News bits: Religious churning; Traitor John Eastman forced out of law; Money talks, democracy walks

NPR reports poll data about reasons people leaving their religions for another religion or for no religion:

People say they’re leaving religion due to 

anti-LGBTQ teachings and sexual abuse

People in the U.S. are leaving and switching faith traditions in large numbers. The idea of “religious churning” is very common in America, according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).

The Catholic Church is losing more members than it’s gaining, though the numbers are slightly better for retention among Hispanic Catholics.

There is much lower religious churn among Black Protestants and among Jews who seem overall happy in their faith traditions and tend to stay there.

As for why people leave their religions, PRRI found that about two-thirds (67%) of people who leave a faith tradition say they did so because they simply stopped believing in that religion's teachings.

And nearly half (47%) of respondents who left cited negative teaching about the treatment of LGBTQ people. “Religion's negative teaching about LGBTQ people are driving younger Americans to leave church,” Deckman says. “We found that about 60% of Americans who are under the age of 30 who have left religion say they left because of their religious traditions teaching, which is a much higher rate than for older Americans.”

About one-third of religiously unaffiliated Americans say they no longer identify with their childhood religion because the religion was bad for their mental health. That response was strongest among LGBTQ respondents.

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A California state bar judge has found that DJT's traitor lawyer John Eastman committed 10 offenses during his work to overturn the 2020 election in favor of DJT. The judge ordered Eastman into a status called involuntary retirement and ordered him to pay all California State Bar costs plus $10,000 in sanctions for being extra naughty. The California State Supreme Court will have to disbar him because the state bar court does not have that power. The 128 page decision includes these statements:

Introduction

In this contested disciplinary proceeding, the Office of Chief Trial Counsel of the State Bar of California (OCTC) charged John Charles Eastman (Eastman) with 11 counts of misconduct arising from certain activities surrounding his representation of former president Donald J. Trump and the 2020 presidential election. Eastman is charged with one count of failing to support the Constitution and laws of the United States (Bus. & Prof. Code § 6068, subd. (a));1 two counts of seeking to mislead a court (§ 6068, subd. (d)); six counts of moral turpitude (🤪) by making various misrepresentations (§ 6106); and two additional counts of moral turpitude (§ 6106). After full consideration of the record, the court finds that OCTC has satisfied its burden of proving all charges except for count eleven, which the court dismisses with prejudice.

In view of the circumstances surrounding Eastman’s misconduct and balancing the aggravation and mitigation, the court recommends that Eastman be disbarred.

INVOLUNTARY INACTIVE ENROLLMENT 

John Charles Eastman is ordered transferred to involuntary inactive status pursuant to Business and Professions Code section 6007, subdivision (c)(4). His inactive enrollment will be effective three calendar days after this order is served and will terminate upon the effective date of the Supreme Court’s order imposing discipline herein, or as provided for by rule 5.111(D)(2) of the State Bar Rules of Procedure or as otherwise ordered by the Supreme Court pursuant to its plenary jurisdiction.

Good ’ole judge Roland whacks the traitor Eastman

A satisfying result

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The WaPo reports (whole artilce not paywalled off) about the fickleness of greedy wealthy elites and their shallow to non-existent commitment to democracy and the public interest:

Many GOP billionaires balked at Jan. 6. 

They’re coming back to Trump.

Elite donors are rediscovering their affinity for the former president over taxes

The day after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, billionaire and GOP megadonor Nelson Peltz called the attempted insurrection a “disgrace” and expressed remorse for voting for Donald Trump. “I’m sorry I did that,” Peltz said of supporting Trump in 2020.

But earlier this month, Peltz had breakfast with Trump and other billionaires — including hotelier Steve Wynn, Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk and former Marvel chairman Isaac Perlmutter — at Trump’s luxurious Palm Beach oceanfront mansion, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private gathering.

The shift reflects many conservative billionaires’ fears of President Biden’s tax agenda, which if approved would drastically reduce their fortunes. In some cases, it also points to their discomfort with the Biden administration’s foreign and domestic policy decisions. Some of these billionaires have been assiduously courted by Trump and his advisers in recent months.

“If it starts to look like Trump may win, despite his legal troubles, it is inevitable that Republican business people who have not been fans will open their wallets in self-defense,” said Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, the top lobbying group for major corporations in New York.

Things that seem to make most people mostly authoritarian include lots of power, lots of money and rigid ideology. Combined with an authoritarian personality, the allure of authoritarianism is quite strong. All the authoritarians need to do is promise to serve and protect the elites, and they get support. 

Now, combine all of that with the legalization of political corruption by the 2010 Citizens United USSC decision and the power brass knuckles capitalist power of lightly regulated corporations acting as mere innocent human beings with constitutional human rights. What does one get? One gets seductive a form of kleptocratic authoritarianism that is far too sexy and fun for the most (~85% ?) of the wealthy to resist. Same goes for authoritarian Christian nationalist elites.

That b@stard Biden is at it again… 😠

Now he’s strengthening protections in the endangered species act!  Who the hell does he think he is, trying to get things done? He’s such a disrupter to our beloved gridlock. And how are the Trump boys 'sposed to bag their big game now?  That Biden is such an @sshole! 😡

Biden administration strengthens Endangered Species Act weakened under Trump.

WTH!  Why doesn’t somebody stop this guy??

More shenanigans by Biden.

*     *     *

Elect TRUMP!  Let's Double MAGA!! 😍/s

(by PrimalSoup)

ILLEGAL INVADERS!!

OH THE HORROR! ILLEGAL INVADERS!!

Busload of ‘Illegal Invaders’ Was Actually the Gonzaga Basketball Team

On March 27, Matthew Maddock, a Republican member of the Michigan House of Representatives, tweeted two images purporting to show buses of illegal immigrants being loaded at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport.

“We know this is happening. 100,000’s of illegals are pouring into our country. We know it’s happening in Michigan,” Maddock continued in a follow-up post. “Our own governor is offering money to take them in! Since we can’t trust the #FakeNews to investigate, citizens will. The process of investigating these issues takes time.” 

The investigatory process for this incident actually took little time, however: X users quickly pointed out that the images actually depict the aircraft and buses carrying the Gonzaga University men’s basketball team. The Bulldogs touched down in Motor City on Wednesday evening in preparation for their Friday matchup against Purdue in the Sweet 16 of the 2024 NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Maddock, however, refused to back down from his assertion, responding “sure they are kommie [communist],” and “Sure kommie. Good talking point,” to two users who suggested that the aircraft had transported the Gonzaga team.

https://thedispatch.com/article/busload-of-illegal-invaders-was-actually-the-gonzaga-basketball-team/

 

Second State Dept. Official Resigns over US Gaza policy

State department official’s resignation highlights rifts over US Gaza policy

Annelle Sheline says ‘I no longer wanted to be affiliated with this administration,’ claiming Biden is flouting US law over Israel

The Guardian

by Julian Borger

• 
  

Wed 27 Mar 2024 18.03 EDT

Last modified on Wed 27 Mar 2024 18.48 EDT

A human rights official has resigned from the US state department over Gaza saying the Biden administration is flouting US law by continuing to arm Israel, and is hushing up evidence that the US had seen on Israeli human rights abuses.

Annelle Sheline, said she had hoped to have an influence on policy by staying at her post in the Near Eastern section of the bureau of democracy, human rights and labor, taking part in discussions, signing dissent cables and raising her concerns with her supervisor. But she had lost confidence she could do anything that would affect the flow of US arms to Israel.

“The fundamental reason was – I no longer wanted to be affiliated with this administration,” Sheline told the Guardian. “I have a young daughter. She’s not yet two, but if some day in the future, she is learning about this and knows that I was at the state department and she asked me [about it] – I want to be able to tell her that I did what I could.”

Sheline is only the second state department official to resign over US policy on the Gaza war (another official left the education department over the issue), but she said that many of her colleagues had told her they would resign if they could afford to lose their job, and had urged her to speak out about her reasons for quitting, rather than to leave quietly.

Annelle Sheline. Photograph: Annelle Sheline

The 38-year-old, who studied the foreign policy of Arab governments for her doctorate, said the state department was aware of plenty of evidence that Israel was violating international law in its conduct of the Gaza war, and that the Biden administration was violating US law by continuing to supply weapons.

She pointed in particular to the Leahy laws, which forbid assistance to foreign military units implicated in atrocities, and section 620 (I) of the Foreign Assistance Act, which states that no assistance should be given to any government which “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance”.

On Monday, the state department said it had received assurances from Israel officials and “not found them to be in violation of international humanitarian law”. But Sheline said: “The law is clear here and we do have evidence. But the specifics are just not being followed.”

The state department has said it is reviewing evidence of civilian harm under a mechanism established by the Biden administration last year, weeks before the Gaza war broke out, but Sheline said the results of those investigations would only be made public when the White House wanted them to be.

 “There are a lot of people working on this at State but at the end of the day, the public policy does have to be something that the White House signs off on,” Sheline said. “Until the White House is ready to take a different line, some of the other things happening in State are just not going to come out.” She said she believed administration policy was being driven by domestic political considerations, but argued that domestic politics were shifting on the issue, pointing to the significant “uncommitted” protest vote in the Democratic presidential primary election, and suggested that the Biden administration had misjudged the mood.

“I do think the president’s view of Israel is deeply influenced by a generational divide,” she said. “I think it’s taken this administration a long time to realise that the previous political calculus on this, in terms of big donors, in terms of the Israel lobby, … is seeing a shift.”

On Wednesday, Gallup published a new poll showing a significant drop in American public support for Israel’s conduct of the war, from 50% in November to 36% now, with 55% disapproving of Israel’s actions.

Sheline credited this shift for helping lead to the US abstention on a UN security council resolution on Monday, allowing it to pass after the US vetoed three earlier draft texts over the nearly six months since the war started.

“I am glad to see that slight shift, but it hasn’t really made any difference to the people in Gaza yet,” Sheline said. “So it’s really too little, too late.

“Not only are these policies devastating the people of Gaza, but I think they’re also devastating the US image in the world,” she argued. “This administration came in promising to rebuild American diplomacy and America’s moral leadership after the Trump administration, but so many of these issues that the administration said were so important – including human rights – seem to be less important to this administration than the US-Israel relationship.”

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Also fr yesterday's Guardian:

Biden administration’s Gaza strategy panned as ‘mess’ amid clashing goals

Strain of aiming to influence Israel’s actions without leverage and also avoiding starvation is showing, say analysts (full story here: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/26/biden-gaza-strategy-criticised-israel

The Biden administration’s policy on Gaza has been widely criticised as being in disarray as the defense secretary described the situation as a “humanitarian catastrophe” the day after the state department declared Israel to be in compliance with international humanitarian law.

Washington was also on the defensive on Tuesday over its claim that a UN security council ceasefire resolution on which it abstained was non-binding, an interpretation that put the US at odds with other member states, international legal scholars and the UN itself....

 I​​srael announced on Monday it would stop working with the UN relief agency Unrwa, the main aid agency serving Gaza. Unrwa said its aid convoys had been blocked since 21 March.

On the same day, the state department spokesman, Matthew Miller, insisted that the US currently had no reason to dispute Israeli assurances that it was complying with humanitarian law in Gaza.

 

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The following warning was published as an op-ed in late Feb. in US Today. It was written by 7 experts  and directors of global food charities in February, so things are only worse now.

The crisis in Gaza will soon reach a tipping point, where emergency food aid won't be enough. Averting mass death becomes harder as starvation gains momentum.

Sean Callahan, Jan Egeland, Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, Jeremy Konyndyk, Abby Maxman, Michelle Nunn, Janti Soeripto and Charles Owubah

Opinion contributors/ USA Today: 2/24

President Joe Biden recently said that in Gaza, “there are a lot of innocent people who are starving.”

In fact, letting people in Gaza suffer and die from hunger and preventable disease is a political choice.

It is not too late to change this story if urgent actions are taken to achieve a cease-fire and the release of the hostages, and to allow a sufficient flow of aid into Gaza.

Only an immediate stop to the fighting, a massive increase in humanitarian assistance and the return of basic services can keep the number of deaths caused by hunger and disease from eclipsing the already shocking number of those killed to date.

 

 “If the situation continues,” one colleague writes, “we will see one of the biggest disasters we have faced as humanitarians. It will be due to hunger, disease, and the very polluted and dangerous environment in Gaza, resulting from the residuals of the thousands of bombs, the white phosphorus, the raw sewage floating all over the place, and the unsafe water being consumed as people don’t have other choices.”

 

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the global authority that monitors food insecurity and acute malnutrition, reports that the entire population of Gaza – more than 2 million people – is experiencing hunger at crisis levels or worse: “There is a risk of Famine and it is increasing each day that the current situation of intense hostilities and restricted humanitarian access persists or worsens. … This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country.”[Note: this piece was written over a month ago, and things have only gotten worse since then with UNRWA not allowed to work within Gaza anymore, and the US having defunded it for a minimum of one year in a bi-partisan vote extending Biden's ban]

The speed of the deterioration in Gaza is unprecedented in recent history. Nearly 3 in 4 Palestinians in Gaza are drinking from contaminated sources. Communicable diseases are on the rise. ....

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Please consider signing a petition for Biden to enforce the UN Ceasefire and expedite as much humanitarian aid as possible before it is too late. If things continue as they are going, not only will untold numbers of civilians slowly waste away and die, but the US will not be the same again in the eyes of the world and its own eyes.

How surrounded are you?

 

I’m very surrounded.  By “rednecks” that is. 

It’s very scary.  As Judy Collins said in the song “Pirate Jenny,” “You never know to whom you’re talkin’.”  Beg to differ.  For the most part, I do.

Link here.

I checked with Siri, and this man lives ~30 miles from me.  When the news said “an Ohio man,” I just had to look it up.  Sure enough, my instincts were right.

While it’s true we never know who surrounds us, how ‘bout you?  Do you live in such a hard MAGA area?  Are you as suspicious of your neighbors as I am?  Any stories to tell?

(by PrimalSoup)

The federal debt & herd psychology; Radical right & the moral rot of cronyism

The Hill reports about an issue that has been personally increasingly concerning for years, namely the psychology of things that trigger herd panic:

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Phillip Swagel warned the United States could suffer a similar market shock as seen in the United Kingdom during former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s brief stint leading Britain, citing the nation’s “unprecedented” fiscal trajectory.

In an interview with the Financial Times this week, Swagel discussed the country’s rising debt, while warning of the dangers of the U.S. facing “what the U.K. faced with former prime minister Truss — where policymakers tried to take an action, and then there’s a market reaction to that action.”

Truss roiled markets in October 2022 as she pressed for significant tax cuts, including changes lessening the tax burden on wealthier individuals without offsets, as well as other economic measures. The budget proposal spurred a major selloff of British debt, forcing U.K. interest rates to decades-long highs and causing the value of the pound to tank.

While Swagel said the U.S. is “not there yet,” he raised concerns of how bond markets could fare as interest rates have climbed.

He added that the nation has “the potential for some changes that seem modest — or maybe start off modest and then get more serious — to have outsized effects on interest rates, and therefore on the fiscal trajectory.”

Some budget experts, however, have cast doubt on Swagel’s alarm.

Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, pointed to improved deficit projections in recent years, as well as forecasts from the CBO he said “don’t project anything that looks like a panic.”

“If someone were thinking about, ‘Should I panic or should I not panic?’ I would just say, ‘hey, the underlying situation has gotten better, right?’” Kogan said, adding “there’s been lower, long-term projected deficits in the Biden administration.”

“You either should have been worried a long time ago, or you should be less worried now,” he said. “Because we’ve been on roughly the same path for forever, but to the extent that it’s different, it’s better.”

A couple of things in that are not comforting. First, although Swagel says the U.S. is “not there yet” in terms of Britain’s economic situation, there is no way to know what might trigger an out of control reaction by debt holders. Maybe we are there now, but maybe we are not. We are talking about a herd (of wealthy investors) that can get spooked if a panic gets triggered by all sorts of things. A change in tax policy can do it. So can a high enough level of US federal debt, on the books or off. )Estimates of unfunded off the books debt obligations runs into the tens of trillions.) So can an enraged, crackpot president who incites a civil war.

Second, the “logic” that experts who downplay the threat evinces arrogance grounded in gross ignorance of basic human cognitive biology and social behavior. The question, should I panic or should I not panic?, cannot be blithely rationalized away by simply saying ‘hey, the underlying situation has gotten better, right’? That ‘reasoning’ is childish and asinine. Panic can arise in the face an allegedly improving underlying situation, because complex situations may not in fact be improving by simply looking at one factor. 

What other factors might be relevant? How one encapsulated by this blithe vapidity quoted in The Hill article: “Because we’ve been on roughly the same path for forever, but to the extent that it’s different, it’s better.” That is a testament to the fact that the TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party) no longer cares about piling up debt. That has been the case at least since George Bush was in office. A part of the mindset kill government at all costs TTKP mindset is called Starve the Beast, which is significantly responsible for increasing debt even in good economic times.

If we have been on the same bad path forever, that is direct evidence the path remains bad and no fix is in sight, so therefore, don’t worry, be happy.  

An expert says, don’t worry, it has always been 

getting worse but we are still just fine!

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The NYT reports:

How Justice Thomas’s ‘Nearly Adopted Daughter’ 

Became His Law Clerk

Justice Clarence Thomas gave Crystal Clanton a home and a job after she left a conservative youth organization in controversy. Then the justice picked her for one of the most coveted positions in the legal world.

“Crystal Clanton’s clerkship for OT ’24 was announced by Scalia Law today!” wrote an assistant to Virginia Thomas, the justice’s wife, who is known as Ginni. The email referred to the 2024 October term of the court, and the tone was jubilant: “Please take a look at these posts of congratulations and support. Consider reposting, replying or adding your own!”

The Thomases and Ms. Clanton, a 29-year-old conservative organizer turned lawyer, have built such a close relationship that the couple informally refer to her as their “nearly adopted daughter.” Ms. Clanton, who was previously accused of sending racist text messages, including one that read “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE,” has lived in the Thomas home, assisted Ms. Thomas in her political consulting business and joined her in a “girls trip” to New York.  

Ethics experts say there is nothing in the Supreme Court’s new ethics code that prohibits a justice from hiring someone accused of racism, or even a close family friend.

This is just more evidence of the deep moral rot that dominates TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party) thinking and behavior. Ethics are not even an afterthought. We saw the same with the corrupt, clueless and useless Jared and Ivanka in government. Here we see the moral rot operating in the USSC. We also see the sick joke that “ethics in government” actually is.

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From the TTKP Crackpots and Liars Files: The WaPo reports about hypocritical, baseless finger pointing by TTKP liars in the aftermath  of the bridge collapse in Baltimore:

Day after bridge collapse, Republicans are blaming Democrats, 

floating unfounded and sometimes racist theories

Some Republican officials, candidates and right-wing pundits attempted to connect the tragedy to some of their most frequent political targets: diversity initiatives, illegal immigration, coronavirus lockdowns and the Biden administration. And early reaction to the incident also provided fresh ground for unfounded theories that the collapse was not an accident at all.

Several sitting Republican officials have sought to tie the Biden administration to the collapse of the nearly 50-year-old bridge.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) told Newsmax on Tuesday that the government is focusing on spending federal funds on “waste,” “when it could be going to things that are the government’s purpose, just like this.”  

“We’re not spending it on roads and bridges. Look at the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that was done a couple of years ago that the left hails as this massive success. But it was mostly Green New Deal, actually, in that bill,” Mace said, referencing the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law by President Biden.

Republicans previously criticized Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as not visiting East Palestine, Ohio, quickly enough after a toxic train derailment there last year. But after the secretary visited Baltimore on the day of the bridge collapse, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) suggested without evidence that the visit was politically motivated and that Buttigieg was preoccupied with diversity policies.  

“Well, this is an election year, so he probably, if it was two years ago might have been a month before he went at all,” Van Drew told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Wednesday. “He’s worried too much about pronouns, worried too much about DEI policies, worried too much about being the cool kid on the block. … I’m disappointed in the job that he does.”  

Along with Van Drew, conservative political candidates and right-wing media personalities have turned to blaming diversity, equity and inclusion policies — a loosely defined term broadly used to refer to efforts to diversify the workforce and academia — for the collapse. It’s the latest in a series of issues that the right has blamed on DEI.

Again, the moral rot in the form of lies, crackpot conspiracy theories, shameless hypocrisy and slanders comes out loud and clear. For example, TTKP members of congress bitterly opposed the Democratic infrastructure bill but now they lie, telling us it is a failure due to an accident having nothing to do with the infrastructure bill.

TTKP moral rot knows no bounds, ethical, legal or rational. The rot is constant, shameless and packed full of lies and slanders. 

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News about DJT’s worldwide support for dictatorship: 

Trump calls his globe-trotting ex-diplomat ‘my envoy.’ 

Neither is in office. Richard Grenell is meeting with far-right foreign leaders, attacking President Biden and offering a glimpse at what U.S. foreign policy could be like in a second Trump term 

After an anti-corruption crusader unexpectedly won last year’s presidential election in Guatemala, democracy teetered on the edge in the Central American country. Amid law enforcement raids on election offices and threats of violence, the Biden administration worked feverishly to lay the groundwork for a peaceful transfer of power.

But not Richard Grenell, a former diplomat and intelligence official in Donald Trump’s administration, who arrived in Guatemala in January, days before the new president was to be sworn in — and threw his support behind a right-wing campaign to undermine the election. 

Grenell met with a hard-line group that sued to block the inauguration, which thanked him for his “visit and trust.” He defended Guatemalan officials who had seized ballot boxes in an effort to overturn a vote declared “free and fair” by the United States and international observers, and he attacked the U.S. State Department’s sanctions against hundreds of anti-democratic actors.

“They are trying to intimidate conservatives in Guatemala,” Grenell said in a television interview. “This is all wrapped into this kind of phony concern about democracy.”

The take-home point is crystal clear: 

DJT considers defending free and fair elections to be a phony concern about democracy, therefore DJT is a full-blown dictator

Grenell - defender of dictators everywhere