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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: While America reels from Trump's attack on our democracy, the Republican Senators make it clear they care nothing for democracy, but everything for power. And they act accordingly.
McConnell and Graham
Senate Republicans have bucked a century-old tradition to continue to confirm President Donald Trump’s judges in spite of his election loss.
The Senate has confirmed six district court nominees since the election, including a 33-year-old attorney with little trial experience who was rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Association (ABA). The move broke a “123-year tradition against voting on judicial nominees of an outgoing president of the defeated party during a lame duck session,” according to Bloomberg Law.
Judicial nominees of presidents who lost their re-election or whose party was defeated have not been confirmed after an election since 1897, Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies judicial appointments, told the outlet. The lone exception was when the Senate confirmed future Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who was then the chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, to a circuit court in 1980.
Stephan: The incompetence of Trump and his administration to deal with the pandemic is destroying America's already fragile illness profit system. Even worse it is destroying the wellbeing of the men and women who labor every day to keep the rest of us well. All of this was so unnecessary.
The reports have come in from all across the country: Hospitals are filling up, especially in the Midwest, and they are running out of the staff they need to take care of patients.
Last week, the United States broke its record from April for the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients, blowing past 60,000 all the way to 73,000, according to data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic.
Now new data released by the Department of Health and Human Services quantify the crisis in America’s hospitals in closer detail. At The Atlantic’s request, HHS provided data on the number of hospitals experiencing staffing shortages. From November 4 to November 11, 958 hospitals—19 percent of American hospitals—faced a staffing shortage. This week, 1,109 hospitals reported that they expect to face a staffing shortage. That’s 22 percent of all American hospitals.
In eight states, the situation is even more dire. More than 35 percent of hospitals in Arkansas, Missouri, North Dakota, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin are anticipating a staffing shortage this week. COVID-19 puts pressure on hospitals in two ways. One, […]
Stephan: History will see Donald Trump as the worst president in our history, and his tenure as president as one of our darkest chapters. We should all be ashamed; I certainly am.
A woman is reunited with her four-year-old son at the El Paso International Airport on July 26, 2018 in El Paso, Texas. The mother and child were separated for one month when they crossed into the United States. Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty
Along with pushing the White House immigration policy which resulted in the separation of more than 5,400 children from their parents and guardians, policy adviser Stephen Miller pressured U.S. Justice Department lawyers out of accepting a settlement in 2019 which would have quickly connected reunified families with mental health services to help them heal from the trauma imposed by the Trump administration.
As NBC Newsreported Thursday, after months of negotiations, lawyers from the DOJ and the pro bono public interest law firm Public Counsel reached an agreement in October 2019, under which the federal government would pay $8 million for the counseling of migrant families.
“Many of these children thought their parents had deliberately abandoned them. The longer that trauma goes unredressed, the more severe the consequences.” —Mark Rosenbaum, Public Counsel
According to three administration officials who spoke to NBC, the Office of White […]
Stephan: We are witnessing an attempted coup by Trump and the Republican Party; there can be no doubt about any of this. I think we have reached a point where Trump, on the 21st of January, should be indicted, arrested, tried, and sent to prison, and those senators who have backed him should be removed from office. I think this is very serious, and there must be an accounting or, the next election, a more competent coup will be attempted. The only thing that is saving American democracy at this point is the inertia of the system, the macro-systems of governance have a momentum that is hard to change, and the incompetence of the coup attempters.
No ethical person who supports democracy can remain a Republican and that needs to be acknowledged.
The US faces a huge task in reversing a culture of “crazy conspiracy theories” that have exacerbated divides in the country, Barack Obama says.
Mr. Obama has said that Joe Biden, who he is greeting here with a socially distant “air elbow”, has “all the qualities we need in a president right now” Credit: Getty
In a BBC interview, the former president says the US is more sharply split than even four years ago, when Donald Trump won the presidency.
And Mr Obama suggests Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 US election is just the start of repairing those divisions.
“It’ll take more than one election to reverse those trends,” he says.
Tackling a polarised nation, he argues, cannot be left only to the decisions of politicians, but also requires both structural change and people listening to one another – agreeing on a “common set of facts” before arguing what to do about them.
However he says he sees “great hope” in the “sophisticated” attitudes of the next generation, urging young people to “cultivate that cautious optimism that the world can change” and “to […]
Stephan: Since most Republicans only listen to explicit Republican propaganda and disinformation media, they don't actually live in a fact-based world. Instead, as was the case when Mussolini and Hitler came to power, Trumpers live in a carefully constructed fantasy world.
It is my view that most people in the fact-based world don't realize how close America is to becoming a christofascist racist state. I think they just find it so improbable that they don't take Trump and the Trumpers seriously. They should.
A man carries a tattered “Trump 2020” flag as supporters of President Donald Trump rally outside the governor’s mansion on November 14 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Stephen Maturen/Getty
President Donald Trump’s unfounded allegations of voter fraud and unwillingness to concede the election are seriously affecting how some Republicans are interpreting the results.
According to a new survey from Vox and Data for Progress, 73 percent of likely Republican voters say that the allegations of voter fraud have made them question Joe Biden’s victory, a statement that 44 percent of all likely voters agreed with as well. Similarly, 75 percent of likely Republican voters said they believed voter fraud took place during the election that benefitted Biden, something that 43 percent of likely voters overall also stated.
Trump’s refusal to concede the election has significant support from members of his party, too.
A majority of likely Republican voters — 65 percent — agreed with Trump’s decision not to concede despite the fact that media outlets have called the election for Biden. And 69 percent of likely Republican voters felt that […]
Stephan: I hope we see a growing outcry for the prosecution of Trump, William Barr and the other Trumpers. A modern equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials, where all of these Trumper men and women are tried for attempting a coup and the destruction of American democracy.
In stark contrast with President-elect Joe Biden—who is reportedly inclined against investigating and possibly prosecuting President Donald Trump for his many proven and alleged crimes—one Democratic congressman on Tuesday demanded that the president be brought to justice.
Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) has been one of the president’s fiercest congressional critics. Credit: Lingjing Bao/Talk Media News Photo Archives/Flickr
“Importantly, any further abuse of the sacred pardon power to shield criminals would itself be obstruction of justice, and any self-pardons would be illegal.” —Rep. Bill Pascrell
Citing an “unprecedented litany of misdeeds [that] must not be swept under the rug,” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.)—a fierce critic of the president—released a statement calling for the prosecution of Trump and members of his administration, whom the 83-year-old congressman accused of committing “innumerable crimes against the United States.”
Pascrell’s statement said that:
[Trump] has endangered our national security. He ripped families apart. He poisoned the Census. He has personally profited from his office. He has attacked our elections and sought to throttle democracy. He was rightly impeached by the House of Representatives. He has engaged in treachery [and] in treason. […]
Stephan: Remembering Nixon's tapes and the role they played in ending his presidency I believe Trump is going to go through all his presidential records and destroy anything that he thinks can be used against him. And I am not the only person who thinks this way. We have an utterly unscrupulous criminal in the White House, and he has surrounded himself by willing orcs who will serve him loyally. What this has revealed is that much of our system of governance is less about laws and more about unspoken agreements. So I hope that when Biden is in office that the electoral college will be eliminated, and what was formerly an unspoken agreement will be formalized in law. We are very lucky the Republicans are so incompetent.
Donald Trump is not much of a note-taker, and he does not like his staff to take notes. He has a habit of tearing up documents at the close of meetings. (Records analysts, armed with Scotch Tape, have tried to put the pieces back together.) No real record exists for five meetings Trump had with Vladimir Putin during the first two years of his Presidency. Members of his staff have routinely used apps that automatically erase text messages, and Trump often deletes his own tweets, notwithstanding a warning from the National Archives and Records Administration that doing so contravenes the Presidential Records Act.
Trump cannot abide documentation for fear of disclosure, and cannot abide disclosure for fear of disparagement. For decades, in private life, he required people who worked with him, and with the Trump Organization, to sign nondisclosure agreements, pledging never to say a bad word about him, his family, or his businesses. He also extracted nondisclosure agreements from women with whom he had or is alleged to have had sex, including both of his […]
Stephan: I wrote this because a reader wrote to challenge me, saying "you say all these negative things about conservatives and the Republican Party. Can you prove any of it with facts, or is it all your political orientation and dislike of Trump?" Here is my answer, and today's only story. Are you listening Georgia? Your vote for two senators is going to change America's future for good or ill.
For the past 15 years I have published in Explore I have tried to make the point that social values determine social outcomes, based on objective quantifiable social outcome data. And that on the basis of that data, it is clear that when forming social policy the best option is always the one that is the most compassionate, life-affirming and fostering of wellbeing. That option proves always easier to implement than the alternatives: more productive, more efficient, nicer to live under, longer enduring, and much much cheaper.1
I know this is going to be controversial, but I want to talk about a second point this data teaches, a trend that is shaping the United States in many ways. It’s components are frequently discussed, but the over-arching trend is rarely mentioned. I am speaking here of the objectively verified failure of conservative social policies to foster wellbeing. Where conservative social policies prevail, Americans, men, women, children, regardless of race or gender, are less healthy and have shorter more miserable lives than people in other developed nations. So it may be controversial but […]
