Libraries have always been very important to me, and I think they are an important part in a civil democratic society. And they are under massive attack. As this article correctly describes, this is an attempt by the MAGAts, particularly in Red states, to control what people can know, and for the MAGAts to control that. Contact your local school board and tell them you do not want the library edited. You can even cite the Shakespeare deletion in Florida. This is North Korea stuff.
Unsatisfied with banning books from schools and prisons, the Texas Legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott in June passed House Bill 900, which will apply to any private bookstore that might sell to a school library. Credit: Shutterstock / Trong Nguyen
A year ago, a religious extremist stabbed Salman Rushdie multiple times at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. The attack occurred just as the world-renowned novelist took the stage to talk about how the United States represents a safe haven for exiled writers around the world. The wounds he suffered nearly killed him.
In May, during his first public appearance after an arduous recovery, he accepted the PEN America Centenary Courage Award. During his remarks, he didn’t hold back about the attack on free expression underway in a certain Southern state.
“The attack on books, the attack on teaching, the attack on libraries in — how could I put this? — Florida, has never been more dangerous, never been more important to fight,” Rushie warned.
We can only wish that what happens in Florida would stay in […]
My big take away from the Republican debate the other night, other than that six of the candidates are prepared to support Trump even if he is a convicted felon, as he almost certainly will be by the time of the election, was their uninterest in climate change. The world faces what in some ways may be the largest existential crisis in recorded history, and one American political party either doesn’t believe it exists, or doesn’t see it as much of an issue. It is a Republican trend, and you can see it playing out at the state level in Red states. What that tells me is that the United States, in the Red states particularly, is going to experience misery and death at a level we have never seen since the Civil War.
‘Let’s have this debate,’ Ron DeSantis said about the climate crisis, before ignoring the issue. Credit: Brendan Smialowski / AFP. / Getty
Unlike in recent election cycles, most Republican presidential hopefuls this time around didn’t flat out deny that the climate crisis is real. But on the Fox News debate stage, they made clear that they’re not interested in dwelling on the issues – or doing much about it.
On Tuesday night, the eight candidates were asked to raise their hands if they believed in the reality of human-caused global heating. They all punted.
The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, immediately derailed efforts to elicit a clear yes or no response. “Let’s have this debate,” he said, before proceeding not to have it at all, instead criticising Joe Biden’s response to the fires in Maui.
Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, was notably the only candidate to full-throatedly deny climate science, making the unsubstantiated claim that “more people are dying due to bad climate change policies than they are due to actual climate change”.
There’s no discernible trend of deaths linked to policies […]
David Badash, Staff Writer - Raw Story / The New Civil Rights Movement
Stephan:
I have been following this story for weeks, waiting to see if Mitch McConnell or some group of his Republican colleagues, would step in and sort out Alabama Republican senator Tommy Tuberville and stop the damage he is doing to the American military. Tommy Tuberville, by his own admission is a White Nationalist fascist. His record in the Senate until this current business has been singularly unimpressive. Now, as this article describes, he is devastating the normal functioning of the American military in all service branches. Alabama voters should be ashamed of themselves sending such a cretin to the Senate.
White racist fascist Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama
U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), the far-right hard-core conservative who since February has been single-handedly holding up the promotions of over 300 U.S. Military officers, has now expanded his fight from a battle against the Pentagon’s policy supporting service members needing to travel out-of-state to obtain abortion services into a war whose targets are individuals: career U.S. Military officers awaiting promotions.
“There is nobody more military than me,” “Coach” Tuberville infamously said last month, when his hit list holding up promotions requiring Senate confirmation had just reached 265 U.S. Military officers. Senator Tuberville’s remarks were not well-received, especially since, as multiple news outlets reported, he had never served in America’s Armed Forces, and had been caught misrepresenting his father’s World War II military record.
“I don’t care if they promote anybody,” Tuberville admitted last week. […]
Yet another sorry story of Republican controlled Red states in the South making health care for women difficult if not impossible. The social outcome statistics on maternal and infant mortality in Southern Red states are worse than those found in third world countries in Africa. It is amazing to me that voters year after year elect to their state legislature mostly White men, who make it clear they don’t give a damn about women, particularly pregnant women, having good healthcare. For that reason I see this as a voter problem. If you vote for a scumbag, how can you be surprised when he behaves like a scumbag? It is just another aspect of the Republican trend of destroying their constituents wellbeing.
Midwife Stephanie Mitchell, who is attempting to open a birth center in Alabama and has sued the state, speaks at the Mothers of Gynecology monument in Montgomery, Ala., this month. Credit: Anna Claire Vollers/Stateline/TNS
When Katie Chubb announced in 2021 she was planning to open a freestanding birth center in Augusta, Georgia, it seemed like everybody in town was excited about it.
She met with local physicians and nurses who said they would welcome her Augusta Birth Center as a provider of midwifery services for low-risk pregnancies. Hundreds of people signed the interest form on her website. She met with the head of obstetrics at University Hospital (now Piedmont Augusta), located less than a mile from the proposed birth center location, who responded positively, she said.
But when Chubb submitted her 800-page application to the state health department for a so-called Certificate of Need — a requirement to open a licensed birth center in Georgia — she discovered that not everybody in town was enthusiastic about the Augusta Birth Center.
Yet another example of a corrupt Republican state legislature working against the wellbeing of their constituents. And, again, I see this as a voter problem. The people of North Carolina voted Senator Paul Newton, a Cabarrus County Republican into office. Newton is a former Duke Energy executive, and his corruption in introducing a bill that only benefits his former employer is so obvious I don’t see how anyone could avoid seeing it.
Electricity companies including Duke Energy see small nuclear plants as a carbon-free alternative to fossil-powered plants. This NuScale design has won approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Credit: NuScale
Lawmakers in Raleigh are considering a bill that could make it easier to permit new nuclear plants and extend deadlines for Duke Energy to clean up coal ash dumps at its North Carolina plants.
Senate Bill 678 was introduced by Sen. Paul Newton, a Cabarrus County Republican and former Duke Energy executive. It would replace the term “renewable energy” in state statutes with “clean energy.”
The bill also explicitly adds nuclear energy to the list of clean energy options as regulators decide what new electrical plants to approve.
Duke Energy supports the bill and has proposed replacing some North Carolina coal plants with a new generation of small nuclear reactors. Duke is also adding solar, wind and hydroelectric capacity as it tries to reduce fossil fuel use to meet the state’s climate goals.
“We support modifying legislation to reflect nuclear’s […]
