Category: Comments
FRANK IN FRIDAY – Insanity Defined
It’s said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If that is so, then the Democrats clearly are insane.
In 2016, when Donald Trump first ran for president, the Democrats called him a fascist, a bigot, a criminal, a threat, and a traitor. They weaponized the government to stop his election. When that failed, they used moles in the FBI, the CIA, the rest of the domestic intelligence community, and some foreign intelligence agencies to disrupt his presidency.
They conducted a protracted special counsel investigation into Russiagate allegations that they knew to be false. They impeached him twice. They eavesdropped on his private conversations with world leaders. They manufactured fake evidence. They falsified FISA wiretap warrant affidavits.
When they took power in 2019, they hounded anyone who ever worked for or with Trump with continual subpoenas to bankrupt them, imprison them, and ruin the their lives. The only message the Democrats had for the American people was, “Trump is bad. We hate Trump, and you should hate Trump.”
When Trump was out of office, after 2021, they indicted him four times in an attempt to imprison him for life, and brought a civil suit designed to bankrupt him and his family. They tried to take his name off State ballots. When Trump ran for president in 2024, the Democrat message was the same. Democrats called him a fascist, a bigot, a criminal, a threat, and a traitor, and said, “Trump is bad. We hate Trump, and you should hate Trump.” Again, that didn’t work.
Now at this point, a sane individual or group might have concluded that their message was not productive and that it would behoove them to find a different and better message. For instance, the Democrats might actually propose some legislation beneficial to the American public. In the alternative, they might choose to nominate candidates for office who aren’t wild-eyed Socialist freaks.
Better yet, they might finally realize that Trump is the duly elected president, and that they very well could benefit their constituents by working with him, rather than against him. Trump wrote The Art of the Deal, and he lives for the deal. On this topic, if the Democrats were smart, they would make deals with Trump to pass bills that would anger the far right members of Congress, and drive a wedge between Trump and his base. Apparently, they’re not that smart.
Moreover, as we approach the midterm elections, Democrats are still preaching the same message and still are expecting a different result. Winston Churchill said, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” The Democrat message remains, “We have nothing to offer but, Trump is bad, we hate Trump, and you should hate Trump.”
Whenever Trump takes action, any action, on any issue, Democrats sue him, and they get partisan judges to hold him up. Despite three assassination attempts, plus the foiling of the latest plot for mass murder at this week’s UFC event at the White House, Democrats still denounce Trump as Hitler and fascist, and call for unlimited resistance to any decision he makes.
Expecting a different result, Democrats insist on holding, every few months, the same lame No Kings protests, featuring decrepit senior citizens limping up and down the street with their little signs.
For Democrats, blind resistance to Trump means opposing absolutely everything he does. He installed pavement in part of the White House Rose Garden, to prevent journalists and visitors from sinking into the mud. They’re against it.
Trump is building a new East Wing ballroom, a feature that presidents from both Parties have said has been needed for many years. The construction is being privately financed, so the American taxpayer isn’t paying for it. Trump is a builder, so he will get it done as quickly and at the lowest cost possible. Democrats are against it. If they could draw out the process for years, and ensure that it cost four times whatever was estimated, they would be for it. Brain damage.
The reflecting pool in front of the Washington Monument was filthy, clogged with garbage, and looking like a backed up sewer. The Democrats wanted to spend $300 million to fix it. Trump did the job for $6.9 million. Democrats objected. They even sued Trump over the shade of blue being reflected.
Democrats also sued to stop last Sunday’s UFC fights on the White House lawn. They lost the suit. They then held a televised, but largely unwatched, counter-program. The program was a super No Kings event, featuring decrepit celebrity senior citizens, projecting the self-same message, ” Trump is bad, we hate Trump, and you should hate Trump.”
Jane Fonda (she still alive?) said the rights of Americans are being taken away by all three branches of the government. I guess she wants to overthrow the government then, right? Julia Roberts (no longer a Pretty Woman) eulogized the woman in Minnesota shot and killed by ICE simply because she was trying to run over and kill the officers, offering that “she did her best.”
Under educated, overpaid, foul mouthed cafone Robert DeNiro said he can’t love a country that’s led by Donald Trump and his sycophant Congress. At the risk that commenting on DeNiro’s idiocy might be considered taking advantage of the simple minded, I’ll simply observe that, as usual, DeNiro is full of shit. To be fair, maybe he just heard the word sycophant and doesn’t really know what it means.
A sycophant is someone who reacts to whatever the boss says by saying, “Yes, sir!” or by applauding whatever stupid bullshit some leftist says. For example, see any episode of The View. If DeNiro really thinks Trump has a sycophant Congress, he truly is nuts. 49.65% of the House is composed of Democrats who oppose Trump 100% of the time. Republicans have a 3 seat majority. In the Senate, there are 47 Democrat Senators. Add to this Republicans Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Rand Paul, who often vote against Trump, and it’s a 50-50 proposition. Sycophants my ass.
The big act at the Democrat TV bitch fest was Bette Midler’s rendition of the song, Rise Up, Sing Out. The refrain, “All you fascists, bound to lose,” proves these imbeciles don’t know what a fascist is. According to Benito Mussolini, fascism means, “Everything inside the State, nothing outside the State, and nothing against the State.” The motto, “The government is all powerful, and you better not disagree” is the Democrat Party in a nutshell, and I do mean Nut Shell.
And coming from the Party that always complains about Trump’s “tone,” Midler’s song certainly did nothing to discourage violence against the president and law enforcement. Here’s one verse, “To Hell with all the cowards, who hide behind their masks; We’re gonna win the midterms, we’re coming for his ass; He knows it too, that bastard’s bound to lose.” Lovely.
Clearly the Democrats have learned nothing in the past 10 years. And they’ve indicated that they’re still wedded to the same tired message. Commenting on Tuesday’s Georgia primary elections, Senator Warnock said anyone who supports the president is in favor of corruption. No, not the corruption of Democrats in Minnesota, Ohio, California and elsewhere. Warnock suggests that Trump wasn’t a billionaire until he was reelected in 2024. In other words, Warnock says Trump got rich while in office. As I said, brain damage. You really can’t fault Warnock though, Ilhan Omar told him that’s the way she got rich, so…
The detestable Adam Schiff (for brains) also has doubled, or is it quadrupled, down on the “Trump bad” message. Schiff promises that, when Democrats regain power, they will subpoena before Congressional Committees any private sector person who aided or worked with Trump. Just like they did the last time. They’ll drag them in, make them run up millions of dollars of legal bills, and try to ruin their lives and businesses. It worked great the first time they tried it, right?
Call me old fashioned, but I think the Democrats might be better served, and I know their constituents would be better served, by a Party that offered the American people something other than, lies, fantasy, hate, invective, insults, Marxism, corruption, waste, and incitement to violence. Will they ever learn? I hope not.
FRANK ON FRIDAY – Coast to Coast Crazy
It’s political primary season, and we’ve been treated to a cascade of Democrat hypocrisy and corruption, from sea to shining sea. From East to West, let’s travel first to the most boring of U.S. States, Maine. (Trust me, I’ve been there). Maine is the home of sitting Republican U.S. Senator, Susan Collins, who has proven herself a constant thorn in the side of President Trump, by often voting against him. She voted against Trump in the 2016 election, against Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, against the Big Beautiful Bill, and a recission package to cut wasteful spending. It was widely believed that she would be targeted by Trump in her 2026 campaign for reelection, but Democrats have changed that equation.
After having been lumped in by the President with other Republican foes such as Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul, only one thing could have caused Trump to reassess his view of Susan Collins. Her Democrat opponent.
Democrats would dearly love to win the next presidential election, but they seem to have a problem attracting male voters, especially young ones. In 2024, Trump had an 11 point edge with male voters, and cut into the previous Democrat advantage among young voters, winning men under 45 by 8 points, and those under 30 by 16 points.
Democrats knew going into 2024 that younger male voters would be a problem. They thought they had solved that problem by putting macho man Tim Walz, a/k/a Elmer Fudd, on the ticket. 
That didn’t work. This year, the Dems are still experimenting with candidates they hope will attract young male voters. The best that can be said is that it’s still a work in progress.
In Texas, they nominated Senate candidate James Talarico, a baby-faced Democrat, who looks like a choir boy (or girl). Running in Texas, a decidedly Red State, Democrat Talarico has not helped himself by announcing he was running a “vegan campaign,” and by opposing the oil industry.
Talarico actually appeared in public in late 2025, wearing a surgical mask, to announce that his campaign’s anti-meat stance was an attempt to address climate change. His anti-oil stance is supposed to serve the same twisted leftist goal. Texans pride themselves on are their loves of barbecue, cattle ranching, and their oil industry, so these moves do not bode well for Talarico.
Of course, these missteps didn’t stop Democrat forces outside the State from sending Talarico’s campaign $600,000 two hour after he won the primary. Talarico is now running around the State trying to change his vegan persona by consuming platters of various meats at campaign events, prompting one journalist to observe, “He looks like he wants to puke.”
In the State of Maine, Democrats are courting young male voters by nominating Marine veteran Graham Platner. A combat veteran, and local oyster farmer, running against the supposedly unpopular Susan Collins? What could go wrong?
The first thing is the Democrat perception of Collins’ popularity. A Senator since 1996, she has won her elections by 5, 17, 23, 37, and 9 points respectively. She consistently polls behind her opponents, and somehow wins. But she’s not the story this year, it’s Platner.
He’s a veteran, sure. He’s played up a battle with PTSD, which is a positive if one has triumphed over that malady. For Platner however, as Marine General Holland Smith once reported, “the issue remains in doubt.”
Platner has a tattoo on his chest of a Nazi death’s head symbol worn by German SS death camp guards, a totenkopf. Representing the Party that insists on denouncing all Republicans, including Susan Collins, as Nazis and fascists, that may seem a tad hypocritical.
Platner has since inked over the totenkopf, and has claimed he never knew that the tattoo he sported on his chest for 20 years had anything to do with Nazis. That would be sketchy enough, but an ex-girlfriend has come forward to report that Platner, who physically abused her, indeed did know the meaning of the tattoo, to which he proudly referred as “my totenkopf.” Perhaps he’ll (or is it Heil?) write a book entitled Mein Kopf.
One might dismiss the unfortunate tattoo as a youthful indiscretion (I won’t, but one might), but it gets worse. Would-be Nazi Platner also has espoused Communist sympathies, saying he would make it illegal for anyone to amass a billion dollars, and has suggested jailing billionaires. (Better not tell his doners that). Never forget that the Nazis (National Socialists) and the Communists, were opposite sides of the same coin.
Oh, and then it turns out Platner got his house from his parents, his business is somewhat phony, as his only customer is his mother, and there’s that history of physically abusing women. Not bad enough yet? Well, he also has been sexting at least six women on a website frequented by teenagers, and allegedly sending females what are euphemistically called Dic-Pics. Democrats don’t seem to care about any of that, though. They want to take over the Senate, and if that means supporting an abusive Commie/Nazi pervert, so be it. Heil Platner!
Moving south along the East coast, we come to New Jersey, where the 11th District Democrat House candidate is a virtual Communist, and the newly ordained Democrat candidate for the 12th District House seat is Adam Hamawy, a pro-Palestianian supporter of Hamas, who once traveled with, and later testified on behalf of the Blind Sheikh, Omar Rahman, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Rahman said he wanted to “conquer the land of the infidels.” (That’s us folks). Enter Hamawy, who’s received millions of dollars from a Pro-Palestinian super PAC called American Priorities. I guess their priority is to destroy America. Hamawy’s a plastic surgeon though, so he should be able to change faces long enough to get elected.
Finally, we wing our way West, to California, where upstart Spencer Pratt’s election night 6 point lead on Commie Raman, a week later became a 4 point loss, as California continues to count ballots for weeks after election day. In India, they count 640 million ballots in one day, but Californians are not as good at math as Asians.
Hans Von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, describes California’s voting system as the worst in the country. “They mail ballots to every single registered voter in the state,” without ever cleaning up their voter rolls to remove the dead, or those who have moved.
In America, about 12% of the population moves every year, from 25 to 35 million a year. Add to this, California has lost a couple of million residents in the past 5 years, people who are fleeing high taxes, high crime, and homeless encampments. That’s the perfect environment for ballot fraud.
The state will count ballots that come in for seven days after Election Day, with a 22-day “cure period” for ballots with issues such as a missing signature. “They contact the voter and say, well, if you come in and fix this, we’ll count it… Plus, of course, they legalized what I call ballot trafficking. They like to call it vote harvesting, but basically they pay people to go to voters’ homes to collect their absentee ballots, which gives them the ability to pressure them to vote a particular way, or frankly, to fill out the ballots.” There’s supposed to be a witness who verifies the mail ballot, but California never checks.
And to make sure the homeless vote, the homeless don’t need an address on a ballot. It turns out that the Raman and Bass campaigns have been funding homeless shelters to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars and paying $5 a vote to homeless people who will cast ballots for them. Democracy in action, huh?
Even though Bass and Raman are going to the runoff election, they’re still counting votes in California. If the 2000 presidential election had turned on the outcome of the California race, I think they’d still be counting the ballots. George W. Bush would have been elected by the House of Representatives. The California voting system is a disgraceful mess that should not be tolerated in any democracy.
California may have been the first Blue State to go crazy, but the Democrat mental disorder now has spread from coast to coast. In three weeks we celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday. Our Founders promised us life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Today’s Democrats offer us only strife, lunacy, and the pursuit of cannabis.
FRANK ON FRIDAY – Carnival Season
It’s June, the time of year when traveling carnivals move from town to town to entertain the public, with dangerous rides and rigged games of chance, all designed to separate the customers, whom they call “marks,” from their hard earned money. These carnivals typically are run by shady and unscrupulous people, “carnys,” who derive their income from exploiting the workers who rely on them, cheating, and bribery.
Given that pedigree for the typical carny, it should come as no surprise that the elected carnys of the Left have gotten into the carnival business too. After all, they already support dangerous positions, and rig elections in order to separate taxpayers from their hard earned money, so why not? The Democrat Party has become a traveling circus, featuring the same kinds of oddities one finds in the crudest of carnivals. The elected carnys include the traditional bearded lady –
The geek, who draws a crowd by biting the heads off chickens –
And an astonishing assortment of other freaks.
And recently, the Democrats’ traveling carnival of lies arrived here in New Jersey. I speak, of course, of the nights of violent rioting that Democrats brought to Delaney Hall, a privately run detention facility in Newark, which currently houses illegal aliens arrested by ICE, who are awaiting deportation.
Members of Congress, including Geek Hakeem Jeffries, Senator Andy Kim, and our illustrious new Governor, Mikie Sherrill, turned up outside the facility to help rouse a crowd, composed of the usual suspects from No Kings rallies (deviant shut-ins with garishly dyed hair, and decrepit senior citizens trying to relive the 60’s), as well as an array of paid protestors, some coming from as far away as Portland, Oregon, who hail from the military wing of the Democrat Party, Antifa domestic terrorists. Add to this the fact that New Jersey is one of those wayward States who’s leaders have declared it to be a “sanctuary State” for illegal aliens, and which, as a result, refuses to permit it’s law enforcement officers to cooperate with federal officers, and what possibly could go wrong? As it turns out, a lot.
As an aside, let me touch on the notion of any State, County, or municipality declaring itself a “sanctuary” for illegals. Legal sanctuary was a doctrine practiced by many religions, in which an accused could enter a church and be immune from prosecution. It was recognized in English Common Law from the 4th Century to the 17th Century. Because the 17th Century ended in 1699, and our Declaration of Independence wasn’t made until 1776, the concept of legal sanctuary has no place in U.S. law. And even if it did, the hijacking of a religious doctrine by an entity which devoutly opposes religion is the height of hypocrisy. In other words, a typical move by the Democrat Party.
Moreover, it’s time that legal action was taken on a case or cases which eventually can be ruled on by the U.S. Supreme Court, which once and for all will declare Sanctuary States, cities, or whatever, unconstitutional. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution makes immigration enforcement the sole responsibility of the federal government. In 2012, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that States cannot intrude on the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration law as it sees fit. So-called Sanctuary States represent such an intrusion. And as municipalities are merely the creatures of the various States, cities have no more right to impede federal law enforcement than do their parent States. Article VI of the Constitution states that it and all federal laws supercede those of the States. End of sermon.
Back to the Delaney Hall riots. All good riots stem from a basic lie. The 1967 Newark riots were sparked by the false story that police had killed a black cab driver. The Delaney Hall riots stemmed from false reports of unhealthy conditions inside the facility, including deficient and tainted food. These false reports prompted State and City health agencies to demand entry for inspection. These agencies have no jurisdiction over the facility. A bit of history is in order.
Delaney Hall is a privately run detention facility, owned by the GEO Group. In February 2025, the facility was leased for 15 years by ICE, to house illegal aliens taken into ICE custody. You may recall that, shortly after it opened, in May 2025, the facility was the scene of a similar incident, in which Democrat Congress people, including big-assed House Member LaMonica McIver, tried to storm the facility. McIver assaulted law enforcement and later was indicted.
The Delaney Hall facility, owned and operated by the same company, was used by Il Duce Obama to house illegal aliens subject to deportation, starting in 2011. No Democrat ever complained about the facility or conditions therein, until the president was named Donald Trump. Governor Sherrill and her ilk, have denounced conditions in Delaney Hall, calling it America’s CECOT, the forbidding illegal alien prison in El Salvador. It’s anything but that.
Here’s a little known, and little reported fact. Before the 2025 ICE lease of Delaney Hall, the facility was under contract to the New Jersey Department of Corrections, which used Delaney Hall as a Halfway House and rehabilitation facility for State prisoners nearing release from prison. I know this because I represented a number of these prisoners. And in my experience, the State prisoners, United States citizens transferred there by the New Jersey government, were happy to go to Delaney Hall, because conditions there were far better than those they experienced in New Jersey prisons.
In late May, NJ politicians tried the same tactics they used during the McIver incident. They showed up unannounced and demanded entry. Now, all a Member of Congress, or a Governor, has to do is call ahead and schedule a visit, and they will be admitted. They didn’t, so they weren’t. The whole spectacle was merely for show; a pretext to bring in the Antifa terrorist bastards to start the riot. And they did.
(An investigation is underway to determine who paid for and is supplying expensive gas masks and body armor to the rioters. Under NJ law, the wearing of body armor while committing assault is a crime punishable by 5 years in prison. Assaulting a federal officer is a far more serious federal offense).
The riots prevented family members from visiting the detainees. The politicians blamed ICE. ICE officers were assaulted, one was viciously bitten. Things got so bad that even Governor Sherrill was forced to act. You’d think that a graduate of the Naval Academy, and former Naval officer, would understand the need to enforce laws and protect the safety of law enforcement officers, but it took days of rioting before she finally, on the night of May 30, sent in a State Police unit, which quickly restored order, arresting more than 20 rioters in the process.
Then, having done the right thing, the Governor alibied to mollify the leftist nuts in her Party, claiming that she took action only to protect the rights of the detainees. She later came to the revelation that most of the rioters were from outside New Jersey. No shit Sherrill! If you had permitted the State and local police to intervene sooner, there would have been no riots, and no interruption of visitations. Idiot Newark Mayor Baraka also got in the act. He’s blasting the State Police intervention, and he’s suing GEO, claiming his Public Safety Director should have been permitted to participate. Hey Asshole, you’re the one who ordered City officers not to be involved in ICE operations.
At its heart, the Delaney Hall riots are based on false reports of food quality and living conditions in the facility, which was inspected by and passed federal inspections. Reports of a hunger strike are lies. Some detainees refused the meals provided, but subsisted on snacks such as honey buns and candy bars obtained from the on site commissary. Indeed, the food served to these filthy, criminal illegal aliens rivals that provided by many schools to U.S. citizen students.
As this is written, the riots have subsided and relative calm has returned to the area around Delaney Hall. The State has established a “Free Speech Zone” to accommodate any leftover blue haired protestors, so they can chant “Grab your guns and kill yourself,” and “Every cop, every fed, shoot yourself in the head,” to their heart’s content. Whenever the politicians who are supposed to be in charge of protecting public safety actually grow some balls and permit the police to act, the cowardly bastards of Antifa tend to fade away, escaping back into their parents’ basements, until the carnival moves on to some new town, in search of new marks to be fleeced.
By the way, if anyone takes exception to the opinions expressed herein, I don’t know what you can do about it. This is my Free Speech Zone.
FRANK ON FRIDAY – Pope Luddite XIV
Pope Leo XIV this week issued his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, in which he called for the limitation and control of artificial intelligence (AI) , which the Pope says threatens to normalize an anti-human vision, by concentrating immense digital power in the hands of a few private actors. The Pope warns that AI represents “the industrial revolution of the modern age,” and poses challenges to human dignity, justice, and labor.
Dire warnings about the dangers of newfangled technology are nothing new. All new technologies are met with fear by prophets of doom. There were those who denounced those noisy, smelly horseless carriages as works of the Devil, which would put buggy whip manufacturers and horseshoeing businesses out of work.
I entitled this piece, Pope Luddite for that reason. The Luddites were members of a 19th Century movement by textile workers who protested the use of automated machinery by the industry. They have come to symbolize those who resist any technological advancement.
Some say that Pope Leo’s warning is more powerful because it comes from an American Pope. Let’s put that argument to rest. He may have been born in Chicago, but Pope Leo is more South American than North, having taken Peruvian citizenship when he was assigned to that country. The Pope’s message isn’t coming from an American point of view, so much as a Progressive one. This is unsurprising.
For those who think Popes only recently have begun spouting Progressive dogma, think again. Pope Leo’s warning that AI is a modern day industrial revolution wasn’t original. In fact, it is reminiscent of an encyclical of Leo XIV’s namesake, Leo XIII, who in 1891 issued Rerum Novarum, which warned that the industrial revolution was exploiting workers, denounced the concentration of wealth, and sought to improve living and working conditions for laborers. Like Leo XIV’s pronouncement, Leo XIII warned that new technology would cost workers their jobs. Indeed, Leo XIV says that his choice of the papal name “Leo” was influenced by this 1891 encyclical.
The difference is that Leo XIII was advocating for the 19th Century entrepreneurs to establish now familiar social programs and advancements such as wage and hour laws, worker safety laws, and the protection of trade unions, while at the same time denouncing socialism and communism. Leo XIV seems to be a dedicated socialist, bent on using AI technology to control State action.
At the heart of Leo’s argument is the notion that AI needs to be disarmed, and turned from an instrument of domination and death, to the service of the common good. Leo says “technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it.” He worries that AI makes war more feasible, and less subject to human control.
On one level, the Pope’s pronouncement may be seen as part of the ongoing dispute between he’s had with President Trump. When he released his encyclical, Pope Leo had at his side Chris Olah, co-founder of the AI firm Anthropic. Olah supports AI safety, a cause with which I cannot disagree. But there’s more.
Anthropic is in an ongoing dispute with the Trump Administration. Its AI program, Claude, is used by a number of government agencies, including defense agencies. Because Anthropic seeks to limit the uses to which its technology may be put, such as being used to select and analyze military targets, the Trump Administration labeled it a supply chain threat to national security. In essence, by controlling the permitted uses of AI, Anthropic or other tech companies could control the conduct of nation States.
Olah’s heart is in the right place, noting that AI companies have incentives that go against doing the right thing: commercial pressure, competition, pride and ambition. He said there must be people outside those incentives, such as church leaders, who are willing to be thoughtful critics.
For his part, Pope Leo is calling for regulation of AI, to keep the technology from dehumanizing society. He sees the challenge of AI about its design and about who gets to make choices as to its use. I’m certainly not in favor of runaway AI programs which risk replacing human decision making with cold digital calculations. People need to control the machines, not the other way around. But who will be that guiding hand?
Magnifica Humanitas may be Pope Leo’s job application, but is he the best candidate? Understand, I’m not bashing Pope Leo. I think he’s striving for a more just and peaceful world, and that is a worthy goal. However, the Pope, any Pope, isn’t merely some devout ascetic conscience of humanity, like the Dalai Lama. He himself is a Chief of State, and the CEO of the conglomerate known as the Holy See.
The Pope may speak out against the dangers of commercialism and capitalism, but he’s got his own business interests to look after. He has his own bank, the Vatican Bank, and the Holy See owns the Banco di Roma. It has gold reserves, owns some 5,000 properties, making it a huge real estate company, it owns two insurance companies, and holds positions in Black Rock, J.P. Morgan, GE, IBM, and Bethlehem Steel. Yet I’ve never heard the Pope lecture these companies about aiding in weapons production.
Despite the fact that the Pope regularly has audiences with tech billionaires, who come to Rome to kiss his ring, and pledge to advance Greenhouse Gas Emissions programs, the Vatican invests in Gulf Oil, and its ownership of a natural gas company, Italgas, may make its focus on Greenhouse Gas emissions seem a tad hypocritical.
Moreover, although the Vatican takes pains to criticize Western industrialists over pollution, CO2 emissions, and the like, it focuses little effort on the true despoilers of the environment in China, Russia, and India. This may be due to the lack of Catholics in those places, but that’s the point.
Even if the Holy See could influence AI use, limiting it to peaceful uses which advance the health and safety of mankind in the West, it hasn’t a prayer of keeping the Chinese and others from making aggressive, warlike use of AI.
Leo’s encyclical condemns the servitude created by the technological revolution, including laborers in rare-earth element mines. I guess he means in China, where most of these elements are being mined, but he doesn’t specify. It also decries young people being exploited by online criminal networks.
No one is for that, of course, but he shouldn’t blame these problems on the fact that the technology exists. Any technology or institution may be perverted for criminal purposes. Even the Church, which is trying to extricate itself from the devastation sown by decades of sexual abuse of minors by its priests. The San Diego Archdiocese had to file for bankruptcy protection due to judgments from abused victims. These things didn’t happen because the Church exists, but because its stewards failed to prevent it.
I suppose we can agree that, regardless of whether he can bring about the regulation and limitation of AI that he advocates for, the Pope said what needed to be said. Far be it from me to question a Pope’s motives, but the AI warnings in this encyclical may be as much about protecting a healthy bottom line as about protecting humanity.
The Holy See gets much of its revenue from a donation program called Peter’s Pence. And we’re not talking about just pence. The program brings in over $60 million a year, but donations have been going down of late. Pope Leo XIII’s prediction that the industrial revolution would cost jobs, making the poor workers even poorer, turned out not to be true. The Industrial Revolution led to higher wages, the emergence of the middle class, and vastly greater giving to the Church.
Leo XIV’s warning that AI will cost jobs mimics a common theme these days, but there’s no telling whether Leo XIV will be just as wrong about that as was Leo XIII. I can understand Leo XIV’s concern, however. People contribute to Peter’s Pence, computers and robots do not. Food for thought.
FRANK ON FRIDAY – A Death Star is Born
Last week, after many years of planning and construction, Il Duce Obama finally opened his Presidential Center in Chicago. It is a massive, and massively ugly edifice.
This monstrosity was built in Chicago’s Jackson Park is said to have cost $850 million for the building alone. But in true Democrat fashion, the price tag doesn’t end with the reported cost. The already overtaxed citizens of the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois also are on the hook for some $350 million for necessary infrastructure improvements.
And the way Obama got control of the property on which his building sits is, to say the least creative financing. To say the most, it’s blatant fraud. Obama got 19 acres of the park for the sum of $10. (Even the Indians got more than that for Manhattan long, long ago). In return for the $10 price, Obama was supposed to fund an endowment with $470 million to support the project. Five years ago, they got the endowment started with a $1 million deposit. No further deposits have been made. That’s what my late father used to call, “A dollar down, and the rest when you catch me.”
And true to his Democrat roots, Obama spent money on the building that he didn’t have. Dozens of subcontractors, many of them minority owned businesses, are owed millions of dollars for work done and never paid for. Well, Obama is all about hope, so I guess they can “hope” they’ll find a way to stay in business. It’s a win-win for Obama, though. He got his building, he got the virtue signaling satisfaction of hiring minority firms, he didn’t pay them of course, but if they go out of business it’ll be Trump’s fault.
The design of Obama’s abomination has raised many eyebrows. According to one of the designers, “The shape of the building was actually meant to mimic four hands coming together to show the importance of our collective action.” Collective? Note the Marxist terminology. Other observers don’t see hands coming together.
Many Chicago residents think they’re getting the back of the hand. They call the building an “eyesore” which is driving up rents and property taxes in the area. Other observers were less kind. They’ve called it the “Obmalisk,” and the “Obamausoleum.” Some see a more otherworldly design, calling it “the Death Star,” and likening the edifice to “a Klingon prison.”
For a man who some accused of being born somewhere other than in the United States, these descriptions could be troubling. We’ve all seen Obama’s birth certificate, but maybe he’s trying to tell us something. After all, the release of UFO files is in the news, and many are claiming there’s proof of space aliens visiting our planet. The shape of the Obama Center is a bit suspicious. To me, it looks a lot like the obelisk from 2001 – A Space Odyssey.
First, let’s set the scene. Valerie Jarrett is the CEO of the Obama Center. Her salary is $740,000 a year, and unlike other minorities connected to the project, she is getting paid. Her introduction was pure virtue signaling bullshit.
“We’d also like to take a moment to recognize the original inhabitants of the land upon which we are gathered today.” “We honor the Anishinaabe, the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, the Odawa and the Potawatomi nations.” Some have faulted at the logic, or apparent lack of such in these comments. They built “a communist monument” on “stolen land” that the new owners refuse to give back.
For his part, Il Duce Obama at first commented on the upcoming 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but then quickly managed to defame our nation’s Founding Fathers. He noted that the success of the experiment with self-government was never a given. “In forming our union, the founders fell terribly short of the Declaration’s promise, leaving slavery intact, allowing states to restrict the franchise to white men who owned property, but in drafting a constitution and a bill of rights, they did have the foresight, the genius to provide us with a framework that allows each generation to make our union more perfect.”
So, the Declaration was flawed, but the Constitution was a work of genius? Okay, but many of the the men who signed the Declaration, also wrote the Constitution. You know, that document that’s supposed to be the supreme law of the land, the one that Democrats like Obama view as merely an impediment to be ignored.
Il Duce spoke of our “beliefs,” and without mentioning his name, used these comments to criticize our current president.
“A belief that our military and law enforcement owe allegiance not to any president or political party but to the people and our Constitution.” Does he think they don’t? These officers swear to support and defend the Constitution, and military officers promise to obey the orders of those appointed over them, like, say, their Commander in Chief. The implication is that the military should disregard Trump’s orders.
“A belief in the peaceful transfer of power after the people have spoken in fair and free elections, recognizing that in a large, complicated society like ours, no group or faction gets its way 100% of the time.”
This one was truly laughable. Barrack Hussein Obama personally participated in the illegal, unconscionable, and unconstitutional attempts to sabotage the Trump 2016 campaign, and to cripple his first Administration. He presided over meetings that led to spying on and wiretapping of campaign officials. He changed intelligence gathering and dissemination rules to permit raw intelligence to be leaked from the Trump Administration. He appointed and left behind moles in every agency whose jobs it was to undermine Trump. Obama was directly responsible for the decision to have the FBI ambush General Michael Flynn, and railroad him into an indictment for lying to a federal officer.
In 2016, the people spoke in a free and fair election, and Il Duce Obama did everything he could to frustrate the will of American voters, for the express purpose of seeing that his Party got its way 100% of the time. Instead of building a Klingon prison, he should be sitting in a prison.
Then Obama spoke of events after he left office. “I recognize it’s been almost a decade since I left office. In that time, we have lived through more war and a terrible pandemic, economic disruptions, mass protests, backlash against mass protests, political conflicts that have shaken the very foundation of our democracy. ” We’ve lived through more war? Obama attacked eight countries and killed thousands. The war with Iran was necessary only because Obama’s to pay off the Iranians financed their nuclear program.
Economic disruptions? Things only got better once Il Duce was gone. Mass protests, and backlash against mass protests? I’ll translate for you. Democrats caused riots that killed scores of people and destroyed thousands of businesses and other property. The backlash was enforcement of the law, which Obama and his ilk oppose.
And political conflicts that have shaken the foundation of our democracy? Obama is the crooked son of a bitch who supervised the shaking.
Then Obama warned us not to “open the door to the most ruthless, or the most careless, or the most fearful among us, who see some groups and some people as more equal than others, and see government as nothing more than a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies and keep those who are different in their place. The balls on this prick! Il Duce ruthlessly weaponized the government to stifle all dissent, and to keep dissenters “in their place,” which he decided was federal prison.
Now that the Obama Death Star is open for business, where is Luke Skywalker when we need him? There is what looks like an open thermal exhaust port on the side of the building. One proton torpedo ought to do it.