AI Trump Grifts The Homeless

Artificial Intelligence or AI has become a huge buzzword in the past ten years and rightfully so. We’re old enough here at the Bucket to remember back in the ’80s when AI first came into the national consciousness and the media overreacted as they usually do and predicted the end of civilization. Stephen Hawking even warned about it, but then again he’s predicted a race of superhumans and possibly aliens taking over earth. Well, AI has finally arrived and it may very well be as dangerous as everyone predicted it would.

AI deepfake videos have become prevalent in the last five years and the results are astounding. Not only are they of good quality, they can actually fool people into believing what they are seeing is real and not fake. Jimmy Kimmel is well known for having deepfake videos on his show, especially featuring TFG, but he promotes them as such. There are other shows and websites that announce that the videos or images are faked and not to be taken seriously. Jabari Jones YouTube site is a good example. But it becomes incredibly dangerous especially when you consider all the malicious agents around the world, like Vladimir Putin, who would like nothing more than a video surfacing where Joe Biden, Barack Obama or other prominent Democrats say disparaging remarks about certain Americans or other countries.

There are also AI image generator sites like img2go where you can create realistic looking images for free. We tried it out and made our photo-toon for today with the prompt ‘homeless Donald Trump begging for money’. The result was surprisingly good. We’ve obviously photo-shopped some items, but the look on the homeless man’s face is authentic (authentic for a fake image, that is ). We couldn’t have come up with a better reaction to Trump’s grifting. We people who despise the orange, megalomaniac man child have had that ‘just shoot me’ look for the past nine years. We just may use AI more in our photo-toons in the future.

AI Donald Trump, who is also a twice impeached megalomaniac man child, runs his latest grift; hawking bibles and sob stories to the homeless because, you know, they're not suffering enough.
AI Donald Trump, who is also a twice impeached megalomaniac man child, runs his latest grift; hawking bibles and sob stories to the homeless because, you know, they’re not suffering enough.

The Republican Crime Syndicate


Things are heating up in the Robert Mueller investigation as more and more of Donald Trump’s cronies are being indicted or flipping on the orange haired man child. The list keeps growing of people close to Trump who are being exposed for corruption. The list includes: Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman; Michael Flynn, Trump’s former National Security Advisor; Rick Gates, former business partner of Manafort; and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and ‘fixer’. One of Trump’s former campaign advisors, George Papadopoulos, just received a puny 14 day sentence for lying to the FBI. In addition to these crooks, there is also one of the first GOP congressmen to support Trump, New York’s Chris Collins, who’s been indicted on insider trading and California’s Duncan Hunter, who is accused along with his wife (who he promptly blamed completely) of misusing campaign funds.  Throw in corrupt former EPA chief Scott Pruitt, former HHS Secretary Tom Price, Donald Trump Jr., who may be implicated because of his Trump Tower meeting and of course, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s current lawyer who looks like he came straight out of a mafia movie and has done nothing but constantly lie and embarrass himself since he was hired by Trump. It’s a rogue’s gallery of con artists who could have easily rubbed elbows with the likes of Capone against the FBI G-men in the 1920s and 30s. Hey, whaddya’ know…Trump is fighting against the FBI just like those hoodlums.

The indictments are now prompting America’s CEO/Dictator to become unglued. He has accused Attorney Confederate General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III of hurting Republican chances in the midterms.  He continues his assault on the free press stating that it is the ‘enemy of the people’.  Bob Woodward’s new book release paints a pretty dismal picture of the Trump White House and has Trump champing at the bit. Now the orange megalomaniac is blowing his top with his own staff because of a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times which pretty much states that Trump is an addle-brained lunatic incapable of making sound decisions.

So, logically with all this mounting evidence of a completely incompetent and dangerous administration, why aren’t the supposedly ‘morally superior’ Republicans removing the orange haired man child from office? Like we’ve said in previous posts, the Trump administration is doing exactly what the Republican’s corporate overlords want him to do; provide daily distractions in the media while the Republican corporate lackeys in the Senate, House and the courts systematically dismantle laws and regulations therefore enabling the corporate oligarchy to reap enormous wealth in the process. If that means breaking the law, then so be it. The Republican party is no longer a party; their actions indicate they are now a crime syndicate worthy of praise from the Godfather himself.

With so many indictments of Donald Trump associates, twenty-first century Republicans can no longer call themselves a party; they're a crime syndicate.
With so many indictments of Donald Trump’s associates, twenty-first century Republicans can no longer call themselves a party; they’re a crime syndicate.

 

The Master Bait And Switcher


One of the most astonishing things about Con-a-thon 2016 that we just can’t believe was that so many old, white Teabagger patriots voted for Donald Trump and voted to keep a Republican majority in Congress. Although he claims that he won’t cut Social Security and Medicare (like we can believe anything he says) conservative Republicans have wanted to cut Social Security and Medicare since their inception and privatize everything. In ‘bidness’ terms, it’s called the old bait and switch. Yes, CONservative Republicans ‘compassionately’ want humans to suffer and die in horrible ways in their old age like in the good old days before the Great Depression when robber barons could work you more than eight hours a day, often for seven days a week and children didn’t waste precious energy playing, they worked for pennies a day. Does anybody honestly think Donald Trump would side with poor people instead of his fellow billionaires? It’s all about greed and making more money, more money, MORE MONEY.  He’s already stocking his cabinet with billionaires and corporatists. Why would so many low income people vote against their own interests and elect someone who will destroy their lives by getting rid of their safety net that enables them to live? Oh yeah…that’s right…Hillary Clinton used a private email server like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and the George W. Bush White House did.

Master bait and switcher and American CEO/Dictator Donald Trump vows to cut Social Security and Medicare to get those lazy mooching freeloading Senior Citizens back to work.
Older Teabagger patriots are experiencing a bit of regret about casting their vote for master bait and switcher and new American CEO/Dictator Donald Trump

Con Artists Revealed

We’re still coming to grips with this election but the initial shock is worn off. While it was pretty much a disaster for sanity, science and intelligent people everywhere, there were some minor victories, especially here in Arizona. While grouchy curmudgeon John McCain unfortunately retained his seat, there were some good things happening: Democrats made pickups in the Arizona House and Senate; Democrats maintained their seats in the U.S. House of Representatives; there was an increase in the minimum wage; one of the people responsible for the March primary debacle, Helen Purcell, was voted out of office; and perhaps the biggest news was that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe ‘Just Call Me God’ Arpaio will finally be riding off into the sunset after being defeated by Paul Penzone.

But several interesting and revealing things are happening in the post-election trauma. We’ll address just one in this post and that is the stock market has taken off with Donald Trump taking office. Initially, stocks plunged worldwide and people around the world started to freak out. But the United States stock market stabilized quickly…almost too quickly. That quick recovery and the fact that it’s taken off since then speaks volumes. The sectors soaring are dirty energy companies (coal, oil, gas), pharmaceuticals and banking and financial services.This pretty much confirms what we’ve known all along; America is no longer a democracy, it’s a corporate oligarchy. As long as the President (even if it was Clinton) is friendly to Corporate America and Wall Street has it’s money, then all is fine. The stock market hangs over America’s head like a Damocles sword: Please Wall Street and its investors or else!

This is where the con comes in. Although Trump claimed to be on the side of the little guy, he is a big time supporter of corporatism. He loves money and other people with money…and that doesn’t mean most of us in the middle and lower classes. In any given conflict between corporate America and individuals, Trump will side with corporate America every time. Trump is a plutocrat! Red state Americans have been royally conned! Unfortunately, Trump voters won’t realize they’ve been screwed until after Social Security and Medicare have been taken away (the Republicans have wanted SS repealed since World War II) or they’re paying higher prices for prescription drugs because protective consumer regulations have been stripped (good times coming for the Pharma bros) or they don’t receive assistance after a natural disaster ripped up their property because the austerity crazed Republican government doesn’t want to spend money to bail them out (remember Hurricane Katrina). But then they’ll probably blame it on the Democrats, who instituted these safety net programs and protective regulations in the first place, because Fox News, a.k.a. the Republican Propaganda Network and our new CEO/Dictator Trump tell them it is so.

Fasten your seatbelts America…it’s going to be a bumpy and nauseating ride.

New American CEO/Dictator Donald Trump celebrates his massive job of con artistry on the American people with one of his fellow plutocrats.
New American CEO/Dictator Donald Trump celebrates his massive job of con artistry on the American people with one of his fellow plutocrats.

The Art Of The Con 101

We’ve commented ad infinitum about our befuddlement over the fact that megalomaniac Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president and is somehow ahead in some polls, despite running an absolutely miserable campaign, and presiding over one of the worst Republican conventions in history. It really boggles the mind! Can Americans really be this dense?

It goes back to previous posts(here, here and here) about some lower income Americans seeing themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. They see a rich man like Donald Trump and they buy his con that he’ll make things better and that all that wealth will come flooding in and tricking down(where have we heard that before). There’s a reason why Trump says he loves the poorly educated; they’re pretty easy to con. And you throw in the fact that most Americans are horrendous at math and you’ve got a world class swindle going on right now in the Republican party which could not only affect the United States but the world in a stupendously negative manner.

Take Donald Trump’s claim a few months back that he gave a million dollars to a veterans charity. On the surface that seems pretty generous. But when you consider that his estimated wealth is 4.5 billion dollars, the one million dollar gift is only 0.022 percent (not even 1% folks!) of his wealth. This is like a person with a $1,000 dollars giving 22 cents to the charity; not very impressive in reality. But that’s the beauty of this con and Republicans use it all the time. They claim that these poor billionaires pay millions in taxes every year. To most of the Republican party’s lower income blue collar white workers, this seems like robbery because a million dollars to these people is an absolute fortune. But to billionaires, it’s a drop in the bucket.

For simplicity sake, take a CEO who earns a one billion a year. If the tax rate is 30%, then he should pay $300 million a year in taxes. Most of us would scream bloody murder if we had to forfeit this much money. But this CEO still has $700 million dollars left. He ain’t hurting! He’s still living high off the hog while you’re scraping and scratching just to get by. When he complains and gets his tax rate lowered he’s taking that extra money and selfishly puts it into offshore tax havens or buying up more real estate and mansions. He’s not letting that money trickle down by any means. In fact, he’s leaving us to foot his portion of the tax bill, one that he easily could afford. Money is power and with great power comes great responsibility. The 1% in this country want all the money and power but none of the responsibility.  Instead, we, the middle and lower classes, are squeezed and the corporate lackey conservative Republicans the 1% pay off in Congress convince everyone it’s the Liberals or the Democrats fault. The Republicans claim loudly that the rich, like Donald Trump, would never con anyone. Hah! Just look into Trump University and his numerous failed businesses. If you’re supposed to run the government like a business, like many Republicans claim, then Trump is the wrong person to be CEO. The astonishing truth is that if you’re a Trump supporter and you make less than $125k a year, you’re voting against your own interests. In short, DO THE MATH!

Donald Trump claims to give a million dollars to chairty which accounts to a not so generous 0.022 percent of his $4.5 billion dollar wealth.
Thanks to the atrocious and pathetic math skills of Americans, authoritarian. megalomaniac con artist, Donald Trump, is on the verge of becoming President.