Global warming update

New analyses indicate that the underwater current that shuttles heat around the Atlantic Ocean is possibly closer to irreversible shutdown by 2050 if we keep doing what we have been doing for decades. It is possible that we have already passed a non-return point but are unaware of it.

Experts have long known that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC — the system of ocean currents that transports heat and salt between the Southern and Northern Hemispheres — can suddenly and irreversibly shut down as a result of rising temperatures. A growing number of computer simulations, including two preliminary analyses published this summer, have suggested a collapse could occur as soon as 2050.

The world as we now know it is a product of this vast overturning. The AMOC moves carbon deep into the ocean and transfers heat at a rate of one quadrillion watts per second — 50 times the rate of energy use by humankind. It shapes the band of clouds that encircles the Earth at the equator, delivering rain to Africa and the Amazon, and brings balmy temperatures to Northern Europe, explaining why Scotland is much milder than Alaska and Newfoundland despite sharing the same latitude.

Differences in temperature and salinity are the engine of the AMOC. As long as North Atlantic water is salty enough — and therefore heavy enough — to sink as it cools, the system is self-reinforcing.

Yet over the past century, humans have warmed the planet by more than a degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) and caused the Greenland Ice Sheet to melt at a pace now exceeding 270 billion tons of ice per year. That influx of freshwater interrupts the salty northbound current, slowing its descent toward the seafloor.

If meltwater continues to flood the North Atlantic, many experts fear the AMOC may cross a tipping point at which it can no longer sustain itself, abruptly and irreversibly shutting down.

A study published this February in the journal Science Advances used the amount of freshwater moving around the South Atlantic to suggest the AMOC had gotten much weaker. Some of the same researchers suggested in preliminary analyses this summer that the system is likely to collapse around the middle of the century if the world remains on its current warming trajectory, and that it could tip even if humanity manages to limit warming to just over 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

In October, dozens of top climate scientists issued an open letter calling on Nordic leaders to “take seriously” the risk of an AMOC collapse in the coming decades. Even a partial shutdown could lead to dangerously harsh winters in Northern Europe, as well as sea level rise on the east coast of the United States and dramatic shifts in rainfall around the equator.

When it comes to climate change, humans are playing Russian Roulette. Sooner or later we are going to face some real catastrophes. 

Q: How seriously does the Republican Party and MAGA generally take climate change?

A: The Republican Party and MAGA supporters exhibit a range of attitudes towards climate change, with a general trend towards skepticism, denial, or downplaying the issue. Many prominent Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have historically called climate change a "hoax" or downplayed the link between human activity and a warming planet. According to Pew Research Center surveys, only 12% of Republicans and Republican leaners consider dealing with climate change a top priority for the president and Congress.

In unrelated news, some reporting indicates that Joe Biden now regrets hiring Merrick Garland. That is a not case of better late than never. It's a case of late is never. Also Biden regrets dropping out of the election, still believing that he would have beaten DJT in the 2024 election. Sigh. 

Thank you for your 'service' Joe

/s

A New Years thought from your local SNOWFLAKE

BINGO!

One of my US correspondents put a very interesting idea to me overnight.

The Democrats might be feeling pretty despondent right now and with good reason. They got a great deal wrong in this election campaign, starting partly with the moment that Biden refused to give way to a younger, more able candidate and partly with the fact that, at present, they do not even seem to know how to spell change, let alone offer it.

But, as my correspondent pointed out, Trump has offered change to everyone, and whilst superficially, each of those to whom he has made a promise might like what he has offered, the reality of the change that he might put on the table is going to be massively uncomfortable for most in the USA.

Tariffs will mean inflation.

Trade wars will create economic disruption.

Deporting the millions of undocumented people in the US will deny workforces to large numbers of American companies and leave parts of the US, like Florida, that are essentially engaged in care services, devoid of the staff that they need to function. It will also be immensely costly and intensely socially disruptive.

There is a serious risk of a battle between the Fed and the federal government over interest rates in the making. That will not be good for American households.

The massive cut to Medicaid, education and other Federal programmes that so excite Trump and Musk will massively harm the well-being of millions of Americans.

And, importantly, if there are no signs of progress on any of these issues, as there were none post-2016 on things like ‘the Wall', the buyers regret that will very rapidly emerge (as it has in the UK for Labour) will result in a massive backlash against the Republicans.

Large numbers of seats in the House and one-third of the seats in the Senate will be up for election at the midterms in just two years' time. The Democrats might be in a total meltdown right now, and I have little sympathy with them because much of what they had to offer the American people was dull, at best, and profoundly unappealing at worst, but in a political system as desperately two-party orientated as that in the UK is, the backlash against the Republicans for failing to deliver on any, some or most of the promises that they have made, which failure seems very likely with Trump in charge, will swing those elections very heavily in the Democrat's favour.

I see quite a lot of logic in this, even though a Democrat revival without an acceptance of error within that Party feels fairly unappealing.

If, however, this logic is right, expect the mayhem that Trump says he might unleash to begin as soon as possible after the inauguration.

2025 might prove to be a very bad year for the USA.

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/11/08/2025-might-prove-to-be-a-very-bad-year-for-the-usa/

AND if we ever had any doubt about how bad it may get, we have our fearless leader Germaine to remind us. Keep up the good fight G. I might tease you occasionally about the gloom and doom in your messaging, but someone has to do the dirty work and we need fresh reminders, especially as this SNOWFLAKE keeps posting more lighthearted stuff. 

So, with that thought in mind, I got to thinking if the disaster about to unfold will actually lead us to a brighter day later on. Pie in the sky thinking?

OH well, whatever happens, Cheers to everyone for the New Year. 

Some year-end reflection…

 Over millennia, I think it is fair to say that humanity has become a “tangled weave” disaster.  So many situations can be traced back to some prior situations, that can then be traced back to even more prior situations, and on and on and on… the breadcrumbs journey of “It’s complicated.”  And it is.

But at the root of it all is what’s known as “the human condition.”  Yes, we, individually as well as collectively, are “patient zero” in all of humanity’s (greater scheme-of-things) problems. 

WHY ARE WE ALL PATIENT ZERO? 

Oh so many reasons: It starts with our birth hard-wiring; continues on with our upbringing (soft-wiring circumstances); gets further build on/destroyed with the benefit or lack of good/bad role modeling; enter the peer pressure years, when long-term adult personalities are beginning to gel; hormonal disruptions add more confusion; the bullying or empathy gene is “awakened”; lack of equality and equal opportunities is aggravating and frustrating; attraction to shallow values may become a siren’s (fuck it all) call; loss of control over negative emotions (there’s a whole hornet’s nest of those buggers [anger, fear, revenge, resentment, self-preservation, greed, disappointments, feelings of desperation, etc., etc., etc.]).  So yeah, like I said, the human condition has become quite complicated alright, and for (understandably) human reasons/explanations.

SO WHAT’S THE FIX?

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  And what we’re doing now is still not getting humanity any different results.  To the contrary, our ongoing behaviors are validating and perpetuating the “next generation” of expected (I think undesirable) results (see above); the perpetual and accelerating cycle of discord all of humanity is seemingly caught up in and can’t escape.

SO WHAT FIXES THOSE UNDESIRABLE RESULTS?

Oh so many things can help fix undesirable results: let’s just call them the antithesis of those negative human condition attributes I’ve mentioned above.  But other than on an individual basis, are such mass fixes even possible?

Q: Is humanity broken?

• If yes, why?  

• And is it “fixable?”

• If no, why not?  

• And by what standards would that conclusion be judged?

Make your case(s).

(by PrimalSoup)

Some thoughts on the human condition

People don't want to BE informed. 

They want to FEEL informed. -- Roger Ailes

There is great truth in that simple but astute observation. When reality is inconvenient, as it often is, the human mind seeks ways to reduce or eliminate the discomfort somehow. For better or worse, the human mind is very adept and fast at rationalizing uncomfortable or self-disaffirming information. The mind unconsciously converts bad reality into something less bad, non-existent (denial) or even good (illusion creation). Ailes really understands people, i.e., he understands this aspect of human cognitive biology. 

He also came up with the Orchestra Pit Theory, among some other observations. According to Ailes, if there are two politicians on stage, one announcing a significant policy like a solution to the Middle East problem, and the other falling into the orchestra pit, the media would focus on the latter event due to its sensational nature. This underscores Ailes' belief that the media's preference for covering gaffes, scandals, and dramatic events over policy substance shapes public discourse and political campaigns. 

Ailes transformed cable news by giving it a hard, radicalizing partisan edge. He used television news as an ideological weapon to appeal to conservative audiences and build rock solid belief in false realities, lies and slanders. He provided confirmation (self-affirmation) to his audience rather than information, understanding that much of the American public wanted to feel informed rather than be informed. Hence Faux News is a great source of pleasant faux news.

In the social sciences, a lot of research is going on about what to do with this aspect of human nature. Nobody has a perfect answer to the disinformation/dark free speech problem so far. The problem has been known and discussed for millennia. In the US, it will probably stay mostly unsolved for a very long time because there is no simple answer. And there is lots of resentment of efforts to combat demagoguery and partisan deceit by America's radical right authoritarians, i.e., MAGA. 

Only hard, slow social engineering solutions that take generations to build and implement seem to have a detectable positive effect. Finland, Estonia and some other countries near Russia have put the social engineering in place to train their populations to resist disinformation. Those are the best examples of the possibility of training societies to at least partly resist the alluring comforts of dark free speech.

Dark blue - fairly disinformation-resistant

Dark red - not very resistant

Q: How resistant is the US public to demagoguery and disinformation compared to countries like Finland, Denmark and Estonia?

A: The United States exhibits a lower level of resilience to demagoguery and disinformation compared to countries like Finland, Denmark, and Estonia. 

The U.S. faces significant political polarization, which has been exacerbated by the use of social media by demagogues. This polarization contributes to the spread of disinformation, as individuals are more likely to share information that aligns with their beliefs, regardless of its accuracy.

Trust in traditional media sources in the U.S. is notably low, with only 7% of respondents fully trusting these sources to report information accurately and fairly in 2022. This lack of trust makes the public more susceptible to disinformation.

Media literacy in the U.S. is not as systematically integrated into the national curriculum as it is in Finland or Estonia. It is often taught as a special seminar or class for older students, rather than being part of the core curriculum from an early age.

Finland and Estonia have integrated media literacy into their education systems from an early age, fostering critical thinking and fact-checking skills. The U.S. lags in this aspect, with media literacy often being an elective or special course.

One can see the problem for the US. Authoritarian MAGA demagogue's efforts to combat disinformation are demagogued and vilified as things like liberal authoritarian censorship or a major burden on free speech. MAGA wants unfettered freedom to demagogue, lie, slander and disinform to its black little heart's content.

Personal opinion: Two kinds of minds 

Speaking of freedom, there are two basic kinds of minds in terms of demagoguery and dark free speech, in my opinion. Type 1 minds are relatively demagoguery and irrationality resistant, while type 2 are more demagoguery and irrationality trapped. The odd, frustrating thing about those two mindsets is that the type 1 minds are a lot more limited or unfree because they tend to be a lot more tethered to facts, true truths and sound reasoning. By contrast, the type 2 folks are generally not so limited. The type 2s have more or less full access to the power of their unconscious mind's capacity to soften or deny reality and reasoning that is inconvenient or self-disaffirming. 

Sadly, those poor type 1s have to more acutely feel the unpleasant feelings that inconvenient or self-disaffirming reality and reasoning can generate. It's no wonder that demagoguery and dark free speech generally tend to be more attractive and persuasive than the stinky reality and reason-tethered world.

The simple joy of being low-information

The visa thing gets seriously worse; Update: Abortion in Texas; Judges - last line of defense

Tales from the MAGA crypt

The sheer bizarreness of MAGA spreading it wings and extending its talons is an amazing, horrible thing to watch. Elon Musk is insane and enraged about work visas for foreign tech workers. One staunchly pro-Musk MAGA loyalist criticized the H-1B visa program on X as “something that should not exist” and Musk lashed out at that:  “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B. Take a big step back and F--- YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.” 

After that cannon blast, the H-1B critic maintained his love of and loyalty to Musk. Mackey, the original target of Musk’s ire, responded, “I personally am fine with reforming H-1B, and as I’ve stated multiple times today, I am incredibly grateful you and many others are in the country because of H-1B.” Talk about a freaking cult, this has got to be one of ’em.

Then our good friend, “Flood the Zone With Shit”, Steve Bannon jumped in with his deep wisdom: “Someone please notify ‘Child Protective Services’—need to do a ‘wellness check’ on this toddler.” 

Interestingly, DJT himself got off the dime and came down on Musk’s side. That is really gonna tick off a lot of MAGA’s white supremacist cadre. As one source put it, “Trump Knifes MAGA Loyalists to Back Sidekick Musk on H-1B Visas.” Musk got real blunt about his view of the white supremacist cadre of MAGA: Musk says ‘hateful unrepentant racists’ must be removed from Republican Party as visa feud deepens. ‘They will absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed,’

Hateful unrepentant racists? Whoa Nelly!! Wait a minnit!! The Dems were viciously attacked by some MAGA elites as something far worse than horrible socialist pedophiles after they raised the possibility of racism in the MAGA ranks. Vivek Ramaswamy refused to denounce white supremacy, calling it a “farce” and an “infinitesimally small fringe” issue. The Dems themselves were in a state of at least modest confusion over the issue. A Perplexity response suggests the racism issue runs deep and broad in the MAGA movement, prompting various dark free speech tactics to defuse it. Now Musk is at least implying that racism is more than a small fringe thing.

It is possible that DJT wants to foment discord in the MAGA movement to help him stay at the center of power. He intentionally fomented internal discord in his business operations. This kerfuffle over work visas just might flush out a serious weakness in the MAGA monstrosity. Time will tell.

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The MAGA wealth and power movement in Texas is leading the way in crushing civil liberties. One source writes:

‘Baby in a dumpster.’ A spate of abandoned newborns unsettles Texas.

“It didn’t specify alive or dead,” Patrick Pequet remembers.

He and fellow firefighters arrived within minutes, pulling into the rear parking lot of an apartment complex in the southwest quadrant of this sprawling city. Police were already there, as were the several residents who had frantically summoned them, standing near a blue dumpster crowded by discarded boxes, scattered trash and garbage bags.

In one of those bags, a baby had been crying. Now, only silence. 

“We were probably the first people to hold the baby with any kind of good intentions,” Pequet said later.

The infant, whom officials named Gabriel after the archangel protector, would live.

Statewide, according to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, at least 18 babies have been abandoned this year. The latest occurred just before Christmas at a Whataburger in San Antonio. A decade ago, the number was seven.

Whether there’s a pattern or common link in these tragedies is not clear. But they’re happening in a state with one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans — with no exceptions for rape or incest — and one of the highest birth rates.  

So maybe this abandoned baby phenomenon has nothing to do with forced birth laws in Texas. But maybe it does. But why give MAGA the benefit of a doubt?

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A NYT opinion asserts that judges are the last line of defense for the rule of law. Of course, that may not apply to some or most Trump judges. But, who else is left to defend the rule of law? Not the US supreme court, that’s for sure.

President-elect Trump recently threatened to lock up political foes, like Liz Cheney, as well as members of Congress who investigated his role in the Jan. 6 attack. “For what they did,” he said, “honestly, they should go to jail.”

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump said repeatedly that he would encourage the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to go after his enemies. His picks for attorney general (Pam Bondi) and F.B.I. director (Kash Patel) have echoed these remarks. Mr. Patel even compiled an enemies list, which includes Christopher Wray and retired Gen. Mark Milley.

This impulse could reach beyond leadership and may well trickle down in significant part to the 94 federal district courts around the nation. Each United States attorney will have been appointed by Mr. Trump and will be subject to his whim — meaning their potential firing if he does not approve of their performance.

If these confirmed public servants can’t stand up to the pressure from above to serve not an individual person but justice as a principle, who will? It will have to be the judges.

Judges simply can’t be blind to what Mr. Trump, Ms. Bondi and Mr. Patel have said. They can’t ignore their words if the Justice Department under Mr. Trump or the F.B.I. goes after those on an enemies list who have committed no crime beyond opposing the president-elect.

The oil-train USSC case; The MAGA explosion over H-1B visas; Re: The insurrection

The "oil-train case" now pending in the USSC (US supreme court) could have a major impact on environmental and health regulations. As usual, the business community wants to gut environmental regulations. This case could wind up doing the job pretty well. A decision will probably come down late next June, or maybe a month or two before then.

The lawsuit, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, directly challenges the scope of environmental reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The Supreme Court's decision could limit how federal agencies evaluate the environmental impacts of projects, thereby reducing the depth and breadth of analysis required for projects like oil trains, pipelines, and other infrastructure developments. The case could limit the federal government’s power to study indirect climate impacts of projects like highways, transmission lines and dams.

The proposed railway in Utah would significantly increase oil production in the Uinta Basin, potentially quadrupling output. This expansion would lead to normally expected increases in environmental and health risks, including air pollution, oil spills, and contributions to climate change.

The outcome of this lawsuit would likely set a precedent for how NEPA is applied to future projects, potentially weakening environmental protections across various sectors, not just oil and gas. The five Republicans on the bench (Gorsuch recused for conflict of interest) are openly hostile to environmental laws and regulations. A win for industry in this case would probably lead to less study and consideration of indirect and cumulative environmental effects of new infrastructure projects. Those regulatory studies are crucial for understanding the full impact of infrastructure projects. 

Detailed analyses under NEPA currently consider the “reasonably foreseeable environmental effects” of proposed projects. That includes (1) direct effects, such as cutting down trees to build a highway or rail line, (2) indirect effects that occur later in time or farther away, such as development spurred by building the highway, and (3) cumulative effects of the action when added to the effects of other past, present and reasonably foreseeable actions, such as building multiple highways in a region.

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TNR writes about the explosion: Steve Bannon Joins War Against Elon Musk as MAGA Implodes -- Donald Trump’s biggest fans are at each other’s throats over immigration, and H-1B visas in particular. Steve Bannon has joined the MAGA war between hard-line immigration opponents and tech executives like Elon Musk, taking the side of xenophobia on his War Room show Friday. “H-1B visas? That’s not what it’s about. It’s about taking American jobs and bringing over essentially what have become indentured servants at lower wages,” the former Trump adviser turned pundit said, referring to the visa program that allows immigrants in specialized fields to work in the United States temporarily.

Each year, about 85,000 H-1B visas are issued by lottery. More foreign workers than that usually apply for the visas so lottery is how they are picked. 20,000 of those visas are for workers with at least a MS degree, some of whom are highly valued, i.e., low wage, workers in high tech. The visas last 3 years and can be extended for another 3 assuming the worker has not gotten into legal trouble. Overstaying the 3 or 6 year limit confers "unlawful presence" status on the worker, in essence making them an illegal immigrant. When a foreign national overstays their authorized period of stay, the visa stamped in their passport by the U.S. Consulate is automatically voided. U.S. immigration law is strict in the application of this provision

Despite those apparent limits, 😕, in FY 2023, 755,020 people were admitted to the U.S. in H-1B status. That is possible because institutions of higher education, nonprofit entities related or affiliated to such institutions, nonprofit research organizations, and governmental research organizations are exempt from the cap. H-1B visas are a significant part of both legal and illegal immigration. Hence the MAGA explosion.

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Two legal scholars, Evan A. Davis and David M. Schulte, wrote an opinion arguing that Dems can and should block DJT from taking office. They argue that DJT's 1/6  insurrection bars him from holding office. They argue that Dems can block certification on grounds of "an oath-breaking insurrection" that makes Trump "ineligible to be president." The basis for that simple legal reasoning is the 14th Amendment, which reads in part:

"No person shall ... hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath ... to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

For what it is worth, i.e., nothing at all, the Colorado Supreme Court had determined that there was "clear and convincing evidence that President Trump engaged in insurrection as those terms are used" in the 14th Amendment, but the U.S. Supreme Court protected DJT arguing that states lack the power to disqualify candidates for federal office. Davis and Schulte cited that as evidence of DJT's disqualification for office.

That legal theory and the factual evidence look rock solid to me. 1/6 really was an insurrection against the Constitution and DJT really was its deeply involved leader. 

However by now I know that I know absolutely nothing about the rule of law when it applies to the elites and especially to DJT 'The Insurrectionist'. At that high and mighty level, the law has become opaque, sacred theology with witches brewing something smelly in the cauldron. 

The Dems doing sacred law stuff

Fire burn

Cauldron bubble

Rule of law is lot of trouble

(spoken in thick Russki accent)

I am crappy at theology. We in the unwashed masses must leave these weighty vaporous law things to sanctified high priests like Joe Biden 'The AWOL' and Merrick Garland 'The Complicit'. As expected based on past history, Dem party leaders reject any effort to block the The Insurrectionist from taking office. Their analysis says he is qualified and good to go.

Dem Party legal scholars at work

Also as expected MAGAlandia is in furious crazy-go-nuts mode over this tiny whisp of old timey law & order reasoning. Hm, on reflection, MAGAlandia is in its usual mode of operation. 

MAGA in standard SNAFU 

operations mode

Dang, doing the research for that insurrection thing was a lot more fun than I expected!

American authoritarianism update

TNR published a long interview with Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, the Harvard scholars who were co-authors of the 2018 bestseller How Democracies Die. Here are two small parts of the interview:

Dire Days: What if Trump Does Everything He’s 

Promised and People Don’t Care?

INTERVIEWER: Can we talk for a minute about Project 2025? We have now Russ Vought, who’s going to run the Office of Management and Budget, assuming he’s confirmed by the Senate, and he was a key author of Project 2025. What parts of that should be most concerning to people, Steven?

LEVITSKY: There are many, many, many policies in there that I dislike and fear. But I think the core problem is the Project 2025 initiative reflects a much broader thinking in the Republican Party, and among the right, which is that not only state institutions, but a number of private institutions like universities, have been penetrated by pernicious forces of the left and need to be purged and packed for the good of society. And again, that’s just classic authoritarian thinking, right? There’s no liberal democratic way to respond to this problem. If you believe that the state is packed by your enemies, there’s no liberal democratic way of resolving that. It is a fundamentally authoritarian attitude that you saw, for example, in right-wing militaries in Latin America in the 1970s. The idea was that the left was kind of a cancer, that it pervaded the state and society and needed to be rooted out. This is a less violent variant of that.

ZIBLATT: Project 2025 includes these proposals to essentially circumvent the Senate confirmation process for Cabinet secretaries and to have acting officials and so on. And I think the most worrying thing is that we’re already seeing discussion of this within a week or two of the election victory. So we’ve seen the first steps already being discussed. Also, this idea that the Insurrection Act can be used on day one certainly is also worrying. Equally distressing is the plan to reimpose the Schedule F to allow for the manning of the state with loyalists. What’s worrying overall is that parts of Project 2025 lay out in very concrete steps exactly all the things we’ve been talking about for years.

INTERVIEWER: [Asks about why the election turned out as it did]

LEVITSKY: I think it’s a combination of a couple of things. I don’t think you can ever depend on voters to vote for democracy. ....

ZIBLATT: A second issue, though, is that one can imagine a scenario in which voters might have understood the risk a little bit more. But I don’t blame voters here. I blame elites again—in particular, social elites. I have in mind the relative silence over the past year of too many business leaders, too many religious leaders, and too many important labor unions—in particular, the Teamsters. When discussions were made public of the plans to round up migrants in an undifferentiated way that doesn’t distinguish between legal and illegal migrants, the failure of so many religious leaders, for example, to publicly and loudly condemn this and raise the stakes of what was involved, meant that many voters didn’t fully understand the stakes of these plans.

You can never depend on voters to vote for democracy. That is a very interesting assertion. The 2024 elections is evidence it is mostly true, even though many MAGA voters claim they voted to protect democracy. In one large poll, about one-third of Trump supporters identified democracy as the most important factor in their voting choice. Apparently, their irrational fears mostly centered on illegal immigration and alleged Democratic Party authoritarianism. 

But what about not blaming rank and file voters who didn’t see the risk, and instead blaming elites for failure to warn them? That absolves American adults of all responsibility their failure to see reality and authoritarian threat for what it is. Instead of reality they relied on a dark free speech illusion to vote against democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. I’m not that forgiving. In my assessment, all of the adult American public eligible to vote who did not vote for Harris gets ~45% of the blame, maybe ~50%. They were warned over, and over and over. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

A lot of other news today is worse than just plain nuts. Well-known crackpot and blithering weirdo Marianne Williamson is making a bid for Democratic National Committee chair. I’m getting palpitations just thinking about it.

MAGA freak Laura Loomer is causing mayhem in MAGAland after insulting and attacking Elon Musk over alleged corruption and supporting more immigration of foreign engineers and scientists. Musk says that Americans are too lazy and too chill. Another MAGA elite joined the worker-bashing fun: Vivek Ramaswamy got criticized after posting a wild rant about how bad American workers suck. 

And then there’s some Christians in a snit: 15,000 people signed a petition accusing DJT of violating Christian values. Quick! Somebody tell Merrick Garland to prosecute DJT for violating Christian values! That will put the fear of God in him! 🤪

We’re is sooo much trouble. Or, are we just having fun?

WTF??

Wheee!

MAGA intent and policies coming into focus: Kleptocracy rising; Strange tales from Fantasylandia

In the coming months, the things that MAGA wants to do regardless of public opinion will become clear. One can reasonably think that MAGA elites will try to do their best to limit news reporting and propagandize MAGA goals and policies that most Americans oppose.  

Among the things that MAGA hates are transparency in government and taxes on elites and big corporations. Among the things that MAGA loves are opacity in government and huge amounts of corruption. A key target is the IRS. By gutting funding to the IRS, congressional MAGA elites enable wealthy tax cheats to commit their crimes with impunity. One source writes:

Republican lawmakers have now clawed back half the investment the Biden administration made in the IRS tax agency. Congress revoked an additional $20 billion from the Internal Revenue Service last week when lawmakers averted a government shutdown, a cut that may undo many of President Joe Biden’s efforts to improve customer service at the tax agency and train fresh scrutiny on wealthy tax cheats.

Biden and congressional Democrats gave the IRS $80 billion in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, but Congress rescinded $20 billion as part of a 2023 budget deal. Shortly afterward, Republicans vowed they’d be back for more IRS cuts. When Congress approved a stopgap funding bill, called a continuing resolution, all the existing policy from the previous fiscal year was carried forward unless new text was specifically added to the bill to change it. There was no language in the bill to undo last year’s cut, so it repeated in the new law.

Critics of the IRS were pleased.  

Biden administration officials said the additional cuts would add $140 billion to the national debt over the next decade by hamstringing the agency’s ability to audit wealthy individuals and large corporations.

Prominent critics of the IRS are authoritarian, government-hating MAGA ideologues and wealthy tax cheats in the form of rich, powerful human beings and huge, powerful human legal entities called corporations. Once in power, MAGA elites plan to fire independent federal Inspector General positions and replace them with corrupt political loyalists. That opens the entire executive branch to true, full-blown kleptocracy. As it sands now, tax cheats already illegally withhold about $428 billion/year from the IRS by one estimate and according to the IRS (which in my opinion is not trustworthy on this data point). My personal estimate is that the annual festival of tax "theft" amounts to at least ~$1 trillion/year. Whatever the true number is, tax cheating is probably going to experience a "healthy" increase thanks to MAGA's kleptocratic hate of taxes, collecting taxes and enforcing tax laws.

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Self-reliant pulling up before 

boostraps were invented

Nutty politics doesn't get much more human than this:

After backing Trump, low-income voters 

hope he doesn’t slash their benefits

NEW CASTLE, Pennsylvania — Lori Mosura goes to the grocery store on a bicycle because she can’t afford to fix her Ford F-150 truck.

The single mother and her 17-year-old son live in an apartment that is so small she sleeps in the dining room. They receive $1,200 each month in food stamps and Social Security benefits but still come up short. Mosura said she often finds herself deciding between buying milk or toilet paper.

It was all that penny-pinching that drove the part-time tax consultant to abandon the Democratic Party this fall and vote for Donald Trump.

“He is more attuned to the needs of everyone instead of just the rich,” Mosura, 55, said on a recent afternoon. “I think he knows it’s the poor people that got him elected, so I think Trump is going to do more to help us.” (and there's the fantasy)

Trump carried the Pennsylvania city of New Castle by about 400 votes, becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to win here in nearly 70 years. More than 1 in 4 residents live in poverty, and the median income in this former steel and railroad hub ranks as one of the lowest in Pennsylvania.

New Castle’s poorest residents weren’t alone in putting their faith in Trump. Network exit polls suggest he erased the advantage Democrats had with low-income voters across the country.

Now, low-income Americans who voted for Trump say they are counting on him to keep their benefits intact even while his Cabinet picks and Republican lawmakers call on him to reduce federal spending.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — whom Trump has chosen to lead a new nongovernmental advisory panel, the “Department of Government Efficiency” — have said they want to trim $2 trillion from the government’s annual budget, a cut that some experts say could be accomplished only by slashing entitlement programs.

What can one say in the face of that kind of irrational false belief? It was well-known before the election that (i) DJT and MAGA hate most government domestic spending and they plan to seriously gut social safety net programs, and (ii) DJT's proposed tariffs would very likely significantly increase inflation. Those low-income voters are probably in for a huge, rude surprise. DJT and MAGA could not care less about them. DJT holds them in open contempt. They are probably gonna need to do a bunch of bootstrap pulling in the next couple of years.

MAGA logic

(compassionate conservatism)

MAGA intent and policies coming into focus; Etc.

It is fair to say that a lot of what MAGA wants, most average people wouldn't if they were aware of it. Some examples are related to the temporary spending bill to keep the government funded until March. The final Musk/Trump bill was changed to retain the practice of “spread pricing” in Medicaid plans. That is where PBMs (pharmacy benefit managers, middlemen in the medicine business) charge a health plan more for a drug than what they pay to the pharmacies that dispense it. The PBMs pocket the difference. Its pure corrupt special interest sleaze, which is why PBMs fight tooth and claw to keep it. The original, pre-Musk/Trump plan required PBMs to pass along all rebates and fees that are based on a percentage of a drug price to their health plan clients. The idea was to eliminate incentives to promote expensive drugs over cheaper ones. And, after all, we would not want patients to harvest some of the cash the PBMs milk out of the system, would we? Course not.

Another example of Musk/Trump MAGA policy priorities relates to protecting hidden junk fees. The original pre-Musk/Trump version included two bipartisan bills that aimed to crack down on junk fees by requiring ticket sellers and hotels to disclose any service charges and other add-ons up front to customers, rather than waiting until the end of the checkout process. Got 'cha! 

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A leading US government agency that tracks foreign disinformation has terminated its operations, the State Department said Tuesday, after Congress failed to extend its funding following years of Republican criticism. The Global Engagement Center, a State Department unit established in 2016, shuttered on Monday at a time when officials and experts tracking propaganda have been warning of the risk of disinformation campaigns from US adversaries such as Russia and China.  The GEC has long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who accused it of censoring and surveilling Americans. It also came under fire from Elon Musk, who accused the GEC in 2023 of being the "worst offender in US government censorship [and] media manipulation" and called the agency a "threat to our democracy." The GEC's leaders have pushed back on those views, calling their work crucial to combating foreign propaganda campaigns.

Welp, if MAGA elites like Musk attack it for censorship, then the GEC is very likely doing a good job at fighting dark free speech. As we all know, dark free speech is absolutely crucial to the rise and establishment of MAGA's kleptocratic authoritarian plans for American society, government and commerce.

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Texas Republican Proposes Public Executions of Undocumented Immigrants

A patriotic Republican in Texas

showing us how to do it

At Trump’s inauguration, reports of a pay-to-pray -- According to a report, you can pray with Trump and Melania. It'll only cost you $100,000. President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is reportedly planning an interfaith prayer service the day before his inauguration, where participants can worship alongside the businessman and his wife, Melania. But those who want to join need to weigh the price of prayer: Tickets to the service will be awarded only to those who donate at least $100,000 to Trump’s inaugural ceremonies, or who raise $200,000.

Biden signs 50 bills into law on Christmas Eve -- President Biden signed 50 bills into law on Christmas Eve, as the year and his time in office draw to a close. The bills Mr. Biden signed include socialite and activist Paris Hilton's bill to protect teenagers living in residential treatment facilities, a bill setting anti-hazing standards on college campuses, and a bill preventing members of Congress from collecting pensions if convicted of certain crimes. He also made the bald eagle the national bird. 

Hm, no mention of any laws that try to protect democracy from kleptocratic MAGA authoritarianism. Biden is apparently out to pasture. Bummer.

The great tea bag escapade; Feisty MAGA politics; Regarding free speech and MAGA

Researchers at UAB (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain) checked out tea bags. They found the bags release lots of microplastics bits into the tea. The UAB newsroom writes:  

The tea bags used for the research were made from the polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose. The study shows that, when brewing tea, polypropylene releases approximately 1.2 billion particles per milliliter, with an average size of 136.7 nanometers; cellulose releases about 135 million particles per milliliter, with an average size of 244 nanometers; while nylon-6 releases 8.18 million particles per milliliter, with an average size of 138.4 nanometers.

MNPLs = micro/nanoplastics

Caco-2, HT29, HT29-MTX = human gut 

cell lines in vitro

The particles were stained and exposed for the first time to different types of human intestinal cells to assess their interaction and possible cellular internalization. The biological interaction experiments showed that mucus-producing intestinal cells had the highest uptake of micro and nanoplastics, with the particles even entering the cell nucleus that houses the genetic material. The result suggests a key role for intestinal mucus in the uptake of these pollutant particles and underscores the need for further research into the effects that chronic exposure can have on human health.

So, it sounds like one might want to use tea bags made out of cellulose, which is found naturally in all kinds of human foods. Plants make cellulose naturally. Cellulose is generally safe to eat in moderation. It occurs naturally in plant-based diets and is used as an additive, apparently in most processed foods.

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Our feisty president-elect is being feisty at the LGBQT concept and community:

Donald Trump made sweeping promises at a far-right event this weekend to end trans rights in several areas, including education, health care, and military service.

Speaking at an event organized by Turning Point USA, Trump also promised to end transgender rights across the board on his first day in office, saying that it will be official policy that “there are only two genders, male and female.” He also said he would sign an executive order to “end child sexual mutilation.”

Trump’s promise to keep “transgender… out of our elementary schools and middle schools and high schools” likely refers to school curricula, which Republican state lawmakers have been legislating against for several years. Questions about curriculum are usually handled by state and municipal bodies, not the president.

“Child sexual mutilation” is an inflammatory way of referring to surgery associated with gender-affirming care, something that is almost never performed on minors in the U.S. It is not clear what power a president has to ban medical procedures through executive order.

“Child sexual mutilation” is not only inflammatory, it is deeply insulting to (i) the LGBQT concept and community, and (ii) other people who dislike overt displays of bigoted theocratic authoritarianism. But what the heck, MAGA doesn't respect the dignity or rights of people MAGA chooses to hate, attack and oppress.

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NewsGuard is under attack by MAGA because it rates the credibility of some news sources that includes some MAGA sites. Some of the ratings for some MAGA sites are low. MAGA is calling that censorship and threatening to attack. 

When veteran newsmen L. Gordon Crovitz and Steven Brill started their news site rating company, they were prepared for the inevitable cries of bias from both sides.

What they didn’t anticipate was that NewsGuard, their company of some 50 employees, would become the target of congressional investigations and accusations from federal regulators that it was at the vanguard of a vast conspiracy to censor conservative views.

Since 2018, NewsGuard has built a business offering advertisers nonpartisan assessments of online publishers — backed by a team of journalists who assess which sites are reputable and which can’t be trusted. It uses a slate of nine standard criteria, such as whether a site corrects errors or discloses its ownership and financing, to produce a zero to 100 percent rating.

Crovitz, a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal and a Republican, and Brill, a left-tending independent who founded Court TV and the American Lawyer magazine, engaged with publishers wanting to understand subpar ratings, sometimes wrangling for hours by phone over the details of a site’s correction policy.

But conservatives now question the company’s premise. Brendan Carr, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, accused the company of facilitating a “censorship cartel,” in a November letter to leading tech platforms. Noting that key legal protections depend on tech executives operating “in good faith,” Carr continued: “It is in this context that I am writing to obtain information about your work with one specific organization — the Orwellian named NewsGuard.”

NewsGuard, backed by legal experts, argues that Carr’s letter may violate the First Amendment by threatening the speech rights of private companies.

“The only attempt to censor going on here is by Brendan Carr,” Crovitz said in an interview.

Despite the battering, tech giants didn’t particularly want to play truth police on their platforms. Crovitz and Brill offered them a solution: Pay NewsGuard to sift the real news sites from the propaganda peddlers.

“We’re going to apply common sense to a problem the algorithms haven’t been able to solve,” Brill told “CBS Mornings” that year. “It’s going to be very simple … telling the difference between the Denver Post and the Denver Guardian, which is a hoax site.”

A “censorship cartel”?  “Child sexual mutilation”? One has to admire the toxic, deceptive, divisive rhetoric that America's radical right authoritarians constantly come up with. The MAGA wealth and power movement is 2nd to none when it comes to dark free speech expertise.

And FWIW, there's this: U.S. is ‘becoming a kleptocracy, oligarchy’: Sen. Murphy slams billionaires picked for Trump admin. It isn't often to hear the word kleptocracy used in politics, despite it being a gigantic issue, along with oligarchy and American authoritarianism generally. A peanut grumbled: Trump's inauguration is gonna be an all-you-can-pocket-tax-payer-money buffet. His whole term too!

I love it, a tax money buffet. That's a great way to describe kleptocracy!

And this too: DOJ officially decides not to charge Matt Gaetz in sex-trafficking probe -- The Justice Department has informed lawyers for Rep. Matt Gaetz and multiple witnesses that it will not bring charges against the Florida Republican after a yearslong federal sex-trafficking investigation. -- What a non-surprise. With Merrick Garland in charge, no elite gets whacked.