Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.

I don’t feel too threatened by Artificial Intelligence because it’s not. For the most part it’s the same Garbage Out that you put In with the additional possibility of errors and unintended consequences. Computers are good at repetitive tasks (of which there are far more than you would think) but as for training- babies are quicker, easier, and tastier.

I would never, ever design one without a hardware off switch though I might not make it obvious to discourage casual use (using the Janet Kill Button just to get slapped in the face by Andie MacDowell again has to be bad for your Karma dude).

The problem as Atrios would put it, is not so much that they’re imperfect, but that people think they are perfect. To me the big deal is not that they break, it’s that they work at all. It’s a miracle, like a singing dog. Who cares that the only tune he knows is “Never Gonna Give You Up”?

Tomorrow I’ll think of some way… after all, tomorrow is another day!

Trump loves ‘Gone With the Wind.’ Historians, not so much.
By Gillian Brockell, Washington Post
Feb. 21, 2020

President Trump, whose grades in history classes have long been buried, added a new riff to his shtick at a rally in Colorado Springs on Thursday night, bemoaning the film “Parasite” — the first foreign-language film to win the Oscar for best picture.

“The winner is … a movie from South Korea! What the hell was that all about? We got enough problems with South Korea with trade,” he said of a close U.S. ally. “Can we get ‘Gone With the Wind’ back, please?”

“Gone With the Wind,” which was not eligible for an Academy Award this year since it was released in 1939, is an epic film based on a best-selling novel about how a Southern white woman experienced the Civil War and Reconstruction.

It was written in an era steeped in the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy,” which framed the slavery-loving South’s secession and defeat as heroic and even patriotic.

Charlottesville. Fine people on both sides, only one of which was Racist Klanners and Nazis. To continue, as if everything was normal and nothing ever happened.

McDaniel and the other black actors in the movie were unable to attend the blockbuster film’s premiere in Atlanta because the theater was segregated. At the Oscars ceremony in a Los Angeles hotel, “Gone With the Wind” producer David O. Selznick had to “call in a special favor” so that McDaniel would be allowed to attend, according to the Hollywood Reporter. She was seated at a table in the back, separate from the rest of the cast and crew.

The movie became the highest-grossing film in history at the time it was released and set a record for most Oscar wins. It was also selected for preservation in the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry.

I’m not as alarmed as some because the U.S. System is so screwed up that even the major native Political Parties (Democrats since 1828 and Andy Jackson, they’ve really backed some reprehensible people and policies; and Republicans since 1854 and John C. Frémont, ironic they’re the modern face of Racism) can’t get it right. I’ve been forced to take a lot of Political “Science” courses and let me tell you what it isn’t.

Dang, you already guessed.

And this is serious Academics, not blow dried idiots who can barely be trusted to read something written by others off a TelePrompter. Not that the writers aren’t idiots too.

I don’t think Russian Intervention in the 2016 cycle was decisive unless you’re contending James Comey was an “Agent of Influence”.

You love him now as a man of integrity and honor. I think he’s a low level Capo who favored a different Don and paid for the fact he was a traitor and never trusted, despite the blood on his hands and the head of Hillary in a bag. May he rot in obscurity, a footnote of weaselly ass kissing sycophancy and why it earns you no respect from the people you’re trying to suck up to. You’re both transparent and basic. A Peon. A Serf. A Slave.

But don’t doubt for a minute that Russia tried, my contention is merely that their direct action had limited effect. I’m not at all sanguine that their 2020 efforts will not be far more so with the active and open complicity of Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio and the Republican Party.

On the other hand it’s simply what they do. They can’t win without cheating because their policies are monumentally unpopular so they do it all the time without compunction or shame. Truly, in the interest of Representative Democracy as a form of Government and the National Interest of the United States of America, the Republican Party must be consigned to the Ash Heap of History along with other Fascist movements.

I don’t necessarily agree with Greg Sargent all the time but I do agree about this-

Don’t mince words. Trump is abetting an attack on our country.
By Greg Sargent, Washington Post
Feb. 21, 2020[

When the Senate acquitted President Trump of the high crimes he committed against our country, Republicans and Democrats alike fell back on a convenient fiction: No, Trump has not really placed himself beyond the law and accountability entirely — for he can always be held accountable in the next election.

Republicans adopted this fiction to obscure Trump’s crimes — that his Ukraine shakedown was all about corrupting that same election. Democrats adopted it to diffuse pressure to sustain the investigative war footing that protecting the country demands.

The news that intelligence officials warned House lawmakers that Russia is again trying to sabotage our election for Trump, and that this disclosure angered him, shatters that fiction entirely.

These revelations are already getting shrouded in euphemism. One CNN analysis insists “America” is “blundering” into another crisis of electoral legitimacy, and that the “partisan divide” is hampering the U.S. response to it.

This notion that the country writ large is stumbling helplessly into this crisis, when in fact one party is inviting it in a manner the other simply is not, and its companion idea that “partisanship” will paralyze our response to it, will be ubiquitous.

So let’s not mince words: Trump and his GOP defenders appear to be actively abetting an attack on our country. By contrast, Democrats can be accused only of passivity — a serious abdication, but not remotely comparable to what Trump and his defenders are orchestrating.

The details of this story — outlined by The Post and the New York Times — again suggest that Trump will stop at nothing to escape accountability at the hands of voters in a free and fair election, regardless of the damage done to our country along the way.

Trump is angry because our intelligence officials followed the law and informed members of both parties about what the intel indicated about new Russian efforts. Trump “berated” his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, for allowing this heresy.

Trump was particularly angered by the presence at the briefing of Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif), who led the impeachment. Trump says Schiff and Democrats will “weaponize” these revelations.

In short: Our intelligence officials have concluded that another effort to subvert our election is underway. And Trump’s leading worry is that this could be used against him, not that our election is in grave danger of being compromised.

In the haze of euphemism that will inevitably enshroud this story, this ugly fact will be blurred with suggestions that maybe Trump doesn’t really believe this is happening, since he just can’t accept that Russia attacked our election in 2016, because he feels it delegitimizes his victory. It’s pathological!

But we must reject this interpretation. Because this conclusion was reached by intelligence officials in Trump’s own administration, by multiple agencies.

It’s theoretically possible that Trump defenders have a legitimate difference of opinion about what the intelligence shows. House Republicans, we’re told, objected by arguing that there’s no evidence Russia wants to help Trump. Some reporting indicates possible internal dissent on this point.

This strains credulity, since intelligence services concluded precisely this intention last time. But even if this is reasonably possible, it is still not exonerating in the least, and the media should not be permitted to euphemize what’s happening here.

Here’s why: Because whatever Russia’s real intentions toward Trump, this is still an attack on our democracy. The Times reports that intelligence discerns numerous concrete threats: new efforts to spread disinformation to divide the country; and possibly efforts to interfere in state voting systems.

That’s not far-fetched. A bipartisan Senate investigation concluded that such efforts got much further in 2016 than we thought.
…
There is zero doubt that Trump sees sowing such doubts as being good for him. He has already spent literally years trying to undermine public faith in our elections, and is likely laying the groundwork for declaring a tight loss illegitimate, a scenario election scholars such as Richard L. Hasen take seriously.

Let’s also note that there are potential practical consequences to Trump denying Congress (especially Democrats) information about outside electoral sabotage. It could mean less oversight on administration failures to protect the country, and less discussion with the public about these failures.

The larger context here, spelled out by Adam Serwer, is the entrenchment of Trump’s GOP as a “regime party” committed to holding power through maximal manipulation of government. Trump’s Ukraine shakedown and his subsequent coverup are the most recent conspicuous examples — and his acquittal is hastening this process.

Then there’s Trump’s success at getting the Justice Department to dial back the sentencing recommendation for confidant Roger Stone. The judge noted that Stone was prosecuted for “covering up” for Trump, i.e., for covering up Trump’s efforts to benefit from outside corruption of our election last time.

If and when Trump pardons Stone, this will be why: He does not view that as a bad thing, but as a positive for him. In a sense, Trump appears to want his intelligence agencies to function as Stone did: Not to alert Congress about outside interference that might benefit him, but instead to keep it under wraps.

So now the media scrutiny must fall heavily on what the administration is doing to mitigate the threat that its own intelligence has identified. Is Trump facilitating or hindering those efforts?

And if House Democrats thought there was an opening to “stand down,” as Brian Beutler puts it, this news shatters that illusion. There is no longer any excuse for failing to ramp up the oversight immediately.

Factio Politica Republica Delenda Est.

Just sayin’.