When I listen to what the corporate media is covering it is endless repetition about Trump and his criminal cases which seem to drag on endlessly. But concurrent with that, and far less discussed, is what climate change is doing. It is rarely discussed as part of a trend, usually as individual events. And confirming once again Schwartz’ Law of Climate Change: Whatever the change it will be worst than predicted, and will happen sooner than predicted. As this article describes very well we are not prepared. While the Republican Majority House gives itself over to culture wars and Hunter Biden’s laptop, the earth under our feet is literally changing day-by-day.
Torrential rainfall inundated much of the Northeast last weekend deluging hundreds of homes and killing one person. With many rural residents trapped and major roads closed, people waited days for rescues. Credit: Charles Krupa / AP Photo
The floods, droughts, wildfires and extreme heat sweeping the globe are offering a dose of the climate future that scientists have warned about for decades — and all the ways the world is not ready.
From a nearly depleted federal disaster fund to state insurance markets that are faltering under the weight of multiple catastrophes, extreme weather is testing the ability of even a rich nation like the United States to withstand the warming that has arrived faster than many scientists expected. So are the torrential rains flooding Northeastern states like Vermont, the shriveling Colorado River that has prompted a multistate brawl over dividing the water, the record temperatures that have raised worries about the stability of the electric grid, and the Canadian wildfire smoke that has repeatedly blanketed D.C. and other parts of […]
The Republican Party rants on and on about immigrants, and the MAGAt world dislikes non-White immigrants. This plus the geopolitics between China and the U.S. are creating an environment where highly trained men and women, are not coming to the U.S. or like the Chinese are leaving. Let’s deal with some actual facts about immigrants: 44.6 percent, or 223 companies, in the Fortune 500 were founded by immigrants or their children, 101 were founded directly by foreign-born individuals while another 122 were founded by the children of immigrants. Or, put another way, millions of White MAGAts depend for their livelihood on their employment by companies founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. There is not a single Homo Sapien in the United States, including the Native Americans, who is not descended from someone who came to this country as an immigrant.
A view of Building 10 on the campus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States on March 12, 2020. Credit: Maddie Meyer / Getty
Facing an increasingly suspicious research climate, a growing number of Chinese scientists are leaving the United States for positions abroad, the latest indicator of how worsening U.S.-China relations are complicating academic collaboration and could hamstring Washington’s tech ambitions.
Chinese scientists living in the United States have for decades contributed to research efforts driving developments in advanced technology and science. But a growing number of them may now be looking elsewhere for work, as deteriorating geopolitical relations fuel extra scrutiny of Chinese researchers and Beijing ramps up efforts to recruit and retain talent. Between 2010 and 2021, the number of Chinese scientists leaving the United States has steadily increased, according to new research published last month. If the trend continues, experts warn that the brain drain could deal a major blow to U.S. research efforts in the long run.
“It’s absolutely devastating,” said David Bier, the associate director of immigration studies at […]
To be honest I have never been able to decide whether Mike Pence just isn’t very bright, or whether he has just adopted Trumpian lying as his campaign strategy. His statement reveals he certainly knows nothing about medicine. As the article describes he is proposing that women carry a non-viable fetus to term, whatever the risk to their own health, because he heard a story about a woman who had a non-viable fetus that ultimately ended as a happy viable birth. I don’t know whether that is just a lie, or a 1 in 10,000 event. Either way what it is saying to women is you don’t control your own body, the state does, and your doctor can’t make a decision as to what is happening with your pregnancy and how to treat it. It is idiotic but that is the Republican Party’s position. I do not see how any woman can vote for a Republican, and yet I know millions will.
MAGAt Republican presidential candidate Credit: BBC
Former Vice President Mike Pence said abortions in the case of nonviable pregnancies should be banned, taking a hard stance on abortion policy, which has served as an emphasis of his campaign.
“I’m pro-life. I don’t apologize for it,” Pence said in a recent interview. “I just have heard so many stories over the years of courageous women and families who were told that their unborn child would not go to term or would not survive. And then they had a healthy pregnancy and a healthy delivery.”
Pence is the only GOP presidential candidate to publicly support a national abortion ban at six weeks. One in three women confirm their pregnancies past the six-week mark, according to a November 2021 study published in the journal Contraception. He has also supported bans on birth control and pushed a 15-week abortion ban as a bare minimum.
“I want to always err on the side of life,” he said. “I would hold that view in these matters because … I honestly believe that we got this extraordinary opportunity in the country today to restore the sanctity of life to the center […]
Test after test, court case after court case has shown the 2020 election was probably the safest most accurate election in American history. That fact-based truth, however, has not stopped Republicans from continuing to spread the Big Lie. Worse, in state legislatures they control Republicans are passing laws designed to allow MAGAt activists to seriously screw up their state’s voting process, and nowhere is this clearer than in Georgia.
The reality is that the Republicans know they have become a permanent minority party and the 2020 and 2022 elections showed them they are unlikely to be able to win a fair election. So their strategy has changed, and through a combination of gerrymandering, voter suppression, rigging election boards, and now encouraging their MAGAt activists to gum up the whole election process with voter challenges made possible through changes in the law. Basically the Republicans now hope to win by cheating.
Jason Frazier, a member of the planning commission for the city of Roswell and urban farmer, challenged Chris Ramsey’s vote and has filed almost 10,000 voter challenges in Fulton County. Credit: Cheney Orr / ProPublica
The recent transformation of the state’s election laws explicitly enabled citizens to file unlimited challenges to other voters’ registrations. Experts warn that election officials’ handling of some of those challenges may clash with federal law.
On March 15, 2022, an email appeared in the inbox of the election director of Forsyth County, Georgia, with the subject line “Challenge of Elector’s Eligibility.” A spreadsheet attached to the email identified 13 people allegedly registered to vote at P.O. boxes in Forsyth County, a wealthy Republican suburb north of Atlanta. Georgians are supposed to register at residential addresses, except in special circumstances. “Please consider this my request that a hearing be held to determine these voters’ eligibility to vote,” wrote the challenger, Frank Schneider.
Schneider is a former chief financial officer at multiple companies, including Jockey International, the underwear maker. His Instagram page includes pictures of him golfing at […]
Just as I predicted people are moving out of states where they are offended and feel uncomfortable. The culture war is literally causing people to internally migrate. If you are a MAGAt Washington, Colorado, or California, for example, are not a place where your fundamentalism, racism, male dominance and militant heterosexuality are going to be comfortably received. So you may be off to Idaho or Florida. Conversely if you are for equal rights for all, gender equality, and have a comfortable acceptance of LGBTQ people it will do nothing but lead to arguments with MAGAts. So you may choose to move to a Blue state like Washington. This is yet another aspect of the Great Schism Trend that is creating two countries in the United States.
The “Harry Potter” books famously feature a sorting hat, a magical way of determining in which house Hogwarts students truly belong: Gryffindor? Slytherin?
Last week, The Associated Press reported that Americans have no need for such sorcery to find the like-minded: Republicans and Democrats are separating physically at such a furious pace, the news agency reported, the ideological divide between the states is now starker than at any point in living memory.
The most striking evidence? A single party controls the legislature in all but two states. And only 10 states are led by governors of parties that differ from the one that controls the legislature.
Some of that is a consequence of pernicious gerrymandering, of course, but there is so little common ground these days that Americans increasingly are picking up and moving to where they feel at one with the dominant cultural norms and free to express themselves.
If you want to put out a gay pride flag, you might think twice about living in one of the seven states — Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, […]
