Remember when the New Hampshire primary was happening and a robo-call went out pretending to be Joe Biden telling people to “save their votes” and not cast a ballot in the primary there? At the time, the Democrats were trying to make a different state the first state to vote in the Primaries and didn’t want to have one in New Hampshire so it seemed like a Democratic effort to undermine the primary there. Biden won, anyway. But, guess what?

A Democratic operative named Steve Kramer has admitted he commissioned the AI call. He said he employed “easy to use online technology” to deploy the call. It cost him around $500 bucks. He was employed by Democratic candidate Dean Phillips at the time but has not implicated Phillips in any way. The two aren’t working together anymore. Kramer commissioned the thing from a magician and hypnotist named Paul David Carpenter who said it cost him $1 and took him about twenty minutes to manufacture with software from an AI firm called ElevenLabs.

On the up side, the Federal government has since outlawed automated calls using AI generated voices. They say it’s a threat to democracy and it is. So, that’s good. The thing is, now that we know how easy it is for anybody with even a little practice to do, AI generated phone calls are suddenly a real and present danger and any slaphead can – and, therefore, will – make one.

To his credit, Carpenter expressed regret over how Kramer used the work product and as the law enforcement investigation heated up, Carpenter got with authorities. My favorite quote from that story? “Nobody wants to become well-known for something shitty.” (He should pay closer attention to MAGA. Some people, apparently, don’t mind…) But he said it would take “mere minutes” for people to learn to do what he did. “Pandora’s Box is opened,” Carpenter said.

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Hey, it looks like Americans finally did the right thing. It was probably an accident. Apparently, we’re all tired of the gouging in the stores and at the gas pump and even when we try to buy a car – so we’ve stopped. Well, slowed. Fewer name brand items are finding their way into our carts. People are buying used cars instead of new. People are driving less. In short, we’ve finally closed our wallets.

We’ve been told – a lot – by corporate media that all that price gouging is “inflation.” Probably Joe Biden’s fault. Of course, it isn’t inflation so much as greed. But now that Americans have closed their wallets, the prices are starting to slide. They won’t come down much but they are coming down and more importantly, they’re not going up anymore.

Now all we need the Federal government to do is reverse their oh-so-stupid rule change made in 2011 that allowed Wall Street to start buying up all the single family homes so Americans can compete in that market again and the cost of housing can fall, too…

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Donny is running around claiming for the deceived that he’s just like Navalny, a persecuted political prisoner just murdered by Vladimir Putin. I can see some differences, just in the description. But the details count, too. Navalny was first poisoned, then imprisoned, and ultimately murdered, on the charge of “extremism.” What the hell does that even mean, extremism? That’s a pretty subjective charge, if you ask me.

Donny, on the other hand, faces 91 separate charges in four different jurisdictions, each of which is well defined – not subjective – well supported by evidence, and has been in the books for years. Donny hasn’t been poisoned. I’ve heard he lives in fear of being poisoned. The story is, that’s why he eats so much fast food and uses the smallest ketchup bottles. It’s harder to poison him that way. But that’s just his snowflake paranoia. Nobody is actually trying to poison him.

If justice does prevail in his case, and he does end up in prison, he’ll come out just as fat as he is now. He won’t be starved while being held. Oh, and…he’ll get out. That, too, is different than Navalny’s fate. Why, it’s almost as if 45 is delusional.

Currently, the United States doesn’t have a corollary to what Putin just did to Navalny. Donny has promised to start all of that if he gets back to the White House, of course, but right now, no. We don’t. Well, we ARE still holding a couple of people in Gitmo who have never been charged but remain in prison, nonetheless, so that’s close. But even they are being fed and not tortured. Nope, a terrified little con, 43, ruined America’s record on that.

Cons, and it’s always cons, justified that by calling it something different. Enhanced Interrogation wasn’t torture at all. Just ask the guys doing the torturing, I mean, interrogations. (DO NOT, for the god’s sake, ask the victims, er, “subjects of the interrogation.” My guess is, they have a different take entirely.)

Ah, crap. Just when I wanted to go all holier-than-thou on Russia, too. It turns out, the US DOES imprison people for political reasons and hold them “indefinitely.” That, too, was brought to you by the terrified, little minds of the conservative movement. I don’t know what’s wrong with those people. I just know they’re wrong…