Colorado passed a law that dictates that our electoral vote total shall be given to the candidate who wins the national majority of votes regardless of how the citizens of Colorado voted. Below is the WSJ final (?) tally regardless that Arizona and Nevada are still counting. This will make little difference as the number of outstanding ballots will not affect anything.
It seems the Republicans have won the presidency and control of the Senate and look to have narrowly* retained control of the house. This means Trump will be able to replace any retiring or expiring justices on the Supreme court with younger people over the wails of sorrow and despair from the left. It's something.
It looks right now that the Republicans have added 3 seats to their majority in the house, so no more impeachments. A republican win like this, in the past, meant, well, nothing. The traditional Republicans would pass continuing resolutions on the budget, and wobble on everything else, proving their position that the government couldn't actually do anything.
The possibility of real change exists, perhaps.
Government employees are traditionally immune from downsizing for any reason at all. Thus the government grows at about 6%/year weather we need it or not. OTOH, if a department or agency is simply erased, the employees in it will find themselves unemployed for no reason at all, and will be forced to find other employment on their own merits. Initially, many will simply move to another agency. If the erasure policy continues, however, this will become more difficult.
My question is what is required to eliminate a department or agency from the government? Ronald Reagan remarked that a government agency was the closest thing to immortality you would find in this world. Congressional approval is required before anything can be downsized or discarded. Congressional approval is directly proportionate to the amount of money the agency drops in a congressional district. The way around this is to point out that the monies sent to a district, were originally taken from that district, and skimmed about 20% before being sent back. Eliminate the agency, keep your money, and eliminate the baksheesh. Makes sense, sounds good, get re-elected, sure! Hopefully Elon Musks persuasive skills will be up to this job.
*Very narrowly. Getting good info on this is difficult at best.
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/
First off I read that Warren Buffet, of Berkshire Hathaway fame, who usually puts out a simple white yard sign with a blue dot on it to encourage people to vote Democratic, has decided to do without any signs this year. I like his approach, so I tried making one myself, a blank white sign with a simple red dot. Problem with this is that it looks like a Japanese flag. Changing the dot to an oval solves that problem, as would changing the dot to a square box. Problem solved.
Meantime, up the block, someone got a very fancy yard sign, in pink, with lace and feminine script reading "Madame President". Beautiful sign, wonderful sentiment. Only problem is that Margret Thatcher isn't on the ballot. To clear up the confusion that might result, I generated a modification to the sign. See below:
The only improvement I could think of was to make the feet separate pieces, with springs between each foot and a clip to attach them to the sign, gibing the assembly a dynamic aspect. Making the feet easily removable would probably result in them getting easily removed though, so I'll just stop here. I get 2 reactions to this picture: Shock and horror, vs guffaws of laughter. The originators might have picked a better font, as I had to explain that it doesn't say Maclam.
CRINKS is a new one on me although I seem to vaguely remember hearing it somewhere. It stands for Chinese, Russians, Iranians, and North Koreans. The modern day Axis of Evil. Here's a picture of 3 of them, missing the junior partner.
I can just imagine what each is thinking:
Khamenei: As soon as I finish with the Jews, those two are next.
Xi: As soon as I'm done with the Uhigers, those two are next.
Putin: As soon as I finish the Ukrainians, those two are next.
Lil Kim (not shown): As soon as those 3 finish each other with the arms I'm supplying them, I win!
The July 2023 U.S. Census population in Michigan was 10,037,261, with 7,929,426 citizens over 18. But interestingly, according to Check My Vote, Michigan's most recent Qualified Voter Files (QVF) show 8,415,767 registered voters on Michigan's QVF, a stunning difference of 486,331 voters!
Check My Vote is also suing MI SOS Benson over her recent decision to hide the coding on the QVF, which shows each voter's voting method.
Remembering all those trucks that showed up at the counting station with hundreds of unfolded absentee ballots, all machine marked for Biden, at 2:30 AM the day after election day?
"Day-O (The Ballot Truck Song)"
Day-o,
day-o
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Day, me say day, me say
day, me say day
Me say day, me say day-o
Daylight come and de
truck gone home
Work all night on a drink of rum
Daylight
come and me wan' go home
Stack dem ballots till de morning
come
Daylight come and de truck gone home
Come, Mister
tally man, tally all me ballots
Daylight come and de truck gone
home
Come, Mister tally man, tally all me ballots
Daylight come
and me wan' go home
Lift six foot, seven foot, eight foot
stack
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Shove 'em all in to de
counter hatch
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Day, me say
day-o
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Day, me say day, me say
day, me say day, me say day, me say day
Daylight come and me wan'
go home
A beautiful bunch o' pre marked ballots
Daylight
come and me wan' go home
Hide the deadly one
for Trump
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Lift six
foot, seven foot, eight foot stack
Daylight come and me wan' go
home
Shove 'em all in to de counter hatch
Daylight come and me
wan' go home
Day, me say day-o
Daylight come and me wan' go
home
Day, me say day, me say day, me say day, me say day, me say
day
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Come, Mister tally
man, tally all me ballots
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Come,
Mister tally man, tally all me ballots
Daylight come and me wan'
go home
Day-o, day-o
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Day,
me say day, me say day, me say day
Me say day, me say
day-o
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Billll
Back in 1991, Louisiana was a one-party state, the Republicans having gone moribund, and it was an election year. The leading Democratic wannabe for Governor was Edwin Edwards, who had just been released from the state prison after serving 5 years for official corruption. Challenging him for the nomination was KKK leader David Duke. Duke changed his party affiliation after losing to Edwards in the party primary, and petitioned himself onto the general ballot. Edwards and Duke finished 1-2 and moved on to the runoff.
Humorous unofficial bumper stickers were created in support of Edwards over Duke, despite Edwards' negative reputation. One bumper sticker read "Vote for the Lizard, not the Wizard", while another read "Vote For The Crook: It's Important."
FWIW, the Wizard was never really a republican and the “crook” won.
A piece in the WSJ today announces that Trump may be considering an advisory role for Elon Musk. This would be the first time in my memory that a president has brought on someone with actual knowledge of a topic to advise him.
Rumor has it he's also courting Vivek Ramaswami, who at this point is not terribly enthusiastic about joining the Trump team.
While he's at it, he might consider Christie Noem in a position relating to down sizing the government. This should work well and prove to be a fairly smooth operation as many government employees would take the hint and either resign or take early retirement.
From IOTW:
WLT Report: Drew Barrymore invited Kamala Harris on her show and made an embarrassing mistake.
During the show, Barrymore, in a soft emotional tone, told Harris, “We need you to be ‘Mamala’ of the country.”
Harris responded, “Yeah, I mean, yeah, no, I know.”
Barrymore was attempting to join the words mom and Kamala together, but in doing so, she called Harris “Mámala,” which, in Spanish, means “suck it.”
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.
Getting humanoid robots through the "uncanny valley". Here's an article about a company building companion robots. They look very realistic, although they lack human level strength and mobility, they're getting closer, and it looks like newer developments in high power electric motors will go a long way toward getting those 'bots up and running, so to speak.
“They had hired an actress to pretend to be a mannequin — and she was really good at it,” McMullen recalls. “For some reason that stuck with me, I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to have a mannequin that looks so real, that people would think that it was?’ Kind of like an inverse of that experience. I started coming up with this, like, crazy idea of a hyper-realistic, pose-able mannequin.”
To this end, McMullen founded his own company, Abyss Creations in 1996, which is perhaps best known for developing the RealDoll adult companion mannequin, the most deluxe versions of which can fetch over $10,000.
He’s sold thousands of them.
McMullen then founded Realbotix in 2014 to bring a similar realism to robots.
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.
Hamas says the IDF has killed some unlikely number of civilians in Gaza. The IDF thinks otherwise. Here's a 'toon to help you tell the difference:
