Why The Techbros Back Trump And Vance Is Their Man In The White House

thebulletin  |  Since the emergence of generative artificial intelligence, scholars have speculated about the technology’s implications for the character, if not nature, of war. The promise of AI on battlefields and in war rooms has beguiled scholars. They characterize AI as “game-changing,” “revolutionary,” and “perilous,” especially given the potential of great power war involving the United States and China or Russia. In the context of great power war, where adversaries have parity of military capabilities, scholars claim that AI is the sine qua non, absolutely required for victory. This assessment is predicated on the presumed implications of AI for the “sensor-to-shooter” timeline, which refers to the interval of time between acquiring and prosecuting a target. By adopting AI, or so the argument goes, militaries can reduce the sensor-to-shooter timeline and maintain lethal overmatch against peer adversaries.

Although understandable, this line of reasoning may be misleading for military modernization, readiness, and operations. While experts caution that militaries are confronting a “eureka” or “Oppenheimer” moment, harkening back to the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, this characterization distorts the merits and limits of AI for warfighting. It encourages policymakers and defense officials to follow what can be called a “primrose path of AI-enabled warfare,” which is codified in the US military’s “third offset” strategy. This vision of AI-enabled warfare is fueled by gross prognostications and over-determination of emerging capabilities enhanced with some form of AI, rather than rigorous empirical analysis of its implications across all (tactical, operational, and strategic) levels of war.

The current debate on military AI is largely driven by “tech bros” and other entrepreneurs who stand to profit immensely from militaries’ uptake of AI-enabled capabilities. Despite their influence on the conversation, these tech industry figures have little to no operational experience, meaning they cannot draw from first-hand accounts of combat to further justify arguments that AI is changing the character, if not nature, of war. Rather, they capitalize on their impressive business successes to influence a new model of capability development through opinion pieces in high-profile journals, public addresses at acclaimed security conferences, and presentations at top-tier universities.

To the extent analysts do explore the implications of AI for warfighting, such as during the conflicts in Gaza, Libya, and Ukraine, they highlight limited—and debatable—examples of its use, embellish its impacts, conflate technology with organizational improvements provided by AI, and draw generalizations about future warfare. It is possible that AI-enabled technologies, such as lethal autonomous weapon systems or “killer robots,” will someday dramatically alter war. Yet the current debate for the implications of AI on warfighting discounts critical political, operational, and normative considerations that imply AI may not have the revolutionary impacts that its proponents claim, at least not now. As suggested by Israel and the United States’ use of AI-enabled decision-support systems in Gaza and Ukraine, there is a more reasonable alternative. In addition to enabling cognitive warfare, it is likely that AI will allow militaries to optimize workflows across warfighting functions, particularly intelligence and maneuver. This will enhance situational awareness; provide efficiencies, especially in terms of human resources; and shorten the course-of-action development timeline.

Militaries across the globe are at a moment or strategic inflection point in terms of preparing for future conflict. But this is not for the reasons scholars typically assume. Our research suggests that three related considerations have combined to shape the hype surrounding military AI, informing the primrose path of AI-enabled warfare. First, that primrose path is paved by the emergence of a new military industrial complex that is dependent on commercial service providers. Second, this new defense acquisition process is the cause and effect of a narrative suggesting a global AI arms race, which has encouraged scholars to discount the normative implications of AI-enabled warfare. Finally, while analysts assume that soldiers will trust AI, which is integral to human-machine teaming that facilitates AI-enabled warfare, trust is not guaranteed.

What AI is and isn’t. Automation, autonomy, and AI are often used interchangeably but erroneously. Automation refers to the routinization of tasks performed by machines, such as auto-order of depleted classes of military supplies, but with overall human oversight. Autonomy moderates the degree of human oversight of tasks performed by machines such that humans are on, in, or off the loop. When humans are on the loop, they exercise ultimate control of machines, as is the case for the current class of “conventional” drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper. When humans are in the loop, they pre-delegate certain decisions to machines, which scholars debate in terms of nuclear command and control. When humans are off the loop, they outsource control to machines leading to a new class of “killer robots” that can identify, track, and engage targets on their own. Thus, automation and autonomy are protocol-based functions that largely retain a degree of human oversight, which is often high given humans’ inherent skepticism of machines.

Legal Weed Has Destroyed More Lives Than Mandated Jabs

theatlantic  |  strange thing has happened on the path to marijuana legalization. Users across all ages and experience levels are noticing that a drug they once turned to for fun and relaxation now triggers existential dread and paranoia. “The density of the nugs is crazy, they’re so sticky,” a friend from college texted me recently. “I solo’d a joint from the dispensary recently and was tweaking just walking around.” (Translation for the non-pot-savvy: This strain of marijuana is not for amateurs.)

In 2022, the federal government reported that, in samples seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration, average levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC—the psychoactive compound in weed that makes you feel high—had more than tripled compared with 25 years earlier, from 5 to 16 percent. That may understate how strong weed has gotten. Walk into any dispensary in the country, legal or not, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single product advertising such a low THC level. Most strains claim to be at least 20 to 30 percent THC by weight; concentrated weed products designed for vaping can be labeled as up to 90 percent.

For the average weed smoker who wants to take a few hits without getting absolutely blitzed, this is frustrating. For some, it can be dangerous. In the past few years, reports have swelled of people, especially teens, experiencing short- and long-term “marijuana-induced psychosis,” with consequences including hospitalizations for chronic vomiting and auditory hallucinations of talking birds. Multiple studies have drawn a link between heavy use of high-potency marijuana, in particular, and the development of psychological disorders, including schizophrenia, although a causal connection hasn’t been proved.

Read: Marijuana’s health effects are about to get a whole lot clearer

“It’s entirely possible that this new kind of cannabis—very strong, used in these very intensive patterns—could do permanent brain damage to teenagers because that’s when the brain is developing a lot,” Keith Humphreys, a Stanford psychiatry professor and a former drug-policy adviser to the Obama administration, told me. Humphreys stressed that the share of people who have isolated psychotic episodes on weed will be “much larger” than the number of people who end up permanently altered. But even a temporary bout of psychosis is pretty bad.

One of the basic premises of the legalization movement is that marijuana, if not harmless, is pretty close to it—arguably much less dangerous than alcohol. But much of the weed being sold today is not the same stuff that people were getting locked up for selling in the 1990s and 2000s. You don’t have to be a War on Drugs apologist to be worried about the consequences of unleashing so much super-high-potency weed into the world.

The high that most adult weed smokers remember from their teenage years is most likely one produced by “mids,” as in, middle-tier weed. In the pre-legalization era, unless you had a connection with access to top-shelf strains such as Purple Haze and Sour Diesel, you probably had to settle for mids (or, one step down, “reggie,” as in regular weed) most of the time. Today, mids are hard to come by.

The simplest explanation for this is that the casual smokers who pine for the mids and reggies of their youth aren’t the industry’s top customers. Serious stoners are. According to research by Jonathan P. Caulkins, a public-policy professor at Carnegie Mellon, people who report smoking more than 25 times a month make up about a third of marijuana users but account for about two-thirds of all marijuana consumption. Such regular users tend to develop a high tolerance, and their tastes drive the industry’s cultivation decisions.

The industry is not shy about this fact. In May, I attended the National Cannabis Investment Summit in Washington D.C., where investors used the terms high-quality and potent almost interchangeably. They told me that high THC percentages do well with heavy users—the dedicated wake-and-bakers and the joint-before-bed crowd. “Thirty percent THC is the new 20 percent,” Ryan Cohen, a Michigan-based cultivator, told me. “Our target buyer is the guy who just worked 40 hours a week and wants to get high as fuck on a budget.”

Smaller producers might conceivably carve out a niche catering to those of us who prefer a milder high. But because of the way the legal weed market has developed, they’re struggling just to exist. As states have been left alone to determine what their legal weed markets will look like, limited licensing has emerged as the favored apparatus. That approach has led to legal weed markets becoming dominated by large, well-financed “multistate operators,” in industry jargon.

Across the country, MSOs are buying up licenses, acquiring smaller brands, and lobbying politicians to stick prohibitions on home-growing into their legalization bills. The result is an illusion of endless choice and a difficult climate for the little guy. Minnesota’s 15 medical dispensaries are owned by two MSOs. All 23 of Virginia’s are owned by three different MSOs. Some states have tried to lower barriers to entry, but the big chains still tend to overpower the market. (Notable exceptions are California and Colorado, which have a longer history with legal marijuana licensing, and where the markets are less dominated by mega-chains.) Despite the profusion of stores in some states and the apparent variety of strains on the shelf, most people who walk into a dispensary will choose from a limited number of suppliers that maximize for THC percentage.

The Democratic Party Is The Gold Digger's Ball

 LATimes  |  Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, continuing his rush to hand out patronage jobs while he retains his powerful post, has given high-paying appointments to his former law associate and a former Alameda County prosecutor who is Brown’s frequent companion.

Brown, exercising his power even as his speakership seems near an end, named attorney Kamala Harris to the California Medical Assistance Commission, a job that pays $72,000 a year.

Harris, a former deputy district attorney in Alameda County, was described by several people at the Capitol as Brown’s girlfriend. In March, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen called her “the Speaker’s new steady.” Harris declined to be interviewed Monday and Brown’s spokeswoman did not return phone calls.

Harris accepted the appointment last week after serving six months as Brown’s appointee to the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, which pays $97,088 a year. After Harris resigned from the unemployment board last week, Brown replaced her with Philip S. Ryan, a lawyer and longtime friend and business associate.

Last week, Brown also appointed Janet Gotch, wife of retiring Assemblyman Mike Gotch of San Diego, to the $95,000-a-year Integrated Waste Management Board, which oversees garbage disposal in California.

“It’s politics as usual,” said Robert M. Stern, co-director of the Center for Governmental Studies, a nonprofit group in Los Angeles. “Governors have done this in the past. This is a tradition the Speaker is carrying on. There are always outcries. People say it is wrong, and when they get in power they do the same thing.”

Brown is making the appointments at a time when his 14-year hold on the speakership is tenuous at best. The Assembly will reconvene Monday with Republicans holding 41 seats to the Democrats’ 39, making it likely the GOP will oust Democrat Brown as Speaker and replace him with a Republican.

“It’s safe to say that these are not appointments we would necessarily make,” said Phil Perry, spokesman for Assembly Republican Leader Jim Brulte, the front-runner to replace Brown as Speaker.

Assembly Republicans were muted in their criticism of Brown--perhaps because Assemblyman Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside) acknowledged Monday that he hired Faye Hill, wife of imprisoned former state Sen. Frank Hill, as a $60,000-a-year aide.

Hill, a longtime lawmaker from Whittier, resigned from the Senate earlier this year after being convicted of taking a $2,500 payoff from an undercover FBI agent.

Morrow hired Faye Hill in October and said she will work in his San Juan Capistrano office as well as in his offices in Oceanside and Sacramento.

“We haven’t been keeping it a secret,” Morrow said, adding that he has received “nothing but complimentary” comments about her work. Morrow called her “amply qualified,” but also said he “can’t divorce the fact that” she gained much of her experience in politics as a result of her marriage to Hill.

The Brown appointments of Harris and Ryan fill vacant slots once held by other Brown appointees, whose terms have not expired.

Harris’ term on the medical board continues until Jan. 1, 1998.

Salary for the California Medical Assistance Commission is tied to legislators’ pay. A government commission earlier this year voted to grant legislators a 37% pay increase, from the current $52,500 a year, to $72,000, effective when the new Legislature takes office Monday.

Trump's New Allies On Bioweapons Research Outside The Reach Of U.S. Law?

Trump's newest allies have something very specific in common.

Tulsi and RFK Jr. are the two most prominent US politicians to discuss the US-funded biolabs in Ukraine.

They have been extremely vocal about this subject, and Trump just brought them both onto his team. 👀

Perhaps… pic.twitter.com/xAxNT62iDk

— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) August 26, 2024

anti-spiegel  |  The Russian Defense Ministry has again released a statement on the US biological weapons programs, reporting on the US attempts to better conceal the programs and relocate them from Ukraine to Moldova and Romania.

I have been covering the Russian Defense Ministry's publications on the Pentagon's bioweapons programs in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian military operation, and translating all Russian statements on the subject. For the average reader, this may be very dry and uninteresting reading, but for experts, this is important information, which is why I take the trouble to translate it all.

Even if the German media ignore these Russian statements or try to ridicule them as crazy conspiracy theories and Russian propaganda, they are being followed very closely by international (mostly non-Western) experts.

Here I translate the new statement from the Russian Ministry of Defense, the slides are taken from the original. After the translation you will find a chronology of the publications.

Start of translation:

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation continues to analyze the activities of the United States and Ukraine in connection with violations of international treaties prohibiting chemical and biological weapons.

We have repeatedly noted that Washington has a significant interest in obtaining biomaterials from citizens of Russia, Ukraine and other post-Soviet states.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has already published information confirming the large-scale collection and transportation of biomaterials. Before the start of the military operation, the United States and its allies managed to remove at least 16,000 biosamples from Ukraine. Within the framework of the UP-8 project alone, blood samples were taken from 4,000 Ukrainian soldiers. Dangerous pathogens and their vectors were exported, more than 10,000 samples.

The biological material was transported directly, without the involvement of shell companies and intermediaries. Human blood and tissue samples were sent from the Ukrainian Public Health Center to Western research laboratories with links to the Pentagon. They were then used for military biological research, including the selection of biological agents dangerous to the population of a particular region.

According to reports, the United States is continuing to develop biological warfare agents that can specifically target different ethnic populations.

According to available information, the United States has begun to actively involve Moldova and Romania in logistical plans for the transportation of biomaterials, using organizations under its control.

This tactic helps to obscure the ultimate recipient and divert suspicion from U.S. authorities and the U.S. biological warfare program.

Note the movement pattern of the biomaterial. It has been established that the export of dangerous goods to Moldova from the Ukrainian side is carried out through the company "Biopartners", which is a subsidiary of an American company of the same name.

The company Q2 Solution, a subsidiary of one of the Pentagon's largest suppliers, is also involved in the logistics processes. We have information confirming the implementation of contracts by this company under the US Department of Defense Threat Reduction (DITRA) programs worth more than $22 million.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the escort of biological cargoes coming from Ukraine is carried out by the logistics companies Gamma Logistics and AeroTransCargo, controlled by Moldovan President Maia Sandu, as well as by medical institutions in Chisinau and Western intermediary organizations.

In the period from August 2022 to May 2024, more than 2,000 transportations of biomaterial samples were officially carried out through the territory of the Republic of Moldova.

Trump and Musk Said The Quiet Part Out Loud About Illegal Immigration...,

Ireland Illegal Immigration Video Fist tap Dale

rev  |   Donald Trump (18:39):

But that was the lowest point ever recorded. It was a really, I mean, I was very proud of those numbers. And then you see what happened with these people, Kamala and Joe, you see what happened. They just let it go. I remain in Mexico policies. I had all these different policies that were so good. Guys like Tom Holman and Brandon Judd from Border Patrol. These are all people that they’ve been on television. They say it’s the best numbers we’ve ever had. We had so many different checks, catch and release in Mexico, not the United, we had catch and release in the United States. We had it in Mexico. We had so many things.

(19:16)
We had things where if many people come in there, they have contagious diseases. We had everything passed. If you have a contagious disease, I’m sorry, but we cannot allow you into the country. So we were setting literally records. And all I was doing is showing that. And I used it sometimes. And in this case, I’m glad I used it. I can tell you that. But there were fantastic numbers. But I’m going to sleep with that chart always. I’ll be sleeping with that chart. That chart was very important, very important for a lot of reasons.

Elon Musk (19:54):

Would it be accurate to say that you’re supportive of legal immigration, but we obviously need to shut down illegal immigration, and especially unvetted illegal immigration?

Donald Trump (20:06):

Yes.

Elon Musk (20:06):

And that’s not the same as saying that everyone who’s an illegal immigrant is bad. In fact, I think most people who are illegal immigrants are actually good. But you can’t tell a difference unless there’s a solid vetting of who comes across the border.

Donald Trump (20:19):

100%.

Elon Musk (20:20):

Does that actually represent your position?

Donald Trump (20:22):

I say it very simply. They have to come in legally. They have to be checked.

Elon Musk (20:27):

Yeah.

Donald Trump (20:27):

Because look, Kamala was the Border Czar. Now she’s denying it. Everything that I do, she’s saying she was strong on the border, we’re going to be strong. Well, she doesn’t have to say it. She could close it up right now. They could do things right now. It is horrible. No tax on tips. And all of a sudden she’s making a speech, she’s saying, “There will be no tax on tips.” I said that months ago. And by the way, they had just the opposite. They had not only tax on tips, but they hired 88,000 IRS agents. And many of them were assigned to go get waitresses and caddies and all of this on tips. They have a policy. They had a policy, they were really going to go after you and we’re really harassing people horribly. And then all of a sudden for politics, she comes out with what I said, which I think is terrible.

(21:14)
And I think it’s also hitting them very hard. These people are fake. Now they’re also saying they did a good job in the border. We had the worst numbers in the history of the world, not of our country. There’s never been a country in history that has had a catastrophe like this. We’ve had, I believe, and I think you believe this too, you hear 12 million, 13, I believe it’s over 20 million people came into our country. Many coming from jails, from prisons, from mental institutions, or a bigger version of that is insane asylums. And many are terrorists. And I’ll tell you what, they’re coming not just from South America, they’re coming from Africa. They’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from Asia. They’re coming from the Middle East. They’re coming from countries that are stupidly and horribly bombing Israel, October 7th. They’re coming from all over the world. And you look at, it’s so sad, October 7th, because it should have never happened.

Elon Musk (22:10):

Yeah. Sure.

Kamala Devi Is To American Politics What Mentholated Cigarettes Are To American Negroes...,

Two Weeks Ago I Predicted Kamala Or Bust....,

 

Golddigger Prank Exegesis....,

I Did The Goodest Job As I Know I Can Do...,

This What You Want To Do?!?!?!?! - Reap The Whirlwind....,

🚨 #BREAKING: SHOTS FIRED AT PRESIDENT TRUMP RALLY IN PENNSYLVANIA pic.twitter.com/eup5YTybS7

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) July 13, 2024

So, Now It's Take Your Crackhead Convicted Felon Son To Work Day At The White House?!?!?!

dailycaller  |  Hunter Biden is reportedly making one of the hardest pitches for his father to continue serving as president, people close to the situation told The New York Times (NYT). This first son has been regularly attending meetings with senior White House aides following Biden’s concerning debate performance on June 27, NBC News reported. Kelly was appalled by Hunter Biden’s reported proximity to presidential matters, stating that his presence in the room is “a big deal.”

“Hunter is now going to the White House meetings,” Kelly said. “Hunter Biden’s there now. Hunter Biden – convicted felon … Drug-addled Hunter Biden — though he’s said to be clean at the moment — is going with the President to all of his meetings right now, apparently as like a backup Biden. And this is begging defended by people like Mika Brzezinski as like, no big deal. But it is a big deal, and there’s a real question about whether this is appropriate and why he’s there. They’re saying, the White House is saying, ‘Oh, it’s just because it’s a holiday week.’ Well, what does that mean? Is it like being your kid, is it bring your son to work day because it’s almost July Fourth?”

In June, a Delaware jury convicted Hunter Biden on three gun felony charges related to his purchase of a revolver and false statements about his drug addiction. 

A stunned Kelly called the situation “remarkable” before mentioning that the White House reportedly said polling data will likely cause Biden “to see the truth.” The radio host cited internal polling obtained by Puck News.

Democratic strongholds like New Hampshire, Virginia and New Mexico are reportedly “in play” for presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, according to the post-debate poll. Additionally, Kelly said the poll showed Biden’s support in free fall in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Nevada.

“The electoral map, based on Open Labs reporting, would land as follows: Biden with 205 electoral votes, Trump 333,” Kelly said. “Three hundred and thirty-three. That would be a landslide.”

 

 

2021 Obama and Biden in a Secret Room in the White House...,

Obama: Now what i'm going to teach you is the Dap. 

This will gain you the trust and respect of the black male community. 

 Biden nods, wide-eyed. “Am I ready?” Obama looks at him for a long moment. 

“We can only hope.”

When you unexpectedly dap up the President at Waffle House 🫱🏾‍🫲🏻 pic.twitter.com/Fu5jsV46Gr

— IG: goodfeetatl (@4oh4dee) June 28, 2024

jes dayyum....,

 

Trump just released a brutal 95 second ad of Joe Biden's debate lowlights: pic.twitter.com/enusIKHhwN

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) June 28, 2024

American Elites Begin Acknowledging America's Decline...,

This month has seen a bevy of new thinkpieces from top American deepstate figures or old-guard publications urging the changing of course, lest the country be swept away by the remorseless tide of history.

The first and most prominent of these making the rounds is that of former speech writer and White House staffer to Obama, Ben Rhodes, entitled:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/biden-foreign-policy-world-rhodes

Rhodes remains among the political haute monde, having founded a thinktank alongside Jake Sullivan, which had many interlinkings with Soros’ Open Society organizations. That’s to say, Rhodes has his finger on the pulse of the ‘inner circles’ of the patriciate, which is underscored by the CFR’s journal offering tribune to his latest. And so it’s even more telling that he’s moved to sound the alarm against a country he feels is—as the cover art above obliges—stumbling headfirst into historic headwinds.

The article is actually quite long and detailed, so we have Arnaud Bertrand to summarize its finest points. The first bolded portion below gets to the heart of Rhodes’ startling argument—but read the rest of the bolded:

This is an interesting piece by brhodes, Obama's Former Deputy National Security Advisor

In an immense departure from US policy to date, he advocates that the US "abandons the mindset of American primacy" and "pivots away from the political considerations, maximalism, and Western-centric view that have caused [the Biden] administration to make some of the same mistakes as its predecessors".

He writes, and I find this a very powerful sentence, that "meeting the moment requires building a bridge to the future—not the past." As in not seek to regain a lost hegemony, but adapt to the "world as it is" which he calls "the world of post-American primacy".

To be sure, the piece still has strong relents of the liberal instincts to remake the world in America's image - a leopard cannot change its spots - but at least he acknowledges the reality that the world has changed and that the US should view itself as a power coexisting with others, not THE power that needs to dominate the rest of the world. Which is a first step...

Also, significantly, he points out the insanity of "framing the battle between democracy and autocracy as a confrontation with a handful of geopolitical adversaries" when the West's own democracies are in such sorry states today that they can hardly be called "democracies" anymore... He writes that instead of trying to constantly interfere in changing other countries' systems, "ultimately, the most important thing that America can do in the world is detoxify its own democracy".

The below encapsulates the core thesis, which is that America’s global primacy is over, and the only way for the country to stay afloat is to adapt to the new realities:

Yet even though a return to competent normalcy was in order, the Biden administration’s mindset of restoration has occasionally struggled against the currents of our disordered times. An updated conception of U.S. leadership—one tailored to a world that has moved on from American primacy and the eccentricities of American politics—is necessary to minimize enormous risks and pursue new opportunities.

This is the theme which recurs again and again throughout the new zeitgeist taking over political discourse in the stricken Beltway—panicking neocons are exhorting each other: we’re in a fight for our lives, if we don’t accept the new realities, we’ll drown!

Publications like Foreign Affairs are where the elite address not us, but each other, in the long-standing tradition of euphemism as secret-coded language of their ‘interior world’ of the deepstate and outlying political class. Here Mr. Rhodes adeptly navigates the nuances of this privileged cant when he declares that the Rules Based Order has fallen:

Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes - Whatever They're Telling You About Biden Is Disinformation

Biden campaign spokesman Adrienne Elrod tries to spin the viral video of Biden wandering aimlessly across Italy as "disinformation" — and demands "social media platforms" censor it. pic.twitter.com/hfMuZpMkwU

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 14, 2024

thesun.co.uk  |  "He was wandering around, he sort of wandered off and Giorgia Meloni, the Italian premier had to sort of guide him back to the crowd. It was quite painful viewing.

"Everyone's putting a slight brave face on it this morning. We've got some more for that for the paper tomorrow. But you can see from that footage yourself, can't you?

"This is getting embarrassing now. It makes you really wonder how President Biden is going to be able to run an election campaign in October and November for re election and if that is a man who really thinks he's going to get through the next four years?"

It comes as earlier this week, Biden appeared to freeze again for a moment during a Juneteenth celebration at the White House.

He looked static at the event - sparking further concern just months before the presidential election.

The Democrat's term has been plagued with gaffes and blunders.

He has fallen up the stairs of Air Force One and has stumbled on countless occasions.

Last year, Biden took a tumble at the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony.

In February, Biden confused the leaders of Mexico and Egypt while delivering a rambling address to the nation after it emerged he wouldn't face criminal charges over storing secret docs.

Last week, Biden seemed to fumble for his seat while on stage with the Macrons and his wife, Jill, at a D-Day event - but there was no chair behind him.

Questions continue to swirl over Biden's health and competency for office - just months before Americans go to the polls.

And polling suggests Biden's re-election bid could be tricky.

This week's G7 meeting was also shrouded in controversy after Putin vowed an "extremely painful" reaction to a deal made at the event to raise $50billion for Ukraine.

The Kremlin dubbed the deal "cynical and criminal" after hearing the money will be raised using frozen Russian central bank assets.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke with the leaders before the viral clip asking for the "historic" loan to keep Putin's soldiers from breaking through the frontlines.

 

We Used To Have The Maestro - THEN POOF - We Got Hot Garbage Instead

 

.45 GUILTY!!! of being the antithesis of a man of culture.....,

President Trump reacts to the verdict:

“The whole country is being rigged right now. This is being done by the Biden Administration in order to hurt or wound a political opponent."

"We'll fight to the end and we'll win...this is long from over." pic.twitter.com/G93N5ZwiBH

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 30, 2024

dailycaller  |  A jury in the deep-blue New York City borough of Manhattan convicted former President Donald Trump on Thursday in the case brought by Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Trump was convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying business records charged in Bragg’s indictment. Defense attorneys cornered the prosecution’s witnesses at critical junctures of the trial in a case that stood on shaky legal grounds from the start, including when Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen, an admitted liar, took the stand as the prosecution’s star witness, a choice that resulted in Cohen revealing he stole from the Trump organization and committing what the defense demonstrated was potentially another act of perjury.

The charges stemmed from $420,000 Trump paid Cohen over 12 months in 2017 for “legal services,” which prosecutors argued was actually to reimburse Cohen for $130,000 he paid to secure a nondisclosure agreement with porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election and keep her quiet about claims of an affair with Trump.

To indict Trump on felony charges and circumvent the expired statute of limitations, Bragg had to claim the records were falsified to conceal or commit another crime — which remained unclear throughout the trial but was assumed to be either a campaign finance or election law violation.

Prosecutors argued Trump engaged in a conspiracy to influence the 2016 election by paying to suppress stories of former Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin, former Playboy model Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels. They suggested he violated a state election law that makes it a misdemeanor for any two or more people to “conspire” to influence an election using “unlawful means.”

Trump is the first former U.S. president to be convicted at a criminal trial. His sentencing is scheduled for July 11th, days before the Republican National Convention set to begin on July 15. Falsifying business record charges carry a maximum sentence of four years in prison.

The jury began its deliberations on Wednesday after Judge Juan Merchan read the jury instructions, which did not require jurors to agree on what “unlawful” means Trump allegedly used to influence the election.

Bragg’s team included Matthew Colangelo, who spent two years as a top official in the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ). While previously working at the New York District Attorney’s office, Colangelo also led both the investigation that culminated in the Trump Foundation’s dissolution and the investigation that later became Trump’s civil fraud case.

Colangelo joined the Manhattan District Attorney’s office as senior counsel in 2022 while Bragg was still investigating Trump.

 

 

There's Still A Civil War Bubbling For Control Of The Israeli Government

mondoweiss |   Any Palestinian following the developments in the Israeli protest movement against “the judicial coup” will require nerves of steel to withstand the hypocrisy on display. The protests are estimated to be 100,000 people strong, politicians are jumping over tables in the Knesset, and former army Chief of Staff Yair Golan is calling for a state of “civil disobedience.” Only yesterday, Netanyahu dismissed Defense Minister Yoav Gallant after he voiced opposition to the judicial reforms, and angry protestors took to the streets in Tel Aviv and other cities and shut down highways. The army has been going through its own crisis ever since military reservists, especially those in the Air Force, joined the protests. If that wasn’t enough, large sums of money are being transferred out of Israeli banks for fear of the effects that the judicial reforms might have on the Israeli economy and on the value of the Israeli Shekel. As for gall, that was hardly in short supply in Yuval Noah Harari’s op-ed telling Netanyahu to “stop your coup or we’ll stop the country.” It’s as if Harari has never heard of al-Issawiyya, which continues to be strangled by the Hebrew University where he teaches, or of oppression and occupation, which wasn’t reason enough to warrant speaking of halting the state.

The Israeli government is trying to use these judicial reforms to grant itself absolute power through the passing of two central laws. The first law aims to establish control over the Israeli Judicial Selection Committee, hence appointing judges whose loyalties would lie with specific politicians rather than with the law; and the second law is the “Override Clause,” which would allow the Knesset to override any decision of the Israeli High Court of Justice that passes by a majority of 61 Knesset members. In other words, the government would seize complete control over the state without checks and balances, effectively becoming the sole governing authority in the country given that it also controls the Knesset by virtue of its majority within the parliamentary body. 

All of this is taking place without a constitution. This means, for instance, that the government can decide to hold elections once every ten years instead of the standard four-year limit still in effect, and no one can override it; or it could pass laws granting the government total control over the media, or it could put LGBTQ people in jail. But the true crisis will emerge when the Israeli High Court of Justice repeals the judicial reforms and regards them as illegal — that is when the state will enter a constitutional crisis without a solution. 

Who will the Israeli security apparatus obey: the government or the judiciary? This isn’t merely a crisis of the state; it is far more profound, posing the question of what the state is in the first place. Former commander of the Israeli Air Force Eliezer Shkedi said as much in an interview with Channel 12: “I have never come across a situation where the commander of the Air Force, the chief of staff, the head of the Mossad, or the police commissioner has to decide whether he listens to an executive authority or to a court decision,” going on to say that if he were the head of the Air Force he would never disobey a court decision.

The fact that Israeli society has always echoed this hypocrisy is nothing new, and neither is it a novel discovery that “democracy” was never an honest description of a state that defines itself as a “state of the Jews.” But the protests this time are greater than at any previous point, and 35% of Israelis express fears of a “civil war,” a phrase that has made its way into daily use.

It’s precisely this level of hysteria, however, that makes it especially infuriating — because of the power and influence of the participants in the protests, because it’s the first time that the struggle is over the identity of the state, and because the roots of the crisis relate to profound political questions concerning the Zionist project, which are normally considered off-limits.

Farmer Brown Gives No Kind Of Phuks About Bringing On Mass Psychosis

washingtonmonthly  |  A new study has documented a remarkable rise in Americans’ use of marijuana. Over the last 30 years, the number of people who report using the drug in the past month has risen fivefold from 8 million to 42 million. Through the mid-1990s, only about one-in-six or one-in-eight of those users consumed the drug daily or near daily, similar to alcohol’s roughly one-in-ten. Now, more than 40 percent of marijuana users consume daily or near daily. The increased use is important to recognize as President Joe Biden plans to reschedule marijuana from a Class I to a Class III drug.

At the nadir of modern marijuana use, in 1992, just 0.9 million Americans reported using marijuana daily or near daily. That number had grown twenty-fold to 17.7 million by the most recent survey in 2022. For the first time, more Americans report using marijuana daily or near daily than they do drinking that often (17.7 million vs. 14.7 million).

Legalization and commercialization have produced a spectacular rise in the potency of cannabis products. Until the end of the 20^th century, the average potency of seized cannabis never exceeded 5 percent THC, its active intoxicant. Now, the labeled potency of “flower” sold in state-licensed stores averages 20-25 percent THC. Extract-based products like vape oils and dabs routinely exceed 60 percent. Back in the 1990s, a person averaging two 0.5-gram joints of 4 percent THC weed per week was consuming about 5 milligrams of THC per day on average. Today’s daily users average more than 1.5 grams of material that is 20-25 percent THC, which is more than 300 milligrams per day. That is far more THC than is consumed in typical medical studies of its health effects.

This spike in marijuana usage and THC consumption might seem unimportant in an era when fentanyl and other synthetic drugs are killing over 80,000 Americans per year, but describing a drug as less dangerous than fentanyl is damning with faint praise. There are exceptions, of course, but on the whole, daily marijuana use is neither health-promoting nor performance-enhancing for the typical daily user.

On the positive side, the kids are mostly all right. Just 2 percent of 12-17 year-old marijuana users consume daily or near daily. As a result, youth account for just 3 percent of the 8.3 billion annual days of self-reported marijuana use in the country. Adult (18+) daily and near-daily users account for three-quarters of those days of use—and a considerably greater share of consumption because they use more per day than weekend-only users.

Indeed, marijuana is becoming something of an old person’s drug. As a group, 35-49-year-olds consume more than 26-34-year-olds, who account for a larger share of the market than 18-25-year-olds. The 50-and-over demographic accounts for slightly more days of use than those 25 and younger.

Still, it is worth asking what the population effects are of so many people consuming high-strength cannabis regularly. Science has struggled to keep up with the new world of cannabis, but potentially concerning signs include increases in emergency room visits for both psychotic episodes and cannabis-induced cyclical vomiting, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and higher rates of automotive crashes involving impaired drivers. And gram for gram, smoking cannabis creates about as many carcinogens, tars, and other lung-damaging chemicals as tobacco—although grams consumed per day is only about one-tenth as great. For others, the effects might be the opposite of a cognitive enhancer, with intoxication adversely affecting short-term memory, concentration, and motivation, resulting in lost opportunities in schools and the workplace.

The biggest long-term medical health risk may concern serious and lifelong psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia. Early hopes—not to say hype—that cannabis would prove an effective medication for mental health disorders have been challenged as studies repeatedly find that use concurrent with conditions like depression and PTSD often predicts a worse course of illness.

Leaving Labels Aside For A Moment - Netanyahu's Reality Is A Moral Abomination

This video will be watched in schools and Universities for generations to come, when people will ask the question: did we know what was really happening and why, and what did we say about it as it was happening? pic.twitter.com/9DgvGSN5F4

— Robin Monotti (@robinmonotti) May 18, 2024