Elizabeth Cohen and Danielle Herman, Reporters - CNN
Stephan: I am beginning to see more and more stories like this as the women in Red states, who have previously either not recognized their subordination or considered it an abstraction, confront the new post-Roe reality. It has already deeply wounded healthcare in the Red states, as physicians leave or accept the state now commands how they deliver care for their female patients. My hope is that women in Red states will rise up against the christofascist Republican policies that limit a woman's ability to control her own body.
Kailee DeSpainCredit: CNN
Nine years ago, Cade DeSpain messaged a friend about a cute girl he saw on her Facebook feed.
The friend introduced him to Kailee Lingo, her sorority sister at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. Kailee remembers that when she and Cade met, it was “a connection at first sight.”
A month after college graduation, Kailee and Cade married in Marble Falls, Texas. They’re both proud to be native Texans: Kailee’s family has lived there for generations, and Cade’s ancestors are among Texas’ “Old Three Hundred,” the original families that joined Stephen F. Austin to settle the area in the 1800s.
At the time, the DeSpains were both passionately anti-abortion.
“I was just your quintessential pro-life Texan,” Kailee, 29, told CNN in a recent interview.
“I was raised in central Texas by extremely Republican parents and grandparents,” Cade, 31, said. “One hundred percent pro-life.”
Kailee and Cade have supported abortion rights since 2016, when she had a miscarriage at 16 weeks and was hospitalized for severe complications, including blood clots and infection. It was one of three miscarriages she had in the […]
Colonel John B. Alexander,PhD USA (Ret.), - Daily Kos
Stephan: John Alexander says something that I have not previously heard, though thought about, that needs to be said by a retired combat experienced senior officer. Two centuries of combat veterans -- I am the latest in 12 generations of vets -- have given up their lives protecting our democracy. Are we really going to let Trump the criminal and his MAGAt Republicans debase that courage and honor?
Arlington National Cemetary
Uneasy lie the souls of hundreds of thousands who rest entombed in the cemeteries of Arlington, Gettysburg, Normandy, Flanders Field, Luxembourg, Ardennes, Punchbowl, Lorraine, Meuse-Argonne, and North Africa or are enshrined in battle monuments at Guadalcanal, Saipan, Papua New Guinea, Busan South Korea, Morocco, Cabanatuan Philippines, and thousands of places known and not. And not to be forgotten are those consigned to oceans deep for whom no markers bear witness. For restless are they whogave the last full measure of devotionthat an ideal might be fostered. That ideal was the notion of America. America was both a place and an ideal, imperfectly formed, yet conceptually-striving to do better. For decades that notion served the world as the bright shining beacon on the hill only to be dashed in one fell swoop with the election of a wannabe authoritarian.
For the interred souls, warriors all, their philosophical bent, be it liberal or conservative, mattered not. It was loyalty to the Constitution, and the framework of America, that bound them inextricably […]
Visitors make their way toward the popular Narrows hike in Zion national park.
It was a typically hot summer day in Utah’s Zion national park, where early-afternoon heat hovered near 100F, even in the shadows of the red peaks soaring overhead. But the extreme conditions did little to dissuade the throngs of tourists who trudged into the chalky brown waters of the Virgin River.
The parking lot at Zion – one of the United States’s busiest national parks – had been full since 8am. Many of the visitors were there to scramble into the shallows of the Virgin River for the ever-popular and Instagrammable Narrows hike.
Thousands of tourists descend on this waterway year after year, even as this region and others across the American west fall deeper into drought. Fueled by the climate crisis and the overuse of dwindling water resources, the drought threatens the safety and sustainability of the spectacular sights; at the same time, tourists and the industries that […]
Stephan: The air pollution produced by aircraft is a major issue, and this report is good news because it shows us that the airline industry is beginning to awaken to its responsibility in climate change remediation. It's only a beginning but it is a trend in the right direction.
Airbus and a partnership of more than a dozen airlines are working together to fund a new carbon capture project.
Their hope is that Carbon Engineering’s direct carbon capture technology can provide secure, verifiable carbon removal credits as part of aviation’s need to offset part of its future emissions.
The partnership includes Air Canada, Air France-KLM, easyJet, International Airlines Group (the parent of British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus and Vueling), LATAM Airlines Group, Lufthansa Group (including Swiss, Austrian, Brussels and the Eurowings brands) and Virgin Atlantic.
The agreement is at this point an early stage partnership, based on letters of intent, and the airlines have “committed to engage in negotiations on the possible pre-purchase of verified and durable carbon removal credits starting in 2025 through to 2028”.
The group’s partner is Carbon Engineering who have pioneered a direct air carbon capture and storage that can cancel out enterprise-level carbon emissions at scale.
At a basic level, their facilities utilize high-powered fans to suck air in, process it, then compress it into liquid and store it in underground geologic reservoirs.
PAUL ROSENBERG, Senior Editor for Random Lengths News - Salon
Stephan: I don't think, from what I see, and hear in conversation, that many Americans properly understand what Christian nationalism is about, what it is attempting, how it is doing it, and how many people in this country support what it is attempting. Doug Mastriano, the MAGAt (read Christian nationalist) is a perfect example of a Christian nationalist. Here is some background. Pass it along.
Doug Mastriano Credit: Doug Mastriano Official Campaign Website
On May 9, the New Yorker published a feature story by Pulitzer winner Eliza Griswold about Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who could well be the Republican nominee for governor next year, as a flagship example of the swelling power of Christian nationalism within today’s GOP. That’s an issue I focused on in a 2018 story largely driven by a paper called “Make America Christian Again,” co-authored by sociologist Andrew Whitehead. I described this phenomenon as “an Old Testament-based worldview fusing Christian and American identities, and sharpening the divide with those who are excluded from it,” and quoted from the paper:
Christian nationalism … draws its roots from “Old Testament” parallels between America and Israel, who was commanded to maintain cultural and blood purity, often through war, conquest, and separatism.
Despite the “Old Testament” slant, this version of Christianity has no room for Exodus 22:21: “You must not mistreat or oppress foreigners in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt,” or numerous other biblical passages — which is […]
