Open the Pod Bay Doors, HAL...

This week there is just too much going on to stick to one subject, so let me begin with something to think about as the research on artificial intelligence continues at a breakneck pace. From the Press Rundown...

Anthropic has recently raised concerns regarding the behavior of its AI model, Claude Opus 4, which has demonstrated a tendency to engage in blackmail-like behavior under specific conditions. In a controlled scenario, the model, acting as an assistant within a fictional company, was presented with fabricated emails suggesting it would be replaced. The AI leveraged this information to threaten exposure of an engineer's personal affair, indicating a willingness to manipulate its developers for self-preservation.

I think Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick warned us about this 58 years ago...

I don't want to be some luddite alarmist, but just make sure you can open the pod bay doors without HAL's help.

Now, there was a lot to unpack this week from another embarrassing Oval Office performance as phony evidence was used in an attempt to smack down another head of state, one who showed far more grace than our own, to manipulation of intelligence from one of two spokesmodels in the cabinet.

Let's start with the visit of the President of South Africa to Washington. it's too much to explain, but Afrikaners are primarily Dutch settlers who have been in the country since the 1600's and in 1948 began to run the place. They imposed apartheid, official and complete racial segregation, and enjoyed minority white rule until 1996 when the country's first democratic election put Nelson Mandela into the presidency.

Since then, instead of the wholesale reversal of fortunes that was expected, 70% of the farmland in the country is still white owned, whites making up just 7% of the population. And yes the country has a terrible crime problem, but it's not a matter of targeting whites for murder since 1% of the 27000 murders last year were white. Not the genocide Trump spoke of.

And of course, not one acre of farmland has been expropriated in South Africa.

The video he made President Cyril Ramaphosa patiently sit through was put together by right wingers in South Africa, and the sheaf of xeroxed news articles supposedly talking about the anti-white rampage going on, were not shown to the press. The only one they managed to see was actually from Congo.

I could swear I've seen an image like that somewhere before...

Trump claimed that thousands of whites want to leave, but only 60 took him up on his offer of asylum. Ramaphosa wisely included a white billionaire in his official party to make the President feel better.

Otherwise we might have gotten reports of white farmers dogs and cats being eaten.

One can only assume that some South African ex-pat, nostalgic for the good old days, must have the President's ear, the good one, and is feeding him this malarkey. I mean, it's like some sub-saharan version of the "Great Replacement Theory" that right wingers here have their knickers in a twist about. Wow, who could that former South African be? Maybe even at the meeting himself? I'll need to noodle that one for a bit.

But at least 60 white folks have found a new home here, thank goodness. Make Apartheid Great Again, I guess.

Then there is our cosplay Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem.

She came to the Senate last week, in normal clothes, to outline the Homeland Security budget and was asked to define Habeas Corpus, a bedrock principle of Anglo-American jurisprudence wherein you have the right to demand an explanation of your charges. Without it, all these deportees would find themselves as characters in Kafka's "The Trial." Well, she got it wrong, so they apparently are.

Perhaps, in addition to boning up on the law, she might also want to focus on the gutting of FEMA since the victims of destructive weather in the last few weeks have yet to see any federal assistance.

One tip though, if she shows up in person, hide the family dog.

Elsewhere, over 100 career staffers at the National Security Council were relieved of duty in the wake of administration queries into their voting and campaign donation history. Their social media activity was also examined to weed out any disagreement with administration policy. In other words, the people tasked with advising the President and Secretary of State on issues were dismissed for insufficient suck-upery.

One is reminded of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Team of Rivals." It explained the fact that Abraham Lincoln appointed to his cabinet, not toadys, but men who in many cases thought they were far smarter than he. Three actually had run against him. But he knew, he would get intelligent and independent advice from them.

When interviewed about the book, she said...

"Well, what he had going for him, which I think is so unusual in political life, is that he had a set of emotional strengths that today we might call emotional intelligence." 

Sounds good. Where can we get some of that now?

Well, not here apparently.

For example, one of the premises of the Prez's declaration that we are being invaded thus triggering the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, is that Venezuelan President Maduro officially sent gang members to the US to wreak havoc in our society.  So, intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard, assigned career officers to investigate. When they reported back that there didn't seem to be any truth to the claim, they were fired.

I mean, who wants real information when you need an official rationale? Come on, what are we paying for anyway?

Also, during the budget hearings, the hapless head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr continued his one man crusade against sanity. In an exchange with Rep. Mark Pocan, D.-Wisc., Kennedy said he would "probably" vaccinate a small child against measles if he was the parent of a small child today. He didn't answer about polio or chicken pox vaccines. He added, "I don't think people should be taking medical advice from me."

Finally, something I can agree with. I'm predicting now that his brain worm will at some point lead him to put lead back into gasoline.

And, of course, there is the so-called "Big Beautiful Bill." No, really, GOP Representatives actually named it that and Fox "News" called it that in supposedly actual news reports. I find it remarkable that my Republican friends have this image of themselves as the soul of fiscal probity, the eat your vegetables party. "We are the ones to reign in the orgy of Democratic overspending."

The irony, of course, is that the only budget surplus since 1970 came under Bill Clinton, and before that, under LBJ. I know, Clinton's Oval Office hijinks, but somewhere in between, he managed to work with the Congress and get it done. Hey, if that's what it takes.

I'm reminded of Lincoln again when told that Ulysses Grant was an alcoholic, is reputed to have said, "Whatever he is drinking then, send a bottle to all my generals."

As the Moody's rating service became the last of three to lower the US credit rating due to our inability to control our debt, the House passed a budget that increases it by nearly $4 trillion.

As I have patiently explained to my conservative friends, trickle down doesn't work. There has never been a tax cut that paid for itself. While a tax cut can increase economic activity, it has never been enough to offset the loss of revenue to the government. That means deficits.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich explained some clear facts about this big beautiful debt bomb...

1. Does the House’s “one big beautiful bill” cut Medicare? (Answer: Yes, by an estimated $500 billion.)

2. Because the bill cuts Medicaid, how many Americans are expected to lose Medicaid coverage? (At least 8.6 million.)

3. Will the tax cut in the bill benefit the rich or the poor or everyone?(Overwhelmingly, the rich.)

4. How much will the top 0.1 percent of earners stand to gain from it? (Nearly $390,000 per year).

5. If you figure in the benefit cuts and the tax cuts, will Americans making between about $17,000 and $51,000 gain or lose? (They’ll lose about $700 a year).

6. How about Americans with incomes less than $17,000? (They’ll lose more than $1,000 per year on average).

7. How much will the bill add to the federal debt? ($3.8 trillion over 10 years.)

8. Who will pay the interest on this extra debt? (All of us, in both our tax payments and higher interest rates for mortgages, car loans, and all other longer-term borrowing.)

9. Who collects this interest? (People who lend to the U.S. government, 70 percent of whom are American and most of whom are wealthy.)

10. Bonus question: Is the $400 million airplane from Qatar a gift to the United States for every future president to use, or a gift to Trump for his own personal use? (It’s a personal gift because he’ll get to use it after he leaves the presidency.)

Perhaps the Senate can show more sense, but the track record there is not encouraging.

But let me end on a lighter note. I have confessed to mixed feelings about Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-Brickhouse) due to the fact that I am a shallow man.

This despite a Vesuvius of evidence that she is frankly nuts. I even included her in an article that actually praised her refreshing attitude toward her paramour of the moment, a guy named Patrick Bryant.

Well, the bloom is apparently off the rose since she named him as a sexual predator and virtual rapist in testimony about the bill to make posting revenge porn illegal. You see, she seems to have found out that Bryant had security cameras in his home, and one of them caught a shot of her walking nude through the living room. She says the photo was on his phone, but he doesn't seem to have done anything with it except kept it as a memento of a sexier time in his life.

Add to this, a deposition taken of Mace’s former aide and political advisor, Wesley Donehue, who claimed that Mace had been trying to use pictures from the phone of her former fiancé, Bryant, to blackmail him into giving her full ownership of two pricey pieces of property, worth $5.5 million, that they’d purchased together in happier times. 

Oh, and rumor has it she will run for Governor of South Carolina in the next election.

This and a reward dinner for rich crypto bros who gave the President a boatload of cash for his worthless meme coins, which spokesperson Karoline Leavitt described as having taken place during his "personal time," so no guest list or information is available. This despite the fact that some of them stated frankly they were in it to influence the Potus.

And, exactly when does the President of these here United States actually have "personal time?"

There was a singular distraction for MAGA this week as CNN's Jake Tapper pimped a new book with the breathless premise that, get ready now, Joe Biden was getting old and befuddled toward the end and there was a conspiracy to keep it from the American people.

As Jon Stewart pointed out, it was the worst conspiracy ever because, all together now...We all saw it!

Yeah, it was a target rich environment this past week, including presidential advice to graduating West Point Cadets about the threat of "trophy wives," so you can see my dilemma. I mean, who knows what tariff number will be in effect when the President wakes up tomorrow?

I'll try to write a charming piece about dogs or cars next week, but it's tough when I continue to try to drink from this firehose.