A ruckus in the church and other tidbits

The Christian kerfuffle in the teapot

Newsweek writes:

Thousands have signed a petition launched by a Christian organization condemning Donald Trump's 2024 bid for the White House.

The morning after Trump's announcement, Faithful America launched a petition that has since amassed more than 14,000 signatures.

The petition says that Trump announced his latest presidential campaign with a speech "laced with fearmongering and lies" and made it clear he "intends to double down on the fascist tactics" that led to the "Christian-nationalist" attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

"We don't know much yet about how the 2024 election will play out, but one thing is certain: Another Trump presidency would be a disaster for our country," it adds. "Multiple power-hungry pastors and Christian-nationalist leaders like Mike Huckabee, Mark Burns, and Eric Metaxas are already lining up to stand with him, falsely pretending they speak for all Christians."

Guess I’m not the only one who is calling out Christian nationalism and fascism on America’s radical right. A few other folks see the same thing. And I do mean few. 14,000 signatures is barely a drop in the bucket. It’s a little droplet. 

The news here is not that there are thousands of Christians in open opposition to Trump. Unfortunately, there are tens of millions of Christian who are not. That’s the real news here.

On sustainable energy production

Over at Neurologica blog, Steve Novella writes:

What is the potential of advanced geothermal? I read different estimates, but they range from 4-6% of current US electricity production by 2050. Here is a map of the US showing the temperature at 7 km. Current drilling technology is good to get down to about this depth but not beyond. But in the 3-7 km range, drilling is expensive and takes time. Even if we take the high end of the estimates, 6% of energy production in the US by 2050 is nice, but also is not going to be a major solution for decarbonization.

Hydroelectric power is currently at about 6% in the US, with a potential to increase to 9% by 2050. That assumes static demand, which is not likely to be true, so these figures will likely be lower. In fact, hydro capacity may only increase enough to keep it at 6% or so as demand increases. Wind and solar have the greatest potential for significant growth. Wind is currently at 9.2% and solar at 2.8%. There are two issues with these sources, they are land-use intensive, and they are intermittent. Without getting into the same debate about the upper limit of wind and solar, let’s just say there is a range of estimates where they can get by 2050.

If, then, by 2050 we have 6% hydro, 4% geothermal, 20% solar, and 30% wind, that leaves 40% unaccounted for. Right now nuclear is 18.9% and fossil fuel is 61%. Many of our nuclear power plants are set to retire so that 18.9% can decrease if we don’t extend their lifespan and replace them. This is why I say that our real choice for the next 30 years is between nuclear and fossil fuel.

If we can get significant new nuclear online in 10-30 years, they will replace fossil fuel plants and hold us over until deep drilling for geothermal comes online, or massive grid storage, or even fusion. These are more realistic for the second half of this century, not by 2050.

The IPCC agrees – there is no solution without nuclear. The numbers simply don’t work. Any other projection is incredible wishful thinking that we simply cannot risk. Otherwise that 40% or so will be provided by fossil fuel, and we will blow past 1.5 C.

We have no choice but to go all in on nuclear power. That has been clear for years. And for years most our political and business leadership has been undermining nuclear power and/or advocating for more carbon energy. Among the culpable prominent political and business leadership are the entire Republican Party leadership and oil and other carbon energy corporations, e.g., Exxon-Mobile. 

From the Humans Can Be Stupid files

Law and Crime writes:

Man Robbed Bank Using Back of His Birth Certificate as Note to Teller While Wearing Ankle Monitor from Another Case — All to ‘Prove a Point’ to His Lover: Feds

A Missouri man has pleaded guilty to robbing a local Bank of America branch using a demand note written on the back of his own birth certificate and while he was wearing an ankle monitor related to a previous case. That device easily placed him at the scene, according to court paperwork.

He did it all, he admitted to the authorities, to “prove a point” to his lover — though it’s unclear from court records precisely what “point” he was trying to make.

 Wonder who his lover is.

The surprised culprit: Michael Conley Loyd

Police nabbed him after leisurely pursuit

“How did they find me so fast?”

Getting a handle on what American Christian theocracy looks like

The concept of what a radical right American Christian theocracy will be is probably murky in the minds of most Americans. It is hard to mentally project exactly what that concept can entail in its impacts on society, business and government. Because of that, a series of blog posts that focus on examples of what the radical theocrats want will help make the concept more concrete and understandable. This is the first in a series of posts on Christian theocracy.

Law and Crime writes:

Norm Pattis, the controversial Connecticut attorney for Alex Jones, is now behind a federal lawsuit seeking to hold a major pharmaceutical company responsible for forcing Christian employees to violate their beliefs that their bodies are “temples of the Holy Spirit” by getting vaccinated against COVID-19.

Pattis’ firm filed suit Thursday in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts against Takeda Pharmaceuticals, alleging claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for discriminating on the basis of religious beliefs. In the complaint, plaintiffs say that in Takeda’s quest to “create ‘highly-innovative medicines,'” the company “fosters a business culture and set of employment practices hostile to religious beliefs it believes might impede its scientific mission.”

The plaintiffs — a group of former employees of Takeda Pharmaceuticals — contend they were victims of religious discrimination because they were fired for refusing to get vaccinated.

According to the complaint, Takeda instituted a vaccination requirement on employees who work in or visit medical facilities that included an exception for religious objections. That exception required that an objecting employee had “sincerely held” beliefs and that accommodating those beliefs would not impose an “undue hardship” on Takeda’s business.

The lawsuit alleges that Takeda’s policy is essentially a sham. Per the complaint:

Takeda rarely, if ever, finds the religious beliefs of an employee “sincere” enough to warrant an exemption. When it cannot defeat the claims of a believer by claiming insincerity, Takeda then claims that accommodating the religious beliefs of an employee or prospective employee would pose an undue hardship on its business. The result is that Takeda almost never grants religious exemptions, in violation of Title VII.

It then goes on to detail precisely what the plaintiffs’ religious objection to the vaccine was — the debunked claim that COVID-19 vaccines contain aborted fetal cells:

The plaintiffs expressed concerns about their being required to inject a substance into their body that was developed in part by use of aborted fetal stem cells; they also asserted various claims such as their bodies being a temples of the Holy Spirit, and asserted other religious grounds sounding in faiths and practices long recognized in the United States and throughout the world.

The plaintiffs’ argument is one that has been used before in vaccine-mandate lawsuits by conservative groups. 

The plaintiffs ask for unspecified compensatory damages including lost wages and attorneys fees, as well as punitive damages.

We the Patriots, USA, Inc., the non-profit law firm that funded the litigation, released the following statement on Thursday:

Our fervent hope is that this lawsuit brings to light the fact that so many people continue to suffer as a result of the decisions that were made during the last two years. For them, the covid crisis is far from over. We are confident that we will obtain a victory for religious freedom that will ensure that discrimination against those with religious beliefs opposed to certain vaccinations is never justified in the eyes of the law.

We the Patriots is also requesting donations to offset the cost of litigation.

There is a lot to consider in this one story. A couple of points stand out:

• Theocratic Christian nationalists (CNs) do not hesitate to argue any excuse being a matter of freedom of religion, e.g., referring to humans as “temples of the Holy Spirit.” That excuse can be used to reject anything medical or nutritional that the CN movement decides is objectionable to God. That would include refusal of all vaccines and any and all medical treatments for parents and their children.

• Although conflicts among constitutional rights are common in modern society, the CN movement obliterates all of them by elevating all religion-related beliefs and activities above all other rights, social concerns and business practices. For example, the CN movement does not care about the adverse public health effects of refusal to get vaccinated. That includes injury and deaths of members of the public who do not share CN beliefs or practices.  

• The CN movement does not hesitate to resort to demagoguery, lies, deceit, slanders and crackpot reasoning to misinform and manipulate people. The CN flock is often or usually seriously misinformed. For example, COVID vaccines do not contain aborted human fetal cells. Nonetheless, the lawsuit alleges that in a court filing. That is not only a lie based on zero evidence, it is crackpot reasoning because having any cells in the main vaccines is impossible due to how the vaccines are made -- no cells are involved.

• CN elites are always asking for money. Always. That is despite massive tax breaks for religion under US tax law. Their greed is boundless. Kleptocratic in my opinion. A major core goal of the CN movement is to force taxpayers to pay for all or nearly all costs of all religious activities. If it gets in power, the CN movement will use our own tax dollars to neuter democracy, secularism and our civil liberties. CN elites want us taxpayers to pay for their own efforts to deceive, cheat, oppress and abuse us.

News bits: Trump is back on Twitter, Mullahs shooting people's eyes out, etc.

It’s baaaaack!

The NYT writes:

Elon Musk Reinstates Trump’s Twitter Account

Mr. Musk, who had asked Twitter users about whether to bring back the former president to the service, said, “The people have spoken.”

“The people have spoken,” Mr. Musk said on Twitter. “Trump will be reinstated.” He added the Latin phrase “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” which roughly means that the voice of the people is the voice of God.

Musk claimed that 52% of 15 million Twitter votes were in favor of reinstating Trump.

From now on, I'll refrain from posting or linking to Tweets here. I don’t want to feed the beast that builds and makes money from Hellscape v. 2. The ‘Musk era’ of poison, lies, slander and open sympathy for treason has begun.

UPDATE: Trump has said that he will not return to Twitter and instead will continue to spout lies, slanders and poison on is social media site. This is good news.

What theocracy can look like

The NYT writes:

Hundreds of Protesters in Iran Blinded by 

Metal Pellets and Rubber Bullets

Security forces have been firing ammunition that has ruptured the eyes of antigovernment demonstrators in the past two months. “Everything went dark,” one said.

The protester was speeding toward a demonstration in Tehran on his motorbike when an Iranian security officer standing 10 feet away raised his gun and fired a rubber bullet.

The protester said the bullet hit his left eye. “We locked eyes and then everything went dark,” said the protester, who goes by the nickname Saman. He cupped his hand to his mutilated eye, afraid that it would drop from its socket, as he drove himself to a hospital where doctors refused to treat him, he said.

He was finally admitted to the government-run Farabi Eye Hospital, where he was operated on nearly 24 hours after he had been shot.

One has to wonder whether things could get that bad in the US after a takeover by an American Christian Taliban operating under Christian Sharia law. The is what the wrath of sacred, loving Gods can look like:

Saman

From the capitalism fails files: 

COVID hell may be upon us

The NYT writes:

The End of Vaccines at ‘Warp Speed’

Financial and bureaucratic barriers in the United States mean that the next generation of Covid vaccines may well be designed here, but used elsewhere.

Operation Warp Speed, the Trump-era program that poured billions of dollars into developing Covid shots, seemed to signal a new dawn of American vaccine making, demonstrating how decades of scientific grunt work could be turned into lifesaving medicine in a matter of months.

But as a third pandemic winter begins in the United States, its vaccine-making effort has lost steam. Efforts to test and produce next-generation Covid vaccines are bogged down by bureaucratic problems and funding shortfalls. Foreign rivals have raced ahead in approving long-awaited nasal-spray vaccines, including one invented in St. Louis, creating a scenario in which Americans would have to travel abroad for the latest in American vaccine technology.

Anyone who argues that capitalism always does everything better than government needs to ignore, deny, downplay and/or distort facts like these. This is what capitalists privately call bad news. By that they mean, bad news for their profits. Many or most capitalists do not care much or at all about whether people get sick or die or not. They care about profit and hating on government.

An odd story of alleged sleaze by radical right Supreme Court theocrat justice Sam Alito

Over the last few days, multiple reliable sources have been reporting a strange story about a years-ago pre-public leak of a major US Supreme Court (SC) anti-abortion decision by Sam Alito. Alito is probably the most or second most radical of the Christian nationalist theocrat and brass knuckles capitalist judges on the SC. As far as I can tell, Alito and Clarence Thomas are in the running for the most extreme of the Republicans on the court. Until now, I've resisted posting about this because it’s so odd and possibly not true. 

But, maybe there is mostly truth in this bizarre story. It comes from some years ago, 2014. The key proponent of the story today is the former rabid anti-abortionist evangelical Christian preacher Robert Schenck. In July of 2020, I posted about what Schenck said in a published interview after his mind changed about what he saw going on. He pointed to moral rot in the American evangelical church. By then, had become disillusioned with the church. He flipped against Christian nationalism (CN). Now he is considered to be a whistleblower about American Christian church sleaze.

The Guardian writes:

Rights group calls for Samuel Alito to be investigated 

after claims of leaked 2014 ruling

Anti-abortion activist said supreme court justice revealed the landmark ruling on contraception and religious rights weeks earlier

A civil rights group issued a call Saturday for US supreme court justice Samuel Alito to be investigated over allegations that the judge leaked a 2014 landmark ruling involving contraception and religious rights at a private dinner with wealthy political donors.

The claim was contained in a New York Times article in which minister Rob Schenck, an anti-abortion activist, said he was told of the decision weeks before it was announced and had used the information to prepare a public relations push.

Schenck also claimed he tipped off Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain owned by Christian evangelicals that brought and won the case allowing privately-held, for-profit businesses to be exempt from regulations to which its owners religiously object, in this case requiring employers to cover certain contraceptives for their female employees.

“The Senate judiciary committee should immediately move to investigate the apparent leak by Justice Alito,” said Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice.

“This bombshell report is the latest proof that the Republican justices on the court are little more than politicians in robes. It’s no wonder trust in the court has hit a record low. Structural reform of the court, including strict new ethics rules, is needed now more than ever.”  

In a letter to supreme court chief justice John G Roberts Jr dated 7 June, Schenck wrote that he was reaching out to the judge “to inform you of a series of events that may impinge on the investigation you and your delegates are undertaking in connection with the leak of a draft opinion”.

He described a dinner at which an unnamed political donor invited to dine at the home of Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, had offered to try to glean information about the pending decision in the Hobby Lobby case.

The next day, the Times reported, the dining guest called Schenck and told him Alito had written the majority opinion in the case and that Hobby Lobby would win. That exact decision was publicly announced less than a month later.  

Schenck concluded the letter to Roberts by saying he “thought this previous incident might bear some consideration by you and others involved in the process”.

How that directly reflects on the current investigation into the leak of the Dobbs decision is not clear, but it arrives at a time of concern for the court’s legitimacy as it works under the sway of a conservative supermajority. Polls show that a majority of Americans are losing confidence in the supreme court.  

After the leak in May of the Dobbs decision draft, Alito called the unauthorized disclosure “a grave betrayal” and ordered an investigation by the supreme court’s marshal.

The Times noted that Schenck’s account has “gaps”. But the newspaper’s examination of the claim uncovered emails and conversations that “strongly suggested” that Schenck knew of the decision before it was made public.

If Schenck’s story is true, what makes it interesting is the howling outrage that Alito, some other radical right Republican theocrat judges on the Supreme Court and CN Republican elites have expressed about the horrible leak of the June 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned the Roe v. Wade decision. Alito wrote both the Hobby Lobby and Dobbs decisions. The 2014 Hobby Lobby decisions a key case that seriously eroded the separation of church and state.

Initially, I rejected this story as too speculative. But as time passes, it seems more and more plausible. Now, for reasons I cannot articulate, this allegation of sleaze by Alito seems more likely mostly true than not. After all, radical right Republican Party elites, including all six on the Supreme Court, are chronic deceivers and liars. why accord them one shred of credibility?

What do you think? Is this bullshit or mostly real? Seems mostly real to me, certainly plausible.

An update: Those frisky Catholic priests -- at it again!

The NYT writes:

Maryland Finds That for Hundreds of 

Clergy Abuse Victims, ‘No Parish Was Safe’

The attorney general of Maryland has identified more than 600 young victims of clergy sexual abuse over the course of 80 years in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, according to a court document filed Thursday.

The new report marks a symbolic milestone in the long-running international abuse scandal that has shaken faith in the Catholic Church and led to some reforms and billions of dollars in settlements. The Baltimore report is one of the first major investigations completed by a state attorney general on sexual abuse in the Church since a scathing report on six dioceses in Pennsylvania shocked Catholics across the nation in 2018. Colorado investigators issued their own report in 2019 on church abuse.

The scale of the abuse outlined is on par with other large abuse cases uncovered in lawsuits and other investigations in dioceses in Boston, Los Angeles, Pennsylvania and Illinois.

The Maryland report found that “no parish was safe,” according to the filing from the office of Attorney General Brian Frosh. Both boys and girls were abused, ranging in age from preschool to “young adulthood,” which a spokeswoman for the attorney general said reached to age 18.

The filing says the Archdiocese failed to report many allegations of “sexual abuse and physical torture” and neglected to remove accused priests from active ministry or even restrict their access to children. Some congregations and schools had more than one abusive priest there at the same time. “The sexual abuse was so pervasive that victims were sometimes reporting sexual abuse to priests who were perpetrators themselves,” the filing states. One congregation was assigned 11 abusers over 40 years.

“Reading the report in its entirety made me physically ill,” Mr. Frosh said. “We may be looking at the tip of the iceberg, but it’s a very big tip.”

In a letter to church members on Thursday, Archbishop Lori said, “We feel renewed shame, deep remorse and heartfelt sympathy, most especially to those who suffered from the actions of representatives of the very Church entrusted with their spiritual and physical well-being.” Archbishop Lori has served in the role since 2012.

The priests were frisky and the morally rotted Catholic church protected them. The only remorse and shame the Church has is that it got caught. If it were not for investigations by law enforcement, none of this moral rot and criminality would have come to light. That is how organized crime syndicates work.

Q: Why doesn’t the IRS revoke tax breaks for this criminal organization?

A: Because the IRS itself is captured, complicit and morally rotted.

One can only wonder how big the iceberg is. One thing is for sure, the Catholic Church crime family will never volunteer that information. Child sex abuse has been uncovered in other Christian denominations in the US, so this is not confined to the American Catholic Church.

Q: Is American Christianity seriously morally rotted? 

News today: Abortion and other bits

The next wave of attacks of abortion rights

Politico writes:

A group of anti-abortion organizations sued HHS and the FDA on Friday in a bid to reverse the FDA’s approval of the abortion medication mifepristone.

Lawyers from the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom filed the suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Amarillo on behalf of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Pediatricians, the Christian Medical & Dental Associations and four doctors.  

Last year, the FDA permitted doctors to prescribe mifepristone via telemedicine and to send the pills by mail.

Abortion rights advocates want the agency to assert that its decisions to approve drugs preempt state abortion bans and restrictions.

Notice how radical right political groups that work to take away people’s rights give themselves names like Alliance Defending Freedom. That happens a lot. It will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court eventually decides this case. I suspect that the court will reverse the approval of mifepristone via telemedicine and sending the medicine by mail. Time will tell. We'll know in a few years.

Garland appoints a special counsel to investigate Trump

The National Review writes:

Former vice president Mike Pence said Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to appoint a special counsel to oversee two criminal investigations into former president Donald Trump is “very troubling.”

The special counsel, Jack Smith, will take over investigations surrounding the extent of Trump’s involvement in the events leading to the January 6 Capitol riot and his alleged mishandling of sensitive government documents, Garland said at a press conference on Friday.

“The appointment of a special counsel is very troubling,” Pence told Fox News at the Republican Jewish Coalition annual leadership conference. “No one is above the law, but I am not sure it’s against the law to take bad advice from your lawyers.”

He added: “The timing of this decision — just a few short days after the president announced his intention to seek re-election, I think that the history of it, the facts that I am aware of behind it, I think it is very troubling.”

Once again, staggering Republican Party hypocrisy is on display. Neither Pence nor GOP elites complained when the FBI announced opening an investigation into Hillary Clinton a week before the 2016 presidential election. That hurt her. Now, about two years out from the 2024 election, the GOP is howling about an investigation. What a bunch of hypocrite fascists. 

And one can see the GOP angling to shift blame from Trump, in this case to his lawyers who Pence claims gave him bad advice. If it was Hillary Clinton in the same position, Pence and the rest of the GOP elites would be howling something like this: “No one is above the law, and if you take bad advice from your lawyers you are still liable for your crimes. LOCK HER UP!! LOCK HER UP!! LOCK HER UP!!” 

Also note that in the blame shifting tactic, the Republicans are directly raising the issue of intent. Conviction for most crimes requires intent to commit the crime. If intent cannot be proven, the accused person cannot be found guilty. This is how white collar criminals get off with most of their crimes. They all claim they did not know that what they did was illegal. That is why, in my opinion, about 99.99% of all white collar crimes are never prosecuted. In nearly all cases, there is no way to get all 12 jurors to agree on intent.

Garland appointed the special counsel to avoid the appearance or actuality any political motivation or conflict of interest. Nearly all Republican elites who have opined, say the investigation is a politically motivated Democratic Party witch hunt. The Democrats could appoint Jesus to investigate and they would still claim it is a corrupt, partisan witch hunt.

The Ukraine war

The NYT writes:

The 96-missile barrage fired across Ukraine on Tuesday was Russia’s biggest aerial attack of the war so far. But it followed months of assertions by Western and Ukrainian officials that Moscow’s stockpile of missiles and other weapons was rapidly dwindling.

Whether the assault on infrastructure targets was long planned, as Ukrainian commanders say they believe, or served as a deadly response to Kyiv’s recapture of the city of Kherson last week, the widespread attack raises questions about how much Russia’s arsenal may be depleted and whether Moscow will endure by finding alternative sources of weapons.

The NYT article goes on to discuss four different ways that Russia might have more sources of weapons than Western military analysts believed, e.g., ramping up Russian domestic missile production. Probably all four are involved. At least all four seem to be plausible.

It looks like in time, the Ukraine will be pulverized and pushed into the Stone Age.  That's why it seemed reasonable to urgently push for negotiations to at least see if some form of acceptable peace agreement is possible. As time goes on, the negotiation position of the Ukraine and anti-Russian forces decline. If the infrastructure of the Ukraine is pulverized to sand and dust, what’s left to negotiate?