We are less than 100 days from the weirdest and most important election in any of our lifetimes, and we have one party that is openly and explicitly planning to end democracy, create an oligarch controlled authoritarian country, break the firewall between church and state, and reduce women to permanent second-class status as citizens. If you don’t vote, and vote only for Democrats, you are condemning yourself and your children to live in a country the Founders would not even recognize. As Benjamin Franklin responded to a woman, as he was walking out of what is now called Constitution Hall, when she asked what kind of government had been created, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” I also urge you to get involved with your local voting process because I keep hearing Donald Trump say to people, “I don’t need your vote…. and after I am President again you’ll never have to vote again.” What he is saying is that he believes the Republicans have already rigged the voting process so that they win.
Peter Cvjetanovic (R) along with neo-Nazis, alt-right, and white supremacist demonstrators chant at counterprotestors after marching through the University of Virginia campus with torches in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11, 2017. Credit: Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency / Getty
“Invasion and great replacement theory rhetoric, both deeply rooted in white nationalist and antisemitic tropes, are no longer a bug on the Hill, they are a regular feature,” said one campaigner.
Republican U.S. lawmakers who embrace and amplify racist, xenophobic, and antisemitic conspiracy theories about undocumented immigrants are helping to stoke deadly politically motivated violence, according to a report published Friday by a coalition of advocacy groups.
The report—titled Bigoted Conspiracy Caucus—”exposes the normalization of xenophobic ‘great replacement’ and ‘invasion’ conspiracies within the 118th Congress, documenting their historical roots and widespread promotion by members of Congress.”
“The great replacement conspiracy claims Jews are orchestrating the replacement of white Christian Americans with nonwhite immigrants, people of color, or others who they think are inferior and ‘easier to control,’” the report states. “Today’s versions […]
Perverted Christianity, fascism, White supremacy, male dominance, and an obsession with guns, that’s the combo of the MAGAt world, and it is all funded by christofascist oligarchs who hire lawyers without honor to play the laws like a banjo to get the American they want. Here’s the story.
Mother Jones illustration / Getty
For decades, McLean Bible Church has served as the place of worship for many of DC’s Republican elite. The sprawling evangelical megachurch in Vienna, Virginia, boasts a roster of former parishioners that includes everyone from Ken Starr to Mike Pence. It’s where Donald Trump once dropped in for a brief prayer after a round of golf.
McLean Bible is also where, in November 2017, a senior pastor named Dale Sutherland formed a nonprofit called Act2Impact. In those days, the organization was described in state records as an “auxiliary” of the church, with a mission to “preach the gospel” and “conduct evangelistic and humanitarian outreach.”
But that mission was short-lived.
Two years later, Sutherland—who had once been an undercover narcotics officer in DC—left McLean Bible and filed papers to rename Act2Impact. It became the Constitutional Defense Fund (CDF), which would “promote and secure” constitutional rights. “We aim to defend and strengthen those rights through methods that will include litigation and […]
Miriam Bergeret , Live Science Contributing Writer - Live Science
Stephan:
Here is some good news concerning research on how to degrade “forever” chemicals (PFAS), that have become a major human-created pollutant with all kinds of negative consequences for the Matrix of Life, including humans.
Scientists have uncovered bacteria with enzymes that can break down various PFAS, also called “forever chemicals.” Credit: Kateryna Kon / Science Photo Library / Getty
Certain bacteria can degrade the strong bonds that give “forever chemicals” their long shelf life, and this hints at potential low-cost treatments that could cleanse water of concerning PFAS.
Now, in a study published July 17 in the journal Science Advances, researchers reported for the first time that four species of Acetobacterium can degrade the bonds in some PFAS. This includes unsaturated PFAS, whose […]
Here is some more transitional good news. As this report says, “The bulk of steelmaking around the world still relies on coal-based blast furnaces.
As a result, the steel and iron industry is responsible for 7% of greenhouse gas emissions and 11% of carbon dioxide emissions globally, according to the consultancy firm Global Efficiency Intelligence….This is more than the total emissions from all the world’s cars and vans.” The conversion of steel-making to non-coal-based blast furnaces will have a huge effect on the matrix of life.
This is more than the total emissions from all the world’s cars and vans.
With steel critical to the building out of decarbonised energy infrastructure, production is expected to continue to rise over the coming years, meaning the potential for decarbonisation is “enormous”, according to not-for-profit data organisation Global Energy Monitor (GEM).
GEM’s annual “Pedal to the Metal” report reveals that 93% of new steelmaking capacity announced thus far in 2024 promises to use lower emission electric arc furnaces (EAFs).
It also shows that 49% of the world’s steelmaking capacity under development now uses EAFs, up from just 43% in 2023 and 33% in 2022.
Of this, nearly all of the capacity announced since the beginning of 2024 operates using EAFs, the non-governmental organisation’s Global Steel Plant Tracker (GSPT) shows.
The tracker covers 2,207m tonnes per year (mtpa) of operating […]
Aaron Davis, Carol D. Leonnig , Reporters - Microsoft Start | The Washington Post
Stephan:
Here is the story, just emerging, of what history will record as the largest bribe of an American President by a foreign government — who else but criminal Trump — in the history of the United States. And, because of the Supreme Court decision on immunity, he will get away with it with no accountability. History will also record that criminal Trump has gotten away with more crimes than any mafia boss. He is a crook at a scale never before seen in this country. His henchman, Bill Barr is also going to get away with no accountability. This story tells us one thing clearly. The MAGAt (formerly Republican Party) is collectively a criminal enterprise, and the man they are putting forward as their candidate is a lecherous man without honor or ethics.
$10M cash withdrawal drove secret probe into whether Trump took money from Egypt. Credit: The Washington Post
Five days before Donald Trump became president in January 2017, a manager at a bank branch in Cairo received an unusual letter from an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service. It asked the bank to “kindly withdraw” nearly $10 million from the organization’s account — all in cash.
Inside the state-run National Bank of Egypt, employees were soon busy placing bundles of $100 bills into two large bags, according to records from the bank. Four men arrived and carried away the bags, which U.S. officials later described in sealed court filings as weighing a combined 200 pounds and containing what was then a sizable share of Egypt’s reserve of U.S. currency.
Federal investigators learned of the withdrawal, which has not been previously reported, early in 2019. The discovery intensified a secret criminal investigation that had begun two years earlier with classified U.S. intelligence indicating that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi sought to give Trump $10 million to boost […]
Yesterday it was a report that Antarctica is 50°F over normal temperature. Today is it is this alarming report about the Andes, the world’s largest longest mountain range. When you realize that a tiny group of rich people who control the oil and gas industries are enriching themselves in a manner that is putting the entire Earth at risk you understand why there is a desperate need to regulate these industries and stop their destruction of our world. Criminal Trump has already and openly whored himself out to these people promising he will protect their greed.
The Andes mountain range, the longest mountain range in the world. Credit: EDUBABA
Recent glacier retreat across the Andes is unprecedented in the history of human civilization, according to a new study published in the Science journal.
The discovery shocked scientists, who initially planned to study the current state of glaciers and how they had varied throughout human civilization.
The research was led by Boston College and included input from scientists at the University of Galway.
“We thought this result was decades away,” said Andrew Gorin, lead author of the study, who first believed the initial results were a fluke, but were confirmed by later samples.
“It goes to show you that this is happening faster than even those of us that think about this the most believed.”
Mr Gorin and the team of scientists carbon-dated bedrock that had been recently exposed by retreated glaciers by measuring beryllium-10 and carbon-14 nuclide levels and found that concentrations were nearly zero.
