Linkage

• Why Do Banks Fail? Three Facts About Failing Banks (Liberty Street Economics) Pretty simple rules to follow.  It may not be definitive, but at least one, look out for banks that have suddenly skyrocketed, is a good rule of thumb.
  
• The World's Oldest Forest Is Here in the Hudson Valley (Hudson Valley Magazine) We are talking about a petrified forest dating back 386 million years.
• Salmon return to lay eggs in historic habitat after largest dam removal project in US history (OPB) A bit of good news.
• For 300 Years, a Jewish Kingdom Flourished in Africa. This Israeli Archaeologist Set Out to Find It - Archaeology (Haaretz) It appears to have been located in what is now northern Ethiopia.
• New research shows younger and middle-aged adults have worse long COVID symptoms than older adults (Northwestern Medicine) So much for the, "It's only an old people thing."
• Why a Family ‘Fart Walk’ Should Be on Your Agenda This Thanksgiving (SELF) If it talks about farts, I covers it.
• Gene behind orange fur in cats found at last (AAAS) Unsurprisingly, it's on the X chromosome.

This video is fascinating, because (largely unintentionally, IMNSHO) the video maker is engaging in highly sophisticated ethnographic analysis while looking at food. To quote Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."

Not a Good Look

As you may have heard, Joe Biden granted a broad pardon to his son Hunter today.

I understand the reason, there is significant evidence that a Trump DoJ would engage in a malicious prosecution, as Hunter's defense team noted.

There are plenty of reasons for him to do this, but the fact that he categorically ruled out any pardon this summer makes it, to quote (not) Tallyrand, "Worse than a crime, it is a mistake."

President Joe Biden on Sunday issued a full and unconditional pardon for his son Hunter, a controversial decision that reverses his long-standing pledge to not use his presidential powers to protect his only surviving son, who was found guilty of gun-related charges in Delaware and pleaded guilty to tax evasion in California.

………

“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” he said. “There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

Biden said he came to the decision over the weekend, which coincided with the family being together in Nantucket, Massachusetts, for Thanksgiving. Hunter Biden’s attorneys this weekend also mounted a vigorous public defense, releasing a 52-page paper on Saturday titled “The political prosecutions of Hunter Biden.”

………

According to the text of the pardon, it applies to all offenses that Hunter Biden “has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.”

The problem here is not the pardon, it was the promise not to do so.

This is not Gerald Ford pardoning Nixon.

 

About F%$#ing Time

It looks like a Federal judge is looking at taking over the Rikers Island jail from the New York City Department of Corrections.

Given their general unwillingness to do anything to fix the problems there, and corrupt ex-cop Mayor Eric Adam's unwillingness to provide any amount of civilian oversight, this would be a good thing:

A Manhattan federal judge in a long-running lawsuit against the city’s beleaguered Department of Correction said Wednesday that a third-party receiver should be appointed to oversee use-of-force and safety issues in the city’s jails.

Laura Taylor Swain, chief district judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, cited nine years of failed promises by jail officials in her 65-page decision.

“The glacial pace of reform can be explained by an unfortunate cycle demonstrated by DOC leadership, which has changed materially a number of times over the life of the Court’s orders, wherein initiatives are created, changed in some material way or abandoned, and then restarted,” she wrote.

She ruled that fining the city or taking other measures to force reforms would not be enough.

“The Court is inclined to impose a receivership: namely, a remedy that will make the management of the use of force and safety aspects of the Rikers Island jails ultimately answerable directly to the court,” she said.

Mayor Eric Adams and his jail officials have strenuously opposed the push for a possible receivership takeover.

Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?

………

Legal experts say a receiver can be granted extraordinary powers and would technically not be required to follow union contracts — meaning everything from job protections to work hours could be on the line across the correction department.

The push for a receiver is also supported by Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, Damian Williams. The Nunez case, named after the defendant, was first filed by his office under predecessor Preet Bharara.

Just do it.

Then fire the bad actors, using the extraordinary powers. 

All you need to do is look at the complaints, and dismiss the worst 10%, which should keep the remaining 90% in line.  (Also fire the overtime abusers, a sleep deprived cop is as dangerous as one who is drunk on duty)

This Is F%$#ed up and Sh%$

Shouldn't doctors know that, unlike an IQ test, health is not relative, and health outcomes shouldn't be normalized over a population? pic.twitter.com/ltayBVTdrZ

— Zagreus | Escaping Long Covid Hell (@zagreusrevival) November 28, 2024

The idea that a serious medical condition is less significant because it has become more prevalent is insane.

Covid is still a threat.

Wear your f%$#ing mask, get your f%$#ing vaccine, and avoid the f%$#ing unvaccinated.

Headline of the Day

If MMT Is Wrong, Why Is It So Much Better at Predicting the Economy - And Economic Disaster?

—Dougald Lamont’s Substack

This is at the center of the dispute between classical monetarism and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

It's not that you can contort your theory to match the facts ex pos facto, it is that your theory should have predictive value.

In 2016, Paul Romer, who was then Chief Economist at the World Bank wrote “The Trouble with Macroeconomics” in which he eviscerated the current state of macroeconomics in the U.S. and around the world, writing that orthodox macroeconomics had been in “30 years of intellectual regress,” and was so disconnected from reality that it was “post-real”. Romer wrote his paper, inspired by a similar critique of “string theory” in physics. 

 ………

The reason for this, Romer argues, is that orthodox economics - the formulas used by government budget offices, political parties, central banks and business, are based on a series of assumptions that are not backed up by facts. 

Yeah, this sounds a lot like string theory.

………

By this, Romer means that economists are inserting what he calls “facts of unknown truth value” which is to say, they are breezily assuming something and putting it into a mathematical formula.

And as a model, it has continually failed to predict crises and inflation that other “heterodox” models of the economy have succeeded in doing.

Romer is making an assumption here, which is that orthodox economic theory is actually an honest attempt to understand and predict our economy.

Lamont, on the other hand, is not making the same assumptions:

………

The opposition to MMT is not about theory: it is about control, and who controls what. MMT recognizes that money is a creature, and monopoly of the state - not the private sector.  

Above all, MMT is not a policy prescription. It is not saying “we should try doing it this way.”

MMT is a different, and arguably more accurate way of modelling the economy and financial system we have right now. It is “we should try seeing the economy this way, and when you do, you’ll see that we have different options.”

This is a very good read on the sad state of affairs of conventional economics, and I recommend that you read the whole thing.

Like Nominating Osama bin Laden to Head Homeland Security

Trump has picked Jay Bhattacharya to head the National Institutes of Health. 

this guy is the proximity author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for allowing Covid to run wild, because we would all end up with natural immunity.

This is f%$#ed up.

Yeah, That's a Great Idea

In the continuing saga of the self-defenestration of Elon Musk and Ecch (Twitter) the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ has stated that the social media site automatically downgrades any posts with links to external sites.

If I were to guess as to the reason for this, it would be because Musk Evil Minions™ are desperate for engagement, so they want to make sure that all featured content points inside.

It's called circle the drain:

X owner Elon Musk seemed on Monday to confirm what sharp-eyed users have suspected for months: that putting a link in your post on his social network is a good way to ensure it won’t go viral.

Musk was replying to a post by the influential Silicon Valley investor Paul Graham, who opined on Sunday that “the deprioritization of tweets with links in them is Twitter’s biggest flaw.” X’s main draw, Graham said, is “to find out what’s going on, and you can’t do that without links.”

Musk’s response implied Graham was right that X’s algorithm downgrades link posts.

“Just write a description in the main post and put the link in the reply,” Musk said, mentioning a strategy that some savvy X users were already employing. “This just stops lazy linking.”

 I guess that, "Just stops lazy linking," is Elon's version of the Steve Jobs quote, "You are holding it wrong," in response to issues with faulty iPhone antennas.

F%$# that.

Speaking of Competition Improving Services

We have another two African countries giving France the boot. Chad and Senegal.

Given the long French history of brutality and looting, even after de jure colonial status ended, it comes as no surprise that these nations are turning to Russia and China.

France lost one of its staunchest military allies in the volatile Sahel region of Africa this week as Chad ended its longstanding defense partnership with the country, the latest blow to French efforts to maintain sway on the continent it once colonized.

France has some 1,000 troops in Chad who will likely now have to leave. Analysts suggested that could further open the door to influence of the Russian military, already present in Chad’s neighbors.

The surprise decision was announced late Thursday by Chad’s foreign minister, Abderaman Koulamallah. “It is time for Chad to assert its sovereignty,” he said in a statement, calling the decision “a historic turning point.”

………

Following the recent ejection of French troops and personnel from other former African colonies plagued by Islamist insurgencies — Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso — the decision by Chad ends what remained of France’s military influence in the troubled stretch of countries below the Sahara known as the Sahel.

……….

In a further shock for France, Senegal’s president told the news agency Agence France-Presse on Thursday that he, too, wants French troops to leave. 

………

Chad’s battle-hardened troops were indispensable in France’s crushing of the Islamist insurgency in Mali in 2013. French troops helped install the dictator Hissène Habré in 1982, then helped overthrow him in favor of Mr. Déby in 1990. French Mirage jets take off regularly on training missions from a military base in the capital, N’Djamena.

French President Emmanuel Macron was the only Western leader to attend the funeral of Mr. Déby, killed fighting rebels in April 2021. Mr. Macron’s presence was seen as a kind of anointing for Mr. Déby’s son Mahamat, the current ruler. “France will never allow the stability and integrity of Chad to be called into question,” Mr. Macron said at the time.

So France has installed 2 dictators in Chad, and was in the process of installing a third dictator, and the Chadians got sick of their bullsh%$?

Gee, hoocoodanode?

………

In April the U.S. announced it was pulling some 75 Special Forces troops from the country after Chadian officials expressed discontent over their presence. It is not clear whether any have returned.

So they kicked out the Americans too.

It appears that the Chinese and Russians are offering better deals, and African nations, particularly in the Sahel, are taking these deals.

It's called enlightened self-interest.

The Check Is in the Mail, I Won’t Cum in Your Mouth, I’ll Respect You in the Morning, and ………

ISPs saying that their, "Excellent Customer Service" is why people do not change their internet providers.

So we have now discovered the 4th big lie of our world.

ISPs have been assiduously conspiring to create local monopolies because this allows them to treat their customers like sh%$.

It's not for nothing that the USA has the most expensive and slowest internet access in the developed world:

Lobby groups for Internet service providers claim that ISPs' customer service is so good already that the government shouldn't consider any new regulations to mandate improvements. They also claim ISPs face so much competition that market forces require providers to treat their customers well or lose them to competitors.

Wait, wut?  You motherf%$#ers are claiming that people stay with you because they like you?

Cable lobby group NCTA-The Internet & Television Association told the Federal Communications Commission in a filing that "providing high-quality products and services and a positive customer experience is a competitive necessity in today's robust communications marketplace. To attract and retain customers, NCTA's cable operator members continuously strive to ensure that the customer support they provide is effective and user-friendly. Given these strong marketplace imperatives, new regulations that would micromanage providers’ customer service operations are unnecessary."

………

While the FCC Notice of Inquiry said that providers should "offer live customer service representative support by phone within a reasonable timeframe," USTelecom's filing touted the customer service abilities of AI chatbots. "AI chat agents will only get better at addressing customers' needs more quickly over time—and if providers fail to provide the customer service and engagement options that their customers expect and fail to resolve their customers' concerns, they may soon find that the consumer is no longer a customer, having switched to another competitive offering," the lobby group said.

The ISP lobbyists must have been laughing so hard that some of them choked on their own spleens.

Why the Biden administration let this slide so long that they will be reversed, or worse, permanently banned from regulating customer service under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), because they don't want to piss off lobbyists.

F%$# the f%$#ing lobbyists.

A Correction

Seems Appropriate

On July 3, 2016, a made a post including my recipes for Cornish (Devonian) pasties.

While I stand by my savory pasties, I just realized that I had left out sugar for my apple and blackberry sweet pasties.

I was looking the recipe up for baking an apple pie (multiply quantities by 3 for a 9 inch deep dish pie crust).

I apologize for my error.

Told You It Was All About Defense Contractor Money

I've written a bit about how the the US dropped Turkey from the F-35 program after their purchase of the Russian S-400 system.

I have noted repeatedly that this was not driven by security concerns, as was claimed by the Pentagon and State Department, but rather it was driven by the fact that they did not want to see defense procurement money going somewhere that the US Military-Industrial complex does not get their vig, as they would if the Turks were to acquire systems from the US or other western suppliers.

It appears now that Turkey is in the process of developing a credible alternative to the F-35, the United States is considering allowing the Purchase of the US stealth fighter.

The US revised its position on the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Türkiye after witnessing its progress with its domestically developed KAAN fighter jet, Turkish National Defense Minister Yasar Guler said Tuesday.

“When the Americans saw that we could build and fly the KAAN, they changed their minds a bit about the F-35,” Guler said, addressing the Turkish Parliament's Planning and Budget Commission.

“Now, they are expressing willingness to provide F-35s. However, no progress has been made. We insist on reclaiming our production share and maintain our request to acquire F-35s,” he added.

Guler also highlighted Ankara’s efforts to modernize the Air Force until the light combat aircraft HURJET and KAAN are operational.

He announced a $1.4 billion payment for 40 US F-16 Block 70 Viper jets, adding Türkiye will modernize its 79 older F-16s in Turkish Aerospace Industries facilities. 

This could be Turkish puffery, or this could be some sort of arrangement with the S-400, there have been rumors that it will be placed under US control, or it could be that Lockheed Martin just wants it's money.

Still, this is an interesting development.

Tweet of the Day

pic.twitter.com/CP4hMUiljE

— No Context Brits (@NoContextBrits) November 26, 2024

This is peak dad humor

An Old Fashion Returns

But it ain't human fashion, it's Orcas wearing salmon hats again after a 37 year hiatus.

I'm hoping that this means that the miniskirt will be coming back:

Northwest Pacific orcas have started wearing salmon hats again, bringing back a bizarre trend first described in the 1980s, researchers say.

Last month, scientists and whale watchers spotted orcas (Orcinus orca) in South Puget Sound and off Point No Point in Washington State swimming with dead fish on their heads.

Off of Point No Point?  If that is not going seriously meta on fashion, I do not know what is.

This is the first time they've donned the bizarre headgear since the summer of 1987, when a trendsetting female West Coast orca kickstarted the behavior for no apparent reason. Within a couple of weeks, the rest of the pod had jumped on the bandwagon and turned salmon corpses into must-have fashion accessories, according to the marine conservation charity ORCA — but it's unclear whether the same will happen this time around.

Researchers think the orcas sporting salmon hats now may be veterans of the trend when it first appeared nearly 40 years ago. "It does seem possible that some individuals that experienced [the behavior] the first time around may have started it again," Andrew Foote, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, told New Scientist.

I have a theory.  It involves orca Instagram and orca influencers.

This theory is (of course) complete bollocks.

Smoking the Turkey Was the Right Decision.

Our power just went out.  there was a boom before the lights went out, so I think a transformer went.

We have a gas range, so we can still cook stove top, but the oven won't work.

I decided to marinate the bird overnight and smoke the turkey over charcoal, and this is thankfully unaffected by our loss of power.

The marinade was basically half a gallon each of apple and orange juice, pepper, a little bit of salt, (it's a kosher bird, so a full brine is not recommended.) mace, cayenne pepper, paprika, bay leaves, ginger, caraway, garlic, leeks, fenugreek, grains of paradise, and coriander.

I browned the leeks and the garlic, then added the juices and the rest of the spices, and simmered for about 45 minutes.

I then added 8 lb of ice (1 gallon), and added it to a cooler, and then the turkey once it had cooled down.

I put a tray of ice on top to keep everything cold and submerge the turkey.

In the morning I pulled it out, patted it dry with paper towels, and added a rub.

It is now smoking with applewood.

I'm using a couple of probe thermometers to monitor the turkeys doneness.

Posted via mobile.

The Abyss Stares Into You ​⃰

We now have reports that people who have been selected for position in the Trump administration have been targeted with swatting and bomb threats.

Ignoring the inevitable false flag conspiracy theories, there are two possibilities here .  Either some left wing activists have begun to act like MAGAts, or MAGAts continuing to act like MAGAts.

If it's the former, it is the abyss staring into them, and I do not approve:

The FBI said Wednesday that “numerous bomb threats and swatting incidents” had targeted people President-elect Donald Trump has selected for Cabinet roles and other positions in his incoming administration.

Trump’s transition team said that “several” of his picks for prominent positions had faced “threats to their lives and those who live with them” on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. The transition team’s statement did not identify how many people appear to have been targeted or name them, and law enforcement officials have not said publicly whether they believe any of the threats were credible.

Six of Trump’s selections said they had received threats to their homes, including Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York), whom Trump has tapped for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and former congressman Lee Zeldin (R-New York), the president-elect’s choice for Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

Others saying they had received threats included Brooke Rollins, whom Trump plans to nominate to lead the Agriculture Department; Scott Turner, his selection to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development; Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Oregon), his choice for labor secretary; and Pete Hegseth, his pick to lead the Defense Department.

This does not bode well for our future as a society.

^*This is from from Neitsche, "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

Quote of the Day

So the Harris Campaign Was the Producers IRL. They Knew They Were Blowing Through $1.5 Billion in 15 Weeks with No Chance of Winning, and to Make Sure They Lost They Brought the Cheneys and Richie Torres on Stage. The Point Was to Wash as Much Stupid Money as Fast as Possible.

—Mark Ames

As I have occasionally (OK, constantly) noted, the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is deeply and profoundly corrupt.

Unless and until the looting is stopped, we will see this again, and again, and again, and again.

I Do Not Expect This to Last

If you can keep itThe announcement of a ceasefire deal between Hezbollah and Israel is better than there being no deal, but given that the Lebanese Army and the UN peacekeepers are the guarantors of this deal.

When juxtaposed with Benjamin Netanyahu's incentives, continued war = continued power = him not going to jail, I am not optimistic about the long term prospects:

A cease-fire meant to end the deadliest war in decades between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah officially took effect early Wednesday, less than a day after President Biden announced the deal and Israel approved its terms.

Thousands of Lebanese began to return to their homes in the first hours of the cease-fire. The fighting has killed thousands in Lebanon and around 100 Israeli civilians and soldiers. The conflict has also displaced about one million people in Lebanon, in addition to doing vast physical damage there, and about 60,000 people in Israel.

Lebanon’s government agreed on Wednesday morning to the deal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed it on Tuesday night and argued that a truce would allow Israel to rebuild its weapon stockpiles while it works to isolate Hamas, the Hezbollah ally that Israel is fighting in Gaza.

………

Under the terms of the deal, a U.N. peacekeeping force, along with the Lebanese Army, will keep the peace in the border zone, as envisioned in a 2006 United Nations Security Council resolution that ended the previous Israel-Hezbollah war but that was never fully carried out. 

………

The failure of the 2006 agreement, known as Resolution 1701, is hanging over the new one. Like the current cease-fire, 1701 relied on the Lebanese Army, which has not been in a position to control Hezbollah, and on U.N. peacekeepers, who have not been empowered to confront Hezbollah militarily.

Yeah, I'll take the "under" on how long this will last.

Fighting to the Last Ukrainian

It appears that the United States has been pressuring the Ukraine to lower its draft age to 18, because the White House wants more bodies to throw in the meat grinder.

There is an African proverb, "When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffer."  This appears to be the case here.

In case you are wondering, the US motivation for this entire clusterf%$# is geopolitics, not the rule of low or peace, or anything else:

Ukraine should consider lowering the age of military service for its soldiers to 18 from 25, a senior U.S. administration official said on Wednesday, putting pressure on Kyiv to bolster its fighting forces in the country's war with Russia.

Speaking to reporters, the official said Ukraine was not mobilizing or training enough new soldiers to replace those lost on the battlefield.

"The need right now is manpower," he said. "The Russians are in fact making progress, steady progress, in the east, and they are beginning to push back Ukrainian lines in Kursk ... Mobilization and more manpower could make a significant difference at this time as we look at the battlefield today."

Russian forces are making gains in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers said this week.
In April Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signed into law legislation to lower the mobilization age for combat duty from 27 to 25, expanding the number of civilians the army could mobilize to fight under martial law, which has been in place since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Lowering the draft age might seem to be the sensible thing at first glance, but it does not reflect the realities on the ground.

………

A source in Zelenskiy's office said the country did not have what it needed to equip the troops it was mobilizing now.

"Right now, with our current mobilization efforts, we don’t have enough equipment, for example armored vehicles, to support all the troops we are calling up," the source said. "We cannot compensate for our partners’ delays in decision-making and supply chains with the lives of our soldiers and of the youngest of our guys.”

Seriously, the Washington foreign policy Blob seems to define infantry as an army of infants.

These psychopaths never seem to realize that there are real human casualties as a result of their pursuit of a, "Great Game."

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ On Wednesday

Claims


Various Inflation Numbers


Durable GoodsThe stats are coming out a day earlt because of the Thanksgiving holiday.

So initial unemployment claims fell by 2,000 to 213,000, beating estimates while continuing claims rose by 9,000 to 1.907 million.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Meanwhile, the updated US GDP growth rate was a 2.8% annual rate, which is a pretty good growth rate, and durable goods orders rose by .2% month over month.

One does wonder if the durable goods number is an artifact of people trying to beat tariffs.

My gut says that this economy feels a lot like mid 2000, before the DotCom bubble burst.

The only question is which group of hyper-leveraged gonifs are going to bring down the whole house of cards and get a bailout while the rest of us get stern lectures about personal responsability.

Why Were They Doing This in the First Place?

The Justice Department has ended a program run by the DEA that paid bounties airport and airline staff who fingered people that the DEA would steal money from.

The cops are crooks:

President Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1973 to persecute Blacks and antiwar activists. Over 50 years later, it's still in operation, serving as an employer for sociopathic goons and drug cartel moles.

And today the DEA is hopping mad because the Department of Justice (DOJ) has finally clipped its wings. No more stopping random people at airports and stealing their cash, following revelations of their latest corrupt scheme: paying airline employees to snitch on travelers.

The suspension comes after a particularly egregious incident where DEA agents detained an innocent traveler based on a tip from an airline employee who was getting paid a percentage of whatever the DEA could steal from passengers. The traveler recorded the encounter and missed their flight, despite no contraband being found. The agents in the recorded incident weren't even wearing body cameras — though that's hardly surprising for an organization that's dedicated to protecting drug traffickers.

Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz's investigation revealed that one airline employee alone received "tens of thousands of dollars" for flagging passengers who committed the suspicious act of… buying tickets within 48 hours of their flight. Meanwhile, the DEA hasn't bothered documenting these encounters or training their agents since 2023, ignoring their own policies from a 2015 oversight report.

Our law enforcement agencies are all to often indistinguishable from criminal syndicates.

 

This was Inevitable

Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has had the charges against Donald Trump dismissed.

This was inevitable once Harris lost.  (I think that Harris lost more than Trump won)

The dismissal was without prejudice, so it could be refiled, but it won't be.

Trump skates again.

Donald Trump has gotten away with causing a violent attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, as part of scheme to overturn the 2020 election, hiding top secret documents from the federal government, and other alleged crimes.

Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday made official what Trump’s election victory made clear, moving to dismiss the election interference case in which Trump was charged with promoting conspiracies to defraud the United States, obstruct an official government proceeding, and deprive Americans of their civil rights through his attempts to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory. Smith said he was dropping the case due to a Justice Department policy that bars prosecuting a sitting president.

“The Government’s position on the merits of the defendant’s prosecution has not changed,” Smith said in the filing.

The motion leaves Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis’ prosecution of Trump and various former aides as the only standing criminal case related to Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Willis has vowed to continue that prosecution. But with her case mired in appeals proceedings related to Willis’ past romantic relationship with the prosecutor she picked to run it, her odds of securing a conviction of the president-elect appear dismal.

F%$# Merrick Garland and his timidity.

File Under, "Well Duh"

Well, knock me over with a sledgehammer,it appears that Kamala Harris' Presidential campaign was an orgy of looting by consultants and campaign members.

This sort of behavior has been one of my primary complaints about the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is the extreme corruption of its professional political apparatus.

After Harris's catastrophic flame-out, other people are noticing:

In the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat, recriminations have flourished inside the Democratic Party with different factions blaming different policies or groups to explain the loss. Critics, however, describe a deeper structural problem with how the modern Democratic Party runs campaigns, which lines the pockets of party insiders, bloats campaign budgets and boxes out influences from outside party elites.

The Harris campaign broke campaign finance records, raising nearly a billion dollars, but ending the race $20 million in debt, spending millions on consultants and hundreds of millions of dollars on paid media.

While most political strategists agree that some spending on paid media is necessary to win a campaign in 2024, Faiz Shakir, a senior advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told Salon that the Harris campaign's spending profile is indicative of a structural issue with how the Democratic Party approaches paid media and political strategy.

Snipping the bit where Mr. Shakir talks about how political consultants see the 30 second ad as the Alpha and Omega for campaign communications, because that is what the consultants themselves say, and because it's really not the core problem.

Consultants get a percentage of media buys, and so extract a personal financial benefit from this strategy.

………

Shakir summed up the issue saying that “there is often a product problem and not a sales problem” with Democratic campaigns. However, there is another side to the problem with paid media, in Shakir’s view. At every step in the process of making an ad, everyone is taking their cut.

“The opportunity to make money off of the firm that has created 30-second ads and the person who has placed the ads is ripe for abuse because there are hundreds of millions of dollars going into it and everyone is taking their skim,” Shakir said. “There’s a huge escalation every step of the way because of a skim at every level.” 

According to Shakir, it doesn’t have to work this way but media firms and campaigns often push for more expensive production strategies like more shoots, or oversaturating airwaves, because it’s an opportunity for everyone to get paid. In some cases, Shakir said, even senior campaign staff will get a cut of ad spending.

(emphasis mine)

Yeah, that's a level of self dealing that surprises me, 

Once again, reality trumps (pun not intended) my worst imaginings.

………

Reviewing the ad spending from the Harris campaign, it’s clear that the bulk of the money was funneled through firms run or owned by Democratic Party insiders. For example, Media Buying and Analytics LLC, received upwards of $281 million for media production and ad buys from the Harris campaign in the 2024 cycle and is owned by Canal Media Partners, according to Business Insider, a firm that has worked with hundreds of Democratic campaigns and was founded by Bobby Khan, who has been in and out of Democratic politics since the early 1990s. 

………

According to Shakir, however, the problems with the Democratic Party’s structure and the way it runs campaigns go beyond just media consultants and the party’s love of paid ads. The core issue, as Shakir puts it, is that the party political operations are a closed loop with well-off consultants, politicians and donors all taking advice from each other with little outside input.

So the problem with the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is a pervasive culture of corruption among the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment)?  Say it isn't so!

This is a feature, not a bug.

This is a racket, and it is a well functioning racket whose goal is to separate political donors from their money.

Winning or losing is irrelevant to this.

This is just a fact of Iron Law of Institutions which is, as I have noted many times, "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution." (Not my idea or term, this term was coined by Jon Schwarz)

 

Quote of the Day

When National Tragedy Strikes, and Everyone (Including, Often These Same People!) Is Saying Things Like “We Must Come Together” and “Now Is Not the Time for Politics,” They’re Busy Figuring Out How to Charge the Feds $500 for a Bottle of Water.

—Duncan "Atrios" Black commenting on reports that Trump aide Boris Epshteyn was demanding payments from people seeking jobs in the administration

We are talking about, "$30,000 to $40,000 a month," to promote people to Trump and Evil Minions™.

These f%$#s are mindbogglingly corrupt.

Not a Surprise

The impact on Michigan voters was more notable pic.twitter.com/8siEur6Fn9

— Polling USA (@USA_Polling) November 22, 2024

It turns out that Kamala Harris's campaign tour with Liz Cheney actually made people less likely to vote for her.

Hell, it made me less likely to vote for her. (I did anyway)

This non-partisan centrist fetish is, to quote (not) Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, "Worse than a crime, it was a mistake."

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is deeply and profoundly incompetent.

As to whether or not the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is more corrupt or more incompetent, that exercise will be left up to my reader(s).

Radical centrism is a disease.

The Thing About Corporate Structures is

If you can dream up a scenario, you have an entity that already exists, and already has legal requirements for it.

It's kind of like Rule 34, but for business.

Rather unsurprisingly, it turns out that this applies to the fever dreams of crypto-bros, at least according to federal judge Judge Vince Chhabria.

He noted that the Lido DAO, which claims that it is, "Just software," is actually a general partnership, and as such can be sued or prosecuted for dealing in unregistered securities:

The cryptocurrency industry has long been fueled by a libertarian ethos that sees government oversight and regulatory scrutiny as the enemy of economic freedom. At the same time, it is also an industry that has sought to reproduce goods and services that already exist in the traditional, regulated economy. In theory, the end result of this setup is a marketplace ungoverned by the traditional strictures (or, more accurately, guardrails) of modern economies. In practice, it means that crypto organizations often flout financial laws, only to then claim that the law does not (or should not) apply to them.

This week, the Lido DAO, one of web3’s largest decentralized autonomous organizations, suffered a legal blow in a litigation case that has sought to clarify yet another one of crypto’s many legal gray areas. Lido is currently being sued in a class-action lawsuit that accuses it of having sold unregistered securities. An LLC representing the DAO has leaned heavily into web3’s notion of “decentralization,” in an effort to get Lido and its associates off the hook. Dolphin CL, LLC, which represents Lido, has made the claim that the organization is just “software” and does not represent a “legal entity” and, therefore, cannot be held liable for its action, court documents claim. However, a federal judge shot down that argument this week, maintaining that Lido is, indeed, a “legal entity” and, therefore, must be subject to the same laws and regulations.

Judge Vince Chhabria found that, under California law, Lido represents a “general partnership” and is therefore subject to the same regulations that such arrangements are beholden to. He also found that those organizations deemed Lido’s “institutional investors”—that is, the large companies that fronted much of its money and managed its operations—should be deemed members of that partnership and, therefore, held liable. Those companies include investment firm Paradigm Operations, well-known venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and investment firm Dragonfly Digital Management. A fourth firm, Robot Ventures, was excluded as a partner.

First, a16z seem to be aggressively investing in every cryptocurrency scam on the internet. When will Mark Andreeson be frog marched out of his offices in handcuffs?

Second, Robot Ventures got off because, the plaintiff did not provide sufficient evidence that they made decisions for Lido.

On a more serio0us note, why the f%$# is cryptocurrency legal at all.  

It does not work as currency, with days to process a transaction and fees that make credit companies look like the good guys, and its only real world application appears to be ransoms.

I Agree with THIS Turd?

John Bolton, batsh%$ insane war monger, has roundly condemned Sebastian Gorka's selection as counter-terrorism chief.

F%%$# me, I f%$#ing agree with f%$#ing John f%$#ing Bolton.

Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has laid into Sebastian Gorka, the president-elect’s pick for counter-terrorism chief, as a “conman” whose selection is not “going to bode well for counter-terrorism efforts when the [national security council’s] senior director is somebody like that”.

Trump praised Gorka, who was born in the UK to Hungarian parents, as a “tireless advocate for the America First Agenda and the MAGA Movement”.

But Bolton came out swinging at Gorka on Friday. The arch-conservative, who served in the Reagan, George W Bush and first Trump administrations, has set out his stall against many of Trump’s picks, including former Democrat and Iraq veteran Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, and told CNN that he “wouldn’t have him in any US government”.

Earlier this week, Bolton told NewsNation’s The Hill that up until Gorka was nominated by Trump as a deputy assistant to the president and the senior director for counter-terrorism, he would have said that Gabbard’s nomination “was the worst cabinet appointment in recent American history”.

This guy is an unqualified and a bigger lunatic than John Bolton.

I would not say that he was the worst cabinet appointment in recent American history though, there is an awful lot of competition there.

This is Not a Surprise

Proximity to oil and gas wells have been long linked to increases in pulmonary problems, and Covid tends to cause death through lung damage, so it should come to no surprise that, "Oil and gas well proximity linked to higher rates of COVID-19 mortality."

My (very likely correct) guess would be that high levels of air pollution from other sources would have a similar impact, as it did with Tuberculosis and a whole constellation of other diseases.

Wear a f%$#ing mask, and get a f%$#ing vaccination:

Between December 2019 and May 2022, the United States saw 82 million reported cases of COVID-19 and approximately 1 million deaths linked to the disease. Some communities, such as those that are economically disadvantaged or have a high proportion of racial or ethnic minority groups, were hit especially hard.

Neighborhoods where residents have historically experienced racial discrimination in housing policy are also more likely to be located near active oil and gas wells; in 2017, 17.6 million U.S. residents lived within 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) of such wells.

Previous studies have shown that those living near oil or gas wells—which can cause air, water, soil, noise, and light pollution—have higher risks of conditions such as asthma, cancer, immunodeficiencies, and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Others have found that air pollution increased COVID-19 risks.

But a new study by Timothy Archer and colleagues is the first, to the authors' knowledge, to study whether proximity specifically to oil and gas development could also be linked to higher rates of COVID-19.

QE f%$#ing D.

Normally, I Try Not to Concern Myself with the Political Opinions of Actors

Unless, of course, they run for office.

In particular, when actors attempt to juxtapose their performances with politics.

For every rule, there is an exception, and Joel Grey's relating his performance as the unnamed Emcee in Cabaret is a sterling example of such an exception.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with great musical theater, Cabaret is a retelling of the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, largely through the experiences of a performer at a Berlin night club, the Kit Kat Club.

With all due respect to the performance of Liza Minnelli, along with a whole troupe of other talented actors, Joel Grey's performance was magnificent.  (He got an Oscar and a Tony)

He argues, and I agree, that the messages and the warnings of the play, have even more relevance today.  

I agree:

This past week marked 58 years since the opening night for the Broadway premiere of “Cabaret” in 1966. At the time, the country was in deep turmoil. Overseas, the Vietnam War was escalating, and at home, our most regressive forces were counterpunching against the progress demanded by the civil rights movement. The composer John Kander, the lyricist Fred Ebb and the playwright Joe Masteroff wrote “Cabaret” in collaboration with the director Harold Prince as a response to the era. The parallels between the rise of fascism in 1930s Berlin as depicted in the show and the mounting tensions of the 1960s in America were both obvious and ominous.

This past week marked 58 years since the opening night for the Broadway premiere of “Cabaret” in 1966. At the time, the country was in deep turmoil. Overseas, the Vietnam War was escalating, and at home, our most regressive forces were counterpunching against the progress demanded by the civil rights movement. The composer John Kander, the lyricist Fred Ebb and the playwright Joe Masteroff wrote “Cabaret” in collaboration with the director Harold Prince as a response to the era. The parallels between the rise of fascism in 1930s Berlin as depicted in the show and the mounting tensions of the 1960s in America were both obvious and ominous.

When we first performed it, in Boston, audiences gasped and recoiled. It was too offensive, too raw, too cruel. Producers fretted and the line was changed to “She isn’t a meeskite at all,” [Yiddish for very ugly] softening the blow, yes, but also the impact. I resented the change and would often, to the chagrin of stage management, “forget” to make the swap throughout that pre-Broadway run.

I’m hearing from friends in the current Broadway production of “Cabaret” that the line is once again getting an audible response, but of a different sort. On more than one occasion in the past two weeks — since the election — a small number of audience members have squealed with laughter at “She wouldn’t look Jewish at all.” In the late 1960s, we softened the line because the truth was too hard to hear. Today, it seems the line is playing exactly as the Nazi-sympathizing Emcee would have intended. 

Damn.  If this ain't history rhyming, I do not know what is.

 D

Quote of the Day

The Core of the Prepper Fantasy: “What If the World Ended In the Precise Way That Made Me the Most Important Person?”

—Cory Doctorow

Sometimes, someone says something about something that you have heretofore been unable to understand, and you get clarity.

I get it now.

Such communication is a rare thing, and it is to be valued.

Light Posting Tonight

Sharon* got a new laptop, and I spent most of the evening setting it up and installing software (Office 2003, because the ribbon sucks wet farts from dead pigeons) for her.

Also, I spent an hour figuring out how the f%$# I turned off right click on the touch pad, because I am an 1d10T.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Interesting Point

There are a number of videos out there which analyze and condemn the Tesla Cybertruck, this one is interesting because early in the video it raises an interesting point, that for every one of the other products produced by the auto manufacturer, they had their origins in the time before Elon had complete control of the company.

For all of the earlier products the basic design, which has remained the same until the truck, had their origins when  Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning were heavily involved in the technical end of things.

The Cybertruck is where the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ first got to do a blank sheet of paper design that he controlled, and it ain't pretty.

The Very Epitome of Modi India

In addition to his fascist Hindu supremacist proclivities of Narendra Modi, it should be noted that his government has been profoundly corrupt, and there is no better example of this than the rise of Gauam Adjani, who parlayed his close connection with Modi and the BJP into a multi-billion dollar empire:

US prosecutors charged Gautam Adani with helping drive a $250 million bribery scheme, in a stunning blow to India’s most powerful businessman and close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Federal prosecutors alleged on Wednesday that Adani, one of the world’s richest people, and other defendants promised to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to win solar energy contracts, and concealed the plan as they sought to raise money from US investors. US law allows federal prosecutors to pursue foreign corruption allegations if they involve certain links to American investors or markets.

As an aside here, I am generally not a fan of US assertions of the extraterritoriality of its laws, but this one seems to apply, because some of the behavior occurred in the US. (See here)

The five-count indictment also accuses Gautam’s nephew Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain, both executives at Adani Green Energy Ltd., of breaking federal laws.

………

The indictment’s impact on Indian business and politics will be far-reaching. Not only does the Adani Group run everything from airports to power generators in the country, the conglomerate is Modi’s key partner in his efforts to build the country’s domestic infrastructure as well as widen its geopolitical influence. While the appointment of a new US Attorney in New York after the return of President Donald Trump to office early next year may impact how the case plays out, Adani’s ambitions and his relationship with the Indian government will likely be permanently altered.

………

The charges mark an enormous setback for Asia’s second richest man just as his businesses were recovering from the blow dealt by short-seller Hindenburg Research’s January 2023 report that alleged fraud and corporate governance issues in the group. That episode had also incidentally forced Adani to abandon a domestic share offering by its flagship due to the resulting rout in its stock.

………

The SEC, which is a civil law enforcement agency, provided detailed allegations against both Adanis and another one of the co-defendants, Cyril Sebastien Dominique Cabanes, in a parallel lawsuit. The regulator identified the firm involved in the alleged bribery scheme, which wasn’t named in the indictment, as Adani Green Energy.

According to the regulator, Gautam Adani spearheaded an effort to pay or promise hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Indian state government officials to induce them to enter contracts that Adani Green needed to develop India’s largest solar power plant project. At the same time, he and his nephew falsely touted the company’s compliance with antibribery principles and laws in connection with a $750 million bond offering, the SEC said.

 My guess is that this all will be dropped after Adani finds a back door way to pay off Trump, but YMMV.

We Find the Defendants Incredibly Guilty

Cue Mel Brooks

Who would have thought that SiriusXM was deliberately making unsubscribing as difficult as possible?

Rather unsurprisingly, a court in New York Court has announced the obvious:

Satellite radio provider SiriusXM made it too hard for customers to cancel their subscriptions, a New York judge ruled this week.

New York Supreme Court Justice Lyle Frank concluded in a Thursday ruling that the company allowed subscribers to sign up through an easy Web-based form, while it routed cancellations through a phone-based customer service system.

“Given the inevitable wait times that come with a live customer service agent, and the again undisputed fact that [SiriusXM’s] agents first go through an evaluation and offer process with the customer before proceeding to cancel, their cancellation procedure is clearly not as easy to use as the initiation method,” Frank wrote.

………

New York Attorney General Letitia James sued SiriusXM late last year, arguing it was “trapping consumers in subscriptions and maintaining deliberately long and burdensome cancellation processes.” James said customers were forced to sit through lengthy six-part conversations and hear up to five offers to keep subscriptions before they could cancel, practices she argued were a violation of state law.

This is Going to Get Interesting

Talks between International Longshoreman's Association (ILA) and the East Coast port operators have broken down, and the current contract ends, and a strike could commence, on January 15.

The ILA walked away from negotiations with USMX scheduled to last for four days after just two days.

In a statement issued on 13 November ILA said, that the first day and half of talks had been productive. “However, late yesterday, talks broke down when management introduce their intent to implement semi-automation – a direct contradiction to their opening statement where they assured us that neither full nor semi-automation would be on the table. They claimed their focus was on modernisation, not automation."

The USMX similarly said initial talks had been positive but were unable to make progress on a range of technology. “Unfortunately, the ILA is insisting on an agreement that would move our industry backward by restricting future use of technology that has existed in some of our ports for nearly two decades – making it impossible to evolve to meet the nation’s future supply chain demands,” USMX said.

I think that a strike is likely, though I also think that Trump will go full Reagan/PATCO on the strikers.

Labor unions have experience some success lately and Donald Trump and Evil Minions™ will be determined to roll that back.

Good

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, along with over 30 co-conspirators have been indicted for their attempted coup attempt.

I wish that I lived in a first world country where just could be administered like this:

The Brazilian Federal Police formally indicted former president Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday of attempting to orchestrate a coup d’état, according to an official statement. The retired far-right military officer is alleged to have sought to subvert the election results and block leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from returning to power.

Bolsonaro, who governed Brazil from 2019 to 2022, is among 37 individuals charged, including two retired generals who served as ministers in his administration. The police report has already been submitted to the Supreme Court, and precautionary measures have been issued, including a ban on international travel, which led to the confiscation of Bolsonaro’s passport months ago.

………

The police’s formal indictment must now be evaluated by the Supreme Court. Bolsonaro was disqualified months ago by the Supreme Court from running for office until 2030. That ruling convicted him of abuse of power, citing his use of the presidential platform to systematically undermine confidence in the security of the country’s voting system.

Investigators argue that the coup attempt failed because the conspirators failed to secure the backing of the then-commanders of the Army and Air Force, Generals Marco Antônio Freire Gomes and Carlos de Almeida Baptista. Both generals implicated Bolsonaro in the plot during their testimony as witnesses, as revealed in March.

On January 8, 2023, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters launched a coup attempt in Brasília, storming government buildings just a week after Lula was sworn in for his third, non-consecutive term as president. To date, only the direct participants in the attack have been tried and sentenced. The Supreme Court has handed down heavy sentences to over 200 individuals, but none of those accused of planning or financing the coup attempt has yet faced trial.

The indictment follows revelations by police this week that the coup plotters had plans to assassinate President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his vice president, Geraldo Alckmin, and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Adding to the tension, just last week, a Bolsonaro supporter detonated an explosive device outside the Supreme Court building.

For some reason this sounds strangely familiar.

FYI, I'm On Bluesky Now

@40-years.bsky.social

Still on the hellsite (Ecch/Twitter) but I'm posting on Bluesky as well.

It appears that scientists who were formerly on Ecch are moving to Bluesky as well, largely because Elon's efforts to make everything algorithm driven have made it much more difficult for scientists to follow each other without the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™'s pontifications and other hate speech disrupting their discourse.

It appears that in social media, the users are not the product, at least not the entire product, so is moderation:

Researchers are flocking to the social-media platform Bluesky, hoping to recreate the good old days of Twitter.

“All the academics have suddenly migrated to Bluesky,” says Bethan Davies, a glaciologist at Newcastle University, UK. The platform has “absolutely exploded”.

In the two weeks since the US presidential election, the platform has grown from close to 14 million users to nearly 21 million. Bluesky has broad appeal in large part because it looks and feels a lot like X (formerly known as Twitter), which became hugely popular with scientists, who used it to share research findings, collaborate and network. One estimate suggests that at least half a million researchers had Twitter profiles in 2022.

That was the year that billionaire Elon Musk bought the platform. He renamed it X and reduced content moderation, among other changes, prompting some researchers to leave. Since then, pornography, spam, bots and abusive content have increased on X, and community protections have decreased, say researchers.

………

Bluesky, by contrast, offers users control over the content they see and the people they engage with, through moderation and protections such as blocking and muting features, say researchers. It is also built on an open network, which gives researchers and developers access to its data; X now charges a hefty fee for this kind of access.

So this is what happens when you turn the public square into an open air sewer.

Justice Delayed

34 felony convictions, and the judge has postponed Trump's sentencing again.

It's going to be put off basically forever.

Trump will never see the inside of a jail cell.

Kind of Like Watching Your Mother-in-Law Driving off of a Cliff in Your Brand New Car

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu. (יִמַּח שְׁמו)

I have noted many times that I consider Netanyahu to be the single greatest threat to the continued existence of the State of Israel, and that I also note that he is a shanda far di goyim (שאַנדע פֿאַר די גויים).

If there is any justice in this world, Netanyahu will spend the rest of his life in prison.

I do not care if Netanyahu is imprisoned in The Hague, or Ktzi'ot Prison, or Tehran, he needs to be locked up.

Yeah, "Accidentally"

The good folks at TechCrunch have a story with the headline, "OpenAI accidentally deleted potential evidence in NY Times copyright lawsuit." 

The good folks at TechCrunch accept that this is accidental.

Bullsh%$:

Lawyers for The New York Times and Daily News, which are suing OpenAI for allegedly scraping their works to train its AI models without permission, say OpenAI engineers accidentally deleted data potentially relevant to the case.

Earlier this fall, OpenAI agreed to provide two virtual machines so that counsel for The Times and Daily News could perform searches for their copyrighted content in its AI training sets. (Virtual machines are software-based computers that exist within another computer’s operating system, often used for the purposes of testing, backing up data, and running apps.) In a letter, attorneys for the publishers say that they and experts they hired have spent over 150 hours since November 1 searching OpenAI’s training data.

But on November 14, OpenAI engineers erased all the publishers’ search data stored on one of the virtual machines, according to the aforementioned letter, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York late Wednesday.

OpenAI tried to recover the data — and was mostly successful. However, because the folder structure and file names were “irretrievably” lost, the recovered data “cannot be used to determine where the news plaintiffs’ copied articles were used to build [OpenAI’s] models,” per the letter.

The judge should consider sanctions.

Here is a Surprise

Once again, the six conservative Supreme Court Justices are blithely accepting testimony from quack doctors.

The doctors have been dismissed by judges across the US as “conspiratorial”, “deeply biased”, “far off” and deserving “very little weight”.

But their testimonies were nonetheless submitted by the state of Tennessee in defense of an anti-trans law the US supreme court will consider in December, in one of the most important cases of the court’s session and among the most consequential LGBTQ+ rights cases in its history.

In US v Skrmetti, the court will weigh whether transgender youth have a constitutional right to access healthcare treatments endorsed by every major medical association in the country, who say the care improves patients’ mental health and reduces the suicide risks of vulnerable teens. The case originated with three trans youth and their parents who sued Tennessee last year over its ban on gender-affirming healthcare for minors, arguing the care was medically necessary and “life-saving”. The outcome could have profound implications for trans rights, bodily autonomy and the government’s authority over people’s private healthcare decisions.

If the court’s conservative supermajority upholds Tennessee’s ban, it would, in effect, be siding with doctors who, LGBTQ+ advocates and trans healthcare experts say, have repeatedly peddled misinformation and in some cases, espoused religious doctrine in the name of science. Six doctors who filed expert declarations for Tennessee have a history of advocating against trans healthcare, and five of them have previously been rebuked or discounted by judges due to their backgrounds.

Expect a 6-3 decision in favor of bigotry.

Also expect the justification to be an exercise in hypocrisy.