Abortion update; Trial update; Poll data on 3rd party effect; Reich video on history, DJT & the GOP

The theocratic radical right's war on abortion rights isn't over yet. Jezebel reports:

In Moyle v. United States, Idaho argues that its abortion ban takes precedence over a federal law establishing a right for all people to receive emergency care, including abortion.

On April 24, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Moyle v. United States, a case about Idaho’s total abortion ban and a federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). EMTALA passed in 1986 and requires hospitals to provide stabilizing, emergency care to patients—including those experiencing pregnancy-related complications—regardless of individual state laws. In certain cases, abortion is necessary to save a pregnant person’s life, but Idaho’s ban allows abortion only if the pregnant person is basically moments from death. In Moyle, the court will determine whether Idaho’s ban and its extremely narrow exception for life-threatening medical emergencies takes precedence over EMTALA.

The case also relates to fetal personhood because Idaho is trying to argue that EMTALA actually does say that an embryo or unborn fetus is a “patient” whose rights should supersede the rights of the person carrying the pregnancy. (It definitely doesn’t say that.)

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Daily KOS reports that DJT is signaling open contempt of the lawsuit and the jurors in his election fraud trial:

Trump refused to stand when the jury entered and left the court room. Next, Trump fell asleep again, .... it is a sign of respect for all in the court room to stand when the jury is being seated and when they leave. A good lawyer will instruct his/her client to show respect to the jury, and the defendant will stand. Well, not this defendant. Trump stubbornly refused to stand for the jury.

And, there's this weirdness about gag orders 🤪:

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NBC News reports poll data about something I have suspected for a while about the possible effect of the JFK Jr campaign:

The latest national NBC News poll finds the third-party vote — and especially independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — cutting deeper into former President Donald Trump’s support than President Joe Biden’s, though the movement the other candidates create is within the poll’s margin of error.

Trump leads Biden by 2 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup, 46% to 44%, in the new NBC News poll.

But when the ballot is expanded to five named candidates, Biden is the one with a 2-point advantage: Biden 39%, Trump 37%, Kennedy 13%, Jill Stein 3% and Cornel West 2%.

The poll finds a greater share of Trump voters in the head-to-head matchup backing Kennedy in the expanded ballot. Fifteen percent of respondents who picked Trump the first time pick Kennedy in the five-way ballot, compared with 7% of those who initially picked Biden.

It is still too early to give much weight to poll data. But it struck me that since Kennedy is a crackpot conspiracy theorist, he would likely appeal to more DJT voters than Biden voters. Time will tell if that actually happens in November. Jill Stein appears to hurt Biden more than Trump, so the impact of 3rd parties is unpredictable at this time.

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This Robert Reich video discusses 6 points of history related to the candidacy of DJT. The first point considers the Robber Barons of the 1800s and early 1900s and parallels with DJT. The second, starting at about 6:50, considers fascism vs authoritarianism vs DJT. The 3rd issue, starting at about 13:50, discusses the rise radicalization of the political right and how that changed perceptions of the left and center left to far left and left. This segment of the video touches on the Overton Window concept and why its is relevant to current politics.

I've argued this point several times here

 The 4th issue, starting at ~16:45, considers the rise of culture wars in recent modern history focusing on the May 1970 Hard Hat Riot in New York city. 

The 5th issue, starting at ~22:35, deals with the corporate takeover of politics starting with a Chamber of Commerce memo to corporate CEOs by Lewis Powell (later a USSC justice). Powell's 1971 memo urged the business community to unite in opposition to social forces arguing for environmentalism, consumer rights and labor unions. Money was the weapon that Powell told the business community it had to use against subversive forces demanding that corporations act with a social conscience for the public interest, not just shareholder interest.

Powell's call to war of united business

interests against the public interest

Yeah, money = power, a no-brainer proposition

The fruit of Powell's war on democracy and

truth included the 2010 Citizens United decision

with this predictable outcome:

The last point (~27:35) deals with the influence of Robert Bork on business and politics. Bork argued that antitrust law was bad and effects on consumers was generally positive or neutral. The end result is a major concentration of corporate power among a few huge companies who learned how to corrupt government with money (free speech). Loss of meaningful business competition after consolidation of political and market power in synch with Bork anti-antitrust ideology is estimated to cost each household about $5,000/year.

Liar wars: Lying capitalists vs. consumers and the public interest

The new lie

A plastics industry propaganda campaign has flared up here. It is remaking the old lie about recycling into a new version of the lie. One can call it the Making Sustainable Change lie. 

The old lie

(but the arrow still goes in the same direction!)

These fine dark free speech proponents (liars) are the American Chemistry Council, Inc. and online at plasticsmakers.org. The website shows happy White Americans in their lovely, perfectly maintained big suburban houses enthusiastically recycling plastics in the front yard as many of us now do, but maybe with somewhat less enthusiasm and in the back yard. Not surprisingly, the website fails to mentions that after decades, about 91% of all single use plastics are still not recycled all these decades later. Inconvenient recycling data estimates like this from 2020 are 100% ignored, making that a lie of omission.

MRF = material recovery facilities, 

a/k/a/ recycling centers

What the propaganda website shows are happy things like this:

See how happy and enthusiastic they are!!

That is so hard to believe that it is unbelievable!

New ways could have been found decades ago 

if the plastics people actually wanted it

This is a lie

Advanced recycling is a lie and an illusion

The 5 actions the plastics polluters say they are calling for: 

30 by 30 sounds a lot like 

vaporware

Wait, the plastics people are the ones who

opposed regulations and social responsibility

Wait, that is evil socialist tyranny

Plastics companies are anti-regulations Republicans, 

not pro-reasonable regulations Democrats  

Wait, that call for more research sounds exactly 

like the same propaganda delay tactic the oil, coal and 

cigarette industries used for decades to block regulations and to 

deceive the public!

This smells like a dirty trick

Wait, the private sector has bitterly opposed 

calls for private sector funding for recycling

The polluters have always wanted to shift the costs 

to consumers and taxpayers 

Translation: The public is becoming angry and 

getting better informed -- we need to try to get ahead of a major

public and political backlash that would ding our profits!!

MEN, MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS!!

Fire propaganda cannons! 

A propaganda cannon blast

Germaine succinctly summarizes the real situation to date:

Actual truth

Thoughts on Christian nationalism and faux Christianity in general

CNs & FCs

In recent years, my opinion of America’s politically active, anti-democracy Christian nationalist (CN) theocracy movement has turned extremely negative. My evidence- and reason-based ill-will (bad opinion) extends to Christians who do not explicitly support anti-democratic theocracy but nonetheless use Christianity for their own personal agendas, which seem to tend towards reliance on some form of authoritarianism and corruption. I call them fake Christians (FCs). 

There is deep moral rot, shameless mendacity and shocking hypocrisy through the lens of both (1) my own moral values, and (2) the moral values that CNs and FCs self-righteously claim they believe in and live by. No one is perfect, but at least people can try in good faith to face inconvenient fact, truth and sound reasoning. They have the moral courage to face what is inconvenient. I see moral cowardice in CN and FC elites who cynically deny what is inconvenient and rational in their quest for wealth and power. But what about the rank and file who see nothing wrong and support bad Christianity? Yeah, exactly what about them? What is the state of their moral beliefs and their behaviors?

Dim views of fake Christianity

At least some other people have a pretty dim view of how CNs and FCs practice their faith. Over at his blog, Raven’s Song, Raven posted a poem he wrote in 1984, and the man says. It includes these thoughts about some TV preachers:

but if a man tells me that it is outdated
that he has more recent information
that he has just come from talking with god
himself
personally
then that man is either
a god blessed saint
or a god damned liar
and if that man is wearing
a five hundred dollar suit
in front of a fifty thousand dollar TV camera
and he is asking me to send him my money
so that he can feed the poor
or serve god
then you know which one
of the two possibilities
I believe

I can think for myself
just as anyone else can
they don’t have to listen to me
to tell them how to think or what to think
and they sure don’t have to listen to you
I know and they know

.

.

. 

and the man in rags is walking down a street tonight
in the cold
with everything he owns in a paper bag
walking past the warm TV studio
in the cold
walking past the warm houses
in the cold
and he is going to die tonight
in the cold
because everyone is watching the preacher on TV
and getting closer to god
so they don’t need to go out
in the cold
and bring a smelly beggar inside
out of the cold
and feed him or give him a place to sleep
out of the cold
or care enough to
treat him like a human being
or save his life
after all
their souls have already been saved
by the preacher

so you can ask anyone else on this street
who in america today
is the holiest man
and he may tell you
billy graham, oral roberts, herbert armstrong
or maybe you
but if you ask me
who in america today
has done the most evil in the name of good
I will tell you

Now that feels like real Christianity to me. That is how I was brought up to understand it. That is the kind of Christianity I am comfortable with and support.

Raven put his poem to an artificial intelligence program called Suno that turns words into songs. The AI-generated song can be played at this link. Like with most other things that humans do, opinions about what is real Christianity and what is fake vary widely. And so does the empirical and moral basis for that variance. 

There are intractable moral differences in the matter real vs fake religion. Democracies resolve the disagreement by reasonable compromise. Theocrats resolve it by force, e.g., forced birth laws, and  bigoted, oppressive laws that discriminate against hated out-groups like the LGBQT community. That is a core moral difference between a pro-civil liberties democratic Christian and a pro-bigotry authoritarian Christian.

An interesting thought

Is it mostly true? Maybe

Tomorrow starts one for the history books…

Two hundred years from now, when we are all dead and gone, and assuming that we haven’t annihilated ourselves by then, future generations will be reading about the first ever criminal trial of a one-time President of the United States.

Here in 2024, when social media runs unchecked and rampant, regular “We the People” are not allowed/forbidden to see the proceedings live, on TV.  We must get the info second-hand, from observers, or from transcripts after the fact.  Better than nothing, I guess. 😕

Here’s the question:

Should “We the People” be allowed to see the proceedings live on TV if we want to?  Hell, we even got to see O.J.'s trial, for crying out loud.

Make your case, pro or con, for letting the public witness this historic event, as it unfolds live.

(by PrimalSoup)