Approaches, 38th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Aldebaran): Every morning, I wake up and open the news on my phone, looking for that death notice. Not just any obituary that might appear buried way down deep and low on the site. I'm looking for that front-page, giant-font notice that tells me the long nightmare is finally over.

Meanwhile, I have to console myself by watching the Stable Genius' agenda fall apart. Old, demented, and senile, he can barely string together a coherent sentence. I'm watching him call for capital punishment of a member of the Senate,  a highly decorated military veteran and literally an astronaut. I'm watching him tell a reporter that he plans on meeting with former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro "in the very near future" a day after Bolsonaro was incarcerated for tampering with his ankle bracelet while waiting to start his 38-year jail sentence. 

I'm watching his attempted prosecution of two political rivals laughed out of court for incompetence. I'm watching him, after weeks of strenuous resistance, submit to the inevitability of the release of the Epstein files, although I still don't believe that anything meaningful will ever be released, certainly nothing detrimental to the Stable Genius.

I'm watching him fall asleep in front of the camera during press conferences. I'm watching him slur his words like an alcoholic on a ten-day bender. I'm watching him string out sentences in long, rambling tangents, many of which revert back to his grievance of two, five, or more years ago and totally unrelated to the topic he was addressing.   

What am I not watching? I'm not watching the announcement that his DOGE project has been formally disbanded, because there was no press conference on that one and they're trying to keep it quiet and on the down-low. I'm not watching his big health-care announcement scheduled for last Monday with Dr. Oz because the announcement  was quietly cancelled without explanation (hint: they don't have a plan for health care).

Every morning starts with the disappointment that the announcement's not there. But there's always tomorrow.