Saturday, August 5th, 2017
Stephan: I think it is very important that those who have a socially progressive world view recognize that the Great Schism Trend has reached a point where it is almost irreconcilable.
It is my view that Special Counsel Mueller could come forward with indictments from his grand juries and it will make not a whit of difference to the Christofascists who are the supporters of Trump.
They don't care what he does, as long as he supports the issues about which they are obsessed: control of women, White supremacy politics, and their fantasies about returning to an America (which never actually existed but they fantasize it did). In their ideal world women and people of color "know their place," men are dominant, and there should be no firewall between church and state so that America becomes a Christian kingdom.
You may think all of this is laughable but I assure you Trumpers will create civil violence over these issues. It is too early to be sure, but I am beginning to suspect that we are seeing the first steps in what I believe is the long term political and social trend of the United States: power devolves to the states and they go their different ways, with the Blue value states prospering, and the Red value states become ever more degraded and angry.
Trump at recent West Virginia rally
Credit: NBC
Ever since Inauguration Day, the public’s faith in the president has been eroding. According to the latest Gallup surveys, only about 38 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s performance, which is down roughly 5 points from February. Vox’s own polling, conducted in partnership with SurveyMonkey, shows a similar drop — from 46 percent at the outset of his term to 41 percent in July.
For the president’s critics, these slipping approval numbers seem like vindication. They show that Americans aren’t blind to the disorder in the White House — that at least some Trump supporters are second-guessing their president.
But what does this mean in practical terms? American politics, by design, has never perfectly followed public opinion. After all, Trump never had a majority of Americans rooting for him. He won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote. What’s important isn’t his popularity nationwide but his approval rate in key parts of the country.
Democrats, for one, hope that […]
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Saturday, August 5th, 2017
Adam Lusher, - Independent (U.K.)
Stephan: The failure of industrial chemical mono-culture agriculture and animal husbandry is becoming increasingly obvious. There can no longer be any doubt that it poisons humans, birds, bees, and the creatures of the sea. The recent decisions of the Trump EPA, and Department of Agriculture removing or relaxing regulatory oversight assure this will continue and the result of that will be the continued diminishment of the United States.
Gulf of Mexico dead zone July 2017
Credit: N. Rabalais, LSU/LUMCON
Scientists have found a polluted ‘dead zone’ of ocean that is larger than Wales and the biggest ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA) said that this year’s Gulf of Mexico dead zone consisted of 8,776 square miles of oxygen-starved sea, covering an area significantly bigger than the 8,020 square miles of Wales.
The dead zone forms annually, mainly because of farm fertiliser pollutants washing into the Atlantic from the Mississippi River, but this year’s affected area was the largest since recording began in 1985.
The environmental campaign group Mighty Earth has blamed the meat industry for the dead zone, claiming much of the nitrate and phosphorous pollution came from fertiliser used in producing vast quantities of corn and soy to feed meat animals.
It singled out the supply chain of Tyson Foods, America’s largest meat company, for particular criticism, but the firm hit back, with a spokeswoman disputing the claims and insisting the Arkansas-based multinational was committed to protecting the environment.
The spokeswoman added: […]
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Saturday, August 5th, 2017
Steven Rosenfeld , National Political Reporter - Alternet
Stephan: Trump supported by the Republican zombies of the congress unabashedly is promoting White identitarian politics. This is going to have a major effect on the Great Schism Trend because whether the Republicans like it in about 15 years we are going to be a majority minority nation.
In this new world the rationale behind gerrymandering and voter suppression will become blatantly obvious. By then the Republicans hope to have turned affirmative action on its head so that it will protect the newly emergent White minority. Here is the latest on this trend.
Members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement hold flags as they salute and shout “Sieg Heil” during a rally in front of the Statehouse in Trenton, N.J.
Credit: AP/Mel Evans
Trump appointees with white power leanings are not just scaling back federal civil rights protections. They are elevating the defense of white Americans across the government as the nation’s demographics become increasingly diverse.
This startling shift can be seen across many departments, from justice to education to environmental protection to labor. It’s not just top appointees in policymaking posts who have long opposed affirmative action and worked to subvert equal rights for minorities; it’s also emerging civil rights enforcement directives, proposed budgets slashing civil rights lawyers and announcements for new anti-minority agendas.
“This White House initiative represents a dangerous departure from policies and practices that help heal our nation’s racial divisions; instead, it serves as a desperate appeal to the worst fears of those who consciously or subconsciously despise the increasing diversity and shifting power dynamic in America today,” said Edward A. Hailes Jr., managing […]
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Saturday, August 5th, 2017
Stephan: The more scientists dig into climate change, the more consequences not even imagined a few years ago are proving to be major challenges. Here is one I would bet you have not heard about, and never imagined.
Indian female farmers sow paddy in a field during monsoon season near Allahabad on July 19, 2014. The monsoon rains, which usually hit India from June to September, are crucial for farmers whose crops feed hundreds of millions of people.
Credit: Sanjay Kanojia/AFP
Rising carbon dioxide levels could have an unexpected side effect on food crops: a decrease in key nutrients. And this could put more people at risk of malnutrition.
A 2014 study showed that higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are likely to put a dent in the protein, iron and zinc content of rice, wheat, peas and other food crops. Samuel Myers, an environmental health researcher at Harvard’s School of Public Health, was the lead author on that study.
This time, Myers and his colleagues wanted to quantify what those changes might mean for people around the world. To do this, they built a new database detailing the foods people in each country eat and the nutrient content of those foods. The database lists the “per capita consumption of 225 […]
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Stephan: More fascinating and important news in the Homo Superior Trend. Developments at coming now almost weekly. It is good news, but it contains a deeper ethical issue that is not being addressed properly in my view.
These embryos were made in the lab with sperm carrying a genetic mutation known to cause hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. CRISPR/Cas9 was used to correct the mutation.
Credit: OHSU
CRISPR/Cas9 is a gene editing technology that’s revolutionizing science at a breathtaking pace.
One of its most exciting, taboo, and controversial applications is tweaking the genes of eggs, sperm, or early embryos to alter a human life. This could one day mean the ability to create smarter or more athletic humans (yes, “designer babies”), but also the chance to knock out disease-causing genetic mutations that parents pass on to their children. We’re talking about eliminating mutations linked to diseases like breast and ovarian cancers or cystic fibrosis.
On Wednesday, a team of scientists reported that they have made major progress toward proving the latter is possible.
In a paper published in the prestigious journal Nature, a team led by Shoukhrat Mitalipovof Oregon Health and Science University described how it used CRISPR/Cas9 to correct a genetic mutation that’s linked to a heart disorder called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in human embryos. And they did it without the errors that have plagued previous […]
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