Stephan: Even though the percentage of people enchurched in the United States has been dropping for years, the strange form of White supremacy, male dominance, christofascism that passes for Christianity today is still a major force to be reckoned with, particularly the crumbling wall between church, in the form White supremacy christofascism, and state. It is another major trend that is not getting enough attention. Here is a report that does address it; I think it is very important my readers are aware of this.
America was not founded as a Christian nation as this group often maintains. In fact the founders were strongly of a mind that no church or religion would influence the state. They felt this way because they or someone in their family had struggled with church influence, and they wanted to be sure that didn't happen in the United States they were creating.
Neil Gorsuch, Jesus, a very odd image, and Thomas Jefferson Photo illustration by Salon/Getty
During oral arguments in the case of Shurtleff v. City of Boston, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch made a pointed reference to “so-called separation of church and state.” What precisely this aside was meant to convey is unclear. Yet Gorsuch’s dismissive comment laid bare what many have known for some time: “Separationism,” as a judicial and legislative doctrine, is on life support. Courtesy of the Christian right, it languishes in a theologically-induced coma.
The many Americans who yearn for secular governance, believers and nonbelievers alike, must confront this truth, accept it and innovate accordingly. They need to do so expeditiously, given the Supreme Court’s hard pro-religion turn — a turn that advantages a white conservative Christian majority at the expense of religious moderates, religious minorities and nonbelievers.
Gorsuch may have just been trolling, but he had a point. Let’s ask ourselves some hard questions about the “separationism” we know (and love).
Stephan: What many don't seem to understand is that if Roe is overturned, it will not be national. Each state will decide. If that happens, the schism between the Red and Blue states will grow even greater and more contentious. The Red states will try to control women coming to Blue states for abortions. a growing number of women will leave a Red state and move to a Blue one. Red economies will fall further behind Blue states, and the Blue states will be pressured to increase their underwriting of Red state failures through tax dollars, what each state puts in and takes out. Blue states are already subsidizing the failure of Red states.
But this will be not only a political change but, also, a cultural one, with many negative implications and no positive ones. It is anti-wellbeing.
More likely than not, you’ll find Sarah Traxler in an airport terminal, staring at her watch and wondering “When is this plane getting here?” Traxler, an abortion provider, flies from her home state of Minnesota to South Dakota twice a month to provide care in the last abortion clinic left in the state, Planned Parenthood’s Sioux Falls health center.
The center has been providing abortion care for South Dakotans for more than 20 years, but in all that time the clinic has never had an in-state abortion provider. Hospital systems in the state don’t allow physicians to work for them if they also provide care for Planned Parenthood. So Traxler, along with four other physicians, work on a rotating schedule ― each doctor takes one week a month, flying in twice that week to accommodate the state’s 72-hour waiting period for patients.
And each physician’s travel is scheduled down to the minute. South Dakota law requires patients seeking an abortion to undergo an initial in-person consultation and then wait […]
Stephan: For most of my lifetime the United States has been seen as a leading democracy. That used to be true but no longer. We are now ranked 26th and given the "Flawed Democracy" classification. This diminution of democracy is not unique to America, however. Democracy around the world is under attack. This report will give you some hard facts. They aren't pleasant.
Credit: Bloomberg Quint
The percentage of the world’s population living under some sort of democracy tumbled last year to 45.7% from 49.4% a year earlier according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2021.
Of the 167 territories surveyed, just 21 were deemed to be full democracies, representing 6.4% of the world’s population, while 53 fell into the “flawed democracies” category. Topping the list were Norway, New Zealand and Finland, while the U.K. ranked 18th. The U.S., which was given a flawed democracy classification, fell one spot to number 26.
Afghanistan and Myanmar took the bottom two spots, just below North Korea.
The EIU said the results continued to reflect the negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Citing measures such as lockdowns and travel restrictions, the report said the pandemic had “resulted in an unprecedented withdrawal of civil liberties among developed democracies and authoritarian regimes alike.”
“It has led to the normalisation of emergency powers, which have tended to stay on the statute books, and accustomed citizens to a huge extension of state power over large areas of […]
Stephan: Here is some excellent and very important news from the Biden administration. This will have a huge effect on our transition out of the carbon era. I have my issues with the Biden admin but, compared with the incompetent criminal thuggery of Donald Trump and his orcs, the Biden folk are angels.
Vice President Kamala Harris plugs an electric vehicle into a charging station last December in Brandywine, Md. Biden administration officiVice President Kamala Harris plugs an electric vehicle into a charging station last December in Brandywine, Md. Biden administration officials yesterday outlined plans to create a network of EV charging stations. Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
The Biden administration will roll out a $5 billion program today to help states build a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations by decade’s end.
The newly dubbed National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program was established by President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law, which Congress passed last November. The administration announced the program yesterday, and it also released guidance to help states begin drafting their five-year deployment plans for building the chargers.
“The President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will help us win the EV race by working with states, labor, and the private sector to deploy a historic nationwide charging network that will make EV charging accessible for more Americans,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement.
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureat in Economics, Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: Paul Krugman has an extraordinary record of being accurate. And he is the only person in media I have seen truly recognize what the Biden administration has done to improve healthcare in the United States, after Trump and the Republicans did everything they could to sabotage Obama care. If you care about the quality of and access to healthcare you better vote Democratic in November (except for Joe Manchin and Kryrsten Sinema). If the Republicans take over Congress... well, they'll do what they always do. Limit access and increase costs to the enrichment of those who own the illness profit system, which gives them the money to rent Congress members.
President Biden signing an executive action on affordable health care last year. Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times
A Republican member of Congress said something epically stupid the other day.
No, I’m not talking about Marjorie Taylor Greene’s warning about Nancy Pelosi’s “gazpacho police.” If you ask me, Greene was performing a public service; we all need some good laughs, especially given the demise of the borscht belt.
I’m talking, instead, about Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who tweeted out a novel argument against universal health care: “Over 70% of Americans who died with Covid, died on Medicare, and some people want #MedicareForAll?”
To belabor a point that should be obvious, Medicare recipients have been especially vulnerable to Covid because they generally suffer from a serious pre-existing condition: advanced age.
Maybe Massie should have looked instead at Canada, which has single-payer health insurance for everyone — it’s even called Canadian Medicare. Canada, as it happens, has had only about a Read the Full Article
