Science & religion pulse check; American dictatorship pulse check

Creationism is the belief that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. A Gallup poll with data from May 2024 gave these results:

This data could be explained by religion inhibiting people from believing in evidence from science that contradicts the creationism story. One personal surprise in the data is that 32% of Catholics believe in creationism despite the Pope saying that science is real and true. Science completely contradicts creationism. Perplexity comments about what the Pope said:

On October 27, 2014, Pope Francis addressed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, declaring that the theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real and do not contradict the existence of a divine creator.

In his address, Pope Francis stated that "The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it".

He also affirmed that "Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve."  

Pope Francis emphasized that God is not "a magician with a magic wand" and that when reading about Creation in Genesis, we should not imagine God as such. [Hm, what should people imagine God as?]

The Pope's logic eludes me, but that is beside the point. The Pope has faith. Those 32% of creationist Catholics also have faith. But that is just their own faith, not the Pope's. Wimpy science is stuck with mundane data, empirical facts and human reasoning. 

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In the most direct assertion that he plans to establish a permanent Christian theocracy-autocratic dictatorship, the NYT reports about DJT's explicit promise (not paywalled) to his Christian supporters:

In the closing minutes of his speech to a gathering of religious conservatives on Friday night, former President Donald J. Trump told Christians that if they voted him into office in November, they would never need to vote again.

“Christians, get out and vote. Just this time,” he said at The Believers’ Summit, an event hosted by the conservative advocacy group Turning Point Action, in West Palm Beach, Fla. “You won’t have to do it anymore, you know what? Four more years, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”

Mr. Trump, who never made a particular display of religious observance before entering politics, continued: “I love you, Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you, you got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”  

Mr. Trump’s suggestion that Christians would not have to vote again if he is elected quickly spread across social media. Some argued that it was a threat that the 2024 election could be the nation’s last if he were to win and claimed it was further evidence of an authoritarian, anti-democratic bent he has displayed throughout his political candidacy.  

Since his 2020 loss, Mr. Trump, who often praises strongmen leaders on the trail, has further embraced a brand of conservatism that experts on autocracy have said veers toward totalitarian. [Hm, what a stupid thing to write -- DJT is far too lazy, mentally deranged and narcissistic to be a totalitarian, he is just a kleptocratic dictator]

Here we have DJT explicitly telling Christian theocrats that he will deliver to them an untouchable Christian theocracy. That package implicitly but clearly includes access to taxpayer money to run Christian religious and brain washing operations (schools). DJT's authoritarian intent could not be much clearer. 

Election subversion update; Supreme court pulse check; Same-sex marriage update

40 sec. video clip from 1980

The NYT reports (not paywalled) about election games that some states play:

How Some States Are Making It Harder to Register Voters

LaVon Bracy has been registering Florida voters ever since Lyndon Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, because she wanted, she said, to give others the voice she was denied as a Black student in a largely white high school. In an average year, she said, the nonprofit Faith in Florida, where she serves as democracy director, used to add 12,000 new voters to the state’s rolls.

That ended last year, when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation that imposed tough new rules on voter registration drives in the name of stopping fraud — and made voter registration groups that break the rules liable for fines as high as $250,000.

These days, Faith in Florida canvassers no longer help would-be voters fill out registration forms. Instead, they hand out slips of paper with a QR code that links to the state’s online registration website. And it’s not just small-time civic groups that are affected: The Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters has scaled back its trademark voter registration drives, too.

“These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea,” said Cecile Scoon, a lawyer and the president of the Florida league.

The political right has long sought to winnow voter rolls in the name of stopping fraud, including a stream of challenges this year. As Democrats prepare for a sprint to capitalize on the excitement of a new presidential ticket by signing up new voters, they are finding entirely new barriers in Florida and some other states to the sorts of voter registration drives that have been a campaign staple for both parties.  

Registrations also have slowed markedly at Florida colleges and universities, where more than a million students are enrolled.

“You have to tell every volunteer that if they screw up, there may be a $50,000 fine,” said Connor Efrian, the president of the University of Florida College Democrats. “The consequences are that there are a lot fewer people going around the campus registering people. People are a lot more intimidated.”

The article reports that other states involved in their own election subversion efforts include Kansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Missouri and Georgia. This is more evidence of the undeniable political power and anti-democratic intent of America's radical right authoritarian wealth and power political-social movement.

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An opinion/analysis article the editors of Scientific American discuss some recent USSC decisions that evince Republican hostility to inconvenient facts and substitution of falsity when necessary to get the right decision, i.e., right wing:

The Supreme Court’s Contempt for 

Facts Is a Betrayal of Justice

The Supreme Court majority’s recent decisions about homelessness, public health and regulatory power, among others, undermine the role of evidence, expertise and honesty in American democracy

When the Supreme Court’s Ohio v. EPA decision blocked Environmental Protection Agency limits on Midwestern states polluting their downwind neighbors, a sad but telling coda came in Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion. In five instances, it confused nitrogen oxide, a pollutant that contributes to ozone formation, with nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas.

You can’t make this stuff up. This repeated mistake in the 5-4 decision exemplifies a high court not just indifferent to facts but contemptuous of them.

The crescendo to this assault on expertise landed in June, when the majority’s Chevron decision arrogated to the courts regulatory calls that have been made by civil servant scientists, physicians and lawyers for the last 40 years. (With stunning understatement, the Associated Press called it “a far-reaching and potentially lucrative victory to business interests.” No kidding.) The decision enthrones the high court—an unelected majority—as a group of technically incompetent, in some cases corrupt, politicos in robes with power over matters that hinge on vital facts about pollution, medicine, employment and much else. These matters govern our lives.

The 2022 Kennedy v. Bremerton School District school prayer decision hinged on a fable of a football coach offering “a quiet personal prayer,” in the words of the opinion. In reality, this coach was holding overt post-game prayer meetings on the 50-yard line, ones that an atheist player felt compelled to attend to keep off the bench. Last year’s 303 Creative v. Elenis decision, allowing a Web designer to discriminate against gay people, revolved entirely on a supposed request for a gay wedding website that never existed that (supposedly) came from a straight man who never made the request. Again, you can’t make this stuff up. Unless you are on the Supreme Court. Then it becomes law.

Summing up the Court’s term on July 1, the legal writer Chris Geidner called attention to a more profound “important and disturbing reality” of the current majority’s relationship to facts. “When it needs to decide a matter for the right, it can and does accept questionable, if not false, claims as facts. If the result would benefit the left, however, there are virtually never enough facts to reach a decision.”  

Climate change, in particular, seems to draw out the Court’s taste for fiction. The 2022 West Virginia v. EPA decision that halted efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions from coal power plants, another 6-3 opinion, saw the majority enshrine a “major questions” doctrine. This legal theology, conjured from the penumbras and emanations of past antiregulatory decisions, insists that sizable regulations require patently-impossible-to-acquire congressional authorization. This is a “power grab” by the Court, anointing itself the economy’s czar.  

A Clean Waters Act case last year decreed wetlands only environmentally protected if their waters possessed a “continuous surface connection” with a larger body of water. This invented requirement is wholly at odds with how water and wetlands actually work, leaving up to half of the country’s protected wetlands now available for dredging. (emphases added)

This is more evidence of the undeniable legal power and anti-democratic intent of America's radical right authoritarian wealth and power political-social movement.

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In the 2015 Obergefell decision, the USSC held that there is a right to same sex marriage. Authoritarian Republicans, including those on the USSC bitterly criticized that decision. Clarence Thomas warned that this issue would be re-examined one day, subject to the same legal analysis that led to the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. That day is coming. Jezebel reports:

Kim Davis Tees Up Supreme Court to 

Reverse Marriage Equality Ruling

In an appeal over damages awarded to a same-sex couple, Davis says the 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges is wrong and should be overruled just like Roe v. Wade

The former Kentucky county clerk [Kim Davis]—who became infamous for denying marriage licenses to gay couples after the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges—is now arguing in federal court that Obergefell should be overturned, for the same reasons the high court shredded Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Christian nationalist Kim Davis wants

God in government and gays to stay unmarried

Davis is appealing a jury’s 2023 decision that she should have to pay $100,000 to a gay couple to whom she denied a marriage license. Davis argued that granting a license to David Ermold and David Moore in 2015 violated her religious beliefs; a deputy clerk eventually gave them a license. (The case is called Ermold v. Davis.) In a brief to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, her lawyers argue that “Obergefell should be overturned for the same reasons articulated by the court in Dobbs”—mainly that it “was wrong when it was decided and it is wrong today because it was based entirely on the ‘legal fiction’ of substantive due process, which lacks any basis in the Constitution.”

This is more evidence of the undeniable legal power and anti-democratic intent of America's radical right authoritarian Christian nationalist wealth and power political-social movement. 

In the Obergefell decision, Clarence Thomas was crystal clear that Obergefell was wrong for the same reason that Roe v. Wade was wrong. Now there are six Republican votes on the USSC to turn that sentiment into Christian Sharia law. One can reasonably expect Obergefell to be overturned in June of 2026, maybe 2027 if the courts are slow or less likely, 2025 if the courts are really fast.

DJT lawsuits against Harris/Biden have started

Thought of the day about the rule of law. Well, at least for this blog post:

“This is an attempt to describe generally the process of legal reasoning in the field of case law, and in the interpretation of statutes and of the Constitution. It is important that the mechanism of legal reasoning should not be concealed by its pretense. The pretense is that the law is a system of known rules applied by a judge; the pretense has long been under attack. In an important sense legal rules are never clear, and, if a rule had to be clear before it could be imposed, society would be impossible. The mechanism accepts the differences of view and ambiguities of words. It provides for the participation of the community in resolving the ambiguity by providing a forum for the discussion of policy in the gap of ambiguity. On serious controversial questions it makes it possible to take the first step in the direction of what otherwise would be forbidden ends. The mechanism is indispensable to peace in a community.” -- first paragraph of the 1949 book, An Introduction to Legal Reasoning, legal scholar and former US Attorney General, Edward H. Levy

As expected, and explicitly threatened, if Joe dropped out and someone else replaced him, DJT and his GOP and MAGA threatened lawsuits. Reuters reports:

Trump campaign files complaint against 

Harris taking over Biden war chest

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday, arguing that U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris could not legally take over funds raised by President Joe Biden's reelection campaign.

The fight over the accounts, which had roughly $95 million in the bank at the end of June, is part of a multi-pronged effort by Republicans to stymie Harris' bid to lead the Democratic ticket.

The Trump campaign argued that Harris undertook a "brazen money grab," according to the filing by David Warrington, the campaign's general counsel. In the filing, which was shared with Reuters, Warrington said Harris was in the process of committing what he described as the "the largest campaign finance violation in American history."

Saurav Ghosh, a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center, a non-partisan watchdog group, has said that because Harris was already part of "Biden for President" as the vice presidential candidate, her claim on the money should be secure.

In any case, election regulators are unlikely to resolve the issue before the Nov. 5 presidential election.

The FEC said they were unable to comment on unresolved enforcement matters.

This is just the beginning of DJT/GOP/MAGA lawsuits. One can reasonably expect at least a dozen federal or state lawsuits. After the 2020 election, DJT/MAGA filed 62 lawsuits in 9 states and the District of Columbia. All 62 failed. Nearly all were dismissed or dropped due to lack of evidence. Judges tended to describe the lawsuits as frivolous and/or without merit.

Experts have started commenting on NPR and elsewhere about what the ramifications of lawsuits might be. Despite what Reuters reports about the FEC being unable to comment, radical Republican FEC chairman Sean Cooksey commented extensively in an interview. DJT appointed Cooksey as FEC chair on Dec. 9, 2020. Cooksey said the language of the controlling law or regulation probably provides a basis for the FEC to block Harris from having access to the Biden campaign money. 

Based on his comments and the slop in the regulation, it is easy see the three Republican FEC commissioners deciding against Harris and the three Dems deciding for her, leaving the commission gridlocked. An appeal to the federal courts by DJT/MAGA would follow. 

Sean Cooksey - his politics is radical

right authoritarianism? Maybe not. 

This exemplifies, once again, the danger of sloppy writing of laws and regulations. Sufficient ambiguity and/or grammatical incoherence provides politically corrupted partisans with all the cover they need to get what they want, regardless of the sometimes clear intent behind the law or regulation. When original intent is unclear, the meaning of a law or regulation becomes a partisan power game.

This also exemplifies the willingness of DJT/GOP/MAGA to file frivolous lawsuits with no evidence, or even in the face of contrary evidence. Facts do not matter. Slop in the law matters far more.

Yahoo! News reported about the partisanship:

Sean Cooksey, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), suggested Monday that Vice President Harris may not be able to access the millions of dollars remaining from President Biden’s campaign, which many campaign finance lawyers say is rightfully hers.

Biden shook up the 2024 presidential race Sunday when he dropped out amid concerns about his age and mental acuity and endorsed his vice president. The campaign had just under $96 million in cash on hand as of June 30, according to its most recent report to the FEC, and filed paperwork to change its name from “Biden for President” to “Harris for President” within hours of the president’s decision.

Even before the campaign filed to change its name, Harris was listed as a candidate alongside Biden on its paperwork with the FEC.

Campaign finance lawyers previously told The Hill that Harris would be able to access the funds if she becomes the nominee. Democrats have started to coalesce behind Harris, but Cooksey called the situation “complicated” and suggested it would be challenged in the agency and at the courts.

“I think it’s really complicated, is the short answer,” Cooksey told “Morning Edition” on NPR. “What he’s attempting to do is to give his entire committee, the cash and all the assets, over to another person.”

“I think it’s gonna have to go through a process, through the FEC,” Cooksey added. “I expect, there’s probably going to be challenges to that at the agency, and probably in the courts as well.”

Democratic Commissioner Dara Lindenbaum, who chaired the commission last year, pushed back on the suggestion that Harris would not be able to access those funds.

“It’s quite clear, Vice President Harris can continue using the campaign committee and its funds,” Lindenbaum told The Hill. 

Steve Roberts, former general counsel to Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, was also skeptical of Cooksey’s comments.

“This interpretation is likely wishful thinking,” Roberts told The Hill.

“Since the declarations of candidacy for 2024, the reasonable interpretation is that the Biden campaign committee is a shared one between Harris / Biden, and perhaps uniquely so because they are incumbents. Otherwise, in 2020, Trump-Pence wouldn’t have had a shared committee, but would have set up separate committees and had their own contribution limits,” he explained.  

While Cooksey told NPR it is “entirely reasonable” to scrutinize the political motivations of members of the six-person commission, which may have no more than three members from each political party at any given time, he defended his record.

“I always try to approach these issues based on what the law requires and what is the best policy, not what’s gonna give people a certain partisan advantage in the short term,” Cooksey said.

Cooksey has sided with Democratic candidates and committees in controversial opinions that have angered many campaign finance reform advocates, including recent decisions that allow candidates to raise unlimited funds for state-level ballot measures, remove restrictions from certain mass text messages and make it easier for candidates and super PACs — which can raise unlimited sums of money — to coordinate on canvassing.

Partisanship here is obvious. A big question is whether partisanship on one or both sides is corrupt, principled or sufficiently grounded in ambiguity to make a solid determination impossible.

MAGA lawyers dropping anti-Harris 

lawsuits in courts across this great land! 

In fear, DJT lashes out in incoherent, blind anger; A new psychological reality appears

The HuffPo writes about DJT's move to avoid debating Kamala on the already-slated Sept. 10 debate. That shows real fear and some understanding of the threat Kamala is to his candidacy and fake reputation:

Former President Donald Trump continued his attacks against ABC News on Monday as he moved to shift his commitment to the next presidential debate now that Vice President Kamala Harris is the frontrunner to be the Democratic nominee.

Trump began laying the groundwork this weekend to dodge or change the rules of the second debate he’s agreed to, which is set to be held Sept. 10 and broadcast on ABC. The former president has been livid after President Joe Biden ended his bid for reelection on Sunday.

“ABC Fake News is such a joke, among the absolute WORST in the business,” he wrote on Truth Social. “They then tried to make ‘Sleepy’ look like a great President — he was the WORST, and Lyin’ Kamala into a competent person, which she is not.”  

“ABC, the home of George Slopadopolus, is not worthy of holding a Debate, of which I hope there will be many!” he went on, using a demeaning name for host George Stephanopoulos.

DJT's insulting lies, slanders and ad hominem attacks evince real fear of Kamala. He is obviously afraid of her. Other reporting that telegraphs his fear and confusion:

Brilliant young man? = fear

Pole numbers? = mental slop

The fear aspect of this is odd. On the one hand, Dems did not fear Biden enough to try to convince him to step down. On the other, despite DJT's fear of Kamala, the Repubs are too scared of the obviously unfit and unqualified DJT to even consider asking him to step aside. Of course DJT, like nearly all morally depraved dictators would never step aside, even if asked. For Biden, it was ultimately about what is best for the nation. For DJT, it is always about what is best for DJT.

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Writing for The Atlantic Anne Applebaum touches on a new perception: 

Suddenly Trump Looks Older and More Deranged

Now the Republicans are the ones saddled with a candidate who can’t make a clear argument or finish a sentence

Four days after the end of the Republican National Convention, it suddenly looks like a very different event. I watched it intermittently, on television, along with perhaps 25 million other Americans (a relatively small number, though enough to matter). I focused on the highlights, like most viewers did. I read the analysis and thought I understood what had happened. But in the light of President Joe Biden’s brave and unprecedented decision to drop out of the race, my memory of what Donald Trump and his party were doing and saying has permanently shifted. I suspect this will be true for at least some of the other 25 million of us too.

Whatever happens next, the frame has altered. Now it is the Republicans who are saddled with the elderly candidate, the one who can’t make a clear argument or finish a sentence without veering off into anecdote. Now the Democrats are instead proposing something new. Now it is the many pundits who were already bored by the race and ready to wrap it up who look foolish.

Based on comments I have read by readers of WaPo and NYT articles this morning, a new perception has already become apparent to a lot of people. With eyes and worries lifted from Biden, and with Repub memories of their blistering criticisms of him, people are seeing DJT with fresh eyes. What they see is a nasty old liar who is mentally incompetent. DJT and the Repubs cannot accuse Kamala of mental unfitness or doddering old age. That takes away at least two of their most potent propaganda weapons. From what I can tell, a lot of people now apparently better see that the accusations of Biden apply to DJT. Now DJT's moral depravity and cruel selfishness stand out more clearly because the criticisms of Biden no longer can help to obscure his true character.

Kamala Harris and the Israel-Palestine Question

 One of my key concerns with Biden (other than his cognitive status) has been his unconditional support for Israel. I've written several OPs here on the topic, so I will only add here that the situation has only gotten worse in the last month while the focus here shifted (understandably) to this critical election. 

While there may be softer rhetoric, and more "empathetic" remarks about the rights and needs of Palestinians from Harris, there is no good reason to assume a major shift in policy. The fact is, though, that Trump will go even further than Biden ever did, very likely recognizing the annexation of the West Bank as some of his donors (including the far-Right Zionist, Miriam Adelson) want him to do. So there's just no candidate C with a chance of winning who can bring US policies within the purview of international law as decreed by both the ICJ and ICC as well as multiple UN Security Resolutions. With Gaza in ruins, a multi-front war creeping ever-more steadily into high-gear, the situation is bleak. Trump will surely be the more aggressive leader of the two. 

My own position is that Harris has expressed concern (more than Biden to be sure) for Palestinians rhetorically, and she is not responsible for his decisions. Therefore, when protests and pressure resume, which I hope they do soon, I believe we will not see the same vitriol and villification that we did of Genocide Joe. Remember that the premise of this election is largely a commitment to democracy, human rights, and moral integrity vs. authoritarian impulses, repression of those who are "not like us" and the lionization of raw power over humane and just principles. 

In that context, a (small "d") democratic leader, even in a quasi-oligarchical polity, should be expected to hear and respond to the pressure of masses of voters (and voters in this case very valuable in such a close election) as the young, progressive, pro-Palestinian protestors who would very much like to prevent Trump from taking office, but who were simply incapable of voting for Biden. I hope, for Harris' sake and that of the country, that she proves to be much more responsive not only in style, but in substance, to the protestors who have not faded away just because the media took them off the front pages. As universities begin to open in only weeks, we will see a battle between MAGA Republicans who proudly condemn the protestors, the professors that teach them, the administrative faculty of liberal arts colleges, and Harris. What will her response be? I hope she gives us something to contrast with the bigoted, militaristic, McCarthyite rhetoric of Trump-- who called Biden a "Palestinian...A bad Palestinian" as a slur on national TV in the famous June 27 debate. I hope she will oppose purges of liberal arts faculty and students, admit that global opinion from the UN, to the highest international courts, to most countries in the world, cannot be dismissed, as Biden glibly did as "meritless and without any factual basis." Unfortunately that is simply not   true. 

I don't expect a total reversal, but hope at the very least for a return to pluralism and democracy in the simple sense of not penalizing those who oppose this ongoing massacre, but instead recognizing the importance of having serious dialogue about where to go from here. This is not the time or place to discuss possible policy options. I only mean to say that it will be important to me, and many other voters who have been shocked and alienated by Biden's policies regarding Israel, to see an open mind and earnest dialogue. In that context, here is Mehdi Hassan discussing Kamala Harris (whom he supported as an alternative to Biden right after the notorious Biden debate of 6/27).  The clip is from Democracy Now!

What Dems are thinking; What Repubs are saying

The WaPo published some recent data on Dem sentiment:

At this point, it is probably too early to give much weight to polls. Some time is needed for the change to sink in. And, polls from the swing states (PA, MI, WI, GA, NC, NV, AZ) are probably the only ones that count, unless a major shift in sentiment from DJT to the nominated Dem candidate occurs.

Reuters reports that all state Democratic party chairs have endorsed Harris. The momentum seems to be in her favor.

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As expected, the Repubs have started their brutal dark free speech attacks on Kamala. The degree of lying, slandering and crackpottery is as high and intense as a reasonable pro-democracy person might expect. Given how disgusting the morally rotted attacks are in my opinion, it seems counterproductive to repeat much or any of Repub filth here. I am inclined to mostly or completely ignore it. If there is useful negative information about Harris to be had, it can come from sources other than hyper-biased Repub liars. 

Q: Is it better to know at least something about the Repub attacks and hypocritical sleaze, or to ignore it?