Various news bits

Justice Dept. Signals Report on Trump Documents Case May Never Be Released -- In a court filing, the department indicated that the report by the special counsel, Jack Smith, may not be made public before Donald J. Trump takes office, raising the prospect that the new administration will bury it.

Comment: The "prospect" it will be buried??? It WILL be buried.

Justice Dept. says it won’t yet release Trump classified document report -- But Attorney General Merrick Garland intends to make public the special counsel’s report about Donald Trump’s election interference case, according to a court filing.

Comment: The DoJ will NEVER release that report if Merrick Garland won't do it now. Another nasty chunk of MAGA history gets white washed because of Garland, DJT's 2nd best protector, after the 1st best USSC.

Trump Asks Supreme Court to Halt His Sentencing in N.Y. Criminal Case -- Prosecutors have been ordered to respond to the president-elect’s request by Thursday morning, suggesting the court could rule before Friday’s scheduled sentencing.

Comment: The rule of law continues to be under constant, vicious attack.

Biden Acknowledges He Might Not Have Been Able to Serve Four More Years -- President Biden insisted that he still could have beaten Donald J. Trump had he stayed in the race, but could not say he would have been vital enough to be president until age 86.

Comment: Duh.

Meta’s ‘tipping point’ is about aligning with power -- In a video on Tuesday explaining Meta’s decision to stop fact-checking posts in the United States, roll back restrictions on hateful language and lift limitations on political discourse across its social networks, the Meta CEO said the “recent elections” feel like a “cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech.” He welcomed a “new era” in which the company can get “back to our roots” and “focus on restoring free expression” rather than trying to reduce false, harmful or offensive content.

Comment: It really does feel like we are at a major tipping point and we are tipping toward authoritarianism with the rise of dark free speech as the dominant form of speech. Honest speech contrary to anything that DJT or MAGA elites want to to hear is being swept away in a tidal wave of defamation lawsuits.

Exxon Mobil Corp. sues California attorney general for defamation over plastic recycling claims -- Exxon Mobil Corp. filed a federal defamation lawsuit against California Attorney General Rob Bonta and several environmental groups, months after Bonta sued the oil and gas giant alleging that it deceived the public for half a century by promising the plastics it produced would be recycled. It seeks unspecified damages and retractions of “defamatory statements” from Bonta and the groups. A spokesperson for the California Department of Justice called the lawsuit “another attempt from ExxonMobil to deflect attention from its own unlawful deception” and said Bonta looks forward to “vigorously litigating” the case.

Comment: This is an example of honest speech contrary to anything that DJT or MAGA elites want to to hear is being swept away in a tidal wave of defamation lawsuits. Here, the MAGA elite is the powerful, wealthy person called ExxonMobil. His (its) lie about recycling is blatant.

GOP-led N.C. Supreme Court blocks finalizing election for Democratic justice -- Justice Allison Riggs (D) eked out a 734-vote victory over Jefferson Griffin, but the Republican challenged about 60,000 ballots cast by voters who have not provided election officials with their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number.

Comment: MAGA fights very hard for authoritarian power and wealth. Democrats do not fight nearly as hard for democracy or the public interest. 

The morality of opposition to vaccination: A stupid topic or not?

One of the key propaganda points that arose and got absorbed into mainstream MAGA's dark free speech arsenal was provable lies about vaccines. As far as I can tell, the modern trend of pathological lying[1] about vaccines started in 1998. That year a study about the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, and rubella or German measles) claimed that the vaccine caused autism. The study was later retracked due to a flawed research protocol and outright fraud, i.e., the study result was an intentional, knowing lie. The alleged autism link has been debunked many times by reliable research results, but millions of American adults, about 24% according to one poll, still don't believe it. 

By contrast to the knowing liars, people who continue to believe a pathological lie even when presented with compelling evidence the lie is false are considered to be self-deceived. The basis for the persistence of self-deceit is grounded in cognitive biology and social behavior. Unconscious biases or unpleasant mental reactions such as confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, belief perseverance, and selective perception bias (the tendency of people to perceive what they expect or want to perceive) play a role. 

Self-deception involves rationalizing or justifying one's actions or beliefs, while ignoring evidence that contradicts those beliefs. They tend to reject, minimize or dismiss the effects of their behavior on both themselves and others.

Despite irrefutable contrary evidence, the pathological lie and self-deceit about autism and other alleged toxicities of vaccines persist to this day. Lies about COVID vaccines are now important in the MAGA wealth and power movement's constant attacks on, and rejection of, truth about vaccines. On multiple occasions, DJT has proposed blocking federal funding for US schools that require vaccines for school attendance, e.g., as reported here. It is not clear if he refers only to COVID vaccines or all mandatory childhood vaccines. If his choice of the anti-vaccine crackpot RFK Jr is a clear signal, he means all mandatory childhood vaccines.

The moral issue

Some questions:

1. Since morals are subjective and personal, is it irrational, or counterproductive even if it is rational, to bring morality into the issue of vaccines or even public health? If not morality, should there be any limit or regulation, e.g., the law or anything else? Is the concept of a "moral stance" meaningless because morals are subjective?

2. If it is reasonable to bring morality into the politics of vaccines, what is the moral stance of (i) the pathological liars, and (ii) the self-deceived? 

Some thoughts:

• If morality is too subjective to be rationally brought into this, the topic is arguably just an academic curiosity with little or no relevance to politics in a democracy, maybe also in an authoritarian regime. 

• It is a fact that pathological liars about vaccines have caused some deceived people to not get vaccinated. Some of those people got sick themselves and some passed their infection to others. Then, they or others died or suffered long-term harm. Therefore one can argue that pathological liars are immoral or evil, if evil is defined as behavior that certainly or reasonably foreseeably could cause avoidable death or harm to others. Others include family members who grieve or are otherwise harmed when a unvaccinated person gets sick and dies or is seriously incapacitated by the infection.

• Self-deceived people who refuse vaccinations have become infected and died or suffered serious harm, and some have infected others who died or suffered serious harm. Arguably they are at least immoral. They arguably are evil if evil is defined as personal behavior that certainly or reasonably foreseeably could cause avoidable death or harm to others. 

This topic seems timely to at least be aware of in view of the impending ascension to power of a crackpot anti-vaccine president and RFK Jr, who is an anti-vaccine crackpot designated to be the head of America's Health and Human Services agency. In the past, he questioned the safety and efficacy of the polio vaccine. But since his nomination, RFK Jr has soft-pedaled his anti-vaccine criticisms to make himself look less crackpot. He is a shameless liar and deceiver just like DJT. 

FWIW, IMHO, DJT and RFK Jr are evil, not merely immoral. 

Footnote:

1. Pathological lying is the term used to describe a persistent lie that cannot be quashed with empirical evidence. The lie simply persists because some or many people falsely believe the lie is truth, e.g., the 2020 election was stolen. Pathological lies are characterized by habitual or compulsive lying, often for no clear or apparent reason, even when the truth would be beneficial to the liar. 

A last thought on the insurrection

Q: In the Colorado case to disqualify Trump, was Trump represented by legal counsel?

A: Yes, Donald Trump was represented by legal counsel in the Colorado case seeking to disqualify him from the state's primary ballot. He was represented by conservative lawyer Jonathan Mitchell in the case before the Supreme Court.

These lawyers will argue Trump’s Supreme Court Colorado ballot case -- Jonathan Mitchell has argued before the Supreme Court several times. Jason Murray is making his first trip on Thursday

Left: Murray

Right: Mitchell

Trump had his due process right protected in his court case in Colorado. 

Failing democracy update

Social media and the mainstream media generally are now under intensifying pressure to shut up or praise DJT and MAGA. Truth is dying. The NYT writes: 

1. Meta to End Fact-Checking Program in Shift Ahead of Trump Term -- The social networking giant will stop using third-party fact-checkers on Facebook, Threads and Instagram and instead rely on users to add notes to posts. It is likely to please President-elect Trump and his allies.

2. Zuckerberg conceded there would be more ‘bad stuff’ on his sites -- Meta on Tuesday announced changes to its content moderation practices that would effectively end a fact-checking program instituted to curtail the spread of misinformation across its social media apps. Instead of using news organizations and other third-party groups, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, will rely on users to add notes to posts that may contain false or misleading information.

The reversal of the years-old policy is a stark sign of how the company is repositioning itself for the Trump presidency in the weeks before it begins. Meta described the changes with the language of a mea culpa: Joel Kaplan, Meta’s newly installed global policy chief, said in a statement that the company wanted to “undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone to over-enforcement.”

Note: There never was irrational mission creep, excessive restrictions or over-enforcement of dark free speech, demagoguery, lies, etc. This is DJT and MAGA exerting power to shut down criticism of DJT and MAGA.

3. Who is Joel Kaplan, Meta’s new global policy chief? -- Joel Kaplan, Meta’s new chief global affairs officer, played a leading role in Tuesday’s content moderation announcement.

In an exclusive interview on “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Kaplan said the company’s previous fact-checking system became too biased and the company wanted to return to its roots of more unfettered speech. He pointed to Elon Musk’s X, which has few rules and allows users to moderate each other, as a good model.

Note: Kaplan is a cynical liar. Zuckerberg is protecting his wealth at the expense of democracy and truth.

4. Meta ends interventions widely seen as effective at reducing belief in falsehoods -- Multiple studies have shown that interventions like Facebook’s fact-checks were effective at reducing belief in falsehoods and reducing how often such content is shared. A study published last year in the journal Nature Human Behavior showed that warning labels, like those used by Facebook to caution users about false information, reduced belief in falsehoods by 28 percent and reduced how often the content was shared by 25 percent. Researchers found that right-wing users were far more distrustful of fact-checks, but that the interventions were still effective at reducing their belief in false content. 

 

We the People…

 

Per Wikipedia…

The Preamble to the United States Constitution, beginning with the words We the People, is a brief introductory statement of the Constitution's fundamental purposes and guiding principles. Courts have referred to it as reliable evidence of the Founding Fathers' intentions regarding the Constitution's meaning and what they hoped the Constitution would achieve:

[click/tap on image to enlarge]

That sounds very idealistic to me.  Now think harder about the words in that so-called “revered document.” 

Q1: Has the Preamble lost its meaning (disappeared/been bastardized/become untrue/what have you) here in 2025?  If yes, why/how so?

Q2: Did the Preamble ever have meaning in days gone by?  If yes, how so?

Present your argument(s).

(by PrimalSoup)

Bottom lines...

 

What are we other than a walking, talking, self-contained sensory perception machine?

Make your case(s) for* humanity.

(by PrimalSoup)

__________________________

*Note- Not intended as a negative OP. But treat is as you wish.