News: Elites protecting elites; Lupus research discovery; Rotten GOP politics

In the last several days, various reports popped up about pornographic AI-generated images of Taylor Swift circulating in the internet. The first one I saw was about Biden railing about someone has gotta do something about this horrible, terrible Taylor Swift thing. I ignored it. But more recently, we see the CEO of the gigantic person (with more constitutional rights than us) named Microsoft blithering that someone has gotta do something about this horrible, terrible Taylor Swift thing. 

WTF! If AI-generated pornographic images of Germaine were circulating on the interwebs,* Biden and Gates would scream at the messenger and tell ’em to get out, with the door rigged to smash their ass on the way out and the guards instructed to shoot at ’em as they ran down the hallway toward the exit. 

* Eew, pornographic Germaine?? Talk about a horrible, terrible thing.

See my point? Us regular people get a kick in the ass and silently pay our taxes, but the noisy and famous beautiful and other elites get elite service and engage in vast amounts of tax evasion (~$700 billion/year by my estimate for the elites alone). They get real, honest to God service and respect. The rest of us get real honest to God disservice and disrespect.

The Mirror writes:

Microsoft CEO calls for tech industry to ‘act’ 

after AI photos of Taylor Swift

Satya Nadella spoke to Lester Holt about artificial intelligence and its ability to create deepfake images of others. After pictures of Taylor Swift circulated, he called for actions

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has called on the tech industry to take action after viral AI pornographic photos of Taylor Swift circulated.

The tech leader expressed grave concern and urgency to do something now. He told Lester Holt in an interview set to air on NBC News Tuesday: "We have to act, and quite frankly all of us in the tech platform, irrespective of what your standing on any particular issue is - I think we all benefit when the online world is a safe world.”

Nadella doesn’t merely have concern for Swift. He has grave concern. I guarantee it, he has zero concern for Germaine and other vermin of that ilk.

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Lupus is a truly terrible disease. Treatments suck and are fairly toxic. One gigantic problem with finding treatments for diseases with bad or no treatments is knowing at the tissue, cell and molecular level what event or series of events triggers disease. That is where most biomedical research is focused these days. It is a slow, tedious, failure-riddled endeavor. 

A press release from the Max Planck Institute in Berlin announced that researchers have found the disease trigger for at least some lupus patients:

Sometimes a single mutation in our genetic make-up is enough to cause disease. This is also the case with the autoimmune disease lupus. Lupus causes severe inflammation throughout the body and can have a serious impact on the lives of those affected. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin have now discovered a mechanism that can trigger lupus in children. This mechanism regulates the amount of a specific immune receptor that normally recognizes the genetic material of pathogens. If this mechanism is disrupted, receptors accumulate in the immune cells leading to the recognition of the body’s own genetic material. As a result, the immune system turns against its own body and causes the systemic inflammation of lupus. In collaboration with physicians from the Hospital of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the researchers were able to identify a lupus patient in whom this mechanism is disrupted by a single mutation.

In order for the immune system to react quickly, a certain number of these receptors must be present in the immune cells. Cells maintain this balance by constantly producing and degrading receptors. “We wanted to understand what happens when this balance is disturbed,” explains group leader Olivia Majer.

During their work, Majers’ team became interested in a protein complex called BORC. The researchers were able to show that BORC is required to degrade Toll-like receptor 7 within the cell. In addition, BORC needs another protein, UNC93B1, to carry out the degradation process correctly. If there is an error in this process, the receptor is not degraded and accumulates in the immune cells. “From earlier experiments in mice carried out a few years ago at the University of Berkeley in California, we already knew that too many of these receptors are a problem,” explains Majer. A greater amount of receptor biases towards recognizing the body’s own genetic material. This leads to an immune response against self, a trigger for the autoimmune disease lupus. So far, however, neither BORC nor UNC93B1 have been associated with lupus in humans.  

Testing for mutations in UNC93B1 could quickly become part of lupus treatment, opening up new approaches to therapy. In the past, doctors have mainly focused on suppressing inflammation with drugs. By targeting the mechanism that has now been discovered, it may be possible to prevent the inflammation from developing in the first place—and thus significantly reduce the disease burden for those affected.

This is early and this discovery needs to be repeated and expanded on to see how common this lupus trigger mechanism is. 

Two points:

• Just because researchers observe an phenomenon in an animal model like mice, it does not mean the same or anything similar goes on in humans. By my estimation, that mistake has been made at least ~100,000 times since the dawn on modern biomedical science in the ~1950s, probably more like 1 million times. For some reason, that lesson just won’t sink in with lots of people, especially non-scientists but including researchers themselves (hence the replication crisis in biomedical and other biological sciences).

• Here, one sees how one discovery builds on another over the years. Researchers at Berkeley found that Toll-like receptor 7 was a problem in mice. That suggested to the Max Planck researchers to look for a human connection with out of whack Toll-like 7 biology in humans. It’s a slow, tedious, failure-riddled process. Biomedical science researchers need to be persistent as hell and have the patience of a freaking saint.*

* I lacked the patience part to stay on the bench as a researcher. That’s why I went to law school and picked an area of law that focuses on biomedical science and research. It’s a heck lot faster and more fun to think and write about science than it is to do it. Can you imagine how long it takes a botanist to do an experiment on a species of a tree? (hint: years)

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These days, there is an almost endless supply of examples of stupidity, corruption, incompetence, crackpottery, bad faith, ill-will, cruelty, mendacity, vulgarity, jaw-dropping hypocrisy and all-around fetid moral rot coming from America's authoritarian radical right Republican Party. Here’s a couple of examples.

1. The WaPo writes: House GOP unveils Mayorkas impeachment articles despite lack of evidence -- The charges come as Republicans swiftly concluded two public impeachment hearings this month without Mayorkas’s in-person testimony or testimony from any fact witnesses, and they have struggled to detail clear evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors.

So instead of doing something about America's worsening problems, including the ongoing radicalization of people on the far right, the dimwit Republicans who control the House piss precious time away with their idiotic impeachments and sabotage efforts to deal with real problems like the US-Mexico border.

2. The WaPo writes: Trump brags about efforts to stymie border talks: ‘Please blame it on me’ -- “As the leader of our party, there is zero chance I will support this horrible open borders betrayal of America,” Trump told a rowdy crowd of supporters at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday, ahead of the state’s presidential caucus on Feb. 8. “I’ll fight it all the way. A lot of the senators are trying to say, respectfully, they’re blaming it on me. I say, that’s okay. Please blame it on me. Please.”

That cynical, self-serving bullshit is worse than mere incompetence. In my opinion, it amounts to intentional treason.

3. Regarding elite Republican sex pervert, hypocrite Christian nationalists: 

Late last month, the Southern Baptist Convention settled a sex abuse lawsuit brought against a man named Paul Pressler for an undisclosed sum. The lawsuit was filed in 2017 and alleged that Pressler had raped a man named Duane Rollins for decades, with the rapes beginning when Rollins was only 14 years old.

Pressler is one of the most important American religious figures of the 20th century. He and his friend Paige Patterson, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, are two of the key architects of the so-called conservative resurgence within the S.B.C.

Both men are now disgraced. In 2018, the board of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary fired Patterson after it found that he’d grossly mishandled rape allegations ....

Both were powerful men so brazen about their misconduct that it was an “open secret” in their respective worlds. Yet they were also so powerful that an army of enablers coalesced around them, protecting them from the consequences of their actions. A single individual can be a predator, but it takes a village to protect him from exposure and punishment.

Yeah, God sure does work in mysterious ways, assuming there is a God. But if not, powerful, perverted men often work in transparent ways.

4. Regarding elite Republican lunacy and cynical mendacity, The Hill writes: Rick Scott: Trump ‘irrelevant’ to border talks: ‘He’s not in office’ -- “He’s irrelevant to this conversation. He’s not in office,” Scott said on “Fox News Sunday,” while laying blame on the Biden administration. Trump has slammed negotiation efforts by Senate Democrats and Republicans on a border security and foreign aid package, raising criticism that he wants to sink any potential deal.

Scott, the author of a lunatic, pro-pollution, pro-climate change, pro-Christian Sharia law 11 Point Plan to Save America, knows that DJT absolutely, positively is relevant to all conversations in congress. Scott is a disgusting scumbag and liar. 

News: DJT blocks immigration solution; Christian nationalist hate, bigotry & tyranny; Etc.

For personal political reasons, DJT wants to block a bipartisan effort to fix the border situation. This is not much different than Nixon sabotaging Johnson’s effort to reach a peace agreement with North Vietnam. What Nixon did struck me as treason. This doesn’t seem much different to me. The Hill reports:

Romney: ‘Appalling’ Trump wants to kill border bill so he can ‘blame Biden’

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Thursday took aim at former President Trump for pushing Republican lawmakers to oppose a border deal so that he could use the issue to campaign against President Biden in the 2024 presidential election.

“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” Romney said. “And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.”

“But the reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border, and someone running for president ought to try to get the problem solved as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later,’” Romney continued.

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LGBQT Nation reports about a zealot Christian nationalist group calling itself One Million Moms. The zealots hate LGBQT people and how they live their lives. They hate a lot of other stuff too. LGBQT Nation Writes:

Conservative Christians rage at “unnatural” 

TurboTax ad showing a loving gay couple

“TurboTax is glorifying sin, and no sin should be honored,” the hate group wrote of the cute 30-second ad

The anti-LGBTQ+ organization One Million Moms (OMM) has condemned a new, humorous 30-second advertisement from the income tax preparation software company TurboTax. OMM claims the ad, which features a male same-sex couple, tries to “push the gay lifestyle and redefine ‘family.'”

The ad features Doug and Andre, a mixed-race male couple who say they “navigated a turbulent housing market” by buying a “boater home,” a playful word for a houseboat that sounds similar to the word “motor home.”

OMM, which only has 108,000 social media followers on Facebook and X, has a habit of throwing a fit anytime any company anywhere publicly acknowledges the existence of queer people.

Their past moral outrage has been directed at Parents magazine for featuring a same-sex couple, an anti-smoking ad that mentioned erectile dysfunction, Highlights magazine for acknowledging gay people, Scholastic books for featuring LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books, the Roseanne reboot for featuring a non-binary child, a Disney cartoon series for its brief scene of two men kissing, a Zales jewelry commercial for featuring a lesbian couple, the fairy tale drama series Once Upon a Time for showing a lesbian kiss, a 30-second TV ad for featuring an affectionate male same-sex couple, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for featuring trans and nonbinary performers, and an ad showing a lesbian couple playing with their laundry.

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Trumplandia

Everybody is reporting that the jury awarded $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for defamation in a second lawsuit. In the first trial, the jury awarded $5.5 million. Speculation is that DJT’s arrogant demeanor in the courtroom and his public comments was part of what motivated the jury to whack him hard in this trial. 

Whether Trump will wind up paying much any time soon is an open question. Trump can to wait to pay the full $83.3 million until appeals are exhausted. That could take years. But, in the meantime, Trump will have to either pay some, buy a bond and put up collateral or put some money under the control of the court until appeals are done. And there is this according to the NYT:

And when it comes to his varied legal expenses — of which there are many — he tries to avoid spending his own money at all. Mr. Trump has tapped his political action committee’s coffers to pay for his own legal fees and other expenses stemming from his criminal indictments and civil trials. Yet $83.3 million eclipses the amount in his political accounts. The verdict on Friday will require Mr. Trump to reach into his own pocket.

For what it’s worth, the standard of evidence in this matter was the preponderance of the evidence standard, i.e., more likely than not. That means that the plaintiff (Carroll) had to produce evidence which, considered in light of all of the facts, leads jurors to believe that what the plaintiff claims is more likely correct or true than not. That is a much lower evidence standard than what is needed for finding criminal guilt, namely proof or evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of guilt.

The World Court Imposes Injunctions Against Israel With Near Unanimity In Historic Ruling

*** BREAKING **** 

 

The ICJ just ruled against Israel and determined that South Africa successfully argued that Israel’s conduct plausibly could constitute genocide. The Court imposes several injunctions against Israel and reminds Israel that its rulings are binding, according to international law. A final ruling will still take more time, but this ruling will have significant political repercussions. Here are a few thoughts. 

 

 This is a devastating blow to Israel’s global standing. To put it in context, Israel has worked ferociously for the last two decades to defeat the BDS movement - Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions - not because it will have a significant economic impact on Israel, but because of the manner that it could delegitimize Israel internationally. However, the ruling of the ICJ that Israel is plausibly engaged in genocide is far more devastating to Israel's legitimacy than anything BDS could have achieved. 

 

Just as much as Israel's political system has publicly been increasingly associated with apartheid in the past few years, following groundbreaking reports by major human rights organizations such as Amnesty, Israel will now increasingly be publicly associated with genocide - as will likely those countries that have supported Israel and its military campaign in Gaza, such as the US under Biden. 

 

The implications for the United States, as a result, are also significant. Firstly because the court does not have the ability to implement its ruling. Instead, the matter will go to the Security Council, where the Biden administration will once again face the choice of protecting Israel politically by casting a veto, and by that, further isolate the United States, or to allow the Security Council to act and pay a domestic political cost for “not standing by Israel.” 

 

 So far, the Biden administration has refused to say if it will respect ICJ's decision. Of course, in previous cases in front of the ICJ, such as Myanmar, Ukraine & Syria, the US and Western states stressed that ICJ provisional measures are binding and must be fully implemented. The double standards of US foreign policy will hit a new low if, in this case, Biden not only argues against the ICJ, but actively acts to prevent and block the implementation of its ruling. It is perhaps not surprising that senior Biden administration officials have largely ceased using the term “rules-based order” since October 7. 

 

 It also raises questions about how Biden’s policy of bear-hugging Israel may have contributed to Israel’s conduct in terms of genocide. Biden could have offered more measured support and pushed back hard against Israeli excesses - and by that, prevented Israel from engaging in actions that can fall under the category of genocide. But he didn’t. 

 

Instead, Biden offered unconditional support combined with zero public criticism of Israel's conduct and only limited push-back behind the scenes. A different American approach could have shaped Israel’s war efforts in a manner that arguably would not have been preliminarily ruled by the ICJ as plausibly meeting the standards of genocide. 

 

This shows that America undermines its own interest as well as that of its partners when it offers them blank checks and complete and unquestionable protection. The absence of checks and balances such protection offers fuels reckless behavior all around. As such, Biden’s unconditional support may have undermined Israel, in the final analysis. This ruling may also boost those arguing that they, as signatories of the Genocide Convention, have a positive obligation to prevent genocide. The Houthis, for instance, have justified their attacks against ships heading to Israeli ports in the Red Sea, citing this positive obligation. What legal implications will the court’s ruling have as a result on the US and UK’s military action against the Houthis? 

 

The implications for Europe will also be considerable. The US is rather accustomed and comfortable setting aside international law and ignoring international institutions. Europe is not. International law and institutions play a much more central role in European security thinking. The decision will continue to split Europe. But the fact that some key EU states will reject the ICJ’s ruling will profoundly contradict and undermine Europe’s broader security paradigm. 

 

Final point: The mere application of South Africa’s application to the ICJ appears to have moderated Israel’s war conduct. Plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza and send its residents to third countries appear to have been somewhat paused, presumably because of how such actions would boost South Africa’s application. If so, it shows that the Court, in an era where the force of international law is increasingly questioned, has had a greater impact in terms of deterring unlawful Israeli actions than anything the Biden administration has done.

 

[This analysis was written by Trita Parsi on X immediately following the ruling. Trita Parsi is the Executive VP of The Quincy Institute For Responsible Statecraft ] 

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Further thoughts: I think it is significant that the president of the ICJ/World Court, Joan Donaghue, is an American. Despite the  Biden Admin's statement that this case is  "meritless, counterproductive and lacking basis in facts," she voted against Israel on all the injunctions. This is also the case for judges from other countries that are allies of Israel, proving that the ICJ functioned without fear or favor. Only Israel's ad hoc judge and the judge from Uganda down-voted any of the injunctions. 

Predictably US media outlets are spinning this historic decision by emphasizing almost exclusively the fact that  the ICJ did not order an immediate and complete ceasefire, which S Africa requested. But to appreciate what just happened I encourage all who are interested to skip the remarkably biased media on this issue here, and simply watch the proceedings which were live-streamed earlier this morning. Let there be no doubt that Israel (and by extension the US which enables its actions) has been condemned for potentially genocidal acts. Israel has been given one month to comply with injunctions that are delineated in the proceedings in the following video. They must submit a progress report on their compliance to the measures in 31 days. Almost all the substantive accusations made against Israel by South Africa in this case have been deemed serious enough to warrant the *prevention of genocide* under international humanitarian law. The US and Israeli dismissal of  this case as "meritless and not based on facts" is no longer possible to take seriously on the international stage. The list of egregious acts presented in the proceedings truly shocks the conscience, and agrees with S Africa's presentation in the court 2 weeks ago. The ICJ also quoted UN officials and reports frequently to substantiate S Africa's accusations in the proceedings. Israel (and by extension the US) have been warned to change course. It now remains to be seen whether or not they will.

News: A liberal's thoughts about Davos; Radical right attacks free speech again; Plutocracy in action

Jim's avatar

An essay by our good friend Jim Hightower comments on the self-described World Economic Forum meeting in the hyper-snotty resort of Davos, Switzerland. The hoi polloi elites gather at Davos to solve the world's problems, well, their own problems. Jim makes some good points:

Why You Were Not Invited to Davos

Once again, my invitation to the big shindig in Davos never arrived. Davos is the posh resort village in the Swiss Alps where some 3,000 global power elites gather every January for a weeklong, corporate-funded Schmooze-and-Booze-Fest to solve the world’s problems.

You and I are never invited to this confab, grandiosely titled “World Economic Forum.” That’s because (1) we’re not corporate or governmental VIPs, and (2) we might raise rude questions like, “Who the hell elected you plutocratic know-nothings and screw-ups to solve world problems – which you largely created?” See? We the People can’t be trusted to be polite.

Indeed, the theme of this year’s forum is, “How Can We Rebuild Trust?” By “we,” they mean the Davos clique itself – the Wall Street bankers, Silicon Valley speculators, various oligarchs, industrial barons, billionaire campaign donors, labor abusers, war mongers, mass polluters, high-tech futurists, and other architects of… well, the mess we’re in.

In our country, only about 10 percent say democracy is working for most Americans today, with the Powers That Be not even trying to serve what the majority believes in, wants, and needs. Economic fairness, social justice, and equal opportunity – our society’s fundamental, unifying values – are being trampled by the greed of moneyed elites and the fear and hatred of small-minded ideological extremists. They squabble over even keeping our government operating and fritter away their time and credibility on crap that undermines public trust.

This is Jim Hightower saying… So, no, Davos crowd, you cannot “rebuild trust,” for no one can trust you. You could gain a real measure of credibility if your elite forum would do something truly significant for democracy, like taking corporate money out of our politics. That would make Davos historic. Otherwise, you’re just partying… and stroking your egos.

Good thing the only thing the high ’n mighty are stroking is their egos. It would be obscene & pornographic otherwise.

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Federal Appeals Court circuits

5th Circuit is MAGAlandia 

Vox reports about another attack from the authoritarian MAGA-fied 5th federal court circuit (TX, LA, MS) on first amendment free speech rights:

A renegade federal appeals court — one dominated by MAGA-aligned judges who routinely read the law in ways that even the current, very conservative Supreme Court finds untenable — has spent the last half-decade harassing DeRay Mckesson, a prominent civil rights activist and an organizer within the Black Lives Matter movement

As part of this crusade, two of the Fifth Circuit’s judges effectively eliminated the First Amendment right to organize a protest in a case known as Doe v. Mckesson.

Mckesson’s case has already been up to the Supreme Court once, and the justices strongly hinted in a 2020 opinion that the Fifth Circuit’s attacks on Mckesson’s First Amendment rights should end — labeling this case “fraught with implications for First Amendment rights.” But the Fifth Circuit did not take the hint, issuing a new opinion last July reaffirming its attack on First Amendment-protected political protests.

Now the case is before the Supreme Court again, and Mckesson’s lawyers want the justices to restore the First Amendment as fast as they possibly can.

The facts are needed to put this case in context. In 2016, Mckesson helped organize a protest near Baton Rouge’s police department building, after the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling there. During that protest, an unknown person threw a rock or some other hard object at a police officer (“Officer John Doe”), hit Doe in the head, causing injuries. The court previously admitted that Mckesson did not throw the heavy object that injured Doe. Doe sued Mckesson, claiming that, as the organizer of the protest where this injury occurred, Mckesson should be liable for the illegal action of an unidentified protest attendee. 

In a 1982 case, the USSC held that “civil liability may not be imposed merely because an individual belonged to a group, some members of which committed acts of violence.” Despite that precedent, the 5th Circuit appeals court is trying to impose liability for protest organizers for anyone present who breaks any law. That could force protest organizers to pay for any unlawful acts of protesters, counter-protesters, bored agitators and anyone else in close proximity to a lawful protest. In essence, the 5th Circuit’s interpretation of the 1st Amendment would make most organized mass protests impossible.

It’s not just that this kind of attack is authoritarian. It’s the case that the same attacks come again and again. America’s ARR (authoritarian radical right), including ARR federal judges, does not give up. If the ARR fails this time, it will keep trying as long as they can or until they get what they want.

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From the Corrupt Plutocrats & Corrupted Congress Files: The Lever reports: 

The Oligarch Exemption For New Business Disclosure Rules

After a multimillion-dollar lobbying blitz, Wall Street firms got themselves exempted from anti-money-laundering requirements being imposed on small businesses

As of Jan. 1, small businesses must report who owns and controls the company to financial regulators or face stiff penalties. The disclosure is required under a new anti-money laundering law designed to curb tax fraud and terrorism financing.

But while mom-and-pop cafes and hardware store owners are now busy filling out the disclosure paperwork, many investment vehicles flagged by law enforcement agencies are exempted from those same disclosure rules after Wall Street firms spent millions lobbying on the matter.

Early versions of what became the Corporate Transparency Act did not include the special carve-out. But the final legislation had a line exempting pooled investment vehicles. That means venture capital funds, hedge funds and private equity funds are not required to report their ownership information, even though the FBI has said such opaque entities are among those used in criminal money laundering.

This loophole undermines “anticorruption, counterproliferation, and counterterrorism programs,” Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote in a 2022 letter to the Treasury Department and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is responsible for regulating the securities markets and protecting investors.  

According to lobbying records, the American Investment Council (AIC), an advocacy organization for private equity firms, spent $22 million trying to influence legislators over the past decade. In the two years leading up to the passage of the Corporate Transparency Act — and its inclusion of the loophole — the group lobbied directly on the legislation and related matters. AIC later boasted that it “worked with Members of Congress and their staffs to help craft these exemptions.”

The Corporate Transparency Act?? Bwahahahahaha!! Yeah, right.

This kind of sleaze is what Jim Hightower was referring to when he mentioned world problems and why people distrust plutocrats and government power players. Guess I’m not going to get invited to Davos either. I wanted to guzzle champagne and scarf caviar with the hoi polloi. Bummer. 

What they serve at Davos for starters

A mere $7,980/kg - yummy!

On sale for only $9,559/bottle - cheap!! 

Yummy!

Discrete, expert service staff at Davos

Yummy!

The economy must be good for them

Wait! What??

I wanna be a corrupt plutocrat too!!

News: Republican liars in congress; The Union splinters before our eyes; Bad hearing leads the Christian Taliban astray

The Republican Party no longer bothers to try to hide the corrupt, authoritarian moral rot that has consumed it. The New Republic reports about a new example related to rotted Republicans desperately wanting Hunter Biden tossed in the slammer:

New Transcript Blows Up James Comer’s Entire Hunter Biden Argument

A new transcript from a key Hunter Biden witness undercuts many of the claims Republicans are making about “Biden corruption”

The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday released the transcript of the testimony of Kevin Morris, a friend of and attorney for Hunter Biden, and his statements undercut everything Republicans have said about the embattled first son.

Morris is a high-powered entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles who met Hunter at a 2019 presidential fundraiser for his father, Joe Biden. Morris has loaned Hunter nearly $5 million in the years since. He testified about his relationship with Hunter in a closed-door committee hearing last week.

Initially, Oversight Chair James Comer just released a list of paraphrased highlights from Morris’s testimony. Comer claimed that Morris informally loaned Hunter the money and does not expect to be repaid until after the 2024 election—or possibly ever. But the transcript shows this couldn’t be further from the truth.

In reality, Morris never once mentioned the possibility of forgiving the loans. Instead, he said he has a “100 percent” expectation that Hunter will repay him, and repeatedly states that he and Hunter have a series of promissory notes agreeing the younger Biden will pay back the money.

What’s more, Morris testified that there is a “balloon” on the loans set for after the election. This means that Hunter is currently making low or even no payments but will start making lump repayments in 2025.  

Morris also repeatedly stated that Hunter never asked him for the money. Morris would voluntarily send money through his lawyers to Hunter’s, but the younger Biden did not ask him to do so. Morris only gave Hunter cash directly once, when he bought two paintings on their second meeting in 2019. And again, he wants the rest of the money he loaned paid back with interest.  

Morris’s lawyer accused Comer last week of grossly misrepresenting what Morris actually said during his deposition. [Morris attorney] Bryan Sullivan slammed Comer’s “cherry‐picked, out of context and totally misleading” press release and demanded the representative release the full transcript.

Even before Morris testified, his lawyer asked the Oversight Committee to be fair about the testimony and not distort what he says by cherry picking comments or mischaracterizing what he says. As TNR makes clear, the Oversight Committee ignored that and mischaracterized the Morris testimony by cherry picking comments and flat out lying. This is the same reason that Hunter Biden keeps asking for a public hearing and no Republican distortions or lies about what he says. Morally rotted House Republican authoritarians wanted Morris’ and Hunter’s testimony behind closed doors so they could lie about what was said and not get called on it.

Last week before the transcript was made public, a House Republican spokesman said “the transcript will affirm Chairman Comer’s readout of the interview with Kevin Morris .... the Committee intends to release the transcript soon but we do not have it from the court reporter at this time.”

What is baffling is why the Oversight Committee didn’t just get rid of any Morris transcript and destroy recording of the testimony. House Republican liars could simply claim it was a clerical error or something. Apparently the Republicans still have not got around to smothering this little bit of transparency in government. That’s probably now on Republican the list of things in government to break (or “fix” as they would call it).

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Texas radical right authoritarian governor Gregg Abbott released a 1 page statement that edges toward a declaration of succession from the Union. He says that he intends to ignore a recent USSC ruling that says federal border agents have the power to control border areas the Texas military (National Guard) has invaded and now controls. Abbott’s declaration is blunt and clear:

The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.

 

Once red states ignore USSC decisions, the rule of law has collapsed. That opens a path to civil war or a peaceful disintegration of the Union. Things are getting real interesting. In a scary sort of way. 

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The Atlanta Black Star reports:

Colorado Pastor Says He May Have ‘Misheard’ God’s Instructions 

After Being Accused In $3.2M Cryptocurrency Scheme

An online pastor in Colorado who claims he was following God’s guidance faces charges of civil fraud in the alleged sale of $3.2 million in bogus cryptocurrency that state regulators say is “practically worthless” to those who fell for the scheme.

A legal complaint filed last week by Colorado’s securities commissioner accuses Eligio Regalado and his wife, Kaitlyn Regalado, of scamming Denver’s Christian community with counterfeit digital currency that had been promoted under the trendy moniker INDXcoin.

Confronted with the charges, Eligio Regalado released a video statement saying that he might have “misheard” the divine instructions, leading to violations of Colorado’s anti-fraud, licensing and registration laws.  

“The Lord said: I want you to build this,” Regalado claimed. “We took God at his word and sold a cryptocurrency with no clear exit.”

In a statement, state regulators claim the digital currency was marketed as a “low-risk, high-profit investment” when, in reality, the assets were undeclared and thus ineligible to be converted to cash through the typical means of a digital platform or trading exchange, rendering the coin “practically useless.”

One peanut gallery expert insightfully commented, I guess it was god’s accent. He just misunderstood. In response to that, another peanut responded, God sounds like my tech guy from Mumbai?

Other concerned peanuts commented, (i) This is why you always get it in writing!, (ii) God was using Google voice and it was mistranslation! and (iii) Everyone knows God is a notorious mumbler. He misheard “rot in jail” as “buy a jet.”

Various bits: MOAB discovered; Germain’s thoughts on the election; Building neuron pathways

The regular news sucks today. It’s repetitive to the point of nausea. The MSM is awash in clickbait headlines leading to mostly clueless blowhard opinionators spewing empty blither about not much of anything, while the authoritarian radical right media remains as crappy and vicious as it has been for many years now. So, other things seem worth a bit of time.

Techspot reports about the finding of a gigantic data breach dubbed MOAB, the Mother Of All Breaches:

Researchers have discovered a database composed of stolen user credentials and personally identifiable information so large that it's been dubbed the mother of all breaches (MOAB). The dataset contains no fewer than 26 billion records, making up 12TB of data from sites including Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Weibo, Tencent, and more.

As is the case with similar databases, most of the data in MOAB has been gathered together from previous leaks over the years. But the sheer number of records it contains suggests there will be new information that has never before appeared online. 

"Threat actors could leverage the aggregated data for a wide range of attacks, including identity theft, sophisticated phishing schemes, targeted cyberattacks, and unauthorized access to personal and sensitive accounts," the researchers write.

Most of the top leakers

Corporate motto: We take your information privacy 

very seriously! 

(Who is AdultFriendFinder??

What is MyFitnessPal??)

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After the unsurprising, completely expected NH primary result, it remains as clear as it has been for months and months, that the election will be Biden vs. DJT. OK, maybe a bit clearer. 

Exit polls indicate that most Repub DJT voters in NH think he would be just fine even if convicted of felonies. So much for anyone ever complaining about an unqualified presidential candidate, despite dementia, felonies, confusing Haley for Pelosi, corruption, or fornication with an illegal hush money payoff. For about half the country, qualification for Republican president is a non-issue as long as the candidate passes two tests, (1) foggy mirror (still breathing*) and (2) whatever the Constitution says (not much).

* I'm not dead yet! 

Despite (i) the corruption and lunatic authoritarianism that has engulfed most of America's political right, and (ii) Biden’s crappy public opinion polling and even worse messaging, I’m starting to sense a shift in general sentiment in favor of Biden. It’s apparently not all the GOP lies and moral rot that seems to bug people the most. It’s something else. Several news items over the last couple of weeks hinted to me that there is a significant ongoing turn by the American public against GOP authoritarianism and maybe another thing(s) I cannot see in the data. 

Right now, and subject to changing events, it feels like Biden is probably going to win this thing (~55% chance) despite himself. Maybe this feeling will pass, but something feels different at the moment. There’s still a lot of time left for either candidate to really self-destruct or be destructed by an October surprise! 

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Researchers have found that neurons are likely to self-organize into neural pathways instead of forming pathways dictated by genes. I posted here before about non-genetic phenomena that hints at self-organization of neurons. In a completely non-biological example, a post discussed how piles of tiny silver wires covered by a very thin layer of polymer could form electrical pathways that mimicked learning in a process called neuromorphic learning, a purely non-biological phenomenon. Now, a similar self-organizing behavior was found to occur in animal models of neural pathway formation. The authors postulate that the same process could be happening in humans. 

The authors write in Nature Physics:

Heavy-tailed neuronal connectivity arises from Hebbian self-organization

The connections in networks of neurons are heavy-tailed, with a small number of neurons connected much more strongly than the vast majority of pairs. However, it remains unclear whether this heavy-tailed connectivity emerges from simple underlying mechanisms. Here we propose a minimal model of synaptic self-organization: connections are pruned at random, and the synaptic strength rearranges under a mixture of preferential and random dynamics. .... Extending our model to include neuronal activity and Hebbian plasticity, we find that clustering in the network also emerges naturally. We confirm these predictions in the connectomes of several animals, suggesting that heavy-tailed and clustered connectivity may arise from general principles of network self-organization rather than mechanisms specific to individual species or systems.

Science Daily discusses this in layman terms:

To understand how neurons form connections to one another, they developed a model based on Hebbian dynamics, a term coined by Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb in 1949 that essentially says, “neurons that fire together, wire together.” This means the more two neurons activate together, the stronger their connection becomes. [just like what happens in non-biological neuromorphic learning]

Across the board, the researchers found these Hebbian dynamics produce “heavy-tailed” connection strengths just like they saw in the different organisms. The results indicate that this kind of organization arises from general principles of networking, rather than something specific to the biology of fruit flies, mice, or worms.

The model also provided an unexpected explanation for another networking phenomenon called clustering, which describes the tendency of cells to link with other cells via connections they share. A good example of clustering occurs in social situations. If one person introduces a friend to a third person, those two people are more likely to become friends with them than if they met separately.

“These are mechanisms that everybody agrees are fundamentally going to happen in neuroscience,” Holmes said. “But we see here that if you treat the data carefully and quantitatively, it can give rise to all of these different effects in clustering and distributions, and then you see those things across all of these different organisms.”

As Palmer pointed out, though, biology doesn't always fit a neat and tidy explanation, and there is still plenty of randomness and noise involved in brain circuits. Neurons sometimes disconnect and rewire with each other -- weak connections are pruned, and stronger connections can be formed elsewhere. 

[unlike what happens non-biological neuromorphic learning] This randomness provides a check on the kind of Hebbian organization the researchers found in this data, without which strong connections would grow to dominate the network.

The researchers tweaked their model to account for randomness, which improved its accuracy.

“Without that noise aspect, the model would fail,” Lynn said. “It wouldn't produce anything that worked, which was surprising to us. It turns out you actually need to balance the Hebbian snowball effect with the randomness to get everything to look like real brains.” 

In this data, one can start to glimpse the workings behind the stunning complexity and diversity of brain wiring, thinking and behavior. Our neurons are self-associating (Hebbian behavior) and self-disassociating (connection pruning or “anti-Hebbian” behavior) all the time. That phenomenology winds up being reflecting in thinking and behavior.