TDS flares up in an online DJT screed

In more solid evidence that DJT is truly a dictator in his ambition, he now publicly and directly (i) demands that Joe Biden stop all the prosecutions of himself, and (ii) threatens Biden. DJT undeniably sees himself above the law. He sees the president as having the power to prosecute or not prosecute crimes including treason. That is how DJT’s former attorney general Bill Barr acted, which is why he is now disgraced among most normal pro-democracy people, but beloved by authoritarian radical right elites.

Mediaite reports about DJT’s latest middle of the night flare up of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome):

Trump Rants For SIX Solid Minutes About Criminal 

Immunity Appeal In Falsehood-Riddled Late-Night Attack

“Because of Joe Biden. I spend a lot of time in courts. Federal. State, city. And tomorrow, I’ll be attending another Biden inspired federal appeals court argument on presidential immunity in Washington, D.C..

Of course, I was entitled as president of the United States and commander in chief to immunity. I’m entitled to immunity. Every president has immunity, especially one that did the job I did. I did a great job, and I wasn’t working for myself. I was working for the country, I wasn’t campaigning. The election was long over. I wasn’t campaigning.

I was looking for voter fraud, something that I have to do under my mandate. I have to look for voter fraud. And I was finding it, tremendous amounts of voter fraud in the 2020 election. We have volumes of information. That’s all there.

And I was doing my job, which I had to do. And it’s my obligation to do an otherwise. Running our country and running it well, we didn’t have Russia going into Ukraine. We didn’t have Israel under attack. We didn’t have China talking every day about going into Taiwan. We didn’t have inflation. We had a great economy. If I don’t get immunity, then Crooked Joe Biden doesn’t get immunity. And. All of the things he’s done to allow the border invasion. Millions and millions of people coming into our country, many from prisons, jails. Mental institutions, insane asylums, many terrorists coming into our country. That’s really allowing insurrection.

And come into a situation where he allowed the surrender to Afghanistan. We surrendered. The United States of America surrendered to Afghanistan, where we gave them $85 billion worth of free. The best military equipment anywhere in the world left thousands of hostages behind. And they were American hostages behind. Still there, many of them. And 13 dead soldiers and many soldiers so badly hurt. This is gross incompetence. We did a surrender in Afghanistan. Nothing’s ever been so embarrassing in the history of our country.

Also, the millions and millions of dollars that went into Joe Biden’s pockets with money from foreign countries like Russia, Afghanistan, China, many others. I mean, Joe would be ripe for indictment. So you’re saying that Trump shouldn’t get immunity, but Joe Biden would? I didn’t do anything like he did. I ran a great country. This guy’s gotten $3.5 million from the mayor of Moscow’s wife. What’s that all about?

And that’s the least of it. One of the reasons he’s so soft on China is because he received a lot of money from China, and he’s afraid to do anything about it or say anything because he knows he’s afraid to say, we have a manchurian candidate in Joe Biden. We have to get him out.

By weaponizing the DOJ against his political opponent. Me, Joe Biden has opened a giant Pandora’s box. As president. I was protecting our country and doing a great job of doing so. And the historians will be saying that they already are. But just look around at the complete mess that Crooked Joe Biden has caused.

He’s the worst president in the history of our country by far. He’s also the most corrupt president. The least I’m entitled to is presidential immunity, just like any other president would get. I’d be the only one that they would even consider not giving me immunity, because for whatever reason, people are angry that I’ve done such a good job and I’ve replaced people that were corrupt that was supposed to be president. So take on the fake Biden indictments. They’re all Biden indictments. These aren’t indictments, as we say, like God coming down from heaven and saying you did something wrong. These were indictments given and pushed by Joe Biden. And he told his DOJ to do it. Don’t believe anything else. He told his DOJ to do it. Go and indict him because he’s losing badly in the polls so badly that he figures this is the only way that he can win.

The only problem is that thus far, it’s pushed us way up in the polls, higher than anybody’s ever been, actually, because people see it’s a scam and they see it’s a persecution and they don’t like it when it comes to anything, but certainly not when it comes to a president. They’re running a political campaign in a dirty way, even worse than they did previously. And frankly, it’s never happened in our country before. It only happens in third world countries or banana republics. They using their department of injustice to go after his a political appointment. And this is all him, 100% him. He’s the one that told him to do it and they obey his orders. It’s a shame never happened in the United States before, but it’s happened now.

And he has to be careful because that could happen to him also. The next president, whoever that may be, has a statute of limitations that go back six years. That’s a long time, Joe. You have to be very careful. We have to guard and protect our country. We have to do what’s right for our country.

You don’t indict your political opponent because he opposes the corrupt election, which you know was corrupt. Everybody knows it was corrupt. The American public knows it was corrupt. You don’t indict your political opponent. Thank you very much.”

Sadly and frighteningly, there still are millions of adult Americans who cannot see much of an anti-democratic, kleptocratic authoritarian threat from a former president who openly committed treason in his 1/6 coup attempt and his blatant morally rotted criminality while in office and thereafter. Tens of millions of American voters actually support this lying, kleptocratic wannabe dictator.

News bits: A bit of gun violence research; Authoritarian radical right propaganda tactics; Etc.

Researchers published gun violence data for 1991-2016. They found that gun safety laws correlated with decreased gun violence.

The Era of Progress on Gun Mortality: State Gun 

Regulations and Gun Deaths from 1991 to 2016

Background:

The recent rise of gun violence may lead to the perception that the problem of gun mortality in the United States is intractable. This article provides evidence to counter this perception by bringing attention to the period spanning from 1991 to 2016 when most US states implemented more restrictive gun laws. Over this period, the United States experienced a decline in household gun ownership, and gun-related deaths fell sharply.

Methods:

The main analysis examines the conditional association between the change in gun regulations at the state level and the change in gun mortality from 1991 to 2016. We include a range of robustness checks and two instrumental variable analyses to allow for stronger causal inferences.

Results:

We find strong, consistent evidence supporting the hypothesis that restrictive state gun policies reduce overall gun deaths, homicides committed with a gun, and suicides committed with a gun. Each additional restrictive gun regulation a given state passed from 1991 to 2016 was associated with −0.21 (95% confidence interval = −0.33, −0.08) gun deaths per 100,000 residents. Further, we find that specific policies, such as background checks and waiting periods for gun purchases, were associated with lower overall gun death rates, gun homicide rates, and gun suicide rates.

Conclusion:

State regulations passed from 1991 to 2016 were associated with substantial reductions in gun mortality. We estimate that restrictive state gun policies passed in 40 states from 1991 to 2016 averted 4297 gun deaths in 2016 alone, or roughly 11% of the total gun deaths that year.

_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

The NYT reports: 

One of Trump’s Oldest Tactics in Business and Politics: 

I’m Rubber. You’re Glue. 

Whenever Donald Trump is accused of something, he responds by accusing his opponent of that exact thing. The idea is less to argue that Mr. Trump is clean than to suggest that everyone else is dirty.

Former President Donald J. Trump is appearing twice in court this week — on Tuesday in Washington and Thursday in New York. He was not required to attend either hearing. But advisers say he believes the court appearances dramatize what is fast becoming a central theme of his campaign: that President Biden — who is describing the likely Republican nominee as a peril to the country — is the true threat to American democracy. 

Mr. Trump’s claim is the most outlandish and baseless version of a tactic he has used throughout his life in business and politics. Whenever he is accused of something — no matter what that something is — he responds by accusing his opponent of that exact thing. The idea is less to argue that Mr. Trump is clean than to suggest that everyone else is dirty.

_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

GOP slanders:

“Joe Biden knew exactly what he was doing, he knew exactly how his family was receiving tens of millions of dollars from our enemies around the world.” — Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), interview on Fox Business Network with Maria Bartiromo, Dec. 22

“I mean, you have more than $20 million that has been moved to the Biden family through many of their shell companies and in LLCs that they set up. We know that a lot of that money came from foreign adversaries, including China and Russia and Kazakhstan and places like that.” — House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Jan. 7

“Based on the evidence I’ve seen so far, I think the number is going to be north of $50 million that we’re talking about here. This will go down as one of the most politically corrupt presidents and families in U.S. history.” — Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), interview on Fox Business Network, Aug. 22

Too bad there won't be any blowback or legal repercussions for the slanders that authoritarian GOP elites routinely poison American politics with. Those lying slanderers belong behind bars. Instead, they are treated by America’s radical right as pillars of the community fighting for truth and democracy. 

_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

Compassionate conservatism in action: 

Moving beyond efforts to block expansion of health care for the poor and disabled, Republican governors in 15 states are now rejecting a new, federally funded summer program to give food assistance to hungry children.

The program is expected to serve 21 million youngsters starting around June, providing $2.5 billion in relief across the country.

The governors have given varying reasons for refusing to take part, from the price tag to the fact that the final details of the plan have yet to be worked out. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said she saw no need to add money to a program that helps food-insecure youths “when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.” Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) said bluntly, “I don’t believe in welfare.”

News chunk & bits: Plastic in bottled water!; Huh, a coup attempt was illegal??; New evidence against DJT?

The boffins in the chemistry department at Columbia University invented a new way of detecting tiny particles in water. The counting method is called Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) microscopy. They looked at popular brands of water in plastic bottles. They write in a recent PNAS paper:

Significance
Micro-nano plastics originating from the prevalent usage of plastics have raised increasingly alarming concerns worldwide. However, there remains a fundamental knowledge gap in nanoplastics because of the lack of effective analytical techniques. This study developed a powerful optical imaging technique for rapid analysis of nanoplastics with unprecedented sensitivity and specificity. As a demonstration, micro-nano plastics in bottled water are analyzed with multidimensional profiling of individual plastic particles. Quantification suggests more than 105 particles (100,000) in each liter of bottled water, the majority of which are nanoplastics. This study holds the promise to bridge the knowledge gap on plastic pollution at the nano level.

Abstract

Plastics are now omnipresent in our daily lives. The existence of microplastics (1 µm to 5 mm in length) and possibly even nanoplastics (<1 μm) has recently raised health concerns. In particular, nanoplastics are believed to be more toxic since their smaller size renders them much more amenable, compared to microplastics, to enter the human body. However, detecting nanoplastics imposes tremendous analytical challenges on both the nano-level sensitivity and the plastic-identifying specificity, leading to a knowledge gap in this mysterious nanoworld surrounding us. To address these challenges, we developed a hyperspectral stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) imaging platform with an automated plastic identification algorithm that allows micro-nano plastic analysis at the single-particle level with high chemical specificity and throughput. .... With the established technique, we studied the micro-nano plastics from bottled water as a model system. We successfully detected and identified nanoplastics from major plastic types. Micro-nano plastics concentrations were estimated to be about 2.4 ± 1.3 × 105 particles per liter of bottled water, about 90% of which are nanoplastics. This is orders of magnitude more than the microplastic abundance reported previously in bottled water. 

Smithsonian Magazine commented:

As much as experts are convinced that puny plastics are all around us, few methods to date have been able to directly detect them. Scientists suspect that the hardest to see are the most damaging of the lot: plastic fragments 100 nanometers in size or less, less than 1/100th the width of human hair. Now, a new study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reports a plastics detection technique that can quickly identify the size and composition of miniscule particulates. The authors found that an average of 240,000 particles populate a liter of bottled water, a number greater than previously reported. The find illuminates the true presence of micro- and nanoplastics littering our homes and lives.

“This is really a breakthrough,” says Sherri Mason, director of sustainability at the Pennsylvania State University at Erie, the Behrend College, who wasn’t involved in the research. “If we can’t detect the particles, then we can’t study them. That’s why this study is so important.”

Hm . . . . . YIKES!! 240,000 plastic bits/L?? (1 L = 1.057 qt)

Some commentary from the learned peanut gallery commentated:

1. As I understand it, fetuses are being found with microplastics. I'd go so far to say the majority of the people of the world are full of microplastics.*
    2. Life in plastic it’s fantastic!
    3. I am become Barbie
    4. Destroyer of worlds.
    5. This Barbenheimer thing is getting out of hand

6. They found a whole plastic bag on the bottom of the Mariana Trench. That's ~11,000 meters under the sea surface.

    7. People are putting plastic in their Mariana trench all the time for fun.

8. Plastic degrades over thousands of years... and our life expectancy has increased as we got more plastic within us... that would mean that... if we were made 100% of plastic, we'd last thousands of years!

* Microplastic particles are found on both sides of the human placenta (both maternal and fetal) for the first time, in a study led by Antonio Ragusa of the San Giovanni Calibita Fatebenefratelli Hospital. In this study, six placentas were studied and found to contain a variety of plastics commonly used in man-made coatings, paints, adhesives, plasters, finger paints, polymers, cosmetics, and personal care products of various colors. (the research paper is here)

____________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________

DJT’s latest defense in the Georgia state election interference lawsuit is that no one told him it was illegal to overturn an election! Mediaite reports:

Trump Demands Election Crimes Case Be Dropped In New Filing

Because Nobody Told Him Overturning Election Was Crime

Former President Donald Trump demanded the election crimes case against him be dismissed on the grounds that he didn’t have advance notice he would be committing a crime by trying to overturn the election. .... Trump’s attorney argued Trump “lacked fair notice” that his conduct could be considered criminal:

DJT’s I didn’t know it 

was illegal defense

This helps explain why DJT needs to pull out all the stops and all the corks from all the bungs in his own defense: 

Maximum jail terms under Georgia state law

That defense ranks right up there with the dog ate my homework defense. 

Cecil ate $4,000 in bills that were 

laying around on the counter 

Bad dog, bad, bad dog!

OK, OK, DJT’s defense isn't quite as good as the dog ate my homework defense. Sheesh.

____________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________

Although this news bit is posited as a big deal, it doesn’t look big to me. Maybe I’m missing something. Salon reports:

Experts: Jack Smith’s “dramatic new proof” so “overwhelming” 

reluctant witnesses may decide to flip

Professor: Trump “demonstrated a criminal intent” to collaborate with insurrectionists at “expense of the Constitution”

Former President Donald Trump refused to help stop the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol and instead watched TV from the White House, according to previously undisclosed details that special counsel Jack Smith's team uncovered as part of its Jan. 6 probe, ABC News reported.

A significant portion of the information in the report comes from interviews with Dan Scavino, Trump's former deputy chief of staff and current senior adviser to his reelection campaign. Scavino, who refused to cooperate with the House select committee's probe on Jan. 6, citing executive privilege, had his claims rejected by a judge last year and was informed he had to comply with a grand jury subpoena. Essential parts of his testimony were disclosed to ABC News.  

“Trump was ‘very angry’ that day – not angry at what his supporters were doing to a pillar of American democracy, but steaming that the election was allegedly stolen from him and his supporters, who were ‘angry on his behalf,’” ABC News reported. “Scavino described it all as ‘very unsettling,’” sources told the outlet.  

“Indeed, Trump’s angry response to Scavino’s comment to him that there’s smoke coming out of the Capitol in effect was, ‘Let it Burn,’” [former prosecutor] professor Bennett Gershman said. “And his nonchalant indifference to Vice President Pence’s safety and welfare offers chilling proof that Trump’s conscious purpose, namely, his intent, was first to incite an insurrection and then by his inaction to demonstrate his intent that the insurrection effectively stop Congress from doing its constitutional duty to certify the election results.”

This proof would be “powerful circumstantial” evidence of Trump’s criminal intent underlying all the federal charges, he added.

Aw, poor Scavino, he was all unsettled on 1/6 because his boss was trying to overthrow the government and pull off a coup. Poor, poor boy. Sad. /s

Actually, I wish Scavino would be put in the slammer for a decade or so to give him time to think about why he supported DJT in the first place and why he refused to cooperate with prosecutors. Citing executive privilege was pure cynical bullshit by Scavino and he knew it all along.

This news isn’t new. We all knew that DJT was watching the coup attempt on TV and refused to do anything about it. That makes perfect sense because he wanted the coup attempt to succeed, not fail because he intervened to stop it. Maybe what makes this important is that there is now testimony under oath about DKT’s morally rotted, autocratic state of mind on 1/6.

The Story of My Ban on Breaking News & Religion

This is the story of how I was permanently banned on Breaking News and Religion by the owner of the website, The Unknown Sleeper. 

I have tried to leave out extraneous information, but tried to include enough information to not leave readers with many questions. I am willing to answer any question you may have. 

To start, you can find the commenting thread where TUS (the unknown sleeper) decided to ban me at BNR. Below is a screenshot of the interaction. But there is a lot of backstory than just that single thread. 

https://breakingnewsandreligion.online/2024/01/03/european-anti-zionism/#comment-6359961426

BNR has a history of normalizing anti-semitism. Jewish commenter Alex The Kay left BNR due to “blatant anti-semitism” several months ago:

A former mod on BNR, commenter Sir Tainley, submitted not one, but two threads to The Den (BNR’s conflict resolution forum) about anti-semitism on BNR.

https://theden.breakingnewsandreligion.online/2023/11/02/moderator-posting-racist-memes/

https://theden.breakingnewsandreligion.online/2023/11/03/is-holocaust-denialism-welcome-on-the-site/

Sir Tainley’s complaints about anti-semitism were ignored, as were mine. Alex The Kay’s departure due to anti-semitism was meaningless for The Urban Sleeper, despite TUS claiming to “respect” Alex. 

Sir Tainley’s first complaint was regarding slurs against the Jewish people, accomplished in comparisons between Israelis and nazis. Such comparisons are recognized by the German Government, the  International Holocaust Remembrance Association, and other relevant parties as anti-Semitic. Take the number one comment on a recent BNR thread regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

“Three months whereby 1/10 of the number of supplies needed to feed a population is a starvation programme reminiscent of what occurred in the death camps of Auchwicz, Dachau and Treblinka. Though the difference with WWII is the US is directly implicated in the mass starvation of the Gazan people by supporting this inhuman policy of the Zionist entity. The US is in fact seen as being directly responsible and is a political pariah in the world.”

In Sir Tainley’s second complaint, Sir Tainley asserted that certain comments are implicitly justifying the Holocaust and compares them to BNR comments equating Israel’s actions with nazi actions. TUS disagrees, claiming that the comments don’t imply the alleged accusations of Holocaust justification or anti-Semitism.

I also complained about anti-semitism of a mod, Rawr. Rawr repeatedly posts a cartoon which every Jew I have ever asked about agreed was an anti-Semitic cartoon. 

Now, what would TUS say about me, you should be wondering at this point. TUS thinks I am a “fake Jew” and a “troll”. TUS claims I “feign Judaism and homosexuality as a smokescreen for spewing bigotry and hate”. Specifically regarding the term ‘fake Jew”, TUS offered various reasons for calling me this name. Sometimes, he would say he thinks I am a non-Jew outright lying about being Jewish. Other times he would claim my Jewishness is illegitimate because I am atheist (Jewish atheism is a not uncommon strain of Judaism in which Jews embrace the cultural aspect of Judaism but not the religious dogma). Regardless of his reasoning for calling me fake Jew, TUS claims I am “no different from any other hatemonger you might find on Stormfront or any other similar hate sites”. 

Why?

As a gay man, I am very bothered by treatment of LGBT people across the Islamic world. Approximately 74% of Christians live somewhere with civil unions or gay marriage. Only 11% of Christians live somewhere homosexuality is illegal. Meanwhile, 52% of Muslims live somewhere homosexuality is illegal per the law, and 5% of Muslims live somewhere with civil unions or gay marriage. These statistics were determined by ChatGPT by analyzing the Pew Research Center’s global religious landscape report, and cross referencing the report with population data and laws pertaining to LGBT people across the world. 

Because Islam is significantly worse for LGBT people than Christianity (which doesn’t take ChatGPT to figure out), I was critical of Islamist doctrine on BNR. While TUS would like to call me an Islamophobe, the truth of the matter is I do not hate all Muslims. Nor am I irrationally fearful of them. I hate people who oppress, jail and execute gays, and that is unfortunately a large portion of the Islamic world. 

I work with a young Muslim woman who I admire and whose company I very much enjoy. She knows I am gay, and she doesn’t care. I don’t hate her, and she doesn’t hate me. I know some will call that tokenism. Unfortunately, there are very few Muslims in the gay world. 

The majority of the time my criticism of Islamism was within the rules of Breaking News and Religion. TUS appeared to get frustrated that I was able to criticize Islamist treatment of LGBT people within the rules he established, and started calling me “fake Jew” and other insults (“troll”) because of it. 

When I complained to The Urban Sleeper that calling me fake Jew was an insult that violated his own rules (no insults), he wrote to me that the rules do not preclude rudeness, and that calling me fake Jew was simply rudeness, not an insult. Despite my claim that being called fake Jew was not just rude but an insult, as the forum owner he could and did continue to call me fake Jew and other names.

When I decided I had had enough of TUS’ nastiness and rudeness, I decided to be honest with him. Given the above experience, and that there are only one or two Jews left on BNR (Who are both far less active than I ever was), I told TUS that people who own websites that are nearly Judenfrei (A German term meaning free of Jews), shouldn’t go around calling Jewish people nazis (which he regularly refers to me as). This is when he banned me.  

Notably, The Urban Sleeper claimed months ago that he and his moderation team do not “moderate for intent”. 

https://theden.breakingnewsandreligion.online/2023/09/13/rawr/#comment-6277283218

That is to say, when I claimed Rawr the mod has an anti-Semitic agenda, it was irrelevant because ‘agendas’ are not moderated. However, that is precisely what TUS banned me for: an alleged agenda of “hate”. I did not break any of BNR rules to cause TUS to ban me. He simply decided he was “fucking done” with my alleged “bigotry” and “hate speech”. 

Questions for Discussion:

1. - I made a conscious decision to stop taking The Urban Sleeper’s nastiness lying down, and be nasty back to him. Would you have made that choice? I stood up against nastiness against me, and bigotry against Jews, at the cost of my voice in the forum. Would you have done the same?
2. - AlexTheKay is a widely respected commenter, who quit BNR due to the normalization of anti-semitism. Why do you think TUS was unable to accept that his forum has slid into a place which was hostile towards Jews, particularly when I brought to the attention of TUS that Alex left due to anti-semitism? 
3. - IsTUS calling me ‘nazi’ a propaganda tactic similar to Putin claiming Ukraine needs to be de-nazified?
4. - Is anti-semitism so engrained in social media, that is impossible for many to see?
5. - If the argument is made that you are fake Jew, then what defines a real Jew? Questioning someone’s identity is a way of dehumanizing them, which is a tactic used by anti-semites. 
6. - Are all Jews supposed to have the same political ideology? When the arguments against Israel shift into attacks against Jews, then this is a clear shift towards antisemitism. 

Unknown unknowns…

No, not the Donald Rumsfeld ones.  😁  I’m talking about what goes on around us that we are cognitively unaware of.  I’m talking the real reality out there, very different than our little slice of it.  Let me take you on the journey… 

Look around you.  What do you see?  It’s called your reality (chairs, tables, windows, computer, etc.), i.e., what we think of as “real stuff.”  To you, all that exists and is real.  It’s what you “know” to exist.  It’s your (I’ll call it) “known knowns” reality.

But if you had the ability to see what goes on outside your visible light spectrum, your so-called reality, your mind would be totally blown.  It would be exactly like entering another realm of existence.

Humans are able to see only a small portion (<1%) of the Electromagnetic Spectrum, the section we call “visible light” (see image above).  Though we can’t directly see outside our little slice, we do, however, know much about it.  We know its effect on our reality. We also know its accessibility can be different for different species other than humans.  For example, “animals such as bees and snakes are able to see into the ultraviolet spectrum.  The light-sensing cells of butterflies allow them to see all kinds of light, and are considered to have the broadest visual range compared to any form of wildlife.”

Then there are all those other kinds of electromagnetic light waves, outside our visual ones, that are floating around out there in what we call “reality”.  These phenomena are also a real part of our existence too.  You got your infrared, ultraviolet, microwaves, radio waves, gamma rays, x-rays (again, see above image).

So, when it comes to the EM spectrum, in summary, we could call all these phenomena “known unknowns”; i.e., “known about” but can’t be “directly known” (experience) without instrumentation.  Known (about) unknowns.

Okay, now let’s go even “deeper” into “reality.”  Did you know that, fundamentally, everything around you is just a myriad of particles and forces, dancing around, and making up your reality?  It’s true.  Artistically speaking, you could think of reality as a massive “fishbowl of chaos” that, for some reason, remarkably comes together to form the visual spectrum of your reality.  (I still don’t understand how these particles and forces are able to come together, stay intact, and create stable images of external individual entities.  (I think it has something to do with amenable chemical bonding, but I don’t know.  That’s for another day.)  Continuing on with my train of thought…

Going even deeper into reality, how about those sub-atomic particles, such as neutrinos, “one of the most abundant particles in the universe.”  Did you know that “about 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second.”  Whoa.  That’s mind blowing.  Or, we could go bigger; the other end of the spectrum.  How about that “dark matter” and “dark energy” floating around out there in the cosmos, baffling even the greatest minds humankind has ever known?

Okay, okay, you get the picture by now.  I have been talking about these accepted (so-called) “known unknowns.”

Now, what I’m trying to get to is the “unknown unknowns.”  What we don’t have any direct or indirect access to, or knowledge of.

We know about these “known knowns” and “known unknowns.”  But what about the “unknown unknowns?”  (Stay with me here.)  The as-of-yet undiscovered phenomena that exists and that may affect our reality, but that we do not have access to, or even awareness of?  There have to be some, no?  What could they possibly be?

Questions:

1. Since our visual reality represents what I call the a.) “known knowns” (things we can directly experience), and b.) the “known unknowns” (things we are aware of but cannot directly experience), do you c.) accept/believe that there are unknown unknowns?  If not, why not?

2. What percent of our reality do you think makes up the known knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns?  (three categories)

3. Has this OP given you any pause about your reality?  Does it cause you to “rethink” it?  For example, how about an afterlife?  How about the Many Worlds Theory?  How about other currently inaccessible dimensions?  Branes (slices of realms)?  If you are fair, considering all that I have pointed out about what is really out there, how can you possibly dismiss these "unknown unknowns" possibilities?  Can you?

Impress me with your thoughts.

News bits: Leniency for traitors; Some Christofascist ideology; Etc.

The Intercept reports:

FEDERAL JUDGES HANDLING the criminal cases of hundreds of people charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol have overwhelmingly issued sentences far more lenient than Justice Department prosecutors sought, an analysis by The Intercept reveals.

In 82 percent of the 719 January 6-related cases that have been resolved, and in which the defendants have either pleaded guilty or been convicted, judges have issued lighter sentences than federal prosecutors requested, the analysis of Justice Department data through December 4, 2023, shows. They imposed the same sentences sought by prosecutors in just 95 cases and harsher sentences in only 37.

Nearly every one of the 24 federal judges handling the massive docket of January 6 cases has shown leniency toward the defendants, regardless of whether the judges were appointed by Democratic or Republican presidents, the data shows. 

Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed that the federal judicial system has been unnecessarily punitive in its treatment of January 6 defendants, complaining that they are “political prisoners” who have been unfairly persecuted for trying to prevent the congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 election. One leading January 6 defendant compared himself to a Jew living in Nazi GermanyOpens in a new tab and saidOpens in a new tab that his “only crime is opposing those who are destroying our country.”

Why leniency for traitors? Because our legal and court system are political and corrupt. The rule of law is an ill-defined thing. Some observers call it an essentially contested concept because it is mostly subjective at least for white collar crimes, especially by rich or powerful elites. 

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

Right Wing Watch reports:

Christian Nationalist Bill Cook Says God Will Start 

Killing FBI Agents for Arresting Jan. 6 Insurrectionists

Rev. Bill Cook is the founder of America’s Black Robe Regiment and an ardent Christian nationalist who wants to see “the government of God [established] throughout every square inch of the Earth.”

In November, Cook preached at On Fire Ministries in Spokane, Washington, which is run by far-right pastor Matt Shea, a former Washington state legislator who was stripped of his committee assignments and booted out of the Republican Party in 2019 in the wake of a report detailing how he had “participated in an act of domestic terrorism” and “planned, engaged in and promoted a total of three armed conflicts of political violence against the United States Government in three states outside the state of Washington over a three-year period.”

The remarks Cook delivered were a perfect match for the venue in which they were presented, as he used his time on stage to declare that the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was a “psy op” carried out by the government and also to warn FBI agents who have been arresting insurrectionists that God will soon start killing them and sending them to Hell.

It’s good to know that God will be tidying up by murdering those evil 1/6 psy op FBI agents and sending them to Hell. 

This is just a reminder of the ongoing radicalization of at least some of American Christianity into some form of enraged, mentally deranged Christofascism.

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

From the Salwart Patriot Entrepreneur Files: Axios reports:

There’s growing concern among some executives and board members at Tesla and SpaceX that Musk's drug use could be influencing his antics, The Wall Street Journal’s Emily Glazer and Kirsten Grind report. .... They fear Musk could hurt himself as well as the future of six companies he oversees. 

Musk has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, “often at private parties around the world, where attendees sign nondisclosure agreements or give up their phones to enter,” The Journal reports.

“People close to Musk, who is now 52, said his drug use is ongoing ... Illegal drug use would likely be a violation of federal policies that could jeopardize SpaceX’s billions of dollars in government contracts.”

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

Meanwhile, there’s an 

insurrectionist at the bird feeder