In today’s SR I am only doing two stories because I want my readers to become fully aware and focused on a trend going on in the United States that is not getting enough attention and that is leading us to a civil conflict between the Federal and Red state governments that is on the verge of becoming violent — a modern civil war. It is also yet another aspect of the process that is making us two countries in a single nation.
Because all the media can talk about is criminal Trump, something that threatens the unity of the United States is going on in Texas that 25 other MAGAt Red state governors are supporting, several literally with troops. Criminal Trump is fostering this trend every day. What am I talking about? What is beginning to look like the first steps of a new civil war. This article explains the history and thinking behind what the Republican Party is doing today. By the time of the election, we may see violence between federal and state troops. I think this is much more serious than the media is treating it.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s defiant statement on Wednesday rejecting the federal government’s authority to enforce immigration law at the U.S.-Mexico border ratcheted up the already tense stand-off between the state and the Biden administration — and signaled how fully the GOP has become the party of the Southern conservatives it was founded to fight.
Abbott’s declaration that the Biden administration had “broken the compact between the United States and the States” by failing to “fulfill the duties” of protecting Texas from an “invasion” is an eerie echo of the political thought that gave rise to nullification and secession in the 19th century and resistance to desegregation in the 20th.
Prior to the Civil War, the prevailing view among Southern elites was that the Constitution of the United States of America was merely a compact between the states. Under […]
This is what I mean when I say this situation in Texas is much more concerning than it is being treated by the media, and much further along than most Americans, I suspect, had any idea. This is why, to my mind, the Great Schism trend I have been writing about (see SR archive) for almost a decade now is coming to some kind of crisis, and we are becoming two countries in a single nation.
Multiple Republican-led states began sending personnel and resources months ago to combat increased migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border, with one state saying “nothing is off the table” as tensions bubble between Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the Biden administration.
Abbott has voiced displeasure over Monday’s 5-4 Supreme Court decision, which vacated an injunction from an appeals court and allowed federal Border Patrol agents to remove razor wire installed at the border by Texas officials under Abbott’s direction. It does not prevent Texas from erecting new wire.
On Thursday, 25 Republican governors backed Abbott and “Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself” against what he has referred to as a migrant “invasion” of his state. Some believe the situation is escalating towards a civil […]
If you think Covid is over you are wrong, as this article spells out. More than that if you don’t realize and acknowledge how badly Republican state governments have dealt with this pandemic than you are either willfully ignorant or just lying to yourself. Covid is still a major threat and the Republican governance, the anti-vaxxer movement, from RFK, Jr to The horrible DeSantis’ quack Surgeon General, have killed hundred of thousands Americans. More than that in year four we should recognize that this is but one of the pandemics we are going to face in the future and the Covid pandemic should teach us something important about the failure of the American illness profit system.
Four years of Covid-19. A total of 1.165 million deaths in the United States. As of December, we were averaging about 1,500 deaths a week from Covid. These numbers may seem abstract to many, but I remember a scientific paper from early in the pandemic that estimated “for every Covid-19 death, approximately nine surviving Americans will lose a grandparent, parent, sibling, spouse, or child”—which means 60,000 Americans were left grieving for the holidays.
Public health is about trade-offs between risks and benefits, just like personal health. Think about your own life: We all weigh the pleasure of that second glass of wine or extra slice of cake against the calories we know that pleasure will bring. And I’m not judging here, as I make these same decisions daily. (Give me that chocolate chip cookie.)
Yet I am not quite sure we’ve ever had an explicit discussion about the collective trade-offs we’ve made when it comes to Covid. […]
The World Health Organization (WHO) has just issued a fresh warning over measles after an almost 45-fold rise in cases across Europe. Epidemologists from the organization said Europe is seeing an “alarming rise” in the spread of the disease, which has “accelerated in recent months”. Some 42,200 cases were reported by member states in 2023, almost 45 times the 941 cases in 2022. In the United States the Center for Disease Control (CDC), in 2000, declared Measles eliminated but now, as this report describes cases are popping up again. The numbers are still small, but why is this happening? The answer, as with the Covid vaccines, is anti-vaxxer misinformation. I have written about this at length (See SR archive and search on “Covid” and “misinformation”). As people come from Europe, or unvaccinated children play together, we are going to see more cases and, I think, it is telling us something very important. Do not get medical guidance from social media. Go to the CDC or sources like MedPage Today, or the Mayo Clinic website. As I said in the previous article, there are going to be more pandemics. Will we be properly prepared? I think not. The American illness Profit System is very poor, particularly with nationwide emergencies, and the weaponization of misinformation has become a defining trend in this country. We desperately need a universal birthright single-payer healthcare system — Medicare greatly expanded. Will we get such a system? Not if the Republicans have anything to say about it.
Despite having a very effective and easily available vaccine, measles outbreaks have continued to pop up in the United States over the last two decades.
Most recently, there have been eight cases confirmed in Philadelphia since December 2023, all among unvaccinated individuals. Additionally, a person with measles traveled through D.C.-area airports and cases have been identified in Delaware, New Jersey and Washington state, according to local reports.
In 2023, there were 41 confirmed cases of measles, according to incomplete data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
While the number of measles cases in the past few years are not at record highs and the 2023 numbers are lower than recent years, the fact that outbreaks are still occurring is a trend that concerns health officials and experts.
Measles was declared eliminated in 2000 — meaning the disease “is […]
