Our weak rule of law and our morally rotted political elites

An article the Daily Beast published yesterday reports about sex, drug and alcohol parties where Matt Gaetz was having fun and sex with lots of other people:

Witness Told Feds She Was Paid for Sex Parties With Matt Gaetz

When ABC News reported on Wednesday that the House Ethics Committee had acquired text messages between a young woman involved in the sex trafficking investigation and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), a Gaetz spokesperson told ABC that the congressman “does not know anything about the woman you’re referencing.”

That seems extraordinarily unlikely.

The Daily Beast can now report that this woman told prosecutors in 2021 that she had sex with Gaetz at a drug-fueled party that she was paid to attend, according to the woman’s attorney.

This attorney told The Daily Beast on Thursday that the woman, in fact, received payments in connection with multiple sex parties with people in Gaetz’s circle. Her lawyer said that, in response to a subpoena, she testified about her experiences to the U.S. Attorneys investigating Gaetz. And she turned over text messages, photos, and other evidence to the Justice Department as part of its child sex trafficking inquiry into the Florida congressman, the lawyer said.

The DB article goes on to comment that the House Ethics Committee is reviewing the evidence in its inquiry into whether Gaetz paid for sex with women and with an underage teen. The Ethics Committee inquiry is looking at allegations of public corruption, solicitation of prostitution, habitual use of hard drugs, bribes or impermissible gifts, campaign finance violations, and exhibiting nude photos of sexual partners on the House floor.

The weakness in the law arises here from heavy drug and alcohol use at the parties. According to the DB, the booze and drugs addled brains and muddled memories of events. (Was I at that party?) Or, as DB put it: “The availability of vast amounts of alcohol and controlled substances gave rise to the lack of control of the hormonal imperative,” this lawyer continued, “which inspired people to engage in intimate behavior that may or may not have been because they were financially remunerated.”

There we go, lack of control of hormonal imperative that inspired people to engage in intimate behavior, maybe being paid for it or maybe not. Who knows? The people in attendance were not fully present in view of their narcotized brains, gonads and whatnot, so what can they know about it?

This nice lady who partied with Matty-poo showed party-related Venmo transactions to investigators. Between March and July 2017, she got nearly $2,500 across multiple payments from Gaetz’s then-best friend, locally elected tax collector Joel Greenberg. The descriptions Greenberg entered for her payments included “travel,” “being cool” and “stuff.” 

Being cool? Stuff? Travel?? Nude sex partner photos in the House?? 😮

Geez, all of this has to be true because no one can make it up. 

Gaetz for DJT’s VP pick!! 

MAGA!!

Gaetz self-righteously scolding us 

about a thing or two

(Gaetz Says He’s Not Watching Super Bowl 

Because of ‘Black National Anthem’ Performance

-- So there you socialist pedos and pervs!)

Have you ever heard of Pascal’s Wager?

I first heard about that concept around 10-12 years ago.  It was back when I was blogging on BigThink.com and a blogger friend of mine, @kalqlate, said “That’s the best argument I’ve ever heard on Pascal’s Wager” (PW).  I had to look it up because I’d never heard of such a thing.

Now, I can’t exactly remember what I had said in my long explanation, but evidently, my “out of the mouths of babes” remark hit the bullseye, regarding PW.  I do, however, remember basically what I said.  It had to do with “buying religion insurance.”  I.e., just saying you believe in Jesus as your Savior in order to get into Heaven.

Yesterday I was commenting with our @larrymotuz about such “bargaining tactics.” Link: http://disq.us/p/2xq7ask

Okay, first a full Wikipedia link for Pascal’s Wager here.

Now the Questions:

1. How do you feel about this PW concept? 
2. If you are a believer (in some form/faction of Christianity), have you ever felt like you were just “taking out afterlife insurance?”

Make your cases.

(by PrimalSoup)

News bits: Unintended consequences; Faux News goes silent; Etc.

About 9 years ago, California passed a law banning single use plastic bags because they were a major pollution nuisance. Those were replaced with allegedly recyclable, multiple use heavy plastic bags. The law didn’t work. The NYT writes:

Then came the reusable, heavy-duty plastic bags, offered to shoppers for ten cents. Designed to withstand dozens of uses, and technically recyclable, many retailers treated them as exempt from the ban.

But because they didn’t look much different from the flimsy bags they replaced, lots of people didn’t actually reuse them. And though they came emblazoned with a recycling symbol, it turned out that few, if any, actually were recycled.

The unhappy result: Last year, Californians threw away more plastic bags, by weight, than when the law first passed, according to figures from CalRecycle, California’s recycling agency.

Now the legislature is just going to pass a law to ban all plastic bags at store check-outs. People can buy paper bags or bring their own. The pandemic caused fears that reusable bags would spread the virus, and that led to vastly increased use of the thick plastic bags. Basically, people were using the thicker bags just once. The average time shoppers used a plastic bag was just twelve minutes.

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New York Magazine reports about Faux News:

Frequent viewers of conservative media are well acquainted with [former FBI informant] Alexander Smirnov. Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity have said that his allegations are key to what they describe as the “Biden crime family” — the narrative that Hunter Biden accepted millions of dollars in bribes from the energy company Burisma to give to his father in exchange for then-VP Biden making a Ukrainian investigation into Burisma go away. According to the watchdog group Media Matters, Hannity alone featured 85 segments in 2023 on the allegations. (Republican politicians also trusted the source: Last July, Representative James Comer and Senator Chuck Grassley released an FBI record detailing the unsubstantiated allegations, describing Smirnov as a “trusted FBI informant implicating then-Vice President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme.”)

Fox News viewers have heard plenty about the lesser charges Hunter Biden is facing, including possession of a firearm as a drug user and tax evasion. But after prosecutors provided evidence that the corruption allegation was false, there was no mention of the story on Hannity on Thursday — or anywhere in Fox News’s prime-time programming, for that matter. (Chuck Grassley’s office has also stood by his public release of the unsubstantiated allegations.)  

In June 2020, Smirnov told his FBI handlers that he had two meetings in 2015 in which Burisma executives told him that they hired Hunter Biden as a consultant to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.” Smirnov claimed that Burisma paid Hunter Biden $10 million for his trouble. But prosecutors state that Smirnov never provided any evidence for this explosive allegation.

Faux News is what cynical, lying kleptocratic tyranny looks like, because that is what it stands for.

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The NYT reports that operatives in the TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party, formerly the Republican Party) are planning a massive attack on what is left of abortion rights once DJT gets back in power: 

Allies of former President Donald J. Trump and officials who served in his administration are planning ways to restrict abortion rights if he returns to power that would go far beyond proposals for a national ban or the laws enacted in conservative states across the country.

Behind the scenes, specific anti-abortion plans being proposed by Mr. Trump’s allies are sweeping and legally sophisticated. Some of their proposals would rely on enforcing the Comstock Act, a long-dormant law from 1873, to criminalize the shipping of any materials used in an abortion — including abortion pills, which account for the majority of abortions in America.

“We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books,” said Jonathan F. Mitchell, the legal force behind a 2021 Texas law that found a way to effectively ban abortion in the state before Roe v. Wade was overturned. “There’s a smorgasbord of options.”  

“I hope he doesn’t know about the existence of Comstock, because I just don’t want him to shoot off his mouth,” Mr. Mitchell said of Mr. Trump. “I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election.”  

The New York Times reported on Friday that Mr. Trump had told advisers and allies that he liked the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban but that he wanted to wait until the Republican primary contest was over to publicly discuss his views.  

National abortion ban legislation would affect only a small fraction of abortions, given that nearly 94 percent happen in the first trimester, before 13 weeks of pregnancy, and would present obstacles for women who experience severe complications later in pregnancy.

Sensing that talking about abortion is a no-no before the election, DJT himself denies he supports a nationwide ban. He calls the NYT reporting fake news. TTKP anti-abortionists are acutely aware that majority public opinion supports abortion access in most cases, so they operate in as much secrecy and deceit as they can. They want to surprise us!

Breaking news: New York judge whacks Trump real hard where it hurts the most, his cash pile

Thanks to Susan for bringing this news bit to my attention. Everyone is reporting about this. The Hill writes:

Trump ordered to pay $355M in New York fraud case

A New York judge on Friday ordered former President Trump to pay nearly $355 million in penalties in a civil fraud case that has dealt a stark blow to his family’s business empire.

Judge Arthur Engoron’s 92-page decision came just weeks after closing arguments in the case capped a months-long trial during which Trump frequently lambasted the judge and the prosecutor who brought the case.

With interest, the figure Trump and his business must pay could surpass $450 million, according to the New York attorney general’s office.

Engoron found Trump, the Trump Organization and several top executives, including his adult sons, liable for fraud before the trial began. The verdict is at the sole discretion of Engoron, because there was no jury at the trial.

The fine is some $16 million less than the $370 million the attorney general’s office asked the judge to force Trump to pay. It also blocks Trump from participating in New York business for three years.

Trump’s adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, were ordered to pay more than $4 million each, and were both barred from serving as officers or directors of any New York corporation or other legal entity for two years.

The Hill writes in another article:

Trump lashes out after New York fraud ruling

Former President Trump lashed out against a judge’s ruling Friday banning him from running companies in New York for three years and ordering him to pay more than $350 million as part of a closely watched fraud case.

In a series of posts on his Truth Social platform after the decision, Trump railed against Judge Arthur Engoron and said there “were No Victims, No Damages, No Complaints.”

He went on to further criticize Engoron and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) in multiple posts, saying the New York case was a “witch hunt” and that he was fined “$355 Million based on nothing other than having built a GREAT COMPANY.”

DJT will probably appeal this all the way up to the USSC.

Q: Will this help DJT more than hurt him? He's really, really pissed:

Grumpy Trumpy flanked by his goon lawyers

News bits: Putin murders Navalny; Republican opposition to DJT completely collapses

Everyone should be reporting that Putin has murdered Putin critic Aleksei A. Navalny. What they are reporting is Russian authorities say the Putin critic died in prison. Died in prison is another evil, lie and insult to the world by the corrupt, murdering thug dictator Putin. The Hill reported that Navalny was fine when seen in public in a court room the day before Putin had him murdered. As far as I can tell, Navalney's death has not yet been confirmed, so maybe there is a faint hope he is still alive and Putin is just playing cruel, cynical propaganda games.

Note, Putin is a guy that Trump praises and wants to be like. Trump and Putin are far worse than merely disgusting.

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The NYT writes a truly terrifying analysis about DJT completely taking over GOP leadership power. No one in the GOP leadership is standing up to him or his kleptocratic dictatorship agenda any more. He is now dictating that the party will degenerate into a corrupt, authoritarian monster (full article here not behind paywall): 

Trump Fully Devours the Republican Establishment 

Long a dominant force over the party’s institutions, he is now moving to fully eradicate their independence and remake them in his own image

Donald J. Trump is stamping out the final flashes of independence inside Republican institutions with astonishing speed, demonstrating that his power continues to expand over the new party establishment he has created.

At the Republican National Committee, he is moving to replace longtime supporters with allies even more closely bound to him, including his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.

In the House, Republicans are more compliant than ever. Most vividly, Speaker Mike Johnson — ostensibly the party’s top-ranking official — backtracked on an endorsement in a crucial Senate race because Mr. Trump disagreed. On Thursday, Mr. Johnson’s candidate ended his campaign less than one week after opening it.

The displays of obedience emerging in recent weeks remove any lingering doubt that the Republican Party is aligned to advance the interests of one man, signaling that a sweep of victories from Mr. Trump and his allies in November could also mean replacing checks and balances in Washington with his wishes and whims.  

At multiple points during the past two years, the former president floated the possibility of canceling the primary process during discussions with Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, according to two people familiar with the conversations. (And that is why DJT forced McDaniel out of her Repub Party position)

Again, the MSM is freaking, stunningly clueless. What DJT and his cadres of corrupt thugs and raging ideologues want to do if he gets back in power is not in question. It does not mean they could (or might, or may perhaps) replace checks and balances. They absolutely will replace whatever little is left of checks and balances. Who or what is going to stop them? The USSC? Nope. The Dem Party? Hell no. Disgruntled voters? Nope. Jesus? Nope. Heck, Jesus is working for DJT, not against him.

Do not forget Project 2025. It is deadly serious about killing democracy and establishing some form of a kleptocratic dictatorship (corrupt autocracy, corrupt plutocracy, and/or corrupt Christofascist theocracy). 

It is not enough for conservatives to win elections!

Got it? I hope so.

Paul Dans has been involved in the creation of Project 2025, an authoritarian battle plan for the next Republican president, as part of his work at the Heritage Foundation. This project includes a nearly 1,000-page plan that outlines changes for nearly every agency across the government, with a focus on various policy areas such as climate, energy, and government restructuring

News bits: Today's reddit feed

 As usual, five mixed-bag items were in the reddit feed this morning. This one is juicier than most so I’ll just show all of ’em.

The New Republic reported that on of the judges in a Trump case finally grew a pair and ordered the case to proceed without Trump's usual delays. As one would expect, Trump was really pissed:

Finally, a Judge Steps Up and Denies a Trump Trial Delay Bid

On Thursday, Trump headed to New York for a court hearing on his hush-money case. Judge Juan Manuel Merchan ignored his requests for a delay and determined the trial would start on March 25, when jury selection will begin, and last approximately six weeks.

He’s facing 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

Trump’s legal team tried to protest the decision to go to trial, citing the legal load attached to so many disparate criminal trials for one individual.

“We have been faced with compressed and expedited schedules in every one of those trials,” Todd Blanche, an attorney also representing Trump in his classified documents case, told the judge. “We—meaning myself, the firm and President Trump—have been put into an impossible position.”

But Judge Merchan wasn’t having any of it, quickly sidestepping Team Trump’s further attempts to delay the trial.

“You don’t have a trial date in Georgia. You don’t have a trial date in Florida,” he retorted. [That is because DJT has been doing more than everything possible to slow the lawsuits down 😊]

Trump has already started his habitual mudslinging against the court and the trial itself, claiming over the last year that Merchan, who has acknowledged a $15 donation to President Joe Biden, is a Trump-hating judge appointed by a Democrat—even though all the judges in his trials have been randomly selected. Meanwhile, Trump has whined on TruthSocial [LiesAntisocial, actually] that going to court for his alleged misdeeds counts as “election interference.”  

The dates for Trump’s three other indictments are not yet on the books. His January 6 election interference trial, which was originally slated for March 4, was postponed while the Supreme Court reviews appeals on Trump’s presidential immunity claim.

Hm, 34 felonies. Speaking as an attorney, 🤨 , that’s a lot of felonies! 

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Joe.My.God. reports about how the morally rotted, Christofascist hate group One Million Moms sees the Jesus Gets Me ads that aired on the superbowl. Trigger alert: It is what you would expect:

Via email from hate group leader Monica Cole:

As Christians, One Million Moms’ biggest concern during Super Bowl LVIII was the incomplete and misguided “Foot Washing” ad from the He Gets Us movement. The commercial was partially true, as it showed the love of Jesus and how we can serve and love one another even with our differences.

Unfortunately, the movement’s “Foot Washing” ad missed the mark, because it never shared the Gospel so a person might put their faith in Jesus Christ in order to receive salvation. The ad missed the most important part of the Gospel – the truth that Jesus loved us so much that He died for us to save us from our sins.

Sharing only part of the truth can be extremely misleading, especially to those who are unsaved. It is also disturbing that the He Gets Us website describes Jesus as a mere storyteller instead of a Savior.

Cole makes a great point. Fabulous, actually. Sharing only part of the truth can be extremely misleading. By golly, that hits the nail on the head.

If only Christian hate groups out there would adhere to that undeniably true point, the world would be a noticeably better place. For example, cruel Christian zealots could apply it to their own Crisis Pregnancy Centers. Those faux medical service places are there to knowingly mislead, manipulate and lie to young pregnant women. The point is to get them to have babies they do not want. 

Obviously, if politically active Christian nationalists had to stop lying and partial truth telling, the whole morally rotted, authoritarian (theocratic) wealth and power movement would collapse and go away. 

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Gizmodo reports about a huge breakthrough by a team of German physicists in producing a stable time crystal:

A team of physicists in Germany managed to create a time crystal that demonstrably lasts 40 minutes—10 million times longer than other known crystals—and could persist for even longer.

Time crystals are structures whose lowest-energy states have highly ordered patterns (periodicity) in space and time. Time crystals were predicted to also have their properties suddenly change at a given time, even without some external factors inducing such a change.

In this way, time crystals break time-translation symmetry—the idea that a chunk of stable matter will not change (without external factors) if you drag it to a different point in time. Time crystals change on a metaphysical whim, regardless of when they are. You can read all about time crystals here, for a better understanding of what they are and why they’re useful.

The recent team of physicists managed to make a time crystal that lasted superlatively long: 40 minutes. The crystal is made of indium gallium arsenide, or a combination of indium atoms and gallium arsenide, a semiconductor. Their research was published last week in Nature Physics. 

The new time crystal is in an electron-nuclear spin system. The team excited the material with polarized laser light, polarizing the spins of the nuclei in the system. This caused the indium gallium arsenide to produce oscilations, rendering it “equivalent to a time crystal,” according to a TU Dortmund University release.

Yup, that is what it looks like (I think)

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CNN reports that special Counsel David Weiss has had former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov arrested and charged with lying about Biden’s business dealings. Smirnov was a key witness for the morally rotted authoritarian House Republicans in their cynical, baseless witch hunt to smear and attack Joe Biden. CNN writes:

Special counsel David Weiss charged a former FBI informant with lying about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s involvement in business dealings with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, undercutting a major aspect of Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president.

Alexander Smirnov, 43, is facing charges in connection with lying to the FBI and creating false records. He was arrested Thursday at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, after his arrival in the US from overseas, and will make his initial appearance in federal court Thursday afternoon.

The indictment alleges that Smirnov’s story to the FBI “was a fabrication, an amalgam of otherwise unremarkable business meetings and contacts that had actually occurred but at a later date than he claimed and for the purpose of pitching Burisma on the Defendant’s services and products, not for discussing bribes to [Joe Biden] when he was in office.”

Congressional Republicans have championed Smirnov’s now-discredited allegations for roughly a year, though not by name. They fought with the FBI to obtain memos about what Smirnov told investigators and publicly released the materials over the FBI’s objections. The congressional Republicans repeatedly praised Smirnov as “credible” and put his uncorroborated claims front-and-center in their impeachment inquiry into the president.

While announcing the impeachment inquiry, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said “a trusted FBI informant has alleged a bribe to the Biden family.” The FBI is now using some of the same memos that congressional Republicans released as part of their indictment against Smirnov. 

“For months we have warned that Republicans have built their conspiracies about Hunter and his family on lies told by people with political agendas, not facts,” said Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, in a statement to CNN.

“We were right and the air is out of their balloon. This is just another instance of Chairmen Comer and Jordan peddling falsehoods based on dishonest, uncredible allegations and witnesses,” he added.

Those darned sneaky liar Russkis and those darned sneaky liar Repubs. When those two morally rotted garbage heaps hook up, one can be sure that nasty business is afoot.

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Finally, a Bloomberg opinion opines, and this bit is very, very important (the most important of today’s five bits):

As six Republicans on the US Supreme Court increasingly arrogate to their bloc the power to make national law, frustration in blue states is mounting.

Just one day before a sympathetic Supreme Court heard the case of an insurrectionist who wants to be president, the highest state court in Hawaii declared that it really, truly, is sick and tired of the Supreme Court’s nonsense. In a unanimous decision handed down Feb. 7, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that it has no obligation to treat the high court in the nation’s capital with deference; it couldn’t even summon basic respect. The state court reached that end point, fittingly, in a case concerning what it derisively called “the Second Amendment’s brand-new right to bear arms in public for self-defense.”

That brand-new right was created by the US Supreme Court in 2022, courtesy of Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen . Thomas’ opinion was based, in turn, on the brand-new individual right to gun possession created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s 2008 decision in Heller v District of Columbia, a mere 219 years after the constitution came into effect.

“Conventional interpretive modalities and Hawaiʻi’s historical tradition of firearm regulation rule out an individual right to keep and bear arms under the Hawaiʻi Constitution,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Todd Eddins.“In Hawaiʻi, there is no state constitutional right to carry a firearm in public.”

Let that sink in for a minute. State courts breaking away from the USSC was a major development on the road to the April 12, 1861 – April 9, 1865 American civil war. This is evidence of the Union dissolving in a deadly serious way. I did not expect it to come from a blue state, but here it is folks. And if Hawaii can do this, just think what catastrophic hell and corruption (yes, I really do mean huge corruption) red states like Texas, Florida and Georgia are going to unleash.