Thursday, April 13, 2023

News bits: A major Christian theocrat attack on secular education; The Twitter hellscape; Etc.

I will keep keep warning that the crippling, corrupting Christian nationalist attack on secularism is well underway. The NYT reports:
Nation’s First Religious Charter School Could Be Coming to Oklahoma

If approved, the online Catholic school would be funded by taxpayer dollars, teeing up a high-profile constitutional battle

An Oklahoma state education board is weighing whether to approve the nation’s first religious charter school this spring, potentially setting up a high-profile constitutional battle over whether taxpayer money can be used to directly fund religious schools.

A small number of charter schools may be affiliated with religious organizations, but the proposed school, which would be run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, would be the first to operate as an explicitly religious school, with religious instruction. Charter schools are a type of public school, paid for with taxpayer dollars but independently run and managed.

A decision to approve the charter, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, would almost certainly tee up a legal battle, something the school’s organizers anticipate and welcome.

With conservative justices now dominating the Supreme Court, St. Isidore’s organizers hope their project will help propel a broader national movement to lower the barriers between church and state and to allow government money to be spent on religious schools. 
Characterizing opponents as “radical leftists” with a hatred for the Catholic Church, Mr. Walters urged board members to make Oklahoma a leader in religious freedom and in expanded options for school children. He added: “I’ll stand by you, any kind of intimidation that comes your way.” 
In a series of recent rulings, the Supreme Court, which now has a 6-to-3 conservative majority, has signaled its support for the directing of taxpayer money to religious schools, amid a broader embrace of the role of religion in public life.
Once the theocrat Republican Supreme Court allows this, and presumably it will (~85% chance?), the floodgates will be opened nationwide for plunder of tax revenues by force by corrupt, rapacious Christian theocrat radicals. We will be royally screwed.


A corrupt Oklahoma Archbishop blessing the 
rape and slaughter of secularism

As usual, the stunningly clueless mainstream media still does not get it, is incompetent, and/or has been mostly subverted and neutered by the profit motive. The MSM will continues to call fascist radical right elites “conservative.” They are not conservative. They are fascist authoritarians. Conservatism is pro-democracy, not anti-democracy and pro-tyranny. Those justices now dominating the Supreme Court are deeply corrupt, anti-democracy, pro-Christian theocracy and pro-brass knuckles capitalist autocracy-plutocracy. In my opinion, the NYT and the rest of the MSM has been significantly corrupted, stupified or otherwise neutered. 

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The outlet announced on Wednesday morning it would let its accounts go dormant and no longer publish its work on the social media platform, citing a recent decision by CEO Elon Musk to label it as state-affiliated media. 

Last week, Twitter under Musk had labeled a number of media outlets that receive some public funding with a “state-affiliated media” label — a descriptor typically reserved for propaganda outlets like RT and China’s Xinhua. NPR responded by ceasing tweets from its primary account, which carries more than 8 million followers.
Once again, the obvious ill-will and bad faith that dominates radical right sentiment and tactics is on public display. NPR is not close to RT or Xinhua. That is a fact, not an opinion. This is standard lies and slanders tactic the radical right routinely employs to win hearts and minds.
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How American fascists do lawsuits: NBC News reports:
Fox News sanctioned for withholding evidence in Dominion defamation case

The judge is giving Dominion Voting Systems a chance to conduct another deposition, at Fox's expense

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis on Wednesday sanctioned Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., for withholding evidence in the Dominion defamation suit and said he's considering further investigation and censure.

According to a person present in the courtroom, lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems played recordings Fox News producer Abby Grossberg made during 2020, which were not handed over to Dominion's lawyers during discovery.
This is an example of, or comes as close as one can get, to the powerful urge for radical right authoritarians to fabricate evidence. I thought this tactic would start blatantly a couple of years ago, but as far as I can tell, that has not happened yet. The faux 2020 election audit the Cyber Ninja goofballs did in Arizona seemed like the likely place for data fabrication to start in earnest. Apparently, Faux is going to lead the charge into the death of facts, truths and reasonable reasoning.

Germaine’s uplifting thought of the day: For plutocratic authoritarians, fascists, theocrats and etc., fact, true truth and sound reasoning is what the leaders say, not what they really are.


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From the Radical Tight Corruption & Sleaze Beat: The Lever writes:
Thomas Pushed To Kill Disclosure Laws While Getting Secret Billionaire Gifts

“This court should invalidate mandatory disclosure and reporting requirements,” wrote Clarence Thomas, who did not disclose years of gifts from a billionaire

While refusing to disclose lavish gifts from a billionaire, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas pushed to invalidate all political spending disclosure laws in America, insisting that donors have a constitutional right to anonymously influence politics with unlimited amounts of cash.

While he asserted that the Citizens United decision “does not go far enough” in rolling back federal campaign finance laws, the watchdog group Protect Our Elections argued that Thomas should have recused himself from the case altogether, because his own nomination to the court in 1991 had been boosted by six-figure spending from the Citizens United Foundation — the group that brought the case.

It was later revealed that Thomas and the late Justice Antonin Scalia had attended conferences hosted by Koch Industries, which pours massive amounts of money into U.S. politics.
Thomas is a true, full blown old-fashioned political bribe-endorsing fascist. So was Scalia. For them these advanced math equations apply: money = power; pluralistic secular democracy = evil and bad; bigoted, intolerant fascism = God's chosen way and good.
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Wisdom from the National Park Service: The WaPo writes about these warnings the NPS has to put out to remind people of some important things:



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