The Grift Culture

"Today, we take a look at just some of the nearly infinite ways in which our society, culture, and economy are infused from top to bottom with Scam Culture™ that is bleeding us dry both financially and mentally."

Grift: to acquire money or property illicitly (as in a confidence game)

Click on the link below for an in-depth look at what is behind so much in the USA:

The Grift of Life

Trump Was The Nerve Center To A Wide Conspiracy

 "The conventional narrative of former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election frames Trump as the culprit and most Republican lawmakers as tolerating it or tagging along out of political expediency. But the leak of a massive trove of text exchanges between Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, and dozens of Republican lawmakers highlights how that narrative lets the GOP off too easily. The texts, published by Talking Points Memo, show Trump wasn’t a lone actor, but something closer to a nerve center of anti-democratic activity. Republicans didn’t just put up with Trump, but worked proactively with him to try to discredit the election both before and after the Jan. 6 insurrection."

Click on the link below for an expose of what REALLY happened regarding the attempt to destroy democracy in the US:

Mark Meadows' leaked texts destroy the Trump lone actor narrative

Shame On Them

"Elite universities have also produced a disproportionate number of senators and representatives from both parties. In fact, Republicans elected to the Senate over the last decade are more likely than their Democratic counterparts to have attended Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford.

"So how to explain Elise Stefanik, Harvard class of 2006, now the third-ranking House Republican, who recently called the January 6 hearings a “partisan witch hunt,” voted to invalidate the 2020 election, and has repeated Trump’s Big Lie of election fraud?

"Or Josh Hawley, Stanford class of 2002 and Yale Law class of 2006, now senator from Missouri, who in December 2020 became the first US senator to announce plans to object to the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, then led Senate efforts to overturn the Electoral College vote count, and fist-bumped the rioters on January 6?

"Or Ted Cruz, Princeton class of 1992 and Harvard Law class of 1995, now senator from Texas, who in late 2020 joined in John Eastman’s and Trump’s plot to object to the election results in six swing states and delay accepting the Electoral College results on January 6, potentially enabling Republican state legislatures to overturn them?

"And how to explain a new crop of Republican senate candidates?"

What the hell did they learn at Harvard and Yale?

Self-Esteem: Beware Of Narcissism

"Plenty of research shows that there is a relationship between self-esteem and subjective well-being, or a general sense of happiness in life. Hence we understand the drive to build self-esteem in the next generation. While conceding that the intentions are good, however, Dutch psychologists Eddie Brummelman, Sander Thomaes, and Constantine Sedikides argue that the methods we often use to raise self-esteem may be creating a generation of monsters."

One does not have to look far to see the truth of these researchers' findings. Click on the link below for the details:

How You Can Raise a Narcissist

"Beyond A Reasonable Doubt"

"Beyond a reasonable doubt is a legal standard of proof required to validate a criminal conviction in most adversarial legal systems.[1] It is a higher standard of proof than the balance of probabilities (commonly used in civil matters) and is usually therefore reserved for criminal matters where what is at stake (i.e., someone's life or liberty) is considered more serious and therefore deserving of a higher threshold.

"The prosecution in criminal matters typically bears the burden of proof and is required to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. This means that in order for a defendant to be found guilty, the case presented by the prosecution must be enough to remove any reasonable doubt in the mind of the judge or jury that the defendant is guilty of the crime with which one is charged." (Wikipedia)

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Our perception of reality is not perfect. Our brains have many cognitive flaws and biases. Science, our best method of understanding reality, is not certain as it uses inductive reasoning to develop tentative theories that can be modified with further objective evidence in the future. The legal system uses abductive reasoning in an attempt to find "the most likely" as it is less certain than a scientific theory. While science uses objective evidence only, the legal system also uses the less-certain subjective evidence as well.

Forensic (Pseudo) Science

"Under Obama, a commission called the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology researched and wrote a 2016 report called Forensic Science in Criminal Courts: Ensuring Validity of Feature-Comparison Methods which found many techniques, such as bite mark and shoe print analysis, so devoid of foundational validity they should be prohibited. But what was to be done with these findings would be left to the Trump administration. What that turned out to be was that the Obama commission's charter was allowed to immediately expire; the new Attorney General outright dismissed their report and said it would not be adopted; and Trump's own forensic science review was announced, which consisted of one former prosecutor hired to write one release stating the Obama report was in error and should be ignored. As of this writing, that's where we remain today."

Click on this link to understand just how bad so-called forensic science is, no thanks to the Trump administration, of course.

Recent History Of Israel, Arab And USA Relationships

Click on the links below for two interesting podcasts presenting behind-the-scenes negotiations concerning the Middle East:

"In this episode, Axios Middle East correspondent Barak Ravid and national political correspondent Jonathan Swan explore the dramatic collapse of Donald Trump's plan to broker 'the deal of the century' between the Israelis and Palestinians."

Trump’s Big Deal Part I: May Your House Be Destroyed

"This episode tells the previously unreported story of how a desperate attempt to stop Israel from annexing part of the occupied West Bank led to the most significant Middle East peace agreement in a generation."

Trump’s Big Deal Part II: From Secret Alliance to the Abraham Accords

Place The Blame For The Plight Of Afghanistan Allies Where It Belongs

"Olivia Troye, a former homeland security adviser to then-VP Mike Pence, reveals that racist and xenophobic ideologies inside the Trump Administration prevented Afghan allies from being granted Special Immigration Visas during the former president’s term. Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller was the tip of the spear." (link)

Ignoring Science Can Be A Killer

"Back in 2019, a panel of health experts declared that of every country in the whole world, the United States was the most prepared for handling a pandemic. So what went wrong? Acclaimed author Michael Lewis is unparalleled in unearthing the most compelling characters to tell an unexpected story – it’s no wonder he’s had multiple books turned into movies (The Blind Side, Moneyball, The Big Short). Now, Lewis has done it again with his latest book, “The Premonition”, following the people who spent years preparing for a pandemic only to be ignored at the most crucial juncture – to devastating results."

Click on the link below for an enlightening expose of how the present pandemic could have been greatly attenuated if the Trump administration was not a science denier:

The Premonition with Michael Lewis

The History of "The Big Lie"

"A big lie (German: große Lüge; often the big lie) is a propaganda technique used for political purpose, defined as 'a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the facts, especially when used as a propaganda device by a politician or official body'.^[1] The German expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, to describe the use of a lie so 'colossal' that no one would believe that someone 'could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously'.

"In the 21st century, the term was applied to Donald Trump's effort to discredit the results of the 2020 United States presidential election. 'The big lie' in this instance was the false claim that the election was stolen from him through massive fraud."

Click on the link below:

Big Lie

Trumpism And Other "Lost Causes"

"Today we take a look in real-time at the construction of the world's newest Lost Cause narrative, the failed re-election of Donald Trump. This is not our country's first experience with Lost Causes and it's not, contrary to popular opinion, even our second connection to a Lost Cause narrative because we didn't invent the first one, we borrowed it from somewhere else and I will tell that story today."

Throughout human history, there have been wars and other conflicts with each side battling for their "Cause." In each case, the victor writes the history, but the loser also has an alternative history that continues to compete with the winner. The podcast below looks at the "Lost Cause" of Trumpism through the lens of history.

Click on the link below:

The Lost Cause of the Election of Trump

The Trump Administration’s Assault On Science And Secularism

 "Our timeline recaps four years of executive orders and federal agency policies that have attacked science and eroded the wall of separation between church and state."

Frankly, I can't imagine a worse display of magical thinking by a POTUS. Click on the link below:

Undermining Science and Secularism

Voter Fraud Is Bogus

Contrary to what Trump and his sycophants are saying, the incidence of true voter fraud of any type is minuscule. The podcast below clarifies the point with what magical thinkers avoid: evidence.

"Today we take a look at the long history and motivations for voter suppression, explain why it tends to help one party over the other and why vote-by-mail is the best solution to the majority of our voting problems."

Click on the link below:

Politics is Pointillism, Stand Back to See it Clearly (Voter Suppression)

Comedians Have Figured Out The Trick To Covering Trump

"While major news networks have struggled to figure out the right way to cover the Trump administration, political satirists like Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, and Seth Meyers have demonstrated why comedy can be such a powerful antidote to bullshit."

Click on the link below:

Every Media reporter needs to internalize this.

Remember, 

Understand WHY Complete Drug Testing Is Mandatory!

"At a Thursday news briefing, Trump trumpeted that chloroquine had shown 'very, very encouraging early results' and said 'we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately.' Minutes later, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, an oncologist, clarified that the drug would be available 'in the setting of a clinical trial — a large, pragmatic clinical trial — to actually gather that information and answer the question that needs to be answered and — asked and answered.'

"Friday, the President said, 'It may work, it may not work. I feel good about it. That’s all it is. Just a feeling.' At the same press conference, Anthony Fauci, a physician who heads the NIAID and a veteran of outbreaks going back to HIV, emphasized the need for a methodical clinical trial."

Thanks to Trump, and quacks like Dr. Oz (link to his latest action) and many other magical thinkers, people are dying from hydroxychloroquine, a valid antimalaria drug, in efforts to avoid the coronavirus effects. Below are the steps ALL drugs MUST go through before approval for a particular disease:

• Phase 1 studies (typically involve 20 to 80 people). Phase 2 studies (typically involve a few dozen to about 300 people). Phase 3 studies (typically involve several hundred to about 3,000 people).

"The study referenced by Trump, and other studies done so far of potential treatments for Covid-19, are small and hastily designed even by the standards of Phase 1 studies. So how often do infectious-disease drugs that enter Phase 2 studies reach the market? An analysis by the Biotechnology Industry Organization says they worked out only 27.5% of the time between 2009 and 2015. That means that three-quarters of the time, medicines against infectious disease that looked promising in small studies either were ineffective or had side effects that made them unusable. Even for medicines that reached Phase 3 trials, just 63% succeeded."

Why President Trump is at odds with his medical experts over using malaria drugs against Covid-19

Trump's Most Egregious Pardon?

"Trump commuted the sentence of Judith Negron, who was convicted on 24 counts of defrauding Medicare through her mental health care business. She declined a plea deal and in 2011 was convicted by a jury of conspiracy to commit health-care fraud, health-care fraud, conspiracy to pay and receive illegal health-care kickbacks, conspiracy to commit money laundering, money laundering, and structuring to avoid reporting requirements.

"Maximum sentencing would have given her life imprisonment as co-owner of a Miami-area health-care company, American Therapeutic Corp.

"Negron’s co-owners Lawrence Duran and Marianella Valera both took plea deals and were sentenced to 50 years and 35 years, respectively, for their roles in the scheme. Their sentences weren’t commuted.

"Trump’s actions 'send a horrible message to the front-line fraud fighters not only at the DOJ, but at the state level,” said Matthew J. Smith, executive director of the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud."

Clemency for Medicare Fraudster Belies Justice

What Was Known About Trump BEFORE The Election

It is old news that a large group of mental health professionals signed a letter months ago stating that Trump is mentally unfit to be the POTUS. Unfortunately, essentially all that we know about him was fully known in the Summer of 2016, as can be seen in this detailed article in The Atlantic magazine (link).

If the USA was a science-based society, it would require all presidential candidates to be evaluated from known public sources by a respected team of mental health professionals*. But, we know how that goes in our magical/faith-based country. SMH

* (cough, cough) tax returns also?

The USA Is In Distress

Is History Going To Repeat Itself?

Yes, politics is very polarized presently, with those who are globalist and want to cooperate with the rest of the world on one side and with those who are nationalistic and isolationistic on the other. History shows the effects of both of these ideologies. One is very dangerous for us all. Thus, the claims that both sides are the part of the problem we have is not supported by the evidence.

Trump is reviving the policies that once darkened the world

Republicans: Please Look At The Whole Picture

"Imagine an episode of 'CSI: Miami' in which the investigators have a suspect and are beginning their forensic work. As they gather the evidence, they dis­cover that the suspect has no serious alibi for the night of the crime. It also doesn’t take them long to figure out what could have motivated their suspect to kill his victim. Using more sophisticated equipment, they uncover physical evidence that links the suspect to the victim and to the crime scene—blood stains on the suspect’s clothes that match the victim’s blood type, DNA evi­dence that positively identifies the blood as that of the victim, soil on the suspect’s shoes whose chemical composition matches that of the soil at the crime scene. Our investigators are also able to get their hands on a recording of the crime scene taken by a surveillance camera at a critical time right before the crime, and using digital video-enhancing techniques, they manage to retrieve meaningful evidence. Aided by powerful face-recognition soft­ware, they are able to place the suspect at the crime scene at the right time.