Tomorrow is Canada Day. It's not a regular day for celebration as it should be. One city has decided to rename the holiday to something more politically correct. We have a prime minister who is as slimy as they come. In the spirit of the Freedom Convoy, Canada Day protests are expected on the national holiday.
What is also expected, is a harsher response from city officials in the country's capital of Ottawa.
That headline could mean a lot of different things. Is he locked in a basement to avoid gaffes, like he was during his presidential run? Is he locked in as the candidate for 2024? But what I am referring to is whether or not he is locked in to policies positions that clearly are ineffective. His managing of the situation with inflation and gas prices have been some of the worst in history, not ineffectual but effectively worse than doing nothing. At this point nothing would be welcome. But he keeps doubling down on things that seem designed to appease the radical left. Either he firmly his policy ideas like raising taxes will help inflation (in itself that would be a form of being locked in), or else he is trapped into continuing with an extreme leftist agenda.
I think at this point it could be the latter circumstance. When you look at how bad his favorable/ unfavorable ratings are, he has alienated the center and a surprising percentage of many traditional Democratic constituencies to the point that there is no recovery short of a genuine miracle. So Let's Go Brandon has two choices:
(1) move towards the center to win back a lot of that lost support. It would mean reversing course on a lot of things and there's no guarantee at this point it would have enough effect to stop a midterm lambasting for the Democrats from voters.
or
(2) Continuing to double down on his chosen path in hopes of driving massive turnout from the radical left in order to try to minimize the damage to the party that is coming in November.
Here's why the latter course is more likely. As mentioned a course change would potentially not do very much to gain support as it really would be too little, too late. But not only that, it would have the reverse effect of option 2 above; it would alienate the radical left base that still supports him. He has no choice but to continue. In addition, he probably is a true believer in Keynesian economics, manmade global warming, radical feminism etc. Why would he go against anything he's moved further towards for the last twenty or more years?
The real locked in question for Let's Go Brandon, is whether the Democrats are going to remain locked into him. After November 8th, the answer will likely tilt a lot further towards 'no'.
The anti-Trump crowd is willing to believe every fabrication no matter how far fetched. Here's Greg Gutfeld's take on how irrelevant it was.
Nancy Pelosi never fails to disappoint when you are looking for a good laugh...
I came across this story a while ago about the Google engineer who claims that an artificial intelligence (A.I.) bot has developed consciousness. Duly skeptical I disregarded the story as sensationalism and/or maybe someone wanting their 15 minutes of fame. It didn't really belong on this blog as it's a bit far afield from politics. But I've posted on similar topics before because in some sense everything touches on politics, even a little. There are previous examples here, here and here, among others. So I thought I'd take a closer look at the story.
Is this a matter of actual artificial intelligence achieving a state of consciousness and self awareness (or rather artificial consciousness), or is it more about wokeness and the next step for the radical left - computers' rights? Or maybe just a misinterpretation of the results of the testing? Either way it's worth considering not only from a political perspective but also morality, ethics and technological perspectives. Take a look at this interview.
Let's Go Brandon Hunter...
