AI WARNING.....

 

Glorified Ad or Grave Warning? The Internet Debates Mega-Viral Economic Doomsday Article About AI Revolution

An article warning humans that artificial intelligence (AI) would soon replace just about everyone went viral on social media on Tuesday, sparking a debate over whether the text was a legitimate warning or an “AI-generated word salad” intended as a glorified advertisement.

In the article posted by AI company CEO Matt Shumer, social media users were warned that the AI revolution could come far sooner than most expected.

Shumer warned that lawyers, finance experts, journalists, marketing copywriters, programmers, workers in the health industry, and customer service agents would all soon be on the chopping block to be replaced by AI, with AI systems on track to “replace human judgment, creativity, strategic thinking,” and even “empathy.”

While the article went hugely viral on social media, amassing 33 million views and 53,000 likes on Elon Musk’s X, Shumer’s claims were shot down by many skeptics.

“It’s depressing how widely shared and read this is. It’s AI-generated word salad posted by someone with a vested interest in spreading AI hype,” weighed in Front Porch Republic editor Jeffrey Bilbro. “AI is ‘big,’ I guess, but its effects will be much more complicated and variegated than this ‘essay’ implies.”

Others, including The Washington Post’s Megan McArdle, argued that the fact that an AI-written article could ignite such a firestorm was evidence in favor of Shumer’s thesis.

“If ‘AI-generated word salad’ can convince a bunch of folks that AI will be the biggest disruption since man tamed fire … well, you should update your priors in favor of AI being incredibly disruptive,” argued McArdle.

Critics described the article as “delusional,” “bullsh*t,” and a barely disguised ad.

https://www.mediaite.com/media/tech/glorified-ad-or-grave-warning-the-internet-debates-mega-viral-economic-doomsday-article-about-ai-revolution/ 

Only question I have is how soon will AI replace Germaine or myself?? 😕

 

The Machinery Is Being Built: What Eight Days in February Revealed About November 2026

 

[This essay condenses findings from a 37-page report documenting Trump administration activity February 2-10, 2026, with comprehensive sourcing.  Full report available here]

On February 2, President Trump said Republicans should "nationalize" elections and "take over" voting in "15 different places." Six days later, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries responded: "What Donald Trump wants to do is try to nationalize the election. Translation: steal it."

Elite consensus now openly acknowledges the stakes. If you've been trying to follow the news and feeling like the pieces don't quite add up to adequate response—this is why. The question is whether we can see the whole picture clearly enough, quickly enough, to respond before the window closes.

The Problem We Face

Here's what makes this moment different from the daily chaos of Trump 1.0: mainstream media covers the pieces  with varying degrees of (in)accuracy, but more importantly they are covered and interpreted separately. Immigration reporters cover ICE expansion. Election reporters cover voter roll litigation. Investigative teams document detention facility construction. Each story appears in its own section, its own day, its own frame.

This fragmentation isn't accidental—it's structural. And it may serve consolidation of authoritarian power by preventing us from seeing what's actually being built: integrated infrastructure across three domains, all converging on a single November Elections 2026 deadline.

I wrote this to explain why the daily news feels increasingly fragmented, as if incapable of or unwilling to report what many of us can see happening in real time; and why institutions seem unable to respond to it adequately. I integrated just eight days of coverage across different beats in a report this week, and a systematic picture emerged that no single outlet I'm aware of has presented to the public.

Though I've written about this problem before here, the stakes are now much higher. The integrated operations of the Trump administration are outpacing institutional capacity to respond in the decisive months between now and the election. What follows is documentation of what eight days in early Feb. revealed.

 

What Eight Days Revealed

Between February 2 and 10, three systems advanced simultaneously:

Operational Capacity: WIRED published leaked documents showing ICE and Border Patrol securing 150+ new field office locations across nearly every state. Not temporary surge capacity—multi-year leases establishing permanent presence near schools, medical facilities, places of worship. Detention capacity expanding to 150,000 beds (five times current levels), with warehouse-scale facilities under construction. Personnel doubled from 11,000 to 22,000+ agents. All funded through $75-80 billion in multi-year appropriations independent of annual budgets—meaning shutdown threats are theater that affects TSA and FEMA but leaves enforcement fully operational.

Voter Suppression Systems: DOJ demanding complete voter rolls from all 50 states, including Social Security numbers, driver's licenses, email addresses, phone numbers, party registration, and voting history. Three federal judges ruled against DOJ in four days (Oregon, California, Michigan), with judges explicitly questioning DOJ's trustworthiness. Meanwhile, Palantir's $60+ million system integrates voter data with Medicaid/SNAP databases, DMV records, and facial recognition into "confidence scores" for bulk deportation processing. And Reuters reported ICE maintains a surveillance database tracking 655+ individuals prosecuted for observing immigration operations—a pre-election target list of civically engaged activists.

Institutional Constraint Neutralization: Fifth Circuit eliminated bond hearings for broad categories of detainees (mandatory indefinite detention). A Biden-appointed judge struck down California's ban on masked immigration enforcement. Congress questioned agency heads while Tom Homan—the actual operational commander—was absent, running enforcement from the White House as unconfirmed advisor bypassing normal oversight.

The Rosetta Stone

How do we know these aren't separate controversies occurring simultaneously? Because Attorney General Pam Bondi told us.

Her January 24 letter to Minnesota Governor Walz explicitly demanded three things as conditions for considering operational changes in Minneapolis: complete voter registration rolls, all Medicaid and SNAP recipient data, and state law enforcement cooperation with ICE.

This is documentary proof. Not interpretation—proof cited by federal judges as evidence DOJ "could [no longer] be taken at its word" and seeks to "abridge the right of many Americans to cast their ballots."

Immigration enforcement creates leverage for data extraction. Data extraction enables voter identification and intimidation. Operational capacity enables removal. All converging on November.

The Timeline Is Arithmetic, Not Rhetoric

All systems operational by November 2026. That's not hyperbole—it's construction timelines:

• ICE office leases being signed now on multi-year terms

• Detention warehouses have summer completion targets

• Hiring surges ongoing

• Voter roll litigation will extend months past deadline regardless of outcome

The infrastructure will be operational for the midterm election whether or not courts rule favorably or Congress passes restrictions. This isn't about legal permission—it's about physical capacity becoming reality while opposition negotiates over guardrails.

Why Institutions Seem Unable to Respond

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, asked about threats against officers: "Let me send a message to anyone who thinks they can intimidate us: You will fail. We are only getting started."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, same day: "The clock is ticking for Republicans to negotiate seriously with Democrats to rein in ICE."

Two parallel realities. Schumer negotiates over masks, warrants, body cameras. Lyons announces operations are escalating. Democrats propose legislation requiring Trump's signature. Republicans fund enforcement independently for multiple years. Democratic timelines unfold over months. Enforcement operates daily.

The tempo mismatch appears decisive. And it's not just tempo—it's fragmentation. Only three states (New York, Massachusetts, Maine) have enacted coordinated restrictions on ICE cooperation. If that expanded to 10-15 states acting simultaneously, the operational friction would multiply significantly. But sequential resistance allows operations to shift to less-resistant jurisdictions. Coordinated multi-state action could -- potentially-- overwhelm federal administrative capacity to adjust.

That's not happening.

What Scholars Are Saying

In December 2025, Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Daniel Ziblatt—authors of How Democracies Die—published "The Price of American Authoritarianism" in Foreign Affairs. Their assessment: the United States has crossed the threshold from democracy to competitive authoritarianism—a system where elections are held and opposition operates, but the playing field is systematically tilted through state institutions.

What we may be witnessing now is the consolidation phase: infrastructure build-out that makes the regime type change irreversible. Whether consolidation locks in, they wrote, depends on "how citizens and institutions respond in coming months."

Nine months remain. The machinery is being built. The question is whether we can integrate understanding and coordinate operationally fast enough to disrupt construction before the system becomes operational.

Why This Matters

If the news seems to fragment into disconnected outrages that somehow don't add up to adequate response, that fragmentation is real and structural. Seeing it clearly, together, refusing to accept the fragmentation even when our institutions can't—that matters. Not because it guarantees we can stop what's being built, but because witnessing together while there's still time is what we owe each other and the future.

This is for the record. For future understanding of how consolidation succeeded or failed despite being visible to anyone willing to integrate the evidence. And for the possibility, however small, that someone positioned to disrupt construction gains the clarity needed to act.

Nine months remain. The machinery is being built. What emerges will be determined not by what public negotiations promise, but by what operational infrastructure accomplishes—and whether enough of us see clearly enough, quickly enough, to disrupt construction before it's complete. We can't know if that's possible. But we can refuse to look away. That's what we owe each other, and everyone who comes after.

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Key Sources:

• Levitsky, Way & Ziblatt, "The Price of American Authoritarianism," Foreign Affairs, December 2025

• Bondi letter to Governor Walz, January 24, 2026: Minnesota SOS

• WIRED: "ICE Is Expanding Across the US at Breakneck Speed", February 10, 2026

• Reuters: "ICE is cracking down on people who follow them", February 10, 2026

• Oregon v. DOJ, California v. DOJ, Michigan v. DOJ (February 7-10, 2026): Federal court rulings blocking voter roll demands

• House Homeland Security Committee hearing, February 10, 2026 (Lyons testimony)

   [Comprehensive bibliography follows full report here] 

A MAGA politician has a mini-epiphany - "wow"

The Hill writes:

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) said Monday she now understands “what the big deal is” after reviewing unredacted files tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“I’ve not been one of the members who has glommed on to this as an issue,” Lummis said in an interview with journalist Pablo Manríquez. “I’ve sort of intentionally deferred to others to find out about it. But 9-year-old victims … wow.”

“I’ve sort of intentionally deferred to others to find out about it. But 9-year-old victims … wow. Well, initially, my reaction to all this was, ‘I don’t care. I don’t know what the big deal is.’ But now I see what the big deal is, and it was worth investigating,” she added. “And the members of Congress that have been pushing this were not wrong. So that’s really my only reaction.”

Her initial reaction was ‘I don’t care’. Her only reactions are “wow” and that people in congress wanting to investigate weren’t wrong. Wonderful. That's blistering, over the horizon insight and analysis. /s 

This is a candid glimpse into the mind of the standard-issue congressional MAGA Republican. Lummis represents classic MAGA incompetence coupled plus classic callousness, apathy, stupidity, and Dog only knows what other moral horrors lurk in her black MAGA character.

Q: Is it over the top or simply wrong to harshly criticize Lummis and all other congressional MAGA Republicans like this? If there are exceptions, who are they? 

Analysis of political polarization in the US

A recent research paper, A new measure of issue polarization using k-means clustering: US trends 1988–2024 and predictors of polarization across the world, describes results researchers got from trying to measure political polarization over time and across countries. Trying to assess political polarization has been messy and error-prone. This paper describes the use of a data collection and analysis method they call k-means clustering (KMC). KMC appears to afford a better way to assess what issues are dividing Americans so bitterly and thus threatening our democracy, rule of law and civil liberties.

In this paper, scientists tracked polarization over time and compared it across countries. Instead of relying on whether people call themselves "liberal" or "conservative," or "Democrat" or "Republican," the researchers used KMC, a computer algorithm. The algorithm looks at how people actually answer a wide range of policy questions, then sorts them into groups of like-minded people from the ground up, without any named political labels. Polarization was measured by separation (how far apart groups are in their views), cohesion (how much people within each group agree with one another), and size (groups sizes compared). That is new in analysis of political polarization. Clusters of issues were assessed in the groups, e.g., abortion, gun control, immigration, gender roles, social values, etc.

The results are interesting. First, KMC analysis found polarization increased in the USA from 1988 to 2024, driven almost completely by a period of rising separation between clusters of beliefs from 2008 to 2020. Data from across the world indicated that mass issue polarization is driven primarily by disagreement over cultural issues, but that varied according to each nation's Human Development Index (HDI), a measure of health (life expectancy at birth), education level (years of schooling) and standard of living (income). Since 1988, the US has been more highly polarized compared to high HDI countries.

Most of the increasing polarization came from the groups moving farther apart from each other on issues. not from people in each group becoming more uniform, or from one side growing much larger than the other.

Data analysis indicated that people's opinions become more "packaged" or clustered. In 1988, someone with right-leaning views on the economy didn't necessarily oppose abortion. Today, positions on different issues increasingly go together in a bundle. If you know someone's view on one topic, you can more reliably guess their views on many others. Interestingly, data analysis also indicated that some of American society was liberalizing, with the left-leaning cluster being significantly more socially liberal in 2024 than in 1988, while the right-leaning cluster was rather stable becoming only slightly more conservative.

What that data and analysis does not capture is radicalization of the right-leaning cluster. It is only slightly more conservative on the issues analyzed, immigration, taxes, gun regulations, social spending, etc. But support for radical right authoritarianism, e.g., supporting strong leaders breaking laws to set things right, or loss of respect for democratic norms and institutions, is a different political dimension than what this research paper analyzed. 

In other words, many or most conservatives (about half the country) generally hold about the same policy views they held in 2008 (abortion probably being an exception), but became more authoritarian in how they believe those policies should be implemented (another link). Meanwhile, about half of the US, more or less liberalized and retained their support for democracy and the rule of law.

A consciousness science update

A current SciAm article, Why consciousness is the hardest problem in science, summarizes the state of the art. In a nutshell, it's stuck. There are 29 theories but we don't have technology that's sophisticated and sensitive enough to detect enough in the staggering complexity of normal brain activity. We can't tell one theory from the other. Some of the theories are backed by no experimental evidence. A unifying experimental observation and consensus belief is that, whatever it is, consciousness is very complex and is grounded in diffuse brain activity. It can't yet be pinned down to small parts of the brain.

 

Two of the leading theories are the global workspace theory (GWT) and the integrated information theory (IIT, mentioned below).

Current thinking is that consciousness has three dimensions, all of which vary in a range of states from full off to on. The dimensions are described in the image below.

Philosophers and scientists still struggle to simply define consciousness without falling back on what it feels like to experience something. Philosophers call that “definition by pointing.” There is a way to measure an approximate degree of consciousness that expert consensus believes is real and clinically useful. The measure is called the perturbational complexity index or PCI. PCI is a crude measure of consciousness, but it reliably estimates someone’s status on the spectrum of consciousness. The SciAm article describes PCI like this:

It suggests that complexity is an important part of a conscious brain. In an awake or dreaming brain, diverse networks of neurons are in constant back-and-forth communication with one another. In this way, conscious brain activity is both differentiated (or rich in information) and integrated (forming one unified whole)—principles that Massimini borrowed from IIT, the theory that doesn’t begin with the brain. These interactions build up complexity, or what IIT theorists call a “cause-effect structure,” so that when you stimulate one part of a conscious brain, other parts respond.

But during dreamless sleep or when someone is under anesthesia, all that communication goes away. “Everything collapses,” Massimini says. “The cathedral falls apart.” Slow brain waves travel across the cortex as neurons cycle rhythmically between two electric states. In the “silent periods” between the waves, neurons enter what’s called a down state, in which they can’t respond to electric signals from their neighbors. This state is why there’s silence when you stimulate an unconscious brain with TMS: “No feedback, no unity, no complexity,” he says.

The SciAm article mentions the hostility that mainstream science still has for possible non-materialist explanations because that drifts into spiritualism/religion. After a massive study to failed to prove or disprove the leading IIT and GWT theories, some scientists got very upset. They publicly called IIT pseudoscience because they believed IIT strayed from materialism into dualism (spirituality or religion). SciAm writes:

 

An open letter calling IIT pseudoscience was published online in September 2023, signed by 124 researchers in or adjacent to the field. The argument focused less on the theory than on its coverage in the media, which the letter’s authors saw as credulous. The authors also took issue with the panpsychist implications of IIT, highlighting descriptions of it as unscientific and “magicalist.” “These bold claims threaten to delegitimize the scientific study of consciousness,” many of the authors wrote in a follow-up article.

The prospect that the field could lose its legitimacy hung over the fight. One side feared IIT’s reputation would drag consciousness science even further toward the fringes, and the other worried that publicly tarring one theory with a “pseudoscience” label would lead to the downfall of the entire field.

What a mess. Scientists still cannot even entertain the possibility of a partial non-physical or immaterial explanation for consciousness without the whole field getting in an uproar. Of course, the press, being the sensationalist, for profit beast it is, one can see why scientists worry about how the science related to IIT will be misunderstood and abused. 

The problem is that there could still be material things we know nothing about, can't even detect yet, that could be a part of consciousness. It is still possible that the immaterial has nothing to do with spirituality or religion, but is something still beyond our ability to detect and understand.

This tension between the immaterial (religious, spiritual) and the material does not seem likely to go away in the near term. We're stuck with it.

Lying & deceit: Moral Choice in Politics

In her 1999 book, Lying: Moral Choice in public and Private Life, moral philosopher Sissela Bok lays out an intelligent but simple analysis of the power and effect of lying and deceit in democracy and politics. By contrast with a democracy, the leader’s lies and deceit in authoritarian states don’t make much difference to average people. They have little to no power. They have to live under their leadership regardless of how morally depraved, reality-detached, cruel, bigoted, or corrupt it may be.

The image below is a tally PolitiFact’s assessment of 1,000 of Trump’s statements. That data makes clear why the topic of lying and deceit in democracy, is critically and urgently important in America today.

Bok’s basic argument is simple and rational. Specifically, when people have been deceived and they act on false beliefs, their power to decide how to act based on facts, truths and sound reasoning has been taken from them without their consent or knowledge. Common sense and contemporary research tell us that deceit is inherently authoritarian, therefore anti-democracy. (link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4)

Also, Bok and some others assert that lying and deceit are almost always inherently immoral. Arguably, they are evil when actions by deceived people based on false beliefs lead to unnecessary harm or deaths. That argument is simple logic. A rock solid example of unnecessary harm and death from deceit is people who have been convinced by anti-vaccine liars and crackpots. Some of those deceived people refuse to get vaccinated against COVID or other infections. Some of them get infected and die. Some infect others who die. (link 5, link 6)

Finally, research and history both indicate that irrational emotional manipulation is the single most effective persuasion weapon that demagogues and authoritarians have in gaining power to deceive and destroy democracy. Fomenting fear, anger, and identity-based resentment constitutes the most powerful weapon demagogues have. It works by (1) suppressing conscious reasoning, (2) creating "winner-take-all" attention narrowing that excludes contrary evidence like actual facts, and (3) exploiting unconscious cognitive biases and heuristics that replace careful reasoning with visceral, emotional responses. (link 7, link 8, link 9, link 10)

Wikipedia describes demagoguery like this: The central feature of demagoguery is persuasion by means of passion, shutting down reasoned thinking and consideration of alternatives. Demagogues pander to passion, prejudice, bigotry, and ignorance, not facts and reason, because this is the most effective tool to exploit human beings.

Q1: Can a person reasonably believe that lies and deceit from Trump and MAGA elites are at least immoral, or even evil?

Q2: Are most rank and file Trump supporters immoral or evil, or are they mostly good people who have been deceived and manipulated, whereby deceit has absolved them of responsibility for their actions?

Who watches the Super Bore anyways?

 Worse - who watches the half-time show?

Not like Bruce Springsteen is gonna be playing during the half-time show, that might make it a worthwhile watch. 

It just ain't 2009 any more. 

Now you get someone who calls himself Bad Bunny?

Bad Bunny was crowned last year by Spotify as the most listened-to musical artist in the world.

Umm, ok, if they say so, never heard of him 😒

So, with that in mind, we need some real time AMERICAN music as an alternative:

• Kid Rock has been named as the headliner of Turning Point USA's conservative alternative to the Super Bowl LX halftime show.
• The organization co-founded by late right-wing activist Charlie Kirk previously said the event would be designed around "faith, family and freedom" and feature as a potential music genre "Anything in English."
• Bad Bunny's selection as this year's Super Bowl halftime performer sparked conservative backlash, for his choice of Spanish as the dominant language of his music and for his past criticisms of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
• https://ew.com/kid-rock-headlining-conservative-alternative-to-super-bowl-halftime-show-11897759
  

Well, ya might not like his politics, but at least it's ROCK 'N ROLL!

Trump is insane

Really, he's just plain nuts. And a liar, hypocrite and morally rotted monster. His looney-tunes EO says in part:

The Government of Cuba has taken extraordinary actions that harm and threaten the United States. The regime aligns itself with — and provides support for — numerous hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors adverse to the United States, including the Government of the Russian Federation (Russia), the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Government of Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

I find that the policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Cuba directly threaten the safety, national security, and foreign policy of the United States. ..... The policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Cuba are also repugnant to the moral and political values of democratic and free societies and conflict with the foreign policy of the United States to encourage peaceful change in Cuba and to promote democracy, the principle of free expression and press, the rule of law, and respect for human rights throughout the world.

Hypocrisy unleashed

A core hypocrisy is that the EO spins a targeted secondary‑sanctions tariff scheme as a defense of “democracy,” “rule of law,” and “human rights” but at the same time the United States arms, shields, and trades heavily with other governments that commit far more extensive abuses, sponsor destabilizing wars, and host U.S. military/intelligence infrastructure without being threatened with comparable penalties.

Trump denounces Cuba for persecuting political opponents, suppressing free speech and press, restricting civil society and torture, and calls its actions “repugnant to the moral and political values of democratic and free societies”. But Trump policy continues extensive security and economic cooperation with brutal dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and others. There is plenty of well‑documented arbitrary detention, torture, and suppression of dissent there  in those Trump-holes. With Trump, economic interests routinely override democracy and human rights concerns in Middle Eastern and other allied thugships (dictatorships).

But the peanuts are not fooled.

Peanut 1: As a Nobel peace prize contender, he wants to non-peacefully take over Cuba and other places. Sounds like a good strategy.

Peanut 2: He didn't win a peace prize from some random organization, the soccer people I think, which he had no reason to even consider himself in the running for. So now he has no obligation to think about peace!

Peanut 3: Accusing others of what you are doing is a core feature of fascism.

Peanut 4 to 3: And toddlers.

Peanut 5: Arrest Don Lemon!!

Peanut 6 to 5: The Epstein files!! Release the Epstein files.

Peanut 7 to 6: They have been released. Trump is a sick pedo. But, he's gonna sue the “third‑rate writer” Michael Wolff, again! 

Peanut 8: In some ways, despite what many say, these are EXTREMELY precedented times.

Peanut 9 to 8: Annoyingly, you're right. 🤔

Peanut 10: Cuba broke into my home last night, and violated my human rights. I’m roughly 1,500 miles away. If it happened to me, it could happen to you. 

Peanut 11: Nailed it! Cuba is in for some Trump ‘freedom’! Buy $Trump memecoin now!

Peanut 12: I very much miss looking up to people.

Peanut 13: Ffs!

Peanut 14: Civilized countries should give some nukes to Cuba. It's the only way of keeping out the Americans.

People we have admired.......

 Inspired by Germaine's last thread on .............

Presidential rankings by experts and the public

I am sure historians have painted all kinds of flattering or not so flattering pictures of historical figures, not just political.

We were "taught" to admire Abraham Lincoln, encouraged to admire Nelson Mandela, and if from a religious background, to worship Jesus Christ.

However, as I stated on that previous thread, if we opt to dig deeper into someone's past we might find things about them less admirable. We might even find criticisms of our heroes.

So, I am going to ask a simple question and hope participants will just ................ well.............. participate on the question................ rather than KNOCK someone else's answer. Disagree sure, that is what discussions are all about. 

Without knowing the full context of a person or history of a person, or knowing some or what YOU believe you know about someone from history, can you name 10 people you truly admired and still admire?

Of course our top 10 will change with the wind or change with new knowledge, but generally speaking............

For me:

Albert Einstein

Abraham Lincoln

Oskar Schindler

Mahatma Gandhi

Martin Luther King Jr. 

Malala Yousafzai

Leonardo Di Vinci

Marie Curie

Helen Keller

Terry Fox 

Honorable mention, Jesus, IF he was a real person, and IF he did spread the message of love (despite how the Church paints him) 

Presidential rankings by experts and the public

Experts routinely rank Trump in the bottom 5 of US presidents. Public and Republican opinion rank him far higher. My BNR post is here.

Wikipedia's commentary on the worst

Pew Research data

YouGov poll data

Wikipedia's summary of assessments of president Nos. 1-5 and 41-46:

Trump still flogging stolen election lies

A NYT article (not paywalled) discusses Trump's continuing lies that the 2020 election was stolen.

The BNR post is here: https://breakingnewsandreligion.online/2026/01/29/how-trumps-2020-election-claims-have-been-debunked-again-and-again/

They believe the lie is truth,

and the truth is a lie

Blog note

One of the Mods at BNR told me I could not post my invite list there because it broke a rule.

So, I'll post my invite list here and link to my posts there.

My current BNR post: https://breakingnewsandreligion.online/2026/01/29/us-cyber-defense-chief-accidentally-uploaded-secret-government-info-to-chatgpt/

When one has a wild imagination.............

 Like SNOWFLAKE does, he sees things others may have missed.

So, there was a recent TV series call Pluribus that I watched then read up on.

Apparently many critics and fans considered the series an analogy of AI taking over our lives.

I suppose. But I saw something different.

In some future time a virus spreads throughout the world. One of the few people NOT infected is this blond lady from the US.

This virus makes everyone docile and happy. It also links every human infected with every other human, so they all have a hive mind. Except a few, including this American woman, who remains independent.

Now, I did see the show as an analogy, in terms of American "independence" vs the hive mind of progressive society. 

Let me explain:

The heroine of the story is the only American survivor. Throughout the show she talks about remaining an individual and not interested in being part of a collective. Meanwhile, the other survivors, all of them from third world countries, decide they rather by part of the hive. Be happy, give up your freedom. Get it?

Moreover, she lectures the other survivors as if she, an American of course, is the only one among them with the determination to keep her independence and freedom. Sound familiar?

Except one other. A Hispanic from some South American country. His part in the show is to travel across rugged terrain on foot just so he can reach the US. Ah ha, an analogy of an illegal alien risking a long journey to reach the US.

Finally, our heroine, the only American not infected by the virus, decides the world needs to be made back to where people enjoyed individual liberties and to accomplish that she is prepared to take drastic measures, and so at the conclusion of the series, she obtains a nuclear device. (have to watch the show to find out how she does this).

In other words, you better support rugged American style individualism or else!

Mind you, my mind has been polluted by woke ideology, progressive thinking, leftwing brainwashing, so I will read all kinds of things into a TV show that really should be viewed as JUST entertainment. 

The legacy of DOGE

Remember DOGE? Remember the Hitler-saluting Musk who led the arrogant non-professional loos cannons that worked for DOGE? Remember the arrogant jackass, Edward “Big Balls” Coristine? We were told in no uncertain terms that that DOGE was going to save taxpayers a trillion a make government more efficient. So, what did it accomplish?

Nah, that's not a Hitler salute,

not even close

The bottom line is that 1) DOGE didn't reduce government spending, 2) it helped make government far less effective in protecting consumers, workers and the environment, and 3) it is still secretly working to create a unified database on all US citizens and residents that an authoritarian MAGA government will use to find and punish or kill political opposition. 

As far as secret work to build a deep surveillance state goes, DOGE is still at it. A Dec. 2025 Wired article, DOGE Isn’t Dead. Here’s What Its Operatives Are Doing Now, discusses current operations. Contrary to popular reports, DOGE has burrowed into the agencies like ticks. It has not gone away. Wired commented:

The DOGE ethos—characterized by cutting contracts and government workers, consolidating data across agencies, and importing private sector practices—remains fully in force. While several media reports have suggested that DOGE has all but fizzled out, DOGE affiliates are scattered across the federal government working as developers, designers, and even leading agencies in powerful roles.

A WBR interview with a couple of experts gives us an overview of the dictator fun 'n games that DOGE is still engaged in. Specifically, DOGA is still working to combine federal data on people into a single database that is scattered across and siloed in federal agencies. That has never been done before. The interview transcript includes these comments:

FAHRENTHOLD: Yes. I'm really interested in the questions of how these databases coming together. I do think that could, in many ways, be the most important long-term legacy of DOGE.

If we start to see that the government is able to marshal all this data and the service of immigration enforcement, for instance, or if the IRS comes and ask you about your immigration status. If the government's priorities are suddenly able to be acted on by all these independent agencies. And that bureaucratic firewalls don't stop them anymore. That interaction with the federal government could be so different in a couple of years that we see that as DOGE's actual biggest impact.

Yes indeed, stitching all the federal data on all of us together into a single database. With a database like that, any person who stands in opposition to Trump and MAGA elite dictatorship, kleptocracy and their bigotry can be easily found and targeted for harassment, jail or murder. DOGE is working diligently to neuter our civil liberties, including privacy. 

The interview makes a couple of points worth keeping in mind. First, something that might be run very efficiently, could still give very poor results, sometimes lethal results. The best services are not the necessarily the cheapest or the most efficient. The best services are ones that take care of people or protect people with reasonable efficiently and efficacy. Right now, DOGE is working to provide services to special interests at the expense of people and the public interest.  

That's one heck of a legacy. Good job Big Balls!  /s

"We ran high-level US civil war simulations. Minnesota is exactly how they start"--The Guardian

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The following op-ed from Tuesday’s Guardian is by Claire Finkelstein, a distinguished professor of law and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, and founder and faculty director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.​

Last weekend I argued here that the United States is no longer merely “at risk” of authoritarianism, as major scholars writing in Foreign Affairs now concede, but that we have entered what Barbara Walter would call the pre‑insurgency phase of civil war, with Minnesota as a decisive test of what comes next. The current operation there is not just another crackdown; it is a trial run, a template for how similar campaigns could unfold in other cities unless there is meaningful pushback.

One obvious form of such pushback did not materialize last night. In a House vote, all but one Republican supported pouring billions more into the DHS/ICE apparatus now targeting residents, citizens, protesters, and migrants with near impunity—disappearing people by the tens of thousands into a rotating archipelago of detention sites that effectively nullify habeas corpus. Seven Democrats joined them, a sobering reminder that there is still no unified opposition party willing to draw a clear line against this machinery.

We ran high-level US civil war simulations. Minnesota is exactly how they start

Claire Finkelstein

Developments in Minnesota closely mirror a scenario explored in a 2024 exercise conducted at the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, which I direct

Since 6 January, roughly 2,000 ICE agents have been deployed to Minnesota under the pretext of responding to a fraud investigation. In practice, these largely untrained and undisciplined federal agents have been terrorizing Minneapolis residents through illegal and excessive uses of force – often against US citizens – prompting a federal judge to attempt to place limits on the agency’s actions. The Trump administration is encouraging the lawlessness by announcing “absolute immunity” for ICE agents. But if the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, does not heed the court ruling, the consequences may be nothing short of civil war.

In just the past week, ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, shortly after she returned from dropping her child off at school. They blinded two protesters by shooting them in the face with so-called “less deadly” weapons. They fired teargas bombs around the car of a family carrying six children, sending one child to the emergency room with breathing problems. They violently dragged a woman out of her car and on to the ground screaming. They have shot protesters in the legs. They have forcibly taken thousands of individuals to detention facilities, separating families and casting people into legal limbo – often without regard to their legal status.

Rather than investigate this conduct and the officer who shot Renee Good, the justice department has opened a criminal investigation into the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, and Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, accusing them of conspiring to impede federal agents. Renee Good’s widow is also under investigation, a move that prompted six US attorneys in Minnesota to resign in protest.

As public outrage grows, ICE has escalated its actions, increasingly engaging in what appear to be random acts of violence regardless of immigration status. Governor Walz has placed the Minnesota national guard on standby to support local law enforcement, while Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act – an extraordinary move that would grant him sweeping domestic military powers and potentially sidestep recent supreme court limits on the use of federal troops in law enforcement. One thousand additional ICE agents have been sent to Minnesota, suggesting that Trump is essentially using ICE as a specialized paramilitary force to target protesters and suppress dissent. And the Pentagon has readied the army’s 11th Airborne Division – roughly 1,500 active-duty soldiers – to back up the president’s threat.

This scenario closely mirrors one explored in an October 2024 tabletop exercise conducted by the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL), which I direct, at the University of Pennsylvania. In that exercise, a president carried out a highly unpopular law-enforcement operation in Philadelphia and attempted to federalize the Pennsylvania’s national guard. When the governor resisted and the guard remained loyal to the state, the president deployed active-duty troops, resulting in an armed conflict between state and federal forces. The core danger we identified is now emerging: a violent confrontation between state and federal military forces in a major American city.

While our hypothetical scenario picked a different city and a slightly different sequence of events, the conclusions we reached about the possibility of green-on-green violence are directly applicable to the current situation. First, none of the participants – many of them senior former military and government officials – considered the scenario unrealistic, especially after the supreme court’s decision in Trump v United States, which granted the president criminal immunity for official acts.

Second, we concluded that in a fast-moving emergency of this magnitude, courts would probably be unable or unwilling to intervene in time, leaving state officials without meaningful judicial relief. State officials might file emergency motions to enjoin the use of federal troops, but judges would either fail to respond quickly enough or decline to rule on what they view as a “political question”, leaving the conflict unresolved. This is why Judge Menendez’s ruling is so critical: it may be the last opportunity a federal judge has to intervene before matters spiral completely out of control.

Third, we warned that senior military leaders could face orders to use force not only against state national guard units, but against unarmed civilians – and that they must be prepared to assess the legality of such orders. Any domestic deployment of federal troops must comply with the Department of Defense’s Rules for the Use of Force and with the constitution, including the Bill of Rights. Even under the Insurrection Act, federal troops may not lawfully shoot protesters unless they are literally defending their lives against an imminent threat – yet such conduct is already happening in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents.

Finally, it is not legal for federal troops to back up ICE agents who are behaving illegally.

Every member of the US military has sworn an oath to defend the constitution. That oath carries legal force. Service members are not only permitted but obligated to refuse patently illegal orders.

That obligation is now under pressure. Senator Mark Kelly is under investigation by the Pentagon for publicly reminding service members in a video he made with five other members of Congress that they may – and in some cases must – refuse illegal orders. But they were essentially correct: troops must refuse to carry out patently illegal orders.

For members of the 11th Airborne Division, this may soon cease to be a theoretical question. Minnesota may be the first test of whether constitutional limits on domestic military force still hold – or whether the United States is about to cross a line from which it cannot easily return.

• Claire Finkelstein is the Algernon Biddle professor of law and professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She is also the founder and faculty director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center

   

  The following NYT Op‑Docs video, released two months ago, remains one of the clearest short overviews of what DHS is doing with public money behind the scenes: an expanding network of long‑term detention sites where due process is systematically undermined. The vast majority of those held have no criminal convictions. In the weeks since the film appeared, the population has increasingly come to include lawful residents and even citizens swept up in mass operations and effectively disappeared into this rotating system of confinement.