Pragmatic politics focused on the public interest for those uncomfortable with America's two-party system and its way of doing politics. Considering the interface of politics with psychology, cognitive science, social behavior, morality and history.
Etiquette
DP Etiquette
First rule: Don't be a jackass.
Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.
COMRADES:—It always affords me much gratification to meet my old comrades-in-arms of ten to fourteen years ago, and to live over again the trials and hardships of those days, hardships imposed for the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions. We believed then, and believe now, that we had a government worth fighting for, and if need be, dying for.
I do not bring into this assemblage politics, certainly not partisan politics, but it is a fair subject for soldiers in their deliberations to consider what may be necessary to secure the prize for which they battled in a republic like ours. Where the citizen is sovereign and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign — the people — should possess intelligence.
The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.
Now in this centennial year of our national existence, I believe it a good time to begin the work of strengthening the foundation of the house commenced by our patriotic forefathers one hundred years ago, at Concord and Lexington. Let us all labor to add all needful guarantees for the more perfect security of free thought, free speech, and free press, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiments, and of equal rights and privileges to all men, irrespective of nationality, color, or religion.
Encourage free schools, and resolve that not one dollar of money appropriated to their support, no matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school. Resolve that the State or Nation, or both combined, shall furnish to every child growing up in the land, the means of acquiring a good common-school education, unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or atheistic tenets. Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate. With these safeguards, I believe the battles which created the Army of the Tennessee will not have been fought in vain.
The BBC reports that an IMF analysis indicates AI will have a major impact on jobs:
AI to hit 40% of jobs and worsen inequality, IMF says
Artificial intelligence is set to affect nearly 40% of all jobs, according to a new analysis by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
IMF's managing director Kristalina Georgieva says "in most scenarios, AI will likely worsen overall inequality".
Ms Georgieva adds that policymakers should address the "troubling trend" to "prevent the technology from further stoking social tensions".
The IMF projects that the technology will affect just 26% of jobs in low-income countries. .... Ms Georgieva said "many of these countries don't have the infrastructure or skilled workforces to harness the benefits of AI, raising the risk that over time the technology could worsen inequality among nations".
Given American political dysfunction and authoritarian radical right ideology dead set against government trying to do anything about problems that any society faces in any country, we can expect little to no domestic or international movement on this developing matter.
One outspoken critic of former Harvard president Claudine Gay was billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. Ackman ripped Gay for alleged plagiarism that was found in her PhD dissertation thesis (and for her inadequate response to questions about anti-Semitism at Harvard before a congressional committee). Gay failed to cite the source of several passages in her thesis.
Ackman’s outspokenness drew some attention to him, and then his wife Neri Oxman. Business Insider (BI) published allegations that Oxman had plagiarised parts of her PhD dissertation. The WaPo commented on the kerfuffle:
Early this month, Business Insider published two stories that alleged that Neri Oxman, a former MIT professor, had plagiarized some of her work, such as by taking information from Wikipedia articles to write her dissertation. The stories came after her husband, the hedge fund manager Ackman, pushed Harvard University to oust then-President Claudine Gay over concerns that she had mishandled student protests and committed plagiarism in her career. Gay resigned on Jan. 2.
Ackman flew into a snit but, unlike the way other billionaires express their displeasure about inconvenient reporting, he publicly said what he did to try to force BI to retract the stories about his wife’s plagiarism. Axios reported:
Bill Ackman, a hard-charging hedge fund manager, is typical in terms of how he behaves about publication of stories they don’t like. Where he’s not typical is in his willingness to be open about what he did:
When the "Neri Oxman admits to plagiarism story" broke, I reached out to a board member I knew at BI, and to its controlling shareholders, the co-ceos of KKR, and to Mathias Döpfner, the Chairman and CEO of [parent company] Axel Springer. I assumed that with a call or two, I would be able to convince BI or AS to suspend the stories.
BI is Business Insider, a publication that reportedaccurately that Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman (an Israeli), admitted to instances of plagiarism in her doctoral dissertation (she failed to put quote marks around several copied passages). KKR is a major shareholder in Axel Springer (AS), which owns BI. Ackman’s assumption was that because Springer owns BI, he could bully them into taking down the story, overriding BI’s editor-in-chief. Oxman’s mea culpa:
Oops, forgot the quote marks,
my bad
Reality check: While it’s true that hedge fund managers often find it easier to talk to CEOs than to editors, it’s incredibly rare for a CEO to override an editor.
Tom Glocer, a former CEO of Thomson Reuters, tells Axios that “I was contacted multiple times (by disgruntled hedge fund managers in particular) when Reuters wrote something less than the adoring hagiography they sought.”
“My standard playbook was to refer the complaint directly to the editor in chief, to let the EIC call the complainant directly, and to remind that person of our separation of church and state.”
The bottom line: Ackman was not being realistic in his assumptions. But he had something of a tailwind because he's Jewish; he was accusing BI of anti-Semitism; and Springer is strongly and explicitly pro-Israel.
Arrogant billionaires like Ackman are the ones often calling the shots about all kinds of things. They buy congress and candidates who will serve them, usually at our expense. Hypocrisy does not faze them any more than corruption does. Getting their way and telling their version of often fake reality is what they expect, demand and often get. Axios implicitly posits billionaire influence on reporting as it being incredibly rare for a CEO to override an editor.
I’m not sure it is incredibly rare for billionaires to influence reporting. Look at Faux News and the rest of the authoritarian radical right propaganda and slanders Leviathan. I suspect elite influence on reporting happens quote a lot. Maybe EICs don’t see a lot of elite complaints because elite political and economic pressure can be exerted in many ways. Maybe the rule is billionaires influence reporting more often than they don’t.
Trump called a judge a 'bad person' for not allowing him to travel for a funeral. His calendar says he’s got a campaign event that day. .... Donald Trump requested the trial date for E. Jean Carroll's defamation trial be postponed. He said he would be traveling on Wednesday to attend his mother-in-law’s funeral. His campaign website shows he’ll be in New Hampshire at a campaign rally that evening.
Bad judge, bad, bad judge! That’ll teach that judge a thing or two. /s
But who knows, maybe DJT will blow the court off and go to the funeral to prove he wasn’t lying about planning to attend. But even if he did that, it’s still not believable as anything other than a forced change in his political theater agenda. The controlling rule of thumb:
Known chronic liars don’t get any credibility or benefit of any doubt.
Vote for DJT damnit, even if it kills you:The Hill reports on DJT’s inspiring call to arms in Iowa today:
Former President Trump encouraged his Iowa supporters to caucus for him at any cost, joking that due to extreme winter weather, “even if you vote and then pass away, it’s worth it.”
Meteorologists warned of “life-threatening” conditions in Iowa for the weekend as the state prepares to caucus. Trump canceled three of his four in-person Iowa events Sunday due to the freezing cold and snow.
“You can’t sit home. If you’re sick as a dog, you say, ‘Darling, I gotta make it,’” Trump said at an Indianola rally on Sunday. “Even if you vote and then pass away, it’s worth it, remember.”
That speaks for itself. And, he wasn't joking. Remember the rule of thumb stated above.
In unearthed Facebook posts, Mark Robinson also called the civil rights movement “crap” and vowed to work on MLK Day because he’s “not a leach.”
Martin Luther King Jr. was just an “ersatz pastor” and a “communist,” and the 1960s civil rights movement was “crap,” according to a series of Facebook posts by Mark Robinson, the leading Republican candidate to be North Carolina’s next governor.
Robinson, who is currently the state’s lieutenant governor, regularly criticized King and the civil rights movement for years on Facebook ― specifically on MLK Day ― HuffPost found amid a review of his posts. The Black politician also downplayed slavery, rejected the idea that he’s part of the African American community, and attacked the late congressman and civil rights icon, John Lewis.
There we have it civil liberties fans. At least some elite authoritarian, radical right GOP leaches think that civil rights are crap and working on MLK Day prevents one from being a leach. What a bunch of feisty, slandering parasite hypocrites.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation raises the specter of a form of potential religious war in the US. What triggered it is the usually successful efforts of TST (The Satanic Temple) to try to match the presence of Christianity on government properties. TST is a legal religion, but it is secular and does not worship Satan as a religious deity. The presence of TST in public places infuriates many Christian zealots who deny that TST can or should be a religion. The FFRF writes:
FFRF Action Fund is taking to task Michigan state Rep. Josh Schriver for his comments asking for the removal of tax-exempt status of churches he disfavors.
Schriver said his proposed policy would “really focus on making a distinction between the church — the church of Jesus Christ — and this, quote unquote Church of Satan. …You really have an issue where they’re seen as equal in the eyes of the state, and that doesn’t seem right to me for many, many legitimate reasons.”
Schriver shows abysmal ignorance of the constitutional prohibition of a religious test for public office by saying, “We have a duty to lead people as representatives who are appointed by God to make sure that we have a state that is not just good, not just great, but godly.” He also displays arrogance in grandiosely parading himself as answering only to “Jesus Christ”: “Honestly, I work for God not for man. And so at the end of the day, I answer to one person and that’s Jesus Christ.”
“In fact, Schriver’s paycheck is provided by the good people of Michigan, so he works for them, and his duty is to uphold his oath of office to ‘support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of this state,’” notes FFRF Action Fund President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The U.S. Constitution is a godless document, whose only references to religion are exclusionary.”
Once Christians legislate the power for themselves to decide what is a “valid” church and what isn’t, there will be great temptation to do more housecleaning. Once the TST is gone, Christian zealots will not be able to resist the temptation to put other invalid religions in their place. Islam, Scientology, Judaism, Hinduism and Mormonism come to mind as early potential wipeout targets.
Also note that Mr. Shriver cites many, many legitimate reasons for wanting to do this. I suspect he cannot cite many, much less many, many reasons for killing TST as a legal religion.
Time will tell how this plays out. Catholic vs Protestant?
DJT is asking for a delay in his defamation trial by E. Jean Carroll against him. Some distant relative died and Trump wants to reschedule a court proceeding to attend the trial. As usual, DJT is lying through his teeth to the court. This letter to the judge from Carroll’s attorney calls out Trump’s insulting lie:
One peanut gallery commenter snarked: Hilarious, of course he did this. Question is, will he blow off his dear mother-in-law’s funeral?
The Hill reports about an interesting poll: 56 percent in new poll willing to see Trump disqualified from ballots in all or some states -- A majority of Americans in a new survey say they would support the Supreme Court either disqualifying former President Trump from presidential ballots across the country or letting states decide whether to include him on their ballots.
The Hill reports about another poll with two pleasant surprises surprise in it:
Just under half of likely Iowa GOP caucusgoers who support former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley indicated that they would make a crossover to the Democratic party, saying that they would rather vote for President Biden over former President Trump.
A new NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll released just one day before the Iowa caucus found that 43 percent of Haley backers in the state said they would vote for Biden if Trump is the GOP nominee while 23 percent say they would vote for the former president. Nineteen percent said they would vote for Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Given his crackpottery, I suspected that RFK Jr would probably draw more votes from DJT than Biden. This data accords with that possibility at least in Iowa. Bigger surprise is that 43% of Haley backers would vote for Biden. I didn’t expect that.
Tax breaks for religion are not written into the US Constitution. Those tax breaks, valued at ~$100 billion/year (a conservative estimate was $82.5 billion for 2013), are a privilege. Religion in America, especially politically active American radical right Christian nationalist churches and businesses have abused the privilege and profoundly insulted the American people with deeply divisive, slanderous attacks on secularism, civil liberties and honest, unspun history.
There have been periodic attacks on the tax break scam for a long time, but those church lobbyists and their money have been ~100% successful in not just keeping tax breaks intact. They have been expanding access to tax dollars via decisions from America’s Christofascist USSC. President Ulysses S. Grant, in his 1875 State of the Union address, commented on church tax breaks:
“correcting an evil that, if permitted to continue, will probably lead to great trouble in our land. [churches received] all the protection and benefits of Government without bearing [their] proportion of the burdens and expenses of the same.”
So, what is the cost-benefit of America’s extravagant generosity to religion? That is hard to pin down, in large part because churches and religious groups and businesses like to operate in as much secrecy as they can get away with. They can and do legally get away with a hell of a lot in secret. The law protects and nurtures rogue theocratic organizations.
Earlier this week, NPR broadcast a long segment (~45 minutes?) about people who were sexually abused and raped by various church leaders, including some high level people (Bishops and whatnot). The NPR broadcast heavily quoted the video below about American church sex abuse and rape. Al Jazeera produced the video.
Some religions, like the Mormon religion, protect pedophiles, They publicly deny it (and brazenly lie about it) or keep silent when questioned. NPR Illinois commented:
A reckoning is taking place in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Jehovah’s Witnesses as stories emerge of child sex abuse.
Years ago, outrage erupted over how the Catholic Church allowed such abuse to go unchecked, but fewer may be aware of how other faiths are covering up abuse in their ranks.
We also highlight the latest reporting from Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines documentary, “Secrets of the Clergy”:
We reached out to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for a statement for this program, but did not hear back.
We also contacted the United States Branch of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Below is the statement we received in full. [the statement is an outrageous pack of lies]
Among the galling insults that religions like Mormonism practice is actively protecting elite church pedophiles and successfully blocking or watering down laws that would require report reporting of criminal sexual assault and rape to law enforcement. The churches want to deal with the problem by hiding, downplaying and denying there is any problem at all. These church leaders have the viciousness in themselves to blame the sex attack victims, not the perverted usually adult male rapists and molesters.
This video and the NPR broadcast left me outraged and bitter about how corrupt and ineffective our two-party political system has become. Maybe it always was that way. This is a moral outrage, pure and simple. The laws I have to live by supports these hideous, lying criminal syndicates that shield themselves by calling their operations a religion and shielding their criminality as an internal matter of religious freedom.
Qs: Should tax breaks for all religions be eliminated or just those that protect rapists and other kinds of perverts? What about Christian nationalist churches who are active in politics and routinely skirt the law (the Johnson Amendment,[1] now widely ignored) that demands loss of tax break status for politically active churches and groups? Should America be a theocracy with Christian Sharia law controlling and run by a bigoted, White male Christian Taliban, or should the US remain a secular nation with the secular Constitution we now have?
The Johnson Amendment is a provision in the U.S. tax code, since 1954, that prohibits all 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Section 501(c)(3) organizations are the most common type of nonprofit organization in the United States, ranging from charitable foundations to universities and churches. The amendment is named for then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who introduced it in a preliminary draft of the law in July 1954.
In the early 21st century, some politicians, including former President Donald Trump, have sought to repeal the provision, arguing that it restricts the free speech rights of churches and other religious groups. These efforts have been criticized because churches have fewer reporting requirements than other non-profit organizations, and because it would effectively make political contributions tax-deductible. On May 4, 2017, Trump signed an executive order "to defend the freedom of religion and speech" for the purpose of easing the Johnson Amendment's restrictions.
NPR reports about public attitude toward disposable plastic items:
These poll results come as environmental experts project disastrous levels of plastic that are already permeating the water you drink, the food you eat and the air you breathe. By 2050, the amount of plastic waste produced worldwide is expected to quadruple, according to a 2017 analysis. “The Plastic Problem”, an hour-long PBS NewsHour special report that premieres Nov. 27 at 10 p.m. ET, examines how the plastic we use is creating problems for our entire planet.
“Those items will be with us for centuries,” said Jacqueline Savitz, chief policy officer in North America for Oceana, a nonprofit ocean conservation organization, in an email to the PBS NewsHour.
More than a third of Americans — 34 percent — oppose a total ban on single-use plastics, such as non-reusable forks and drinking straws, while a quarter of U.S. adults said they support such a measure, according to a PBS NewsHour and Marist poll.
That’s sort of a mixed bag. People need to be willing to give up some convenience for the sake of the environment. For example, about 0% of plastic cutlery and about 0% of plastic coffee pods are recycled. Almost 100% of those items go into the environment in some form or another.
Although there are many reasons one may choose not to have children, recent restrictions on reproductive health care may also contribute to this decision. For example, the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson eliminated a long-standing constitutional protection for abortion access, which reduced patients’ medical autonomy and increased the risks of pregnancy and childbirth, and therefore may have led adults to decide not to have children. In this study, we use representative data on Michigan adults immediately before and after the Dobbs decision to examine changes in the prevalence of childfree adults in this population. We find that 21% of Michigan adults were childfree before the Dobbs decision, but this number rose to nearly 26% after the decision. Controlling for demographic characteristics, a Michigan adult was 32.8% more likely to be childfree after the Dobbs decision than before. We conclude that when access to safe reproductive health care is uncertain or unavailable, adults that do not already have children may decide that they do not want children.
If this is a nationwide thing, it ought to help decrease American overpopulation. If so, that would be a good thing, but for the wrong reason. Hm. One can wonder if this will prompt a spasm of emotion over the Great White Replacement Theory if it gets picked up and distorted into some blood curdling horror by America’s radical right propaganda Leviathan, e.g., Faux News, et al. Hard to tell.
From the Trolling the Christians Files:Rapper Lil Nas (Little Nasty?) releases a new single today called J CHRIST. The song is dedicated to “THE MAN WHO HAD THE GREATEST COMEBACK OF ALL TIME!”
A Lil nas publicity photo promoting the new song is sure to get some blood pressure up.
The Nitter net reports about an unsulting, lies- and slander-laden DJT verbal screed in the courtroom in New York City, from yesterday I think:
Qs: Why the hell do judges not toss DJT's sorry, treasonous, insulting, lying ass in jail for inciting another insurrection, and openly insulting the courts, the legal system and the American people? What’s a Nitter net?
Newsweek reports about payments to DJT from foreign governments in violation of the emoluments clause of the US Constitution:
Speaking at a Fox News town hall on Wednesday night, the former president defended himself from accusations made in a recent report from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee which accused him of accepting payments from foreign governments from countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar while in office.
The report accused Trump of violating the U.S. Constitution's foreign emoluments clause, which prohibits federal officials from accepting money or gifts from foreign governments without permission from Congress, after overseas officials stayed in his real estate company's hotels and apartments during his time in the White House.
Eric Trump, executive vice president of The Trump Organization, dismissed the report's finding as a "joke" and said that all the company's profits from its business with foreign governments were voluntarily donated to the United States Treasury.
Apparently it is lost on vice president Eric the Corrupt and Clueless that the emoluments clause does not care what a president does with money from a foreign government. All it says is a simple Don’t take the money, stupid! The open contempt and disregard the Trump family has for the rule of law could not be clearer. The Trump family sure has a lot of morally rotted grifters, traitors, crooks and liars in it. Eric himself is a sick, insulting joke.
Q: Has Barron Trump been unleashed on the world yet, or is he still incubating at some ivy league school while he hones his ethics skills? 🤪 (Hey! Who stole my lunch money!)
