Lazy Caturday Reads

Good Day!!

It’s a fairly quiet news day today, since we are fast approaching Christmas and the New Year. I’m just going to post a mixed bag of stories that caught my eye this morning.

Before we get into any bad news, here’s a cat story from ScienceAlert: NASA Has Beamed The First High-Def Video Across 19 Million Miles. Featuring a Cat.

NASA on Monday announced it had used a state-of-the-art laser communication system on a spaceship 19 million miles (31 million kilometers) away from Earth – to send a high-definition cat video.

The 15-second meow-vie featuring an orange tabby named Taters is the first to be streamed from deep space, and demonstrates it’s possible to transmit the higher-data-rate communications needed to support complex missions such as sending humans to Mars.

The video was beamed to Earth using a laser transceiver on the Psyche probe, which is journeying to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to explore a mysterious metal-rich object. When it sent the video, the spaceship was 80 times the distance between the Earth and Moon.

The encoded near-infrared signal was received by the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, and from there sent to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.

“One of the goals is to demonstrate the ability to transmit broadband video across millions of miles. Nothing on Psyche generates video data, so we usually send packets of randomly generated test data,” said Bill Klipstein, the tech demo’s project manager at JPL.

“But to make this significant event more memorable, we decided to work with designers at JPL to create a fun video, which captures the essence of the demo as part of the Psyche mission.”

Space missions have traditionally relied on radio waves to send and receive data, but working with lasers can increase the data rate by 10 to 100 times….

The ultra-HD video took 101 seconds to send to Earth at the system’s maximum bit rate of 267 megabits per second – faster than most home broadband connections.

​”In fact, after receiving the video at Palomar, it was sent to JPL over the internet, and that connection was slower than the signal coming from deep space,” said Ryan Rogalin, the project’s receiver electronics lead at JPL.

The big news yesterday was that the Supreme Court rejected Jack Smith’s request that they immediately decide the question of whether Trump has complete immunity from prosecution for anything he did in office. 

Adam Liptak at The New York Times: Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case on Trump’s Immunity Defense for Now.

The Supreme Court declined on Friday to decide for now whether former President Donald J. Trump is immune from prosecution on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.

The decision to defer consideration of a central issue in the case was a major practical victory for Mr. Trump, whose lawyers have consistently sought to delay criminal cases against him around the country.

It is unclear what the court’s order will mean for the timing of the trial, which is scheduled to start on March 4, though it makes postponement more likely. The case will now move forward in an appeals court, which has put it on a fast track, and most likely return to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks or months.

In denying review, the justices gave no reasons, which is typical, and there were no noted dissents.

Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting Mr. Trump, had asked the justices to move with extraordinary speed, bypassing the appeals court.

Any significant delays could plunge the trial into the heart of the 2024 campaign season or push it past the election, when Mr. Trump could order the charges be dropped if he wins the presidency.

A speedy decision by the justices was of the essence, Mr. Smith said in his petition seeking immediate Supreme Court review, because Mr. Trump’s appeal of a trial judge’s ruling rejecting his claim of immunity suspended the criminal trial.

Mr. Smith wrote that the case “presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.”

“The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request,” Mr. Smith added. “This is an extraordinary case.”

The appeals court has already put the cast on a fast track with argument beginning January 9. Trump celebrated the SCOTUS decision as a huge win, but legal experts beg to differ.

Yahoo.com: George Conway Throws Water on Notion of a Trump Victory From Supreme Court Decision: ‘Isn’t a Big Deal.’

Count George Conway among those who are less than impressed by the Supreme Court’s decision Friday to pass on an expedited request to decide whether Donald Trump is protected by immunity in the Jan. 6-related federal case against him….

Christmas Kitty Cat, by Stella Sherman

“I think today’s order is not a big deal,” Conway told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes in an interview you can watch above. “I see a lot of people with their hair on fire. They can just douse their hair in water, because this isn’t a big deal. I don’t think it’s going to affect the trial date that much. Worst case is, the trial gets pushed to the summer.

“The reason is, I think this order shows the weakness of Trump’s immunity case,” Conway added. “And I think the court realizes it’s got the D.C. Circuit that’s going to hear arguments January 9th. It’s not a hard case. I think they’re going to move very quickly. If I was the presiding judge on the panel I’d already be writing the opinion. And once they rule, they can lift the stay, they can issue a mandate and lift the stay, which means, then you’re going to have Donald Trump saying ‘Oh, we need expedition, we need expedition.’”

Conway went on to repeat he thinks the timeline for a trial will be April, May or June and that “Donald Trump is not going to be able to stop it.”

“And the Supreme Court could grant that and hear it in May, hear it in June, and you could still have a summer trial,” Conway continued, regarding a possible post-conviction appeal. “Or better yet they could deny it because he’s already had his argument at a court of appeals before a very distinguished panel. Donald Trump should be frankly treated like every other criminal who’s been convicted in a federal district court and be forced to litigate his arguments after his conviction.”

Joyce Vance also weighed in on her Substack, Civil Discourse: Let’s Debunk This.

This afternoon, the Supreme Court declined Jack Smith’s request to hear Trump’s appeal on presidential immunity, bypassing the court of appeals. Trump’s immunity motion is important because if he wins, it’s game over. The entire indictment would get dismissed if he were immune from prosecution. And while my assessment is in line with Judge Chutkan’s—she denied Trump’s motion—we don’t know for certain what the Supreme Court will do.

Logically, Trump’s motion lacks merit.

• To grant it, the Court would have to hold that presidents are above the law. All presidents, not just Trump. Anything they do while they’re president is protected. We’ve seen that same argument rejected repeatedly in a civil context: E. Jean Carroll’s case and the civil suit over January 6 in Washington, D.C., for instance. There’s no analytical reason to believe criminal conduct is any more deserving of protection than civil violations are, once a president is out of office.

• Trump claims that even absent total immunity for presidential conduct, the conduct he’s been charged with falls within the “outer perimeter” of a president’s duties, so he’s entitled to immunity. To credit that, the courts would have to believe that the steps Trump took to interfere with multiple states’ votes, elections a president has no role in, are somehow a part of his job. Elections are run by secretaries of state and county officials. The president has no say in the final vote count and no duties, core or outer perimeter, to interfere in those counts or the final report of the Electoral College.

• If the Supreme Court granted Trump’s motion, what would prevent Joe Biden or any future president from doing precisely what Trump did in 2020, but with more skill—and succeeding? Nothing. The Supreme Court would have ruled they could do no wrong. And that’s why the Supreme Court has to deny Trump’s motion to dismiss the charges, unless it wants to end democracy by giving a license to the next president to do whatever it takes to stay in power.

Vance goes on to destroy Trump’s claims that this was huge victory for him. Read the details at the link.

A few more Trump stories:

Josh Fiallo at The Daily Beast: Trump Blames His Own Ignorance for Hitleresque Rhetoric.

Donald Trump claimed Friday that his recent comments about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. weren’t inspired by similar statements made by Adolf Hitler about Jewish people, saying he’s merely ignorant to the specifics of Hitler’s hateful rhetoric.

To drive home his point, Trump insisted in an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he really doesn’t “know anything about Hitler.”

Christmas Cat, by Daniel Rodgers

“I’m not a student of Hitler,” Trump said, defending his comments. “I never read his works. They say that he said something about blood, he didn’t say it the way I said it either, by the way, it’s a very different kind of a statement.”

When Hewitt pressed Trump about his rhetoric, Trump insisted again that immigrants are poisoning the blood of Americans.

“They’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums,” Trump said of immigrants. “They’re terrorists, absolutely, that’s poisoning our country, that’s poisoning the blood of our country.”

Later in that rant, after complaining about immigrant children going to U.S. schools without having learned English already, Trump said again, “We are poisoning our country; we’re poisoning the blood of our country.”

Hewitt informed Trump that Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that German blood was being poisoned by Jews, and suggested that his comments didn’t sound all that different from the Nazi leader.

Trump said he didn’t mean any racist sentiment with his “poisoning the blood” comments, and insisted he’s “doing incredibly” with Black and Hispanic voters.

As I have noted previously, Trump doesn’t need to read or study Hitler. He has Stephen Miller to write his speeches, which he then reads on a teleprompter.

This is pretty funny, from Amy B. Wang and Isaac Arnsdorf at The Washington Post: Trump claims he peacefully surrendered power, ignoring Jan. 6 attack.

Former president Donald Trump claimed Friday that he peacefully surrendered power at the end of his term in office, despite having urged a crowd of his supporters to converge on the U.S. Capitol, where some staged a deadly attack that interrupted Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s election on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump’s comments came during an interview with conservative syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt in which the former president was asked for reassurance that he would not be a dictator if he returned to the White House and whether he would peacefully surrender power at the end of his second term.

“Of course — and I did that this time,” Trump said, before repeating his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. “But I did. I did it anyway.”

Trump’s response omits the fact that he urged his supporters to converge on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while Congress was certifying Biden’s electoral win. Many in the pro-Trump mob that overran the Capitol that day had chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” in the misguided belief — pushed by Trump — that the then-Vice President Pence could have stopped Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.

In video of the Jan. 6 attack, law enforcement officers outside the Capitol were shown being harassed, beaten and sprayed with noxious liquids by members of the mob. In one video from the attack, a rioter can be seen bashing a fallen police officer with a pole flying the American flag. The unprecedented attack left five people dead, including a police officer and a woman shot by police. Two other officers who were on duty that day later died by suicide, and more than 100 officers were injured.

Trump and his supporters have consistently downplayed the severity of the Jan. 6 attack, but the former president’s insistence that he engaged in a peaceful transfer of power in 2021 has sparked new alarm in light of his recent authoritarian rhetoric.

Christmas Cat by Daniella Vasileva

And from Kierra Frazier at Politico: Trump vows a peaceful transfer of power if reelected. [This story is also based on the Hugh Hewitt interview.]

If reelected president in 2024, Donald Trump vowed Friday that he would turn over power peacefully to the next president after him….

Trump has been indicted for his role in trying to overturn the results of that contest, and he repeated his false claims on Friday that the last election was rigged.

“Of course,” Trump responded to Hewitt when asked if he would hand over power peacefully if reelected. “And I did that this time. And I’ll tell you what. The election was rigged, and we have plenty of evidence of it. But I did it anyway.”

I think the more important question is whether he will step aside peacefully if he loses the 2024 election, and I’m absolutely certain that he wouldn’t.

More stories you might find interesting:

Raw Story: A neuroscientist’s guide to surviving Christmas with Trump-loving relatives.

As the holiday season approaches, family gatherings are set to transform homes into microcosms of the national political landscape. In these reunions, conversations can quickly turn from benign banter about sports to the divisive topic of politics. With an election cycle upon us the name “Trump” can be as contentious as it is inescapable, turning a festive gathering of lights and eggnog into an ideological battleground.

This is the challenge many of us face this Christmas: How do we, armed with our morals and convictions, navigate the treacherous terrain of political discourse with those we love — without the feast turning into a fracas?

If you are a lone liberal leaf in a staunchly conservative family tree, you may be dreading the holiday. If you are not alone, and the family is more-or-less divided on political topics, it can be even worse — all holy hell can break loose. It is not an exaggeration to say that families can be — and sometimes are — torn apart in the highly polarized political climate we find ourselves in.

The solution to this problem lies in developing strategies based on an understanding of neuroscience and psychology that can calm the storm within, ensuring that our physiological responses do not commandeer our interactions.

But what if I told you that an understanding of the relevant concepts holds the key to not just surviving these encounters, but potentially bridging family divides? The goal isn’t to convert but to converse, and to plant seeds of thought that might, in time, bear fruit.

Let this article serve as a guide to navigating political discussions with grace and the subtle powers of persuasion.

The first thing we need to know is that two distinct yet interdependent cognitive systems govern our decision-making processes.

If any of this applies to you, read all the details at Raw Story. I’m fortunate that I don’t know and Trump supporters.

Carolyn Kee at Yahoo News: A new COVID variant is dominant in the US: Know these symptoms.

As holiday travel peaks in the United States, a heavily mutated new COVID-19 variant called JN.1 is spreading rapidly and fueling an increasing number of infections. The highly contagious omicron subvariant is now the dominant strain nationwide and accounts for nearly half of all cases.

JN.1 is currently the fastest-growing variant in the country, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

During a two-week period ending on Dec. 23, JN.1 made up an estimated 44% of cases in the U.S., per the CDC’s latest data. After JN.1, the next most common strain was the HV.1 subvariant, which accounted for about 22% of cases nationwide. At the end of November, JN.1 only made up about 8% of cases.

Respiratory virus season has yet to peak in the U.S., which means COVID-19 cases are expected to rise in the coming weeks.

JN.1 is also gaining speed in many other countries. Earlier this week, the World Health Organization classified JN.1 as a “variant of interest” due to its “rapidly increasing spread” globally.

Scientists around the world are closely monitoring JN.1, which has sparked some concern due to its rapid growth rate and large number of mutations. However, the new variant is closely related to a strain we’ve seen before. It’s a direct offshoot of BA.2.86, aka “Pirola,” which has been spreading in the U.S. since the summer.

JN.1 has one extra mutation compared to BA.2.86, which has more than 30 mutations that set it apart from the omicron XBB.1.5 variant. XBB.1.5 was the dominant strain for most of 2023 and it’s the variant targeted in the updated COVID-19 vaccines, TODAY.com previously reported.

All of the most prevalent COVID-19 variants in the U.S. right now are descendants of omicron, which began circulating in late 2021.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Supreme Court rules legislative maps unconstitutional, orders new boundaries for 2024 vote.

MADISON – The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday ordered the Republican-controlled state Legislature to draw new legislative boundaries ahead of the 2024 election, arguing their GOP advantage is unconstitutional — delivering a long-sought win for Democrats who have stayed deep in the Legislature’s minority for more than a decade.

The court in a 4-3 decision said the court is also prepared to replace the state’s heavily gerrymandered maps if the Legislature and Democratic governor cannot agree on a new plan.

“Wisconsin is a purple state, and I look forward to submitting maps to the Court to consider and review that reflect and represent the makeup of our state,” Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement.Law Forward, a Madison-based liberal-leaning law firm focused on voting issues, brought the legal challenge straight to the Supreme Court in August — bypassing lower courts in an expedited effort to put new maps in place before the fall.

The court ordered lawmakers to have new maps adopted for the August legislative primary. Wisconsin Elections Commission officials have said new maps must be in place by March 15.

The ruling forces half of the state Senate and the full Assembly to run in new legislative districts. Republicans currently hold 64 of 99 seats in the state Assembly and a supermajority in the state Senate, with 22 of 33 seats.

The ruling delivers a political landmine ahead of the 2024 presidential cycle that will all but certainly focus on the battleground state of Wisconsin. It’s the latest chink in Republican power since GOP dominance in Wisconsin state government began diminishing in 2016, when Donald Trump became president.

Since then, Republicans have lost the governor’s office and control of the state Supreme Court.

Read more at the link.

Cats in Christmas Hats, Ruth Sanderson

Finally, from Nicole Narea at Vox: The US may be flouting its own laws by sending unrestricted aid to Israel.

The recent high-profile killings of three Israeli hostages, two women in a Gaza church, and 11 unarmed Palestinian men in front of their family members have raised new global alarm at Israel’s targeting of civilians amid its war in Gaza. The deaths came as part of its ground assault, and as it continues a bombing campaign that even staunch Israel ally President Joe Biden has called “indiscriminate.” Yet, he continues to push for additional, essentially unconditional aid to Israel — despite the fact that some foreign affairs experts say existing US laws meant to safeguard human rights should have long restricted the flow of such assistance.

“We always treat Israel with kid gloves when it comes to potential human rights violations of any kind,” said Josh Paul, who has become a prominent critic of the Biden administration’s Israel policy since resigning from his post as the director of congressional and public affairs at the State Department bureau overseeing American arms sales over concerns about the Israeli response to the October 7 attack by Hamas, a Palestinian militant group designated as a terrorist organization by many countries. “When it comes to suspending or curtailing lethal military assistance, there’s no sign of anyone willing to take any actual steps.”

The US provides more aid to Israel than to any other country, about $3.8 billion annually in recognition of the two states’ “special relationship” that dates back decades. Now, Biden wants Congress to approve an additional $14.3 billion in aid to Israel as part of a broader package that also includes aid for Ukraine and that has been held up over immigration policy negotiations. He also recently circumvented Congress to sell Israel $106 million worth of tank ammunition.

Biden administration officials told CNN that they are not currently considering placing conditions on aid beyond those that already exist in federal law, saying that the US expects Israel to abide by international humanitarian law and that the Israel Defense Forces conducts internal legal reviews of its strikes beforehand.

“We’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel in the process. Not a single thing,” Biden recently told Democratic donors.

Read the rest at Vox.

Best wishes for a peaceful and relaxing long weekend, regardless of whether or not you are celebrating a religious holiday.