eating at good restaurants, but NEVER had a steak. Europe (or at least France and Italy, a country we had visited before) has a lot of things small. Cars are small, houses are smaller than in the US, highway lanes are narrower. The people are contented, quieter, and somewhat lethargic.

    And skinny.

    They are tall for sure and probably meet President Trump’s requirement of employment of 6 feet high. But when standing next to our male tour-mates from the U.S., Canada, and Australia, they looked less macho-looking and on the lesser side in terms of weight.

    The absence of steak offers the best explanation for the state of their bodies.

    A few years back, we were in Italy. The only time we had good steak was when we dined at the Machiavelli Winery in Tuscany. The rest of the tour offered no meat – and the food, well, forgettable because I don’t remember any. If I ate anything over there as tasty or nearly as tasty as In-n-Out hamburger, I would never forget.

    Now, in France we encountered the same problem. I agree with my wife that it must have meat but either meat is more expensive than other fares or the country has a secret don’t-treat-the-tourists-well policy. I have been immerged in the American culture for quite some time so I may not understand French culture as well as I have hoped. But I observe that they discriminate severely against Canard (Duck) in favor of Oie (Goose). You find duck foie gras everywhere but not goose foie gras even in high-end restaurants, not because they political-correctly oppose the force-feeding but because the duck foie gras production is less complicated and less expensive. Have you ever heard of a French who avoids gourmet food just because it is more expensive and more complicated to produce?

    At the Fish Market in Trouville-sur-Mer, we saw a lobster lying immobile on a bed of ice (naturally less expensive than the ones swimming in a tank) priced at 98 Euros per kilo, about $50 a pound at the current rate. In an Oriental grocery store in our area, a pound of lobster costs $16(+-).

    No doubt, in America, food is more available in terms of variety and quantity and more affordable.

    At the end of the trip, I persuaded my wife to spend a little more money to dine at an upscale restaurant in Paris. The décor was beautifully Grand Siecle with a modern twist, the service was attentive, and the menu was satisfying as it listed steak, which was the item I ordered. When I ate it, I looked at my wife but did not say anything to disappoint her but I was disappointed. Was I pretentious to feel that the steak was not as good as an American one? I dismissed the negative thinking and continued enjoying an exceptionally beautiful evening, our last one in Paris.

    A week after returning to the U.S. we found ourselves at a steakhouse. The taste of their steak vindicated my feeling about Europe’s.

    Then, a thought occurred to me. I think that I understand why the billionaires, especially the ones who came from outside of the U.S. and made it big here, have strong emotion and feeling when it comes to immigration. It has a lot to do with cultural fighting but also, in no small part, their feeling about the state of the body of their first cousins in Europe. They feel indignant and outrageous that their European cousins look skinny, don’t have good steak, and don’t readily have goose foie gras while their distant cousins, the immigrants, from South America get fat and big because they can get good steak anywhere in the U.S., and a short trip to Las Vegas would serve them, wearing just a T shirt and jeans, foie gras d’oie.

    The fight could have been carried out methodically, quietly, justly, and effectively. Because of the emotion and deep feelings of the privileged, it has been ferocious and cruel that is avoidable.

    Now, the fight is spread, intentionally, to Europe.

    The solution as I have advocated before: A strong, prosperous, and independent Europe. It has a large and fertile land mass, talented inhabitants, exceptional strategists and fighters, pride, and high spirit. That it can be on its own and become a strong pillar in the new world is an accepted fact. It just needs a will.

    And if you need land to raise cattle and oies, learn from the Japanese: buy or rent lands from other countries with vast unused lands such as the US, Australia or Canada. You can even perform a diplomatic feat by negotiating with Russia for such productive deal and, why not, a side deal regarding the Ukraine problem.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                                         (This article appears on thelephongjournal.com, X, and Facebook)

    AI is possibly the real and formidable adversary of the billionaires and the privileged class.

    They had ruled society, the multitude, for ages by physical force. When revolution after revolution, Bastille, American Revolution etc., rendered physical force impractical or even a Trojan horse as the multitude possessed more physical power, the privileged class turned to information as a tool, or rather made information the exclusive tool, to maintain their seat on the Upper or Superior Mat, like the Vietnamese like to say, and colonize the rest of society.

    To gain an advantage, information needs to be developed or gathered. More importantly, the information must be kept secret. That is what the privileged class has been doing – to keep information from ordinary people and keep them from being equal.

    The technical or special knowledge is of course possessed by the experts: how to build an airplane, why the water on Santa Monica beach sometimes should be avoided, etc. Ordinary people don’t need or want to know, but the information is available and readily accessible.

    Other information that are important and the public is entitled to know as they affect their life, however, have been deliberately kept from them: Who killed President John F. Kennedy; or who is included in the Epstein infamous list; or why Boeing, the company that produced the flawed 737 aircrafts that by 2024 experienced  234 aircraft losses, 529 accidents, and 5779 fatalities got $4.2B from the U.S. Government to develop a space vehicle and an extraordinarily successful company, SpaceX, was awarded only $2.6B to do the same thing; or why huge amounts of money always go to already wealthy zillionaires, and ordinary folks continue to struggle to pay exorbitantly-priced gasoline to take their children to school, etc.

    AI has cleared the field and made information readily accessible to the public to the point where in a few minutes talking to AI, a Joe would conceivably be able to know about most of everything that a billionaire knows. No knowledge would be special knowledge reserved for billionaires. And that is a clear and eminent danger to the billionaires and the ruling class and that is why they don’t want to regulate AI, as anything regulated will become public information accessible to ordinary people.

    AI would make life’s problems simpler and easier to understand, and questions could be answered quickly.

    One party could feed to AI such questions as how can I cheat my opponent to win this election? The opponent in turn asks would the election system present any flaws that a cheater could exploit? Were the above-mentioned questions answered truthfully, there would be no rampant accusations of fraud, cheat, or steal flying around to muddy the political atmosphere for the advantage of one party or another.

    There is now a tug-of-war between two factions: AI should or should not be regulated.

    Ordinary people of course want it to be regulated. Keeping it unregulated means to keep the multitude away from it and reserve it for the billionaires as their exclusive privilege. It is conceivable that a regulated AI would answer these above-mentioned questions honestly, but unregulated AI companies controlled by billionaires would not allow their AI to answer questions they don’t like.

    It has been said that the Human Brain is God. The tech billionaires have proved beyond doubt that their brains are scarily superior. It was Archimedes who declared that “Give me a stand, and I will move the earth”. AI clearly gives the proverbial stand to the tech billionaires who will certainly become an omnipotent God to control the earth and soon the Universe.

    So, the choice for us, when we are still able to choose, is AI as an equalizer rather than an AI providing a stand for the billionaires to conduct themselves as God.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                                           (This article appears on thelephongjournal.com, Facebook, and X)

Why so many ridicule or criticize Natalie Harp so harshly?
Everyone is endowed by Nature with a combination of certain abilities. She, like her critics, just wants to use them to gain the most benefits. She swoons over Donald Trump the president of the United States, the guy who wagged his finger and half of the White House complex, the proud symbol of America for years, disappeared, or even kisses his ass, so what? What wrong with it? Honestly, nothing wrong with it.
In life, especially fast-moving American life, where to aim your arrow is essential for success. If luck gives you a chance and puts you next to the president of the United States, if you pay attention to your detractors and are reluctant to kiss his ass (and kiss it publicly if that gives you more benefits) that would be a fatal mistake of your on-the-make-life that would kill your one-in-a-life chance to succeed – to find your place in the sun as Sammy Davis had hollered for years.
Look at the big boss. Didn’t he know he did not say correctly about a lot of things? Of course, he did but why should he care if his lies are pleasing like singing an oldies song to the ears of the over-65-year-old voters? Are you, righteous critics, sure that sticking to the high road with ethical and moral principles is the sure way to success? Since 2026, or even before, MAGA has shown you that to be wrong. They saw them as unimportant or have probably turned them into being unimportant. Nothing succeeds like success and if you fail to gain power, I repeat, you are irrelevant.
Criticizing success is, frankly, nothing but jealousy babbling. If Ms. Harp succeeded in banning some media outlet from the White House press corps as rumored, it would be euphoria and proof that she is competent in doing what she has been doing – dropping effective words into power’s ear and moving the world. And lugging the duffle bag next to the big boss only enhances the perception of being powerful.
I have said it first, proudly, before Peter Thiel, in a post on X that the president’s people, many of them, have exhibited incompetence. So, when the billionaire/investment genius/political thinker/social and political influencer/advisor-to-president Mr. Thiel said the same thing on September 24 on MD Meet podcast, then there is a common observation of such incompetence.
But somehow, such incompetence blends in well with the current American
political landscape and makes incompetence normal and acceptable. Imagine the mistakes committed by the intelligence agencies and the defense department under, say Leon Panetta, it would have caused uproars so deafening that heads would have rolled off those agencies instead of walking about nonchalantly.
MAGA has determined for itself that the U.S., or even the world, should not be what it has been. They don’t want to improve it. They want to remake it into something different. So, incompetence may be unimportant or perhaps the weapon to achieve the goal of turning society upside down, destroying it to build a new one just like bulldozing the East Wing to build a new what-ever.
Putting the name of President Donald J. Trump on a building specifically built and named after President John F. Kennedy to commemorate him was clumsy and weird but has served the purpose of whoever wanted to do it: as long as MAGA is the boss of the town, the Kennedy Memorial apparently stops being one; clumsy or not, three to four years may help the public to forget its name.
Caveat populus: you have a choice with your votes: to enable and continue the MAGA world where there is no such a thing as human society but only mortal combatting clans, and act like a true MAGA member: everyone for themselves. Or ask like John F. Kennedy what you can do for your country but not what your country can do for you – your clan.
JOHN P. LE PHONG
(This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)

In only two years and a half, MAGA has remarkably achieved many of its goals – easily.

For years, the U.S. clamored for other NATO’s members to increase their defense budgets as the U.S. carried some 62% of the total NATO defense spending. Faced with MAGA’s policy of “America First”, EU has been pushing for strategic autonomy, independent from the U.S. In other words, they are not relying on the American umbrella of security, economic and military, anymore. MAGA has got its wish: no more European piggyback on American expense.

The seemingly erratic declarations or statements insulting to its allies, the exorbitant tariff hike, and the effort to transform the U.S. into a police state have built a wall around it. It is now separated from the world, MAGA can do whatever they have wanted to do to transform the U.S.A. into a dictatorship. With or without a king, MAGA has run the country like a kingdom, treating Congress, let alone Democrats, like a side show.

It has decidedly defeated Woke politics and dreams: no more world influence or pressure on America politics to promote and protect minority groups, no more social ideology according to the world’s wisdom. There is now only one block, a solid block of influencers or deciders in American politics and society: the white block – white extremists or supremacists. The US Supreme Court sees to it that the Voting Rights Act will not hinder the Republicans from increasing their seats in Congress, potentially keeping Congress a long-time if not forever puppet. The rationale of the Louisiana v. Callais decision: Louisiana must act COLOR-BLIND.

When President Trump appointed several women to important cabinet positions, it led to the belief that the macho MAGA finally recognized that misogyny was wrong and women would be treated equally by MAGA.

Tulsi Gabbard looked serious in white. Kristi Noem with her rolled-up sleeves, hair flying with every step she took, was an unusual image of the head of a security agency that was supposed to be macho – unusual but still unknown and therefore acceptable.  Pam Bondi was (and still is) beautiful, poised, ramrod straight, sharp mind, and sharp tongue, all the attributes of an Amazon woman ready and able to confront chauvinism, giving hope that she would prove to be a formidable contribution to the women’s effort to assert their right to be treated fairly and justly.

Then, things unraveled in unexpected ways.

Ms. Bond stated early and openly that she was ready to release the Epstein files, all of them. She had just reviewed them and obviously was outraged by what she saw and read. There were only two groups of human beings in the files: young litle girls and men, much older and much more powerful men. There was only one game, if it could be called a game: the little girls trapped within the walls (brick, mortar, and other kinds of walls) and the men just did to them whatever and whenever they wanted, sadistic, sordid, base. The action called for was clear for Pam: inform the public then prosecute the wrongdoers.

Then, the AG dragged her feet. She postponed the release, and when she did, she released the files, redacted, selectively, as if her decision were influenced, not by what was right or wrong or women needed to fight back, but by some things or some ones else. If that were the case, everyone could guess the gender of these some ones.

    But her responses and attitude at Congressional hearings seemingly supported men’s entrenched belief that did serious damages to the Equal Right Movement: Women do not have equal substance.

    Congressional hearings are supposed to be a forum for the witnesses to provide answers or information to Members’ questions. The witnesses do not always answer all the questions, and not answering a Member’s question is not exactly difficult requiring high art. Her predecessors, Merrick Garland and William Barr avoided answering questions they did not want to answer with aplomb. But at her Congressional hearings, she behaved and spoke as if she were in an irate-neighbor-fighting-her-neighbor’s dog-messing-her-lawn. No grace under pressure, even though as a woman she should possess more grace than, say, her boss president Trump.

    The second woman cabinet secretary, Kristi Noem was asked by a Congress’ member a simple question if she had sexual relations with Corey Kowandowski. Her response was: “I am shocked that we are going down and peddling tabloid garbage in this committee today.” And “That kind of garbage has been refuted for years, and it is offensive that you have brought that up.” She should have learned from the master. On 60 Minutes, the President stated simply and succinctly, “I am not a pedophile”.

    What was missing in her answer was the “I”: It was refuted but “I” did not refute. The Occam Razor answer “No, I did not” would have done perfectly well for her. A listener could not help thinking that her dodging of the question indeed confirmed her extra marital affair.

Such lack of grace under pressure and roundabout talking, as read by their detractors, are signs of psychological weaknesses.

After they were gone, one could argue that MAGA had executed a Machiavellian maneuver to deal the Equal Right Movement a severe blow and bolster the misogynists’ prejudicial and sadistic position that the right place for women would be at home, in the kitchen, and in bed.

But their best and most striking achievement is to show how vulnerable and weak Democracy is and how to subvert it without having to fire a shot or even to violate the law.

JOHN P. LE PHONG
(This Article appears on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)