Morning

Funky Friday.

Thursday Night

Rock on.

Self-Preservation

I dunno, guys, I don’t think it is too crazy to be alarmed that senators aren't willing to use the obvious tools genuinely available to them in response to an attack on their own.

They don't have magic wands, but they do have some tools.

And if they prove me wrong, great, but...

Seems Bad

Goons dragged out Senator Padilla and pushed him to the floor just for asking a question at a press conference, and this is what Noem had to say:

Kristi Noem: "We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city." Sen. Alex Padilla is then forcibly removed!

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— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) June 12, 2025 at 7:06 PM

I'm sure California has some state laws about attempts to overthrow the government. Maybe it's time for Newsom to start dusting those off. Maybe it's time for Chuck to grind the Senate to a halt... hahaha whatever.

Alpha Energy

She's got a plan.

“We know the Lions are going to the Super Bowl this year because they have a good defense and a good offense, right?” Slotkin, referring to Detroit’s NFL team, told an audience of roughly 400 people at a town hall forum.

“So we have to be able to do both,” Slotkin added. “We have a strong defense, but then you’ve got to have a vision, an alternative vision, to what is being provided to us every day. And that is the charge of the next generation of leaders in the Democratic Party.”

She keeps saying how tough she is without actually doing it.

She also has thrown herself into advocating for a robust takedown of the president’s agenda.

“I wrote a war plan,” the former CIA analyst and Pentagon aide told her audience here last week, “of how to contain and defeat Trump — a 17-page PowerPoint.”

Can we see it? No.

Lansing — U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Holly, told a crowd in mid-Michigan Friday night that her party owes the public an "alternative vision" for the country's future and she's developing a plan she hopes to unveil in the coming weeks.

Soon! Can't fucking wait.

"I wrote a war plan of how to contain and defeat Trump, a 17-page PowerPoint ... just like ... I used to do at the Pentagon," said Slotkin, who previously worked in national security. "We used to do war planning.

"And it's about being rigorous and ruthless about our priorities. Part of the plan is about having an alternative vision."

Slotkin said that the vision will be about protecting the middle class and dealing with artificial intelligence's impact on the economy and education. It will also detail what Democrats would do if they had control of Washington, D.C., she said.

She thinks making PowerPoints in the Pentagon makes her a fighting troop.

There is always a chance my cynicism will be proven to be misguided!

It's Tariff Day, Again

Bessent says Trump will likely keep pausing the tariffs, though I can't keep track of precisely which tariffs these are.

Or maybe not!

Trump said Wednesday he would be willing to extend a July 8 deadline for finishing trade talks with countries before higher U.S. levies take effect, but that the extensions may not be necessary.

“I would, but I don’t think we’re going to have that necessity. We made a great deal with China,” Trump told reporters. “We’re dealing with Japan, we’re dealing with South Korea. We’re dealing with a lot of them. So we’re going to be sending letters out, in about a week and a half, two weeks, to countries, telling them what the deal is, like I did with EU.”

And the big beautiful deal with China just takes us back to where we were.

It remains unclear whether the truce will hold — or crumble like one struck in May did. Even if the agreement does prove durable, its big accomplishment appears to be merely returning the countries to a status quo from several months ago, before President Trump provoked tensions with China in early April by ramping up tariffs on goods it produces.

I was amused that this story fronts the critics. I'm not saying that's bad practice, just highlighting that it is a choice.

I Guess He Got Some Phone Calls

He's inclined to believe it because he's a big racist, and inclined to be happy to deport lots of brown people for the same reason, but I do think Miller's been feeding him nonsense about millions of criminals for years. 

Liberals, mostly, aren't the ones hiring undocumented workers.

If the Dems can't run with this one...

Leading From Behind

Is he unpopular enough, yet?

Thirty-eight percent of voters approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president, while 54 percent disapprove. In Quinnipiac University's April 9 poll, 41 percent approved, while 53 percent disapproved.

Is this unpopular enough, yet?

Voters were asked about Trump's handling of seven issues...

immigration issues: 43 percent approve, 54 percent disapprove, with 3 percent not offering an opinion; deportations: 40 percent approve, 56 percent disapprove, with 4 percent not offering an opinion;

It isn't an Alpha Energy move to stay relatively quiet on something until everyone has already turned against it.

"Pro-Vaccine Groups"

Proof they will "both sides" anything.

Thursday Is New Jobless Day

I suspect this is starting to get "interesting" again.

248K new lucky duckies celebrating their funemployment.

Morning

Thirsty Thursday

Wednesday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Very Serious

People who claim they are about to create Computer God are given a more respectful hearing than people who say, in response, "lol, no."

But It Wasn't Designed For That

A fair response  - which I have seen! - to an Atari 2600 beating Chat GPT at chess is that ChatGPT wasn't designed for that. That's the point! It isn't designed for most of the things people think it can do, and that companies are claiming it can do!

ChatGPT might be great for responding to emails or quick-drafting a document, but it's not quite ready to take on the world's chess prodigies—or indeed, chess-playing consoles from 50 years ago. In a unique experiment, an engineer pitted the latest ChatGPT 4o model against his Atari 2600's chess engine on the beginner difficulty level, and ChatGPT got handily defeated, eventually conceding.

Sure, Jan

You can just start laughing at anyone who doesn't recognize this as the con that it is.

At one point in the essay, Altman claimed that next year, in 2026, the world will “likely see the arrival of [AI] systems that can figure out novel insights.” While this is somewhat vague, OpenAI executives have recently indicated that the company is focused on getting AI models to come up with new, interesting ideas about the world.

I'm sure for it will come up with some impressive freshman dorm bong hit philosophy that it stole from a 1995 Usenet post.

The Only Time I Was Rooting For Trump

Though I am sad it didn't last longer.

NJ Gov. Primary

I don't really know anything about the winner, Sherrill, but Gottheimer sucks so I am glad he lost (4th place!).

What A Moran

Unsurprisingly, ABC got rid of Terry Moran.  I am very curious if he knew this was likely and just said, "fuck it," or if he was surprised.

As I said, if he didn't know, then he really doesn't understand his own profession.  If he did, good for him!

Morning

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