Is the AI bubble about to pop? 

Some financial analysts think so…

AI is worrisome enough already — its insatiable thirst for energy and water, its capacities to replace humans on the job, its potential to destroy the planet over the long run. But my immediate concern is how the flood of money into the opaque AI industry has inflated the U.S. stock market and, indirectly, the U.S. economy. 

What happens if the bubble bursts?

Remember the housing bubble of 2008 that resulted in millions of foreclosures and a recession? What about the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s that wiped out almost 200,000 jobs and trillions of dollars in wealth? Or the stock market bubble that exploded into the Great Depression that lasted for a decade?

These economic bubbles followed a well-worn pattern…

An asset generates excitement among investors because its value starts rising — not because it’s inherently valuable or profitable, but mainly because other investors are buying it. 

As more and more investors borrow piles of cash to get in on the action, the bubble grows. But when it becomes evident that way too much has been invested relative to the potential for profits, the bubble bursts. 

[CLIP: Hey there's a bubble. “How do you know?” Trust me.]

It’s often the case that the biggest investors, with inside information, notice the bubble and cash out before it bursts. Everyone else is left with near worthless pieces of paper. If the entire economy is threatened, governments have to bail out the remaining players to avoid even more widespread destruction.

AI has many of the characteristics of a bubble.

Market valuations of the industry’s major players have soared in recent years. Some of this rise in value is on the basis of legitimate hope that AI will transform the world. But some of the rise is based on industry hype that, ironically, may itself be artificial.

Major AI companies have been pumping up their own value by doing trillions of dollars worth of deals with each other — helping the bubble get bigger by generating more hype and luring in more investment. 

But according to an MIT report, 95 percent of companies that have adopted AI tools aren’t yet seeing any financial returns from them. And some of AI’s biggest companies, like OpenAI, are losing billions of dollars every year. Others, like Oracle, are taking on more and more debt to fund their AI development.

How big can a bubble get? Even Jeff Bezos admits there’s a lot of hot air…

CLIP: “When people get very excited, as they are today, about artificial intelligence, for example ... every experiment gets funded, every company gets funded. The good ideas and the bad ideas. And investors have a hard time in the middle of this excitement, distinguishing between the good ideas and bad ideas.”

Investors sorting out good and bad ideas wouldn’t be as much of a problem if AI weren’t completely taking over the entire U.S. economy. 

Since 2022, shares of stock surrounding AI and its data centers have accounted for an estimated 75 percent of the returns to America’s biggest corporations and 80 percent of earnings growth. The seven biggest technology companies tied to AI are disproportionately propping up the entire U.S. stock market. 

And by one estimate, investments in AI data centers and other infrastructure have accounted for 92 percent of U.S. GDP growth in 2025. All of this growth has of course minted new billionaires and made other Big Tech titans even more wealthy. But what about everyone else?

One way or another, you and I are footing some of the bill surrounding AI development. Thirty-seven states have passed legislation granting hundreds of millions of dollars in tax exemptions for the building of data centers. Electricity bills are rising to power AI. Communities are seeing their water sources depleted. Data centers do create some jobs, but many are temporary — and don’t amount to nearly as many jobs as the ones that could be lost. 

This AI bubble keeps getting pumped bigger and bigger while the rest of the economy, you know the real economy that we actually live in, is gasping for air. Trump’s tariffs are sending prices skyrocketing. Housing and healthcare are out of reach for too many. And the job market is slowing to a halt.  

Which giant corporations or ultra-wealthy investors strike it big — and which lose their shirts — because of an AI bubble is beside the point. 

I worry about the working families whose struggles don’t make the headlines, like AI stocks breaking record after record. 

I worry about the people who are barely scraping by as AI hype masks an economy that is really only working for the super-rich.

I worry about all of the people who could lose their jobs and savings if the AI bubble bursts — possibly causing another massive recession and leading to yet another massive government bailout at taxpayer’s expense.

This isn’t meant to alarm you. But you need to understand the warning signs.

The future of AI is not inevitable — we still have time to shape it.

We can let Big Tech innovate, but we can’t let it dictate the future — or put our entire economy in jeopardy. 

And if the AI bubble bursts, we simply cannot bail out Big Tech and keep inflating its bottom line.

The most dangerous corporation in America is one you may not have heard of. 

It’s called Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley tech company that may put your most basic freedoms at risk.

Palantir gets its name from a device used in The Lord of the Rings. If this weren’t such a serious subject, I’d spend the whole video making funny Lord of the Rings references…

BOB [AS GANDALF]: You shall not pass!

… but I won’t do that because there’s nothing funny about the real dangers of Palantir.

Think about this — What do AI, the US Military, domestic surveillance and the tech broligarchy all have in common? 

Palantir — co-founded by far-right billionaire Peter Thiel and its current CEO Alex Karp.

TRUMP: We buy a lot of things from Palantir

In JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, a “palantir” is a seeing stone — something like a crystal ball — that can be used to spy on people and distort the truth. During the War of the Ring, a palantir falls under the control of the evil Sauron, who uses it to manipulate and deceive.

Palantir Technologies bears a striking similarity. 

It sells AI-based data platforms that let their clients, including governments, militaries, and law enforcement agencies, quickly process and analyze massive amounts of your personal data. 

Whether it’s social media profiles, bank account records, tax history, medical history, or driving records, the tools that Palantir sells are used to help clients identify and monitor individuals — like you. 

Why should this matter to you? Well, billions of your tax dollars are going to Palantir, and what Palantir is working on could be used against you.

[CLIP 1:04] ALEX KARP: Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them.

Early in his current term, Trump signed an executive order requiring government agencies to consolidate all of their information about you into one giant database — something that has never been done before. To help process this massive amount of information, Trump chose Palantir.

Trump claims this is about “efficiency.” But as one Silicon Valley investor described it, Palantir is “building the infrastructure of the police state.”

Data privacy experts warn that when government data is pooled together, it can be used by a tyrant to intimidate or silence opposition. The possibilities for abuse are huge. One of Palantir’s major projects is a new immigrant surveillance system for ICE’s deportations. 

We’ve already seen Trump target people or organizations he considers enemies. Imagine if he  could punish or deny services to individual Americans based on their political affiliation,  whether they’ve attended a protest, or even posted an unflattering picture of him online. 

Palantir could be giving Trump the power to do just this.

Palantir co-founder and Trump ally Peter Thiel has made no secret of his disdain for democracy, writing “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” 

But when he speaks of “freedom,” he isn’t thinking about you. To him, “freedom” means that he and his fellow tech oligarchs get to do what they want, without consequences, while the rest of us live in an authoritarian police state.

It’s a match made in Mordor — Trump gets the infrastructure to go after his enemies. Thiel gets to end American democracy. 

And if Thiel’s anti-democratic sentiments weren’t terrifying enough, it also appears he isn’t sure if humans are all that great either.

CLIP: Ross questions Thiel. “You would prefer the human race to endure? You’re hesitating. This is a long hesitation.”

The danger of Palantir’s AI-powered super database on all Americans is amplified by the vast wealth and power of those associated with it, and their apparent disdain for democratic institutions. 

To protect democracy and our individual freedoms, we need to elect leaders who will defend the public from corporations like Palantir — not partner with them. 

Tolkien’s palantir fell under the control of Sauron. Thiel’s Palantir is falling under the control of Trump. 

How this story ends is up to all of us. Please, help spread the word by sharing this video.

Is your grocery store cheating you?

CLIP: Imagine picking up an item on sale only to be charged full price at checkout. That's exactly what Consumer Reports says is happening at Kroger-owned stores across the country.

Kroger got caught repeatedly overcharging shoppers for items that were advertised for less. 

Here’s an example: Allison, a mom in Ohio, bought pizzas for her family because they were supposedly on sale. She got some minced garlic that was also on sale too. But she ended up getting charged 25% extra for the pizzas and 60% extra for the garlic. Apparently the sale was over, but Kroger hadn’t updated the prices on the shelves.

This wasn’t a fluke. This happened so many times that Allison filed a complaint with Ohio’s attorney general. And she’s hardly alone. Hundreds of Kroger shoppers in at least half a dozen states have complained of deceptive pricing.

Consumer Reports, the Guardian, and the Food & Environment Reporting Network launched an undercover sting to find out how widespread the problem is. For three months, they sent secret shoppers to 26 Kroger stores in 14 states. 

On over 150 different items, they found big discounts advertised on the shelves, with only tiny print or store codes unclear to shoppers revealing that the sales had ended days or even months earlier.

And that’s not the only way Kroger has overcharged its shoppers in recent years. Last year, Kroger executives admitted to using nationwide post-pandemic inflation as an excuse to raise its prices more than its costs were going up.

Kroger reported record sales and profits in 2024, all while nickel-and-diming shoppers like YOU. Meanwhile, it paid its CEO more than $15 million while also enriching Kroger shareholders with $7.5 billion in stock buybacks.

If this makes you want to shop somewhere else, that might be harder than you think. Kroger is the second largest grocer in America and operates 2,700 stores under at least a dozen different brand names. If you’re shopping at Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer, Fry’s, Mariano’s, or King Soopers — you’re really just shopping at Kroger. Investigators found the same pricing problem at all of them. 

Don’t shop at Kroger? Well, similar pricing shenanigans have recently been uncovered at other major grocery chains. Both Walmart and Albertsons had to shell out millions of dollars to settle lawsuits in which they were accused of unfairly overcharging customers. 

Now, Kroger, Walmart, and Albertsons all insist that these pricing snafus were an honest mistake. But the pattern resembles a bait and switch scam. And grocery prices are already high. Even small pricing discrepancies, over time, can put a strain on households that are barely scraping by.

Here’s the bigger problem. Together, these three corporations account for a whopping 57% of grocery sales in America. Their dominance of the grocery industry gives them an inordinate amount of pricing power. If shoppers are sneakily getting shafted at one store, it’s not so easy for them to just go shop at a competitor to get a fair deal…simply because there might not be any competitors.

It’s this near-monopolistic power that lets Kroger — and a handful of other grocery giants like Walmart and Albertsons — get away with these pricing scams. Minimal competition opens the door to maximal price-gouging — and maximal opportunity to rip off shoppers. 

This is why we need stronger antitrust enforcement to break up big corporations that dominate their industries.

We also need both state and federal regulators to crack down on these pricing abuses. 

You also have to be vigilant. The next time you head to the grocery store, be on the lookout for raw deals. 

After sixty years in and around politics I’ve developed a sixth sense.

And my sixth sense tells me the tide is now turning on Trump.

You see, there’s a sleeping giant in America who always remains asleep until some venality becomes so noxious…some action so disrespectful of the common good…some brutality so noisy, that it has no choice but to awaken and roar “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?”

Trump is attacking our most basic civil rights. He baselessly smears and threatens his political opponents. He's blowing up the economy and hasn't done squat to help working people. The Epstein scandal haunts him.

He’s a failing president whose approval ratings are tanking. Like any authoritarian bully throughout history, when Trump feels humiliated, he lashes out.

But what he doesn’t realize is that his authoritarianism and his bullying are beginning to wake up America’s great sleeping giant. 

Millions have hit the streets in protest of this regime. Communities are banding together to protect their immigrant neighbors. Americans are voting with their dollars and boycotting corporations that suck up to Trump. 

Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I’ve seen a lot. I know the signs.

Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunt destroyed countless careers before the giant roared: “have you no sense of decency?”

The giant roared again after witnessing scenes of civil rights marchers getting clobbered by white supremacists. Congress then passed the Civil Rights Act.

It roared again after tens of thousands of young Americans were killed in Vietnam, finally bringing to an end one of the nation’s costliest, deadliest, and stupidest wars.

It roared at Richard Nixon after he was heard on tape plotting the coverup of Watergate — and forced him to exit the White House by helicopter.

America’s sleeping giant is starting to roar again now — at the tyrant occupying the Oval Office.

And when the giant roars, the good sense of the American people will put an end to whatever it was that awakened it.

Trump is using the federal government to wage a war on free speech.

[Carr CLIP: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way…”]

Yes, that's a government official threatening to trample on the First Amendment like a mob boss — the very definition of tyranny. 

How are some of America’s largest media companies responding? By helping Trump get away with it! 

Disney, which owns ABC, caved to pressure and suspended Jimmy Kimmel after he criticized Trump’s actions following the assasination of Charlie Kirk.

This isn’t the first time dissent has been silenced under this regime. Trump has cracked down on universities and abducted student protestors. He sued the New York Times and Wall Street Journal over reporting he didn’t like. And he cut off funding for public broadcasting because he thought it was biased against him.

But why was Disney, one of the most powerful corporations in the world, so quick to surrender? Follow the money. 

Disney needs Trump’s approval for a merger with the streaming network Fubo. Major ABC affiliate station owners Nexstar and Sinclair, that first threatened to drop Kimmel and forced Disney’s hand, are also seeking merger approval and industry deregulation that requires sign off from Trump’s FCC..  

The same can be said of Paramount (owner of CBS), which only recently got the FCC’s greenlight for its multi-billion dollar merger with Skydance after settling a frivolous lawsuit with Trump. To ensure that deal, Paramount fired Stephen Colbert and CBS News hired a Trump loyalist to oversee supposed “bias” at the network. 

Now Skydance, which is controlled by the family of billionaire Trump-backer Larry Ellison, is eyeing an acquisition – Warner Brothers, owner of CNN. And Trump is helping to broker another deal for Ellison’s Big Tech company Oracle to become a major owner of TikTok.

What will Trump require in return?

At a time in history when the most influential media institutions and leaders in the U.S. need to stand up for free speech and decency, they are leading the charge in the opposite direction — either to line their own pockets or avoid Trump’s wrath. They’re treating the erosion of our fundamental rights as a simple cost of doing business.

That includes Jeff Bezos's Washington Post, which reshaped its editorial and opinion column standards seemingly to align with Trump. And it includes CEOs of major social media platforms that are publicly fawning over him.

These billionaires and corporations think they can have a symbiotic partnership with Trump,

[CLIP: Sundar Pichai (CEO, Google): And we look forward to working together. And thanks for your leadership. Tim Cook (CEO, Apple):

Thank you, sir. That means a lot to me. Uh, I want to thank you for including me this evening. It's incredible to be among, uh, everyone here, particularly you and the First Lady.]

But the lesson of history is tyrants can never be appeased. 

What will stop Trump from continuing to demand more and more concessions — or from silencing anyone else who questions him?

[Trump clip: “They give me only bad publicity or press. They’re getting a license, I think maybe their license should be taken away]

The media has a responsibility to serve as a check on tyranny — not appease it. That’s why we must boycott Disney and all its subsidiaries like Hulu, and any media corporation that surrenders to Trump. 

Instead, pledge to support independent and local media. That could be your locally owned newspaper. Your NPR or PBS affiliate that just had its funding cut. Or an independent, small donor-funded news organization. If you have one that you support, post it in the comments.

Now more than ever, we need independent, fearless voices that will defend our constitutional right to free speech.

Our democracy depends on it.

Is crypto always bad?

Not necessarily. There’s Krypto the Superdog. Such a good boy!

And then there’s crypto-zoology. I’m sure searching for Bigfoot has its charms.

MULDER: …where it’s just you and the elements and possibly a cryptozoological simian hairy humanoid with enormous feet.

What about crypto-currency?

Some argue that it has value, but crypto has yet to find significant uses that don’t involve some sort of criminal activity. The crypto industry itself has been racked by theft and scams. Worse yet, crypto poses real dangers to our democracy and the economy. 

Here are three things you must know.

#1 Trump’s crypto corruption is off the charts

In his first term, Trump profited off the presidency in ways that would have shocked even his most corrupt predecessors. But crypto makes it even easier for individuals and foreign nations to bribe him. Crypto’s murky anonymity makes following the money almost as hard as tracking down the Loch Ness Monster.

Just four days before early voting started in 2024, Trump and his sons launched the crypto firm, World Liberty Financial. The New York Times said: “It’s highly unusual for a presidential candidate to embark on a new business just weeks before Election Day.”

Ya think?

But as soon as Trump won, money started pouring in. 

And then just days before returning to office, Trump launched a separate crypto scheme, selling TRUMP and MELANIA memecoins. Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency based on an image or online joke.

But this is no joke: The Trump family has made about $3 billion from crypto so far — with many purchases by foreign buyers. Forbes now estimates that over half of Trump’s entire net worth is crypto-based.

And with Trump acting as both the President of the United States and as his own crypto brand ambassador, it’s hard to tell which job he’s doing at any given moment. 

                                                                                                                                   Around the time that Trump made a state visit to the United Arab Emirates, a UAE firm announced it would buy $2 billion of Trump’s World Liberty Financial currency. 

Do Trump crypto buyers get presidential favors in return? Well, one US company said it explicitly purchased $2 million of Trump’s memecoins to influence trade policy. 

And then there’s Chinese billionaire Justin Sun. You might have heard of him because he spent $6.2 million buying an avant garde art installation that was a banana duct taped to a wall — which he then ate. 

What you might not have not heard was that Sun was charged with crypto-related fraud. But after Trump was elected, Sun invested more than $115 million into various Trump crypto products.

Guess what happened next? Trump’s SEC suddenly stopped prosecuting Sun. How curious and bizarre! 

Trump’s SEC also abandoned a lawsuit against Binance, a crypto exchange that had previously pled guilty to money laundering. 

When did this happen? Just days after Binance started listing a Trump cryptocurrency on its marketplace.

Why do you suppose they dropped these cases? I guess like the Jersey Devil or the chupa-cabra, those are just mysteries we’ll never unravel. 

But there’s more.

The second thing you must know is that Crypto is trying to buy our government

The crypto lobby spent more than $195 million on the 2024 election. And they seem to be getting their money’s worth. Within his first six weeks in office, Trump called for a “Crypto Strategic Reserve”— a government backed stockpile of crypto assets, sort of like our oil reserve, but completely pointless. That announcement made crypto prices shoot up higher than the supposed flying mothman.

Trump’s pro-crypto SEC chair, Paul Atkins is heavily invested in crypto himself. He’s lifting financial guardrails in ways that will make it easier for crypto firms (like the Trumps’) to spread into new markets.

Trump’s Justice Department even scrapped the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, giving a greenlight to all kinds of crypto crime, even though Americans lost $9.3 billion in crypto scams in 2024.

Crypto also spent big on House and Senate races, on both Republicans and Democrats. And guess what?                                                       

The Senate passed the so-called GENIUS Act — a regulatory bill that the crypto industry lobbied for. Eighteen Democrats joined with nearly all Republicans to vote yes.

The bill gives a stamp of legitimacy to so-called “stablecoins,” a type of currency that Trump’s World Liberty Financial makes and sells. Stablecoins claim to be more stable because they’re supposedly tied to the value of other assets that are held as collateral — like the dollar or Treasury securities. But we already saw one collapse just a couple years ago, wiping out some investors’ life savings.

And here’s a fun detail. While the bill appropriately bans members of Congress and their families from profiting off stablecoins, it places no such restrictions on the president.

But the most dangerous part of the GENIUS Act is how it allows crypto to reach its kraken-like tentacles into mainstream financial systems. That brings us to:

And lastly… Crypto could tank the economy

The GENIUS Act opens the door to institutions investing more heavily in crypto. It would even let banks and big corporations, like Walmart, Amazon, or Facebook, launch their own digital currencies — potentially thousands of them — all with little oversight.

Trump has also opened the door to letting retirement plan administrators invest 401(k) funds in crypto. That could put your savings at risk even if you never buy any cryptocurrencies.

As we saw during the 2008 financial meltdown, the more the economy becomes entwined with volatile and speculative investments, like crypto, the greater the risk to all of us. The failure of risky bets can have a domino effect. 

If a single cryptocurrency began to tank (as they have done in the past), investors would likely rush to sell off crypto to get their real money back. This could lead to massive bank runs. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has predicted that under the GENIUS Act, crypto firms could end up holding more than $2 trillion in U.S. treasury bills as collateral. If they had to suddenly liquidate those assets to cover a bank run, the value of U.S. securities could plummet, triggering a global financial crisis.

But at least the Trumps are getting rich, right?

To summarize, crypto has shown no redeeming social value, and it poses huge dangers to our democracy and our economy. 

I don’t believe that Bigfoot, Nessie, or the Dover Demon are real (sorry), but the dangers of crypto definitely are. 

And we will need a lot more than a dog with superpowers to protect us from them. 

Please share this video to help spread the word.