The Advanced Bonewits’ Cult Danger Evaluation Frame, V 2.7

Over at a neopagan site, a way to evaluate the danger of a group, tribe or cult is described. The higher the score on 18 traits, the more dangerous the group. It would be fun to try it on the Republican Party. The site comments: 

The ABCDEF is founded upon both modern psychological theories about mental health and personal growth, and my many years of participant observation and historical research into minority belief systems. Those who believe that relativism and anarchy are as dangerous to mental health as absolutism and authoritarianism, could (I suppose) count groups with total scores nearing either extreme (high or low) as being equally hazardous. As far as dangers to physical well-being are concerned, however, both historical records and current events clearly indicate the direction in which the greatest threats lie. This is especially so since the low-scoring groups usually seem to have survival and growth rates so small that they seldom develop the abilities to commit large scale atrocities even had they the philosophical or political inclinations to do so.

Five of the 18 traits for evaluation

The GOP
Trait        My score

1               9

2               9

3               10

4               9

5               8

6               5

7               7

8               9

9               8

10             6

11             7

12             7

13             7

14             9

15             10

16             8

17             10

18             10

Total         148

If the average score is a 5 for all the traits that total score is 90. The highest score is 180.

I see the GOP as a 148, making it look quite dangerous to me.

Is that about right or too high or low?

Microplastics on the brain; Is CT gonna pull an RBG on us?; The stink eye is upon us

The University of New Mexico Newsroom reports:

Microplastics Make Their Way from the Gut to Other Organs, 

UNM Researchers Find

In a recent paper published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, University of New Mexico researchers found that those tiny particles – microplastics – [could have an] impact on our digestive pathways, making their way from the gut and into the tissues of the kidney, liver and brain.

Scientists estimate that people ingest 5 grams [5,000 mg] of microplastic particles each week on average – equivalent to the weight of a credit card. [What!? Really? . . . . Actually, not really. It is ~3 mg/week. That is a typo. Bad UNM Newsroom, bad, bad 

UNM Newsroom!]

~3 mg microplastics/week isn't very much, 

but it accumulates and we don't know how potent it is 

in eliciting good or bad biological responses

While other researchers are helping to identify and quantify ingested microplastics, Castillo and his team focus on what the microplastics are doing inside the body, specifically to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and to the gut immune system.

Over a four-week period, Castillo, postdoctoral fellow Marcus Garcia, PharmD, and other UNM researchers exposed mice to microplastics in their drinking water. The amount was equivalent to the quantity of microplastics humans are believed to ingest each week.

Microplastics had migrated out of the gut into the tissues of the liver, kidney and even the brain, the team found. The study also showed the microplastics changed metabolic pathways in the affected tissues.  

In a paper published in the journal Cell Biology & Toxicology in 2021, Castillo and other UNM researchers found that when macrophages encountered and ingested microplastics, their function was altered and they released inflammatory molecules.

Well this is interesting. One’s brain-mind wanders, being addled with plastics and all. Nanoplastics, the inevitable decay products of microplastics, can cross cell membranes and enter directly into cytoplasm. What fun! Wonder what that will do. Can they test for microplastics without cutting out your brain? Maybe there’s no advanced civilization in the universe because they all discover plastic and it kills them. This could be is our generation’s answer to the joy of lead paint and popcorn ceilings loaded with asbestos!

My goodness, there is so much fun stuff to think about here.

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

The Hill reports about an unexplained absence of the USSC’s oldest fart on the bench, Clarence Thomas:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was absent from the court Monday with no explanation. Thomas, 75, also was not participating remotely in arguments, as justices sometimes do when they are ill or otherwise can’t be there in person.

Chief Justice John Roberts announced Thomas’ absence, saying that his colleague would still participate in the day’s cases, based on the briefs and transcripts of the arguments. The court sometimes, but not always, says when a justice is out sick.

Good old USSC. It likes to keep the rabble in the dark and fed full of BS. In this case, we are fed BS consisting of nothing at all. We don’t deserve to know when justice is deathly ill, just like when RBG up and dies on us so that DJT could appoint another authoritarian radical right monster to the court. 

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

Newsweek reports: Donald Trump 'Glares' at Reporter Who Exposed Him Sleeping During Trial

I guess Trump’s rapper name is Sleepy-D!

DJT as baby giving the stink eye

to the reporter

DJT as dog doing stink eye

DJT as DJT giving all of us the stink eye

Greta Thunberg giving DJT

the stink eye

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

A sad WaPo story from Gaza:

For three-and-a-half long hours on Jan. 29, the cellphone in 6-year old Hind Rajab’s hands was the closest thing she had to a lifeline. Alone in the back seat of a car outside a Gaza City gas station, she was drifting in and out of consciousness, surrounded by bodies, as she told emergency dispatchers that Israeli tanks were rumbling closer.

Paramedics were on their way, the dispatchers kept telling her: Hold on. The paramedics were driving to their deaths.

Twelve days later, when a Palestinian civil defense crew finally reached the area, they found Hind’s body in a car riddled with bullets, according to her uncle, Samir Hamada, who also arrived at the scene early that morning. The ambulance lay charred roughly 50 meters away (about 164 feet) from the car, its destruction consistent with the use of a round fired by Israeli tanks, according to six munitions experts.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said they conducted a preliminary investigation and that its forces were “not present near the vehicle or within the firing range” of the Hamada family car. Nor, they said, had they been required to provide the ambulance permission to enter the area. The State Department said it has raised the case repeatedly with the Israelis. “The Israelis told us there had, in fact, been IDF units in the area, but the IDF had no knowledge of or involvement in the type of strike described,” said spokesman Matt Miller.

A Washington Post investigation found that Israeli armored vehicles were present in the area in the afternoon, and that gunfire audible as Hind and her cousin Layan begged for help, as well as extensive damage caused to the ambulance, are consistent with Israeli weapons. The analysis is based on satellite imagery, contemporaneous dispatcher recordings, photos and videos of the aftermath, interviews with 13 dispatchers, family members and rescue workers, and more than a dozen military, satellite, munitions and audio experts who reviewed the evidence, as well as the IDF’s own statements.

From the crackpots & liars files: Fire employees

The BBC reports:

In a memo, first reported by news website Electrek, billionaire owner Elon Musk told staff there was nothing he hated more, "but it must be done".

The world's largest auto-maker by market value had 140,473 employees globally as of December, according to its latest annual report.

Tesla has not responded to the BBC's request for comment.

"We have done a thorough review of the organization and made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by more than 10% globally," said the email from Mr. Musk.

"There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done. This will enable us to be lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle."

There is nothing that Musk hates more than firing employees? That is seriously doubtful at best, much more like a brazen lie. Why would Musk, or any other blowhard business executive say that?

Simple. The fearsome power of public relations, i.e., propaganda. The label public relations was invented in the 1920s by the famous American propagandist Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud. Bernays was very smart. He understood Freud. In the 1920s, Bernays invented the phrase public relations. The term "propaganda" had been poisoned by thugs who saw the power in what Bernays understood about the human condition.

Bernays died in the utterly false belief that propaganda or public relations would always serve the public interest. He never understood how the cigarette industry and later cynical liars lusting for profit could viciously use what Bernays taught about how to deceive and manipulate mass public opinion. Bernays died self-deluded about the immorality and evil of the monster he and a few others created and unleashed on the human species in the name of "our own good."

America today still hemorrhages democracy, liberty and respect for truth from the knowledge of the human condition that Bernays elevated to the level of a real, powerful science. Bernays died self-deluded at best, cynical liar at worst.

Wealthy elites and average deluded government-hating 

people still argue that debunked bullshit makes sense

Nuclear treaty talks?; Ambiguity in an important law

A NYT article not paywalled (paywalled link) discusses an offer by China to start talks about a treaty among nuclear nations to formally adopt a no first strike policy for nuclear weapons:

Since China’s first nuclear weapons test, in 1964, the country has pledged loudly to never go first in a nuclear conflict — no matter what. That stance, coupled with a stated strategy of “minimum” deterrence, didn’t demand the level of American fear, loathing and attention that the Russian threat did.

The Pentagon says Beijing is on track to double the number of its nuclear warheads by the decade’s end, to 1,000 from 500 — a development that senior U.S. officials have publicly called “unprecedented” and “breathtaking.” China has drastically expanded its nuclear testing facility and continued work on three new missile fields in the country’s north, where more than 300 intercontinental ballistic missile silos have recently been constructed.

In truth, no one knows what China is planning. President Xi Jinping’s government, as with much of its domestic policy, releases vanishingly little information about its nuclear intentions, strategies or goals, and it has been equally unwilling to engage on arms control.

That is, until now.

In February, in a rare offer for nuclear diplomacy, China openly invited the United States and other nuclear powers to negotiate a treaty in which all sides would pledge never to use nuclear weapons first against one another. “The policy is highly stable, consistent and predictable,” said Sun Xiaobo, director general of the Chinese foreign ministry’s Department of Arms Control, in Geneva on Feb. 26. “It is, in itself, an important contribution to the international disarmament process.”

The invitation came as a surprise. While Beijing has long claimed moral superiority over other nuclear powers on this issue — China and India are the only nuclear-armed nations to declare a no-first-use policy — opening the possibility for talks in such a public way is something China hasn’t done in years.   

[President Biden] supported a no-first-use policy as vice president amid deliberations inside the Obama administration, and as a presidential candidate on the campaign trail he said the “sole purpose” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be aimed at deterring or retaliating against an adversary’s nuclear attack. But when it came time for his own administration to adopt a declaratory nuclear policy, he decided not to break with America’s longstanding nuclear dogma and retained the first-use option.

In my opinion, the US must at least accept the invitation to talk and start to talk. Talking about an existential threat with parties capable of starting nuclear war is far better than staring at each other through distrusting eyes.

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

Here is the text of a part of 18 USC §1512(c) that the USSC has accepted to hear a dispute about:

(c) Whoever corruptly—

(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or

(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

The fight is over the meaning of the word otherwise. The USSC will decide what otherwise means and how or if it connects (1) with (2). 

The stakes are very high. First, depending many the traitors convicted in Trump's 1/6 coup attempt could wind up having their convictions overturned. Second, a basis on which Trump himself can be prosecuted might vanish. Two two four felony charges Trump faces are based on this obstruction statute in relation to him trying to overturn the 2020 election. He could move to have those two charges dismissed if the Supreme Court rules for the 1/6 traitors in this case and get a great opportunity to exploit his self-proclaimed victimhood.

The HuffPo writes:

At issue is a law that makes it a felony if someone “corruptly … obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” This law — known as 18 U.S.C. 1512(c) — was enacted as part of the accounting reform law passed in 2002, in the wake of the Enron and Arthur Andersen scandals. Federal prosecutors have used it to charge 330 people who were involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, including Fischer — and former President Donald Trump.

Fischer argues in his appeal that the provision was not intended to be used in this way. Instead, he claims, a full reading of the law’s text shows that it was only meant to apply to the corrupt obstruction or impediment of documents in an official proceeding.

Fourteen district court judges have upheld charges for obstructing an official proceeding in Jan. 6 insurrection-related cases, on the understanding that “otherwise” means “in a different manner.” This would mean that the language of the first subsection related to the destruction of documents holds no bearing on the second subsection.

But in an appeal to dismiss the same charge when it was brought against Jan. 6 defendant Garret Miller, Judge Carl J. Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia reached a different conclusion.

In his March 2022 decision, Nichols wrote that the word “otherwise” imposes a limit on the second subsection and “requires that the defendant have taken some action with respect to a document, record, or other object in order to corruptly obstruct, impede or influence an official proceeding.”

Since Miller did not attempt to obstruct an official proceeding related to a document, Nichols wrote, that charge against him was dismissed.

Nichols referred to his decision in Miller’s case to similarly dismiss the charge against Fischer.  

On appeal, a majority from a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit disagreed. That ruling determined that the word “otherwise” should instead be defined by the “the commonplace, dictionary meaning” as “in a different manner” and, therefore, the “obstruction” prohibited by law does not refer solely to document-related crimes.

If the six radical authoritarian Republicans in the USSC want to protect Trump, this case is about as good as it can get. Two felony charges vanish and the sanctimonious liar-traitor Trump gets to play the martyred victim card with a vengeance. 

And this is happening in 2024. That is is a major part of why Merrick Garland looked to me to be too feeble and timid to do his job by May of 2021. All of this should have been resolved by at least a year ago. Now it is too late. Justice delayed could easily turn out to be justice denied and democracy killed. That is how high the stakes are for the entire, crumbling structure of the American rule of law. Biden failed us by (i) putting an incompetent in charge of the DoJ, and (ii) not firing him when it was obvious that Garland was not up to the job. Now it is just too late. We horribly messed our own bed and we get to sleep in it.

Sabine Hossenfelder criticizes academia and irrational constraining dogma

This ~14 minute video by Sabine Hossenfelder (PhD, physics), My dream died, and now I'm here (why academia sucks), sharply criticizes the academic Ivory Tower for timidity, at least in physics. She argues that academic science operates more like a business than an intellectually open human enterprise. She makes some good points, including a sharp accusation of misogyny.

GOP authoritarian moral rot; Wine improves with age; Talking to the flock; Israel vs Iran

The New Republic comments:

Looking back, it’s clear that one of the more fateful moments in the evolution of today’s Republican Party came when Kevin McCarthy made his abject pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago three weeks after January 6, 2021. This was, in essence, Donald Trump’s public absolution, with then-GOP leader McCarthy affirming that the Republican Party would make the construction of a monumental historical lie about the insurrection central to its identity for the foreseeable future.*

The infernal plan was to recast what was the largest outbreak of stateside political violence in memory as a just cause—while transforming the insurrectionists into victims and martyrs. By doing so, McCarthy would keep Trump and his movement safely in the Republican Party fold, ensuring the GOP electoral victories that could not be conceived of without their participation.

All of which set the stage for Mike Johnson’s groveling meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Friday. Billed as an event about “election integrity,” their press conference confirmed that the GOP remains as committed as ever to their disturbing post-insurrection path.

It was a deeply weird affair. With Trump hovering watchfully over Johnson, the House Speaker said that in campaigning, he’s discovered that people across the country just happen to be thoroughly obsessed with precisely the same thing that preoccupies Trump. “Everywhere we go, one of the first questions that people ask about is this issue of election integrity,” Johnson said.  

Johnson and Trump also announced that the House will pursue a new bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Johnson even rattled off a convoluted theory in which non-citizens are threatening our elections by the “design” of President Biden—a soft version of the “great replacement theory” that has become mainstreamed at the highest levels of Republican and MAGA establishment power.

Trump's authoritarianism and moral rot have taken full control of the Republican Party. Corruption, lies and crackpot anti-democracy conspiracies are the norm. Elections will be subverted into shams if Trump and his GOP get their way.

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

The NYT reports, not paywalled off:

11% more adult Americans now believe that DJT is a "safe" choice!? Unbelievable but true. Terrifying. The stunning power of relentless dark free speech is on display here, yet again.

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

The WaPo reports about rock solid rank and file loyalty to DJT:

Jerry Dean McLain first bet on former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social two years ago, buying into the Trump company’s planned merger partner, Digital World Acquisition, at $90 a share. Over time, as the price changed, he kept buying, amassing hundreds of shares for $25,000 — pretty much his “whole nest egg,” he said.

That nest egg has lost about half its value in the past two weeks as Trump Media & Technology Group’s share price dropped from $66 after its public debut last month to $32 on Friday. But McLain, 71, who owns a tree-removal service outside Oklahoma City, said he’s not worried. If anything, he wants to buy more.

“I know good and well it’s in Trump’s hands, and he’s got plans,” he said. “I have no doubt it’s going to explode sometime.”

For shareholders like McLain, investing in Truth Social is less a business calculation than a statement of faith in the former president and the business traded under his initials, DJT.

Even the company’s plunging stock price — and the chance their investments could get mostly wiped out — doesn’t seem to have shaken that faith. The company has lost $3.5 billion in value since its public debut last month.

As a business, Trump Media has largely underwhelmed: The company lost $58 million last year on $4 million in revenue, less than the average Chick-fil-A franchise, even as it paid out millions in executive salaries, bonuses and stock.  

And in two years, Truth Social has attracted a tiny fraction of the traffic other platforms see, according to estimates from the analytics firm Similarweb — one of the only ways to measure its performance, given that the company says it “does not currently, and may never, collect, monitor or report certain key operating metrics used by companies in similar industries.”

If this isn't personality cult reasoning and behavior, it has to be at least one heck of a tribe.

Note that Mr. McLain is 71 and has a nest egg of abought $25,000. His retirement is not going to be much fun, assuming he can retire at all. A lot of Americans, maybe ~50%, are in similar financial straits.

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

The Hill and everyone else is reporting: US helps Israel repel Iran’s missile and drone attack --The U.S. helped its ally Israel repel a significant missile and drone assault by Iran, assisting with intercepting hundreds of Iranian drones and missiles. President Biden and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke following “Iran’s brazen attack” that targeted Israel on Saturday. The president said he reaffirmed U.S. support for Israel and condemned Iran’s missile and drone attacks during the call. .... Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said that Israel is facing a “vicious” attack and the U.S. “must stand with its ally.

What about Israel's brazen, vicious attack of Iran's consulate in Damascus? Right, we defend that. Is the US going to get sucked into another one of the endless supply of wars in the rage & hate-driven Middle east?

Hm, today is not a good news day. Sigh. It's a toxic news day. ☠️