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

I will keep keep warning that the crippling, corrupting Christian nationalist attack on secularism is well underway. The NYT reports:

Nation’s First Religious Charter School Could Be Coming to Oklahoma

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

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

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

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

With conservative justices now dominating the Supreme Court, St. Isidore’s organizers hope their project will help propel a broader national movement to lower the barriers between church and state and to allow government money to be spent on religious schools. 

Characterizing opponents as “radical leftists” with a hatred for the Catholic Church, Mr. Walters urged board members to make Oklahoma a leader in religious freedom and in expanded options for school children. He added: “I’ll stand by you, any kind of intimidation that comes your way.” 

In a series of recent rulings, the Supreme Court, which now has a 6-to-3 conservative majority, has signaled its support for the directing of taxpayer money to religious schools, amid a broader embrace of the role of religion in public life.

Once the theocrat Republican Supreme Court allows this, and presumably it will (~85% chance?), the floodgates will be opened nationwide for plunder of tax revenues by force by corrupt, rapacious Christian theocrat radicals. We will be royally screwed.

A corrupt Oklahoma Archbishop blessing the 

rape and slaughter of secularism

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

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The Twitter hellscape v. 2: National Public Radio (NPR) is quitting Twitter:

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

Last week, Twitter under Musk had labeled a number of media outlets that receive some public funding with a “state-affiliated media” label — a descriptor typically reserved for propaganda outlets like RT and China’s Xinhua. NPR responded by ceasing tweets from its primary account, which carries more than 8 million followers.

Once again, the obvious ill-will and bad faith that dominates radical right sentiment and tactics is on public display. NPR is not close to RT or Xinhua. That is a fact, not an opinion. This is standard lies and slanders tactic the radical right routinely employs to win hearts and minds.

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How American fascists do lawsuits: NBC News reports:

Fox News sanctioned for withholding evidence in Dominion defamation case

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

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

According to a person present in the courtroom, lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems played recordings Fox News producer Abby Grossberg made during 2020, which were not handed over to Dominion's lawyers during discovery.

This is an example of, or comes as close as one can get, to the powerful urge for radical right authoritarians to fabricate evidence. I thought this tactic would start blatantly a couple of years ago, but as far as I can tell, that has not happened yet. The faux 2020 election audit the Cyber Ninja goofballs did in Arizona seemed like the likely place for data fabrication to start in earnest. Apparently, Faux is going to lead the charge into the death of facts, truths and reasonable reasoning.

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

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From the Radical Tight Corruption & Sleaze Beat: The Lever writes:

Thomas Pushed To Kill Disclosure Laws While Getting Secret Billionaire Gifts

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

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

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

It was later revealed that Thomas and the late Justice Antonin Scalia had attended conferences hosted by Koch Industries, which pours massive amounts of money into U.S. politics.

Thomas is a true, full blown old-fashioned political bribe-endorsing fascist. So was Scalia. For them these advanced math equations apply: money = power; pluralistic secular democracy = evil and bad; bigoted, intolerant fascism = God's chosen way and good.

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Wisdom from the National Park Service: The WaPo writes about these warnings the NPS has to put out to remind people of some important things:

Most squirrel bites originate at the front, or “bitey end,” of the squirrel.

— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) March 20, 2023

Don't pet the fluffy cows. 🦬

— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) March 30, 2023

Did you know if you hold an ermine up to your ear, you can hear what it’s like to be attacked by an ermine? pic.twitter.com/CS20M9XDjh

— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) February 1, 2023

BEWARE OF SATAN!

 Satan is real. Dolly Pardon has said so:

Dolly Parton Warns ‘Satan is Real’ in New NBC Christmas Special

 | Dec 7, 2022

“My brothers and my sisters,” Parton begins. “I’m here to tell you that Satan is real. He is real and walking around amongst us trying to destroy everything that’s good and beautiful. He wants to break our hearts and minds, destroy our dreams and plans. He wants to tear us up into little pieces, break us down and send us straight to hell.”

Parton then adds, “My God can do anything. My God can heal the sick, mend broken hearts and take our souls to heaven.”

https://dailycitizen.focusonthefamily.com/dolly-parton-warns-satan-is-real-in-new-nbc-christmas-special/

Apparently the dailycitizen agrees with her:

So, what should the discerning Christian think about Parton’s new Christmas special?

On the one hand, it’s certainly a good thing for a major celebrity to remind the world of the reality of Satan and hell.

From the very first chapters of the book of Genesis, Scripture teaches about the reality of Satan and his schemes to deceive and destroy the world. In addition, Jesus Christ frequently taught about the Devil and hell.

Fear is Satan’s primary tool for sterilizing you

Without faith, it’s impossible to please God, and without faith is where probably most Christians are at this moment.  Satan knows if he can rob you of your faith, you can’t share your faith — because you can’t share what you don’t have. In fact, fear is Satan’s primary tool for sterilizing you, to keep you from reproducing more Christians. He knows having faith and sharing your faith are two sides of the same coin.

https://www.christianpost.com/voices/fear-is-satans-primary-tool-for-sterilizing-you.html

Not convinced yet?

The truth is that talking about Satan isn’t going to win you a lot of popularity points. If most people think about Satan they envision him as a red devil with horns and a pitchfork. It is much more acceptable to talk about God and his plan and his love. And of course we should talk of Christ and preach of Christ and prophesy of Christ. But knowledge of Satan is absolutely crucial if we are going to survive his increasingly bold assault and discern his increasingly devious strategies. 

Why is it worth our efforts to study the origin, character, and tactics of the adversary? I believe there are at least eight reasons.

The eight reasons listed here:

https://latterdaysaintmag.com/why-learn-more-about-satan/

AND PLEASE, when wondering why I posted this thread, Don't say the Devil made me do it!

Continuing commentary about Clarence Thomas: Normalization of blatant corruption continues

The NYT published an interesting opinion by Adam Cohen,  a former member of the NYT editorial board. Cohen writes:

54 Years Ago, a Supreme Court Justice Was Forced to Quit 

for Behavior Arguably Less Egregious Than Thomas’s

There are two distressing aspects to the scandal of Justice Clarence Thomas’s years of accepting luxurious vacations and private jet trips from a billionaire, as revealed last week in a damning investigation by ProPublica.

The first is that these gifts came from a man who seems to have strong feelings about issues that come before the Supreme Court. The second is the lack of bipartisan outrage at malfeasance that corrodes the standing of the nation’s highest court.

.... it is worth recalling that the last time such serious allegations were made against a sitting justice, Congress did respond firmly and in bipartisan fashion. Justice Abe Fortas’s departure from the court in 1969 is both a blueprint for how lawmakers could respond today and a benchmark of how far we have fallen.

Justice Thomas’s conduct has been far more egregious in scale than Fortas’s. ProPublica reported that a single nine-day “island hopping” trip by Justice Thomas and his wife, which included a 162-foot superyacht, could have cost him over $500,000 if he had chartered the private jet he flew on and the yacht himself.

The defenses being made on Justice Thomas’s behalf hardly pass the laugh test. It was just, as Justice Thomas put it, “personal hospitality” among close friends? That would be a nice meal at a friend’s home, not an invitation to travel the world like royalty on a plutocrat’s dime. And about that friendship: ProPublica reports that Justice Thomas’s rich benefactor, the real estate developer Harlan Crow, befriended him after he became a justice. It is hard to believe that if Justice Thomas started voting like Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the friendship or the free island hopping would continue.

Democrats in Congress are also pushing for a code of ethics for the justices who, unlike lower court federal judges, are not covered by one.

Republicans, however, have been deafeningly silent. Fox News has filled the void by locating an “expert” to declare that the story about Justice Thomas is “politics, plain and simple.” Influential Republicans in Congress are reported to be working behind the scenes to block the push for a code of ethics.

News bits: Irate professor calls DeSantis a fascist; Electrons are very round ⭕; Radicalizing Democrats

Newsweek reports:

The director of New College of Florida's applied data science program has offered his resignation in a letter that accused Governor Ron DeSantis of being a "fascist" over his conservative overhaul of the school.

Aaron Hillegass has worked at New College—a public liberal arts institution in Sarasota, Florida—since November 2022, according to his LinkedIn profile. His role has been to recruit students and professors, help students find jobs after leaving school, and teach machine learning. On April 8, he offered his resignation, decrying alleged attempts to transform the school into the "Hillsdale of the South."  

DeSantis and other Republican politicians have for months been pointing to Hillsdale College, a private conservative Christian institution in Michigan, as a model for what they want education nationwide to look like. 

In his letter, Hillegass protested DeSantis' alleged moves to transform New College into a new Hillsdale, stating that the Michigan school is "bad for America" because it "cultivates prejudice" towards minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and non-Christians.

"When a governor guts the leadership of a state school in an effort to make a facsimile of Hillsdale, that is fascism. Not the shocking Kristallnacht-style fascism, but the banal fascism that always precedes it," the academic wrote.

This is just some more evidence of the deep animosity that Christian nationalist elites have toward secular education and education about inconvenient subject matter. This is not just public schools at risk. This theocratic attitude includes post high school education institutions. Specifically, they want to entirely get rid of both and replace them with (i) Christian fundamentalism and myths, and (ii) Whitewashed false history.

The MSM, Newsweek here, keeps referring to this kind of politics as conservative. The MSM still does not get it. This kind of politics is not conservative. It is radical right for the politically correct, or fascism or Christofascism for the more blunt.

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Boring physics - electrons are very, very round: Quanta Magazine writes:

Imagine an electron as a spherical cloud of negative charge. If that ball were ever so slightly less round, it could help explain fundamental gaps in our understanding of physics, including why the universe contains something rather than nothing.**

Given the stakes, a small community of physicists has been doggedly hunting for any asymmetry in the shape of the electron for the past few decades. The experiments are now so sensitive that if an electron were the size of Earth, they could detect a bump on the North Pole the height of a single sugar molecule.

The latest results are in: The electron is rounder than that.

The updated measurement disappoints anyone hoping for signs of new physics. But it still helps theorists to constrain their models for what unknown particles and forces may be missing from the current picture.

Jeez, the height of a sugar molecule on a ball the size of Earth? That seems to be pretty darned sensitive. 

** Current theory posits that we should not exist because the big bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. When matter and anti-matter collide, they mutually annihilate and release a lot of energy, and particles like neutrinos and various flavors of quarks. Obviously since we're made of matter and doing human stuff, there's still some things we don't understand about the universe. 

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Radicalization of the Democratic Party: Radicalization of the left in response to the radicalization of the right is an ongoing process according to some observers. A 2019 article in The Atlantic pointed to the rise of Bernie Sanders, a socialist who calls himself a democratic socialist. That was cited as evidence of a movement in the Democratic Party toward the far left. Socialism really is far left, so that could be called radicalization. Despite Bernie's popularity, the Democratic Party is still mostly controlled by neoliberal capitalists. Socialism is not going to happen with that crowd in charge.

A WaPo opinion cites the effects that radicalized Republican politics in red states is having on young Democrats who are active in politics. The WaPo opinion comments:

The reactionary turn underway in many red states is beginning to shape a new generation of young Democratic officials, many of whom will one day be the party’s leaders.

In these red states, young Democrats are entering local politics and developing public presences in response to the far-right culture-warring unleashed by GOP majorities. New restrictions on abortion and the growing right-wing backlash to LGBTQ rights are radicalizing a wave of Democratic public servants who mostly hail from the Gen Z and millennial generations.

“We’re seeing this across the country,” said Amanda Litman, a co-founder of Run For Something, which recruits progressive candidates for state and local office. “It’s no coincidence that some of the loudest voices pushing back are young leaders in red states, often from urban environments, often people of color, often LGBTQ themselves.”

Last week, after the GOP-controlled state legislature in Tennessee expelled two young Black lawmakers for protesting gun violence, and after a Texas judge invalidated federal approval of abortion medication, Run For Something’s candidate recruitment spiked. Litman says more than half the new candidates are from red states.

What binds these lawmakers and candidates together is an acute sense that the character of the country is on the line and it could determine their own futures. “For them, every part of this conversation is personal,” Litman says.

As one would expect, this is an issue that radical right propaganda plays on and spins into a narrative of a hellscape run by communists, socialists, strange, dangerous people like people of color, atheists or LGBTQ people. Republican elites and leadership now routinely refer to the left as the radical left. That is standard American fascist rhetoric.  

Despite a movement to the left of some of the Democratic Party, Pew Research data from 2022 indicates that congress has generally become more conservative over the last 50 years. So at least at the level of congress and red state legislatures, the drift to the left in those places apparently has not made much of a difference yet.