The Chinese still have a lot of problems, some of which are outlined in this article, but they get very clearly the importance of moving their culture out of the carbon energy era.
Last November, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua and U.S. climate envoy John Kerry shook hands on a pledge to triple renewable energy globally by 2030. It was hailed as a welcome revival of climate cooperation between the world’s biggest and second-biggest emitters of greenhouse gases and offered hope that the two veteran climate negotiators had found a way through a blizzard of negative diplomatic exchanges to keep alive the prospects for greater global ambition on tackling climate change.
In one key sector essential to that ambition, however, the Chinese government can argue, with some justification, that it is China, not the United States, that is in the lead. In a world in which national climate targets are being missed, the speed and scale of expansion in China’s installed renewable capacity is unmatched.
In 2020, for example, China pledged to reach 1,200 gigawatts of renewables capacity by 2030, more than double its capacity at that time. At its present pace, it will meet that target by 2025, and could boast as much as 1,000 gigawatts of solar power alone by the […]
I, too, get Social Security, having started to contribute to it in 1958, when I was 16. I don’t know how anyone lives on the meager sums one gets from Social Security. This article describes what the reality of this system has become, and I think it is disgraceful. Why is this not a major issue in the Presidential campaign? Why is there so little coverage about this crisis in the media? Why is the federal minimum wage in the U.S. $7.25 an hour, when the tax structure has created millions of millionaires and 813 billionaires? We should be ashamed of ourselves.
Rising food costs have put a strain on Social Security recipients’ finances. Credit: Chona Kasinger / Bloomberg / Getty
Until last year, Janet Albrecht could afford to eat roast beef sandwiches or tuna salad for lunch. But the widowed 78-year-old now has to skimp on her meals because her Social Security benefits haven’t kept up with the rising costs for food, housing and health care in recent years.
A retired graphic designer, Albrecht estimates she’s paying $100 more a month at the supermarket than she was before inflation started skyrocketing in 2021. Her landlord increased the monthly rent by a total of $65 over the past two years, her utility bills are larger and some of the seven medications she takes daily after suffering a heart attack have gotten more expensive. She hasn’t had a haircut in more than a year, though she doesn’t like to wear her hair so long.
“I’m down to eating ramen for lunch, which I never ate in my life until recently,” said Albrecht, an […]
The oligarchs created by the MAGAt (formerly Republican) Party by restructuring the U.S. tax system to favor the rich, do not want democracy to continue. They want America to become a kind of Hungary. Phony elections, and total control of society by an authoritarian leader and the oligarchs who created him. Criminal Trump is relying on this formula. The uber-rich dump tens even hundreds of millions of dollars to buy his election from ignorant resentful Americans and that is the last real election we ever have. We have 82 days to convince everyone we know that they must vote, and they must vote only for Democrats. This election is not about political partisanship. This is an election between democracy and autocracy.
Credit: Pol Badia / Unsplash
Get ready: massive pools of dark rightwing money are soon going to clobber us. Will Democracy survive this onslaught by the morbidly rich?
Democrats are giddy right now; the substantial lead that Trump had held over Biden for months has largely vanished as the match-up has changed to Harris and Walz. In the ten polls aggregated by RealClearPolitics since Biden’s withdrawal, Trump has lost 3 points and only leads by one. In the DailyKos/Civiqs poll Harris leads Trump 49/45, Reuters puts the race at 43/42, and Morning Consult has it at 47/46.
Trump is blustering in ways that indicate he thinks he’s losing (Thursday’s presser at his shabby golf motel was particularly pathetic), while JD Vance’s poll numbers are in the toilet…or the couch…and showing no indication of recovery any day soon.
That said, other lessons from this and recent past years should keep Democrats from easing up or becoming overconfident. The […]
I wonder, have the women in the MAGAt controlled states, finally realized they have been reduced to second-class status, and their wellbeing is now controlled by politicians not themselves or their doctors? Did they vote for those politicians? Is this what they wanted?
Credit: MedPage Today
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Bleeding and in pain, Kyleigh Thurman didn’t know her doomed pregnancy could kill her. Emergency room doctors at Ascension Seton Williamson in Texas handed her a pamphlet on miscarriage and told her to “let nature take its course” before discharging her without treatment for her ectopic pregnancy.
When the 25-year-old returned three days later, still bleeding, doctors finally agreed to give her an injection to end the pregnancy. It was too late. The fertilized egg growing on Thurman’s fallopian tube ruptured it, destroying part of her reproductive system.
That’s according to a complaint Thurman and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed last week asking the government to investigate whether the hospital violated federal law when staff failed to treat her initially in February 2023.
“I was left to flail,” Thurman said. “It was nothing short of being misled.”
The Biden administration says hospitals must offer abortions when needed to save a woman’s life, despite state bans enacted after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion more than two years ago. Texas is challenging that guidance and, earlier this summer, the Supreme Court declined to resolve the […]
Sara Cincurova and Virginia Williams, Reporters - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
“A study published earlier this year estimated that 65,000 rape-related pregnancies probably occurred in states with abortion bans since Roe fell,” this article reports. And it describes the misery inflicted by MAGAt politicians on girls who are raped. This is what the Red States have degenerated into thanks to those politicians. Did you vote for one of those politicians? Are you ashamed of yourself? I certainly would be.
View image in fullscreen A study published earlier this year estimated that 65,000 rape-related pregnancies probably occurred in states with abortion bans since Roe fell. Credit: FatCamera / Getty
Since fall of Roe, 14 states have passed near-total abortion bans – most with no exceptions for rape or incest survivors
As children in Texas, A and her sister were raped multiple times by their stepfather and his friends before she found she was pregnant earlier this year.
“We both had STDs because none of them used condoms,” A said. Their stepfather stopped sexually abusing them when he found out the sisters were treated at a clinic for sexually transmitted diseases. One of his friends did not.
The sisters fled to a domestic violence shelter when A found out she was pregnant, and managed from there to find abortion pills through a network of underground activists. “If I couldn’t have an abortion, I would have killed myself,” A said. “The man who raped me was a pig, and I did not want to have his baby inside of me.”
