Abortion update; Trial update; Poll data on 3rd party effect; Reich video on history, DJT & the GOP

The theocratic radical right's war on abortion rights isn't over yet. Jezebel reports:

In Moyle v. United States, Idaho argues that its abortion ban takes precedence over a federal law establishing a right for all people to receive emergency care, including abortion.

On April 24, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Moyle v. United States, a case about Idaho’s total abortion ban and a federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). EMTALA passed in 1986 and requires hospitals to provide stabilizing, emergency care to patients—including those experiencing pregnancy-related complications—regardless of individual state laws. In certain cases, abortion is necessary to save a pregnant person’s life, but Idaho’s ban allows abortion only if the pregnant person is basically moments from death. In Moyle, the court will determine whether Idaho’s ban and its extremely narrow exception for life-threatening medical emergencies takes precedence over EMTALA.

The case also relates to fetal personhood because Idaho is trying to argue that EMTALA actually does say that an embryo or unborn fetus is a “patient” whose rights should supersede the rights of the person carrying the pregnancy. (It definitely doesn’t say that.)

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Daily KOS reports that DJT is signaling open contempt of the lawsuit and the jurors in his election fraud trial:

Trump refused to stand when the jury entered and left the court room. Next, Trump fell asleep again, .... it is a sign of respect for all in the court room to stand when the jury is being seated and when they leave. A good lawyer will instruct his/her client to show respect to the jury, and the defendant will stand. Well, not this defendant. Trump stubbornly refused to stand for the jury.

And, there's this weirdness about gag orders 🤪:

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NBC News reports poll data about something I have suspected for a while about the possible effect of the JFK Jr campaign:

The latest national NBC News poll finds the third-party vote — and especially independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — cutting deeper into former President Donald Trump’s support than President Joe Biden’s, though the movement the other candidates create is within the poll’s margin of error.

Trump leads Biden by 2 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup, 46% to 44%, in the new NBC News poll.

But when the ballot is expanded to five named candidates, Biden is the one with a 2-point advantage: Biden 39%, Trump 37%, Kennedy 13%, Jill Stein 3% and Cornel West 2%.

The poll finds a greater share of Trump voters in the head-to-head matchup backing Kennedy in the expanded ballot. Fifteen percent of respondents who picked Trump the first time pick Kennedy in the five-way ballot, compared with 7% of those who initially picked Biden.

It is still too early to give much weight to poll data. But it struck me that since Kennedy is a crackpot conspiracy theorist, he would likely appeal to more DJT voters than Biden voters. Time will tell if that actually happens in November. Jill Stein appears to hurt Biden more than Trump, so the impact of 3rd parties is unpredictable at this time.

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This Robert Reich video discusses 6 points of history related to the candidacy of DJT. The first point considers the Robber Barons of the 1800s and early 1900s and parallels with DJT. The second, starting at about 6:50, considers fascism vs authoritarianism vs DJT. The 3rd issue, starting at about 13:50, discusses the rise radicalization of the political right and how that changed perceptions of the left and center left to far left and left. This segment of the video touches on the Overton Window concept and why its is relevant to current politics.

I've argued this point several times here

 The 4th issue, starting at ~16:45, considers the rise of culture wars in recent modern history focusing on the May 1970 Hard Hat Riot in New York city. 

The 5th issue, starting at ~22:35, deals with the corporate takeover of politics starting with a Chamber of Commerce memo to corporate CEOs by Lewis Powell (later a USSC justice). Powell's 1971 memo urged the business community to unite in opposition to social forces arguing for environmentalism, consumer rights and labor unions. Money was the weapon that Powell told the business community it had to use against subversive forces demanding that corporations act with a social conscience for the public interest, not just shareholder interest.

Powell's call to war of united business

interests against the public interest

Yeah, money = power, a no-brainer proposition

The fruit of Powell's war on democracy and

truth included the 2010 Citizens United decision

with this predictable outcome:

The last point (~27:35) deals with the influence of Robert Bork on business and politics. Bork argued that antitrust law was bad and effects on consumers was generally positive or neutral. The end result is a major concentration of corporate power among a few huge companies who learned how to corrupt government with money (free speech). Loss of meaningful business competition after consolidation of political and market power in synch with Bork anti-antitrust ideology is estimated to cost each household about $5,000/year.

Liar wars: Lying capitalists vs. consumers and the public interest

The new lie

A plastics industry propaganda campaign has flared up here. It is remaking the old lie about recycling into a new version of the lie. One can call it the Making Sustainable Change lie. 

The old lie

(but the arrow still goes in the same direction!)

These fine dark free speech proponents (liars) are the American Chemistry Council, Inc. and online at plasticsmakers.org. The website shows happy White Americans in their lovely, perfectly maintained big suburban houses enthusiastically recycling plastics in the front yard as many of us now do, but maybe with somewhat less enthusiasm and in the back yard. Not surprisingly, the website fails to mentions that after decades, about 91% of all single use plastics are still not recycled all these decades later. Inconvenient recycling data estimates like this from 2020 are 100% ignored, making that a lie of omission.

MRF = material recovery facilities, 

a/k/a/ recycling centers

What the propaganda website shows are happy things like this:

See how happy and enthusiastic they are!!

That is so hard to believe that it is unbelievable!

New ways could have been found decades ago 

if the plastics people actually wanted it

This is a lie

Advanced recycling is a lie and an illusion

The 5 actions the plastics polluters say they are calling for: 

30 by 30 sounds a lot like 

vaporware

Wait, the plastics people are the ones who

opposed regulations and social responsibility

Wait, that is evil socialist tyranny

Plastics companies are anti-regulations Republicans, 

not pro-reasonable regulations Democrats  

Wait, that call for more research sounds exactly 

like the same propaganda delay tactic the oil, coal and 

cigarette industries used for decades to block regulations and to 

deceive the public!

This smells like a dirty trick

Wait, the private sector has bitterly opposed 

calls for private sector funding for recycling

The polluters have always wanted to shift the costs 

to consumers and taxpayers 

Translation: The public is becoming angry and 

getting better informed -- we need to try to get ahead of a major

public and political backlash that would ding our profits!!

MEN, MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS!!

Fire propaganda cannons! 

A propaganda cannon blast

Germaine succinctly summarizes the real situation to date:

Actual truth

Thoughts on Christian nationalism and faux Christianity in general

CNs & FCs

In recent years, my opinion of America’s politically active, anti-democracy Christian nationalist (CN) theocracy movement has turned extremely negative. My evidence- and reason-based ill-will (bad opinion) extends to Christians who do not explicitly support anti-democratic theocracy but nonetheless use Christianity for their own personal agendas, which seem to tend towards reliance on some form of authoritarianism and corruption. I call them fake Christians (FCs). 

There is deep moral rot, shameless mendacity and shocking hypocrisy through the lens of both (1) my own moral values, and (2) the moral values that CNs and FCs self-righteously claim they believe in and live by. No one is perfect, but at least people can try in good faith to face inconvenient fact, truth and sound reasoning. They have the moral courage to face what is inconvenient. I see moral cowardice in CN and FC elites who cynically deny what is inconvenient and rational in their quest for wealth and power. But what about the rank and file who see nothing wrong and support bad Christianity? Yeah, exactly what about them? What is the state of their moral beliefs and their behaviors?

Dim views of fake Christianity

At least some other people have a pretty dim view of how CNs and FCs practice their faith. Over at his blog, Raven’s Song, Raven posted a poem he wrote in 1984, and the man says. It includes these thoughts about some TV preachers:

but if a man tells me that it is outdated
that he has more recent information
that he has just come from talking with god
himself
personally
then that man is either
a god blessed saint
or a god damned liar
and if that man is wearing
a five hundred dollar suit
in front of a fifty thousand dollar TV camera
and he is asking me to send him my money
so that he can feed the poor
or serve god
then you know which one
of the two possibilities
I believe

I can think for myself
just as anyone else can
they don’t have to listen to me
to tell them how to think or what to think
and they sure don’t have to listen to you
I know and they know

.

.

. 

and the man in rags is walking down a street tonight
in the cold
with everything he owns in a paper bag
walking past the warm TV studio
in the cold
walking past the warm houses
in the cold
and he is going to die tonight
in the cold
because everyone is watching the preacher on TV
and getting closer to god
so they don’t need to go out
in the cold
and bring a smelly beggar inside
out of the cold
and feed him or give him a place to sleep
out of the cold
or care enough to
treat him like a human being
or save his life
after all
their souls have already been saved
by the preacher

so you can ask anyone else on this street
who in america today
is the holiest man
and he may tell you
billy graham, oral roberts, herbert armstrong
or maybe you
but if you ask me
who in america today
has done the most evil in the name of good
I will tell you

Now that feels like real Christianity to me. That is how I was brought up to understand it. That is the kind of Christianity I am comfortable with and support.

Raven put his poem to an artificial intelligence program called Suno that turns words into songs. The AI-generated song can be played at this link. Like with most other things that humans do, opinions about what is real Christianity and what is fake vary widely. And so does the empirical and moral basis for that variance. 

There are intractable moral differences in the matter real vs fake religion. Democracies resolve the disagreement by reasonable compromise. Theocrats resolve it by force, e.g., forced birth laws, and  bigoted, oppressive laws that discriminate against hated out-groups like the LGBQT community. That is a core moral difference between a pro-civil liberties democratic Christian and a pro-bigotry authoritarian Christian.

An interesting thought

Is it mostly true? Maybe

Tomorrow starts one for the history books…

Two hundred years from now, when we are all dead and gone, and assuming that we haven’t annihilated ourselves by then, future generations will be reading about the first ever criminal trial of a one-time President of the United States.

Here in 2024, when social media runs unchecked and rampant, regular “We the People” are not allowed/forbidden to see the proceedings live, on TV.  We must get the info second-hand, from observers, or from transcripts after the fact.  Better than nothing, I guess. 😕

Here’s the question:

Should “We the People” be allowed to see the proceedings live on TV if we want to?  Hell, we even got to see O.J.'s trial, for crying out loud.

Make your case, pro or con, for letting the public witness this historic event, as it unfolds live.

(by PrimalSoup)

Israeli public opinion about the war in Gaza: The outlook is very bad for the Palestinians

From what I could tell, the murderous 10/7 attack by Hamas on Israel probably turned a lot of Israeli public opinion against the Palestinian people and their cause. But is that really true? Apparently. A search of Israeli public opinion gave this answer:

Q: What is Israeli public opinion about the actions the Israeli military are taking in Gaza?

A: The vast majority of Israelis, across the political spectrum, are convinced of the justice of the war against Hamas in Gaza.

• 57.5% of Israeli Jews believe the Israeli military (IDF) is using too little firepower in Gaza, while only 1.8% think the IDF is using too much.

• Despite some dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Netanyahu's handling of the war, trust in the IDF remains high, with 49.5% of Israelis expressing confidence in the military's actions.

• Israelis have rallied to crush Hamas after the October 7th attack that killed over 1,400 people and took over 240 hostages. They have little tolerance for criticism of the steep toll the conflict has taken on Palestinians.

• Even Israelis who oppose the occupation largely reject any contextualization of the Hamas attack, viewing it as an unjustified breach of Israel's borders. 

In summary, the Israeli public overwhelmingly supports the military's actions in Gaza, with a majority believing the IDF is not using enough force, despite growing international criticism of the high Palestinian casualties and destruction. Israelis see the war as a justified response to the Hamas attack.

If that data is basically correct, it along with past history, strongly suggest that the Palestinians and their cause are screwed permanently. There will probably never be a two-state solution. The only solution that looks plausible to me for the foreseeable future is the forced removal of all Palestinians to miserable, poverty-stricken enclaves that are strictly controlled by the Israeli military. The time for diplomacy is probably gone and not coming back any time soon, if ever. This is looks like it is getting close to end of the ~76 year-old game called Middle East peace. 

Of course, that's just my current opinion. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe something will change.

Qs: 

1. This is not a perfect analogy, but if terrorists in Canada lobbed missiles into the US and crossed the border killing ~25,000 people and taking ~1,500 hostages back across the border, would you support proportionally about the same level of retaliation against Canada with ~575,000 Canadian deaths (mostly non-combatant civilians), based on a kill ratio of ~23:1 as estimated for the current Gaza conflict (probably too low because many Palestinians are simply unaccounted for and may be dead).  

2. It is unreasonably sanctimonious or unfair for Americans and other foreigners to criticize the level of bloodshed among Palestinian civilians?

3. Does past history matter, e.g., the Q&A quoted below?

Q: Has Israel blocked a two-state solution since 1948?

A: Based on the search results, it appears that Israel has taken actions that have made the two-state solution increasingly difficult to achieve since 1948: 

• After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Israel captured more territory than was originally allocated to it under the 1947 UN Partition Plan, while Jordan took control of the West Bank and Egypt took control of Gaza. This resulted in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians becoming stateless refugees. 3 5

• In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and other Arab territories. This led to the idea that Israel would exchange land it had captured for peace with its Arab neighbors, including the Palestinians. 5

• However, over time, Israel has continued to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank, making the prospect of an independent and contiguous Palestinian state more difficult. 1 3 4

• Some scholars argue that the two-state solution was "stillborn" and "never a solution" due to the competing nationalist claims over the land and the difficulty of partitioning it equitably. 4

So in summary, while the two-state solution was initially proposed as a framework for resolving the conflict, Israel's actions since 1948 - including capturing and occupying Palestinian territories and expanding settlements - have made the realization of this solution increasingly remote over time, according to the sources provided. The search results suggest Israel has been a major obstacle to achieving a viable two-state solution.

AI warfare update; A proposed federal land management policy shift

The Register reports that DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has successfully completed tests with a modified, artificial intelligence-driven F-16 fighter jet going against a human pilot in a standard F-16 jet:

US Air Force says AI-controlled F-16 fighter jet 

has been dogfighting with humans

Robo-plane was made to restrain itself so as not to harm pilot or airframe

The claims rest on the USAF and DARPA implementing machine learning in an X-62A VISTA, a plane built as a testbed as it can mimic the performance of other aircraft, and recognition of their work as one of four finalists for the National Aeronautic Association's 2023 Robert J. Collier Trophy, an annual award for exceptional feats of aeronautics or astronautics in America.

"The potential for autonomous air-to-air combat has been imaginable for decades, but the reality has remained a distant dream up until now," said Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. "In 2023, the X-62A broke one of the most significant barriers in combat aviation. This is a transformational moment, all made possible by breakthrough accomplishments."

DARPA has been testing AI agent software for piloting simulated planes for several years. Its Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program dates back to 2020, when AlphaDogfight trials pitted human pilots in a flight simulator against an AI opponent.

The AI software won that competition but had an edge – it was allowed to fly at speeds that would have overstressed a real aircraft and generated g-forces that would harm a human pilot.

The integration of AI into modern

warfare is scary but apparently inevitable

AI is taught not to break the airplane because it can do so. But, if AI completely replaces humans, aircraft design would no longer have to take into account human limits. Aircraft design would be unleashed from human considerations. 

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Federal lands

The federal government owns and administers a huge swath of land in the “West” sometimes defined to be some lands west of the 100th meridian to the east side of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges in California, Oregon and Washington. These public lands consist of (i) the heavily touristed National Parks, which cover less than 50 million acres (78,125 sq mi), and (ii) roughly 450 million acres (7,031,250 sq mi) of grassland, steppe, desert and forest managed in trust for the American people by the Unites States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Unites States Forest Service.

100th meridian running 

through ND, DS, NE, KS, OK and TX

As discussed in Nov. 2023 posts here, and here, the federal lands of the West mostly were, as author Chris Ketcham in his 2019 book quoting historian Bernard DeVoto described it: 

“a plundered province,” a resource colony for corporations and absentee landlords who practiced an “economy of liquidation.” He was broad in his attacks on the liquidators. He went after the timbermen, the mining companies, the stockmen, the cattle barons, the oilmen and gasmen, the overgrazers, the deforesters, the denuders, the profiteers of gold rushes and grass rushes. He named the bankers and congressmen who abetted the plundering. The Western hogs, he called them.

In short, federal lands were not managed in trust for the American people. They were exploited by brutal special interests for special interest profit. That has been the law. Until now. The WaPo reports (not paywalled) about a major proposed federal land management policy shift that puts conservation and recreation on equal footing with resource extraction by Western Hogs and sanctimonious government hating ideologue zealots:

For decades, the federal government has prioritized oil and gas drilling, hardrock mining and livestock grazing on public lands across the country. That could soon change under a far-reaching Interior Department rule that puts conservation, recreation and renewable energy development on equal footing with resource extraction.

The final rule released Thursday represents a seismic shift in the management of roughly 245 million acres of public property — about one-tenth of the nation’s land mass. It is expected to draw praise from conservationists and legal challenges from fossil fuel industry groups and Republican officials, some of whom have lambasted the move as a “land grab.”

Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, known as the nation’s largest landlord, has long offered leases to oil and gas companies, mining firms and ranchers. Now, for the first time, the nearly 80-year-old agency will auction off “restoration leases” and “mitigation leases” to entities with plans to restore or conserve public lands.

“Today’s final rule helps restore balance to our public lands as we continue using the best-available science to restore habitats, guide strategic and responsible development, and sustain our public lands for generations to come,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.

If Trump is re-elected in 2024 I guarantee it or your money back, that if this this new policy is in place, it will be soon reversed to hand power back to special interest Western Hogs, while taking it away from the public interest. We all know where the sympathies of the morally rotted Republican Party lie, i.e., with Western Hogs, and against the public interest.

This machine is called a Bull Hog

Bull Hogs shred bushes and trees

to clear land for resource extraction  

This is how Ketcham described the operation of Bull Hogs in his 2019 book:

Here’s what’s happening to our land: it is May 2018, in the Egan Range of Nevada, south of Ely, and a machine called a Bull Hog is approaching. .... It runs on treads like a bulldozer, and affixed at it’s front is a spinning bladed cylinder. It has one use and one use only -- the destruction of the forest in which I stand, a forest of pinyon and juniper that the BLM manages on our behalf. .... The pinyon-juniper forest is the great survivor in the aridlands, drought resistant, adapted to heat, and is deliciously sweet-smelling -- these two species, after the sagebrush, are the perfuming flora of the Great Basin and the Colorado Plateau. But they have no value for logging or wood products, no value that can be measured in money. Therefore, they must be wiped out for other enterprises -- for cattlemen I later learn, so that the land in the Egan Range will be “productive” for cows and not wasted.

The Bull Hog, operated and funded by the Department of the Interior -- at our expense, with our tax dollars -- charges through the forest as I stand in a kind of fugue, incredulous at the pace of its destruction. The beautiful old gnarled trees are devoured in the mouth of the mobile muncher, knocked down and chewed up, defecated out its ass-end in fragments. .... The howl and whine of the engine and the spinning blades, the tortuous toppling of the trees, the crackling and crushing of trunks and limbs, the shattered spitting of being alive seconds before -- it is almost too much to bear.

.... May is prime nesting season for birds in the pinyon-juniper biome. Kestrels and hawks, mountain chickadees and house wrens, black throated gray warblers, flickers, gray flycatchers, scrub jays and pinyon jays live here, and in the soil between the trees nest the poorwills -- all that are caught and ground to red mist by the servo-mechanism, for no reason other than to expedite commerce.

This point bears repeating: If Trump is re-elected in 2024 and if this new policy is in place, it will be soon reversed to hand power back to special interest Western Hogs.