Here is what everyone, including the MAGAt climate change deniers are about to learn. I have been telling my readers for years now, if you own a coastal property please take some time to Google what is predicted for your area before it happens. Don’t lose your investment, as is already happening to people who own homes and buildings on the Florida and North Carolina coasts.

The thing that strongly stands out with Red states, especially states where Christian Nationalism is particularly strong, and Utah is essentially a theocracy controlled by the LDS (Mormon) church, is that they endless rant on about how strongly they support families, yet the truth is it is all a lie. Red states have higher maternal and infant mortality. They have a higher rate of divorce, a higher rate of out of wedlock births, a higher rate of divorce, poorer child care, poorer education and on and on. Utah particularly stands out. In addition to all that Utah has the highest rate of porn viewing — indeed an ex-Mormon reader told me there are even special Mormon porn channels. The state also has a terrible record on climate change. It is so bad, in fact, that the Great Salt Lake is disappearing, and because Utah had such poor pollution policies the exposed soil of the drying lake is filled with arsenic that is now blowing around Salt Lake City with all kinds of bad health consequences. States controlled by Republicans always have inferior social wellbeing. (See the SR archives, and watch the SR podcasts for the proof of what I am saying.)

Although an overwhelming majority of American voters in all states who feel women should have the right to control their own bodies the Supreme Court’s conservative cabal and the Republican controlled state legislatures have combined to create two levels of healthcare in the Red states; one for men and one for women. Nothing is going to change this but Red state voters turning their states Blue. I don’t think that is going to happen, and the result therefore is going to be enormous misery and increasing deaths of women in Red states.

Using an old Mac laptop I hadn’t used in years, I have jury-rigged a way to get SR back into publication. It is clunky and not easy, I cannot hook everything up, but doable.

In 2023, as in the previous year, and the one before that, and so on back more years than I can remember attempts to hack and crash SR have typically run over 7,000 a year. They come from Russia, China, Hungary other authoritarian countries and, particularly, the United States. It is very clear that fascists and other haters and racists of many nationalities don’t like SR’s fact-based nature, and don’t want the things I say, or the articles I feature to become known. For a number of years now to stop these attacks and hacks from destroying SR I have spent a considerable and now growing amount of money for various protection services. I want SR to continue to be freely available and I don’t permit advertising because I don’t have time to research each company to see if they promote wellbeing. That’s why your contributions in support of SR are so deeply appreciated. They make a real difference. I also want to particularly thank, Beth Alexander, who handles the production of SR every day, and without whose support I could not publish.

That said, I confess, I did not expect to have my personal email account attacked in the way that just happened. I don’t know who did it but it was very personal. Several nights ago, after I had closed down for the day, about 0300, and gone to bed, someone hacked my iMac computer and basically destroyed it. The technology used is more sophisticated than I fully understand, but the result was the next morning the computer would turn on but would not boot. I could access nothing. The best technician on the island has been working on it since that morning and tells me it will be several more days before he is through. I may have to buy a new iMac. My biggest fear at this point though is that something was done to the Time Machine and that I could be facing the loss of 30 years of work. It is clear that to protect myself from this happening again I am going to have to subscribe to several new protection services, and create multiple back-ups in different locations. I am also going to have to explore what needs to be done to protect the SR podcast. Sadly, we are becoming a very nasty hate-filled world.

I thank all of you again for your supportive comments, and your contributions. SR will continue in spite of all that has happened.

It is my opinion that the reason so few Americans are supporting democracy is because of issues that are mostly not even discussed by corporate media but that affect the daily lives of every American. We talk a little bit about racism and anti-semitism, but rarely that 50 milion Americans are constantly worrying about whether they or their children will get enough to eat that day. Or whether tens of millions even think they can drink the water that comes out of their taps. Or whether they will have to sell their home to pay a family medical bill. Or whether they can afford to send one of their kids to college. Even if such things get mentioned on corporate media, they are rarely if ever described as defining trends in the United States. Ranked against other countries in the developed world the U.S. is at the bottom of almost every ranking. Literacy. Life Expectancy, incarceration, obesity, child mortality, wealth inequality, and on and on. These are facts. Then add to that the weaponization of misinformation. The problem is not democracy, it is the lack of democracy. And, instead of facing these realities, just a Biden did today, we tell ourselves we are the best. Yet sitting around their kitchen table everyone knows the truth of their own lives. I have been covering these facts in the SR podcasts, take a look. How are you going to like America’s democracy when you can’t get enough to eat, or to get your kid or mother the medical attention they need?

I don’t think this High School tragedy even registered with many Americans, nor the bravery of Principal Dan Marburger. American schools are dangerous but these murders happen so frequently that the only thing that remains in people’s memories is that schools are dangerous. This is another reason citizens think so little of democracy.

I think Ankush Khardori makes exactly the right statement of why Clarence Thomas should recuse himself. However, I think Thomas and the Supreme Court are so corrupt he won’t. I hope I am wrong. It would certainly bolster the Court’s reputation, which is very low.