Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Democrat Clerk’s Office Employee in Arkansas Gets ZERO Prison Time After Pleading to Felony for Illegally Altering 132 Voter Records

A former employee of the Democrat-run Pulaski County clerk’s office in Arkansas walked out of court this week with no prison time after pleading no contest to a Class D felony for illegally altering election records.

Circuit Judge Karen Whatley on Tuesday approved a plea agreement giving 58-year-old Deborah Smith of North Little Rock a two-year suspended prison sentence and a $300 fine.

The Class D felony initially carried a maximum sentence of six years behind bars, according to Just the News.

In other words, an election worker deliberately manipulated more than 100 voter records, and walked out of court without spending a day in prison.

Smith worked in the clerk’s Voter Registration Department when the records were altered in October 2024.

The scheme affected 132 voters assigned to Precinct 051.02 in North Little Rock. Their precinct information was switched to Precinct 001.04 in Maumelle, meaning affected voters could receive ballots containing races from the wrong city while omitting contests in which they were legally entitled to vote.

The manipulation was discovered after early voting began on October 21, 2024, when a voter complained that a desired candidate was missing from the ballot.

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Harvard Professor Warns That AI Execs Are Pushing World Toward Factory Farming of Humans

We’re racing towards a future where AI enables the “factory farming of humans,” a Harvard professor warns — if tech elites get their way, at least.

In a new episode of The New York Time’s “Hard Fork” podcast, the historian Jill Lepore discusses her idea of an “artificial state” that’s supplanting the traditional nation state, and particular constitutional democracy, with one that erases human autonomy.

In this emerging world order, government is conducted “not by the consent of people but by machines that are making decisions,” she explained on the podcast. And those machines, of course, are owned by corporations.

We aren’t living in the artificial state quite yet, Lepore stresses, but it’s something that’s being built and realized around us. And crucially, it’s also a fantasy held by certain influential elites who believe their power should supersede the actual government and the voters who decide how it’s run.

“The rhetoric that comes out of this particular historical moment is really about the evanescence of modern liberal democracy, constitutional democracy,” she said. The elites pushing this rhetoric aren’t “interested in what the people want,” she added. “Because actually, what the people want is not to have AI and not to have data centers. So that’s the crisis.”

Lepore explores the idea in depth in her upcoming book “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State.” She was inspired by a simple question: in our current world where you’re forced to talk to an AI to get answers, ranging from when you call in to ask about an appointment or talk to a company’s support chatbot on its website, “who decided this is a way we should be living?”

The artificial state is a sort of backsliding, in which more and more of the state’s functions are now being replaced by corporations that own and control our digital communications infrastructure. How we get our news, and information on elections and who to vote for, is all being mediated by these powerful groups — through technologies like the TV and radio, once, and now social media being the increasingly dominant medium.

The digital communication our lives are now structured around have a powerful isolating effect. In her 2024 piece for The New Yorker where she initially explored the idea that would later become her book, Lepore described the artificial state as the “factory farming of public life, the sorting and segmenting, the isolation and alienation, the destruction of human community.” 

The artificial state isn’t purely driven by AI, but it’s certainly being accelerated by it. People are asking ChatGPT about who to vote for, rather than talking to their neighbors, local officials, or experts. The political messages they’re seeing, meanwhile, are probably in part being written with AI. Decisions at every level are being made with the assistance of thinking machines. AI is also entrenching surveillance, processing the mountains of data that is being gathered on all of us.

One nefarious aspect of the pro-AI rhetoric coming out of Silicon Valley is that it frames AI as an inevitability. But Lepore argued that this brand of fatalism is a “bogus premise,” itself nestled on top of several more dubious propositions. One we hear endlessly is that regulation stifles innovation, so the government should take the handbrake off AI development. The other is that technology always advances democracy, which assures us that all of the very real threats to democracy AI poses in the present will magically sort themselves out.

Neither of those are true, Lepore says, and you have to look no further than how similar promises were made for technologies in the recent past. 

“So now, the AI people come back with the same argument that was made about the internet — the personal computer, the internet, and social media,” she said in the interview.

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Pennsylvania Democrats ERASE “Mother” and “Woman” From State Health Code — Replaced With “Postpartum Individual” in Radical Gender Ideology Push

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s administration is quietly attempting to erase women and mothers from the Commonwealth’s health code in the name of radical gender ideology.

Buried inside a sweeping 502-page regulatory proposal from the Pennsylvania Department of Health are multiple revisions that strike the words “woman” and “mother” and replace them with dehumanizing, gender-neutral terms such as “individual” and “postpartum individual.”

The changes were first uncovered by The Daily Wire. The proposed overhaul of 28 Pa. Code Chapter 27, which governs communicable and noncommunicable diseases, was published in the Pennsylvania Bulletin on August 8.

The Shapiro administration apparently believes the words “mother” and “woman” are now too offensive for Pennsylvania’s official health regulations.

You simply cannot make this up. Under the proposed changes:

  • “Pregnant woman” becomes “pregnant individual.”
  • “Mother of a newborn” becomes “postpartum individual.”
  • “Mother of stillborn” is replaced with “case of stillbirth,” while references to the mother are changed to “postpartum individual.”
  • A “mother’s medical record” becomes a “postpartum individual’s medical record.”
  • Language referring to medical professionals attending women during childbirth is rewritten to say they attend “individuals.”

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‘They are my family’: Government scolds want to stop woman from feeding neighbors breakfast

Government scolds are insisting that a woman who opened her home to a few friends and neighbors stop offering them breakfast.

Because she hasn’t obtain official permission to be a good neighbor, and, of course, subjected herself to the government inspections that officials like.

It is the Center Square that has the details about “small-town Missouri resident Kathy Kite.”

The grandmother has been warned by her local health department to stop being a nice neighbor, and now the Goldwater Institute has taken up her cause, giving the government a deadline to respond or face a lawsuit.

“Citizens should not be required to get the government’s permission before offering passers-by some coffee and a bite to eat while they socialize,” Dave Roland, of the Goldwater Institute.

The report explained how the situation developed several months ago: A local convenience shop stopped serving breakfast and when Kite asked about that, the store employees suggested she do it, and sent some locals her way.

“I said, OK, come on over, guys. I’ll make you breakfast,” Kite told the Center Square. “So the next morning, I got up at like 4 o’clock in the morning because they come at like five.”

Currently, she’s been making about two dozen servings, for about eight or 10 people, six days a week. Without charge.

She does take donations.

“My mom and dad were raised in the Depression, and so we were raised hearing the stories of how they went hungry,” Kite told The Center Square. “My mom once told me, she said, ‘You never know when you’re entertaining an angel. So if someone comes to your door, you welcome them in, and you give them something to drink. If they’re hungry, you feed them.'”

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The UN and Red Cross Are Calling for Restrictions on AI Drones and Killer Robots

The United Nations and the Red Cross are warning that rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic weapons are bringing the world dangerously close to crossing a moral red line that has inspired dystopian science fiction for decades: the autonomous targeting of humans by deadly machines.

In an appeal to world leaders on August 25, the International Committee of the Red Cross and UN Secretary-General António Guterres renewed their call for a global treaty establishing restrictions on autonomous weapons systems. They warned that the technology behind AI targeting software and unpiloted drones has developed at record speed since the UN and Red Cross first called for such negotiations three years ago.

“At the same time, scientists and engineers developing these systems have themselves raised the alarm,” Guterres and the Red Cross said in a joint statement on August 25. “When the architects of this technology are calling for limits, States cannot afford to remain passive. This year must mark a turning point.”

In other words, the world must act now to rein in what are commonly known as “killer robots” or “slaughterbots” — unpiloted drones, robotic dogs, robot sentries armed with guns, AI targeting systems, and other digitally driven death machines that can identify, strike, and eliminate human beings on their own.

“You don’t even need drone operators; you can just type in a coordinate and not see the implications of what you are doing,” said Rory Fanning, an author, activist, and veteran of the U.S. war on Afghanistan, in an interview.

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Not just a stunt: Head of U.S. Geological Survey confirms ‘Lake America’ designation

While some Trump detractors have scoffed at his signing an executive order Thursday to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, the president post on Truth Social verification from the U.S. Geological Survey that the change has been made official.

As WND reported, Trump Wednesday posted a video declaring his intent to change the name of the lake, which straddles the U.S.-Canadian border, saying, “All it takes is a good pen and some intelligence.”

Then on Thursday Trump welcomed reporters into the Oval Office to sign the executive order.

Many commentators and activist routinely excoriate Trump when he seemingly unilaterally changes designations on the map, but now the man in charge of the official federal government records on geographic designations is confirming the change, in a memo to his boss, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

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Trump Has Made Up to $15M in Oil and Gas Stock Rise Spurred in Part by Iran War

President Donald Trump’s deeply unpopular war on Iran has helped inject millions of dollars into his personal wealth while saddling everyday Americans with a $72 billion bill, a new report reveals.

Amid the war, oil and gas companies’ stocks have skyrocketed in value as companies report staggering earnings; ExxonMobil recently reported its profits doubling year-over-year, while Chevron’s net income has increased nearly 400 percent as a result of the disruptions to the global oil market. In all, oil and gas companies reported $125 billion in profits in the first half of 2026, with a corresponding jump in stock value across the fossil fuel industry.

As a result of that rise, Trump may have profited as much as $15.5 million, and netted at least $4.6 million, from his oil and gas holdings this year, Democrats on Congress’s Joint Economic Committee (JEC) found in a report this week. In all, his oil and gas holdings went from a maximum value of $45.5 million to as much as $61 million.

The analysis was based on stocks that Trump held at the end of 2025, including Exxon, Chevron, and seven other oil and gas companies. His profits may be even higher than the report suggests, as Trump bought additional oil and gas stocks in the first three months of 2026 worth up to $3.6 million. These were bought in a period when the U.S. seized control of Venezuela’s oil profits and launched a war on Iran that has sent oil prices sky-high.

Meanwhile, the rise in energy prices has cost Americans an additional $71.5 billion in gas prices at the pump, the Democrats found, or an average of over $600 a household. That’s before taking into account the hike in prices for things like groceries and other associated costs like increased mortgage rates caused by the war.

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‘You will receive a $25 gift card’: It looks like Democrats are buying votes, investigation confirms

An investigative journalist has unleashed a new report, heading into the 2026 midterm elections, explaining that it looks like Democrats are buying votes.

It is Natalie Winters whose report cites publicized Democrat giveaways include gift cards, food and concert tickets.

She noted one situation developed just before Arizona’s 2026 primary, with a “nonprofit” run by the former executive director of the Navajo County Democrats, who also previously worked for Hillary Clinton.

That group “invited Native voters to a ‘Ballot Party’ with food and said attendees would be ‘filling out our mail-in primary ballots together,'” she explained.

Then there was Florida, where “an Instagram account operated by a recent Democratic state House candidate advertised free fish dinners for people who brought a new voter to register.”

And, “In Georgia, a nonprofit funded for voter-registration and turnout work said it would give out $25 gift cards to people who brought an adult to register,” she confirmed.

Even more, “Nationally, a nonprofit funded by the dark-money organization behind the largest pro-Kamala Harris super PAC is running 2026 giveaways offering $400 gas cards, $500 grocery cards and a concert package worth approximately $4,900—while collecting personal information that it says is matched against voter files.”

The instructions appeared clear in a flyer for a fish fry at Movement for Change in Florida: “Bring someone to register to vote and receive a free fish dinner along with your new register voter.”

That social media statement appeared to come form Haley Morrissette, a Democratic state House candidate in 2024.

“The money trail leads to Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute. Its tax filings report a $14,500 ‘GOTV’ grant in 2022 and a $9,100 ‘GOTV/Voter Registration’ grant in 2023 to Movement for Change—a combined $23,600,” Winters documented.

“You will receive a $25 gift card,” promised an Instagram account for Eyvone’s Porch In-Centive Inc., if you “bring someone 18 years or older to register to vote.”

Winters reported, “EPIC is a Moultrie, Georgia, 501(c)(3) that describes voter registration and turnout as part of its work. The organization’s website thanks Black Voters Matter as a partner and says founder Carol Simpson received a ‘Georgia Democratic Lifetime Achievement Award’ in 2026. The site does not identify who issued that award.”

The investigation explained the Arizona stunt: “Arizona Native Vote published its Facebook invitation on July 11, 2026. It invited Hopi residents to a July 17 event in Polacca featuring ‘conversation, food, fun’ and ‘filling out our mail-in primary ballots together.’

“Arizona’s official calendar shows that early ballots had already been mailed. The event occurred just four days before the July 21 primary,” the report said.

The Native Vote organization got a $200,000 Henry Luce Foundation grant on March 5, 2026, for ‘Indigenous Knowledge.’ Official Katz Amsterdam Foundation records disclose another $375,000 across 2023, 2024 and 2025 for voter registration and civic engagement in rural and tribal communities. A Black Voters Matter 2024 Form 990 also lists $20,000 in general operating support,” Winters said.

She delivered multiple other examples of offerings for gas cards, grocery cards, Visa cards, concert experiences and more.

The report does confirm some offerings call themselves “incentive-driven voter-file” operations, so they are not a “proven payment for casting a vote.”

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Sanders Vows to Introduce Legislation to Stop Flock’s “AI Mass Surveillance”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has pledged to introduce legislation aimed at reining in the mass adoption of AI-powered video surveillance via companies like Flock Safety, as the camera networks being erected in communities across the U.S. face fierce backlash.

Sanders said that the widespread adoption of AI-powered Flock cameras that monitor peoples’ every activity outside of their homes is edging the U.S. closer to a system of totalitarianism. The company says that its cameras are already in place in over 6,000 communities across the U.S.

“You may not know it, but you may already be being tracked by artificial intelligence,” Sanders wrote on Monday. “Flock, a surveillance company backed by Big Tech oligarchs like Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel, has installed more than 120,000 AI-powered surveillance cameras across America.”

“What does that mean for you? It means that if Flock is in your community, every time you leave your house, a Flock camera records and tracks you,” Sanders went on. “If you are dropping your kids off at school, Flock knows. If you are going to a doctor, Flock knows. If you are going out on a date, Flock knows.”

Sanders said that he is soon introducing legislation to “stop Flock and AI mass surveillance.”

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Trump Must Not Let Washington’s Korea Hawks Intimidate Him Again

One of the great foreign policy disappointments of Donald Trump’s first term was the failure to advance his initial promising initiative to begin normalizing relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).  Trump had abandoned the threats and bluster toward Pyongyang that marked his early months in office.  Instead, he moved to open a personal dialogue with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and facilitate productive negotiations on several important issues.  That approach led to an unprecedented U.S.-DPRK summit meeting in Singapore on June 12, 2018 and, later on, to a famous sight: the U.S. president crossing the Demilitarized Zone from South Korea into the communist North on June 29, 2019, to hold a brief chat with Kim.

Unfortunately, Trump failed to prevent hawks from both parties in Congress and in the overall national security establishment from sabotaging such conciliatory efforts.  Indeed, the president made a fatal blunder of his own by appointing the rabidly hawkish John Bolton as his National Security Advisor.  Congressional opponents of any meaningful relationship between the United States and the DPRK also excoriated Trump for moving to reduce Washington’s confrontational stance toward Pyongyang.

Indeed, hardliners in Congress and the broader policy community denounced the president for his willingness even to interact with Kim. The United States gave the odious dictator a huge boost in prestige, critics contended, merely by affording him a face-to-face meeting with the president and treating him as an equal. “In his haste to reach an agreement, President Trump elevated North Korea to the level of the United States while preserving the regime’s status quo,” intoned House minority leader Nancy Pelosi.

Despite that bruising political experience during his first term, Trump has indicated that he would be receptive to a new dialogue with the North Korean leader before the end of 2026.  “I get along with him well,” Trump stated.  “And you know what? The fact that I get along with him, that’s a very good thing, not a bad thing.”

On the delicate and difficult issue of relations with North Korea, Trump’s instincts are correct.  A new summit meeting would be a useful first step toward ending the dangerous policy rigidity that, except for Trump’s all-too-brief interlude, has plagued the U.S. stance toward North Korea for decades.

To achieve a constructive breakthrough, however, the president must go on the offensive against a host of vitriolic, often partisan, detractors.  Even his mild new outreach to Pyongyang is already drawing fire akin to the ideological and partisan attacks that doomed his efforts in 2018 and 2019.  The rhetoric of Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) was typical. “Kim Jong Un is not, I think, terribly impressed with Donald Trump.  And withdrawing forces from Korea, canceling exercises, plays into his game.”  Trump in a Truth Social post the previous Sunday stated that he told Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” planned joint military exercises alongside South Korean forces.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board echoed Reed’s opposition to Trump’s conciliatory gestures to Pyongyang. “President Trump is nothing if not impulsive, and his latest brainstorm is to rekindle his courtship of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.”  The Journal’s editors were especially annoyed that Trump had cited his “very good relationship” with Kim and had contended that U.S. military exercises with South Korea “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful.”

The editors expressed alarm at the president’s approach.  “This will reinforce the growing belief in Asia and Europe that the U.S. is becoming an unreliable ally,” they fumed.  “It may also increase the calls in the South for Seoul to develop its own nuclear deterrent.”

Despite the shrill criticism, Trump’s latest initiative actually is a cautious, overdue effort to jump-start meaningful diplomacy with Pyongyang.  The real danger is that such a modest, conciliatory effort will be too little, too late.

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