Not Your Average JOE

 In case you haven't heard:

National Joe Day

National Joe Day is somewhat of a different holiday that falls on the 27th of March every year. It’s a holiday in which people celebrate the name Joe and all of the people they know with that name.

How To Observe National Joe Day

National Joe Day is probably one of the easiest holidays to celebrate. On this day, all a person has to do is to celebrate a Joe in your life, celebrate a famous Joe, or even change your own name to Joe for the day. People can also use the day to enjoy a hot cup of Joe or even a plate of sloppy Joes.

https://www.holidayscalendar.com/event/national-joe-day/

Now, which Joes should we celebrate?

Joe Biden? One of the most successful Presidents ever in terms of legislation passed during his first term, but still, for some reason, immensely unpopular? Any theories as to way?

How about Joe Manchin? Somehow, he always does manage to coming around to supporting the other Joe's agenda, though he likes to drag it out before he does and is still beholding to the oil industry. But, he does manage to stay popular in a red district. A pain in the butt? Or a surviver?

Of course we could go way OUT there and give some love to:

Joe Exotic

Such a handsome fellow, agree?

If you want more on politics, there is also:

The anti-Trump Republican, not the rock star. Mind you, has his star faded? I seldom see any more interesting news items on him.

SO, who are your favorite Joes, your least favorite Joes, or are there any Joes you know personally you want to give a big shout out to on this National Joe Day?

News bits: Zealots censoring tolerance; Tales from the free market

Insider writes about the radical right canceling a song about tolerance and accepting others:

Wisconsin 1st graders were told they couldn't sing 'Rainbowland' by Dolly Parton 

and Miley Cyrus because it was too controversial

"Rainbowland" includes the lyrics: "Living in a Rainbowland, The skies are blue and things are grand, Wouldn't it be nice to live in paradise, Where we're free to be exactly who we are, Let's all dig down deep inside, Brush the judgment and fear aside, Make wrong things right, And end the fight, 'Cause I promise ain't nobody gonna win."

That's just another example of the Christian Taliban in action in America today. They are going to crush tolerance, secularism and democracy or die trying.

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ProPublica writes about how one health care insurance company does business:

How Cigna Saves Millions by Having 

Its Doctors Reject Claims Without Reading Them

The vague wording [of his rejected medical reimbursement claim] made Dr. Nick van Terheyden suspect that Dr. Cheryl Dopke, the medical director who signed it, had not taken much care with his case.

Van Terheyden was right to be suspicious. His claim was just one of roughly 60,000 that Dopke denied in a single month last year, according to internal Cigna records reviewed by ProPublica and The Capitol Forum.

The rejection of van Terheyden’s claim was typical for Cigna, one of the country’s largest insurers. The company has built a system that allows its doctors to instantly reject a claim on medical grounds without opening the patient file, leaving people with unexpected bills, according to corporate documents and interviews with former Cigna officials. Over a period of two months last year, Cigna doctors denied over 300,000 requests for payments using this method, spending an average of 1.2 seconds on each case, the documents show. The company has reported it covers or administers health care plans for 18 million people.  

Before health insurers reject claims for medical reasons, company doctors must review them, according to insurance laws and regulations in many states. Medical directors are expected to examine patient records, review coverage policies and use their expertise to decide whether to approve or deny claims, regulators said. This process helps avoid unfair denials.

But the Cigna review system that blocked van Terheyden’s claim bypasses those steps. Medical directors do not see any patient records or put their medical judgment to use, said former company employees familiar with the system. Instead, a computer does the work. A Cigna algorithm flags mismatches between diagnoses and what the company considers acceptable tests and procedures for those ailments. Company doctors then sign off on the denials in batches, according to interviews with former employees who spoke on condition of anonymity.  

Within Cigna, some executives questioned whether rendering such speedy denials satisfied the law, according to one former executive who spoke on condition of anonymity because he still works with insurers.

“We thought it might fall into a legal gray zone,” said the former Cigna official, who helped conceive the program. “We sent the idea to legal, and they sent it back saying it was OK.”  

In a written response, Cigna said the reporting by ProPublica and The Capitol Forum was “biased and incomplete.”

It is OK to have a computer reject your insurance claim, legal said so. And so did the computer! Saying otherwise is just biased and incomplete.

So much for the rule of law and social conscience. If a law gets in the way of profit, just blow it off or get your lobbyists to get the law obliterated. That's just how brass knuckles capitalism works whenever it can. 

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Tales from Fauxlandia: NBC News reports:

Ex-Tucker Carlson producer files new claims Fox News lawyers 

coached her testimony in Dominion lawsuit

Abby Grossberg sued Fox last week, alleging she was coerced into giving misleading testimony about the network's election fraud coverage. She was fired Friday.

America Is Preoccupied

America Is Daydreaming

America Is Crackpotting

America Is Banning Books

America Is Not Concentrating

But Tucker the Liar is serious about getting 

to the bottom of the barrel, . . uh, . . story

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From the Let's Kill Them All Files, legal wizards, not lizards, have dreamed up a snagglepuss of a new legal theory. It's published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review in a paper entitled Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate Deaths. This one is a real gullywhumper. The wizards write:

Prosecutors regularly bring homicide charges against individuals and corporations whose reckless or negligent acts or omissions cause unintentional deaths, as well as those whose misdemeanors or felonies cause unintentional deaths. Fossil fuel companies learned decades ago that what they produced, marketed, and sold would generate “globally catastrophic” climate change. Rather than alert the public and curtail their operations, they worked to deceive the public about these harms and to prevent regulation of their lethal conduct. They funded efforts to call sound science into doubt and to confuse their shareholders, consumers, and regulators. And they poured money into political campaigns to elect or install judges, legislators, and executive officials hostile to any litigation, regulation, or competition that might limit their profits. Today, the climate change that they forecast has already killed thousands of people in the United States, and it is expected to become increasingly lethal for the foreseeable future. 

Activists and journalists declaim the executives of ExxonMobil, Shell, and other large oil companies as “mass murderers.” Lamenting that “millions of human beings will die so that they can have private planes and huge mansions,” they talk of “[d]ragging the corporate titans who profited from driving the world to the brink before a judge.” But as of this writing [Jan. 25, 2023], no prosecutor in any jurisdiction is bringing homicide charges of any kind against fossil fuel companies (FFCs) for even a single death related to climate change. They should. 

The case for homicide prosecutions is increasingly compelling. A steady growth in the information about what FFCs knew and what they did with that knowledge is revealing a story of antisocial conduct generating lethal harm so extensive it may soon become unparalleled in human history.

Woof! Lethal harm so extensive it may soon become unparalleled in human history? The FFCs are in big trouble now. That is gonna scare the jebus out of those feisty Huge Oil Co. executives and their lackeys in congress, the courts, etc. 

They are gonna stop polluting, killing and propagandizing real quick, right? Nah. They are going to yawn and buy black smokers for their employees to show their sincere support for the environment.

Take that, you evil socialist 

environment

A NYT interview with Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg (91) has terminal cancer, with about 3-6 months left to live. In 1971, he gave copies of the US military’s secret 7,000-page history of the Vietnam War to The New York Times and The Washington Post. The government tried to stop publication, but the Supreme Court defended the First Amendment right of a free press against prior restraint. That led to public anger at the government for lying about the conduct of the war. Ellsberg faced criminal charges, e.g., violating the 1917 Espionage Act, but government misconduct caused the charges to be dismissed. 

Here are couple of the Qs and As from the NYT interview:  

Q. As you look around the world today, what scares you?

A. I’m leaving a world in terrible shape and terrible in all ways that I’ve tried to help make better during my years. President Biden is right when he says that this is the most dangerous time, with respect to nuclear war, since the Cuban missile crisis. That’s not the world I hoped to see in 2023. And that’s where it is. I also don’t think the world is going to deal with the climate crisis. We’ve known, since the 2016 Paris agreement and before, that the U.S. had to cut our emissions in half by 2030. That’s not going to happen.

Q. The number of people with the security clearances to view classified material has expanded, perhaps exponentially, since the leak of the Pentagon Papers, and I wonder, aside from a few people like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, why haven’t there been more Dan Ellsbergs? Why aren’t there more people who, when presented with evidence of something that they find morally objectionable, disclose it?

A. Why aren’t there more? It’s a question I’ve often asked myself. Many of the people whistle-blowers work with know the same things and actually regard the information in the same way — that it’s wrong — but they keep their mouths shut. As Snowden said to me and others, “Everybody I dealt with said that what we were doing was wrong. It’s unconstitutional. We’re getting information here about Americans that we shouldn’t be collecting.” The same thing was true for many of my colleagues in government who opposed the war. Of course, people are worried about the consequences.

Before my case and the Obama administration’s prosecutions of whistle-blowers, they needn’t have been worried about going to jail. But apart from that, they fear losing their jobs, their careers, risking the clearances on which their jobs depend. People who have these clearances have often invested a lifetime in demonstrating that they can be entrusted to keep secrets. That trust becomes a part of your identity, which it is difficult to sacrifice, so that one loses track of a sense of higher responsibility — as a citizen, as a human being.

Q. We tend to think of the classification system as a system of protection. But you sometimes talk about it, and I think correctly, as a system of control.

A. That is what it is. It is a protection system against the revelation of mistakes, false predictions, embarrassments of various kinds and maybe even crimes. And then the secrecy system in its application is predominantly to protect officials, administrations from embarrassment and from accountability, from the possibility that their rivals will pick these things up and beat them over the head with it. Their rivals for office, for instance.

....

The media as a whole has never really investigated the secrecy system and what it’s for and what its effects are. For example, the best people on declassification outside the media, the National Security Archive, month after month, year after year, put out newly disclosed classified information that they have worked sometimes three or four years, 10 years, 20 years to make public. Very little of that was justified to be kept from the public that long, if at all. An expert estimated in Congress in 1971 that 5 percent of classified information met the criteria for secrecy at the time it was classified, and after a few years that decreased to half of one percent. 

....  

As I said, my work of the past 40 years to avert the prospects of nuclear war has little to show for it. But I wanted to say that I could think of no better way to use my time and that as I face the end of my life, I feel joy and gratitude. 

Ellsberg's arguments seem sound to me. The threat of nuclear war is frighteningly high, we're not going to deal responsibly and seriously with climate change, and the US government lies far too much to us by unwarranted opacity. Unwarranted secrecy threatens democracy and the rule of law. 

Ellsberg explains his fear of nuclear war by arguing that nuclear weapons have been used many times since 1945, including now by both sides in Ukraine.* Their use is threats of use akin to a bank robber threatening to use a gun. Even if the robber doesn’t pull the trigger one time, they might the next. Ellsberg comments on that: "But eventually, as any gambler knows, your luck runs out."

* I am unaware of Ukraine threatening to use nuclear weapons against Russia, but Russia has made the threat against Ukraine.

News chunks: Texas bounty for drag queens, dead or alive; Border bounty hunters empowered to use force

Radical right sex derangement syndrome (RRSDS) continues to worsen and spread among red states. The targets of this dangerous disease are people in the LGBQT community. The Intercept writes:

GIVEN REPUBLICANS’ RELENTLESS legislative attempts to erase trans and gender nonconforming people, a new bill in Texas that LGBTQ+ advocates are describing as the “drag bounty hunter bill” may seem like a drop in the ocean. This fact alone is intolerable. There is, however, something particularly barbaric in the bill’s explicit encouragement of citizen harassment to drive gender variance out of public life.

The proposed legislation defines “drag” as any “performance in which a performer exhibits a gender that is different than the performer’s gender recorded at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers and sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs in a lascivious manner before an audience.”

The inclusion of “lascivious” might suggest that the bill is only aimed at performances in venues that already exclude minors, like nightclubs. But given that Texas Republicans are at this very moment attempting to pass a law defining any venue that hosts a drag performance as “a sexually oriented business” — including restaurants — it’s clear that “lascivious” provides no limit to the bounty hunter bill.

If passed, the law is certain to shut down family-friendly drag events and library story hours, but it threatens all gender-nonconforming performers, and even events like Pride.  

The bill is a rehash of a strategy used against abortion in the state. When Texas lawmakers passed Senate Bill 8 in 2021, effectively banning abortion in the state, they introduced a novel legislative approach for running roughshod over constitutional protections: sanctioned vigilantism.

The abortion law deputized private citizens to sue anyone suspected of helping a person obtain an abortion, with the promise of a $10,000 reward for successful cases. Since its passing, copycat laws have abounded, given the legislation’s ability to evade federal court challenges by relying on civil lawsuits. Now, Texas Republicans are seeking to use the same legal mechanism in their all-out assault on gender variance.  

The drag bounty bill likewise encourages citizens to sue anyone who hosts or performs in a drag performance in the presence of a minor — with the added allure of a monetary reward. Successful plaintiffs could receive as much as $5,000 in “damages,” up to 10 years after the event.

Across the country, even in New York City, far-right militias and other armed fascists have already made a habit of threatening family-friendly drag performances and story hours. The Texas bill grants the practice a vile authority — and pulls from a long legacy of the government using state-sanctioned vigilantism to enforce white supremacy, gender conformity, and border rule.

It won't be long before RRSDS leads to non-conforming people being murdered by zealous, heavily armed people seeking to inflict self-righteous discipline on the bad people. Knowing this was coming, Texas has empowered and encouraged the impending slaughter by anointing the murderers to the lofty status of God's righteous bounty hunter. 

In due course, the radical right Texas legislature will come to see that instead of bounty hunters, God's enforcers are law enforcers. They are thus entitled to State Marshall status, a badge and qualified immunity for non-conforming who get people shot dead. It will be a BYOG operation. MAGA!!

BYOG = Bring your own gun

Compulsory heterosexuality and gender conformity is so manufactured and 

fragile, that it requires heavy policing and enforcement

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In another exciting development from Texas, the legislature is proposing a law that deputizes citizens and empower them to shoot immigrants crossing the border. The Independent writes:

Republican lawmakers in Texas want to create a state security force to patrol the US-Mexico border that critics have characterized as a "vigilante death squad policy."

Dade Phelan, the Republican speaker of Texas' House of Representatives, told a meeting of the Texas Public Policy Foundation that he plans to introduce a bill that he says will "make national headlines and change the conversation on border security," according to The Intercept.

The bill — House Bill 20 — would allow Texas' Department of Public Safety to hunt, arrest, and deport undocumented migrants.

The group would be comprised of law enforcement officers and civilians under the direction of a governor-selected chief. The members of the group would also be extended immunity from criminal prosecution relating to their actions on the border. They will be directed to "arrest, detain, and deter individuals crossing the border illegally including with the use of non-deadly force."

The group will also apparently be authorized to "use force to repel, arrest, and detain known transnational cartel operatives in the border region."

I've argued here several times that if Democrats get blown out of power and democracy falls, illegal immigration is going to be a key factor in the collapse. 

Defending the border

Who are we?

I’m throwing this together at the last minute, so I hope it makes some sense.  I’m just spit balling here, typing out loud. 🤷‍

A couple of days ago, one of our bloggers was asking about “How to love a country that doesn’t love you back.”  Here, in the U.S., a lot of people are feeling that way these days.  They and their chosen lifestyles are feeling rejected by the country as a whole.  Whether racially, ethnically, sexually, other, they do not feel safe or wanted. Are such people being paranoid, experiencing some kind of perceived indignance?  Or, is such treatment real?

I was lying in bed this morning thinking about those feelings of rejection, trying to figure out the “whys” of it all.  And, there are plenty.  We all know what those reasons are.  We also know it’s complicated.  As populations grow larger and more diverse, the problem gets exacerbated, almost exponentially.

It seems, politically, everyone is at each other’s throats.  For the most part, we’ve “chosen teams” and seemingly will fight to the political death (of a party) over the eventual outcome.  Who will “win” (have the final say-so)?  As a result of that inner-conflict, I have to wonder if America is destined to eventually fail.  And that would be a real shame, because it really once was, in my opinion, “the shining city on the hill,” as proclaimed by Republican President, Ronald Reagan.

Back in my father’s day, America once represented many desirable freedoms that only a handful of countries out there have enjoyed.  Patriotism abounded, and freedom of thought and expression, freedom of the press, freedom of religion or no religion, etc., was a given.  America said you could be all that you could be, and you believed it; that YOU were in charge of your own destiny.  How great was that?!?  Very.

So, what happened?

What do you think?  Is there a problem?  Is this post an overreaction?  Is it spot-on?  Does American idealism need “fixing”?  Is America even broken?  Is it destined to eventually fail?

What’s your take on all of this?  What is the ultimate solution?  Is a solution needed?  What is in America’s future?

Like I did, just go where your mind take you.  And thanks for giving us your perspective.

News bits: Immigration into Canada; Marketing on the people; CN's authoritarian culture war

A NYT article reports on an effort by Canada (2021 pop. 38.3 million) to increase the size of its workforce by increasing immigration:

For the first time in its history, Canada grew by over one million people last year and most of them were newcomers, signaling that the federal government’s ambitious goal of boosting immigration to fill labor shortages is within reach.

Canada’s population growth rate of 2.7 percent in 2022 put it among the world’s 20 fastest-growing nations, ....

The growth comes as the federal government makes a push to address its labor shortage and manage a wave of retiring baby boomers by raising its 2025 immigration targets almost 25 percent.

a United States official familiar with the issue said that the two countries had reached an agreement that would allow Canada to turn back asylum-seekers walking into the country from the south. In exchange, Canada has agreed to provide a new, legal refugee program for 15,000 migrants fleeing violence, persecution and economic devastation in South and Central America, the official said.

Canada enjoys widespread support for immigration and public “attitudes are extremely positive,” said Victoria Esses, the director of the Centre for Research on Migration and Ethnic Relations at Western University in London, Ontario.  

But as Canadians contend with house prices and monthly rents that strain even affluent budgets, some are questioning how much the government’s rosy outlook on immigration is taking into account the other supports those newcomers will need, particularly for housing.

One can hope that this does not lead to the rise of a Canadian radical right movement like immigration has in other countries. 

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Marketers, like some politicians, are chronic liars. The car industry is pushing paid subscriptions for whatever can be turned into a subscription. Most consumers are not buying it. The car industry is telling us consumer demand is driving the whole thing. ArsTechnica writes:

The last decade or so has seen the creeping techification of the auto industry. Executives will tell you the trend is being driven by consumers, starry-eyed at their smartphones and tablets, although the 2018 backup camera law is the main reason there's a display in every new car.

But automakers have been trying to adopt more than just shiny gadgets and iterating software releases. They also want some of that lucrative "recurring revenue" that so pleases tech investors but makes the rest of us feel nickeled and dimed. Now we have some concrete data on just how much car buyers are asking for this stuff, courtesy of a new survey from AutoPacific. The answer is "very little."

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Christian nationalism (CN) is a powerful, aggressive political movement that aims to gather power and wealth for elites, while imposing cruel theocratic Christian Sharia law on everyone except chosen elites. At present, brass knuckles capitalism (BNC) and CN dogmas dominate the radicalized GOP. After the takeover of the Supreme Court by radical Republican CN judges under Trump and the radical CN Republican Party, the Christian theocracy floodgates opened fast and wide. We all know what happened to abortion. It still is happening. 

There is an expanding scope of increasingly virulent CN attacks on transgendered people. For whatever reason, transgendered people enrage and terrify the CN ranks and file. CN elites feed that fear and hate by passing laws to make transgendered sex identity go away, or at least get out of sight and mind. Vice reports:

Trans Children Were the Beginning. The GOP Is Coming for Adults Now

The politicians who’ve repeatedly introduced anti-trans bills under the guise of “protecting children” are routinely going after adults now

A newly-proposed healthcare ban in Florida could effectively ban gender-affirming care for people of all ages, in yet another indication that GOP lawmakers are not only targeting trans youth, but trans adults too.

Florida HB1421 would prohibit insurance providers, including private insurers, from covering gender-affirming care, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket. “A health insurance policy may not provide coverage for gender clinical interventions,” the bill states. Florida previously introduced a bill that will force businesses that pay for gender-affirming care to also pay for detransitions, in a bid to further restrict access to life-saving healthcare for transgender people by disincentivizing employers from covering care in the first place.

So here is a case where radical right BNC hate of government interference dogma appears to be at odds with CN dogma which imposes government interference with the powerful insurance industry. The tension probably will not flare up into anything because a lot or probably most BNC elites are also CN elites. There is a lot of cooperation and overlap between those two anti-democratic, authoritarian powers. That, along with a couple of things like vast wealth and vicious, shameless demagoguery, is a significant part of what make the unholy authoritarian BNC-CN alliance so powerful and terrifying.

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Another trait of the CN-BNC power and wealth movement is its hate of transparency. That too is starting to be reflected in states controlled by the radical right Republican Party. The NYT writes: 

Florida Bill Would Shield DeSantis’s Travel Records

The bill, which was advanced by state senators in both parties, includes a sweeping retroactive clause that would block the release of many records of trips already taken by Mr. DeSantis and other officials, as well as their families and staff members.

Florida has long had expansive public information laws, known as sunshine laws, codified in the State Constitution. They allow the public to gain access to a variety of government records, including criminal files, tax documents and travel logs. These laws have exposed abuses of state resources by Florida officials: In 2003, for example, Jim King, the president of the State Senate, was found to have used a state plane to fly home on the weekends.[1]

So, not only is the authoritarian CN-BNC wealth and power movement anti-democracy and anti-inconvenient truth, it is also pro-corruption. Corruption shielded by unwarranted secrecy is a key marker of authoritarianism. It is always or nearly always a significant part of the tyrant-theocrat package. The rule of thumb is: Where corruption is high, tyranny is high and democracy is low.

Footnote: 

1. In a sign of Democratic Party stupidity, Democrats voted for the secrecy bill in committee. One Democratic legislator was asked why they voted the bill out of committee, they said they thought the bill was only about security for government officials. On reflection one changed their mind and claimed they now oppose the bill.

Honestly, one has got to wonder what is wrong with a lot of Democratic politicians. They still don’t get it. Are they really that stupid or are they complicit and in silent support of getting rid of democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, secularism, pluralism, the Democratic Party, inconvenient truth, transgendered people, etc.?