January 2019 - Page 10 of 26

Sunday, January 20th, 2019

Pentagon: Climate change threatens military installations

, - Politico

Stephan: The thing about military bases is that they are located to be optimal for the task of that installation. Naval bases, for instance, are placed near the sea. The problem, as the military is discovering, and this report describes, is that many of those sites are vulnerable to climate change. Thus tens of billions of dollars of your tax money are presently at risk, and it looks like it is going to cost tens of billions more to remediate the effects of something Trump and the Republican Party do not believe exists. An interesting little existential conundrum for which you and I are paying.

Credit: Union of Concerned Scientists

Flooding, drought and wildfires driven by climate change pose threats to two-thirds of the U.S. military’s installations, the Defense Department said in a new report required by Congress. (emphasis added)

The authors of the report, which the Pentagon delivered to Congress on Thursday, note that it probably underestimates the full extent of risk to military facilities because it only looks at likely impacts over the next two decades. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said the world needs to become carbon neutral by 2050 to prevent global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius, which would lock in many of the most catastrophic effects of climate change.

“It is relevant to point out that ‘future’ in this analysis means only 20 years in the future,” the report said. “Projected changes will likely be more pronounced at the mid-century mark; vulnerability analyses to mid- and late-century would likely reveal an uptick in vulnerabilities (if adaptation strategies are not implemented.)”

President Donald Trump has regularly dismissed climate science, including […]

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Sunday, January 20th, 2019

Generation Z Looks a Lot Like Millennials on Key Social and Political Issues

KIM PARKER, NIKKI GRAF AND RUTH IGIELNIK, - Pew Research Center

Stephan: If I were Republican I would fear for the future of my party. It is already becoming clear that except in a few of the really deep Red value states, the only way for a Republican to win is through tricks, gerrymandering, voter suppression or outright fraud. And even in those deep red states change is underway. As this extensive Pew Research study shows, the next generation of American voters not only don't agree with Republican values, they loathe both Trump and the Republican Party. I take this as excellent good news.

Gen Z

No longer the new kids on the block, Millennials have moved firmly into their 20s and 30s, and a new generation is coming into focus. Generation Z – diverse and on track to be the most well-educated generation yet – is moving toward adulthood with a liberal set of attitudes and an openness to emerging social trends.

On a range of issues, from Donald Trump’s presidency to the role of government to racial equality and climate change, the views of Gen Z – those ages 13 to 21 in 2018 – mirror those of Millennials.1 In each of these realms, the two younger generations hold views that differ significantly from those of their older counterparts. In most cases, members of the Silent Generation are at the opposite end, and Baby Boomers and Gen Xers fall in between.2

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Sunday, January 20th, 2019

Five reasons the pope’s clergy sex abuse meeting in Rome will fail

Father Thomas Reese, SJ, Columnist for Religion News Service - National Catholic Reporter

Stephan: Almost every day, somewhere in the world, groups of Roman Catholic priests are arrested for molesting children. I could run a story, or several actually, every single day, and it has been going on for years now. To be clear, R0man Catholic priests are hardly the only clerics with this problem, all the Abrahamic religions suffer from sexual dysfunction; it is baked in so it is mostly a matter of degree. Fundamentalists, for instance, of any denomination, are the worst and, perhaps because of Catholicism's celibacy requirement the problem seems to be exacerbated in that faith. Studies report that only about 50 percent of priests are celibate and, depending on the poll, about 15 percent are serial molesters. Here is an assessment of the current situation in that faith by a Jesuit priest, who is a prominent public intellectual in that community. It is not a happy story, and it presages a very difficult future for Roman Catholicism.

Pope Francis attends an audience with the members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See for the traditional exchange of New Year greetings at the Sala Regia, at the Vatican, on Jan. 7.
Credit: AP/Ettore Ferrari/Pool Photo

Next month’s meeting in Rome, called by Pope Francis to deal with the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, may well be a failure before it even starts.

The stakes for the meeting have been ratcheted up, at least for the American church, as the Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy sex abuse has summoned up new scrutiny of the church’s response, from the pews and from government officials; then, in November, the Vatican squelched a vote at the U.S. bishops’ fall meeting on measures designed to hold the hierarchy accountable for not dealing with abuse.

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Now, more than 100 presidents of episcopal […]

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Sunday, January 20th, 2019

Correction

Stephan A. Schwartz, Editor - Schwartzreport

Stephan: The other day I made a mistake, and I want to correct it. In the piece I published on the White secession movement I commented on how the Blue value states underwrite the failure of the Red Value states and make it possible for them to function at all. In offering an illustration I included New Mexico in a list of states receiving more from the government than they put in. I was not wrong about my financial facts. New Mexico, like Mississippi for every one dollar it puts into the federal treasury does get three dollars back. But it is not a Red value state, 46% of the voters now define themselves as Democrats. A number of readers wrote to correct me, and I thank them for doing so. I strive to make SR reliable and fact-based. When I make a factual error please let me know, citing your source.

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Saturday, January 19th, 2019

Thousands more migrant children separated under Trump than previously known

Amanda Holpuch, - The Guardian (U.K.)

Stephan: The vile policy of the Trump administration concerning child refugees on our southern border just keeps getting more and more inhuman, as the number of children involved goes up by orders of magnitude. As much as the policy what I find so appallingly and depressing is that Americans are willing to work in these jobs, and do these things.

A woman with her son at the border. Advocacy groups had been warning for months that family separations were already taking place.
Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty

The Trump administration may have separated thousands of migrant children from their parents at the border for up to a year before family separation was a publicly known practice, according to a stunning government review of the health department’s role in family separation.

A report by the health department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) published on Thursday said officials at the health department estimated “thousands of separated children” were put in health department care before a court order in June 2018 ordered the reunification of 2,600 other children.

“The total number of children separated from a parent or guardian by immigration authorities is unknown,” the report said.

This report shows that not only did the US government probably separate thousands more children from their parents than previously thought, but it was […]