Pun Salad

Sabine Hossenfelder brings her quirky sense of humor and her German accent to her look at that AI-debunking Apple study we discussed a few days back: AI Can’t Reason. Should It Drive Cars?.

At my age, I am almost sure: (1) an AI could drive safer than I can; (2) I don't want pineapple on my pizza.

Also of note:

• It's like they have forgotten about the boy who cried wolf. Maybe they don't teach that in schools any more. Heather Mac Donald checks out the Prophets of Doom.

  A quiz: Who said the following, and which speaker did the New York Times deem dark and demagogic?

  “We’re not going to have a country” if my opponent wins.

  My opponent is “a threat to our democracy and fundamental freedoms.”

  “There is one existential threat:” my opponent.

  “The only existential threat to humanity is climate change, and [my opponent] didn’t do a damn thing about it.”

  The 2024 presidential election “might carry near-existential stakes.”

  Blacks and Hispanics “have to wake up knowing that they can lose their very life in the course of just living their life. . . . [they] have to worry about whether their sons or daughters will come home after a grocery store run or just walking down the street or driving their car or playing in the park or just sleeping at home.”

  “America must heed this warning”: my opponent is a “fascist.”

  “No one has ever been as dangerous to this country” as my opponent.

  “Folks don’t care if tanks roll by on the way to the store as long as the milk doesn’t cost more than 4 years ago.”

  Answer key: The first quote is from Donald Trump. The rest are from: Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Joe Biden, the New York Times, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris, and a New York Times reader.

  Yet the Times accuses Trump alone of making “fear an animating force” in his campaigns, of using “fear as a tool” to stir up his base, and of taking “doomsday prophesying to a new extreme.” Trump alone sends the “dark, apocalyptic” message: “Be Afraid!” according to the Times. By contrast, Harris, Biden, and the Times are merely telling the truth about the existential threat that is Trump—and, in the case of Biden’s comments about black parents, about the existential threat that police pose to blacks.

  Joe Biden is old enough to have heard about the boy who cried wolf, but in his dotage he's apparently turned the kid into the hero of the fable.

• Old man rambles incoherently in Concord. That's my alternate headline for James Freeman's WSJ column; instead, he went with Biden Still Speaking in Public.

  Remember the guy whose cognitive challenges were so great that a Justice Department special counsel said he could not be successfully prosecuted despite evidence of willfully violating the law? It’s the same guy the Democratic Party considered so impaired that he was denied the presidential nomination even after winning every party primary and caucus except the one in American Samoa. Believe it or not, he’s still the president of the United States and he continues to accept public speaking invitations, of all things. Joe Biden’s comments in New Hampshire this week neatly encapsulate the abuse of power during his term—abuse that Vice President Kamala Harris still insists on tolerating if not abetting. In an NBC interview on Tuesday, Ms. Harris turned down yet another opportunity to acknowledge Mr. Biden’s cognitive issues and his administration’s abuse of the justice system.

  And there's an additional angle about a couple of his local apparatchik chicks:

  New Hampshire’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, also don’t seem inclined to put country over party.

  Freeman notes the tweets from Maggie and Jeanne "contain messages welcoming Mr. Biden to the Granite State but no condemnations of his remarks."

• To the extent that anything can be said to be on his mind. Andrew C. McCarthy notes that Locking Up Trump Has Been on Biden’s Mind for a Long Time. (Gifted link!)

  On Noah’s excellent piece about President Biden’s assertion that “we’ve got to lock him up” in reference to Donald Trump, I would simply add that this is not the first time the president has let slip his connection to the Democratic lawfare efforts, led by Biden’s own Justice Department, to get his Republican opponent — now his vice president’s Republican opponent — locked up.

  During Trump’s state criminal trial in Manhattan, I wrote about the various ways in which the president was complicit in the lawfare campaign. In the column, I noted

  this gem buried in a February 10 Politico report: Biden has “grumbled to aides and advisers that had [Attorney General Merrick] Garland moved sooner in his investigation into former President Donald Trump’s election interference, a trial may already be underway or even have concluded.” I believe this is why Smith — who could have pushed hard for a relatively swift trial in Florida on a very strong obstruction case against Trump regarding the Mar-a-Lago documents — brought such a legally dubious case against Trump in Washington: Biden and Democrats have made the Capitol riot central to their 2024 campaign, so Smith was under great pressure to bring whatever related charges he could theorize.

  It was always nonsense for the Biden-Harris administration, Democrats, and their media allies to claim that Biden was sealed off from the Trump prosecutions. At least in their federal iterations (Smith’s two cases), these prosecutions could not proceed unless Biden approved of them. They are brought under executive power, which he holds exclusively.

  Even when he was compos mentis, Joe's been a vengeful, bitter man.

• If you're too poor to buy condoms, you probably can't afford a baby either. Elizabeth Nolan Brown covers the latest D-side pander: Biden and Harris Propose 'Free' Condoms Covered by Insurance.

  A new proposal from the Biden administration would require health insurance companies to fully cover the costs of over-the-counter birth control, including condoms. The proposal represents "the largest expansion of contraception coverage in more than a decade," said Vice President and 2024 presidential candidate Kamala Harris in a statement.

  "This new action would help ensure that millions of women with private health insurance can access the no-cost contraception they need," President Joe Biden said.

  I'm sorry, it's now the woman's job to buy condoms? When did that happen?

• If you have to yell at someone, might as well be him. Jeff Maurer hits on a possible tactic to shore up Kamala: Maybe if I Yell at Nate Silver More, Harris Will Win.

  The news cycle in these critical days before the election tends to follow a pattern. Each day, Nate Silver’s election forecast model updates. Shortly thereafter, partisans for whichever side received bad news get on social media and bombard Nate with so much invective you’d think that he had karate kicked Dolly Parton. This complaining has become an election season tradition, much like election-themed Halloween costumes or giving a campaign your ex’s phone number so that they bug them, not you.

  Personally, I want Harris to win. I think she’s by far the better choice, but Nate’s model doesn’t agree: As I write this, it gives Trump a 53-47 edge. I find that unbelievable – didn’t the model see the debate? Doesn’t it remember January 6? I’ve got some Huffington Post articles that I could send the model if it’s on the fence, because this is just baffling – why doesn’t Nate’s mechanical processor of polling data see the world like I do? And how much do I need to yell at this computer to get it to come around?

  To be clear: I am already yelling at the computer a lot. When the model barely moved after Harris chose Walz as VP, I tweeted “UMMM…HELLLLO??? 👇👇👇” with a link to a SurveyMonkey poll showing Harris up by eight points nationally. I tweet something like that in response to the model pretty much every day – I’ll write “WRONG MUCH??? 😂” or “🙄🙄🙄” or “UN…FREAKING…REAL ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”, because…well, come on. The model feels so wrong! Literally no one I know is voting for Trump – not my neighbors here in DC, not friends from grad school, or any of my colleagues in the late-night comedy writing world! Is that factored into your model, Nate? It must not be, because I just named like 50 people, but your forecast shows almost half the country voting for Trump!

  I'm pretty sure Nate's model fails to take into account cranky retired bloggers with some minor skills in Linux system administration, Perl, and dog-walking.