"Elon Musk has never ever run a company that turned a profit on its own merits"

 or 

Why You Should Be Getting Ready For A 1928 Size Or Bigger Crash And A Real Fascist Takeover 

I have taken the liberty or opportunity to do one of my quick and dirty editings of part of the machine generated transcript of this Youtube of Max from UNFTR and one of his not simple but comprehensible explanations of the financial swindles of the tech-bros and other members of the Epstein class.  First, here's the video:

And here's the section I edited with some comments.

Now look at the mission statement. SpaceX says it intends to build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary to understand understand the true nature of the universe and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars. 

That's not paraphrasing. That is literally the company's mission statement. And 93% of its projected revenue is supposed to come from AI and orbital data centers that don't exist. and probably will never because science. 

If your bullshit meter isn't all the way straight to the highest measure over that, you should consider getting a new one.  

The wildly optimistic, I would add certainly self-interested space agency presentation of the prospect of a human body being able to stand a trip to Mars is based on what looks to me on extremely dodgy scientific assumptions even when you take into account the extremely unlikely prospect of the fittest human beings being able to survive such an attempted trip to just the very nearest planet in the solar system.  Not to mention a return trip and the prospect of a human body long living on a planet of such low gravity and such unearthlike conditions.   I would put most of what is presented to the investing public in that regard is most realistically and honestly considered to be science fiction.   And I don't mean informed science fiction of the kind that I've been disgusted that so many real scientists are big fans of.   I mean the movie and video game junk.   You can read through the paper at the link,  I'd recommend not taking the mathematical speculations too seriously and note how much of that estimate is based in anything other than already known and widely agreed on physics and biology.  The space agencies and its parasitic private corporate entities are quite capable of presenting total bullshit to the public in order to sucker the Congress into giving them money and corrupting the legal bases under which they operate and get funding. 

I will, almost certainly, go into a diatribe at the danger of having an extremely stupid, ignorant and credulous ruling class who don't read non-fiction or even good fiction but watch shit like the kind I slammed here earlier in the week.  And that rot certainly extends well into what passes as our intellectuals.    The best sci-fi in cheap ink on cheap paper is light entertainment, the best of it doesn't rise above that, I mean the Le Guin level of it, no matter what second-rate academics who are at a loss for what to write papers about claim about it.   

NOTE WELL before proceeding, public funding is, in the end, what this is all based in because, as noted in the last words excerpted here point out,  Elon Musk as so many other tech-bro-Epstein class level billionaires and the mere millionaires who are parasites of that history making grift, are mostly good at corrupting governments into shoveling money their way and rigging the regulation in their favor through dirty money. 

So, their own perspectus says, and I'm going to read this directly here, quote, 

" Several of our anticipated market opportunities, including certain AI, orbital, lunar, and interplanetary, transportation, and industrial activities are still emerging and evolving or do not currently exist."

And such markets may not develop as we expect or at all. I mean, such markets don't exist, and they might never. But here's where it gets criminal, at least in spirit, if not law. 

This IPO would never have gotten off the ground under normal regulatory conditions, because the SEC under the leadership of the administration that Elon helped install just looked the other way while two sets of rules were quietly rewritten. The first one, the NASDAQ changed its bylaws. So, conveniently timed for the SpaceX June listing, in May, NASDAQ enacted what it calls a fast entry rule.

Note this:  

NASDAQ changed its bylaws. So, conveniently timed for the SpaceX June listing, in May, NASDAQ enacted what it calls a fast entry rule.

So, under the old rules, a company had to season for at least three months before joining the NASDAQ 100. Most cases, it was up to a year, and it needed a minimum 10% public float, meaning 10% of the shares had to be available to the public. Under the new rules, top 40 companies by market cap can just enter the index in 15 trading days and that float minimum totally eliminated. So SpaceX floated about 5% of its total shares which was an artificially very thin slice designed to create scarcity to drive up the price. 

Now under the old rules, it could never have entered any major index. So NASDAQ literally rewrote the rules so SpaceX could get in. And this is hugely important. See, Musk made early NASDAQ 100  inclusion a condition of his listing there. So, they had to do it and they complied. They didn't have to do it. They just complied. Okay. 

They didn't HAVE TO DO IT.  They just complied!  That is if they wanted this con job to be listed there,  if THEY wanted to be in on the con,  they had to do it.    

So, you might be thinking, "This is just Wall Street nonsense. Why is this important to me?" I'll tell you. It means that every ETF, every index mutual fund, every passively managed retirement portfolio that tracks the NASDAQ 100 is now required to hold SpaceX without choice. 

Notice this, that your mutual fund or retirement might be tied to this without you even knowing that.   This is what happens when you trust them,  under US law,  under our Constitutional system as defined by the Supreme Court and as a Congress and executive produced by the regime of lies and money-corruption in our politics which the line of Supreme Court rulings I rail about regularly, permitted AFTER THE POST-WATERGATE CLEAN ELECTION LAWS WERE EVISCERATED IN THE NAME OF THE "FIRST AMENDMENT."    That absolute fact that this is ultimately a product of the corruption of our elections allowed by Buckley v Valeo and its progeny is about to become the dominant issue in this analysis.   The corruption that the Supreme Court allowed by knocking down that 1970s bipartisan effort to clean dirty money out of our politics has produced this. 

So, if you have a 401k that includes an index fund with any exposure to the NASDAQ, congrats, you are an investor in SpaceX, whether you know it or not or want to be. Passive flows into the deal were estimated to be nearly $50 billion. Now, the second issue is the lockup period. Standard IPO lockups keep insiders from selling for at least 180 days. The idea being that executives and early investors have to live by the company's performance instead of cashing out as soon as they go public. SpaceX used a staggered lockup schedule. 

So most early investors like sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East, members of the so-called PayPal mafia can begin selling 20% of their stakes at the first quarterly earnings call, which is right around the corner. Now, Elon's lockup is longer, but early investor exit liquidity was essentially baked in from day one. They changed the rules and the SEC allowed it because this is Trump's SEC. 

The whole thing is probably going to be a pump and dump, and it's not the only "AI" IPO that is happening right now.   I think there are at least two others if not more. 

This almost certainly would not have happened if Joe Biden or Kamala Harris was president right now.  Remember that when the crash comes, as it will.    I don't hold any stock but I'm taking my meager savings out of anything except an insured savings account because I have no idea if that would be secure but I do know that it's in the bankers' interest that people still deposit money into their banks. 

Now, let's talk about what we've actually done here. Because beyond the IPO mechanics, beyond the accounting tricks and the rule changes and this bizarre mission statement about extending the light of consciousness to the stars, we've handed one guy an unlimited war chest. And look what he did the last time. He had a pretty sizable one. He contributed $200 million more to the 2024 election. And analysts have subsequently determined that it was about roughly 115,000 votes in key swing states that determined that outcome. So did his money make a difference? You tell me. But here's the scale. 200 million today represents 2000s of 1% of his net worth. What are we doing? With the capital raised in this IPO, Musk can acquire dozens scores, maybe hundreds of other companies. He can buy his way into AI dominance even if he never builds a data center in orbit. He can own and reshape entire industries. 

We've already seen what his vision of AI looks like, though. It's Grock. It's unsaavory and it's unstable. But we've given him the means to own the whole board. And so, let's be really clear about something. Elon Musk has never ever run a company that turned a profit on its own merits.

I've been trying to warn my loved ones who invest money in stocks and market funds and the like to get out of it while the getting is still possible, in every case to no avail.  Their brokers can talk a good line.   But I've got to try. 

American Genocide By The Trump Regime's Voluteer Genocidalist Musk

 

"This Administration Isn't Qualified to Honor Black History -- Or Black Excellence" - Reese Waters Excellent Juneteenth Post

 

Of all of the many podcasts and such that I increasingly find is better than any corporate news or what you'll get from NPR,  Reese Waters' is one I rely on daily.  

I'm tempted to say let's ignore July 4 for the duration of the exile of democracy from the US but this makes me want to TAKE IT BACK FROM THE FASCISTS,  THE WHITE SUPREMACISTS,  FROM THE POMADE PETE KEGBREATH RACIST DRUNKS.    

I Wouldn't Give You Two Cents To Go Back Into My Mind At 28 - Hate Mail

I WOULDN'T MIND HAVING the body I had at 28, the age that poor Stephen Crane died of tuberculosis but not if it meant I didn't have the life experience and reflection that the later decades gave me.   True, by that age I hadn't lived as much as he had,  though I'd seen a considerable part of an even more depraved demimonde than furnished him with a large part of his education and grew up in a far less innocent age than he had.  I was still a young jack ass in many ways as most people are until they're older,   I hadn't yet developed a deep skepticism for the intellectual milieu in which I grew up and was educated into - not in the classroom, in the media and entertainment and general trends.   Seeing through that was one of the great things I got out of living longer though it could have gone bad very easily.   If I had not made my way from the youthful conceit of agnosticism back to Christianity I might have lapsed into cynical materialism like so many of those who went from the left to the right.  It was the morality that I got from Christianity that kept me from doing that.  If Crane would have developed the same way out of the ultimately sterile and futile late 19th century notions of naturalism to what would now be called the left instead of vulgar materialism,  no one can know.  Mark Twain just sort of soured into an intense cynicism though he still had some notions of morality to it.   His attempts at capitalism were not successful.  

I am taunted with a link to a "Humanist" website that goes into the young man's, Crane's alleged irreligion, which I have to say I was vaguely aware of when I listed him yesterday but which I didn't take seriously.    I haven't looked into it in regard to him but generally when I have looked at such claims by atheists (which "Humanist" means after the word was usurped by ideological atheists) about such historical figures they lay claim to,  I've found those are anything from exaggerated to outright lies.   One such earlier figure  about whom such claims were made to me was Mozart whose letters, known associations (his Masonry, for example), and his music disprove those claims.   Others in the repeated claims of such atheist polemicists, especially such crap coming from the "Humanists" and such outfits as "Freedom From Religion" should not be taken without fact checking but which never are, at least not by any atheists citing them who I've run across.  And some of them are academics who should certainly know better but clearly don't have that level of integrity. 

I mentioned Stephen Crane because his work of imagination, The Red Badge of Courage, has been sometimes compared to Huckleberry Finn.  It reproduces the feelings of a young man, not much more but significantly more mature than Huck.   It's not  novel about a fully mature adult with an adult's level of experience and knowledge,   Both books contain extremely important lessons for readers,  certainly Twain's using Huck Finn to show readers what Uncle Tom's Cabin already had, that Black People are People, that enslaving them is wrong, something that John Woolman's Journal had done even earlier, though as it wasn't a story book, to less wide readership.  Those parts of Huckleberry Finn are the parts when he and Jim are on the river,  the parts in which the idiotic Tom Sawyer doesn't appear.  The parts I said I might be able to re-read with pleasure.

One of the things I recall reading was that Stephen Crane said what I did, that of Twain's books, he liked Life on the Mississippi best, though that's my recollection of reading something about that.    If I hadn't been struck at Crane having the same opinion as me,  I probably wouldn't remember it.   

You tend to focus on that which agrees with you and you develop that in your imagination instead of having a wider view of the entire picture.  Which is one of the problems with taking the thinking of a young man as being what he would think if he had had the chance to become an old man with all of the life experience.   But he imagined being an old man in one of his later stories,  "The Veteran" which some think was him imagining his novel's hero surviving the war and achieving a heroic death far later.  It starts with the old Veteran admitting to having been scared in battle, where his novel started out.  No doubt he got that from him talking with Civil War veterans, and the young Crane doesn't appear to have shut off the possibility that he'd have gone in a different direction if he'd lived, too. 

Old Fleming staggered. It was true; they had forgotten the two colts in the box stalls at the back of the barn. “Boys,” he said, “I must try to get ’em out.” They clamored about him then, afraid for him, afraid of what they should see. Then they talked wildly each to each. “Why, it’s sure death!” “He would never get out!” “Why, it’s suicide for a man to go in there!” Old Fleming stared absent-mindedly at the open doors. “The poor little things!” he said. He rushed into the barn.

When the roof fell in, a great funnel of smoke swarmed toward the sky, as if the old man’s mighty spirit, released from its body—a little bottle—had swelled like the genie of fable. The smoke was tinted rose-hue from the flames, and perhaps the unutterable midnights of the universe will have no power to daunt the colour of this soul.

I could speculate on what he meant by that, whether it was a sop to conventional piety in his readers or whether it showed he really believed in something like that but the young man didn't live long enough to tell us if there was anything to it.   

Without that, something we can never have, there is no way to know. 

He had a fine imagination for experiences he had never had directly and a talent for making his thoughts about that convincing.    It's an extreme irony that so much of what is called "naturalism" and the like is a product of such imagination though it is never admitted that's what it is.   Same with science, same with everything.  The basic conceit of modernism, naturalism, etc.  that we can have an unmitigated knowledge of things is plainly wrong. 

Owen Jones Does A Then and Now View Of Some Of The Worst Supporters Of Trump's Stupid War With Iran

He ends up with the question of how many times do these same war mongers get to make wars that get millions of People killed, that harm and maim even more than they kill with out them at the very least being treated as the COMPLETELY DISCREDITED CRIMINALS, LIARS AND IDIOTS THEY HAVE PROVEN THEMSELVES TO BE.   I can guarantee you that John Bolton and John Podhoretz and many of the younger war mongering assholes revealed as criminals, liars and idiots in this video will continue to be go-to heads for the totally discredited American media whenever they get the urge to get the next Bush or Trump level idiot, liar and criminal to use he American military the way Trump has.   

The "free press" in the US as protection against this kind of governmental evil  is such a total load of bullshit. 

As I've mentioned before, one of the consequences of this as the wars of Bush II, Bush I, the illegal wars of Reagan, Vietnam. . . should be that the war making powers the Congress unconstitutionally gave to the president are definitively removed back to there being only Congressionally approved wars as the friggin' Constitution claims are the only legitimate ones. 

I Don't Care About The Movies - Hate Mail

IN MY BRAWLS HERE over the years,  I noted that that distinguished American author whose magnum opus, Huckleberry Finn,  my generation was supposed to regard as THE GREAT 'MERICAN NOVEL, Mark Twain, was an extremely uneven writer producing, for the most part, crap.  All of his most notable novels are written from the point of view of a boy or, in one case, the book he wanted people to regard as his best,  a young girl AND EVEN THAT IS TOLD AS RECOLLECTED BY A LITTLE BOY sixty years later.  That book, Recollections of Joan of Arc, is not well regarded today, probably because of its positive treatment of religion,  but I think Twain wanted it to be his stab at writing an important adult book.   He claimed to have researched it for years, 

I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none.

I deeply sympathize with Mark Twain, no doubt he was sick to death of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and the other (now entirely dated) humor that made him famous.   Of all his books,  and I went through the project of reading all of him available to me years ago, the one I still like and could imagine re-reading for pleasure, Life on the Mississippi,  was his attempt at good natured but not notably humorous realism.   I could imagine re-reading parts of Huckleberry Finn, the parts without the putrid Tom Sawyer in it,  with some pleasure though I don't think I would.   Why read that when you can read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman or Stephen Crane?

As to today's and yesterdays Twain schollars not liking it,  anyone who would have gone into a life study of Twain would have done so on the basis of his more typical production so it's not a big surprise they wouldn't like his project to escape those confines.   You usually judge an author on the basis of their typical and most lauded work, not on the outlier. 

So I don't think Stephen Spielberg's several attempts at adult movies makes up for the bulk of what he did in, along with so many others in Hollywood once the 1970s BLOCKBUSTER movie that you could get teenage boys to pay to see 37 times in the first run had become a thing, to end Hollywood's brief post-WWII attempt to make adult movies.   I've seen some of that and found it rather bland and sentimental.   I would much, much rather have seen what Stanley Kubrick was planning by way of a movie about the Holocaust than what Spielberg did.  I've read that Kubrick abandoned his project when Spielberg's Schindler's List was announced.   I do not regard it as in any way up to the topic, but, then, no movie could be what that movie is made out to be.   Kubrick's would probably not have been a big audience pleaser in the same way. 

I recently noted the great effect on American drama that the Yiddish Theater and the Federal Theater Project had had once those who were involved with those got to write plays, produce plays, act in them and also to make movies dominated the field.  Sidney Lumet's work  is an example of that trend which started stalling out in the mid 70s.   Just "The Hill" not one of his big movies proves that.    I don't have favorite directors but he might be the one I chose if I was forced to choose one. 

There were still adult movies being made and, I suppose, there still are but for the most part I don't want to sit through the months worth of dross to find the two hours of gems.   When I told my brother-in-law I didn't watch TV anymore he talked about this or that show that I was missing out on.   I told him if someone poured a bucket of quarters into a cesspool,  I wouldn't dive in to retrieve them.   I'd rather go looking at something that doesn't take as much time and where I can, generally, have more success at finding something worthwhile.   Besides, these days I'd have to subscribe to some scheme to see new movies and it's not worth it.   I'd rather look at the remnants of the Federal Theater Project and its offshoots that are available for free online,  and I don't mean War of the Worlds.   Though Welles was a product of that depression era project.  

Iran's Deal That Trumps The US - A Few Thoughts

DECADES OF THE SOVIET UNION'S  attempts including arms races,  making deals with smaller countries, its entire foreign and much of its military policy has not done what Bush II in Iraq and Trump in Iran have managed to do in a quarter of a century, TOTALLY DESTROY AMERICA'S HEGEMONY ACHIEVED BY COMING OUT OF WWII INTACT AND WITH THE POLICIES THAT FDR AND TRUMAN PUT IN PLACE.

Trump's surrender note to the Iranian regime was, as many have said all along would happen, is a total capitulation to the Iranian regime.   It is such a disaster for the United States, for United States power, for our economy, for the People of the United States that I doubt the Republicans in the Senate will allow it to come for a vote,  if it does, they will have put the final nail in the coffin of MAGA because there is no way they can vote for it and, perhaps other than the brain dead Fetterman, NO DEMOCRAT WHO WANTS TO CONTINUE IN POLITICS WILL VOTE FOR IT.    They would have to pass it with Republican votes and any Republican who votes for it should consider retirement too.   About the only Americans who would welcome the thing are those who, like me, wasn't a big fan of American hegemony as it turned out to be but I don't favor it because it is so unfavorable to the welfare of The People of he United States and it would leave a very smart, very skilled, very mature and measured dictatorship in Iran as a major regional if not world power.  

As in Bush II's Iraq disaster,  Trump's Iran disaster is also a disaster in which Israel and the corrupt anti-Iranian dicatators of Saudi Arabia and some of the other Gulf states had a hand in convincing a stupid and corrupt American president into.   I doubt that the American status quo in regard to Israel will ever return to what it was.  Not after the combination of its self-posted genocide in Gaza and its somewhat less arrogantly self-posted Lebensraum violence in the West Bank and its role in convincing the stupidest and most corrupt president in American history to use the powers that the Congress stupidly gave American president to foment yet another disastrous foreign war.  

While Norman Finkelstein is not incorrect in noting that Trump is,  as Cheney and Bush II were before,  quite capable of having other, largely financial motives in bringing these wars of such terrible consequence,  the role that Israel and it's dangerously out sized influence in American politics through the Israel lobby here IS A HUGE PART OF THIS.  In that Israel is not more at fault than other countries and, in fact, the United States are in their manipulation of other countries.  We have made that extremely easy for them because Israel and its lobby here merely take advantage of our native corruption.   We have chosen to maintain that exploitable corruption all on our own. 

But that they have NOT been able to goad other presidents into direct American military involvement in the form of a war shows that Finkelstein's dismissal of their role in getting the two presidents with the least legitimacy (each was originally installed through an illegitimate electoral and, in Bush II,a  corrupt, partisan judicial maneuver) to go into enormously disastrous wars is one of his few real errors of judgement.  Israel and the Israel lobby are going to pay a price for this,  unfortunately so will many entirely innocent American Jews who have been against the whole thing.     

You can con even a conman by appealing to their weakness and Trump is a degenerate and stupid locus of the greatest accumulation of the most exploitable weaknesses that any American president has ever been.   If Iran's rulers have been brilliant in their conduct of their response to the American-Israeli attack on it, I will give Israel's fascist government this,  their corrupt leaders are far smarter than the corrupt leaders the American oligarchy put over us in the last half century.   They just got too ambitious in their own corruption figuring that like Dr. Seuss's Sneetches, Americans don't learn anything from even the hardest of experience. 

I think in his case Finelstein realizes that one of the real consequences of this is that it puts American Jews in danger in ways that they have never been in in American history till now.   I worry about that too, and not just for the very large number of American Jews who have been opposed to all of this from the start and those who have finally seen what a disaster the last great European colonial project has been.  First in terms of morality, second, and also in terms of morality,  for Palestinians and others in the Middle East.   Here in the United States the Israel industry and lobby has twisted and perverted our already twisted and not infrequently morally perverse foreign and military policy.   They have been empowered in that by that line of the stupidest Supreme Court rulings in our history.  Its billionaires have been attacking everything from whatever shreds of integrity our propaganda and lie filled alleged news media has  to the blackmail of racist Zionist billionaires and their goons in the Trump regime and the Congress over our educational institutions.   As in Britain, we are in another period like the red scare no behalf of Israel.   In every way when a foreign country has had that kind of influence over the United States, it has ended up being to our detriment,  though in the past only Britain has had that role, with some of the larger European economies, such as France's having some minor role in that regard.   But getting into that will get me off of the topic of this post.

America has had two hugely disastrous wars in the Middle East within a quarter of a century, three if you're going for about a third of a century with the Bush I Gulf War.   All of them brought by Republican administrations, all of them with the support of billionaire-millionaires who figured either to profit from them or to get support for their pet ideological projects, as if you can tease out any selfish motives for even those billionaire hobbies.  Given the Bush I Gulf War which was the prelude to HW Bush's son's war,  I'd say that's three Republican presidencies in a row that have done this and you can bet that there will be another one if Republicans get in again,  they are utterly corrupt to start with and they are proven to be suckers for those trying to sell us on another war with terrible consequences.   Eisenhower was the last Republican who had any sense when it comes to the cost of war.   There won't be another from that party. 

I used to say that the war in Iraq was sold in no small part to racists who really believed that the Iraqi People were going to roll over and do American bidding once Saddam Hussein was gone.  It wasn't only the neocons who claimed that,  Dick Cheney and Little Bush really believed that just as they believed that the utter catastrophe that Afghanistan has always been for empires far closer to it could be brought to heel by the great white hope that they certainly picture America to be.    Racism has been the strongest and most durable of malign traits of the United States as a collective entity,  it is our greatest evil and our most powerful one.   It has ruled many states of the United States every single year of their existence, apart from the brief period of Reconstruction, it has ruled virtually every state in the country for at least part of its existence.   It is a mainstay of our media, both the "news" and, especially in so-called entertainment, which is far more powerful than any purported venue that gives out alleged information.  It is no accident that Trump has done what not even the two Bushes have done, go directly into a war with Iran which Saddam Hussein was stupid enough to start WITH THE HELP OF THE UNITED STATES AND AT THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION.   The racism inherent in our elites as well as in the lowly here leads to a kind of amnesia when the lives destroyed by such wars are not considered white.   Well, those so forgotten or not considered to start with don't agree,  they have not forgotten and the consequences result in animosities that the average American and even those who get elected president by the worst of us are mystified at.   

No deal would be better than the surrender Rubio, Vance, Kushner and the other real estate crook, Witkoff are presenting.   Just coming home with our tails between our legs would be better.  The worst consequences of this war are guaranteed to be the status quo for decades to come no matter what is signed.  By then the, forgive me but there is no other way to put it strongly enough,  retarded lard ass of a president the Republicans and the oligarchs gave us will be long rotted in his grave.  If the Trump family are true to form it will be either in some grotesque tomb for which they'll get some grift or it will be dumped in a hole on some Trump property for tax purposes.  Look where Ivana's brats allowed her corpse to be dumped without any regard for the grave-site.   Nothing is sacred to these sub-humans except money.    And look where that has brought us.  

Just a few thoughts on the treaty to nowhere. 

I Know Nothing About Spielberg's New Movie Other Than He Apparently Is Remilking The ET Teat That He'd Already Milked When He Made That Tearjerker

I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE MOVIES especially not sci-fi-adventure movies.  

If it's true that, on the basis of a movie script which, or so I understand, is based on a treatment by Spielberg, himself, him making any kind of speculative declarations of what a scenario he imagines would do to Christianity are based on an even greater level of ignorance than my almost total nescience about his movie.   What if the "ETs" turn out to be highly religious in a monotheistic way compatible with the Abrahamic religions?   What if they convert to Christianity?   If so, I'm hoping it's one of the peace churches or we might be in big trouble. 

Spielberg is one of those whose movies of the mid-1970s onward buried the attempt at Hollywood to make movies for adults in favor of adolescents who would go see the same movie over and over again in one month.   Which helped me to come to the conclusion that I really don't care about the movies, prefering the cheap, cheap, close to the author's intent form of radio drama - though, again, I generally don't care for the sci-fi and fantasy genres, too easy, too stupid.  

That's a problem for any kind of theater but especially for the movies.  Going back and looking at some of the classic movies I enjoyed when I saw them,  the stories are largely absurd, the acting looks contrived and old fashioned and while some of them are visually striking and even to some extent artistic, that doesn't make up for the stories and the acting.   

I suspect that whatever might happen if "contact" is made,  it won't have much of an impact on those of us who really believe the Gospel of Jesus.   It's not as if the Bible was the last word in that,  though it certainly must inform any genuine understanding of the Gospel.   When I imagine "ETs" who manage to have technology powerful enough for them to get here,  I imagine they learned such things as "the meek will inherit their planet,"  "do to others what you'd have them do to you," sharing food and drink is to share in the very substance of God.   Any species that developed technology that didn't share those truths of the Gospel probably end up destroying themselves like the materialists in the human species are doing right now.  If Spielberg doesn't have that as a theme in the movie, it's bullshit. 

Remember I Pointed Out That Millionaire Spoiler Who Got Paul LePage Elected Governor

WITH LESS THAN A MAJORITY OF THE VOTERS SUPPORT,   the ego that ate Maine, twice, Elliot Cutler, had had five chances that someone who wasn't a multi-millionaire elite lawyer pedo-porn addict wouldn't have gotten?

Well one of Paul LePage's judicial appointments just gave him a sixth chance to go right back to the crime he was convicted of. 

Eliot Cutler released from jail again

The disgraced gubernatorial candidate and sex offender was arrested last week for failing to sign a probation treatment plan document — his 6th alleged probation violation.

According to court documents, the 79-year-old man from Brooklin refused to sign a contract required for participation in problematic sexual behavior treatment.  . . . 

A probation officer said that decision, as well as Cutler’s discharge from the counseling program, indicates that he “has no intent of following his ordered conditions.”

But during a court hearing in Hancock County on Tuesday morning, Superior Court Justice Patrick Larson agreed to remove the treatment program as a court-ordered requirement until his court proceedings are resolved.

I would like to know what Larson's record of treatment of non-millionaire, repeat parole violators has been up till now.  I have a feeling this may be a unique case in Maine where someone has gotten six chances and the judge makes such requirements sound like it's something unusual as a condition for parole. 

The legal profession, including the judges and, worst of all the "justices" is riddled with among the scummiest of sleeveens who know that their first order of business is to serve the rich and powerful, their training in how to lie about that in complex, elegant sounding language so as to fool the gullible.   Lying and meting unequal law because they know which side their bread is buttered on.   

I'd ask if the legal profession, including the judges and "justices" can get any lower than they are now, but, of course, they can.  

T is for Trump and also for trash

Torching the country,  its burning to ash.    

My impromptu couplet on the corruption.

Saturday Night Radio Drama - Gordon Pengilly - Bailey's Way: Simply Judy

 Simply Judy 

 

Written by Gordon Pengilly, Bailey's Way stars Esther Purves Smith as Tanis Bailey, a young rookie constable on the the Calgary Police Service determined to make’Detective’ just as soon as she can. 

David LeReaney as Sergeant Mann 
Grant Linneberg as Detective Donaldson

Introduced by Bob Boving 

I was going through some thumb drives and found the mp3 of Gordon Pengilly's excellent radio play,  Seeing in the Dark which won a prize from the BBC.  Unfortunately the transfer of the recording of the BBC production was taken down so I can't repost that.  I'd like to. 

I also can't post any of his plays that I've only read but never saw a production of, a number of them for radio, which is my favorite form. I'd love to hear some of those I haven't heard.   I have always liked his work.  He wrote the series Bailey's Way for the CBC's Mystery Project so I've decided to post those over the summer, starting tonight.  

I Suppose It's Too Much To Hope For What With Our Stupidly Written First Amendment In The Hands Of Our Corrupt Supremes

THERE IS A FAINT GLIMMER OF HOPE for those of us who value the truth and honesty and just basic correct information against lies,  self-interest and online slop, not that it will survive the US Supreme Court's usual BJ prostitute servicing of the billionaires, millionaires and "corporate persons" but a court in Germany has held that the part of Google that is giving even we the unwilling "AI" search results are liable for lies it throws out to the world.

Potentially impacting all AI search engines and chatbots known to poorly paraphrase source links, a German court has ruled that Google is liable for false statements in AI Overviews.

The preliminary ruling came in a case flagged by The Decoder, where two publishers found that Google’s AI Overviews incorrectly linked them to scams and other sketchy business practices. After smearing publishers by making affirmative statements like “Yes, [it] is known for dubious business practices and is often perceived as a scam,” Google failed to correct the misleading output, even after the publishers sent a cease-and-desist letter earlier this year.

Google tried the usual arguments to shield itself from liability for false statements in AI Overviews, such as arguing that most users understand that AI outputs aren’t always accurate and must be verified.

But the court found that, unlike traditional search engines that merely present lists of links to third-party statements, Google’s tool made “independent, new, and substantive statements” based on its own misinterpretation of links on the Internet.

That’s a problem, the court said, because while publishers may have been able to sue to stop third parties from publishing defamatory statements appearing in Google search results, only Google can correct the underlying algorithm and outputs displayed in AI Overviews. And because, at least initially, the company did not, it therefore “must be held accountable,” the court ruled. Beyond that, Google’s argument was deemed particularly weak, since the AI overview in this case “contains statements that do not appear in the search results at all.”

All but the most tech savvy of those who have favored so-called "artificial intelligence" and those they have gulled among the public have the most magical and unrealistic view of it and its potential and that includes virtually every tech billionaire, individually or clustered into malignant herds of them and their tech goons.  Their view of it more influenced by sci-fi, sci-ranger cultism, scientistic, atheist-materialist ideology or just the typical greed that has fed many a stock market bubble.   

Other than the successful use of "AI" for some highly technical things, like scanning cell samples and imaging to look for signs of pathology, most of it is commercial crap fueling the approaching and disastrous pop or the current bubble the world economy is sitting on.  That is concerning but, as I've noted, the use of "AI" to destroy real information in favor of slop, truth in favor of lies,  oligarchic propaganda over everything else, is destroying equality and democracy as well.   

Whatever parts of Google who still care about responsibility and not being evil - remember that slogan? - should buck the "AI" mania and shut it down and get it out of their search engine.   I might go back to using it if they did that, with it, no.   They're going to take a hit when the bubble bursts which,  I think, given the eagerness of the tech billionaire oligarchs trying to dump their stocks in IPOs all at once, is about to happen, they might want to at least mitigate the disaster for their company by publicly trying to get shut of it.   

But back to "AI" that libels companies and, no doubt, individuals making the corporations, billionaires and millionaires liable for their algorithm's lies here in the land lorded over by the lawyer-liars on the Supreme Court,  I wouldn't suggest you wait up nights or hold your breath.   Those Supremes love them some billionaire-millionaire lying.   They have for at least sixty four years.   I hope in other countries without our out of control Court they can keep the truth alive because it's got little chance here. 

Note:  You can, of course, use it to tell the truth or, at least, something closer to the truth than, for example, the American "free press'" version of things.   I would, by the way, include the Iranian use of "AI" generated cartoons to hurl against Trump in that.   Though they certainly wouldn't be interested in turning it against the dictatorship in Iran, once the Israeli-American war on them stops.   If we live that long. 

Hey, Anyone Working For The Platner Campaign

 you have my full permission to use this or a snappier variation of this, informally or formally, to get him elected.

ANOTHER UPPITY BLUE COLLAR MAINER FOR PLATNER

Considering The Media Were OK With Trump's Known Adulteries And Those Of Countless Other Rich Women And Men

including Susan Collins' maybe their going after Graham Platner is a class issue.

After writing this, I wondered how many stories per day have been filed about the "scandals" of Graham Planter as opposed to past and proven sex scandals with an added boost of hypocrisy, like Henry Hyde's adulterous affair as he was chasing after Bill Clinton's sex life,  Newt Gingrich's dumping of his first wife for the woman he was having an affair with as she was fighting cancer.   And that's not to mention the many, many stories that are never touched in the media when it's a member of their own profession posing as a moral arbitor.  

I wrote about Mika Brezinski's hypocrisy in questioning whether given his known minor issue of talking dirty with consenting adults online, if Graham Planter had the moral purity to go after Donald Trump for his Epstein involvement.   She could have certainly asked Susan Collins that same question,  Susan Collins is known to have been involved with her husband as his previous wife was fighting cancer which is a lot sleazier than the "scandal" that has blown up against Graham Platner's online sexy TALK.  Which his wife and he have reportedly worked through PRIVATELY and he stopped doing it.    It's reported that Collin's husband, who she was seeing for quite a while before, divorced his wife while she was ill.  Exactly what Newt Gingrich did to his first wife. 

And then there's the reemergence of Donald Trump's old pro liar, Kellyanne Conway who lied about what he's accused of WHILE WORKING FOR THE KNOW EPSTEIN CLASS #1 GUEST STAR IN THE EPSTEIN FILE,  THE MAN WHO MIKA AND JOE GAVE PHONE CALL SEGEMENTS TO ON THEIR MORNING SHOW AS HE WAS A KNOWN ADULTERER RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT AT A TIME HIS KNOWN FRIENDSHIP WITH EPSTEIN DURING THE PERIOD OF EPSTEIN'S KNOWN CRIMES  WERE PART OF THE PUBLIC RECORD.  

And, as mentioned last night, the media who is going after Graham Planter to put a general sense of unease around him IS FULL TO THE TOP OF REPORTERS, OPINION SCRIBBLERS, EDITORS, PUBLISHERS AND RIGHT ON UP TO OWNERS WHOSE OWN MORAL HISTORIES DISQUALIFIES THEM FROM THROWING THE FIRST NOT TO MENITION THE NEXT STONES IN THAT REGARD.   Everyone from David Brookes and his dumping his first wife for a far younger woman, to the likes of Rupert Murdoch whose fortune was, in no small part, built on peddling pornography,  the soft core titty pics to the hard core stuff.  And with his known history.  

I remember while I was studying medieval and later history in high school and college that it was striking how the monarchs and nobility and aristocracy and, yes, the clergy were such notable adulterers, fornicators, rapists, etc. whose sexual sins were known but who seldom to never suffered the consequences  meted out when the same became known of among the peasants.  The same is certainly true in American history in which the rich and famous and connected had sex with whomever they wanted to,  most famously Thomas Jefferson who raped at least one of the young girls he kept in slavery - the very crime of Epstein and Trump and the billionaires Epstein serviced - but who will be lionized as he is every 4th of July.   And what he, as a member of the Southern aristocracy did, was common practice, so common that it was remarked on how many of the children among the enslaved looked like family members of their enslavers - one of the reported attractions of the girl Sally Hemmings to Jefferson was that she was almost the spitting image of his late wife - we can be in little doubt as to why that may have been. 

But the same thing that is commonly accepted and acceptable when it is known to be done by the rich,  both men and Women,  certainly in the media class - itself now an appendage of the show-biz industry which is like a pack of dogs or herd of cats in perpetual heat is presented as having no moral disqualification at all.   It's hilarious for Republicans of any kind to be pretending to get the vapors about this, considering how many of its biggest figures have really sordid histories,  Ronald Reagan and his Hollywood past, Newt Gingrich who, like Trump, seems to have committed adultery with all of his wives - the present Mrs. Gingrich was screwing him while he was married and while she was a choir member at the National Cathedral - several of Gingrich's replacements as Republican Speaker's of the House including Denny Hastert who is known to have been a serial pedophile sexual abuser who is the highest member of the government to have ever served a prison sentence.   The present Republican caucus as well as the Trump regime are full of sexual sinners, likely sexual criminals as a number of them are either suspected of or known to have been in the Epstein class.   Then there's their gentleman's agreement policy on the likes of Lindsay Graham and many others who, if a Democrat shared their sexual history, they'd go after hammer and tongs. And don't forget the several accusations that the current Judiciary Chairman, Jim Jordan knew about the sexual harassment going on against his wrestling team members at Ohio State while he did nothing about it.   I'd like to know the monthly percentage of stories about that as compared to the coverage that Graham Platner has faced.   I'd put years to weeks that the media firestorm over Platner has been far heavier and more concentrated. 

I think they're going after Graham Platner on the basis of him being a blue collar man from a small state, someone who from an early age grew up doing physical labor, who went into the military as a means of advancement and who went back to physical labor.   It's certainly an issue of class and, not improbably, him not coming from a place like New York or California or Virgina or even Ohio.  Certainly a likely issue in the NYT's  treatment of him.   It was one of the things that was certainly part of the media's sandbagging of the man who may well have been our most moral president,  Jimmy Carter whose Georgian farmer origin was likely an issue for the media elite, as certainly was Bill Clinton's Arkansas origin was in their willingness to make his history an issue.   Susan Collins, as a guaranteed to never vote against the financial interests of the Epstein class and the big media moguls, is given a pass in that regard.  

There is more than a little it of outrage among the national media that their hit job on Graham Platner doesn't seem to have worked and, if my observation, shared with many others may well have driven up the Planter vote in Maine, it increased his support. It also may be the final hurrah of the influence of the traditional big media outlets like the Times and the cabloids.   I hope that's right because it will certainly mean that at least a lot of Mainers have seen through their games and their self-interest and snobbery.   Maybe it's because we've experienced the snobbery of so many elites from away who have colonized Maine.  Especially those from the NYC area.   I think they look on Graham Platner as an uppity rustic.  One who doesn't aspire to be their handmaid like Susan Collins has so reliably been. 

Mika and Joe And The Rest of The Mainstream Media Had No Trouble With Their And Trump's Adulteries As They Gave Him Free Air Time In 2016

HEARING THE ADULTERESS MIKA trying to push the "scandal" of Graham Platner and consenting adults talking dirty online WHEN SHE AND HER HUSBAND AND COUNTLESS OF THOSE IN POLITICS SHE AND THEY HAVE NOT GONE AFTER FOR THEIR ADULTERIES AND MUCH, MUCH MORE makes me think maybe Graham Platner should only go on TV to be interviewed with only those who are not only celebate but who have led lives of total chastity. 

Good luck finding anyone in the media or in politics who isn't an actual adulterer.   

I'm not going to wait for Graham Platner to make us in Maine giving a giant FUCK YOU! to the mainstream media a plus for his campaign,  I'm going to leave no opportunity to push that as one of the things we can accomplish by voting him into the Senate by a landslide.    So, fuck you, Mika, Joe, NYT, etc. all of you FILTHY RICH Republican-fascist oligarch tongue bathing hypocrites. 

The Things I Do For This Blog!

SOMEONE WANTED ME TO look at a video of the guy I used to call The Blessed Virgin Benny,  that annoying, screechy voiced dweeb,  Ben Shapiro.   I won't bother with the content,  it's racist crap.  

Now, I don't listen to those who annoy me very often, especially those whose content is worthless and predictable,  so I hadn't noticed before.   He very much reminds me of another massively annoying Republican-fascist adjacent vidiot,  who has very similar style and look and presentation and total wave of BS content.   

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that Little Benny and Nick Fuentes have a hell of a lot in common?  I mean other than the racism and generally fascist adjacency?   Maybe it's the incel vibe with both of them.  

Take Into Account That All Of This Is A Product Of Speech HATE SPEECH And It's Freely Allowed Under Liberal Democracy

 

It's January 6 style organized goons attacking neighborhoods and cars and,  as Owen Jones says,  it's spread freely by the Reform fascist party, other facsists,  in the British media and on Musk media. 

Imagine what they could do if they had a Second Amendment and the level of gun ownership that we have here.  

Going No-Tech As A Way To Fight Back? Big Tech Will Try To Keep You Endentured

JUST READ about a small tractor manufacturer in Alberta,  Canada that is making the kinds of tractors that everyone I know would like to have,  one which has no computer tech in it that makes you, in effect, a renter of a tractor you paid for, in full, because John Deere or some other big name in tractors put such proprietary computer code in it which you have to buy back to fix the damned thing.   All farmers who own such equipment are, in a way, tenant farmers.  Anyone with any experience of tractors know that a farmer spends a good deal of time having to fix a tractor or, if they'r unfortunate enough to have one new enough,  paying a tech working for the company they bought it from because no one else is authorized to fix it and you can get into a lot of trouble if you bypass that crooked monopoly.   I hope that the Alberta company, or others taking their cue from them, start making tractors for smaller scale farmers who don't have a hundred thousand or so to drop on buying their tractors.  Things are tough enough for farmers without that problem.

The same goes for car manufacturers and everything else that crooked, billionaire acquired companies have done to turn ownership into subscription,  one of the reasons that I'd never have owned a Mac and one of the reasons I dumped Windows after one of their Windows 10 mandatory "updates" that completely crashed my computer, that of all of the other Windows users I talked to the same day.   And that was before the Windows 11 subscription enslavement of Windows users. 

Looking at the rumblings around Linux these days,  I get the feeling that big-tech is trying, through controlled politicians here and elsewhere, trying to thwart and destroy the alternatives to the big tech operating systems and freeware.    California's "Age verification" legislation has supposedly good goals of protecting underage computer users,  though it's an absurd idea and about as easily skirted by the minimally savvy computer users under the age of 16.  What it really does is place ruinous burdens on Linux operating system developers who are generally doing it for nothing with minimal to no resources, and Linux developers of low cost or freeware applications.   Buffy Wicks, the California Assembly member behind the legislation, who allegedly wrote it,  has taken lots of big tech oligarch's campaign money, as well as those from such scams as the "charter school movement."*   

I don't think it's paranoid of Linux developers and those of us who use Linux to be deeply suspicious of such legislation,  which I will bet most of the legislators voting on it gave minimal attention to.  All they had to hear was that they'd be tarred with not "protecting children" and that was enough for them to vote for it.   You can be certain that when the financially interested corporations and their oligarchic owners and their hirelings among lawyers and PR flacks and other associated liars are planning things like this,  if they can wrap it in "protecting children" or "free speech" (ha!) or other knee jerk words, they can get politicians to vote for them out of fear of what their next campaign opponent or some troll farmer can spread about them.  These days they don't have to farm trolls, they can do it with bots. 

But I'm not going to point out that the biggest reason for all of the dirty money pushing dirty laws, such as those that don't allow farmers to fix their own tractors or get independent - and far less expensive - technicians and mechanics to fix THE TRACTOR THEY BOUGHT TO OWN is the Supreme Court's corruption of a. making corporations "persons" with all rights and privileges of, you know, real, natural, limited People and b. such things as making money = "speech" one of the biggest reasons that PACs and Super PACs have corrupted our law and our politics to the extent that it has.   If that original clean-elections legislation passed more than fifty years ago had stood, the oligarchs might have come up with other means of corrupting our elections - they still had the original corruption of Sullivan that invented the media's "right to lie" - but the ones that dominate us now wouldn't exist or, at least, wouldn't dominate as they do.   As Buffy Wicks' career shows,  if you have billionaires and multi-millionaries and they can give freely,  the politician can pretend they're not taking dirty money but getting it from the oligarchs directly.   

Did they write the legislation she introduced, what is their motive for doing that?   Does anyone really believe it's going to protect children from online porn and hate speech and online crooks?   That is apart from the corporations that have their hand in the pocket of anyone who, in reality,  rents their software or equipment.        

*Here, from the East Bay Democratic Socialists' FAQ about her.

What does Buffy mean when she says she takes no contributions “from corporations”?

Buffy’s campaign is awash in corporate cash. That includes money from the bank accounts of:

• Corporate billionaires (like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman)
• Corporate employees who make concerted donations (like Ron Conway and other employees of SV Angel)
• Corporate trade associations (like the California Association of Realtors)
• IEs funded with corporate cash (like “Govern for California”)

That’s why the audience at the October 2 League of Women Voters debate broke out in laughter when Buffy said “Jovanka and I are, I think, two of very few candidates in the state of California who have chosen to take no corporate money in this race.”

What Buffy actually means is that she hasn’t taken money directly from the bank accounts of corporations. Her website makes a far narrower claim: “I have not accepted contributions from corporations in our campaign.”

That’s a dodge—as The Atlantic explains, “more of a political maneuver than anything else.” Like many corporate Democrats who have begun rejecting checks from corporations and their PACs, Buffy isn’t “actually rejecting corporations’ resources”—as this website illustrates in detail.

We don't think it matters much whether a donation comes from a corporation’s checking account or its CEO's personal bank account. We're concerned about the billionaires spending big to change the outcome of our elections, and about what policies—anti-worker, anti-tenant, anti-patient or anti-student—they hope Buffy will support in their interests.

Red Norvo Trio - Move

 

Red Norvo - Vibes
Tal Farlow - Guitar
Charles Mingus - bass

For some reason Tal Farlow videos started showing up in my sidebar yesterday.    

They Don't Know Us