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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.
Senator Bernie Sanders is one the few people in Congress with any integrity, and he has been dedicated all his adult life to fostering wellbeing for all. What he is saying here is the truth, “”The United States remains the world’s dominant military power,” the senator continued. “Alone, we account for roughly 40% of global military spending; the U.S. spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined, most of whom are allies. Last year, we spent more than three times what China spent on its military.” The fact is you and I each year are milked like captive cows. President Eisenhower warned us this would happen, and the way these corporations got away with it, is that they first rented the the members of Congress and told them to pass no laws that would damage their profits, and they didn’t. So we don’t pass enough funding to feed our children, but there is essentially no limit on the murder corporations.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) presides over a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on November 14, 2023 in Washington, D.C. Credit: Kevin Dietsch / Getty
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has a novel way to stop military-industrial complex profiteers from “bilking the American people”—and it’s actually over 80 years old.
In an article published Tuesday in The Atlantic, Sanders (I-Vt.) called for a revived Truman Committee—a World War II-era bipartisan congressional panel “designed to rein in defense contractors, closely oversee military contracts, and take back excessive payments.”
“America’s national priorities are badly misplaced,” the senator asserted. “Our country spends, with almost no debate, nearly $1 trillion a year on the military while at the same time ignoring massive problems at home. We apparently have unlimited amounts of money for nuclear weapons, fighter planes, bombs, and tanks. But somehow we can’t summon the resources to provide healthcare for all, childcare, affordable housing, and other basic needs.”
“The United States remains the world’s dominant military power,” the senator continued. “Alone, we account for roughly 40% of global military […]
If you are a woman living in a Red state you are a second-class citizen, and you better get used to that. If you are a woman or girl and need gynecological care for any one of a host of reasons you may find you can’t get it. If you are pregnant and something goes awry, your life is at risk because non-doctor Republicans in state legislatures, who don’t even seem to understand the medical reality of pregnancy, write laws so threatening to the doctors that they may not be able to help you, and your only option is to go to a state controlled by Democrats. What amazes me is that millions of women vote Republican assuring their second-class status, and second-class health care. Here is a fact-based report that demonstrates the truth of what I am saying.
Dr. Sarah Osmundson is a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. Credit:Stacy Kranitz / ProPublica
Sitting at her computer one day in late December, Dr. Sarah Osmundson mustered her best argument to approve an abortion for a suffering patient.
The woman was 14 weeks pregnant when she learned her fetus was developing without a skull. This increased the likelihood of a severe buildup of amniotic fluid, which could cause her uterus to rupture and possibly kill her. Osmundson, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who helps patients navigate high-risk pregnancies, knew that outcome was uncommon, but she had seen it happen.
She drafted an email to her colleagues on the Nashville hospital’s abortion committee, arguing that the risk was significant enough to meet the slim exception to Tennessee’s strict abortion ban, which allows termination only when “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” She pleaded with her fellow doctors to spare this […]
Did you know that if you are a pregnant woman in the Red states of Missouri, Texas, Arizona, or Arkansas and you are seeking a divorce the government will not allow you to get it until after the baby is born, and then there are a host of other problems. I see this as yet another aspect of the Republican Taliban’s actions to subordinate women, a growing trend in Red states that is becoming the reality of life for women in those states.
Pregnant woman cannot get divorced in these four states Credit: Getty
There are four states where judges cannot legally finalize a divorce if a woman is pregnant with no exception for cases involving domestic violence, according to The American Pregnancy Association.
While the laws in Missouri, Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas allow for couples to file for divorce, the court must wait until after a woman gives birth in order to finalize child custody and child support.
Two of these states – Missouri and Texas – are subject to trigger laws where, since the overturning of Roe v Wade in June 2022, abortions are automatically banned in the first and second trimesters of pregnancy.
Thom Hartmann gets it. He lays out what the Republicans are doing at the state level in the states they control and it is appalling. This is a. measure of how far The Great Schism has progressed. We are becoming two very different countries with an increasingly dysfunctional federal government. I confess what surprises me is how many MAGAt Americans vote for what is happening in their states and really don’t care about democracy. I think it is because these people haven’t ever actually lived in an authoritarian state, and have no idea what the christofascists intend to do to their lives
Guests listen as Former U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center on March 4, 2023 in National Harbor, Maryland. Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty
Why are conservatives calling for the end of American democracy? At the CPAC meeting this week, a well-known rightwing influencer, Jack Posobiec, went off on a rant about how important it is for conservatives to band together to end democracy in America and, presumably, replace it with Christofascism like in Russia. “Welcome to the end of democracy!” he declared. “We’re here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6th, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here,” he said as he held up a cross. “That’s right, because all glory is not to government, all glory to God.”
This, frankly, should not be surprising. It was 1951 when Russell Kirk, the godfather of the modern conservative movement, published his book The […]
I picked this from half a dozen other stories of MAGAt family criminality. How in the world did the voters of Colorado elect someone like Lauren Boebert to represent them? Didn’t someone do some research on her and her family Will they vote her into office again, I wonder? Is anyone noticing how many MAGAt politicians are crooks of one kind or another? I see these stories frequently, I just haven’t been running them, but I have come to see them as a trend not isolated stories. The Republican Party seems to be criminal from top to bottom. That’s not a partisan comment, just a statement of fact.
MAGAt Republican Lauren Boebert Credit: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades / USA Today
The son of Rep. Lauren Boebert (R.-Colo) was arrested Tuesday on more than 20 criminal charges in the latest incident of ongoing Boebert family issues.
Jail records show he faces 22 counts altogether, five of which are felonies. The charges include criminal possession of ID documents with multiple victims, conspiracy to commit a felony, first degree criminal trespassing and theft.
“This is an ongoing investigation, no further information will be released at this time,” the Rifle police said in the post.
Tyler Boebert was still in custody as of 9:45 a.m. Mountain Time Wednesday at a $8,250 bond, Garfield County Jail records showed. Rep. Boebert acknowledged the arrest in a statement Wednesday, saying he “should be held accountable for poor decisions.”
‘I love my son’: Lauren Boebert releases statement on son’s arrest
Here is some good news for EV owners. Not a big deal, but it makes the EV charging network a little larger.
Rivian charging station
Rivian is following in Tesla’s footsteps with its decision to open its public charging network to all electric vehicles (EVs) later this year. The announcement came in the company’s latest letter to shareholders, outlining plans to expand access to the Rivian Adventure Network (RAN).
While Rivian’s Adventure Network is currently smaller than Tesla’s Supercharger network, comprising 400 DC fast chargers in 67 locations across the US, the company aims to make all these chargers available to all EVs before the end of the year. Although no RAN stations have been built in Canada yet, Rivian has ambitious plans to install thousands more chargers at hundreds of stations across North America.
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe had previously hinted at the company’s intention to open up its charging network, and now there’s a clear timeline for this initiative.
“In the second half of 2024, we anticipate opening up our Rivian Adventure Network to non-Rivian owners,” the company stated in its Q4 2023 shareholder letter. This move aims to provide other EV owners with access to Rivian’s reliable charging solution, leverage fixed costs associated with each charging site, and tap into […]
I don’t care for some of the language in this article, but the point it is making is correct and very alarming. Today I listened to interviews at a Trump rally and was appalled at the ignorance, hate, and resentment of the White men and women, mostly middle-aged or older. When asked what shaped their opinion they cited the Fox propaganda network, similar sources, and what I recognized as phony AI-generated misinformation.
Illustration by Alexander NaughtonArt for The Intrinsic Perspective
The amount of AI-generated content is beginning to overwhelm the internet. Or maybe a better term is pollute. Pollute its searches, its pages, its feeds, everywhere you look. I’ve been predicting that generative AI would have pernicious effects on our culture since 2019, but now everyone can feel it. Back then I called it the coming “semantic apocalypse.” Well, the semantic apocalypse is here, and you’re being affected by it, even if you don’t know it. A minor personal example: last year I published a nonfiction book, The World Behind the World, and now on Amazon I find this.
What, exactly, are these “workbooks” for my book? AI pollution. Synthetic trash heaps floating in the online ocean. The authors aren’t real people, some asshole just fed the manuscript into an AI and didn’t check when it spit out nonsensical summaries. But it doesn’t matter, does it? A poor sod will click on the $9.99 purchase one day, and that’s all that’s needed for this scam to […]
Several times in the recent past I have told you about emails I have received from mothers who are SR readers, and who wrote to tell me their daughters, one 15, the other 16 had been the victims of AI-generated porn using their faces widely circulated by boys who hit on them and that they had rejected. I have a daughter and could well imagine the effect, but I confess I had no idea how large this evil trend has become. According to an analysis by independent researcher Genevieve Oh that was shared with The Associated Press, more than 143,000 new deepfake videos were posted online this year, which surpasses every other year combined. What is particularly appaling is that, as this story describes this isn’t just adult men, it is also middle school boys — that is 12, 13, 14 years of age doing this about girls in their middle school. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, what kind of country have we become? And what is our Congress doing? Nothing.
Beverly Vista Middle School, Beverly Hills, California
Nude images of middle school students created by classmates using artificial intelligence are roiling the Beverly Hills school district, the latest in an emerging trend that’s prompting calls for legislation.
Officials in California’s Beverly Hills Unified School District are working with the Beverly Hills Police Department to identify both the victims and perpetrators of an undisclosed number of nude images reported by students at Beverly Vista Middle School last week.
“On Wednesday, the BVMS Administration received reports from students about the creation and dissemination by other students of Artificial Intelligence generated images that superimposed the faces of our students onto AI-generated nude bodies,” district officials wrote to parents in an email cited by Fox 11. “As the investigation is progressing … more victims are being identified. We are taking every measure to support those affected and to prevent any further incidents.”
Jackie Kruger, mother of an eighth grader at the middle school, described the situation to KCAL as “frightening and terrible.”
“I can imagine how devastating that would be,” Kruger said.
