Here is some good news about the transition out of the carbon era. I happened to see a reference in a professional journal and went looking for a general audience report and found this. Like most of the good things the Biden administration is doing the development described in this report isn’t really getting any coverage. The media is obsessed with the madness of criminal Trump and the many good things that are happening in the U.S. are hardly mentioned.
The Idaho National Laboratory. Credit, DoE
Across the nation, land set aside for the purpose of possibly destroying the world is now welcoming infrastructure meant to save it.
Sites managed by the Dept. of Energy’s nuclear weapons division are now playing host to solar farms that should be able to power thousands of homes.
As part of a government program called Cleanup to Clean Energy, the Idaho National Laboratory, though never having hosted nuclear weapons itself, will soon be the site of a 400-megawatt solar farm spread across 2,800 acres.
Though the project timeline hasn’t been released, a lease was negotiated for the INL project with Massachusetts-based solar developer NorthRenew Energy for 300 megawatts of solar power.
Another developer called Spitfire was awarded a lease for 100 megawatts and another 500 of battery storage, according to Elektek.
Other locations including the Hanford site in Washington state, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, the Nevada National Security Site in Nevada, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, are all considered strong candidates for the program.
The christofascist Republicans have made their next move clear: eliminate no-fault divorce. They want to take the United States back to the 1950s, and the years before that. This is their next move to control women. If you are a woman, and you vote for a Republican in November, you are saying that you choose to be submissive to your husband, and let him through the laws control you, and make it very difficult for you to get away. I had seen some earlier reports about this trend but didn’t run them because I thought it was too fringe to be taken seriously. I was wrong. Read this article carefully; it will help you realize what the Republicans really have in mind.
Some lawmakers are talking about turning back the clock on divorce law. Credit: Mofles/ Getty / iStockphoto
Before the 1960s, it was really hard to get divorced in America.
Typically, the only way to do it was to convince a judge that your spouse had committed some form of wrongdoing, like adultery, abandonment, or “cruelty” (that is, abuse). This could be difficult: “Even if you could prove you had been hit, that didn’t necessarily mean it rose to the level of cruelty that justified a divorce,” said Marcia Zug, a family law professor at the University of South Carolina.
Then came a revolution: In 1969, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan of California (who was himself divorced) signed the nation’s first no-fault divorce law, allowing people to end their marriages without proving they’d been wronged. The move was a recognition that “people were going to get out of marriages,” Zug said, and gave them a way to do that without resorting to subterfuge. Similar […]
JANELL FETTEROLF and STEPHANIE KRAMER, - Pew Research Center
Stephan:
Pew Research Center has recently published a very sad story about America: “Americans are less likely than people abroad to feel close to others in their country and community, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey of 24 nations. This is especially the case among certain groups of Americans, including younger adults, those with lower incomes and less education, those who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, and those who are religiously unaffiliated. This is part of the Great Schism Trend, and gives yet another perspective on how American society is breaking apart.
Americans are less likely than people abroad to feel close to others in their country and community, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey of 24 nations. This is especially the case among certain groups of Americans, including younger adults, those with lower incomes and less education, those who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, and those who are religiously unaffiliated.
How we did this
Across all 24 countries surveyed, a median of 83% of adults say they feel very or somewhat close to other people in their country. A majority of U.S. adults (66%) also hold this view, but Americans are the least likely among those in the countries surveyed to do so.
Even fewer Americans feel close to people in their local community: 54% feel a connection to others near them, compared with a median of 78% of adults across all 24 countries. South Korea is the only country with a lower share of adults who feel connected with others in their community (50%).
Feeling close to other Americans
Some Americans are less likely than others to feel a connection to […]
Here is yet another example that you rarely hear anyone talk about showing how women, young girls in this case really, are controlled by adult men. The more research I do on this subject the more I realize what a big factor it is in American society.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
As more states make child marriage illegal, the places where it is still lawful are emerging as havens for ceremonies which can devastate the lives of young people. A Newsweek investigation reveals the disturbing reality that a lack of unified action against child marriage can establish.
Californian Sara Tasneem was just 15 when her father arranged for her be married in a spiritual ceremony to a stranger almost twice her age.
She was visibly pregnant, she said, when they left the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-90s to embark on a road trip to Reno, Nevada, where she was legally married. “Nobody asked me if this was something that I wanted,” she told Newsweek.
“I was a very petite teenager and I was clearly pregnant… “Nobody asked me, ‘do you want me to call your mom?’ Nothing. That day, basically, I signed everything away.”
At the time, Nevada law permitted minors to marry with the consent of one parent.
“It only took a signature from a parent or guardian, basically on a permission slip that was notarized,” she said.
Yet another report on the Congressional Republicans seeking to control how Americans are able to conduct their own reproductive process. Anyone who knows someone who has had to use IVF for a woman to get pregnant knows what a desperate, expensive, difficult process it is. A couple has to really, really, want to have a child to have to resort to IVF. However, the christofascist Republcians who maintain a fertilized egg has the full rights of an incarnated person want the state, not individuals, to oversee every aspect of reproduction.
A senior embryologist at West Coast Fertility Centers in Fountain Valley, California, adds media to petri dishes containing embryos, before freezing the embryos, on February 29. Credit: Jay L. Clendenin / The Washington Post / Getty
Senate Republicans voted Thursday to block a bill put forward by Democrats that would guarantee access to in vitro fertilization nationwide.
The legislation failed to advance in a procedural vote by a tally of 48-47. It needed 60 votes to advance. Republicans criticized the Democrat-led legislation as unnecessary overreach and a political show vote.
“Why should we vote for a bill that fixes a non-existent problem? There’s not a problem. There’s no restrictions on IVF, nor should there be,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, told reporters.
The vote is part of a broader push by Senate Democrats to draw a contrast with Republicans over reproductive health care in the run up to the November elections. Democrats are highlighting the issue this month, which marks the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
