The White House on Friday slammed California Gov. Gavin Newsom for “making life worse” in California, telling me exclusively his new tax hike is "just the latest blow" to hard working families.

You may recall California as the state that tried to punish people for exposing rampant fraud, including Medicaid fraud, and is home to Newsom’s Own Ambulance Scam to bilk federal taxpayers.

It’s also home to routine spending sprees by irresponsible Democrats at every level. The latest example is Newsom’s massive $350 billion budget plan finalized Friday — the largest chunk of change in the history of the state. And that’s a very high bar.

And what better way to pay for such things, Katie Couric’s crush thought, than to, um, .. take it from hard-working Americans by way of their healthcare? His scheme, a monthly per-enrollee tax on Medicaid, ObamaCare, and health plans at work, is going to see higher premiums across the board for working residents in the state. Genius!! No wait, that other thing. Terrible! That’s it.

As White House spox Allison Schuster puts in this exclusive statement:

“Gavin Newscum has done everything in his power to make life less affordable for Californians, and a $400 hike in healthcare premiums is just the latest blow to hard-working taxpayers. While the Trump Administration is actively working on making life more affordable through the President’s tax cuts, deregulation, and no tax on tips, overtime, or Social Security, the Democrats in California continue to steal money from taxpayers and make life worse. “

More taxes, more spending, and more Big Government in the state that’s the natural home to all those things.

Newsom is simultaneously loudly pantomiming about taxing the rich, in his supposedly sincere “national billionaire tax” bluster the last few days, which is cover for the fact that he opposed the same thing in the California budget that raises premiums on everyday Americans. So even the crazies can’t count on him. (Oh, and the crazies know it, by the way.)

Newsom thinks he’ll be the next president. A lot of Democrats and Courics hope that’s true. As long as the press keep glossing over what he’s done to the state, continues to do, it’s a genuine risk.

I’m not calling California a lost cause, but …

… as we say in North Carolina, that state ain’t right.

Kellyanne Conway tore into Democrats on Thursday night during remarks at GOP event in Connecticut, mocking Mamdani, AOC, Platner, and a slew of others. (Catch that audio here.) But she also had jokes directed at Republicans and even midly teased President Donald Trump on his social media escapades. (Catch that audio below.)

Conway was the keynote at the Connecticut Republican Party’s 47th Annual Prescott Bush Awards Dinner in Stamford and was quick with cutting remarks and quippy comments throughout.

The heavy roasting was for the left side, but there still a few pretty good ones that weren’t specifically directed at the enemy. Conway talked about the great leaps forward in GOP messaging and what an improvement it’s been over the “shitty” ads you’d see just a few years about the mechanics and “non-sexy” parts of politics.

“We were horrible at this for decades. We had no idea how to do the mechanics of politics,” she said. “The left: so smart. They got people to the polls. Were driving seniors to the polls, were calling you, reminding you.”

“And we’re like, ‘We have this great ad.’ They’d run it and I’m like, Oh, my God, that ad’s terrible.” she continued. “‘And we’re going to translate it into Spanish.’ I’m like, Okay, now, great. Now we have two shitty ads. Perfect. That’s fabulous. Thank you so much. You sound like the Taco Bell dog. This is not a compelling ad for anybody.”

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Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway put on a roast in Connecticut on Thursday, hitting Hochul on gestation and Mamdani on toddlerhood, trashing AOC’s ass-vertising and Kamala’s entire being, and even talking Trump tweets and Rupert Murdoch reax along the way. And I’ve got the audio.

Conway was the keynote at the Connecticut Republican Party’s 47th Annual Prescott Bush Awards Dinner in Stamford, and during a wide-ranging talk, Conway drew laughs and applause several times for her zingers and slams.

Most of the roasting was done “inline” with the narrative, but the hit on socialist NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani just seemed to pop out. A relatable moment: it’s virtually impossible to mention that walking joke and not say something hilarious or mean.

She was talking midterms when she blasted the “manchild in Manhattan” for finally finding his constituency.

“In the last 75 years, in 92% of the midterms, which means all but three, the party out of power has picked up seats in at least one of the chambers,” Conway said. “If anybody can defy political gravity, it’s Donald J. Trump, but he’s not on the ballot.”

“When the governorships in New Jersey, where I still vote, and Virginia, and of course Mamdani, manchild in Manhattan got elected… It just rolls off the tongue if you forget his last name,” she said. “He looked so at ease with those five-year-olds recently. I’m like, ‘Finally, he’s found his peeps. He’s got a constituency.’”

At another point in her remarks, Conway likewise trashed Kamala Harris in somewhat of an aside. She was talking about Fox News host Brian Kilmeade showing clips of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, but before making her point she took some time to just rip Harris utterly to pieces.

Conway said Kilmeade’s clip showed Harris “out on the book tour or something or other.”

“Nobody told her she has to read it, but someone wrote one for her,” she said. As the crowd reacted, Conway rolled with it. “I really don’t like her at all. I don’t respect her. No. I don’t respect her.”

She added one more “I don't respect her” to the fire then fanned the flames, saying Harris was so lazy as VP that neighbors like Conway were never disturbed by comings and goings.

“She didn't work hard,” Conway said. “Her publicist is my neighbor. Near the vice president's residence, and by my house. And I didn't live there before Mike Pence was vice president, but when he was, I had his schedule right here, and I still had my mobility constantly compromised because the vice president of the United States was going to work and coming home from work. And I never had that happen in four years of his successor.”

Conway unleashed on “The Squad” and AOC, and segued into Platner and others as she outlined all the ways Democrats continue to get worse rather than better. More out of touch instead of more connected to actual Americans.

She lead into the topic by saying that Republicans can disagree with Trump and that’s healthy, because you can have a “unified” party without being a unanimous one.

“The Democrats have unanimity. I don’t want it,” she said. “They all sound alike. They all say the same thing. They all look alike most days. The Squad that doesn’t do squat. They’re famous for being famous.”

“What’s her name, AOC, had to write ‘Tax the Rich’ on her ass, excuse me, at the Met Gala. How ridiculous,” Conway said. “Yeah, she did. And she got a sanction for doing that. Got a sanction for doing that. Terrible.”

She wasn’t done with AOC though, pegging her as a do-nothing big-talker attention hog.

“Name a bill she’s passed,” she said., “I looked it up again the other day because I’m like, I don’t, I want to be fair to her if I missed one. She’s yet to pass one, she’s in her fourth term. She renamed a post office. She’s never walked in one, but she renamed a post office. She renamed a bench for somebody. And she has a microphone in her face at all times. She doesn’t do anything that matters to anybody in this room.”

She then listed the terrible people who are influencers and new recruits for Democrats, calling out Maine Democrat, Nazi tattoo-haver, and #MeToo villain Graham Platner, as well as Michigan Dem frontrunner Abdul El-Sayed and his buddy and top Dem influencer Hasan Piker, who hates dogs and loves Hamas.

“This is what we’re up against. We should be winning everything not nailed to the ground,” she said. “But people need to know it.”

Unfortunately the audio for the jab at New York Gov. Kathy Hochul didn’t survive, but the gist of the comments, per a source in the room, were slamming the new law in the state that replaces the words “mother” and “father” with heinously idiotic euphemisms.

Important to understand: This is not a joke. The state now uses the terms “gestating parent” and “non-gestating parent” instead of mom/mother or dad/father in statutes, court, and everywhere else. Seriously.

Conway said gave birth to her children in New York City and “can’t imagine” what it’s like now, mockingly saying, “‘Congratulations, gestational parent… it’s a… to be determined later."

That’s not all the audio by a long shot. In the next article you can hear her comments about Trump tweets and Murdoch and bad GOP ads and more.

You hear a lot of complaints from the David French wing of politics about how people are a bunch of mean assholes, especially those who are of the Christian conservative Republican sort that French still preposterously claims to have been.

But I’m not talking about being asshole. I’m talking about being ass. And while David French is indeed an excellent example of an ass, that’s not who I’m bitching about today, specifically.

I’m talking about people trying to pull this crap:

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Woke progressive enclave Seattle has set up “protest zones” around the stadium where four World Cup matches are set to take place, but it’s Los Angeles where the much more interesting demonstrations are set to take place. Iran faces New Zealand tonight at SoFi Stadium, and not everyone is thrilled the team was allowed to come here and participate. To say the least.

Among those taking the field is Mehdi Torabi, a favorite of Khamenei whom the dictator dubbed “dignified” in 2022 for declining to wear a black wristband in solidarity with protesters crushed by the regime.

In fact, the soccer star was accused of deliberately taking a penalty “with the express purpose of revealing a pro-regime message on a shirt underneath his jersey.” It’s a stunt he pulled once before, revealing a shirt in 2019 in protest of the people’s protests that said “The only path to salvation of country is to follow orders of the leader.”

East Coaster may not realize the size of the Iranian diaspora concentrated in Los Angeles just a few miles from the stadium. West LA is home to the largest Iranian community in the world, outside of Iran. Tehrangeles, it is sometimes called. Or “Little Persia.”

Protesters outside the stadium on Sunday waved the Lion and Sun flag, the flag of Iran before the Islamic Revolution. But inside the stadium, you’re not likely to see it. FIFA has banned it from inside World Cup stadiums.

Tonight as Torabi takes the field, you have to wonder if he’ll try for another demonstration of his loyalty to the regime. A shirt, a message, a penalty display, it’s possible. In the shadow of the deal between Iran and the U.S., the team that faced the prospect of being excluded from the World Cup now has the chance to not just show up and play, but do so free from messages against that regime inside the stadium.

But outside? Well you can watch that below.

It wasn't so long ago that the idea of a ghost in a machine writing news articles sounded like science fiction or a conspiracy theory or a third item. Today, it barely raises an eyebrow, even though it should.

The rise of the machines—from automated customer service interactions to generated artwork to increasingly innovatory writing tools—has become an undeniable part of modern life. AI-generated content has moved from novelty to normality with remarkable speed—and whether we as definite human beings fully realize it or not, it's already changing the way information is created, distributed, and consumed. It's exciting in some ways. It's also worth asking whether we've stopped to think about what might be lost along the way.

Here’s the thing: most people don’t spend a lot of time wondering whether an article they’re reading was written by a fellow human or by a mechanical machine-o-mat. Why would they? The words are there. The information is there. The byline is on the screen. The skin alleles are on the keyboard. At first glance, it all seems so perfectly normal.

But that’s exactly what makes this so pivotal. As artificial intelligence becomes better at sounding like real human beings, like what you and I are, the distinction between human judgment and machine-generated content is becoming increasingly blurred—with implications harder to ignore than a humorous illustrative analogy.

One of the most significant concerns we face involves what experts commonly refer to as hallucinations—instances in which AI systems generate information that appears credible, authoritative, and remarkably convincing despite being entirely fabricated. These hallucinations can take many forms—including wrong or invented facts, nonexistent sources, mismatched historic event dates, and even wrong or fake quotations. As one veteran editor recently observed, “A fabricated quote is more than a mistake—it’s a fundamental breach of the trust wall that exists between journalists and the public they serve.”

Whether an error is large or small, the potential damage to public confidence can be substantial—and increasingly difficult to reverse. The reality remains that a machine capable of producing a convincing falsehood at scale presents a remarkably unique challenge for news organizations.

Beyond questions of factual accuracy lie issues of trust. Journalism has always relied upon a foundational relationship between writers and readers—a relationship built on transparency, accountability, and authenticity that persists to this day. It’s a verified and checked fact that TV and print news outlets enjoy widespread national acclaim and warm feelings from the American public at large. The hallowed and trusted press are an institution respected across politics thanks to their years of accurate reporting, non-biased interviews, and refusal to indulge in rank and offensive partisanship.

Now, AI writing threatens that pristine journalistic record the American press have maintained. When consumers encounter news content, they could very well assume that judgment was exercised, sources were evaluated, information was verified, and facts were checked.

But the growing integration of AI in news content means consumers have to wonder whether a computer has produced the latest inaccurate information without the help of any human gatekeepers whatsoever.

If readers become uncertain about who—or what—is responsible for the false information they consume, confidence in the broader information ecosystem could completely vanish 12 years ago!

Additionally, there’s the growing problem of content homogenization. In today’s increasingly interconnected digital environment, information is produced, distributed, consumed, shared, aggregated, summarized, reformatted, repackaged, redistributed, reshared, aggregated again, disintegrated, reintegrated, redistributed, and consumed once more at an unprecedented pace.

As AI-generated content becomes more common, there are legitimate concerns that the internet could become flooded with articles that sound remarkably similar—utilizing comparable structures, recurring phrases, familiar transitions, and predictable conclusions. In effect, a digital landscape of synthetic, low-effort content of ample supply and meager variety.

There is also the question of human judgment. Reporting is not merely the mechanical act of assembling sentences into paragraphs or paragraphs into articles. Journalism requires curiosity. It requires skepticism. It requires intuition, perspicacity, acumen, understanding, discernment, perceptiveness, and insight. And it requires the ability to recognize contradictions, identify significance, ask difficult questions, understand context, provide examples, and present things in list formats.

Artificial Intelligence cannot replicate lived experience or human understanding—even if it’s the latest version featuring the all new custom Emotional Differential Intelligence and Truthfulness engine that will change your whole perspective on AI and is available now in limited markets, check local listings.

At the end of the day, meaningful journalism is about more than simply generating words on a page—it’s about generating perspective, context, insight, and value. An American media without that quality would be an American media of no quality at all.

And as Americans, are you truly accustomed to the media being of low or no quality?

Ultimately, the conversation surrounding AI-generated journalism is about more than technology—it’s about people, who are humans just like I am. As we (humans) move forward into an increasingly automated future, we must ask ourselves an important question: what role should authentic human voices continue to play in the creation and dissemination of news, information, politics, and memes? The answer may not always be simple, and the path forward may not always be clear. Nevertheless, it is essential that innovation remain aligned with the values that have historically made journalism in the United States trustworthy, and impactful.

Yes, the threat to journalism is most assuredly coming from AI generated articles and their very difficult to spot markers and tells, and not from any other more looming credibility issues, fact-checking problems, or overt biases.

You’re in your car, leaving a parking lot headed out to the rest of your day when it happens. You’re turning right from the exit. You’re waiting patiently for oncoming traffic to clear. Your signal is blinking. Your blood pressure is normal. A partial break approaches, the near lane clear, other vehicles safely in the far one. Your foot moves to the gas and then ...

Then some jackass decides that Right Damn Now is the perfect time to just roll on into the right lane. The closest lane. Your lane.

This is what we in the business call “being a prick.”

Of the ruling idiocies in our idiocracy, two of the most aggressively irritating are:

1. Being oblivious.

2. Pretending to be oblivious.

I despise both, though maybe the second thing, popularly described as “pretending not to understand” among us complainers on X, that is the most pervasive and intentional. Being actually oblivious may speak to moral turpitude, or maybe narcissism, or to actual outright dumb cluelessness. But the pretense? As a means of argument?

That’s what we in the business call “being an absolute bag of dicks.”

You see it in TV news all the time. Or rather half the time, I should say. And just guess which political party is always the target when “playing dumb” is deployed. Give you two guesses, and both of them are cable news networks.

Yep.

But the lane changer is a special kind of irritant, too. They’re the person who stops just inside the door when they enter a store or restaurant. The person who has a loud speakerphone conversation in public or, worse, on public transportation. The “listening to music or watching videos with no headphones” performers. The movie theater talkers, the open mouth chewers, the social media goodbye cruel world-ers, the “leave the grocery cart in the middle of the parking lot” shoppers. The airline seat recliners. Yeah, I said it.

The sheer obstinate will of humanity to irritate and enrage is a force that gives jerks their power. It’s a malignant energy field created by all living assholes. It’s a bad attitude that surrounds us and infuriates us; it binds the galaxy together in wanting to be torn asunder. It makes some long for solitude.

We are the irritated. The grouches. The curmudgeons. I mention this not to teach but to complain. It’s what I do. What we do. It’s a lifestyle, if not a living. It may not be a philosophy, but it’s not not one. It’s a surly state of mind. Surlitude.

And it’s going to come up a lot around here.