Year: 2023

A video version of the earlier post, “$47 Trillion – the ripoff by the rich and corporations – in two charts – maybe a few more…..” is available on YouTube:

The other day I was poking around in TikTok to see what it is all about. Came across a quote from Karl Marx that struck a chord. “There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery.” Here we --->> read more -->>

I was already 31 years old when the rip-off of America began in 1979. I was busy, and the changes in American life were only occasionally to be noticed.  By the mid-1980s my management life started to feature the early signs of the financialization of the corporation. I knew of --->> read more -->>

My previous post, “$47 Trillion – the ripoff by the rich and corporations – in two charts – maybe a few more…..” raises the question of exactly what 47,000,000,000,000 amounts to. There are so many “0”s! Let’s work with a one-dollar US paper bill. So how many dollar bills do --->> read more -->>

What More Needs To Be Said? 91 Felony Crimes Charged Trump has now been indicted for 91 different felony crimes spanning his four indictments to date. 34 counts for the Stormy Daniels NY state hush-money case, 40 in the Federal classified documents case, 4 in the Federal Jan. 6th case, --->> read more -->>

insurrection ĭn″sə-rĕk′shən noun 1. The act or an instance of open revolt against civil authority or a constituted government. 2. A rising up; uprising. 3. The act of rising against civil authority or governmental restraint; specifically, the armed resistance of a number of persons to the power of the state; --->> read more -->>

Recently I came across the Summer 2023 issue of Jacobin (self-described as “a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture.”). The lead article is “The Iraq Invasion Twenty Years Later“. This reminded me of all the lies and posturing that led up to --->> read more -->>

I’ve been publishing my research and opinion pieces on the web for over twenty years. Since Fall 2017, here on AmericanDelusions.com. The topics have ranged from family events and local hometown matters to a wide range of topics in economics, capitalism, politics, society, the environment, and more. All of this --->> read more -->>

I ran across this letter to the editor in the July 6th edition of The Columbia Paper concerning the recent Supreme Court ruling in 303 Creative v. Elenis (from NYTimes: “Supreme Court Backs Web Designer Opposed to Same-Sex Marriage“) allowing businesses to discriminate against people based on religious views. This --->> read more -->>

Recently I’ve noticed bumper stickers, mostly on pickup trucks, calling out a love for the Constitution. What do I love about the Constitution? Rural states with tiny populations automatically control the Senate. The ten least populous states have a total population of 9.6 million. California, the most populous state, has --->> read more -->>

Trump received 74 million votes in 2020. This amazed and upset me a lot. The ongoing global warming crisis and the exhaustion of earth’s resources continue to arouse my concerns about our future. I wrote a longish essay on the subject in early 2022. Here is the positioning statement from --->> read more -->>

This is a reprint from UNDARK: AI Creators Want Us to Believe AI Is an Existential Threat. Why? June 22, 2023 by Ryan Calo The warning consisted of a single sentence: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics --->> read more -->>

  By chance, I saw an exhibition titled “The Future of Money” (thru 9.9.2023) at the Art Museum of The Hague, Netherlands in May 2023. The central work is a very large drawing that illustrates the flows of money through the economy. Now there is a video tour of this --->> read more -->>

Following comments in the media that the indictment document was “a readable narrative” as opposed to a dull legal document, I downloaded it for a read-through. Here is a link to the indictment “USA vs Trump & Nauta“. The first 27 pages of 49 provide a detailed narrative. In fact --->> read more -->>

If you are still enthralled with ChatGPT in its variations and many competitors, here is an amusing story from the NYTimes: “The ChatGPT Lawyer Explains Himself.” The story details the sad, delusional, ignorant story of Steven A. Schwartz, the lawyer who used ChatGPT to write a legal brief in a --->> read more -->>

This time by the Feds.    

Propublica has a great story, “Supreme Risk: An interactive guide to rights the Supreme Court has established — and could take away“(6.1.2023), enumerating a long list of rights that are the results of Supreme Court actions but not supported by actual laws passed by Congress and signed by a President. --->> read more -->>

A recent NPR report, “Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation aims for a monument on the National Mall”, alerted me to this project. Authorized by Congress in 2017, it is entering the design selection phase now. The group driving this is the aforementioned GWOT Memorial Foundation, and it states its --->> read more -->>

President Eisenhower, previously General Eisenhower of WWII fame, warned of the Military Industrial Complex in  his farewell addresses in 1961. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced --->> read more -->>

Speaking of AI in 2018, Jason Yosinski said, “To a certain extent, as these networks get more complicated, it is going to be fundamentally difficult to understand why they make decisions,” he said. “It is kind of like trying to understand why humans make decisions.” As the mega-monopolies in the --->> read more -->>

Received this morning (4.28.2023) from YouTube: “Important notifications Community Guidelines warning Your content Embrace White Supremacy was removed due to a violation of our Community Guidelines.” Clearly, no one at YouTube watched even the first minute, let alone the entire video!! I appealed. To YouTube’s credit, I received a response --->> read more -->>

No sooner did I finish work on my 4.18.2023 post “Starting down the path to embracing White Supremacy” than I came upon a powerful essay on the Time website, “Without Indigenous History, There Is No U.S. History” by Ted Nighthawk, a professor of history and American studies at Yale University. --->> read more -->>