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Preventive Incantation

It doesn’t matter how one feels* about AI as a technological problem, as it is much more of a financial problem, a threat similar to others that preceded it but special in its own special way. Purveyors already know the limits of the technology but dangle the potential profits as unlimited.

Because all the convenient confusion can be difficult to parse, a cultural interpretation of the crisis requires urgent attention. And thanks to Short Attention Span Theater – the single, unwavering truism threading society together – it needs to be brief and concise. Enter The Great Crash, 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith into evidence:

…there is deep faith in the power of incantation. When the market fell many Wall Street citizens immediately sensed the real danger, which was that income and employment – prosperity in general – would be adversely affected. This had to be prevented. Preventive incantation required that as many important people as possible repeat as firmly as they could that it wouldn’t happen.  This they did. They explained how the stock market was merely the froth and that t he real substance of economic life rested in production , employment, and spending, all of which would remain unaffected. No one knew for sure this was so. As an instrument of economic policy, incantation does not permit of minor doubts or scruples.

To the mighty extent that AI hype runs riot, our savvy age turns the power of incantation into cynicism verging on a new art form. Machine learning is so deeply ingrained into every sector that it simply must work and cannot fail, to coin a phrase. It must be powerful if important people are warning that it might take over.

Meanwhile, circularity: Tech giants investing in each other’s AI products and projects, driving valuation and demand for power, water, chips, and data centers, and inflating the perception of market consensus. We love the miasma of mortgage-backed securities in the morning.

Circularity > singularity.

Image: Screenshot from Bloomberg March 20, 2026

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Smoking the Wrong End

I couldn’t write anything for a couple of days, but not because I couldn’t top ‘pinyon’ in the subject line, thank you very much.

With all the gloating about Romney’s Doofus Act this far out from the election, we should remember not to play in their hands. The reality of Romney, the entire dimensions of its scandalous fraudulence, is the fault of the Republican Party and its insanity refineries around the southern parts of the country, as much if not more than any of it actually belongs to him. Pierce:

The biggest problem with Romney’s campaign is its utter incoherence, which stems from the fact that he had to romance a Republican primary electorate that is clearly demented. The root of the campaign’s fundamental dishonesty, which is what has led to its incoherence in the first place, is the fact that the Republican primary electorate forced Romney to renounce the only real achievement he has as an elected politician — the Massachusetts health-care reform. Once you find you have to lie about all the good you did, what does the rest of it really matter?

Yes, do tell. And now, in a bit of very hopeful convergence, what I would really like is for some reporter to ask the President what he thinks about the NFL right about now. And I would like for the President to say that, of course he likes the NFL, likes to drink beer and watch it like some others do, and so he hates what is going on now with the owners trying to turn the refs’ pensions into 401(k)s but that this sort of thing has been happening for a while now. Let’s let that discussion burst out into the open now, too, while we’re at it.

That’s what I would like.

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Funny, that

In tribute to Romney’s Doofus Abroad act, I wanted to post an excerpt from Graham Greene’s The Comedians, a comic reference to something decidedly not funny.

Of course there’s nothing online that I can find, but you should still take this as a recommendation for Greene’s famous novel about Haiti, wherein friends of Romney could find new and better ways to conduct themselves abroad. See also, The Quiet American.

So instead, we turn to John Ruskin who, in true enlightening nineteenth century fashion, has some choice words for Willard about taxes. This is from Fors Clavigera, Letter VII, 1871:

Do you see, in The Times of yesterday and the day before, 22nd and 23rd June, that the Minister of France dares not, even in this her utmost need, put on an income tax; and do you see why he dares not?

Observe, such a tax is the only honest and just one; because it tells on the rich in true proportion to the poor, and because it meets necessity in the shortest and bravest way, and without interfering with any commercial operation.

All rich people object to income tax, of course;— they like to pay as much as a poor man pays on their tea, sugar, and tobacco — nothing on their incomes.

Whereas, in true justice, the only honest and wholly right tax is one not merely on income, but property; increasing in percentage as the property is greater. And the main virtue of such a tax is that it makes publicly known what every man has, and how he gets it.

For every kind of Vagabonds, high and low, agree in their dislike to give an account of the way they get their living, still less, of how much they have got sewn up in their breeches. It does not, however, matter much to a country that it should know how its poor Vagabonds live, but it is of vital moment that it should know how its rich Vagabonds live; and that much of knowledge, it seems to me, in the present state of our education, is quite attainable.

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Getting your wish

Haven’t read the Obama interview in Rolling Stone yet, but the teaser at Grist puts an interesting gloss on the climate change debate getting injected into the fall presidential campaign:

He made some remarkable statements, including his belief that the millions of dollars pouring into the anti-science disinformation campaign will drive climate change into the presidential campaign.

Really hard to say about that, but fun to speculate. I would suspect that, as much as the objectively pro-warming crowd prides itself on being aggressive, this is one issue they probably would rather not talk about.

But they won’t be able to help themselves. And so they will call out all the scientists trying to pull the wool over the eyes and get more funding for their research… I actually can’t follow the logic of corruption they project onto scientists. But at some point, if AGW does get some play in the campaign – and it’s more than just about Romney lying about what he used to say (because he will be lying) – will the question become why are hippies trying to stifle job creation? Or will it be why does the government want to force every last American into Manhattan and onto subway trains to get to work? The window is still way, way over on the side of ‘you hippies are crazy.’

This is the level of discourse we’ve come to expect, and to a great extent, deserve. Until the window moves and/or the debate is framed in a way that puts big business on the defensive. Who know; it might be something Romney is able to accomplish all on his own. I would not being above reserving a special place in the history of the survival of the planet for Willard. Would you?

Just think: hippie children might one day be named for the candidate who inadvertently rendered climate change denial inoperative.

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Closing of the (American) Deal

Not sure if you read Charles Pierce, but you should. He’s given Esquire a new lease on life, with excellent advice for Willard Romney, like this:

That said, I think it’s time to update the recommendations I made last month. To pull off as shameless and utterly unprincipled a “pivot” as the one that is being proposed by the various handicappers on the bus would tax even the formidable internal guidance system of the Romneybot 2.0, for which being shameless and unprincipled is the only one of its prime functions that has worked perfectly throughout the campaign. The only way I see of doing it is to be so honest about being shameless and unprincipled that the whole wide world is so impressed by the sheer magnitude of your big, clanging brass balls that it forgets that you’d sell Massachusetts to the Somali pirates for five more points in next month’s Gallup poll, or 250 votes in Alabama. (I researched this phenomenon closely over the weekend, watching John Calipari win a national championship.) So, now that it’s very nearly, perhaps, almost, sort of Opening Day, let me suggest a “Big Speech” the candidate can deliver some time over the next three weeks, when nothing is really going on, and all that’s left to the campaign is empty bloviating (Hi, Newt!) and bitter recrimination (or, as it is known around the Santorum household, Our Reason To Live.) Give it to ’em between the eyes, Willard:

“I’m Willard Romney, bitches, and how you like me now?

“See what I did there on Tuesday night? I hammered those punks like ten-penny nails into a wedge of fine cheddar. I am a strong, able Republican with more money than God and an even greater taste for mindless destruction and casual vengeance. I am not a jack Mormon. I am a gangsta Mormon, motherfkers, and the country is my bling. I am Moroni’s Omar. I am the Stringer Bell of the Great Alkali Plain and the world is mine, whenever I want it. Come at the king, you best not miss. I’ll bury your ass like I buried Santorum’s, under so much money that nobody will ever find it, even though I hear it glows red in the dark every time someone mentions The Pill. I bought me a Wisconsin and a Maryland and a D.C., although I am aware that even my wealth — and have you noticed that I have $250 million stashed away for a rainy fking century? — wouldn’t be enough to carry The District in the general. But all I really have to do is spend enough to carry 51 percent of the Green Rooms there and I’m home fking free. And I can do that. Chuck Todd’s already halfway down into my vest pocket, looking for loose doubloons. And you know why?

“Because I’m Willard Romney, bitches, and I can buy and sell your great-grandchildren and you won’t even know it happened.

If it should please, and it does, you should start at the top and read the whole thing.

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U.S.A., Inc

The corporatization of American politics continues unabated, of course, except it has achieved hyperspace warp speed from the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. Enter Romney, who I guess is supposed to be the lobbyists’ dream candidate. But do they really want to succeed raising the barriers to entry and eliminate their competition? Eliminate corporate taxes and regulations? Do they believe that’s going to create a healthy economy where their companies will flourish? Wait – they don’t care about those things? What do they care about?

The ever-expanding role of lobbyists in politics is a major victory for corporate America. Overwhelmingly, the companies and trade associations that dominate top-dollar lobbyists’ clientele are seeking to protect their own legislated competitive advantages, including special tax breaks, favorable procurement rules and government regulations that prevent new challengers from entering the marketplace.

Republicans should be acutely aware of the dangers posed by the lobbying community. When insurgents led by Newt Gingrich took over the House after the 1994 election, they were determined to open markets, allow free enterprise to flourish and rid the legal and regulatory system of competitive favoritism.

In practice, just the opposite took place. Gingrich, and especially Tom DeLay, ceded enormous power to Washington lobbyists in what they called the K Street Project. Loyal lobbyists were rewarded with earmarks, leadership support for special amendments and the delegated authority to write legislative provisions.

Shortly before he became House whip in 1995, DeLay created Project Relief, a legislated moratorium on new regulations. He appointed Bruce Gates, a lobbyist for the National-American Wholesale Grocers’ Association, to run the project and Gordon Gooch, a petrochemical lobbyist, to write the first draft of the bill. The bill was then modified by Paul C. Smith, an automobile industry lobbyist, and by Peter Molinaro, a lobbyist for Union Carbide.

That was a remains a real question.

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Six Less Votes

That’s how many votes the millions Romney spent in Iowa this year (30,015) won him, versus how many he garnered (30,021) in a second place finish in 2008.

Pathetic on many levels, and yet gratifying on some others – the extent to which the Republican candidates cannot move the needle. Again, the inability of the Republican party to put forward a candidate who espouses the tenants of the party AND that people will like/vote for is scandalous. The country needs (at least) two viable governing parties; the Republican party is determined not to be one of them.