Our President told Bob Woodward that he knew COVID-19 would be profoundly deadly but told Americans differently (i.e., "it's going to be fine") because "I don't want to create a panic." But that's not leadership -- leadership would have sounded more like this is going to be bad, but we'll fight our way through it and we'll come out on top. And it would have reduced "panic," though I seriously doubt it would have saved very many lives, since "show(ing) strength" only goes so far if you don't actually know what you're doing. Don't expect this to be a Damascus moment for your Confederate flag-flying neighbor, though. We must leave their instruction to God.
In a peripherally-related note, Tucker Carlson claims that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) -- who has spent years positioning himself as a staunch ally of our President -- brokered all those interviews with Bob Woodward which are garnering our President so much deservedly negative publicity now. But only weak people and drama addicts look for someone to blame all the time. And, ah, Mr. Graham is up for re-election this year, in an unexpectedly tight race, and now South Carolina's Presidential votaries might be thinking he's not a "real conservative" (particularly since he's also lately bashed QAnon).
The putatively more capable Presidential son won't condemn Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, saying "(w)e all do stupid things at 17." OK, everyone who did something stupid when they were 17, raise your hand! Yeah, that's my hand up, too. Now everyone who shot three protestors when they were 17, raise your hand! Not so many hands now, eh? And thus we are reminded, yet again, that money can't buy a clue.
Having heard that Americas PAC radio ad about Biden family finances, I remind you that ProPublica covered the long story of how Jim Biden has benefited financially from being Joe Biden's brother. Of course, our President has done far, far worse than anything ProPublica relates in their reporting, but then that's the whole point: every time you bring up our President's obvious corruption, his votaries say "well, what about the Biden family?" And though "well what about" is what people say when they can't win the argument on the merits, his votaries don't care about persuasion so much as shouting you down.
Finally, AI language generator GPT-3 writes an op-ed at The Guardian to reassure us that artificial intelligence isn't such a bad thing. The op-ed is actually a human-edited melange of eight op-eds, and the human editors basically told it what to say. Even so, I still think we have less to fear from AI than from greedy/stupid people making AI do more of our work than it should. Anyone who's ever dealt with the self-checkout kiosk at the supermarket or been disappointed yet again by autocorrect knows what I'm talking about.
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