Opinion poll: Voter fear; Radicalization of Catholicism?; Forced birth war update

NPR reports that poll data indicates that fear is a significant concern among voters:

NPR poll: Democrats fear fascism, 

and Republicans worry about a lack of values

The fear factor is real in America, but Democrats and Republicans are scared for the country's future for different reasons, the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds.

They also believe very differently about what children who will inherit that future should be taught.

Looking at this year's presidential election, the survey also found big shifts with key voter groups, along generational, racial and educational lines.

It also explored how third-party candidates and so-called "double haters" — who have unfavorable ratings of both President Biden and former President Donald Trump — could affect the race.

Finally, the poll finds a jump in Republicans now believing Trump has done something unethical, as he continues to contend with dozens of criminal charges and legal troubles. The number of Republicans saying Trump has done something unethical has jumped 12 points since February, from 34% to 46%. Still, only 8% of Republicans think he's done something illegal, compared to almost half of respondents overall (47%). A whopping 77% overall think Trump has done something illegal or at least unethical, and a majority believes the investigations into his conduct are fair.

Biden's 2-point lead with all adults and 5-point lead with registered voters evaporates when RFK Jr. and others are considered. RFK Jr. takes in 11% of the vote, which is about how much he's been registering on average in previous Marist polls and other surveys. It's no secret that there's a lot of cynicism and disaffection among many voters. Highlighting the country's partisanship, respondents said both men essentially represent equal threats to democracy, and majorities say they dislike both.

Assuming the data is meaningful somehow, whether all of that collectively is good, bad or about equally mixed is not obvious to me. Any thoughts? I just keep getting feelings of unease from a lot of the news these days.

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An AP article reports about what appears to be a surge of radical fundamentalism in the American Catholic church:

‘A step back in time': America’s Catholic Church 

sees an immense shift toward the old ways

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — It was the music that changed first. Or maybe that’s just when many people at the pale brick Catholic church in the quiet Wisconsin neighborhood finally began to realize what was happening.

The choir director, a fixture at St. Maria Goretti for nearly 40 years, was suddenly gone. Contemporary hymns were replaced by music rooted in medieval Europe.

So much was changing. Sermons were focusing more on sin and confession. Priests were rarely seen without cassocks. Altar girls, for a time, were banned.

At the parish elementary school, students began hearing about abortion and hell.

“It was like a step back in time,” said one former parishioner, still so dazed by the tumultuous changes that began in 2021 with a new pastor that he only spoke on condition of anonymity.

Across the U.S., the Catholic Church is undergoing an immense shift. Generations of Catholics who embraced the modernizing tide sparked in the 1960s by Vatican II are increasingly giving way to religious conservatives who believe the church has been twisted by change, with the promise of eternal salvation replaced by guitar Masses, parish food pantries and casual indifference to church doctrine.

The shift, molded by plummeting church attendance, increasingly traditional priests and growing numbers of young Catholics searching for more orthodoxy, has reshaped parishes across the country, leaving them sometimes at odds with Pope Francis and much of the Catholic world.

The changes are not happening everywhere. There are still plenty of liberal parishes, plenty that see themselves as middle-of-the-road. Despite their growing influence, conservative Catholics remain a minority.

This is discomforting. Conservative Catholicism, whatever it is, strikes me as inherently anti-democratic and authoritarian. That mindset seems to be similar to, or about the same as, America's radical right authoritarian wealth and power movement, roughly Trump and his radicalized Republican Party. The mindset also seems to align with the NPR poll data discussed above. 

It is now obvious that America's radical right authoritarian movement is completely comfortable with harsh, aggressive minority rule over the objections of the majority of Americans. In my opinion, that is a solid evidence of anti-democratic authoritarianism. 

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Forced birth advocates are getting very aggressive. The WaPo reports about an apparently new tactic to stop abortions in states where it is legal (not paywalled):

Texas man files legal action to probe ex-partner’s 

out-of-state abortion

The previously unreported petition reflects a potential new antiabortion strategy to block women from ending their pregnancies in states where abortion is legal

As soon as Collin Davis found out his ex-partner was planning to travel to Colorado to have an abortion in late February, the Texas man retained a high-powered antiabortion attorney — who court records show immediately issued a legal threat.

If the woman proceeded with the abortion, even in a state where the procedure remains legal, Davis would seek a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding the abortion and “pursue wrongful-death claims against anyone involved in the killing of his unborn child,” the lawyer wrote in a letter, according to records.

Now, Davis has disclosed his former partner’s abortion to a state district court in Texas, asking for the power to investigate what his lawyer characterizes as potentially illegal activity in a state where almost all abortions are banned.

The previously unreported petition was submitted under an unusual legal mechanism often used in Texas to investigate suspected illegal actions before a lawsuit is filed. The petition claims Davis could sue either under the state’s wrongful-death statute or the novel Texas law known as Senate Bill 8 that allows private citizens to file suit against anyone who “aids or abets” an illegal abortion.

The decision to target an abortion that occurred outside of Texas represents a potential new strategy by antiabortion activists to achieve a goal many in the movement have been working toward since Roe v. Wade was overturned: stopping women from traveling out of state to end their pregnancies. Crossing state lines for abortion care remains legal nationwide.

Anti-abortion advocates constitute a powerful, aggressive minority that is not ever going to stop trying to impose forced birth law nationwide. These people are theocratic zealots fighting God's sacred war. They do not compromise. If this minority of people ever get enough power, America will be ruled under the iron fist of intrusive Christian Sharia law administered by a corrupt, cruel male Taliban. 

Christian theocrats do not believe 

in that reasoning

Their religion does prohibit everyone

from whatever it makes illegal 

Will the biggest student movement since Vietnam be crushed?

 

In a matter of days, dozens of Gaza solidarity encampments have sprung up on over a hundred university campuses across the U.S. It’s the biggest student movement since the anti-war protests that swept U.S. universities in the 1960s.

As encampments are erected across the country, students have peacefully called for divestment from Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. In response, many school administrations are inviting police onto campuses to violently crack down on students.  

For over six months, tens of thousands of Jews and countless other people of conscience have fought to end the genocide Israel is committing against Palestinians in Gaza. We continue to demand that the Biden administration end its support for the Israeli military. 

The biggest student anti-war movement since Vietnam

As the movement for a ceasefire grows, students across the country have organized in the thousands to demand that their universities cut ties with Israel’s apartheid regime. Over 100 Gaza solidarity encampments have been established on campuses across the country, reclaiming the space as  “liberated zones” and “popular universities for Gaza.” Student chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace have been involved in organizing at least 47 of these encampments. 

At the University of Chicago, students established the “Popular University for Gaza” on the main quad of the University of Chicago campus. Painted boards bearing the messages “Disclose, divest, and repair” and “In solidarity with Gaza forever” have been erected around the encampment. At the University of Minnesota, hundreds of student protesters pitched dozens of tents on Monday, linking arms to protect the encampment after arrests were threatened. 

And so on, at over one hundred campuses across the country. 

In response to these peaceful student anti-war protests against genocide, many school administrations have invited police onto campus for violent crackdowns.

Violent repression at Columbia University and City College

At Columbia University, negotiations broke down and the university began issuing fresh suspensions on Monday. In response, hundreds of Columbia students and professors occupied Hamilton Hall, one of the buildings occupied by anti-war student protesters in 1968. Faculty linked arms with students to protect protesters inside. 

Students renamed the occupied building “Hind’s Hall,” after 6-year-old Hind Rajab, who was murdered alongside her family by the Israeli military in Gaza. For hours, Hind was left to bleed out as Israeli forces fired on ambulances trying to reach her. 

 On Tuesday evening, the Columbia administration again called the cops on their own students. As student journalists were confined to Pulitzer Hall, and told they would be arrested if they left, hundreds of NYPD police clad in riot gear swarmed Columbia’s campus to forcefully disperse the encampment and remove the students occupying Hind’s Hall. Cops deployed an armored vehicle to gain entry to Hind’s Hall and brutalized the dozens of student protestors who were doing nothing but peacefully occupying a building on their own campus. 

One video shows a protester being thrown down the stairs; another shows cops entering Hind’s Hall with their guns drawn to confront the unarmed student protesters inside. Just a few miles away, dozens of cops were deployed in a simultaneous raid to crack down on protesters at CCNY, where police also used excessive force against peaceful students, arresting dozens. Across the city, hundreds of protestors were arrested.

On air, a student reporter for Columbia’s radio station fought back tears at the news that Columbia President Minouche Shafik has requested the NYPD remain on campus for the remainder of the school year [May, 17]

The first 20 or so minutes of this video is a briefing by Columbia Professors discussing the severe mistreatment of their students by the Columbia Administration and NYPD under Mayor Eric Adams broadcast by Reuters yesterday. Worth a look if you are interested in what really has been going on at Columbia U.

 

Violent repression at UCLA

At UCLA, tens of thousands of dollars were crowdfunded to bus Zionist agitators to campus, where they surrounded student protesters. In one video, a woman waving an Israeli flag is seen shouting at students: “Go to Palestine. I hope they rape you.” 

On Tuesday evening, masked Zionist vigilantes from outside campus attempted to tear down the students’ encampment. They beat students with bats, threw bricks, sprayed mace, and shot fireworks at protestors, all while police stood by and watched. Later last night, UCLA student journalists who were walking on campus were followed and assaulted by Zionist counter-protestors.

[More coverage of UCLA events of April 30 in this LA Times article.  ]

Violent repression across the country

As dozens of encampments are erected across the country, students peacefully calling for divestment from Israel’s oppression of Palestinians are facing an increasingly violent crackdown by the state. 

Police clad in riot gear have been called in to clear encampments by force, and over 1,000 students have been arrested in total. Videos taken of police raids have shown students and professors being thrown to the ground and handcuffed, shoved, beaten, and dragged by militarized police. 

Across the country, cops are using pepper spray, rubber bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas on students, many of whom are still teenagers, at the behest of the university administrators who claim to care for their safety. At Arizona State University, videos showed cops removing the hijabs of female Muslim protesters. At Tulane, mounted police rode through the student encampment. 

Pro-Israel agitators are also doing everything in their power to smear protesters and get encampments shut down by force. When a man waving an Israeli flag showed up to Northeastern University’s Gaza solidarity encampment and shouted “kill the Jews,” the university had 100 pro-Palestine student protesters arrested in response. The Northeastern administration justified the crackdown in a statement citing this antisemitic threat — neglecting to specify that it was a pro-Israel provocateur making that threat. 

It’s clear that the only violence happening on U.S. campuses is being perpetrated by the state and Zionist agitators. Yet the U.S. media and pro-genocide politicians have gone to great lengths to portray peaceful, student anti-war demonstrations as violent, antisemitic mobs, in order to justify the increasingly brutal crackdown on the right to protest.

Fr. The Wire (official newsletter of JVP). Full article here.

Commentary on the MSM’s failure regarding the USSC immunity case

It is inconceivable to many people that the USSC is taking seriously Trump’s ghastly argument that presidents have absolute immunity from any acts that break any laws, literally including overthrowing the government by force and assassinating political opponents. While this is the insane argument his attorneys are making to the USSC, Trump himself is publicly threatening to prosecute Biden for breaking laws once he gets back in power if his immunity bid fails. 

This immunity case is beyond insane. And so is the USSC for taking it up in the first place. The authoritarian Republican USSC has already failed dismally and betrayed us and the rule of law, regardless of what it decides. That assumes it ever does decide, which it does not have to do.

Also insane is mainstream media reporting that makes the USSC look like it is being mostly a neutral, nonpartisan institution instead of the hyper-partisan radical authoritarian Republican Party monster it really is. What the hell is wrong with the MSM? Subverted by corporate ownership? Brain rot from Jewish space lasers? Long COVID brain inflammation causing a massive IQ drop? Shaken journalist syndrome? Etc.? Etc.?

I am not alone in making this criticism of gross MSM incompetence in this case. The Nation writes:

The Media’s Coverage of Trump’s Immunity Case Has Been Appalling

By covering the Supreme Court’s hearing of Trump’s immunity claim as if the court were impartial and nonpartisan, the media has done the American people a serious disservice

The reports about what happened during the hearing, and how the Republican justices are likely to rule, range from credulous simplicity to outright gaslighting. The court will almost certainly take the extreme, unprecedented, and previously unfathomable position that Trump cannot be held criminally accountable for all of his actions—and the reason it is likely to do so is that the court knows the media will carry its water and normalize its ruling to a public that lacks the time and acumen to fully appreciate what it’s doing.

I’m not talking about Fox News or Newsmax, whose coverage I have not read or watched but assume it’s ranged from cultish to clownish, as it always does. I’m talking about the mainstream press, the so-called “liberal” press, which is taking its cue from the Supreme Court and trying to normalize the proposition that presidents should be immune from at least some crimes.

At oral arguments, the conservatives authoritarian Republicans (Germaine’s typo fix) on the court introduced the novel idea that a president may be immune to criminal prosecution for some acts—specifically, some “official” acts—that are performed in his (or her, theoretically) role as president. That idea runs counter to the very principle of the rule of law, but it’s one the Republican justices entertained in order to accomplish their central goal of preventing Trump from facing trial before the election. It’s also a convenient way for conservative authoritarian justices to foster the idea of an “imperial presidency”—one where conservative presidents are fully free to trample on civil rights and use maximal force to accomplish their “official” goals, unrestrained by the rest of society.

Instead of explaining how dangerous and unprecedented it would be for a president to be able to commit crimes without the possibility of future legal accountability, most press reports chose to act as if this were a normal and acceptable choice for the court and the country. And while this would be bad enough, it hasn’t been the media’s only failure. The media has also fallen for the whole bogus charade behind the case to begin with. The entire reason that Trump filed his immunity claim was so that the courts—including, ultimately, the Supreme Court—could delay his trial until after the election. And that’s why the Supreme Court took the case. It’s also why they waited until late April to argue it and why they’ll likely send it back down to the D.C. Court of Appeals for an additional hearing.

By covering the case as if the Supreme Court were impartial and nonpartisan—and as if it’s blithely unaware of its own delaying tactics—the media does the American people a disservice. Most of the coverage has felt like reading a report about the Chicxulub meteor, from the perspective of the placental mammals: “Today, a large rock in the sky seems poised to land on our humble planet. Whatever happens, the collision is sure to be spectacular and could well have a lasting impact on life on this planet, though our opposable-thumbed experts assure us that the future remains bright for all who survive.”

 

You can see the media’s various blinders in this report from The Washington Post titled “Supreme Court seems poised to allow Trump Jan. 6 trial, but not immediately.” First of all, the headline misses the point. The Supreme Court is not “poised” to allow Trump to stand trial… because they are in the process of delaying that trial indefinitely. The Post may as well write, “We’re all poised to die, but not immediately.”  

The Associated Press was the only mainstream, legacy media outlet I saw that framed the issue correctly. It wrote: “Since conservatives on the court gained a supermajority with the confirmation of three Trump appointees, they have cast aside decades-old precedent on abortion and [affirmative] action. Now Trump is asking them to rule that one of the fundamental tenets of the American system of government—that no person is above the law—should be rejected as well, at least as it applies to him.”

More troubling to me are the people who should know better. I cannot fathom what made NPR’s Nina Totenberg write a piece titled “Trump’s immunity arguments and the experiences of the justices who might support it,” because it sounds like she’s doing crisis management for the conservative authoritarian Republican justices.

The second paragraph offers a particularly wild recharacterization of the issue. She writes: “Perhaps it’s Trump Derangement Syndrome that led lots of legal eagles, from liberal to conservative, to believe that former President Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from criminal prosecution was preposterous. But it’s more likely that court observers didn’t properly account for the personal experiences of the conservatives authoritarian Republican justices.” 

Okay, first of all, Trump’s immunity claim is preposterous. It is not deranged to think that the 45th president should be subject to the laws just as his 44 predecessors were. 

The Supreme Court is poised to crown Donald Trump as king of America. That is the headline. That is the thesis that should be nailed to a church door.

The article is long and criticizes other MSM reporting that normalized Trump’s literally insane immunity argument. The MSM has failed and betrayed us badly. With cover like that, the USSC is probably going to get away unscathed by the crimes the radical Republicans have already committed by protecting the traitor Trump so far.

Gaza war protests go off the rails -- dumpster fire starts; Forced birth wars update

It looks like the protests against genocide in Gaza are turning into a deeply counterproductive dumpster fire. The students are now breaking laws and occupying campus buildings. The cops are gonna come in, crack some skulls and arrest people. The pro-Israel propaganda Leviathan is gonna smear the protesters as hard and viciously as it can. Attention will turn from Gaza genocide to Biden- and liberal-inspired antisemitism, domestic terrorism and tyranny. Trump will gleefully attack and smear Biden with everything that he, and his cadre of sleaze artists like Steve Bannon, can think of.

One exception to the self-immolation of the protest movement is at Brown University. The NYT reports: At Brown, a Rare Agreement Between Administrators and Protesters -- Brown students took down their tents on campus after the university in Rhode Island agreed to discuss their demands for divestment from support for the Israeli military. Demonstrators agreed to dismantle their encampment at Brown, which had been removed by Tuesday evening, and university leaders said they would discuss, and later vote on, divesting funds from companies connected to the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.

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The WaPo reports about the impacts of the forced birth law that goes into effect today in Florida:

When she walked into the abortion clinic Tuesday morning, Kristen thought she’d made it just in time.

The 22-year-old mother of two had learned just a few hours earlier that a new six-week abortion ban would go into effect in Florida on Wednesday. So she canceled all her plans and found someone to drive her, in hopes of ending her pregnancy before the deadline.

She was one day too late.

“We did an ultrasound and you’re over the state limit,” said Eileen Diamond, the director of Benjamin Surgical Services International, gently explaining to Kristen that the test showed she was eight weeks pregnant.

While the clinic could still provide abortions for women more than six weeks into their pregnancies until midnight, Diamond said, another Florida law requires all abortion patients to have an ultrasound at least 24 hours before their procedure. That meant the earliest Kristen could get an abortion was Wednesday, when her abortion would no longer be legal.

“Oh no,” Kristen said, tears rolling down her cheeks as she sat across a desk from Diamond in a consultation room. “No. No.”

As of Wednesday morning, clinics across the country’s third-largest state can no longer offer abortions to most patients who walk through their doors — forced to turn away any woman who is further than six weeks along, a point when many still don’t know they’re pregnant. The enactment of Florida’s new ban on May 1 is widely expected to be the biggest jolt to abortion access across the country since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.  

For Kristen, the nearest abortion clinic that will be able to help her is now in Charlotte — an 11-hour drive away.

“I can help you find an appointment in another state, but you would have to get there,” Diamond told her Tuesday.

Kristen shook her head. Then she looked at Diamond and laughed: With her financial situation, Diamond might as well have been suggesting she fly to the moon.

“I can’t afford three kids,” said Kristen, who like other women in this story spoke on the condition that only their first names be disclosed to protect their privacy. “But I’m not going out of state. I can’t afford to go out of state.”  

A ban of this magnitude will immediately upend abortion access far beyond Florida’s borders, with Floridians traveling to North Carolina, Illinois and Virginia, where clinics are already struggling to absorb patients from antiabortion states across the Southeast. And while abortion rights advocates are hoping voters will approve a measure in November that would lift the ban in January — restoring abortion access in Florida until roughly 24 weeks of pregnancy — tens of thousands of women will be affected between now and the new year, regardless of what happens in the election.

This is a example of callous Christian Sharia theocracy intruding into people’s lives in a major way. Christian theocrats have no regard for majority public opinion that they disagree with. Only what God wants is what counts. That is authoritarian theocracy, pure and simple. It is here and now, not in the future or in another country. 

It is long past time for all tax breaks for all religion in the US to be repealed. Religion plays hardball politics, so it should play with the same rules that the rest of us have to play with. 

Best POTUS ever…

First, nobody is perfect. So, it isn’t wise/recommended to base your opinion of someone on one act (or non act) they’ve committed (granted, exceptions exist [see Hitler]). 

What I’m saying is, nobody can be all things to all people. It’s just impossible. And when someone tries to be that, that person is usually looked upon with suspicion; someone who can’t be trusted. 

Don’t get me wrong; getting along with as many people as you can is to be commended, especially if you don't want to be seen as a jerk. So yeah, finding some kind of middle ground is a tough row to hoe. 

So, considering the above, do you have a favorite (albeit likely flawed in some way) President of the United States? (Other countries can use your own presidents as examples.) Give your reasons why you picked that person.

(by PrimalSoup)

Another analysis of the New York state election fraud trial: It is boring and about business integrity

A NYT opinion (not paywalled) by a New York City attorney, former Manhattan assistant district attorney Rebecca Roiphe, discusses the election fraud/hush money trial from the point of view of a person who has actually enforced the laws Trump is being charged with violating:

Now that the lawyers are laying out their respective theories of the case in the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump in New York, it would be understandable if people’s heads are spinning. The defense lawyers claimed this is a case about hush money as a legitimate tool in democratic elections, while the prosecutors insisted it is about “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election.”

Yet this case is not really about election interference, nor is it a politically motivated attempt to criminalize a benign personal deal. Boring as it may sound, it is a case about business integrity.

It’s not surprising that the lawyers on both sides are trying to make this about something sexier. This is a narrative device used to make the jurors and the public side with them, but it has also created confusion. On the one hand, some legal experts claim that the conduct charged in New York was the original election interference. On the other hand, some critics think the criminal case is a witch hunt, and others claim it is trivial at best and at worst the product of selective prosecution.

As someone who worked in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and enforced the laws that Mr. Trump is accused of violating, I stand firmly in neither camp. It is an important and straightforward case, albeit workmanlike and unglamorous. In time, after the smoke created by lawyers has cleared, it will be easy to see why the prosecution is both solid and legitimate.

It would hardly make for a dramatic opening statement or cable news sound bite, but the case is about preventing wealthy people from using their businesses to commit crimes and hide from accountability. Manhattan prosecutors have long considered it their province to ensure the integrity of the financial markets. As Robert Morgenthau, a former Manhattan district attorney, liked to say, “You cannot prosecute crime in the streets without prosecuting crime in the suites.”

Lawmakers in New York, the financial capital of the world, consider access to markets and industry in New York a privilege for businesspeople. It is a felony to abuse that privilege by doctoring records to commit or conceal crimes, even if the businessman never accomplishes the goal and even if the false records never see the light of day. The idea is that an organization’s records should reflect an honest accounting. It is not a crime to make a mistake, but lying is a different story. It is easy to evade accountability by turning a business into a cover, providing a false trail for whichever regulator might care to look. The law (falsification of business records) deprives wealthy, powerful businessmen of the ability to do so with impunity, at least when they’re conducting business in the city.

Roiphe's opinion goes on to point out that prosecutors and New York courts have interpreted this law with its general purpose in mind. Because of that, the element of intent to defraud has a broad meaning. It is not limited to the intent of cheating someone out of money or property. And, as common with white collar crime cases, circumstantial evidence is often used to prove criminal intent. 

Prosecutors will ask jurors to use their common sense to infer what Trump’s intent might be for filing lots of false documents. Roiphe says that in similar trials, New York jurors often conclude that a defendant must have created a false paper trail for a reason. She asserts that jurors can conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump’s lies were intended to seek to commit a crime(s) or to cover one(s) up because as she puts it, “documents don’t lie.” In this lawsuit, Trump is accused of filing 11 false invoices, 12 false ledger entries and 11 false checks and check stubs, allegedly with intent to violate federal election laws, state election laws and/or state tax laws (34 separate felonies).

From Roiphe’s experienced insider point of view description of the case, it seems that Trump probably will be found to have committed fraud by most neutral jurors. At present, Trump’s main defense is that he was merely trying to avoid embarrassing his family, not trying to violate any law. The wild card here is one or more MAGA jurors who will probably vote to acquit Trump regardless of the evidence or “common sense.”

Trump is not even trying to deny the 34 documents were false. He did that. Period. He is arguing that the false documents were filed to protect his family. Nearly all MAGA people would probably accept his lie as truth and vote to acquit him.