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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.
Ajit Niranjan, Europe Environment Correspondent - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
This year we have seen a temperature rise in excess of 1.5°C (2.7°F) which was the threshold world leaders had agreed we would not exceed by the end of the century. We haven’t totally crossed the limit because the target was not a yearly but a decadal average. However, as things are setting up, I think we are going to go beyond the limit, which means that the climate change tip point is going to be exceeded and thus, the climate change disaster is upon us.
The world has baked for 12 consecutive months in temperatures 1.5C (2.7F) greater than their average before the fossil fuel era, new data shows.
Temperatures between July 2023 and June 2024 were the highest on record, scientists found, creating a year-long stretch in which the Earth was 1.64C hotter than in preindustrial times.
The findings do not mean world leaders have already failed to honour their promises to stop the planet heating 1.5C by the end of the century – a target that is measured in decadal averages rather than single years – but that scorching heat will have exposed more people to violent weather. A sustained rise in temperatures above this level also increases the risk of uncertain but catastrophic tipping points.
Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which analysed the data, said the results were not a statistical oddity but a “large and continuing shift” in the climate.
“Even if this specific streak of extremes ends at some point, we are bound to see new records being broken as the climate continues to warm,” he said. “This is inevitable […]
The person Missouri voters put into office as one of their senators, Josh Hawley, has come out and said it. So have Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. They, and others who have not spoken out yet, want to make Christianity the official religion of the United States, and to breach the firewall between church and state that was so important to the Founders. And, if you read Project 2025, and I urge you to do so, you will see that imposing religious orthodoxy on the United States is just one of the nightmares the MAGAt (formerly Republican) Party will force on the nation if Trump is elected. I look at the polls, and I think, Americans stand on a precipice, and if the country falls into that abyss by electing Trump, by this time next year none of us will recognize the country in which we will be living.
Explicit christofascist Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri Credit: Anna Moneymaker / Getty
At the fourth National Conservatism Conference, known as NatCon 4, Senator Josh Hawley saw fit to tell the audience exactly what he stands for—and it’s Christian nationalism.
“Some will say I’m calling America a Christian nation. And so I am. Some will say I’m advocating Christian nationalism. And so I do. My question is: Is there any other kind worth having?” Hawley said at the conference’s gala dinner Monday night.
The Missouri Republican defended his statement by claiming that American democracy was founded by Christian nationalism, which is also America’s political tradition. He also spoke of replacing the Pride flag on federal buildings with the words “In God We Trust.”
To his credit, Hawley did offer some unexpected suggestions in his speech, such as rejecting “blood and soil” authoritarianism and calling on Republicans to support unions (though not public-sector unions). But Hawley has given unions some token support and praise before, and it has never been […]
Planning to kill someone but a little short of ammunition? No problem if you live in Texas, Oklahoma, or Alabama. Just go to the nearby vending machine and you can buy all the bullets you need. Yes, in those three MAGAt controlled states, and soon to be other Red States, you can buy ammunition along with some milk and lettuce when you are shopping at a local store. The United States already the only country in the world where the largest cause of death of children under 17 is a bullet in their bodies, has now become the only nation where you can buy bullets from vending machines.
Ammunition vending machine Credit: Common Dreams
A Texas-based company has developed vending machines that sell bullets and installed them at a handful of grocery stores in Texas, Oklahoma, and Alabama, with plans for expansion into other states, according to news reports this week.
The machines, produced by American Rounds, based in the Dallas area, use artificial intelligence to verify the age of buyers, who must be 21 to purchase the shotgun, rifle, and handgun bullets on offer.
There are few federal regulations on the sale of ammunition, and only a small number of states have their own tougher laws.
The vending machines are “likely to stoke controversy,” Newsweek reported, while Gizmodo called their spread a “questionable new trend.” Social media users wrote that the idea of vending machines for bullets was “insane”, “horrible,” and “beyond sick.”
“In some states, you can now walk into a grocery store and buy bullets from a vending machine as if you were ordering a candy bar or a soda,” Gizmodo reported, though it explained that the process […]
Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has done what needed to be done. Bravo to her. I doubt she will be successful because of the MAGAts in the House, but with her impeachment articles she has brought focus and media attention onto the two most corrupt Justices in the history of the Supreme Court. If the Democrats hold both houses of Congress, and a Democrat is elected President I think we will finally see the cleaning out of the corrupt christofascist majority in the Court.
Associate Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, the two most corrupt Justices in the history of the Supreme Court. Credit: Alex Wong /Getty
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has introduced articles of impeachment against conservative Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas over their failure to disclose gifts they have received while serving on the court – a messaging move that will surely fail in the GOP-controlled House.
“Justice Thomas and Alito’s repeated failure over decades to disclose that they received millions of dollars in gifts from individuals with business before the court is explicitly against the law,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement. “And their refusal to recuse from the specific matters and cases before the court in which their benefactors and spouses are implicated represents nothing less than a constitutional crisis.”
“Congress has a legal, moral, and democratic obligation to impeach,” she said.
This is the latest example of House Democrats – led by some of their highest-profile members – prioritizing the Supreme Court in their campaign year messaging. They’ve previously signaled that, if they regain control of […]
Elizabeth Cerceo, MD, Associate Professor and Director of Climate Health - MedPage Today
Stephan:
What the media have not understood is that the Supreme Court’s Chevron decision transfers absolute power from scientific experts in regulatory agencies to non-scientist judges and will have no competence is assessing a measure. The corrupt christofascist majority on the Supreme Court has destroyed a significant portion of our democracy, particularly the part that affects the health and wellbeing of the American population. My questions are: why is the media not discussing this so people know what happened, and why is no one in the Congress doing anything about this? You and I are losing our democracy with every decision of these corrupt facist political agents.
The irony of a jubilant Fourth of July parade I attended with my kids last week — with marching bands, people in costume, and colorful floats — is that the U.S. government has never been more chaotic. The fragility of our democracy has been thrown into sharp relief over the past few months with a partisan Supreme Court placing a heavy finger on rightward leaning scales and the great unknown of November elections. The legislative branch of government, with all its foibles, then becomes the most secure path forward for those of us who like to breathe air, drink water, and not overheat.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo on June 27 overturning what’s known as “Chevron deference ” prioritizes business interests over public health in a decision that weakens the ability of agencies to enforce regulations, such as restricting power plant pollution. It says that agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are actually not the experts […]
Here is an insight into one of the major dynamics driving White Nationalism. White men so unattractive in their attitudes and behavior that they can’t find a woman willing to have sex with them. The Incel movement and White Nationalism have merged, and become a major part of the MAGAt Party that seeks to put rapist and felon Trump back into office. And the polls say they are going to succeed unless some very significant changes occur and produce a majority of American voters who want to preserve democracy and treat women as equals.
“Aryan Nations (AN) was once a powerful organizing force for white supremacists that cultivated a wide spectrum of racist and anti-Semitic ideas,” according to the SPLC. Credit: SPLC
Lonely, sexless straight men have become a larger force in the White nationalist movement.
That’s according to Ellee Reeve, author of the book “Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics.”
Reeve talked with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday to discuss her findings, saying straight men who struggle to find a romantic partner can be drawn to alt-right communities.
“That’s a big entryway into this,” she said. “A big entry point is, ‘Why won’t women be with me?’”
The so-called “new white nationalist movement” is highly influenced by “incel” culture, she said, referring to men who are involuntarily celibate.
“It means that feminism has doomed them to be virgins forever because in the natural order of things, less attractive women would marry them,” […]
Alaina Demopoulos, Feature Writer - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
Child marriage, which really means young girl marriage, even barely pubescent girls, is an issue that, in my view is not getting anywhere near the attention it should be getting. Look at the number of such marriages in the U.S. As this article explains, this practice is supported by a very strange consortium who have some very ill-conceived ideas why it should be legal. It shouldn’t be.
Nine-year-old Eunice Winstead Johns and her husband, Charlie Johns, 22, at their home in Sneedville, Tennessee, in 1937. Credit: AP
Courtney Kosnik was 16 when she met the man who would become her husband in a Detroit coffee shop. She thought she’d met her savior. She was living in poverty, under the care of an alcoholic mother who struggled to hold down jobs. He promised her stability. Two months later, he proposed.
No one in Kosnik’s life seemed bothered by the fact that the man was 28, more than a decade older than his bride-to-be, and he had a plan to get around her status as a legal minor: They just needed her mother’s permission to wed, and if she didn’t give it, they could always drive down to Ohio, where the rules around marriage were less strict.
Kosnik’s mother didn’t need much convincing. The man seemed polished and friendly, and he said that he could provide a “better moral upbringing” for her daughter. “Isn’t it crazy that someone wanted to give their wife a ‘moral upbringing’?” Kosnik, now 47, said. […]
Clarence Thomas is the most corrupt Justice of the Supreme Court in two centuries. And yet there he sits, untouched and held to no accountability for his corruption, one of the six christofacists who are taking our democracy apart and affecting the lives of over 300 million Americans in a negative way.
Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sits with his wife and conservative activist Virginia Thomas while he waits to speak at the Heritage Foundation on October 21, 2021 in Washington, DC. Credit: Drew Angerer / Getty
Two Senate Democrats have published a list of roughly three dozen lavish gifts Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas received from right-wing billionaires during his time on the Court.
On the eve of the Independence Day holiday, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate Thomas for “possible violations of ethics and tax laws” in his “repeated and willful omissions” of gifts from wealthy benefactors.
“The scale of the potential ethics violations by Justice Thomas, and the willful pattern of disregard for ethics laws, exceeds the conduct of other government officials investigated by the Department of Justice for similar violations,” Whitehouse and Wyden wrote. “The breadth of the omissions uncovered to date, and the serious possibility of additional tax fraud and false statement violations by Justice Thomas […]
