Opinion
By Jeff Childers
03-18-24
Good morning, C&Cers, it’s Monday! I’m back in sunny, warm Florida and we’re back in business. Your roundup today includes: the ChatGPT robots are coming, whether you like it or not; I report on Judge McAfee’s potential connections to Fani Willis; media and Joe Biden dangerously deny Russia’s elections and then interfere with it; media and Joe Biden interfere with U.S. elections with new “fine people” hoax; and Washington literally lowers the bar.
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🔥 Figure, an affiliate of OpenAI, the ChatGPT maker and former non-profit, now owned by Microsoft and being sued by Elon Musk, posted a video last week of its new test model assistant robot. Maybe it’s just me, but OpenAI’s robot looks just like a prototype Terminator. Watching the short video, I kept expecting it to ask where Sarah Conner was. The carefully-choreographed demo shows the robot answering simple questions while doing things everybody hates to do: picking up trash and putting up the (unbreakable plastic) dishes. Not taking your job, no, never.
CLIP: Robot talks and does dishes (2:30).
For some reason, OpenAI gave its robot the voice of a 60-year-old white guy with a bad smoking habit. Its voice also included a slight stutter and it said “um” at least once, showing they’re finally starting to make the robots seem more relatably human by programming mistakes into it.
Next maybe they can make it randomly trail off mid-sentence and then cover for itself by saying things like “anyway” or “I probably shouldn’t say that.”
Making mistakes makes it more human. “Oops, I’m sorry Dave, I broke another one. I’ll be back.”
They’re coming. Get ready.
🔥 Over the weekend, commenters continued poking me about Judge McAfee’s connections to Fani Willis, implying they show some kind of secret bias that should change my mind about what’s really going on in the case. So I looked into the claims. The first claim is that McAfee and his wife each donated $150 ($300 total) to Fani Willis’ 2020 District Attorney campaign. The second claim is that McAfee once briefly worked for Fani Willis at the Fulton County DA’s office. Both claims are true.
For background, I relied on an article published last August in the New York Times under the headline, Judge on Trump Case Once Worked Under Fani Willis.
First, as to the donation. In 2020, Fulton County voters were forced to choose between two democrats running for District Attorney. Fani Willis ran against an ultra-liberal incumbent, democrat Paul Howard, and it was no secret that local conservatives supported Willis. Some of our own C&Cers from Atlanta even reported voting for her in the comments. Given that, plus the fact they briefly worked together (more on that in a minute), it’s unremarkable that McAfee made a relatively small donation to Fani’s campaign.
The rest of McAfee’s slim voting record appears to favor Republican candidates.
On the plus side, Judge McAfee’s resume offers plenty of encouraging conservative bona fides. McAfee, 35, graduated law school relatively recently in 2013. While attending the University of Georgia, he was vice president of the Federalist Society’s local chapter. The Federalist Society is a solidly conservative law group (I am also a member). McAfee also was the Law School Republicans’ treasurer.
McAfee’s career could be called meteoric, exactly what you’d hope to see from a skilled and intelligent jurist. Keep in mind, this part of his resume is all in his ten-years post-graduate. According to the Times, McAfee’s very first job out of law school was in the Fulton County DA’s office, where he was briefly assigned to Fani Willis’ felony team. But he was quickly promoted out of Willis’ office to the complex trial division. Then he was promoted again, to senior assistant district attorney, where he prosecuted murder cases in the major case division.
In 2019 — only six years out of law school — McAfee was appointed to assistant U.S. attorney for the entire Northern District of Georgia, and prosecuted federal cases like bank fraud and drug trafficking. In March 2021, Governor Kemp appointed McAfee to lead the state’s Office of the Inspector General, an internal watchdog agency investigating fraud, abuse and mismanagement in government. It’s likely he worked with the Governor in that politically-sensitive job.
He was Inspector General when was appointed last year to Fulton County judge, showing Governor Kemp must have liked the job McAfee did as IG. Kemp appointed him into an open judicial slot, making McAfee the youngest judge in Fulton County.
After all that, no, I do not think that Judge McAfee is secretly working for Fani Willis and playing 5-D chess instead of 4-D chess. His small $300 donation in an all-blue local election — to someone he knew — makes sense. True, McAfee’s very first job as a 24-year-old law school graduate was in Fani Willis’ office, but he shot right out of there to much more important, high-profile, and politically-sensitive positions.
The bottom line is: not only is Judge McAfee smart, experienced beyond his years, and well-connected, but from his resume he is not just conservative but also very politically savvy. It’s now even more clear why he was a great choice for Trump in this case, maybe the best possible choice among the Fulton County judges.
Remember, Trump could easily have drawn some all-in liberal judge instead. Sometimes, and I am not talking about anyone in particular, but sometimes some Republicans can be guilty of being impossible to satisfy and suspicious of everyone. I’m just saying.
🔥 Yesterday, CNN ran a totally unbiased headline, “Putin extends one man-rule in Russia after stage-managed election devoid of credible opposition.” I wonder what CNN really thought about it? Anyway, Putin won 88% of the popular vote in a same-day election yesterday. (No early or mail-in voting.) The vote predictably showed that Russians don’t want to change presidents in the middle of a war with NATO — whoops! sorry! — I meant in the middle of a war with Ukraine.
And it only took the Russians a few hours to count their ballots.
Laughably, every single Western leader criticized the Russian election. Most hilariously, that included Joseph Robinette Biden, who himself was “elected” in a drawn-out, slow-motion electoral disaster that was mangled, delayed, ballot-harvested, water-main-broked, mailed-in, extra-ballots-found, midnight-spiked, counting-room-windows blocked, election-observers rejected, and otherwise totally mucked up beyond any semblance of a believable election process.
Joe had the nerve to call Russia’s election fake. Once I stopped laughing about that, I started laughing all over again, because I realized that in other words, Joe Biden is now an election denier. So.
I have been informed by serious, fretful news commenters — many times — that “interfering” with an election — like by making Hillary Clinton memes — is a danger to our democracy. Interfering in any way is literally the worst possible thing a free citizen can do. Many good citizens, including veterans, first responders, and grandmas, are right now languishing in the shiv wings of many federal prisons, for interfering with the 2020 election by walking slowly through the Capitol rotunda taking selfies.
Even denying the validity of an election is grounds for Facebook termination with prejudice and for getting jammed on an FBI watchlist. But apparently, not if you’re denying Russia’s election. It hasn’t even been a full day yet, but somehow they already know Putin’s re-election was a fraud. Who needs evidence? It just was!
But it’s even funnier than that. Okay, it’s dark humor, since it includes a lot of newly-deceased Ukrainians. Over the weekend, right before Russia’s voting day, Ukraine — directed by NATO war planners — launched its biggest action since its failed Glorious 2023 Spring Counteroffensive. All along the border, Ukraine shot missiles, launched drones, and invaded with over 50 tanks, countless other vehicles, and over 5,000 men — attacking civilian targets related to the election, including polling places.
At first, Ukraine denied it had anything to do with the massive attack on Russia’s election infrastructure. Ukraine said hey, it wasn’t them, it was an organized resistance inside Russia who oppose Putin and the war. But then the Russians walloped the invading army, and pictures started popping up on social media showing wrecked, U.S.-made Bradley fighting vehicles, and Ukraine had to stop pretending it was a civil war.
Apparently the geniuses in NATO’s planning bunker thought it was a good idea to massacre thousands of Ukrainians and sacrifice massive amounts of material trying to manufacture a fake civil war on the border, a ‘civil war’ that nobody would have believed anyway. And then, predictably, sitting back in their safe base in Poland or wherever, NATO’s imbecilic generals just got everyone killed, and the Russians shot down all their missiles and drones and the whole thing backfired and just made Russian voters madder so they voted even more for Putin.
So I say, let’s get the January 6th prisoners out of jail to make room for the NATO generals who planned all this election interference. Which is apparently even worse than their war crimes of deliberately targeting civilian election infrastructure.
🔥 It was a bloodbath! In yet more election interference news, yesterday the corporate media interfered with elections here at home, by deploying their latest false Trump said something mean hoax. But, thanks solely to TwitterX, by this morning many of yesterday’s fake-news stories had been walked back. The UK Guardian is still hanging in there with its headline, “Trump predicts ‘bloodbath’ if he loses election and claims ‘Biden beat Obama’.”
Corporate media widely reported that, at a Saturday speech in Ohio, Trump predicted there would be a “blood bath” if he doesn’t win. He was calling for violence! He crossed the line! He should be impeach… indicted! And lots more words to that effect. Joe Biden, or whoever runs Joe’s social media (it was way past his bedtime at 8:46pm), quickly claimed Trump was calling for another January 6th Capitol invasion!
But hasty revisions began after a tactical nuke of pushback exploded on TwitterX. CNN’s revised headline sort of cleared up Trump’s meaning: “Trump warns of ‘bloodbath’ for auto industry and country if he loses the election.”
Aha. A bloodbath for the auto industry. Not a civil war.
Then … thank goodness for TwitterX. Alert Twitter users quickly recalled this 2020 headline:
Whoops.
The unsurprising truth was Trump was just in the middle of talking about auto industry tariffs and layoffs, and then said something to the effect that, if Biden gets re-elected, they hadn’t seen anything yet, and it would be a bloodbath. Meaning, more layoffs. Yawn.
Finally, I say: impeach Biden! His statement misquoting Trump was at least as bad as those Hillary memes; it was rank election interfering. And impeach him for calling for blood baths! And then round up the reporters. They can share cells with NATO’s war-planning election interferers.
🔥 Finally, Portland has competition. The Spokane Spokesman-Review ran a story yesterday headlined, “Supreme Court: Bar exam will no longer be required to become attorney in Washington State.”
ChatGPT’s idea of a ‘dignified’ (its words) transgender judge.
According to the article, in 2020 Washington’s Supreme Court created a Bar Licensure Task Force — the year of peak insanity — to review how unfairly attorneys get licensed in that state. Four years later, the task force unsurprisingly found that the traditional bar exam “disproportionally and unnecessarily blocks marginalized groups” from becoming attorneys and is “at best minimally effective” to ensure competency.
Gosh, I wish we’d have known that back when I took the exam. It was brutal.
Washington’s Supreme Court did four things: It shrank the current minimum score to pass the bar (of course). It ordered creation of a new “experiential-based” alternative bar exam, presumably written in ebonics or using native pictures instead of words. It ordered law schools to allow students to work 500 hours as a “legal intern” over the three years of law school to waive the exam requirement altogether. And it said anybody who “identifies as a lawyer” should automatically receive a law license. (Okay, I made up that last one. But not the rest.)
Washington people, do not panic. This will be a self-correcting problem.
First, this isn’t about making more diverse lawyers. Washington’s Supreme Court really wants more diverse judges, but to get a diverse judge you first need some diverse lawyers. Most states require lawyers to practice for five or ten years before they can run for judge. Once made a diverse judge in Washington, they can be moved up to the federal circuit.
Second, the marginalized groups they have in mind aren’t based on race. Racial groups have received diversity assistance for decades. So it must be trans judges they have in mind. Rainbow-haired, pierced, tattooed, bearded lady judges.
But I doubt it will work. Graduating unqualified lawyers just leads to malpractice lawsuits. It’s possible they could smuggle a few through as non-practicing lawyers like judicial clerks, or in carefully protected transactional jobs, and get some judges that way.
But then the unqualified, diverse judges will wreak havoc in courtrooms and run afoul of ethics issues. Like someone whose name rhymes with ‘Wanny Fillis.’
Tellingly, the Spokesman-Review couldn’t find a single lawyer to quote who was enthusiastic about this great pro-diversity idea. The closest the article got to that was one single law school dean, who allowed he was on board with the change, in concept, but noted “the devil’s in the details.”
For sure, the devil’s in there somewhere.
Expect the lawyers who the Supreme Court ordered to craft those details to slow walk its preposterous scheme and try to murder it in the crib.
Washington is now the second state to eliminate its bar exam. The first was Oregon, which switched over a couple months ago, so it’s too soon to tell what scale of epic disaster they’ve created this time.
Science! Shut up!
Have a marvelous Monday! No exams are required to become part of the C&C Army, either, just a reading assignment, so come back tomorrow morning for another delicious serving.
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© 2022, Jeff Childers, all rights reserved
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
