Stephan: Four in 10 Americans live in counties that had climate disasters in 2021. Do you think I am exxagerating when I tell you climate change isn't coming, it's here. And it is going to get worse, much worse.
Kayakers paddle down Interstate 676 after flooding from heavy rains from hurricane Ida in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Sept. 2, 2021. Credit: Branden Eastwood / AFP / Getty
Last year was filled with extreme weather fueled by climate change. California was overrun by mudslides, and there were dangerous heat waves, droughts and hurricanes. More than four in ten Americans live in a county that was affected by climate disasters in 2021, and more than 80 percent experienced at least one day of unusually high temperatures, reported The Washington Post. At least 656 people died due to the disasters, according to news reports and government records. The financial cost of all these disasters was more than $104 billion, not including the wildfires, extreme heat and drought in the West.
There were fewer climate disasters reported in individual counties last year as compared to previous years, but eight statewide emergencies related to climate disasters — including hurricanes, landslides, fires, floods and severe storms — were declared by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the most since 1998.
Stephan: Have you begun to notice that working class Trumpist MAGAt men all look and dress very much the same and carry themselves in much the same way? It is an affectation of pseudo-masculinity. In contrast consider the life and style, the masculinity, of Sidney Poitier and Harry Reid, to name two men who have recently died.
A group of men carry rifles as they gather outside the Minnesota State Capitol building on May 22, 2021 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Credit: Stephen Maturen/Getty
If you follow conservative politics, you know that the state of masculinity in America has been a hot topic this past year.
Republicans like Josh Hawley, a senator from Missouri and a star of the New Right, have made masculinity a signature issue. In a recent speech at the National Conservatism Conference, for example, Hawley argued that the progressive left is trying to “deconstruct” the American man. That’s quite a statement, and whether you agree with it or not, it’s crucial to grapple with its appeal and how it’s shaping our politics.
I reached out to David French, a senior editor at The Dispatch — a center-right publication that’s been critical of the Trumpist turn in conservatism — and now a contributing writer for the Atlantic, for the latest episode of Vox Conversations. French tracks conservative politics as closely as anyone, and recently wrote about […]
Stephan: MAGAt Anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers, who are dying by the thousands, nonetheless continue their anti-science anti-fact protests, apparently supported by the Trumpists on the Supreme Court. Trump, McConnell, and the senate's MAGAt Republicans have destroyed the Supreme Court's integrity, and left us with this insanity.
MAGAt demonstrators protest masks, vaccine mandates, and vaccine passports in Boston. Credit: Joseph Prezioso/Getty Images
A majority of the justices on the Supreme Court may not see COVID-19 as an emergency. But they do see it as an opportunity. This unprecedented pandemic, the deadliest in American history, has forced the executive branch to act swiftly and creatively at each stage of the crisis. Facing an often-deadlocked Congress, President Joe Biden has drawn on old statutes to establish new regulations to stop the coronavirus from spreading and killing more people. Yet in so doing, he has given the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed justices a chance to hobble his whole agenda. And during oral arguments over Biden’s vaccine mandates on Friday, these justices made it painfully clear that they will also seize this moment to grind down the federal government’s ability to perform even its most basic functions as well.
Friday’s arguments revolved around two rules issued by the Biden administration. The first, which we’ll call the employer mandate, was issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It imposes […]
Stephan: One of the most interesting things I have noticed about the 6th January attempted coup is how lightly the peasant perpetrators have been sentenced and how their leaders from Trump to McCarthy haven't been charged with anything at all. Why is this happening? I think the answer is that Americans, including many of the judges, cannot really comprehend that this was not a demonstration but an outright attempted coup. Such a thing has not previously happened in living memory, and Americans have no experience with what a fascist coup is like. They see the peasants who stormed the Capitol as misled citizens. And they cannot bring themselves to believe that 149 members of Congress would actually try to overturn the will of the people expressed by their voting.
Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Credit: Jon Cherry/Getty
More than 150 people have pleaded guilty to storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, but relatively few defendants have received prison time for their role in the insurrection.
A Politico analysis of every sentence to date in the Capitol riot shows that judges have been wary about imposing long prison terms except when violence, or the threat of it, was involved. A little over half of defendants who have pleaded guilty are still awaiting sentencing, and some of the most serious cases of violence against police officers are still awaiting their fate, so the length of prison time for the most serious offenders may change. See the full database
Additional sentencing hearings are booked for the early months of this year, and many more are expected to be added as defendants reach plea deals with prosecutors or are found guilty at trial.
There are more than 700 people who have been arrested for crimes tied to the assault on […]
Stephan: As I have published previously (See SR Archives) behind MAGAt world are a host of corporations, who don't want regulation, or taxation, and would live quite comfortably in a fascist system, and are happy to fund it coming into being. Here is a article that lays this out quite well, I think.
There’s a lot of tres piquant news as we roll into the first anniversary of the events of January 6. (How does one celebrate the first anniversary of a barely unsuccessful coup, assuming that seizing the radio station or the airport is out of the question?) First, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago has cancelled his scheduled Horsewhip The Press event, announcing instead that he will tell all at one of his wankfests in Arizona next week. Second, former Trump adviser Peter Navarro went on teevee with MSNBC’s Ari Melber and explained how the institutional coup was going to work itself out through compliant members of Congress and the presumed complicity of Mike Pence. (To his everlasting credit, Melber explained to Navarro that he was describing a coup.) And the special congressional committee released a batch of texts between Camp Runamuck and various Fox News teevee stars, in which the latter were pleading for the president* to turn off the madness, all of which should embarrass any legitimate journalists who ever stood up in defense of that whorehouse.
