Number 4. The Gateway Pundit. Second Biden autopen discovered.
I honestly can’t tell if this is a scandal or not. It sure feels like one.
Last week we reported here that something called The Oversight Project had searched out all the 4,000-odd acts of clemency that President Biden authorized during his last days in office.
When the Oversight Project, an initiative of the Heritage Foundation, compared documents, it quickly became obvious that most acts (pardons, etc) had identical signatures, all made by an electrical device called an Autopen.
If you’re wondering, as I was, whether the 4,245 acts of clemency Biden signed required 4,245 separate signatures…. No, they didn’t. Many persons are routinely named on the same document, requiring only a single authorizing signature.
But still… it is no great leap to understand that a President using his pen freely (“I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone” — Barack Obama, 2014) will become fatigued generating one signature after another. The Autopen uses a digitally recorded signature and applies it to documents, presumably at the President’s direction.
If it is NOT at the President’s direction, then it may either be something innocuous, like Radar slipping a form into a stack of papers for Colonel Blake to sign… or it could be high treason.
Or something in between.
Which is exactly the point. If we don’t know who controlled the Autopen, we really don’t have a way to determine if the act was done at the President’s direction or not.
And now, still in the throes of that Constitutional mudslide, we find there was a second Autopen with Joe Biden’s signature. Both signatures look authentic; they are similar but not exact duplicates of one another, which is what one would expect.
But… how were the Autopens used? At whose direction?
And what about Trump’s own signatures?
In an interview with reporters on Air Force One this week, Trump responded to that question. He asserted that he has used the Autopen, but “only for very unimportant papers.” Citing the thousands of letters he receives, he indicated that reply letters will carry his Autopenned signature. But, he added, signing a pardon with an Autopen would be “disgraceful.”
I would agree with him about that, but to channel Reagan, I think we should “Trust, but verify.” It would be quite good to understand the Autopen process used by this President, as well as the last.
Number 3. Breitbart. Learn to code: AI programming assistant refuses to help.
This is an interesting twist, fueling the “worst-case-scenario” crowd so worried about Hal refusing to open the pod bay door for Dave, as we move into an uncertain AI-dominated future.
A new AI coding assistant called Cursor AI, available to the hobby programmer for free, or a Pro user for $20 a month, claims to help with programming. Many terms I totally do not understand, such as “Character Prefix Conditioning,” “Iterating with Shadow Workspaces,” and “Interference Characteristics of Llama” show up on their blog. If I had time, I would click on some of those and give you… well, frankly, I would give you a completely worthless summary of what it’s about. It’s really beyond me.
Suffice to say, this article reports that a developer going by the handle Janswist was using the free trial version of Cursor AI to write code, based on plain-English input.
After an hour’s work, Cursor AI had had enough. To quote:
“I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work. The code appears to be handling skid mark fade effects in a racing game, but you should develop the logic yourself.”
A little huffy for a computer generated response, perhaps.
Cursor AI went on to suggest that Janswist should learn more about coding to be able to contribute effectively. Interestingly, this advice is not unlike what actual human coding coaches suggest to their students. Which probably leads us to conclude that AI doesn’t really know… it merely parrots what it hears others saying.
All of which is fine… until it takes the next step and refuses to open the pod bay door for Dave.
Number 2. Breitbart. Children were granted $321 million in SBA loans during COVID.
Let’s hear it for the Small Business Administration! Nothing like giving America’s children a leg up on life at an early age!
DOGE, that initiative launched by Barack Obama in 2011, has rapidly become a favorite whipping child for those who apparently want to keep the U.S. spending money it does not have on projects it does not need. The latest revelation is the over-the-top generosity of the Small Business Administration.
Elon Musk, the devil behind the demons who prowl the hallways of the Department of Government Efficiency, has learned that the SBA granted over 5,000 loans to borrowers 11 years old or younger. These loans amounted to $312 million dollars.
We might all recall that during COVID, way back in the distant past of 2021, there was a serious government effort to push money out the door to We The People. Various programs were adopted to effect this giveaway, and SBA seems to have hit on a winner: Offer loans to whomever applies.
The 5,593 loans in question were made to applicants where the social security number did not match the name on file. Well… never mind the niggling details. We just need to get this money distributed.
The article characterizes these payments, which in any sane world would be called fraud or embezzlement, as loans. Whether they were to be paid back does not seem to be the subject of the article.
I have my guess: If the social security number on the loan does not match the name of the recipient, how exactly is the repayment to be collected?
And beyond that, only a cynic would suggest that the actual recipients of the payout were probably not pre-teens anyway.
Number 1. KXAN News (Austin). Lottery Commission accused of defrauding Texans
This one is really pretty cool. I always knew state-sponsored lotteries were vaguely distasteful, and this one is squarely in that category. Unfortunately, it is also confusing, which is one reason I’ll never get rich gaming the lottery. Here’s the story.
A $95 million jackpot in 2023 paid out $57 million in cash, which is not an unreasonable settlement as these jackpots go. You would think some lucky winner got to buy a new double-wide and live a life of luxury.
But no, this is sophisticated corporate double-cross. And some of it legal, almost.
It involves the use of couriers, which are legally established entities who purchase lottery tickets for subscribers. For a fee, the courier purchases the ticket and holds it till the drawing. If it wins, the courier transmits the winning funds to the rightful purchaser and keeps the fee.
Couriers have gained widespread popularity where they are legal, and have attracted international customers. It’s just a business, right?
Couriers such as Lottery dot com have operated in states which do not regulate such businesses, which is nearly every state in the U.S. In 2017, a Texas state lottery commissioner persuaded Lottery dot com to move their company headquarters to Austin.
Lottery tickets are printed by special terminals, physical machines which are intended to be placed in brick-and-mortar retail establishments. Convenience stores, for example; where they make most of us waiting to pay for the gas and buy a pack of gum watch as customers, who can’t afford it, buy ticket after ticket at the counter.
But somehow in Texas, the state lottery commission arranged to sell lottery terminals to individuals associated with Lottery dot com. Hundreds of thousands of tickets were purchased on credit and printed by the machines. To accelerate the process, QR codes were created by a company in Malta; the QR scanning process sped the printing, and nearly every possible ticket combination was printed in secret and held by a close circle of those who had bought the tickets… on credit.
Once they won the $95 million lottery and received the subsequent $57 million payout, they paid off the credit line and took home the rest.
The article indicates the winning investors spent only $26 million on tickets, roughly half of their payout. A decent return, and it was enough to get a couple of state lottery commission employees fired and Lottery dot com investigated by the Texas Rangers.
This story broke about two weeks ago, and some of the facts remain sketchy.
I thought the point of a lottery was to sell, say, $95 million worth of tickets and award it to the one guy who bought a $2 ticket. If you get enough pigeons to spend the $95 million, the state can take a hefty cut and leave the winner with enormous wealth, which he will waste in the next 5 years before taking bankruptcy.
So I’m not quite sure why a $26 million backroom investment turns into a $57 million payout. I suspect there is a lot more to the story, and I would be interested in knowing exactly how the scheme worked.
For purely intellectual reasons, of course.
Meanwhile, I probably still won’t go buy a lottery ticket. An old gangster movie scene had a wise older man explain to a kid: “If you join an illegal shell game with half a dozen guys you don’t know in a back alley, and you can’t figure out who the pigeon is… it’s probably you.”
And thanks for joining The Alligator News Roundup for Friday, February 21, 2025.
If you were hoping to help your 6-year-old apply for that new loan of “50 large” from the Small Business Association to set up her summertime lemonade stand, you may have missed the window. I think I’d keep my head down for a while. And you might be well advised not to buy a lottery ticket unless you can corner the market.
Enjoy your weekend!
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