As we all know, ethics for radical right Republicans in power is extinct. The Lever reports about a current example of a corrupt Trump federal appeals court judge:
Trump Judge’s Anti-Abortion Ruling Followed
Payments From Group Leading Case
Corrupt Trump thug James Ho
(actually looks like a real thug)
Based on what the majority of the three-person panel ruled, the 5th Circuit could be saving this argument for a better case, as they instead ruled on procedural grounds (in a separate opinion partially concurring and dissenting from the panel majority, Trump appointee James C. Ho stated that the Comstock Act meant that it is illegal to send abortion medication via mail). The same wait-and-see game goes for claims that the FDA did not have the authority to loosen restrictions on mifepristone, or even to approve it in the first place.
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QAnon was right! There really are microchips in whatever they said there was microchips in. Business Insider writes:
Parmigiano-Reggiano makers are putting edible microchips the size of agrain of sand into their 90-pound cheese wheels to combat counterfeitersThere are counterfeiters of Parmigiano-Reggiano. That's because it's the original parmesan cheese officially protected by the European Union, meaning the name can only be used for the authentic product. Parmigiano-Reggiano must be made in a particular area of northern Italy's Emilia Romagna region ....The Wall Street Journal reported that the micro-transponders are made of silicon and about the size of a grain of sand. They are being placed on the casein label, a food-safe label commonly used in cheese production, which is placed on the cheese wheel. The microchip can then be scanned to pull up a unique serial ID that buyers can use to ensure they've got the real thing.
The Journal reported the chips cannot be read remotely or used to track someone should they ingest it.
We're being watched. 👀
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From the An Ignorant Customer is a Profitable Customer Files: Tech dirt writes about huge tech corporations trying hard to avoid transparency about their pricing to consumers:
Comcast, AT&T Try To Kill New RequirementsTo Be Transparent About Their Shitty Pricing
The 2021 infrastructure bill did some very good things for broadband. Not only did it include a massive, $42 billion investment in broadband deployment and require better mapping, it demanded that the FCC impose a new “nutrition label for broadband,” requiring that ISPs be transparent about all of the weird restrictions, caps, fees, and limitations of modern broadband connections.
It’s 2023 and there’s still no label. And big broadband providers including Cox, AT&T, Comcast, and Charter are, unsurprisingly, trying to have the entire requirement killed. After whining for two years that it was too hard to comply with the requirement, industry trade groups and lobbying organizations have been petitioning to have the new rule killed entirely:The US broadband industry is united in opposition to a requirement that Internet service providers list all of their monthly fees. Five lobby groups representing cable companies, fiber and DSL providers, and mobile operators have repeatedly urged the Federal Communications Commission to eliminate the requirement before new broadband labeling rules take effect.
To be clear, requiring that these regional monopolies be clear about pricing is pretty much the bare minimum when it comes to regulatory oversight. Big ISPs for decades have advertised one price, then saddled your bill with spurious below the line surcharges to hit you with a higher rate.
The FCC, lobotomized after decades of lobbying, routinely engages in regulatory theater when it comes to big telecom. As in they’ll implement some fairly tepid efforts to demand “transparency” by big monopolies, but they routinely lack the courage to actually take aim at the underlying monopoly power and lack of competition (lest it upset campaign contributors and domestic surveillance allies).
Once again, brass knuckles capitalism shows its moral fiber. The fiber is revenue and profit lust. Tech giants want to maintain their revenues and profits by deceiving consumers to rip them off more effectively. Fortunately, we have a lobotomized FCC to pretend it is protecting consumers. Just wait until Republicans control congress and the White House again. What little is left of the FCC will be obliterated.
On a related note, I cannot figure out what electricity costs per kilowatt hour. The bills that SDG&E send out are blindingly complex and undecipherable. As best I can guess, the lowest rate at midnight to 6 am is about $0.30 per kWh. I think its closer to about $0.40 at 4 -9 pm and about $0.35 at 6 am to 4 pm. I gave up trying to figure it out. After all I want to be a good customer and the best customer is ignorant. I'm ignorant.
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From the Cruel Tyranny of the Radical Right Files: Time magazine reports about a 13 year old girl in Mississippi who was raped. She did not know she was pregnant and could not get an abortion once she figured it out. She starts the 7th grade soon:
Ashley just had a baby. She’s sitting on the couch in a relative’s apartment in Clarksdale, Miss., wearing camo-print leggings and fiddling with the plastic hospital bracelets still on her wrists. .... Peanut, the baby boy she delivered two days earlier, is asleep in a car seat at her feet, dressed in a little blue outfit. Ashley is surrounded by family, but nobody is smiling. One relative silently eats lunch in the kitchen, her two siblings stare glumly at their phones, and her mother, Regina, watches from across the room. Ashley was discharged from the hospital only hours ago, but there are no baby presents or toys in the room, no visible diapers or ointments or bottles. Almost nobody knows that Peanut exists, because almost nobody knew that Ashley was pregnant.
In the fall of 2022, Ashley was raped by a stranger in the yard outside her home, her mother says. For weeks, she didn’t tell anybody what happened, not even her mom. But Regina knew something was wrong. Ashley used to love going outside to make dances for her TikTok, but suddenly she refused to leave her bedroom. When she turned 13 that November, she wasn't in the mood to celebrate. “She just said, ‘It hurts,’” Regina remembers. “She was crying in her room. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she didn’t want to tell me.” (To protect the privacy of a juvenile rape survivor, TIME is using pseudonyms to refer to Ashley and Regina; Peanut is the baby’s nickname.)
The signs were obvious only in retrospect. Ashley started feeling sick to her stomach; Regina thought it was related to her diet.
The closest abortion provider for Ashley was in Chicago. At first, Regina thought she and Ashley could drive there. But it’s a nine-hour trip, and Regina would have to take off work. She’d have to pay for gas, food, and a place to stay for a couple of nights, not to mention the cost of the abortion itself. “I don’t have the funds for all this,” she says.
So Ashley did what girls with no other options do: she did nothing.
Poor sad Ashley, Regina, Peanut and sad family. They have been mugged and robbed by a cruel God. America's radical right Christian Taliban is responsible for this gratuitous, outrageous cruelty. It's Dark Ages evil and savagery in the name of an allegedly loving, tolerant Christian God, Jesus, Holy Ghost or whatever the God-forsaken thing(s) is called.
Q: Can one consider forced birth laws a form of domestic terrorism and Ashley & family casualties of the radical right's civil war on secularism and civil liberties? (it sure looks that way to me)
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From the Trumplandia Cult Files: Poll data from CBS says it all:
Information in the indictments doesn't have an impact, in part, because they generally believe it's Trump who tells them the truth. Trump far and away leads the GOP field among voters who place top importance on a candidate being "honest and trustworthy."The context here is that Republican primary voters believe the political system is corrupt at an even higher rate than Americans overall do. That could mean perceiving Trump as railing against — or prosecuted by — that system might well make him seem, from their perspective, like the one telling a larger truth.
More generally, Trump's voters hold him as a source of true information, even more so than other sources, including conservative media figures, religious leaders, and even their own friends and family.
What??? Honesty is important to Trump supporters and he is trustworthy?? What planet am I on? Did someone slip a roofie into my kopi luwak? Call out the National Guard! Somebody do something!
Cult: (a) a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object, e.g., "the cult of St. Olaf"; (b) a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister, e.g., "a network of Satan-worshiping cults"; (c) a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing, e.g., "a cult of personality surrounding the leader"
Qs: Is MAGA a cult with Trump the cult leader? If not, why not?
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