Bits: Legal update; Crackpot watch update; Rudi gets wacked by judge

The Daily Beast reports about a rare bit of good news for us, bad news for DJT and the dirty businesses who enabled his sleaze:

Banks and insurance companies trying to keep the public in the dark about their business dealings with Donald Trump ran into a ray of legal sunshine on Tuesday, after a judge ruled that he wouldn’t seal records in the run-up to the New York Attorney General’s upcoming trial against the real estate mogul.

A handful of firms associated with Trump made a last-ditch effort to hide documents that detailed the way they unwittingly became part of the Trump Organization’s alleged scheme to inflate assets. But the judge, Arthur F. Engoron, ruled that—aside from information like the home addresses of certain employees and bank account numbers—the public has a right to see the documents and communications.

The former president is just 34 days away from heading to civil trial in New York City, where his personal finances will be put under a microscope while the state’s AG tries to bleed his corporation dry over the way it routinely overstated its holdings on official documents.  

But with that trial around the corner, the companies that kept lending him hundreds of millions of dollars for business deals are trying to quietly slink away into the shadows—and hide the paperwork that shows how they played along.

As usual, this evinces businesses operating in as much secrecy as possible. Why? Because most businesses have a hell of a lot of bad stuff to hide. One could even say there are buttloads of bad stuff to hide.

Aren't all businesses good and ethical? You decide. What bad stuff could there possibly be?  

Well, there's these items for example, price gouging, deceit and abuse of consumers, deceit of government, law breaking, shocking incompetence of arrogant nincompoop executives, more price gouging, toxic chemicals in food and other products, illegal labor use, vast pollution of the environment, legal and illegal child labor use, tax evasion, fraud, murder, lies, deceit, slanders, crackpot conspiracy theories, support of criminals like DJT, executives and employees fornicating, executives supporting authoritarian, theocratic, fascist, bigoted and/or racist groups and ideologies like the John Birch Society and Christian nationalism, more price gouging, intentional design of low quality products, intentional design of products that go obsolete, intentional design of products that when broken cannot be fixed, more price gouging, purchase of congress and state legislatures to (i) legalize corruption and create tax loopholes, and (ii) protect business from consumer lawsuits, etc. 

Stuff like that, you know? Hm. Ooh, there's some very nasty business in that list of business nastiness. Now I've scared myself. I think this issue is going to be appealed all the way to the USSC. Companies that did sleazy business with DJT have a hell of a lot to hide. They need to get the USSC to protect their sacred corporate privacy. After all, corporations are very powerful people, right? Right.  

Hm. Now I wonder why it is that power corporation people get their privacy respected, but powerless people people do not, e.g., forced birth laws. Could it be that government is corrupted and subverted by special interests a vehicle that services special interests before it services the public interest? . . . . . Hell yes.

_____________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________

The Hill reports about the spread of fresh anti-vaxx crackpottery:

A new study found that dog owners in the U.S. are growing more skeptical of vaccinating their four-legged friends — including to help prevent rabies.

The study, published Saturday in the medical journal Vaccine, found that 53 percent of dog owners had some concern about the safety, efficacy or necessity of canine vaccines.

Additionally, 37 percent were concerned that vaccines could cause “cognitive issues” in dogs and may lead them to develop autism, a theory not backed up by scientific evidence.  

The study found that more owners are experiencing Canine Vaccine Hesitancy (CVH), defined in the journal as “dog owners’ skepticism about the safety and efficacy of administering routine vaccinations to their dogs.”

On the horizon, crackpots who believe that paying taxes is the work of Satan. Oh, those crackpots are already here. Never mind. 

_____________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________

In another sign of how openly contemptuous that DJT and his thugs have for the rule of law, Rudi got wacked without even making it to a trial to determine his liability for defamation. The WaPo writes:

U.S. Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled that Giuliani was liable for defaming two Georgia election workers whom he falsely accused of tampering with votes.

Howell took the extraordinary step of ruling against Giuliani without a trial, while saying he had deliberately shirked his obligation to turn over crucial discovery materials in the case.

In the blistering 57-page opinion, she suggested Giuliani’s failure to turn over materials was aimed at avoiding liability not just in the defamation case but more broadly — including, apparently, in the Fulton County case. She said Giuliani’s conduct left her no choice because the election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, were deprived of materials they needed to argue their case.

At the core of Howell’s ruling is the idea that the prominent longtime lawyer and former swashbuckling federal prosecutor must have known better. She repeatedly cited Giuliani’s lengthy legal career to make the case that he had deliberately avoided his responsibility to preserve and turn over records.

“The fact that Giuliani is a sophisticated litigant with a self-professed 50 years of experience in litigation — including serving as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York — only underscores his lackluster preservation efforts,” she wrote.

So, Rudi gets nailed without even making it to trial on the merits of the lawsuit because he withheld evidence, maybe even destroyed it. In view of the fact that Rudi was a big mouthed federal prosecutor, hiding or destroying evidence is about as openly contemptuous of the law as it can get. Judge Howell has already ordered Rudi to pay $132,000 in sanctions for failing to comply with court orders. The rest of this trial will be to determine damages Rudy will have to pay to the two people he has now been held liable for defaming. This ought to bankrupt him. Good. It would be better if the thug got years of jail time, but that's for the other Georgia lawsuit, a criminal case with possible jail time.

News bits: The CN's tax revenue war; America's civil war update; Traitors & crackpots updates

A WaPo article discusses the CN (Christian nationalist) wealth and power movement's decades-long efforts to sink radical Christian claws deep into tax revenues: 

On a private call with Christian millionaires, home-schooling pioneer Michael Farris pushed for a strategy aimed at siphoning billions of tax dollars from public schools

For decades, Farris — a conservative Christian lawyer who is the most influential leader of the modern home-schooling movement — had toiled at the margins of American politics. His arguments about the harms of public education and the divinely endowed rights of parents had left many unconvinced.

Now, speaking on a confidential conference call to a secretive group of Christian millionaires seeking, in the words of one member, to “take down the education system as we know it today,” Farris made the same points he had made in courtrooms since the 1980s. Public schools were indoctrinating children with a secular worldview that amounted to a godless religion, he said.

The solution: lawsuits alleging that schools’ teachings about gender identity and race are unconstitutional, leading to a Supreme Court decision that would mandate the right of parents to claim billions of tax dollars for private education or home schooling.

The 50-minute recording, whose details Farris did not dispute in a series of interviews with The Post, is a remarkable demonstration of how the ideology he has long championed has moved from the partisan fringe to the center of the nation’s bitter debates over public education.

A deeply religious evangelical from Washington state, Farris began his career facing off with social workers over the rights of home-schoolers and representing Christian parents who objected to “Rumpelstiltskin” being read in class.  

It is outside the courtroom that Farris’s influence has arguably been most profound. No single figure has been more instrumental in transforming the parental rights cause from an obscure concern of Christian home-schoolers into a GOP rallying cry. 

When former president Donald Trump called for a federal parental bill of rights in a 2023 campaign video, saying secular public school instruction had become a “new religion,” he was invoking arguments Farris first made 40 years ago. The executive order targeting school mask mandates that Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) signed on his first day in office cited a 2013 state law guaranteeing “fundamental” parental rights that Farris helped write.

I have said it multiple times here and say it again. The radical, bigoted CN theocracy movement hates secular education, government and law. It is patient and ruthless in its efforts to break down legal barriers the Christian church faces in making taxpayers pay for as much of Christian operations as it can get away with. Once cash floodgates are opened, Christian power will increase enormously. Extremist Christian power will probably increase too much for democracy, civil liberties and secular rule of law to withstand the onslaught.

CN's Christian Taliban elites intend to force everyone to pay it for whatever its elites choose to do, even if most people do not it done to them. This is not a majority movement. It never has been. It is a deeply corrupt, extremist minority seeking to install a Christian theocratic dictatorship on all Americans, and American government, commerce and society.  

This is just another warning. I'll keep the warnings up as long as the Christian Taliban allows it. Once they get power, I'll be silenced.

_______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

The AP writes about the deepening hate and discord rising in the courts, in Wisconsin state courts in this case:

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The conservative chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday told the new liberal majority in a scathing email that they had staged a “coup” and conducted an “illegal experiment” when they voted to weaken her powers and fire the director of state courts.

Chief Justice Annette Ziegler, in two emails obtained by The Associated Press, said that firing and hiring a new state court director was illegal and ordered interim state court director Audrey Skwierawski to stop signing orders without her knowledge or approval.

“You are making a mess of the judiciary, the court and the institution for years to come,” Ziegler wrote to her fellow justices and Skwierawski. “This must stop. ... I have no confidence in the recent hostile takeover and the chaotic effect it has had on the court, staff, and the overall stable functioning of the courts.”

Liberals gained a 4-3 majority on Aug. 1 when Justice Janet Protasiewicz began her 10-year term after winning election in April. Conservatives had held the majority for 15 years prior to that. The emails are the latest sign of broiling tensions on the court since liberals took control.  

In their first week in power, the liberal justices voted to fire the state court director, hire Skwierawski and create a committee to do much of the work that the chief justice had done, a move that significantly weakened Ziegler. She was elected by the conservative majority to a second two-year term as chief justice in May.

Justice Rebecca Dallet, one of the four liberals, responded to Ziegler late Monday by saying she was “disappointed” that Ziegler was communicating through the media with a “deeply inappropriate, and at times partisan, tone and tenor.”

Dallet defended actions of the majority justices, saying everything they have done is constitutional.

“We are simply creating process so that a majority of the court can effectively work in the face of an intransigent and uncollegial chief who apparently insists on a public debate about issues for political purposes, rather than allow a court majority to function as it always has,” Dallet said.

Radical right authoritarian Wisconsin 

Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler

_______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

MTN reports that DJT vows to appeal an non-appealable order about the trial start date:

Trump Attacks Judge; Vows To Appeal Non-Appealable 

Trial Date in New Deranged Posts

Donald Trump once again went off the rails in a post on Truth Social today, attacking Jack Smith and Judge Tanya Chutkan and announcing he will appeal the date of his trial over the January 6th insurrection, which is set for March 4th, 2024.

In the post, Trump called Chutkan a "biased, Trump hating judge," and said the Trial would be based on the findings of "the January 6th Unselect Committee of Marxists, Fascists, and political hacks," and once again repeated the lie that the January 6th committee "DESTROYED & DELTED" evidence, and stated, "I will APPEAL."

The only problem with this: Trump can't appeal the trial date. Dates of trial are non-appealable. 

As far right extremism heats up in anticipation of civil war, Right Wing Watch has lots to report. One RWW article reports about biblical revisionism by what used to be crackpot, fringe far right lies and slanders:

‘Jesus Wasn’t a Pacifist’: Training Christian Minutemen to 

Remove ‘Domestic Enemies’ From Office

The “Elijah Streams” program has become increasingly focused on promoting far-right conspiracy theorists and self-proclaimed “prophets” who resolutely insist that Trump is actually still president.

The most vocal of these guests has been Johnny Enlow, a Trump cultist, QAnon conspiracy theorist, self-proclaimed “prophet,” and Seven Mountains dominionist who believes that the United States government should “function as a virtual theocracy.” Enlow, who is associated with the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation movement, has made dozens of appearances on the “Elijah Steams” program where he has incessantly spread wild conspiracy theories and made untold baseless claims for which there is no evidence.

Following Trump’s loss, Enlow openly declared that Trump would be justified in imposing martial law and calling for revolution. “

On Tuesday, Enlow served as a guest host on “Elijah Steams,” where he interviewed Amanda and Henry Hastings, who run a biblically based tactical weapons training program called Shoot, Move, Communicate. Henry Hastings is a former special forces commander who “transitioned to the ministry” until, he claims, he had a “supernatural encounter” in which God reportedly told him to start training up “modern-day Minutemen”—emphasis on “men.”

Jesus certainly wasn’t a pacifist,” Hastings said. “If you go to the Book of Revelation and you really get to know who the Lord is, he’s definitely not an anti-war pacifist at all. And if you want to go to the Old Covenant and see how men moved and operated, there were definite enemies. … They were people and they were enemies, and men had to go up when freedom was threatened by them and overtake and destroy those who would threaten freedom.”

Those feisty Christian nationalists are an increasingly violence-prone terrorist group. Another exciting RWW article comments:

Larry Klayman Claims ‘Citizen Grand Jury’ Has Convicted Biden, 

Calls on Military and Law Enforcement to Enforce Sentence

Klayman said that “sentencing of the corrupt Biden plan” will be held August 29. “We will then commission established law enforcement and the military to take Biden and his son and his brother into custody if they don’t turn themselves in, and frankly, put them in the slammer,” he said in a video posted on YouTube. He has promised future trials of public health official Anthony Fauci and other perceived enemies of the MAGA movement.

Klayman’s cosplay has no legal standing, but could inspire violent behavior from one of former President Donald Trump’s passionate supporters. Klayman denounced the “Marxian Jewish left” he said was persecuting Trump, calling for a “counterrevolution.” He called the judge in the Georgia indictment an “anti-white racist.” He said he believes that someone in Trump’s orbit will be harmed, which would set off Trump’s supporters.

We all hope that this crackpottery is still fringe radical right lies, crackpottery and treason. If this drivel is mainstream in the Republican Party, the situation with the radical right is a lot worse than most people imagine. 

Far right activist, liar, traitor 

and lawyer Larry Klayman

Somebody is actually paying attention to Klayman's lies and slanders,

even though he sounds a lot like Mike Lindell the crackpot pillow guy

Bits: BKC lobbying corrupts congress, again; COVID update; A massive BKC war is brewing

After the trail derailment On Feb. 3 in East Palestine Ohio, Norfolk Southern railroad dropped its years-long opposition to safety regulations that would have prevented the derailment. NS opposition to the regulations has returned and it effectively blocks the regulations pending in congress. In other words it is just BKC (brass knuckles capitalism) doing business as usual by corrupting and subverting government with cash. 

The Intercept describes how relatively small amounts of BKC cash controls congress to get 'er done! while the public interest gets shafted as usual:

AFTER LAYING LOW in the wake of the disastrous East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment, Norfolk Southern is back to spending millions in Congress — and a paper trail indicates that it’s lobbying for weaker regulation and rewarding members of Congress who play along.

From the day of the derailment on February 3 through the end of April, the company made no political contributions, instead receiving refunds of donations it had made to a number of campaigns. But as the national spotlight dimmed, the company got back to work.

In the last four months, Norfolk spent $1,657,500 on lobbyists who met with the same elected officials tasked with regulating the company. And in June and July alone, the company shelled out almost $200,000 to a myriad of congressional campaigns and political action committees, or PACs, according to its recent filings with the Federal Election Commission, including one from this week.  

As Norfolk went on a spending spree, the Bipartisan Railway Safety Act stalled in the Senate, due to a lack of sufficient Republican support. .... The oil company that manufactured the toxic chemicals that were released in Ohio has also donated heavily to Republicans while pushing to weaken the bill, The Lever reported.  

OVER THE SUMMER, Norfolk Southern donated $5,000 to each of the PACs associated with GOP Sens. Marsha Blackburn, Ted Budd, Shelley Moore Capito, John Cornyn, John Hoeven, and Cynthia Lummis — most of them members of the Senate transportation committee. Meanwhile, Blackburn and Sen. Roger Wicker received $1,500 and $5,000, respectively, to their campaign accounts. None of the Republican senators’ offices responded to requests for comment on the donations, nor about their stances on the Bipartisan Railway Safety Act.

Meanwhile, a few Democrats have welcomed cash from the rail giant too. The PACs of Sens. Joe Manchin and Chris Van Hollen each received $5,000. Manchin’s office did not answer a question about the donation, and Van Hollen’s office did not respond to a request for comment.  

Many of the lobbyists working on behalf of the rail industry previously worked in the halls of Congress, now subbing their congressional staffer badges for a Norfolk Southern-stamped guest pass. So far this year, 167 of Norfolk Southern’s lobbyists are among the industry pack who used to hold government jobs. And some were even members of Congress themselves, like former Sens. Trent Lott (a Republican) and John Breaux (a Democrat). In one of their $60,000 Norfolk Southern contracts, the pair were among lobbyists speaking to Congress on an array of “regulatory issues affecting the railroad industry,” including the Bipartisan Railway Safety Act.

Three very important points

Worth noting are three important things. First, in addition to this blatant but normalized and routine conflict of interest mode of political operation, one can only wonder how much that ~$2 million in recent payments to lobbyists, corrupt politicians and corrupt political groups is worth to Norfolk. Probably at least about ten times that much, each year. The Intercept did not say what the return on its corruption campaign investment is worth.

Second is the fact that campaign finance laws requiring reporting of spending were necessary for this kind of reporting to happen. Without such laws, The Intercept would not have been able to get this data. Everyone involved in legalized corruption like this would simply not answer question from reporters or anyone else about how much special interests paid to whom, or how much recipients received. The public would know nothing about any of this corruption.

Third, prominent radical right, pro-tyranny Republicans like Clarence Thomas vehemently oppose all laws related to reporting of spending or gifts to anyone in government. The radical authoritarian's legal theory is that the US Constitution contains and protects an implicit, almost absolute right to private free speech. If that radical pro-corruption idea ever becomes the law, all of this corruption would go on in private. Everyone involved could say nothing or lie. The public would never know. Kleptocrats love conducting business in secrecy. The more secrecy, the more corruption there can be. 

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

COVID is probably not going to go away. It is going to keep mutating and threatening waves of pandemic. The Ohio State University newsletter discusses the situation:

COVID-19 virus is evolving rapidly in white-tailed deer

White-tailed deer across Ohio have been infected with the virus that causes COVID-19, new research has found – and the results also show that viral variants evolve about three times faster in deer than in humans.

Scientists collected 1,522 nasal swabs from free-ranging deer in 83 of the state’s 88 counties between November 2021 and March 2022. More than 10% of the samples were positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and at least one positive case was found in 59% of the counties in which testing took place.

Genomic analysis showed that at least 30 infections in deer had been introduced by humans – a figure that surprised the research team.

“We generally talk about interspecies transmission as a rare event, but this wasn’t a huge sampling, and we’re able to document 30 spillovers. It seems to be moving between people and animals quite easily,” said Andrew Bowman, associate professor of veterinary preventive medicine at The Ohio State University and co-senior author of the study.

“And the evidence is growing that humans can get it from deer – which isn’t radically surprising. It’s probably not a one-way pipeline.”  

The 80 whole-genome sequences obtained from the collected samples were represented groups of viral variants: the highly contagious delta variant, the predominant human strain in the United States in the early fall of 2021 that accounted for almost 90% of the sequences, and alpha, the first named variant of concern that had circulated in humans in the spring of 2021. An investigation of the mutations found in the samples provided evidence of more rapid evolution of both alpha and delta variants in deer compared to humans.

So not only are humans not taking COVID seriously, e.g., not getting vaccinated, there is a reservoir of valiant patriots who harbor misconceptions about the disease and how to reduce the risk of spreading the infection in humans who might get sick and die or suffer long COVID.

Q: Where did all the shockingly deceived Americans come from? Did QAnon do it?

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

From the BKCs Are Royally Pissed Files: The NYT writes about the Biden administration starting the process of negotiating drug prices for Medicare and Medicaid under an evil socialist, communist, pedophile Democrat law: 

U.S. Announces First Drugs Picked for Medicare Price Negotiations 

The price negotiation program, established by Democrats as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, is expected to save the government tens of billions of dollars in the coming years

The Biden administration on Tuesday announced the first 10 medicines that will be subject to price negotiations with Medicare, kicking off a landmark program that is expected to reduce the government’s drug spending but is being fought by the pharmaceutical industry in court.

The medications on the list are taken by millions of older Americans and cost Medicare billions of dollars annually.

That is really going to make drug companies furious. We can expect a blizzard of lobbyists with hoards of cash to parachute onto congress so they can  get 'er done! while the public interest gets shafted as usual. It will be interesting to watch to see how long it takes before this pro-public interest effort gets corrupted and subverted by relentless, ruthless BKCs doing their business on congress. 

One can imagine that the radical BKCs that dominate the USSC might have to step in to save those outrageous reasonable drug company profit margins if suitable action from congress cannot be purchased. I think I can see some really great vacations for Clarence Thomas on the horizon.  

Drug company lobbyists 

parachuting onto congress

Supplies of drug company cash for congress 

and the Supreme Court if necessary

An incoming 2nd wave 

of lobbyists

Clarence T. anticipating fun evening soirees with the incoming lobbyists

 and their $$$, followed by some really great all expenses paid vacations!

Bits: Psychology of conspiracy theory spread; Geothermal energy update; Constitutional sherrifs movement

PsyPost writes about a recent research paper that examined the role of what is called the need for chaos plays in spreading conspiracy theories (CTs):

New research suggests that a psychological concept known as “the need for chaos” plays a bigger role than partisanship and ideology in the sharing of conspiracy theories on the internet. The study, published in Research & Politics, indicates that individuals driven by a desire to disrupt and challenge established systems are more inclined to share conspiracy theories.

The authors wanted to explore three specific motivations behind the sharing of conspiracy theories: motivated sharing (sharing to bolster their or their group’s beliefs), sounding the alarm (sharing to generate collective action against a political outgroup due to feelings of losing), and the need for chaos (sharing to disrupt the political system regardless of partisanship or belief). 

“Although earlier work found a positive relationship between the need for chaos and sharing (and that the need for chaos superseded partisan motivations for sharing) these studies did not assess how the need for chaos affected sharing when pitted against a direct measure of conspiracy theory belief. Testing these mechanisms together is important because people who believe conspiracy theories might be more willing to share them online, but belief is not a necessary condition for sharing.”

The article goes on to point out that people with a high need for chaos tend to agree with statements such as “We cannot fix the problems in our social institutions, we need to tear them down and start over” and “I need chaos around me – it is too boring if nothing is going on.” Also, the data indicated that belief in a conspiracy theory was the strongest strong predictor of willingness to share it.

The factors in order of importance of a person’s tendency to spread a CT online: 

belief a CT is true > the need for chaos > feeling our side is losing (sounding the alarm, or roughly partisanship or ideology) 

The need for chaos tends to be somewhat independent of belief a CT is true or false because the urge to spread it is driven by a person’s belief that the whole system needs to be destroyed and rebuilt from scratch. 

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

By now, it is likely that the US government will no longer be able to seriously deal with greenhouse gas emissions. The polluters have won the war. The last major federal action was a big spending bill the Democrats with the support of some Republicans pushed through congress before the Dems lost the House in the 2020 elections. 

Government has been corrupted and mostly neutered by a combination of effective, decades-long opposition to dealing with global warming from (1) corrupted radical right anti-regulation dogma and propaganda underpinned by brass knuckles capitalism, and (2) major pro-pollution business interests, prominently huge oil, gas, coal and chemical corporations, also buttressed by ruthless propaganda. At this point, advances in energy science and technology will probably be needed to save us from environmental disaster. Absent that, we're probably hosed.

The NYT reports about possibly significant advances in geothermal energy generation:

There’s enough geothermal energy below ground to power the entire country. Some are trying to tap it — by using techniques from the fracking boom

Hot, dry rocks lie below the surface everywhere on the planet. And by using advanced drilling techniques developed by the oil and gas industry, some experts think it’s possible to tap that larger store of heat and create geothermal energy almost anywhere. The potential is enormous: The Energy Department estimates there’s enough energy in those rocks to power the entire country five times over ....

Fervo Energy is using fracking techniques — similar to those used for oil and gas — to crack open dry, hot rock and inject water into the fractures, creating artificial geothermal reservoirs. Eavor, a Canadian start-up, is building large underground radiators with drilling methods pioneered in Alberta’s oil sands. Others dream of using plasma or energy waves to drill even deeper and tap “superhot” temperatures that could cleanly power thousands of coal-fired power plants by substituting steam for coal.

“Everyone knows about cost declines for wind and solar,” said Cindy Taff, who worked at Shell for 36 years before joining Sage Geosystems, a geothermal start-up in Houston. “But we also saw steep cost declines for oil and gas drilling during the shale revolution. If we can bring that to geothermal, the growth could be huge.”

States like California are increasingly desperate for clean energy sources that can run at all hours. While wind and solar power are growing fast, they rely on fossil fuels like natural gas for backup when the sun sets and wind fades. Finding a replacement for gas is an acute climate challenge, and geothermal is one of the few plausible options.

The NYT article goes on to note that two different tests had succeeded in reaching the deep hot rocks and getting electricity out of the heat. One expert commented that those successes constitute major advances sooner than expected. Despite those successes, it remains unclear if and when large scale geothermal energy can be produced cheaply.

As usual, the mainstream media shows it's bias against nuclear energy. In this case, the NYT  implicitly dismisses nuclear as a plausible opinion at best. That is a bald faced lie (of omission). In fact, safe nuclear energy is more than a plausible option. It is available right now. But as usual, since our government is corrupted and broken, developing widespread nuclear is a basically off the table. That's unfortunate, to say the least.

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

The AP reports about a growing national radical right movement that was started by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association in 2011:

Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer talks in his office in Goldendale, Wash., July 5, 2023. Songer is an advisory board member of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association and has faced harsh criticism for his embrace of the organization's ideology about the extent of the power of the sheriff

“The sheriff is supposed to be protecting the public from evil,” Dar Leaf, the chief law enforcement officer for Barry County, Michigan, said during a break in the National Sheriffs’ Association 2023 conference in June. “When your government is evil or out of line, that’s what the sheriff is there for, protecting them from that.”

Leaf is on the advisory board of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, founded in 2011 by former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack. The group, known as CSPOA, teaches that elected sheriffs must “protect their citizens from the overreach of an out-of-control federal government” by refusing to enforce any law they deem unconstitutional or “unjust.”

“The safest way to actually achieve that is to have local law enforcement understand that they have no obligation to enforce such laws,” Mack said in an interview. “They’re not laws at all anyway. If they’re unjust laws, they are laws of tyranny.”

There we have it. In addition to the courts, the sheriff also gets to decide if a law is evil, unconstitutional, overreach, unjust or tyrannical, and then refuse to enforce it if it is. By golly, the radical right has discovered a new way to fight for freedom. I'll send the CSOPA a dart and ask if they oppose forced birth and election subversion laws the radical right passed. Those are forms of tyranny, right? 

And remember your 3 Gs, God, Guns 'n Guts. That probably should be GGBG, God, Guns, 'n Blood 'n Guts.