Category: Humor

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DeepSeek — China gets the drop on us

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

January 27th, 2025

Hey, everyone, remember the gigantic AI thing, the one that Musk wanted to raise a trillion* dollars to invest, backed by bitcoin? Trump was talking about a $500 billion that he would probably just steal from the Social Security fund. All the tech giants were in a huge race to pour money into AI, hoping to make it bigger, stronger, faster? Remember that?

Sure you do. It was all just there yesterday.

Well, funny story.

China has released something called DeepSeek. It’s their own AI platform, easily as powerful and flexible as the ones the tech bros have been dumping all those trillions into. They did it on a grand total of six million dollars budget. Pocket change for Intel, and for Musk, just part of his pocket lint.

Oh, yeah. Also, it’s open source. That means anyone can take it, play with it, use it, adapt it, all for free.

The financial bubble pop was probably big enough that it caused that earthquake in Maine. It may well be the biggest financial pop in history, even bigger than the real estate crash of ‘08.

Investors react to such upheavals with the equanimity of a flock of chickens in a thunderstorm, and as a result, the tech markets are busily tearing out their own entrails and eating them feverishly in a effort of minimize the scale of the crash.

A glance at the markets this morning shows carnage. Nvidia is down 17%. NASDAQ is down over 600 points. Marketwatch has the reassuring headline, “Does DeepSeek spell doomsday for Nvidia and other AI stocks? Here’s what to know.” The lede was interesting, as well: “That’s the big question on the minds of investors Monday, given newfound attention on DeepSeek, a Chinese AI app that has climbed to the top of downloads from Apple’s U.S. App Store. The service has become so popular that it’s restricting registration due to what it called ‘large-scale malicious attacks.’” Hmm. I’m guessing those attacks aren’t coming from Dark Web hackers. Care to guess which companies and/or countries are behind it? I’m imagining the TrumpenMusk coalition is quite busy this morning.

On one hand, it’s gratifying to see the techbros take a haircut on this scale. Most of them have accumulated vast amounts of wealth and power, which they’ve combined with a vapid kleptomaniacal libertarianism in hopes of unlimited wealth and power while the other 99.9% of us eke out an existence in an Ayn Randian hellscape.

And I was contemplating a vast bubble backed by cybercurrency, a truly frightening prospect. It’s one thing to say currency has no real intrinsic value and thus bitcoin is equal, and that’s true so far as it goes; you can’t eat gold, as they say. But regular currency has consensus value: a dollar is worth a dollar because everyone roughly agrees that a dollar has value. With bitcoin, the “consensus” lies in computer algorithms which are far more volatile and not attuned to human needs. If the lights go out, bitcoins value vanishes. Vaporware backed by pretend money really does sound a bit…tenuous, doesn’t it?

But I also feel apprehension. DeepSeek doesn’t just open Pandora’s Box; it blows that sucker to smithereens. Everyone will have access to extraordinarily powerful AI and can play with it in any way they choose.

The Trump administration will probably yell that it can’t be trusted because there’s no guessing what the Chinese have in the way of back doors or acquisitionware. You know, like they supposedly do with TikTok.

But being open source means anyone can examine the source code, line by line, making unexpected guests on board next to impossible.

The drawback, of course, is that anyone else can take that code and add all sorts of goodies and foist that off on an unsuspecting public.

I would imagine that something similar to the Linux community will spring up and monitor the various flavors of DeepSeek that emerge. While significantly more complex than a desktop OS, Deep Seek does have the advantage over Windows and other programs in that it’s ALL visible.

But if you thought AI was expanding at a fantastic rate before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

This doesn’t bring about a smarter AI that can actually think. And it can make some really amazing mistakes. Peter Cawdron posted an in-depth, probing five-page AI-spawned review of his book “Enclave.” It was very convincing except for one little thing—he never wrote a book called “Enclave.” And I can’t imagine writing a five page review of his work without mentioning First Contact. The other day, someone asked an AI if water freezes at 27F. The AI replied it does not, it freezes at 32F, so in order to freeze the water, you would need to raise the temperature from 27 to 32. And you thought Bible-based “science classes” were ridiculous.

Right now, we’re all just blinking at the afterglow of a thermonuclear explosion. I suspect we’re in for an interesting few months, even without the Nazis in Washington.

* Yes, trillion, one thousand billions, one million millions unless you learned to count English style, in which case it’s a British billion.

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Solstice 2024 — Expiry dates and the Cassandra Effect

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 21st, 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

www.zeppjamiesonfiction.online

Science may not have a hard-and-fast rule that stipulates when hominids became truly human, but if it was up to me, I would say it was the first a hominid raised his fists in the air and shouted, “We are all DOOMED!” Now, granted, science may find that a bit unhelpful, since nobody can say when the first doom-shouter arose, but they have been an inextricable part of humanity since it became overcooked apes.

“The end is nigh” may be a popular pastime with us somewhat-evolved monkeys, and the real allure lies in the fact that if you shout it long enough, you’ll eventually be right. All things end. Look upon my works and despair. We are but mortal. Even the Universe has an expiry date.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with doom-shouting, of course. Oh, you won’t get invited to many parties and your kids will tell you the music in your day was also crap, but often such shouts warn of clear, present, and avoidable dangers. Things such as overpopulation, climate change, nuclear proliferation and pandemics are very real and even existential threats.

One drawback to doom-shouting is that the shouter will encounter the Cassandra effect. Cassandra was an ancient Greek soothsayer who was always right, but cursed because nobody ever believed her. Part of it is because most people are at least mildly optimistic. There are the incurable Panglossians, (aka “idiots”) who see everything through rose-coloured lenses, and the deterministic optimists (my group) who acknowledge the dangers and threats but think we can work our way through them. We’re also idiots, but a good deal less starry-eyed about it.

Most doom shouters are full of crap, of course. Humanity did not end because of cats, communists, Elvis, or rap music. Religious texts are big on “End of Days,” leading to endless trouble because of nitwits who interpret it to mean it is Divine Will they bring about the End of Days, but those texts are uniformly a load of crap, too. Too many people believe if you pile bullshit high enough, it becomes worthy of worship. Another sign of humanity, I suppose.

Which brings us to the here-and-now. America has willingly swallowed poison, and we’re all waiting to see if it was a lethal dose, or if America will end up puking it up and feeling really bad for a long time after.

For those of us currently living in the US who aren’t part of the One Percent, we’re in for hard times. There’s a very real possibility that America as we know it won’t exist by Solstice 2025. Class-based coups are always ugly, and those staged by the aristocracy tend to be even crueler and bloodier, and often throw the host nation into third-world poverty. And that, in a nutshell, is what has happened in America.

My brand of optimism doesn’t believe that the course of human events is on an inevitably downward path. If that were true, I believe history would have come to a close at the gates of Auschwitz.
No human force is truly inexorable, no matter how powerful it seems. The USSR was one of the most brutal and pervasive regimes in history, but when the government lost even the passive consensual support of the people, it collapsed relatively bloodlessly in a matter of weeks. It wasn’t a one-off. Ask Assad—his mail is being forwarded to Moscow now.

Our would-be masters, no matter how arrogant or brutal, absolutely depend upon our support. Without it, they will fall. Remember that. A national strike and millions in the streets peacefully protesting, can end them. It’s up to us. It is always up to us. Be prepared to resist.

How will the world do? We seem to be undergoing a world-wide convulsion and shifting, one that seems to happen every ninety years or so (the 1930s, the 1840s, the 1760s). Each brought about strife, loss, and bloodshed, but in the end the overall lot of humanity improved. That’s important to remember—the next decade might be fairly crappy, but history suggests a better life for the survivors.

The existential threats I mention above will still be with us. They are, after all, reiterations of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Nothing new under our sun. And while its possible that one or more of them may raise up to decimate us, I doubt any will end us. For all that we seem hell-bent on self-obliteration, there’s always some sort of built-in override that causes enough of us to dig in our heels and save us from ourselves. Overall, pollution isn’t as bad as it was fifty years ago. A lower percentage of people died in warfare in the 20th century than in any century going back to the 14th century. (Admittedly, those are low bars.)

We’ve managed to live under the nuclear threat for eighty years now. We aren’t likely to see a pandemic that will kill off a third of us like the one in the 17th century. Over-population was seen as an intractable and inevitable doom fifty years ago. But our birthrate is declining world wide. (Due, in part, to the aforementioned pollution. Details, details.)

Even climate change may encounter built-in natural governors of the sort that prevented Earth in the past from becoming another Venus, or allowed it to come back at least three times from a state of “Snowball Earth.”

How will we fare? Um, well, let’s just say the Earth is considerably more durable than we are. But existential threats mean existential reckonings. We may yet find ways to avoid the worst of the consequences we’ve laid out for ourselves.

I believe, and will always believe, that we will somehow muddle through, and even prevail.

Why would we persevere, if not for the fact that most of us believe that?

It’s Winter Solstice 2024.

The wolf didn’t eat the sun. It will return.

Don’t lose hope. Never lose hope.

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Well, Pardon Me! — Biden pardon ignites firestorm of hypocrisy

Well, Pardon Me!

Biden pardon ignites firestorm of hypocrisy

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 1st 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

When I heard that Joe Biden had pardoned his son, Hunter, I just sat back, grinned, and waited for the GOP to utterly disgrace themselves. If you expect the GOP to behave like cowardly hypocritical strutting little bootlickers, they will never, ever disappoint you. If you drop a skunk into a pen of terriers, you can take it as a given that most, if not all of the dogs are going to smell just awful in a few moments.

Joe Biden explained his decision thusly: “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice — and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”

Hunter was convicted on federal gun charges: possessing a gun illegally. Not in the commission of a crime, mind you. Just possession. Now try and find a single Republican who would say prison was warranted for a first-time offense on that specific crime. Even the ones not owned outright by the NRA wouldn’t support that. Unless, of course, the accused happened to be a member or related to a member of the Democratic Party.

He was also convicted on federal tax evasion charges. I’m having a hard time imagining that Donnie looked in the mirror and snarled over that one. Hell, his party is BUILT on the concept of cheating the hell out of the United States, by any means legally or illegally.

I hope Joe Biden used both middle fingers when he held the pen to sign the pardon.

Donnie, who has form when it comes to abusing the power of the pardon, launched right in. “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump asked Sunday. “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”

Well, the ones still in jail, his ‘hostages,’ are violent anti-American filth who threatened and tried to kill people for the crime of just doing their jobs. Trump says he plans to pardon them first thing, but they will still be violent anti-American filth. (I’m not counting on those pardons happening: Trump has form on screwing followers who are no longer of any use to him, and deep down he knows how utterly useless his ‘hostages’ are now that he’s back in power.)

But he will pardon anyone useful, no matter what they did. Steven Bannon. Charles Kushner, who he just named ambassador to France. Chuckles, like his son, is a real corrupt piece of work. Per Wikipedia, “In 2005, he was convicted of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering after hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, arranging to record a sexual encounter between the two, and sending the tape to his sister. He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.” Yup, tax evasion. Like Hunter Biden, right.

I remember, a few decades back, I complained that American sex scandals tended to be kinda boring, and you had to turn to the Brits and the French for the really juicy, interesting types of scandals. So thank you, Chuckles, for making American perfidy interesting again. Just one thought: when you get to France, don’t try to compare yourself to Thomas Jefferson. The French will tell you, Chuckles, that they knew Thomas Jefferson, and that you, Chuckles, are no Thomas Jefferson.

Gym Jordan, a man who really should be in prison, had this to say: “Democrats said there was nothing to our impeachment inquiry. If that’s the case, why did Joe Biden just issue Hunter Biden a pardon for the very things we were inquiring about?” I guess Jimbo doesn’t quite get that Hunter was convicted by a court (you know, just like Donnie Trump and the J6 ‘hostages’ were) and not because of your circus show “investigations.” They were exercises in vicious foolishness conducted by vicious fools. No pardons needed there. At least not for Hunter. As for you clowns…

Rudy Giuliani, widely considered “Most Likely to Die in a Cardboard Box Under a Bridge” weighed in with his usual gravitas: “Biden, who will not even meet with his granddaughter Navy, didn’t pardon his son because he’s a good father. He did so because, as his son admits on the Hard Drive, for 30 years Hunter has given half the millions he’s collected to the Boss of the Crime Family – Joe Biden.” How you doing with those payments to the two women whose lives you ruined, Jools? I hear you’re crying you eyes out, and darn it, Trump can’t pardon you, even if he thought you were worth the effort.

Chuck Grassley, man least likely to remember he’s a senator, said, “I’m shocked Pres Biden pardoned his son Hunter [because] he said many many times he wouldn’t & I believed him. Shame on me.” Hey, good going, Chuck. Those last three words are true.

Folks, the Trump regime is going to be a soul-sickening exercise in hypocrisy and viciousness. It won’t get any better from here.

Remember to laugh at these fools, or they’ll drive you crazy.

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The Black Nazi — Ruckus has met his match—and more

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 19th 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Fans of the old “Boondocks” TV animated show no doubt remember Uncle Ruckus. In a series renowned for its unblinking, razor-sharp satire of race and racial relations in America, Ruckus stood out as one of the most challenging characters. Obese, slovenly, and an absolute bigot, Ruckus was perhaps the most memorable element in a show filled with brilliant characters.

Ruckus was, to all appearances, an African American. However, he claimed (and presumably believed) that he was actually a white Irish-American who suffered from “reverse vitiligo,” which turned his skin black.

According to Wikipedia, “Ruckus constantly hurls racism at all things black. On being asked if he supports the use of the word “nigga“, he says, ‘No, I don’t think we should use the word, and I’ll tell ya why. Because niggas have gotten used to it, that’s why. Hell, they like it now. It’s like when you growin’ crops and you strip the soil of its nutrients and goodness and then you can’t grow nothin’. You gotta rotate your racist slurs. Now I know it’s hard ’cause ‘nigga’ just rolls off the tongue the way sweat rolls off a nigga’s forehead, but we cannot let that be a crutch. Especially when there are so many fine substitutes: spade, porch monkey, jiggaboo. I say the next time you gonna call a darkie a nigga, you call that coon a jungle bunny instead.’” Well, OK then.

Ruckus routinely says things about black people that most Americans haven’t heard since the 1960s.

It’s a sign of the absolute genius of show creator Aaron MacGruder that Ruckus is actually a relatable character who sometimes is even sympathetic. His mother was a severely damaged woman who internalized feeling of inferiority and self-disgust emerging as self-hating racism. His father was an violent and abusive drunk whose rampages cost a young Ruckus his eye. For all his vicious racism, he was capable of kindness and generosity, including to the protagonists in the Freeman family, all black.

I’ve referred to some African Americans in the Trump orbit as Ruckuses before: Clarence Thomas, Herschel Walker, a couple of others that Bartcop used to call “lawn jockeys.”

But none of those unworthies even came as close to Ruckus-hood like North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson has come.

Robinson not only matches Ruckus in his speech (he referred to Martin Luther King Jr as “Martin Lucifer Coon”) but actually sinks below Ruckus in his vileness and horrific self-image. CNN blew the doors off his long and extremely sordid long-lived role in the resident porn community. Starting with a grandiose claim that Ruckus, in his worst possible moment, couldn’t approach. He described himself as “a black Nazi.” It turns out that his utter hatred for transexuals and “immoral” people such as gays or liberals is an utter sham: He’s a huge fan of transexual porn.

He was already widely known as a porn-dog of long standing, and already had a long resume of dark and incendiary statements including mass killings of various groups of people. In normal times, no self respecting political party would hire him as a janitor, let alone as the candidate for governor.

But these aren’t normal times. Trump took him under his wing, once praising him as “Martin Luther King on steroids.” The GOP, having thrown away any and all pretense of integrity, ethics, common sense or patriotism, went along docilely.

Just for some perspective, Christine O’Donnell saw her political career end when she felt it necessary to deny she was a witch. Bill Clinton was impeached for fibbing about having sex with a consenting adult. Obama endured weeks of abuse for wearing a tan suit. Bush Junior had a questionable service in the Texas Air National Guard. Dennis Hastert retired in disgrace for actions that these days would put you in charge of the House Judiciary Committee.

The standards of the GOP have fallen from sleazy and contemptible to outright nihilistic and demented.

But today’s reports on Robinson were a bridge too far, it seems. Tonight, there are widespread demands for Robinson to drop out of the governor’s race since his very presence will damage the party in an important swing state. Without North Carolina, GOP chances of winning the White House are effectively zero.

But there’s a couple of problems as of 6:20 pm PDT. First, Robinson denies all the stories despite overwhelming evidence (he even claimed they were written by AI, which apparently has the ability to travel back in time over more than a decade to post in his identity), and refuses to leave the race. Second, the GOP face a deadline after which Robinson’s name must remain on the ballot as absentee ballots go out. That deadline is in about 158 minutes: midnight Eastern Time, 9pm here.

For the GOP, it’s pretty much an unwinnable situation. Should Robinson withdraw, they have virtually no time at all to pick a sacrificial lamb to replace him on the ballot. He would surely lose (Robinson was trailing by 18 points anyway) but it would minimize damage to the rest of the party, including Trump, in a state that should have been solid red but was teetering before this happened.

If Robinson stays, the Democrats are going to waste no time running ads showing Trump calling Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids.” Yes, Trump said that in front of cameras.

Robinson deserves what’s coming to him, and so does Trump.

But if there is anything else good coming from this, it may cause many more Republicans to realize the sick and disgusting poison that has taken over their party, and begin to resist.

I’ll hold off until 9 to finish this. I suspect it may sound the death knell for Trump. We shall see.

Whelp, the magic hour has passed, Robinson is still in the race, and both the Harris Campaign and the Lincoln Project have their first ads out.

Trump is going to be wearing Robinson as his own personal codpiece for the next seven weeks.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer pair of guys.

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“I Hate Taylor Swift” — Don Coyote tilts at windmills

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 15th 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

“I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT” – posted on Truth Social by you know who.

There are several things about Taylor Swift that Donald Trump failed to notice. She’s richer than him. She’s more popular. Her fan base is more committed. She’s better looking. And she’s a lot smarter.

So sure, Donnie, pick a fight with her. What could go wrong?

Taylor Swift was always pretty apolitical up until this year. I won’t speculate on what her private thoughts on this are except to note that she seems quite sane, which pretty much guarantees that she would take a dim view of our Donald. But just guessing, I would reckon the final straw was when Donald reposted a fake meme claiming that Taylor Swift had endorsed him. That’s damn near defamation, and I would want to set the record straight right away if I was her.

A lot of Donald’s followers are over-the-top assholes, like the person who made up the fake meme, but Donald is just big enough a fool to think that these crazy morons are working to do what’s best for Donald. You just have to look at his inner circle—Laura Loomer, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Chris LaCivita, Steven Miller…to know that these are not “the best people.” Even supporters like Ann Coulter and Marjorie Taylor-Greene are backing away in disgust now. It takes some doing to disgust Coulter and MTG, you know?

I’m guessing he’ll go right on attacking Taylor Swift because it’s perfectly normal for a presidential candidate to attack people for supporting the other candidate, right?

Horrible to say, I’m almost certain Swift is already getting bomb threats from Donald’s gestapitos already. Springfield, Ohio hospitals, the city hall, and police have been getting bomb threats for having the temerity to say there’s no evidence that any residents in that town have been eating anyones’ pets.

I had one Trumpkin on Facebook accuse me of “making democrat spin” for stating that inflation had come to an effective halt over the past three months and manufacturing jobs were on the rise. I asked him to identify anything I said that was untrue, but then added: “First let me know if you think immigrants are eating people’s pets in Springfield. I want to know if I’m wasting my time or not.”

Granted, when I respond with facts and figures, usually I just get something along the lines of “No! You’re lying!” and then I never hear from them again. So I probably won’t hear back anyway. But I’m mindful of the dictum attributed to Mark Twain: “Never argue with a fool. People might not be able to tell the difference.” Robert Heinlein said something along the lines of “Never get in a mud-slinging contest with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig enjoys it.”

The latest “eaten cats in Springfield” moral panic is part of a list of red flags that cause me to turn around and walk away from a fool. “Litter boxes in school bathrooms” is another, along with “The election was stolen” and “People have always loved Trump.” Some opinions are so incredibly stupid it’s an utter waste of time to argue them.

This is the Age of Trump where no conspiracy theory is too absurd, no lie too egregious, and no pandering to utter morons more obvious. Donald had been hooting that he WON the debate, and of course his followers are chanting it. Yeah, he won the debate in much the same way that Cumberland beat Georgia Tech (look it up). And the conspiracy theories immediately began: Harris was given the questions in advance, she had an ear device for answers from her aides, a special camera lens made Trump look older and Harris younger.

And of course, Harris did cheat, you know. Unbeknownst to Trump, she sneaked the following qualities to the podium: intelligence, experience, wit, wisdom and assertiveness. If she hadn’t brought those advantages along, she would have…well, broken even with Trump. Yeah, let’s put it that way.

She baited Trump, of course, most notably with the remark that people were leaving his rallies. Trump’s monkeys think that’s unfair. It’s nobody’s business if a future President of the United States is easily thrown off his game and manipulated. Besides, all of democracy’s enemies—Putin, Xi, Kim Jong Un, Victor Orbán and Modi—all love Trump, and would never take advantage of him, right?

Republicans Against Trump is growing into a significant segment of the Republican electorate, with some of the strongest voices against Trump coming from the politically conservative portion. While some will support Harris, most will simply not vote for Trump, and it’s important to remember that while they are our allies against Trump, they still have their own agenda. They’ll still be voting down ticket for Republicans who aren’t Trump stooges, so don’t make the mistake of believing Harris’ increasing lead in the polls translates to a blue wave.

Although even there, Trump is doing the GOP real harm. He’s gleefully accepting huge donations for his PACs from every vicious fascist plutocrat in the country (but noticeably, not from business leaders!), but he’s not sharing the wealth down-ticket. Quite a few GOP state parties, especially in swing states, are dying on the vine from lack of funding. Yes, even in states where childless cat ladies and Swifties don’t dominate, and the landscape is studded with morons who believe [whichever] immigrant group eats pets and/or drinks the blood of Christian babies.

Some day, America will look back on the Age of Trump with pity and disgust. But we aren’t there yet.

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The Trump Grump — Claiming Harris-ment?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

August 14th, 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

I had fun (or some equivalent word that carries the same meaning as “enjoying getting a root canal”) watching the Trump/Vance show with Mark Robinson in North Carolina today. No, I wasn’t in North Carolina. It’s August, and I’m not nuts. That’s just where the rally was.

Now, Robinson himself is a real piece of work. He attained his political philosophy from reading the gospel of Saint Limbaugh of the Rushes, and just sort of went downhill from there. He is true to those teachings, I’m sad to say. He’s opposed to abortion under all circumstances, unless one of those circumstances happens to be that Mark Robinson is the daddy. He denies climate change, and wants marijuana consumption to be a felony. He prattles on about the Rothschilds and “international bankers” which is a red flag to any Jew. Robinson also wrote: “this foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash,” and “There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered.” (Caps are his, a grammatical twitch he shares with Trump.)

“There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth. And yes I called it filth. And if you don’t like that I called it filth, come see me and I’ll explain it to you.” He also wants to end the separation of church and state in public schools.

OK. He seems nice. He’s a big part of Trump’s outreach to minorities, you know. He was Trump’s second choice for that job, but then it came to light that his first choice, Uncle Ruckus, was a fictional character.

The Trump campaign billed today’s rally as being a major policy address on the economy. Trump addressed that with the laser-like focus that we’ve all learned to associate with him, telling the small crowd he was “not sure” he agreed that the economy is the most important issue of the election. I guess he got the news that inflation was 0.2% for the past three months, and that the polls showed people had more faith in the Democratic Party to manage the economy—the first such result in nearly twenty years. So suddenly the economy is no big deal. Trumpkins, write that down. It will be on the final exam.

Trump said he would cut gas and energy prices in half. No, really. He said that. But that noble determination and vision that is the Trump trademark caused him to add, “If it doesn’t work out, you’ll say, ‘Oh well, I voted for him. I still got it down a lot.’” No, really. He said THAT, too. Gas production is at record heights right now, and gas prices are lower than they were in 2021. I begin to understand why Trump doesn’t want to get into the nuts and bolts of economics.

A few years ago, Trump said, “The economy always seems to be better under Democrats than it is under Republicans. It shouldn’t be, but it is.” That was before he entered politics and still had most of his marbles.

He doubled down, quite literally, on the tariffs he wants to impose. It had been a 10% tariff on all imports. Now he wants it to be 20%.I devoted an entire essay to that notion a couple of months ago, detailing what a catastrophic mess it would make of the economy. All I said then, times two.

He also said the day he takes office there will be the biggest economic boom. “It will be a boom,” he promised. Um, yeah. OK.

Trump also praised his sit-down with Elon Musk, saying it was “one of the most successful shows ever done”. Watching him discuss climate change with the nepo baby who runs Ex-twitter brought to mind the phrase “Beavis and Butthead try to work the microwave.” If stupidity could alleviate climate change, those two would have us in an ice age by now.

Trump also stopped to mock Harris’ laugh. He’s on safe ground there: Nobody has ever seen him laugh, and I’m not convinced he understands why people laugh. Perhaps he thinks it’s from an itchy nose, or a sort of cough only the uncouth engage in.

The rest of his “policy statement” was the usual mish-mash of lies and smears.

Meanwhile, Shady JD continued his own particular charm offensive. Today’s offering was his opinion that the role of post-menopausal women was to be baby sitters. After all, if they can’t pump out babies, of what use are they?

While Vance hasn’t agreed to it yet, Tim Walz and CBS News have agreed to a vice presidential debate on October 1st. Walz said, “I’ve got to tell you. I can’t wait to debate the guy. That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up,” The chesterfield jokes, admittedly unfair, are slowly dying down and will go away. Or you might say, “Sofa, so good.”

Trump is trying to lay the groundwork for challenging Harris’ candidacy, arguing that switching candidates in mid campaign is unconstitutional. It’s not, of course. In fact, the constitution doesn’t mention political parties at all. Quite a few of the Founders were hoping political parties wouldn’t arise in the first place, and originally, it was set up so whoever got the second-most votes in a presidential election automatically became the vice-president. George Washington considered the costs of having to hire a food taster and suggested an alternate approach might be tied. But Trump is lining up ways to seize office no matter how the vote goes. And he has some of the most powerful scumbags in the country behind him.

So even though things are going Harris’ way for now, don’t let down your guard. Even if Trump is an insensate drooler by election day, there are some who want him as a figurehead. Be vigilant.

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Taxing Trump — Making America Tariff-ic Again

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 16th 2024

zeppscommentaries.online

Donald is bad enough when he isn’t sounding like Grandpa Simpson on meth. It’s deeply alarming when this 78 year old dimwit prattles on about batteries and sharks. He has somehow concluded that an electric powered boat is far more hazardous in an accident because of the batteries, and you would get electrocuted before the sharks get you. Never mind that all boats with engines have batteries anyway, or that the sharks would get electrocuted, too. Windmills murder birds and cause cancer, it seems, although Trump tower has killed its share of birds and listening to Trump might make you wish you had cancer.

It’s when he drifts from the evils of conservation to the virtues of economic policy where he gets truly terrifying. Its bad enough when he rails about the national debt (40% of which came from his tax policies) or the horrible cost of “illegal” immigrants (who actually ADD about $1.3 trillion a year to the US economy) but now he’s decided that he, and he alone, can fix the cost of paying for the United States to be a going concern.

His proposed solution to our fiscal woes? Eliminate all federal income taxes. You know: our national revenue. Libertarians have come up with variations on that over the years going on the lunatic notion that the best way to cut household expenses is by quitting your job. It’s a reasonable idea: in fairly short order, you’ll no longer have any household expenses. Or any household.

But even Donald understands that government has to pay for stuff. So he proposes to fund the government through tariffs.

Tariffs are basically a tax on imported goods. Donald likes to pretend that the tariffs are a tax on importers, and not the American people, and hopes that none of his brain-dead supporters will stop to consider that importers will raise their prices to compensate, and those increased prices WILL be assayed against the consumers in America. Donald has spoken of a 10% across the board tariff on all imported goods. The US imports about $4 trillion a year, so that would be $400 billion in tariff revenues.

For 2025, the White House projects that revenue from income taxes will be about $2.6 trillion. Payroll taxes are about $2.2 trillion, and corporate taxes would be about $467 billion. (Fifty years ago, corporate taxes were about 60% of federal revenues—and corporations did just fine!) Call it $5.267 trillion in revenues.

It’s not real likely that Donald will keep payroll taxes, since destroying Social Security and Medicare has long been a republican dream. And if you have a calculator capable of multiplying by zero, you can get a good estimate of the chances he’ll want to keep corporate taxes going.

Now, the astute observer may have noted that $5.267 trillion is a larger number than $400 billion. In fact, it’s about thirteen times bigger.

Which means cuts would have to be made. One mandatory payment is interest on the national debt, of which over 80% was created by Republican policies and misadventures, and half of THAT by Donald Trump alone. Those interest payments are about $967 billion a year.

Let’s see: $400 billion minus $967 billion leaves…hmmm.

OK, so we cut EVERYTHING, and we are still in the hole by $567 billion a year. Tch. No military, so social programs, sell the capitol building, get rid of all regulatory agencies, no federal economic development, none of these public schools nonsense. Churches can take all that over, right? There’s about 70 million people who get social security, and for a large majority of them, that’s all that separates them from homelessness and starvation. Churches are gonna be busy, busy, busy.

Some people might take a negative view of that, being people and all. Banks will have huge on-paper wealth from all the homes they’ll foreclose on by the millions until they find out the homes can’t be sold because everyone is broke. Then they all crash, including the ones Donald owes money to. He’ll like that.

Well, Donald does have a solution. Bigger tariffs on countries he doesn’t like, which is pretty much all of them except Russia. He has already suggested a 50% tariff on all cars from China. Given how much he loves countries south of here or in Africa, expect him to levy huge tariffs there.

But there’s a fly in the ointment. Other countries might take exception, and impose tariffs of their own. The technical term for this is “trade war” and it’s destroyed many economies.

The US exports about $3.3 trillion a year. Losing a chunk of that to an economy already reeling from an economic slow-down of over $10 trillion a year and tens of millions starving isn’t going to be very helpful. The good news is it can’t do that much more damage.

Ever seen the Mad Max movies? Consider them to be the blueprint for Donald’s Five Year Plan.

If Trump gets elected, buy all the salt, spices, bullets and cat food you can. You’re gonna need it.

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Going to the Dogs — The party of mutt sluts

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 5th 2024

The saga of
Kristi Noem and her dead puppy keeps staying in the news. It isn’t
because gleeful Democrats are hyping the story. It’s because Noem
herself won’t back down, and just keeps digging herself into an
ever-deeper hole. First she tried implying that she didn’t know
the story survived the first draft and shouldn’t have been in the
book. The classic Scooby-Doo “If it weren’t for you meddling
kids” defense. That blew up when it came out that she did the
audiobook herself—including the happy tale of the demise of
Cricket. The initial “farmers have to made hard choices” excuse
died stillborn when she wrote, “I really hated that dog.”

Now
she’s pointing to Biden’s German shepherd, Champion, who
reportedly bit a dozen or so Secret Service agents. She’s saying
that Biden should have shot the dog. She didn’t say if Biden
should have dispatched Champion live from the oval office, or in
front of a joint session of Congress (it really could have been an
excellent opportunity for Biden to turn to the Republican side and
say, “If the Supreme Courts says I have absolute immunity, you lot
are next.”). Maybe Biden could have discussed responsible pet
ownership while in the backdrop behind him, a couple of vengeful
secret service agents stuffed a yelping Champion into a running wood
chipper. It would have given Biden true Sarah Palin cred, you know?

But
Noem, Republican to her empty core, refuses to back down, still
hoping she can turn it into a campaign where she is the innocent
victim of “woke” libs. Maybe she could have took a flamethrower
to a couple of live kittens just to show she can’t be bullied by
lunatic leftist pansies and commies.

But
even Donald Trump, yes, Donald Fucking Trump, wondered aloud what was
wrong with her. It takes real talent to make him feign being
appalled. This is the guy who ripped off a children’s cancer
charity, right? His standards are...flexible.

To
be sure, his reaction is performance art. He’s probably watching
to see if she survives the political storm, and even though she
didn’t get invited to Donald’s meat parade of Veep picks for
billionaires, she’s probably still on his list. He doesn’t care
how vile she is. In fact, he prefers vile. He just wants to know
how mindlessly loyal she would be. His last Veep toad was such a
disappointment, you know.

His
fans, while shrinking, are even more vehement. They adore it when he
behaves like a pig. That’ll show those libs! They push for worse
and worse behavior from GOP candidates, since viciousness, cruelty,
rudeness and pure arrogant stupidity are seen as virtues among those
deplorables. After all, those are what Trump expects from his
closest minions. Michael Cohen wasn’t his main lawyer for twenty
years because Cohen was a nice guy. He was as dirty and nasty as any
mafia torpedo. His autobiography could have just as easily been
titled “...But Take the Cannoli.”

Meanwhile,
Republicans keep vilifying refugees, immigrants, Muslims,
African-Americans, and now students. Never mind that America’s
Nazi population have all gravitated to the GOP; Republicans are
attacking all critics of Netanyahu as being “anti-Semitic” even
though most of them value Israel for the demented Bible-based
Revelation belief that the state of Israel must exist in order for
the Rapture to occur. Jews are just God bait in their eyes.
Netanyahu isn’t their friend, but he is chum. Trump praises people
who are Nazis as “very fine people” and attacks critics of Israel
and in his base, at least, gets away with it.

AIPAC
support Trump, of course.

What
Trump supporters don't understand is that supporting him doesn't
automatically make them safe in his New World Order. History suggests
the opposite, in fact. Strongman leaders know their truest believers
are gullible, feckless, erratic, easy to manipulate, and unreliable.
After all, they already betrayed their country once. So unless Trump
supporters can find a way fast to make themselves useful to the new
Fuhrer, he's just going to throw them away like used condoms. Read
recent history: the early years of Lenin, Hitler, and Mao. They
quickly filled the camps with their truest believers, and executed
many more. Look up “Night of the Long Knives.”

The
corporate execs who back Trump doubtlessly think they can control him
once he takes office. But Trump sees them as a useful prop. He
isn’t going to reciprocate their loyalty, and once his mass
deportations and tariffs create a Great Depression, he’ll blame
them bitterly for the chaos and deprivation his policies have caused.
If the Supreme Court has anointed him King at that point, expect him
to start hanging CEOs publicly.

Oh,
yes, and Republican office-holders can feel free to resume shooting
puppies in this Brave New World. It’s not like they’ll be good
for anything else under Glorious Leader. They will be justice of
Champions. And not playing proper Cricket to do so.

FOOTNOTE:
After I wrote this but prior to publishing it, I came across this,
from Sophia Cai, national politics reporter for Axios:

"Trump
says he loves Kristi Noem despite puppy killing controversy, per
Mar-a-Lago audio obtained by Axios," she reported Sunday.

“In the audio, Trump at a private luncheon commented on each of the following lawmakers, giving some insight into his thinking,” according to her published report.

The article reveals that Trump’s response to Noem was that the GOP governor is, “Somebody that I love. She’s been with me, a supporter of mine and I’ve been a supporter of hers for a long time.”

See? Told you his outrage was fake.

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AI in the Trenches — Generative vs Creative

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 2nd, 2024

Peter Cawdron is one of the most prolific writers around. Since 2011, he’s written 27 novels with the common theme of First Contact, and with two exceptions, all are stand-alone works, each with its own world, cast of characters, and aliens. Quite often the premise is based on the outline of a science fiction classic (“Ghosts,” the exploration of a seemingly dormant extrastellar object, borrows the premise from Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rendezvous with Rama” but, like all of Cawdron’s novels, is a wholly original take.) He also has at least 12 other novels, plus several compilations of short fiction, and has edited several anthologies. By any metric, it’s an extraordinarily prodigious output. In a review of his next-to-latest offering, “The Artifact” I remarked that he made Stephen King look like George RR Martin.

You might think that with a production load like that, Cawdron is just another by-the-numbers potboiler hack. You couldn’t be more wrong.

His latest is a novel that gives a nod to “Anatomy of Courage: The Classic WWI Study of the Psychological Effects of War” written by Winston S. Churchill’s personal doctor, Sir Charles Watson, Lord Moran. Cawdron’s novel depicts the brutality, ugliness and futility of trench warfare. I’ll be reviewing it on zeppjamiesonfiction.com later this week for anyone interested. Like his previous half-dozen books, this one is superior.

Cawdron always has an afterword to his novels which is worth reading. He’ll discuss the scientific theory underlying that particular story, explain how it was influenced by a classic work of hard SF, and discuss the political and social elements. He’ll often assert a personal note about his own thoughts and feelings as he wrote the story. They make for engaging sequelae.

In his “Anatomy of Courage,” he noted that based on the quality of his past half dozen novels, all written in a year, some people were gossiping online that he was using AI – artificial intelligence – to write the books, that he couldn’t have possibly done all that quality work by himself.

Well, it’s the internet. People talk shit. But any self-respecting writer would be at the very least irritated by that. Cawdron noted that he had written several really good books in an amazingly short time, and with most people I would take his umbrage as a humblebrag. (“Please don’t hate me because I’m beautiful”). But he HAS done exactly that. He does go on to explain the recent boost in his output, but that’s his story to tell, and if you want to know it, then buy the book. It’s on Amazon and Goodreads.

The allegations are utter crap, and I’ll tell you why I’m convinced of that.

I’ve written a lot in my time. Two novels, a couple of dozen short stories, about 1500 eclectic columns, and about 300 reviews. Writing the novels in particular gives me a certain insight into the writing process of another writer. I’m pretty good, I think, at spotting moments where, usually in the first draft, a writer is struck by a stray thought, leans back, considers, and then with a grin, starts writing or revising. First drafts tend to have a lot of those. (There’s a dictum: write the first draft for yourself, the second for your readers, and hope what remains survives the copy editors.)

I’ll give you an example of how it works. Your character, and let’s risk a lawsuit from Neal Stephenson and call him “Hiro Protagonist,” is standing in a park. What kind of park? Well, a city park. Does it have grass? Trees? A lake? Is there a breeze? Does the sun shine, turning ripples into a disco ball? Are there kids playing? Two old farts playing chess in a pagoda? What else?

Well, pigeons. Don’t most parks have pigeons?

I have a picture my dad took of me when I was seven. I was standing in Trafalgar Square in London, attired in my prep school uniform, and I have my right arm out in front of me, bent at the elbow. On my forearm is a big, well fed pigeon who is eyeing a piece of bread in my left hand with proprietary interest. The expression on my face (“He’s rather … large … isn’t he?”) is a mixture of fascination and intimidation. Presumably I gave the bird the bread without losing any fingers and we both flew away peacefully.

That infuses a vision of what a couple of pigeons are doing in my park. They’re squabbling over a bit of popcorn.

That process leads to a throwaway line in the story. “Near the end of the bench, a pair of pigeons had a lively debate over a kernel of popcorn. The larger one flicked his head lightning fast and flew off with his meal, leaving the other to squall in frustration and give Hiro an appealing, appraising glance.”

That little bit of color is something no AI can manage. Tell an AI to write a scene about a man standing in a park waiting for someone, and the AI might mention the park bench, the trees, the grass, maybe something about the other people. Depends how good at plagiarism it is.

But that bit about the pigeons is something no AI can do. It might mention pigeons if it’s exceptionally well trained, but that little drama about the popcorn, the slight hint of aggression and menace between the birds, that comes from a human mind sharing a human experience.

If you write a lot, you come to be very familiar with that process, and you learn to spot it in the writings of others, especially those whose writing you want to learn from. Cawdron’s books, backed by meticulous research, affinity for solid detail and depending from a vivid imagination, are replete with such.

AI can do a lot, for better or for worse, but the deterministic chaos of the human mind, with its emotion, volition, confusion and empathy, cannot be duplicated in code. AI might be good enough to confuse a casual reader, but it will rarely fool a constant reader, let alone a writer who can guess what went into seemingly unimportant passages that provide color and tone and humanity to a story, making a decent story great.

They may make AIs generative. But they can’t make them mimic human creativity.

It won’t hurt to learn to look for the trade secrets behind the words. You’ll appreciate the works of someone like Cawdron more, and it will make you a bit better, intellectually and in the ability to discern what is human…and what is not.

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And SOTU Speak…– Republican chaos makes for entertaining night

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 9th 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

After last year’s State of the Union address, you might think the Republicans would have dusted the Biden boot marks off their collective asses and learned a lesson. Don’t try to heckle Biden. He’ll eat you for lunch. Did they learn?

Nope.

Empty “Armpits” Greene (R-Trash) once again led the Charge of the Dim Brigade, “Half a brain, half a brain, half a brain downward!”. She showed up in full MAGA regalia, including the tacky red gimme cap. Someday I hope to figure out how acting like a nekulturny imbecile “owns the libs.” It doesn’t hold up well in my experience. The fastest way to wipe the shit eating grin off a MAGAt’s face is to point out that looking and acting like a fool doesn’t own me.

She stuffed a button in Biden’s hand that read, “Say her name, Laken Riley.” This referred to a 22 year old woman murdered by a Venezuelan national in the US without documents. Biden referred to “Lincoln Riley” in his speech, committing the gaffe of calling her accused murderer “an illegal,” a term much beloved by bigots and hatemongers. But Greene’s crusade was gaffy in and of itself: the presence of the Venezuelan wasn’t because of any Biden policy; the assailant was in the country as a result of a last-day-in-office move by Trump. Per Politico ( https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/19/trump-venezuela-temporary-legal-status-460524 ) “President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced he will offer Venezuelan exiles protection from deportation, a move he has considered for years but refused to do until his last full day in office. Trump is using the little-known Deferred Enforced Departure program, or DED, to offer temporary legal status to Venezuelans fleeing the humanitarian crisis brought on by Nicolás Maduro’s regime. DED, similar to Temporary Protected Status or TPS, protects recipients from deportation and allows them to get work permits. However, it is granted directly by the president instead of the Department of Homeland Security.”

It wasn’t the only time during the speech where the right exploited a grieving parent to blame Biden for something Trump did. Florida Rep. Brian Mast hit on the bright idea of inviting Steven K. Nikoui, the Gold Star father of Marine Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, who was killed in August of 2021 by a suicide bomb during the chaotic evacuation of Americans from Kabul Airport. However, it was Trump who agreed to withdraw all troops by May 1st 2021 (he originally wanted to do it in just two weeks, by March 2020, but backed off over vociferous Pentagon objections). By the time Biden took office, 5,000 Talibani prisoners were released, and US presence reduced from 13,000 to 2,500, who were supposed to oversee the removal of all US equipment somehow. The government of Afghanistan was given no say in any of this, of course. Biden was able to get an additional three months, but it was going to be a mess anyway.

The Republicans even managed to duplicate one of last years’ missteps, booing loudly when Biden described their tax policy as “giving trillions to the rich.” Biden leaned on one elbow, grinned, and asked, “You’re saying you don’t want to do that now?”

Speaker Mike Johnson, sitting behind Biden alongside Vice President Kamela Harris, was a silent comedy show all to himself with a variety of strained smirks, purse-lipped headshakes, eye-rolls and open indecision over whether he should approve or disapprove of something Biden said. You could almost see a giant translucent Trump head, glaring orange at him, daring him to disobey any transitory whim Trump felt during the speech. Johnson looked like a bible literalist forced to audit a scientific convention on evolution. In case he felt even a moment of comfort, the clown show caucus was there to embarrass him.

How honest was Biden’s speech itself? By SOTU standards, which always involves a lot of presidential congratulatory self-back-slapping, it was really good. He shaded the truth some in some areas, but unlike his predecessor, didn’t say any flat-out lies. You can read the Politifact review here. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politifact/2024/03/08/fact-checking-joe-bidens-2024-state-of-the-union-address/

Oh, and George Santos showed up. There’s a loophole in Congressional rules that allows expelled and disgraced members of Congress to get seats at the SOTU. No, really. He was there. Maybe he wanted a MAGA franchise for Trump’s $400 gold sneaks. He was a good addition to GOP gravitas.

But the fun didn’t end when Biden finished the speech. He made a classic Biden open-mike gaffe on the way out, telling Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado “I told Bibi (Netanyahu), don’t repeat this, you and I are going to have a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting.” Even that gaffe couldn’t help the GOP, since Biden said exactly what a large and increasing number of Americans, upset by the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, have wanted to hear him say.

Then there was the Response from the kitchen of Alabama Senator Katie Britt. By the time she was done, a lot of people were expecting to hear a sudden voice over: “From New York, it’s Saturday Night Live!” I won’t go into how weird and bad the speech was—thousands of others have already done that, and the video is around. Watch it. Really. It’s a comedy gem. But she misplayed the same “blame Biden” game. She spoke of a 12 year old girl who was made a sexual prisoner and gang-raped for months on end. She said, “We wouldn’t be OK with this in some third world country. This is the United States of America.” She blamed Biden border policies, of course.

Except it didn’t happen in America. It happened in Mexico. And Biden wasn’t president during any of that; Trump was.

Well, at least she knows what country she’s in. Maybe?

CORRECTION:  The Washington Post has this to say about the rape allegations by Katie Britt:

If you were watching Britt’s speech on Thursday night, you likely would have thought she was talking about a recent victim of sex trafficking who was abused in the United States and suffered because of President Biden’s policies.

If you did, you would have been wrong. Sean Ross, Britt’s communications director, confirmed that she was talking about Karla Jacinto Romero — who has testified before Congress about being forced to work in Mexican brothels from 2004 to 2008. (A viral TikTok by journalist Jonathan Katz first revealed that Britt was speaking about Romero.) In a phone conversation and a statement, Ross disputed that Britt’s language was misleading.

Trump himself had a Truth Social meltdown. He suggested that Biden was using performance-enhancing drugs to come across as not-senile, a curious suggestion from a man often suspected to taking Adderall, especially in light of the mushrooming Trump White House drug scandal under “Doctor” Ronnie Jackson, which gave the impression of Animal House with Doonesbury’s “Uncle Duke” running the show.

Trump didn’t like Biden’s stridency, writing, “THIS IS LIKE A SHOUTING MATCH, EVERY LINE IS BEING SHOUTED.” Yes, he was complaining about someone shouting in all caps. Only Trump, am I right?

But Trump got some good news: Someone put up the $92 million surety certain to be lost when Trump makes his doomed appeal of the defamation case he lost (twice, now) to E. Jean Carroll.

Trump’s bond was guaranteed by the Federal Insurance Company — a New York-based subsidiary of the company Chubb Group LLC, which is headquartered in Switzerland. According to Elana Sulakshana at RainForest Action Network, “Chubb insures fossil fuel infrastructure in Russia that is bankrolling Putin’s war on Ukraine, oil and gas extraction off the coast of Brazil, exploratory drilling in the Arctic, and other fossil fuel projects globally.” CEO Evan Greenberg likes to talk a good environmental stance, but it’s greenwashing. He underwrites some of the filthiest fuel projects for some of the filthiest regimes. And now, apparently, he’s underwriting Trump. At least he’s only taking a small step down, right?

GOP, have faith in George Santos. You are all part of his plan. Or maybe you’re part of Putin’s Plan.

Either way, you’re screwed.

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