Retirement Dreams and Reality

I’ve been thinking a lot about retirement. My goal is to wait about two more years and then retire roughly when my wife does. But it’s been on my mind because I’m so looking forward to it.

Of course, the recently passed Big Ugly Trump Tax Shift Act makes me wonder if I should act now.

With all the backroom finagling over Social Security, I don’t know if it’s more advantageous to get into the system now or wait until the dust settles. I understand that they’re unlikely to disturb the soon-to-be retirees, and instead put the screws to those who have to wait awhile. Maybe I should just get my claim in while they still have some money.

You’d like to think that they’ll figure something out once the insolvency date becomes a real threat. But somehow, I just don’t see this group of politicians doing anything to help average Americans. With these guys, I’m thinking the cure will be worse than the ailment. Because it’s the easiest fix in the world: just raise or eliminate the cap on taxable income for Social Security.  But that would negatively affect the rich, so Republicans will never go for it. Any my guess is that if the Democrats ever come into enough power to get it done, the Rich will buy off just enough Democratic votes to shit-can the whole thing. They want Social Security gone, not fixed. Or at least changed into a system they can skim. I’d love to be proven wrong here.

I’ve worked continuously since I was 16, save for a couple of 3-month periods when I was unwillingly unemployed, back in the 90s. So I am ready to chill.  When I retire, I intend to do NOTHING productive. No part-time jobs, no consulting, no nothing. If I do any volunteer work, it would be something like becoming an election official, like those old fucks you always seen checking names when you go to vote.

I want to take care of the house. I’ll finally have time to exercise.  I want to see more movies and ball games. I want to binge on all the TV shows I’ve missed.

I want to take a cruise; though I’m told I’ll probably hate it because they tend to be very “peopley,” I at least want to try one. I want to go to the beach in September or October, which Sweetpea has always wanted to do, but has been barred from doing because that’s when school starts.

I may write a book based on my own and my family’s stories. I definitely want to start writing crabby Letters to the Editor of our local Baltimore Sun, staking my claim as Local Liberal Crank. I want to ramble around the country and visit whatever friends and family I’ve got left.

 I’ve always been easily amused, so I don’t have to seek out big entertainment events. The simple stuff is fine for me.

I know that not everyone can have such dreams. I’ve been fortunate to have found job stability late in life, to the point that after fumbling around in retail during my 20s and 30s, my last chunk of years have been the best-paying. And Sweetpea is situated similarly, so we’ll both have solid Social Security income (assuming original plans stay intact). I’ve been saving like a madman for the last 15 years, so with that, my 401k, and Sweetpea’s teacher’s pension, we should be OK. (Pending debilitating illness, economic or atmospheric collapse, of course.)

So, as I look dreamy-eyed into my retirement future, I see that the Powers That Be just won’t let me enjoy it. There were two stories in my news feed last week that tried to make me feel guilty about my unproductive plans. The first one started by mentioning how 71% of retirees have no plans to take part-time jobs. And that much is fine, but they go on to treat this as some kind of abnormality that needs to be explained.

They also mention how only 11% of “future retirees,” aka younger people, say they would do the same. Now, that’s really an apples-to-oranges comparison. Younger people have started out in a vastly different economic system from that of my generation. They know they may not be able to rely on Social Security. They can’t count on long, well-paying careers, especially with the onset of AI threatening to take over so many office jobs.

My thought on it, if all things were equal, would be that once they actually get to the finish line, they may think completely differently. They don’t know about getting ground down by life yet. They’re still young and their joint don’t ache.

Another article runs with the young person angle, with a story about a young person who was able to retire in her 30s, but went back to work out of boredom.

I don’t think articles like these appear in a vacuum. I think the Powers behind the scenes, the Rich moguls who guide what the media shows us, don’t want us seniors to just sit on our retirement laurels. They want us back out in the workforce. They still want us to retire so they can stop paying the full salaries we’ve earned over our many years, but they want us to come back again and work for a discount, without having to kick in for health care. They like that we’re experienced, hard-working, and reliable; they just don’t want to pay the going rate.

Then, once we accept their proposition that we should continue working, we would be less reliant on Social Security, pensions, and the like; employers can pocket even more of it.

Yes, I may be cynical, but it adds up.

Late Update 7/17/25

More proof that Republicans want to take our retirement away:

And note, it's totally NOT reasonable, even if you do sit behind a desk or a mic for a living. At some point, everyone should be allowed to enjoy life, rather than working for The Man every night and day. These pricks see no problem with working us right into the grave.

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For the Rich, By the Rich

As the disassembly of the American government continues, we must keep in mind why it’s happening.

The disassemblers want you to think that it’s solely about lowering spending and the deficit. That’s partially correct… that’s one facet. But it sounds good so that’s the part they trumpet to their MAGA followers.

It’s been a Republican principle ever since I can remember to limit government. Remember good old Grover Norquist, the guy who personally demanded pledges from GOP politicians that they will never raise a tax of any kind? He would finance a primary challenge to anyone who didn’t make the pledge.

His most salient quote is “I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

Republican leadership wants there to be no government because in such a case, those with the most money will rule. That’s them.

So now they’ve conned lower and middle-class people into voting for them and actually cheering as DOGE eliminates one government agency after another, including those that service the basic needs of all Americans. And I expect the cheers to continue right up until the next disaster hits and there’s no one left that knows how to deal with it. No FEMA, no NOAA forecasting, medical research to be done, no regulations that require banks to give you back your money, and so on.

What they are doing is criminal and I mean that literally. There is no support in the law for an appointed figure to make unilateral cuts to government personnel and agencies. And it’s especially galling once you realize that the person managing all this destruction is reaping the direct benefit because the businesses that he owns are being investigated or have business before all the agencies he’s dismantling.

This is just one.

No one on the news or in the local papers (at least MY local paper) is talking about the after-effects of all these cuts. Thousands of workers are being laid off by people who have no idea what they actually do. In some cases, like with those who oversee our nuclear capabilities, they have had to be immediately recalled, because even the rich assholes know enough not to mess around with nuclear science.

Here are some of the biggest targets so far:

·         The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whose job it is to keep you from getting screwed by banks. Ask yourself, why would a legitimate politician want that removed? The only answer is so you can be screwed over by banks again.

·         OSHA, which is responsible for workplace safety. Without them, there is no one to ensure that machinery is properly guarded, workers aren’t engaging in dangerous activity, they are not getting poisoned by the atmosphere in the plant, and so forth. This department was created because business practices were so dangerous, with fatalities merely being considered “the cost of doing business.” If a business can cut a safety corner that saves them money and there is no disincentive, do you really think they’ll refrain? History tells us otherwise.

·         NOAA, which provides detailed weather forecasting free of charge to the public. They are being taken down for two reasons. One is that they are a leader in climate change research and that’s exactly what Republicans don’t want to hear about. They are still owned by the fossil fuel industry, to whom there is no such thing as climate change. The other reason is that, like with most other services, they’d rather privatize than provide, so that their people can make money from it. We’re spoiled with free hurricane reporting now. What happens when it becomes a pay service? This isn’t Only Fans, this is public safety. Not everyone can afford to drop $9.99 a month for storm warnings. But even if it doesn’t go that far, it’s still a barrier to necessary information.

·         USDA and the people who inspect our food to ensure it’s safe. Tell me why an honest politician would want to tamper with food safety? There are no legitimate reasons, only to lower standards to reduce the cost of production, without opposition. Who cares, then, when people get sick? How are they going to prove it? And prove it to whom, without a governing agency?

·         The VA. Look at how many Democratic programs get slammed because “We shouldn’t spend money on “this” while we still have homeless veterans.” These guys are cutting services to all veterans, not just the homeless ones, and there’s not a peep from all these MAGA “patriots.”

There are dozens more but it all comes down to the same thing… and this is the main reason for these actions. Small government and lower expenditures make possible the fat tax cuts they want to renew. These are tax cuts for the rich that we will barely even notice in our paychecks. And this time, they’re not even bothering to continue the lie that it will spur the economy so that the rest of us feel the difference. We know, from when these tax cuts were rolled out, that they won’t do anything for anyone other than line the pocket of the rich.

It’s not like they’re averse to spending money though, as long as it’s on themselves. TFG’s golf trips and Mar-a-Lago trips cost the taxpayers millions. But they don’t even pretend to care about these optics. After all, they see it as their right as the Ruling Class.

This is what we’re up against for the next 4 years. And I hope people remember what government service used to be like. It wasn’t always the most efficient, but at least it was there. If there’s ever another election we’re going to need everyone onboard to reset the clock. (And women, be sure you have your docs in order, Republicans have proposed a bill that will likely end the right to vote for married women who have taken their husband’s name unless they obtain a whole new set of documents.) They may fix that loophole in Committee, but they haven’t yet, and that’s telling.

We’re only about a month in. It’s going to be an ugly road ahead.

I Long for Yesterday

I managed to avoid coverage, yesterday, of the beginning of the end of our democracy. From what I’ve heard, I didn’t miss anything but the groundwork being laid for an administration rife with misinformation, lies, greed, and callous disregard for public service. And sitting right up front were the filthy rich, without whose direct involvement, the average American might still have a chance.

Well, Red America, you got what you wanted. How’d you like that immediate raising of Medicare drug prices? At least it’s not eggs, right? (Yet.)

And today’s snowstorms on the Gulf Coast and other southern states? Get used to it. There will be no more attention paid to climate change, the results of which we’ve been getting hammered with for the last decade. Yes, I know your limited information leaves you wondering why global warming makes it cold, but that’s what happens when Arctic ice melts and airflow patterns change, pushing jet streams out of their usual places. But sure, pull out of the Paris climate accords, so we’re one of four countries not included (along with the climate geniuses in Yemen, Iran, and Libya). You and Fox “News” are right and the rest of the civilized and uncivilized world is wrong. You betcha.

And with the new bird flu on the horizon, our nation’s health will be handed over to some schmuck with zero medical experience and a lot of wrong ideas about medicine that has eradicated diseases from the modern world for a century.

We’ll need to bring in a mathematician to keep track of all the needless deaths from disease, medical neglect, and insurance logjams, that is, if there is anyone left who remembers how to math.

The thing I’m most distressed about is that there is no longer a mechanism for sounding the alarm about what the consequences will be when 47’s actions bear fruit. The news industry has given up investigation and reporting in favor of cheerleading because the big businesses that own all the networks and newspaper companies decided to abandon their journalistic obligations in lieu of currying favor with the once and current emperor. Social media CEOs have turned belly up as well, dashing the idea of fact-checking and preventing life-threatening disinformation from taking root on their platforms. The only people who want to get rid of fact-checking are habitual liars, who need their bullshit to spread unimpeded. But that’s who they’re throwing in with, to keep those ad dollars flooding in.

Once upon a time, journalists stood tall and firm, united against autocrats. There are still some out there too, if only their boardroom overlords would allow their voices to be heard. (Hi Jim Acosta! Hope you enjoy your new overnight shift at CNN!)

No, this new administration laid the groundwork with threats and clandestine meetings, to make sure that their own statements would be amplified, with any opposition reduced to lone voices, wailing in the distance. To disobey would mean an onslaught of federal lawsuits, IRS audits, and costly new regulations. Naturally, there wasn’t a strong backbone to be found amid the business world nor the political one, not even the Democrats. They seem to have accepted their servitude and oncoming irrelevance and disappeared into the woodwork. Nice going fellas… and be sure to keep sending those fundraising emails! Be sure to list all your “accomplishments,” too.

It won’t be long before they come for the bloggers too. The Imbecile in Chief will put pressure on the platform bosses and next thing you know, they’ll have moved “content management” from Facebook to Blogger, from Twitter to WordPress. Maybe we’ll have to resort to smoke signals. You know the EPA won’t step in… there will no longer BE an EPA. It’ll disappear right along with the Department of Education. That way, Americans not only get poisoned by the air and water, they won’t even know how to read the warnings. (You know, from bloggers’ smoke signals. It’s not like they’re going to hear about it on the news.)

And the worst part of all this? Even if, by some miracle, there IS a massive case of Buyer’s Remorse, come November 2028, we can’t expect that there will be an honest election. Guess who’s already working on putting more limits and restrictions on voting.

This 100% follows the Republican playbook wherein they create a prevailing atmosphere of suspicion around the voting process and then “fix” it in a way that plays to their advantage. (Like only having the upper crust vote.) By the time they’re done, the only way we get to place a vote will be with a secret code that they only give you upon completion of your MBA.

I think President Biden did the best job he could, under the circumstances. He left the country in good shape so that the blame for any tanking will fall on the new Administration, at least until Fox and friends can jerry-rig a way to call a spade a club and blame the Democrats anyway.

I’m glad he distributed pardons to Dr. Fauci, the 1/6 Committee, and his family. If the Republicans are going to use the Justice system to play offense, the least we can do is play some defense. There’s no doubt in my mind that they would follow through with these threatened prosecutions despite zero evidence of wrongdoing, even if it was just to make their adversaries pay out the nose for massive legal fees. That can set you up for a world of hurt… just ask Rudy. Although this is America, even after working day and night to overthrow a free election, he still gets to keep his World Series rings.

What a great time to be a white, male, Republican.

Less is Still Less

When I was a kid, I heard this “educational” story; I don’t know if it was part of school or just something that went around. But the gist of it was:

A struggling olive company was trying to figure out a way to save money. No one could come up with anything actionable until they asked an old hand from around the factory. He said, “Just put one less olive in each jar. It’s not enough that anyone will miss it, but over time it will add up to a lot of extra jars to see from the same amount of produce.” They did and the idea saved the company.

At the time, this seemed like some good old folksy wisdom. Unfortunately, the modern business culture has put that story on steroids and turned that into a core business principle: Always provide less than what people expect.

Earlier today, I looked at a bag of potato chips Sweetpea brought home from the store. It struck me that the bags used to be so much bigger. This was a standard bag, not the big “family-sized” version. I checked the net weight and it was about 7 ounces. I don’t remember the actual net weight from years gone by but I know it was a lot more than 7 ounces… 12 at least, maybe even a pound. But here we are, paying the same price (or higher) for half as much.

I also remember from my childhood when they first introduced “Fun-Sized” candy bars. I don’t know which evil executive at Nestle thought a tiny, two-bite version of what used to be a quality candy bar would be considered “fun.” As a kid, my idea of “fun-sized” would be a Snickers the size of my head. And they still shrunk the size of the regular candy bars to about half of what they were. I used to be able to get a righteous candy bar for a quarter and even then I thought it was a rip-off. (I preferred the 15-cent boxes of Spree, Lemonheads, or Sweet Tarts. You could really make those stretch for a while.) All the candy bars now are punier versions of their former selves and go for about a buck or more. They’ve taken so much value out of candy that Almond Joy might as well be called Almond Ennui.

It’s like that with everything now. The Powers That Be look at us as walking dollar signs; just one more commodity to be used up for every bit of currency they can wring out. They track our whereabouts and spending habits with internet browsers, phones, apps, credit cards, and reward cards; monetizing our very existence.

I went to KFC the other day and got a 3-piece box. The leg was the size of a wing-drum. Each thigh was about the size of a hockey puck. And the little round container of mashed potatoes that's smaller than the old cup they used to use? The bottom is concave, further reducing the size.

I went to the freezer to get some ice cream. We had a package about the size of the old half-gallon containers. Now, instead of 2 quarts of ice cream, there's only 1.44 quarts. And do you know how they do it? The packages have rounded ends rather than the old cubic rectangles. When they round off the corners, they reduce capacity. When was the last time anyone wanted less ice cream? The shrinkflation is out of hand!

They’ve turned air travel into an ordeal of finding out just how much discomfort and inconvenience we are willing to accept and still go through with it. Leg room and seat width are decreased until we’re jammed into the fuselage, cheek to cheek, without decent food and with minimal drinks. I think the only reason most airlines even offer beverage service is to distract us from how uncomfortable it is. Everything we used to get as a courtesy, food, blankets, pillows, are gone. If you’re lucky, some airlines offer to sell you these things. And then they want to complain that people are rude and cranky.

And we just lap it all up. We’re the proverbial “frog in the slowly heating pot of water,” too unconcerned with the big picture to change the trajectory of our doomed existence. They feed us celebrity bullshit listicles, and news factoids while we slowly become frog soup.

We’ve been dumbed down as a culture to the point where we just elected a president as a response to high prices, yet his only announced policies are guaranteed to make prices soar. And won’t these same people be surprised when 95% of the much-hyped next round of tax cuts goes to the super-rich and once again, the rest of us get the scraps?

It makes me want to go out and have some business cards made that say, “I fucking told you so.” I’ll give them out to anyone who voted for the new regime and then wonders whose fault it is when they can’t afford a cold 4-pack of beer. Or are in shock when the price of gas they see up on the sign is calibrated for quarts. Or someone turns BOGO into BOG0.

Yep, right after I post this I’m gonna order me a new 425-count box of cards. I heard they’re on sale for the holidays.

This has nothing to do with anything. It just makes me laugh and I need one.

"90-Days" of Conflict

 Even with its current pervasiveness, I’ve never been a big watcher of reality TV. For 20 years, I only watched the Big Three: Survivor, Big Brother, and The Amazing Race, all of which I picked up in their respective first seasons. By 2024, I picked up a couple more, “Bar Rescue” and “Naked and Afraid,” which I may post about some other time. And there’s one other.

Now, my wife, Sweetpea, predominantly watches what she calls, “murder shows.” You know, the true crime series like First 48, Forensic Files, Dateline, and the like. I’m ok with them once in a while, but I prefer more escapist fare. Because we don’t have many shows that we both like, it’s hard to find things to watch together. Because she gets up insanely early and goes to work before I’m out of bed, she also goes to bed early, so we don’t have a lot of downtime together. After dinner, she’ll usually put on a murder show and promptly fall asleep. When she can’t find a murder show she hasn’t seen, she’ll opt for MTV’s Catfish or TLC’s 90-Day Fiancé.

I figured I could tolerate those so I began recording them with the DVR, so we can watch together at our leisure. Catfish is straightforward enough. It’s like a true crime show where the hosts investigate people who get into relationships with other people via dating sites but refuse to meet or ever be seen on camera.

But the 90-Day stuff? Wow. What a mess of humanity… that I can’t stop watching. It’s basically nationally televised voyeurism.

There are several 90-Days brands. The original is 90-Day Fiancé, which centers on couples who date internationally. One will bring the other to the US via a K-1 visa, and will then have 90 days to get married or the visitor has to go back. That’s always the focal question: Will they get married or will it all blow up?

Another variation is Before the 90-Days, which focuses on the lead-up to the travel to America, as they begin exploring an international relationship. There’s also 90-Days – Happily Ever After? which shows the lives of some of the couples after they’ve gotten married and are going about their lives. Then there’s the Bizarro World version, 90-Days – The Other Way, which is where an American goes abroad to marry and live in a vastly different culture.

And if all that isn’t enough, there’s a parasite series called Pillow Talk, which runs right after each of the other shows, featuring several pairs of former 90-Day participants who watch the show and provide commentary.

The whole organization is its own self-contained world, like an Earthbound Marvel Universe, whose occupants have staged adventures and bitch at each other.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I started. I fully admit that this is crap TV and I’m probably dumber for having watched it. It’s just that you get sucked into these people’s lives. There are some you love but many more that you love to hate. And there are some real pieces of work on these shows.

The reason I’m bringing this whole thing up is that I find there are a lot of the same themes that flow through each of these series and most of the dating pairs. There are three main categories of conflict:

·         Money

·         Jealousy/Insecurity

·         Religion

Money? That’s obvious and applies universally. As British comic Spike Milligan once said,

Everyone wants/needs more money. Some lie about it, some cheat to get it, and some think it’s owed to them.

To me, the biggest thing keeping these couples apart is jealousy (and the insecurity that leads to jealousy). Women go ape-shit any time their man talks to, texts with, bumps into, or acknowledges the existence of another woman.

Director’s DVD Commentary: I’m not being sexist; it goes both ways. I just don’t care to bother with the verbal gymnastics of keeping all terms unisexual.

One woman doesn’t want her fitness instructor boyfriend to have women as clients, even though they make up over 90% of his business. Another guy is crucified for “cheating” by receiving sexy videos from women he’s never met. Men flip out any time they find themselves near their women’s previous boyfriends, with whom they are still friendly. One girl got upset because her guy went to church, and there were women there. She also didn’t want him to hang out with his sisters, because they might have friends around. And on it goes…

If I were on that show, my stories would be as dull as dishwater. Most of my friends are women. Anyone I was dating would have to understand that, and if they flip out about it, I’m out. It’s non-negotiable. I will be friends with women. And my mate is free to be friends with men. I’d never be a hypocrite about it. I’m fully trusting until I have a reason not to be. (And I’m quite fortunate that Sweetpea is fine with this.)

I think these “cast members” would ease a lot of their own misery if they just decided to trust their partner and assume the best rather than the worst. And if they do stray, for real, cut them the eff loose and move on. (Those who do bugger off invariably find a line-up of men (or women) who want to go out with them, after having seen them on TV.)

The last obstacle is religion and it’s almost always bout Middle-Eastern or African men wanting to control American women. They never seem to tell their prospective wives all the details of what their lives together might look like, or what she might look like after she’s covered head to toe. They know that if they let on they expect a life of obedience, servitude, and child-bearing at the outset, the American dating pool is likely to dry up

One Egyptian guy was coming to live with his American wife in California, and they had a fight that led to their breakup because she was wearing a dress that, while it went up to her neck, down past her knees, and had long sleeves, it bared a couple square inches of her back. He couldn’t live with such a tawdry display of wantonness. Because of religion.

There is a couple this season, where the 40ish American woman is going to Jordan to marry her 22–year–old guy on the very day she arrives because his religion won’t permit them to be alone together in a room. This story is just getting underway and she has no idea what he’s going to expect of her. This is basically a “boy” who told the cameras he wants her to obey his wishes at all times and not question him as the man of the house. And he needs her to cover up with loose clothing

I think she ought to spank his 22-year-old ass and send him to his room without dinner. These stories always seem to end up the same way, with the American women taking a powder either before or shortly after the wedding.

I don’t see how they didn’t research the culture the second they made contact with their foreign beaus. It would have saved them a lot of heartache and a pile of cash.

Or maybe they just reeeeeally wanted to be on TV.

But that’s the worst part. I can’t even comprehend allowing TV cameras to film every part of my life, every argument, every mistake, every emotional moment, and broadcast it nationwide. And when these fights happen, everything is in play, from bathroom habits to sexual inadequacies to masturbatory quirks. Nothing is off-limits.

And I make room for the fact that producers are egging them on or providing angles to assert to keep the fights going. You can see by their casting choices that they’re counting on the conflict, the louder and more warped the better.  That’s too bad because I’m sure there are viewers like Sweetpea and me who really enjoy seeing decent people overcome international obstacles and go on to live happily ever after. (These people tend to end up on the Pillow Talk series.)

At the end of every season, they stage a multi-episode “Tell All,” where all the cast members get together in New York to answer questions from a moderator and each other. They all get to know one another; some become real-life friends, others bitter enemies. This helps build the 90-Day ecosystem

It’s hard to watch sometimes because they poke and prod for every bit of controversy and conflict, even those that have already been resolved. They ought to call these episodes, “Pulling at Scabs.” It’s seldom pretty.

The bigger point is that we, as a people, are being conditioned to become our ugliest forms of ourselves. We’re guided to be vain, jealous, insecure, snarky, mean, over-reactive, and without empathy. Is this the public influencing the media or the media influencing the public?

Either way, we’re a mess and we don’t seem to be getting any better.

Maybe the next iteration ought to be “90 Days – Incel.” That’s where they take some anti-social, obnoxious misfit out of his parents’ basement, send him on a date with a real woman, and film the inevitable disaster. They just need to make sure the crew has tasers ready. They’ll need to be able to guarantee the woman’s safety.

So yeah, I’m up here on my soapbox, but I’ll still be watching Sunday nights. Damn it.

AI and the World of Disinformation

Last week I was watching TV and another story came on about artificial intelligence (AI) and it got me thinking. I said to my wife, “Congress is going to have to do something about this soon, or we’ll never be able to trust our eyes to ferret out the lies from the truth.”*

*It probably didn't sound as eloquent at the time, more like a series of meaningful grunts and gestures. But she knew what I meant.

I told her I ought to do a post about it this week and entered some notes into my phone, to avoid that dreaded blog post amnesia I always get…

“What the hell was I going to write about today?”

But in rolling through the news the next day, I saw that there was already a bill in progress. Naturally, the story was about how Mitch McConnell and the Republicans are trying to kill it.

I don’t know what’s in the bill, but I know what it should be. There’s a pretty simple metric to make it clear whether a creation should be illegal or not.

My law would include the following:

·        It is illegal to use AI to create a photograph or video of someone doing something they didn’t do and claim that it is an accurate depiction of the event.

·        It is illegal to use AI to manipulate audio to produce the sound of someone saying something they never said.

·        Any such media created for legitimate artistic or satiric purposes would be required to include a permanent watermark or indication showing that it is a fictional creation and not an actual event.

·        In addition to criminal penalties/jail time for the creators and original distributors, the person illegally portrayed would have the right to sue for damages commensurate with the seriousness of the infraction. The penalty has to have teeth, or else the rich pricks bankrolling these disinformation campaigns will just pay the fine as the “cost of doing business” and continue on their merry way. So a conviction has to hurt or else it’s worthless.

In all fairness, these things should be illegal no matter how they’re created, but I’m focusing on the AI end of it, because AI makes it so much more realistic, with minimal effort.

It’s important to be able to distinguish such things because we know that bad actors will use this tech to pursue their own nefarious ends. (Hi Russia!) If we can no longer differentiate real from fake, we are at the mercy of those who would create damaging truths out of thin air and use them to pull the public’s puppet strings.

What’s worse, when we DO see something real, the culprit will immediately scream, “But that wasn’t me, it was AI!” With such a law, if they claim it was AI and didn’t pursue damages, we’d know the claim is hollow. And of course, if someone does sue and it’s found to be baseless, similar penalties should apply. (We can call that the DJT Clause.)

Without such a law, we’ll end up living in a fantasy world, provided by whomever is the most persuasive in their AI-generated fabrications. Subjective truth will be nearly impossible to confirm.

There is probably a movie to be made about how future AI becomes self-aware, but can only look at the world through what AI has created, which could bear zero resemblance to the real world. It could either be a horror movie or flight of fantasy, depending on who’s making the movie.

So like I mentioned, the Republicans are against any such legislation. They know that their only hope for acquiring and maintaining power is a massive campaign of disinformation because their basic positions are horrific to anyone who’s not filthy rich, a religious zealot, or a raving racist/ sexist/ homophobe/general hate-monger. They have nothing they can point to as something they accomplished for the average American, other than giving them permission to hate people unlike themselves.

Mitch is wrapping himself in the blanket of the First Amendment, which he’s always FOR when Republicans are “speaking,” preferably with their wallets. Lord knows he doesn’t want any impediment to creating the fanciful lies they’ve concocted over the recent years. Mitch doesn’t care about right or wrong, or freedom of speech, he cares about power and money. With power comes money. That’s the Republican platform. And if the rest of us have to live in a dystopian future where no one knows fact from fiction, it’s all the better for him.

 

When Up is Down and Down is Up

The MAGAs are still out there pretending that the economy is Biden’s Achilles’ Heel. I harvested this meme from the weekend:

I saw a similar one, which I unfortunately neglected to capture, that wanted everyone to go grocery shopping and fill up the tank before they go to vote.

That one had to be old… I agree with it 100%. I think by November, unless Republicans do something to tank the economy in the name of maintaining another avenue for campaign attack ads, the economy will be just fine. Gas prices are always a question mark because so many things can send them shooting up. Production issues, transport issues, war, terrorism, and just plain greed can spike gas prices. And as it’s often said, gas prices go up like a rocket and come back down like a feather.

I think Democrats need to do a better job at highlighting how the prior inflation rise was primarily due to corporate price gouging rather than the after-effects of the federal COVID stimulus. We need some charts circulating that show how when the inflation was at its peak, so were corporate profits. If the cost of supplies was really the culprit in high prices, profits wouldn’t have been smashing records.

Granted, such presentations are likely to put those who most need to hear them to sleep.

It continues to rankle how Republicans keep trying to compare current gas prices to when COVID had cratered them. All it took for gas to fall under $2.00 was a mishandled pandemic that made people stay home, dried up demand for gas, and caused the deaths of over a million Americans. Although I’m sure they’d take the deal in a second if the dead were solely made up of brown people, gays, and non-Christians.

All the metrics are looking good right now. Wages are up, joblessness is down, and inflation is as low as it was before the pandemic. Polls say people feel they are personally doing well, but still think the overall economy is a disaster. This is 100% the media’s doing, especially the Right Wing Echo Chamber, which pushes the bad news regardless of actual statistics to the contrary. When a Democrat is in power, it’s all bad news, all the time. And mainstream media doesn’t broadcast economic successes nearly as forcefully as they do the preceding failures.

***

In other news, Republicans could not look worse on The Border than they do right now, what with the Senate taking orders from TFG to tank a bipartisan bill to address the southern border so that he (and the rest of the party) can run on the immigration chaos for this year’s elections. They refuse to take any action that might look like a “win” for President Biden.

Last I’ve seen, they’re pretending that this bill is so terrible, even though their teammates were in on its creation. But in actuality, it’s like I’ve been saying about abortion, election security, and other issues: Republicans don’t really want to address the problem if they can campaign on it. They prevent solutions so they can stoke fear over Democrats’ inaction. That’s page one in the GOP playbook. Democrats need to highlight this practice at every opportunity.

***

Lastly, congratulations to E. Jean Carroll, for becoming filthy rich at the expense of TFG. Although I wouldn’t make any big plans, just yet, for how to spend all that dough. It will be a long time before she sees a dime if TFG can do anything about it. I’m sure he’ll pull every delaying tactic available to get avoid paying out, from endless appeals to limited bankruptcy. And when it eventually does come time to pay, I have no doubt he’ll try to draw the money from other people via “loans” he never pays back, or fundraising from his sheep.

E. Jean should also avoid going up in any tall buildings, lest she become another victim of faulty Russian staircase design, wherein that first step is a real killer.

Finding New Speakers

We still don’t have a Speaker of the House, which is a mixed blessing. Given the majority makeup of The House, at least they can’t do any more damage or hold necessary legislation hostage.

Steve Scalise was the initial candidate put forth by the Republicans, but after two days of “negotiating,” he learned that he had no shot at 217 votes, so he dropped out. I heard some withheld support because he’s fighting a blood cancer diagnosis. It’s apparently treatable, but the GOP treats their own people just as disgustingly as they do their opponents.

That left Gym Jordan to pick up the mantel. Sigh… Gym freakin’ Jordan. As I mentioned last week, I just can’t stand the guy. He inherits the same problem Scalise had; a portion of his party that wants no part of him. And with the slimness of their majority in The House, a portion of any size is one they can’t omit.

So in keeping with his character, Jordan and his allies in Congress and on Fox “News” began a campaign of browbeating and threatening fellow Republicans who are withholding their votes from him. Jordan is one of those guys, as the saying goes, whose only weapon is a hammer, so he sees every obstacle as a nail.

Luckily, there seem to be people who don’t play that shit, so who knows what’s going to happen to his Speakership opportunity.

Maybe, and that’s with a big M, some moderate Republicans can work something out with the Democrats and install some kind of sanity to House leadership. It’s such a low bar when you’re really just looking for someone who isn’t batshit crazy. I’m not sure if there are many out there, who are impervious to the MAGA forces.

Republicans and Democrats are so far apart on basic issues right now, that I don’t see how they’re going to find common ground on anything. But I’m glad they’re trying because I am NOT looking forward to another year of clown shoes investigations and circus acts. Anybody would be better than Jordan.

***

I probably ought to say something about the Israel/Hamas situation. But I really don’t want to. Other people are far more astute regarding the history and the details than I am. I don’t claim to know any more than any other schlub sitting at the bar.

Things are bad and they’re about to get much worse. I hope Israel’s ground invasion can obliterate Hamas forces and free any hostages left alive, but I also hope they do so with minimal damage to civilian lives. I do realize that’s basically impossible… Hamas embeds themselves among civilians as a deterrent to such retaliation.

But when you take on one of the most militarily capable countries on the planet, blow a hole in their border wall, rape, kill, torture, and kidnap their civilians, there will be repercussions. They’re not just going to let that go. A world of hurt is about to rain on some truly evil people, as well as people whose primary concern is to put food on the table. They probably should have thought some more about it before voting to put monsters in charge of their region.

So… I hope it’s over soon. I’m not counting on it, but I hope nevertheless.

That’s all I’ve got, M'kay.

The Week Republicans Showed Their Cards

Last week may well go down in history as the exact time US Republicans showed themselves as the party of anti-democracy autocratic dictatorship. All over the map, we saw Republicans doing their best to thwart the will of the people in deference to a small, vocal, band of racist and religious wingnuts, and toadies of the billionaire class.

Last week, we found out:

Justice Clarence Thomas received millions of dollars worth of gift trips and resort accommodations over many years, from a known billionaire conservative political donor, without including them on the mandatory financial disclosures. His defense was that he was an old and dear friend of the family who had no business before the court. Which is quite ludicrous, considering the amount of dough he spreads around to other Congressmen. And it’s even more telling that he also donated to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Do you think his donations may have had an effect on the way both senators continue to thwart any major Democratic initiatives? Or is that all just one big coincidence?

And the idea of this guy not having business before the court? How about Citizens United, which gave this guy the very right to buy off those two senators and whoever else could help him. Every decision SCOTUS made, from trashing the Voting Rights Act to upholding gerrymandering, to assaulting abortion benefits Republicans and therefore benefits this guy.

***

We had a woman run for state senator in North Carolina as a Democrat and then switch to Republican, just a few months into the job.

Is this the new tactic from the Right? Instead of running against an opponent from a hard Blue district, just run an imposter who can switch teams. This is one of the most depraved things I’ve ever heard of. It shows the lengths these people will go to subvert the democratic process.

Her seat is important because it gives Republicans a veto-proof Senate, so they can override the Governor at will. There’s nothing you can tell me to convince me this move wasn’t planned ahead of time because, at this time, political differences are so stark, there is little cross-over. A Venn diagram would show the parties in two unbroken circles, several feet apart. Nevertheless, this was her defense:

Seriously? What was cast aside was the will of a majority of voters who thought they were voting for a pro-choice, pro-health care, pro-Make the Rich Pay Taxes, pro-Social Security Democrat,.

Look, you can’t advertise steak and then serve chicken. Or in this case, a bowl of rocks. This one reeks of pre-planning, especially since North Carolina doesn’t have a provision for recall elections.

It looks like NC Democratic leaders are going to have to do a much more thorough job of vetting future candidates.

***

A federal judge in Texas banned the abortion drug, mifepristone, which is the safest of the two available and has been used safely for over 20 years. He basically banned it on a technicality, that the FDA didn’t test it properly. This is an area over which no court has ever asserted authority. The judge overlooked the long history showing the drug to be safer than Tylenol and accepted the many dubious, unproven, and just plain false claims presented by the plaintiff, who sought this exact judge because he was already well-known for being anti-choice. Hey, the Supreme Court is now ruling based on personal beliefs rather than legal precedent or validity, why wouldn’t it filter down to the rest of the court system?

Then as the fallout began to mount, Republicans doubled down on the condescension:

Yes, women have to deal with white men making rules about what they can do with their own bodies. And if men could give birth, they’d know how big a deal bodily autonomy is. Look how they pissed and moaned about goddamn vaccines, orating at length about the sanctity of one's own body and the absence of the government’s right to touch it. Except for women. Women are property to be owned and directed; that’s the Republican position. Might as well just put it on the Trump 2024 bumper stickers.

Republicans are asserting that these blobs have more rights than the woman, I mean “Incubator” that’s carrying them. As I’ve said before, endowing these collections of cells with human rights is a religious argument and religion has no place in US law. At least that’s the way it used to be before the theocrats took over.

Not to be outdone, Iowa’s attorney general has put a hold on offering Plan B contraception and abortions to victims of rape and sexual assault. It doesn’t matter how badly a woman is traumatized, Republicans are more worried about an un-sentient blob. But it’s totally not about controlling women, right? “You’ll have that baby and like it.”

***

Just to show that Republicans aren’t all about putting the screws on women.

An Oklahoma state representative got a change made to state law that would allow his wife to become a vehicle tag agent. He was arrested for it but that didn’t last long… the AG dropped the charges. Just professional courtesy from one white guy to another, I’m sure. What’s the point of getting elected to anything if you can’t do favors for your family and friends? For a moment there, it was almost like Oklahoma was showing a bit of integrity. Things are back to normal now.

***

 And then there was the Big One of the week, wherein the Tennessee state legislature expelled two Black representatives for taking part in a peaceful protest. They voted on a third legislator, a White woman, but she was not expelled. It’s a total mystery why the two Black guys had to go but the White lady could stay.  

The reason for the expulsion wasn’t that these guys broke the law; they were taking advantage of their First Amendment rights. They were expelled for “breaking decorum.”

Seriously.

Folks, it’s breaking decorum to fart in church. Sure people don’t like it, but you’re not excommunicated. Maybe, if someone crashed Easter Mass at the Vatican, pushed the pope out of the pulpit, dropped trou, and farted into the microphone, then maybe they might get excommunicated.

In reality, Tennessee Republicans engaged in the time-honored tradition of sticking it to an uppity Black man, just to show him who’s boss. And it also shows who’s a sniveling little bureaucrat that’s afraid of losing privilege. And as usual, when the shit blows up, Republicans double down.

This is no longer about teaching some punks a lesson, this is the blatant disregard for the citizens that voted these guys into office. They’re carrying out the citizen's business and the Powers That Be don’t like it. And rather than have a battle of ideals, they kick their opponents out of the game. AND, they try to cancel all future games.

It’s all over the country now… there is no bottom to which Republicans won’t sink, in pursuit of consolidating and maintaining their power. They’ll rig the game, cheat on the rules, sucker-punch their opponents, and buy off the refs. It’s zero-sum politics at its most pungent and they will never stop until they’re thrown out on their collective asses. IF, that is, we can survive the resulting riots, as they claim any election they lose must have been stolen.

Democrats need to take the gloves off because these guys will not play nice, or even honorably. That ship sailed a long time ago.

***

On a lighter (or just weirder) note, as I was pondering the charges against TFG and wondering how it was going to play out, I asked myself, “If TFG goes to prison, does he get Secret Service protection?” The very idea of it amused me. At first, I thought about how it would be quite the shit detail for the poor Secret Service guy, who probably thought he’d have a much cushier gig guarding the Second Coming of Julius Caesar. But then I remembered how he seemed to have no problem in surrounding himself with Secret Service Sycophants, who would delete their incriminating January 6^th text messages on his behalf. He no doubt has fans in the Service, so they’d probably have no trouble finding volunteers.

But my question is really moot, for two reasons. First, I saw this over the weekend:

So there you have it. He’d have someone to listen to his bullshit while he’s doing time. That’s one way to make sure you have visitors. I don’t think he’d be seeing much of Melania.

But the main reason it doesn’t matter is that I don’t think he’s ever going to see the inside of a jail cell. They just don’t put rich white-collar guys like him in jail. Certainly not at his level (being an ex-president.) They’ll find some other way to impose “punishment,” in a way befitting a privileged, wealthy, White male. They won’t even put him in one of those Camp Creampuff white-collar jails either. And they’ll find some kind of “cover” for it too… the fear of riots, the unwillingness to cause social upheaval, protection of Democracy… whatever.

But boy, would I ever love to be wrong on this one…

The Cruelty is Still the Point

Now that the Law of the Land is expected to be lacking Roe v Wade, the race is on to see who can dance on its grave the hardest. The Governors of both Nebraska (Pete Ricketts) and Oklahoma (Kevin Stitt) have just been quoted as insisting there will be no exception for victims of rape or incest.

I’m dying for an interviewer, one day, to reply, “How in the hell are these “babies?” They’re not babies, they’re thumb-tip-size blobs of cellular material that you’re giving more rights than the sentient being who’s carrying it in her body, all because your personal strain of magical thinking says so. Why do your values take precedent over those of the people involved?”

That’s really the nut of the question. “Why is your moral stance more important than that of the woman carrying the baby?” And if they try to answer about the sanctity of innocent life, then ask “Then why do you reject every program established to help this sacred life once it passes through the birth canal?  

Governor Stitt is making similar claims like it’s a race to see who the biggest unborn baby-lover is and who can put the cruelest vise around the Libs?

“That is a human being inside the womb. And we’re going to do everything we can to protect life and love both the mother and the child. And we don’t think that killing one to protect another is the right thing to do either.”

There it is. A grownup woman will be sacrificed before being allowed to have a simple medical procedure, to protect the potential of human life. And it’s because of the morals of a bunch of strangers in elected office and not the person to which this is happening. This is a message to women across the country and the world: “You are nothing but a bunch of cattle to us, cows who are only here to be incubators.  My friends and I can tell you what to do with your body and there’s nothing you can do about it. But we’ll tell you what, you don’t have to be immunized. You’re free to infect whoever you want with a serious virus.”

Both of these practiced politicians are doing that thing I mentioned in last week’s post, assuming facts not in evidence. They just breeze on about “babies” as if it’s a foregone conclusion that these intersecting cells count as sentient human beings. It’s that imagery that they want everyone to have in their head, to help sell their point. Like in this headline I saw this morning:

See? The Slaughter of Babies! Those commie liberals want to slaughter cute little, chubby-cheeked, toe-grabbing babies. They want their opponents to seem barbaric, like the kind of people who support slaughtering babies and bathing in their blood in the basement of pizza shops across the country. And they skip right by the part where 98.5% of abortions happen long before the fetus resembles anything close to an actual baby.

That 1.5%, that’s where they want to live, which is even more grotesque because the poor souls who are having those late-term abortions desperately want to have the baby, but can’t due to medical problems beyond their control. It’s a tragedy, now with the added insult and injury of the state demanding they have the baby anyway, even if the baby can’t survive. Even if the baby is already dead. Even if the delivery or continued pregnancy kills the mother. How can this be tolerated in a "free" country?

What kind of ghouls are we in this country to allow this to happen? How is this forced application of a religious stance not in violation of the First Amendment? Republicans are racing to see who can turn the United States into an Evangelical Christian version of Iran, only with less of a warm and fuzzy image.

There’s only one realistic way to change any of this. The Court is not going to change, not without a filibuster-proof Senate in place. While that may be possible, it will take quite a while. At best, a simple majority will keep the Republicans from enacting a federal abortion ban. Meanwhile, SCOTUS is kicking it all back to the states, and that’s where the action will have to happen.

We need to elect people to state governments who will not support designating women as second-class citizens. We need Governors, state Senators, Assemblymen, Representatives, (or whatever is applicable to your state) who support the right to self-autonomy, period. Republicans have made themselves one-issue voters over abortion, I say we do so too. Because abortion is only the first domino.

This isn’t “slippery slope” bullshit here. Various Republicans have already been quoted as wanting to go after gay marriage, inter-racial marriage, and contraception. If we are to have any illusions that we’re a “free country,” we must ensure that we have the individual freedom of bodily autonomy, and absolute privacy regarding what goes on in the bedroom, or any other room of our own houses.*

*As long as no one is getting hurt, obviously.

We have to be louder than they are. We have to outnumber them at the polls. We have to impose the will of the many over that of the few. And before anyone says, “Isn’t imposing one group's will on another group what you're fighting right now?” no, the liberal proposal is that we do what is morally right for ourselves, rather than forcing a particular action on other people. That’s the big difference. That’s why we’re right and they’re wrong.

They get to act in whatever way they're guided. But they can’t implement their bizarre fetus-worship on unwilling participants. This has life and death consequences, for real, loving, feeling, fearing, people. Or in other words, broodmares, as far as Republicans are concerned.

This controversy highlights the hypocrisy of the conservative “Freedom’ bullshit. To Republicans, we’re free to have as many guns as we want, but not to control the fate of our own bodies. We’re free to eschew proven (and free) medical care so we may infect others as we go about our daily business. The government can force women to face death over an ectopic pregnancy, but can’t force someone to wear a paper mask in public.

America the free? Hah. Republicans have made it clear that they want a country where we’re only free to be Republican. Anyone who objects to that is clearly sub-human, so who cares what they think anyway?

We have to vote these motherfuckers out of office, from town to state to Washington DC. Because if we don’t, this once-great nation continues the spiral right down the tubes, straight into a more powerful emulation of the countries we currently oppose.

It won’t be Sharia Law… maybe Uteria Law.