George Santos sentenced to 87 months in prison

One of the most spectacular cases of fraud by a member of the US Congress came to an end today when George Santos was sentenced to 87 months in prison for all the crimes he had committed. The brazenness of both his frauds and the way he responded when he was found out were truly breathtaking. The judge was not convinced by his last-minute expressions of contrition.

He lied extensively about his life story both before and after entering the US Congress, where he was the first openly LGBTQ+ Republican elected to the body. He was ultimately convicted of defrauding donors.
…

He admitted to deceiving donors and stealing the identities of nearly a dozen people, including his family members, to fund his winning campaign. He also made up strings of fantastical stories about his life, identity and experiences.

During his court case he frequently held press gatherings and mocked the media and his detractors, saying he was being smeared.

Santos was shown to have spent donor money on vacations, luxury goods, Botox treatment and the website OnlyFans.
…

Santos’s sentencing was not without controversy. Before his Friday court appearance, he referred to himself as a “scapegoat” on social media, in reference to prosecutors accusing him of organizing the fraudulent conspiracy.

Santos also alleged that the justice department was a “cabal of pedophiles”, in posts made to X. Prosecutors highlighted Santos’s comments in a filing after Santos’s defense team requested a two-year prison sentence.
…

As part of the plea agreement, Santos was forced to pay a restitution of $373,749.97 and forfeiture of $205,002.97.

A list of his lies is something to behold. And yet, for a while, his Republican colleagues in Congress were willing stand by him until the scandal got so bad that they booted him out. It was a local newspaper the North Shore Leader that first accused him of fabricating his resume shortly before his election but the story did not gain traction in the major media.

Since he was convicted in federal court, he could appeal to Trump to pardon him. It would not be at all surprising to me if Trump did that.

Lawrence Krauss taken down by Rebecca Watson

Via Pharyngula, I saw an excellent analysis by Rebecca Watson (see below) about a new book coming out that is edited by Lawrence Krauss that has the title The War on Science.

She takes apart Krauss, describing his abominable behavior towards women over the years. Krauss was the chair of the physics department at Case Western Reserve University from 1993 until 2005, when I was also in the department. Because he was the chair, I had plenty of interactions with him though we were not friends and did not socialize outside of official functions. While I did not have any problems with him personally or professionally (except on one occasion when I felt that he behaved ungraciously), I had seen and heard things that made me have misgivings about his judgment and ethics, and so found the charges made against him by so many women to be utterly plausible.

While the book is not yet out, Watson’s description about the blurbs about it sounded to me like it was written by Republican MAGA types, claiming that the enemies of science are wokeness, DEI, transgender women, war on free speech, cancel culture, and all the other usual suspects that are trotted out by the MAGA-adjacent for all society’s ills. (It is curious that most of the people who shout loudest about their right to free speech being denied are rich, famous, and (mostly) white men who seem to have no difficulty finding publishers and other media outlets for their views. It seems like what they really want is that, despite their obnoxious views, to be loved by those who were their allies before their ugly sides were revealed.)

Watson talks about other contributors to the book like Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, and Steven Pinker, all of whom have a marked anti-trans bias. She did not discuss other dubious contributors such as Niall Ferguson, Jordan Peterson, and Peter Boghossian. Some of them are not even scientists and so I was surprised that they could not sign on another famous transphobe J. K. Rowling to boost the sales.

California is now the world’s fourth largest economy

It has just surpassed Japan.

California’s economy has surpassed Japan’s, making the Golden state the fourth largest economy in the world, Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Thursday.

The state’s nominal GDP reached $4.1tn, according to data from the International Monetary Fund and the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, edging out Japan’s $4.02tn nominal GDP. California now ranks behind the US at $29.18tn, China at $18.74tn and Germany at $4.65tn.

This took me by surprise. I knew that California had a large economy but did not realize that it was this large, and because of its high growth rate, maybe on track to become even larger than Germany and be third.

The state has outperformed the world’s top economies with a growth rate in 2024 of 6% compared with the US’s 5.3%, China’s 2.6% and Germany’s 2.9%. This week’s new rankings come six years after California surpassed the United Kingdom and became the world’s fifth largest economy.

The state’s population is just under 40 million, which places it at #39 in rankings of population by country, just below Canada. The per capita GDP of California is $102,500 while that of the rest of the US is $73,529.

Like many other Democratic states, it sends more to the federal government than it receives from them, whereas most Republican states receive more than they send. So Republicans, who love to whine about how ‘their’ money goes to the undeserving, are in reality the ones who are living off the wealth of others.

California is a major contributor to economic growth nationally, with the money it sends to the federal government outpacing what it receives in federal funding by $83bn, according to a statement from Newsom’s office.

Despite an enormous shortage of affordable housing that has fueled a homelessness crisis in the state, the population has grown in recent years. Meanwhile, last year the state reported its tourism spending had hit an all-time high – though California has seen a drop in some areas.

Canadian tourism in California was down 12% in February compared with the same month last year amid Trump’s tariff war. In response, the state has announced a new campaign to draw Canadians back, while one city has put up pro-Canada signs across its downtown.

But the governor Gavin Newsom warns that California’s economy could be hurt by Trump’s actions.

Trump must be looking like a paper tiger to China

It seems to be the conventional wisdom that the tariff war between the US and China is not good for anybody, least of all the two countries concerned. And yet, here we are with China having tariffs of 125% on US goods and the US having tariffs of 145% on Chinese goods, rates that would have been thought utterly preposterous before this trade war started. Trump must have thought that China would quickly come to him seeking to make a deal, but they have not, even though the tariffs will undoubtedly hurt their economy and their long range plans, according to Yasheng Huang, an expert on China who teaches at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management.

I think it’s clear they [China] don’t want a trade war. Their economy is struggling, and the export sector has been one of its few bright spots. Last year, they had almost a trillion-dollar trade surplus. The property sector is not doing well. The technology sector is doing well, but it’s not really adding that much to G.D.P. growth. So this was purely a trade war that was initiated by the United States, and not by China.

I don’t think they want to cave in. That would make the Chinese leadership look very bad. And, moreover, I don’t think they trust the Trump Administration. Even if they were to give concessions this time around, I don’t think they believe that the concessions would hold. So there are multiple motivations on their part not to quickly come to an agreement if that agreement requires significant concessions.
…

I think, if I had to place a bet, my bet is that they still want to continue with the current model. They don’t trust Trump. They don’t believe that his tariffs are credible. And I have to say I agree with them. And they think that he is going to make concessions. If he is going to make concessions, then I think they prefer to stay with the current model, which is a lot of investments, a lot of production, and then relying on the export markets. I think that’s their preferred option.

[Read more…]

Larry David skewers Bill Maher for normalizing Trump

Bill Maher was invited by Trump to have dinner with him at the White House and afterwards said that privately Trump was different from the way he presented himself in public, that he was ‘gracious and measured’ and had a sense of humor.

Comedian and talk show host Bill Maher praised President Trump after their late March meeting at the White House, describing him as “gracious and measured.” 
…

The talk show host emphasized that he did not turn “MAGA” and “to the President’s credit, there was no pressure to” do so during their March 31 meeting.   

“Just for starters, he laughs. I’ve never seen him laugh in public, but he does, including to himself, and it’s not fake, believe me. As a comedian of 40 years, I know a fake laugh when I hear it,” Maher said.
…

The longtime comedian said he felt like he did not need to walk on “eggshells” while speaking to Trump, something, in his view, would be unlikely around former Democratic Presidents Obama and Clinton.

“I feel it’s emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days,” Maher said, later telling his viewers that Trump is different in public compared to his persona in a private setting.
…

“Trump was gracious and measured. And why he isn’t that in other settings, I don’t know, and I can’t answer, and it’s not my place to answer.”

Maher is of course one of those people who calls himself a liberal even as he increasingly moves rightward, claiming smugly that he is being sensible and has not changed but that it is liberals and Democrats who have moved too far to the left and are going crazy.

Larry David was having none of this. In a hilarious New York Times op-ed titled My Dinner With Adolf, he skewers Maher without mentioning him by name.

I will not quote from David’s piece because one should really read the whole thing.

Trump backtracking on boasts to end the war in Ukraine

During the presidential election campaign, one of the boldest promises that Trump made was that he would end the war between Russia and Ukraine, not just on day one of his presidency, but even before because just the fact that was elected would bring both sides to the negotiating table. This is what he said in his debate with Kamala Harris on September 10, 2024.

Former President Donald Trump said if reelected he would end the war in Ukraine before his inauguration because he is respected by Ukraine and Russia’s leaders.

“That is a war that’s dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president,” the Republican said during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday. If I win, when I’m president-elect and what I’ll do is I’ll speak to one, I’ll speak to the other, I’ll get them together.”

“I know Zelenskyy very well and I know Putin very well. I have a good relationship and they respect your president, O.K., they respect me, they don’t respect Biden.”

[Read more…]

How the new pope will be elected

I have not yet seen the new thriller film Conclave (the word comes from the Latin cum clave, meaning “with key”) about the election of a pope but it looks like the filmmakers hit the jackpot in terms of timing since the death today of pope Francis means that we will have the process unfolding before us within the next few weeks when the cardinals gather in Rome to elect a new pope and the storm of publicity will make people even more curious about the film

Only 135 of the cardinals are eligible to vote, with the remaining 117 excluded from voting because they are over the age of 80. 108 of the voting cardinals were appointed by Francis so this election will very much bear his imprint. Although he was from Argentina, most of the voting cardinals are still from Europe, though now a quarter of the cardinals are from Asia. They meet in a locked room after excluding all but the voting cardinals and a handful of people such as doctors, confessors, masters of ceremonies, cooks, and cleaning staff, all of whom are also sworn to secrecy.
[Read more…]

Supreme Court stops deportations

It has become clear that the Trump gang’s plan is to summarily detain and deport people before they have had a chance to challenge their detention in the courts via a habeas corpus petition. Once the people have been deported, they then claim that there is nothing they can do to bring them back, even if the plane carrying them was still in the air. This practice so enraged a district court judge James Boasberg that he began criminal contempt proceedings against the government because of their earlier defiance of his order to turn around planes that had been transporting people to El Salvador prions and then stonewalling his attempts to get them to give him a clear timeline of their actions.

A federal judge found probable cause Wednesday to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt for willfully disobeying his order to immediately halt deportations under the rarely used Alien Enemies Act and turn around any airborne planes.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s order gives the administration a final opportunity to come into compliance but says he otherwise will take steps to identify the specific people who flouted his March 15 ruling, which was later lifted by the Supreme Court, and refer them for prosecution.
…

In dispute is whether the government violated an oral order from Boasberg given around 6:45 p.m. that day to halt or turn around any flights carrying migrants. 

The White House has sought to sidestep that question, saying it complied with a 7:27 p.m. written order. In court, however, they have declined to provide Boasberg with flight details and have asserted the ability to do so under the state secrets privilege.

Boasberg on Thursday raised the specter that the administration’s delay in publicizing the proclamation could have been “trying to put measures in place to get people subject to the proclamation removed from the country before it’s possible to challenge” their deportation and before it could be blocked by a court.

[Read more…]

Appeals Court slaps down Trump

After the US Supreme Court said that the Trump administration needed to facilitate Kilmar Ábrego García’s release from a prison in El Salvador, they started, as predicted, playing word games to not do anything, arguing that ‘facilitate’ only meant that if he should turn up at the US border, they would let him in but that they need do nothing more. They had earlier admitted that sending him had been a mistake but said that since he was now in the custody of El Salvador there was nothing that they could do.

The president of El Salvador came to the White House and he and Trump gave a joint press conference where they yucked it up and seemed to find it highly amusing that an innocent man is now in a foreign prison separated from his family here, and has been reportedly traumatized by the experience. It was disgusting to see how little regard they had for the fate of an innocent man.

The case went before a three-judge panel from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and they blasted this line of reasoning in a unanimous opinion, saying that the word ‘facilitate’ did not allow the government to do nothing
[Read more…]

Affirmative action for US students

It is clear that the Trump gang is going after foreign students by revoking their student visas willy-nilly for the most trivial of reasons, while pretending that it is about fighting anti-Semitism.

“The fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi was crystal clear in his condemnation of antisemitism during his 2023 “60 Minutes” interview. “To be antisemitic is unjust,” the student activist plainly stated, denouncing anyone who uses antisemitic rhetoric when protesting Israel’s war on Gaza.

On Monday, Donald Trump’s administration arrested Mahdawi after sadistically luring him to an immigration office by implying his citizenship application process was complete. The excuse offered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio is that Mahdawi needs to be deported to halt the spread of antisemitism. But Rubio’s team offered no evidence that Mahdawi is antisemitic, and did not bother to acknowledge his very public denunciation of antisemitism. 

Similar accusations have been leveled at Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and green card holder arrested for participating in the Gaza protests, and Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts student on a visa from Turkey, arrested for signing an op-ed opposing the war. There has been no evidence produced of antisemitism from either, however. On the contrary, the Washington Post reports that an internal State Department memo written before Ozturk’s arrest found no evidence to support the accusation. Mikey Barat, Mahdawi’s Israeli friend, told The Intercept that while they “do not agree on everything,” Mahdawi “has denounced violence” and seeks “coexistence.” 

[Read more…]