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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: This is what really worries me. Gun obsessed right-wingers are arming themselves and anticipating violence; perhaps better phrased as anticipating causing gun violence. The period from 3 November to 20 January is going to be very dangerous. I also expect Trump and the outgoing Republican senators to do as much damage to our democratic republic as they can before being forced by the election to surrender their offices.
Man in military gear with shotgun Credit: Shutterstock
On Saturday, Bloomberg Quintreported that there is a huge spike in sales of military gear as Americans fear widespread civil unrest in the wake of the election — no matter who wins.
“‘Tactical apparel’ has become a lifestyle industry serving militarized law-enforcement agents and the freelance gunmen who emulate them,” reported Peter Robison, Rachel Adams-Heard, and Erik Larson. “Less than two weeks before Election Day, orders are rolling in.” For example, “Since last year, online purchases have driven a 20-fold jump in sales of goods like the $220 CM-6M gas mask — resistant to bean-bag rounds — for Mira Safety of Austin, Texas.”
“A shift became apparent with this spring’s Black Lives Matter protests and bitterly resented pandemic lockdowns,” said the report. “Now the gear is everywhere, from camouflage-clad antifa supporters to right-wing extremists who appeared at Michigan’s capitol even after men were arrested in a plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.”NEW! Help us launch the Raw Story Podcast. Click to learn […]
Stephan: The moral scumminess of Trump and Pence, and the orcs around them prove that the Trump administration is the most morally corrupt administration in American history. The proof? The policies that tore children from the arms of their parents, hundreds of children who were then lost in the system. Add to that the refugee camp described in this report; a camp that only exists because of the morally bankrupt immigration policies put in place by Trump. Like the Japanese internment camps, which at least at a World War to justify it, and the debasement of the Native American cultures, this is as stain on the honor and integrity of America that can never be expunged.
MATAMOROS, MEXICO — A butter yellow sun rose over the crowded tent camp across the river from Texas and a thick heat baked the rotten debris below, a mixture of broken toys, human waste and uneaten food swarming with flies.
Clothing and sheets hung from trees and dried stiff after being drenched and muddied in a hurricane the week before.
As residents emerged from the zipper-holes of their canvas homes that morning in August, some trudged with buckets in hand toward tanks of water for bathing and washing dishes. Others assembled in front of wash basins with arms full of children’s underwear and pajamas. They waited for the first warm meal of the day to arrive, though it often made them sick.
The members of this displaced community requested refuge in the United States but were sent back into Mexico, and told to wait. They came there after unique tragedies: violent assaults, oppressive extortions, murdered loved ones. They are bound together by the one thing they share in common — having nowhere else to go.
Erin Mansfield, Josh Salman, and Dinah Voyles Pulver, - USA TODAY
Stephan: It is a measure of how willfully ignorant and mesmerized Americans can be that Trumpers continue to congregate at Trump's superspreader events in spite of the obvious evidence that they do so at the risk of their lives. Just where do you have to be mentally to do something that stupid? As for Trump; in my view, his incompetence in handling this pandemic constitutes a crime against humanity.
As President Donald Trump jetted across the country holding campaign rallies during the past two months, he didn’t just defy state orders and federal health guidelines. He left a trail of coronavirus outbreaks in his wake.
The president has participated in nearly three dozen rallies since mid-August, all but two at airport hangars. A USA TODAY analysis shows COVID-19 cases grew at a faster rate than before after at least five of those rallies in the following counties: Blue Earth, Minnesota; Lackawanna, Pennsylvania; Marathon, Wisconsin; Dauphin, Pennsylvania; and Beltrami, Minnesota.
Together, those counties saw 1,500 more new cases in the two weeks following Trump’s rallies than the two weeks before – 9,647 cases, up from 8,069.
Public health officials additionally have linked 16 cases, including two hospitalizations, with the rally in Beltrami County, Minnesota, and one case with the rally in Marathon County, Wisconsin. Outside of the counties identified by USA TODAY with a greater case increase after rallies, officials identified four cases linked to Trump rallies.
Although there’s no way to determine definitively if cases originated at Trump’s rallies, public health experts […]
Nicole Hong and Jesse Drucker, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan: Over the last four years it has become clear that the Trumps are a criminal family, and they surround themselves with friends and colleagues who are also grifters, crooks, and general scumbags. Here is the latest one to be arrested. I am surprised there is so little discussion about this, because I am sure that it is going to be a major aspect of history's analysis of this period.
Ken Kurson Credit: J Grassi/Patrick McMullan/Getty
Ken Kurson, a close friend of President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, was taken into federal custody on Friday and charged with cyberstalking in connection with his divorce.Mr. Kurson, who now runs a media company and works in the cryptocurrency industry, helped write a speech for the president’s 2016 campaign. When Mr. Kushner owned The New York Observer, the weekly newspaper, he appointed Mr. Kurson to be its editor in chief in 2013.
Mr. Kurson was also a longtime associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and the former New York City mayor.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn accused Mr. Kurson of sending threatening and stalking messages to several people, including a friend whom he blamed for the deterioration of his marriage.
The F.B.I. has also gathered evidence that Mr. Kurson engaged in a similar pattern of harassment during his divorce proceedings in 2015, including installing software on someone’s computer to monitor keystrokes, the criminal complaint said. He also used aliases to contact that person’s employer to report false allegations of […]
Stephan: The facts are clear and indisputable: Republicans do not like democracy as a system of governance, do everything they can to sabotage it, and are a criminal party. Under Republican presidents, the number of criminals involved with their administrations is notably greater than under Democratic presidents. That is a fact, and here is the documentation. Note also, the Trump numbers are as of January 2020. Today it is higher.
If you vote Republican you vote against democracy, and for white-collar criminality.
A Facebook post claimed that there have been 317 criminal indictments in the administrations of three recent Republican presidents — Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon — and only three indictments under three recent Democratic presidents — Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.
Here’s what the post said about those presidents, whose terms date back to 1969 when Nixon was in office:
“Recent administrations with the MOST criminal indictments:
Trump (Republican) — 215
Nixon (Republican) — 76
Reagan (Republican) — 26
“Recent administrations with the LEAST criminal indictments:
Obama (Democrat) — 0
Carter (Democrat) — 1
Clinton (Democrat) — 2
“Notice a pattern?”
Unless an administration official is charged with a crime for acts while in office, it’s not always easy to identify which indictments can be connected to a presidential administration; some administration officials have been indicted for acts in the private sector, some indicted people were involved in presidential campaigns but didn’t work in the administration, etc.
This claim exaggerates the number of indictments under Trump, in particular, by counting the number of criminal charges filed, rather than the number of people indicted; and it includes the indictments of people who are not part of his administration, such as 25 Russians.
On the whole, however, the indictments under the three GOP presidents do dwarf those […]
Stephan: Last night during the Presidential debate you heard Trump push carbon energy. It was the statement of one of history's losers. Whether Trump likes it or not we are leaving, the world is leaving, the carbon energy era, and here is the proof of that statement. However, the closing of oil and gas companies, as this report explains, is far from the end of carbon pollution and poisoning. And who do you think is going to pay for the cleanup. Why you will unless the Biden administration and the Democratic Congress passes legislation to anticipate and remediate this. It is my view that carbon energy corporations should be required by law to put aside sufficient resources to pay for the clean-up of the mess they leave.
Amid a record wave of bankruptcies, the U.S. oil and gas industry is on the verge of defaulting on billions of dollars in environmental cleanup obligations.
Even the largest companies in the industry appear to have few plans to properly clean up and plug oil and gas wells after the wells stop producing — despite being legally required to do so. While the bankruptcy process could be an opportunity to hold accountable either these firms, or the firms acquiring the assets via bankruptcy, it instead has offered more opportunities for companies to walk away from cleanup responsibilities — while often rewarding the same executives who bankrupted them.
The results may be publicly funded cleanups of the millions of oil and gas wells that these companies have left behind. In a new report, Carbon Tracker, an independent climate-focused financial think tank, has estimated the costs to plug the 2.6 million documented onshore wells in the U.S. at $280 billion. This estimate does not include the costs to address an estimated 1.2 million undocumented wells.
Greg Rogers, a former Big Oil advisor, and co-author of
Stephan: The deliberate sabotage of the US Post Office by Louis DeJoy, a grifter appointed by Trump, is the most blatant manifestation of the criminality of the Trump administration, and the Republican Party.
My wife and I voted last week, and took our ballots to one of the secure ballot boxes we have here on the island. Under Democratic Governor Jay Inslee in spite of attempts by Republicans in the Washington state legislature to sabotage mail-in ballots, the voting process has remained secure.
My personal recommendation to my readers is that you get a ballot and either put it in a secure official ballot box, or vote in person, or take your ballot to the clerk responsible for collecting ballots. Skip the post office.
If Biden is elected I also think Louis DeJoy should be fired, arrested, indicted, tried, and sent to prison for what he has done.
Two weeks before the election, there are signs that delays continue to plague the U.S. mail, a tracking effort by the USA TODAY Network and the University of Maryland’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found.
Of 64 letters and packages sent short distances within battleground states since mid-September, 14 took longer than the U.S. Postal Service’s own three-day service standard for first-class local mail. Most of the problems arose in Michigan, although Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida each had at least one late arrival.
Eight of the shipments took a week or more to get to their cross-town destinations, including one letter that still has not arrived, according to the post office’s online tracking system. The missing letter was put in the mail two weeks ago, on Oct. 6.
Although the mailings were too small in number to determine whether widespread delays are occurring, the erratic results make it hard to know whether or not your ballot will arrive at the elections […]
Stephan: It's hard to keep track of all the lies, so here is the fact checking
The stage of the presidential debate in Nashville. Credit: Amr Alfiky/The New York Times
In their final debate, President Trump unleashed an unrelenting series of false, misleading and exaggerated statements as he sought to distort former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s record and positions and boost his own re-election hopes. The president once again relied heavily on well-worn talking points that have long been shown to be false.
The president appeared determined to reinvent the reality of the last four years — and the history of the pandemic in 2020 — as he faces judgment on his actions in just 12 days. He once again falsely dismissed the Russia investigations as a “phony witch hunt.” He insisted that aside from Abraham Lincoln, “nobody has done more for the Black community,” an assertion that people in both parties find laughable. And he tried again to wish away the pandemic, saying “we are rounding the turn” even as daily cases of the virus this week topped 70,000 in the United States for the first time since July.
