Pun Salad

But Saul Goodman has more video thoughts for you:

I'm not as reverent to the sacred cow of "Democracy!" as is Saul (or Mike). A sampling of Pun Salad posts on the topic: here, here, here, assorted items here, here, here, and here.

Also of note:

• Among the multitude of insults to voters… Jack Butler has a peeve with the language employed by Working-Class Zeroes, all of whom strive for "authenticity." (WSJ gifted link)

  The best way for politicians to appeal to voters now, especially those considered “normal” or “working-class,” is apparently to assume the worst of them.

  Consider Dan Moraff, one of the political operatives who recruited Graham Platner to run in Maine’s Democratic Senate primary. Mr. Moraff paid a firm to probe Mr. Platner’s past for anything potentially problematic. The search yielded some of the outré posts Mr. Platner had made on Reddit. He wondered why black people supposedly don’t tip, identified as a communist and suggested that “there are times in this world when, for the good of tolerance and humanity, you need to kill a m——.”

  Mr. Moraff claims that he views Mr. Platner’s uncouth ruminations not as an obstacle but an asset. Voters, he believes, “want people who are real human beings, and they want people who do not look and sound like the vat-grown people who’ve been leading this country off the cliff for the past century, and that’s Graham.” In a statement provided to the Journal after revelations of Mr. Platner’s shady romantic past, Mr. Moraff said that he’d let “the people of Maine decide” whether he’d vetted his candidate sufficiently.

  News flash: A candidate who thinks you'll be impressed by his potty-mouthed vocabulary does not have a high opinion of your intelligence.

• Speaking of psyops preying on the weak-minded. Jim Geraghty notes what Team Orange is up to: Trump’s Face Takes over Washington.

  On the way to the Washington studio of CNN yesterday morning, I passed by the U.S. Department of Labor building at 200 Constitution Avenue, which currently has a pair of giant banners adorning it — one of former President Teddy Roosevelt, who former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer inducted into the Department of Labor’s Hall of Honor back in September.

  […]

  The other massive banner on the Department of Labor building is of our current president, Donald Trump. Last year, a department spokesman said the banner cost taxpayers about $6,000. (If you find that kind of frivolous expense sobering, that may be the only part of Chavez-DeRemer’s time as secretary that was.) At an August cabinet meeting, Chavez-DeRemer said, “Mr. President, I invite you to see your big, beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor, because you are really the transformational president of the American worker.”

  To clarify, the giant Trump banner on the Labor Department building is different from the large banner of Trump’s face on the U.S. Department of Justice building at 950 Pennsylvania Avenue. No estimate for the cost of creating and installing that banner has been released.

  This is separate from the large banner with Trump’s face that was put up on the U.S. Department of Agriculture building in May 2025 and taken down by August. According to FOIA requests filed by Bloomberg News, the banners and the supplies used to hang them cost taxpayers a total of $16,400.

  Reader, it goes on from there, because other examples abound. What combination of narcissism (on Trump's part) and insincere pandering to that narcissism (on his minions' part) is left for the reader to guess.

• The day was young… when James Freeman posted his article: The Latest Whoppers From Bernie Sanders (WSJ gifted link). So they may not be actually the latest as you read this. Still:

  Like the communist thugs he has long supported, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist, Vt.) is a relentless teller of falsehoods. The latest appalling example is his declaration that artificial intelligence software developed by tech companies is “a public resource,” even though it is created by private organizations and does not belong to the government. This Sanders falsehood is used to justify his draft plan for the government to seize half the shares of what he deems “systemically important” AI companies.

  One naturally wonders—if he actually believes his false claim—why he’s not demanding that government seize all of the shares. Even Sen. Sanders probably understands that AI companies would be worthless without the hardworking, creative people inside them and that a total seizure would cause everyone to flee.

  I note the cartoon I posted five years ago::

  

  At the time I observed: "Linus Grew Up to be Bernie Sanders."

• Sure, it never hurts to ask honest questions. A thought-provoking article at the Dispatch from Joseph O. Chapa: AI Is Making Us Question What It Means to Be Human. Should It? (Dispatch gifted link)

  The AI debates in recent years have been dominated by loud voices on two ends of a wide spectrum. The so-called “doomers” emphasize the risks—the possibly existential risks—advanced AI may pose to humanity. At its most extreme, doomers believe that AI will become so powerful that it will pose an existential threat to the human race. Meanwhile, the “boomers” paint a picture of the utopia  that advanced AI may be able to bring about. Jobs? No one will need jobs once we’ve got universal basic income thanks to the prosperity AI generates. Indeed, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto declares that “there is no material problem–whether created by nature or by technology–that cannot be solved with more technology.”

  Both the “boomer” and the “doomer” views make sense only if we suppose that AI will continue to develop in leaps and bounds just as it has done since OpenAI released GPT-2 in 2019. But even if AI capability were to plateau at its current levels, chatbots that use our languages, models that can create visual art, and AI-enabled tools that can help strategize for war raise fundamental questions about what sets humans apart from sophisticated machines. Now that AI has so many capabilities that we have always considered strictly human, we have to ask, what can the rapid development of modern AI teach us about ourselves?

  Chapa's article is a good overview of AI's history (going back further than you might think) and the current swirling issues. I'm not entirely satisfied with his conclusions, but see what you think.

Recently on the book blog: