Turning On The Giant Faucet Of Bullshit - US Politics February 2025

Hmm... who was it an ad for???

Did an AI write that?

The guillotine had a long post-revolutionary history of being used to carry out the death penalty on ordinary criminals on behalf of the government of France and was last used on an Algerian immigrant in 1977. It's just as much a tool of the reactionaries as the gas chamber, firing squad, or electric chair.

I know this is all so he can try to push crypto, but jesus christ this would trigger a massive global economic collapse that would make 2008 seem like nothing:

I suspect this will just end up being something Old Man Trump said on a plane and we won’t hear about it again. But after recents, who are we kidding? Anything is possible. On Air Force One today en route to the Super Bowl, Trump told reporters that DOGE analysts (whatever that means) had found “irregularities” in U.S. treasuries and that the U.S. may not be obligated to pay some of them. “Maybe we have less debt than we thought,” he said.

Needless to say, this is quite literally violating the express language of the 14th Amendment which says: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

If financial markets actually thought Trump was serious about this, that he would follow through on this, they’d probably go completely haywire. As I said, I think — unless and until we hear more — they will think this is just the old man ranting.

One other point worth noting is that Trump seems to be basing this on some analysis from the DOGE boys. This appears to have been one of the DOGE boys’ main goals at Treasury, getting access to details about what kinds of payments Treasury makes, the answer being close to everything the U.S. government does outside of the Pentagon and some of the Pentagon stuff too. The Treasury also services the U.S. debt, which is what we’re talking about here. I’m less clear on what access to which part of the Treasury Department these guys could have gotten to get information about how the Treasury Department sells and services Treasury notes. But all that detail aside, imagine thinking that by downloading a ton of data and having a few days to analyze it you could make the determination that a significant amount of the U.S. national debt wasn’t real and didn’t have to be paid. It’s hardly the craziest thing we’ve seen over recent days. But it’s still worth noting how nuts that is.

https://defector.com/salesforce-is-using-a-hallucination-to-sell-ai

The thoroughly solved problem of obtaining the food that you want from an establishment that sells food—at least as, if not more, thoroughly solved than the problem of water falling from the sky onto your body—now requires AI to ensure that people don't incorrectly get what they didn't order?

It is simply wild that Salesforce has this opportunity to highlight to a mass audience, even indirectly, their best and most promising use-case for AI, and here they are aggressively pitching an inscrutable solution to a non-existent problem.

There was a weird Superbowl ad where some kids come into a bodega talking about how AI is going replace all of our jobs, then the woman behind the counter has a flashback to the 80s where her now husband is a kid talking about how computers are going to change the world. Then in the present she looks at her husband and says "I think we're going to be just fine."

I am really confused about the message: the 80s kid was certainly right about computers, so that means the today kids could be right about AI. I guess it's just "People will always need bodegas."

― Iza Duffus Hardy (President Keyes), Monday, February 10, 2025 11:16 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hmm... who was it an ad for???

― realistic pillow (Jon not Jon), Monday, February 10, 2025 11:18 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Weirdly enough, Coca-Cola:
https://www.marketingdive.com/news/coca-cola-westsides-finest-kenya-barris-campaign-trail/739251/

Apparently White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett said on CNBC this morning that Trump wants to fight inlation by increasing labor supply and lowering aggregate demand. So their strategy is slashing jobs and shrinking the economy? Seems like that may not go over too well.

it is completely disingenuous to pretend to not know exactly what i mean when i make a guillotine joke.

You want to kill the King's wife

i think the point was that the joke isn't funny

If you ban one Van Horn Street three will rise up to take his place.

Fork in the Street

i can’t tell whether that’s aimed at me, milo, but if you’re comparing me to VHS i don’t really know what to say

Three will rise up

ah

it is completely disingenuous to pretend to not know exactly what i mean when i make a guillotine joke.

Unless you are arguing that the contemporary equivalents of Hebért and Saint Just (both of whom have ideological similarities to contemporary leftist thought) should be executed?

Sarahell, I want the rich and powerful to be executed. that is what the guillotine represents in the public imaginary, despite its historical inaccuracy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To me, those jokes evince Stalinist authoritarianism but hey …

My proposal to shift all guillotine references to “Ipatiev House basement” (alternate version: get Romanoved) was not adopted at the last Council of Posters. Until that’s reconsidered, we just have to assume most people can understand symbolism used for more than 200 years.

Or at least that the people who pretend they can’t understand will spend more of their time scolding college kids in Che shirts or something.

I'd be more amenable to discussing such rhetoric if I thought there was even the slightest chance of it ever happening during my lifetime. It won't, so let ppl have their revenge fantasies imo, Lord knows the rich do nothing to make them seem less justified.

xpost

we need to bring back the trotsky ice axe now more than ever.

It would be nice to find a corner of the internet free from fake-macho revenge-killing fantacists, but here we are.

in the old days the rich would at least die in wars occasionally? they would make some duke a general and he'd get blown to bits in france somewhere. not anymore. they all live to be a thousand.

now that trump has abolished the penny i gotta say: i might agree with him there. fuck a penny. especially when you read this: "It cost 3.69 cents to produce and distribute a penny last year..."

Trump must really hate Lincoln

3.69 cents saved is a penny earned

this might be the first thing I've ever actually agreed with Trump on. the penny needed to go like 20 years ago.

Yeah I had the same thought when I saw the penny headline — something Trump is doing that I don't have to get mad about.

Time to dump some pennies into the change-counting machine, pronto!

actually the most surprising thing about it is I can't immediately figure how he's grifting off this idea. perhaps transactions are gonna get automatically rounded up and sent directly to Mar-a-Lago or something

Jared shorted the company that supplies penny blanks.

It would be nice to find a corner of the internet free from fake-macho revenge-killing fantacists, but here we are.

― Iza Duffus Hardy (President Keyes), Monday, February 10, 2025 10:16 AM (fifty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yea, the problem is definitely people who have these fantasies and not those whose avarice is destroying the lives and livelihoods of people everywhere, not to mention the planet.

oh, don't worry I think both are a problem!

sadly relevant humor: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/voting-for-the-mayor-who-promised-to-blow-up-the-city-doesnt-mean-i-approve-of-the-mayor-blowing-up-the-city

we definitely don't need any new pennies, I have enough in a box in my closet to supply us for the next century, easily

old pennies will officially become nickels in 2026.

a gift from your friend DJT.

How long until the articles about how young people don't even know what pennies were?

The Pennies Mightier

Elementary school math curriculum going to take a beating

xp or the fake video on youtube where a parent shows their kids some coins and the kid has no idea what they are

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9aM_dT5VMI

so Byron Donalds left DC to be on Bill Maher's show and gave his voting card to someone else to cast House votes for him.

here we go.. is this where we kickstart the constitutional crisis?

A federal judge in Rhode Island on Monday ordered the Trump administration to comply with his order to unfreeze federal grants, after attorneys general for several Democratic states claimed the directive was not being fulfilled.

In a short order, U.S. District Judge John McConnell directed the Trump administration to “immediately” end any federal funding pause until he decides whether to indefinitely block the freeze while litigation is ongoing.

yes

contempt for the lawyers and then possibly jail

Hard to know what’s even worth mentioning, but softening the enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is almost comically on the nose. I would suspect Musk influences there, but probably Trump himself has found that law irksome (not to mention Jared).

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-loosen-enforcement-us-law-banning-bribery-foreign-officials-2025-02-10/

Remember when people talked about the Emoluments Clause?

remember when we all crazy for stare decisis. good times...