Thoughts about the intelligence of the public

This post, bee in the bonnet actually, was triggered by some comments milo made yesterday. 

milo

Ears of the other milo

 

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public. -- attributed to American author and social critic H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) but not found exactly verbatim in his published works, so the source and original form of this expression are not known with absolute certainty

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably untrue. It is the chief occupation of mankind. -- H.L. Mencken

Well, what about that? Right? Not right? Not sure? Don't understand the question?

Let's reframe the question, just for fun. The framing of the issue above is by people who think or do know they know how to fool lots of people. Yeah, Mencken thought he could see people. That was only partly true. There really are some people who make their living by deceiving and irrationally emotionally manipulating the public. That business sector that does that is called public relations. The biblical admonition thou shalt not lie is basically 100% irrelevant to those people and businesses. Their paychecks and return on investments depend on lying. If they are not good liars, they are out of jobs. But what if the Bible got it right about lying and it really is a deeply bad and immoral thing to do to people?

So, how about framing it like this: 

1. (social science:) “.... cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. .... the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”

2. (reasoning:) By evolution of what it is to be human, we are susceptible to some variable degree to liars, deceivers, emotional manipulators and crackpots who apply flawed, usually self-serving reasoning, lies and slanders to political issues, business, and religion, the goal usually being accumulation of wealth and/or power, usually at other people's and interest's expense.

3. (therefore:) The elites and people who know better who lie, crackpot and emotionally manipulate are more culpable of bad or evil than the people they have deceived, manipulated and betrayed.

Over the years I've posted my opinion about who is more to blame for false and irrational beliefs in politics, the deceivers or the deceived. Most recently for America's radical right, roughly Trump supporters, this feels about right:

~55% elite propagandist deceivers & politicians

~45% rank and file deceived 

But now on rethinking this yet again, I reassess the culpability analysis for America's radical right:

~60-65% elite propagandist deceivers & politicians

~35% rank and file deceived, 40% when they have the information to know better 

Why give less culpability to regular people? A couple of reasons. First, when Reagan was shot, his shooter was accorded some leniency because he was considered to be mentally impaired. After that, the laws were changed to make a mental impairment defense essentially impossible. But the underlying fact of the human condition did not change. Only the politics changed. Humans are still just as fallible, flawed or sometimes mentally ill. But changes in the law like that reinforce the idea of the primacy of human intelligence and reason, despite little or nothing having changed about the human condition in millennia.

Second, look at how deceitful and crackpot modern radical right and other politics has become. Average people cannot know truth when it is being hidden. The burden should be on people who know truth to speak truth. Americans can't handle truth very well because they have been shielded from it by much of the political left, right, and the business and religious communities.

I do not myself believe that many people do things because they think they are the right thing to do . . . . I do not think that knowledge of what is morally right is motivational in any serious sense for anyone except a handful of saints. Federal judge Richard Posner, referring to the power of social situations to compel behavior

I find it difficult now to identify the motives for many things I have done . . . . I do not have a good answer to the question of my own behavior . . . . My memory has a strange way of selecting its contents. George Stigler, Nobel laureate, regulatory capture theorist, commenting on how the human mind deals with and distorts reality and logic

I am now impressed with the role of power in economic life - and with the great if largely innocent service of the conventional economic instruction in concealing it . . . . [The modern business firm's] influence and power extend to politicians, Presidents and the Pentagon. This power would be much more remarked and resisted were it not for the social conditioning of economics and its instruction. The latter contends that all producers-all business firms and corporations, from the smallest to the largest, from the corner drugstore to Exxon and General Motors - are substantially subordinate to the impersonal authority of the market. So matters are presented in all reputable economic discussion . . . . Power is much enjoyed, and its economic and political exercise can also be pleasingly remunerative. Nothing serves it better than a theology that disguises its exercise. -- John Kenneth Galbraith, commenting on the amazing difficulty people have when trying to see how power subtly works in politics

So, is the American public unreasonably dumb, deceived, too lazy to get the information that is being withheld from them, just being normal, and/or some other thing(s)?

For context, NPR aired a segment yesterday about CPCs (crisis pregnancy centers). Those are places in poor neighborhoods staffed by religious Christian fanatics. They claim to provide medical and pregnancy-related services, but that is a gigantic lie. The whole point of the existence of CPCs is to con, cajole, scare, shame, pressure and/or lie to stop frightened poor women from getting an abortion. The entire CPC industry is built on lies and deceit. Worse, some of the funding (maybe ~5-10%?) for CPCs is stolen by corrupt politicians in state governments.* Those corrupt politicians siphon some federal tax dollars to CPCs. So, you and I get to help fund an industry built entirely on Christian liars and their immoral or evil lies. The CPC industry is now a major focus of the post-Roe v. Wade Christian nationalist attack on civil liberties that God disapproves of.

 * The rest of the money comes from private donors, some of whom anonymously donate large amounts of cash to keep Christian liar business operations going.

News bits: Prosecutor asks for immediate whacking of DJT; 14th A, Sec. 3 is for real?; Car ride for a cow

Egads, there's a mountain of undisputed evidence in the case! This is from the prosecutor in DJT's New York business fraud case. I thought this was the weakest of the four indictments. Apparently the prosecutor believes the case is strong enough to move for summary judgment! PBS reports:

New York’s attorney general says a judge doesn’t need to wait until an October trial in her civil lawsuit against former President Donald Trump to rule that he committed fraud while building his real estate empire.

In court papers made public Wednesday, Attorney General Letitia James urged Judge Arthur Engoron to issue an immediate verdict endorsing her claim that Trump and his company defrauded banks and business associates by lying on financial statements about his wealth and the value of his assets.

Engoron has scheduled a Sept. 22 hearing on James’ request. Her lawsuit, which seeks $250 million in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York, is scheduled to go to trial Oct. 2 in state court in Manhattan.

To rule, Engoron needs only to answer two questions, James’ office argued: whether Trump’s annual financial statements were false or misleading, and whether he and the Trump Organization used those statements while conducting business transactions.

“The answer to both questions is a resounding ‘yes’ based on the mountain of undisputed evidence” in the case, James’ special litigation counsel Andrew Amer said in a 100-page summary judgment motion.

Based on that, Amer argued, no trial is required to determine that Trump, the Trump Organization, and other defendants, “presented grossly and materially inflated asset values” in the financial statements and then used those statements “repeatedly in business transactions to defraud banks and insurers.”

“At the end of the day this is a documents case, and the documents leave no shred of doubt that Mr. Trump’s (statements of financial condition) do not even remotely reflect the ‘estimated current value’ of his assets as they would trade between well-informed market participants,” Amer wrote.  

In seeking summary judgment on the fraud claim, James’ office pointed to evidence that shows Trump inflated his net worth by up to 39%, or more than $2 billion, in some years. James’ office said Trump’s “blatant and obvious deceptive practices” included wildly overstating the size and value of his homes in Florida and New York, marking up the value of unsold condominiums and rental space, and claiming he could do more with certain land that allowed — like building more homes on his Scottish golf course that the local government had approved.

Well dang! Now we see why those businesses who committed sleaze DJT wanted the evidence sealed and kept from the public. DJT and everybody involved his was a big steaming pile of lying, rotted criminal guts.

Now I'm starting to think that maybe, maybe probably, DJT might really get his ass kicked in the courts. Nah, that's too good to be true.

Disgruntled citizen

And, he's not wrong

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A month or so ago, two lawyers associated with the powerful, anti-democratic radical right Federalist Society wrote a legal analysis of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. They concluded that the constitution prohibits DJT from running for president again. 

Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection and Other Rights

Section 3 Disqualification from Holding Office

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.  

Summary of relevant bits: No president (DJT) who previously took an oath to support the constitution of the United States (which DJT did), engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the constitution (which DJT also did), or gave aid or comfort to the enemies thereof (he did that too). 

Although the legal argument seemed sound, I immediately dismissed it. First, laws like this often aren't applied against rich or powerful people. Second, the analysis felt like a Federalist Society publicity stunt to make the organization look less authoritarian than it actually is. But in recent weeks, lawsuits have been threatened in several states to force DJT off the ballot. PBS repports:

Liberal groups seek to use the 14th Amendment to block Trump from 2024 ballots

  

The 14th Amendment bars from office anyone who once took an oath to uphold the Constitution but then “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” against it. A growing number of legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump after his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the U.S. Capitol.

Two liberal nonprofits pledge court challenges should states’ election officers place Trump on the ballot despite those objections.

The effort is likely to trigger a chain of lawsuits and appeals across several states that ultimately would lead to the U.S. Supreme Court, possibly in the midst of the 2024 primary season. The matter adds even more potential legal chaos to a nomination process already roiled by the front-runner facing four criminal trials.

In 2021, the nonprofit Free Speech For People sent letters to the top election official in all 50 states requesting Trump’s removal if he were to run again for the presidency. The group’s legal director, Ron Fein, noted that after years of silence, officials are beginning to discuss the matter.

“The framers of the 14th Amendment learned the bloody lesson that, once an oath-breaking insurrectionist engages in insurrection, they can’t be trusted to return to power,” Fein said.

Ahead of the 2022 midterms, the group sued to remove U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene and then-Rep. Madison Cawthorn, both Republicans, from the ballot over their support for the Jan. 6 protest. The judge overseeing Greene’s case ruled in her favor, while Cawthorn’s case became moot after he was defeated in his primary.

That a judge ruled in favor of MTG exemplifies why some people (e.g., me) are skeptical about the rule of law applying to rich or powerful people. Maybe there more to this than I initially thought. Time will tell if this is just a mole hill or something a lot bigger. It still seems more like a mole hill than anything else.

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Everyone is reporting about Howdy Doody the cow that got a car ride. The cow is big.

In Norfolk Nebraska, pop. ~24,000, police stopped the driver of the car because they thought it was unsafe to be tootling abound town with a big cow in the car. Since the cow was too big to take to the dog pound, police asked the man to dive his cow home and put it away.

Howdy Doody examining the horns

mounted on the front of the car

Interesting observations between two brothers

 So, those who attend my forum, know that my brother came a-visiting this past week. We wanted to avoid talking politics but did get into a few political discussions.

Since leaving "home" last year to move to Canada, I find myself somewhat removed (though not totally removed) from American politics.

I mentioned this to my brother and he informed me that things have gone sour back "home" in Minny as well.

How so? I asked.

He told me that practically everyone he knows, from friends to neighbors, are SO FED UP with partisan politics that they have started to tune out.

I asked him, doesn't this create a danger for the 2024 elections?

He didn't know the answer to THAT question, but suspects a lot of people might just avoid voting in 2024.

With passion running rampant across the political spectrum, I have my doubts, I believe people WILL VOTE. BUT............ back to this concern that people are tuning out.

From YOUR observations, does my brother have a point? His argument was that people are really really tired of hearing about Trump, or what is wrong with Biden, and are really really fed up about NOT hearing enough about policy. It's all the Dems are the bad guys or the Repubs are the bad guys.

Everyone calling everyone on the other side names. He insists, that were I to return to our home town for a spell, I would notice the difference myself. People just don't want to talk politics. They are ANGRY at both sides AND at the media from both sides for doing nothing but riling people up.

I know I have become a bit removed from it all because of where I live now, BUT AGAIN, could my brother be right? FROM YOUR OBSERVATIONS - are Americans tuning out? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Radical right authoritarian Wisconsin 

Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler

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

Trump Attacks Judge; Vows To Appeal Non-Appealable 

Trial Date in New Deranged Posts

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

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

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

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

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

Remove ‘Domestic Enemies’ From Office

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Calls on Military and Law Enforcement to Enforce Sentence

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

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

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

Far right activist, liar, traitor 

and lawyer Larry Klayman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three very important points

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drug company lobbyists 

parachuting onto congress

Supplies of drug company cash for congress 

and the Supreme Court if necessary

An incoming 2nd wave 

of lobbyists

Clarence T. anticipating fun evening soirees with the incoming lobbyists

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