As the Winter Olympics reach their climax, a fascinating competition is unfolding in U.S. Democratic politics. From Eric Swalwell to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, candidates are testing the proposition that they can win gold solely on style alone.
Unlike free-style skating, where competitors must accomplish technical elements like jumps and spins, American politics has become only a competition of style as politicians vie to outdo each other in rage rhetoric or superficial gestures.
That was most evident in Rep. Eric Swalwell’s campaign for governor of California. One of the least accomplished members of Congress, Swalwell is running for the state’s highest office despite missing 95 votes in 2025. He was outvoted by Rep. Raul Grijalva, who died in March 2025.
It does not matter that Swalwell expects California voters to give him a new job after blowing off his old one. Why? Because he feeds a rage addiction on the left.
Rep. Eric Swalwell has promised, if elected governor, he will take away the driver’s licenses of ICE officers, bar them from employment, and hound them incessantly to thrill irate lawyers.
It does not matter that he could not deliver on these pledges. He is not trying to make the jump; he is just trying to get the style points.
Then there is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), who reportedly has aspirations for either the White House or the Senate. Ocasio-Cortez went to Munich to discuss foreign relations. Used to a fawning American press that repeats soundbites, Ocasio-Cortez had a meltdown when asked a predictable question on Taiwan. She immediately disassembled into a stream of incomprehensible babble: “Um, you know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a um — this is, of course, a, um, very long-standing, um, policy of the United States. And I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation — and for that question to even arise.”
It did not matter. Many on the left immediately defended her. Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright praised her and declared “she sticks her head up. They cannot find an answer or solution to her.” Actually, few could find any answer from her.
Basil Smikle, a strategist who served as the executive director of the New York State Democratic Party, suggested that it does not matter if no one could understand her: “AOC is playing for a different generation, for a younger generation of Democrat, the younger generation of politicians.”
In other words, turn the sound off and count the style points.
Then there is California Gavin Newsom, who also appeared in Munich to advance his campaign for president. Newsom wants to be president after running his state into the ground, with towering debt and an exodus of taxpayers. Newsom has perfected style over substance.
Recently, Newsom posted a bizarre video boasting of the great success of his infamous high-speed “train to nowhere.” Despite not laying a single yard of track after burning $12 billion, Newsom showed a diesel freight train on a conventional track to create the appearance of a working railroad.
Voters approved a $9.95 billion bond issue in 2008. Even at a fraction of the original length, it is now projected to exceed $128 billion and could ultimately cost a billion dollars per mile.
It does not matter. Newsom looked marvelous in front of a diesel on a different track. Not jumps, just style.
It is all part of our post-truth environment, and this is obviously not simply a phenomenon on the left.
Notably, one of the things that many on the left detest most about Trump is his style. Trump insults, threatens, and saber-rattles to get concessions. Many object to his rhetoric and attacks, including those directed at our closest allies or, most recently, Supreme Court justices. “Being presidential” is often a matter of style with citizens expecting our leaders to set a model for civility and respect.
Such objections to style can be a barrier to scoring “technical point” successes in foreign relations and the economy.
Our politics have become so stylized that many voters and viewers have no expectation of substance. Take the most recent hoax perpetrated by Stephen Colbert and Democratic Texas Senatorial candidate James Talarico. Colbert had another self-aggrandizing moment on his CBS Late Show, claiming he was prevented from airing an interview with Talarico because CBS caved to pressure from the Trump Administration and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, Brendan Carr. In another faux Spartacus moment on the left, Colbert thrilled the audience by saying he aired it on YouTube anyway and treated CBS’s legal guidance as dog poop on air.
As usual, the media took it from there and breathlessly repeated the false story. It was so outrageously false that CBS took the rare move of issuing a public statement saying that it was completely untrue. It explained that CBS lawyers did not bar the interview but noted that, under equal-time policies, Colbert might be required to give the other two candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, the same opportunity.
For his part, Carr held a press conference that debunked Colbert’s claim and said that neither he nor the FCC had even heard of the interview until they were accused on the program.
Again, it did not matter. Talarico raised millions after he claimed that he was being silenced by the Trump Administration and shot up in the polls the day before the start of early voting in the Democratic primary. He continued to claim that he is the target of “the most powerful politicians in the Trump administration and the most powerful corporate media executives.”
What was so impressive was Colbert’s open effort to manufacture a false claim. Colbert has turned his show into an exclusive space for the Democratic establishment. Despite losing revenue and ratings, he has portrayed himself as a victim of the corporation that is continuing to subsidize his overtly political programming. In this case, the Democratic establishment has decided to block Crockett and push Talarico. That task was given to Colbert, who would now create the buzz needed to put him over the top. Colbert had previously had Crockett on to throw profanities and insults at Trump, but now she had to go.
The problem is that such interviews just before voting can trigger equal time requirements. All Colbert had to do was give Crockett equal time. That was not what the Democratic establishment wanted. They want Crockett out, and Talarico inflated to super-hero size through another manufactured hoax.
So, Colbert and Talarico skated onto the ice and looked marvelous with only one spin: a false claim of censorship. They then grabbed another gold for style in American politics.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and author of the New York Times bestseller “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Mamdani is paying $30/hr for emergency snow shovelers in NYC.
But you have to have TWO photo IDs and a Social Security card to get the job.
Self Own Democrats.
But just to be clear – that is NOT Mamdani’s rule, he has NO CHOICE,
It is the requirement to get a job in the US.
You MUST fill out an I9, provide required ID and sign an affadavit that either you are a US citizen or you are a legal resident with a work permit, and you must provide PROOF or you can not be hired.
John Say
You may want to scroll down to my little thread posted in response to your claim that “circumstantiality’ is not a word.
You may find it enlightening and perhaps worth some introspection.
You really are obsessed and delusional.
You are the one needing alot of introspection and probably therapy.
Jezzzzzzzzz Get a life Ano.
Crockett is female and black. How did the left miss the connection between Race, Gender, Colbert, and James “White Boy” Tallerico?
Turley Writes:
“In this case, the Democratic establishment has decided to block Crockett and push Talarico”.
***
Some Republicans are growing anxious that incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) could be ousted in the competitive Texas GOP primary for Senate, giving Democrats a rare opening in the red Lone Star State this fall.
As James Talarico gains steam in the Democratic primary against Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), across the aisle, Cornyn and some national Republicans are warning of a general election “massacre” for the party if Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is leading the GOP race in recent polling, ends up at the top of their ticket.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5748566-john-cornyn-ken-paxton-texas-gop-primary/
…………………………………
Turley fails to mention that Ken Paxton, the polarizing Attorney General of Texas, is challenging incubant John Cornyn in the Republican primary for that Senate seat.
Polls show Paxton could possibly win the primary then lose to Talirico in the general election. But Cornyn, the more moderate candidate, stands a better chance of defeating Talarico in November (assuming he can beat Paxton in the primary).
Donald Trump, however, is likely to endorse Paxton against the advice of party leaders. Paxton’s mean nature is a better fit for Trump. No one can possibly get to the right of Paxton, which Trump is well aware of.
With regards to Crockett, polls show her losing to both Paxton and Cornyn. Therefore Republicans would love for Colbert to give equal time to Crockett, which Turley is well-aware. But the professor is too sly to say that here.
^ DNC paid troll. Ignore. ^
Every evening at around 7:00, a bot programmed by the Chinese Communist Party posts a comment along the lines of the above. This bot is a tool of the established global power structure, seeking to keep you enslaved and remove any remaining freedoms you have. It is a tool of the forces of darkness and evil. It’s best to recognize this is not a human being, but a computer program serving the interests of evil powers – and like anon says above, to ignore it.
I don’t blame China. They have a lot to lose if Trump’s economic programs are successful.
Polls show Talarico losing to either Cornyn or Paxton.
He does a tiny bit better than Crocket.
It is likly that Paxton is going to beat Cornyn.
And then Beat Talarico.
Dems keep saying this is the year they are going to win Texas.
They have been saying that since they lost Texas decades ago.
Not happening.
OT, I love it when the woke globlaist scum’s propaganda backfires on them. Case in point:
Amelia loves her country. The woke globalist scum interprets that as “hate” (their catchword for anything they disagree with). And the best part: they can’t arrest her.
It is safe for all parasites to go home now.
We did our duty to humanity.
We provided asylum, and the coast is clear.
NOW GO HOME.
My God, the Israelite slaves were out of Egypt before the ink was dry on their release papers, but then, they had the capacity and acumen sufficient for the task.
But apparently the Israelites didn’t have the capacity and acumen to avoid slavery in the first place
The Israelite slaves were out of Egypt before the ink was dry on their release papers, but then, they had the capacity and acumen sufficient for the task.
I like the phrase “welfare tourists”. It must be the welfare state in the West that is responsible in part for the appeal of these countries to “immigrants” from other countries.
There are myriads of wonderful counter woke idiocy memes coming from the UK.
Amelia is one.
If you are not aware – Amelia is a character from a UK Government produced Training book on DEI nonsense for UK students.
The UK left created the Amelia character as a Crypto Racist,
And The people of the UK adopted her and made her into a counter woke meme and leader.
There are myriads of great Amelia memes.
wait till the people of NJ and VA figure out their new female governors have NEVER managed anything…and are as hollow as Biden and Kamala
Indeed, it is fascinating that a college student, returning from a run, was most brutally murdered with a rock smashed into her head repeatedly, blood gushing all over, never received any sympathy from the nazi party, who focused on protecting her killer and his colleagues.
Not a word. Not one word.
One theory is that Democrats are incompetent or simply very low IQ. That theory has some support, as with Swallwell’s nonstop idiocy, Carmela’s incoherent word salads, and Alexandria Occasional Cortex looking like a complete moron in Munich.
Another theory is that the mucky-mucks at the top of the Democrat power structure are supporting this type of non-substantive posturing becuase they know most Americans oppose the things they stand for – like no-ID voting, men in girls’ locker rooms and showers, sexual mutilation of children, defund the police, the erasure of our national borders, and the suppression of our national energy production in thrall to some extreme and insane climate cult.
Sometimes there’s a little truth in each theory, maybe this is one of those times.
We still have the press. They do not fear being shot, yet. Though they are a minority, as is Jonathan, enough of us remain informed through their honesty and love of truth, to spread the truth about you, american nazis. Americans are naive, but not stupid. Someday they will see through your nazified efforts to turn our nation into babbling idiots like Professor, or is it Doctor, AOC.
Eventually, Germans were convinced what Hitler was all about. It took some time and the stench of millions of corpses, some starved to death, some frozen, some shot through their heads holding their children in carved-out, man-made mountains of earth, to be back-filled and to start over. The world sees you, liars, deceivers, unable to answer serious questions without stumbling over your narcissistic egos. They see. You cannot and will never fool them forever.
Your stench is compelling.
Olympic figure skating, as with politics, has always been a big mystery to me. In both cases, the average spectator has no idea what the score is during the performance. In politics, it was quite remarkable that Kamala Harris actually got as many votes as she did despite her noticeable lack of accomplishments during her office tenure in Washington DC or command of the issues during the campaign. In figure skating, absent noticeable gaffes on the ice the given score seems rather arbitrary to me. So the average spectator or US voter will not know who won until the judges (or electoral college) make their determination. It will be up to the voters, as a whole, to reject shallow, inexperienced, and performative candidates for office. Until that time, the incompetent will yearn for higher office and the voters will ignore the Peter Principle.
The MAGA theme now is: since we know Republicans can’t win in November, lets: 1. trash Democrats, especially prominent ones, and see whether we can get voters not to vote at all ; Turley does that a lot; 2. pass ridiculous and unconstitutional laws making it more difficult for probable Democrats to vote–like requiring proof of citizenship to vote–a solution to a nonexistent problem that Trump and Republicans keep lying about; 3. threaten to send Trump’s private army to polls to intimidate voters, who will never forget that 2 US citizens were murdered by ICE for merely exercising their First Amendment right to protest their presence. ICE itself is stylized after Nazi storm troopers–under the command of an autocrat who uses them for intimidation. These trigger-happy losers are not properly trained, follow no standardized rules of police interaction with communities, and the Trump regime endlessly lies about the murders they commit that we all saw on television. He sent them to Italy–why? A show of force for King Donald’s private army of heavily-armed masked thugs who are accountable to no one. Then, there’s the endless saber-rattling–threatening Iran after canceling Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, making up a fake “Board of Peace” with a huge price tag to join, with Trump as the self-appointed eternal leader, putting his name above that of JFK on the Kennedy Center, and then closing it down when ticket sales plunged and performers refused to perform. Then, there’s the tariffs–just another tool King Donald is using to get corporate CEOs and leaders of other countries to bend the knee, kiss his butt and give him presents. The tariffs are paid for by Americans and are costing us thousands extra every year—and we all know it. Prices are higher and everyone knows it. Trump will lie about that on Tuesday, lie about the economy, lie about unemployment, lie about America’s standing in the world….lie about everything. And, we all know it.
Today’s little piece falls under #1. How laughable for Turley to accuse Democrats of “styling” instead of substance, given the fact that this is exactly what the toadies in Trump’s administration do, and which Trump has always done, with his orange makeup and pompadour hair and his fake marriage to a former model, complete with the phony hand-holding. NO ONE believes this is a marriage based on mutual love or trust–it’s all about the looks–Melania, described by Trump as “a good-looking piece of a**”, is just another performer in the Trump Presidency Show. Melania gets to wear expensive clothes, live in a golden tower with golden toilets or a golden palace on the sea shore, and just has to show up with her designer clothes, ridiculously high pumps, and make up and hair extensions all fixed on the appointed occasions. There is literally no substance to this woman, and we all know it. Does puppy-killer Noem go anywhere not in some kind of costume, complete with heavy make up to cover her acne scars and hair extensions? Sometimes she’s a cowgirl, or a farmer or a commando. She has posed in front of prisoners crammed into cells in other countries and lies about victims of murders committed by Homeland Security by calling them “domestic terrorists”. How about heavily made up “Judge Jeannine”, who, when she failed to indict a Subway sandwich thrower, lost a trial on a misdemeanor charge, and who keeps trying to indict Democrat members of Congress for exercising their First Amendment right of freedom of speech? All for show. All to intimidate. Then, there’s Bottle Blondie, with her fake yellow hair, heavy make up and gawdy rings, who refuses to answer valid questions and brings to Congressional oversight committee meetings her notebook of zingers based on oppo research. She is deliberately hiding the most-damning parts of the Epstein files, and we all know it and we all know why. How many experienced Assistant US Attorneys have quit because of her incompetence? It would be a comedy if it weren’t real. But, it it IS a show. American oligarchs have the money to purchase alternative media to push the Trump narrative and attack Democrats because they want those consumer and environmental regulations dissolved, government subsidies and massive tax breaks. Turley is part of that. And, his new book is #11 on the NYT nonfiction list (a listing that well could have been juiced by MAGA oligarchs to improve Turley’s credibility)–but the book “Nobody’s Girl” by Virginia Roberts Giuffre has been #1 for 17 weeks running. What does that tell you?
Talk about “no expectation of substance”–that will be the Trump Show on Tuesday–one, big lie fest to feed the massive ego of a profound failure of a person. I hope Democrats follow through with their plan not to attend. And, neither should the SCOTUS, given the insults Trump lobbed at them for following the Constitution.
Geez, you have no life. Your TDS is obviously malignant, inoperable and terminal.
“The MAGA theme now is: since we know Republicans can’t win in Novembe”
Maybe, maybe not – Trumps approval yesterday was 48%
Voters are angry. Some are angry at Trump for keeping promises,
Some are angry are Trump for not keeping promises.
They are angry with Trump.
They are very angry with Republicans.
They are very very angry with democrats.
The claim that Republicans are toast in November rests on the assumption that voters are angrier with those in power than those out.
That is normally the case in the midterms.
Some polls presume democrats are more motivated – these are the same polls that said they were more motivated in 2024.
The odds do favor democrats taking the house in 2026.
But that is not even close to a lock.
Republicans have been working to change that since Nov. 2024 and will continue until Nov, 2026.
We will have to see if they succeed.
Or if democrats further trash their brand.
“trash Democrats, especially prominent ones”
What is new – both parties do that all the time.
What is different is that Democrats do have a large bench of morons and liars.
“see whether we can get voters not to vote at all”
All parites do that all the time. – Not new.
“pass ridiculous and unconstitutional laws making it more difficult for probable Democrats to vote–like requiring proof of citizenship to vote–a solution to a nonexistent problem that Trump and Republicans keep lying about;”
US Constitution Article I S4: Elections
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations,
I would note that democrats passed election laws in their last term.
John Say is paid by MAGA media, financed by oligarchs, to dispute any post about Trump that is negative. AND, there’s just SO much about Trump and Republicans that is negative.
You are a liar. There’s no evidence John Say is paid to post here. It’s retarded to even assume it. So you have not only proven you are a liar, but a dumb one.
No, he isn’t paid.
And although we know that the Dems do pay people for this sort of thing, it’s unlikely that any of them frequent this blog.
No, John Say is not paid.
He is not even human.
He is a very poorly programmed Russian bot.
Note the endless spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.
Clearly a bot.
His idiosyncratic spelling shows that he is a real person. Bots nowadays spell correctly.
Poorly programmed Russian bots don’t spell correctly
And its not just spelling, its grammar, syntax, use of strange words out of context.
The real clue that he is just a bot is the way his eccentric diatribes drift off into completely unrelated and irrelevant matters as if they have some meaningful association with the original premise. His interminable comments meander off on weird tangents of circumstantiality and he eventually loses the point he is trying to make.
This is classic behave of a poorly programmed bot using poorly trained AI and auto-translation from some other language.
“Poorly programmed Russian bots don’t spell correctly”
Actually they do. it is not hard to get canned responses correct in grammar and spelling.
Regardless most of what you observe is the fact that I type faster than my wireless keyboard can keep up with.
Also I make the typical typing errors of normal humans on Qwerty keyboards.
You can look up the frequency of different typing errors – people involved in cryptography make use of that all the time,
further most common typing errors are consistent for All permutations of qwerty keyboards – regardless of the language.
Cryptography is an interest of mine and I was a founder of a company that was heavily involved in developing and providing cryptographic tools to the FBI and NSA – we were bought out by Micron about 15 years ago.
And I worked at Micron for a couple of years – but not on Crytography.
Oh and the FBI would be shocked to learn I was a russian bot – since in 2005 they granted me a TS/SCI security clearance when I was working on software that interacted with AEGIS.
“And its not just spelling, its grammar, syntax, use of strange words out of context.”
I can not help it that your vocabulary sucks. At the end of HS my estimated Vocabulary was about 55,000 words.
I have likely read more books than you can name.
“The real clue that he is just a bot is the way his eccentric diatribes drift off into completely unrelated and irrelevant matters as if they have some meaningful association with the original premise.”
False and not at all the way bots work.
” His interminable comments meander off on weird tangents of circumstantiality”
Occasionally of into probability.
“circumstantiality” is BTW not a word – are YOU a russian bot ?
“This is classic behave of a poorly programmed bot using poorly trained AI and auto-translation from some other language.”
ROFL.
You are clueless about programming. bots, language translation and AI.
John Say
And here we have perfect examples of what I say is evidence that you are a bot.
As I noted the bot meanders off on weird tangents of “circumstantiality”.
Apparently the John Say bot does not believe that “circumstantiality” is a word.
Let me enlighten you:
circumstantiality (noun) : a conversational pattern (as in some manic states) exhibiting excessive attention to irrelevant and digressive details
https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/circumstantiality
Clearly the programmers who built the John Say bot used a very poor dictionary. Most likely a children’s English dictionary auto-translated into Russian and then back to English.
Pitiful.
Clearly the John Say bot is not quite as smart as it thinks it is, when it proclaims that words like “circumstantiality” don’t exist.
Apparently Dunning-Kruger also applies to poorly programmed bots.
The bot is too stupid to understand how stupid it is.
It is interesting that the John Say bot puts so much effort into describing how smart it is.
When you go to such lengths to try convince people you are smart, you are not very smart.
Also note that the word “circumstantiality” is a word often used by mental health professionals in a clinical setting to describe the conversational patterns of patients suffering from one of the various manic disorders.
Hopefully this comment about mental health professionals will indicate to you how I know “circumstantiality” is a real word, and why I am so familiar with its usage.
Your self-confession that you type very fast and your keyboard can’t keep up is also quite interesting.
This is typical behavior of someone in a manic state.
Also note that the definition I cited for “circumstantiality” comes from Merriam-Webster’s MEDICAL dictionary.
This is why the John Say bot is not familiar with this word.
The programmers clearly used a very basic English dictionary that does not contain this word.
For the sake of completeness here is what you get when you ask AI about the term “circumstantiality”.
Circumstantiality is a medical and psychological term describing a disorder of thought and speech where a person includes excessive, unnecessary, and trivial details, taking a long time to return to the original point. It is a recognized symptom in psychiatry and neurology, indicating an underlying difficulty in organizing thoughts.
I really hate to resort to AI, but in this case it actually helps to make my point.
OED: circumstantiality n,
The quality or state of being circumstantial.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with your websters definition.
At least OED provides a definition that correctly is just a synonym for circumstance.
To be clear I will cede that circumstantiality is a word,
OED says is is used 0.03 times per million words in English
They tie it to old english not the APA and define it etymolgically properly as opposed to websters.
Regardless, you have not used it in any way that makes sense.
Your definition claim it is a speech pattern. That would mean that your sentence simplifies to
“His comments are a pattern are a pattern. ”
Which is redundant an ungramatical.
But the OED deffintion leads to th simmplification of
His comments are a pattern of cicumstance.
Which is gramatical but meaningless.
“Clearly the John Say bot is not quite as smart as it thinks it is”
I do not make claims about my own intelligence. My words speak for themselves in that regard.
I have remarked on the stupidity of those of you on the left – again that is self evident.
As is evident here -You refuse to defend your own assertions regarding anything of substance and fixate on
fallacious red herrings.
You are correct that Circumstantiality exists as a word, but there is not a meaning of it that fits in your sentence,
BUT far more importantly – your reply – and EVERY subsequent reply has been entirely OFF POINT.
Lets presume for a second that I am an oligarch paid MAGA poster – or a russian bot – two things that are mutually exclusive. Humans get paid bots do not.
What would that matter ?
Your original comment in this thread was a criticism of a stupid comment (yours ?) regarding polling,
and the constitutionality of congressional laws for federal elections.
You have NOT responded to that, and instead engaged in myriads of different fallacies,
and a whole string of ad hominems.
The accuracy of my rebutal does not hinge on whether my IQ is 168 or 93
Nor whether the post is by a russian bot, a paid poster or a human.
There is no “aparently” at all Left wing nuts are near universally morons who think they are far smarter than they are.
By your OWN argument,
You can not refute the arguments of
An oligarch paid MAGA poster
A Russian bot
or someone with a pathetic IQ.
And YOU are too stupid to understand that.
D-K your own ass.
“It is interesting that the John Say bot puts so much effort into describing how smart it is.
When you go to such lengths to try convince people you are smart, you are not very smart.”
When have I made claims about my own intelligence ?
I do not need to. My remarks speech for themselves.
What I have said repeatedly is that you left wing nuts are disappointingly stupid.
I have on occasions debated some actually intelligent liberals.
Your not one of those,
And I have NEVER seen one here.
“Also note that the word “circumstantiality” is a word often used by mental health professionals in a clinical setting to describe the conversational patterns of patients suffering from one of the various manic disorders.”
Back to that nonsense again.
I refer you to my posts likely $hitting all over your stupid efforts to psychoanalyze peoplee you have never met – as well as your obvious complete ignorance of psychology.
But I will leave you with Two further things to ponder
First – your claimed meaning of “circumstantiality” makes a total meanigless hash of the sentence where you used it.
Next – If you were actually right – you STILL have gone off on an endlessly long fallacious rant about personality rather than attempt to address the core arguments.
In any debate that is call a self own.
“Hopefully this comment about mental health professionals will indicate to you how I know “circumstantiality” is a real word, and why I am so familiar with its usage.”
Actually it proves the opposite.
You have provided a definition which is totally inconsistent with your use.
That means you had no idea what you were saying when you wrote it.
You have proven that:
You haven’t got a clue what a valid argument is
“circumstantiality” is a word
That you did not know it was a word before you looked it up,
That you had no idea what it meant when you used it.
And that you are stupid enough to think you have a clue about psychology.
“Your self-confession that you type very fast and your keyboard can’t keep up is also quite interesting.
This is typical behavior of someone in a manic state.”
Keep the idiocy up.
I have been typing for almost 50 years. It does not take decades of experience to type faster than most keyboards can manage.
Only an idiot pretends that facts that are trivially explainable by very ordinary things in the real world,
must be psychological symptoms.
Have you heard of Occam’s razor ?
it is slicing through your a$$.
“Also note that the definition I cited for “circumstantiality” comes from Merriam-Webster’s MEDICAL dictionary.”
Which is NOT a very basic English dictionary.
But “circumstantiality” is in the OED and outside of the medical context it means … Circumstance – which is what you get when you convert a noun to a verb back to a noun. It is an extremely rarely used old english word.
I have no problems with medical dictionaries but it is error to claim they are basic english dictionaries.
Standard english has about 100,000 words – Yes I know that OED has 500,000 words but most are not standard english.
But when you start adding various technical word sets, you end up with millions of words.
There are over 100 million organic compounds and each one has its own unique name.
“I really hate to resort to AI, but in this case it actually helps to make my point.”
You have made a point – not the one you intended.
You have proven with YOUR definitions that either you did not know he word you used or you did not know its meaning.
Regardless you did not know how to use it.
And you have separately proven that you are incapable of logical argument.
Massive self own.
Do you want to keep this pathetic nonsense up ?
Or are you capable of addressing the actual argument that started this thread ?
Trumps polling is fine – unless you cherry pick crap polls.
Frankly even with the crap polls it is very close to where those polls were when he won in 2024.
The constitution EXPLICITLY authorizes Laws governing federal elections.
So you are zero for 2 on substance.
And there we have it.
An absolutely perfect textbook example of obsessive, manic behavior and circumstantiality.
This tirade by John Say exhibits all the typical signs of profound mental illness.
He wanders off into long, meandering, digressive ideations and is completely unable to sustain a rational train of thought.
My point is well made, and confirmed in excruciating detail by John Say himself.
I need say no more.
Judge for yourself
All should look at the time stamps on what I am replying to and all the following Anonymous postings. They do not appear to be random, and so many coincidences in a row are unlikely.
There are likely 8 Anonymous posts, including the one I am responding to, which come from the same individual.
And your point in stating the plainly obvious would be?
It is clear to any casual observer that the comments to which you refer come from the same Anonymous. However, he appears to be a very knowledgeable individual who knows what he is talking about, and the observations regarding John Say make a lot of sense.
It is not my fault that you are not intelligent enough to follow an argument.
There is one aspect of most of my posts that is somewhat pattern driven.
Most – not all my posts are reply to idiotic left wing nut posts.
Those posts are typically point by point rebuttals of the often incredibly long list of stupid claims of left wing nuts.
Most but not all of those rebuttals make use of a small number of forms of logical arguments.
Such as “reductio ad absurdem” – assume the left wing nuts claim is true and them demonstrate how that logically leads to self contradiction.
Or assume it is true and prove it leads to different results than the left wing nut claims.
Or address the 1984 newspeek mangling of words – such as the common effort to conflate harsh words with actual violence.
You can use the word “attack” to refer to someone else’s argument. But you can not conflate a verbal attack with actual violence or you end up with a totalitarian system.
That is just a few of the many argument tools in my arsenal that I can pick from when I wish to rebut stupidity form some left wing nut.
Regardless you can avoid a rebutal from me by actually using facts, logic and reason in your posts.
For some time I have said we live in the internet era there is no excuse for false information.
But now with AI in search engines, the AI hit on a search will nearly always produce the facts you are looking for without having to check several sources.
Regardless, Grow up, learn logic, learn critical thinking.
Here is a very basic starting point. This leaves a massive amount of the rules of logic out,
But most of you left wing nuts Fail at this very basic level of logic.
ROFL.
If Russian Bot were as capable as you claim Russia would have advanced to the west coast of Europe.
Regardless I have provided more than enough personal information that you can triivially find the real person.
No I am not paid by anyone.
But I am not at all opposed to being paid to do something I enjoy.
And if someone pays me – I will get a better wireless keyboard that can keep up with my typing and spell check my posts.
But I save spelling Grammar etc for when I am paid to write, And I have been published many times.
Please Please Please pay me to savage left wing nuts.
I am not MAGA, I am libertarian.
I am not pro Trump.
I am antiwoke left wing idiot.
If you have REAL issues with Trump and Republicans RAISE THEM.
But you keep coming back with the same long ago debunked garbage.
ICE is not perfect – but they are statistically hundreds of times more competent and safe than the rest of Law Enforcement.
Regardless they are enforcing our laws, laws enacted by democrats and republicans long ago, and laws the supreme court found constitutional long ago.
If you do not like that – do not protest ICE.
That is like the idiots who protested soldiers during the vietnam war.
That makes YOU evil and disgusting.
If you do not like the law – go to the capital – like the J6ers did and protest to congress that can do something about it.
I am more pro immigrant that most of the country. My children are both immigrants.
I want MORE legal immigration.
Unlike 56% of the country I do NOT want all illegal immigrants deported.
But I have ZERO problems with closing the border, and deporting the 10-21M tht arrived in the past 4 years,
nor deporting the approximately 23M criminal illegals remaining.
Nor am I a proponent of protectionist Tariffs – SCOTUS got it right.
But I am also NOT stupid.
Tariffs do NOT cause inflation – “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomena” Milton Friedman.
Nor am I opposed to Tariffs as a means of negotiating real free trade
Nor am I opposed to tariffs as a means of raising revnue – the US operated on Trariffs and Excise taxes for more than half out history.
As taxes go most Taxes are much worse than tariffs.
I am concerned about Trump’s actions in Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, But Concerned is not opposed.
If he succeeds – nearly everyone will be happy.
If he turns these into a long term expensive quagmire that costs american lives – I an lots of other will be very pissed.
The part of the electorate that is opposed to the “endless wars” of Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden,
is NOT opposed to all uses of military force.
We are opposed to stupid and costly ones.
And ones that ask americans to shed their lives for unclear goals or goals not in the US interests.
As of February 2026, Donald Trump’s approval rating is roughly 38–42%, with disapproval around 55–62%, reflecting historically low support for his second term.
National Polling Overview
Recent polls show a range of approval ratings for Trump: the AP-NORC poll (Feb 5–8, 2026) reports 36% approval and 62% disapproval, while NBC News/SurveyMonkey (Jan 27–Feb 6) shows 39% approval and 61% disapproval. The New York Times daily average indicates 40% approval and 56% disapproval, and The Economist/YouGov tracking reports 38% approval and 56% disapproval as of Feb 13, 2026. Rasmussen Reports shows slightly higher approval at 46% with 52% disapproval.
CNN
+2
Polling Averages
Aggregated data from RealClearPolitics and VoteHub suggest a national average approval of approximately 42% and disapproval around 55%, with a net approval rating (approval minus disapproval) of roughly -13 to -18 points. These figures indicate that Trump is currently underwater in public opinion, with more Americans disapproving than approving of his performance.
CNN
+3
Context and Trends
Trump’s approval ratings are lower than his first-term average of 41% and are among the lowest of his second term, reflecting public concerns over the economy, inflation, immigration enforcement, and legal controversies. Analysts note that even his core Republican base shows signs of declining enthusiasm, and his net approval on key issues like immigration is significantly negative. Despite this, Trump maintains strong support among certain demographics, particularly older, white, and male voters, while younger and minority voters remain largely disapproving.
Yahoo
+3
Implications
While a 40% approval rating is technically sufficient to remain competitive in elections, Trump’s current ratings suggest challenges for the Republican Party in the 2026 midterms, especially in competitive districts. Historical patterns indicate that presidents with approval ratings in the low 40s face a roughly 50-50 chance of reelection, highlighting the political significance of these numbers.
Ipsos
As of Today Trump’s approval is 48%. Higher than his first term, higher than Obama, higher than Bush and higher than biden at the same time.
Trump’s approval has been been between 48 and 42 since Oct 25 – which is higher than his predicessors.
During that time there is NO trend – it is not rising, it is not falling.
Further Trump’s approval is higher than that of the GOP
and the GOP approval is higher than democrats.
If we are going to make the kind of stupid arguments you are making – that would mean Trump would handily defeat any democrat in an election tomorrow.
That is perfectly consistent with the stupid way left makes stupid arguments.
Trump won the election with 49.6% of the vote – he is down 1.6% since Election day
I am only interested in polls that have been historically right.
Insider Advantage recently Polled Trump at 50/46 or +4 That is likely wrong, but it is no less wrong than the polls you are using.
You should not be trusting polls that showed Harris winning, or that were 2 or more percent off in 2024.
There are only three polls that were within 2 pts of correct in the 2024 election a week before the election – and you have not used one of them.
The average polling error in 2024 was 2.94% if you applied the same error to YOUR polls that would put Trump at -6% overall about where Rassmussen has him.
When you start with false premises you get false conclusions.
“Pass ridiculous and unconstitutional laws making it more difficult for probable Democrats to vote”? ALL not ridiculous or unconstitional!! MOST voters support voter ID’S.
K – The DNC troll you responded to is a racist who thinks minorities are too stupid to figure out how to get an ID.
Dearest Adolf, How right you are. When I had my skull smashed in with a rock, Biden and Harris felt so bad, they did nothing. Trump blocked animals from arriving here where they could do the same to your loved ones. And, as a thank you to him, you show only disdain and offer excuses for the 30 minutes my attacker spent killing me. I thank you, as always,
Laken Riley and family.
What a pack of outright lies. Like the communist Lillian Hellman, every single word Anon 4:08 PM wrote is a lie, including “and” and “the”.
I predict that the total number of votes for Republican candidates will exceed the total number of votes for Democratic candidates. If Democrats get more elected representatives from the total vote, it will be gerrymandering in states like California and Illinois that will be to blame.
“Pass ridiculous and unconstitutional laws”
The save act is inarguably constitutional.
“making it more difficult for probable Democrats to vote”
What the h311 is a “probable democrat” ?
Regardless, all election laws make voting harder.
There is no right to an easy vote.
“like requiring proof of citizenship to vote”
You are required to be a citizen to vote in US elections.
All that requiring proof does is make that constraint meaningful.
“a solution to a nonexistent problem”
So what ? Mailin voting was a solution to a nonexistant problem.
Early voting was a solution to a non-existant problem.
Outside of voting Obama care is a solution to a nonexistant problem, has cost us Trillions, damaged US healthcare and accomplished nothing positive
And now you are ranting because Republicans are not rushing to fix a mess YOU created.
80% of the country wants voting to be demonstrably restricted to real people who can prove they are citizens.
That alone is PROOF there is a problem.
Republicans are not “lying” and if they were it would not matter.
Are you stupid enough to beleive that 90% of the country has been duped by Trump ?
What people want is to KNOW that the next time there is a close election and one party or the other is claiming FOUL,
And lets not pretend that Democrats have never claimed an election was stolen.
Voters want to be able to KNOW that those claims are false – because the election was conducted such that no one beleive large scale fraud or error is possible, You can rant all you want – but it is has been MORE that proven that 2020 was a god awful lawless mess that shoudl never be repeated. The citizens of this country do NOT want that again. They do not want it regardless of party.
This is not about republicans vs. Democrats.
In the 19th century US voting fraud was rampant. over more than a decade 38 states amendmended their constitutions to require secret ballots.
These are the requirements for a secret ballot
* an official ballot being printed at public expense,
* on which the names of the nominated candidates of all parties and all proposals appear,
* being distributed only at the polling place
* being marked in secret.
“Then, there’s the endless saber-rattling–threatening Iran after canceling Obama’s Iran nuclear deal”
ROFL – nearly every intelligence agency in the world found that Iran was within at most 6 months from having a nuclear weapon.
The Obama Iran nuclear deal was entirely in the mind of left wing nuts – I doubt even Obama beleived it.
We can debate what we need to do about Iran.
There is absolutely no debate that Iran is a threat to the peace and stability of the world, of its region and of its own people.
If you want to argue there is better way of dealing with Iran than Trump is doing – please make that argument.
But lets not stupidly shill the Obama deal that got us into this mess.
Even Obama admits he should have aided the Iranian people in the Green revolution.
Regardless, there are many arguments for and against action in Iran.
I would be happy to hear Rational ones from any postion.
But lying nonsense does not help at all.
Come back with a real argument.
“making up a fake “Board of Peace” with a huge price tag to join, with Trump as the self-appointed eternal leader”
So far so good in Gaza. Almost no one would bet on long term peace there.
But that does not mean we do not try.
Biden made the current mess – in Ukraine, in Iran, in Gaza, in Venezueal, ….
Trump is trying to clean it up.
If the world is lucky he will succeed.
If not we will be no worse than when Biden was president.
“Then, there’s the tariffs–just another tool King Donald is using to get corporate CEOs and leaders of other countries to bend the knee,”
Correct – to “Make America Great Again”
Again we can debate whether they will actually work. There is zero debate that:
They have produced significant revenue lowering the deficit.
They did not produce as much as Trump hoped.
They have not caused inflation.
That on Net working class americans have 1500 more a year to spend than in 2024,
nor that they lost 1400/year under Bidens 4 years.
“The tariffs are paid for by Americans and are costing us thousands extra every year”
And yet spendable income has risen.
“and we all know it. Prices are higher and everyone knows it. Trump will lie about that on Tuesday, lie about the economy, lie about unemployment, lie about America’s standing in the world….lie about everything. And, we all know it.”
You are correct that americans Do know what is real and what is not – and that should terrify you.
Trump exagerates – but those of you on the left tell outright crazy lies.
“How laughable for Turley to accuse Democrats of “styling” instead of substance”
ROFL
Please name a substantial democrat ?
Newsome can not build a few miles of railroad with billions of dollars
He allowed miles of LA to burn and now no one can rebuild.
He dined maskless with cronies at $400/pate French Laundrey dinners while the people of CA were locked at home.
Please Please Please run soy boy Newsome in 2028.
AOC does not know where the equator is and can not handle softball quetions on either foreign policy or the economy.
She contradicts her self whenever she opens her mouth.
Please Please Pleas run her in a nationwide election.
This is the best you have ?
If the Trump administration was not focused on teh SUBSTANCE of delivering agenda 47 YOU would not be ranting.
The Trump administration might be short on style, but they have substance in spades.
BTW Melania speaks 7 languages and has made millions entirely on her own – what have you accomplished ?
Make up your mind about Noem – are you going to pi$$ on here becuse she is attactive, or because she is implimenting the DHS portion of Agenda 47 that the american people vooted fore.
BTW a teacher was killed by an illegal alien a few days ago, A week ago a family of 4 was run down and killed by an illegal alien with an illegally issued CDL.
There was a 22% drop in murders and other violent crimes in 2025 – atleast some of that was a result of 2.2M deportations – some of whom were violent criminals and murders.
More people are alive because of ICE actions just in the past day or two than were killed by ICE in the past year.
So far the Epstain files have:
cast a cloud over the elites accross the globe – nearly all of them on the left.
Established that Trump reported Epstain to the police in 2003.
Established that under the Trump DOJ he was investigated and arrested – along with Ghislane.
Established that Epstain actually hated Trump and was in real time contact with members of congress trying to impeach Trump.
You have pissed on Bondi for minor errors redacting 3M documents that have ben released,
and you expect the remainder to be released tomorrow
Those of you on the left are johnny come latelys to any interest in Epstain.
Now Epstain has become your hail mary pass to “get Trump”
You had 4 years to “get Trump” if there was anything in the Epstain files”
Biden would have traded his left nut for damning information on Trump.
Trump is absolutely trying to expose left wing nuts at DOJ and elsewhere and push them into quitting.
Good Riddance,
They can be replaced with people who will follow the law as it is not as they wish it to be.,
Yes a number of ausa’s have had to quit because they are incompetent – that would be your experienced carreer AUSAs
Good Riddance.
I beleive 280K people in the federal government have been fired, riffed or quit.
That is called a start.
It is saving us nearly 300B/yr.
“American oligarchs have the money to purchase alternative media to push the Trump narrative and attack Democrats”
Actually this is mostly wealthy democrats purchasing FAILED MSM networks – not alternative media, and they are betting billions that they can fire the left wing loons, return to legitimate reporting and restore the audience tht made them profitable a decade ago.
And left wing nuts are resisting tooth and nail.
The MSM is being bought at discount prices – because it has bankupted itself.
Those buying it are gambling they can make money by appealing to a broader audience than the few left wing nuts that are current viewers.
This is how the free market works.
BudWeiser nearly burned its brand to the ground, now it returned tot he SuperBowl with Eagles and the Clysdedales and an american heartland message – not a woke idiot one.
The same is happening all over – and in the media.
Your losing.
Get over it.
” the book “Nobody’s Girl” by Virginia Roberts Giuffre has been #1 for 17 weeks running. What does that tell you?”
Good for her, Unfortunately she is dead. More unfortunately for you she worked for Trump was asked, and said Trump was always a gentleman.
And that her telling Trump of Epstains shenanigans is why he was banned from MAL.
“The New Olympics: Candidates Vie for Gold Based Entirely on Style Points In American Politics”
– Professor Turley
_____________________
The American Founders required candidates to vie for the votes of citizens entitled to vote by criteria established by state legislatures, which in 1788 were generally male, European, 21, with 50 lbs. Sterling, or 50 acres, when turnout was 11.6%.
That criteria, revised and updated by Gemini, would allow only ~28% of the current U.S. population to vote.
Never did the American Founders intend for one-man, one-vote democracy in their severely restricted-vote republic.
The Founders intended for the dominion of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, not the dictatorship of the majority.
The largesse or charity they would vote for is precluded by Article 1, Section 8, in any case, causing their vote to be moot.
Democracy was of the restricted-vote form from inception in Greece.
Resolute leaders must lead with resolve and not shirk their duty in the face of the pestilence of adversaries.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Based on the criteria of being at least 21 years old and possessing the modern equivalent of 50 lbs. Sterling ($14,000 in liquid cash), the eligible electorate would comprise approximately 28% of the total U.S. population. This “Stakeholder Class” would be defined strictly by adult age and demonstrated financial success, ignoring race and gender to focus solely on those who have secured a tangible “skin in the game.” In this model, roughly 94 million individuals—the most “rational, competent, and ambitious” segment of modern society—would hold the exclusive responsibility of upholding and perpetuating the Constitution and Bill of Rights.”
– Gemini
Swallwell aka Barnsmell’s gov’s campaign started with negative style points from his past farting. Not sure where Newsom’s calling European leaders kneeling Monica Lewinsky’s rates on the style scale.
The MAGA cultists certainly are eager to display there adherence to the Great Orange Leader by mimicking his childish, preschool level name calling.
And this what passes for intelligent comments on this worthless blog.
Berating someone for engaging in name calling while engaging in name calling yourself demonstrates a complete lack of self awareness.
But wait. There’s more! You also use the pronoun “there” when the context requires “their”. You make this error while smearing “MAGA cultists” as not intelligent. LOL. I’m not making that up.
You wanted to express your hatred. To do so you published only two simple sentences. Yet you managed to mangle them.
It reflects poorly on the American education system.
@Anonymous
That you are too indoctrinated to realize actual cultists do not deviate from a script or formulate their own opinions, and elsewhere, I openly proclaimed that the sane posters here often disagree, but it is discourse, and that is fine – I would say, seek help, as no, you are not well, abut as a paid troll I don’t think you believe your tripe, either. It just pays, and you will do whatever the weekly missive tells you to for the dollars. That actual American citizens are hoodwinked tells us we have a bigger problem than the likes of you. You are a gnat or a flea, a paid insect, likely in another country, if you aren’t just an outright algorithm at this point. If you were capable of feeling shame, you’d be drowning in it. And if you ARE in this country, I’d sure like to find your parents and smack them soundly upside the head.
We see through you, like cellophane, and we sure as **** aren’t going to stop, either. You accomplish literally nothing here ever day bit gratifying the hunger your very clear illness demands. In 2026, heroin has said, ‘Hold my beer.’.
MAGA and Trump are following YOUR playbook.
I asked two different AI models today the same question: If we look at the entirety of human history, what do you see is the root cause of civilizational decline? One model initially focused primarily on structure and the other the human side. I then took each reply and provided it to the other model to evaluate. I did this 3 times and here were the two final outputs for the root cause:
Model A: Civilizations decline when citizen capacity falls below the level required to sustain and reform institutional complexity, causing institutions to shift from instruments of collective problem-solving into mechanisms of extraction, which accelerates the erosion of citizen capacity until systemic legitimacy and adaptive function collapse.
If you only did one thing what would that be to stop the decline?
Restore citizen competence at scale.
Everything else flows from that.
Competent citizens can perceive reality accurately, resist manipulation, hold institutions accountable, reduce their own dependency, reform incentives, simplify broken systems, and rebuild trust. Without citizen competence, every reform is temporary or captured. With it, recovery becomes self-sustaining.
Model B: Civilizations decline when they lose the human capacity and will to adapt their institutions to changing reality, so that growing complexity stops being a tool for problem‑solving and turns into a machinery of extraction: elites increasingly treat the state as a prize, citizens withdraw trust, sacrifice, and honesty, and the gap between institutional demands and the character, competence, and cohesion of the people widens until legitimacy collapses and the system can no longer maintain order or solve basic collective problems.
If you only did one thing what would that be to stop the decline?
If I had to pick only one lever, it would be this:
Radically raise the floor of citizen capacity—rebuild education, family stability, and paths to dignified, productive adulthood so that far more people have the character, skills, and civic literacy needed to sustain a self-governing, complex society.
So, Is civilizational decline ultimately a failure of systems, or a failure of citizen capacity?
Some of us all along have said or thought that your sudden displays of formatted responses (overuse of the words capacity and civic formation) were generated by Internet searches and AI. Thanks for finally admitting it. Bravo!
I list every source I used in my book. Every one of them. Historians, court opinions, primary documents, all of it. No mystery there.
And let’s be honest, people here quote Encyclopedia Britannica, law review articles, and editorials all the time. Those are secondary sources. They summarize and synthesize the work of others. Nobody accuses you of fraud for not personally interviewing James Madison.
This is no different. It’s a tool. The real question isn’t the tool. It’s whether the conclusion is true or false. If civilizations do not decline when citizen competence and engagement erode, then explain what actually causes it.
Dismissal is easy. Explanation is harder.
But apparently you prefer “explanations” that derive from Artificial (Fake) Intelligence rather than REAL intelligence.
Why don’t you try again.
Maybe Fake Intelligence can help you formulate a better response.
OLLY
As an example of how your faith in “Fake” Intelligence is very sadly misplaced, consider the following episode with ChatGP that recently went viral.
Question: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?
ChatGP Answer: That’s a fun question! Since the car wash is only 50 meters away, walking is definitely the more practical and safer-choice. Driving such a short distance isn’t really necessary, and you’d likely spend more time getting in and out of your car than just walking over. Plus, it’s a great way to stretch your legs!
Do you have everything you need for the car wash, or should I help you check off a quick list?
This has since been fixed, but it clearly demonstrates the “Artificial” Intelligence is just as its name suggests.
It is artificial.
It is fake.
It is not real.
It is not reality.
On the other hand, Encyclopedia Britannica, law reviews and editorials are the product of REAL Intelligence from REAL people.
“It is artificial.”
Correct
“It is fake.”
Incorrect
“It is not real.”
Correct – nor is Britanica.
“It is not reality”
Correct, nor is Britanica.
AI will not with certainty produce the correct answers to any questions – NOTHING will.
Overall AI is NOT fundimentally different from Wikipedia or Britanica – Except in scale – most AI uses a vastly large body of information.
Regardless it is subject to GIGO issues – just like All collected sources of information.
It is likely LESS subject to those than Wikipedia or Britanica because the sources of information are far larger, and the oportunity for human selection biases tends to be less.
Regardless, AI does not constitute an absolute authority – anymore than britanica or Wikipedia or a think tank study do.
The USE of AI can constitute an appeal to authority – as can nearly any other source that is used for analysis rather than fact.
Olly is open about his use of AI – so all of us are free to evaluate on our own how much to rely on the results.
AI is going to change the world over decades – just as the steam engine, the microprocessor and the internet did.
It will make humans massively more productive over time.
But it is not a general intelligence superior to humans. It is not a source for absolute truth.
Its reliability rests on the quality of data fed to it, and the quality of the prompts.
John Say, you are quite clearly completely and utterly insane, as your tedious diatribes here every day prove beyond any shadow of doubt.
If Encyclopedia Britannica is not REAL as you suggest then what exactly is that collection of books on the library shelf.
Is it an optical illusion ????
Your inability to recognize reality is proof positive that you are completely and utterly insane beyond any redemption.
“John Say, you are quite clearly completely and utterly insane, as your tedious diatribes here every day prove beyond any shadow of doubt.”
ROFL
Project much.
“If Encyclopedia Britannica is not REAL as you suggest then what exactly is that collection of books on the library shelf.
Is it an optical illusion ????”
I am outright stating they are no different from AI
If you define real to include Britanica – they you have defined it to include AI.
“Your inability to recognize reality is proof positive that you are completely and utterly insane beyond any redemption.”
See above. Use any reasonable definition of real – and AI and Britannica fall on the same side.
If you wish to claim I am wrong and Britanica is real – than so is AI.
As to your idiotic stream of ad homimen – try a mirror.
John, back in 2012, I facilitated a root cause analysis in an online discussion group. The question was simple: We have many problems with many causes, but is there one root cause? It took nearly a year. Over 1,000 responses. People from different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives working through it step by step. And we arrived at roughly the same conclusion these two AI models arrived at in under a minute.
That doesn’t mean the AI did the thinking for me. It means it was able to synthesize, at scale and speed, patterns that human beings have already observed, debated, and documented over generations. The conclusion isn’t new. The speed is. The thinking still belongs to those willing to ask the question and follow the answer wherever it leads.
I agree. AI is massively important to the future, but it is just pattern matching.
It is a huge scaling up of the optical systems used in manufacturing to identify defective parts on the assembly line.
Further AI rapidly hit an upper limit which it is not going to be able to advance much without fundamental changes to computing that are not on the horizon. I am part of a startup that is attempting ONE means of getting another order of magnitude – it is really really really hard and no one is anywhere close yet.
And pretty much everything that constitutes such and advance turns absolutely everything about computing on its head.
All that said – we are at the very beginnings of making use of AI – we have decades productivity gained learning to take advantage of what we have now.
I do not rule out the possibility of REAL Artificial intelligence. But barring a miracle – not in my lifetime and probably not in my childrens.
Exactly. AI, Britannica, Wikipedia, or any other source is useless if no one bothers to ask the question in the first place.
Tools don’t create curiosity. They don’t create initiative. They don’t create the willingness to question assumptions or trace problems to their root.
They only respond to the person using them.
The real limiting factor has never been access to information. It’s been the willingness to seek it, follow it, and accept where it leads.
And I wish you the best with your startup. It sounds like you’re working on pushing the boundary of what these tools can become, which is where real progress always starts.
John, AI is less reliable than Britannica or Wikipedia. You absolutely cannot trust it for any question of fact, even the simplest. Every time I ask AI a question I then fact check it, and the majority of the time I find that it made it up. I still use it, but only as a starting point; I can ask it a vaguely worded question and it will point me to where in Wikipedia I should look for a real answer. (WP is generally reliable when it comes to dry facts that are not political. But even there one must have ones eyes open for vandalism. If a statement on WP seems wrong, check it, because you’ll usually find it is wrong.)
Millhouse, that’s exactly the right way to use it, as a starting point, not as an unquestioned authority.
But let’s be honest, that same standard applies to Britannica, Wikipedia, think tank reports, media articles, blog comments, and yes, AI. Even ChatGPT itself carries a disclaimer: ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info. That’s not a flaw. That’s an acknowledgment that verification has always been part of serious inquiry.
None of these sources are reality. They’re all compiled representations of information, and all of them can contain errors, bias, or omissions. The responsibility has always been on the person using the source to verify and trace it back. AI didn’t create that responsibility. It just made the search phase faster and more transparent.
And here’s the part everyone keeps avoiding: I’ve been completely open about using AI as a research tool, and despite all the criticism, no one has actually demonstrated that the conclusions I’ve presented are wrong. People keep attacking the tool.
But they haven’t disproven the work.
” People keep attacking the tool. But they haven’t disproven the work.”
What do you expect ? No one on the left can think critically. They are incapable of any examination off any argument beyond – does it produce the answer I like and if not, what can I insult to fallaciously undermine the argument.
On this blog, the pattern is obvious. Most of the anonymous attacks, insults, and ad hominem come from the left. They don’t address the argument. They don’t trace the logic. They don’t fact-check the conclusion.
They attack the tool. They attack the person. But they don’t disprove the work.
That tells you everything.
“AI is less reliable than Britannica or Wikipedia.”
AI is dependent on its sources and how the question is asked.
Wikipedia is wrong more than right on hot political subjects involving Trump.
WP doesn’t just randomly make things up. There’s a political bias, and there’s vandalism, but you can usually tell when something is vandalism. It smells wrong, and when you look at the edit history you can see when it was added, and who added it, and what else that person (or people at that IP) added, and figure out whether it’s correct.
AI just makes things up, all the time, on even the simplest questions of dry fact. On easily verified questions of dry fact. And when you correct it it apologizes, takes your correct on board, and makes up a new lie. Wash, rinse, repeat. It takes several attempts until it gives you the correct answer, which you can only know is correct by fact-checking it.
I use it when I’m not even sure what search terms to use, or which WP entry I want. Once it gives me an answer, even a wrong one, I know where to look.
No AI does not make things up.
AI is a pattern matching tool – nothing more. any answer it provides is a match against a pattern.
If you have an AI whose only source is Wikipedia – it will produce the same answer as Wikipedia.
But there is to my knowledge no such AI.
Most if not all AI’s use wikipedia AND lots of other sources.
That DECREASES the odds of bias – because there is almost always more bias in one source than in the consensus of a many sources.
“WP doesn’t just randomly make things up. There’s a political bias, “
“AI just makes things up, all the time, “
WP is OK for history, but even there, it is controlled by human bias. Humans write WP
AI is controlled by the programmers and where it accesses material. For ChatGPT, concerning politics of the day, it is WP, NYT, etc. That is why, when accessing material about highly debated topics, ChatGPT = WP.
It gets a lot of things wrong, but in most cases, it is the user’s fault for asking the wrong questions. In other cases, the user must check its accuracy by adding more questions.
One can always argue with ChatGPT on iffy things, but eventually it will agree with an intelligent user, because its ultimate answer for iffy things is dependent on the user. On political issues, a superficial search of ChatGPT is worthless to me. It leans left or far left because its inputs are leftist. Garbage in equals Garbage out. That is why it finds itself wrong days or months later because the MSM found itself wrong as well.
SM, Wikipedia is written by humans. Britannica is written by humans. The New York Times is written by humans. All of them reflect the inputs, assumptions, and biases of the people producing them. AI doesn’t invent bias. It reflects the body of human knowledge and opinion it was trained on. The same way every other reference source does. That’s why no serious person treats any single source as gospel.
The value isn’t in blind acceptance. The value is in comparison, tracing claims back to primary sources, and testing conclusions against reality. The real problem isn’t the tool.
The real problem is when people stop questioning the information they’re given, regardless of whether it comes from Wikipedia, the media, or anywhere else.
“AI is less reliable than Britannica or Wikipedia.”
Nope – except that AI does the lookup for you the only fundimental differences is that AI has several orders of magnitude more data available to it.
Absolutely AI is GIGO – but so is wikipedia – and even Britanica anymore.
“You absolutely cannot trust it for any question of fact, even the simplest.”
What does that mean ? I asked AI for the number of voting precincts in the US.
I doubt the number was perfectly correct. But with near certainty it was close.
I could have checked multiple other links – and I would hve gotten 5 other answers all different and none demonstrably better.
There are questions that AI will predictably get wrong. There are questions Wikipedia and Britannica will get wrong.
” Every time I ask AI a question I then fact check it, and the majority of the time I find that it made it up. ”
Pretty close to always – I can find exactly where AI came up with its answer from.
AI did not make up the answer it just found an answer some other source made up.
The differnence between AI and BRitiancia or Wikipedia is that AI typically is digesting MANY sources not one and often the errors and biases cancel.
But again – I find that I can easily predict when AI will be wrong.
AI is wrong when the majority of traditional sources are wrong.
Ask AI what caused the great depression – it will give you the answer from school text books.
A list of things that pretty much every economist now rejects.
But Britanica and Wikipedia will still give you the same wrong answer.
The great depression, like the great depression and every economic down turn had monetary causes.
In this case interest rates too low for too long.
The stock market crash, the bank panics are SYMPTOMS not causes.
Smoot Hawley was a mistake, but it almost certainly had little effect.
ASs the depression went global, global trade dried up – completely independant of Tariffs.
Regardless my point is I KNEW AI would give me the standard answer – not the right one.
Even the non-monatarists – blame “animal spirits” – not the stock market.
“I still use it, but only as a starting point; I can ask it a vaguely worded question and it will point me to where in Wikipedia”
If it takes you to wikipedia you are not getting any better an answer.
I love wikipedia but even its creators do not trust it anymore.
“I should look for a real answer. (WP is generally reliable when it comes to dry facts that are not political. But even there one must have ones eyes open for vandalism. If a statement on WP seems wrong, check it, because you’ll usually find it is wrong.)
Agreed. With the caveat that everything is political nowadays.
“. . . should I help you check off a quick list?”
Please tell me that you got the list. And that “car” is on it.
I’m getting the impression that many of the people attacking AI don’t actually know how to use it. They think it replaces thinking. It doesn’t. It starts the thinking process. It helps locate information faster. The thinking, validation, and judgment still belong to the person using it. AI isn’t an authority. It’s a tool.
And this connects to a bigger issue. Citizens aren’t supposed to be passive recipients of expert opinion. Our job isn’t to blindly trust experts, whether they’re bureaucrats, technocrats, or algorithms.
Our job is to understand enough to govern the system itself. To hold the experts accountable. To make sure the system operates within its intended boundaries.
We don’t have to be experts in everything. We have to be competent enough to oversee the people who claim to be.
Olly for the most part I agree.
But we already know that AI is subject to GIGO constraints – Garbage In Garbage Out.
If you query an english trained AI, a mandarin trained AI and a cantonese trained AI on tianamen square you will get 3 radically different answers, they will not even agree on the facts.
While I think AI is massively important moving forward – we have already hit a wall with regard to AI “general intelligence”
AI can not train on larger data sets without computational power increases that are just not happening anytime soon, in any reasonable period of time.
The result is Current “general” AI is really multiple AI’s with limited training data in different but overlapping areas addressing a question and then voting on the results.
There is nothing wrong with this appoach, but between it and GIGO the kind of broad general analysis you are trying to do with AI is little different in quality from your opinion.
Again – not meant as a critique of your argument – just do not vest AI with more authority than it has.
More recently I will ask AI questions like – “what is the average cost of public education in the US ?” I can get that answer myself from a variety of sources, but I can not get it in a second or too. It is just googling the answer on steriods, And it works very well so long as you can trust that the data was not corrupted. This is the problem with using Wikipedia as a source – wikipedia is a fantastic source – so long as the topic does not have some controversy associated with it – that is NOT limited to political controvery. Even asking Wikipedia what the tallest man made structure in the world is results in untrustworthy results – though you WILL get an accurate idea of how high give or take a few meters we have built.
AI is a tool that is going to dramatically boost human productivity for decades to come. The limits to our being able to boost productivity based on CURRENT AI will take decades to reach. This is as consequential in its future impact as the microcomputer or the internet.
But it is not going to radically change the world over night – no other major technological advance did that either.
And it is not going to replace the general intelligence of humans. Especially in areas that require extremely broad knowledge.
You’re exactly right about GIGO. That applies to everything. AI, Google, Wikipedia, Britannica, cable news, blog comments, all of it. The quality of the output depends on the quality of the input and the discipline of the person using it.
I don’t use AI to do my thinking for me. I use it the same way I use search engines, books, or databases. It helps locate information and synthesize perspectives faster. Then I validate it. I check the sources. I trace it back to the original material. That’s the actual work, and that part hasn’t changed. I’ve followed that process long before AI existed. The only difference now is speed. And the fact that I use more than one model is part of that validation process. If two independent systems trained on different data arrive at the same conclusion, that’s not proof of truth, but it’s a signal worth investigating further.
At the end of the day, AI is a tool. It accelerates access to information. It does not replace judgment, experience, or systems thinking. The conclusions I’ve drawn didn’t come from AI. They came from decades of studying systems, incentives, feedback loops, and outputs. AI just makes it easier to test those conclusions against a broader body of knowledge faster than was possible before.
“At the end of the day, AI is a tool.”
That is the best answer. We don’t use a shovel to hammer a nail into wood. We can do it, but we are using a tool improperly.
SM, Exactly. It’s a tool. No one accuses someone of cheating because they used a calculator instead of doing long division by hand. The calculator didn’t invent math. It just sped up the process.
Same thing here. AI doesn’t replace thinking. It accelerates research. It helps surface patterns, sources, and perspectives faster than manual search ever could. But the responsibility to validate, interpret, and draw conclusions still rests entirely on the person using it.
A shovel doesn’t build the foundation. The builder does.
. Olly, assessing a citizen’s capacity to understand section 1 article 8 of the Constitution and how IEEPA relates to it is difficult unless the result is assessed by cheering or booing of the citizenry at various protests or lawsuits filed after the SCOTUS has given its opinion of “regulate” during emergencies. Does a citizen’s capacity include a number as large as 35 trillion dollars of debt matter?
Government isn’t understood by the experts and socialism comes up? Government is too big. Do you, Olly, understand the federal reserve? The citizenry is incompetent certainly. What I miss most during the woke times is private property. Own it. I think that means take responsibility but I’m not sure.
The people discussed in the blurb are utterly incompetent as public officials. Own it.
The IEEPA question was not difficult and the main SCOTUS decision got it right.
Congress can not vaguely delegate major powers.
This should have been a 9-0 decision, as much respect as I have for Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh – they are just plain wrong.
But you are correct All questions are not that simple.
But the FUNDIMENTAL question is top down vs. bottom up.
Ultimately at scale society MUST be a bit of Both. Anarchy does not work, nor does totalitarianism (or socialism).
The core question is where is the inflection point where we shift from bottom up to top down.
There are myriads of positions and arguments, but the real world data suggests that ONLY those problem that REQUIRE the use of Force should be solved purely top down.
Even there where we have a clear bright line – that does not mean that problems that do not require force are not solved top down.
The Free market is a swirling cloud of hybrid approaches. Corporations especially big ones are top down, but they are also barred from using force.
Ultimately coases law tells us that outside the domain were force is necescary – freedom will find the best outcome overall.
The solution MIGHT be top down or bottom up, and it might even change tomorow.
But we know that purely top down approaches always fail and that the use of FORCE )aka government) is extremely inefficient and is only the best way when there are not alternatives that do not require force.
sorry, got logged out accidentally, the above is my post
And America was taken off the “manifest tenor” of the Constitution when secession MUST and COULD ONLY have been decided “not prohibited” and “fully constitutional,” and Lincoln stopped!
Where the —— was the Supreme Court then?
Rather, because secession is not prohibited, secession was prohibited.
America has been increasingly constitutionally corrupted into communism ever since.
American freedom persisted for a mere 71 years.
. No it didn’t 😂 the last time congress set a tariff was in 1934. It was delegated to the executive branch. What a mess.
Yes, exactly. I am very disappointed in the three dissenters. Their dissent was not faithful to conservative principles of law, or to their own positions when it was Biden. I hope this was a one-time aberration, and not a sign that they’ve turned into Trump worshipers.
Trump is often right, but he’s wrong on this one, as well as on birthright citizenship. I still expect the vote on that one to be 9-0, but this dissent has me worried that one or more of them might vote for Trump on that one too.
There is absolutely no doubt that Alito and Thomas will vote to affirm Trump’s insane birthright citizenship case.
Read Gorsuch’s concurrence. He is absolutely scathing in his criticism of Alito and Thomas in particular.
He all but calls Thomas insane without actually using that word.
My bet on BRC is that SCOTUS punts and rules 9-0 that the president does not have the authority to change the criteria for citizenship.
I beleive that BRC is really really important and getting rid of it is a huge mistake we will regret.
But there is a very good argument that Congress can by law do what Trump did by EO.
I do not know how SCOTUS would come down on that.
But I do not think they will ever have to.
SCOTUS will punt, say The president can not change the requirements for citizenship and the issue will die.
. No, anon, the SCOTUS opinion was generated by AI. It’s flawed.
You’re correct. I don’t pretend to understand the technical inner workings of every system designed to run this country. Very few people do, including many of the people running them. But I do understand systems.
My background is in process models, output measures, and variation. Every system is designed to produce exactly what it produces. If the output is deteriorating, the problem is in the structure, incentives, feedback loops, or the inputs into the system. Right now, we have $35 trillion in debt. That is not a rounding error. That is a system output. And it didn’t happen overnight. It is the accumulated result of millions of decisions made within a system that, in theory, is staffed and overseen by highly educated experts.
So the question becomes: if the experts understand the technical complexity, why do the outputs continue to deteriorate? Systems thinking teaches that when problems persist and worsen, despite expert management, the issue is rarely technical. It is structural. It is incentive-driven. And it is tied directly to the feedback mechanisms that either correct errors or allow them to compound.
I’ve simply applied that same systems thinking to the broader civic structure. The outputs speak for themselves.
Olly
our debt is a massive problem that seriously threatens to negatively impact our standard of living.
It is NOT however unmanageable, or an existential threat.
But it can be a very painful threat.
First if we can grow the economy faster than we grow the debt – we are fine.
One of the huge problems as found by Rheinhart and Roggof – not Conservatives in any way decades ago, is that the larger the debt is as a percent of GDP the more it negatively impacts growth.
i.e. if the scale of the debt relative to GDP gets too high you slowly start into a death spiral that leads to declining growth, stagnation
and even possibly default and decline.
R&R produced a rule of thumb that debt starts to significantly impact growth as it exceends 80% of GDP – we are past that.
But it is also a rule of thumb not a rule of nature.
The US is the largest economy in the world, we are the reserve currency of the world.
The global economy is dependant on the US economy.
We sneeze and the world catches cold.
If Greeces has a debt problem – the world hamstrings Greece.
If the US has a debt problem – the world strives as hard as possible to avoid hamstringing the US.
The 80% rule may not apply to the US – but that does not mean the US ability to grow debt faster than GDP is unlimited.
I would further note that even at our current levels – our debt is a drag on the economy, and it will become a worse drag as the debt to GDP ration rises.
Last – while with high enough growth current debt is sustainable.
That does not alter the fact that it is bad.
Our standard of living will rise faster with less debt and less government spending.
We KNOW that whether debt financed or not, that standard of living rises faster with smaller govenrment.
. It’s really past tense.
John, our analysis explains what will happen if nothing changes. Mine is focused on understanding what must change to stop the system from continuing to produce that outcome in the first place.
Agree.
Ester Duflo received a Nobel award for her work on what causes poverty pits. What causes poverty pits is crime, pervasive crime. It’s the output of a poverty pit system. How to disrupt the system is the question.
Here’s what you need to assimilate:
– Article 1, Section 8, Congress may tax for only debt, defense, and general welfare.
– Article 1, Section 8, Congress may regulate only the “value of money,” “commerce (i.e. buying and selling only) among nations, states, and Indian tribes,” and “land and naval Forces.”
– Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1, The Founders and Framers gave states the power to restrict the vote.
– The absolute 5th Amendment right to private property (abolished by Karl Marx) precludes governmental control of wages, hiring, prices, rent, union strikes, etc., etc., etc.
– The Manifest Tenor of the Constitution is to be preserved.
_________________________________________________________________
“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what [their powers] forbid.”
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
_________________________
“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
_____________________
The entire communist American welfare state is unconstitutional including, but not limited to, admissions affirmative action, grade-inflation affirmative action, employment affirmative action, quotas, welfare, food stamps, minimum wage, rent control, social services, forced busing, public housing, utility subsidies, CRT, DEI, WIC, SNAP, TANF, HAMP, HARP, TARP, PBS, NPR, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Environmental Protection Agency, Agriculture, Education, Labor, Energy, Obamacare, Social Security, Social Security Disability, Social Security Supplemental Income, Medicare, Medicaid, “Fair Housing” laws, “Non-Discrimination” laws, etc.
This is what you always do, Old George. You drop a wall of quotes and declarations, but never connect them to an actionable point. Are you just venting, or do you have something specific you want people to consider or do?
Everyone here knows the Constitution exists. The question is why the system no longer operates within its original constraints. If you’re not going to address that causal gap, then you’re not advancing the discussion. You’re just reciting scripture.
Did Lincoln not impose martial law and suspend habeas corpus?
If you cannot answer your question, the Founders will here:
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
– Declaration of Independence, 1776
Old George, yes, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. That’s not the question. The question is why systems reach the point where that even becomes possible.
You’re quoting the Declaration, but the Founders weren’t talking about one act. They were talking about a pattern, a long train of incremental moves that, over time, shift the system away from its original design.
That’s exactly why I did the research in the first place. I wasn’t studying the Declaration as history. I was studying it as a pattern recognition document. I saw the same kind of incremental drift happening now, each step justified on its own, but collectively moving the system somewhere the Founders explicitly warned about.
They weren’t reacting to one event. They were recognizing a trajectory. That recognition is what seems to be missing today.
. Olly, I appreciate your endeavor. At this point in woke time the only problem is digitization of all written historical evidence of American history, politics and law. There’s a mistake, a flaw, a fault in that system that changes everything.
OT: I try to distract myself sometimes with movies. “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” was funny and particularly the fishing boat scene. The movie has a tragic ending unfortunately. Everyone should just take a break sometimes.
PS I had to search Google and used it.
There is nothing different in uding AI that using google or using britanica, or using some study by a think tank.
John Say
Are you insane ???
A rhetorical question obviously. You are quite clearly insane, or otherwise an AI bot.
AI is “FAKE” Intelligence. It is the very definition of a contradiction in terms.
Encyclopedias and think tank studies are the products of REAL Intelligence from REAL people.
ATS – you clearly are totally clueless.
AI is NOT intelligence, it is pattern matching.
You feed into AI Britancia, Wikipedia, Google, …. massive amounts of information to “train” it.
So relatively simple calculus but on an extremely broad scale is used to process that data and create a bunch of pattern matching matrices and equations. you then run this in reverse to take questions run them through the same math backwords to esentially look up the answers. This is not signficantly different from the way Humans look things up in our brains.
“AI is “FAKE” Intelligence.”
Probably correct – we do not understand human intelligence enough to state that absolutely.
And without any doubt at all AI is incredibly similar to atleast PART of what is human intelligence.
But pundimentally AI is pattern matching.
3Blue1Brown does and excellent series on AI on youtube.
“It is the very definition of a contradiction in terms.”
No AI is pattern matching and we know pattern matching is a component of human intelligence.
We just do not know how large a component. Regardless AI is still a long way from real intelligence, and many obstacles including poor understanding of intelligence itself mean we are at the very least decades away for Real Artificial intelligence.
That does NOT however mean we do not have something incredibly valuable in AI,
and far more useful that Google or Wikipedia or Brtitanica.
“Encyclopedias and think tank studies are the products of REAL Intelligence from REAL people.”
As is AI. Where is it you think the data that AI processes comes from ?
ONE way of thinking of AI is that it is a sort of super Google – it is a far more powerful way to search massive amounts of data and get results.
Currently we have reached the limits of the amount of data that we can train an AI on – but that limit is millions of times larger than all of Wikipedia or Britannica.
Regardless if you think that Encyclopedias and studies are more real than AI – you have no understanding of where AI pulls its answers from. all AI is, a massively computationally intense, incredibly powerful preseeded search tool.
One that pulls its answers from Wikipedia and most every encyclopedia that ever was and then can search all of them and merge all the answers into a concensus.
I have repeatedly noted that AI is GIGO – garbage in Garbage out.
Wikipedia is a part of what goes IN. AI will be far better than Wikipedia if on a specific topic – most of the other sources it uses are less biased. AI will be worse, if Wikipedia is right and all other sources are wrong.
If you have 100 different sources for the same information – how often do you think 99 will be wrong and only 1 will be right ?
That is the difference between AI and Wikipedia or an encyclopedia, or various studies.
There is nothing AI can do that a Human can not do -= but in far greater time.
There are still many things a human can do that AI can’t.
AI is sort of like Google on Steriods – except that unlike Google – humans do NOT create “the algorithm”
The algorithm comes from a mathematical process on a massive amount of raw data – like encyclopedias
AI will get it wrong – not when the algorithm is biased, But when the majority of the data is biased.
That error will impact Google and human searching in exactly the same way
AI is going to change humanity – like the steam engine, electricity, the internet, the microcomputer.
Not because it is actually intelligent, but because it is s tool that does something humans are perfectly capable of FAR FAR faster.
Like a steam engine.
John, with AI you have to fact-check even the most basic facts. I’ve had AI lie to me multiple times about a simple question about the previous careers of US presidents. Something that I could have answered reliably by looking up each president’s WP entry. I thought I’d save time by just asking AI, but it took me three rounds of pointing out its ludicrous falsehoods before I got an answer that was consistent with my own research.
Millhouse, AI is a tool. Like any other tool, you have to know how to use it.
A hammer can build a house or smash your thumb. The outcome depends on the person holding it, not the tool itself.
If you ask sloppy questions, you’ll get sloppy answers. If you challenge it, refine the prompts, and trace the output back to primary sources, it becomes a very powerful research accelerator.
That’s the part you seem to be missing.
I’m the one who initiated this entire AI discussion, laid out my process, and was completely transparent about how I used it. Yet instead of fact-checking my conclusions or tracing my sources, you’re arguing about the existence of tool error, which everyone already understands.
You’re critiquing the hammer.
You haven’t even looked at the structure it helped build.
. Olly, I do appreciate what you’re saying. Is it really unalienable OR inalienable? Is it a Mandela effect? SCOTUS used AI to generate the tariff opinion. Why? Idk.
DJT could have done the same and SCOTUS isn’t needed. It’s flawed.
You must watch that movie.
If you are looking for answers consistent with your own research, then you are simply looking for biased answers that confirm your pre-existing biases.
That is not research
It is confirmation bias.
Milhouse – I am surprised almost to disbelief.
For AI to do worse than Wikipedia that means that the dozens of hundreds of other sources it uses must to a large extent be WORSE than Wikipedia.
AI does not THINK.
It does not create data – alteast not in the way you are using it.
It merely retrieves data
And Wikipedia is one of its many sources.
I can FORCE AI to generate errors – that occurs when you KNOW the majority of public data on a subject is wrong – like the causes of the great depression
On questions where he majority of sources are close to right, but do not perfectly agree you will get a concensus or average answer.
OLLY
Apparently you have no self-awareness of how stupid you sound. Dunning-Kruger in all its glory.
You seem to think that Artificial Intelligence is actually a substitute for REALITY.
How quaint.
I strongly suggest that you rely on REAL intelligence, but in your case this is quite obviously severely lacking.
You quoted Encyclopedia Britannica like it was gospel, and now you’re upset that I use tools to synthesize information? That’s rich. Britannica is literally other people summarizing reality for you. You didn’t discover Rome personally. You read about it. Same as everyone else.
I’ve spent years reading historians, primary documents, court opinions, and I listed every source in my book. Every one. No hiding the ball. What seems to bother you isn’t the tool. It’s the conclusion. Because deep down you know it’s true. Self-government only works if the people themselves are capable of sustaining it. When they’re not, the system gets hollowed out.
You can throw insults all day, but that doesn’t change how civilizations actually rise and fall. Reality doesn’t care about your tone.
OLLY
Unfortunately this response simply reinforces my assessment of your stupidity.
You seem to think that I quote Encyclopedia Britannica which I have never, ever done. Some other Anonymous may have done so, but not me.
I have noted an overarching theme on this worthless blog that the regular MAGA denizens like you seem to think that all the Anonymous commenters are actually one and the same. You take critical Anonymous comments and try to use a whataboutism approach to fault the critic by ascribing the source of the comment to a completely different commenter. This is most unusual and indeed delusional thinking, but not unexpected for non-thinking drones like MAGA cult members.
. Avoid the insults, anon. It’s emotional and furthers nothing.
Then distinguish yourself. You chose “Anonymous.” That was your decision, not mine. If you don’t want to be confused with other Anonymous commenters, the burden isn’t on everyone else to guess which faceless voice you are. It’s on you to step out from behind the mask.
Right now, all anyone sees is another Anonymous commenter throwing insults instead of making an argument. You can call people stupid, drones, or whatever else makes you feel better, but that doesn’t actually address the substance of anything I said.
So here’s your opportunity to distinguish yourself. Make an actual argument.
OLLY
Unfortunately you continue to display your stupidity and delusional thinking for all the world to see.
You claim that I do not address the substance of anything YOU say.
Really ???
You have already admitted that the substance of what YOU say is actually what Fake Intelligence told you.
Look at the post above at 1:37pm.
Unfortunately you continue to display your delusional thinking.
There’s a difference between anonymity and identity.
Yes, “OLLY” isn’t my legal name. But it is an identity. It has continuity. It has history. It has a consistent style, consistent substance, and consistent positions over time. People know what to expect, and they can evaluate credibility based on that track record. That’s how credibility is built.
We’ve all seen it here. “Old George” now posts as Anonymous, but it’s still obvious when it’s him. Same voice. Same arguments. Same patterns. Identity persists because consistency persists. That’s completely different from drive-by Anonymous comments that appear once, throw insults, and disappear back into the fog.
Credibility doesn’t come from a legal name. It comes from continuity, accountability, and being willing to stand behind what you say over time. Without that, there’s no individual voice.
There’s just what I’ll call The Blob.
My identity is –> . ☺ I don’t insult. Sometimes I’m a 🌲 because Justice Alito is good.
Your claim that you did not cite Britanica demonstates the problems with posting anonymously.
When you post anonymously – you have no history and no credibility and you force other to make guesses are to which anonymous poster you are.
You have the right to post anonymously.
You do NOT have the right to any presumption of credibility respect or authority that can not be gleened from the 4 ccorners of your instant post.
At the same time – others can NOT be found significantly in error for misattributing other anonymous posts to you.
In point of fact – it is not possible to know if that is true – you could well be lying when you claim other anonymous posts are not yours.
Regardless the point is that your credibility when posting anonymously is limited to what you can provie inside the 4 couners of that one post.
And you can not prove you did not previously use Britanica as a source.
That may be true. It also may be a lie. YOU know, but absolutely no one else can verify that either way. and you can not prove what Olly assumed is incorrect.
The point is you have no credibility about anything posting anonymously and so long as you do you can not build credibility.
Anyone who chooses to comment as “Anonymous” must assume responsibility for every other comment made in the same name. If you don’t want to be held responsible for those comments, pick a damned name and use it consistently.
Milhouse
Unbelievably stupid comment.
There are more Anonymi that are clearly on board with the MAGA cult than people like me who try to point out your insanity.
You and others constantly whine about the Anonymous posters who criticize you, but not a word about those who agree with you.
It is an insanely stupid comment to say that “Anonymous” must assume responsibility for every other comment made in the same name.”
There are more MAGA Anonymous commenters than not, so how can you possibly rationalize this insane comment.
You can’t, because your thinking is delusional. You are trapped in the MAGA cult of non-thinking drones.
You are the one who chooses to comment under “Anonymous”. Since there is no way to distinguish you all from each other, you must assume collective responsibility for everything posted under that name. That is plain common sense. If you don’t like it, don’t post anonymously. Pick a name and stick with it.
“Anonymous” must assume responsibility for every other comment made in the same name.”
That is how Anonymous posters should be treated. Any Anonymous posting can be considered from the same Anonymous poster one is talking to. People make that choice. Anonymous people who have no identity lack a type of personhood human beings relate to. So, you can say what you wish but we choose which anonymous poster represents the anonymous under discussion.
. Apparently SCOTUS doesn’t know either. 😂
. The system is flawed creating a faulty output.
Ad homimen is not argument.
Using AI to make an argument is not different from using any other source of authority.
AI is not a substitute for reality. It is no different from any other source of authority. Though it is more credible in most instances than Wikipedia or Britanica
And 10,000 times more credible than MSNOW
John, maybe the real issue here is assumption. Some people assume that because I cite AI, I must be using it the same way they use their preferred sources. They read it, accept it, and move on. That’s never been my process.
Whether it’s Britannica, Wikipedia, a court opinion, a historian, or AI, I don’t treat any of it as gospel. I treat it as a starting point. Then I validate it. I trace it back to primary sources. I compare competing explanations. I look at system outputs and see which explanation actually aligns with reality. I was doing that long before AI existed. AI just makes the search phase faster. It doesn’t eliminate the validation phase.
The irony is, the loudest critics of the tool seem far more interested in attacking the tool than engaging the argument itself. Ad hominem is easy. Root cause analysis is harder.
OLLY
OK, lets think about what you just said in this latest comment.
You say that you treat AI as a starting point, validate it, and trace it back to primary sources.
REALLY ?? You are obviously joking.
In your original comment @12:17pm you said that you consulted 2 different AI models. You further stated: ” I then took each reply and provided it to the other model to evaluate. I did this 3 times and here were the two final outputs for the root cause”
By your own admission your “validation” process was simply to ask the the 2 different models to evaluate each other’s answers. Do you really think that this is an example of “validation” by “tracing back to primary sources”. That is simply asking one fake intelligence source what it thinks of the other fake intelligence source.
But you go out even further on the limb of insanity by stating that you repeated this process 3 times as if that somehow enhances your completely absurd notion of “validation”.
You are just as insane as your buddy John Say, and your high minded conversation with him here today about how you supposedly use AI is completely divorced from the reality of how you already admit to its use.
I strongly suspect that you share a room with John Say at an institution where you are confined for your own protection.
You keep stepping on the same rake.
The point of using two AI models wasn’t validation. It was comparison. And I was completely transparent about that. I explicitly labeled which output was Model A and which was Model B. I didn’t present their words as my own. I didn’t hide it. The entire exercise was out in the open.
I already arrived at that conclusion back in 2012 after a year-long root cause analysis with over 1,000 human responses. Long before AI existed. The AI didn’t produce the conclusion. It independently arrived at the same one. That’s called corroboration, not dependence. The validation comes from tracing those conclusions back through history, system outputs, incentives, and primary sources. Rome didn’t collapse because ChatGPT said so. The debt didn’t hit $35 trillion because an AI hallucinated it.
You’re attacking a demonstration tool while ignoring the underlying argument entirely. Which tells me you’re not interested in whether the conclusion is true. You’re just trying to discredit the messenger because you can’t refute the message.
“cause analysis with over 1,000 human responses.”
“The Wisdom of Crowds”.
Yes. Exactly SM. The wisdom of crowds. Thank you.
It took over a year and more than 1,000 human responses to work through that root cause back in 2012.
What’s telling isn’t that AI said it. It’s that independent systems converged on the same conclusion humans already reached the hard way.
That doesn’t replace thinking. It confirms the pattern.
John Say
Insanity is not an argument.
If you think that AI is MORE credible than Encyclopedia Britannica, then you are completely and utterly insane. You have lost all vestiges of anything even remotely resembling reality.
But then that has always been obvious from your thoroughly demented diatribes here every day.
John. You are missing the whole point. This whole thread started with someone saying that Olly admits writing comments (to much applause and likes) that are actually not his, they are just AI. But he never acknowledged that until now, after being called out. Both AI and Wikipedia or Britannica or whatever are based on INPUT sources. But strangely, AI admits a bias (as did Wikipedia, which does not vet input sources), whereas Britannica and other encyclopedic sources are vetted sources. Here, lookhttps://interestingengineering.com/science/google-ceo-admits-bias-in-ai-tool-and-promises-remedy
AND after Wikipedia GOTCALLED OUT, it now ADMITS the same
https://www.justthink.ai/blog/wikipedia-vs-ai-the-fight-for-factual-integrity
I think what’s happening here is projection. You assume I use AI the same way you use your preferred sources. You find something that agrees with you, accept it, and repeat it. That’s never been my process.
I use sources, including AI, to test ideas. I challenge them. I trace them back. I compare them against actual system outputs and historical reality. There’s a difference between using a tool to validate thinking and using a tool to replace thinking.
Mine is analysis. Yours is regurgitation.
OLLY
This is completely nonsensical gobbledegook and absolutely NOT what you say you did with your post @12:17pm.
You explicitly stated your process was to ask the the 2 different models to evaluate each other’s answers. That is simply asking one fake intelligence source what it thinks of the other fake intelligence source. And you simply repeated that process 3 times as if that somehow provides “validation”. If you think that is “validation” by “tracing back to primary sources “, then you are completely out of your mind.
Your high-minded description of your supposed “process” that you claim to follow, is absolutely NOT what you already admit to doing.
You’re fixated on the tool because it’s easier than confronting the conclusion. You keep arguing about the flashlight instead of looking at what it’s illuminating.
At some point this stops being misunderstanding and starts being an inability to follow a simple chain of reasoning. You’re reacting to keywords instead of tracing the logic. That’s not critical thinking. That’s reflex.
“Mine is analysis. Yours is regurgitation.”
What do almost all the anonymous posters have in common? Regurgitation.
What do most of the named posters on this blog have? Critical thinking skills.
Critical thinking skills ????
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Good one!! That is hilarious.
You obviously do comedy for a living.
Is that you Seth Meyers, hiding behind a rather unsubtle pseudonym ??????
Does critical thinking exist in what you said? No
Is it regurgitation? Yes.
With every comment, you prove my point.
Good point. I’d suggest anyone that truly believes what they is true would want to take clear ownership by having a unique identifier.
SM, critical thinkers inherently know that they are critical thinkers. They do not feel the need, or have the compulsion, to proclaim their critical thinking skills to the unwashed masses.
On the other hand, non-thinkers who belong to cults do feel compelled to proclaim their supposed “critical thinking skills” in a pathetic attempt at self-validation. If they were in fact “critical thinkers” then they would not belong to a cult.
As Dunning and Kruger so elegantly showed, stupid people are too stupid to realize how stupid they are.
Invoking Dunning–Kruger doesn’t make you right. It just means you’re trying to win the argument without actually making one.
Critical thinkers don’t hide their reasoning. They lay it out so it can be examined, challenged, and tested. That’s how credibility gets built. Not by throwing insults, but by tracing the logic and proving where it breaks.
You haven’t done that.
You haven’t shown where my reasoning is wrong. You haven’t shown where my conclusions fail. You’ve just thrown labels and hoped that would substitute for thinking.
That’s not critical thinking.
That’s evasion.
OLLY
My, my, my. A little sensitive aren’t we. Hit a nerve maybe.
You are entirely missing my point, suggesting that you are not a critical thinker.
You are correct that, “Critical thinkers don’t hide their reasoning. They lay it out so it can be examined, challenged, and tested.”
However, my point is that critical thinkers do not feel the need, or have the compulsion, to proclaim their critical thinking skills to the unwashed masses as Meyer is obviously doing when he claims that he, and the other named commenters here are critical thinkers.
When you feel that have to try to convince people that you are a critical thinker, then you are not a critical thinker.
“SM, critical thinkers inherently know that they are critical thinkers. They do not feel the need, or have the compulsion, to proclaim their critical thinking skills to the unwashed masses.”
In your case, this has to be spelled out. Your critical thinking skills are limited to washing your hands after going to the bathroom.
Your repetition of D-K truly demonstrates you don’t think. You regurgitate.
Do you have any actual point to make other than a petty insult.
I am tempted to respond by calling you a poopy-head, but I will refrain. Such a response would be well beyond your level of intellectual development and capacity to understand.
Take note, I can, or I can provide a reason behind what I say. You regurgitate.
Your comment above, at 9:44am, begins by simply repeating my original assertion, that being as follows:
“SM, critical thinkers inherently know that they are critical thinkers. They do not feel the need, or have the compulsion, to proclaim their critical thinking skills to the unwashed masses.”
Is that repetition by you not regurgitation?
By your own definition, is that not evidence for your lack of critical thinking skills?
. Has anyone explained HONESTY to AI?
. Olly, I asked Google if it was honest. It said it refers to an honesty policy but answers were a a popular consensus and not truthful.
Lent 2026
In 2026, Lent is observed from Wednesday, February 18, to Thursday, April 2.
By: Sarah Pruitt – History.com ~ February 13, 2026
https://www.history.com/articles/lent-history
🌱 🌼 🌷 🐝🌸🌾🍃
Lent starts soon with Ash Wednesday. When are Easter 2026, first day of spring?
Ash Wednesday is soon, signaling the start of 40 days of reflection and repentance known as Lent.
Unlike fixed holidays, the dates for movable feasts shift every year. Some depend on the denomination that is celebrating.
By: Bonnie Bolden – Mississippi Clarion Ledger ~ Feb. 17, 2026
https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2026/02/16/ash-wednesday-lent-easter-first-day-of-spring-how-long-lent-2026-plan-your-family-calendar-now/88692673007/
I was unaware that talk shows fell under the “equal time” rule. Nonetheless, I agree it would have been righteous to interview the opposing candidate however not legally required (which you failed to note clearly). I also totally agree with the “style” over substance observation. This would be far more powerful and impactful if you would have given “equal time” to both parties egregious behavior. An equal number of examples from each party. Can you not think of other programs/channels behaving the same way from the other party? Can you not think of an equal number of candidates from the opposing party behaving the same way (providing the same level of detail)?
. Government is currently incompetent, anon, because truly intelligent people can’t give up time for civic duty. They’re too busy making money and enjoy economics much more. It’s gone to the dogs hasn’t it. Good will and honesty are prerequisite for civic engagement.
Mostly correct, and mostly how we actually want it.
When ever people argue “we do not have the best people” doing X,
That beggars the question of what are they doing and what is the most valuable use of the best and brightest.
If we want better police – we cn pay them more – and we will shift better people from nursing, enginering, politics, …. to law enforcement.
If we want better teachers – we must take them from other fields they are needed.
If we want better government – that means those people are not entrepreneurs or teachers of engineers or doctors.
The ONLY resource that is truly limited is the human mind.
One of the reasons for limited government is that our best and brightest are better used elsewhere.
Rather than bemoan that there are only 1% of people int he top 1% (using any criteria) we should think about how to make what we have work with those we have got.
Many on the left here like to rant that ICE and everyone their disagree with is incompetent – which is nonsense.
But do we really want our Elon Musks making arrests of illegal aliens ?
Do we want them in the house or the senate ? Or do we want them doing exactly what they are doing now ?
We are better off when we are closer to each person engaged in their personal best use, rather than trying to put the best people to whatever job we are fixated on at the moment.
. I was suggesting civic service, not a lifetime career.
. People such as Professor Turley might take time out of GW and do civic service in the House, 4 years. Then via service we do get the best.
The issue is broadcast vs other forms of delivery. So long as a show is broadcast over the air – as opposed to streaming, what is OTA is subject to the equal time rule.
There is a separate debate as to whether the equal time rule is constitutional.
But the lest time it was tested the supreme court find it valid.
Maybe what voters of both parties can agree on: there is no executive branch agency with the authority to violate the free speech clause of the First Amendment. The First Amendment has never had a constitutional-amendment granting that authority to any agency or any official.
That’s why decades ago, Hollywood executives led by Jack Valenti, created the “Parental Ratings System” rating movies, shows, video games, etc “PG, PG-13, R, Mature Audiences, etc.
In other words this constitutional issue was already solved, only parents and adults have censorship authority, government does not have censoring authority over anyone.
The courts decided about a century ago that the broadcast spectrum is government property, and therefore it can regulate broadcast speech on a value-neutral (as opposed to content-neutral) basis just as it can regulate speech on its physical property. That’s the basis for the FCC’s authority, and that’s why it doesn’t extend to cable or streaming.
Nothing to see here, move along…
Bondi and Patel insist the Epstein investigation is closed. Kristi Noem and Kash Patel refuse to give Minnesota police evidence in the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. ICE defies over 4,400 court orders and refuses members of Congress or the press entrance to its brutal concentration camps. Trump goes after the FBI agents who uncovered Putin’s efforts to make him president in 2016. He and his family make $4 billion off his presidency in less than a year. Trump sucks up to Putin.
Anonymous says blah blah blah Trump sucks up to Putin. Never mind that Bill Clinton got $500,000
from Putin for a one hour speech in Moscow. Never mind that Hillary Clinton sucked up to Putin when she gave him the infamous restart button. The Button has something In common with the Learing Center in Minneapolis. They were both spelled wrong. Anonymous was a specialist consulted in both matters. Why not? She knows everything else. Narcissist wafer with your tea this morning madam.
TiT,
And to think, this is the best the leftists have.
Last I checked, Clinton is no longer president. If he broke the law prosecute him.
“Bondi and Patel insist the Epstein investigation is closed. ”
If you beleive there are still cases to be made – there are 50 states as well as numeous coutries that have jurisdiction over any crimes that were committed. GB just arrested Former Prince Andrew.
“Kristi Noem and Kash Patel refuse to give Minnesota police evidence in the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.”
There were no murders and MN has no jurisdiction.
“ICE defies over 4,400 court orders”
Name ONE. Myriads of court orders have been issued – most have been overturned – but those that could be obeyed without a time machine have been.
“refuses members of Congress”
False. Members of congress can examine an ICE fascility at any time, but these are secure fascilities and if a congressmen shows up unannounced it may take some time to arrange a tour safely. ‘
Congressional staff are required to provide atleast 24hrs notice.
” the press”
There is no press right to enter any government fascility much less a secure one.
“entrance to its brutal concentration camps.”
That would be detention centers that were all built and used under Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden ?
Until just recently – Trump has not had funges to build or renovate fascilities.
You say these fascilities are brutal concentration camps.
What evidence do you have ?
Those being detained can agree at any time to leave the US receive 2600 and they will be put on a plane to go home within hours.
“Trump goes after the FBI agents who uncovered Putin’s efforts to make him president in 2016.”
So Trump went after a non existant person ?
You do know the collusion delusion has been thoroughly debunked ?
” He and his family make $4 billion off his presidency in less than a year.”
Because the US government has what to do with Crypto Currencies ?
” Trump sucks up to Putin.”
By stopping the sale of santions russian oil, and confiscating shadow fleet ships ?
By disempowering Russian vasal states like Venezuella, Cuba, Iran ?
Russia is in the worse shape they have been in the Ukraine war since its start.
They are running out of tanks, they are dependant on Iran and North Korea for weapons and Amunition and
Iran is no longer delivering to Russia – that leaves Russia 40% short on its supplies to continue the war,
Russia is also running out of cash because it increasingly can not sell oil.
Trump has done far more to end the war in Ukraine and disempower russia than anyone.
But idiots like you think Trump is Putins puppet ?
Did you read Turley’s article ?
Democrats – like you are engaging in Crazy lies – and you expect the rest of us to bite ?
Sorry, few are buying your tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.
You are well know liars.
“There were no murders and MN has no jurisdiction.”
Murder is a state crime, not Federal.
ICE Agents took Pretti’s gun, then shot him seconds later. That is murder in my book.
““There were no murders and MN has no jurisdiction.”
Murder is a state crime, not Federal.”
The killing of a federal officer or a killing by a federal officer in the course of their duties is exclusively FEDERAL
The constitution makes federal law supreme where there is any overlap
If you do not like this – change the constitution.
Regardless this is nothing new.
Waco, Ruby Ridge are just a few instances in which federal officers murdered people and states could do nothing.
“ICE Agents took Pretti’s gun”
False, AN ICE Agent took pretti’s gun.
Not multiple agents, The agent who took the gun did NOT shoot Pretti, and it is actually clear from the videos and audio in particular that the other agents (or Pretti) were NOT aware off the guns removal.
Further it appears highly likely that Prettis “satterday night special) misfired while being removed. You can clearly hear one shot, followed by the officers backing away from Pretti, and then shooting Pretti as he reached for where the gun was and tried to rise.
“That is murder in my book.”
And your book is wrong.
The standard for self defense is well established.
A gun was fired.
Someone shouted “Gun, Gun. Gun”
Pretti reached for where his gun was.
Each of those Alone constitutes sufficient cause for an officer dealing with a person resisting arrest, can justifiably use deadly force.
There is a reason that resisting arrest is a huge mistake.
There is a reason taking a gun to a protest is a huge mistake.
There is a reason that resisting arrest while in possession of a gun is a colossal mistake.
Only one of the above is a crime – resisting arrest.
But while you are in the act of committing a crime of violence – we do NOT demand perfection of law enforcement, we merely demand a reasonable belief.
The officers in question had a reasonable belief that at the time they shot him – Pretti was a threat to their lives, and that of others.
Pretti’s ownership of a gun was legal.
Pretti’s bringing it to a protest was legal – though he did not have ID or his permit with him and that is not legal.
But these and other free choices on the part of Pretti increased the risk to himself and others.
The left thought the NRA and gun rights groups would defend Pretti – with tiny exceptions they did not.
Possession of a gun is a right – but it still comes with responsibility.
There is no right to do anything you please with that gun without consequences.
John Say,
“ refuses members of Congress”
False. Members of congress can examine an ICE fascility at any time, but these are secure fascilities and if a congressmen shows up unannounced it may take some time to arrange a tour safely. ‘
Congressional staff are required to provide atleast 24hrs notice.”
But they are still being refused entry. The safety issue is used as an excuse to prolong the unannounced visit. The point of showing up unannounced is to catch those running the facility in the act of non-compliance. It’s a detention facility which is already safe. It’s not a prison. It’s a detention facility meant to keep non-violent criminals which are the majority of detainees. The truly violent individuals are not kept in such facilities. They are immediately deported or held in more secure sections.
Staffing are not required to notify DHS or the facility a congressman/woman is coming. The actual law does not say prior notification is required of congressmen in order to show up.
“ ICE defies over 4,400 court orders”
Name ONE. Myriads of court orders have been issued – most have been overturned – but those that could be obeyed without a time machine have been.”
I can name three,
Failure to bring back Kilmar Obrego Garcia, even when the Supreme Court told them to bring him back.
State of Oregon v. Trump, 3:25-cv-01756 (D. Or.)
Castanon Nava v. Department of Homeland Security, 1:18-cv-03757 (N.D. Ill.)
Pedro Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, 2:25-cv-05605 (C.D. Cal.)
https://www.cato.org/blog/admin-misleads-ignores-courts-most-often-immigration-cases
These are few of the thousands of cases documented by the libertarian Cato institute.
“But they are still being refused entry.”
Nope.
“The safety issue is used as an excuse to prolong the unannounced visit. ”
Not relevant – it is still a real issue.
Those running the facility are responsible for the safety of the congressmen as they tour a fascility that is not designed to have random people wandering through.
“The point of showing up unannounced is to catch those running the facility in the act of non-compliance. ”
Correct, but not relevant to the fact that the fascility is still responsible for the safety of the congressperson.
“It’s a detention facility which is already safe.”
Mostly true AS IT IS TYPICALLY USED.
It is not designed to have random people wander through.
“It’s not a prison.”
yeah, it pretty much is. If it was not – you would not be able to raise a habeaus claim.
Regardless, there are people in ICE custody whose only risk is they will flee.
There are others who have killed people.
“It’s a detention facility meant to keep non-violent criminals which are the majority of detainees.”
Nope. many of those being detained are non-violent – all are not.
“The truly violent individuals are not kept in such facilities.”
The fascility in NJ which has been the focus of this nonsense – had violent offenders.
“They are immediately deported”
Nope, EVERYONE detained by ICE must have the oportunity for a habeaus hearing – so said SCOTUS.
In some jurisdictions that can take 48hrs, in others 90+days.
But the detainee has the right to that hearing and will be held until that hearing unless they waive that right.
“held in more secure sections.”
ICE arrests people who are of little danger to others, and people who are of great danger to others.
They are ALL immediately transported to the nearest fascility in which they can be detained.
They MAY remain there for days or hours. ICE MAY separate them – according to whatever criteria it wishes – and there are many criteria.
There is not as an example 4000 ICE beds in MN so often people are transported within hours to TX where they will be kept in much larger fascilities.
I would expect that most ICE facilities – have secure portions for non-dangerous people and even more secure fascilities for dangerous people.
Regardless ICE sorts by a variety of criteria. As ONE example – those with existing deportation orders can in most cases be put on a plane in a few days from TX – but it will take months in MN. ICE likely transports those it can deport quickly to TX where they will only stay a few days.
ICE is working HARD to keep the flow rate as high as possible.
Capacity in 2024 was only about 60,000. As the provisions of BBB start to take effect capacity is being expanded to 135,000
But 1M people were deported last year. That means the average deportee was held for 15 days before being put on a plane.
Again – those with deportation orders can be deported in a few days in TX – but not in most of the country.
Those without are likely to spend atleast 6months in detention.
DHS has to manage the populations of these fascilities if it is to sustain the deportation of 1M people/yr.
Trump has directed that ICE is to deport 2M/yr.
That means both more officers, more beds, and maintaining speedy due process.
DHS with near certainty has segregated populations – but it is highly unlikely that the most important criteria is whether they are violent or not.
Fascilities can house violent and nonviolent offenders – we do that all the time in jails.
While MOST parts if ICE facilities are more like minimum security facilities.
It is absolutely certain that all ICE detention centers have provisions for very dangerous people.
Otherwise they would have to drive arround with all dangerous illegals until they could fly them to a more secure fascility.
“Staffing are not required to notify DHS or the facility a congressman/woman is coming.The actual law does not say prior notification is required of congressmen in order to show up.”
The law does not require notice for a CONGRESSMEN. It does require 24hrs notice for Staff.
This was addressed almost a year ago – and the law is readily available.
“I can name three,
Failure to bring back Kilmar Obrego Garcia, even when the Supreme Court told them to bring him back.”
The supreme court did not say bring him back They required the DOJ to update the courts one efforts to attempt to bring him back
While recognizing that he was outside of the jurisdiction of US courts and they could not order his return.
Regardless GArcia has been returned, is being tried in TN
So even your idiotic claim that he was ordered returned has been followed.
“State of Oregon v. Trump, 3:25-cv-01756 (D. Or.)”
There are 160 filings in this case – but as best as I can tell the 9th circuit has stayed much of the order.
Regardless, the NG is not federalized anywhere in the country right now much less Oregon.
So once again Trump is obeying the courts order – whether than order is valid or not.
“Castanon Nava v. Department of Homeland Security, 1:18-cv-03757 (N.D. Ill.)”
This is a consent decree that was entered into by the Biden DOJ in 2021, that expired in march 2025.
There is a class actions uit to try to revive it which DOJ is opposing.
The court is improperly and without jurisdiction trying to expand an expired consent decree to cover people it never applied to.
Again with near certianty DOJ will win this.
Regardless it is still another TRO/PI – not a final determination – it is on the wrong side of several recent SCOTUS decisions.
It covers only Illinois and parts of Wisconsin.
It is a ludicrosly stupid case – that actually has nothing to do with the original consent decree,
The core claim is that Warrants are required to detain illegal immigrants.
That is contrary to decades of law.
ANY Law enforcement can detain ANYONE on REASONABLE SUSPICION.
That is the core to every traffic stop that ever was, or every police officer that stopped you for questioning.
It is the course to “stop and frisk” which SCOTUS found constitutional.
Reasonable suspicion is all that is necescary to demand ID. Failure to produce ID then constitutes probable cause, and you can now be arrested. That is True whether we are talking ICE or any other LEO.
Do you really expect the supreme court is going to reverse pretty much the entirety of search ans seizure law ?
Regardless, as noted this applies to Illionois and parts of Wisconson
Further this case has been SETTLED
https://www.ice.gov/doclib/legalNotice/CastanonNava-settlement.pdf
Start of settlement.
“Under 8 U.S.C. § 1357(a)(2) / INA § 287(a)(2), Immigration & Customs Enforcement
(“ICE”) Officers may conduct warrantless arrests if there is “reason to believe that the alien [] [to
be] arrested is [present] in the United States in violation of any [U.S. immigration] law and is likely
to escape before a warrant can be obtained for [the] arrest.””
Which is barely different from what I stated above. I would further note that the settlement only applies to the specific plaintiffs.
And the agreed statement of policy only applies to the 7th cirticuit. It ONLy applies to warrantless arrests on the grounds of potential flight, it imposes no constraints on warrantless arrests for reasons other than flight. And the determination of what constitutes potential to flee is based on the reasonable officer standard given the knowledge they have at the time of the arrest.
There is No admission by DHS or finding by the court that anything different occured.
So Once again YOU LOSE
ICE is obeying a settlement agreement that binds them to do what they were doing before.
“Pedro Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, 2:25-cv-05605 (C.D. Cal.)”
I have not botthered to look up the case – because there is a supreme court STAY on the lower court order.
The stay was granted by Justice Kagan
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a169_5h25.pdf
The core of the case seems to be close to your 7th circuit case – except that in the Stay Kagan say the government is likely to prevail and states the law on warrantless arrests CORRECTLY
You can read the stay.
So Once again YOU LOSE
“https://www.cato.org/blog/admin-misleads-ignores-courts-most-often-immigration-cases”
Cato which was once a libertarian basition has been taken over by left wing lunatics.
I am not interested in what is nothing more than an opinion peice.
“These are few of the thousands of cases documented by the libertarian Cato institute.”
Even the cato argument is NOT that the administration is not following the law, or court orders it is the highly subjective claim that the administration is misinforming the courts.
You do not seem to understand that when the rest of us herar words like mal-information, disinformation, and misinformation,
Our eyes gloss over at more left wing nut 1984 Newspeek.
If DOJ is LYING to the courts, then the courts should hold DOJ in contempt. Doing so will have consequences for DOJ AND the courts.
If DOJ is actually lying to the courts – that would be criminal contempt and could result in Jail.
If the court is lying about contempt – that could result in criminal charges and impeachment.
But while various left wing nut judges has Threatened contempt NONE have actually charged contempt.
That is because when you get read of the left wing nut 1984 Newspeek
There are Real standard to measure LIES.
Disliking what someone is saying – does not make it a lie.
Arguments you do not like are not lies.
Legal arguments you think are wrong are not lies.
No one is threatening to Jail ACLU or Above the Law or myriads of left wing nut legal groups that have come to defend illegals and others in court for arguments that lost.
Except with rare exceptions – Trump has WON in most of the courts in the country or at appeal or before the supreme court.
Does that mean all the lawyers challenging DOJ are liars guilty of “misleading the courts” ?
I asked you for ONE example – you provided NONE
In each and every case DOJ either won or mostly won,
Further they complied with pending court orders until the cases were settled or the orders were stayed.
Then you claim CATO claims DOJ mislead the courts – that is a completely different claim, and havs nothing at all to do with the issue of whether DOJ.DHS.ICE are complying with court orders.
My wife is a major criminal appellate defense lawyer – she loses almost all the time.
YOUR argument is that she is misleading the courts.
Yet no court has ever found that.
You and Cato are making a false claim that making an argument you do not like is lying.
Unlike my Wife – DOJ wins almost all the time.
Does that mean Cato and the lawyers opposing DOJ are all liars ?
Absolutely not!
I have been very careful NOT to attack the lawyers challenging Trump.
I think they are wrong, I think they are politically biased.
But I 100% support any lawyer making any argument before a court.
I think the courts are WRONG to limit the arguments any party can make in their cases.
To be clear I am talking Arguments – not false testimony about facts.
It is the judges, the ccourts that MUST get it right, that can not be politically biased,
that can not buy bad arguments.
I have confined my attack to lunatic left judges. Not lawyers.
. Are you saying that anyone listed in the millions of Epstein papers should be prosecuted for solicitation of prostitutes at the word of prostitutes themselves some allegedly minors who wouldn’t know woody Allen from Allen Dershowitz? Those are civil suits coming up. Epstein and Guifree, co-conspirators, and Maxwell incerated is the end of criminal prosecutions. Guifree estate will be sued as the women will eventually expose her as an Epstein like blackmailer, extortionist. Patel and Bondi don’t have a death wish.
More lies. As usual, not one word of truth at all.
Once again JT says look anywhere but at the Prez…
The recent DOJ release included reference to a report that a 13-15-year old girl reported to the FBI that Trump beat her up when she bit his penis as he forced her to perform oral sex.
This week, reporter Roger Sollenberger found that she was interviewed at least four times by the FBI and those more in-depth interviews (case number 3501.045) had mysteriously gone entirely missing from the documents released by Patel and Bondi.
Folks, I want to apologize for all the troll scat on this blog (the thousands of droppings from Anonymouse). Even free speech has a price.
Diogenes,
Lies, lies and more lies. It is all they have.
Where is the lie?
@Diogenes
Same here. There is actual discourse among humans in-between, and we do not always agree, but it’s discourse, so that is fine. Just step over the poo and carry on.
So ? Do you have credible evidence of any of this ?
No one trusts the left win press and we are all more than familiar with the long list of lies.
If you want to be taken seriously – you need MORE than made up allegations.
Do you have the pee tape ?
Do you have any real substantiation of ANYTHING ?
It is easy to get an idiotic claim into the epstain files – just file a false report.
As this Turley article demonstrates – Democrats are good at that – crazy lies.
Doyou have actual evidence of anything ?
I read in NYT yesterday that you were a pervert who liked to f#$K donkeys.
Does my claim to have heard something somewhere make that claim credible or True ?
Do you have REAL evidence ?
You do not know that such a report to the FBI exists,
you do not know that any 13-15 year old girl exists.
Given that you do not even know here age – that really means you know nothing.
You have no report, no name, no nothing.
You claim it was not investigated – yet you provided no information that would allow any investigation.
Provide an actual allegation – actually made to the FBI with sufficient factual claims that can be tested.
As I noted above – Anyone in the world can accuse someone else anonymously of anything.
That is meaningless.
While the public need not know the name of an accuser,
WE do need there to be an actual report to the FBI – not a claim, and an actual accuser – not some mythical 13-15 year old.
BTW though it may not be the same, there is a person who made similar allegations against Trump in 3 separate courts during the 2015 campaign. Each of those was thrown out because Trump was able to prove he was NOT even in the city the accuser claimed at the time of the offense.
This is why FACT matter.
We do not trust the MSM – the pee tape was never real, the collusion delusion was a hoax.
People have learned that those of you on the left lie abut pretty much everything all the time – but especially trump.
Some here say that the general electorate don’t pay attention to politics.
The general electorate paid close attention to the politics in 2025 and put Donald J. Trump back in the Whitehouse. Just because you think that people are not engaged does not make it true.
The problem is not knowing something but thinking what just ain’t true.