Well, that was weird. Katie Zacharia, the new White House press secretary, made her debut on the podium on Tuesday with all the warmth, wisdom and political dexterity of an AI avatar.

Zacharia was all stilted delivery, nervous tics and lack of eye contact. With an eerie lack of emotion, she served up pro-Trump talking points, took only three questions and vanished after 14 minutes. It was like the West Wing had turned into uncanny valley.

The Zachbot’s past is indeed a bit of a mystery. The 41-year-old claims to be a lawyer but later a reporter asked when she passed the bar exam and she gave the unconvincing answer: “When I moved to China.” 
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Zacharia has the blond hair, glossy makeup and Fox News aesthetic of her immediate predecessors Kayleigh McEnany and Karoline Leavitt (her name also begins with a “K” – surely a tell to the AI detectors). 
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The Zachbot read from prepared notes about Trump’s many great accomplishments, awkwardly glancing up at her audience less than she should, smiling at odd moments and putting the emphasis on all the wrong words. “A great relationship …” (looks down, sighs, sounds like her cat just died) “with Venezuela”.

It was bad. Toe-curlingly, don’t-know-where-to-look bad. At least Leavitt had delivered her propaganda hot. Evidently Trump’s communications team have found new and ingenious ways to torture reporters.

She only took questions from three rightwing outlets and bungled even that.

Katy Tur of MSNOW reviewed her performance.

Questions are also being raised as to whether she actually is a lawyer as she has claimed, since there is no record of her having passed the bar in any state, which is required to practice law. Having a law degree is not sufficient.

Newly-minted White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia has repeatedly identified herself as a “lawyer,” but a report by independent journalist Judd Legum says her name does not appear as a member on any state bar association website, and a review by Mediaite of her claims of working as a lawyer in China do not seem to add up.
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As Legum’s report noted, “[I]t is quite plausible for a law school graduate who is not admitted to practice law in any state to work for a firm in China, since the work may not involve American courts,” but she also repeatedly claimed that she was an “outside counsel to the IFC and the World Bank” during this period, a much less believable claim, that two major international institutions would be willing to hire a brand-new law school graduate with no bar admission.
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There is plenty of evidence Zacharia did attend Pepperdine’s law school and graduate. For starters, she is listed as an alumna member of the school’s “Dean’s Council” as “Katie S. Zacharia (’07, JD ’11);” it is highly unlikely that Pepperdine would not have accurate information on whether it actually granted her a diploma.

But merely graduating from law school and earning a juris doctor degree is not enough to hold oneself out to the public as an “attorney” without also being admitted to a bar association, which generally requires passing a background check and bar exam.

If it turns out that she has not passed the bar exam, she then has yet one more qualification for working in the Trump administration, and that is inflating her credentials.

Jimmy Kimmel went to town on this latest fiasco.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Trump administration: Grifting and incompetence all the way down.

You may recall that last Spring, a chemistry professor at Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota was accused of urinating on student belongings, and was dismissed from his position. His troubles have greatly increased: he has been formally charged with a felony.

There has been a confession.

Urination had been found in trash cans, individuals’ water bottles and inside professors’ decorations, the state criminal court document said.

Investigators determined Fischer was responsible for the series of urine-related cases, and he resigned from Macalester College, where he had spent 25 years working.

Authorities confronted Fischer before charging him, the court document said. He allegedly shared that “during the last one and a half to two years he developed a habit of urinating in a cup and disposing the contents in either trash cans or lab sinks around campus”, according to the document.

Calling it a “habit” doesn’t make it better.

Hot tip for any young people hoping for a career in the sciences: having a criminal record of peeing all over your workplace is the kiss of death for your employment prospects. Dr Fischer has flushed away his 25-year teaching career with his “habit”.

In a horrible, tragic incident, a man with a history of mental illness climbed a fence at a South Yorkshire zoo and walked up to a Siberian tiger, which did what a tiger does. It swiftly killed him. His family is grieving. It’s all over the news — this was such a rare and unusual event.

Our mentally ill president, who watches television constantly, saw the video, and rather than doing something anywhere close to presidential, or what a sober adult would do, like expressing his sympathies, chose to eruct on social media.

Donald Trump reposted a silent 41-second video apparently showing the attack on his Truth Social account on Tuesday, captioning it: “Don’t ever mess with nature! President DJT.”

A minute later, he posted a 24-second video compilation of lion attacks on people, this one accompanied by jaunty music.

So presidential. So dignified.

Can someone take him to the zoo and leave a few cage doors unlocked?

It got worse.

“President Trump posted a wild AI-generated video late Tuesday that showed him chasing, tackling and befriending a Siberian tiger, hours after he had warned his Truth Social followers: ‘Don’t ever mess with nature!’” the New York Post reports.

That’s straight from Answers in Genesis. It’s official dogma at AiG that all the dinosaurs were vegetarian. And they still rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars from the rubes.

Meanwhile, the fully articulated and intact skeleton of Cuvier is spinning in his grave.

The controversy emerged in late September, when the Wall Street Journal began publishing a series of reports about Guilfoyle’s questionable activities—including promoting a Greek construction firm, bragging about luxury trips paid for by businessmen, and asking a Trump donor to pay a $100,000 credit card bill in exchange for getting the attention of the Trump Administration.

The State Department’s inspector general is looking into the allegations, the AP and the Journal reported.
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As the reports emerged, Trump did not defend Guilfoyle, who was in a relationship with his eldest son between 2018 and 2024. “I just heard about it—too bad,” the President told reporters on Friday. “I mean, I don’t know. She’s an ambassador. I just heard a little bit about it. I don’t know too much. She was always very nice.”
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The 57-year-old Guilfoyle was a former prosecutor in the San Francisco and Los Angeles District Attorney’s Offices and was appointed Assistant District Attorney in San Francisco in 2000. She gained fame as a co-host of the Fox News’ conservative political talk show The Five, which she joined in 2011 and left in 2018.

Besides Guilfoyle’s legal and media work, she also helped raise funds for Trump’s presidential campaign in 2020. Guilfoyle was also a witness to the events leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol attack, and met with the House committee investigating the insurrection in 2022.

From 2001 to 2006, Guilfoyle was married to Gavin Newsom, then a San Francisco supervisor and later mayor and now California’s governor who’s widely seen as a Democratic presidential contender. 

The article goes on to detail the many abuses she committed, above and beyond the ones that have been widely publicized.

What surprises me is that the ability to engage in this kind of abuse, in using their official positions to personally enrich themselves, seems to be almost a given with members of the Trump administration, starting with Trump himself and his family. Perhaps her problem was that didn’t give them a kickback and/or was too open about it.

In her farewell statement, Guilfoyle praised Trump, no doubt hoping for a pardon if and when she is charged with corruption.

So here’s my walkthrough of the 2026 California ballot.

Insurance Commissioner

LA Times has a fairly neutral article on the two candidates Ben Allen and Jane Kim. The key issue seems to be regulating property insurance. Kim is advocating some transformational changes, while Allen is focused on improving the efficiency of the current system. Transformational changes can be good, but only if they’re good, so how do I judge? On this reddit thread, the consensus is that Kim doesn’t really know what she’s doing, and is likely to make the market worse by chasing insurance providers out of the state, which is a thing they’re already doing.

Board of Equalization, District 2

Most news sources will explain that the Board of Equalization is a nothing office. After corruption scandals a decade ago, it was stripped of most of its power. So it doesn’t really matter! I think the best I can hope for is that a BoE candidate might use it as a stepping stone into some other minor office that actually does something. So I’m inclined to kick out the incumbent Salley Lieber so she can do something else. I also found an article from GrowSF that seemed to like the challenger John Pimentel.

California Superintendent of Public Instruction

Although I said I believe in filling out the entire ballot, I make a few considered abstentions, usually relating to school. I feel like maybe people with kids should make those decisions. I quickly looked up this contest, and I found that Sonja Shaw has been culture-warring against transgender girls. Let’s put her in the “no” column and vote for Richard Barrera.

Judges

I think people should just vote yes on most judges, because in principle they should be non-partisan positions. That said, some years ago I found out that I voted for a judge who was involved in a scandal, so now I at least make an effort to verify that none of them are involved in scandals. They all checked out.

All the other candidates

I’m skipping over the local elections, although I do vote on those!

A lot of the other contests are between one Democrat vs one Republican. You know what to do, vote against the fascists. We spend so much time talking about this, let’s not waste further time here, and move onto the propositions.

Proposition 1

In the context of California politics, everyone is a Democrat, so we find other things to disagree about. I tend to be a pro-housing partisan. So I pay attention to the endorsements from California Yimby. This year, they have some detailed analysis of several propositions, which I quite liked and will cite at every opportunity.

Proposition 1 is a measure to fund housing subsidies. This is a good measure that makes housing more affordable without negatively affecting the housing supply. CA Yimby explains why this is good policy, and how it compares to alternatives.

Proposition 2

This is the “rainy day fund” proposition. CA Yimby explains the context. The “Gann Limit”, enacted in 1979, limits California state spending. This mucks with California’s ability to save on some on good years and spend more on bad years. This proposition gives them more flexibility, and just seems like sensible budget reform.

Proposition 3

Since 2012, voters have approved a temporary tax on the top 2% earners.  (That’s $371k per year for individuals, or $743k per year for joint-filers.  Despite our household being very wealthy, this is well above our range.) This proposition is to make those taxes permanent. Yeah, sounds good to me.

Proposition 4

This proposition allows state and local governments to provide public funding for election campaigns. Theoretically, this should lower the barrier to entry for candidates, allowing them to lean on public funding instead of big donors. Although, it’s not clear if actually works out that way in practice. Nobody seems to have a strong arguments either way about this one.  I think it sounds reasonable.

Proposition 5

Proposition 5 is a procedural change in recall elections (i.e. a vote to remove someone from office). Currently, if there is a recall, then it gets paired with an election for a new candidate. The proposition changes it so it follows normal succession rules: the governor appoints someone, or there’s a special election. I think pairing a recall with a re-election likely muddies both questions. For instance, suppose a Democrat were undergoing recall, the people who most favor the recall might be Republicans.  So the candidate who pulls ahead might be a Republican. But then Democrats might not support the recall even though the Democrat being recalled is genuinely bad. So I’ve argued myself into a yes.

Proposition 37

This proposition creates a subsidized home loan program. My initial reaction was negative. We don’t need more benefits to homeowners, an already privileged class. CA Yimby had a more measured analysis, pointing out that because the loans only apply to new housing, it could in principle encourage more housing construction. However, even CA Yimby seemed skeptical of the policy’s efficiency, and offered no recommendation. I’m going with my initial prejudice and voting no.

Proposition 38

This is a bond for immunology research. Without passing judgment on the research, I don’t think it should be funded via state proposition. LA Times explains that the proposition is written so that very few research institutes actually qualify for the proposed grant; it’s basically a grant for one specific institution. If the research is so good, let it go through a normal grant process.

Proposition 39

This proposition imposes ID requirements for voting. I think this subject has already gotten a lot of discussion but: voter ID requirements are nominally intended to reduce fraud, but this is a form of fraud that doesn’t occur much to begin with. In practice, this creates additional obstacles to voting, which disproportionately affect disadvantaged groups. The ACLU has further arguments.

Proposition 40

This is a one-time billionaire wealth tax. The advantage of a one-time tax is that it theoretically avoids people dodging the tax by moving out of state. The disadvantage is that the revenue is temporary. CA Yimby had a pretty long analysis, explaining that it doesn’t really avoid people moving out of state, because now you just have that looming threat that the state will do it again. Also, the fact that it’s a wealth tax is problematic, because wealth is far more mobile than income. There’s a link to an economic study suggesting that specifically in the California context, this would decrease tax revenue. If we want a wealth tax, it needs to be on the federal level, not state level.

Proposition 41

This proposition “prohibits new state taxes that exclude revenues from state spending limit” and “requires audits for new state special taxes.” I think that’s referring to the same “Gann Limit” discussed in relation to proposition 2. The internet tells me this was specifically designed to nullify proposition 40. Although I’m no on 40, I am not in favor of erecting more barriers against taxes.

Proposition 42

This proposition “prohibits new state personal property taxes and certain retroactive state taxes.” So, another proposition designed to nullify prop 40? I’m already no on 40, we don’t need these extra procedural changes that rule it out entirely.

Proposition 43

This proposition requires local governments get a supermajority of votes to increase taxes. This seems like a very bad idea. CA Yimby explains some of the context, discussing voter measures that proved bad for housing. For example, in 2022 Los Angeles voters taxed real estate transactions over $5 million, which was marketed as a progressive “mansion tax”, but in practice is a regressive tax applying to apartment buildings. Still, this is a reactionary procedural change, and even CA Yimby opposes it.

Proposition 44

This requires community health clinics spend 90% of revenue on program services. This seems overly specific, and an improper subject for a state proposition. Also, I think the division between service expenses and administrative expenses is a bit artificial–one way to improve services is by hiring staff. If there is a problem with community health clinic budgets, I’m sure there are better measures than this.

Proposition 45

This proposition amends the CEQA environmental review process for certain public projects, generally making it easier to get through. CA Yimby has an analysis of this one too, but says it’s about much more than housing, an doesn’t endorse anything. While the measure makes it easier to push housing projects through, there’s already a CEQA exemption for “infill” housing.  So the proposition favors more “sprawl” housing, which even Yimby has mixed feelings about.  Also, there are substantive environmental concerns about building housing in areas at risk of fire. On the other hand, supporters say CEQA is being used to delay clean energy infrastructure. Feeling ambivalent about this one but leaning no.

The reason for this preamble is that in most instances, my posts are not written from the point of view of an authoritative expert on the topic but rather consist of my efforts to try and understand something by putting it out there. And today’s topic is the first in a series on macro-economic indicators: what they are and what they mean. Since I am not only not an economist nor have I taken even a single course in economics at any level, this series of posts will consist of my attempts to put together a coherent picture based on my casual reading on the topic. The subject is dull. Economics is not known as the dismal science for nothing, but it is important, and I will try to stumble my way through it.

The main macro-economic indicators, at least in the US, are (1) the stock market, (2) the bond market, (3) the exchange rate for the US dollar in relation to gold and other currencies, and (4) size of the deficit, (5) the national debt, (6) the Gross Domestic Product, and (7) the trade balance. These things do not act independently of course. They are linked together in many ways but the link that I am going to focus on is interest rates, the cost of borrowing money.

Interest rates are key in influencing the first four indicators particularly. Most of the time, interest rates are passive in the sense that they respond to other factors. The main exceptions are the interest rates set by the Federal Reserve, one of which is known as the Federal Funds Rate that is periodically reviewed and set by the Federal Open Market Committee that meets eight times per year at which “the Committee reviews economic and financial conditions, determines the appropriate stance of monetary policy, and assesses the risks to its long-run goals of price stability and sustainable economic growth”. It is “the interest rate at which depository institutions lend balances at the Federal Reserve to other depository institutions overnight”. It is currently at 3.75%. Another key interest rate is the Discount Rate which is the interest rate charged to commercial banks for short-term loans obtained from a Federal Reserve Bank lending facility. It is currently at 4.00% for banks on a strong financial footing but could be higher for others.

Stock prices are theoretically based on the value of the company and its value theoretically is obtained by adding all of its assets and dividing by the number of shares that have been issued. So that each share represents ownership of that fraction of the company. This should be a fairly stable number especially if the assets are mainly tangible in terms of property and inventory. But some assets (such as intellectual property) are intangible and the value of the assets are particularly volatile and can fluctuate wildly. Stock prices are also driven by the laws of supply and demand, so that if people start buying up a stock for any reason (rational or irrational), its price can rise while if they start to sell, its price can drop so that its relationship to the underlying assets can become quite tenuous. In general, people are happy when the stock market as a whole goes up since most people have some investments in stocks either by purchasing them directly (as a very few people do) or because their retirement accounts are invested in them (as is the case for most people). What causes a company stock price to rise is the expectation that its revenue and profits are going to grow, while the belief that it is stagnant or about to decline will cause the price to fall.

These fluctuations do not cause major concern unless the prices rise dramatically suggesting the existence of a bubble. This rapid rise can cause people to think that they have more wealth than they actually do and spend more than they should. When the bubble pops for whatever reason, much off their wealth is wiped out. This can cause individual pain and, if it is widespread enough, lead to a recession where everybody starts cutting back on spending, leading some companies to cut costs or even go into bankruptcy and the loss of jobs.

The US stock market is currently riding high, which is surprising considering that the country is at war with no end in sight, oil prices are high and rising, and inflation is also high. What seems to be driving the stock market is the AI boom with tech companies and billionaires spending trillions of dollars on the software as well as building massive data centers all over the country. Investors seem to be betting on a big payoff in the future and thus are willing to pour money into this sector of the economy.

What worries some is that the AI optimism may be the result of a bubble, its prices rising on beliefs of growth and profits that are unrealistic and bound to come down sharply at some point, dragging the overall stock market down with it, perhaps precipitously.

But while casual observers focus on the stock market, the professionals look at the bond market that is less volatile (and thus less useful for speculative investments and quick returns) but provides a better measure of the state of affairs.

Next in this series: Interest rates and the bond market

This sounds like a fascinating, factual documentary.

Oscar-winner Alex Gibney’s 4-hour documentary about Elon Musk may be the most important film of the year. After the first two hours, audiences will learn that he is better at engineering everything around him to suit his ego and his bank account than he is at engineering his many products. We see the damage he has inflicted, including horrific dash-cam footage of fatal accidents involving self-driving cars. Many who watch it will be rattled but consider it as remote if they don’t buy a Tesla or have stock in SpaceX.

The second two hours are when it gets really scary, because that is when audiences learn how he affects every one of our lives, in the United States and throughout the world. Gibney asks, “How could Musk assume so much power and why had we given it to him?”

Musk hates it. What’s really scary, though, and demonstrates the chilling effect billionaires have on our lives, is that it’s already being censored.

The documentary is facing more than a war of words from Musk, however. The film’s distributor, Bleecker Street, has not been able to run paid advertisements on several major social media platforms. As of Sept. 25, YouTube, Meta, TikTok and X had all refused. YouTube, where the trailer had been available through regular channels, and Meta have since reversed course, saying that it had been flagged for “political content.”

There are also concerns about whether “Musk” will eventually land on HBO as originally planned in the aftermath of the Skydance merger, the new entertainment giant created by Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. CEO David Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison, is friendly with Musk.

WOoooOOOOOooooo! Who needs Hallowe’en when the ghouls have taken over?

If that’s just too depressing for you, here’s a comic to cheer you up.

Oh, what a happy fantasy!

(There’s a whole series of anti-billionaire comics at that site. Expect the creator to be censored soon.)

TITLE:  THE HEADBANGER

Premise:  A young woman appears in 1988 small town Washington (STRANGER IN TOWN) naked and with amnesia, totally messed up.  A drunk?  How did she get there?  Prevailing theory is she got in a car and wandered into town, which leads to an abortive search for the car – no luck.  Everybody privy to the situation wants to help and she’s soon clad in granny clothes (HAND-ME-DOWNS).  She learns that she likes hard rock music and may indeed be an alcoholic (KNIGHT OF CUPS, INVERTED).  Strangely, she’s afraid of isopods and anything resembling them.

Pretty soon people begin acting strangely, and turning up dead with their brains missing.  The police and locals go from friendly to deadly serious as they try to figure out if she’s the killer and who she is (INVESTIGATION).

The Villain:  Partway through the story a biker shows up and says he knows her, and that she can’t be trusted.  An abusive ex?  Former partner in crime, double-crossed?  That ain’t the villain tho.  The villain is an alien bug-thing that was released from its aeternal slumber by eruption of Mount St. Helens.  It eats brains and puppets the body (BODY SNATCHERS) to make it trick other people into position for a cheeky brainhop.

Horror Element:  It wasn’t able to eat her brain but was able to puppet her body, and used it to kill off the other people in her biker gang.  The sole survivor besides her was an abusive ex, so he’s both.  Why can’t it eat her brain?  Mmm… let’s say it was something in her hairdo, lol.  Anyway, it was able to pilot her as far as the lil town and fall off, to kill again.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  The tech feels close but still has some maddening irritations to it.  This one had rough draft by gemini, two followups by gpt, not even a lil photopea required.  Nice.

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And Ohio crowd chanted “deport” as President Donald Trump blasted Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., during a campaign rally speech on Monday night.

Trump held the rally in Youngstown, Ohio, just hours after federal agents executed a search warrant on Omar’s home in relation to a criminal investigation.

Trump took aim at Omar and the wider Somali community in Minnesota.

“She’s a disaster. She comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military. All they do is shoot each other, and she comes into our country and she says, ‘I have a constitutional right,'” Trump joked. “She’s got a constitutional right. She’s telling us about the Constitution and she’s coming from one of the worst countries anywhere on the planet.”

That’s the real reason for the raid: he just hates all people from a country in Africa. This is criminal prejudice and an abuse of federal law enforcement for a partisan purpose. Arrest Trump, not Omar.

I’m not in her district, but if I were, after this I’d be even more committed to voting for her, and I’m also more committed to seeing Trump impeached. It’s too bad congress is stacked with corrupt and stupid Republicans so that won’t happen.

He should have been gone after this blatant criminality.

I can’t believe that they found boxes of stolen classified documents in Ilhan Omar’s bathroom?
Oh wait, that was Trump’s public bathrooms in Mar-a-lago.
Just in case you were wondering what the difference between fascism and investigating actual crimes looks like.