“No Labels” is the newest flavor on the election docket. I watched Joe Lieberman promote it last Sunday with the platform of “no one wants either of the regular party candidates.” To make his point, Joe uses a poll that says 70% of Americans don’t want Biden to run and 60% of Americans don’t want Trump to run. But as in all polls, these results depended on how the questions were presented.
I remember when No Labels was formed. I went to their first meeting at some hotel ballroom in NYC and watched as Joe Manchin spouted all the bullshit he has been shoveling to the people of West Virginia that allows a Democrat to get re-elected in a GOP state. Of course, that was before he and the moronic brat from Arizona almost tanked Biden’s legislative agenda, an agenda that would encourage anyone with a logical mind to vote Democrat in 2024.
No Labels, refuses to reveal the names of its donors, but it shouldn’t take too much research to uncover the list of GOP super donors that are backing it with the goal of turning it into a spoiler that will help Trump in ’24. There is no other reasonable excuse for the existence of No Labels except maybe the doddering Lieberman’s need to see his name in lights once more before he fades into non-existence.
The bottom line is, Manchin and No Labels cannot win in ’24. There is no way a third party can get 270 electoral votes. So, their only reason to exist is as a spoiler. Trump is a loser who stands little chance of a win, so that means they will be spoiling it for Biden, a President who, by that time, will probably have the best record of any President since FDR. Of course records of achievement mean little or nothing to many American voters which is h reason there is anyone voting for Trump,
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Last week SAG & AFTRA joined the Writer’s Guild in a strike against what the Media called the Hollywood Establishment, but what is actually a new consortium of corporate giants from the tech sector and broadcasting that have taken over the entertainment industry. Like any strike it’s about money and benefits but more importantly, it’s about power & control and how they will relate to the future of Artificial Intelligence, the most dangerous invention since the invention of the atomic bomb!
Yeah, I know, we all thought the computer used up that description, but AI and its potential uses and misuses make the computer look like a child’s toy.
I remember when the computer was first made available to the public. It was advertised as a great new way to create everlasting filing systems and a wonderful editing tool. Now the file systems become obsolete every time they upgrade, and the computer has taken over our lives. AI will be a thousand times more invasive, and a million times less reliable.
The entertainment unions are, of course, worried about jobs and pay, and they should be. From its very inception AI has been touted by industry as a means of lowering labor costs. Up until now it has been about replacing people with robots that can do repetitive work, but now with the improvements that are the natural results of any scientific progression, it’s about replacing the creative process with AI and getting a cheaper, albeit boring product.
The problem with AI is that it has the capabilities to give its user control of the world. Right now, almost every nation has some capability for its use, which means that there must be not just national, but international control exerted if we are to have any hope of keeping this phenomenon from taking over everything.
Sitting back and allowing industry to take care of controlling its growth would be like hiring a wolf to protect your pets.
Industry has proven throughout the centuries that there is only one criterion by which everything is measured- profits. How those profits are achieved is the major question because if our own eyes are to be believed, industry, in choosing to replace its labor force with various kinds of AI, is actually destroying its own consumer base. You can’t buy crap if you don’t have money. Research tells us that people in the lower third of the labor force don’t really save very much. They need more than most do, so the more they make the more they buy, and that’s what makes the economy soar. You start replacing those people with robots and there will be no one to buy your widgets.
But wait, you say. If, a lowly commentator can understand this, wouldn’t the CEOs who run all these businesses also understand it?
They probably do. They just don’t care. Many are functioning on a scenario in which they will drive their company’s profits sky high by eliminating labor costs through the use of AI. This will drive up the stock price, thereby making the investors ecstatic, encouraging them to vote a huge CEO bonus which can be taken into retirement long before the sales drop off enough to reflect back onto the already departed CEO.
And that’s only the economic problem. The real problems are political. educational, and social. We have already seen the problems that can be generated by a President who lies to the people. Now multiply those lies by thousands and you only begin to understand the problems that can be bred by the unincumbered use of AI in any or all of these situations. As we have seen demonstrated, AI can create very realistic imagery. Those who are trying to protect it by leaving it unregulated want to convince us that it can’t, but even in its infant state it is as good or better than anything else that has so far been developed and that stuff fools many.
The world is so full of unscrupulous people who are constantly trying to take advantage of others that it would be criminal not to lay out some protections against what is now mostly immoral, but what should be illegal behavior.
Sure, we already have too many laws and no where near enough of what it takes to uphold them all, but if we don’t get ahead of this problem, it will destroy our ability to control a world that already has too much unscrupulous activity and too many con men.
Can you imagine how Donald Trump, if he manages to stay out of jail, would put the AI technology we have available today to work to create a world in which nothing is what it appears to be, and no one can be believed, no matter what they say. I can and it’s pretty ugly.