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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.
Jessica Ho and Penn State, Researchers - Study Finds
Stephan:
The United States is now ranked as one of the poorest democracies and Americans have the shortest lifespans amongst all the English speaking democracies. and part of the reason for the short lifespan data is that people in Red States have notably shorter lifespans than people in Blue states. Here are the facts about our length of life compared to other English-speaking democracies.
UNIVERSITY PARK, PENNSYLVANIA — In a race nobody wants to lose, the United States has found itself in last place. A recent study in BMJ Open reveals that Americans have the shortest life expectancy among six high-income English-speaking countries. This startling finding raises urgent questions about the state of health and healthcare in the world’s largest economy.
What separates Americans from their longer-lived Australian cousins? The study points to several key factors:
Gun violence: Australia’s strict gun laws have resulted in significantly lower rates of firearm-related deaths.
Drug and alcohol use: The U.S. continues to grapple with a severe opioid epidemic, while Australia has managed to keep drug-related mortality relatively low.
Traffic safety: Australia has implemented measures like more roundabouts and stricter driving regulations, resulting in fewer road fatalities.
Healthcare system: Australia’s healthcare system outperforms the U.S. in several key areas, including accessibility and preventive care.
Lifestyle factors: Higher rates of obesity, sedentary lifestyles, and unhealthy diets contribute to America’s higher cardiovascular disease mortality.
The research, led by Jessica Ho, an associate professor at Penn State, examined
BENJAMIN STORROW, Staff Writer E&E News - Scientific American | E&E News
Stephan:
I am happy to publish this good news. It is happening in spite the hundreds of millions of dollars the oligarchs whose money is based on the carbon powered technologies and corporation are pouring into the MAGAt (formerly Republican) Party. The party that doesn’t believe in climate change, and doesn’t support non-polluting energy. But one must also keep in mind that the United States despite this good news is still far behind other developed nations in the transition out of the carbon-power era.
CLIMATEWIRE — Wind and solar generated more power than coal through the first seven months of the year, federal data shows, in a first for renewable resources.
The milestone had been long expected due to a steady stream of coal plant retirements and the rapid growth of wind and solar. Last year, wind and solar outpaced coal through May before the fossil fuel eventually overtook the pair when power demand surged in the summer.
But the most recent statistics showed why wind and solar are on track in 2024 to exceed coal generation for an entire calendar year — with the renewable resources maintaining their lead through the heat of July. Coal generation usually declines in the spring months, due to falling power demand and seasonal plant maintenance, and picks up when electricity demand rises in the summer.
Renewables’ growth has been driven by a surge in solar production over the last year. The 118 terawatt-hours generated by utility-scale solar facilities through the end of July represented a 36 percent increase from the same time period last year, according […]
The Chinese still have a lot of problems, some of which are outlined in this article, but they get very clearly the importance of moving their culture out of the carbon energy era.
Last November, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua and U.S. climate envoy John Kerry shook hands on a pledge to triple renewable energy globally by 2030. It was hailed as a welcome revival of climate cooperation between the world’s biggest and second-biggest emitters of greenhouse gases and offered hope that the two veteran climate negotiators had found a way through a blizzard of negative diplomatic exchanges to keep alive the prospects for greater global ambition on tackling climate change.
In one key sector essential to that ambition, however, the Chinese government can argue, with some justification, that it is China, not the United States, that is in the lead. In a world in which national climate targets are being missed, the speed and scale of expansion in China’s installed renewable capacity is unmatched.
In 2020, for example, China pledged to reach 1,200 gigawatts of renewables capacity by 2030, more than double its capacity at that time. At its present pace, it will meet that target by 2025, and could boast as much as 1,000 gigawatts of solar power alone […]
I, too, get Social Security, having started to contribute to it in 1958, when I was 16. I don’t know how anyone lives on the meager sums one gets from Social Security. This article describes what the reality of this system has become, and I think it is disgraceful. Why is this not a major issue in the Presidential campaign? Why is there so little coverage about this crisis in the media? Why is the federal minimum wage in the U.S. $7.25 an hour, when the tax structure has created millions of millionaires and 813 billionaires? We should be ashamed of ourselves.
Rising food costs have put a strain on Social Security recipients’ finances. Credit: Chona Kasinger / Bloomberg / Getty
Until last year, Janet Albrecht could afford to eat roast beef sandwiches or tuna salad for lunch. But the widowed 78-year-old now has to skimp on her meals because her Social Security benefits haven’t kept up with the rising costs for food, housing and health care in recent years.
A retired graphic designer, Albrecht estimates she’s paying $100 more a month at the supermarket than she was before inflation started skyrocketing in 2021. Her landlord increased the monthly rent by a total of $65 over the past two years, her utility bills are larger and some of the seven medications she takes daily after suffering a heart attack have gotten more expensive. She hasn’t had a haircut in more than a year, though she doesn’t like to wear her hair so long.
“I’m down to eating ramen for lunch, which I never ate in my life until recently,” said […]
The oligarchs created by the MAGAt (formerly Republican) Party by restructuring the U.S. tax system to favor the rich, do not want democracy to continue. They want America to become a kind of Hungary. Phony elections, and total control of society by an authoritarian leader and the oligarchs who created him. Criminal Trump is relying on this formula. The uber-rich dump tens even hundreds of millions of dollars to buy his election from ignorant resentful Americans and that is the last real election we ever have. We have 82 days to convince everyone we know that they must vote, and they must vote only for Democrats. This election is not about political partisanship. This is an election between democracy and autocracy.
Credit: Pol Badia / Unsplash
Get ready: massive pools of dark rightwing money are soon going to clobber us. Will Democracy survive this onslaught by the morbidly rich?
Democrats are giddy right now; the substantial lead that Trump had held over Biden for months has largely vanished as the match-up has changed to Harris and Walz. In the ten polls aggregated by RealClearPolitics since Biden’s withdrawal, Trump has lost 3 points and only leads by one. In the DailyKos/Civiqs poll Harris leads Trump 49/45, Reuters puts the race at 43/42, and Morning Consult has it at 47/46.
Trump is blustering in ways that indicate he thinks he’s losing (Thursday’s presser at his shabby golf motel was particularly pathetic), while JD Vance’s poll numbers are in the toilet…or the couch…and showing no indication of recovery any day soon.
That said, other lessons from this and recent past years should keep Democrats from easing up or becoming overconfident. The […]
I wonder, have the women in the MAGAt controlled states, finally realized they have been reduced to second-class status, and their wellbeing is now controlled by politicians not themselves or their doctors? Did they vote for those politicians? Is this what they wanted?
Credit: MedPage Today
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Bleeding and in pain, Kyleigh Thurman didn’t know her doomed pregnancy could kill her. Emergency room doctors at Ascension Seton Williamson in Texas handed her a pamphlet on miscarriage and told her to “let nature take its course” before discharging her without treatment for her ectopic pregnancy.
When the 25-year-old returned three days later, still bleeding, doctors finally agreed to give her an injection to end the pregnancy. It was too late. The fertilized egg growing on Thurman’s fallopian tube ruptured it, destroying part of her reproductive system.
That’s according to a complaint Thurman and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed last week asking the government to investigate whether the hospital violated federal law when staff failed to treat her initially in February 2023.
“I was left to flail,” Thurman said. “It was nothing short of being misled.”
The Biden administration says hospitals must offer abortions when needed to save a woman’s life, despite state bans enacted after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion more than two years ago. Texas is challenging that guidance and, earlier this summer, the Supreme Court declined to resolve the […]
Sara Cincurova and Virginia Williams, Reporters - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
“A study published earlier this year estimated that 65,000 rape-related pregnancies probably occurred in states with abortion bans since Roe fell,” this article reports. And it describes the misery inflicted by MAGAt politicians on girls who are raped. This is what the Red States have degenerated into thanks to those politicians. Did you vote for one of those politicians? Are you ashamed of yourself? I certainly would be.
View image in fullscreen A study published earlier this year estimated that 65,000 rape-related pregnancies probably occurred in states with abortion bans since Roe fell. Credit: FatCamera / Getty
Since fall of Roe, 14 states have passed near-total abortion bans – most with no exceptions for rape or incest survivors
As children in Texas, A and her sister were raped multiple times by their stepfather and his friends before she found she was pregnant earlier this year.
“We both had STDs because none of them used condoms,” A said. Their stepfather stopped sexually abusing them when he found out the sisters were treated at a clinic for sexually transmitted diseases. One of his friends did not.
The sisters fled to a domestic violence shelter when A found out she was pregnant, and managed from there to find abortion pills through a network of underground activists. “If I couldn’t have an abortion, I would have killed myself,” A said. “The man who raped me was a pig, and I did not want to have his baby inside of me.”
Here is some fact-based information that will help you become healthier.
People who eat a precise amount of fruit per day (2.5 servings!) are more likely to age healthfully. Credit: Emmanuel Phaeton / Unsplash
Last month, two opinionarticles in TheNew York Times, published on consecutive days, argued that nutrition and overall health are very straightforward, based on “boring” principles we’ve known since “third grade,” like eating your vegetables. Wellness entrepreneurs who say otherwise are probably just trying to sell you their fake advice and products, according to one of the op-eds.
Phony wellness pushers make easy targets, but they’re not the only ones saying this stuff is complicated. Scientists at the world’s leading universities see great complexity in food’s interactions with human biology over a lifetime. They’re studying these dynamics, forming new hypotheses and pointing to unsettled research questions. When it comes to the dietary principles that scientists have agreed upon, few American adults, let alone third graders, are actually aware of them.
The message that healthy nutrition rests entirely on long agreed-upon, clear-cut fundamentals, as articulated […]
