Thursday, April 12th, 2018
Noor Al-Sibai, - Raw Story
Stephan: The christofascists through their Frankenstein, the Republic Party, are doing everything they can to change the fundamental nature of the American judiciary by appointing men and women whose views are profoundly at variance with the majority of Americans. Did you think desegregation was a settled legal and cultural view, that any judicial nominee would affirm if asked? Surprise, surprise, meet Wendy Vitter, who Trump has proposed as a Federal judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana.
New Orleans Trump judicial nominee Wendy Vitter
A federal judicial nominee on Wednesday refused to say whether she agrees with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that ruled “separate but equal” schools are unconstitutional when grilled during her Senate confirmation hearing.
“Do you believe that Brown v. Board of Education was correctly decided?” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) asked Trump judicial nominee Wendy Vitter.
“Senator, I don’t mean to be coy,” Vitter responded, “but I think I get into a difficult area when I start commenting on Supreme Court decisions, which are correctly decided and which I may disagree with.”
“My personal, political or religious views I would set aside,” she continued, saying that if she were confirmed she would uphold the “binding” decision.
After Blumenthal once more asked the anti-abortion New Orleans lawyer if she agreed with the more than half a century old precedent, she continue to deflect.
“I would respectfully not comment on what could be my boss’ ruling,” Vitter said.
If confirmed, Vitter will become a federal judge in the Eastern District […]
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Thursday, April 12th, 2018
John Burnett, - Reader Supported News/npr
Stephan: Private prisons are essentially a grift in which the literal warehousing of the bodies of peasants are used as valves to milk the public treasury. Private prisons are not something a democracy should have, but they can be very profitable, so the Trump administration has wedded its racist anti-immigrant policies to its privatization of prisons schemes and presto, a profitable milking barn is created.
A new Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility on this site in Conroe, Texas, will house up to 1,000 immigrants at a cost of $44 million a year to U.S. taxpayers.
Credit: John Burnett/NPR
The Trump administration wants to expand its network of immigrant jails. In recent months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has called for five new detention facilities to be built and operated by private prison corporations across the country. Critics are alarmed at the rising fortunes of an industry that had fallen out of favor with the previous administration.
The Joe Corley Detention Facility is a sprawling complex surrounded by shiny concertina wire located in Conroe, Texas — about an hour north of Houston.
ICE spends more than $2 billion a year on immigrant detention through private jails like this one.
The Corley facility is owned by GEO Group, the nation’s largest private prison company.
ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service pay GEO $32 million a year to house, feed and provide medical care for […]
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Thursday, April 12th, 2018
BOBBY LEWIS, - Media Matters
Stephan: Study after study reports that Republicans do not like educated people because the more education a person gets the more likely they are to vote Democratic. The solution: First, gut public schools and turn them into charter and private schools where you can teach propaganda not facts. Second, corrupt universities and colleges by funding professorships for christofascist disinformation academics. Three, voter suppression. Four, gerrymander districts. Five, use the christofascist media to make people fearful about colleges and claim "conservative" views are suppressed. In that way you get a docile, ignorant peasantry easily manipulated by fear, hate, and racism. Here is an example of how No. 5 works.
Photo illustration by; Natalie Matthews-Ramo.
Credit for images: FoxNews and FoxNews.com.
On April 6, Politico magazine ran a profile of Charlie Kirk, the founder, chief fundraiser, and public face of Turning Point USA (TPUSA). Though TPUSA is perhaps best known for a misguided 2017 protest in which members wore adult diapers to “trigger the libs”, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit’s stated mission is to “identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.” Politico magazine reported that TPUSA’s donors generally “inhabit a conservative media universe that pumps them with anxiety about liberal kids,” and that “Kirk is not shy about saying he’s selling them a solution to those worries”:
“You can’t watch Fox News without seeing five or six segments a day about the nuttiness on college campuses,” Kirk told me in one of several interviews we conducted starting in November of last year. “You pair that nuttiness up with people in their 60s and 70s who are beginning to map out […]
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Wednesday, April 11th, 2018
Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History - University of Michigan - truthdig
Stephan: Here is some lovely good news. The Trumpian christofascist may not believe in non-carbon energy but, thankfully much of the rest of the world has better sense, and this is what is being achieved. Bravo, Portugal, Costa Rica, and Scotland.
Solar in Portugal
Credit: ACCIONA Energy
The aspiration for a 100% green electricity grid is no longer a dream. It is regularly being achieved in the real world for weeks or months on end. This development is absolutely crucial, since burning fossil fuels at the rate we are burning them is rapidly changing the climate in ways that seriously harm our quality of life.
In this past March, Portugal not only generated enough electricity from renewables to power the whole country for the whole month, it actually produced extra electricity this way. Portugal is constructing an underwater cable to export green electricity to Morocco, and hopes to strengthen the links of its grid to Spain and France. But the important thing is that Portugal, a country of over 10 million people, may soon regularly avoid burning fossil fuels for making electricity nationally. 100% renewables are becoming normal.
Portugal has an advantage in that some 30% of its electricity comes from hydro. Still, if it had not invested heavily in wind and in re-engineering its national grid, […]
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Wednesday, April 11th, 2018
Jennifer Kavanagh, Michael D. Rich, - Rand Corporation
Stephan: Truth Decay. Spot-on term. Here is an assessment by the Rand Corporation that deserves your most serious attention.
Over the past two decades, national political and civil discourse in the United States has been characterized by “Truth Decay,” defined as a set of four interrelated trends: an increasing disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations of facts and data; a blurring of the line between opinion and fact; an increase in the relative volume, and resulting influence, of opinion and personal experience over fact; and lowered trust in formerly respected sources of factual information. These trends have many causes, but this report focuses on four: characteristics of human cognitive processing, such as cognitive bias; changes in the information system, including social media and the 24-hour news cycle; competing demands on the education system that diminish time spent on media literacy and critical thinking; and polarization, both political and demographic. The most damaging consequences of Truth Decay include the erosion of civil discourse, political paralysis, alienation and disengagement of individuals from political and civic institutions, and uncertainty over national policy.
This report explores the causes and consequences of Truth Decay and how they are […]
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