DCUM Weblog

I woke up this morning with a blog post all planned out, but before I sat down to begin writing, I changed my mind. I was inspired by a tweet I read on X that got me thinking. I will quote that tweet in full because I think it nails something that hasn't gotten enough attention: "The government are going to spend billions contracting an AI that doesn't work, fire a bunch of people, and then hire a bunch more people whose job is to make it look like the AI works." This was written by someone named Tom Whyman of whom I have previously never heard. I believe that he is writing about the United Kingdom (he is Northumbrian), but the tweet very much fits our likely future here in the United States.

As is often the case, I feel the need to start with some caveats. I am just a guy who owns and operates a parenting website. I am not a philosopher, a technologist, or anyone with any special insight. I have thoughts and I have a platform on which to publish them. Readers are free to take them or leave them. With that said, it is impossible not to notice that we are currently at a critical point for artificial intelligence. Billions of dollars have been plowed into the technology and expectations raised, with no exaggeration, as high as Mars. But, AI has not been delivering. Sure, it can undertake a few remedial tasks. Maybe write a poem in the style of a famous poet or provide an error-filled response to a question that someone has asked on DCUM. But the technology has not yet reached world-changing functionality. Based on what I read in the press, the main use of AI these days is by college undergrads cheating on their assignments and college professors catching the students cheating, with the technology making errors in both cases. Welcome to our mistake-filled future.

Cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump has never been shy about using his presidency to enrich himself or his family. He relentlessly exploits his office to extract every penny possible for his own personnel benefit, even overcharging the Secret Service to stay at Trump properties while providing protection for him. But yesterday, Trump took things to a new level, turning the White House lawn into a new car showroom and his social media feed into the Home Shopping Network. But this effort was not for Trump's own financial gain, but rather for the benefit of Shadow President Elon Musk.

In an event fully covered by the White House press corps, Musk lined up examples of various Tesla models in front of the White House. Trump, who the day before had promised to buy a new Tesla, gave what amounted to an infomercial extolling the virtues of Teslas before settling on a red Model S. Trump emphasized that he is not allowed to drive due to Secret Service restrictions. However, former President Joe Biden frequently drove various vehicles during his term. It might be the case that Trump doesn't know how to drive. While sitting in the Model S, Trump needed confirmation that one of the two pedals was the brake pedal. At any rate, it is apparent that Trump is not really in the market for a new car and that the entire event was meant to promote the sale of Teslas, an unethical if not surprising violation of presidential practices.

Generally, I believe that the administration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump is terrible in every way. My normal disposition towards the Trump administration is along the lines of the famous Dril tweet about ISIS, "you do not, under any circumstances, ‘gotta hand it to them’". There is one area where I may have to make an exception to that rule: anti-trust policies. Someday, I may write about those policies, but that day is not today. Today, I want to address Trump administration policies in the Middle East. I am not ready to concede that I have to hand it to Trump in this regard, but that is not as unrealistic of a proposition as it might seem.

From the viewpoint of someone like me who is strongly supportive of the Palestinians' aspirations for an independent homeland and who is concerned about Islamophobia and anti-Arab bigotry in the U.S., Trump is obviously not the ideal president. He is, after all, the sponsor of the Muslim ban implemented during his first administration. He has been unequivocally pro-Israel, having moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and recognized Israeli control of the Golan Heights during his first term. Just yesterday, my blog post was about the blatant attack on the First Amendment involving the Trump administration's detainment of a Palestinian green card holder accused of nothing more than exercising speech that Trump doesn't like. Yet, unlike the campaign of former Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump reached out to Arabs and Muslims during the campaign and promised to do what former President Joe Biden had been unable to accomplish: secure a ceasefire in the Gaza war. This Trump was able to do, even before being inaugurated as president.

I had a post all ready to go this morning, but I am going to save that for later and address another topic. One way that fascists and authoritarians win is by starting on the margins and normalizing their behavior by acting against unpopular targets. This creeping authoritarianism then spreads and, sort of like the analogy of boiling a frog, one morning the country's population wakes up and realizes that it is no longer free but has no idea how it got there. Cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump and Shadow President Elon Musk clearly have authoritarian tendencies and deserve no benefit of the doubt. But, one administration official who was thought to be the adult in the room, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has now shown that he is not only willing to condone the impingement of freedom in the United States but is an active participant. This warning sign of danger comes in the form of the detainment and disappearance of Mahmoud Khalil, a student protester at Columbia University.

Almost every time that I have written about Shadow President Elon Musk and the U.S. DOGE Service, I have complained that Musk and his minions were using a meat cleaver where a scalpel would be more appropriate. Cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump apparently came to the same conclusion yesterday, posting on his Truth Social social media platform that, going forward, cuts to the federal workforce would be made with a scalpel rather than a "hatchet". This may well be the first step toward restraining Musk and DOGE.

Trump is not giving up on DOGE just yet, saying that "I think they’ve done an amazing job." But it is clear that Trump has changed his opinion about DOGE's slash-and-burn methods. DOGE's indiscriminate firings have been conducted with no regard for who was actually being let go or the particular skills and capabilities of those individuals. As a result, DOGE has often had to backtrack and try to rehire employees who had just been fired. This included employees tasked with overseeing the safety of nuclear weapons and combating avian flu. In both cases, DOGE only realized what it had done after the employees had been dismissed. This led to frantic efforts to locate the former employees and try to coax them back to their jobs.

On January 21, the day after cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump pardoned 1,500 January 6 insurrectionists, the Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Edward R. Martin, Jr. signed a motion to dismiss the case of Joseph Padilla. Padilla had been convicted of assaulting two police officers on January 6, though his case was ongoing. Martin did not have to work very hard to identify Padilla's defense attorney because that individual was none other than Edward R. Martin, Jr. himself. Martin was, in fact, both the prosecutor and the defense attorney in the case, a clear violation of the Department of Justice's conflict of interest rules. This is Martin in a nutshell. A former defense attorney for January 6 insurrectionists who is now, temporarily at least, in charge of the U.S. Attorney's office that was primarily responsible for prosecuting the January 6 cases.

Today I am going to give my impression of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress last night. Let me fully caveat this by saying that if you have absolutely anything else to do, no matter how unproductive it may seem, it is probably a better use of your time than reading my thoughts about Trump's speech. Frankly, watching paint dry would probably be more useful and maybe even more interesting. For those of you choosing to continue reading, I can summarize my opinion succinctly. The speech sucked.

There was a time that regardless of whatever you thought of Trump, you had to concede that he could give an entertaining, if largely false and not particularly interesting, speech. But this one strained my capacity to stay awake. It was interminably long and, not to put too fine of a point on it, boring. It was the longest such speech in U.S. history. In hindsight, I should have followed Representative Al Green's example and gotten myself ejected from my living room. But having neither the foresight nor a Sergeant of Arms at hand, I was stuck watching for the entire ordeal.

Anyone with even a vague familiarity with cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump knows that he loves a scam, particularly one from which he can benefit financially. Therefore, Trump and cryptocurrency are a match made in heaven. During the presidential campaign, Trump became a strong backer of cryptocurrencies, leading to large donations from the cryptocurrency industry. Moreover, both Trump and his wife Melania launched their own meme coins. Both seem to take undue pleasure in fleecing their fans and supporters. Among the first executive orders that Trump signed was one promoting "digital financial technology" or cryptocurrency. Among other things, this EO created a working group on digital asset markets. This group was, in turn, charged with evaluating the potential creation of a digital asset stockpile. This weekend, thanks to a "truth" from Trump on his Truth Social social media network, this cryptocurrency stockpile gained additional attention.

Recently, Shadow President Elon Musk posted a tweet that began, "All government spending is taxation." That's the sort of statement that, if you didn't spend at least a few seconds thinking about it, you might believe to be intelligent. But if you do think about it, you really have to wonder what he means. Lucky for us, Musk went on to explain further. "Whatever is not directly taxed is taxed in the form of inflation, as the government prints more money," he wrote. The revelation here is that Musk apparently considers government spending to be inflationary, almost by definition. Musk's thinking can be disputed from a number of different angles, but I am not going to do that. Instead, I am going to explain why I think this bit of thinking on Musk's part explains his desperate moves to chainsaw the U.S. government.

I had planned to write more about the U.S. DOGE Service and Elon Musk today, but changed my mind. It's Friday. Let's do something fun. Instead of another description of how Musk and DOGE are destroying our government, I am going to provide a synopsis of one of the biggest letdowns since Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone's vault and found it empty (to be fair, there were a couple of rusted cans inside). This was the release of "The Epstein Files" that has been promised for months. MAGAs have been drooling over the prospect of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein being made public. Cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump promised during the campaign to release the files, though perhaps because he remembered that he himself is mentioned in the documents, he backtracked somewhat and suggested that some might not be released. Attorney General Pam Bondi said earlier this week that the files were on her desk and that she was preparing to release them. This much-anticipated event happened yesterday and, well, didn't go as planned.