The danger of protecting demagoguery

The New York judge in DJT's falsified business documents case changed the gag order. DJT is now allowed to publicly savage, slander, lie about and incite violence against witnesses and jurors in his case. If a juror or witness winds up dead, that blood will be on the hands of the judge, DJT and the murderer(s). The AP writes:

A Manhattan judge on Tuesday modified Donald Trump’s gag order, freeing the former president to comment publicly about witnesses and jurors in the hush money criminal trial that led to his felony conviction, but keeping others connected to the former president’s case off limits until he is sentenced July 11.

Judge Juan M. Merchan’s decision — just days before Trump’s debate Thursday with President Joe Biden — clears the presumptive Republican nominee to again go on the attack against his former lawyer Michael Cohen, porn actor Stormy Daniels and other witnesses. Trump was convicted in New York on May 30 of falsifying records to cover up a potential sex scandal, making him the first ex-president convicted of a crime.

In a five-page ruling Tuesday, Merchan wrote that the gag order was meant to “protect the integrity of the judicial proceedings” and that protections for witnesses and jurors no longer applied now that the trial has ended and the jury has been discharged.

Merchan says that abandoning jurors and witnesses to the enraged savagery of DJT and MAGA freaks is OK now that the trial is over. Yes, the proceedings involving jurors and witnesses is over. But the authoritarian attacks on the integrity of the rule of law and the judicial system continue unabated. That should have been sufficient to keep the gag order in place, but it was not. 

IMHO, Merchan made a colossal mistake. It might get some innocent people killed.

Also my opinion, this exemplifies the most important weakness of democracies that revere free speech. Demagogues like DJT can and have killed various degrees and forms of democracy in their ruthless quest for wealth and power. Sometimes they kill innocent people along the way. Respect for free speech led Merchan to unleash the poisonous vitriol that drives DJT. Innocents in that trial must now bear the serious burden of Merchan's decision. Dark free speech is being used by authoritarian demagogues to destroy American democracy and the rule of law. There's not a damned thing we can do about it. 

Killing inconvenient free speech

If DJT and his thug supporters ever establish the American authoritarianism they seek, one of the first casualties will be inconvenient but honest free speech. The main target to be silenced is criticism of the thug Republican autocrats in power and their corruption. The Chinese government did that and it still does. To varying extents, so do autocrats in Russia (Putin), Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Iran, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Hungary, the Taliban in Afghanistan and now, to some extent, the Republican Party in the House of Representatives. Autocrats hate criticism and ban it when they can. Democracies cannot do that. Democracies that protect free speech are defenseless from powerful internal and external dark free speech assaults.

Political news bits

A gun violence epiphany! (finally): 

U.S. surgeon general declares firearm violence a public health crisis

Vivek H. Murthy called on the nation to address gun violence with the vigor used to reduce deaths and injuries from tobacco and motor vehicle crashes.

The surgeon general’s advisory marked the first time the nation’s leading voice on public health — the same office that in the 1960s highlighted the lethal consequences of cigarette smoking — had issued an urgent pronouncement on deaths related to firearms. The 39-page advisory underscores the significant physical and mental toll of gun violence on communities nationwide.

Despite growing public sentiment favoring stronger firearm laws, gun groups, including the National Rifle Association, have long opposed stricter gun measures. In 2021, the NRA launched a $2 million campaign opposing President Biden’s efforts to bolster gun-control measures. The surgeon general’s advisory also met with criticism from the NRA.

Perplexity on gun violence: Gun violence costs the U.S. approximately $557 billion annually, which is about 2.6% of the gross domestic product. Gun violence results in approximately 40,000 deaths and twice as many injuries each year in the U.S.. In 2020, there were 45,222 gun-related deaths, making it the leading cause of death for children and teens under 19.

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AARR (America's authoritarian radical right) blames Biden for massive federal debt. That is another massive AARR lie.

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Although it is sill too early to put much weight on it, recent polling suggests a sentiment shift among young voters: Young voters backing Biden over Trump by 23-point margin: Poll -- The CBS News/YouGov poll found 61 percent of likely voters younger than 30 surveyed support Biden while 38 percent support Trump. These voters are more likely to say abortion, climate change, and race and diversity issues would impact their vote than those older than 30.

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From the Brass Knuckles Capitalism Files: 

Last year, representatives of New Mexico’s oil industry met behind closed doors with the very groups with which they typically clash — state regulators and environmentalists — in search of an answer to the more than 70,000 wells sitting unplugged across the state. Many leak oil, brine and toxic or explosive gasses, and more than 1,700 have already been left to the public to clean up.

Oil companies had agreed to work with regulators to find a solution to the state’s more than 70,000 unplugged wells. After months of negotiations, the industry turned against the bill it helped write because it was unhappy with the bill’s final language. The influential New Mexico Oil and Gas Association told its supporters that HB 133 was “a radical and dangerous approach designed to strangle the oil and gas industry” and asked them to send their elected representatives a form letter opposing it.

Good 'ole oil lobbyists - a fine bunch scumbags,

mostly Trump supporters

Q: Why do lobbyists for major economic sectors and major corporations have so much power that they can and do routinely subvert and betray the public interest?

A: Because America has pay-to-play political systems and the lobbyists are backed by enough cash to buy politicians to subvert and betray the public interest.

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Republican tyranny and vengeance plans for 2025: 

Conservative-backed group is creating a list of federal workers 

it suspects could resist Trump plans 

Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation are digging into the backgrounds, social media posts and commentary of key high-ranking government employees, starting with the Department of Homeland Security. They’re relying in part on tips from his network of conservative contacts, including workers. In a move that alarms some, they’re preparing to publish the findings online. 

With a $100,000 grant from the Heritage Foundation, the goal is to post 100 names of government workers to a website this summer to show a potential new administration who might be standing in the way of a second-term Trump agenda — and ripe for scrutiny, reclassifications, reassignments or firings.

The concept of compiling and publicizing a list of government employees shows the lengths Trump’s allies are willing to go to ensure nothing or no one will block his plans in a potential second term. Jones’ Project Sovereignty 2025 comes as Heritage’s Project 2025 lays the groundwork, with policies, proposals and personnel ready for a possible new White House.

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DJT is looking for a way to weasel out of the debate in two days?: A non-paywalled source reports that DJT is getting worried about the debate. He keeps harping on wanting a drug test for Biden. If nothing else, he could downplay a good performance by Biden as due to performance-enhancing drugs. Or, just maybe he will use a lack of a drug test as a non-excuse excuse to avoid the debate.

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Israeli politics poisons American politics: AIPAC Unleashes a Record $14.5 Million Bid to Defeat a Critic of Israel -- The deluge in outside spending, which also includes another $1 million from another pro-Israel group, threatens to sink Representative Jamaal Bowman.

Although AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is a powerful foreign agent, it still has not been classified as the agent of a foreign power. Our congress is corrupt, incompetent and subverted by special interest money. AIPAC is currently registered with Congress as a lobbying group, not as an agent of a hostile foreign power. In my opinion, Israel is a hostile foreign power.

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Crackpot & poison tales from MAGAlandia: San Antonio U.S. Rep. Chip Roy says he wants to 'ethnic cleanse' white progressives -- In a tweet defending Donald Trump's plan to deport 20 million migrants, Roy said he wants to deport "white progressive Democrats - with a special bonus for rich ones with an Ivy League degree."

The decline of rural America

I have posted several times about the decline of the rural economy (here and here). The phenomenon is not unique to the US. For example, in the 1970s, the Soviet Union government decided to abandon support for rural areas as they go from sustainable economic independence to dependence. Abandoned Russian villages are reverting to primordial forests with packs of wolves freely roaming the land. In Russia, that was a decision driven by economic reality coupled with an incompetent, deeply corrupt, authoritarian government. 

By contrast, the US has pumped vast amounts of money into rural areas that can no longer self-sustain. This topic is important because it is political and has been highly weaponized by America's authoritarian radical right wealth and power political-social movement. This will probably be a significant issue, maybe major, in the 2024 election.

A recent NYT article discusses this again: 

‘Too many old people’: A rural Pa. town reckons with population loss

There is a deepening sense of fear as population loss accelerates in rural America. The decline of small-town life is expected to be a looming topic in the presidential election.

May 31, 2024, Main Street in Sheffield, Pa.

Deaths outpace births

SHEFFIELD, Pa. — Lee Goldthwaite might have the most stable job in this remote corner of northwestern Pennsylvania.

The caretaker of Sheffield Cemetery is busier than ever directing crews clearing trees to make space for more graves as deaths dramatically outpace births here and in other vast stretches of rural America. Each time he buries a newly deceased resident he wonders how the town that once drew scores of young families will survive.

“We already lost our bank,” Goldthwaite said as he took a break from trimming the grass around headstones. “We lost our liquor store, and we may be about to lose our high school.”

Across rural Pennsylvania, there is a deepening sense of fear about the future as population loss accelerates. The sharp decline has put the state at the forefront of a national discussion on the viability of the small towns that have long been a pillar of American culture.

America’s rural population began contracting about a decade ago, according to statistics drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau.

A whopping 81 percent of rural counties had more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023, according to an analysis by a University of New Hampshire demographer. Experts who study the phenomena say the shrinking baby boomer population and younger residents having smaller families and moving elsewhere for jobs are fueling the trend. 

The Center for Rural Pennsylvania, an agency overseen by the state legislature, estimates that Pennsylvania will lose another 6 percent of its rural population by 2050. Some counties, including Warren County, where Sheffield is located, will experience double-digit population declines.

State lawmakers and other leaders now consider the population loss a crisis and are drawing up plans to try to reverse the trend. They say neither Pennsylvania nor the nation can afford to lose small towns and the institutions that power them. Not only are they a touchstone of American life, but they are also key to driving certain sectors of the economy, like agriculture.

Sheffield’s only ambulance was taken out of service about two years ago, around the same time the community’s only day care closed due to low enrollment. Starting this school year, teens are being bused to a distant high school because there are not enough teachers to staff the local one.

Residents are peeved that the local bank branch and liquor store have closed. The organizers of the town’s beloved Johnny Appleseed Festival recently announced they don’t have enough volunteers or money to continue. And many of Sheffield’s churches no longer have full-time priests or pastors, deepening residents’ sense of malaise.

“I wish I had an idea to say, ‘If you do this,’ this place can be turned around,” said Jack Cashmere, 86, a lifelong Sheffield resident. “But I guess you just have too many old people like myself.”

In 1980, Sheffield Area Middle-Senior High School had about 600 students. The current enrollment is just 224. The broader Warren County School District — encompassing most of the county — also saw its school enrollment decline by more than half since 1980.

As the presidential election approaches, many residents in this deeply Republican town say they view Trump as having a better vision for salvaging rural America, even though Biden has steered billions of dollars to initiatives that support rural America.

But at the Lee House, one of two remaining bars in Sheffield Township, many patrons were not optimistic that either Trump or Biden has the answers needed to save the community. The bar, which dates back 150 years and advertises on its front door that smoking is still allowed indoors, now routinely closes at 9 p.m. due to “fewer and fewer people,” said Carla Allen, the bar’s owner.

“I don’t want either of them for president,” said Barb Strike, 54, as she puffed on a Parliament cigarette and sipped a Bud Light. “They don’t care about us because no one in this town is rich enough for them to care.”

Kenneth M. Johnson, the demographer at the University of New Hampshire, said the deck remains stacked against most rural communities, except for those within proximity to larger metropolitan regions or those with industries that rely heavily on immigrant labor. “Barring some outside occurrence, it’s very unusual for counties to recover,” Johnson said.

The political implications of this are easy to see. America's authoritarian demagogues will demagogue this issue and blame Biden and liberals for something that they themselves have been and still are powerless to stop. In modern American radical right politics, inconvenient reality does not exist. Fake reality based on irrational attacks and demagoguery is what authoritarianism must have to thrive on and grow powerful.

People like Barb Strike will not hear or believe much or anything about the failing efforts of America's political center and left to protect rural people and their communities. What they will hear plenty of is authoritarian Faux News, the authoritarian radical GOP and the dictator DJT lying, slandering and demagoguing the issue. Despite their great noise and smoke, cynical authoritarian demagogues will not provide plausible solutions to the problem of rural decline.

Spotting deepfakes; Research about the origin of life on Earth

An interactive NYT article (not paywalled) tests your ability to spot deepfakes generated by AI. I got 7/10 right. This is a useful little exercise because it gives tips about what to look for. It is getting harder to spot deepfakes, but it helps to know what to look for.

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Experts are still intensely interested in how life arose on Earth. If it happened here, it could be a model for the origin of life anywhere in the universe where life might be. A NYT article (not paywalled) discusses some current thinking about this interesting little question:

The rail cars stopped [in the abandoned gold mine shaft]. We stepped out and walked a short distance to a large plastic spigot protruding from the rock. A pearly stream of water trickled from the wall near the faucet’s base, forming rivulets and pools. Wafting from the water was hydrogen sulfide — the source of the chamber’s odor. Kneeling, I realized that the water was teeming with a stringy white material similar to the skin of a poached egg. Caitlin Casar, a geobiologist, explained that the white fibers were microbes in the genus Thiothrix, which join together in long filaments and store sulfur in their cells, giving them a ghostly hue. Here we were, deep within Earth’s crust — a place where, without human intervention, there would be no light and little oxygen — yet life was literally gush­ing from rock. This particular ecological hot spot had earned the nick­name Thiothrix Falls.

Scientists like [Magdalena Osburn, a professor at Northwestern University and a prominent member of the relatively new field known as geomicrobiology] have shown that, contrary to long-held assumptions, Earth’s interior is not barren. In fact, a majority of the planet’s microbes, perhaps more than 90 percent, may live deep un­derground. These intraterrestrial microbes tend to be quite different from their counterparts on the surface. They are ancient and slow, re­producing infrequently and possibly living for millions of years. They often acquire energy in unusual ways, breathing rock instead of oxy­gen. And they seem capable of weathering geological cataclysms that would annihilate most creatures. Like the many tiny organisms in the ocean and atmosphere, the unique microbes within Earth’s crust do not simply inhabit their surroundings; they transform them. Subsurface microbes carve vast caverns, concentrate minerals and precious metals and regulate the global cycling of carbon and nutrients. Microbes may even have helped construct the continents, literally laying the ground­work for all other terrestrial life.

Like so much about Earth’s earliest history, exactly where and when life first emerged is not definitively known. At some point not long after our planet’s genesis, in some warm, wet pocket with the right chemistry and an adequate flow of free energy — a hot spring, an impact crater, a hydrothermal vent on the ocean floor — bits of Earth rearranged themselves into the first self-replicating entities, which eventually evolved into cells. Evidence from the fossil record and chemical analysis of the oldest rocks ever discovered indicate that mi­crobial life existed at least 3.5 billion years ago and possibly as far back as 4.2 billion years ago.

Among all living creatures, the peculiar microbes that dwell deep within the planet’s crust today may most closely resemble some of the earliest single-celled organisms that ever existed. Collectively, these subsurface microbes make up an estimated 10 to 20 percent of the biomass — that is, all the living matter — on Earth. Yet until the mid-20th century, most scientists did not think subterranean life of any kind was plausible below a few meters.

Although these early studies were tantalizing, many scientists remained skeptical because of the possibility that surface microbes had contaminated the samples. In subsequent decades, however, researchers continued to find microbes in rock and water obtained from mines and drill sites all over the world. By the 1980s, attitudes had started to shift. Studies of aquifers clearly indicated that bacteria populated ground­water, even thousands of feet below the surface. And scientists developed more rigorous methods for preventing the accidental introduction of surface mi­crobes, such as disinfecting drill bits and tracking the movement of fluids through the crust to make sure surface water was not mingling with their samples.  

“This research really is a form of exploration,” [University of Toronto geologist Barbara Sherwood Lollar] says. “Some of the findings are causing us to rewrite the textbooks about how this planet works. They are changing our understanding of Earth’s habitability. We don’t know where life originated. We don’t know if life arose on the surface and went down or whether life emerged below and went up. There’s a tendency to think about Dar­win’s warm little pond, but, as my colleague T. C. Onstott likes to say, it could just as easily have been some warm little fracture.”

The life came from 

below hypothesis

Some of the scientists described here work about 4,850 feet underground in an abandoned gold mine in South Dakota. It stinks of brimstone (hydrogen sulfide gas) and is hot and humid (90ᵒ, 100% humidity) down there, even though it is below freezing winter temperature on the surface.

Microbes growing in hot water

near the Old Faithful geyser in Wyoming 

One argument I am aware of against life evolving first on the seafloor at thermal vents is that even thought there is plenty of free energy at those vents, the ocean is simply too big. Biomolecules would be too diluted in an ocean for abiogenesis, i.e., creation of life from non-life. Instead, warm, moist underground pockets or geothermal surface pools with plenty of free energy are plausibly small enough to allow pre-biotic molecules to concentrate in the water there sufficiently to spark non-life into life.

How faithful are you?

Got something on the heavy side to start off the week.  I’ve brought this subject up before, but it has been a while.  We may have some new people here who might want to chime in.  Or, maybe you have changed your mind on your previous answer.

Do you ever think about the Pledge of Allegiance?  We have one here in the states, and maybe your country has one too, if you live in another country.  Here is what ours looks like:

Using Mirriam-Webster's definitions, let’s also look up two of the Pledge’s key words:

Pledge : a binding promise or agreement to do or forbear.

Allegiance : loyalty and obedience owed to one's country or government. 

 

Now for the questions:

1. When was the last time you were asked to (or expected to) pledge your allegiance to a flag?  (E.g., at jury duty, at a Rotary or other club meetings, at a church or other community organization, etc.)
2. What does the Pledge of Allegiance mean to you?  Just what it literally says?
3. What do you think the Pledge of Allegiance means to others (newly minted citizens, the military, the “man on the street,” other)?
4. Is pledging allegiance more of a sentiment than a real obligation?  (I.e., it’s the thought that counts?)
5. As one who pledges such allegiance, what do you think is expected of you?  (E.g., to follow all civil laws, to never criticize your country, to die for your country, other?)
6. If/When you recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and if you are an atheist (we have plenty here), do you skip over saying the “under God” part?
7. Is the Pledge out of date? Is our "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" a lie?
8. Are we becoming more perfect or less perfect as a union?  Explain your answer in detail?

(by PrimalSoup)

House Republicans cancel inconvenient free speech; Regarding the history and traditions test

The NYT reports (not paywalled):

The Republicans who now hold the majority have used the House’s rules of decorum to impose what is essentially a gag order against talking about Mr. Trump’s hush-money payments to a porn actress or about the fact that he is a felon at all, notwithstanding that those assertions are no longer merely allegations but the basis of a jury’s guilty verdict. Doing so, they have declared, is a violation of House rules.

“When they censor any mention of Donald Trump’s criminal convictions, they are essentially trying to ban a fact,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said in an interview. “I am not aware of any precedent where factual statements have been banned in our lifetime.”

The American radical right authoritarian wealth & power movement simply does not tolerate inconvenient truth. This is an example of the intolerant, closed-minded, reality-detached threat.

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Yesterday, NPR broadcast a segment about the new law in Louisiana that forces all public education classrooms to post the 10 Commandments. A question was asked about why all other religions could not also demand that their iconography also be posted in view of the equal protection clause. The response was simple: Other religions would not pass the history and traditions (HAT) test. Non-Christian iconography could be excluded without violating the equal protection clause because those religions do not pas the HAT test.

That makes no sense at all. But the current USSC could easily find sense in it. The USSC used the HAT test to obliterate abortion rights and most gun safety laws. The reason the HAT test is so poisonous is that it makes no sense and can be easily used to arrive at nearly any decision a partisan judge wants to arrive at. Why is this the case? Several reasons.

• First, the application of the HAT test in abortion and gun safety law cases was clearly irrational. The judges cherry picked bit and pieces of history they liked and ignored what was inconvenient. They also could not define what a "tradition" was. That depended various subjective things, e.g., how the issue was framed. Framing was convenient, ignoring inconvenient traditions.

• Second, Judges lack historical training and expertise. The HAT test converts legal reasoning into historical analysis. Judges are trained in law, not history. With a bit of garden variety partisan human bias that leads to flawed or selective interpretations of historical evidence. Historians have already heavily criticized both the abortion-killer and the gun safety law killer cases as partisan historical bullshit.

• Third, the HAT test ignores changing societal norms and values over time. What was historically accepted may no longer align with modern understandings or acceptance of rights and acceptable behaviors. In essence, the HAT test was intentionally invented by radical right authoritarians to ignore evolving standards that are inconvenient to radical right kleptocratic, democratic, plutocratic and Christian theocratic dogmas, e.g., the establishment clause for religion. The HAT test gives the USSC enormous power to completely reshape most or nearly all of the law and society in the name of a single, deeply flawed, hyper-partisan "historical/traditional" analysis. 

• The USSC has not laid out any clear methodology to apply the HAT test. There are no established guidelines for how to conduct proper historical analysis or what counts as sufficient historical evidence of a "tradition." The HAT test is well-suited to disguise subjective partisan "reasoning." The HAT test easily leads to covert, unguided, or ad hoc partisan analysis. For example, when there are no clear historical precedents or traditions, there is nothing to base an unbiased analysis on.

• Finally, the HAT test uses history to describe what ought to be. History has always been used to describe what happened in the past, not what should be. The test uses descriptive historical facts to find normative constitutional questions. That makes no sense because a lot of what happened in history is contested, ambiguous and/or now obsolete in view of social and technological change. Even worse, the test means that a controlling "tradition" is constitutional.  

The point of the HAT test is clear. It is a fig leaf the authoritarian American radical right wealth and power movement plans to use to kill inconvenient aspects of democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. Those inconvenient aspects include voting rights, transparency in government (a necessity for unlimited corruption), minority protections and church-state separation, especially in public education.

To drive home the point here, the NYT reports about the new Christian nationalist 10 Commandments law in Louisiana:

The crowd at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School in Lafayette, La., applauded Gov. Jeff Landry as he signed bill after bill this week on public education in the state, making it clear he believed God was guiding his hand.

One new law requires that transgender students be addressed by the pronouns for the gender on their birth certificates (“God gives us our mark,” he said). Another allows public schools to employ chaplains (“a great step for expanding faith in public schools”).

Then he signed into law a mandate that the Ten Commandments be hung in every public classroom, demonstrating a new willingness for Louisiana to go where other states have not. Last month, Louisiana also became the first state to classify abortion pills as dangerous controlled substances.

Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana signed bills this week to expand the presence of religion in the state’s public schools, which will be allowed to hire chaplains and required to post Ten Commandments in classrooms

“We don’t quit,” Mr. Landry, a Republican, said at the signing ceremony.

Taken together, the measures have signaled the ambition of the governor and the Republican-led Legislature to be at the forefront of a growing national movement to create and interpret laws according to a particular conservative Christian worldview. And Mr. Landry, a Catholic who has been vocal about his faith’s influence in shaping his politics, wants to lead the charge. 

“Christian conservatives in this state have been a force for a very long time,” said Robert Hogan, a political science professor at Louisiana State University. “They view him as a champion of their cause, and this consolidates that.”

Dodie Horton, the state representative who sponsored the Louisiana bill, said that having the commandments posted would allow students to “look up and see what God says is right and what he says is wrong.” 

Ms. Horton, a Republican, is a member of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, a group formed in 2020 to advance explicitly Christian values and legislation among elected officials. The group is working to adopt her bill as one of its pieces of model legislation, so that members in other states can push through similar laws.

The Christian political movement has been evident in debates across the country over transgender rights, school curriculums, in vitro fertilization and abortion. In Arizona, during the fight over an abortion ban from 1864, the speaker of the House, Ben Toma, told The New York Times in April that “all of our laws are actually based on, what, the Ten Commandments and the Book of Genesis, which are thousands of years ago.”

It is an argument that has been repeated by supporters of the Ten Commandments law in Louisiana, who contend that the commandments are a historical document as well as a religious text.

“This is all born of the leftist culture war tearing down the fabric of the country, and we are saying, ‘Enough,’” said Jason Rapert, founder of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers and a former state senator in Arkansas. “We are going to try to rebuild the foundation of this country.”

Like it or not, and believe it or not, we are in an all-out war against an aggressive, bigoted, corrupt Christian fundamentalist theocracy. It aims to kill democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. These authoritarian radical bigots do not want to just turn the clock back to Jim Crow or even the 1800s. They want to go back in time over 2,000 years. They are dead serious about that and about controlling your lives as they see fit, whether you believe it or not.

Q: Is this is all born of the leftist culture war tearing down the fabric and foundation of the country, or is it significantly or mostly born of the bigoted, authoritarian Christian theocratic culture war tearing down the fabric and foundation of the country? 

HOW DID I MISS THIS?

 Just saw this online:

Ancestry.com entry proves Biden died in 2018 at Guantanamo Bay

A June 13 Instagram post  shows a woman navigating through the Ancestry.com website to a death notice for Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. with the same birthdate as President Joe Biden. The notice says Biden died in 2018 at Guantanamo, Cuba.

“This is it y’all,” the woman in the video says. “In living color. This is proof that indeed there are actors playing parts on the world stage.”

The claim stems from a record posted March 14 to FindAGrave.com, a site related to Ancestry.com. The original post contained Biden’s correct date and place of birth but claimed he was executed for treason. The record said he died in either 2018 or 2020, depending on which archived version is examined.

The listing also claimed Biden was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, but a search of the Army Cemeteries Explorer shows no entries for Biden.

(Well, of course NOT, they, whoever they are, don't want people to know Biden is buried there, otherwise the jig us up) 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/06/20/biden-death-notice-ancestry-com-fact-check/74144955007/

From the Brass Knuckles Capitalism Files: US drug prices

A NYT article (not paywalled) discusses how American pharmaceutical drug prices are jacked up by middlemen who operate in secrecy:

The Opaque Industry Secretly Inflating Prices for Prescription Drugs

Americans are paying too much for prescription drugs.

It is a common, longstanding complaint. And the culprits seem obvious: Drug companies. Insurers. A dysfunctional federal government.

But there is another collection of powerful forces that often escape attention, because they operate in the bowels of the health care system and cloak themselves in such opacity and complexity that many people don’t even realize they exist.

They are called pharmacy benefit managers. And they are driving up drug costs for millions of people, employers and the government.

The three largest pharmacy benefit managers, or P.B.M.s, act as middlemen overseeing prescriptions for more than 200 million Americans. They are owned by huge health care conglomerates — CVS Health, Cigna and UnitedHealth Group — and are hired by employers and governments.

The job of the P.B.M.s is to reduce drug costs. Instead, they frequently do the opposite. They steer patients toward pricier drugs, charge steep markups on what would otherwise be inexpensive medicines and extract billions of dollars in hidden fees, a New York Times investigation found.

Most Americans get their health insurance through a government program like Medicare or through an employer, which pay for two different types of insurance for each person. One type covers visits to doctors and hospitals, and it is handled by an insurance company. The other pays for prescriptions. That is overseen by a P.B.M.

“We’re really, really good at what we do,” Jon Mahrt, president of UnitedHealth’s P.B.M., Optum Rx, said in an interview. The main lobbying group for the P.B.M.s says that in 2022 they saved their clients and patients $286 billion.

But those savings appear to be largely a mirage, a product of a system where prices have been artificially inflated so that major P.B.M.s and drug companies can boost their profits while taking credit for reducing prices.

• P.B.M.s sometimes push patients toward drugs with higher out-of-pocket costs, shunning cheaper alternatives.

• They often charge employers and government programs like Medicare multiple times the wholesale price of a drug, keeping most of the difference for themselves. That overcharging goes far beyond the markups that pharmacies, like other retailers, typically tack on when they sell products.

• The largest P.B.M.s recently established subsidiaries that harvest billions of dollars in fees from drug companies, money that flows straight to their bottom line and does nothing to reduce health care costs.

• The P.B.M.s, which are responsible for paying pharmacies on behalf of employers, are driving independent drugstores out of business by not paying them enough to cover their costs. Small pharmacies have little choice but to accept these lowball rates because the largest P.B.M.s control an overwhelming majority of prescriptions. The disappearance of local pharmacies limits health care access for poorer communities but ultimately enriches the P.B.M.s’ parent companies, which own drugstores or mail-order pharmacies.

• P.B.M.s sometimes delay or even prevent patients from getting their prescriptions. In the worst cases, patients suffer serious health consequences.

Many patients learn about the existence of P.B.M.s only when they have a problem getting medications and spend hours navigating a byzantine system of approvals and restrictions.

So when PBM spokesman Jon Mahr says, “We’re really, really good at what we do,” he is spot on correct. That is absolutely true. His job is to help screw the American people out of every last penny to squeeze every last penny of profit out of health care. He is really good at what he does, i.e., he lies to us in pursuit of profit.

The radical, authoritarian Republican Project 2025 wants to reduce regulations on all businesses, including PBMs. Why? Because there is so damn much money to be made for the giant "human" corporations and the Republicans who open the floodgates of profit for those "people." 

It is all about the Benjamins, not human health or the public interest.

Disinformation and misinformation kills people

Although we all know this, it bears repeating. People acting on the basis of false beliefs sometimes get themselves or others killed. That happens in reality, not theory. The Harvard Misinformation Review writes:

Attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines may have “spilled over” 

to other, unrelated vaccines along party lines in the United States

This study used data from pre- and post-COVID surveys to examine vaccine attitudes in the United States. We found evidence consistent with an ideological “spillover” effect: Liberals’ attitudes became more positive towards non-COVID vaccines (flu, MMR, HPV, chickenpox) and conservatives’ attitudes became more negative. These spillover effects are perplexing because the COVID-19 vaccines were developed more rapidly than the others and (some of them) were the first to use mRNA technology on a mass scale to achieve immunization. Hence, there were reasons to isolate one’s attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccines rather than generalize them. This exacerbates current vaccine communication challenges.

ESSAY SUMMARY 

• We compared political conservatives in the United States to liberals, measuring the degree to which their attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccines extend to other, unrelated vaccines.

• Conservatives had far more negative attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccines compared to liberals, but also had more negative attitudes towards the influenza, MMR, HPV, and chickenpox vaccines.

• We used an unsupervised machine learning algorithm to classify participants in a pre-pandemic survey into clusters of “likely liberals” and “likely conservatives.”

• This led to tentative results suggesting that conservatives in the United States spread their negative attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccines to unrelated vaccines (flu, HPV, MMR, chickenpox).

• Liberals in the United States appeared to exhibit the opposite trend, generalizing their positive attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccines to unrelated vaccines (flu, HPV, MMR, chickenpox).

US law requires vaccines to be safe and effective for a vaccine's approved medical use. Period. 

In the case of liberals, believing that all common, major vaccines are safe and effective is rational and supported by a lot of empirical evidence. In the case of conservatives, neither rationality nor evidence supports their false belief. This is an example of blind, reality-denying loyalty to toxic MAGA cult disinformation. 

That false belief gets some innocent people indefensibly killed. Period.

About fentanyl & related synthetic opioids

For years, there has been reporting about about how bad the problem of fentanyl and related synthetic (man-made, not natural) opioids is. Supplies of precursors to make fentanyl in Mexico and the US come from China. The US asked China to crack down on the precursors and it agreed. Then US-China relations went to hell. Despite the agreement, China still supports the fentanyl disaster in the US by supplying precursors. China uses supplies of fentanyl and related synthetic opioids to inflict as much damage on American society and economy as it can. The cost in human life in the US is of no concern to the Chinese government. The WaPo reports (not paywalled):

Despite fentanyl crackdown, Chinese sellers are open for business

A booming online marketplace in shipping small but potent packages of the chemicals used in the production of fentanyl from China to Mexico remains largely unhindered

 

When President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to revive a joint crackdown on illegal drug trafficking in November, it sent a brief shock wave through the vast network of Chinese suppliers fueling the production of fentanyl.

Drug suppliers hit pause on international orders, as local Chinese officials conducted site inspections and began circulating fresh reminders of regulations. Beijing sent a warning notice to its pharmaceutical industry and shut down 25 Chinese companies selling fentanyl precursors — the chemical building blocks of a drug that accounts for the majority of more than 70,000 synthetic opioid overdose deaths a year in the United States.

But seven months later, those same sellers say it’s business as usual.

The three people — two salespeople for Chinese chemical companies and a Chinese reseller based in Mexico — described resuming sales this year after making minor adjustments to avoid scrutiny, including tweaking customs labeling on packages and pivoting to alternative compounds that have virtually identical applications.

“Possibly in the future there is some impact, but it’s not a problem right now,” said one Hubei-based salesperson for a chemical company that produces 1-Boc-4-AP — a fentanyl precursor — and the sedative xylazine. The person claimed the company had resumed sales of both compounds to Mexico in January after a six-week pause that started around the time of the Xi-Biden meeting.

“Like water flowing around rocks … if there is a demand there is a way,” the person said.

Water flowing around rocks

The CDC reported that for 2017, the economic cost of opioid use was about $1 trillion:

In the 39 jurisdictions studied, combined costs of opioid use disorder and fatal opioid overdose varied from $985 million in Wyoming to $72,583 million in Ohio. Per capita combined costs varied from $1,204 in Hawaii to $7,247 in West Virginia. States with high per capita combined costs were located mainly in the Ohio Valley and New England.

A congressional analysis for 2020 indicated that the total cost had increased significantly compared to the 2017 analysis:

Today, in Recognition of National recovery Month, the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC)—led by Chairman Don Beyer (D-VA)—released a new analysis that finds the opioid epidemic cost the United States a record of nearly $1.5 trillion in 2020. This is up 37% from 2017, when the CDC last measured the cost.

After the pandemic disrupted the U.S. health care system, reducing access to substance abuse treatment and exacerbating social and economic stress that can worsen addiction, opioid use increased. Data show the highest numbers of fatal opioid overdoses ever reported in 2020 and 2021—69,061 and 80,926 fatalities, respectively—and opioids are now the main driver of drug overdose deaths.

A 2024 Congressional Research Services report commented:

DEA alleges that PRC-based chemical companies advertise and sell online fentanyl precursor chemicals, including some that are not internationally controlled and are correspondingly legal to export out of China. PRC firms also sell other synthetic drugs of concern, including xylazine and nitazenes. PRC companies ship such items to Mexico or directly to the United States, including via the U.S. Postal Service and express consignment services, “carefully packaged to deceive customs inspectors.” According to DEA, customers, often associated with Mexico-based transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), may pay for the chemicals and drugs in cryptocurrencies, making it harder for DEA “to follow the money.” They also pay using U.S. and PRC payment services or bank transfers. DEA alleges that the TCOs use largely PRC-sourced chemicals to synthesize fentanyl substances in clandestine laboratories, and often mix xylazine and nitazenes into fentanyl-related products, making the substances “even deadlier,” before distributing them across North America.  

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl-related substances) may have resulted in more than 78,000 U.S. overdose deaths between September 2022 and August 2023.

A trillion here and a trillion there, and pretty soon, the US goes bankrupt. The human life cost? Meh, just the cost of inept government? Who is mostly responsible for this disaster? China? Mexico? The US? All three about equally? No one, because the markets should be left free and wild to run butt naked in pursuit of profit and free, wild markets always solve all problems far more effectively than any government ever could? Should fentanyl be legalized and the industry taxed, leaving markets free & wild to run butt naked?

So many good questions, so many bad answers. 

Fentanyl victim

Lethal doses

Note the speck of carfentanil

Blog note: COVID

A couple of days ago I felt crappy. 🤒 I tested twice for COVID. Was positive twice. Still feel crappy. My blogging might be limited for the next couple of days or until the crappiness significantly lifts.

A couple of days ago the fed govt stopped monitoring new cases of COVID. Now we are flying blind in the pandemic. Yes, it is still a pandemic. So far in 2024, ~24,000 people have died of COVID in the US. This isn't over and it won't be for a long time.

Two Fox News stories for your amusement.

 YES.......................... Amusement.  

Trump Loses It At Fox News, Says No One Can Trust It

The former president is once again lashing out at the network for letting a guest speak critically of him.

“Nobody can ever trust Fox News, and I am one of them, with the weak and ineffective RINO, Paul Ryan, on its Board of Directors,” the presumed GOP nominee for president wrote, using the acronym for “Republican in name only.”

“He’s a total lightweight, a failed and pathetic Speaker of the House, and a very disloyal person,” the former president continued.

A representative for Fox News didn’t immediately return a request for comment on the former president’s remarks. (No, what a surprise!!)

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-fox-news-paul-ryan_n_66733658e4b0a1f905bb17c9

Fox News poll finds Biden ahead of Trump by two points

President Biden leads former President Trump by two points in a national poll of the presidential election published by Fox News on Wednesday, taking a lead for the first time since last October.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4730684-fox-news-poll-finds-biden-ahead-trump/

WOW, two whole points, break out the champagne!!

Jewish senators are getting nervous

The Hill reports:

Jewish senators alarmed by Alito’s pro-Christian agenda

Jewish Democratic senators are alarmed by conservative Justice Samuel Alito’s sympathy for basing government on Christian principles — something he expressed at a Supreme Court gala when he endorsed the idea of returning the nation to a place of “godliness.”

Democratic senators, including several Jewish lawmakers, fear Alito’s majority opinions in several high-profile cases, such as the Dobbs decision, which overturned the right to abortion, were driven by his religious views.

And they are not buying Alito’s claim that he had nothing to do with and couldn’t prevent the flying of an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a symbol of the Christian nationalist movement, at his New Jersey beach house.

Senate Democrats say members of the Supreme Court have a right to religious freedom but warn that when they try to impose their religious views on others, it crosses a line.

A Jewish Democratic senator who requested anonymity to comment on Alito said he is pushing a sectarian religious agenda on the court.

“I don’t think there’s really any doubt. I don’t think Alito and [conservative Justice Clarence] Thomas are being shy. They have a view of the world, and they’re trying to establish an official religion, and a specific denomination,” the lawmaker said.

One has to wonder if Christian Democratic senators are alarmed about radical authoritarian Christian nationalism (CN), if they are part of the CN movement, or if they don't care about anything other than re-election. If they are alarmed, they are not vocal about it as far as I can tell. The Democratic Party is pathetic. 

Improvement in diagnosing depression; Global cooling biomolecule discovery

Researchers at Stanford have published a study that has (1) uncovered six different types of depression, and (2) found that some of the different types respond to standard anti-depression treatments better than others:

A Stanford Medicine study reveals six subtypes of depression, identified through brain imaging and machine learning. These subtypes exhibit unique brain activity patterns, helping predict which patients will benefit from specific antidepressants or behavioral therapies. This approach aims to personalize and improve depression treatment efficacy.

Better methods for matching patients with treatments are desperately needed, said the study’s senior author, Leanne Williams, PhD, the Vincent V.C. Woo Professor, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and the director of Stanford Medicine’s Center for Precision Mental Health and Wellness.

Brain imaging combined with a type of AI called machine learning can reveal subtypes of depression and anxiety. The study, to be published today (June 17) in the journal Nature Medicine, sorts depression into six biological subtypes, or “biotypes,” and identifies treatments that are more likely or less likely to work for three of these subtypes.

Around 30% of people with depression have what’s known as treatment-resistant depression, meaning multiple kinds of medication or therapy have failed to improve their symptoms. And for up to two-thirds of people with depression, treatment fails to fully reverse their symptoms to healthy levels.

That’s in part because there’s no good way to know which antidepressant or type of therapy could help a given patient. Medications are prescribed through a trial-and-error method, so it can take months or years to land on a drug that works — if it ever happens. And spending so long trying treatment after treatment, only to experience no relief, can worsen depression symptoms.

“To our knowledge, this is the first time we’ve been able to demonstrate that depression can be explained by different disruptions to the functioning of the brain,” Williams said. “In essence, it’s a demonstration of a personalized medicine approach for mental health based on objective measures of brain function.”

Given how primitive and ineffective depression treatments generally are, this seems like an important and promising avenue of research to pursue further. For new patients who present with depression, an initial brain scan could point to treatments that have a better chance of offering some relief sooner. This research starts to debunk the idea of one size fits all, trial and error for treating depression. I hope this pans out and turns out to be the start of a major advance in treating depression.  

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STD reports about ocean a climate-cooling compound that some ocean algae make:

Global Cooling Breakthrough: Scientists Discover 

Ocean Algae’s Crucial Climate Impact

Researchers have identified Pelagophyceae algae as significant producers of DMSP, a compound crucial for climate regulation. This discovery suggests higher than expected levels of DMSP and its byproduct DMS, impacting global climate cooling.

The researchers identified the bloom-forming Pelagophyceae algae as potentially abundant and important producers of a compound called dimethylsulfoniopropionate, or DMSP.

Co-lead author Professor Jonathan Todd, of UEA’s School of Biological Sciences, said: “The Pelagophyceae are amongst the most abundant algae on Earth, yet they were not previously known as important producers of DMSP.

“This discovery is exciting because DMSP is an abundant antistress compound, food source for other microorganisms, and major source of climate-cooling gases.”

Every year, billions of tonnes of DMSP are produced in the Earth’s oceans by marine microorganisms, helping them to survive by protecting against various stresses like changes in salinity, cold, high pressure, and oxidative stress.

Importantly, DMSP is the main source of a climate active gas called dimethylsulfide (DMS), which is known as the smell of the seaside.

When DMS is released into the atmosphere, DMS oxidation products help form clouds that reflect sunlight away from the Earth, effectively cooling the planet.

This natural process is essential for regulating the Earth’s climate and is also hugely important for the global sulfur cycle, representing the main route by which sulfur from the oceans is returned to land.

Interesting. The smell of the ocean comes from DMS. 

If more DMSP and DMS can be coaxed out of the oceans, this might turn out to be an important bit of knowledge for dealing with global warming.

News: Christians against CN make a noise; FA resource page on CN; A MSM criticism

Newsweek reports that some real Christians are starting to get vexed with faux Christian theocrats (Christian nationalists) stinking up the church and giving their religion a bad name:

Thousands Sign Christian Petition Demanding 

Samuel Alito Resign: 'Unfit'

A petition created by Faithful America is nearing its goal of signatures on Sunday as they demand Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to resign amid his recent controversies.

In its petition from Wednesday, with a goal of 15,000 signatures, Faithful America, an organization of Christians supporting social justice causes while opposing "Christian nationalism," is demanding the conservative justice resign after he was heard in a secret recording agreeing that the United States should return "to a place of godliness" as well as for two flags that were previously flown outside the justice's home.

"You are unfit to serve on our nation's highest court, and we demand that you immediately resign...This man is far from impartial and cannot remain a justice on our nation's highest court. As a grassroots movement of Christians, let's join together to demand that Justice Alito immediately resign," the petition states.

You can sign the petition here. They are going to need a heck of a lot more than 15,000 signatures.

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The Faithful America website has a really great page devoted to describing and fighting against CN (Christian nationalism). Here are two snippets of info:

What is Christian nationalism, and why is it a threat?

As defined by multiple sociologists and academic researchers, Christian nationalism is a political ideology and cultural framework that claims America was founded to be a "Christian nation" where Christians should receive special legal treatment not available to non-Christians. This merges the previously separate Christian and American identities, proclaiming that the only true Americans are the country's Christians (and a specific subset of conservative Christians, at that). This means that Christian nationalism is antisemitic and Islamophobic, and poses a threat to the religious freedom of America's Jews, Muslims, Indigenous peoples, mainline Protestant Christians, and more.

Is Christian nationalism Christian?

No, Christian nationalism is a political ideology and a form of nationalism, not a religion or a form of Christianity. It directly contradicts the Gospel in multiple ways, and is therefore considered by many Christian leaders to be a heresy. While Jesus taught love, peace, and truth, Christian nationalism leads to hatred, political violence, and QAnon misinformation. While Jesus resisted the devil's temptations of authority in the wilderness, Christian nationalism seeks to seize power for its followers at all costs. And while Christianity is a 2,000-year-old global tradition that transcends all borders, Christian nationalism seeks to merge faith with a single, 247-year-old, pluralistic nation.

Woof! Those Christians are getting to be a feisty lot!

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From the Milquetoast MSM Files: 

A retired federal judge says Judge Cannon 

appears to show 'favoritism' toward Trump

Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, continues to make decisions that puzzle many legal observers.

Last month, Cannon delayed the start of the trial indefinitely. She's taken months to make routine procedural decisions.

Retired judge Shira Scheindlin: The main thing that stood out to me is how she has constantly caused delay in the case instead of moving it forward. She's done that in, I would say, two ways. One is her inability to rule in an efficient manner. She holds onto motions. She keeps them pending. She can't seem to decide things. Most experienced judges, which of course I considered myself after 27 years, try to know which motions really require further consideration and argument and which, you know, instinctively you could say frankly, one word: denied. And you can rule from the bench.

The second thing that stands out to me is what appears to me to be her dislike of the government and her favoritism toward the defense. I'm not saying that that's going to, in the end, determine how she rules on everything, but she seems to have a visceral dislike of Jack Smith and his team. She's constantly criticizing them. She's constantly being sharp and sarcastic with them, and she almost never treats the defense that way.

Appears to show favoritism? Legal observers are puzzled? For real? Geez, what planet are we on here?

If something walks, talks, looks, smells and acts like a judge showing blatant favoritism to a party in a trial in their courtroom, it is the judge showing blatant favoritism. What planet do the elites in the MSM live on? It sure isn't Earth.

Q1: What the hell is wrong with the MSM, e.g., is it corrupted, co-opted, inept, biased, clueless, and/or something else? (this dreary news reporting is from NPR) 

Q2: Do you believe the following sentiment is mostly true, false or ambiguous?

(FWIW, I believe it is usually mostly true 

and in the case of DJT, completely true)