News bits: Science-based spirituality; Gerrymandering's unintended consequences

An interesting research paper, Spirituality of Science: Implications for Meaning, Well-Being, and Learning, indicates an aspect of spirituality that isn't discussed much:

Awe-inspiring science can have a positive effect on mental wellbeing

Research led by psychologists at the University of Warwick has revealed a profound connection between the spirituality of science and positive wellbeing, much like the benefits traditionally associated with religion.

The research explored how people use science as a source of spirituality and its connection with their sense of wellbeing.

Dr Jesse Preston, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick and lead author of the study said: “Spirituality is most often associated with religion, but science can be a powerful source of awe and wonder for many. It can provide a meaningful source of understanding oneself and the universe, and it can foster a sense of connection to others and our place in the world.”

Science parallels positive wellbeing observed in religious people

In three studies, Dr. Preston and her research team surveyed 1197 people (602 men, 589 women, and 6 others) on their attitudes towards religious beliefs, spirituality and their interest and belief in science.

The first study established the concept of “Spirituality of Science”, and asked people about feelings of transcendence, connection and meaning when engaging with science. Participants’ responses were compared with other attitudes towards science, including an interest in science and belief in science, feelings of awe, meaning in their lives and religious beliefs.

Spirituality of Science was related to belief in science, but unlike other attitudes including interest in science and belief in science, Spirituality of Science was also associated with feelings of awe and general spirituality. This showed that scientific sources of spirituality may be psychologically similar to religious spirituality.

In a 2014 book, Waking Up: A guide to Spirituality Without Religion, Sam Harris described spirituality and religion like this:

Twenty percent of Americans describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Although the claim seems to annoy believers and atheists equally, separating spirituality from religion is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It is to assert two important truths simultaneously: Our world is dangerously riven by religious doctrines that all educated people should condemn, and yet there is more to understanding the human condition than science and secular culture generally admit. 

I should address the animosity that many readers feel toward the term spiritual. Whenever I use the word, as in referring to meditation as a “spiritual practice,” I hear from fellow skeptics and atheists who think that I have committed a grievous error. The word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, which is a translation of the Greek pneuma, meaning “breath.” Around the thirteenth century, the term became entangled with beliefs about immaterial souls, supernatural beings, ghosts, and so forth. It ac quired other meanings as well: We speak of the spirit of a thing as its most essential principle or of certain volatile substances and liquors as spirits. Nevertheless, many nonbelievers now consider all things “spiritual” to be contaminated by medieval superstition. 

I do not share their semantic concerns.

Maybe a person's interest and happiness with secular things like science and nature just reflects a form of spirituality other than a formal or informal religion. Guess in retrospect, all of that is obvious. The research paper is here.

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A WaPo article writes about backfired gerrymandering:

Illinois Democrats drew new maps 

They pushed the GOP to the right

The state’s congressional redistricting illustrates how gerrymandering hollows out the political center and strengthens the fringe, experts say

On a warm Friday night in the St. Mary’s Catholic Church parking lot, sweating men sipping cold beers dipped fish fillets into bubbling deep fryers as children played on the bouncy castle.

This down-home fish fry used to be a regular stop for U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, a moderate Republican who grew up in this former coal town in Central Illinois. But that was before new district lines drawn in 2021 pushed him into far more conservative terrain — and into competition with a fellow GOP incumbent.

To keep his job in Congress, Davis had to square off with Rep. Mary E. Miller, a member of the right-wing Freedom Caucus who closely aligned herself with former president Donald Trump. In the primary campaign, she assailed Davis for his willingness to compromise with Democrats and to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Miller, the hard-liner, won the 2022 race. Davis, the consensus-seeker, was out.

The bitter Republican feuding was not merely a symptom of the broader civil war in the national party. Rather, it was prompted by the actions of Illinois Democrats, who used their supermajority in the legislature to redraw district lines in a way that would strengthen their already titanium-solid lock on power.

The strategy worked, adding one Democratic seat to the Illinois delegation and trimming two Republican ones as GOP voters were packed into a smaller number of districts. 

The new map also accomplished what experts say gerrymandering does with ruthless efficiency, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans are responsible: hollowing out the moderate political center and driving both parties further toward the ideological fringes. 

“Gerrymandering undermines a key element of democracy, which is competition,” said Harvard University government professor Steven Levitsky.  

Politicians representing more-evenly split districts fear general election competition and therefore tend to govern more moderately, Levitsky said. But those in lopsided districts worry more about primary challenges and become responsive to the extremes in their party.  

“What’s really new about our politics today is that the radical fringe on the right, who are pretty authoritarian and pretty nativist, are now exercising outsize power,” Levitsky said.

13 states get an F

For years, gerrymandering to increase competition is something that seemed highly desirable to me. Then a few years ago, the radical right gerrymandered their way into power and that led to reconsidering that pro-competition belief for voting. Should Democrats fight for less partisan voting districts to avoid losing democracy to corrupt authoritarianism? Fight fire with fire? 

In view of this, more competition in voting seems better than less. A report broadcast on NPR yesterday indicated that Republicans in Matt Gaetz' gerrymandered Florida voting district were very happy to, as they see it, see Gaetz stand up to congress for them. One has to ask, stand up for exactly what? But that doesn't matter. It reflects the fact that no matter what Gaetz says or does, he will be re-elected to the House for as long as he wants. No Democratic Party candidate has a chance of winning the Gaetz Voting District.   

Now my mind has flipped. I'm back to opposing partisan gerrymandering (to offset Republican gerrymandering) and supporting pro-competition gerrymandering, or at least significantly less partisan gerrymandering.

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A WaPo article logic checks an FBI targets Trump supporters story that Newsweek published recently. Newsweek failed basic logic. Recently, Newsweek has been increasingly publishing pro-authoritarian radical right content. The WaPo writes:

It is not surprising that the assertion outlined in Newsweek’s headline — “Donald Trump Followers Targeted by FBI as 2024 Election Nears” — has been embraced as revelatory by Trump’s base.

That’s despite the lack of evidence within the article itself for this explosive claim.

That’s the fundamental problem with the report, written by [Newsweek reporter] William Arkin: That case is not made. Arkin presents some numbers and quotes, but none add up to “FBI singling out Trump supporters,” as the headline implies. Instead, it describes a new threat category created by federal law enforcement that includes people inspired to violent action by Trump — but also violent actors inspired by other ideologies and candidates. That may be a shift in the FBI’s approach, as Arkin argues, but it isn’t one aimed at broadly targeting Trump supporters.

Here’s the heart of Arkin’s argument, describing the extension of the group seen as “anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists” (AGAAVE):

“[T]he FBI went further in October 2022 when it created a new subcategory—'AGAAVE-Other’ — of those who were a threat but do not fit into its anarchist, militia or Sovereign Citizen groups. Introduced without any announcement, and reported here for the first time, the new classification is officially defined as 'domestic violent extremists who cite anti-government or anti-authority motivations for violence or criminal activity not otherwise defined, such as individuals motivated by a desire to commit violence against those with a real or perceived association with a specific political party or faction of a specific political party.’”

“Though Trump and MAGA are never mentioned in the official description of AGAAVE-Other, government insiders acknowledge that it applies to political violence ascribed to the former president’s supporters.”

That last paragraph is crucial. Notice that the insiders don’t claim it only applies to Trump supporters or even only to political violence from Trump supporters. This is a Logic 101 test question: Just because everything in Set A belongs to Set B does not mean that Set B only includes things from Set A. The word “felony” applies to bank robbery, but that doesn’t mean that “felony” only describes bank robberies.

So here, the facts are correct, but the logic is garbage. Did Newsweek make this obvious mistake because it is quietly pro-authoritarian radical right? It is hard to see this being a good faith mistake, but easy to see it being authoritarian radical right propaganda.

An essay: Radical right scholarship openly favors American dictatorship

An essay the Philadelphia Inquirer published yesterday focuses an interesting aspect of radical right authoritarianism:

America needs to talk about the right’s ‘Red Caesar’ plan for U.S. dictatorship

“Thought leaders” of the far right talk openly about a 2025 dictatorship -- People need to be alarmed 

To a small but influential gaggle of so-called “thought leaders” on the edge of the stage — the pseudo-intellectuals of right-wing think tanks, and chaos-agent-in-chief Steve Bannon — the growing rot infecting another key U.S. institution is just more evidence for their stunning argument now flying at warp speed, yet under the radar of a clueless mainstream media.

The D.C. dysfunction is more proof, they would argue, that the nation needs a “Red Caesar” who will cut through the what they call constitutional gridlock and impose order.

If you’re not one of those dudes who thinks about Ancient Rome every day, let me translate. The alleged brain trust of an increasingly fascist MAGA movement wants an American dictatorship that would “suspend” democracy in January 2025 — just 15 months from now.

"The idea that the US might be redeemed by a Caesar – an authoritarian, rightwing leader – was first broached explicitly by Michael Anton, a Claremont senior fellow and Trump presidential adviser." https://t.co/8Mzpyjx3af— Teddy Wilson 🏴‍☠️ (@reportbywilson) October 4, 2023

The guru of this push for a president seizing dictatorial powers to overthrow what far-right activists see as a “deep state” of liberals — corrupting institutions ranging from government agencies to the media to large corporations and the Pentagon — is a professor of politics at Michigan’s ultraconservative Hillsdale College, Kevin Slack. (Yes, the same Hillsdale that GOP-led school boards, including Pennridge in Philadelphia’s northern exurbs, are hiring to whitewash their curriculums.)

In War on the American Republic: How Liberalism Became Despotism, in which he rails against the “cosmopolitan class” of unelected elites he claims is running America, Slack writes that the “New Right now often discusses a Red Caesar, by which it means a leader whose post-Constitutional rule will restore the strength of his people.” In a recent Guardian article, writer Jason Wilson — who deserves enormous credit for tying together these threads — finds anti-democracy arguments like Slack’s are gaining traction in the small but influential world of far-right think tanks like Hillsdale and the Claremont Institute. That’s been tracked here in Philadelphia by another writer, the centrist liberal Damon Linker at UPenn, who sees a dangerous conspiracy theory taking root not just with obscure professors but with the iconoclastic billionaires who back the right.

“Intellectuals play a certain kind of role, especially on the right, in legitimating actions of elites in the party and [the] movement,” Linker told me in a recent interview, adding: “They’re giving people permission to do terrible things,” labeling shameful measures as “acts of virtue.”  

The chaos at the bottom of the political food chain is coming from the same instincts tearing apart the top of the government: A desire to blow it all up.

When these raw instincts are translated by the extreme right’s “intellectuals” into an explicit plea for a dictatorship, you can see that America is poised to cross the Rubicon — a metaphor rooted in the river in northern Italy that Julius Caesar had to cross with his army in 49 B.C. in order to drive out Rome’s democratically elected government and seize power.  

And yet the elites that far-right extremists claim are “all powerful” seem incapable of grasping these very real threats to constitutional government or a free press. That’s particularly true of the mainstream media and its pacesetters like the New York Times or the Washington Post, which seem determine to “both sides” the descent into dictatorship — with headlines that blame dysfunction on Capitol Hill on “Congress” instead of Republicans, or that place the 80-year-old President Joe Biden’s verbal or actual stumbles on a level pitch with rising GOP fascism.  

It’s all the more remarkable since we all know who the actual “Red Caesar” is — even if he is, technically, orange. Donald Trump, the 45th president who seems to have already locked down the Republican nomination to become the 47th, has been accused of running a rambling, ideas-free campaign — except that’s not true.

As the Los Angeles Times recently noted, Trump has been pretty specific in recent speeches and interviews about the actions he would take if he takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2025 — such as naming a special prosecutor to go after his political enemies, blowing up civil service protections to fill the government with his acolytes, deploying the military in a massive deportation campaign, and sending troops to “control crime” in Democratic-led cities. If Julius Caesar were still here, he’d surely be giving a Trump 47 presidency a Roman salute.  

In thinking about a “Red Caesar,” it’s helpful to remember what the actual Caesar said right before crossing the Rubicon: Alea iacta est, meaning, “The die is cast.” But in the United States in 2023, the die is not cast, not yet. The majority of Americans do not want to live under a dictatorship, and we have the power to stop this. But America is never going to prevent the “Red Caesar” unless we start talking about it, loudly and right away.

That is spot on.

Recent polling indicates that defense of democracy or opposition to authoritarianism is not a major concern for most Americans. The economy and national security are bigger concerns. Gallup reported: 

• Fifty-three percent of Americans believe the Republican Party will do a better job of keeping the country prosperous over the next few years, whereas 39% choose the Democratic Party.

• A slightly larger majority, 57%, have greater faith in the Republican Party to protect the country from international terrorism and military threats, while 35% favor the Democrats.

Q: Are Americans as a whole sufficiently alarmed about the threat radical right to democracy? 

YEAH BUT..................................................... WHAT IS THE ANSWER??

 Not an enjoyable read. Long too. For the enquiring mind:

Large and sustained federal budget deficits are harmful to the fiscal health of the United States, yet policymakers struggle with reining in the red ink. Even during the years of economic growth immediately predating the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government ran large and growing budget deficits, near $1 trillion per year. As policymakers enacted emergency measures to combat the COVID-19 crisis, federal budget deficits ballooned to levels not seen since World War II. Although the deficit has reverted to pre-pandemic levels as the United States winds down pandemic spending, deficits are projected to grow significantly over the coming decades—an ominous trend that will put increased strain on the federal budget. BPC’s economic policy team analyzes the government’s running budget deficit and updates the Deficit Tracker monthly.

For the rest of the details:

https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/deficit-tracker/

Damn, that IS nasty. But what to do about it? What are the solutions? What is the answer?

I seldom read anything about making those spending cuts to the military. Or reversing tax cuts to the rich. I do hear a LOT about Medicare and Medicaid, school lunch programs and such.

How about money for research and development?

How about money for infrastructure programs?

How about money for the disabled, and disabled veterans?

How about cutting back on food inspections or safe drinking monitoring?

I mean, we NEED to cut somewhere, right? 

What would YOUR priorities be? Your solutions?

Reverse tax cuts to the rich? Deep cuts to the military? Cut entitlement programs? Cuts to research and development? Cuts to foreign aid - including Ukraine? Close the border so we aren't spending so much on supporting immigrants?

EVERYONE knocks the other side for THEIR suggestions. But there has to be some way to cut the deficit spending. 

Fitch Ratings downgraded U.S. debt from AAA to AA+ on August 1, citing rising deficits, a broken budgeting process, and political brinksmanship—echoing Standard & Poor’s downgrade after the 2011 debt limit episode.

News bits: Ancient human footprints; Normalizing the banality of crazy

The WaPo writes:

Ancient footprints upend timeline of humans’ arrival in North America

New evidence adds to work showing people made these prints sometime between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago

Two years ago, a team of scientists came to the conclusion that human tracks sunk into the mud in White Sands National Park in New Mexico were more than 21,000 years old. The provocative finding threatened the dominant thinking on when and how people migrated into the Americas. Soon afterward, a technical debate erupted about the method used to estimate the age of the tracks, which relied on an analysis of plant seeds embedded with the footprints.

Now, a study published in the journal Science confirms the initial finding with two new lines of evidence: thousands of grains of pollen and an analysis of quartz crystals in the sediments.  

The thousands of footprints found in White Sands are an extraordinary but evanescent record of life around Lake Otero, the body of water that rested inside the basin during the Pleistocene. The ancient tracks are the remnants of complex interactions. Children played. Humans stalked giant sloths. A person walked a mile, carrying a child and placing them down occasionally.  

Fossil footprints were first seen in New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin in the early 1930s and were initially thought to be evidence of a bigfoot, said David F. Bustos, a resource program manager at White Sands National Park. They turned out to be from a giant ground sloth, a 2,000-pound mammal that went extinct around 10,000 years ago. Researchers also found tracks from trudging mammoths, a dire wolf and other ice age creatures.

The WaPo reports that some experts are still not convinced the footprints are that old, but conceded this new analysis makes the age assessment significantly more plausible. Bustos commented about the skepticism “it was hard to believe that humans could be walking along with the mammoth prints nearby, and that the prints could be of the same age.”  

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A WaPo article postulates that the increasingly deranged, violent rhetoric from Trump and far radical right authoritarian Republicans is normalizing crazy:

After eight years of Trump in politics, is a ‘banality of crazy’ setting in?

Last week, the Republican Party’s leading presidential candidate proposed executing suspected shoplifters.

“Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store,” former president Donald Trump said in Anaheim, Calif., outlining his vision for a second term at the convention of the state’s Republican Party. As the audience applauded, laughed and cheered, Trump added for emphasis, “Shot!”

The Anaheim speech was part of a pattern of increasingly aggressive rhetoric by Trump — and a somewhat muted response by the news media to his repeated exhortations to violence.

During his speech in Anaheim, Trump also mocked Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband, who was gravely injured last year in a hammer attack by an assailant who reportedly believed the former president’s lies about a “stolen” 2020 election.

A few days before his appearance in California, Trump suggested on his Truth Social platform that the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, deserved “DEATH!” for reassuring Chinese officials that the United States had no plans to attack in the waning days of the Trump administration.

He has also hinted darkly about seeking retribution against judges, prosecutors, witnesses and officials involved in his multiple criminal and civil cases. In April, Trump said that an indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg (D) would result in “potential death and destruction.” On Monday, facing a civil suit alleging business fraud, Trump urged people to “go after” Letitia James (D), the New York state attorney general who filed the suit.

The latest comment received only scattered attention.

Trump’s intimations of violence have received relatively less press coverage because they have become so routine, said Brian Klaas, a political scientist at University College London. Klaas says this reflects “the banality of crazy” — a tendency for the news media to ignore or downplay statements once considered shocking but which now, due to repetition, are taken more for granted.

“Bombarded by a constant stream of deranged authoritarian extremism from a man who might soon return to the presidency, [journalists] have lost all sense of scale and perspective,” Klaas wrote in the Atlantic last week, in a headline that felt both jarring and unsurprising: “Trump Floats the Idea of Executing Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley.” Klaas continued: “But neither the American press nor the public can afford to be lulled. The man who, as president, incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to overturn an election is again openly fomenting political violence while explicitly endorsing authoritarian strategies should he return to power.”

Qs: Is there such a thing as a moderate Republican in view of the behavior and rhetoric coming from the ARRRP and its leaders? What about all of these decent, otherwise normal rank and file Republicans who are deceived and cannot see or accept that they support corrupt, bigoted dictatorship -- are they moderates?

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Anecdote: A couple of opinions in the WaPo today argue, e.g., that there is such a thing as “moderate Republicans”, the Dems should have saved McCarthy's speakership and Dems need to step up to fill the sanity gap that arose with the collapse of the ARRRP into total violence-fomenting insanity and moral breakdown. 

FWIW, most of the comments I looked at to those opinions push back hard. They reject blame shifting to Dems for the breakdown of government and democracy that radical right authoritarians have intentionally created. 

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In a morality-focused opinion piece, another source notes the pro-violence rhetoric rising in Musk's X hellscape:

The Moral Case for No Longer Engaging With Elon Musk’s X

The former Twitter is incentivizing violent content, which will only become worse to stand out to users 

A video of [a horrific public murder], obtained initially by the New York Post, was soon seized upon by one of X’s newest “stars” — one of those users who has thrived under the new Elon Musk regime at the former Twitter. His feed (which I will not publicize) is a stream of incendiary incidents from around the world, posted several times a day to an audience that is approaching a million followers.

I don’t follow this account, but X’s algorithm makes absolutely sure that I see what it has to say. A senseless murder is apparently a content opportunity not to be missed. The user’s post on Tuesday contained all the ingredients for success: It was timely. It was shocking. It was an innocent 32-year-old man dying on the streets of New York City. It was a chance, duly taken, to write an inflammatory comment on Carson’s work in public policy, as though it had somehow led to this moment, as though he had it coming.

.... I watched as the video clocked 1 million views, then 2 million. Up up up. Disgusting replies flooded in by the thousands: That’s what you get for supporting woke policies; should have carried a gun; looks planned. By the time I got home, I had deleted the app from my phone.  

.... it’s time to step back as an engaged user, one who for the past decade has posted several times a day and scrolled countless times more. My eyeballs are no longer for sale to Musk and whatever grotesque content he wants to serve up in front of them.  

Decency long left the building at X. It flows from the very top. When former executive Yoel Roth, whom Musk wrongly accused of being a pedophile, warned recently about hate speech on X, CEO Linda Yaccarino’s first reaction was to play down his concerns. On Monday, Musk followed up: “I have rarely seen evil in as pure a form as Yoel Roth.”

News bits: Getting info from government via FOIA requests; Vaccine crackpottery works

One of the most potent tools that federal and state government corruption fighters have is freedom of information laws. Commonly called FOIA requests, these laws allow anyone to ask for information of specified issues. Nate Jones, the head of FOIA requests for the WaPo writes about his work in a current article, I find documents officials want to keep hidden. Here’s how. In the comments to that article, Jones linked to an earlier article about his work, RETIRED U.S. GENERALS, ADMIRALS TAKE TOP JOBS WITH SAUDI CROWN PRINCE, which comments:

More than 500 retired U.S. military personnel — including scores of generals and admirals — have taken lucrative jobs since 2015 working for foreign governments, mostly in countries known for human rights abuses and political repression, according to a Washington Post investigation.

In Saudi Arabia, for example, 15 retired U.S. generals and admirals have worked as paid consultants for the Defense Ministry since 2016. The ministry is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, who U.S. intelligence agencies say approved the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Post contributing columnist, as part of a brutal crackdown on dissent.

Congress permits retired troops as well as reservists to work for foreign governments if they first obtain approval from their branch of the armed forces and the State Department. But the U.S. government has fought to keep the hirings secret. For years, it withheld virtually all information about the practice, including which countries employ the most retired U.S. service members and how much money is at stake.

To shed light on the matter, The Post sued the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps and the State Department in federal court under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). After a two-year legal battle, The Post obtained more than 4,000 pages of documents, including case files for about 450 retired soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. The Post submitted its first FOIA requests for the documents in May 2020. After getting little or no response from the military services and the State Department, The Post filed a lawsuit in federal court in April 2021. The WaPo's legal complaint is here.

That's just an FYI about FOIA and governmental refusal to obey transparency law when it is inconvenient, embarrassing or reveals evidence of corruption, crime and/or treason. Pages 1-3 of the WaPo's complaint:

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The research journal Vaccine writes:

The most commonly reported reason for not having been boosted was a prior SARS-CoV-2 infection (39.5%), followed by concern about vaccine side effects (31.5%), believing that the booster would not provide additional protection over the vaccines already received (28.6%), and concern about booster safety (23.4%) or that it would not protect from SARS-CoV-2 infection (23.1%).

Improvement in booster uptake is necessary for optimal public health in the United States. The development of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 occurred at an unprecedented speed, but vaccine uptake remains among the greatest current public health challenges as updated boosters continue to be developed and made available to the public.  

In September 2022, bivalent boosters were recommended for everyone 12 years old and above and since December 2022, they have been approved in the United States for all people aged 6 months and above. However, as of May 2023, less than 20% of eligible persons had received an updated booster, representing a critical public health challenge.

There you have it. Lies and crackpottery about COVID mRNA vaccines have poisoned the minds of about 80% of the American public. Truth just doesn't have the impact that a juicy fear or distrust-inducing lie or false conspiracy theory has. That seems to be about as true in health care as it is in politics.

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Global warming update: The AP writes:

September sizzled to records and was so much warmer 

than average scientists call it ‘mind-blowing’

After a summer of record-smashing heat, warming somehow got even worse in September as Earth set a new mark for how far above normal temperatures were, the European climate agency reported Thursday.

Last month’s average temperature was 0.93 degrees Celsius (1.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1991-2020 average for September. That’s the warmest margin above average for a month in 83 years of records kept by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

“It’s just mind-blowing really,” said Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo. “Never seen anything like that in any month in our records.”

But remember, as the CARRRP* likes to point out, it's just the weather, not the climate.

* Corrupt authoritarian radical right Republican Party (corruption just needs to be in the mix)

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Religion update: The AP reports:

In many countries around the world, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people who are nonbelievers or unaffiliated with any organized religion. These so-called “nones" — atheists, agnostics, or nothing in particular — comprise 30% or more of the adult population in the United States and Canada, as well as numerous European countries. . . . . [We] also look at regions where openly being a none is rare or even dangerous.

The AP report on the US:

The decades-long rise of the nones — a diverse, hard-to-summarize group — is one of the most talked about phenomena in U.S. religion. They are reshaping America's religious landscape as we know it.

In U.S. religion today, “the most important story without a shadow of a doubt is the unbelievable rise in the share of Americans who are nonreligious,” said Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University and author of “The Nones,” a book on the phenomenon.

The nones account for a large portion of Americans, as shown by the 30% of U.S. adults who claim no religious affiliation in a survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Many embrace a range of spiritual beliefs — from God, prayer and heaven to karma, reincarnation, astrology or energy in crystals.

“They are definitely not as turned off to religion as atheists and agnostics are,” Burge said. “They practice their own type of spirituality, many of them.”

Dulak still draws inspiration from nature.

Data like this is what drives the most of aggression and extremism of the American Christian nationalism movement. The CN wealth and power movement sees an existential threat in the nones, agnostics and atheists. This atheist, i.e., me, sees an existential threat in the CN movement, but not in honest, tolerant, organized religion. I'm an outlier among outliers.

Also note that other research into this indicates that the nones, agnostics and atheists amount to about 50% of the American public. It depends on how one words the questions and what factors are taken into account. Some nones claim to be Catholic or protestant to avoid social ostracism in their communities.

Fun little bits of news

Texas Republican will nominate Trump for Speaker of the House

Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) announced late Tuesday that he will file paperwork to nominate former President Trump to be the next Speaker of the House.

“This week, when the U.S. House of Representatives reconvenes, my first order of business will be to nominate Donald J. Trump for Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives,” Nehls said in a statement. “President Trump, the greatest President of my lifetime, has a proven record of putting America First and will make the House great again.”

What fun!

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McHenry orders Pelosi to vacate Capitol office in one of first acts as Speaker pro tem

Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) ordered Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to vacate her Capitol hideaway office so he could take it over, just hours after becoming acting Speaker, Pelosi’s office said Tuesday.

Pelosi denounced the demand in a statement late Tuesday.

“With all of the important decisions that the new Republican Leadership must address, which we are all eagerly awaiting, one of the first actions taken by the new Speaker Pro Tempore was to order me to immediately vacate my office in the Capitol,” she said.

“This eviction is a sharp departure from tradition,” she continued. “As Speaker, I gave former Speaker Hastert a significantly larger suite of offices for as long as he wished.”

Things is gettin' personal up thar in the House! It's fair to say that there's not going to be much or any bipartisanship or good will going forward. It is a broken institution. It will probably stay broken for quite some time to come. 

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Jim Jordan throws his hat in the ring for Speaker

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Wednesday announced he would seek the Speakership.

Barf.

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Republicans Already Barred Trump From Being Speaker of the House

Some Republicans have suggested that Donald Trump should take up the gavel. But the former president's legal troubles could block any efforts to bring him into the House's GOP leadership, according to Republican Conference rules.

But even if Trump had full Republican support in the House, Rule 26 of the GOP Conference states, "A member of the Republican Leadership shall step aside if indicted for a felony for which a sentence of two or more years imprisonment may be imposed."

Well, that's no big deal. Just vote Rule 26 out of existence. No, wait. They can't do that because there's no Speaker in the House at present. I'm confused. 🤪

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Trump's sophisticated fraud trial defense is crystallizing:

Trump insisted Tuesday that his organization’s financial documents were not the least bit fraudulent—but even if they were, he couldn’t be held responsible because it was up to the lenders and insurers to fact-check that.

“Also, the financial statements are very strong in terms of cash, liquidity, and everything else. This case is a scam,” Trump continued. “There can’t be fraud when you’ve told institutions to do their own work.”

In other words, it's not fraud when you tell institutions like banks and insurance companies to do their own work to fact check the papers a liar puts in front of them. Hm. Seems like an odd defense. Does that mean bank robbery is legal if the bank has insufficient security? Or, I can say my home is worth 10 times what it is worth and get a big fat loan on that basis and blow all the money on fun stuff like the Fornicator-in-Chief?

Hm, what's that hand in the 

upper right grabbing?

Politics is so confusing . . . . . 

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House speaker contender Steve Scalise reportedly called himself ‘David Duke without the baggage’

Republican, who some say could replace Kevin McCarthy, has had reported associations with ex-Ku Klux Klan grand wizard

Wheeee! What fun! No baggage, therefore I'm not a racist.

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Gingrich says House GOP should expel ‘anti-Republican’ Gaetz

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) on Tuesday called on House Republicans to expel Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and defeat his motion to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from his post.

In a scathing op-ed published in The Washington Post, Gingrich attacked the Florida Republican as “anti-Republican” and said Gaetz was engaging in “childish behavior” and “has become actively destructive to the conservative movement.”

Newt (the Stinker) Gingrich? The champion punchbowl Turd Tosser? Now there's a destructive, childish voice out of hell and a fun blast from the toxic past.

People, things in the GOP are in gooood shape.