Humans just don’t seem to be able to comprehend what climate change is doing to the earth and, therefore, we keep making the same mistakes over and over. Here is an example of what I mean. Will we ever wake up and do what is necessary for our cultures to survive? I actually don’t think so. Not until the changes are catastrophic and we have no choice. Just look at the way the U.S., particularly in the Republican controlled Red States, is responding to sea rise, and temperature rise. Look at the news. Do you get it?
Scientists discovered that Earth’s tilt has changed because of the amount of ground water pumped by humans. Image credit: Seo et al.
Earth’s tilt has changed by 31.5 inches (80 centimeters) between 1993 and 2010 because of the amount of groundwater humans have pumped from the planet’s interior.
In that period, humans removed 2,150 gigatons of water from natural reservoirs in the planet’s crust. If such an amount was poured into the global ocean, its surface would rise by 0.24 inches (6 millimeters). A new study has now revealed that displacing such an enormous amount of water has had an effect on the axis around which the planet spins.
Scientists arrived at this conclusion by modeling the changes in the position of Earth‘s rotational pole, the point at which the planet’s imaginary axis would stick out of the surface if it were a physical object. The position of the rotational pole is not identical with the geographical north and south poles and actually changes over time, so the rotational axis cuts through different spots on the planet’s crust at various […]
I bank online, and pay bills that way, and we have rented a box at the Post Office rather than having mail delivered to a mailbox on our rural road because, when we moved here 15 years ago, we were warned about postal theft. Now it has gotten much worse, to a point, as this article describes, where the Better Business Bureau has issued a warning. If you live in an area where you may be at risk, take this article aboard and make such adjustments as are indicated.
A U.S. Postal Service employee Credit: Creative Commons
In the United States, the problem of checks being stolen from the mail by fraudsters has gone from bad to worse. And the problem has become so severe that even the Better Business Bureau, according to CBS News, is urging customers to avoid sending checks by mail.
Journalist Jon Delano, reporting for KDKA-TV News (CBS News’ Pittsburgh affiliate) in an article published on June 20, explains, “Americans wrote 3.4 billion checks last year, according to the Federal Reserve, and many of them end up in the U.S. Postal Service to pay bills for one thing or another. Now…. more of them are getting stolen than ever…. The Postal Service reports that complaints of mail theft doubled in 2021, and banks report that check fraud jumped to 680,000 reports last year, up from 300,000 the year before.”
Delano reports that the fraudsters who are stealing checks from the mail could range from “workers at postal distribution centers who recognize a check in an envelope” to “thieves who […]
As this article describes the Neo-Nazis White supremacy christofascist organizations, both male and female, are increasingly networking and joining forces. This is MAGAt world, and these are people who are trying to destroy America’s multi-racial democracy. These are the people who now control the Republican Party.
Bobby Bean, second from the bottom on the left, a member of the Proud Boys who was part of the January 6th insurrection sits with the Chattanooga chapter of Moms for Liberty Credit: Moms for Liberty Chattanooga Chapter
Alexandra Caballero was already well-known in Miami’s far-right scene as an organizer of anti-mask protests at school board meetings when, in August 2021, she joined the city’s chapter of the extremist “parental rights” group known as Moms for Liberty.
For six months, Caballero told VICE News that she was happy to be a member of the group. Founded in 2020, Moms for Liberty portrays itself as a wholesome, grassroots movement that is focused on protecting students. However, previous VICE News investigations uncovered a pattern of disturbing behavior by the group’s members, who have violently harassed and intimidated parents, school superintendents, school board members, and students who have stood up to them. Caballero took part in many of these protests and harassment campaigns until April 2022.
Then, things turned sour.
After an argument with the local leader of the chapter, Eulalia María […]
John B. Alexander, Contributing Writer - Daily Kos
Stephan:
John Alexander lays out, and I completely agree with him, what we both clearly see as the central factor in America’s democracy crisis — the voters. Look at the polls. As the criminal charges against Trump grow and continue, his poll ratings aren’t going down, they are going up. How is that possible? The answer is about a third of Americans don’t value democracy, and aren’t interested in preserving it. Instead they want to vote for a racist criminal psychopath. What is the cure for this? There is no cure, the only thing that is going to stop the destruction of democracy in the United States is if the other two thirds of the voters turn out and vote a straight Democratic ticket. Are the Democrats perfect. No they are not. They have all kinds of problems. But they are completely committed to protecting and supporting democracy, and social policies that foster wellbeing. Will that happen? I am not at all certain it will.
Polling station. Credit: Marc Serota | Getty
Can American Democracy survive its electorate?
In the face of overwhelming evidence, tens of millions of people have demonstrated they are willing to vote for an amoral, megalomaniacal con artist. Worse, many of their elected representatives are so fearful of their constituents, they were unwilling to defend the U.S. Constitution and the citizens of this country. That was clearly demonstrated when the Senate twice declined to do its Constitutional duty to remove and block from reinstatement, the impeached President Trump despite very convincing evidence of wrongdoing. The effort to resist both times was headed by Senator Mitch McConnell, whom Trump personally denigrated by calling him among other nasty things, a “dumb son of a bitch,” a “stone cold loser,” and a “piece of shit.”
Consider the experiences of Sarah Longwell, a quite conservative political strategist, who conducts focus groups to ascertain the thinking of potential voters on a variety of issues. Strikingly, she recently interviewed a group of Iowa Republican voters, all of whom believed that the indictment […]
I have been describing The Great Schism Trend now for about 10 years, so I assume regular readers understand what the term means. We have now reached a major transition point in this trend. Between the 2020 election and the upcoming 2024 election the Red state controlled by Republicans have been very methodically turning their states from democracies into anocracies. During the same period, the Blue states controlled by Democrats have been fostering wellbeing and enhancing democracy. This is not a partisan statement. As this article describes, which is why I picked it, this is based on the social outcome data. The article makes important points about the trend. We really are becoming two different countries, related but not the same.
Interracial couple arguing in coffee shop Credit: Shutterstock
Next year’s elections are still 16 months away. But for voters, perhaps the most important developments took place during the first half of this year — when states drafted and passed the legislation that will shape how those contests are run.
“The rules that will govern the 2024 election are being written today,” said Megan Bellamy, vice president for law and policy at the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks state elections legislation and works to protect access to the ballot. “Already, based on what we’ve seen, it will look different from the 2020 election for many voters, all the way from how they vote to how their ballots are counted.”
With all but a few state legislatures now having wrapped up their sessions, it’s clear that for voters in some states, it will be easier to cast a ballot, while in others, it will be harder.
According to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice, 21 bills that restrict voting or interfere with election administration were either signed into law, […]
