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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.
Stephan: Ken Paxton is an incompetent ideologue and moron. The fact that this man is the Attorney General of Texas tells you something is deeply rotten in the Republican Party of Texas. And now we see him actively advancing the Big Lie being promulgated by Republicans. All those people you saw yesterday storming the Capitol were not right-wing thugs, they were really Antifa dressed like Trumpers. Saying that is proof that Paxton has no integrity, no honor, and no interest in democracy.
Republican public thug Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas
On Wednesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton promoted a tweet from far-right Investors Business Daily writer Paul Sperry, claiming that a “former FBI agent” has confirmed the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters was a “false flag” engineered by a “bus load of Antifa thugs.”
Paxton, who headed up the election group Lawyers for Trump, is currently under indictment for securities fraud and faces a federal investigation for bribery and abuse of power over his relationship with an Austin real estate developer who gave $25,000 to his campaign. He was also the architect of a well-publicized lawsuit to try to overturn the presidential election results of several states, which was soundly rejected by the Supreme Court.
Neither Sperry nor Paxton offered any evidence to support this theory.
Stephan: Ken Paxton, Texas AG, is far from the only Republican promoting the idea that the mob that took over the Capitol yesterday were not what they actually were -- Trumpers -- but, instead, that they were the mythical Antifa. It is my view these Congressional members should be expelled from public office and never allowed to run for office again.
“Some of the people who breached the Capitol today…are members of the violent terrorist group, Antifa.”
If were to call Matt Gaetz a fucking c*cksucker, would that make me a bad person or would I get more followers? https://t.co/XvvmzMIU7n
Most Americans clearly heard President Donald Trump encourage his supporters to march to Capitol Hill and demand the 2020 presidential election results be overturned in his favor. Shortly after Trump’s directive, his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol Building.
But despite all evidence to the contrary, several delusional Republican lawmakers and a disturbing number of Trump loyalists insist antifa is to blame for their own behavior. Hours after law enforcement managed to gain control of the chaotic situation, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) expressed outrage over what ensued. However, he did not hold the Trump supporters accountable, reports the Washington Post.
According to the Republican lawmaker, some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters. They were masquerading as Trump supporters and in fact, were members of the “violent terrorist group” antifa. Antifa, a left-wing anti-fascist movement, has been described by some on the […]
Stephan: Donald Trump and the Republican Party have utterly failed to competently deal with the pandemic causing hundreds of thousands of unnecessary illnesses and deaths; they have crashed the economy for millions of Americans; they have ruined America's relations with the other countries in the world, aligning us with authoritarian governments; and, now, they have smeared their feces across American democracy by encouraging a mass insurrection to the astonishment of the rest of the world.
Pro-Trump supporters on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6. Credit: Samuel Corum/Getty
World leaders reacted with horror after a pro-Trump mob assaulted American democracy and the peaceful transfer of power by storming the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, as lawmakers were attempting to certify President-elect Biden’s victory in November.
Why it matters: The U.S. government is typically a leading voice in condemning political violence all over the world.
What they’re saying
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson:“Disgraceful scenes in U.S. Congress. The United States stands for democracy around the world and it is now vital that there should be a peaceful and orderly transfer of power.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “Canadians are deeply disturbed and saddened by the attack on democracy in the United States, our closest ally and neighbour. Violence will never succeed in overruling the will of the people. Democracy in the US must be upheld – and it will be.”
Stephan: These have been an historic two days during which time the Republican Party took off its smiling mask and revealed its true face. That of a slavering monster dedicated to destroying American democracy.
Pennsylvania Democrat State Senator Jim Brewster
Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate majority refused to seat a Democratic state senator who narrowly won re-election over a challenger who won’t concede.
The GOP majority removed Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who was to preside over the ceremony, and president pro temp Jake Corman took over instead and prevented Sen. Jim Brewster (D-Allegheny County) from being sworn in, reported the Inquirer‘s Abraham Gutman.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1346522564865253376&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rawstory.com%2Fpennsylvania-state-senate%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px.
Republican Nicole Ziccarelli has challenged Brewster’s win, asking the courts to throw out 311 mail-in ballots from Allegheny County that lacked a handwritten date on the outer ballot envelope, as required by law, but the state’s Supreme Court permitted those votes to count.
Nearby Westmoreland County, which partially sits within Brewster’s district, did not count undated ballots, and Ziccarelli complained to U.S. District Court that her due process and equal protection rights were violated, although Brewster and Democratic officials argued federal courts had no jurisdiction to overturn a state court decision.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1346524843584475137&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rawstory.com%2Fpennsylvania-state-senate%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px
Stephan: Trump has two weeks left, and you can be sure he is going to do everything he can to harm the United States because he did not win his election. Here is one example of what I mean.
Rivers run through the lush tundra valleys of Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge. Credit: Acacia Johnson
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In one of its last strikes against the American wilderness, Donald Trump’s administration will on Wednesday auction off portions of the Arctic national wildlife refuge to oil drillers.
The lease sales are the climax to one of the nation’s highest-profile environmental battles. The lands on the northern coastal plain of Alaska are home to denning polar bears and migrating herds of Porcupine caribou that indigenous communities depend on and consider sacred. But the oil industry has long suspected that the ground beneath the plain holds billions of barrels of petroleum.https://www.theguardian.com/email/form/plaintone/4199Sign up for monthly updates on America’s public lands
Once the leases in the refuge, known as ANWR, are sold to energy companies, they would be difficult to claw back. The incoming president, Joe Biden, could, however, discourage development in the refuge by putting regulatory hurdles in the way of drillers.
The refuge has become central to America’s debate over how quickly to stop drilling for and burning fossil fuels as […]
Stephan: There just is no limit to the nastiness of Trump and his orcs. I wonder where we will be two weeks from today, what other horrors will they perpetrate?
Interior Secretary and Trumpian Orc David Bernhardt. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
Companies in the petroleum and other industries will not be held legally responsible for killing migratory birds as long as they did not mean to, the Trump administration said Tuesday, drawing swift condemnation from animal welfare and conservation groups.
The Interior Department is scheduled to finalize the rule change Wednesday, a boon to oil and gas companies that sought weakened protections of birds from an administration in its waning days.
A draft of the final rule comes two weeks before President-elect Joe Biden assumes the presidency, as well as on the heels of a new bipartisan conservation law protecting wetlands and waterfowl. It also coincides with a sharp decline in the overall population of birds in North America.
The number of birds on the continent has dropped by 3 billion, about 30 percent, since the 1970s, according to a survey published in the journal Science in September 2019.
The waterfowl-protection law (PL 116-188) that President Donald Trump signed Oct. 30 protects birds and bird habitats.
Under the new rule, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service […]
Stephan: In my opinion, the activity of Trump and the Trumpers in this post-election period constitutes a text book example of sedition and treason. The real question for me is will these people be held accountable Will anyone go to prison? The answer will determine whether this happens again. No accountability guarantees the Republicans will try this again, and do a better job of it.
Credit: Lambert/Getty
“We are what we pretend to be,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote in the opening of his 1962 novel, Mother Night, “and so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” Republicans in Congress are pretending to be seditionists—and so they have become, in fact, seditionists.
Forget all the whispered denials and the off-the-record expressions of concern in private; ignore the knowing smirks on camera from GOP officials who are desperately trying to indicate that they’re in on the joke. Brush aside the caviling of the anti-anti-Trump writers who would rather talk about that time in 2017 when some Democrats objected to the Electoral College vote (and were gaveled down by Joe Biden himself).
This is sedition, plain and simple. No amount of playacting and rationalizing can change the fact that the majority of the Republican Party and its apologists are advocating for the overthrow of an American election and the continued rule of a sociopathic autocrat.
This is not some handful of firebrands making a stand for the television cameras. In 2005, one Democrat in the House and one in the Senate filed […]
Stephan: Trump is not the only loser trying to undermine democracy in America, and I think that is an important point to bear in mind. This is an attack by a party on the fundemantal structure of the election system.
With the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden only 15 days away, President Donald Trump is still refusing to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election. And Dan Lavoie, who served as a speechwriter for former New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, is noting that Trump isn’t the only Republican who has been challenging election results. Two others include Jim Oberweis in Illinois and Nicole Ziccarelli in Pennsylvania.
In Illinois’ 14th Congressional District, Democratic incumbent Rep. Lauren Underwood defeated Republican challenger Jim Oberweis in November — and she has been sworn into a second term in the U.S. House of Representatives. But only one day after Underwood was sworn in, Oberweis announced that he was challenging the election results. That election was quite close: Underwood, according to the Illinois Board of Elections, defeated Oberweis by 5,374 votes. Take advantage of our limited time offer. Go ad-free for just $2 a week. Support independent journalism.
In an official statement, Oberweis (an Illinois state senator) said, “I do not believe we found any rampant fraud, but what we […]
