Stephan: THe christofacist cabal on the Supreme Court are always blathering on about originalism, what the Founders thought about something, what their original intention was. Reading their published opinions makes it clear, however, that the justices' understanding of early American history is crap. How about this for originalism? Benjamin Franklin was pro-choice and felt strongly enough about it that he wrote a treatise instructing women how to have an abortion in the 1700s.
Benjamin Franklin. pro-choice Founder
Benjamin Franklin is revered in history for his fixation on inventing practical ways to make everyday life easier. He was a prolific inventor and author, and spent his life tinkering and writing to share his knowledge with the masses.
One of the more surprising areas Franklin wanted to demystify for the average American? At-home abortions.
Molly Farrell is an associate professor of English at the Ohio State University and studies early American literature. She authored a recent Slate article that suggests Franklin’s role in facilitating at-home abortions all started with a popular British math textbook.
Titled The Instructor and written by George Fisher, which Farrell said was a pseudonym, the textbook was a catch-all manual that included plenty of useful information for the average person. It had the alphabet, basic arithmetic, recipes, and farriery (which is hoof care for horses). At the time, books were very expensive, and a general manual like this one was a practical choice for many families.
Franklin saw the value of this book, and decided to create an updated version for residents of the U.S, […]
Stephan: By any social outcome measure, I can think of, from maternal mortality to childcare, to care for the elderly, to incarceration, to police brutality, and on and on, the United States has deliberately, and with intention, become a second-rate country. I just hate having to write that sentence, but facts are facts. And now we have the overturning of Roe by six political hacks and christofascist ideologues. As this report lays out, "Of the 36 countries the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs defines as developed economies, all but two -- Poland and Malta -- allow abortions on request or on broad health and socio-economic grounds," and most of the rest of the developed, and even developing world, is moving in the opposite direction from the U.S. The only countries that aren't are religious autocracies, which is what we are rapidly becoming.
I am so tired of politicians telling everyone how we are the world leader, Reagan's "shining city on a hill" when, in fact, we have become a negative outlier by almost every measure of social wellbeing. If we won't face the truth we will only continue to decline further. November is going to tell the tale as to which direction we go.
Pro-choice demonstrators outside of the Supreme Court
LONDON — The US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on Friday has reverberated around the world, setting the country apart from its key allies on reproductive healthcare.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it “clearly has a massive impact on people’s thinking around the world,” and called the court’s decision “a big step backwards.”
Other world leaders have also slammed the decision, with protests scheduled to take place across cities in Europe over the weekend.
The move counters a global trend towards freer access to abortion, and places the US in a very small club of countries that have moved to restrict access in recent years.
Here’s how the US compares with the rest of the world on the issue of abortion following the ruling.
Some US allies have greater access to abortion
Until Friday, the US was one of 56 countries where abortion was legal at a woman’s request, with no requirement for justification, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Stephan: Here is another hard truth, and another negative trend. The greatest threat to societal wellbeing is White MAGAts, and the Supreme Court has just made it easier for them to carry concealed weapons in public. These poorly educated, low-IQ Whites are the main source of terrorism in the United States, and they are becoming more violent every year.
Assaults directed at abortion clinic staff and patients increased 128% last year over 2020, according to a new report from the National Abortion Federation.
Why it matters: Heated political rhetoric, the passage of more restrictive state abortion bans and increased media coverage all factored in the increase in violence, emboldening those “who want to harass and terrorize abortion providers,” Melissa Fowler, NAF Chief Program Officer, told reporters.
Fowler added that the NAF expects a continued escalation of violence and is “on heightened alert.”
By the numbers: Beyond the surge of assaults outside of clinics, NAF documented the following:
A 600% increase in stalking.
A 63% increase in burglaries.
A 54% increase in acts of vandalism (which included multiple incidents of bullets being fired through clinic windows).
A 163% increase in hoax devices or suspicious packages at clinics.
An 80% increase in bomb threats.
A 128% increase in invasions, including instances in which anti-abortion protesters forcefully entered clinics.
NAF found that arson, death threats and trespassing attempts dropped off last year.
The organization is bracing for fallout from a forthcoming Supreme Court decision that could decide […]
Sarah K. Burris, Staff Writer - AlterNet / Raw Story
Stephan: I don't think most Americans realize how close we came at the last election to becoming a fascist anocracy, on the Mussolini model, with Trump as Mussolini. It is also now obvious that in addition to the appointees like Eastman and Gulioni, a significant number of Republican members of Congress were not only complicit, they were active agents working for Trump's coup, as they demonstrate by their requests for pardons.
To me, the big unanswered question at this point is will Merrick Garland and the DOJ hold any of these villains accountable? I don't think the answer is at all clear. If they don't this will happen again, and it will be done more competently. We are a nation in decline, with one last chance, the election in November, to reverse what is happening. Will the American voting public rise to the occasion? I don't think that is clear either.
Former Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division Jeffrey Clark
The fifth of the public hearings for the House Select Committee investigating the attempt to overthrow the election focused on the extent to which the former president attempted to use the Justice Department to change the 2020 election.
The hearing came on the heals of federal agents raiding the home of former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who was alleged to have penned a letter that would have declared the election questionable.
Witnesses Jeffrey Rosen, Steven Engel and Richard Donoghue, who were all senior DOJ officials in the Trump administration, described to the committee how they met with Donald Trump in the White House to discuss what the former president said was election fraud.
Legal experts watched in awe of the revelations, claiming that former Acting Asst. Attorney General Jeff Clark is in big trouble for his role in the attempt to overthrow the election. On multiple occasions, the former Justice Department officials said Clark and Trump led an effort to subvert the 2020 election […]
Anna Clark, Aliyya Swaby and Annie Waldman, - Institute of Educational Sciences
Stephan: Here is what our deteriorated public education system, and the charter schools have done to the American public.
The most recent date for which I could find hard facts is a study pushed in May 2022 based on data up to 2017 Here is the headline. In 2017, approximately 48 million U.S. adults had low English literacy skills and 69 million adults had low numeracy skills in English. People with this level of illiteracy, particularly when they are hyper-religious with overactive amygdalas are easily manipulated. This is MAGAt world. The truth is about a third of Americans are simply incapable of understanding why democracy is important. They vote on the basis of their fear, hate, religion, and racism.
Low-skilled adults in literacy in English are those with skills insufficient to complete tasks requiring comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences. Low skilled adults in numeracy in English are those who would have difficulty making calculations with whole numbers and percentages, estimating numbers or quantity, and interpreting simple statistics in text or tables (OECD 2013).
A large-scale international study of working-age adults (ages 16–65), PIAAC assessed the literacy and numeracy skills of the U.S. adult population in 2012/2014 and in 2017.
Participants were interviewed about their background (e.g., education and work experiences) in either English or Spanish. They then completed an assessment of their skills in English. As U.S. PIAAC only tested literacy and numeracy skills in an English-language context, the results indicate only whether participants are literate or numerate in English. Adults unable to participate in PIAAC’s background survey do not have estimates of their skills proficiency and are marked as “Could not participate.”
This group includes adults who were unable to participate because of a language barrier or a cognitive […]
