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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
If you read me regularly you know that I have been calling the merging of White evangelical christianity and what used to be the Republican Party, christofascism. I don’t capitalize the C because this cult may use the language of the Bible but they have nothing to do with Jesus’ teaching or the values of Christianity. This is a cohort defined by their anger, White racism, resentment, sense of self-righteousness, victimization, and their worship of criminal Trump. Not the brightest group as proven by the fact that they believe what Trump vomits out every day, and think he actually gives a damn about them.
Long known for his improvised and volatile stage performances, former President Donald J. Trump now tends to finish his rallies on a solemn note.
Soft, reflective music fills the venue as a hush falls over the crowd. Mr. Trump’s tone turns reverent and somber, prompting some supporters to bow their heads or close their eyes. Others raise open palms in the air or murmur as if in prayer.
In this moment, Mr. Trump’s audience is his congregation, and the former president their pastor as he delivers a roughly 15-minute finale that evokes an evangelical altar call, the emotional tradition that concludes some Christian services in which attendees come forward to commit to their savior.
“The great silent majority is rising like never before and under our leadership,” he recites from a teleprompter in a typical version of the script. “We will pray to God for our strength and for our liberty. We will pray for God and we will pray with God. We are one movement, one people, one family and one glorious nation under God.”
Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s campaign is a nightmare of stupidity, willful ignorance, and conspiracy delusions. I hope no SR reader is going to make the mistake of voting for this man or his VP mate Nicole Shanahan. We have a two-party system, voting for a third-party candidate in this case is really a vote for Trump. But apart from that Kennedy’s and Shanahan’s anti-vaxxerism in conjunction with criminal Trump’s madness is responsible for the death of a million people, and Shanahan’s anti-IVF nonsense is just more Earth II madness. These are dangerous people.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate has been a harsh critic of in vitro fertilization, while funding alternative research on extending women’s reproductive years.
Nicole Shanahan has for years denounced IVF — calling it “one of the biggest lies that’s being told about women’s health today.”
At the same time, she has also been a vocal proponent of and financial backer for unconventional research into the possibility of helping women having children into their 50s and exploring no-cost interventions to help women conceive, such as exposure to sunlight.
“I’m not sure that there has been a really thorough mitochondrial respiration study on the effects of two hours of morning sunlight on reproductive health. I would love to fund something like that,” Shanahan said to a 2023 panel with the National Academy of Medicine, a group to which she said she had previously donated $100 million. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine said Bia-Echo’s donation amounted to $150,000.
The statement was met with chuckles, “Yeah, let’s do it,” she added. “I just have an intuition that could be interesting and maybe work.”
As a candidate, her criticisms of IVF have taken on heightened importance following an Alabama Supreme Court’s […]
I have been warning SR readers for over a decade of what is coming about climate change and the migrations it is going to cause so you can prepare and make prudent decisions about your own future. (See SR archive, and search on “migration”) Now others, like this article, are taking up this same warning. I urge you to do some research on what the projections are for your region, and when something is likely to happen.
Credit: Adobe
Just months after the Carr and Mendocino Complex fires ripped through nearly 700,000 acres of northern California in 2018, the wind-driven Camp Fire erupted near Chico. The fire scorched through the abnormally dry vegetation, blazing and spreading rapidly, and at one time burned some 10,000 acres in just 90 minutes. It caught the residents of the cozy town of Paradise, nestled in the western Sierra Nevada forests, completely by surprise. The conflagration quickly consumed the entire town, destroying everything and killing 85 people.
Most of the rest of the 26,000 residents fled, and survivors relocated, mostly to California’s Central Valley. Around a quarter have returned to rebuild their homes and communities, despite the fire risks, but many of Paradise’s diaspora cannot or do not want to attempt doing so. Now that they’ve been uprooted, they’re moving on with their lives elsewhere.
Such a scenario is a sign of what’s to come for a growing swath of Americans in the climate-change era, Abrahm Lustgarten argues in “On the […]
Yet another story of the United States failing to educate its young. Fifty-four percent of us can’t read past 6th grade level as it stands now. Forty-three percent can’t read past 5th grade level. Our public schools are being deliberately sabotaged by what was once the Republican Party, and this is the latest report on what is going on with college applications. What all of this is telling anyone who will listen is that in the near future Americans will be the most poorly educated of the developed democracies, if we are still even a democracy. By every social data outcome measure I can find the United States is a country in a major decline. Few in politics will talk about it, corporate media rarely covers it, but that is what is happening.
Colleges Are Facing an Enrollment Nightmare Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Sources: Harold M. Lambert / Getty.
For years, Senator Lamar Alexander was known for theatrically unfurling a paper document so long that he could hold it above his head and still see it drag along the chamber floor. It was the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, a form that every college student and their family must complete to be eligible for federal grants and student loans. Detractors argued that its length (more than 100 questions) and complexity (experts joked that you needed a Ph.D. to complete it) deterred students from getting aid and attending college. In December 2020, on the eve of Alexander’s retirement, Congress finally passed legislation to simplify the form, with implementation ultimately scheduled for the high-school class of 2024. It was a rare win for bipartisan, commonsense governance: less paperwork, more kids going to college.
That was the idea, anyway. In practice, seemingly every phase of the implementation has gone wrong; an ostensible process of simplification […]
Members of Congress are leaving, now staff are talking about leaving. How much clearer does it have to get that the U.S. Congress is not functioning properly and our democracy is deteriorating? What do you think will happen if criminal Trump is elected?
House Speaker Mike Johnson on February 1, 2024 Credit: Creative Commons
The wave of retirement announcements and sudden resignations by members of the 118th Congress may soon be spreading to lawmakers’ staff as well.
Senior-level aides on both sides of the aisle are becoming increasingly frustrated with the ossified, hyper-partisan climate in Washington, DC, according to a Washington Post analysis. The Post’s Paul Kane attributed staffers’ disgust with working on Congress to not just “pandemic fallout, ranging from partisan battles over mask mandates to the long closure of the buildings to the public,” but also “the ongoing toxicity since the January 2021 attack on the Capitol.”
“Congress is broken,” the nonprofit Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) stated in its 2024 “State of the Congress” report. The report noted that nearly half of senior aides in both chambers of Congress are considering leaving their jobs because of “heated rhetoric from the other party.”
“Only 12% of Democrats and 31% of Republicans agreed that ‘Congress is currently […]
Erin Reed , Commentator - Erin In The Morning. / truthout
Stephan:
Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are so poorly governed that if you look at their social outcome data, from healthcare to education it is clear they are basically third-world countries. What is even sadder is how filled with hate and White racism they are, as this article describes. They remind me of South Africa during the apartheid period of its history. This is their latest nastiness, and it is spreading to other TCP-dominated states.
Opponents of several bills targeting transgender youth attend a rally at the Alabama State House to draw attention to anti-transgender legislation on March 30, 2021, in Montgomery, Alabama. Credit: Julie Bennett / Getty
The pace of anti-transgender legislation has slowed in recent weeks, with several states, known for previously targeting transgender individuals, failing to pass any such laws. However, a different dynamic is emerging across the Gulf South, where three states are advancing bills that would cease the legal recognition of transgender individuals, potentially having significant repercussions for their trans residents. Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama are introducing bills to define sex in a manner that excludes transgender individuals, potentially affecting birth certificates, driver’s licenses, bathroom access, and more.
The bills, dubbed the “Women’s Bills of Rights” by their supporters, fall far short of actually protecting women’s rights. They fail to protect access to birth control or abortion, do not ensure equitable pay, neither allocate funds for nor promote women’s athletics, and lack any provisions designed to curb violence against […]
Nitasha Tiku and Pranshu Verma , - Microsoft Start
Stephan:
This AI fake video trend is getting worse and worse, and unsuspecting women are discovering that their faces are being “stolen” to be used in fake videos. As you can see in this story local police departments are not equipped to deal with this, and our dysfunctional Congress has neither the will nor the capability to deal with it. My recommendation to you is to send the URL for this story to your district’s Congress member and Senators and ask them to tell you what they are planning to do about this.
Michel Janse was on her honeymoon when she found out she had been cloned.
The 27-year-old content creator was with her husband in a rented cabin in snowy Maine when messages from her followers began trickling in, warning that a YouTube commercial was using her likeness to promote erectile dysfunction supplements.
The commercial showed Janse — a Christian social media influencer who posts about travel, home decor and wedding planning — in her real bedroom, wearing her real clothes but describing a nonexistent partner with sexual health problems.
“Michael spent years having a lot of difficulty maintaining an erection and having a very small member,” her doppelgänger says in the ad.
Scammers appeared to have stolen and manipulated her most popular video — an emotional account of her earlier divorce — probably using a new wave of artificial intelligence tools that make it easier to create realistic deepfakes, a catchall term for media altered or created with AI.
With just a few seconds of footage, scammers can now combine video and audio using tools […]
Sarah Mervosh and Francesca Paris, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan:
America needs to sit down with itself and have a serious conversation about what is happening with our culture. We are a deteriorating culture in every aspect from healthcare to childcare, elder care, and even just learning to read, write, and do simple math. To quote this report, “The trends suggest that something fundamental has shifted in American childhood and the culture of school, in ways that may be long lasting. What was once a deeply ingrained habit — wake up, catch the bus, report to class — is now something far more tenuous.”
In Anchorage, affluent families set off on ski trips and other lengthy vacations, with the assumption that their children can keep up with schoolwork online.
In a working-class pocket of Michigan, school administrators have tried almost everything, including pajama day, to boost student attendance.
And across the country, students with heightened anxiety are opting to stay home rather than face the classroom.
In the four years since the pandemic closed schools, U.S. education has struggled to recover on a number of fronts, from learning loss, to enrollment, to student behavior.
But perhaps no issue has been as stubborn and pervasive as a sharp increase in student absenteeism, a problem that cuts across demographics and has continued long after schools reopened.
Nationally, an estimated 26 percent of public school students were considered chronically absent last school year, up from 15 percent before the pandemic, according to the most recent data, from 40 states and Washington, D.C., compiled by the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. Chronic absence is typically defined as missing at least 10 percent of the school year, or about 18 […]
