The Haake Take

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

A man with a third grader’s intellect says all we need to regulate AI is a smart president. The same guy who will bark “hoax! hoax! hoax!” at climate change while Mar a Lago takes on water now insists that efforts to regulate AI are also a hoax. If Americans listen to this barking clown instead of scientists, engineers, and AI developers, we truly have entered Idiocracy, and we will get the killer robots we deserve.

On Trump’s social media posts, he keeps depicting himself in fantasy roles: Superman, Jesus, the Pope, Sci-Fi leader of dystopian death machines & a larger than life military commander. His fantasies are sometimes “official,” communicated to the American public directly under White House insignia, and they frequently come in waves of multiple fantasies at one time. Over Labor Day he indulged and made it public 37 times.

Republican Senator Thom Tillis, former Senate Armed Services Committee member, has accused Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth of mismanaging the Pentagon, and is recommending Trump fire him. Tillis wrote on X that Hegseth is “intimidated by competence” and “retreats to ginning up culture wars instead of soberly attending to the vital work of our national defense and the health and well-being of our fighting force.”

Have you ever woken in the morning steeped in a sense of nonspecific dread? It’s undefined, and even though you have no idea what it’s about, it’s palpable. You recognize that it’s just a feeling, not a fact, yet the heaviness presses. You scan the night’s memories for a bad dream… nothing in jackboots chased you through a field, the mean girls didn’t take your coat.

Last week, on an emergency basis, Trump asked the Supreme Court to rescue the centerpiece of his “capital improvement campaign.” Trump now calls his ballroom — a 90,000 ft.2 gilded party palace where donors in haute couture can eat wagyu beef and dance the night away — an “urgent matter of national security.” On Friday, the Court let Trump have his way.

According to the Federal Reserve, the share of wealth owned by the top 1% in the US recently hit a record, the highest since tracking began. The top 1% today holds $55 trillion in wealth, roughly the same amount held by the entire bottom 90% of all Americans. Today’s uber rich enjoy staggering wealth, and they wield control of traditional and online media outlets to keep it that way.

Heading into midterm season, voters are experiencing Trump’s economic illiteracy first hand, even as Trump, embarrassingly, keeps blaming Biden. If he hadn’t elevated personal loyalty over professional competence when choosing his cabinet, staff would advise him that blaming a long gone predecessor makes Trump look weak, but he did, so they don’t, and here we are.

On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee, hats in hand. The war in Iran has depleted key weapons stockpiles, reducing U.S. inventories of interceptor missiles and stealth cruise missiles to less than half and costing over $37 billion to date. To the naked eye, these costs reflect disastrous mismanagement of an unauthorized and escalating war.

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