Stephan: It tells you a lot about the Trump family that Donald Trump's sons are big game killers. I have always thought big game hunting for trophies is a disgusting and immoral activity and have never killed any animal with a gun. The fact -- that's right the fact -- is there is nothing sporting about hunting animals, whether they are lions or bunnies.
The only justification for doing so, in my opinion, is if you need their bodies for meat to feed yourself and your family. And I say this as a veteran who the Army tried to turn into a sniper because my marksmanship, as a result of my constant competitive shooting, was the highest they had seen in the proceeding two years (Happily, I became a medic). Anyone who knows how to competently use his weapon, and has the appropriate weapon, can kill any animal. There is no sport in it. You might as well shoot a cow in a field, or a squirrel in your driveway.
Trump’s disgusting cretinous sons bragging they killed an endangered animal
More than 1.7 million animals have been slaughtered in the past decade
Wealthy hunters are competing to kill the most highly prized creatures
Some hunters are even shooting pigs from helicopters in latest US craze
Bloodthirsty trophy-hunters are killing one animal every three minutes, a damning exposé of the industry has revealed.
More than 1.7 million animals, including lions, elephants and endangered rhinos, have been slaughtered in the past decade, with wealthy hunters competing to kill the most highly prized creatures.
The devastating figures have emerged in a book which highlights the links between the £300 million-a-year industry and powerful global elites.
Trophy Leaks: Top Hunters And Industry Secrets, by Eduardo Goncalves, also reveals the latest craze among American hunters is to shoot pigs from fast, low-flying helicopters. It claims that:
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is a member of a breeding programme that has raked in millions of pounds selling rare animals to trophy-hunters;
Almost 800 hunters have won the ‘African Big 5’ prize, an industry award for killing at least one lion, elephant, leopard, a black […]
Stephan: Yet another proof of Schwartz' first and second laws of climate change. First Law: Whatever is predicted the change will be worse than predicted. Second Law: Whatever time frame is predicted will occur faster than predicted.
Since the end of the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago, Sea levels have risen dramatically, sometimes at a very fast pace. Chart by John Englander
Of the many threats from climate change, sea-level rise will most certainly be among the most impactful, making hundreds of thousands of square miles of coastline uninhabitable and potentially displacing over 100 million people worldwide by the end of the century. This threat is a top concern for national security experts because forced migration poses significant risks to international security and stability.
The magnitude of this threat depends heavily on how much the oceans rise in the coming decades. But because of the complex dynamics of massive ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, exact estimates remain elusive, ranging from just over a foot to several feet above current levels. That disparity is the difference between tens of millions of people forced from their homes or a much more unmanageable hundreds of millions displaced.
Stephan: We are a nation in crisis because our entire political system has broken down. We no longer have a two-party system with each party committed to democracy. Now we have one party still supportive of democracy and another party in conflict with itself, mostly dedicated to White supremacist christofascist authoritarianism. Worse yet, there is a large percentage of Americans who seem to support the end of democracy in the United States, although they would never admit that. As with their religion, they keep the words and forms, but not the substance.
This year, 2021, I think is going to be the year when we either recommit to democracy or slide into christofascist authoritarianism, and the great American experiment ends. The country will go on, slowly disintegrating, but it will not be the America we have known. Georgia will give us a first look revealing which way it is going. The choice is up to each of us, as to which side we are on.
Trump supporters outside of the Georgia State Capitol Building in Atlanta in November 2020. Credit: Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire
Republican lawmakers in key states that President-elect Biden won have vowed to crack down on voting reforms implemented amid the coronavirus pandemic that made it easier for Americans to vote, according to AP.
Why it matters: The popular reforms contributed to this year’s record turnout and did not produce widespread fraud as claimed by President Trump and his supporters, according to the Department of Justice.
Context: Attorney General Bill Barr told AP in early December that the department did not uncover evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
The big picture:
Georgia: Republicans in Georgia, which Biden narrowly won, have proposed requiring a photo ID when voting absentee, a ban on drop boxes and requiring an excuse for mail voting.
Georgia’s two U.S. Senate runoffs in January will take place under current law.
Pennsylvania: Republicans, who hold a majority in both Pennsylvania legislative chambers, are discussing changing a law that extends mail voting to all […]
Stephan: I completely agree with this. As I have watched what has happened since the election it has become clear to me that this is not a situation where one can just go on as if nothing had happened, as occurred with Nixon when Ford pardoned him. If democracy is to be preserved it can only happen if there is accountability, not only with Trump but with the orcs with whom he surrounds himself, as well as the 126 House Republicans who played their role in the madness of the last few weeks. If there is no accountability it is a confirmation that the president and other high-ranking government officials are simply above the law and can do as they wish; that is authoritarianism, not democracy.
The Signal: Trump is now talking the sedition talk on a daily basis, and, one has to assume, actively planning ways to walk the sedition walk over the next month. He is meeting regularly with Sidney Powell, Steve Bannon and other plotters, and daily he is being fed a diet of ever more extreme scenarios for overturning the election results. This is no idle chatter, and even if we had once been inclined to dismiss it with words to the effect of “Oh, it’s only the crazy old guy blowing off steam,” we no longer have that luxury. In increasingly specific language, Trump and his band of traitors are advocating some combination of martial law, national emergency, and paramilitarism as a way to cling to power.
Witness: On Friday, Trump reportedly argued, to the dismay of many of his top officials, that he should appoint Sidney Powell (of “Hugo Chávez stole the US election” fame) as a special counsel to investigate election fraud. That was, apparently, too nuts an idea even for Rudy Giuliani to stomach; it was […]
Stephan: It is time to face this difficult truth: The problem with America is Americans. My own view is that because 64% of Americans have never been outside the boundaries of the United States, a majority of Americans have no idea what happens when a nation sinks into authoritarianism. Not a clue. And that is coupled with a culture that has grown to see every person for himself as the norm, and profit as the only social priority. It is a form of mental illness, and the failure to recognize it, and address it, is literally destroying us.
Only a massive financial and psychological restructuring of American culture is going to allow us to continue as a democracy, and create a society where fostering wellbeing is the systemic goal.
For those interested in the primary research paper upon which this article is based: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886920305468
Sandeep Roy, a doctoral candidate with a major-applied focus on clinical psychology at the University of North Texas, explained the correlation between the two.
“My interest in the relationship between pathological personality traits, such as those captured by psychopathy, and prejudicial tendencies originated from my experiences working with offenders in the Arizona correctional system prior to graduate school,” said Roy.
He added, “I noticed offenders who were elevated in psychopathic propensities, as measured by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 2003), frequently used racial epithets to denigrate me and other staff. When I began studying this personality disorder more in my graduate training, I noticed a paucity of literature relating psychopathy to prejudice.”
Roy went on to explain what inspired his research as he noted […]
