Stephan: I am so tired of the disinformation and lies I constantly hear, read, or am told in emails. No immigrants are not the source of the spread of Covid. The problem is Republican anti-vaxxers, as a child ought to be able to figure out by looking at where the hot spots are. Let's deal some actual facts, and here they are.
Earlier this week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) joined Sean Hannity on Fox News to discuss the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border and, specifically, what Hannity called “the biggest superspreader in the country.”
“I’m going to argue, you know, the high rate of covid positivity at that border — any American that is infected because Joe’s not enforcing the laws of this country, you can blame Joe Biden for covid,” Hannity said, claiming vaguely that migrants crossing the border are driving the current surge in coronavirus cases. “And if you die, I would put the blame on him, too. Why won’t they stop this superspreader event? Because it’s happening in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands.”
“Sean,” Cruz replied, “you’re exactly right.”
Sean was not exactly right. He was not even partially right. Nor was Cruz right when he started riffing on a Fox News report about 7,000 migrants in the city of McAllen, Tex., being released while coronavirus-positive.
“McAllen is a city, its population is about 140,000,” Cruz said. “That means 5 percent of the population of the city […]
Katherine Stewart, Author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (Bloomsburg 2020) - History News Network/Raw Story
Stephan: Doing my daily research to produce SR today I went through a number of Republican and rightwing sites. I do this regularly although not daily, because I have found leaving small gaps of time is the best way to see trends develop. Today's little excursion left me with three main impressions. First, the increasing christofascist racism, even from a month ago. Second, the attempt to blame the frightening increase in Covid cases not on the willful stupidity and culpability of the Right, particularly Red state governors, but on a supposed mass migration of Covid carrying immigrants Biden is allowing to flood into the United States. Something that factually is not happening. Third, the explicit rejection of democracy. This last most notable in the words of the fascist racist Tucker Carlson, the loudest voice on Fox.
How did we get this way? Katherine Stewart, in this excellent essay, lays out how White supremacy Christian nationalism arose in America. It is a story virtually no one but a subset of historians knows. Worth your time to learn it.
Donald Trump and Jerry Fallwell, Jr.Credit: White House photo
Right around the time the House began its impeachment inquiry, the homepage of the U.S. Department of State featured a talk by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo titled “Being a Christian Leader.” Only a few weeks had passed since Attorney General William Barr told students at Notre Dame Law School that “secularists” are to blame for “moral chaos” and “immense suffering, wreckage, and misery,” and that “Judeo-Christian moral standards are the ultimate utilitarian rules for human conduct.” Then, at a January campaign rally at a Miami megachurch, President Donald Trump told the largely evangelical crowd that God is “on our side.”
Most of us have a sense that this kind of religious-nationalist rhetoric and behavior got its start with the revolution that Reagan brought to power. A decisive moment was in August 1980, at the Reunion Arena in Dallas, Texas, when Reagan addressed 15,000 thousand pastors and religious activists. “I know that you can’t endorse me,” but “I want you to know that I endorse you and what you […]
Stephan: The development of digital media has fundamentally altered human culture, most notably in the United States, because it has allowed disinformation to be weaponized. What in the past would have been a drunk declaiming in a seedy bar, can now become a national movement. The evidence for this is irrefutable. It is made evident each day.
The vast majority of adults in the United States get at least some news online (via smartphone, computer or tablet), and the online space has become a host for the digital homes of both legacy news outlets and new, “born on the web” news outlets.* Digital advertising revenue across all digital entities (beyond just news) continues to grow, with technology companies playing a large role in the flow of both news and revenue. Explore the patterns and longitudinal data about digital news below.
Audience
Credit: Pew Research
The news outlets included in this analysis are those whose primary domain – the outlet’s flagship website – averaged at least 10 million unique visitors per month from October to December of each year analyzed, according to Comscore, a cross-platform audience measurement company. This includes both digital-native news publishers, such as Axios or HuffPost, and so-called “legacy” news organizations (those that originated in print or broadcast) like The New York Times or Fox News that met those traffic levels. There were 97 such outlets in 2020 (for a full list of outlets and collection methods, […]
Portrait of Coral Davenport Coral Davenport, Energy and Environment Reporter - The New York Times
Stephan: Joe Biden as President is very interesting to watch. Because he was a Senator for 36 years, and Vice President for 8, he has spent most of his adult life learning how to make American government work to foster wellbeing, which is his Rooseveltian inclination. Notice how he committed to the transition out of carbon powered vehicles, promising millions of new union jobs and, at the same time, raised the miles per gallon to 52 by 2026, which is going to be very expensive to achieve, while at the same time he is tightening emissions levels, which will also be expensive to achieve. This is a classic example of Smiling Buffalo leadership. Smile in the direction you want to go, while leaning in that direction.
Electric cars charging at the University of California, Irvine, in 2015. “When I say electric vehicles are the future, I’m not joking,” the president wrote in a tweet on Wednesday. Credit: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
WASHINGTON — President Biden on Thursday announced a multistep strategy aimed at rapidly shifting Americans from gasoline-powered cars and trucks toward electric vehicles — a central part of his plan to reduce the pollution that is heating the planet.
Mr. Biden is first restoring and slightly strengthening auto mileage standards to the levels that existed under President Barack Obama but were weakened during the Trump administration. The new rules, which would apply to vehicles in the model year 2023, would cut about one-third of the carbon dioxide produced annually by the United States and prevent the burning of about 200 billion gallons of gasoline over the lifetime of the cars, according to a White House fact sheet.
The administration next plans to draft even more stringent pollution rules for both passenger vehicles and heavy-duty trucks that are designed to compel automakers to ramp up sales of electric vehicles.
Stephan: Only when we grow out of Abrahamic materialism, in which we see the earth as an exploitable bank account left to us by a rich uncle. Something unconscious. And, instead, see ourselves as one species in a matrix of life, will we be able to handle climate change effectively. Here is a fact-based example of what I mean.
Two decades in to the world’s largest seagrass restoration project, Virginia’s coast
When Karen McGlathery used to swim in the coastal bays off Virginia’s Eastern Shore, the water would quickly turn cloudy and brown as sediment swirled around her. Now, 25 years later, for as far as she can swim, the water remains clear. The sediment is anchored in place by lush green seagrass meadows, teeming with fish, scallops, and crustaceans. “It’s like this beautiful underwater prairie,” says McGlathery. “It’s just gorgeous.”
McGlathery, an environmental sciences professor at the University of Virginia, is part of a team running the largest seagrass restoration project in the world in these coastal bays—and one of the most successful. The two-decade-long project is a “blueprint for restoring and maintaining healthy ecosystems,” according to a 2020 research paper, and proof that marine habitats can be brought back to life in a way that’s self-sustaining.
In the 1930s, a wasting disease swept along the U.S. east coast, wiping out huge swaths of eelgrass. Where Virginia’s coastal bays used to be carpeted in this species […]
