The rise of AI has led to a sweeping panic over its potential as a job killer. Relax! Sure, it is going to lead to the replacement of a few jobs, the kind of jobs that require a skill level way below the hiring requirements for stoop labor, but that is for only a small sample in the huge job market that exists out there. The real picture, as painted by a look at our usually reliable job market history, is quite different. It shows us a jobs picture that is rife with industrial expansion on the heels of scientific invention. Look what has happened in the past following the invention or development of some primary tool. How about the steam engine, the spinning wheel, the telephone, the typewriter … just for starters. Almost every kind of farm machinery was predicted to cause job loss, but instead expanded acreage under cultivation. The steam engine was predicted to end the horse business, putting drivers and handlers out of business, and it did, but it cost a few thousand jobs while creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs on railroads, in factories, and in the trucking business. It will be the same with AI. Much of the new work is already happening in the field of computing, and it is already such an expansive investment, that the increase in employment will have multiplied many times by the end of the decade.
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As I write this, July 4th is just past. By the time you read this, it will probably be almost forgotten, and while Trump may still be celebrating his reign as emperor, the rest of us will be looking forward to the mid-terms and hopefully a change in the balance of power.
The big question is if the Dems win, will Trump be immediately impeached? I hope not. Sure, I’d love to see him on the garbage heap or actually in jail. He has earned both, but that would give the GOP a chance to regroup for the ’28 elections. Better that Trump gets to play out his term with no power, under the thumb of a Democratic congress. That will keep the other Republicans under a Democratic thumb and weaken them for the ’28 elections.
The GOP may be giving up as a party under Trump, but the Democrats aren’t exhibiting enough strength that they will be able to sit back and relax when it comes time to compete. I see no strong front-runner in the Democratic ranks. It’s time we should already be fighting over which of 5 or 6 candidates are best suited for the presidential run, and I only see a couple of rather soft-hearted inquiries. That’s just not good enough.
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Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas was on Meet the Press this Sunday, and if you’ve never heard his name before, there’s a good reason. The first thing he was asked was if the bombing continues in Iran, how can we say the war is over? Naturally, he didn’t answer it, just embarked on a series of bullshit that someone had fed him from the White House.
Host Ryan Noble went on to the housing bill currently before congress that Trump killed because he wants to tie a voter registration bill to it. It’s a bill that would enable Trump to go into the voter rolls, pull individuals out, and refuse them eligibility. This wouldn’t work over time, but it will take long enough to eliminate certain votes for this election.
White House press secretary Caroline Levitt was quoted that the Housing Act was one of the most significant pieces of housing affordably legislation in American history. Within hours of that post, Trump canceled the bill, saying it was a minor, insignificant piece of legislation. When questioned about this, Marshall jumped to about four other subjects without answering the question but claiming incorrectly that wages are outrunning inflation. Then he went on a ramble about election fraud. Noble pointed out that there is almost no provable election fraud going on in this country. The only election fraud is being perpetrated by Trump himself.
This sent Marshall off on an unintelligible rant that made absolutely no sense.
The bottom line; Marshall is an idiot and the people of Kansas deserve him for electing him.
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There’s been a lot of noise lately, most of it generated by Donald Trump, about communism. The thing is, Trump’s kind of capitalism is what causes communism. That’s right. That’s absolutely right. Let’s take a quick trip back to 1917 and take a look at what happened in Russia. There was no communism then, only a tsar, a job much like a king, who ran the country and who was surrounded by courtiers, a bunch of oligarchs who said “yes” to the tsar and got richer and richer every year. Think Elon Musk or any number of current billionaires.
Well, the tsar was feeding off the people, and the oligarchs were feeding off the people, and the people … well, you get the picture. So, Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky convinced Stalin to lead a revolution that took over Russia and saved the people from the tsar. Okay, it wasn’t as simple as that, nothing is. But it gave Stalin a chance to prove the point about great warriors not necessarily being great leaders, when he took over the country and caused communism to fail. The problem was even communism needed someone to run the store, and the guys who were strong enough to do that were strong enough to see themselves running the whole show, and that’s what they ended up doing … from Stalin to Putin, from Soviet Russia to the current Russian Empire. Looking up from the bottom, it doesn’t look much different from what Trump’s trying to do over here.
Trump sneers at communism but what Russia exists under bears no resemblance to the communism of Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky. It’s more of a common, everyday dictatorship with a strong army.
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Meanwhile, back in the anti-communist United States, President Donald Trump is working his butt off every day to prove that he is certifiably insane.
When he won in ’24, we thought his moves upon taking office were aimed at setting up a dictatorship (illegal). Then he seemed to go on a rampage to see how much money he and his family could gyp the taxpayer’s out of (immoral). Lately, it’s been what foreign nation he could take over and make into a state (fattening). But the problems aren’t Trump’s batshit crazy meanderings into any of these areas. They all come from his inability to maintain the same insane position regarding any of them for two days running. One day Trump hates Bibi Netanyahu, the next day he loves him. The same is true of Zelenskyy, Putin, the Iranian negotiators, every European leader whose name he can remember, and even the Pope.
If Trump were a janitor in the same building in which he now works, he would have been long ago removed, as a danger to the public just for what he has said and done almost every day since he was elected. Allowing him to continue operating as President is a crime against humanity, end a danger to the entire planet.
In closing, let me suggest that Harry Truman’s decision to order a nuclear attack on Japan was accepted because the American people didn’t think, at the time, that it was based on a reading of his morning bowel movement. No such assumption can be made about any of Trump’s decisions.