Mini bits: The missing informant; The missing tapes; Capitalists hate labor unions; Etc.

From the Post-Truth Politics Files: Newsweek writes about an informant that Republican elites have been saying has rock solid evidence that proves, proves mind you, Joe and Hunter are bribe-taking, communist sleazeball criminals:

Kentucky Rep. James Comer, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, has admitted no one had had any contact for three years with an alleged key source in its investigation into the Biden family business dealings.

Comer appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News show Thursday to give an update to the Republican inquiry into allegations Joe Biden took part in "influence peddling," while vice president in the Obama administration. The serving president is also accused of engaging in corrupt foreign business dealing with his son Hunter Biden and Ukrainian energy company Burisma. However, the investigation has so far not revealed any real evidence to back up the claims.

Oops, apparently the informant has disappeared. Nonetheless, Joe and Hunter are bribe-taking communist sleazeball criminals even without proof.

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More from the Post-Truth Politics Files: The Daily Beast writes about recordings that Republican elites have been saying has rock solid evidence that proves, proves mind you, Joe and Hunter are bribe-taking, communist sleazeball criminals: 

Republicans Admit They ‘Don’t Know’ if Biden 

Bribery Tapes ‘Really Exist’

.... Republicans and right-wing media have been running wild with unsubstantiated claims about a foreign bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden.

The story really grew legs in the conservative media ecosphere this week when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) hyped up the potential existence of “audio tapes” proving Biden accepted a $5 million bribe from a Ukrainian energy company while he was vice president.

At the same time, despite his colleagues being forced to admit there may not be any recordings, Grassley has expressed hope that Trump is proud of him for pushing so hard for a Biden probe. “Well I hope he thinks I’m doing good work,” Grassley said on a conservative podcast on Wednesday. “I’d like to have him think that of my oversight work.”

Grassley the Sniveling Groveller wants DJT's approval for doing good oversight work. So far, Grassley's oversight work has turned up nothing. However, nothing alone is suspicious and Joe and Hunter need to be locked up. Right?

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Employees get fired: The WaPo writes about Starbucks baristas who openly work to unionize and then get fired for doing so:

For months, Lexi Rizzo had clocked in before dawn convinced that the company where she had worked for nearly eight years was determined to fire her. And Rizzo thought she knew why: She was one of 49 baristas from across Buffalo who sent a letter to the company’s chief executive in August 2021 informing him that they were seeking to form a union.

Today there are about 320 unionized Starbucks stores in the United States — a rare bright spot for the shrinking labor movement. But the gains have come at a price, union officials said. Only 13 of the workers who signed the original Buffalo organizing letter are still with the company.

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COVID update: The Hill writes: 

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told vaccine manufacturers on Friday their fall COVID-19 update should target the XBB.1.5 strain of omicron. That variant is currently responsible for about 40 percent of all infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Vaccine companies have been working on XBB-specific vaccines, so they will be ready by the end of the summer.

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Obama disputes racism with Tim Scott: Consider the arguments that Scott lays out to attack Democrats. This kind of reasoning is at the heart of American radical right political thinking. The Hill writes:

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) took a jab at former President Obama this week after the Democrat criticized the declared 2024 GOP presidential contender over his remarks about race and racial progress in the country.

“Let us not forget we are a land of opportunity, not a land of oppression. Democrats deny our progress to protect their power. The Left wants you to believe faith in America is a fraud and progress in our nation is a myth,” Scott said in a statement Thursday.

“The truth of MY life disproves the lies of the radical Left. We live in a country where little Black and Brown boys and girls can be President of the United States. The truth is – we’ve had one and the good news is – we will have another,” he added.

Worth noting is (1) the argument that if one minority person can succeed, all of them can and that proves, proves mind you, great progress, implying racism is completely gone or trivial at worst, (2) Democrats deny social progress to protect their power, (3) his silence about some bigoted Republican policies, e.g., voting laws that target racial minorities to limit their influence, and (4) referring to the radical left.

Item 1 is bullshit-based lie that proves nothing. One story about one person does not tell the whole story. Racism in America is far more complex than Mr. Scott alone. Regarding 2, I don't recall most Dems denying progress. Most acknowledge both progress and significant remaining racism-based problems, e.g., in law enforcement, housing and employment. Item 3 is telling. It is a lie of omission. All that minority Republicans can do these days in the face of GOP policy is employ the KYMS tactic (keep your mouth shut). Finally, item 4 is a standard radical right lie employed as a misdirection to distract from the fact that the Dem Party and its power is dominated by center and center-right politicians. In terms of political power, the "radical left" is not a major player. Scott's insinuation of radical left power is a both a lie and a slander.

News bits: A GOP tax policy proposal; Radical right desire to weaponize law enforcement; Moral injury

From the My God! How Much More Evidence Do You Need Before You Realize That Republicans Favor The Rich, Screw The Non-rich And Increase The Federal Defecit Files?: The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released an analysis of what corrupted, radical, authoritarian House Republican plutocrats want to do to us:

1% = 3.32 million people

20% = 66.4 million

• The trio of tax bills that House Republicans will consider in committee on Tuesday, June 13, include tax cuts that would mostly benefit the richest one percent of Americans and foreign investors.

• Under the legislation, the richest fifth of Americans would receive $60.8 billion in tax cuts next year while the poorest fifth of Americans would receive $1.4 billion in tax cuts.

• Because foreign investors own much of the stock in U.S. corporations, they would ultimately receive $23.8 billion of the corporate tax cuts next year.

• The only group of Americans receiving more than foreign investors next year would be the richest 1 percent, who would receive $28.4 billion.

• The legislation includes an increase in the standard deduction that would help some middle-income taxpayers but would do little for those who most need help.

Just weeks after threatening to cause a catastrophic default on the federal debt to address an alleged budget crisis, House Republicans plan to consider legislation that would increase the deficit by expanding the Trump tax cuts for corporations and other businesses.

Officially the cost of the new tax cuts would be offset, mostly by provisions that would roll back certain parts of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act addressing climate change, but the true costs are hidden by budget gimmicks.

The most important budget gimmick is that the legislation enacts the biggest tax cuts for only two years even though its proponents plan to extend them in the future making them, in effect, permanent. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that if all provisions are permanent, the trio of bills would result in more than $1 trillion in revenue losses over the next ten years.

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What a second term would look like: Politicized, corrupt, police state law enforcement: The NYT writes:

When Donald J. Trump responded to his latest indictment by promising to appoint a special prosecutor if he’s re-elected to “go after” President Biden and his family, he signaled that a second Trump term would fully jettison the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence.

“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Mr. Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on Tuesday night after his arraignment earlier that day in Miami. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”

But by suggesting the current prosecutors investigating the Bidens were not “real,” Mr. Trump appeared to be promising his supporters that he would appoint an ally who would bring charges against his political enemies regardless of the facts.

The naked politics infusing Mr. Trump’s headline-generating threat underscored something significant. In his first term, Mr. Trump gradually ramped up pressure on the Justice Department, eroding its traditional independence from White House political control. He is now unabashedly saying he will throw that effort into overdrive if he returns to power.

Mr. Trump’s promise fits into a larger movement on the right to gut the F.B.I., overhaul a Justice Department conservatives claim has been “weaponized” against them and abandon the norm — which many Republicans view as a facade — that the department should operate independently from the president.

What does this tell you about DJT, the GOP elites, their major donors and the American people who support them? Obviously, opinions will differ. But it tells me that most of them are anti-democracy, pro-tyranny (some combination of autocracy, theocracy and plutocracy). That is the undeniably case whether they know it or not. The line of plausible deniability has clearly been crossed.

The NYT says that DJT appeared to be promising his supporters that he would appoint an ally who would bring charges against his political enemies regardless of the facts. That is an inexcusable understatement. Enemies will be eliminated regardless of facts is exactly what he is saying.  

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Capitalist for-profit health care and moral injury: I've argued here many times that for-profit capitalism is inherently inimical to the public interest in certain areas, e.g., health care, energy policy, environmental policy, infrastructure, utilities and insurance. There is plenty of evidence to back that up. 

More evidence is discussed in a NYT article that focuses on the moral injury that many health care providers are experiencing as capitalist health care becomes ever more ruthless about squeezing out more profit at the expense of everyone and everything else. The NYT writes:

Psychiatrist Wendy Dean read an article about a physician who died by suicide. Such deaths were distressingly common, she discovered. The suicide rate among doctors appeared to be even higher than the rate among active military members, a notion that startled Dean, who was then working as an administrator at a U.S. Army medical research center in Maryland. Dean started asking the physicians she knew how they felt about their jobs, and many of them confided that they were struggling. Some complained that they didn’t have enough time to talk to their patients because they were too busy filling out electronic medical records. Others bemoaned having to fight with insurers about whether a person with a serious illness would be preapproved for medication. The doctors Dean surveyed were deeply committed to the medical profession. But many of them were frustrated and unhappy, she sensed, not because they were burned out from working too hard but because the health care system made it so difficult to care for their patients.

In July 2018, Dean published an essay with Simon G. Talbot, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, that argued that many physicians were suffering from a condition known as moral injury. Military psychiatrists use the term to describe an emotional wound sustained when, in the course of fulfilling their duties, soldiers witnessed or committed acts — raiding a home, killing a noncombatant — that transgressed their core values. Doctors on the front lines of America’s profit-driven health care system were also susceptible to such wounds, Dean and Talbot submitted, as the demands of administrators, hospital executives and insurers forced them to stray from the ethical principles that were supposed to govern their profession. The pull of these forces left many doctors anguished and distraught, caught between the Hippocratic oath and “the realities of making a profit from people at their sickest and most vulnerable.”  

One survey found that nearly one in five health care workers had quit their job since the start of the pandemic and that an additional 31 percent had considered leaving. 

The article focuses on doctors. It points out that moral injury does not affect all doctors. Many specialists are doing fine and have no moral complaints or concerns. 

In case one might think that moral injury is liberal vaporware, a search of the science literature for the exact phrase "moral injury" from 2015 to 2023 gives 14,200 hits. Moral injury is a real thing, not vaporware. A 2019 review of the moral injury literature (full pdf here) indicated that the phenomenon (disease?) has limited clinical data leaving treatment options unclear:

Although a dearth of empirical clinical literature exists, some authors debated how moral injury might and might not respond to evidence-based treatments for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) whereas others identified new treatment models to directly address moral repair. Limitations of the literature included variable definitions of potentially morally injurious events, the absence of a consensus definition and gold-standard measure of moral injury as an outcome, scant study of moral injury outside of military-related contexts, and clinical investigations limited by small sample sizes and unclear mechanisms of therapeutic effect.

The point here is obvious. The overwhelming moral value that brass knuckles capitalism operates under is profit. Everything else is secondary. Secondary concerns like crappy patient care and moral injury are almost always treated as problems for propaganda campaigns and "public relations" departments to deal with. All huge corporations tell us they care about us, but for some of them that is a pure lie. They care about profit and good public appearances but not much or anything else.

Qs: Can one reasonably assert at least some moral failing in the millions of people who work for ruthless capitalist health care and other companies that clearly put profit ahead of human, environmental and other important social concerns? Any difference between the owners and executives who impose ruthless policies in pursuit of more profit and the workers who implement them?

News chunks: The illusion of equality before the law; An argument for two-tiered legal system ; Etc.

Equality before the law propaganda: By now, most everyone is knows that DJT and America's radical right authoritarian political movement is screaming about DJT's indictment. According to their narrative, the indictment proves, proves mind you, that America has a grossly unfair, corrupt, weaponized two-tiered legal system. According to the authoritarians, one tier is for corrupt, communist Dems who can gleefully break laws with impunity. The other tier is weaponized law enforcement directed at poor persecuted, innocent Repubs who get cruelly whacked for either (i) literally nothing illegal (that is what DJT is claiming right now), (ii) minor or trivial offenses, or (iii) doing the same things that Dems were never prosecuted for.

By now it is undeniable that there really is a two-tiered system of law. Wealthy or powerful elites tends to get treated better than most everyone else. This applies to the kid gloves treatment that DJT has received so far. While DJT got to go with dignity to his arraignment, others in his position would have been arrested in an early morning raid in their homes and then hauled off to jail in handcuffs to await an arraignment. So yeah, the law is weaponized against those in the bottom tier.

The NYT writes about more favors that top-tier DJT got out of his arraignment proceeding: 

Most of the substance of the hearing centered on the details of the bond agreement for Mr. Trump. Mr. Smith’s senior prosecutors waived demands for bail, or any other precondition that might be deemed as undignified or overly restrictive. They insisted that Mr. Trump not discuss the case with Mr. Nauta, who remains on the former president’s payroll as a personal aide.

Judge Goodman pressed for a tougher deal, suggesting that Mr. Trump be blocked from having any contact at all with important witnesses. His lawyers responded that the witnesses included people on Mr. Trump’s personal staff and security detail, and that it was not realistic to ask him to cut off contact with them.

The prosecution appeared willing to go along.

So, there we have it, DJT gets to collude with witnesses to get their lies straight. Prosecutors didn't demand any bail. No preconditions that might be undignified or overly restrictive.

How the law treats elite 

criminals like DJT 

(the Grand Poobah seated in the chair)

So, is that an exaggeration? Hell no, it isn't. For example, the NYT writes about other  stealers of classified government documents:

Two weeks ago, a federal judge sentenced Robert Birchum, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel, to three years in jail for removing hundreds of secret documents from their authorized locations and storing them in his home and officer’s quarters.

In April, a judge sentenced Jeremy Brown, a former member of U.S. Special Forces, to more than seven years in prison partly for taking a classified report home with him after he retired. The report contained sensitive intelligence, including about an informant in another country.

In 2018, Nghia Hoang Pho received a five-and-a-half-year sentence for storing National Security Agency documents at his home. Prosecutors emphasized that Pho was aware he was not supposed to have taken the documents.

These three recent cases are among dozens in which the Justice Department has charged people with removing classified information from its proper place and trying to conceal their actions. That list includes several former high-ranking officials, like David Petraeus and John Deutch, who each ran the C.I.A.

Other Grand Poobahs like David Petraeus just got two years probation and a $100,000 fine as his punishment, even though he spilled his guts to reporters. Another Grand Poobah, former CIA director John M. Deutch plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge and paid a $5,000 fine for keeping classified information on his home computers.

Notice the two tiers elephant here? How can one not see it? It's right there:

“If the president in power can just jail his political opponents, which is what Joe Biden is trying to do tonight, we don’t have a republic anymore. We don’t have the rule of law. We don’t have the Constitution.” — Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)

Two final thoughts on this chunk:

1. DJT claims he is a victim of an unfair, weaponized two-tiered system of law enforcement. For context, one newspaper writes: "AOC says idea Trump is victim of a ‘two-tier’ justice system is an insult to Black and brown Americans." Does AOC raise a valid point? Or is that just an unjustifiable whataboutism?

2. People who claim this is political prosecution by Dems for political advantage are not asserting just garden variety lies. Those lies directly undermine our systems of law enforcement and courts. At this point given all that has happened since 2016, one can reasonably believe that people who assert that argument are insurrectionists and traitors. Or, does calling them insurrectionists and traitors go too far, since lies like that are protected free speech?

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Why DJT should get better treatment than the rest of us peons: The NYT article quoted above also discusses an argument for why elites should get better treatment:

Sean Trende, a political analyst with RealClearPolitics, has offered a helpful way to understand these questions — and specifically when a former president should, and should not, be charged with a crime.

Start by thinking about all the other people who had engaged in behavior similar to that for which the ex-president was charged with a crime. If just some of those other people were charged, the ex-president should not be, Trende wrote. Prosecutors have a large amount of discretion about which cases to bring, and they should err on the side of not indicting a former president because of the political turmoil it is likely to cause, he argued.

But if the ex-president did something that would have caused anybody else to be charged with a crime, he should be, too. “The president shouldn’t be above the law,” Trende explained.

The article goes on to point out that here is good reason to believe that the case against DJT is in the second category. If any other American done what DJT did, they would have been prosecuted. So, should prosecutors err on the side of not indicting a former president because of the political turmoil? Or, should they actually tip slightly against a former high level defendant who has betrayed the public trust to vindicate the damage done to civil society, the public interest, the nation, democracy and/or the rule of law itself? By erring in favor of a Grand Poobah, law enforcement and the courts undeniably signal that compared to the rest of us crimes of the elites are less bad and the public interest isn't worth spit. 

Is that logic garbage and the attendant attitude of respect for sleazeball elites immoral, deeply and/or arrogant, or is it reasonable?

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How Faux News sees it: From the Projecting One's Own Bad Intentions Onto the Opposition Files: The WaPo reports:

 

Fox News shocks with ‘wannabe dictator’ 

graphic during Biden speech

A real Fox News chyron at the end of its 8 p.m. hour. pic.twitter.com/7fUT1Nj62D

— The Recount (@therecount) June 14, 2023

Q: Is it reasonable to think that Biden is a wannabe dictator? DJT? 

Trump's indictment and the vicious propaganda war it spawned

As expected, a vicious, mendacious, deeply immoral Republican Party propaganda war over the Trump indictment is underway. This 8 minute video with Trump supporter Lindsey Graham goes over what appear to be about the best arguments that Trump supporters can come up with. This is loaded with hyper-partisan political lies, slanders and sleaze.

If you could stomach that dreck, here's a fact-based analysis of Lindsey's lies and deceit.

Hillary's emailgate: The DoJ under Trump had four years to go after Hillary for her alleged crimes, but nothing happened. From that lack of indictment and prosecution, I believe that there was not enough evidence to prosecute Hillary. Presumably, the available evidence was insufficient to prove criminal intent. Given that, Graham's blither about Hillary committing crimes by smashing cell phones with hammers is pure Republican Party bullshit and lies. 

Hunter's laptopgate: Waddabout Hunter's laptop? Wikipedia comments: 

Trump attempted to turn the [Hunter's laptop] story into an October surprise to hurt Joe Biden's campaign, falsely alleging he had acted corruptly regarding Ukraine while in office. The hard drive data had been shared with the FBI and Republican operatives such as Trump advisor Steve Bannon before it became publicly known. In December 2019, under the authority of a subpoena issued by a Wilmington grand jury, the FBI seized the laptop from Mac Isaac. .... Despite persistent allegations that the laptop contents indicated corruption by Joe Biden, a joint investigation by two Republican Senate committees released in September 2020 did not find wrongdoing by him, nor did a Republican House Oversight committee investigation by May 2023. 

So, the FBI and DoJ had from December 2019 until January 21, 2021 to investigate the evidence in Hunter's laptop. But again, there was no indictment and prosecution. Therefore, the laptop scandal was another insulting GOP vaporware nothingburger, regardless of what insulting lies Lindsey spews. A detailed WaPo analysis suggests that laptop evidence could be challenged as unreliable and/or tampered with.

Bill Clinton's Lewinskygate: Lindsey also drags Bill Clinton into this. Clinton was impeached by the House for obstructing justice and committing  perjury. The Senate acquitted so the impeachment died there. 

Both obstruction and perjury are actual crimes. But neither violated the Espionage Act, which is what most of the crimes Trump is accused of having committed. After Clinton left office, Bush was in office for 8 years. In those 8 years, there was no criminal indictment and prosecution for those crimes. 

So, Lindsey dragging Bill into this looks like another insulting Republican nothingburger. 

Whistleblowergate: Lindsey then howls in sanctimonious moral outrage that whistleblowers who turn national security secrets over to foreign nations get prosecuted for espionage. He then argues that Trump did not turn secrets over to any other nation and therefore no espionage was committed. This lie is Lindsey's most subtle deceit. Trump is charged under 18 U.S. Code § 793(e), Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, which is part of the Espionage Act. That law reads as follows:

 

18 U.S. Code § 793, Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information   

(e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it;  

 

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

The part in red specifies that anyone, not just a foreign agent or enemy, who is illegally willfully shows the defense information shall be fined or imprisoned. That makes Lindsey's comments a lie. The last highlighted part specifies that simply refusing to turn over defense information to the government violates the law. Trump refused repeatedly. That also makes Lindsey a liar. 

The subtlety in Lindsey's lie here is that he says Trump did not commit espionage. That may or may not be true, depending on how espionage is defined in the law and Lindsey's mind. But Trump clearly did violate the Espionage Act law by retaining the 31 national defense documents and not turning them over when asked. That violated 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) 31 times. What is less clear is how many documents Trump showed to other people, which would violate the provision of the law highlighted in red.

Trump's plea deal offer(gate): In a show of arrogance and contempt for the rule of law of galactic proportions, Newsweek reported that Trump has mulled a plea deal contingent on the government paying him damages: "Trump further predicted that he will not be convicted on the federal charges stemming from the documents case. He also stressed that he would not accept a plea deal unless he was presented one 'where they pay me some damages.'" And, Trump might also demand that the US government has to issue an apology for indicting him and reinstall him immediately as president, while immediately jailing Bill, Hillary, Joe and Hunter because they are all horrible, communist, criminal, pedophile lizard people who need to be locked up!!

Germaine's letter to the State Bar of South Carolina(gate): Lindsey graduated from the University of South Carolina law school in 1981. His public** bar credentials page indicates that he is an inactive member of the bar, but in good standing. Germaine might write a letter to the state bar there suggesting they look into Lindsey's comments. Since his screed on TV was loaded with easily verified lies, maybe there's some basis in South Carolina to discipline a scumbag, even if it is an inactive member. Germaine is unsure if it's worth the cost of a stamp to point out that Graham is a bald faced liar to the SC bar. Much confusion reigns in poor Germaine's fevered mind. 

** No, I am not doxxing Lindsey. His bar page is public, just like mine is here in California. Anyone can look him up.

This guy is in good standing??

What does it take to be in bad standing,

shoot someone on 5th Ave. in broad daylight?

In the interview, one can easily hear Lindsey Graham's frustration, loud and clear. One has to concede that. Unfortunately for America and democracy, Lindsey is an expert vicious, lying bag of insulting sleaze. And, he's a good actor. 

Far worse, Lindsey is probably right to say that what he says in this interview is what most Republicans actually believe. That is terrifying.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to PSS (Primordial Soup Susan) for bringing up the Graham interview on ABC.

Cults and Religions…

First, let me plant this conundrum in your head:

At what point does a religion become a cult?  Or, is it a cult that can become a religion, when it can get enough “community backing/validation?” (see for example orthodox religions)

Like the chicken and the egg, can one be the predecessor, or successor, of the other?  Okay, hold that thought…

Next, let’s get some working definitions from Mirriam-Webster, so that we can all be on somewhat the same page:

Cult

1 :

a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious (not genuine, false)

also : its body of adherents

2

a : great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work

b : the object of such devotion

c : a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion

3 :

a system of religious beliefs and ritual

also : its body of adherents

4 :

formal religious veneration : WORSHIP

 

Religion

 

1 :    

a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices

2 :

a:         (1): the service and worship of God or the supernatural

(2): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance

3 :       

a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

I guess a lot of mixing and matching can happen here.  Also, some essentially contested concepts (ECCs) are scattered throughout.  But let’s try to work with what we got. 

Here are the questions:

Q1: Where do you draw your line in distinguishing between a cult versus a religion?  What is the defining/pivotal quality(ies) that make them one or the other?  I.e., those “gotta haves” that the other doesn’t. 

Q2: How do you know when someone has crossed over the religion line into becoming a cult member?  What does that take?  E.g.,

• When their religion occupies xx% of their day/week
• When there is a manipulative element to their activities
• When they seem to have lost all ability to think for themselves and depend on a figurehead for instructions
• Other

News bits: What's up with John Roberts?; The potential for violence ratchets up; Etc.

A Supreme Court decision last week, Allen v. Milligan, was about voting rights. It surprised a lot of people who expected the six authoritarian Republican Supreme Court justices to continue attacking voting rights. In an unexpected turn of events, chief justice John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh voted to protect black voters from further gerrymandered disenfranchisement in Alabama. Some partisans immediately seized on this as evidence the Republicans on the Supreme Court were not just predictable authoritarian Republican partisans. 

For what it's worth, I instantly dismissed the pro-voting rights decision as an aberration in view of the decades of blatant hostility that Republican Party elites, specifically including John Roberts, have shown toward voting rights. The Milligan decision was a misdirection to keep criticism of the court down. 

And don't forget that in Milligan, four of the six radical Republicans voted to blow another massive hole in voting rights. Only God knows what Kavanaugh got in return for his vote with Roberts.

40 second video clip

Classic clip from 1980: Paul Weyrich, "father" of the right-wing movement and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority and various other groups tells his flock that he doesn't want people to vote. He complains that fellow Christians have "Goo-Goo Syndrome": Good Government.  As of 2007, Weyrich continued to gave weekly strategy sessions to Republicans.

Weyrich: "As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." 

The Guardian writes about the Allen v. Milligan decision:

The US supreme court ruling delivered on Thursday by John Roberts marks a departure for the chief justice from his 40-year battle to whittle down racial equality protections enshrined in the crowning glory of the civil rights movement.

Roberts wrote the Allen v. Milligan opinion himself, forging an unconventional 5-4 majority with the support of the three liberal-leaning justices plus the partial backing of the conservative Brett Kavanaugh. The chief justice’s decision to cling closely to precedent and avoid a sweeping reframing of voting rights law took supreme court observers by surprise.

In his Milligan opinion, the chief justice pledged himself to providing “a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record”. He upheld a lower court ruling that had objected to the electoral maps drawn up by Alabama’s Republican-dominated legislature.

A key to understanding Roberts’s intentions is that he plays the long game. He likes to present himself as a bridge-builder who represents the moderate center of American jurisprudence. He is also highly sensitive to the slump in public trust in the supreme court that has followed embarrassing revelations about Clarence Thomas’s luxury holidays paid for by a Texan billionaire.

In that context, Roberts has shown himself willing to bide his time before making some of his more extreme interventions.

The pattern is seen perhaps most clearly with voting rights, where Roberts has since the early 1980s expressed profound doubts about the role of federal law in forwarding equal representation for Black citizens. Exactly 10 years ago, he delivered Shelby County v. Holder, which punched a gaping hole in the Voting Rights Act, Lyndon Johnson’s landmark legislation that was perhaps the pinnacle of the civil rights movement.

Roberts pretends he is a bridge-builder representing the moderate center of American law. That he presents himself that way is true. But that presentation is a bald faced lie. It is a sham. Roberts is playing the long game here. In due course, he will continue limiting voting rights. In time if he lives long enough, he will cement into American law unrestrained power of (i) the radicalized, authoritarian Republican Party, (ii) Christian nationalist theocracy, and (iii) radical brass knuckles capitalism.  

That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it unless Roberts shows a lot more evidence that he is actually serious about (i) “a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record”, and (ii) defense of democracy, the public interest and civil liberties, especially voting rights.   

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From the Treasonous Coup Plotters Files: The NYT writes about signs that violence is increasingly possible in response to Trump's indictment: 

Kari Lake publicly inciting violent 

insurrection and a coup

(lock her up)

The former president’s allies have portrayed the indictment as an act of war and called for retribution, which political violence experts say increases the risk of action 

“If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me,” said Kari Lake, the Republican former candidate for governor of Arizona. “And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.” [Is that a threat of violence??]

The federal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump has unleashed a wave of calls by his supporters for violence and an uprising to defend him, disturbing observers and raising concerns of a dangerous atmosphere ahead of his court appearance in Miami on Tuesday.

In social media posts and public remarks, close allies of Mr. Trump — including a member of Congress — have portrayed the indictment as an act of war, called for retribution and highlighted the fact that much of his base carries weapons. The allies have painted Mr. Trump as a victim of a weaponized Justice Department controlled by President Biden, his potential opponent in the 2024 election.

The calls to action and threats have been amplified on right-wing media sites and have been met by supportive responses from social media users and cheers from crowds, who have become conditioned over several years by Mr. Trump and his allies to see any efforts to hold him accountable as assaults against him.

One can only wonder. Is the delightful authoritarian insurrectionist Ms. Lake auditioning for Trump's pick for Vice President? Hm . . . . sure sounds like it. 

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On the campaign trail: The NYT writes:

Former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday cast both his indictments by prosecutors and his bid for the White House as part of a “final battle” with “corrupt” forces that he maintained are destroying the country.

The apocalyptic language came in Mr. Trump’s first public appearance since the 38-count federal indictment against him and a personal aide was unsealed — and in a state where he may soon face additional charges for his efforts to pressure Georgia election officials to overturn his 2020 election loss there. It was Mr. Trump’s second indictment in less than three months.

“This is the final battle,” Mr. Trump said in the speech to several thousand activists, delegates and members of the media who gathered in Columbus, Ga.  

“Either the Communists win and destroy America, or we destroy the Communists,” the former president said in Georgia, seeming to refer to Democrats. He made similar remarks about the “Deep State,” using the pejorative term he uses for U.S. intelligence agencies and more broadly for any federal government bureaucrat he perceives as a political opponent. He railed against “globalists,” “warmongers” in government and “the sick political class that hates our country.”

Mr. Trump also described the Justice Department as “a sick nest of people that needs to be cleaned out immediately,” calling the special counsel, Jack Smith, “deranged” and “openly a Trump hater.”  

And he attacked by name Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., who is weighing criminal charges against Mr. Trump, calling her “a lunatic Marxist” and accusing her of ignoring violent crime and instead spending all of her time “working on getting Trump.”  

The crowd cheered and laughed throughout, and when he mentioned Democrats, the hall was filled with boos and jeers. At one mention of Hillary Clinton, a woman started chanting, “Lock her up!”  

Mr. Trump and his advisers are keenly aware that the Republican base overwhelmingly supports him in his legal battles and reflexively dismisses whatever facts prosecutors produce. The Trump campaign team has exploited that dynamic and put their opponents in the presidential primary in a lose-lose situation: Either they begrudgingly defend and praise the front-runner or they suffer the wrath of millions of voters.

That speaks for itself. 

Q: I can feel the power of the dark speech rising, can you? 

Yeah, but will my destiny be good or bad?

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From the Job-Creating Entrepreneur Files: The Huffpost writes:

Elise Stefanik Is Already Raising Money (For Herself) Off Of Trump's Indictment

The House GOP conference chair is urging people to donate to the “Official Trump Defense Fund,” but virtually all of that money would go to her campaign

“President Trump has been indicted on federal charges,” reads the subject line of a Thursday-night email from Team Elise, Stefanik’s joint fundraising committee.

“Biden’s weaponized federal government has handed President Trump BOGUS CHARGES over the ‘Boxes Hoax,’” says the email. “They are just trying to keep him out of the White House in 2024. President Trump needs ALL of his loyal supporters to stand with him at this crucial time.”

“RUSH A DONATION TO OUR OFFICIAL TRUMP DEFENSE FUND TO STAND WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP,” the email shouts.

It’s the Boxes Hoax. It’s Boxgate!!