Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

During a news conference last night, President Joe Biden angrily denied claims in a special counsel’s report that describes the 81-year-old Democrat’s memory as “hazy,” and having “significant limitations.”  

The  special counsel report released yesterday found evidence that President Joe Biden willfully retained and shared highly classified information when he was a private citizen, including about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, but concluded that criminal charges were not warranted.  As reported by The Associated Press.

The report from special counsel Robert Hur resolves a criminal investigation that had shadowed Biden’s presidency for the last year. But its bitingly critical assessment of his handling of sensitive government records and unflattering characterizations of his memory will spark fresh questions about his competency and age that cut at voters’ most deep-seated concerns about his candidacy for re-election.

In remarks at the White House Thursday evening, Biden denied that he improperly shared classified information and angrily lashed out at Hur for questioning his mental acuity, particularly his recollection of the timing of his late son Beau’s death from cancer.

The searing findings will almost certainly blunt his efforts to draw contrast with Donald Trump, Biden’s likely opponent in November’s presidential election, over a criminal indictment charging the former president with illegally hoarding classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and refusing to return them to the government. Despite abundant differences between the cases, Trump immediately seized on the special counsel report to portray himself as a victim of a “two-tiered system of justice.”

Yet even as Hur found evidence that Biden willfully held onto and shared with a ghostwriter highly classified information, the special counsel devoted much of his report to explaining why he did not believe the evidence met the standard for criminal charges, including a high probability that the Justice Department would not be able to prove Biden’s intent beyond a reasonable doubt, citing among other things an advanced age that they said made him forgetful and the possibility of “innocent explanations” for the records that they could not refute.

“I did not share classified information,” Biden insisted. “I did not share it with my ghostwriter.” He added he wasn’t aware how the boxes containing classified documents ended up in his garage.

And in response to Hur’s portrayal of him, Biden insisted to reporters that “My memory is fine,” and said he believes he remains the most qualified person to serve as president.

“How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden asked, about Hur’s comments regarding his son’s death, saying he didn’t believe it was any of Hur’s business.

When asked about the report earlier Thursday in a private moment with a handful of House Democrats ahead of his speech at their suburban Virginia retreat, Biden responded angrily, according to two people familiar with his comments, saying, “You think I would f—— forget the day my son died?” The people did not want to address the matter publicly and spoke of condition of anonymity.

Biden pointedly noted that he had sat for five hours of in-person interviews in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s October attack on Israel, when “I was in the middle of handling an international crisis.”

“I just believed that’s what I owed the American people so they could know no charges would be brought and the matter closed,” Biden said.

The investigation into Biden is separate from special counsel Jack Smith’s inquiry into the handling of classified documents by Trump after Trump left the White House. Smith’s team has charged Trump with illegally retaining top secret records at his Mar-a-Lago home and then obstructing government efforts to get them back. Trump has said he did nothing wrong.

Hur, in his report, said there were “several material distinctions” between the Trump and Biden cases, noting that Trump refused to return classified documents to the government and allegedly obstructed the investigation, while Biden willfully handed them over.

Isn’t this a big brouhaha!

Tony

U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in the Colorado/Trump Ballot Case.  Photo:  9News.

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the Colorado/Trump ballot case.  I listened to several hours of it and am of a mind that there is no way the Court will uphold Colorado’s position to keep Trump off the ballot. I think it is only a matter of how many justices will vote to overturn.  Below is an excellent analysis of the hearing written by Alan Feuer and Charlie Savage of The New York Times.

Tony

————————————————————————-

The New York Times

Takeaways From the Trump Ballot Case

The Supreme Court heard arguments on whether former President Donald J. Trump is constitutionally ineligible to hold office again. Here’s what the debate could mean for the case’s outcome.

By Alan Feuer and Charlie Savage

Feb. 8, 2024

The Supreme Court yesterday wrestled with whether former President Donald J. Trump is constitutionally ineligible to hold office again, as the Colorado Supreme Court had ruled in barring him from that state’s ballot.

The issue turns on whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment applies to Mr. Trump because of his efforts to stay in office after losing the 2020 election that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot. The provision bars people who engaged in an insurrection against the Constitution after taking an oath to support it as an “officer of the United States.”

Here are several takeaways.

Colorado’s ruling appeared unlikely to stand.

Enough justices expressed skepticism of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision that a majority of the court appeared likely to hand Mr. Trump a victory and vote to overturn it.

Most justices seemed generally receptive to various arguments the former president’s lawyer, Jonathan F. Mitchell, advanced in support of reversing the lower court’s ruling. His main contentions were that Section 3 is not “self-executing,” meaning it could only be enforced by a separate act of Congress, and that the provision simply did not apply to a former president like Mr. Trump.

Two of the court’s three liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined their conservative colleagues in displaying doubts about allowing a state to decide who can run for a national office.

Justice Kagan expressed concern that by allowing Mr. Trump to be removed from the Colorado ballot, it could set a precedent of giving individual states “extraordinary” power to affect national elections.

Justice Jackson pointed out that the text of the amendment did not explicitly include “president” in the list of offices that could face disqualification for engaging in insurrection. That was because the amendment, she argued, was not initially intended to keep Southern rebels from running for president, but rather to stop them from using their popularity in their home states to seek local offices and get back into power by running for Congress.

Some justices worried about ‘unmanageable consequences.’

Several justices asked questions that signaled concern that upholding the Colorado Supreme Court’s disqualification of Mr. Trump could unleash broader chaos or otherwise harm democracy.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. repeatedly raised the prospect that numerous other states could retaliate by removing a Democratic candidate — he did not specifically name President Biden — from their ballots by saying he, too, had engaged in an insurrection. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. also kept returning to that point, raising the specter of “unmanageable consequences.”

Lawyers for the Colorado voters who challenged Mr. Trump’s eligibility for the ballot and the state of Colorado urged the justices not to see that potential consequence as a reason to overturn their state’s action. Jason Murray, a lawyer for the voter group, said courts could stop an abuse of the process.

“This court can write an opinion that emphasizes how extraordinary ‘insurrection against the Constitution’ is and how rare that is because it requires an assault not just on the application of law, but on constitutionally mandated functions themselves like we saw on Jan. 6,” Mr. Murray said.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked Mr. Murray whether the position that Mr. Trump cannot be president again would be harmful for democracy since it would effectively disenfranchise people seeking to vote for him. Mr. Murray replied that the purpose of the constitutional safeguard is to protect democracy not just for the next cycle but for generations to come.

“The reason we’re here is that President Trump tried to disenfranchise 80 million Americans who voted against him, and the Constitution doesn’t require that he be given another chance,” he said.

Several justices wondered whether a statute is necessary.

One potential off-ramp for the Supreme Court to overturn the Colorado ruling would be to say that Section 3 is not “self-executing,” meaning that it has no legal force on its own and needs a statute enacted by Congress to be enforced.

The Supreme Court has previously deemed other parts of the 14th Amendment to be self-executing, meaning they need no such statute. But multiple justices focused on how allowing states to enforce Section 3 would be incongruous with the rest of the amendment since it largely was about taking power away from state governments after the Civil War.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the first member of the court to speak, opened the arguments by encouraging Mr. Mitchell to explain his view that the provision is not self-executing and so Colorado had no authority to enforce it.

Still, Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that numerous states have relied on Section 3 to disqualify candidates for state office, even though there is no congressional statute telling states they can do that.

Some justices asked whether presidents are ‘officers of the United States.’

Justice Jackson was not the only justice who signaled interest in the argument that Section 3 does not cover people who took an oath to support the Constitution only as president — like Mr. Trump — if the phrase in Section 3 “officer of the United States” applies only to appointed officials, not elected ones.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch noted that another part of the Constitution says that the president shall commission “all” officers of the United States and noted that presidents do not grant commissions to themselves. He also pointed out that the speaker of the House and the Senate president pro tempore are described as officers in the Constitution, but that another clause says members of Congress cannot simultaneously be “officers of the United States.”

But Justice Sotomayor was skeptical of that view, suggesting that it was a “gerrymandered” argument. Among all modern presidents, she added, it would apply only to Mr. Trump, who did not previously take an oath as a member of Congress or a military officer or a lower-ranking civilian executive branch official.

There wasn’t much talk about whether Jan. 6 was an insurrection.

Given how central the issue of engaging in insurrection was to the disqualification process, it was somewhat surprising how little the justices and lawyers talked about whether Mr. Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 was — or was not — an act of insurrection.

Mr. Mitchell barely mentioned the storming of the Capitol during his presentation to the court, preferring to stick to highly technical issues of the law. And while Mr. Murray opened his arguments by blaming Mr. Trump for engaging in insurrection on Jan. 6, the justices largely sidestepped the factual question of whether his characterization was correct as they peppered him with questions.

Justice Kavanaugh, in a rare dip into the insurrection question, asked Mr. Murray why states should be granted the power to disqualify insurrectionists under the 14th Amendment when there was already a different “tool” to disqualify them from holding office: the federal statute making it a crime to incite, assist or engage in insurrection against the United States.

Of course, none of the more than 90 counts Mr. Trump is facing in his four separate criminal cases accuses him of taking part in an insurrection, even though the House select committee that investigated the events of Jan. 6 recommended he be charged with the federal insurrection count.

What happens next?

The justices did not indicate when they would issue a ruling. But what they decide could have consequences far beyond Colorado: There have been challenges to Mr. Trump’s eligibility in at least 35 states. Not just the outcome but also the rationale behind it will reverberate.

For example, one focus of the arguments is that if the court were to overturn the Colorado ruling on procedural grounds, rather than pronouncing on the merits whether Mr. Trump is constitutionally ineligible to be president again, it could lead to a later constitutional crisis.

Were he to then win the election, the question would return, including for members of Congress who would be asked to certify the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, 2025.

Dear Commons Community,

In December and early January, I read a book  by Christopher de Hamel about illuminated manuscripts (see my blog posting). Having read several other books on the subject, I found it intriguing how individuals, mostly monks, working by themselves for months painstakingly produced magnificent copies of historic material that included colorful images to accompany the text.  Some are short pieces dealing with a single religious theme while others are quite lengthy.  The vast majority of illuminated manuscripts were produced between the fifth and sixteenth centuries. There are still a few “limners” who practice the art today in the traditional fashion. However, de Hamel’s book got me thinking what it would be like in our modern world to produce such work,  specifically, how digital technology would be used.  Hence, the birth of my “technuscript.”

An illuminated manuscript  is by definition produced by hand.  A technuscript (if you look in a dictionary or on Google, there is no such word) would use many of the same design elements that characterized the medieval illuminated manuscripts but would employ digital technology to produce the finished product.  On a whim, I set out to try and emulate in an all-digital document, the design features employed by the manuscript copiers.   

I decided to create my technuscript from  an article I published in the Online Learning Journal in 2017, entitled “Theories and frameworks for online education:  Seeking an integrated model.”   I selected this article because it has a number of colorful images with which to work.  However, I enhanced the article substantially by adding images produced by generative AI software.  The design features I took from traditional illuminated manuscripts included:

1. Using bright,  jewel-toned colors (reds, blues, yellows, greens) in the images;
2. Employing a variety of image sizes from small thumbnail to full pages;
3. Placing borders on images;
4. Using an antique block font on a vellum-style page background for the text;
5. Colorizing the first word of each paragraph.
   

Below are some sample pages to illustrate the style I used.  The entire technuscript is available at: Article Matted Matura Script PDF

I would love to receive feedback from any of you reading this posting as to what you think about my efforts.  As an aside, this project became a labor of love and a six-week diversion with my wife, Elaine, encouraging and critiquing me along the way.

Tony

Republican Speaker Mike Johnson’s Face Show His Dejection.  Courtesy of The Huffington Post.

Dear Commons Community,

The Republicans in the House of Representatives lost two key votes yesterday on the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkis and on aid to Israel.

Impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkis

In a stunning blow to Republican leaders, the House rejected an effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas  after a number of Republicans joined Democrats in opposing it.

The final vote was 214 to 216.

The vote was incredibly dramatic. It was tied 215 to 215 for several minutes, with every Democrat voting no along with three Republicans: Reps. Ken Buck (Colo.), Tom McClintock (Calif.) and Mike Gallagher (Wis.). A tied vote meant the effort would fail, so Democrats began shouting “Order!” at Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to drop the gavel and end it.

Republicans were furiously prodding Gallagher to change his vote, but he wouldn’t. At the last minute, Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah) voted no, not because he opposed the measure but because it would allow the House to bring it back up again another day. That bumped the final tally to 214-216.

Aid to Israel

A bill to provide Israel with more military aid went down to defeat yesterday in the House, spoiling Speaker Mike Johnson’s attempt to separate Israel from other national security priorities, including helping Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s military invasion and deterring crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The vote gave individual lawmakers another chance to show voters their support for Israel and could be used on the campaign trail to criticize those who voted against it. But it did little to generate momentum toward passage of a final emergency spending package.

The House had already gone on the record in support of an Israel aid package. Johnson brought that package up in November on one of his first days as the new House speaker. The vote was in response to Hamas and other militants killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking captive some 240 men, women and children in an Oct. 7 attack.

Regardless of the party, the House leadership generally only brings items to a vote when they are sure of the outcome. It is obvious that Speaker Mikc Johnson has a problem with controlling his Republican delegation.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The National Border Patrol Council, which represents Border Patrol agents tasked with keeping America safe, yesterday endorsed the bipartisan border security legislation that has been making its way through the U.S. Senate.

“Since Joe Biden has been in office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has averaged over 6,700 apprehensions per day, and the vast majority have been released under a policy known as catch-and-release,” said National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd. “Approximately 60% of all border apprehensions are single adults, a good number of whom are men of military age. The Border Act of 2024 will codify into law authorities that U.S. Border Patrol agents never had in the past. This will allow us to remove single adults expeditiously and without a lengthy judicial review, which historically has required the release of these individuals into the interior of the U.S.”

The statement continues: “This alone will drop illegal border crossings nationwide and will allow a great many of our agents to get back to detecting and apprehending those who want to cross our borders illegally and evade apprehension. While not perfect, the Border Act of 2024 is a step in the right direction and is far better than the status quo, which is why the National Border Patrol Council endorses the bill and hopes for a quick passage.”

The National Border Patrol Council represents approximately 18,000 Border Patrol agents and personnel who are charged with enforcing the country’s immigration laws.

For months, a bipartisan group of Senate negotiators led by Republican Senator James Lankford from Oklahoma, Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona, and Democratic Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut have worked to produce bipartisan border security legislation.

The lead GOP negotiator for the Senate border security bill, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., responded to widespread criticism of the bipartisan legislation as some warn it could be “dead on arrival” if it reaches the House. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., alongside other prominent GOP critics, have voiced their opposition to the $118 billion spending package, claiming it doesn’t go far enough to curb illegal immigration. 

But Lankford urged critics to read the bill, arguing it will create a “faster and stronger system” of deportation and will “flip the script” on Biden’s immigration policy.

“Are we, as Republicans, going to have press conferences and complain the border is bad and then intentionally leave it open after the worst month in American history in December?” Lankford questioned during “Fox & Friends” on Monday. “Now we’ve got to actually determine, are we going to just complain about things or are we going to actually address and change as many things as we can?”

“If we have the shot — and it’s amazing to me, if I go back two months ago and say we had the shot under a Democrat president to dramatically increase detention beds, deportation flights, lock down the border, to be able to change the asylum laws, to be able to accelerate the process, no one would have believed it.”

“And now no one actually wants to be able to fix it, says, ‘I don’t want to even debate it. I don’t want to discuss it.’ We have to decide, as Republicans, what are we going to actually do about the border and leave it open or actually leave it closed?” he continued. 

Unfortunately, the vast majority of congressional Republicans are incapable of putting the country ahead of their party.

Thank you Senator Lankford for your leadership and at least trying!

Tony

Bob Beckwith, right, with President George W. Bush, who addressed rescue workers on Sept. 14, 2001, from atop a destroyed fire truck at the World Trade Center site. Credit…Win McNamee/Reuters

Dear Commons Community,

Former New York City firefighter Bob Beckwith, remembered for returning to service to search for survivors on 9/11, has died at the age of 91, the Uniformed Firefighters Association said.

Beckwith, who had already retired before Sept. 11, 2001, “suited back up” after the terror attacks and “raced toward the danger to save and search for others,” former President George W. Bush said in a statement Monday.

Beckwith is remembered for standing next to Bush in an iconic photo on the rubble of the World Trade Center in the days after 9/11.

The former firefighter was 69 years old at the time of 9/11. Beckwith served 29 years in the FDNY and retired in 1994, according to the fire department.

“His courage represented the defiant, resilient spirit of New Yorkers and Americans after 9/11,” Bush said. “I was proud to have Bob by my side at Ground Zero days later and privileged to stay in touch with this patriot over the years. Laura and I send our condolences to Barbara and the Beckwith family as they remember this decent, humble man.”

The Uniformed Firefighters Association said Beckwith “is one of the heroes of 9/11 who stood tall for America, New York City and all New Yorkers.”

“Bob Beckwith was one of many retired FDNY members who responded to the World Trade Center site in the days and months following September 11, to aid in rescue and recovery, as a testament to their devotion to their FDNY family,” New York City Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh said in a statement. “His iconic picture with President Bush captured a moment that was both inspiring and heartbreaking. We are grateful to his service to our city and our nation, and we join his family and friends in mourning his loss.”

A hero indeed!

May he rest in peace! 

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, had a piece yesterday entitled, “Inside Trump’s Not-So-Swift Brain,” that comments on his and his MAGA followers obsession with Taylor Swift.  Here is an excerpt that imagines what is going on in Trump’s head.

“….Taylor must be destroyed. She and Travis will be deified as prom king and queen at the Super Bowl, especially if 87 pops the question on America’s Holy Day like they’re in a Hallmark movie. And no one can be deified more than me. I AM THE BIGGEST CELEBRITY ON THE PLANET! Jon Voight, that old Midnight Cowboy, compared me to Jesus, and my tremendous followers think God has sent me to fight the Marxists and fix America, which is now a third-world country.

“Taylor is being treated like an American icon, but I’m the American icon. I’m trying to save America by destroying democracy, the N.F.L. and Taylor Swift. I know it might seem crazy to attack the things that bind America. But I alone can fix it.

“MAGA is waging a Holy War on her because she’s going to urge people to vote, and that would be mainly suburban women who hate me. They tell me, ‘I don’t know if the suburban women like you.’ Suburban women, will you please like me — I saved your damn neighborhoods, OK?

“It’s pathetic that Crooked Joe Biden needs a pop singer to drag him over the finish line. It didn’t help Crooked Hillary when she got propped up by Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Christina Aguilera, Bon Jovi, Kelly Clarkson and Miley Cyrus. Speaking of music, I hope Taylor doesn’t get a Grammy. I deserve a Grammy!”

On-target commentary on Nutso Trump!

Below is the entire column.

Tony

—————————————————————————————-

The New York Times

Inside Trump’s Not-So-Swift Brain

Feb. 3, 2024

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist, reporting from Washington

It’s easy to imagine what’s going through Donald Trump’s head right now. I can hear his interior monologue all the way from Mar-a-Lago. He’s fulminating, working himself up to another epic meltdown, like he had over Nikki Haley the night he won the New Hampshire primary. The thoughts pinballing through Trump’s cortex might be something like this:

“I like Taylor Swift. I do. She’s made a career of revenge, which gets my Complete and Total Endorsement. She’s beautiful, just my type, unlike that wack job E. Jean Carroll and her sick lawyer, Roberta Kaplan.

“Rachel Maddow is not getting my money for that penthouse and shopping spree E. Jean promised her on MSDNC. Rachel wears the same outfit every day anyway. Besides, I don’t have $83 million. My third-rate lawyers drained the money I siphoned from my donors. I thought everyone knew I made that up about being a billionaire.

“I’ll tell you what: The idea that Taylor Swift is more popular than me is a joke. Her fans are 13 years old. They can’t even vote.

“In the Rigged and Stolen election of 2020, I got the most votes of any president in history. She doesn’t have more fans than me. She doesn’t! And my fans are more committed. Swifties won’t stand in line as long as mine. They’ve never broken into the Capitol for her. Oh, what a beautiful day that was.

“Now let me just tell you, I’m two for two, dominating in Iowa and New Hampshire, great, great, fantastic states, very special places. Every place we go we have tens of thousands of people outside every arena. They have to build larger arenas in this country just for me, right?

“Taylor seems like a nice girl, a little too wholesome for my taste. She did a Diet Coke ad and I like Diet Coke. She even got Birdbrain to take her daughter to a concert. And sure, I have a Taylor friendship “BFF” bracelet. Who doesn’t? That neurotic dope Maureen Dowd once compared me to a 13-year-old girl. SHE DOESN’T KNOW ME!

“Taylor more popular than me? Wrong! My movement is so much bigger and more fanatical than her movement. I could beat her so badly. Melania has been on more magazine covers than Taylor. More men hit on Melania than Taylor.

“And Taylor should not have been Time magazine’s Person of the Year. I should have been on the cover. I am the greatest phenomenon in history! And it should still be Man of the Year. What’s with ‘Person’?

“Like I told The Daily Caller, I wish Taylor and Travis the best. I hope they enjoy their life, maybe together, maybe not. Probably not. Too bad we have to take Taylor down. I liked Taylor’s music about 25 percent less in 2018, when she endorsed that loser Phil Bredesen against Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee. Then I liked her 50 percent less in 2020 when she accused me of trying to ‘blatantly cheat and put millions of Americans’ lives at risk in an effort to hold onto power,’ when I waged war on the post office to undermine mail-in voting, because those weenie Democrats didn’t want to leave the house during Covid. If she endorses Biden again, I’ll like her 200 percent less.

“SAD! But Taylor must be destroyed. She and Travis will be deified as prom king and queen at the Super Bowl, especially if 87 pops the question on America’s Holy Day like they’re in a Hallmark movie. And no one can be deified more than me. I AM THE BIGGEST CELEBRITY ON THE PLANET! Jon Voight, that old Midnight Cowboy, compared me to Jesus, and my tremendous followers think God has sent me to fight the Marxists and fix America, which is now a third-world country.

“Taylor is being treated like an American icon, but I’m the American icon. I’m trying to save America by destroying democracy, the N.F.L. and Taylor Swift. I know it might seem crazy to attack the things that bind America. But I alone can fix it.

“MAGA is waging a Holy War on her because she’s going to urge people to vote, and that would be mainly suburban women who hate me. They tell me, ‘I don’t know if the suburban women like you.’ Suburban women, will you please like me — I saved your damn neighborhoods, OK?

“It’s pathetic that Crooked Joe Biden needs a pop singer to drag him over the finish line. It didn’t help Crooked Hillary when she got propped up by Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Christina Aguilera, Bon Jovi, Kelly Clarkson and Miley Cyrus. Speaking of music, I hope Taylor doesn’t get a Grammy. I deserve a Grammy!

“Black voters, Hispanic voters, young voters are coming to my side because I’m the greatest. The economy is roaring and the stock market is at record highs because investors are projecting I will beat Biden.

“Biden’s aides have to leak stories about how he calls me a Sick F-Word in private because I cheered on Jan. 6 rioters and I joke about Paul Pelosi getting hit with a hammer by a MAGA supporter. As if cursing like I do makes him a tough guy. Besides, I like violence. It adds some excitement to the rallies.

“LOOK AT WHAT YOU MADE ME DO, Taylor. You and Mr. Pfizer are now at the top of my enemies list. I don’t get too angry, I get even. Hey, Taylor, that would be a good song title for you!”

Dear Commons Community,

Kevin Roose, the technology columnist for The New York Times, has a piece this morning lauding the capabilities of Perplexity, a new AI-powered search engine.  He believes it has the potential to challenge Google as the go-to search engine of choice. Here is an excerpt.

“…recently, I’ve been stepping out on Google with a new, A.I.-powered search engine.

It’s called Perplexity. The year-old search engine, whose founders previously worked in A.I. research at OpenAI and Meta, has quickly become one of the most buzzed-about products in the tech world. Tech insiders rave about it on social media, and investors like Jeff Bezos — who was also an early investor in Google — have showered it with cash. The company recently announced that it had raised $74 million in a funding round led by Institutional Venture Partners, which valued the company at $520 million.

Many start-ups have tried and failed to challenge Google over the years. (One would-be competitor, Neeva, shut down last year after failing to gain traction.) But Google seems less invincible these days. Many users have complained that their Google search results have gotten clogged with spammy, low-quality websites, and some people have started looking for answers in places like Reddit and TikTok instead.

Intrigued by the hype, I recently spent several weeks using Perplexity as my default search engine on both desktop and mobile. I tested both the free version and the paid product, Perplexity Pro, which costs $20 per month and gives users access to more powerful A.I. models and certain features, such as the ability to upload their own files.

Hundreds of searches later, I can report that even though Perplexity isn’t perfect, it’s very good. And while I’m not ready to break up with Google entirely, I’m now more convinced that A.I.-powered search engines like Perplexity could loosen Google’s grip on the search market, or at least force it to play catch-up.

I’m also scared that A.I. search engines could destroy my job, and that the entire digital media industry could collapse as a result of products like them. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

At first glance, Perplexity’s desktop interface looks a lot like Google’s — a text box centered on a sparse landing page.

But as soon as you start typing, the differences become obvious. When you ask a question, Perplexity doesn’t give you back a list of links. Instead, it scours the web for you and uses A.I. to write a summary of what it finds. These answers are annotated with links to the sources the A.I. used, which also appear in a panel above the response.

I tested Perplexity on hundreds of queries, including questions about current events (“How did Nikki Haley do in the New Hampshire primary?”), shopping recommendations (“What’s the best dog food for a senior dog with joint pain?”) and household tasks (“How long does beef stew stay good in the fridge?”).

Each time, I got back an A.I.-generated response, generally a paragraph or two long, sprinkled with citations to websites like NPR, The New York Times and Reddit, along with a list of suggested follow-up questions I could ask, such as “Can you freeze beef stew to make it last longer?”

One impressive Perplexity feature is “Copilot,” which helps a user narrow down a query by asking clarifying questions. When I asked for ideas on where to host a birthday party for a 2-year-old, for example, Copilot asked whether I wanted suggestions for outdoor spaces, indoor spaces or both. When I selected “indoor,” it asked me to choose a rough budget for the party. Only then did it give me a list of possible venues.

Perplexity also allows users to search within a specific set of sources, such as academic papers, YouTube videos or Reddit posts. This came in handy when I was looking up how to change a setting on my house’s water heater. (Exciting stuff, I know.) A Google search yielded a bunch of less-than-helpful links to D.I.Y. tutorials, some of which were thinly veiled ads for plumbing companies. I tried the same query on Perplexity, and narrowed my search to YouTube videos. Perplexity found the video I needed for my exact model of water heater, extracted the relevant information from the video and turned it into step-by-step instructions.

Under the hood, Perplexity runs on OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 model along with its own A.I. model — a variant of Meta’s open-source Llama 2 model. Users who upgrade to the Pro version can choose between a handful of different models, including GPT-4 and Anthropic’s Claude. (I used GPT-4 for most of my searches, but I didn’t see much of a difference in the quality of the answers when I chose other models.)

I was not aware of Perplexity and tried it this morning.  I found it quite capable and easy to use. I suspect that Google will respond to the competition.

Tony 

Dear Commons Community,

Jonathon Cohn of The Huffington Post did an analysis yesterday comparing Joe Biden and Donald Trump as the presumed presidential candidates in the November election.  His basic message is that this election will be very different from 2020.

Below is his entire article.

Go0od commentary!

Tony

—————————————————————————

The Huffington Post

Why A Second Trump-Biden Matchup Won’t Be A Rerun Of The 2020 Election

We know more about Trump — and more still about Biden — than we did four years ago.

By Jonathan Cohn

Feb 2, 2024, 05:53 PM EST

“We’re back where we started.”

I heard CNN’s Dana Bash say that last Sunday morning, while I was half-listening to the talk shows. I knew instantly what she meant.

A rematch of Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race now seems virtually inevitable. And it doesn’t just feel familiar. It feels like the same exact race we saw last time ― the same old men, saying the same old things they always say, except now they’re even older and (in one or both cases, maybe) less mentally acute.

It seems boring, disappointing or exasperating to lots of people, and you might be one of them. I get that. But I also think it’s easy to overlook the ways in which Biden-Trump 2.0 would be dramatically different from the first time around ― and why that should matter in November, when Americans will have to decide on a president for the next four years.

The most obvious difference is the circumstances of the election: what’s happening in the nation and the world, and what challenges that means for whoever will serve in the White House.

Back in 2020, the campaign took place right as COVID-19 was first spreading, creating a once-in-a-lifetime public health crisis. This election is unfolding amid a pair of violent international crises, the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.

The main economic challenge in 2020 was to prop up the economy as the pandemic threatened to shut it down. Today, the main challenge with the economy is to keep it running without letting it overheat.

Violent crime is now going down instead of up. Illegal border crossings are going up instead of down. And of course, in 2020, abortion was still a right throughout the U.S., albeit with restrictions. Now it exists only in some states, and is under threat in others.

But there’s another, less obvious difference between 2020 and 2024, and it might matter even more. Today, we know a great deal more about the two men who are likely to appear on the ballot.

What We’ve Learned About Trump

By 2020, Trump had said enough to suggest he might not accept the results of an election he lost fairly, and might even try to contest the outcome. But it wasn’t until Jan. 6, 2021, that he showed he would actually follow through on those impulses, up to the point of provoking an armed insurrection in order to stop Congress from certifying the electoral vote.

Since then, Trump has repeatedly threatened to continue down this path of flouting democratic principles and the rule of law, whether it would be by pardoning the Jan. 6 rioters or having the Justice Department prosecute the political foes he calls “vermin.”

Meanwhile, high-profile conservative advocates, including some former Trump administration officials, have put together “Project 2025,” a 1,000-page strategic blueprint for how Trump might govern in a second term. It includes a plan to fire as many as 50,000 federal workers, as part of an effort to fight the so-called “deep state.”

he intended to act like a dictator. “Only on day one,” Trump said. In 2020, you could maybe find an excuse to dismiss such talk. In 2024, you really can’t.

The same goes for allegations of serious transgressions in Trump’s professional and personal lives, which dogged Trump long before he ran for president. It was not until 2022 that juries found the Trump Corporation guilty of tax fraud and found Trump personally liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s and then defaming her by denying it publicly.

Those are some pretty important data points for voters to consider, with more to come depending on how and when the other legal proceedings involving Trump unfold.

But it’s Biden about whom we’ve probably learned the most, because in 2020 it was impossible to know what kind of president he’d actually be. Now we do.

What We’ve Learned About Biden, Part 1

As a candidate, Biden embraced a sweeping, potentially historic agenda on domestic policy, a plan that included once-in-a-generation infrastructure efforts, a wholesale reimagining of child and elder care and transformational investments in clean energy. But Democratic candidates for president almost always talk big.

As a senator and then as vice president, Biden had focused much more on the judiciary and foreign policy. It was easy to assume he wasn’t fully committed to his campaign agenda, or that he wouldn’t actually try to pursue it.

Boy, was that assumption wrong.

Biden pushed forward with the big ideas, initially attempting to wrap them into one giant legislative package he called “Build Back Better.” He deferred heavily to Democratic leaders in Congress and was not afraid to pass legislation on party-line votes, though he simultaneously pursued bipartisan legislation where he saw an opportunity.

Not every decision worked out. There’s a strong case that narrowing the agenda even a little bit might have achieved more, or at least moved the process along more quickly.

But while Biden had to jettison some parts of the agenda and scale back others, he ended up achieving more than any reasonable analyst could have expected, affixing his signature to major initiatives that are now pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure, semiconductor development and clean energy ― and bringing down prescription drug prices, too.

What We’ve Learned About Biden, Part 2

On foreign policy, the most revealing episodes of Biden’s presidency have arguably been the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan and his position on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. They represent very different challenges, though it’s possible to see some patterns in Biden’s approach.

One constant has been his attention to and management of international alliances. With Ukraine, he has managed to lead a policy response that’s been relatively free of dissent from America’s top international allies. In Gaza, he has maintained a united diplomatic front with Saudi Arabia and other regional players that, he hopes, will be the foundation of a post-war reconstruction and peace arrangement (as reported weeks ago by HuffPost’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed).

The other constant is a firm conviction about right and wrong and what needs to be done, regardless of what Biden is hearing from critics, even in his own administration. It was obvious with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which so many members of his military and diplomatic establishment resisted or tried to slow down. It is even more obvious now with his support for Israel, despite a growing outcry over what Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas has meant for the people of Gaza.

In both cases, it seems clear Biden is following his own inner compass. In Afghanistan, that compass points him toward getting American soldiers out of what he believed was a hopeless endeavor ― a perspective likely informed by having a son who served in the military.

In the Middle East, the compass points him toward supporting an Israel he views primarily as an embattled refuge for the Jewish people. That view is a lot more common among older officials who formed their opinions in the era of Golda Meir and the Yom Kippur War, while the Holocaust was a fresher memory and Israel was repeatedly battling Arab military forces.

How you process all of this will obviously depend on your values, sympathies and priorities, and in some cases, on how you settle your own internal conflicts.

But whatever you think about Biden ― and whatever you think of Trump, for that matter ― you have a lot more information today than you did in 2020.

It may be the same old men on the ballot. That doesn’t mean it will be the same old election.