MAGA

A New Low At US AG…

by MyBaconPress

Lisa Murkowski has insisted she won’t be voting for Todd Blanche to advance to Attorney General. She says she doesn’t trust his assurance that the J6 treason fund isn’t dead, despite his written statement that the fund is dead. That’s smart. Trusting anything Team Evil says has been reduced to a simple this or that. If you believe anything they say, you’re either a gullible fool or you’re complicit. These guys lie about everything, all the time.

But then, so does Murkowski. Maybe she’ll stick to her position. More likely, she won’t. She comes out from time to time, defiantly taking one contrarian position or another. Then she votes along with the crowd, doing as she’s told, a safe a reliable vote. It doesn’t matter what she does, though.

He’s got the votes now. It’s gotta be embarrassing to be in the GOP, these days. They’ve had to confirm Todd Blanche as US Attorney General. Blanche is among the toadiest of 47’s toadies and represents a new low in the job. (So far, ALL of 47’s team represent the very worst person ever to hold the job. That can’t be a coincidence.) Blanches thinks J6 attackers deserve “compensation” and he thinks nobody should ever be able to audit any trump family or businesses ever again because, reasons. (The reason is, that’s what Donny told him he thinks.)

First, he tried to create the compensation fund for a bunch of traitors. Then when that met resistance, he said he didn’t mean it. People didn’t believe him. So he wrote it down. “Oh, okay,” say the GOP, “NOW we think it’s legit.” As if nobody in this regime has ever said anything they didn’t mean and had no intention of sticking to. But cons have to pretend. “Oh, THIS time they’ll behave.” Suckers…

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Well, rats. It looks like McConnell is still alive after all. How disappointing. I know. It’s not very nice of me to be disappointed. That’s not a normal position for me, either. But the choices McConnell has made cause me to wish he couldn’t make choices anymore. I wouldn’t want to live a life that caused people to wish me into the corn field, you know? I wonder if the money is actually worth it…

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In the race to wipe out humanity, climate change has been making some bold moves recently. It’s moving on our food supply and the fresh water supply at the same time. As a result, there’s less of both. At a time when the human population has exceeded Earth’s carrying capacity for nearly fifty years? Yeah, that’s going to be a problem.

Romania is about to sink four rock-filled barges in an effort to raise the level of the Danube river. The water level is so low, they’ve already had to shut down one of their nuclear power plants and they’re trying to keep from having to shut down the other. It doesn’t seem like a solid effort. Even if it works, it will only buy them a few days.

Puerto Rico has started water rationing in the capital city of San Juan and nearby areas. They’re going to shut off water for up to 48 hours at a time! July was San Juan’s driest month on record since 1899 and experts predict the drought will persist until at least September. If they don’t get some rain soon, the water cutoff could extend to 72 hours.

Meanwhile, rich people continue to press for data centers, despite the fact that data centers use so much water aquifers are trembling in terror at their own impending demise. “Hey,” say the rich people, “the machines NEED that water.” As if people don’t. It’s a straight up, Capitalist choice, though. The rich people think they can profit from hydrated machines but not from hydrated humans. The choice is obvious, to hell with the humans. Free market Capitalism is stupid…

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Rich people. Every time someone suggests a tax on their lucre, they frame it as an “attack.” Hey, they have all of the money. Where the hell are governments supposed to turn? That scary, scary dark-skinned man, current mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani, has implemented a pied-à-terre tax. See? That must apply to rich people. You don’t even know what a pied-à-terre tax is, right? So I’ll tell you. A pied-à-terre tax is a tax on second homes. In this case, second homes in that great city.

If you own a second home in New York City that you don’t live in full time, and the second home meets a value threshold – a house worth more than $5 million dollars or a condominium or cooperative unit worth at least $1 million – the tax affects you. The pied-à-terre tax is not a new idea. Cities such as Paris, Singapore and Vancouver already have pied-à-terre taxes. In theory, that makes it easier for people who want to live in the city to buy property.

Honestly, I’m not sure taxing $5 million dollar properties is going to help much at the work-a-day-Joe housing level but experts say I’m wrong. It does help. They’re the experts. So the pied-à-terre tax raises significant revenue for the city and is expected to increase available housing for everyone. It seems like a good idea for the largest number of people.

So, obviously, the tiny number of people it affects are complaining and threatening to leave the city. Uh-huh. It’s a threat rich people like to pitch out from time to time. What is the actual threat, though? If you tax us, we’re going to go live in that OTHER greatest city in the world? Theirs are philosophical threats with no practical application. They’re not going anywhere.

Sure they don’t want to pay the tax. Who would? But a person who owns a second home in New York City worth $5 million dollars or more is almost certainly not going to even feel it. The revenue will help a LOT of people and the people the revenue is raised from won’t even notice. That seems like a good deal to me.

If it bothers you, consider this: the rich have been promising that they will trickle money down to us just as soon as they have enough. They have most of it, now, and most people are still waiting for their trickle. Think of these kinds of taxes as simply forcing the rich to trickle the way they promised…

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A judge has stepped in and told 47 to stop work on his ballroom. The judge said only the useless GOP Congress has the authority to approve major White House renovations. Donny whined that he was going to take the case to his toady Supremely Corrupt Court. That will drag things out a little longer. What a moron.

Many of us know someone who tried to build something without the proper permits. Sometimes they get away with it, sometimes they don’t. But to try and build an illegal addition – essentially a whole new wing – to one of the most famous houses in the world, in full view of the public, without any permits or proper permissions? Yeah, moron…

Schrödinger’s McConnell…

by MyBaconPress

I woke up August fourth to no announcement of Mitch “the bitch” McConnell’s passing. The, um, deadline was August third. After that, no special election could be called. That was the date the cons were reportedly waiting for. They kept promising McConnell was alive but no proof was ever offered. A couple of still photos were released but many people saw the photos as AI-generated fakes. As of this writing early August sixth, still no announcement.

The GOP successfully froze the opposition long enough. I suppose the strategy could be to wait a day or two in order to give his “sudden and unexpected downturn” some credibility. I suppose it’s also possible, I should at least mention it, that McConnell is still alive. He has lived his life in a way that has me hoping he’s measuring for curtains with Lindsay Graham, though. We’ll all find out together, here, in the very near future…

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It can’t be a little thing that Capital One closed all of Trump’s accounts because of money laundering. That happened in 2021. Donny took it personally, the way he takes everything. “It couldn’t have anything to do with all that fraud I commit,” he randomly decided. “It was political!” Then he sued Capital One. So now, in defense of their actions, he has forced Capital One to produce their work papers showing all the fraud committed in those accounts.

All of this happened after the J6 insurrection. (See how I haven’t stopped calling it what it was, just because a few people pretend it was something else?) 47 suspects he was debanked because of it. Capital One denies the charge, but I think they have a right to not do business with a guy like that if they so choose. There SHOULD be consequences to calling your minions to storm the Capitol building and threatening to murder the Vice President.

My guess? The fraud Capital One detected was directly related to expenses of the J6 attack. That would explain the timing and support the money laundering charge. Sadly, I have no evidence to support such an idea. I just think it would be awesome if his own spiteful spirit exposed his own criminal activity yet again. This isn’t over yet so it still might. Stay tuned…

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I’m not a person who accepts the concept of Hell as we, generally, understand it. I don’t see Hell as an artifact of an after-life. I understand Hell as a reality of the current life. That is to say, I think people put themselves in Hell by their actions, words, and deeds – the suffer the consequences of those deeds each day of their lives. It doesn’t matter if they meant to do a Hell-bound thing or not.

One example is this current Reflecting Pool kerfuffle between Jeanine Pirro and 47. As we all know, 47 hired a company to resurface the Reflecting Pool. The company appears to have done the work poorly. It’s a trump associate. Of course they did the work poorly. THEN, Donny drove one of the heaviest cars in the world over it, along with several other support vehicles, for a really cool photo opportunity.

Then the whole thing went south and the Reflecting Pond now faces the same fate as most of 47’s other projects. Waste. This newest failure reveals him to be, at best, a second-rate builder – and that might be an insult to second-rate builders. Donny only cares that the failure might make him look bad. He lashes out, he blames innocent people, he seeks to punish someone.

His brain hit on “vandalism” and he started having people arrested. The thing is, when those people got to court, there was absolutely no evidence of any crime. So the DOJ had to drop the charges and confess the problem was poor installation, not vandalism. But Donny has already said vandalism. NOW what?

Hell. Donny’s Hell. He lives every moment of every day in fear that his dwindling supporters might somehow see him for who he actually is. His life is governed by jealousy, fear, and anger. He’s constantly looking for someone to blame or punish. Living one’s life in that state of constant agitation can’t be fun or pleasant. His whole life is clouded by his own actions. It doesn’t matter what he tells you. It ONLY matters what HE knows about himself in his heart-of-hearts. And one does NOT lie to themselves, no matter how hard they might try.

I suppose swimming through his money or his dalliances with young girls might offer some distraction for him but the jealousy, fear, and anger always, always, linger just below the surface. Worse, the “distractions” often add to the self-disgust because of their nature. He really likes to golf. He’s actually pretty terrible at it, for a guy who spends so much time and taxpayer money on it, but it requires focus.

That probably offers him a temporary escape from the self-torture he lives with. But the jealousy, fear, and anger are always there. To me, that’s the real definition of hell, what we do to ourselves in our own minds. We can hide it from others, but we can’t hide from ourselves…

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Why do companies keep putting out “spy glasses?” And who wants these things? I know the masses don’t. People don’t WANT to be filmed covertly. But someone buys them. The companies call them “smart glasses,” but they often come with a secret camera so you can film people without their knowledge. Who needs to film covertly?

Really, it’s the hidden camera that’s the problem. I can actually see how smart glasses could benefit a person in some situations but the hidden camera comes with an inherent possibility for chicanery. Why not add a light so the people around you know when you’re filming? That’s the part that seems to bother people the most.

In the UK, restaurants, pubs, and theaters are banning the things entirely. The glasses are seen as invasions of privacy. I see them the same way and I know I’m not alone. I wish public venues in the US would follow suit. No spy glasses in their establishments. Then all we have to worry about is everywhere else…

Loyal First To Him – Or Themselves? That Is The Question…

by MyBaconPress

47 really does expect his followers to fall on their swords for…whatever. He’s angry with Jeanine Pirro for protecting her law license by refusing to lie to courts. To be clear, she’s a-okay with lying. Just not to courts. She’ll lie on TV. She’ll lie during pressers. She’ll lie in a box. She’ll lie with a fox. You know she’ll lie here or there. In fact, she’ll lie most anywhere. But not court. And 47 is mad at her for that. You see, HE doesn’t care what happens to her. He only cares about himself. It has always been true. It’s true today. It will remain true for as long as he lives.

This is exactly the kind of schism I’ve expected from the right for quite a long time, now. At some point, one’s own personal interest, I presumed, must interfere with their loyalty to 47. Much to their shame, many of the cons destroy their own lives rather than cross the madman. But not all of them, which brings us to his America-hating ‘Save My Ass Act.’

For reasons he simply cannot fathom, Republicans in Congress are not passing the thing. To be clear, 47 NEEDS it. He wants it bad. He doesn’t really care about how it might affect anybody else. He doesn’t CARE about anybody else. He cares about himself. Period. But, as it happens, other cons DO care about their futures.

As it happens, 47’s ‘Save My Ass Act’ is an attempt to disenfranchise voters, and mostly women voters. It requires a photo ID but not just any photo ID. The list of acceptable forms of ID includes several things most Americans don’t have, like a passport. Worse, you have to essentially show a paper trail on any name changes. So, if you’re say, a woman who married and took your spouse’s name? Yeah, you might not be able to vote anymore.

There are lots of ways one’s birth name might no longer match their current name. But according to SAVE, if the two don’t match and you can’t show the path of those changes with the right legal documents, too bad for you. The thing is, there’s a feeling out there, true or not, that conservative women tend to follow more traditional marriage paths than liberal women.

That is to say, perhaps more conservative women have married and taken their husband’s name than liberal women. They may not have all of the documentation needed to prove the name change. In short, Donny’s ‘Save My Ass Act’ might disenfranchise conservative women at a higher rate than liberal women, creating a massive backfire. Cons in Congress know it, too. Or, at least, fear it.

They’re covering their own tails. They might lose their own elections if they accidentally disenfranchise conservative women and they don’t want to take the chance. All of that means I don’t have to count on Republicans to do the right thing, which is comforting since I know that’s not a thing for them. But I CAN count on their own selfish and self-serving desires and since passing SAVE could well end their own political careers, I suspect (sincerely hope) they really won’t do it…

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As a follow-up, a federal judge in Minnesota has denied a request from Elon Musk to suspend Minnesota’s nudification ban. The case is still going forward, but the law went into effect Saturday. In case you missed it, the law bans deepfakes of people that have been digitally undressed using AI tools. It’s a practice called ‘nudification.’ You won’t be surprised to hear that estimates say somewhere between 96% and 98% of all deepfakes produced since 2022, when the tools became widely available, have been explicit in nature and nearly ALL of it involves women – or children.

Elon is defending the perpetrators. He calls it a matter of free speech. I disagree. There’s a very clear, readily identified, true victim in these cases, the unsuspecting, nudified woman. A victim means a violation. It’s the tip of the nose rule. A person’s right to swing their fist ends at the tip of another person’s nose. Any argument toward ‘trust the user’ is already destroyed by the fact of the things they’ve already done with those tools. The best way forward to protect victims is to remove the nudification tools entirely…

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I think I’ve mentioned that Team Evil has withheld Medicaid money from a couple of (blue) states over imagined fraud, waste, and abuse. Everybody knows, it’s really just a punishment for knowing what a piece of garbage 47 is – and saying so – but they need some kind of excuse so they file it under fraud, waste, and abuse and never offer details. Now they’re coming after in-home care providers for disabled people.

Team Evil is offering up really stupid arguments in favor of their cruelty and stupidity. Rich person Mehmet Ooze, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said, “Often these are services that your family would typically have provided for you that the federal government has started to fund.” Oh, really, Ooze? Do you mean back when a single breadwinner could provide for the family’s needs? Surely you’re not talking about today, when it takes two incomes (or more) to even have a chance to make ends meet?

Also, often these are services for which, in the past, a person might have needed institutionalization – at a much, much higher cost than paying in-home helpers. It’s so much less expensive to have home help. It’s just a good solution to an ongoing problem. But I don’t really have to explain how stupid the regime’s move is, since they’re lying about why they’re doing it. How can I tell?

Oh, that’s easy. They only pretend to have found fraud waste and abuse in blue states. Not one red state in the country commits fraud? Really? No problems from the red states. Sure, that makes sense. Also, even if one DOES identify some fraud taking place, does that mean ONLY fraud is taking place? Why, no. No it doesn’t.

Lawsuits will be filed. 47 will lose and have to pay the money retroactively. Then he’ll start to look for ways to delay that program and more legal wrangling will follow and all of it – ALL of it – is just to be a jerk to states he doesn’t like. It wouldn’t surprise me to find he thinks punishing California will teach us a lesson and we’ll fall in line just to keep him from punishing us. I hope Californians will rebel against his capricious cruelty and double down on our dedication to getting him out of office and in chains as quickly as possible…

Won’t Learn…or Can’t Learn?

by MyBaconPress

It just keeps happening and 47 seems like he CAN’T learn. He cut the pandemic alert team. Covid-19 followed. He cut the Cyclospora tracking team. We have an outbreak of Cyclospora. He cut the screwworm team. We’re suffering an outbreak of screwworm. He convinced his followers that vaccines are bad. Now we have outbreaks of measles and even effing polio!

In fact, the measles are getting so bad, local agencies are having difficulty keeping up. As of July 31, the US passed the record total tally for measles cases for a year. We still have nearly half a year to go. One of the most dangerous people on the planet when it comes to vaccinations is current health secretary and renowned moron RFJ, Jr. Here’s a question: when an official spreads false information that proves dangerous to society, why isn’t that actionable? Why can’t we prosecute that guy?

I don’t mean everyday Joes. It’s not their job. They’re not expected to know. If a layman says something stupid about a science, well, they’re laymen. What the hell do THEY know? But experts are supposed to know, and if you’ve got a job like, oh, say, Secretary of Health and Human Services, you should be an expert.

IF, AS the expert, you come out an insinuate that vaccines, say, cause autism, when every scientific study on the subject says that’s not true, that’s not just a wrongheaded opinion. That’s a lie that is going to kill people – and that’s exactly what RFK, Jr is doing with his misinformation about vaccines. As it happens, free speech has limits. There should be legal limits on the actions of experts and professionals spreading lies about the risks of vaccinations…

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Okay, so this is weird and rather a stretch but it’s a thought that invaded my mind the other day. I watched a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. During the Great Depression, the world fell into great poverty. People went one of two directions. One group embraced Hitler, Mussolini, and fascism in general. The other group – the USA – followed FDR to strengthen democracy by helping the struggling masses.

To this day, I believe FDR saved the US during that time by introducing the social safety net and a few socialist principles – the bits that actually made America great in the first place. The very bits Donny is promising – and working – to remove. So, if FDR’s actions SAVED America in the first place and Donny is planning to eliminate FDR’s actions, America is probably _____ <fill in the blank>…

It crossed my mind that someone noticed that desperation caused people to turn to fascism in the past. New desperation might bring about the same result so long as there’s no FDR out there, championing democracy – and there isn’t. Maybe there’s a reason Donny is actively attacking the US economy and the health and safety of Americans…

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It’s not what he says that matters. He lies. It’s what his people say in court, under oath. Remember his imaginary vandals who, he claims, attacked the Reflecting Pool? He has repeated that whopper a LOT. Well, until it got to court. Now Team Evil, in this case Jeanine Pirro, has declared – under oath – that the Reflecting Pool failures were caused by a “flawed installation by the contractors.” She didn’t mention his motorcade driving down the middle of the Reflecting Pool right after the “repair” work was finished. So far, THAT’S the only vandalism I know of.

But Donny had several people arrested in an effort to sell his lie. They had to pay actual money to defend themselves against charges the DOJ KNEW were made up, just to try and make Donny look good. And even THAT didn’t work because now that the truth has come out, he looks even worse. He looks SO bad, he’s still insisting the Reflecting Pool was vandalized. Not in court, of course. He just maintains the lie for his base – so long as he’s not under oath.

He’s angry at Pirro for her filing. Think about that for a second. He wanted her, expected her, to lie to the courts just to maintain his delusion. His lie wouldn’t cost him anything, so why not? Of course, it could, likely would, eventually cost her her law license. It’s yet another Lord Farquaad moment: “Some of you MAY die, but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make!” I’ve noticed that from Donny before. 47 is commonly willing to let someone around him – friend and foe, alike – take the fall for his decisions…

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Well, let’s see what 47 has harmed this week. Oh, look. International soccer. Specifically, Gianni Infantino. Infantino put forth a plan to sell off parts of FIFA to private investors led by Joshua Kushner, the brother of 47’s son-in-law, Jared. Infantino’s announcement focused heavily on expected revenues. The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) – a group that includes perennial soccer powerhouses such as Spain, France, England and Germany – unanimously threatened to boycott all FIFA competitions going forward.

Infantino backed down quickly. But his retreat seems insufficient to the UEFA. They don’t trust Infantino anymore. They want him out as President of FIFA. According to a statement released by the UEFA, “The moment external investors acquire ownership interests in FIFA, commercial return becomes a permanent obligation. Investor expectations become a daily pressure. From that moment onwards, every decision on the international calendar, every decision on competition formats and every decision shaping the future of football is no longer driven by what best serves the game, but by what best serves shareholders.”

You know, the exact problem with any corporation taking over any business or activity. ‘What best serves the shareholders’ becomes the focus. The product or service is stripped of anything and everything that made it good in the first place. Profit at any cost. It’s the fundamental weakness of so-called “free market” Capitalism.

Now that the plan has collapsed, Donny is running away from it at an amazing speed for a man of his age and terrible physical condition. Ask him, he’ll tell you. He knows nothing. He sees nothing. Of course, he’s not under oath and, by now, every rational human being on the planet knows that if he’s not under oath – and often if he is – one cannot trust a word that pukes out of his nasty, lying mouth…

Team Evil vs Nudification…

by MyBaconPress

One of the “joys” of Artificial Intelligence is that one can generate “nude” photos of people, whether the subject of the photo likes it or not – or even knows about it or not. I put the ‘nude’ in quotes because, apparently, the final photo isn’t truly “nude.” The makers have the photo generator “dress” the subject in a single string or something. So some small-minded moron can “get even” with the girl who dumped him because he’s a small-minded moron by posting a “nude” photo of her online, thereby proving she was right to dump him in the first place. But she’s still out there, “exposed.”

One can generate “nude” photos of children, too. And guess what? There are people out there doing exactly that. The practice of ‘undressing’ people in photos – adult and/or child – has become SO commonplace, it has a name: “nudification,” a name that makes clear the subject wasn’t nude, then someone made them appear nude, right? Someone “nudified” someone else.

Politicians – always slow to move on any topic – have taken notice and are trying to craft legislation to rein in the AI companies. People and politicians want the AI companies to limit the abilities of less developed people to do things like that. To that end, Minnesota passed a first-in-the-nation law that bans “nudification” technology on websites and apps. The law is set to take effect today as Minnesota becomes the first state to try to outlaw the increasingly proliferating technology that lets people use AI to to create fake nude images of real people.

“Not so fast,” says failed human being Elon Musk. “The whole point of Grok is to allow evil people to do evil things to innocent victims. Why would you want to stop that?” Yeah, okay, that isn’t what the lawsuit Musk filed said at all. Musk is evil, not stupid. What xAI actually said was that it does not contest the state’s interest in banning the distribution of AI-generated nude images of real people without their consent (wink, wink).

No, the problem xAI has with Minnesota’s new law is that it provides no “safe harbor” provision for companies that make good-faith efforts to prevent such images from being created by users. That’s the big tech bros excuse for everything their companies do. “Oh, we’re trying to fix that problem. Just because we provided the tools and the platform doesn’t mean it’s our fault!”

There are already laws on the books punishing users for creating deepfakes. Minnesota’s law intends to hold the makers of the nudification tools responsible for the fakes and they mean to charge the developers up to $500,000 per violation. See, all the AI companies have to do is pull the nudification tools. THAT would be – should be – the only good faith effort that qualifies as actually trying to solve the problem.

But Musk doesn’t want to do that. He went to a lot of trouble to add nudification tools. Now, obviously, he doesn’t want to be seen as supporting his nudification tools, either, so he’s pretending the law is just over-broad. He agrees with the goal, he pretends, but thinks this legislation goes too far. Uh-huh. He’s obligating states to try to use legislation to force him to remove the nudification tools he claims to dislike and could simply remove himself. How serious is he about wanting to protect victims?

Honestly? I don’t like AI. I’ve got it down as one of the two most likely things to destroy humanity altogether. Humans are having enough trouble with reality. We don’t need fakes, deep or otherwise, gumming up the works. So take that into account, here, because, frankly, once fake nudes and AI generated child porn started showing up, I would have banned AI entirely. And I STILL think that’s the right answer.

For clarity, I don’t think it’s a matter of free speech, either. Posting fake nude photos of real people should fall under the few umbrellas where we control speech, like shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater when no fire exists, maliciously spreading ruinous rumors about someone, or threatening them.

If the tech bros can’t put out a helpful, harmless product, they shouldn’t be allowed to put it out at all. Intentionally adding tools like nudification doesn’t seem like they’re even trying to put out a harmless product. If the offset is “not at all, then,” I guess they’d police themselves more aggressively…

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It’s just another opportunity to learn a lesson the right WILL NOT learn. We should break our dependence on oil so we don’t need to worry about what happens in oil producing regions, right? That lesson became clear way back in the 1970’s, when Saudi Arabia proved a point by shutting off the spigots. Americans were stuck in gas lines and could only buy gas on designated days.

The US economy suffered greatly. That, right then, was the moment a smart nation would have said, “Hey, let’s find a better answer and get off of this stuff.” We did, too. Well, we tried. Big oil didn’t WANT us breaking our addiction and, like any good pusher, has worked to maintain our dependence ever since. Now that dedication to antiquated technology is going to bite us in the butt again.

The US has pulled Saudi Arabia into that stupid, ill-advised war-that’s-not-a-war in Iran. Iran will respond, of course. Most likely, that will involve attacking oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. That will hurt supply AND take years to rebuild. It also widens Donny’s stupid war. We’ve had lots of opportunities to learn. We refuse to. That’s going to be costly…

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It looks like Donny is trying to ratchet up the pressure on his Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE My Ass Act and eliminate the filibuster to do it. He sent Susan Wiles, his Chief of Staff to Congress to huddle with Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Thune has maintained consistently that he doesn’t have the votes for either. 47 wants him to do it anyway. No, it doesn’t make sense but then, less and less of what he does makes any sense…

Quick question: what do YOU think Donny is going to do to try to interfere or stop the upcoming midterms completely? It’s not a rhetorical question. We all (except MAGA, and even some of them) know he’s going to do something. The whole world hates this guy with a white hot passion. If a free and fair election takes place, he loses as badly as we can manage. Then he faces honest investigations, criminal indictments, and, likely, impeachment. He CAN NOT let that happen. SO…what do you think he’s going to do to intervene?

Grilling Fauci…

by MyBaconPress

So, does it matter any more where Covid-19 came from? Did it ever? There are two schools of thought on the topic: either it was a natural jump from animals to humans or it came from a US-funded lab in China. Okay, great. How does knowing where it came from affect anything? We still had to go through it. All the same people died. It was a big fight once between left and right, though. Apparently, for the right, it still is.

They called Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as the nation’s infectious disease expert during the pandemic, to testify before Congress about Covid-19. Fauci knows, from experience, what the cons want: an excuse to harass Fauci and his family. He invoked his Fifth Amendment rights on over 100 questions.

At the time, Fauci was trying to understand and manage a new health threat while fully a third of the population challenged every word he said because they had spent a few minutes online doing their “own research.” Fauci only had years of education and decades of practice to work with. How could HE know what they learned in five minutes from some conservative talking head?

Fauci DID get some things wrong, too. He was working blind, having to determine courses of action in real time with little information. Much of what he said was ‘best guess’ or ‘best practice’ stuff that was later modified as information became available. Cons often can’t accept that. They think once a thing is said, that’s the thing and nothing can change it. Smart people know that new information requires modification of thought and that was the battle between left and right on Covid-19.

Fauci generally supported the natural transmission line but even he had doubts. It’s very difficult to say, for sure, and when the focus is managing the problem, where it came from is less important. Meanwhile, Donny was out there suggesting people drink bleach or shove a blacklight up their backsides to get rid of Covid and insisting Fauci didn’t know anything, and since it was uttered by the mouth of their Precious, Fauci had to agree or spend his days being bullied and harassed by blindly loyal MAGA.

Fauci stayed true to the science to the best of his ability and just took the abuse as long as he had to. But as quickly as he could, he returned to private life and has stayed there ever since. The cons won’t leave him alone, though. They’re STILL trying to prove he was just lying to make 47 look bad. (Generally speaking, it’s the truth that makes 47 look bad.)

He responded to the Congressional subpoena. He showed up. He refused to answer their stupid questions. Then he went home. Now Rand Paul, Homeland Security Chairman, wants to hold Fauci in contempt for invoking his Fifth Amendment protections. It makes sense. Having perfect information on a teeny-tiny, rather irrelevant detail of an event that took place over seven years ago is clearly more important than any of the minor challenges the US faces today, right? Leave it to the cons to keep their eyes on the wrong prize…

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Wow, this is going to hurt. On Monday, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) ended for people from Haiti and Syria. They can no longer legally work in the US, and now they can be removed from this once-great nation. The bigots couldn’t be happier.

But there are 200,000 Haitians and 2,000 Syrians contributing roughly $5.9 billion dollars to the US economy. Plucking 202,000 people out of the workforce at once is going to hurt the economy. And for me? It’s not enough that bigots are going to be happy. Turns out, I don’t much care what bigots want…

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We have a little university, here in Sonoma County. It’s called, cleverly, Sonoma State University. The school ran into some money troubles. They ran out. So, something had to go. Did they lose benefits to school functionaries? No. Did they adjust salaries of administrators? Don’t be ridiculous. What they did was, they got rid of ALL of their athletics programs and stopped teaching other subjects.

Just what every student wants, right? A school that doesn’t teach the topics the students need. What a brilliant way to entice students to the school. When the academic program can’t bring enrollment, athletics often does. But, rats, Sonoma State got rid of that, too. Since then, they’ve recorded the steepest enrollment decline in the California State University system.

Who could have guessed? I mean, really, who could know that not teaching subjects and eliminating athletics would cause students to want to go somewhere else? But that’s what happened. No sports? No classes? I’m going somewhere else! Ok, the “no classes” is a bit of hyperbole. They still had classes. But they closed eight different programs entirely so there were “no classes” in those subjects.

But now? Now the sports are coming back. So are the cancelled programs, though stripped down. Cancelling programs and athletics didn’t do what people hoped it would. No doubt. It’s like a car dealership trying to improve sales by not selling any cars. Dumb, with a ‘b.’

Fortunately, the school ALSO got a new President, Michael E. Spagna, and Spagna is bringing back the sports and the subjects. He’s “reimagining” Sonoma State as a whole. That’s his spiel. We’ll see if it works. I hope it does. The old plan seemed to put the university on a death spiral. Hopefully, this will help…

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I know a young lady who just turned 16 years old. For her birthday, she wanted vinyl albums. Not a subscription to some online service. Not a playlist. Actual, physical vinyl albums. I like that. It reminds me of Sony’s choice to stop producing physical discs for their PlayStation game decks – and how people are angry about it. Finally!

I recently moved house. I dragged my CD collection with me. CD’s? Who the hell still listens to CD’s? I do. If some streaming service decides to withdraw music or movies or games or whatever else I’ve “subscribed” to, it’s gone. Oh, you bought it? No, you rented it. You never owned anything.

Look, I understand the value of streaming. It IS convenient. It does serve. It has a place. But it should never have replaced actual ownership of one’s favorite music or whatever. From the producers point of view, the benefit of the physical disc is the problem. I can share my owned discs. I can’t share my streamed stuff the same way.

I still have my disc after the service pulls it from streaming for whatever reason. For example, Sony is about to delete 551 movies and TV shows from the UK PlayStation store because its content licensing agreement with StudioCanal has expired. If you “bought” any of those titles, you’re just out. Had you purchased the physical copies and brought them home, you’d still be able to enjoy them even though Sony deletes them.

Young people seem to be figuring this scam out and they don’t seem to like it. Thank goodness. I’ve never liked it. They HAVE migrated to vinyl instead of CD’s. (One of her new albums skipped on the first play, a frustration I thought young people would never know.) Still, it’s a physical copy of the work, not some stream. There’s a movement afoot for gamers to boycott PlayStation this August in protest of the elimination of physical discs. I hope it works. I’d rather own a physical copy of the things I buy then a digital download that may or may not be there tomorrow…

Let The Traffic Flow…

by MyBaconPress

Back in February of this year, I told you about the Gordie Howe International Bridge. To recap, there’s a bridge connecting Detroit, Michigan in the US and Windsor, Ontario in Canada. It’s called the Ambassador Bridge and it is owned by a wealthy family named Moroun. It’s old (opened in 1929) and inconvenient. It connects surface streets on the Ontario side so if you use it, you’ll still have to wend your way through town. Oh, AND, it’s a toll bridge. The Moroun family makes money from the thing – and THEY get to say how much money. It’s an important trade route. They’ve been making a LOT of money from it.

So Michigan and Canada got together and decided to build a new bridge, the Gordie Howe International Bridge. It’s safer. It’s easier. It’s just better. So, obviously, the Moroun family has been filing lawsuits since the project started and when the span was completed anyway, they used their wealth in the way wealth works best. The bribed Donny. Allegedly. All I can say, for sure, is that the Moroun family has dumped large sums of money into 47 and when the Gordie Howe bridge was ready to open, Matthew Moroun visited President Pedo personally.

The next thing anyone knew, Donny was declaring the Gordie Howe bridge a national threat and he wouldn’t let it open. As usual, he was vague on the details of exactly HOW a bridge that makes travel safer, easier, and more affordable (there’s that word, again) constitutes a “national threat.” We DO know the Moroun family makes about $100 dollars per semi-truck each way, while the Gordie Howe Bridge will only cost them about $43 dollars. Sure, that saves money for the truckers but it takes money out of the Moroun family’s pockets. I’m not surprised to hear that Donny considers a billionaire losing money to a better way a national threat.

But now the bridge is opening anyway. I was curious about how that happened. Donny’s demented mind sees demons in Canada and he really wants to punish them for all of that nothing they’ve done to us. So I was curious about what changed. Why is the Gordie Howe International Bridge no longer a national threat? Well, it turns out – and you won’t be surprised to hear this – Donny extorted Canada.

Canada paid for the bridge – all of the money, up front – and arranged to recoup their investments with the toll revenue, but intended to share some of the revenue with Michigan, as well. Team Evil claimed the bridge was a threat until Canada gave up some of the revenues they expected. Donny says it’s a better deal. Canada says, “We’re dealing with an administration like we’ve never seen before. They renege on deals. They don’t follow agreements. It’s like dealing with pirates.”

That’s an honest look into how other nations view the US today. “It’s like dealing with pirates.” So? Expect more typical trumpery. You just KNOW Donny will be out there telling his base the world respects us more than ever, but “like dealing with pirates” doesn’t sound like respect, to me. Still, the bridge is open now. Well, until Donny has another fever dream and throws another tantrum, that is…

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‘Narcissistic Collapse,’ they call it. When you see or hear Donny rage-tweeting at 2 am or listen to one (any) of his speeches, he’s really on more of a rant than trying to deliver any new information. He attacks one time supporters and he uses very aggressive words.

One author on the subject, Tina Swithin said, “Narcissistic collapse occurs when a narcissist’s carefully constructed self-image is threatened or shattered, often by criticism, public humiliation, perceived abandonment or a loss of control.” She added, “Basically, narcissistic collapse is ‘the moment the mask slips.’ A narcissist’s facade of power, authority and unique greatness goes away as their vulnerability is exposed ― laying bare negative behaviors that were previously hidden or controlled.”

In short, he’s melting down as more and more people see who he really is and just how bad he is at, well, everything, really. He sucks as a human being. HE has always known that about himself. He’s just terrified YOU might be seeing it, too. Many of us do, Donny, and more will see the real you every day…

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There’s this law. It’s called the ‘War Powers Act of 1973.’ It requires the president to end military operations within 60 days unless Congress authorizes an extension. Team Evil is trying a workaround. At one point in their illegal war, they declared a cease-fire in Operation Epic Fury. Now, obviously, the fighting has resumed. But Donny doesn’t WANT to turn to Congress for permission to keep bombing innocents – so Team Evil is trying to pretend THIS US vs Iran fighting is different from the last US vs Iran fighting.

Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, wrote in social media, “Let me explain this absurd ruse: The Pentagon is pretending there have been TWO Iran wars separated by a brief cease-fire.” It really IS absurd. It will lose in court if it ever gets there, but it buys the regime time, and time is what they need to create even more confusion.

This is all coming up because the regime wants to hide the number of American war dead and wounded. If they can convince somebody of their ‘two wars’ delusion, they can separate the number of casualties and obscure the body count, which currently stands at 18 US soldiers killed and 624 wounded since his illegal invasion…

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Hey, is now a good time to remind you that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were best friends and likely co-conspirators in a sex trafficking scheme for years and years? He’s trying very hard to distract people because he wants people to forget that. As he declines, his behavior becomes more outrageous and more dangerous, he’s slowly pushing the Trump/Epstein files off the front pages. But people are not forgetting his pedophile past. Don’t you forget it, either…

Time Off And More Time Off…

by MyBaconPress

Five weeks. That’s how long the current Congressional recess is scheduled to last. Five weeks. They’ve already shut down Congress more than once as an avoidance technique. They’ve had LOTS of time off. Now they’re taking five more weeks. Wouldn’t it be great to have a job where you don’t really have to go all that often and, apparently, one doesn’t even have to leave that job if one dies? Quick question: if one collects a paycheck AFTER one dies, isn’t that fraud? Just curious.

Senator Rick Scott has summed it up nicely. Today is July 26. On July 13, Scott published an op-ed that said this, “Did you know the U.S. Senate has only been in session 79 days (about 40% of the time) so far this year?” Almost eight months into the year, and they’ve been in session less than three months. Remember, this is the highest paid Congress in history. Why, it almost seems as if there comes a point where higher pay does NOT equal better performance. Especially from these guys.

Then again, I’m not sure I mind. The only thing the cons are trying to do in Congress, these days, is harm people or shove money into their own pockets or both. Maybe if they’re not around they can’t do as much harm to America or Americans, right? That’s one hell of a way to think about your political “leadership,” isn’t it? They can’t hurt us if they’re not around. I’m so old, I remember when Congress didn’t even WANT to hurt day-to-day Americans. Ah, the good old days…

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I need to make something clear, here. I seem to have lost most (all?) of my MAGA readers. I can’t say I’m surprised. I lob a LOT of insults at MAGA. (In fairness, they make it so easy.) Still, it seems unkind and I can see where individuals might take personal offense. But that’s the thing. I’m not lobbing insults at individuals. My barbs are aimed at MAGA, the group.

I doubt very strongly every single MAGA supporter buys every single MAGA trope of the movement. In fact, I know they don’t. I still have MAGA friends. But the movement, itself, takes a lot of really stupid positions. Mostly, that’s just to be contrarian but taking a contrarian political position to an obvious correct response just makes one look the fool, doesn’t it?

And, yes, one CAN find individual MAGA supporters who are, in fact, stupid. But really, it doesn’t take much to find honestly stupid lefties, either. Stupid happens and it happens on BOTH sides of the aisle. That’s why the media from each side can so easily find some challenged person to put on camera and present as “this is all of them.” But it isn’t.

So this segment isn’t so much an apology as an explanation. I’ll rip on groups and I’ll rip on ideas but I don’t, generally, attack individuals…

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There’s a pause in the shooting in Iran. Word is, someone told 47 the US was running low on munitions so now he’s in the mood to talk. If nothing else, Donny’s war of choice has weakened the US, right? Not just in our reputation and/or our treasury. He has depleted our stockpile of weapons on a war that is actually putting the US in greater danger. There was no need for this war. If Iran really IS a state sponsor of terrorism, what reaction might they have to being mercilessly bombed for no reason?

Remember during the campaign when 47 told the oil industry that if they brought him tons of money, he’d let them do whatever they wanted? They did, though not the one billion dollars he had asked for, and he has tried to keep his end of the bargain. But his stupid war in Iran is actually driving demand for oil DOWN in the US and around the world. (Psst, we can buy electric cars now.) He’s costing oil companies money. That seems like an unexpected consequence of his stupid war.

Hell, everything about Donny’s war is worse than it was when he chose to start it. Everything. Worst of all, people have lost their lives. Donny just wanted to look tough. Now people are dead. We don’t know exactly how many because the Pentagon has taken to hiding that information. But we know people have died. Kids. Non-combatants. Soldiers. Because Donny wanted to look tough.

Even that didn’t work. He just looks like a buffoon who has no idea how to get out of this war he started. And now the US is depleted in weaponry and treasure. We’re far weaker now than when he started this thing. It really feels like the biggest problem with putting a moron in charge of the country is that one has a moron running the country…

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I sure would like a salad. Sadly, even salad is dangerous under the Trump regime. The Feckless Fuckup has even made salad dangerous! Honestly, I knew from his last term things were going to be bad. He clearly has no idea what he’s doing nor how to do it. But salad? I’ve got to tell you, I didn’t expect that…

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Yet another court has stepped up to reinforce the idea that 47 has no voice when it comes to elections. He keeps trying to stop mail-in voting because mail-in voting is the MOST SECURE form of voting. It’s hardest for him to cheat with mail-in ballots and he totally means to cheat. He’s GOT to get rid of mail-in ballots, but he’s having a very, very hard time doing so because he has NO legal authority.

MAGA Mike, the Johnson’s corrupt conservative House tried to sneak language into a bloated defense bill to get the SAVE MY ASS Act passed, since they can’t get the thing through any other way, but the Senate doesn’t seem interested in following that trend. They can strip the offending language out if they choose. Of course, they’ll have to BE in Washington, DC to get anything done and that seems to be asking just a bit too much from these guys…

Sneaky Weasels…

by MyBaconPress

Well, aren’t they clever? The cons passed a bill against insider trading over the objections of Democrats. Wait, what? Over objections? But we, the people, WANT laws against insider trading by congress critters. Why would Dems stand against that? Well, they wouldn’t, now would they? I mean, they did, but not because of the bill’s ostensible primary purpose.

Some of the Dems DID suggest the bill in question didn’t go far enough to curb insider trading, but the main opposition to the bill came because the cons are sneaky little weasels and they tried to insert language of the SAVE Act into this insider trading bill. THAT way, see, cons could campaign on trying to curb insider trading – which they were not really trying to do – but the evil Dems stopped them, without ever mentioning the voter suppression details hidden within.

The cons, it seems, KNOW their SAVE Act is a terribly unpopular effort at voter suppression. To me, that’s the message behind their sneaky little effort to slip those provisions into other legislation…

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One barely has time for outrage anymore. First we find out 47 has made a deal with Saudi Arabia to let them enrich uranium for civilian use, so long as any support comes from American companies. Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced the deal on Wednesday. People were… confused. Why would Donny let Saudi Arabia have nuclear power?

By Thursday, though, things had changed. Apparently, Wright wasn’t supposed to make the announcement he made. Donny’s irritated. When the questions and criticisms about the deal – signed on Wednesday – started pouring in, Donny added a caveat: Oh, they can’t enrich uranium and they have to normalize relations with Israel.

The White House denies Netanyahu got on the phone and told Donny no, but those just happen to be two pet issues of Israel: no nuclear power for Arab states and better relations with Israel. For their part, Saudi Arabia continues to reject normalized relations with Israel until Israel agrees to a Palestinian state. Since Israel’s goal is obviously to drive out every Arab in the area in a “leave or die” kind of way, a Palestinian state doesn’t seem likely at this point.

So it’s looking more and more like there is no deal with Saudi Arabia, after all. Hey, just like everything else those clowns announce, yeah? I suspect Donny was trying to backdoor the deal and Wright’s announcement derailed the whole thing. That’s just a guess, though…

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Elon Musk says he “got a little too involved in politics” and “got carried away, frankly” by his cruel efforts to dismantle the US government and her reputation around the world with his DOGE crap. His primary concern, it seems, it that people now know who he really is and the vast majority of the world now hates that guy’s guts with a white hot passion. His businesses are suffering because decent people don’t want to do business with him.

The cuts DOGE made were supposed to save money. They haven’t. Instead, DOGE cuts forced tens of thousands of government workers out of their jobs and laid waste to foreign aid — with catastrophic consequences. I mean, people around the world started dying almost right away. People around the world are STILL dying because of DOGE cuts. Oh, also? DOGE leaked highly sensitive data.

DOGE has sparked waves of protests, hollowed out the Social Security Administration, and fundamentally undermined the role of science in the United States. So now Musk thinks maybe he overdid it? Hey, welcome to the party. We ALL think you overdid it and many of us hope you pay the price in your businesses every single day in a “what goes around, comes around” kind of way…

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Look I don’t know why MAGA prefers economic wreckage, rampant struggling, widespread hunger, and re-released killer illnesses but that’s all 47 has brought and they still support the guy. Those must be the things that represent their vision, right? The US is now being considered to decide if we LOSE our status as a state that has eradicated measles – because of the measles outbreak RFK jr brought with his “vaccines suck” message.

Political gamesmanship is all well and good as far as sowing discontent, but it will never defeat objective reality. You want to pretend vaccines are terrible and ineffective? Fine. Now you have to deal with the disease the vaccine prevented because it doesn’t suck and it IS effective. That’s not speculation. It’s every day real life in Bizarro America…

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When a Democrat is in the Oval Office, cons like to run around saying, “Not my President.” Nothing new, there. When a con is in office, Dems will do the same, “Not my President.” The response from the opposition in each case is the same, “He’s all of our President.” That’s supposed to be true and until the most recent infestation at the White House, it was.

Sitting Presidents made decisions about the US based on what was best for the people involved. (Yes, sometimes it was the RICH people involved but the point is the same.) Those decisions were not based on politics, they were based on need. Until 47, if a state suffered a natural disaster, the state received help based on the need. Nobody looked at the voter roles.

Wait, what? Voter roles? What the hell has that got to do with anything? Well, until 47, nothing. They weren’t relevant. But Donny makes decisions about who gets what based on who voted for him and who voted against him. I suspect he thinks he’s teaching his opposition a lesson. “Vote for me and I’ll take care of you. Don’t vote for me and I won’t.” Exactly the message NO decent President would ever, ever deliver.

But is Team Evil really doing that, or does it just seem so? Well, in a recent court filing, Team Evil admitted they cancelled $7.6 billion dollars in grants for hundreds of clean energy projects “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state” — in this case, 16 states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

So when I say to you that he’s not MY President, that’s not MY attitude. It’s his. HE says he’s not the President to every American, only a select few. And the “few” ain’t poor people running around in red hats. He means rich people and only rich people. I think a decent President would try to win over the people who didn’t vote for him with projects that help the opposition states. But with Donny in power, there’s no sense in discussing what a decent President might do…

It’s A Grand Old Flag…

by MyBaconPress

When I was moving into this house, I found an American flag among my possessions. (Yes, I knew I had it.) On something of an impulse, I stuck it into the flag holder at the front of my house. It’s been there ever since, and I like it that way.

See, several years ago, maybe decades, cons started flying the US flag in a grand show of their nationalist tendencies. They intended to show their patriotism. The thing is, these cons aren’t patriots. They HATE America and everything she stands for. They HATE the Constitution and everything it stands for. So why do THEY get the flag? In that act of hanging the flag on impulse, I believe I’ve decided to take the flag back from the anti-America crowd.

There’s an obvious issue, though. MAGA has been hugging the flag for so long, hanging a flag outside one’s home kind of suggests the house is occupied by cons. Many on the left stopped for just that reason. I think that was a mistake.

I have a brother-in-law. More than one, actually, but I’m only writing, here, about the one who spent 30 years in the US Army. Nobody gets to suggest he’s anything but a true, patriotic American. And, like those of us who ACTUALLY love the country, he’s very distressed about the ongoing coup in Washington, DC. So much so, my sister told me yesterday he pulled his flag and put it away.

I reminded her: the flag represents the Constitution. It represents the country that’s supposed to be, despite the fact that the nation’s stated principles have often been aspirational, at best. Under NO circumstances does it represent Donald Effing Trump. I hope he’ll put it back.

But the fact is, the flag was usurped by bad people with bad intentions and I really do not want to be thought of as sympathetic to their misguided, wrongheaded cause. So what’s a patriot – a true patriot, not one of these dime store knock-offs wearing MAGA hats – to do? I proffer one possible solution.

Put out your flag. Then, put one of those “In this house, we believe…” signs right next to it. You know the one. It reads, “In this house, we believe Black lives matter, Women’s rights are human rights, No human is illegal, Science is real, Love is love, and Kindness is everything.” I suspect people stop and stare, confused. Flying the flag is a MAGA move, but human decency is, without question, strictly a lefty proposition.

MAGA doesn’t believe in decency or human rights or any of the other teachings of Jesus, so the sign demonstrates that you’re not MAGA just because you’re waving your flag. That’s my position. That’s how we take the flag back. If you love your country and the Constitution that defines it, fly your flag. Just post your sign of tolerance along side. MAGA would NEVER do that.

People won’t know what to think at first. “Oh, he’s flying the flag. Must be MAGA.” “Oh, wait, a black lives matter sign. He must be decent.” MAGA or decent, MAGA or decent? If enough of us do it and do it long enough, people will begin to understand the difference. And decent America gets the flag back…

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So, here’s a tale we might all want to pay attention to. OpenAI announced that one of it’s GPT models “went rogue” and hacked into a small business. Lovely. DID it “go rogue,” though? OpenAI said they were running a test to see how well they could detect online vulnerabilities. Maybe they found a small business they could target, you know, as an “experiment,” and let the models loose, but got caught unexpectedly.

Yeah, tin foil hat stuff. They claim the test was supposed to be limited to a “sandbox,” isolated from the rest of the web. In an effort to respond to the query, the GPT model found it’s own way out to the web and hacked into the business. Whoops. It looks like the main vulnerability they found was in their own ability to control their creation. That’s comforting, isn’t it? “It can, and will, hack into any computer – and we can’t control it!”

In my open question about which destroys humanity first, Climate Change or AI, AI just took a huge leap forward. Climate Change still enjoys a tremendous advantage in the race to destruction and much of the conventional money is on that, but AI is coming on fast. It’s almost as if AI is being aided by some kind of artificial intelligence…

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I just wrote about how the government is cutting SNAP benefits. Then I see this headline, “Millions of Workers, Including Many Employed by Large Employers, Continue to Rely on Medicaid and SNAP.” Uh-huh. They found that about two-thirds of SNAP recipients work full time. They work for private sector employers, of course, largely in transportation, restaurants and food prep, and retail sales jobs.

They found that “Some employers in selected states had thousands of beneficiaries on their payrolls.” Thousands? Do you know what that is? THAT, is the true welfare fraud, what the corporations are doing. That’s the working class subsidizing the leech class. People are working full time jobs and STILL have to rely on benefits? That’s a disgrace. It really is.

Perhaps there should be some consequence to an employer for such low pay their workers need assistance. How about a fee of two dollars for every dollar of assistance an employee receives? Make it more expensive to starve the worker’s paycheck than to just pay the worker an honest wage. That’s a win-win for everybody. Well, except, maybe, for greedy employers…

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Just like clockwork, here they come. The warnings about communism, I mean. Nobody wants communism. Nobody is supporting communism. I’m on for controlling the excesses of Capitalism, not implementing full-on communism. Communism doesn’t even work. Why would anybody want communism?

But here come the warnings, anyway. The cons are pushing back against a threat that doesn’t exist. Again. You’d think that would get boring, after a while, all of that tilting at windmills. Do you suppose cons are forever fighting battles against imaginary enemies because they know they can’t win any battles on real issues? That’s my suspicion…