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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.
DAVID BAUDER and LINLEY SANDERS, Reporters - Associated Press
Stephan:
Ronlyn and I are also tired of the news, and in talking about it have agreed, as to why we feel this way. Our conclusion is the U.S. news corporations only cover three or four stories a day, and say very little about what is going on in the rest of the world. Even more importantly, with the exception of a few television commentators like Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow, the election is treated like a horserace between two basically normal politicians. It is not, and how anyone can believe it is, is really is dumbfounding. Donald Trump and his family are criminal at a level that if I were writing another novel I would not create such characters because I wouldn’t believe such people would be credible. And yet there they are, in our faces every day, with no proper assessment in the media as to how villainous and corrupt they are.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — When her husband turns on the television to hear news about the upcoming presidential election, that’s often a signal for Lori Johnson Malveaux to leave the room.
It can get to be too much. Often, she’ll go to a TV in another room to watch a movie on the Hallmark Channel or BET. She craves something comforting and entertaining. And in that, she has company.
While about half of Americans say they are following political news “extremely” or “very” closely, about 6 in 10 say they need to limit how much information they consume about the government and politics to avoid feeling overloaded or fatigued, according to a new survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts.
Make no mistake: Malveaux plans to vote. She always does. “I just get to the point where I don’t want to hear the rhetoric,” she said.
The 54-year-old Democrat said she’s most bothered when she hears people on the news telling her that something she saw with her own […]
Almost every day now I am seeing research studies like this one that make it clear that as a culture, and remember that culture is a creation of collective individual choices, fostering wellbeing is no longer a priority. As this report says, “Rural Americans tend to have higher rates of smoking, obesity, and chronic conditions at age 60, setting the stage for poorer health outcomes in later years.” Then add to that the rise of “medical deserts, so that it becomes hard to get help and you can see a major trend emerging in rural America.
Key Results
The key finding was a significant gap in quality-adjusted life expectancy (QALE) between urban and rural residents, especially for men. Urban men at age 60 could expect 17.5 quality-adjusted years of life, compared to only 15.7 for rural men. For women, the gap was smaller but still present (19.3 years for urban women vs. 18.7 for rural women). The study also found that this gap has widened over the past two decades, with rural residents seeing little to no improvement in QALE while urban residents have made gains.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA —For many Americans, moving to the country is a lifelong dream to finally escape the stress of busy city life. Unfortunately, a new study warns that people opting for “the simple life” of rural America are actually living shorter lives.
Researchers at the University of Southern California have discovered a growing divide in health […]
Traitor Trump, fascist Speaker Johnson, and the rest of the MAGAt politicians, are obsessed about subordinating women; it tells you a lot about their own sense of manhood. And they think suppressing women angry about having the MAGAt government taking over control of their body can also be used to rig the election. Thom Hartmann has it exactly right. And yet we also know that millions of woman are comfortable being reduced to handmaidens and will vote for both Trump and Johnson.
Republicans don’t want women to vote. They now think they may have a strategy that could help make that happen.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and former president Donald Trump were pushing the SAVE Act (Safeguard American Eligibility Act), demanding it be part of must-pass legislation to fund the federal government for another year (the funding runs out at the end of this month and then the shutdown begins).
It died in the House a few nights ago, but, like a bad penny, you can bet it’ll return. Now they’re pushing for it in the Senate, with a version authored by Joe Manchin, his final goodbye kiss to — or future bet on — the Republicans.
Trump, on his failing, Nazi-infested social media site, ranted Tuesday that Republicans must get “every ounce” of the SAVE Act passed […]
The hysterical censorship of the MAGAts is becoming quite frightening in the sense of preserving democracy and having an intelligent educated electorate. They are now trying censor or ban dictionaries as this article describes. Dictionaries! That’s how frightened about a third of the White population has become. As I have said, I think this is all a reaction to the unconscious precognition they have about the radical changes climate change is going to cause. They live in a fantasy of White supremacy, male dominance, enthral to a man who is a kind of cartoon villain, who tells them he knows how to fix it, how to make the world familiar to them again.
It may have started off as an ordinary fall school day at a high school in the Wentzville School District of Missouri in 2022, but when a police officer entered the school library, the day took an unsettling turn. The school librarian didn’t know why the officer was there until he approached her and explained that he was investigating a complaint — she had been accused of distributing pornography to students.
The librarian listened as the officer told her that certain books in her collection, like The Handmaid’s Tale and Gender Queer: A Memoir, had triggered the accusations he had come to investigate. She was dumbfounded. These books were not pornography as someone had charged; they were award-winning works of literature and personal memoirs that explored themes of identity, gender […]
The MAGAt Republican attempt to subvert our historical system of government has become so blatant that it ought to be a leading story in the all the media. It isn’t. I don’t know whether it is because most journalists don’t comprehend it, or because they are being told to concentrate on something else. Whatever the cause it is happening in front of our faces, and Americans don’t seem to see it. It is absolutely essential, however, if we are to survive as a democracy that both the House and the Senate come out of this election with strong Democratic majorities, and what worries me is that I am not sure that is going to happen.
A nonprofit organization aligned with former President Donald Trump that has played a major role in preparations for his potential second term is merging with a key group that works with Senate Republicans.
The America First Policy Institute is combining with the Senate Working Group, the two organizations announced Wednesday. The merger will expand AFPI’s profile in Washington, further solidifying its relationship with the congressional wing of the GOP.
AFPI has aggressively promoted pro-Trump policies during his post-presidency, and its leaders have taken senior positions in the former president’s transition operation. Linda McMahon, a Trump cabinet member and AFPI chair, was recently named a co-chair of Trump’s transition team. Doug Hoelscher and Michael Rigas, who served in the Trump administration and at AFPI, are also working on the transition effort.
With the possible reelection of Trump, the organization is looking to deepen its ties to Senate Republicans, […]
The central problem of the human species appears to be greed. It simply overwhelms all other considerations. Scientists have known for decades, and repeatedly told politicians that humans are destroying Earth’s ecosystems, and the matrix of life. Why? Greed. As things are proceeding I think it is going to destroy whole societies, particularly in South America simply can’t overcome greed and the corruption it produces. Consider this report as an example of what I mean.
The South American jungle, spanning nine countries, is seen as crucial to the fight against climate change due to its ability to absorb planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
RAISG experts reported an “accelerated transformation” of the Amazon, with an “alarming increase” in the use of land previously occupied by forest for mining, crops, or livestock.
“A large number of ecosystems have disappeared to give way to immense expanses of pastures, soybean fields or other monocultures, or have been transformed into craters for gold mining,” they said.
“With the loss of the forest, we emit more carbon into the atmosphere and this disrupts an entire ecosystem that regulates the climate and the hydrological cycle, clearly affecting temperatures,” Sandra Rio Caceres, from the Institute of the Common Good — a Peruvian association that took part in the study — told […]
In the 19th and 20th centuries, one of the most important social trends was the commitment to public education. That is no longer the case. The MAGAt Republican Party wants to end public education and turn it into a profit-making indoctrination system that pushes fascist fantasies and a kind of perverted Christianity. Here is yet another example of this truth.
Mary, a high school English teacher of 20 years, has dealt with her share of parental objections toward books. From the mother who worried The Crucible contained witchcraft to the father who questioned Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray because Wilde was gay, Mary has practiced explaining, advocating for, and negotiating her book selections over the decades. “Almost every English teacher will encounter parental complaints about a text choice at some point,” Mary described to me. “They are sometimes frustrating, but they are not typically difficult to handle.”
They are also nothing like what many teachers today are up against, and not just in red states. The media spectacles that have been documented in school board meetings—and the countless quieter yet equally high-pressure scenes the public never sees—are far from over. In the course of working on a book, Teaching in a Time of Book Bans: Lessons From Teachers and Librarians, I interviewed school faculty from across the country about their recent experiences with censorship. For the […]
I have been predicting this for a decade, and now it is here. If I could see it coming surely the pharmaceutical corporations and politicians could see it. Where is the necessary research? Oh, since the government pays for most of it, and few politicians wanted to see it or allocate the money, as this article describes, tens of millions are going to die.
Bacterial illnesses that are resistant to available antibiotic medicines will cause more than 39 million deaths worldwide over the next 25 years and indirectly contribute to an additional 169 million deaths, according to a forecast published on Monday.
By 2050, annual death tolls attributed directly to antibiotic resistance, or associated with it, will reach 1.91 million and 8.22 million, respectively, if remediation measures are not in place, an international team of researchers reported in The Lancet.
Those annual numbers represent increases of nearly 68% and 75% per year, respectively, over death tolls directly and indirectly attributed to antibiotic resistance in 2022, the researchers with the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance Project wrote.