It Could Get Worse

IF KRISTI NOEM ever finds out who Irma Grese was.   I can easily imagine her LARPing that role and Trump giving her a pardon for whatever crimes she committed while doing it and our insane Constitution letting them let her off the hook.   I can well imagine that happening under our legal system.  Especially under the Roberts Court and its unitary executive fascist model. 

They've identified, activated and weaponized every of the many defects in the United States Constitution.  Even some of the head-in-sand MSNBC lawyers are beginning to face the fact that the Constitution has been in a crisis for years now,  I'd say ever since Bush v Gore in 2000.  

Update:  I'm tempted to point out that SS Barbie was the governor of the once great state of South Dakota at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic and she was one of those who was the most irresponsible of all governors in the country,  among other things permitting the Sturgis Motorcycle rally to go on with an eye to the money that would bring in and, besides that,  it made her the Covid Queen of South Dakota, as one publication put it.  A star in MAGA world and, no doubt along with her considerable and extensive plastic surgeries,  got her the same kind of notice from Trump that a woman can get from him if she isn't a billionaire.   I think her recklessness with Peoples and animals lives is reason to think, given the right circumstances that she'd do what Irma Grese did.   

As it is, I think the Dakotas and Wyoming should either be forced into being one state cutting down the number of criminal idiots they send to the Senate down by four or they should be returned to territorial status.   South Dakota, at least, used to send someone like George McGovern to Washington,  now it sends criminal idiots like her to Washington. 

Memorial Day Radio Drama - Canadian Broadcast Corporation - Afganada

 Afganada

Afganada was one of the last radio dramas produced by the once very fine Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio Drama department.   I'm posting the first of three episodes you can find at Archive.org.   Apparently you can hear the entire series at i-tunes, though I haven't tried the link. 

It's a story of Canada's involvement in the United States' long war declared on the poor country because the country that financed and aided the terror attack on September eleventh was the rich dictatorship of Saudi Arabia,  which is now doing through Republicans and Trump some of what they wanted to do through financing and aiding that attack,  destroying America through buying Trump and Republicans.   America is its democracy or it is just another dirty, seedy nation state under oligarchic fascism, like the countries Trump went to this month expecting to get lots of money from them, which he did. 

In trying to decide what to post on the damaged and sullied and should be solemn holiday of Memorial Day,   I thought, given Trump's attacks on the best friend the United States has ever had,  it would be best to remember the Canadian and Afghan veterans of what was our war and our fight.   Canadians died in fighting and attacks, both military and civilians,  many were injured including those who sustained permanent injuries, many came back with the same range of health issues that others who answered America's call in what turned out to be the longest war in our history.   It should be remembered that the first Canadians killed in Afghanistan weren't killed by the Taliban or other factions on the ground there,  they were killed when the United States bombed a training exercise, the pilot thinking it was an enemy operation, the Tarnak Farm Incident.    Remember that when you hear Trump and Republican-fascists talking trash against Canada.  

It's Been A While Since

I enjoyed a FAFO video, here's one about a Trump supporter immigrant from Denmark who is now sitting in Trump's ICEstapo prison without access to a lawyer waiting to be deported without due process.   

Here's one case where I have no problem with deporting him.    I don't think America needs to import a fascist like him.  I wonder if Denmark would welcome his wife and kids.  I'd certainly want to know if she supported Trump because I wouldn't have any problem with them excluding her on that basis just as I have no problem with America excluding those who support fascism. 

Since I Don't Care

about sports - could never understand why I was supposed to care who won and who lost a frickin' game, including when I was forced to play - I didn't think about what the latter-day FOX Lies robo-blonde Riley Gaines claim to fame consisted of and how it implodes her hate shtick and the use of trans-athletes by our neo-fascists.   

Here's how the estimable NTodd put it in the comments here.

"an accomplished athlete" = highest career finish was 5th place (the one she tied with Lia Thomas), failed to qualify for an Olympic qualifying event (lol), then retired from swimming to make money on the hate grift. "

I hadn't thought until I was washing the floor, thinking about this that as Lia Thomas was tying with Aryan Blondie, Thomas merely tied for an also-showed place AND A NUMBER OF NON-TRANS WOMEN BEAT BOTH OF THEM. 

If the problem with trans-women athletes is that they have some competitive advantage over those who are assigned biological females at birth,  how come several such non-trans females  beat both Lea Thomas and the FOX style robo-blonde?   I wonder what other sports records of trans-women losing or winning against those assigned female gender at birth would show as to the validity of that complaint.   Someone should ask the FOX hate skank that question,  I haven't read that anyone has brought it up to her yet. 

Watching A Video About

German "Brotkultur" bread culture, included a description of what has become called "bread" in the United States.    The video said that the junk was "tasty" which reminded me that back in the 1970s an immigrant to the US complained to me that American "bread" was what in his country would have more likely been called "cake,"  the sugar content was so high.

The only reason which makes that memory at all relevant to anyone else is that the man who said that to me was a Lutheran pastor who was AN AFRIKANER WHO WAS FORCED OUT OF MUSK-TRUMP NOSTALGIA APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA FOR OPPOSING THE RACIST REGIME. 

I'm old enough to remember when the Afrikaner immigrants in the United States were opposed to white supremacy,  not like the ones the white-supremacist Musk-Trump-Vance regime want to import now. 

Another Real Intelligence Has Noticed It Too

I PROPOSE "REAL INTELLIGENCE" as opposed to "artificial intelligence,"   I think that's a phrase that we need to promote to fight against the "AI" that is destroying human intelligence and culture with ersatz "realism."   How about this for a bumper sticker? 

"WHY BELIEVE "AI" WHEN YOU CAN HAVE THE REAL THING?" 

Mike Lewis at the National Catholic Reporter has also noticed the flood of fake "Pope Leo" videos that have been generated, having "him" say things he's never said using a sometimes near-enough imitation of his real voice and image to peddle lies that are, in fact, fooling a dangerously large number of People.   

In the days following Pope Leo XIV's election, the internet has been inundated with artificial intelligence-generated deepfake videos, images, and messages purporting to depict the new pontiff. These media fabrications, some of which have been circulated on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, present the pope delivering messages he never said, sometimes even in his own voice.

For example, a YouTube video, entitled "POPES WAKEUP URGENT CALL TO ALL TRUE CHRISTIANS || POPE LEO XIV SPEECH," posted on a channel called "Pope Leo XIV Sermons," delivers a fiery 42-minute exhortation about the end times in an AI-generated voice based on that of Pope Leo.

A snippet:

"The sky is heavy with prophecy. The clock of heaven is ticking its final seconds. And I declare to you today: 2025 is not just another year. It is a spiritual alarm sounding in the heavens for all who still have ears to hear. Look around you. Do you not see it? The world is unraveling at the seams."

The entire thing pretty much goes on like that, speaking of signs, warnings, and the end of the world, but without actually saying much with specificity or substance. My guess is that the script is AI-generated as well. I would say the whole thing is silly, except that this channel has over 13,000 subscribers and the video has over 230,000 views.

Most concerning is that some Catholics have been misled by these videos. A friend mentioned that her brother-in-law was sending AI-generated videos to their family's group chat. When it was pointed out to him that the video pages even had clear labels indicating the content was fake, he refused to believe it, insisting, "Why would someone fake such a beautiful sermon?"

Another friend shared with me that his mother told him that she thought the aforementioned AI-generated video about the end times was genuine. Even after he explained it was fake, she responded, "It was still a good message."

I sent a link to the video to a priest friend of mine. He responded that they'd just had a parish talk on the papacy, and at one point a participant stood up and shared a fake Pope Leo prayer they found on social media. My priest friend remarked, "This is going to be a massive problem."

All three of these exchanges happened within a five-hour timespan.

This is exactly the kind of thing I was afraid was going to be a result of this "AI" lying,  if they can do it with Pope Leo they can do it with any politician and you can bet that such lies are being manufactured or will soon be, having any Democratic front runner say things and put online that will sink their chances in a close election.   

I think of it as being related to the opposition research that American Catholic "trads" with millions and billions were doing and circulating on "liberal" possible Popes at least in the last year or two as we got closer to another conclave.   I've seen reports that such a file was kept on Pope Leo while he was still Cardinal Prevost as well as a number of others.    One of the Youtubes I saw promoting the absurd idea that they might lie Raymond Burke or Robert Sarah into the papacy may well have been "informed" by such a load of op-research dirt on far less unlikely candidates.   Happily, the Cardinal Electors in place right now aren't as gullible as they were in the late 1970s or even early 2000s,  though I wouldn't be surprised if, along with watching "Conclave" some of them were seeing what was on Youtube as they went into Conclave.   Americans won't be so fortunate in our elections as a extremely dangerous fraction of our voters are extremely vulnerable to "AI" generated lies of this kind, perhaps even more so than the bad actors made up and on a couch at FOX Lies.

America will either make it illegal to make and distribute such stuff or Americans can kiss not only democracy but the possibility of a decent government and society goodbye.   Back before "AI" I was pointing out how much actual, Holocaust denying,  Hitler revering neo-Nazi propaganda there was on Youtube and that when I called it to "youtube's" attention, they didn't see anything wrong with posting it even though it clearly violated their posted guidelines.    That was back when I had some confidence it was some low-paid idiot young person who had something to do with that level of "content moderation,"  Now I suspect they may give that task to a badly programmed "AI" system.   

We have to face the fatal problem that the late 18th century concept of "free press" and "free speech" is in the 21st Century and find a way to make the freedom to tell the truth compatible with protecting democracy and a decent life from lies and hate speech.   I will point out that the hate speech and lies we face now WERE TOLD ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE, NATIVE AMERICANS, LATINOS, CATHOLICS, ITALIANS, FRENCH CANADIANS,  WOMEN, AND MANY OTHER SEGMENTS OF THE AMERICAN POPULATION and lots of People were killed, enslaved, oppressed by that "free speech" and "free press," only the slogans of the First Amendment drowned out that glaring truth.   Now, in the 21st century, it's not only Women and members of hated and oppressed minority groups who are targeted by Democrats of any nationality and "liberals" and now judges and "justices" who don't have the means to have a protective team mitigating the dangers.   

Hate speech and lies are, in fact, the determining factor in our elected politics and, now, the very law of the land in the hands of the Roberts Court - the majority of them put in power exactly by the kind of media campaign that I mentioned the very same American billionaires and millionaires put in place to try to get a Raymond Burke or Robert Sarah the papacy.   It's no wonder they thought they could do it in the election of a pope,  they've succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in destroying America's once aspiring democracy.  

I May Post the Comment I'm Keeping In Moderation For Now, It's By The Neo-Nazi Who Trolls Me

 Riley Gaines is not only a lovely and fiercely intelligent young woman, and, unlike you and your fellow misogynist Olbermann's claim, an accomplished athlete, but she's also an astute observer of Dem logic.

She pointed out, despite the shooting of the Israeli embassy workers yesterday, the Dems have been remarkably restrained in not calling for a ban on guns. You guys have also been quiet about a ban on "offensive speech" and are not referring to the person in question as a, "Nazi."

Has the professional spoil sport skank pointed out THAT REPUBLICAN-FASCISTS HAVEN'T BEEN CALLING OUT FOR A BAN ON GUNS AFTER THE SHOOTING AT THE ISRAELI EMBASSY?   IF THEY'D NOT ARMED AMERICA TO THE SKIES, THE SHOOTING PROBABLY WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED. 

While The Free Press Demands Liberals and Democrats Apologize For Having The Most Competent

the most competent post-Covid pandemic government in the free world,  I have yet to hear any conservative, any ex-recent-Republican, any of those who have been parts of the Republican Party, its politicians, its judicial appointments, its, God help us, Supreme Court appointees APOLOGIZE FOR THE POLICIES AND IDEAS AND CLAIMS AND PROCLAMATIONS WHICH HAVE BROUGHT US HERE.  TRUMP II.

It is Republicans and conservatives who gave us the previous record breaker in adjudicated criminality within a presidential administration,  Nixon.   It brought us to the then record-breaker in that,  Reagan.   It brought us Bush I, an administration so corrupt that George H.W. Bush pardoned his way out of himself being the subject of a likely indictment for high crimes committed during his presidency.   It brought us Bush II through the Bush v Gore 5 Supreme Court "justices" - conservative Republicans -  whose actions were so bad that they lost two Republican "justices" who voted against that overthrowing of American Democracy, the Supreme Court choosing to install Bush I's idiot son whose irresponsibility led to 9-11 and, not only the hopeless Afghan war in response to what was largely a Saudi financed terror event but which then used the opportunity to lie us into invading Iraq, a bloodbath so catastrophic that the numbers of those whose deaths resulted make the lake of blood Saddam Hussein was responsible for look like nothing.  And to top that off there was the Bush II economic crisis which nearly did what Trump is now well on his way to doing.

And it should not be forgotten that Bush II cemented the Republican-fascist control of the Supreme Court which has largely been at the center of enabling Trump, both during his first regime and now as the Judicial system under the Roberts Court not only failed to stop Trump - repealing parts of the 14th Amendment and turning the American presidency into an absolute monarchy for all practical purposes - it is clear that under the guardianship OF CONSERVATIVES the American Constitution has failed entirely.  

Anyone who claims that isn't the case is lying AS TRUMP HAS YET TO BE STOPPED BY IT.

Sharing the greatest share with the Supreme Court is the Republican caucus of the Congress,  which could have stopped Trump by convicting him of the most outrageous and clearly impeachable offenses in BOTH OF THE TRUMP IMPEACHMENT TRIALS.   

All of this is the consequence of American conservatives going back half a century, this decent into American fascism has been a consequence of the choices of conservatives.

AND I HAVEN'T EVEN GOTTEN TO THE ROLE THE AMERICAN MEDIA HAS PLAYED IN THIS, BOTH THE ADMITTED CONSERVATIVES AND THE "BOTH-SIDES" ASSHOLES WHOSE "EVEN HANDEDNESS" ALWAYS ENDS UP PROMOTING REPUBLICAN-FASCISM.   And that includes the "liberal media" which was never liberal, the New York Times played an enormous role in promoting it, as did all of the networks, including PBS and NPR,  most of those in the press who aren't culpable run small newspapers or magazines.   And a lot of those which may come to mind,  such as The Nation and The Progressive and In These Times are not off the hook in that regard.   Promoting idiotic spoiler "third-party" and independent candidates and driving down the anti-fascist vote that counts. 

I wouldn't suggest anyone hold their breath waiting for a. conservatives, even those ex-Republicans to start, in large numbers, admitting their role in bringing us to this and asking for forgiveness, b.  waiting to breathe for the media to admit to it is even more likely to get you dead.   The lawyers, the judges, the "justices" will certainly not admit to the role they played in this.   Nor will anyone in the media ever try to get them to admit it.   They're all too busy trying to get governors of states hit by major catastrophes to sell books for Jake Tapper in the latest ginned-up program to make low-information voters blame Joe Biden and Democrats for them giving us Trump. 

This kind of media campaign ahead of a difficult election for Republicans, to give the low-information voters a vague sense that Democrats can't be trusted has been going on my entire life.   If I had a dollar for everyone I've encountered who had some vague sense that Hillary Clinton was corrupt WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO SAY HOW OR WHY THEY THOUGHT THAT I'd be rich.   

Israel Is A Genocide State They Should Be Cut Off By The West

 

Why Not Go Farther?

I SEE A LOT IS BEING made of what is being presented as Pope Leo casting shade on non-hetero "normal" marriages in an address he made to the Vatican Diplomatic Corps, the other day.   It is being presented in a way that a lot of my fellow LGBTQ+ People will, no doubt, be offended by as could, very easily Women or men who had single-parent families and,  I'll point out, those who have made other kinds of marriages than the minority of those covered by the remarks.   

This can be achieved above all by investing in the family, founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman, “a small but genuine society, and prior to all civil society.”[2] *

I'll give you the entire context of this in the second of three words he said were the basis of the Church's, well,  I'll give you that paragraph too:

In our dialogue, I would like us to keep in mind three essential words that represent the pillars of the Church’s missionary activity and the aim of the Holy See’s diplomacy.

The first and third are certainly worth discussing but it is that one sentence this is focused on.  It appears in this context. 

The second word is justice. Working for peace requires acting justly. As I have already mentioned, I chose my name thinking first of all of Leo XIII, the Pope of the first great social Encyclical, Rerum Novarum. In this time of epochal change, the Holy See cannot fail to make its voice heard in the face of the many imbalances and injustices that lead, not least, to unworthy working conditions and increasingly fragmented and conflict-ridden societies. Every effort should be made to overcome the global inequalities – between opulence and destitution – that are carving deep divides between continents, countries and even within individual societies.  

It is the responsibility of government leaders to work to build harmonious and peaceful civil societies. This can be achieved above all by investing in the family, founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman, “a small but genuine society, and prior to all civil society.” [2] In addition, no one is exempted from striving to ensure respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly, from the sick to the unemployed, citizens and immigrants alike.

My own story is that of a citizen, the descendant of immigrants, who in turn chose to emigrate. All of us, in the course of our lives, can find ourselves healthy or sick, employed or unemployed, living in our native land or in a foreign country, yet our dignity always remains unchanged: it is the dignity of a creature willed and loved by God.

Of course no one should hold their breath waiting for America's free press to notice that passage about "the global inequalities – between opulence and destitution – that are carving deep divides between continents, countries and even within individual societies," when they can gin up hatred of LGBTQ+ People for the free press and to  its owners' profit.  This piece is as much about how the free press will use selected sentences and phrases that Pope Leo uses, and nothing sells in the free press like sex.  

Note the the [2] just after the problematic quote which refers to a footnote that indicates this is a quote taken from Leo XIII's great encyclical, Rerum Novarum which was issued on 15 May 1891.   If there's one thing that Leo XIII was not thinking of it was LGBTQ+ families, which I doubt he could even imagine.   Leo XVI certainly can imagine such families and those other "non-standard" families I mentioned and others, such as families that result from divorced parents remarrying or, I'll point out, families that would fit entirely well within the ones covered by his definition THAT IS UNTIL ARE THEN ALTERED BY UNEXPECTED DIVORCE OR INVOLUNTARY SEPARATION OR DEATH.   I'm sure many of the families of those who Good Pope Francis was so concerned about,  those who were imprisoned, those who were separated by the necessity of a parent going abroad to try to get the means of support - immigrants (Leo has certainly taken up their cause even before he became Pope) and many others are as much in need of the concern of governments, churches and other institutions.  AND SO DO THOSE WHOSE PARENTS OR GUARDIANS AREN'T IN THE MINORITY OF MARRIAGES COVERED BY POPE LEO'S UNFORTUNATELY RESTRICTIVE SENTENCE.

My first question in regard to the remark about types of families is why shouldn't governments go farther in providing the good implied by Leo's claim of why they should focus on some families than in the subset of all families he chose to focus on.  

I will note that in no place at least in any document I've seen, has Leo opposed such support being given to the majority of families that aren't covered by the set he sets out as the supposed ideal.  Though that is certainly the implication being taken from it by those who hate LGBTQ+ People and our families.   Maybe I should start capitalizing Families,  because, as the two Leo's more than just imply,  People ideally live in families, if not biologically related People living in one or more households, then in families of friends.

I'll use this opportunity to advocate something I did when the marriage-equality issue was so much under discussion, after the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages in that state and the Republican-fascists and the free press used hatred of LGBTQ+ People to promote Republican politicians chances,  as they are doing now, no doubt using Leo's unfortunate sentence to do that. 

The government should not be in the marriage business, that is between couples and God, in the first instance and, somewhat down from there, whatever churches they choose to belong to.  Governments should have no more to do with that than to acknowledge households and relationships by recognizing civil unions of two adults who choose to enter into a civil union.   In discussing that at the time I noted that in France, the most common form of civil union was entered into by single daughters and their widowed or divorced or otherwise unmarried mothers.   Civil unions and families are what should enjoy the governmental protections that are given only under legal marriages now.  

The irony of the Catholic Church position on this is that it defines such homes only by the sex lives of those who head or form such families.  You'd think they would recognize that families can be formed when those who lead them don't have sex with each other and never intended to.   I know of families in which a Lesbian aunt or Gay uncle play as big a role in them as the biological parents or parent do.  Such a family which is not defined by anyone having sex with anyone would be left out of the concern of governments under this formulation AS WOULD THE CHILDREN GROWING UP IN SUCH FAMILIES. 

Update:  I should have mentioned that a lot of those who would make such vicious use of Pope Leo's statement would fail to notice that their own families are as not covered by what he says governments should be concerned with as those of LGBTQ+ parent-led families.   For a start, families in which one or both of the parents have adulterous relationships even if they stay married, those which, as I mentioned above, are formed after the divorce and remarriage of one or both of the hetero-sexual parents.   I don't have statistics BUT I'LL BET THE LARGE MAJORITY OF THOSE IN POLITICS AND THE MEDIA WHO MAKE SUCH USE OF IT ARE AS EXCLUDED BY POPE LEO AS SAME-SEX COUPLES' FAMILIES, in fact I'll bet that there are as large a percent of stable same-sex parent families of faithful couples as there are in hetero-sexual parent families.  I'll bet Lesbian couples raising children have a better track record of faithfulness than hetero-sexuals who would be taken as falling within Leo's definition. 

I wish I could find the clip of the former professional virgin, Ben Shapiro whining and squeaking about the only purpose of marriage being pro-creation.   Someone in the Q&A asked him if he intended to stop being married when he was done having children.   It's a question that any politician or media figure who says something along those lines should have to answer for IN TERMS OF THEIR OWN LIVES AND MARRIAGES.  

The Free Press Is The Enemy Of Egalitarian Democracy And A Decent Life For All

THE MEDIA HANDLING of the news that the best president in living memory,  Joe Biden has an aggressive and metastasized form of prostate cancer has been entirely in keeping with the media handling of Democratic politicians as opposed to Republican politicians, also going back to at least 1966 or so.  Any Democrat or would-be liberal or lefty who hasn't noticed that Democrats are ALWAYS in for worse treatment by the media than Republicans in that fifty-nine years  or so is either a media professional who has a vested interest in lying about that - and almost all of them are - or they are extremely stupid.  

The fact is that the media is only even a friend of equality and democracy when they have some requirement to favor the truth over opportunistic lies.   That comes as close as a taught lesson from experience as could be had from an honest appraisal of the history of the American media, freed by Supreme Court rulings to lie with impunity.  That is freed to lie  when it comes to Democratic politicians who might not favor the interests of the millionaires and billionaires who own and run and appear on camera in the media as opposed to the Republicans who are devoted to the servicing of millionaires and billionaires.  This is yet another example of that one law for the lion and the ox meaning oppression as mentioned here Saturday,  one law for the liars and the truth-tellers leads to oppression as can be seen in the descent of American politics into fascism over exactly that same fifty-nine years after the Sullivan Decision.  

Jake Tapper is, no doubt, gleeful in the marketing opportunity he and his co-writer have had in applying the double standard that is fully compatible with the First Amendment, one-law fits all, as it has turned out.   No doubt about it.  I heard the allegedly liberal NPR giving him that kind of opportunity this morning as they used his line that not only Joe Biden's administration but the entire Democratic Party allegedly kept Joe Biden's health problems and alleged mental decline a secret.   They do that AS NO PART OF THE MEDIA THAT REALLY COUNTS, THE NETWORKS, THE CABLOIDS, THE GUTTER LEVEL PODCASTERS, ETC.  DON'T DO THE SAME FOR THE ENTIRELY CLEAR MENTAL DEBILITY OF TRUMP.  

Joe Biden's administration LED BY HIM, PUT TOGETHER BY HIM, had the best performance of any president since Franklin Roosevelt did with a similar situation handed to him by three Republican presidents.   His economic policies were the envy of democracies that didn't bounce back anywhere near as much from the economic chaos that had come in the years before he took office.   He had the most competent presidency since LBJ's and, unlike the tragedy of LBJ getting suckered farther into Vietnam by the Harvard boys,  Joe Biden bravely took the hit by sticking to the deadline that Trump I set for the U.S. exiting from the interminable war in Afghanistan.   He was, indeed, THE MOST COMPETENT PRESIDENT OF MY LIFETIME and that goes back into the Truman years.  Yet the media has painted him as a senile and incompetent old man.  Apparently George Clooney's disappointment that Joe Biden, during a very difficult presidency forgot his face figures heavily into this.   As good an actor as Clooney might be, and he's good but he's not great, and as handsome as he continues to be,  I'd rather have a president who remembered the People and issues that were a vital part of his job than even a celebrated Hollywood actor.   Actors who are disappointed that a President, who has to meet regularly with heads of state,  politicians, advisors, popes, heads of state, etc.  might not recall who they are (do we know that Joe Biden watched his movies?) are not the best measure of the competence of an American president.  

I will contrast the media handling of Ronald Reagan who frequently forgot who members of his cabinet were and who as sympathetic a head of government as Margaret Thatcher noted had nothing much in his head,  who believed he was in on the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp, as he sat in Hollywood, the incompetent and stupid Bush II and now Trump who is clearly and publicly both stupid and demented and who wrecked America's health-care,  economy and infrastructure once and who is doing it again, and who well may top Hoover in tanking the economy decisively.   

Anyone who buys into the relatively young Thomas Jefferson's absurd notion that journalism is a reliable bulwark against oppression after two hundred and fifty years of the evidence that unless they are punished for lying, they will always serve wealth and the most malicious of purposes, is either a liar or they are more demented than anyone has accused Joe Biden of being.   I would put Jake Tapper in the liar category,  someone who serviced the rise of Trump II by his refusal to fact check him during the "debate" that he co-anchored with the equally putrid Dana Bash.   And I would put NPR,  the New York Times and virtually every other large player in the American media in that category.   

There is a potential for the media to serve egalitarian democracy but not so long as it is owned by the millionaires and billionaires and especially not as long as it has legal protection to lie with impunity for the interests of its owners and operators.   The legal mechanisms to hold them to account and to break up the very real control of those with millions and billions would be far different from what we have now and, LIKE ANY MAN MADE LEGAL SYSTEM, would have flaws and dangers embedded in them.   For anyone who prefers the current system with its known dangers which are deadly to egalitarian democracy and a decent life for all than to try to learn from the disasterous history of America after the Sullivan Decision, you have already given up on equality, democracy and decency,  how much worse does it have to get before you face the obvious truth?   A Third Reich, Italian fascist or Imperial Japan in ruins?   A post-nuclear nightmare?   I will remind you of the Musk-Trump regime playing with the "fail safe" system that protects us from our own nuclear arsenal -  I wonder if George Clooney will admit that it was safer under Biden than with what he, foolishly, helped bring us back to.   I can't rate our alleged journalism's danger to democracy as opposed to the role that Hollywood has played in it - Trump as a politician is a product of Hollywood as was Reagan - but "liberal Hollywood" is about as reliable for being a problem for it.   But, then, entertainment is a matter of make-believe, just as our journalism is, now that they have also had public interest requirements removed from them, as well as not lying.  

There Are Already A Huge Number

of totally fake AI generated videos supposedly of Pope Leo giving sermons he never gave and saying things he hasn't said.   I get a lot of "catholic" as well as Catholic content foisted on me by several sites algorithms in the languages I do searches in and I've seen them in English, French and Spanish so far.

I hope that someone as internet savvy as Leo assigns a couple of People at the Vatican to get on that because if the comments on such fake videos are anything to go by,  they will be a major burden to his papacy as they, in fact, are in every area of activity online and, so, in real life.  

This is a real danger for reality being what determines human culture.   It didn't start with AI or even the internet but both of those have made things worse by an enormous factor.   

For Once A Welcomed Commercial - A Quick Post Which May Lead To More In Time

WILLIAM BLAKE is one of my favorite poets and one whose poetry has often resisted my understanding.   I've tried a couple of interpreters of Blake, E.P. Thompson was the last one I tried, and, while I've found some persuasive things in them, none of them has ever really convinced me they really got him.   I did come to the conclusion that you probably couldn't get to him unless you shared at least some of his belief in God and Jesus which even such devotedly sympathetic secularists reject.   It would be like someone studying modern physics without believing in electrons or current biology without believing in the things that Barbara McClintock discovered (which, clearly, many of the big names in the popular understanding of science, today, don't).   

I will note that in the last several months of reading Scripture, especially the New Testament,  I have come to the startling conclusion that love is a central force in existence, both our only hope of the survival of death - and I mean literally that, continued conscious existence after bodily death, not some remembered existence or other transient metaphor - but also as the reason any of us or the universe exists at all.  I haven't developed any great Scriptural or reasoned arguments to support that,  so huge is it that I would guess you'd have to say it in Blakean language and that might not have the force it needs without Blakean pictures in color, as well.  Blake is also one of my favorite artists.  

I hadn't thought of Blake in my thinking about this until listening to this new short essay "Enemies of the Human Race" William Blake on the disaster of atheism, by Mark Vernon - which has an announcement of his upcoming book Awake!: William Blake and the Power of the Imagination which, alas, won't be published here in the States until September and who knows if any of us will have enough money to buy it by then.   

I may go into some of what Mark Vernon says when I have time to work out a better copy of the machine transcription (AI is a so-so stenographer as well as being essentially stupid) and I'd have to re-read the two long and difficult poems he discusses.   What he says about Blake's condemnation of what amounts to modernism and, in my thinking, the inadequacy of republicanism and secular, non-egalitarian democracy and the impossibility of that when there is enormous disparity in the actual having of physical, material wealth.    I think Blake got it right when he said, "One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression".    The pretenses of our law that pretends that there is "Equal Justice Under Law" when there never has been and the Lockean framers of the Constitution and the judges and "justices" have made it even more so have certainly come to its real reality in the criminal triumph of Trump and Republican-fascism.   I might note that you could state it more clearly by replacing "lies" for "Lion" and Truth for "Ox,"  only one such substitution of terms to prove the validity of the relationship - if you wanted to try to do it mathematically. 

Update:  Don't know why it didn't occur to me that you might be able to read the essay at Mark Vernon's Substack.   You can but it requires a subscription,  you can get a free one with a link through his website.  I will be reading through what he said on the video and might have some comments on it later. 

Hey Hey RFK How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?

If someone deserves to die that way it's Little Bobby,  I just hope he doesn't take innocent children along with him.  

 Notice how Chris Hayes discerned a definitely eugenic statement about only "sick children" dying of measles and advocating "choice" for parents to allow their children to be one of those "sick children" - no doubt the "sick children" might have a different opinion about their parents ignorantly or malignantly taking that chance for them just as those who have fallen for the anti-vaxx cult lies taking such a chance.   Put on top of his call to register those who are said to have autism - something his fellow Republican-fascists USED TO claim to fear as a prelude to . . . . something BAD.   At least when they gave that as their excuse to oppose Social Security.

The irony in the new eugenics goes very deep, all the way back to a belief in the theory of natural selection and its long and immediate history of generating eugenics as a "science."  One of those huge ironies is the enthusiasm that the haters of Darwin have for his most consequential product.   I'm sure Little Bobby is a true believer in not only the reality of evolution but in a particularly crude and primitive conception of Darwinism, natural selection.  With him the common cause he has with the Protestant Fundamentalist anti-evolutionists is his love of money.   When it comes to anti-vaxx,  he got into it and stays in it and promotes it because it enriches him. 

The Absurd Idea That "AI" Can Have Rights Will Swamp Democracy

I HAVEN'T HAD THE TIME to look much at what Pope Leo has to say about "artificial intelligence" but thinking about the little I've heard has brought to my mind something that I haven't heard anyone address, yet.   He does seem to have at least some of the problem with it that I also have, which is yet another good sign. 

Talking about the product of "AI" in the context of journalism forces me to talk about the stunning amount of "AI" that presents not only fiction but lies as a highly dangerous,  convincing simulacrum of fact or even truth.  A HIGHLY CONVINCING PRESENTATION OF TOTAL FICTION INCLUDING SOME OF THE MOST HATEFUL CONTENT IMAGINABLE, AND PERHAPS UNTIL NOW UNIMAGINABLE.    That was, of course, not something that waited for AI or the internet or even electronic media but it is possible to generate lies so fast and so fecundly lies that can be sold with the same kind of software that Google and other media use to sell.  That was something done with direct mail before the internet became a thing - but it expanded enormously with the spread of low-cost computer and computing but it is something that has expanded enormously feeding off of the enormous amounts of data that People give up stupidly and willingly or that which is mined without any of them knowing their activity is being monitored and complied.  

It is insane to think that the assumptions of the framers of the First Amendment and even those who developed other theories of "free speech" and "free press" in the ink on paper and through snail-mail technology can possibly match the new reality that the media of today presents for democracy, self-government, and the possibility of a decent society.   It won't surprise that anyone I doubt the legal systems of old democracies or the most allegedly up-to-date law will be able to cope with it,  the self-interested complicity and compliance of lawyers, law-makers, judges and "justices" are already destroying the possibility of egalitarian democracy.

The question I have yet to hear anyone ask or address is where the "right of free speech" or "press" in AI generated content is born or resides.    The idea that anyone but a living being can have rights is not only absurd but it is dangerous.  The criminally insane 19th century Supreme Court invented "corporate person-hood" has literally deprived real human beings of their rights, their property AND THEIR LIVES over and over again, it has been a Court erected juggernaut attacking equality and democracy.   Are they going to invent such "rights" for computers?   For software programs?   For the inhuman production of their simulation of "speech" which appears to be being published online without so much as a human reviewing or editing or even directly publishing the content on Youtube or Google or other venues that will, also, not monitor or control their content?  

I have every convidence in the stupidity of the law, the courts, the Supreme Court, the "civil liberties" industry which has a long record of cynical service to even some of the most homicidal and destructive of industries, peddling gun violence, peddling alcohol, tobacco, addictive prescription drugs, and even industries that endanger the health and minds and lives of those who are employed by them.   I have every confidence that the ACLU would oppose any questioning of the idea that "AI" cannot have any of the various "rights" listed in the First Amendment.  

But it's well past time someone brings up the absurdity, the superstition, the self-serving nonsense that the product of "AI" can be said to possess 'rights".  

P.S.  I recently listened to several novels "read" by "AI" including some phrases in French among the English text.   I suppose the more than absurdly laughable "French" ("S il vou plat and other worse than an English speaker trying to phonentically render French text) and repeatedly mis-reading words spelled the same way but pronounced differently ("read" is only one of those).   I'm afraid that human-read audio books are going to be a thing of the past, throwing large numbers of human voice-actors out of work.  Like MP3 and online streaming destroying the recording industry and doing huge damage to the music profession,  this is going to really have a bad impact on human culture.  

Roland Martin And Company On Pope Leo's Creole Heritage

THIS HAS ME SMILING like little else I've heard this year. 

 

Not A Blast But More A Retro Petard From The Past - I'm Noticing At Least a Blip in 00s era Neo-Atheism On The Internet

LOOK AT WHAT THIS MEMBER of the "Ethical Society" recently said in a comment on that fun Youtube channel I recently posted a piece from here. 

@ZenBearV13

5 months ago (edited)

“Religion is the first — and worst — explanation we came up with.” - Christopher Hitchens

As a member of the Ethical Society of St. Louis, I agree with the premise you advocate here. Religion is not an isolated system of beliefs but a part of our development as sapient beings that must be integrated into our understanding of our future. It doesn’t deserve special reverence, merely conscious consideration.

Considering the video starts with a question of whether the listener or someone they know suffers from a condition called "angry 17-year-old-atheism," which Christopher Hitchens based his entire journalistic career on spreading (I can't figure out any other reason he'd have had that long gig at The Nation, and I used to read him all the time when I subscribed) before he branched out to a Bush II era neo-con theme, maybe being the last of a long line of Trotskyites who took that baby step from one depraved ideology to a similar but far more lucrative depraved ideology,  I'd say this guy's answer to that question is "Yes." 

Christopher Hitchens?   Really?   That liar and journalist whore who went from being a Trotsyite to a supporter of the worst neo-cons and crypto-fascists?   One who, I will guarantee you, would be supporting if not actually Trump, then much of what the Trumpzis are doing if not on anything else than on the basis of his financial interest and getting his drunken mug on right-wing media.   The man who, among many other things, supported the Bush II regime and its entirely illegal and catastrophically bloody and permanently consequential invasion of Iraq, defending their motive of getting hold of Iraq's oil? 

That's who members of the "Ethical" Society hold up as a valid judge of ethics?   It's like holding up James Randi as a figure of science, as many a true believer in materialist-atheist-scientism apparently still does.  Only that's relatively less dangerous.   I was mildly interested in following up on the "Ethical Society" and its members during my long look at 00's era new atheism but I started losing interest in it as it went out of style and fewer of those stuck in angry 17-year-old style atheism mentioned it as their their attention drifted to newer shiny objects.  I have been tempted to do the same critique of the Fieldston School in NYC based on its product, the one I've slammed elite Catholic Education and the prep--> Ivy sysem on.  I may have mentioned the "ethics" of A.G. "Dash" Sulzberger, the man whose journalistic ethics at the New York Times apparently are identical to those of Jeff Bezos, as one of them in the past.   The Fieldston School strikes me as a kind of atheist religious prep which has about the same relationship to "ethics" that the elite Catholic preps have to the Gospel of Jesus, these days.   Based on its product. 

I too hastily deleted a comment in moderation

 this morning, one which mocked Catholic "doctrine" as being entirely nonsensical.   I just didn't want to get into it, especially with someone who I doubt has the slightest notion of what Catholic doctrine is and how it differs from dogma or a pop cultural dog's lunch of Chick Publications' nonsense, for that matter.   I think he thought it was going to upset me but, as he generally does, he missed. 

As things progressed through a busy day I thought it was kind of funny because "Catholic doctrine" isn't what the Church is most importantly about,  even for most Catholics, it's how we live that matters.   I say that as I mention that that "Catholic doctrine" includes the social-justice doctrine that it's clear Pope Leo XIV has signaled will be a major focus of his papacy.  If I had to choose between any secular doctrines, everything from market economics to a mixed system to the many socialisms that aren't absolutely wedded to a transcendent conception of human and other life I would say anyone who doesn't choose that "doctrine" is a fool.  

Looking at RMJ's place he makes a similar point much more briefly:

I am always cheered by anything that advances people over other concerns.

It was when Good Pope Francis did that he got the right wingers, the Burke's the Sarahs, the Muellers, the Stricklands, Viganòs,  and the EWTN, National Catholic Register (not to be confused with the generally excellent National Catholic Reporter) and the rest of the billionaire-millionaire financed "trad-cath" astro-turf LARP cult in a swivet.  It got not a few of the Cardinal Electors in a swivet too, even some of them made it clear they didn't want someone who would carry on the work of Francis.  Even some of those those who Francis showed his charity, such as the scandal plagued Cardinal Pell, turned on him because he cared more about People than abstract notions of purity in doctrine and dogma.  Charity comes well down the list of concerns for such guys, even though it was the central teaching of Jesus.  I would point out that one of the greatest ironies of the would-be "trad-Catholics" is that they're even more willing to overturn even the longest standing of those, like the U.S. Supreme Court in the hands of the American right, there is little apart from scolding other People over their sex lives that such are willing to overturn in service of their often blatantly corrupt ends.   And when you mix in such stuff as American legal credentialing by the most elite of our secular universities, the trad-caths go full raving fascist loony.  

The social media and other activity of the well-financed liars of the trad-cath right in the period between the papacy of Good Pope Francis and Pope Leo has been fully as bad as the worst of the Republican-fascist attacks on President Biden and then Kamala Harris, joined in by the commercial, secular media.  I was glad to see that like Francis, Pope Leo has some familiarity with social media, he must be familiar with the worst of it.   Which I don't think it will be possible to ignore.  I hope, unlike Francis, that he is more willing to crack down hard on the lying cardinals, bishops, priests, etc.  whose mother tongue isn't Church Latin but false witness.  Such as Strickland and Viganò should have been shut down a lot sooner than they were.    While I hope that such cases are handled with more justice than JPII and Benedict XVI often dealt with their critics,  I hope Pope Leo understands the danger that they pose, not just to the Church but to secular politics in places where the cults that they sway exist.   Doing justice is always a narrow path between caring about the rights of the individual and the danger they pose to the wider community or an innocent individual.   I think, though Francis did, in the end, take means to protect the innocent, sometimes he should have acted faster.   

I think RMJ said it best, though.  

Still Optimistic Going Into The Second Day

WHILE POPE LEO has said things in the past that LGBTQ+ People like me wouldn't much like - and who knows how much he may have grown since he said them - the indications from his social media activity are really encouraging.   Here's from a piece about that from the National Catholic Reporter:  

There is only so much we can learn about Pope Leo XIV from his X account, an account in which he mostly retweeted others. But if we read between the lines, we can see a common thread of deep concern for the marginalized and the poor, and an emphasis on the role of government in ensuring the welfare of its citizens. For those who hoped for continuity with Francis' pontificate, Prevost's X feed is a reassuring, and downright hopeful, scroll.

Whether it's posting a Spanish language video interview condemning the death penalty with compassion and nuance, or resharing a stern rebuke of those who offer "thoughts and prayers" without policy changes in the face of mass shootings, our new pontiff has not minced words about the sweeping implications of nonviolence.

During the tumultuous year of 2020, he posted multiple calls for racial justice and promoted COVID-19 vaccinations as a means of caring for the vulnerable. (He was also seen wearing a face mask as late as 2022.)

It only takes one brief glance at Prevost's X profile to see that immigrants are particularly close to his heart. His last post before becoming pope, shared on April 14, was a retweet drawing attention to the suffering of the deported — and calling out President Donald Trump specifically for a lack of compassion. But this wasn't new for Prevost; he's been challenging Trump's position on immigration since before Trump even won the 2016 election.

But immigration isn't the only issue that compelled Prevost to speak out against Trump. In 2017 he shared a post by the Laudato Si' Movement pushing for the president to read Francis' climate justice encyclical, Laudato Si', and another by Catholic News Service Rome expressing concern about the environmental impact of Trump's policies.

Perhaps the biggest difference between our current American political leaders and our new American-born pope can best be summed up by a 2021 post that appears to bear an original caption from Prevost himself. Linking to a commentary on a homily on the Beatitudes delivered by Francis, Prevost wrote: "These beatitudes also highlight the temptations faced by bishops, like that of seeking power and a comfortable lifestyle."

I was kind of hoping he'd adopt the immediate shock-effect of Francis coming out in a plain white cassock as a means of reinforcing a rejection of "power and a comfortable lifestyle" but maybe he figures that point has already been made and he is saving his action for more serious fights. 

People have been commenting on the widespread non-Catholic enthusiasm for the idea that WE have a Pope,  some have said that even a lot of atheists and non-Christians have been enthusiastic about this choice as they soon became encouraged by Good Pope Francis.   I don't think the a "trad-Catholic" choice would have had that effect, especially from the hard-core legalists - a canon lawyer would have been even more of a disaster than another academic theologian.   I think the reason for that is that modern secular culture, modernism (in that sense) is as unfulfilling and unhelpful as reactionary "traditionalism."   Reactionary traditionalism, as voiced by the like of J.D. Vance, other recent right-wing converts and the wealth-generated "trad-catholics" is ultimately as useless.  Like the 18th century style of "liberalism" that sought to free the rich to enjoy their wealth as they rode roughshod over workers and others, as opposed to the original American form of liberalism that was based in the egalitarian economics of the scripture,  the sterile, would-be scientific "modernism" that is what most people concentrate on is more a matter of wealth hoarding with permissiveness to those with that wealth than anything else.  The long list of the icons of modernism who were enthusiasts for dictators, both of the right and the would-be left should make everyone's use of that term more careful about what they mean.  

I hope that Pope Leo turns out to be another pastoral Pope who has the same orientation as Francis for the hunger, homing and material as well as spiritual welfare for least among us, for the environment, for those who are marginalized, for those who are in the worst parts of their lives.   As I said, I hope he makes a radical decision to change the priesthood that will admit that the Holy Ghost hasn't seen eye-to-eye with Church tradition on an exclusively unmarried-male priesthood, turning back the Benedict-era policy of shrinking the church so as to make it more to the liking of those who yearn for a return to before Vatican II.    I will say that noting that if you read even the reactionaries among past Popes after Leo XIII,  pretty much all of them supported and reinforced the Catholic social teaching of that Leo, at least in their official documents.   If you want to put their economic policy in terms of secular politics, it tends to radical equality BECAUSE IT FOLLOWS THE GOSPEL AND THE LAW.   There are no egalitarian economics and, so, politics more radical  than the Gospel of Jesus.  It is an expansion of the already radical economics and politics of The Law of Moses.   That might not be what the billionaire-millonaire astro-turf-high-visibility "trad-Catholic" cult wants but it is the heart of Christianity and the best of the Catholic tradition.  The real one, not the one that lends itself to live-action-role-playing as seen in the movies and on TV.  

"Pope Leo XIV" Is A Good Sign

POPE LEO XIII is universally acknowledged to be the initiator of modern Catholic Social Teaching.  In one of the articles I read anticipating what names the new Pope might choose the author speculated that if "Leo" was the name of choice it would be a way for him to indicate that was what he intended to focus on. 

In other articles, most of which said that it was a very long shot that an American might be chosen,  Robert Provost was said to be someone known to be dedicated to continuing the process of reform and change that Good Pope Francis, now Saint Francis Bergoglio began. 

I said something of what I hoped the new Pope would do, including complete equality for Women in the Catholic Church.   I also said that I didn't expect that to happen.   I'm hoping that he will open up ordination to married Catholic men,  John Paul II opened the door by allowing disaffected Anglican priests who are married to become Catholic priests.   Who knows if even that partial reform will happen? 

But that's only some of the less important change that needs to be made.    His many years working in Peru will give him a lot better idea of that than I'll ever have.  

I'm provisionally optimistic but that makes me nervous.    I'd been afraid of them electing someone who I knew would be mediocre to bad, though I was pretty sure the real disasters put forward as likely candidates would never be elected by two thirds.    I expect that the integralist-fascist nutters are going to be splitting.   After this I think it's pretty unlikely that things will go back to JPII-Benedict XVI.