It was not my intention when I started to plan SR for Thursday to focus on Missouri. But the wellbeing of this Republican-controlled state is deteriorating so alarmingly and so quickly that when one compares it to what is happening in Texas, Florida, or a dozen other Republican-controlled states one sees The Great Schism Trend playing out openly before our eyes. We have become — not becoming, become — two very different countries within one nation.
Missouri senators voted Wednesday against amendments that would have allowed abortions in the cases of rape and incest in the state.
Missouri senators debated a bill that would make it illegal for public funds to go toward abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood. During the debate, Missouri state Sen. Tracy McCreery (D) introduced amendments that would allow exceptions for abortion in incest and rape cases.
“I think the consensus is that Missouri law went too far when they banned all abortions,” she said during the discussion, according to audio posted online by the state Senate.
However, her efforts were struck down along party lines by the Republican-controlled state Senate, The Associated Press reported. McCreery also argued the current abortion ban shows the state does not care about women who are victims of rape.
“What we’re saying is, ‘We don’t care,’” McCreery said of the abortion ban, according to the AP. “We’re going to force you to give birth, even if that pregnancy resulted from forcible rape by a family member, a date, […]
The problem with the Republican Party is Republican voters. Here, in this report on who does and does not believe in climate change, you can see why I say this. Our problem as a country is we have a large percentage of the population who are poorly educated barely literate racists. I think what this is telling us is that as a country we need better education, and higher literacy, because Republicans, as a party, are more poorly educated, and less literate than Democrats. That is not, although it may sound like it is, a partisan statement. It is simply based on objectively verifiable facts.
Wilted palm trees line a destroyed property in Lahaina, Hawaii, on 8 December 2023, amid recovery efforts following the August wildfire. Credit: Lindsey Wasson / AP
Nearly 15% of Americans don’t believe climate change is real, a new study out of the University of Michigan reveals – shedding light on the highly polarized attitude toward global warming.
Additionally, denialism is highest in the central and southern US, with Republican voters found less likely to believe in climate science.
Using artificial intelligence, researchers analyzed over 7.4m tweets posted by roughly 1.3 million people on the social media platform X (previously Twitter) between 2017 and 2019. The social media posts were geocoded, and classified as “for” or “against” climate change using a large language model, a type of artificial intelligence developed by OpenAI.
“Over half of the tweets we looked at simply denied that climate change was real, that it was a hoax,” said Joshua Newell, co-author of the study and professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan. “It wasn’t surprising but it was disappointing, I would hope that more and […]
Here is a very important interview about the grotesque and, in my view the evil wealth inequality that is doing such damage to America’s social wellbeing. It also discusses how to reverse this negative trend. One of the key steps is reversing the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. That isn’t going to happen as long as we have the christofascist cabal that controls the Court today. But if the Democrats could take a strong majority in both Houses of Congress, and Biden wins, laws could be passed changing the tax code and controlling the banks that could accomplish what needs to be done.
Protesters display signs during a demonstration in New York City Credit: Michael Nigro / Sopa Images / Lightrocket / Getty
The fortunes of the five richest men in the world have “shot up by 114 percent since 2020,” according to a January 2024 Oxfam report on global inequality, while “nearly five billion people have been made poorer.”
This most recent gross increase in wealth and income inequality builds on global trends that took hold in the early 1980s, with the decades-long increase in inequality being particularly large in the United States compared to other developed nations. Wealth inequality is typically higher than income inequality, which in turn feeds higher future income inequality. Indeed, income inequality in the U.S. continues to rise, according to the latest report from the Congressional Budget Office, utilizing data through 2020.
At the same time, and quite unsurprisingly, the largest U.S. banks made record profits in 2023, with JPMorgan Chase reporting $49.6 billion in net income for the year. In the meantime, the Federal Reserve, which world-renowned progressive economist Gerald Epstein calls the “chairman” […]
, Reporter - Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology
Stephan:
You may remember a federal judge in Texas ruling that Mifepristone the drug that induces abortions should be taken off the market citing a peer-reviewed journal published by the academic publisher Sage. It turns out, however, that the paper was misinformation submitted by a group of anti-choice researchers. Sage, as this announcement from the publisher reports has retracted the paper and announced it was fake. It will be interesting to see whether the Republican judge follows with his own announcement.
Credit: Reuters
At the request of Sage and the Journal Editor, the following articles have been retracted:
Studnicki J, Harrison DJ, Longbons T, et al. A Longitudinal Cohort Study of Emergency Room Utilization Following Mifepristone Chemical and Surgical Abortions, 1999–2015. Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology. 2021;8. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/23333928211053965
Studnicki J, Longbons T, Harrison DJ, et al. A Post Hoc Exploratory Analysis: Induced Abortion Complications Mistaken for Miscarriage in the Emergency Room are a Risk Factor for Hospitalization. Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology. 2022;9. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/23333928221103107
Studnicki J, Longbons T, Fisher JW, Harrison DJ, Skop I, MacKinnon SJ. Doctors Who Perform Abortions: Their Characteristics and Patterns of Holding and Using Hospital Privileges. Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology. 2019;6. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/2333392819841211
Reader concerns and investigation
A reader contacted the journal with concerns about the 2021 article as to whether presentation of the data in Figures 2 and 3 is misleading, whether there are defects in the selection of the cohort data, and whether the authors’ affiliations with pro-life advocacy organizations, including Charlotte Lozier Institute, present conflicts of interest that the authors should […]
MAGAt world is largely a White, low education, low literacy, racist christofascist cult. Why? I think one reason that gets almost no discussion is that no living Americans have ever experienced organized massive civil violence in their own town, city, or county; it hasn’t happened since the Civil War. I think that is an important reason so many people in the United States find criminal Trump’s fascism so interesting.
Donald Trump’s fascistic rhetoric about how immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country, as well as the GOP’s embrace of the “great replacement theory,” are repellent to many Americans. But for a startling number of people, new survey results exclusively provided to Rolling Stone reveal, the message that immigrants pose a dark threat to the nation is being met with enthusiasm — or a dangerous shrug of indifference.
More than a third of Trump’s 2020 voters — 35 percent — agree with Trump’s claim, parroted from fascists before him, that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” according to survey results from the University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll. Only 32 percent of Trump voters and 37 percent of Republicans outright disagree with the Nazi slogan.
Trump first started using the blood-poisoning rhetoric late last year, ratcheting up his longstanding hateful declarations that migrants are “rapists,” “murderers,” or “animals.” The notion that immigrants are corrupting the national bloodline, though, directly echoes Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Trump believes this fascist rhetoric works for him, and has privately said that “poisoning the blood” is a “great line,” a source previously told Rolling Stone.
