GOP lawmakers will appear alongside white nationalists, Nazi apologists, at rally to support insurrectionists

Stephan:  The Republican Party has become a White Supremacist authoritarian christofascist cult working to destroy American democracy. Republicans don't try to hide this, in fact, as this report shows, they flaunt it.
A protester holds a Trump flag inside the US Capitol Building near the Senate Chamber on Jan. 6, 2021, after protesters stormed the Capitol to protest a joint session of Congress to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump. Credit: Win McNamee/Getty

A rally planned for Saturday at the Arizona Capitol that aims to support “political prisoners” of the January 6 insurrection will feature speakers who are white nationalists, have endorsed Nazi ideology and are facing charges for storming the U.S. Capitol alongside GOP legislators. 

The event is organized by a group that boasts two officials from the Arizona Senate’s election “audit” on its leadership team.

One of the speakers, “American Greyson” Arnold, has used his social media pages to post memes lauding Nazis as the “pure race” and lament the American victory in World War II. He also called Adolf Hitler a “complicated historical figure.” 

And in one Instagram post provided to the Arizona Mirror by independent extremism researcher Arizona Right Wing Watch, Arnold posted the logo of Stormfront, the first major hate site […]

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Babies Are Already Pooping Plastic, Study Finds

Stephan:  If you read SR regularly you know I have been tracking the plastic pollution trend for several years now, watching it get worse and worse. Micro plastics showing up in fish, birds, and now, human babies. If you know someone who has a new baby, please pass this along to them.
Babies have more plastics in their stool samples than adults, a new study found. Credit: John Howard / DigitalVision / Getty

Babies haven’t spent a lot of time on the planet, but apparently it’s still enough time to be exposed to lots of plastic.

A new study published in Environmental Science and Technology Letters Wednesday found an average of 36,000 nanograms of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) microplastics (MP) per gram of infant feces, compared to 2,600 nanograms for adults.

“Our study suggests that infants are exposed to higher levels of MPs than adults,” the authors wrote.

Microplastics are what happens when plastics break down in the environment into bits less than five millimeters long, Wired explained. They have been found everywhere from Mount Everest to the ocean floor, but the researchers wanted to test exposure in infants.

To do this, they collected dirty diapers from six one year olds and filtered the poop for microplastics, Wired explained. They also tested three samples of meconium, an infant’s first feces, and 10 adult stool samples. They tested all of the samples […]

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Melting of polar ice shifting Earth itself, not just sea levels

Stephan:  Here is a consequence of the polar ice melting as a result of human-mediated climate change that few if any in government are even thinking about. We are like children playing with matches having no concept what is coming. Citation upon which this report is based: "So much ice is melting that Earth's crust is moving, Nature (2021). DOI: 10.1038/d41586-021-02285-0
Geophysicist Sophie Coulson Credit: Harvard University

The melting of polar ice is not only shifting the levels of our oceans, it is changing the planet Earth itself. Newly minted Ph.D. Sophie Coulson and her colleagues explained in a recent paper in Geophysical Research Letters that, as glacial ice from Greenland, Antarctica, and the Arctic Islands melts, Earth’s crust beneath these land masses warps, an impact that can be measured hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles away.

“Scientists have done a lot of work directly beneath ice sheets and glaciers,” said Coulson, who did her work in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and received her doctorate in May from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. “So they knew that it would define the region where the glaciers are, but they hadn’t realized that it was global in scale.”

By analyzing satellite data on melt from 2003 to 2018 and studying changes in Earth’s crust, Coulson and her colleagues were able to measure the shifting of the crust horizontally. Their research, which was highlighted in Nature, found that in some […]

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Far-right pastor says there are more gays than ever thanks to a ‘demonic spirit’

Stephan:  Unless you spend time doing research on the evangelical christofascist world it is hard to appreciate how sex-obsessed and deranged these people are. This report gives you a hint.
Evangelical Pastor Kent Christmas 

A right wing mega-church pastor who falsely claims Donald Trump won re-election “by about 80 million votes” says more Christian children than ever before identify as LGBTQ, making clear he believes that is bad.

Pastor Kent Christmas, who shares his ministry with his wife Candy, appeared on stage before thousands of his followers and declared, “never have Christians’ children been more taken over by homosexuality, than they are right now,” as Right Wing Watch reports (video below).

The vast majority of Americans support same-sex marriage and equal rights and responsibilities for LGBTQ people.

Christmas blamed a “demonic spirit that comes after our seed” for the increase in people who identify as LGBTQ.

“If I asked each and every one of you to stand that has a son, daughter, or a niece or a nephew, or a brother or sister, that is gay, half of you would stand up in this building, because it is a demonic spirit that’s come after our seed and the church that God has raised it up […]

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America’s richest 400 families pay a lower tax rate than average taxpayer

Stephan:  The Republican members of Congress to a person will not vote for the Biden bill changing the tax structure so the rich pay at least a slightly bigger portion of their fair share. I understand that, because of the Congressional corruption. What I did not understand properly until the Covid pandemic, I now realize, was why ordinary middle-class people voted Republican, not occasionally but consistently. Covid has taught me these people are easily manipulated by their fears, anger, hates, and resentments and will not only vote against their own self-interest, they willingly will join a death cult. Is that an exaggeration? What do I mean when I say death cult? Here's what the CDC said about Pennsylvania on 14 September. The same could be said in any other state Today’s online report shows that since January 2021: · 97 percent of COVID-19-related deaths were in unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated people. Among a total of 6,472 COVID-19-related deaths identified in Pennsylvania in 2021, the latest data shows 213, or three percent, post-vaccination deaths identified. Cumulative death incidence among the unvaccinated and not fully vaccinated was 7.9 times as high as the death incidence among the fully vaccinated. · 95 percent of reported hospitalizations with COVID-19 as the primary diagnosis/cause of admission were in unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated people. Among a total of 34,468 hospitalizations with COVID-19 as the primary diagnosis/cause of admission reported in Pennsylvania, 1,820 were reported to have occurred in fully vaccinated people. These figures account for data from 55 percent of all hospitals and 69 percent of acute care hospitals in Pennsylvania, representing approximately 80 percent of acute care beds in the state. · 94 percent of reported COVID-19 cases were in unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated people. Among a total of 639,729 positive cases, there have been 35,389, or six percent, identified post-vaccination cases. Cumulative case incidence among the unvaccinated and not fully vaccinated was 7.1 times as high as the case incidence among the fully vaccinated. “That means that 97 percent of deaths reported through the beginning of September were in unvaccinated or not fully-vaccinated people,” That's what I mean when I talk about death cult. If you are unvaccinated, you are deliberately choosing to take a risk that could cost you your life. And if you are obese your odds contracting and dying of Covid go way up. Anthropologically, that is fascinating.
A sign featuring Jeff Bezos calls for taxing the rich in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021.
Credit: Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Gett
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  • The richest 400 Americans paid an average 8.2% federal income tax rate, which is “low” relative to other taxpayers, according to a White House report published Thursday.
  • That’s due to the tax treatment of investment income, like capital gains and dividends, the report said.
  • The analysis comes as Democrats try to raise taxes on the wealthy to fund up to $3.5 trillion in investments to expand the safety net and mitigate climate change.

The wealthiest 400 American families paid an 8.2% average rate on their federal individual income taxes from 2010 to 2018, according to a White House analysis published Thursday.

Those richest 400 families represent the top 0.0002% of all taxpayers, according to the White House report.

Their estimated tax rate, paid on $1.8 trillion of income over the nine-year period, is “low” relative to other taxpayers, according to the report, which was authored by economists in the […]

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