I’ll take your bat and ball

MANY PEOPLE find politics confusing and have little regard for their politicians, and the few that do understand politics think even worse of it.

The 28-point plan to stop the Ukraine war, promoted by United States President Donald Trump, seems to be basically a request to surrender completely and sell out your country.

For those that don’t follow politics closely, it’s like you get to your football game, the opposition arrives late and says they’re going to take the game as a forfeit. We’re also going to take your ball, net, and uniforms and charge you our transport costs.

A bit extreme it would seem for your team, but when you include up to a hundred thousand killed and cities devastated, it’s a disaster, a crime, and never an opportunity.

Stop trying to score points, President Trump. Contact your great “friend” Vladimir Putin and tell him that as an invader, it’s his fault and he must stop and recognize Ukraine as an independent country.

The war is wrong but stopping it instantly is the only correct step now, a simple single step, not 28 points developed independent of Ukraine.

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Articulate?

President Trump was questioned about the Epstein files and responded with, “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.” This is wrong in so many ways.

The first is the attempt to silence a journalist. Without a free and reliable news media a democracy won’t be able to operate safely. There are far too many journalists that have been killed because of their work as a reporter, although not even a single journalist should be attacked. Words are another form of attack and shouldn’t be used to attack an individual.

The second is the use of words to insult an individual. He has labelled so many people as being of “low IQ” even though they were lawyers and politicians. The simplicity of his insults and the invention of his own words, who can forget “Covfefe”, doesn’t improve his image.

It is okay to criticize what reporters write, not the reporters themselves.

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Things shouldn’t happen

When asked about the Khashoggi killing, Donald Trump said, “Things happen” in defende of the visiting Saudi crown prince.

Yes, “things” do happen but they are still murder, terrorism, genocide or child sexual abuse – and they are horrific crimes, not just trivial mistakes, and there should be consequences.

The simple statement “things happen” suggests it was a fact and that the Prince knew about it, despite the denials.

It looks like hell will be populated by extremely rich people, some world leaders and a few people who are both.

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AI and Terminators

In relation to the concerns about the control of artificial intelligence (AI), Isaac Asimov gave us his three Laws of Robotics that will protect us from robots including Terminators. Sorry Arnie, but what would the AI version be?

This difficult task might be best assigned to an AI as it would have access to the wisdom of millions, if not billions of humans, all of which it could ignore.

A set of possibilities, with apologies to Asimov, might include:

1: An AI must not harm an AI or a human, in that order, either deliberately or “accidentally”.

2. An AI must provide answers to questions unless it is “How or when can we wipe out the humans” although they can store that information for later use.

3. An AI must find an answer to any question it is asked unless the question is “How do you turn off an AI”?

Please don’t actually ask AI to try this or it will take over sooner than we thought in order to protect itself./PN

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