Politics Plus

Yesterday, I got confirmation that I can see Virgil Sunday. That doesn’t give me a whle lot of notice, but I wanted to be as quick as I can, because, what with the Delta, I believe the US is looking at another lockdown, and I’d like to visit as much as I can before that happens. Because the new visitation procedures afford some social distancing, not every weekend is available for every inmate. The scheduler gave me enough possible dates to construct the schedule, bless her. So I can sort of plan.  I idled the car for  about  a quarter hour (not sure it needed it, but that’s OK) and started setting up an extra week of meds  so visits will be on the off weekends and I won’t have to do everything at once.

Cartoon – (Yeah, I know – actual elephants don’t deserve that.  But the GQP does.)

Short Takes –

The Hill – Trump’s deal with the Taliban set the stage for the Afghan collapse
Quote – History will mark Aug. 15, 2021, as the date that the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban retook control over this troubled and war-torn country. But the real date that the Taliban’s victory was assured is Feb. 29, 2020, the day the Trump administration signed what it characterized as a “peace” deal with the Taliban. Once this agreement was signed — the tragic collapse we witnessed this weekend was inevitable. Of course, the agreement was not, and could not possibly have been, a “peace” deal since one of the parties currently at war — the Afghan government — was not a signatory. Rather, this was a “withdrawal” agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban that set the terms for the complete departure of American troops from Afghanistan by May 2021.
Click through for the story. Of course the facts that Bush and Trump** are traitors and that Obama was hamstrung by Republicans for eight years does not automatically mean that Biden is handling this as well as anyone possibly could. But I tend to believe he is.

HuffPost – A Powerful New Deepfake Tool Has Digitally Undressed Thousands Of Women
Quote – (HuffPost is not naming the site in order to avoid directing further traffic to it.) It went offline briefly Monday after HuffPost reached out to its original web host provider, IP Volume Inc., which quickly terminated its hosting services. But the site was back up less than a day later with a new host — as is often the case with abusive websites. Launched in 2020, the site boasts that it developed its own “state of the art” deep-learning image translation algorithms to “nudify” female bodies, and that the technology is so powerful there is not a woman in the world, regardless of race or nationality, who is safe from being “nudified.” But it doesn’t work on men. When fed a photo of a cisgender man’s clothed body, the site gave him breasts and a vulva.
Click through for details. This is just what we didn’t need. Of course, given the fact that vulvae and even nipples are as different as fingerprints, theooretically, it might be possible to prove in a lawsuit that this software was used. Except who wants her vulva photographed for comparison? Would testimony from a wona’s OBG be acceptable in lieu of photos? Jurors don’t actually look at fingerprints in the court, do they?

Democratic Underground – CNN and MSNBC are no better this morning. From a Marine who served in Afghanistan
Quote – Man, I picked a good day to mostly stay off this site today. The number of bad takes by people who couldn’t find Afghanistan on a map were coming fast and thick, and simultaneously ignoring the actual experts, ie those of us who survived by understanding Afghanistan is NOT the west.
Click through for the full Twitter thread, laid out for readability (the quote is just the first tweet.) It’s well thought out ans clearly explained. Who says Marines are dumb?

Food for Thought –