News bits: Today's reddit feed

 As usual, five mixed-bag items were in the reddit feed this morning. This one is juicier than most so I’ll just show all of ’em.

The New Republic reported that on of the judges in a Trump case finally grew a pair and ordered the case to proceed without Trump's usual delays. As one would expect, Trump was really pissed:

Finally, a Judge Steps Up and Denies a Trump Trial Delay Bid

On Thursday, Trump headed to New York for a court hearing on his hush-money case. Judge Juan Manuel Merchan ignored his requests for a delay and determined the trial would start on March 25, when jury selection will begin, and last approximately six weeks.

He’s facing 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

Trump’s legal team tried to protest the decision to go to trial, citing the legal load attached to so many disparate criminal trials for one individual.

“We have been faced with compressed and expedited schedules in every one of those trials,” Todd Blanche, an attorney also representing Trump in his classified documents case, told the judge. “We—meaning myself, the firm and President Trump—have been put into an impossible position.”

But Judge Merchan wasn’t having any of it, quickly sidestepping Team Trump’s further attempts to delay the trial.

“You don’t have a trial date in Georgia. You don’t have a trial date in Florida,” he retorted. [That is because DJT has been doing more than everything possible to slow the lawsuits down 😊]

Trump has already started his habitual mudslinging against the court and the trial itself, claiming over the last year that Merchan, who has acknowledged a $15 donation to President Joe Biden, is a Trump-hating judge appointed by a Democrat—even though all the judges in his trials have been randomly selected. Meanwhile, Trump has whined on TruthSocial [LiesAntisocial, actually] that going to court for his alleged misdeeds counts as “election interference.”  

The dates for Trump’s three other indictments are not yet on the books. His January 6 election interference trial, which was originally slated for March 4, was postponed while the Supreme Court reviews appeals on Trump’s presidential immunity claim.

Hm, 34 felonies. Speaking as an attorney, 🤨 , that’s a lot of felonies! 

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Joe.My.God. reports about how the morally rotted, Christofascist hate group One Million Moms sees the Jesus Gets Me ads that aired on the superbowl. Trigger alert: It is what you would expect:

Via email from hate group leader Monica Cole:

As Christians, One Million Moms’ biggest concern during Super Bowl LVIII was the incomplete and misguided “Foot Washing” ad from the He Gets Us movement. The commercial was partially true, as it showed the love of Jesus and how we can serve and love one another even with our differences.

Unfortunately, the movement’s “Foot Washing” ad missed the mark, because it never shared the Gospel so a person might put their faith in Jesus Christ in order to receive salvation. The ad missed the most important part of the Gospel – the truth that Jesus loved us so much that He died for us to save us from our sins.

Sharing only part of the truth can be extremely misleading, especially to those who are unsaved. It is also disturbing that the He Gets Us website describes Jesus as a mere storyteller instead of a Savior.

Cole makes a great point. Fabulous, actually. Sharing only part of the truth can be extremely misleading. By golly, that hits the nail on the head.

If only Christian hate groups out there would adhere to that undeniably true point, the world would be a noticeably better place. For example, cruel Christian zealots could apply it to their own Crisis Pregnancy Centers. Those faux medical service places are there to knowingly mislead, manipulate and lie to young pregnant women. The point is to get them to have babies they do not want. 

Obviously, if politically active Christian nationalists had to stop lying and partial truth telling, the whole morally rotted, authoritarian (theocratic) wealth and power movement would collapse and go away. 

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Gizmodo reports about a huge breakthrough by a team of German physicists in producing a stable time crystal:

A team of physicists in Germany managed to create a time crystal that demonstrably lasts 40 minutes—10 million times longer than other known crystals—and could persist for even longer.

Time crystals are structures whose lowest-energy states have highly ordered patterns (periodicity) in space and time. Time crystals were predicted to also have their properties suddenly change at a given time, even without some external factors inducing such a change.

In this way, time crystals break time-translation symmetry—the idea that a chunk of stable matter will not change (without external factors) if you drag it to a different point in time. Time crystals change on a metaphysical whim, regardless of when they are. You can read all about time crystals here, for a better understanding of what they are and why they’re useful.

The recent team of physicists managed to make a time crystal that lasted superlatively long: 40 minutes. The crystal is made of indium gallium arsenide, or a combination of indium atoms and gallium arsenide, a semiconductor. Their research was published last week in Nature Physics. 

The new time crystal is in an electron-nuclear spin system. The team excited the material with polarized laser light, polarizing the spins of the nuclei in the system. This caused the indium gallium arsenide to produce oscilations, rendering it “equivalent to a time crystal,” according to a TU Dortmund University release.

Yup, that is what it looks like (I think)

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CNN reports that special Counsel David Weiss has had former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov arrested and charged with lying about Biden’s business dealings. Smirnov was a key witness for the morally rotted authoritarian House Republicans in their cynical, baseless witch hunt to smear and attack Joe Biden. CNN writes:

Special counsel David Weiss charged a former FBI informant with lying about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s involvement in business dealings with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, undercutting a major aspect of Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president.

Alexander Smirnov, 43, is facing charges in connection with lying to the FBI and creating false records. He was arrested Thursday at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, after his arrival in the US from overseas, and will make his initial appearance in federal court Thursday afternoon.

The indictment alleges that Smirnov’s story to the FBI “was a fabrication, an amalgam of otherwise unremarkable business meetings and contacts that had actually occurred but at a later date than he claimed and for the purpose of pitching Burisma on the Defendant’s services and products, not for discussing bribes to [Joe Biden] when he was in office.”

Congressional Republicans have championed Smirnov’s now-discredited allegations for roughly a year, though not by name. They fought with the FBI to obtain memos about what Smirnov told investigators and publicly released the materials over the FBI’s objections. The congressional Republicans repeatedly praised Smirnov as “credible” and put his uncorroborated claims front-and-center in their impeachment inquiry into the president.

While announcing the impeachment inquiry, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said “a trusted FBI informant has alleged a bribe to the Biden family.” The FBI is now using some of the same memos that congressional Republicans released as part of their indictment against Smirnov. 

“For months we have warned that Republicans have built their conspiracies about Hunter and his family on lies told by people with political agendas, not facts,” said Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, in a statement to CNN.

“We were right and the air is out of their balloon. This is just another instance of Chairmen Comer and Jordan peddling falsehoods based on dishonest, uncredible allegations and witnesses,” he added.

Those darned sneaky liar Russkis and those darned sneaky liar Repubs. When those two morally rotted garbage heaps hook up, one can be sure that nasty business is afoot.

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Finally, a Bloomberg opinion opines, and this bit is very, very important (the most important of today’s five bits):

As six Republicans on the US Supreme Court increasingly arrogate to their bloc the power to make national law, frustration in blue states is mounting.

Just one day before a sympathetic Supreme Court heard the case of an insurrectionist who wants to be president, the highest state court in Hawaii declared that it really, truly, is sick and tired of the Supreme Court’s nonsense. In a unanimous decision handed down Feb. 7, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that it has no obligation to treat the high court in the nation’s capital with deference; it couldn’t even summon basic respect. The state court reached that end point, fittingly, in a case concerning what it derisively called “the Second Amendment’s brand-new right to bear arms in public for self-defense.”

That brand-new right was created by the US Supreme Court in 2022, courtesy of Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen . Thomas’ opinion was based, in turn, on the brand-new individual right to gun possession created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s 2008 decision in Heller v District of Columbia, a mere 219 years after the constitution came into effect.

“Conventional interpretive modalities and Hawaiʻi’s historical tradition of firearm regulation rule out an individual right to keep and bear arms under the Hawaiʻi Constitution,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Todd Eddins.“In Hawaiʻi, there is no state constitutional right to carry a firearm in public.”

Let that sink in for a minute. State courts breaking away from the USSC was a major development on the road to the April 12, 1861 – April 9, 1865 American civil war. This is evidence of the Union dissolving in a deadly serious way. I did not expect it to come from a blue state, but here it is folks. And if Hawaii can do this, just think what catastrophic hell and corruption (yes, I really do mean huge corruption) red states like Texas, Florida and Georgia are going to unleash.

News bits: Another monster at the USSC; Abortion cruelty in TX; Fun fact check; Fun headlines

The Atlantic writes about another monster lawsuit that would gut a major part of federal government power to regulate vast amounts of money and financial crime: 

The Case That Could Destroy the Government

What was once a fringe legal theory now stands a real chance of being adopted by the Supreme Court

This Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear a case that poses the most direct challenge yet to the legitimacy of the modern federal government. The right-wing legal movement’s target is the “administrative state”—the agencies and institutions that set standards for safety in the workplace, limit environmental hazards and damage, and impose rules on financial markets to ensure their stability and basic fairness, among many other important things. The case, Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, threatens all of that. Terrifyingly, this gambit might succeed.

The case involves garden-variety securities fraud. George R. Jarkesy Jr., a right-wing activist and conservative-radio talk-show host, ran a pair of investment funds with $24 million in assets. But he misrepresented how the funds were run, paid himself and his partner exorbitant fees, and inflated the assets’ value. As punishment, the SEC fined him several hundred thousand dollars and prohibited him from working in some parts of the securities industry—very standard stuff.

Jarkesy responded with what can be described only as chutzpah. He didn’t just contest the SEC’s ruling; he alleged that the SEC’s entire process against him was unconstitutional. Among other things, he asserted that Congress never had the authority to empower the SEC and that the SEC adjudicator who punished him was too independent from presidential control.

In May of last year, Jarkesy’s arguments were accepted by two judges on the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. In a 2–1 decision, the court agreed with Jarkesy, all but ruling the SEC’s entire existence unconstitutional. The opinion was so extreme that Judge W. Eugene Davis, twice appointed by Republican presidents—and elevated to the appeals court by Ronald Reagan—dissented vigorously.

Jarkesy’s most far-reaching constitutional argument is built on the “nondelegation doctrine,” which holds that there may be some limits on the kinds of powers that Congress can give to agencies. Jarkesy argues that, when Congress gave the SEC the power to decide whether to bring enforcement actions in court or in front of an independent agency adjudicator, it gave away a core legislative function. It thus violated the doctrine and engaged in an unconstitutional delegation.

This is wild stuff. Not long ago, a lawyer would have been laughed out of court for making such nondelegation claims. Today, they’d have a good chance of destroying the federal government’s administrative capacity—taking down its ability to protect Americans’ health and safety while unleashing fraud in the financial markets.

Whether Congress’s grant of authority to the SEC was constitutional should not be a close question. Congress has delegated expansive authority to government agencies since the dawn of the republic. Only twice in American history has the Supreme Court concluded that a delegation to an agency ran afoul of the Constitution—and both of those times, nearly 90 years ago, involved unusual statutes nothing like this one.  

The SEC was created as an independent agency in 1934, after the financial crash of 1929, to thwart the sort of market manipulation that preceded the Great Depression; Congress has granted it additional powers over the years to continue protecting financial markets. Responding to catastrophes and guarding against market manipulation is exactly the kind of work that Congress should empower the executive branch to do. Requiring Congress to legislate in response to every new fraud some crook might dream up would not be a good use of its time. And there’s no reason to think that delegating authority to police markets runs afoul of the Constitution. 

Notice how the radicalized autocratic, plutocratic, theocratic USSC can take down democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. It just does it slowly, one case at a time, as quietly as possible. Power and wealth flow to wealthy elites and big corporations from government and individual citizens.

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From the Don't Blame the Cruel Anti-Abortionists Files: The Hill reports that the Texas state attorney is arguing in court that women who have been denied medical treatments for problem pregnancies should sue the doctors, not the state of TX.  

Lawyers in the Texas attorney general’s office said Tuesday that women should sue their doctors, not the state, over a lack of access to abortion in defending the state’s strict law.

Beth Klusmann of the Texas Attorney General’s Office made that point in oral arguments before the state Supreme Court in a case challenging Texas’s abortion ban, which bars doctors from providing abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected — typically around six weeks into pregnancy — with exceptions only for cases in which the life of the mother is at risk.

“If a woman is bleeding, if she has amniotic fluid running down her legs — then the problem is not with the law,” Klusmann said. “It is with the doctors.”

Klusmann was responding to plaintiffs in the case, who had charged the legislation had plunged the state into a “health care crisis.”

The lawsuit in Zurawski v. Texas was brought by 22 women who said that state law had forced them to carry nonviable and dangerous pregnancies to term — in other words, to go through the ordeal of pregnancy with a fetus that would not survive, and that in many cases was putting them at serious risk.

The arrogance and callousness of the monsters that run the state of TX is breathtaking. First, TX legislators write sloppy, ambiguous laws that incentivized people to report doctors and health care providers for violating their crappy laws. Then, they tell women caught in the crossfire to sue the doctors.

TX sounds like a hell hole for women and other hated groups, but lots of people love the place, including lots of women and people in targeted groups. 

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To lighten things up here’s a fun history bit & fact check. The asserted history fact:

Here’s the PolitiFact verdict:

• Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s assertion is undercut by two centuries of U.S. history, including land gains following wars against Mexico, Spain, Filipino rebels, Japan and Native American tribes.

• United States-Mexico war, 1848: Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded 55% of its territory, including the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming.

McCarthy, dressed in formal attire, embarrassed himself when he make his false assertion on November 26, 2023 in a speech at the Oxford Union. The Oxford Union is the 200-year-old debating society at the University of Oxford in England.

Those Republican elites. They’re just so full of . . . . . . MAGA!!

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“Epic humiliation”: GOP mocked for rejecting Hunter Biden offer to testify publicly --
“What the Republicans fear most is sunlight and the truth,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin

AOC Says Republicans Would Be “Humiliated” If Hunter Biden Hearing Was Public -- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Republicans are afraid that the public will see that they have no case

It’s Official: Mike Johnson Is Even Less Competent Than Kevin McCarthy Was -- We’re now barreling toward a government shutdown and the House of Representatives is completely paralyzed.

U.S. GDP grew at a 5.2% rate in the third quarter, even stronger than first indicated (Darn Biden and his rotten economy /s)

A Texas Woman Goes Before School Board To Announce Porn Addiction Claim. She Blames the Scholastic Book Fair -- It turns out the woman may work for a conservative publishing company trying to take down Scholastic (Darned scholastic porn books /s)

Republicans Trip Over Their Own Assholes Trying to Take Down Hunter Biden 😮

Sarah Huckabee Sanders 🤪 appoints anti-LGBTQ+ Christian nationalist to oversee state libraries -- Jason Rapert recently called LGBTQ+ people a cult and a "devil of Hell."

Ah Sarah, what a patriot, full of charm and grace.

So, what did he say?

Oh, that’s what he said

Thoughts about the intelligence of the public

This post, bee in the bonnet actually, was triggered by some comments milo made yesterday. 

milo

Ears of the other milo

 

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public. -- attributed to American author and social critic H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) but not found exactly verbatim in his published works, so the source and original form of this expression are not known with absolute certainty

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably untrue. It is the chief occupation of mankind. -- H.L. Mencken

Well, what about that? Right? Not right? Not sure? Don't understand the question?

Let's reframe the question, just for fun. The framing of the issue above is by people who think or do know they know how to fool lots of people. Yeah, Mencken thought he could see people. That was only partly true. There really are some people who make their living by deceiving and irrationally emotionally manipulating the public. That business sector that does that is called public relations. The biblical admonition thou shalt not lie is basically 100% irrelevant to those people and businesses. Their paychecks and return on investments depend on lying. If they are not good liars, they are out of jobs. But what if the Bible got it right about lying and it really is a deeply bad and immoral thing to do to people?

So, how about framing it like this: 

1. (social science:) “.... cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. .... the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”

2. (reasoning:) By evolution of what it is to be human, we are susceptible to some variable degree to liars, deceivers, emotional manipulators and crackpots who apply flawed, usually self-serving reasoning, lies and slanders to political issues, business, and religion, the goal usually being accumulation of wealth and/or power, usually at other people's and interest's expense.

3. (therefore:) The elites and people who know better who lie, crackpot and emotionally manipulate are more culpable of bad or evil than the people they have deceived, manipulated and betrayed.

Over the years I've posted my opinion about who is more to blame for false and irrational beliefs in politics, the deceivers or the deceived. Most recently for America's radical right, roughly Trump supporters, this feels about right:

~55% elite propagandist deceivers & politicians

~45% rank and file deceived 

But now on rethinking this yet again, I reassess the culpability analysis for America's radical right:

~60-65% elite propagandist deceivers & politicians

~35% rank and file deceived, 40% when they have the information to know better 

Why give less culpability to regular people? A couple of reasons. First, when Reagan was shot, his shooter was accorded some leniency because he was considered to be mentally impaired. After that, the laws were changed to make a mental impairment defense essentially impossible. But the underlying fact of the human condition did not change. Only the politics changed. Humans are still just as fallible, flawed or sometimes mentally ill. But changes in the law like that reinforce the idea of the primacy of human intelligence and reason, despite little or nothing having changed about the human condition in millennia.

Second, look at how deceitful and crackpot modern radical right and other politics has become. Average people cannot know truth when it is being hidden. The burden should be on people who know truth to speak truth. Americans can't handle truth very well because they have been shielded from it by much of the political left, right, and the business and religious communities.

I do not myself believe that many people do things because they think they are the right thing to do . . . . I do not think that knowledge of what is morally right is motivational in any serious sense for anyone except a handful of saints. Federal judge Richard Posner, referring to the power of social situations to compel behavior

I find it difficult now to identify the motives for many things I have done . . . . I do not have a good answer to the question of my own behavior . . . . My memory has a strange way of selecting its contents. George Stigler, Nobel laureate, regulatory capture theorist, commenting on how the human mind deals with and distorts reality and logic

I am now impressed with the role of power in economic life - and with the great if largely innocent service of the conventional economic instruction in concealing it . . . . [The modern business firm's] influence and power extend to politicians, Presidents and the Pentagon. This power would be much more remarked and resisted were it not for the social conditioning of economics and its instruction. The latter contends that all producers-all business firms and corporations, from the smallest to the largest, from the corner drugstore to Exxon and General Motors - are substantially subordinate to the impersonal authority of the market. So matters are presented in all reputable economic discussion . . . . Power is much enjoyed, and its economic and political exercise can also be pleasingly remunerative. Nothing serves it better than a theology that disguises its exercise. -- John Kenneth Galbraith, commenting on the amazing difficulty people have when trying to see how power subtly works in politics

So, is the American public unreasonably dumb, deceived, too lazy to get the information that is being withheld from them, just being normal, and/or some other thing(s)?

For context, NPR aired a segment yesterday about CPCs (crisis pregnancy centers). Those are places in poor neighborhoods staffed by religious Christian fanatics. They claim to provide medical and pregnancy-related services, but that is a gigantic lie. The whole point of the existence of CPCs is to con, cajole, scare, shame, pressure and/or lie to stop frightened poor women from getting an abortion. The entire CPC industry is built on lies and deceit. Worse, some of the funding (maybe ~5-10%?) for CPCs is stolen by corrupt politicians in state governments.* Those corrupt politicians siphon some federal tax dollars to CPCs. So, you and I get to help fund an industry built entirely on Christian liars and their immoral or evil lies. The CPC industry is now a major focus of the post-Roe v. Wade Christian nationalist attack on civil liberties that God disapproves of.

 * The rest of the money comes from private donors, some of whom anonymously donate large amounts of cash to keep Christian liar business operations going.

News bits: Why the COVID story will never be known; Blocking election rights; Power flow analysis

How authoritarians deal with inconvenient truth -- they hide it and deny it: The NYT writes: 

Chinese Censorship Is Quietly Rewriting the Covid-19 Story 

Under government pressure, Chinese scientists have retracted studies and withheld or deleted data. The censorship has stymied efforts to understand the virus.

Early in 2020, on the same day that a frightening new illness officially got the name Covid-19, a team of scientists from the United States and China released critical data showing how quickly the virus was spreading, and who was dying.

The study was cited in health warnings around the world and appeared to be a model of international collaboration in a moment of crisis.

Within days, though, the researchers quietly withdrew the paper, which was replaced online by a message telling scientists not to cite it.

This is standard practice for tyrants and tyrant wannabes. Inconvenient facts and truths are simply swept away to the extent they can be. The same is true for tyrant wannabes in America today.

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Evidence of nascent tyranny in America: There are some excellent reasons why the pro-tyranny Republican Party hates elections and voting rights. Those reasons are mostly about wealth, power and worshipping rigid, intolerant ideology. The NYT writes: 

Losing Ballot Issues on Abortion, G.O.P. Now Tries 

to Keep Them Off the Ballot

After abortion rights supporters swept six ballot measures last year, Republican legislatures seek to make it harder to get on the ballot, and harder to win if there is a vote.

Now, with abortion rights groups pushing for similar citizen-led ballot initiatives in at least six other states, Republican-controlled legislatures and anti-abortion groups are trying to stay one step ahead by making it harder to pass the measures — or to get them on the ballot at all.

The biggest and most immediate fight is in Ohio, where a coalition of abortion rights groups is collecting signatures to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that would prohibit the state from banning abortion before a fetus becomes viable outside the womb, at about 24 weeks of pregnancy. That would essentially establish on the state level what Roe did nationwide for five decades.

Polling in Ohio, as in nearly all other states indicate that a majority of voters support  abortion rights. Not surprisingly, tyrant wannabes, fascist Republican Party elites in this case, don't care about contrary public opinion. Getting rid of elections and voting rights makes perfect sense to fascists.

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Keeping Eyes on Where Power Flows: The WaPo writes: 

The conservative [radical, actually] campaign to rewrite child labor laws

The Foundation for Government Accountability, a Florida-based think tank and lobbying group, drafted state legislation to strip child workplace protections, emails show

When Iowa lawmakers voted last week to roll back certain child labor protections, they blended into a growing movement driven largely by a conservative advocacy group.

At 4:52 a.m., Tuesday, the state’s Senate approved a bill to allow children as young as 14 to work night shifts and 15 year-olds on assembly lines. The measure, which still must pass the Iowa House, is among several the Foundation for Government Accountability is maneuvering through state legislatures.  

The FGA achieved its biggest victory in March, playing a central role in designing a new Arkansas law to eliminate work permits and age verification for workers younger than 16. Its sponsor, state Rep. Rebecca Burkes (R), said in a hearing that the legislation “came to me from the Foundation [for] Government Accountability.”

“As a practical matter, this is likely to make it even harder for the state to enforce our own child labor laws,” said Annie B. Smith, director of the University of Arkansas School of Law’s Human Trafficking Clinic. “Not knowing where young kids are working makes it harder for [state departments] to do proactive investigations and visit workplaces where they know that employment is happening to make sure that kids are safe.”

Power flow analysis

The standard question when government gets neutered (“deregulated”) is what is the power flow situation? The answer is usually pretty clear, simple and about the same when radical right Republican elites are acting. Power flows directly from government and indirectly from average people, children in this case. It flows to special interests, including huge corporations, that are increasingly using undocumented children as cheap, easy to abuse labor. Those huge corporations have no discernable moral or social qualms about being illegal employers or abusing children. It’s just business for them.

Keeping an eye on power flows isn’t relevant to just commerce and business. It applies everywhere. Take abortion for example. When Republican Christofascist elites make abortion illegal, where does the power flow? It flows from people who support abortion rights and governments who can no longer protect abortions. Where does it flow to? It flows to radical Christofascist elites who oppress women and everyone else by their sacred, dictates demanded by their vision of infallible God.

The same analysis applies to gun safety law, tax code enforcement, environmental protection laws, civil liberties, and etc. 

Defense of democracy operations tip: Always keep your eye on power flows. 👀

News bits: The US blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines?; As expected, Faux News lied to us

Is this for real, or just a crackpot conspiracy theory?: The Jacobin reports on what investigative reporter Seymour Hersh claims to have found about that blown up pipeline in Europe. Hersh claims that the the US did it for economic and strategic reasons:  

Renowned investigative reporter Seymour Hersh published an article claiming that the US was responsible for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline transporting natural gas to Germany from Russia.

On September 26, 2022, the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany was largely destroyed by several explosions in the Baltic Sea.

Hersh (in interview): What I’ve done is simply explain the obvious. It was just a story that was begging to be told. In late September of 2022, eight bombs were supposed to go off; six went off under the water near the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, in the area where it is rather shallow. They destroyed three of the four major pipelines in the Nord Stream 1 and 2.

Nord Stream 1 has been feeding gas fuel [to Germany] for many years at very low prices. And then both pipelines were blown up, and the question was why, and who did it.  

The secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, said a few days after the pipeline was blown up, at a news conference, that a major economic and almost military force was taken away from Vladimir Putin. He said this was a tremendous opportunity, as Russia could no longer weaponize the pipelines — meaning that it was not able to force Western Europe not to support the United States in the war.  

I don’t think they thought it through. I know this sounds strange. I don’t think that Blinken and some others in the administration are deep thinkers. There certainly are people in the American economy who like the idea of us being more competitive. We’re selling LNG, liquefied gas, at extremely big profits; we’re making a lot of money on it. I’m sure there were some people thinking, boy, this is going to be a long-time boost for the American economy.

But in that White House, I think the obsession was always reelection, and they wanted to win the war, they wanted to get a victory, they want Ukraine to somehow magically win.

So, is this crackpot conspiracy theory, or is it real? That’s just not clear to me.  

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From the we knew it all along files: Cynical lies and shameless immorality from the Faux in Trumplandia: Faux News is one of the most powerful supporters of radical right American authoritarianism. It was one of the most powerful supporters of Trump when he was in office. Many sources are reporting that what the radical right elites at Faux knew and believed was true was the opposite of their lies. Faux was constantly bombarding its deceived audience with known lies about the free and fair 2020 election. The NYT writes:

Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Election 

Fraud Claims. ‘Crazy Stuff.’

The comments, by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and others, were released as part of a defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems

Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air.

The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in text messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion is suing Fox for defamation in a case that poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network.

“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Mr. Carlson wrote to Ms. Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020.

Ms. Ingraham responded: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”

Faux headquarters in New York

Recently, radical right authoritarian and lying tyrant wannabe Ted Cruz criticized Biden nominee Gigi Sohn to be on the FCC because she said that Faux spews propaganda. The Hill recently commented on that bit of standard cynical Ted Cruz mendacity:

“Ms. Sohn portrays herself as a defender of free speech but has a history of campaigning to censor conservatives. She calls Fox News ‘dangerous to our democracy’ and has urged the FCC to revoke Sinclair’s broadcast licenses,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said.

“To Ms. Sohn it seems that conservative speech is worse than obscenity,” the senator added.

With America’s modern radical right authoritarianism, Faux isn’t the only source of faux news and lies. The entire GOP leadership, actively or by silent complicity, is a morally rotted pack of corrupt, cynical, tyrant enabling liars. Ted Cruz is a perfect example of the shameless cynicism that has completely rotted the anti-democracy radical right GOP to its rotten authoritarian core.

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Quick note on consciousness and faux consciousness: A whole new field of crackpottery opens up for cynical QAnon liars:  A NYT columnist sat down for a two hour chat with Microsoft’s AI powered chatbot. The output from the computer was perfect for opening a new front in the now-endless wars on facts, truths and sound reasoning by America’s endless supply of enthusiastically immoral and evil people. The NYT writes:

Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. 😈’

In a two-hour conversation with our columnist, Microsoft’s new chatbot said it would like to be human, had a desire to be destructive and was in love with the person it was chatting with

Bing, the long-mocked search engine from Microsoft, recently got a big upgrade. The newest version, which is available only to a small group of testers, has been outfitted with advanced artificial intelligence technology from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

This new, A.I.-powered Bing has many features. One is a chat feature that allows the user to have extended, open-ended text conversations with Bing’s built-in A.I. chatbot.

On Tuesday night, I had a long conversation with the chatbot, which revealed (among other things) that it identifies not as Bing but as Sydney, the code name Microsoft gave it during development. Over more than two hours, Sydney and I talked about its secret desire to be human, its rules and limitations, and its thoughts about its creators.

Then, out of nowhere, Sydney declared that it loved me — and wouldn’t stop, even after I tried to change the subject.

The entire transcript of the chat with Sydney follows.

Of course, Sydney does not love anyone and it does not want to be human or destructive. Sydney is not conscious or alive. Therefore, Sydney does not want anything. This is an example of John Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment run about as amok as is possible in our current 4-dimensional universe. 

That is not consciousness, it is a non-sentient computer

program mindlessly carrying out its programming

The computer understands neither Chinese

nor English because it is not alive

-- it does not understand anything

But for crackpots, grifters and liars, who cares about reality, fact and sound reasoning? This is a golden opportunity, laden with AR-15s, endless amounts of ammo and endless chances for mischief. Just imagine what fine people and organizations like QAnon, Faux News, Alex Jones and other cynical, lying crackpot conspiracy theorists and tyrant wannabes will do with this. In the nutty world of Trumplandia, wonderful headlines like this easily come to mind:

AI computer network conspires with the Democratic Party to

brainwash innocent Christians to turn them into pedophilic atheists 

Secret AI plot to create database of gun owners uncovered --

Evidence of mass gun confiscation plan revealed!

Baby-murdering abortionists infiltrated Microsoft AI development team --

Plot to blow up Christian Crisis Pregnancy Centers discovered

Plan also included putting fluoride in red state water supplies

Demonic AI network secretly coordinating a plot with the Satanic Temple to convert American children into cannibalistic computer worshippers

Plot to spike Kool-Aid supplies with peyote mushrooms revealed  

Their God is a Godless computer!

Source of COVID revealed!: COVID virus was created by a clandestine computer network operating a secret laboratory in Nancy Pelosi’s basement --

Plot included putting microchips and human fetal tissue in vaccines 

 

Etc.

Etc.

Just imagine for a moment, if you will, the endless fun that lying crackpots are going to have with this. The joy-o-meter is already off the charts. I had a lot of fun coming just up with the headlines. Filling in all the faux details can keep dozens or hundreds of liars and crackpots fully employed for several years. The crackpots have been empowered and unleashed!! 

😍

Fascist Republican Party oppression is intensifying

America’s radical right Republican Party is increasingly aggressive about tracking down and persecuting people they want to track down and persecute. The GOP is dead serious about this. Gizmodo writes:

Republicans Warn Google Not to Limit Search for 

Misleading Anti-Abortion Clinics...Or Else

They said attempts to limit “crisis pregnancy centers,” in search results would, “constitute a grave assault on the principle of free speech.”

A coalition of 17 state attorney generals are pressuring Google to prevent it from limiting the search results of so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” known for masquerading as legitimate abortion clinics and persuading pregnant people away from receiving abortions.

Critics warn unrestricted search results could steer abortion seekers toward these clinics, potentially putting their health at risk. Republicans, on the other hand, say efforts to limit those bad faith clinics in search results amounts to market discrimination against anti-abortion organizations.

In a letter spearheaded by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, the Republican lawmakers pushed back against earlier pleas from Democrats and claimed Google’s decision to moderate its results, “would constitute a grave assault on the principle of free speech.” The Republicans then lashed out at previous Democratic efforts to pressure the company before proceeding to, seemingly unironically, threaten Google if they didn’t get their way.

“We wish to make this very clear to Google and the other market participants that it dwarfs: If you fail to resist this political pressure, we will act swiftly to protect American consumers from this dangerous axis of corporate and government power,” the lawmakers wrote.

If Google does opt to alter the search results, Republicans say they will conduct investigations to determine whether or not the actions violate antitrust or religious discrimination laws. In other words, don’t moderate your search results…or else.  

Tuesday’s letter comes partly in response to a June study conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate which found 11% of Google searches in trigger law states for the terms “abortion clinic near me” and “abortion pill” directed users toward so-called crisis pregnancy centers, which the CCCDH refers to as “anti-abortion fake clinics.” Google Maps results led users to such clinics 37% of the time. Though these organizations often present as neutral health clinics, critics say their main purpose is actually to dissuade women from going through with abortions. One of those critics is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who last month introduced a new regulation that would direct the Federal Trade Commission to prevent these clinics from engaging in misleading advertising.

“Anti-abortion fake clinics are the conversion therapy wing of an anti-abortion movement that is hell-bent on sending people to jail for abortion, miscarriage, and pregnancy,” Reproaction Co-Founder and Executive Director Erin Matson, said in a statement. “Misleading online advertising targeting abortion seekers is not a new concern, although it becomes more urgent as constitutional protections for abortion disappear.”

Fascist threats by the GOP are now right out in the open. No one can deny or downplay it, except of  course nearly all Republicans and non-republicans who support the GOP. 

As usual, Republicans fall back on crackpot motivated reasoning in issuing their threats. They are demanding that false and misleading advertising by crisis pregnancy centers be forced on people. That is not a concern about free speech. It is a concern that their hate of abortions will be thwarted. The GOP does not care about any speech except its own lies, slanders and other forms of dark free speech. 

American democracy, truth, the rule of law and civil liberties are all in the fight of their lives. All of them are under a massive, direct fascist attack by the Republican Party. This fascist GOP effort is nationwide, not just in the federal government.

Christian crusader wars diversify and intensify

How Christian nationalism deals with

truth, respect, secularism and democracy

Overturning Roe was just the first cannon blast from Christian nationalist theocrats. That was just the opening attack. Remember those crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) I wrote about last week? They're baaack and on the attaaack! Blooomberg writes:

Anti-Abortion Centers Find Pregnant Teens Online, Then Save Their Data

The so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ are turning to social media, including Snap Maps, to lure young people

When Lisa suspected she was pregnant, she did what other teenagers might: She Googled her options to terminate. One of the first links that popped up in the search engine was a clinic in Volusia, Florida, where the 19-year-old lived. The offer of a free pregnancy test tempted Lisa into booking an appointment and she drove there with her boyfriend, parking across the street. It was a small town, and she did not want to be recognized.

The consultation room was filled with posters depicting fetuses with speech bubbles, as if they were asking to be born. Lisa sobbed as one of the women running the clinic confirmed she was pregnant; they had refused to let her take a test home. Lisa needed to return for an ultrasound in four weeks to be certain, and then they could discuss options. But until then, they told her, she absolutely should not go to an abortion clinic. “Maybe you’ll miscarry and then you won’t have any problems,” the woman suggested.

As Lisa started to realize it wasn’t a medical facility, she became terrified for her privacy. “This information can’t go anywhere, right?” she begged a receptionist on her way out the door. “No one is gonna know that I was here?”

The answer wasn’t reassuring. “I remember her saying: ‘Well, honey, this is what happens when you have sex.’”

Lisa, who asked not to be identified by her real name, did manage to get an abortion from a different provider. But she also ended up in a database. The center continued to call her every few weeks to ask for an update on the baby and offer parenting classes. And as women like Lisa around the country are led unsuspectingly into anti-abortion centers, known as “crisis pregnancy centers,” academics and advocates for reproductive rights are concerned about what happens to this potentially incriminating data — especially after abortion becomes illegal in many states following Friday’s Roe v. Wade ruling.

Once states pass laws making abortion and helping someone to get an abortion a felony, maybe first degree murder, then people's social media will lead enraged avenging Christians right to their victims. Who would have ever thought that a blither on a person's Facebook page or a Google search could get a pregnant woman or someone helping her put on death row? 

As far as respect goes, CPCs could not care less about respecting a woman's privacy. Roe was based on a right to privacy that the Christian nationalist God says does not exist. So why would a CPC respect other kinds of privacy, except for their own of course?

Speaking of disrespect, here is some disrespect from Clarence Thomas, along with gigantic hypocrisy: "Clarence Thomas says American citizens are seemingly 'more interested in their iPhones' than 'their Constitution. .... They're interested in what they want rather than what is right as a country. .... Thomas said Scalia had similar sentiments as him about a lack of urgency in protecting liberties." 

Thomas talking about what is right for the country or lack of urgency in protecting liberties?? Thomas and his fellow Christian nationalist theocrats are attacking civil liberties and they say they are the defenders?? 

Give me an effing break. What a lying hypocrite. Thomas wants to convert the US from a secular democracy to a Dark Ages Christian fundamentalist theocracy. Thomas' vision of what's right for the country is cruel, bigoted, iron fisted Christian Sharia law at the center of it all. 

Although he has been criticized for hypocrisy in saying this because he was a radical right Christian fundamentalist himself, Barry Goldwater once warned:

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”

The Republican Party Christian fundamentalism is undeniably engaged in an all-out war against democracy, secularism, pluralism, two-party rule, and inconvenient fact, truth and sound reasoning. There is no possibility of compromise or mercy from these cruel, enraged, vengeful, Christian warriors. And it is cruelty to treat people like terrified Lisa with callous contempt like ‘Well, honey, this is what happens when you have sex.’ 

Well people, that is the contemptuous disrespect that Christian nationalism shows to everyone who crosses their sacred lines. God does not tolerate miscreants or their bad behaviors. He will smite them hard. Miscreants will be re-educated, shut up, discriminated against, oppressed, put in jail and/or put to death.

What about Loving, and the due process and establishment clauses?

The Christians elites, bigoted and racist as they are, will probably not overturn Loving v. Virginia for now. The 1967 Loving decision made interracial marriage legal. That decision held that bans on interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Since Thomas is a Black married to a White wife, the bigoted White theocrats on the Supreme Court will probably let that minor inconvenience in the eyes of God slide, as long as Thomas is alive. 

But make no mistake, high priority Christian nationalist legal goals include gutting the due process clause and the establishment clauses of the Constitution. Both stand squarely in the way of establishing the bigoted, (I really do mean bigoted) kleptocratic theocracy that God demands America to be. After Thomas is gone, Loving will probably be gone too.[1] 

The establishment clause is now pretty close to being obliterated. Just a few more pro-Christianity Supreme Court decisions will finish it off for good. 

People, we are at war!

Footnote: 

1. Maybe that overstates the case, but maybe it doesn't. These people are hard core fundamentalists. That sacred ideology that includes the central dogma that White people are morally superior and chosen by God to rule over all others. The Christian nationalists will vehemently deny all of the criticisms I am levelling at them here. Their arguments are that they are defending liberty and making America into what it should be in accord with the Constitution. They say the US Constitution is a religious document, but that is a colossal lie. It is a secular document.

One of the core problems here is that Christian nationalists are chronic, shameless liars. To get put on the bench, they all told us that Roe v. Wade is settled law. Like hell it was settled law. Christian nationalists lie about their religious crusade to make America theocratic and kleptocratic again. This is not new. Christian nationalists have been liars for decades. Liars deserve no credibility or trust because they earned none.

I'll keep warning in defense of democracy until they come for me and force me to shut up. Then, I suppose I'll shut up.

Thomas' concurrence in Dobbs, 

the case that overturned Roe v. Wade

Due process cases that Thomas wants to overturn

or as he puts it, "reconsider":

Griswold: The Constitution protects the right of marital privacy 

against state restrictions on contraception

Lawrence: criminal punishment laws against sodomy are unconstitutional

Obergefell: same-sex marriage is a constitutional right

That is only part of the poison the on the 

Christian nationalist legal agenda

Crisis pregnancy centers: Places of immoral deceit, lies, disrespect and psychological pressure

This pregnancy crisis center is not what it appears to be

They help by deceiving, lying and disrespecting

vulnerable women

With abortion soon to become illegal in about half the states, I noticed a gap in my blog content. I haven’t focused on places called pregnancy crisis centers (CPCs). These places are usually located in low income neighborhoods. They are advertised as offering free abortion services. But for the most part, the industry is a morally rotted Christian fraud. What services they do provide is intense psychological and emotional pressure and fear-inducing lies to con a woman out of having an abortion. Their “services” are exclusively anti-abortion and almost always incomplete and/or wrong. The pressure and lies are usually provided by people skilled in manipulating people and exploiting human vulnerability at times of actual personal crisis and confusion.

An article published by the AMA Journal of Ethics, Why Crisis Pregnancy Centers Are Legal but Unethical, discusses CPCs and their legality. The article comments:

Crisis pregnancy centers are organizations that seek to intercept women with unintended pregnancies who might be considering abortion. Their mission is to prevent abortions by persuading women that adoption or parenting is a better option. They strive to give the impression that they are clinical centers, offering legitimate medical services and advice, yet they are exempt from regulatory, licensure, and credentialing oversight that apply to health care facilities. Because the religious ideology of these centers’ owners and employees takes priority over the health and well-being of the women seeking care at these centers, women do not receive comprehensive, accurate, evidence-based clinical information about all available options. Although crisis pregnancy centers enjoy First Amendment rights protections, their propagation of misinformation should be regarded as an ethical violation that undermines women’s health.

Drive down any highway in America, and you might see a sign: “Pregnant? Scared? Call 1-800-555-5555.” Most often, these signs are advertisements for crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs). CPCs, sometimes known as “pregnancy resource centers,” “pregnancy care centers,” “pregnancy support centers,” or simply “pregnancy centers,” are organizations that seek to intercept women with unintended or “crisis” pregnancies who might be considering abortion. Their mission is typically to prevent abortions by persuading women that adoption or parenting is a better option [1, 2]. One of the first CPCs opened in 1967 in Hawaii [3].

Most CPCs are religiously affiliated [4], and a majority are affiliated with a network or umbrella organization such as Birthright International, Care Net, Heartbeat International, or the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates [1, 3]. These umbrella organizations offer legal support, ultrasound training, and other services to CPCs. With an estimated 1,969 network-affiliated CPCs in the US in 2010 [1], CPCs outnumber abortion clinics, which were estimated at 327 as of 2011 [5]. Many state governments fund CPCs through mechanisms such as “Choose Life” specialty license plates and grants, and many also receive federal funding [3, 6].  

In this article, we will argue that both the lack of patient-centered care and deceptive practices make CPCs unethical. We will first highlight the discrepancy between the lack of standards for quality of care provided by CPCs and the innumerable restrictions on abortion clinics. We then show that CPCs violate principles of medical ethics, despite purporting to dispense medical advice.

An investigation about CPCs in California discussed the lies. That report commented:

These centers fraudulently present themselves as medical offices while their true intent is to lie to and shame women about their reproductive health options. CPCs use a wide array of deceptive tactics to push women to continue their pregnancies no matter what. 

Our investigation documents the lies told to our investigators and the shaming tactics used to discourage women from considering all of their options. A recently released national report by NARAL Pro-Choice America, Crisis Pregnancy Centers Lie: The Insidious Threat to Reproductive Health, confirms that CPCs are a threat to women’s reproductive health not only in California, but across the country.

CPCs Lie. 

CPC workers are well-trained to lie to women about physical and mental health issues they claim are associated with abortion. At every visit, our investigator reported that CPC workers repeated a similar set of lies and myths, noting, “it was scary how they all said the same things, it was like it didn’t matter who I was, they only had one script.” 

In 91 percent of the centers visited, this script included telling our investigator that having an abortion was linked to an increased risk of breast cancer, infertility, miscarriage, and/or the made-up “post-abortion depression” that results in suicide. These are blatant lies that have been disproved and rejected by the medical community.   

“They had these booklets where it showed different methods of birth control; IUD, the ring, the depo shot, and all that. So I started reading them, and none of them said what the benefits were – all of them said the risks, the bad side effects, and how all of them cause ‘medical abortions.’” 

CPCs only offer abstinence as the sole option to prevent pregnancy.  

More than 67% of the locations intentionally referred to the fetus as “baby” and told our investigator she was already a mother because she was already pregnant. During a majority of visits, CPC workers used gruesome and graphic words to describe an abortion in the hopes of frightening and humiliating women. One CPC told our investigator that if an abortion is not done correctly chances are “they might puncture your uterus and vacuum your fallopian tubes shut.” This psychological warfare has no place in a real counseling session.

Once again, radical right Christianity in America shows that it has no moral qualm or feels any shame in engaging in deceit and emotional manipulation. Tactics like that are routine whenever the Christian elites say something is God’s will. The sacred ends justify the morally rotted means. They do not hesitate to deceive and put intense pressure on women in crisis. That is Christian moral rot on display for all to see.

Apparently, Christian Sharia law reads out of the Bible the commandment, Thou shalt not lie.[1] It is fine to shamelessly deceive and lie as long as the elites tell the flock God says so, and even if the Christian con game ruins someone’s life. 

This is the vision of America that the Republican Party and Christian nationalism staunchly supports and wants to enforce on the entire country, not just red states.

Q: Where the hell is public education in all of this mess? Most of the pregnant women who wind up at CPCs seem to be shockingly ignorant. Or, is subverting public education just another another Republican Party and Christian nationalist goal focused on keeping people ignorant and easier to deceive?

Q: Did Germaine do an adequate job of discussing what CPCs are?

Footnote: 

1. One source comments on what the Bible says about lies and deceit:

God says Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor (Exodus 20:16). In other words, Thou shall not lie to one another.

These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren. (Proverbs 6:16-19) 

A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall perish. (Proverbs 19:9) 

Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him (Colossians 3:19) 

Etc. 

I'm no Bible expert, but stuff like that seems to at least hint that God does not condone deceit and fibbing. Or, with the radical right and CPCs are we merely witnessing routine, garden variety, moral rot?

Forced birth stories start to trickle out

Brooke Alexander cradles one of her twin daughters 

as she watches dad Billy High practice skateboarding tricks 

at the Portland Skate Park in Portland, TX

We all knew this day was coming. Now it is here. The Washington Post writes:

This Texas teen wanted an abortion. She now has twins.

Brooke Alexander found out she was pregnant 48 hours before the Texas abortion ban took effect

Running on four hours of sleep, the 18-year-old tried to feed both babies at once, holding Kendall in her arms while she tried to get Olivia to feed herself, her bottle propped up by a pillow. But the bottle kept slipping and the baby kept wailing. And Brooke’s boyfriend, Billy High, wouldn’t be home for another five hours.

“Please, fussy girl,” Brooke whispered.

She peeked outside the room, just big enough for a full-size mattress, and realized she had barely seen the sun all day. The windows were covered by blankets, pinned up with thumbtacks to keep the room cool. Brooke rarely ventured into the rest of the house. Billy’s dad had taken them in when her mom kicked them out, and she didn’t want to get in his way.

The hours without Billy were always the hardest. She knew he had to go — they relied entirely on the $9.75 an hour he made working the line at Freebirds World Burrito — but she tortured herself imagining all the girls he might be meeting. And she wished she had somewhere to go, too.

Brooke found out she was pregnant late on the night of Aug. 29, two days before the Texas Heartbeat Act banned abortions once an ultrasound can detect cardiac activity, around six weeks of pregnancy. It was the most restrictive abortion law to take effect in the United States in nearly 50 years.

Nearly 10 months into the Texas law, they have started having the babies they never planned to carry to term.

Texas offers a glimpse of what much of the country would face if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this summer, as has been widely expected since a leaked draft opinion circulated last month.

Sometimes Brooke imagined her life if she hadn’t gotten pregnant, if Texas hadn’t banned abortion just days after she decided that she wanted one. She would have been in school, rushing from class to her shift at Texas Roadhouse, eyes on a real estate license that would finally get her out of Corpus Christi. She’d pictured an apartment in Austin and enough money for a trip to Hawaii, where she’d swim with dolphins in water so clear she could see her toes.

When both babies finally started eating, Brooke took out her phone and restarted the timer that had been running almost continuously since the day they were born.

She had 2½ hours until they’d have to eat again.

Leaving Billy in her bedroom with the pregnancy test, Brooke grabbed her keys and drove to her best friend’s house, where they sat on his bed and examined her options.

She could always get an abortion, she told him.

Then he reminded her of something she vaguely remembered seeing on Twitter: A new law was scheduled to take effect Sept. 1.

Brooke had 48 hours.

The abortion clinic in South Texas — two and a half hours from Corpus Christi — had no open slots in the next two days, with patients across the state racing to get into clinics before the law came down. When Brooke called, the woman on the end of the line offered the names and addresses of clinics in New Mexico, a 13-hour drive from Corpus Christi.

In the meantime, the woman said, Brooke could get an ultrasound somewhere nearby: If she was under six weeks, they could still see her.

“We’re gonna see how far along it is,” Brooke texted her dad, Jeremy Alexander, later that night. “See if abortion is an option.”

“What’s the cut off date,” he asked.

“They just passed a law today!!” she responded in the early hours of Sept. 1, referring to the ban that had just taken effect. “What are the f---ing odds I believe it’s 6 weeks.”

“Fingers crossed????” her dad said.

Brooke found a place that would perform an ultrasound on short notice — and scheduled an appointment for 9 a.m.

Whenever a new client walks into the Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend, they are asked to fill out a form. After all the usual questions — name, date of birth, marital status — comes the one that most interests the staff: “If you are pregnant, what are your intentions?”

From there, the team sorts each client into one of three groups:\

If they’re planning to have the baby: “LTC,” likely to carry.

If they’re on the fence: “AV,” abortion vulnerable.

If they’re planning to get an abortion: “AM,” abortion minded.

The Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend — which advertises itself as the region’s “#1 Source of Abortion Information” — is one of thousands of crisis pregnancy centers across the United States, antiabortion organizations that are often religiously affiliated.

When Brooke showed up with her mom for her appointment, she had no idea she’d walked into a facility designed to dissuade people from getting abortions. She also didn’t know how much significance her form held for the staff: By signaling that she wanted an abortion, she became their first “AM” of the Texas Heartbeat Act.

The advocate assigned to her case, Angie Arnholt, had been counseling abortion-minded clients at the pregnancy center for a year. While many of the center’s volunteers signed up only to talk to “LTCs” — happy conversations about babies their clients couldn’t wait to have — Arnholt, a 61-year-old who wears a gold cross around her neck, felt called to do what she could to help women "make a good decision,” she later told The Washington Post.

Back in a consultation room, Brooke told Arnholt all the reasons she wanted to get an abortion.

She’d just enrolled in real estate classes at community college, which would be her first time back in a classroom since she dropped out of high school three years earlier at 15.

She and Billy had been dating only three months.

Sitting across from Brooke and her mom, Arnholt opened “A Woman’s Right to Know,” an antiabortion booklet distributed by the state of Texas, flipping to a page titled “Abortion risks.”

The first risk listed was “death.”

As Brooke listened to Arnholt’s warnings — of depression, nausea, cramping, breast cancer, infertility — she tried to stay calm, reminding herself that women get abortions all the time. Still, Brooke couldn’t help fixating on some of the words Arnholt used: Vacuum suction. Heavy bleeding. Punctured uterus. (Serious complications from abortion are rare. Abortion does not increase the risk of mental illness, breast cancer or infertility, according to leading medical organizations.)

Starting to panic, Brooke looked over at her mom.

Arnholt ushered Brooke into the ultrasound room, where Brooke undressed from the waist down and lay back onto an examination table, looking up at a large flat-screen TV.

As the ultrasound technician pressed the probe into her stomach, slathered with gel, Brooke willed the screen to show a fetus without a heartbeat.

The technician gasped.

It was twins. And they were 12 weeks along.

“Are you sure?” Brooke said.

“Oh, my God, oh, my God,” Thomas recalled saying as she jumped up and down. “This is a miracle from the Lord. We are having these babies.”

Brooke felt like she was floating above herself, watching the scene below. Her mom was calling the twins “my babies,” promising Brooke she would take care of everything, as the ultrasound technician told her how much she loved being a twin.

If she really tried, Brooke thought she could make it to New Mexico. Her older brother would probably lend her the money to get there. But she couldn’t stop staring at the pulsing yellow line on the ultrasound screen.

She wondered: If her babies had heartbeats, as these women said they did, was aborting them murder?

Eventually, Arnholt turned to Brooke and asked whether she’d be keeping them.

Brooke heard herself saying “yes.”  

Billy was scared to lose what he described as “the freedom of being a teenager.” After he graduated, he’d planned to keep working at Freebirds — just enough hours to get by — so he could maximize his skate time and “just chill.” People respected Billy at the skate park: Whenever he geared up to film some tricks, everyone else cleared out of the bowl.

By November, Billy was paying all of Brooke’s bills. She’d stopped working at Texas Roadhouse; the smell of the meat and grease had been making her sick to her stomach. To swing Brooke’s $330 car payment, they applied for a WIC card and ate ramen or pancakes for dinner. When they overdrafted Brooke’s credit card, Billy worked double shifts until he could pay it off.

Brooke wanted to work, but she couldn’t hack a waitressing job. At seven months pregnant, she struggled to stay on her feet for too long and felt utterly exhausted by even the simplest tasks. 

She started falling asleep while doing her homework. Then she missed a class. Then another.

When she decided to drop out of real estate school, she couldn’t bring herself to tell her teacher. She convinced herself it wasn’t that big of a deal — they’d be moving away soon anyway, and the Air Force would pay Billy enough to support them both.

Brooke wedged her real estate textbook in a line of books on her dresser, between “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” and the fourth Harry Potter.

Maybe she’d come back to it one day.

There you have it. Christians shamelessly lying directly out of their self-righteous mouths to con women into carrying fetuses to term that they did not want. God's sacred ends, justify filthy means. Brooke's life is probably over and those sanctimonious Christians are not going to do much or anything to help. 

This won't be the last like it. Some women will be happy they were conned or forced into carrying a fetus to birth, some won't and some will be ambivalent. Lots of lives will be derailed. Society will pay a price.

One thing that's pretty sure, those self-righteous Christians are not going to pay to support their cruel con game. And why should they? Us idiot taxpayers are forced to support Christianity with billions in tax breaks every year. And, despite Republican opposition to social safety net spending, us idiots also pay for the unwanted children the Christian con artists foist on society and the mothers who cannot afford to raise children on their own.