Category: Vote / Voting

A P.S.A. About A.I., Brought To Us By KS A.G. Kris Kobach

Really! Look.

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach’s PSA meekly counters utopian AI promises 

Eric Thomas

Whether you are watching the Super Bowl on TV, scrolling make-up tutorials on Instagram or listening to a technology podcast, you are being fed advertising for artificial intelligence.

The commercials are everywhere. And they promise the world.

Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, the companies that build AI have deployed advertising to recruit us as loyal users of their astronomically expensive software. Persuade us now, and perhaps we will be loyal customers later.

Meanwhile, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach — with some help from a nebulous technology group — has sounded an alarm about AI this week, releasing a PSA.

“The reports are very troubling,” he says about threats posed by artificial intelligence.

Over the next few years, our culture will decide whether we are AI skeptics or fanatics. For that reason, the language that is used to sell AI — or steer us away from it — matters. Let’s listen to what is being said about the technology that could define the 21st century.

From Silicon Valley

In their ads, technology companies describe AI as a wonderland: productivity at work, inspired hobbies at home and wellness nirvana at the gym. The word choices would make a spiritual guru proud.

In marketing AI app-building software, Base 44 urges us: “Consider yourself limitless.” It’s also described as “the next thing you can’t live without.” The company uses the language of religious cults swirled with rampant consumerism. “Elite” plans start at $160 per month.

Besides AI, what product from the past 50 years could have generated all of these promises in one commercial? In 78 seconds of advertising, Perplexity offers:

  • “Get your time back.”
  • “Access to knowledge is easier than ever.”
  • “Discover something new every day.”
  • “Knowledge on-demand anytime anywhere. For anything you wanna know.”

There’s no modesty — just hyperbole.

Judging by their advertising, tech companies agree on AI’s greatest virtue: efficiency.

The YouTube description for a Copilot AI ad claims that “Microsoft 365 Copilot isn’t just a better way of doing the same things. It’s an entirely new way of working.” Press play on the video and watch a layered flurry of chatbot prompts, all written simultaneously and feverishly, including: “Want to get a jump start on your day?” The message envisions AI as hyperactive multichannel problem solving.

Other AI advertising promises are more direct. ChatGPT’s advertisement, “What Codex unlocks,” features a technology CEO who boasts about what AI made possible. You don’t need to understand his jargon to understand the promised efficiency.

“We were able to create a JavaScript runtime in just two weeks,” says Syrus Akbary Nieto. “Without Codex, it would have taken us easily one year.”

For people outside Silicon Valley, ChatGPT’s advertising shows tangible AI efficiencies, such as opening a new restaurant.

“I found the perfect spot,” someone types into the chatbot. “Help me write the business plan.”

In another ad, ChatGPT is the elixir for fixing the family car: “Dad said the truck is ours if we fix it. Help us get it running.”

The pitches implicitly promise success when you combine your ambition with AI’s wisdom — never mind the skills required to cook spaghetti bolognese or handle a wrench.

Elsewhere, two of Google’s recent AI commercials blend family values with problem solving. One commercial considers how to reassure a young boy about moving to a new house.

The ad’s answer: Open the Gemini chatbot and ask it to visualize his new bedroom, complete with the family dog’s bed. The commercial closes with words carrying a double meaning: “It will be whatever we want it to be,” the boy’s mom says. Both the house and the Gemini chatbot, the script suggests, can be family dreams. (snip-MORE, including the ad transcript, and info about the organization behind the ads. It’s good, and not much more to read. I just don’t like lifting other people’s work.)

Some Peace & Justice History for 4/16 & 17:

April, 16, 1971
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimated over 2,000 people openly refused to pay part or all of their income tax.
“If a thousand [people] were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood.” – Henry David Thoreau on the Mexican War


National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee 
April 16, 2000
Between 10,000 and 20,000 activists blockaded meetings of the
World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. Sitting down at intersections and locking arms to form human chains, the protesters were opposed to Bank and IMF policies that increased third-world indebtedness and did little to directly benefit the poor in those countries.

“The World Bank is subjugating our economic and social independence,” Vineeta Gupta, a doctor from the Punjab in India, said in a letter he delivered to World Bank President James Wolfensohn at his home. “It is time that we shut the bank down, and this boycott is a great start.”

More from National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee:

War Tax Resistance

What is War Tax Resistance?

War tax resistance means refusing to pay some or all of the federal taxes that pay for war. While you can refuse income tax legally by lowering your taxable income, for many people war tax resistance involves civil disobedience.

In the U.S. war tax resisters refuse to pay some or all of their federal income tax and/or other taxes, like the federal excise tax on local telephone service. Income taxes and excise taxes are destined for the government’s general fund and about half of that money goes for military spending, including weapons of war and weapons of mass destruction.

People take many roads to war tax resistance. Most are motivated by a combination of reasons and actively work for peace in many other ways too. If you consider your motivations this will help you determine your method of resistance.

Refusing to pay federal income taxes is an act of civil disobedience with a long history in the U.S. America’s most well-known war tax resister was Henry David Thoreau, whose refusal to pay his poll tax because of the Mexican-American War earned him an night in jail and the experience that led him to write his influential essay, Civil Disobedience. While those of us who refuse to pay war taxes believe our refusal is just and imperative — and some of us cite international law to back up this belief — the government considers the refusal to pay these taxes to be illegal, and there are potential repercussions through the IRS collection system. For most of us who resist, the dire consequences of voluntarily paying for war are far worse that what the IRS and government can do to us. (snip-MORE)

April 17, 1959
22 were arrested in New York City for refusing to take shelter
during a civil defense drill.
April 17, 1960
Inspired by the Greensboro sit-in of four black college students at an all-white lunch counter, nearly 150 black students from nine states formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina, with Ella Baker, James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., the founders set SNCC’s initial goals as overturning segregation in the South.

They also considered it important to give young blacks a stronger voice in the civil rights movement, as many had participated in sit-ins that had proliferated to dozens of cities over the previous three months.
At the Raleigh conference Guy Carawan sang a new version of “We Shall Overcome,” an adaptation of an old labor song. This song would become the national anthem of the civil rights movement.People joined hands and gently swayed in time singing “black and white together,” repeating over and over, “Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day.”
What SNCC did to make change happen 
April 17, 1961

Cuban leader Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs invasion.
An army of 1500 anti-Castro Cuban exiles, mercenaries equipped and trained at a secret Guatemala base by the CIA, landed at Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) in an attempt to “liberate” Cuba from Communist rule. Within three days, the invasion proved disastrous with nearly 1200 members of Brigade 2506 (who had been trained in the U.S.) taken prisoner. 

Known as Operation Zapata, it was conceived by Vice President Nixon, planned and approved by the Eisenhower administration, and executed shortly after President John Kennedy’s inauguration.

President Kennedy receives the Brigade 2506 flag in Miami
in 1962 and declares: “I promise to return this flag in a free Havana.”

Soviet General Secretary Nikita Kruschev sent a telegram to President Kennedy:
“Mr. President, I send you this message in an hour of alarm, fraught with danger for the peace of the whole world. Armed aggression has begun against Cuba. It is a secret to no one that the armed bands invading this country were trained, equipped and armed in the United States of America. The planes which are bombing Cuban cities belong to the United States of America, the bombs they are dropping are being supplied by the American Government . . . .”
What actually happened 
April 17, 1965

The first national demonstration against the Vietnam War took place in the nation’s capital. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the organizers, had expected about 2000 marchers; the actual count was 15,000–25,000. This was the largest anti-war protest ever to have been held in Washington, D.C. up to that time. The number of marchers approximately equaled the number of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. Several hundred students in the protest broke away from the main march and conducted a brief sit-in at the U.S. Capitol’s door.
An exam prepared by SDS about the Vietnam War (answers available) 
April 17, 1965

Gay rights advocate Jack Nichols
The first demonstration promoting equal treatment of homosexuals, Jack Nichols, Barbara Gittings and others picketed in front of the White House.

There were no media present.
Read more (Go-it’s interesting!)
April 17, 1986
Reverend Jesse Jackson, future congresswoman Maxine Waters and others co-founded the Rainbow Coalition, initially intended as a progressive public-policy think tank within the Democratic Party.


Representative Maxine Waters, Harry Belafonte,
John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO,
Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Willie Nelson
August 6, 2005-Atlanta, Georgia.

Brief history of Rainbow Push Coalition
April 17, 1992
On Good Friday morning, about 50 people accompanied Fr. Carl Kabat and Carol Carson to Missile Silo Site N5 at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, the same silo that Carl and other members of the Silo Pruning Hooks (see below) disarmed in 1984. They cut through a fence and, once inside, Carol used a sledgehammer on the concrete lid of the silo while Carl performed a rite of exorcism.
Eventually, the police arrived and arrested Carl and Carol. They were jailed and held until their court appearance. At that time, they made a preliminary agreement with federal prosecutors wherein they would plead “no contest” to trespass in exchange for the property destruction charge being dropped; they were sentenced to six and three months, respectively, in a halfway house.
Carl Kabat
A History of Direct Disarmament Actions 
About the Silo Pruning Hooks action 

Open Windows & Clay Jones

Trump’s DOJ is trying to throw out Jan. 6 convictions

This seditious president is using the Dept. of Justice to rewrite history and keep his Sturmabteilung available

Ann Telnaes

Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and Trump toady signed motions to vacate convictions of Jan. 6 rioters including Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys leaders Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs.

Dr. MAGA

Dr. Fucknut will see you now

Clay Jones

As you will recall, Donald Trump attacked the pope, and then he posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ healing the sick.

The New York Times described it: The image had showed Mr. Trump dressed in white and red robes, with the president’s hands emitting shining lights. His right hand was touching the forehead of a man lying on a bed in a hospital gown, evoking religious art that depicts Jesus healing the sick.

In the image posted on Sunday, the man in the bed is surrounded by figures looking up at Mr. Trump, including a medical worker with a stethoscope, a praying woman and a man in a camouflage uniform. The background of the image includes the Statue of Liberty, a building resembling the Lincoln Memorial, fighter jets, eagles, fireworks and a billowing American flag. (snip-MORE, and it’s Hot!)

An Action Alert

of sorts.

Note three: Jeanine Pirro just launched her latest bad idea. She has set up a tip line for people to call about crimes Eric Swalwell might have committed. Ok cool. We hope people use it. We also hope they let her know about the rapist piece of shit she works for. The number is 202-252-0809. (snip)

F Yeah, Indeed!

An Abundance Of News

I was especially interested in the Justice Clarence Thomas comments, which I read, then became disinterested for reasons you’ll get if you read them. Lots of news of the day here.

Hegseth to Reporters: Whose Side Are You On?

INSIDE: Sonia Sotomayor … John Eastman … Bitcoin Jesus

David Kurtz

Compares Press to the Pharisees

A thin-skinned and prickly Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went off on journalists in his press conference this morning, resorting to the classic “attack the messenger” defense to a unpopular war going poorly.

It’s not the first time Hegseth has succumbed to blaming a lack of patriotism among reporters for unfavorable headlines and critical reporting on a Middle East conflict ignited by the Trump administration. But today’s screed was striking for how it mixed the old worn-out reflexive questioning of the loyalty of reporters with biblical references that reflect Hegseth’s personal Christian nationalism:

https://embed.bsky.app/embed/did:plc:aunpu65mdrhwfie7ynymlzeh/app.bsky.feed.post/3mjmgjwfiwr2h?id=46073155471352445

“Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on,” Hegseth said. “It’s incredibly unpatriotic.”

In the decades since the Vietnam War, the Pentagon had haltingly moved away from the defensive crouch it often took in the face of criticism toward a more transparent and self-reflective public response to bad news. It was not always consistent and the backsliding was dramatic during periods of sustained setbacks, like in Iraq during the aughts, but the general trajectory was away from the kind of knee-jerk circle-the-wagons approach that Hegseth rolled out this morning.

Questioning the loyalty of journalists — or any regime critics — harkens to earlier dark eras of America history and to authoritarian regimes worldwide. But Hegseth’s diatribe came with a strong Christian twist, as he compared journalists to the Pharisees who rejected Jesus in the Bible:

“The Pharisees, the so-called and self-appointed elites of their time, they were there to witness, to write everything down, to record, but their hearts were hardened, even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter,” Hegseth said.

“They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda. As the passage ends, the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel against him, how to destroy him,” he continued.

“I sat there in church and I thought, our press are just like these Pharisees, not all of you, not all of you, but the legacy Trump-hating press, your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors,” he added.

Hegseth — callow, reactive, driven by a warped theology of nationalism, and poorly grounded in history — personally represents a dramatic break from decades of training, education, and refining of a professional officers corps. In 15 months in office, Hegseth has done more to politicize the military than any secretary of defense in at least the last half century.

Third Boat Strike in Three Days

The accelerated pace of unlawful strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats continued in the eastern Pacific, with the third such strike in the last three days. Three people were killed in the 51st strike of the U.S. campaign, bringing the death toll to at least 177 people.

What Trump Foreign Policy Looks Like

  • USA Today: Pentagon ramps up planning for possible military ops in Cuba
  • WSJ: Pentagon Approaches Automakers, Manufacturers to Boost Weapons Production
  • WaPo: Trump administration pushes nations to sign ‘trade over aid’ declaration

SCOTUS Watch

  • Justice Sonia Sotomayor apologized privately to Justice Brett Kavanaugh and followed up with a public apology released by the Supreme Court for remarks last week that, without naming him, attributed his defense of what have become known as “Kavanaugh stops” to his posh upbringing.
  • In a public appearance at Yale Law School, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted the Roberts Court’s handling of its emergency docket.
  • In unusually pointed remarks carried live by CSPAN, Justice Clarence Thomas launched a broadside at progressivism.

Jan. 6 Never Ends

  • Trump lawyer and coup plotter John Eastman was officially disbarred in California after the state Supreme Court declined to take up his appeal.
  • Trump I White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is seeking reimbursement from the Trump DOJ of his legal fees incurred as a witness in both of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations.

Must Read

Heather Cox Richardson draws a straight line from Lincoln’s assassination to Jan. 6 and the events of this week.

Do as We Say Not as We Do

NBC News: “Anti-abortion advocates met with Justice Department officials Wednesday, just hours after the Trump administration fired prosecutors it accused of coordinating too closely with abortion-rights advocacy groups during the Biden administration.”

Election-Year Islamophobia

When all else fails and their election prospects look dire, Republicans fall back on various forms of racist appeals to solidify their base and wrong-foot Democrats. This year, top Texas Republicans have landed on Islamophobia as the racist appeal of choice. TPM’s Josh Kovensky reports on the ground from Grapevine, Texas, where he talks to right-wing activists who are back again to warning about Sharia law and portraying Muslims as an external threat to “real” Americans.

Too often, gullible national media outlets treat these racist effusions like an organic upwelling of nativism, rather than a calculated election year strategy. TPM, I’m proud to say, has never been suckered in.

Thread of the Day

The Corruption: Bitcoin Jesus Edition

ProPublica offers a casebook study in the erosion of white-collar crime prosecutions under Trump II that includes the intervention of DOJ political appointees and the retention of a former Trump criminal defense attorney to outright kill one of the largest-ever cryptocurrency tax fraud cases.

Creepy Text of the Day

“Hearing u/r in town. Wishing you would let me know. I could have made some excuses to get out and show u around. Please keep this private.”—Richard Chavez, father of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, in a text to a young female staff member working for his daughter

Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here. (snip)

One More Short Video, & A Story

These are informational, rather than fun, except that Pete Buttigieg is fun even while serious. I’d like to see him run for something this time. Then, any time a very wealthy person thinks of others before themselves, it’s good news; Meals On Wheels is a fine thing.

Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has donated again—a week after gifting millions to a colege, she’s just given $70 million to Meals on Wheels America

By  Emma Burleigh

Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott

MacKenzie Scott, worth $41.1 billion, is on a philanthropic tear and has donated an estimated 46% of her net worth.Dia Dipasupil / Staff / Getty Images

While billionaires have come under fire for not living up to their philanthropic promises, one person is rising from the rest: MacKenzie Scott. She’s pouring billions into education, public health, and the environment—and now, she just funneled some of her fortune to help feed and support millions of Americans. (snip-MORE)

Trae’s Got Something To Say-

Josh Day, Next Day!

Woot! He has mentioned in other posts that this one is longer than usual, so relax and enjoy. Also, remember Josh is on The Late Show, with Stephen Colbert, tonight!

Zohran’s First 100 Days Of Sewer Socialism Success In New York City

This is what working for the people, working for the public means. This is what representing the will of the people / public looks like. This is what is attracting the people / public voters to the democrats, yet Chuck Schumer as yet to endorse Mamdani. Why? Because the two are the opposite sides of the political coin.  One wants to serve and represent the people / public and the other is a corporate democrat beholden to big money donors and major lobbyist groups.  Same with Hakeem Jerofies who only endorsed Mamdani when on election night it became clear he would be the winner.  Hugs