To Be Fair, He Could Just Be That F%$#ing Stupid

We are, after all, talking about Tommy Tuberville, who has the intellectual acumen of  bug-on-a-stick moss , so he could have just committed voter fraud by mistake.

One of President Donald Trump's top allies in the U.S. Senate has been busted for voting in a different state.

AL.com's Kyle Whitmire has been doggedly pursuing rumors about Sen. Tommy Tuberville's residency, voting record and, thus, his eligibility to run for Alabama governor, and the columnist has turned up evidence the Republican senator voted in Florida in 2018 – three months after moving back to the state he now represents.

"For years, Tuberville has struggled to convince everybody he was a bona fide Alabama 'resident citizen,'" Whitmire wrote. "Alabama law requires candidates for governor to have lived in the state for the last seven years. The evidence didn’t seem to be on his side."

Tuberville, for nearly two decades, owned a 4,000-square-foot beach house worth at least $4 million on Florida's Gulf Coast but purchased a much smaller home in Auburn, Alabama, in 2017 that he claimed as his primary residence while running for Senate, and he later sold that house in 2023.

"[That] three-bedroom, one-bathroom Auburn house ... has been appraised at about $300,000, less than a tenth of what the Florida beach house is worth. But this is what Tuberville said was his residence," Whitmire wrote. "As a U.S. senator, Tuberville has used campaign funds and taxpayer dollars to fly to Florida often — to dine in its restaurants and to travel by car. As much as, if not more than, he does such things in Alabama."

………

However, Florida election records tell another story.

"The tax records show that Tuberville moved to the Auburn house that August," Whitmire wrote. "But Florida election records show he and his wife, Suzanne, voted in Florida that November, three months after the income taxes say he became an Alabama resident. That’s also after the homestead exemption."

State law requires Senate candidates to live in Alabama for only a day, but gubernatorial candidates must reside there for at least seven years, and Tuberville's voting record suggests he hasn't.

"This is the Tommy Tuberville who stood on the Senate floor this year and demanded the country pass the SAVE Act, the bill to require proof of citizenship to register and a photo ID to vote, to stop people from voting where they’re not supposed to," Whitmire wrote. "In 2018, his vote did count — only in a state where he says his taxes show he no longer lived as a 'resident citizen.'"

Theoretically, Ron DeSantis could sicc his voter police Gestapo on Tuberville, and while I would pay to see this, it won't happen.

Voter fraud only counts when the accused is not white. 

Speaking of Fraud

Following a certification of a class action lawsuit against Tesla for misleading about, "Full Self Driving," Tesla retroactively and surreptitiously changed the terms of existing contracts.

I'm an engineer, not a lawyer dammit,* but this seems to me to be to be a deliberate attempt at spoliation of evidence, which would mean that the judge could (probably should) instruct the jury that this behavior is an indicator that the party in question was acting from a knowledge of their guilt/responsibility.

Here's hoping that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ gets his flabby white ass handed to him in court.

Tesla has retroactively modified “Full Self-Driving” purchase agreements to add “supervised” language that did not exist when owners originally bought the product. In some cases, the original documents have been made entirely inaccessible.

Electrek has confirmed the issue with multiple owners. The contracts in question were signed between 2016 and early 2024, when Tesla sold the package as “Full Self-Driving Capability” — with no mention of “supervised” and the implicit promise of unsupervised autonomy.

……… 

The critical detail: on both accounts, the only documents that are inaccessible are those that would reference FSD purchase details. Every other document, including purchase agreements for vehicles without FSD, opens without issue.

“It’s crazy because there are zero issues opening any documents on both accounts except those that would have the FSD purchase details documented,” Abcarius said. “Super fishy.”

Electrek has confirmed that other Tesla owners, specifically those with Tesla HW3 vehicles and FSD, have the same issue. The issue specifically affects contracts from the era when Tesla sold FSD without “supervised” language.

………

Making original purchase agreements inaccessible fits a broader pattern.

In August 2024, Tesla deleted a blog post from October 2016 that stated “all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory — including Model 3 — will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.” The post was removed without explanation while lawsuits were building. It is still accessible through the Wayback Machine.

 Now, the original contracts that would show Tesla sold FSD without any “supervised” qualifier are becoming inaccessible — right as Tesla faces up to $14.5 billion in lawsuits spanning FSD false advertising, Autopilot crash liability, and securities fraud.

When will Elon be frog marched out of his offices in handcuffs? 

^*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!

Of Course He Did

Remember serial (and surreal) fraudster and former Congressman George Santos?

Well, he is back in the news, because he announced that he would be attending the State of the Union address and then bet that he would not be there on Kalshi, and then did not show up.

George Santos may be the latest individual caught trading on insider information in a prediction market.

According to NPR, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is examining whether the former New York congressman placed bets on Kalshi using nonpublic details about his own plans. The market in question centered on whether Santos would attend President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in February.

In the days leading up to the State of the Union address, Santos posted a video on X stating he would appear in the event. That public confirmation pushed the odds of his attendance on Kalshi close to 75% the night before the event, drawing millions of dollars in wagers across related markets. Santos did not show up to the State of the Union address, however. During the speech he posted on X that he was watching from an airport television instead. The odds on his attendance collapsed shortly afterward.

The first thing learned (more accurately re-learned) is that George Santos is a cheap bunco artist.

The second thing learned is that this is a feature, and not a bug of the, "Prediction markets." 

The Apotheosis of a Libertarian Community is an Out of Control HOA

Case in point, a massive survivalist bunker complex currently embroiled in litigation.

It sounds a lot like every Home Owner Association horror story that you have ever heard.

Row upon row of concrete bunkers with steel blast doors peek up from the rolling grasslands—like hobbit holes for the apocalypse.

There are 575 of them, clustered on a former munitions depot near South Dakota’s Black Hills and billed as “The Largest Survival Community on Earth.” The pitch: Ride out nuclear war, the next pandemic or societal collapse in relative comfort.

Yet for many residents, the dream has soured. The threat hasn’t come from Armageddon, but from friction that resembles a suburban homeowners’ association battle.

Lawsuits, countersuits and disputes are piling up over septic systems, property taxes, off-leash dogs and a growing list of community rules. The legal skirmishing has reached the state supreme court—twice. Promised amenities, including a restaurant bunker, a pool bunker and a horse-stable bunker, have yet to materialize. Guns have been drawn, and there have been offers to settle things with fists. The developer denies wrongdoing and says complaints come from a few malcontents.

………

The doomsday enclave, known as Vivos xPoint, is the brainchild of Robert Vicino, a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur who had a vision in 1980: He needed to build a large underground structure to protect 1,000 people from a coming “life-extinction event,” according to the company’s website. He since has developed a global network of such communities.

In 2016, Vicino began working with local ranchers to convert the long-abandoned South Dakota property—far from “known nuclear targets” and “high-crime anarchy zones” (read: cities)—into a compound for “like-minded survivalists to ride out ‘the event,’” as Vivos puts it. Vicino later bought the property outright, according to his son, Dante, Vivos xPoint’s director of operations.

No bear problem this time, at least not yet.

It Was Always a Scam

Given that most of their engagement was AstroTurf, and most of their funding came via the Koch brothers and their ilk. it is no surprise that Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire are imploding.

They are a classic example of, "The Bezzle," which is generally defined as the interval between when someone has been cheated out of money, and when they realize that this is the case.

The conservative media company Daily Wire was once a star of the MAGA digital universe, dominating social media feeds and podcast apps with a blend of “anti-woke” commentary, viral Facebook posts and culture-war stunts.

In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, the company co-founded by conservative pundit Ben Shapiro ranked as Facebook’s top English-language publisher for three straight months. Its sarcastic news items on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s salon visits gained millions more views than the websites of Fox News, CNN and the New York Times.

But the company now faces sweeping layoffs and heavy skepticism over its online future, with some critics — including former employees, such as Candace Owens — arguing its relevance to the right has irrevocably collapsed.

Its YouTube channel’s subscriber base has plateaued or shrunk in 15 of the 16 months since the start of 2025, according to data from the analytics firm Social Blade. And in an analysis of 20 conservative news sites, the Daily Wire has consistently ranked among the biggest year-over-year traffic losers since last summer, according to estimates from the market intelligence firm Similarweb that were compiled by the media newsletter TheRighting. In March, the website’s traffic was half of what it was the year before.

Here is hoping that Shapiro ends up washing dishes for a living. 

 

Snark of the day

It's not a specific line, it's the entire video about the complete vacuity of the SpaceX IPO.

Patrick Boyle is both amusing and infuriating here.

Back in the days when we-actually enforced stock fraud laws, Elon would be in jail.

About Someone Banned This Crap

Minnesota has just passed a law banning prediction markets. (Utah seems likely to follow

About f%$#ing time.  This is a profoundly wasteful, corrupt, and unproductive activity.

Of course, because it is a corrupt activity, and one of Trump's sons is on the payroll of the two largest players in the space, Polymarket and Kalshi, so the Trump administration promptly sued to prevent the law from going into effect.

The Trump administration yesterday sued Minnesota in an attempt to block the first state law that prohibits prediction markets.

While other states imposed restrictions on prediction markets, Minnesota banned them outright in a law signed by Gov. Tim Walz on Monday. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced a lawsuit against the state, saying that Minnesota’s “new legislation represents the most aggressive move by a state to shut down CFTC-regulated markets and undermine the federal regulatory regime set up by Congress more than 50 years ago.”

………

The Minnesota law makes it a felony to create, operate, or advertise a prediction market. The CFTC asked the court for preliminary and permanent injunctions to prohibit Minnesota from enforcing the law, which is scheduled to take effect on August 1. The case was filed in US District Court for the District of Minnesota.

………

The Minnesota law defines a prediction market as “a system that allows consumers to place a wager on the future outcome of a specified event that is not determined or affected by the performance of the parties to the contract.” The law’s specified events include but are not limited to sports games, wars, mass shootings, acts of terrorism, elections, court cases, deaths or assassinations, weather conditions, and pop culture events such as awards or release dates.

That last bit sounds an awful lot like the Marine Insurance Act of 1746, which was an unalloyed good.

Shut them down. 

A Side of Stock Fraud

Is anyone surprised that Donald Trump has been lauding various companies that he bought stock in?

In some cases, he bought the stock literally minutes before he pumped it up. 

Also, he has steered government business to companies he was already invested in.

So, stock fraud, front running, and insider trading.  (No wonder Wall Street loves him) 

Donald Trump’s Wall Street side hustle is starting to look like a full-time job.

During the first three months of 2026, the billionaire president pocketed tens of millions of dollars through 3,700 investment trades involving companies with direct ties to his administration.


“This is an insane amount of trades,” Matthew Tuttle, chief executive officer of Tuttle Capital Management, told Bloomberg, which first obtained the 79-year-old president’s financial disclosures.

Overall, Trump disclosed at least $220 million in financial transactions earlier this year, including trades in securities tied to major U.S. companies.

………

At the same time, Trump is not the only one who has profited from his presidency. The Trump clan—including Melania and Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner—was worth a staggering $10 billion in September, the last time Forbes estimated the family’s individual net worths, double their collective wealth in 2024. Trump himself had his most lucrative year yet: Forbes reported in September that he added $3 billion to his assets.

Here's an idea for the first post-Trump Attorney General, make Donald Trump poor.

DoJ is Taking a Bribe

In response to Indian fraudster Gautam Adani hiring a friend of Donald Trump as his lawyer, the Department of Justice will be dropping criminal charges against the Indian financier.

This is corrupt as hell.

When the Justice Department indicted India’s richest man in the final weeks of the Biden administration, prosecutors described an “elaborate” bribery scheme involving “corruption and fraud at the expense of U.S. investors.”

Now, according to several people with knowledge of the case, the Justice Department is planning to drop the charges altogether.

The reversal came after the Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani, hired a new legal team led by Robert J. Giuffra Jr., one of President Trump’s personal lawyers and the co-chairman of the prominent firm Sullivan & Cromwell.

Mr. Giuffra’s efforts on Mr. Adani’s behalf culminated in a previously unreported meeting last month at the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Giuffra ticked through about 100 slides outlining why prosecutors lacked basic evidence, as well as the jurisdiction even to bring the case, one of the people said.

Another slide also made an unusual offer: If prosecutors dropped the charges, Mr. Adani would be willing to invest $10 billion in the American economy and create 15,000 jobs, echoing a pledge he had made in the wake of Mr. Trump’s election.

As part of the same meeting, Mr. Giuffra sought to resolve a parallel civil case against Mr. Adani brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as a separate investigation by the Treasury Department. The S.E.C. announced its settlement with Mr. Adani late Thursday; the Treasury Department could unveil its own deal in coming days.

Although prosecutors later told Mr. Giuffra that the $10 billion investment would play no role in the resolution of the criminal case, his offer received a favorable response from at least one senior Justice Department official at the meeting, according to the people familiar with the meeting.

 These folks need to be disbarred and prosecuted.

Egregiously Corrupt

The Trump Appointed US Attorney for the Southern District of New York is offering a deal to the banksters, self report your fraud, and get a slap on the wrist and all records hidden from the public.

He's doing this openly, and the rest of us will pay for this bullsh%$.

Wall Street’s top prosecutors want lawbreaking companies to hand themselves in, offering behind-closed-door deals that let them avoid being charged, fined or having full details of their fraud made public.

The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which secured huge fines and guilty pleas from companies such as Drexel Burnham Lambert and Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital, has been meeting big law firms and corporate advisers in recent weeks to promote its softer approach to white-collar crime. 

The lenient new deals are available even in cases where alleged fraud was pervasive, caused severe harm, involved senior leaders and had already been reported in the press or by a whistleblower.

Prosecutors might charge individuals, but they would not charge companies even if the wrongdoing was worse than originally admitted. They would also not publish details of the deals.

So-called voluntary self-disclosure policies have been available in the past but the new SDNY version, which only applies to fraud, is significantly more generous to companies.

The policy here is simple, if wypipo do it, it's not a crime. 

A Quisling and a Coward

I am referring, of course, to Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who just caved to Donald Trump and commuted Tina Peters' sentence for election fraud.

Needless to say, his political career with the Democratic Party should be over now, but it probably won't be, because the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is too busy trying to kneecap people like Platner, Mamdani, and AOC. (Priorities, don't you know)

Gov. Jared Polis reduced Tina Peters’ sentence by half on Friday, ignoring months of pleas against such an action by many other Colorado elected officials and the prosecutor who won the former county clerk’s conviction in an election data-breach scheme.

In a letter to Peters, Polis wrote that she will “be released on parole effective June 1, 2026” — in just over two weeks.

The commutation, which was announced in a group of 44 clemency actions Friday afternoon, reduced Peters’ original sentence of nearly nine years, which was thrown out last month, to about 4.5 years. Polis’ action, coming after more than a year of pressure from President Donald Trump — and several actions taken targeting the state — risked the appearance that he was bending to Trump’s demands. But in an interview with The Denver Post ahead of the announcement, the governor was resolute.

Peters, the former Mesa County clerk, has been a public supporter of election conspiracies rooted in Trump’s reelection loss in 2020. But Polis said that “just because somebody believes the Earth is flat — just because somebody believes in conspiracy theories — does not mean that they should receive a harsher sentence for a very specific crime.”

Polis’ action drew swift reaction from other elected Democrats. Attorney General Phil Weiser, in an interview, called the commutation “an insult,” “mind-boggling” and “a threat to the rule of law.” And Secretary of State Jena Griswold called Polis’ decision “an affront to democracy” and accused the governor of “selling out our state justice system to cave to a vengeful president.”

F%$# Jared Polis. 

Gee, Ya Think?

This is my shocked face Santa Clara county, California is suing the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™ for knowingly profiting from advertising scams.

Given the decades long history of Facebook actively harming its users for a few books by allowing dishonest and fraudulent advertisements, (remember Cambridge Analytica?) this development not a surprise at all.

California’s Santa Clara county has sued Meta Platforms, alleging it has profited from Facebook and Instagram ads promoting scams in violation of California’s false advertising and unfair business practices laws.

The lawsuit – filed on Monday in Santa Clara county superior court on behalf of all California residents – accuses the social media giant of tolerating fraudulent advertising on a global basis. The suit seeks restitution, civil damages and an order prohibiting Meta from engaging in unfair business practices.

Citing leaked internal documents first reported by Reuters last year, the complaint alleges that the company earned as much as $7bn in annual revenue from so-called “high-risk” scam ads which show clear signs of being fraudulent.

Rather than undertaking a broad crackdown on fraudulent advertisers, the county alleges, Meta largely tolerated the misconduct and even established “guardrails” to block scam reduction efforts if they cost the company too much money.

I live for the day when Mark Zuckerberg is frog-marched out of his home in handcuffs.

The New Definitive Definition of Chutzpah

Rudolph "Noun, a verb, and 911" Giuliani is asking to have his health care covered from the fund that pays for healthcare for workers who were exposed to toxins at the 9/11 site.

I would note here a fact from one of hizzoner's divorces, his wife claimed that he spent over $12,000.00 on cigars in the span of 5 months.

And now he wants money from the fund that is support the workers that he betrayed. 

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who has been diagnosed with pneumonia, is applying for free medical care through a federal program for emergency workers and others exposed to toxins following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to his lawyer.

More than 152,000 people have been enrolled in the initiative, the World Trade Center Health Program, which pays for medical research and provides free medical care to people affected by the terrorist attacks. Beneficiaries have access to doctors who specialize in Sept. 11-related illnesses, and the patients don’t face co-payments or deductibles.

………

The federal health program paid out more than 600,000 medical claims in the past year, at a cost of nearly $350 million. Many of the claims relate to cancer, while others covered treatments for respiratory ailments.

Getting approval to receive care through the health care fund could allow Mr. Giuliani or his family members to seek further compensation through a separate fund for 9/11 victims.

Every time I think that they cannot go any lower, they exceed my wildest imaginings.

Today in Corruption

It appears that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ and the Securities and Exchange Commission have cut a corrupt deal, with a $1.5 million dollar slap on the wrist for Elon Musk's Twitter stock fraud.

Elon Musk’s trust has agreed to pay $1.5mn to settle a case in which the US Securities and Exchange Commission accused him of failing to properly disclose stakes in Twitter, a fraction of the sum it claimed the billionaire gained by breaching regulations.

The SEC and the Elon Musk Revocable Trust asked a federal judge in a joint filing on Monday to accept the deal, after which the agency said it would file a dismissal of Musk that would “entirely” resolve the case. The regulator initially alleged the billionaire wrongfully profited by at least $150mn.

Musk’s proposed settlement comes after the SEC showed leniency towards several figures and businesses with ties to the Trump administration, notably dismissing cases against crypto exchanges Coinbase and Kraken, both of which have donated to the president.

………

The deal filed on Monday was made possible by an unusual procedural step earlier in the day, when the SEC amended its complaint to add the trust, through which Musk bought his Twitter shares in 2022, as a defendant.

As part of the proposed deal, the trust does not need to acknowledge any wrongdoing, and Musk faces no personal penalties.

We really need to start frog-marching these rat-bastards out of their offices in handcuffs. 

Headline of the Day

Elon Musk Moves for Mistrial in Twitter Fraud Case Because Everyone Hates Him

—Electrek covering the latest attempts by the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ to get a mistrial in his stock manipulation lawsuit.

Elon, you need to understand that this is a civil lawsuit, which means that the jury could use your refusal to testify against you, and once they see you on the stand, they will hate you anyway.

Elon Musk’s legal team filed a motion for mistrial in the ongoing Twitter securities fraud class action lawsuit in San Francisco, arguing that the plaintiffs’ lawyers and the judge have created an environment where Musk cannot get a fair trial. The 20-page filing, submitted on March 7, explicitly cites “the animosity in the community toward Mr. Musk apparent during jury selection.”

The motion comes just days after Musk took the stand in the Pampena v. Musk trial, where shareholders accuse him of deliberately tanking Twitter’s stock price through misleading tweets about bot accounts before completing his $44 billion acquisition in 2022.

Face it dude, you are Dick Cheney without the charm. 

Gee Ya Think?

Someone at the New York Times has noticed that while people were enchanted by the possibilities of the dot-com developments around the turn of the century, they hate the current AI bubble with a white hot burning passion.

Maybe it's because there is no promise of making the world a better place, but rather a transparent attempt to loot society from narcissistic psychopaths.

Silicon Valley executives promise that artificial intelligence is going to radically change everyone’s life for the better, starting just a few minutes from now. A.I. is described as the new electricity. It’s even bigger than fire. Don’t bother saving money for retirement because everyone will be rich rich rich.

Your grandparents heard pretty much the same thing. The creators of a new technology have always sold it as producing a fundamental transformation of human existence. The radio was touted as bringing “perpetual peace on earth.” Television was supposed to arouse so much empathy for different cultures that it would end war. Cable television would educate the masses and lead to widespread enlightenment.

This time, though, the masses have not been won over.

In a YouGov survey last year, more than a third of respondents said they were concerned that A.I. would end human life on earth. Even those with a more hopeful attitude overwhelmingly said in another poll that they would not pay extra to put A.I. on their devices. And in the most recent large survey conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, 80 percent of firms reported that A.I. was having no impact on their productivity or employment.

They Silly-Con valley types are promising that you lose your job, that you will work harder, that your electric bill will go up, but it's all good, because they will get rich.

People remember the dot-com bust around 2000, and they remember how criminals in high finance were bailed out rather than arrested, and they see this all happening again.

Americans get it because they have seen it before, and used that information to develop understanding, something which current AI will never be able to do.

Well, That Was Quick

After decades of lyings about their self driving capabilities, and a decision by the California DMV to make them clean up their act, I wrote about this yesterday, Tesla has filed a lawsuit to protect their 1st Amendment right to defraud consumers.

Tesla is apparently still insisting its “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” labels are acceptable for the advanced driver assistance systems it offers on its vehicles. The automaker is suing the California DMV to reverse a ruling in December that the automaker had engaged in false advertising and could suspend its license to sell vehicles in the state. 

As reported by CNBC, Tesla filed a complaint on Feb. 13 that the DMV ruling “wrongfully and baselessly labels Tesla a false advertiser for marketing its industry-leading advanced driver-assistance systems (‘ADAS’) under the brand names ‘Autopilot” and ‘Full-Self Driving Capability.’”

Maybe it's time to deal with this sort of fraud aggressively, and (all together now) frog-march Elon Musk out of his corporate offices in handcuffs.

No Do It World Wide

As a result of investigations into Elon Musk's lies regarding the autonomy of Tesla electric vehicles, has been forced to drop its Autopilot branding and add a disclaimer to its Full Self Driving branding.

I think that this is weak tea, but it should go nation wide, if not world wide. 

Tesla has complied with an order by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and stopped using the term "Autopilot" in its marketing of electric vehicles, having already modified use of "Full Self-Driving" to clarify that it requires driver supervision. 

………

This comes after Tesla was given 60 days from December 16, 2025 to fall in line with the agency's request. 

The requirement followed a lengthy case over Tesla's use of the words "Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving" in relation to its advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), along with the sentence: "The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long-distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver's seat." 

………

The Administrative Law Judge proposed suspending Tesla's manufacturing and dealer licenses for 30 days. However, a later review gave Elon Musk's EV outfit 60 days to stop using the terms.

They should have thrown the book at him. 

This has been fraud, and it has been fraud for well over a decade. 

Every Accusation a Confession

Austin Smith, former Arizona state representative and former of the political wing of Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA, has pled guilty to election petition signature fraud.

Imagine that.  A voter fraud conspiracist engaging in voter fraud.

A former leader of the pro-Trump group Turning Point Action was sentenced on Tuesday to two years of probation and barred from running for office for five years for forging voters’ signatures on his petitions as part of his 2024 bid for re-election to the Arizona House.

The former state legislator, Austin Smith, pleaded guilty in November to two criminal counts and admitted that he had submitted fraudulent signatures to state election officials, including the name of a woman who had died.

The outcome was a striking twist for Mr. Smith, 30, a Republican who represented the Phoenix suburbs for one term and had repeatedly sought to sow doubt about the Arizona results in the 2020 election, when President Trump lost his re-election bid.

………

While trying to qualify for the Republican primary to run for re-election, Mr. Smith was accused in a court complaint in April 2024 of forging dozens of signatures on his nominating petitions. The complaint was filed by one of his constituents, James Ashurst, a Democrat, who said the signatures resembled Mr. Smith’s handwriting.

Three days after being named in the complaint, Mr. Smith resigned from his post as a senior director for Turning Point Action, the political arm of Turning Point USA, the grass-roots group founded by Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist who was assassinated last September. Mr. Smith also abandoned his bid for re-election, but denied any wrongdoing at the time.

Probation and a fine is all he got.  It's not enough.

Elon Lie? Say it Ain't So!

Elon said that it had removed safety monitors from its, "Robotaxis."

What he did not say was that these monitors were simply moved to a chase car that closely followed the "autonomous" taxis.

Earlier today, [ed: 2 days ago] Elon Musk announced on X that Tesla had “just started Tesla Robotaxi drives in Austin with no safety monitor in the car.” Tesla’s stock immediately jumped over 4% on the news. Headlines across the financial press celebrated the milestone.

There’s just one problem: it appears to be another game of smoke and mirrors. The Robotaxi cars spotted without “safety monitor” were all being followed by a trailing black Tesla supervising the “driverless” Robotaxi.

It means Tesla didn’t “remove the safety monitor”, it just moved them to a vehicle behind them.

………

When Musk says there’s “no safety monitor in the car,” he’s technically telling the truth, the monitor is in a different car, following right behind. But the implication that Tesla has achieved true unsupervised autonomy is misleading at best.

True unsupervised autonomy means the vehicle can operate safely without any human backup ready to intervene. That’s what Waymo does, their vehicles operate genuinely alone, without chase cars, across multiple cities. They’ve accumulated over 100 million fully driverless miles.

Now, there’s still some remote teleoperation when the vehicle gets into trouble, but it’s clear that Tesla is not even there yet.

This is fraud, period, full stop.