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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: Stupidity and greed, two of humanity's major curses. I urge you to click through to the U.N. Environment Program report itself:
http://productiongap.org/2020report/
The sun rises over an oil field over the Monterey Shale formation where gas and oil is extracted using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on March 24, 2014 near Lost Hills, California. Credit: David McNew/Getty
To follow a 1.5°C-consistent pathway, the world will need to decrease fossil fuel production by roughly 6% per year between 2020 and 2030. Countries are instead planning and projecting an average annual increase of 2%, which by 2030 would result in more than double the production consistent with the 1.5°C limit.
The coronavirus pandemic has sent global energy demand plummeting, and led many analysts and oil executives to conclude that a transition away from fossil fuels is marching nearer. But a new United Nations report says the world’s leading fossil fuel producers still appear set on expanding their output to levels that would send temperatures soaring past global climate goals.
The report, published Wednesday by the U.N. Environment Program and written by researchers from several universities, think tanks and advocacy groups, looked at national plans and projections for fossil fuel production. It found that […]
Ferris Jabr / Brendan George Ko , Contributing Writer / Visual Story Teller - The New York Times Magazine
Stephan: Here is a beautiful story of life and consciousness of the forest. The more science learns about the biosphere the clearer it becomes that all life is interconnected and interdependent. Only our greed blocks us from seeing what is obvious. If you support the fostering of wellbeing at every level everything becomes so much easier to understand.
As a child, Suzanne Simard often roamed Canada’s old-growth forests with her siblings, building forts from fallen branches, foraging mushrooms and huckleberries and occasionally eating handfuls of dirt (she liked the taste). Her grandfather and uncles, meanwhile, worked nearby as horse loggers, using low-impact methods to selectively harvest cedar, Douglas fir and white pine. They took so few trees that Simard never noticed much of a difference. The forest seemed ageless and infinite, pillared with conifers, jeweled with raindrops and brimming with ferns and fairy bells. She experienced it as “nature in the raw” — a mythic realm, perfect as it was. When she began attending the University of British Columbia, she was elated to discover forestry: an entire field of science devoted to her beloved domain. It seemed like the natural choice.
By the time she was in grad school at Oregon State University, however, Simard understood that commercial clearcutting had largely superseded the sustainable logging practices of the past. Loggers were replacing diverse forests with homogeneous plantations, evenly spaced in upturned soil stripped of most underbrush. Without any competitors, […]
Lisa Mascaro and Andrew Taylor, Staff Writers - Tampa Bay Times/ Associated Press
Stephan: One single corrupt senator, recently re-elected by Kentuckians who, given the state's social outcome data, one would think would know better, but apparently not, whose track record for his state ought to be a personal humiliation is now hanging up government relief desperately needed by tens of millions of Americans all over the country.
The reality is the United States no longer has a functioning two-party system, and no one exemplifies this more clearly than Mitch McConnell. The fact that this is happening yet is not producing a national outcry by those millions tells us more about our country than I think most of us want to know.
WASHINGTON — An emerging $900 billion COVID-19 aid package from a bipartisan group of lawmakers all but collapsed Thursday after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Republican senators won’t support $160 billion in state and local funds as part of a potential trade-off in the deal.
McConnell’s staff conveyed to top negotiators that the GOP leader sees no path to an agreement on a key aspect of the lawmakers’ existing proposal — a slimmed-down version of the liability shield he is seeking for companies and organizations facing potential COVID-19 lawsuits — in exchange for the state and local funds that Democrats want.
The GOP leader criticized “controversial state bailouts” during a speech in the Senate, as he insists on a more targeted aid package.
The hardened stance from McConnell, who does not appear to have enough votes from his Republican majority for a far-reaching compromise, creates a new stalemate over the $900-billion-plus package, despite days of toiling by a bipartisan group of lawmakers to strike compromise.
Other legislative pile-ups now threaten Friday’s must-pass government funding bill. If it doesn’t clear Congress, that would […]
Stephan: As a result of the neverending disinformation campaign waged by Trump, Fox, Breitbart, Limbaugh, and other propaganda operations run by the christofascist White supremacists a large percentage of Americans either think the Covid-19 Pandemic is a fraud, or that Bill Gates is trying to put microchips in your body to spy and control you, and refuse to wear masks or social distance. They also don't want to take any vaccine. I think getting the vaccine into everyone's arms is going to be a long tedious process that will take months.
The big takeaway from all this for me is that an appalling number of Americans are so poorly educated, that they are easily manipulated through their fears, hates, resentments, and racism.
Credit: Illustration by IStock
This past week, millions of Americans joined together in total defiance of all public health advice for another round of infecting and killing their loved ones, while ensuring that the nation’s medical professionals will face several more months of risky, grueling, emotionally draining labor trying to keep a country full of heedless jerks and credulous conspiracy-mongers alive.
Many doctors, nurses, and hospital staff are increasingly hopeless and disillusioned. Gone are the 7’oclock cheers and “Thank you essential workers” signs in every window. That fleeting solidarity has been replaced by a cold, selfish indifference to the staggering and seemingly pointless sacrifices these heroic workers continue to make on our behalf. And many of them are wondering how much longer they can keep it up.
Never has this been more clear than it was over the long Thanksgiving weekend. While many Americans did the sensible — if heart-wrenching — thing and stayed home or limited their gatherings to small, pre-existing “pods,” more than a million people traveled through airports the day before Thanksgiving. In one poll, 40 […]
Stephan: This is the leverage point that is going to determine what survives about American democracy. Here are the facts: 126 Republican Representatives are traitors. The question is what is going to happen to them? My guess is nothing. And if that turns out to be the case then they get away with it, just as Trump is going to be pardoned, along with all the other scum around him. That means they will do it again since they have faced no consequences for their traitorous behavior.
Pascrell’s letter
Only one-third of the Republicans elected to Congress in 2020 will be seated in Congress come January if one New Jersey Democrat has his way.
Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ) argued on Friday that the 126 Republicans seeking to overturn election results should not be seated in Congress.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Friday joined the group seeking to overturn the election results in four states.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1337466661146828800&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rawstory.com%2F2020%2F12%2Fdemocrat-wants-to-use-civil-war-law-about-traitors-to-ban-126-republicans-from-being-seated-in-congress%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550pxTake advantage of our limited time offer. Go ad-free for just $2 a week. Support independent journalism.
Rep. Pascrell believes Section 3 of the 14th Amendment should be invoked to keep the Republicans from holding office.
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United […]
Stephan: Right now, I think the biggest most important trend in the United States, other than the failure to deal with climate change, is that we no longer have a functioning two-party system, the form of governance we have had since the 1790s. It was not what the Founders had intended, but political controversies caused the system to develop and it has prevailed until it began to unravel during the Nixon years, and became a crisis over the past five years.
Now as this essay describes this is what is left of the Republican Party.
2020. Grand Rapids, Michigan. USA. President Donald Trump’s last rally before the 2020 Election on November 3, 2020. Grand Rapids was also the site of his final rally in the 2016 election.
If you were dropped in from another country without knowing anything about the United States and surveyed our current political moment, what would you conclude about the Republican Party and the broader conservative movement it represents? As 2020 comes to an end, what is conservatism about?
After nearly four years of Donald Trump’s presidency in which no misdeed was too vulgar or corrupt for conservatives to defend, now culminating in an outright war against democracy itself, you might be tempted to answer, “Nothing.” Though that’s not quite true, the real answer is not much more encouraging.
Some years ago, I wrote a book arguing that Democrats should learn from the things Republicans did well. One of these was that the GOP had a simple foundation of shared beliefs that could be easily communicated to voters. Ask a Republican running for any office from dogcatcher all the way up […]
Stephan: Faux Dictator Loser Trump and his head orc Moscow Mitch were relying on the three justices they put on the high court, plus Uncle Thomas and Alito to back their coup, but it didn't happen. However, in the process, they revealed that the Republican Party no longer supports nor wants a United States governed by a democracy. That can no longer even be debated.
The Supreme Court
Briskly rejecting a long-shot but high-stakes case, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday tossed out the Texas lawsuit that had become a vehicle for Republicans across the country to contest President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
In a few brief sentences, the high court said it would not consider the case for procedural reasons, because Texas lacked standing to bring it.
“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,” the court wrote in an unsigned ruling Friday evening.
With Electoral College deadlines rapidly approaching, the ruling likely ends President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the election results through the courts. The Texas attorney general’s office did not immediately return a request for comment Friday.
Texas sued this week to challenge the election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin on the basis that those states implemented pandemic-related changes to election procedures that, Texas claimed, were illegal […]
Stephan: Here are the Republican representatives who aligned themselves with the attempted coup by Loser Trump and the Texas AG. Go through the list, and if you see anyone from your state listed, starting today please organize a citizens action group committed to seeing that the Republican representative in your state who was part of this attempted coup is voted out of office in 2022. There has to be a price for participating in an attempt to overthrow democracy.
All 50 states have officially certified the results of the 2020 presidential election as of this week, reaffirming what has been known for over a month now: Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States.
And yet, on Thursday, 106 Republican members of Congress signed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to allow the state of Texas to file a lawsuit that seeks to invalidate the election results in the states of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, all of which President Donald Trump lost. On Friday, Republicans filed an updated brief to include an additional 20 members.
With electors scheduled to meet on Monday to officially name Biden the victor, it’s a long shot that the court will step in. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court justices denied a Republican effort to challenge a 2019 Pennsylvania law that expanded mail-in voting.
Among the representatives who signed on are several members who have just won races in the very states whose elections they now allege are so rife with “irregularities” that they want the court to throw out the results. There is no evidence of widespread electoral fraud.
