News bits: Egad, Canadians are alarmed!; Canada threatens the US; Progress in public unhealth; Etc.

The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) reports:  No longer a joke: Ministers say Trump's threats to absorb Canada need to be taken seriously -- Trump said Tuesday he'd be willing to use 'economic force' to join countries -- Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc said Wednesday that U.S. president-elect Donald Trump's assertions that Canada should become the 51st state should be taken seriously, after he initially dismissed them as a joke. "The joke is over," LeBlanc told reporters in French. "The president and his allies continue to repeat this — we know it's not going anywhere — but the fact that he's repeating it, it's not very constructive."

Comment: Not very constrictive? Nah, can't be. It came from DJT, so all's well. Darned alarmist Canadians . . . . grumble, grumble . . . . .

Canada Lawmaker Suggests Letting 3 US States Join, Get Free Health Care -- Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May suggested that California, Oregon and Washington join Canada as provinces, offering universal health care and stricter gun laws.

Comment: Hm, universal health care and better gun safety laws . . . . . sounds rather appealing.

Hawaii Gov: RFK Jr.'s Anti-Vax Misinformation Left Dozens Of Kids Dead In Samoa -- Hawaii Gov. Josh Green (D) on Wednesday warned senators not to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the next health and human services secretary, sharing a dark story about Kennedy fueling an anti-vaccine misinformation campaign that Green said led to dozens of children dying in Samoa amid a measles outbreak. “This is an absolute life-or-death decision that the Senate … and frankly the incoming president is poised to make over our future,” Green, who is also a physician, said at a Capitol Hill press conference with other lawmakers who are medical professionals.

Comments from peanuts in the gallery: 

1. Oh, NOW they bring up the dead kids... when it doesn't fucking matter anymore. Jesus fucking Christ, I hate the media. "Oooo he had a brain worm" ... "he ate a dog" ... HE KILLED 83 CHILDREN! This isn't some secret, it's been known forever. 

Hm, that peanut seems to be a bit disgruntled.

2. He’s also an AIDS denialist. The folk who support him aren’t bothered in the slightest. Dead Samoan kids don’t bother MAGA, and neither do people dying needlessly of HIV/AIDS. This is the future they want for America, where the right people are hurt, and their kind of people rise to the top, even if they have to climb a mountain of bodies to do it.

Hm, JFK Jr is an AIDS denialist? Nah, that's nuts. It can't be . . . . . crud, he is. 

Republican asks Supreme Court to condemn & overturn same-sex marriage -- Republicans in Idaho’s House of Representatives are considering making a formal statement imploring the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its famous 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. The measure proposed by Republican state Rep. Heather Scott frames the court decision as an “illegitimate overreach.” Scott’s measure asks the court to bring back the “natural definition of marriage,” even though different forms of marriage (including same-sex unions) have existed throughout human history [apparently that is true].

Comments: The day is coming when the USSC will take up a case that challenges the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. We're not there yet, but within ~3 years, it probably will come up. Then the Christian nationalist Republicans will very likely overturn it. The legal arguments they relied on to get rid of abortion rights directly apply to the 2015 same-sex marriage decision. It is surprising that a lawsuit isn't already pending. Getting rid of same-sex marriage rights by Christian nationalists is taking significantly longer than I anticipated. The legal situation is more complicated than I imagined it would be.

Regarding the collapse of truth

404 Media reports about the ongoing collapse of truth in social media:

"Insulting, criticizing, or antagonizing our colleagues or Board members is not aligned with the CEE (Community Engagement Expectations)." 

Meta’s HR team is deleting internal employee criticism of new board member, UFC president and CEO Dana White, at the same time that CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced to the world that Meta will “get back to our roots around free expression,” 404 Media has learned. Some employee posts questioning why criticism of White is being deleted are also being deleted.  

Other employees criticized the decision and raised the point that there is video of White slapping his wife in a nightclub; White was not arrested and was not suspended from UFC for the domestic violence incident. .... “I can kind of excuse individuals for being unaware, but Meta surely did their due diligence on White and concluded that what he did is fine. I feel like I’m on another planet,” another employee commented. “We have completely lost the plot,” a third said.

 

Left: Zuckerbucks (as DJT calls him), "The super wealthy"

Right: Dana White, "The Wife-Slapping Fibber"

Who is Dana White? Good question. Here is how some of the peanuts in the gallery describe him and the truth vs dark free speech situation in social media:

1. For the very old-timers who remember Dana White's time on the Usenet as a regular old poster, before his mobbed-up cronies purchased the UFC from SEG, you may recall the evolution of Dana's background:

• Claimed to be a former professional boxer. This was false.
• Then claimed to be a former amateur boxer. Also false.
• Then claimed to be a boxing trainer and coach. Predictably false.
• Finally admitted he was a Boxercize coach at a strip mall gym.

2. Internal content moderation (dissent) while killing content moderation is on point for tech culture hypocrisy.

3. You can't get into their bubbles and fight back on their turf. They control the algorithm dictating what the users see and don't see. To expand, you can’t beat the algorithms with facts, sources, logic, or kindness. Who gets their message boosted, and whose messages get disappeared. Don't hang around a dead platform hoping it'll change. Twitter is just Nazis and creeps now. Facebook, soon to follow.

4. I’m ex-Google, now Meta. Both companies have cracked down severely on internal dissent through internal moderation. Google’s Memegen used to be extremely political and often divisive, now that sort of speech is limited / prohibited. Facebook is not a social network anymore. It's an ad/propaganda network.

Ooh, we don't wanna be misaligned with community engagement expectations. That's a big no-no. Of course, the community is Facebook executives, like Dana. Meanwhile, the rest of us in the booboisie are just an expendable resource, often a smally nuisance, to harvest cash from. We don't need to know any stinking truth. As Zuckerbucks once said when asked why people gave him their personal information in the early days of Facebook:

People just submitted it. I don't know why. 

They trust me. Dumb fucks.

But seriously, where is actual, honest to God truth in all of this? It is dead and gone. ☠️ 

It got killed as collateral damage, well, actually actual intended damage, by fine people on both sides “getting back to their roots around free expression.” They want dark free speech, a/k/a “free expression”, to run free, wild and butt naked throughout all of America. Facts, sources, logic, and kindness are dead! Hail to Nazis and creeps, crackpots and cranks, and DJT and MAGA!!

See, nothing to worry 

about here

Auto parts are secure!

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.