Stephan: If you are an American woman living in a state-controlled by Republicans, are you comfortable being a second-class citizen; is that okay with you? I ask because you keep voting people into office who are committed to keeping you in that status. Take Alabama, for example.
Kim Blalock and her 8-month-old son. Blalock was charged with prescription fraud after she refilled her pain pills during pregnancy.
Kim Blalock’s spine is a mess. At 36, the Alabama mom is battling a degenerative disc disease as well as arthritis and chronic complications from back surgery. Two months before she got pregnant with her sixth child, a car crash compounded her agony.
Now she has been indicted on a felony charge because, when she was eight months’ pregnant, she refilled a legitimate opioid prescription to treat her crippling pain. If Blalock were to be convicted, her case could set a dire precedent, not only for pregnant people, but for anyone seeking a prescription for a controlled substance in the state.
Blalock says her orthopedist never asked if she were pregnant when she came in to refill her hydrocodone prescription, which she’d had for years. Weeks later, she gave birth to a baby boy with no sign of neonatal abstinence syndrome. A positive drug screen, however, triggered an investigation. Investigators confirmed Blalock had a valid prescription. A pill count proved […]
Stephan: You have probably heard something about this story, since almost every network mentioned it. But here is the full story. It is so very sad.
Dr. Brytney Cobia said Monday that all but one of her COVID patients in Alabama did not receive the vaccine. The vaccinated patient, she said, just needed a little oxygen and is expected to fully recover. Some of the others are dying.
“I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections,” wrote Cobia, a hospitalist at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, in an emotional Facebook post Sunday. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.”
Three COVID-19 vaccines have been widely available in Alabama for months now, yet the state is last in the nation in vaccination rate, with only 33.7 percent of the population fully vaccinated. COVID-19 case numbers and hospitalizations are surging yet again due to the more contagious Delta variant of the virus and Alabama’s low vaccination rate.
For the first year and a half of the pandemic, Cobia and hundreds of other Alabama physicians caring for critically ill COVID-19 patients worked themselves to the bone trying to save as many as possible.
Stephan: I have two reactions to the Bezos space trip: First, I think it is an obscene example of American wealthy inequality. Forty percent of American families would be pressed to write a $400 check, while a couple of men are so rich they can have their own space programs. Second, it provides irrefutable data showing that the media simply does not understand the implications of climate change, or doesn't want to lose the advertising revenue from the corporations that are creating climate change.
Broadcast news networks are notoriously bad at covering the climate crisis, dedicating a vanishingly small amount of airtime — year after year — to the grave existential threat despite the many potential stories they could be running about it.
Their neglect of the climate crisis is on stark display in a new statistic: According to Media Matters for America, morning TV shows spent nearly as much time on Jeff Bezos’s space launch on July 20, 2021 as they did on the climate crisis in all of 2020.
The morning shows on broadcast networks combined spent 212 minutes covering Bezos’s space trip just on Tuesday alone, Media Matters researchers found. Meanwhile, in the entirety of last year, the shows spent a combined 267 minutes on the climate crisis.
Bezos’s space trip was 11 minutes long. By contrast, the climate crisis has been ongoing for decades and daily threatens the fabric of our society and the continued existence of our species, if it continues unabated.
Further, Bezos’s trip to space was largely a PR stunt, meant to garner excitement around the billionaire and his space company while also buying fawning […]
Stephan: Our democracy is under a coordinated attack. Why this is going on, who is doing it, and who are its servants is presented in this and the following report which, I believe, give an accurate assessment.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) questions members of the Biden administration during a hearing on April 20, 2021 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Our entire political system is designed to let corporate money speak, through campaign contributions and corporate lobbying.
The hilarious 2006 film “Idiocracy” offers a vivid depiction of American politics. The movie is classified as a sci-fi comedy, but it is more like a searing documentary. It almost perfectly describes America’s crisis of survival today.
In “Idiocracy,” set 500 years in the future, America is suffering from famine. Every public function has been turned over to some self-serving corporate interest. A fruit-drink company controls crop irrigation, and the nation’s crops are being poisoned by the fruit drink. In the meantime, the public is kept in a state of abject ignorance and distraction by demolition derbies, drugs, and debauchery. The nation is saved when an average Joe, miraculously resuscitated from the distant past, reintroduces clean water to the crops, thereby saving the nation. He is hailed as a genius for his […]
Alex Kotch, Investigative Reporter - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Here is today's Democrat Scum Award. Yes, thats right alt-right readers, I highlight scummy behaviorthat I see in public figures regardless of party. What I care about is fostering wellbeing not partisanship. This Scum Award goes to Joe Manchin, and this well-researched article spells out his lack of ethics. As I have said before, what Manchin wants is to stay in office. That's what governs his behavior.
Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, chairs a Senate energy and natural resources committee hearing. Credit: J Scott Applewhite/AP
As “thousand-year” heat waves caused by the climate crisis rock the west coast and biblical floods engulf major cities, Senate Democrats are negotiating a $3.5tn budget package that could include an attempt to slow the use of fossil fuels over the next decade.
One prominent senator is very concerned about proposals to scale back oil, gas and coal usage. He recently argued that those who want to “get rid of” fossil fuels are wrong. Eliminating fossil fuels won’t help fight global heating, he claimed, against all evidence. “If anything, it would be worse.”
Which rightwing Republican uttered these false, climate crisis-denying words?
Wrong question. The speaker was a Democrat: Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
West Virginia is a major coal-producing state. But Manchin’s investment in dirty energy goes far beyond the economic interests of the voters who elect him every six years. In fact, coal has made Manchin and his family very wealthy. He founded the private coal brokerage Enersystems in 1988 and still owns a big stake in the company, which his son currently runs.
