Stephan: Republicans simply cannot govern, if by govern one means create policies that foster wellbeing. In the Red value states democracy is crumbling, and it will be interesting to see how the people of those states vote in 2020, or if they are even allowed to vote.
As Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, Ohio and Georgia attempt to outlaw abortions after six weeks, Missouri legislators approve an eight-week ban and Alabama passes a near total ban on abortions, we speak to journalist Ari Berman about how the widespread attack on abortion rights across the country is tied directly to voter suppression. He writes in a recent piece for Mother Jones, “These states have something else in common: a systematic effort to distort the democratic process through voter suppression and gerrymandering. These tactics have greased the way for near-total bans on abortion and for other extreme right-wing policies.”
AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about gerrymandering and abortion.
ARI BERMAN: So, these issues are all connected. And when we saw all of these abortion bans, one thing that I realized is that many of the states passing these abortion bans recently also are very heavily gerrymandered. So, you have, for example, in Ohio, which was one state that passed this abortion ban, Republican candidates in Ohio for the state House got 50% of votes in the last election but control 63% of legislative seats. You look at Missouri, Republican candidates in the Missouri House got 57% of the votes but control 71% of the seats.
So, what’s […]
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Stephan: This is a sad little story that I am running because it illustrates the current state of Red values governance in Alabama, a sad little state teetering on third world status. It is hard to understand what the people of Alabama think they are doing to their own wellbeing given the men and women they vote for.
University of Alabama
The University of Alabama’s board of trustees voted to return a recent $21.5 million gift from the university’s largest donor after the philanthropist called on students to boycott the school over the state’s severe abortion ban, local media reported Friday. The vote wrapped up a two-week conflict between the university and Hugh F. Culverhouse Jr., a 70-year-old Florida real estate investor and lawyer whose pledge in September to donate a record $26.5 million led the university to praise this generosity publicly and rename its law school after him; it has been the “Hugh F. Culverhouse Jr. School of Law” since last fall. He has already given $21 million, which the university will now return, and the school’s name will revert to the University of Alabama School of Law. Friday afternoon, the university removed Culverhouse’s name from display.
The university system has denied that its decision is a response to Culverhouse’s comments, citing a longer-running dispute that, it said, involved the philanthropist wanting to dictate the terms […]
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Stephan: I'll just let this one speak for itself.
An artist’s rendering of the mass extinction of life that occurred toward the end of the Permian Period, about 250 million years ago.
Credit: Lynette Cook/Science Source
There was a time when life on Earth almost blinked out. The “Great Dying,” the biggest extinction the planet has ever seen, happened some 250 million years ago and was largely caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Now scientists are beginning to see alarming similarities between the Great Dying and what’s currently happening to our atmosphere.
Scientists are highlighting that similarity in a new exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
The crown jewel of the Deep Time exhibit is the museum’s first real Tyrannosaurus rex. Its skeleton stands over the bones of a prone triceratops, with one clawed foot holding down the hapless herbivore and jaws clamped onto its head, ready to take a bite the size of a manhole cover.
“We like to say, ‘Come for the dinosaurs, stay for everything else,’ ” says Scott Wing, one of the curators.
The theme […]
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