The Politboro

 Amidst much speculation as to who, if anyone, was running the country during the last administration, here's a piece from a whistleblower naming the 5 people who had their hands on the autopen, setting policy, and seemingly not informing the meat puppet behind the big desk.

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The pardon attorney identified three individuals as key “gatekeepers”: Ron Klain, who served as President Biden’s White House chief of staff from 2021 to 2023 and returned last year to assist with debate preparations; former senior Biden adviser Anita Dunn; and Robert Bauer, former personal attorney to President Barack Obama.

Martin later added two more names to the list—Steve Ricchetti, former counselor to President Biden and chairman of his 2020 campaign, and “obviously Jill [Biden],” the First Lady.

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We're finding out. Slowly.

Hitler?

 It's not just the Dems calling the Reps Hitler. It seems to have started as early as 1936. FDR unilaterally moved Thanksgiving from the (usually) fourth Thursday in November, to the fifth, which occasionally happens. He did this at the behest of some department stores, bothered by holiday shopping being spaced too closely. It didn't go over very well:

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Political criticism followed as well. Former Kansas governor Alf Landon, FDR’s opponent in the 1936 presidential election, accused him of having forced the change on “an unprepared country with the omnipotence of a Hitler.” Other Republican governors refused to honor the changed date. Fewer than half of the states celebrated it that year.

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The tradition has persisted

Using A.I.

 Here's a useful use of A.I. in which a montage of lefty talking heads have their speeches/reports revised to replace the word "democracy" with "bureaucracy". It works quite well.

https://notthebee.com/article/when-you-use-ai-to-replace-democracy-with-bureaucracy-suddenly-the-corporate-news-starts-to-make-sense/

Election Predictions

 Here's an accidental prediction from ABC for Penn. Let's see how close the the actual fix they get.

Results are in! margin not bad, just reversed from reality. Better luck next election.

AI vs Natural Stupidity

 The Colorado legislature, or at least one member of it, has decided that AI represents a threat, or something, to themselves, or maybe someone else, and has offered legislation that would somehow regulate AI development in Colorado, to protect us. Or at least protect the politicians.

Money quote:

“The technology is literally changing on a weekly basis, just like the early days of the World Wide Web. It’s mind numbing how fast it’s moving,” said Kyle Shannon, CEO and founder of Denver-based Storyvine, which is using generative AI to add transcription and summaries to its videos. “I also know from experience how stifling a bill like this would have been in the mid-’90s. And I know that overregulating AI right now is going to put Colorado businesses at a significant disadvantage.”

Warning that letting the famously stupid legislature regulate anything is generally a bad idea. I used ChatGPT to write a bill calling for a top-level audit to be performed on statewide elections, and sent it to my representative, and to the Secretary of State. The rep never answered, and the SOS claimed we already did this, citing the reg that allegedly called for it. I read the reg. It DOES NOT call for any such thing, but rather sets up a checksum count to verify that the original count was correct. 200 ballots mailed in from a "residence" at a gas station is just fine as long as they all get counted. 

Modern Campaigning

An article shows that an aspiring candidate can buy an AI that can work his or her name into daily news releases in a favorable way. The candidate can then do a quick fact check, and pass the releases on to the press, or incorporate them into fliers to be distributed to the constituents. The AI in question is written in Israel, but if that's a problem, others are available. Word is that they turn out workmanlike prose at very little cost.

At the same time, clever programmers can take images of their candidate and make videos of said candidate making speeches endorsing, or condemning, whatever issue is hot in any given district. This makes it possible for U.S. Grant to campaign effectively from his tomb. It also makes it possible for Joe Biden to come out in favor of reinstating slavery. So watch out. Still, it could get Trump out of the courtroom and back on the campaign trail in short order, rendering the Dem interference moot. 

Biden Walks

The DOJs investigation into Bidens mishandling of classified documents  has ended with no charges. 

DOJ: 

DNC: Also a trial would interfere with his presidential campaign. Can't have that.

QOTD - The Modern Left

Shamelessly taken from the WSJ, who also felt this worthy of repetition:

Thus does the glacial pace of the American legal system, and the helpless timidity shown by most liberal judges . . ., enable Trump’s attack on democracy. . . . Even most liberal judges, facing an existential threat to their entire profession, as well as serious threats to their own safety, can’t bring themselves to give Trump a taste of his own medicine. [Tanya] Chutkan at least is less tolerant of his lying garbage, but she did pause his trial. And the D.C. appellate decision rescinding part of her gag order, written by three Democratic appointees, reads like a parody of anxious liberal hand-wringing. “Mr. Trump is a former President and current candidate for the presidency,” it reads, “and there is a strong public interest in what he has to say.”

Even granting the dubious idea that the public interest is served by Trump’s semiliterate screeds on Truth Social, there is a far more obvious and compelling interest here. Whether he becomes president again will be highly influenced, and perhaps determined entirely, by whether these cases can be resolved in a timely and fair fashion. That interest is directly and seriously undermined by letting him speak about the trial in any way whatsoever. Indeed, if anyone has ever deserved pretrial detention, it is him.

Ryan Cooper writing for the American Prospect, Dec. 20: 

This should give you a bit of a foretaste of what to expect when the left finally grasps the brass ring of uncontested one-party rule.

Robots On The News

 As I predicted some 8 years ago,  and again 6 years ago  TV stations have moved from hiring overpaid pretty faces to robots to read the news, weather, and sports. The only difference is that instead of complex animatronic faces on upper body models with changeable wigs, they're using full body AI generated 3D models that look and move like real people. Or at least mostly like real people. The examples here  have repetitive hand movements that need a bit of variation added to make them a bit more realistic.

Visualize 3 AI models: The news is read by a 40-some male with a bit of gray at the temples in a nice suit. The sports can be read by a blond haired white gut with a good outdoorsy tan, or a black fellow who can be wearing the hairstyle of whomever is leading the sports stories today. (Dennis Rodman today.....) The weather girl can be modeled after the one a channel in Mexico found who can give the weather in such a way that notice of an impending extinction-level meteor strike goes completely unnoticed.

Notice that this will do nothing whatsoever for the veracity of the output. The models say whatever they're told to say so that the anonymous fake news writers become more important than the fake news readers.

Max Headroom, call your office. Your full body upgrade is now available.

QOTD - 3rd Parties

 This from Nancy Pelosi via frontpagemag.com:

Orwell is from an older school. The new postmodern school has liberal politicians and pundits saying nonsense that would embarrass a North Korean propagandist. They advocate for censorship and shutting down dissent in order to protect democracy. The two-party system, they contend is democracy, but anything else is a threat to democracy.

When a Dem says "our democracy" He, she, or it is talking about one in which one candidate runs, gets elected, and runs a country swathed in rainbows in which everyone is happy and prosperous, and repeatedly reelects the dear leader and his henchmen. 

QOTD - Dictators

 This from Lloyd Billingsly at Power Line Blog:

The style of the Biden Junta is full-on Stalinist, with show-trials, pre-dawn raids, imprisonment without trial, media censorship and so forth. Clinton’s “formal deprogramming” will make a good fit. Watch for details in the days ahead.

They also try to tell you that Trump is a wannabe dictator. 

QOTD - Guns

 Found at Breitbart:

While announcing the launch of an executive level gun control office–the Office of Gun Violence Prevention–President Joe Biden called again for a ban on “assault weapons” and said, “If you need 80 shots in a magazine you shouldn’t own a gun.”

Gee, Joe, if you have to disarm your constituents in order to stay in office, maybe you shouldn't be holding that office, ya think?

Examples:

"The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, short swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types of arms. The possession of unnecessary implements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues and tends to foment uprisings." - Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598), Japanese Shogun

And here is the complete quote:

Every Communist must grasp the truth, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. Yet, having guns, we can create Party organizations, as witness the powerful Party organizations which the Eighth Route Army has created in northern China. We can also create cadres, create schools, create culture, create mass movements. Everything in Yenan has been created by having guns. All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army. Some people ridicule us as advocates of the "omnipotence of war". Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a democratic republic. Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the labouring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed.

Mao Tse-tung
November 6, 1938  

Gun Law Overreach - Term Limits?

 Seems New Jersey is going for the title of possessor of the most obnoxious gun laws in the country, having passed some that make even possession of a Daisy BB gun a felony. 

I don't see this withstanding any court challenge at the federal level, but due to the way the system works, they get to keep it on the books for 2-3 years while cases drag their way from one court to another until the SCOTUS tosses the lot of them. Of course at that point, the NJ legislature simply passes a variant of the unconstitutional laws, and they get another 2-3 year run of illegal gun control.

I thing that if a legislature passes any law that is subsequently found to be unconstitutional in the supreme court, all the legislators at the state legislature who voted in favor of it should be removed from legislative office, and forbidden from ever holding such office in perpetuity. Should also include the governor who signed it.

Colorado Education Drops The Mask

 And issues a statement openly advocating communism. 

First, here's some definitions: Capitalism is trade, purely and simply. Its only drawback is that it's impractical to trade a whole cow for a loaf of bread, so it needs a medium to make change, hence money. That's about it.

Socialism is capitalism with government meddling.  Government is an elastic term. It can include anything from an elected democracy to a hereditary monarchy, and also includes criminal mobocracies or subjugation by invading barbarians. The only difference is the amount of meddling the government does.

When government exercises total control, it's called communism. 

So here's the statement by the Colorado Education Association, written by a history teacher who, of all people, should know better.

A final version of the resolution that was passed states that "CEA believes that capitalism requires exploitation of children, public schools, land, labor, and/or resources. Capitalism is in opposition to fully addressing systemic racism (the school to prison pipeline), climate change, patriarchy, (gender and LGBTQ disparities), education inequality, and income inequality.

However, a screenshot captures an earlier draft of the resolution that included a call to replace capitalism with a "new equitable economic system." 

The screenshot of the original version of the resolutions reads "CEA believes that capitalism requires exploitation of children, public schools, land, labor, and/or resources and, therefore, the only way to fully address systemic racism (the school to prison pipeline), climate change, patriarchy (gender and LGBTQ disparities), education inequality, and income inequality is to dismantle capitalism and replace it with a new, equitable economic system."

This is what the union wants to teach your kids.  

Humor - Amicus Briefs

 OK so if you're looking for humor, reading amicus briefs to supreme court cases is probably not the most fertile ground. OTOH when one of the participants is the Onion, a competitor for the title of "Newspaper Of Record", in which it is defending its use of parody, well, you might strike gold.

In addition to maintaining a towering standard of excellence to which the rest of the industry aspires, The Onion supports more than 350,000 full- and parttime journalism jobs in its numerous news bureaus and manual labor camps stationed around the world, and members of its editorial board have served with distinction in an advisory capacity for such nations as China, Syria, Somalia, and the former Soviet Union. On top of its journalistic pursuits, The Onion also owns and operates the majority of the world’s transoceanic
shipping lanes, stands on the nation’s leading edge on matters of deforestation and strip mining, and proudly conducts tests on millions of animals daily.

The Onion is arguing that any reasonable person would be able to figure out that things the Onion published regarding a local police departments approach to pedophilia were humorous parody and not some kind of defamatory muck raking. As the case progresses we may het to see if a liberals complete lack of a sense of humor, a known trait of the breed, must be accommodated by humor writers, lest they feel "targeted" or "triggered". This would necessarily make humor a lot less funny, but the eventual complete ban on humor is an unstated plank in the liberal platform. 

Article here.

FBI Now Formally in The Leakage Business

 Same as it ever was I guess with anything having to do with Trump being quickly leaked to a hostile press. Since the letters in question were taken by the FBI and held in no one elses possession, there can be no doubt whatsoever who is doing the leaking. Not only is the FBI Bidens personal gestapo, I guess they will soon be joined by those 88,000 new Stasi IRS agents.

New Improved Lie Detector?

 The technology to detect mental problems via a skin sensor is out there, it only needs a careful analysis to move from detecting Parkinson's to detecting purposefully generated falsehoods. An AI could probably knock this out in a day or so.

Imagine a politician making a speech behind a podium with contact patches embedded in the speakers surface. Imagine politicians making every speech like an Italian, hands flailing in the air to emphasize every point, and to avoid touching the contact patches.

The DNC: What Next?

 Not a rant about their latest power grab, but a question about the future makeup and direction of the party itself. Pundits across the board are predicting a disaster for the DNC this year only rivaled by the Chicxulub meteor impact that marked the end of the Cretaceous and the extinction of the dinosaurs.

So lets imagine the Dems bomb biblically in November. Then what? The DNC is a big organization, like a huge vehicle with a committee in the drivers seat. Post election, some of the drivers committee are going to either jump out the doors, or be tossed. But which ones? The moderates will find it easy enough to reinvent themselves as independents, and who knows, perhaps alter their voting practices. The hard core will be happy to see them go, and will move to make sure they don't come back. Ownership of the party is profitable, and the fewer "unproductive units" there are, the more swag the remainder gets.

This could work the other way of course, with the extremists getting the boot and the moderates taking over, making sure that the now exiled Bolsheviks find it very difficult to get back on the bus, and certainly not into the drivers seat. 

The DNC is a large, heavy vehicle, and no loss will be great enough to completely destroy it. At least I don't think so. Remember the Whigs?

Is The Left Desperate? Yes!

 Here's the latest move to insure that the left doesn't lose its trifecta of political control: charge Republicans under section 3 of the 14th amendment which disfranchised southern politicians after the civil war.

Hard to believe, but there it is. Frankly I don't think they'll get very far with this, but if you find a friendly judge to uphold this moonbattery, it could take years for it to get to the supreme court and get tossed, and in the meantime, the Dem candidate gets to claim that his Republican opponent has been plausibly charged with insurrection.

Reproduction Laws

If you don't like the abortion law recently passed in Texas, consider this little gem recently proposed in Pennsylvania.

The bill will force men to undergo vasectomies within 6 weeks from having their third child or their 40th birthday, whichever comes first.

This legislation includes a $10,000 reward to whoever snitches to the proper authority on those who have failed to submit to forced sterilization within the allotted time.

All the best ideas come from China, don't they, comrade?