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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: Ever since I was a little boy people have been talking about speculating on flying cars. They have become a standard feature in SciFi movies. But where is reality? It appears it is here.
SkyDrive SD-03 Credit: SkyDrive
In the 1880s, the first automobile was developed and about two decades later, the Wright brothers in North Carolina invented the first successful airplane. Today, the world is closer to combining those two concepts as a Japanese tech company said it completed a manned test flight of a “flying car.”
The company, SkyDrive, said in a news release on Friday that it had completed a flight test using “the world’s first manned testing machine,” its SD-03 model, an electrical vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle. The flight time was four minutes, the company said.
The aircraft has one seat and operates with eight motors and two propellers on each corner. It lifted about 3 meters (or about 10 feet) into the air and was operated by a pilot, the company said.
Tomohiro Fukuzawa, SkyDrive’s chief executive, said on Saturday that five years ago there were various prototypes of flying cars, usually with fixed wings. SkyDrive’s product, he said, was one of the most compact in size and was lighter compared with other designs.
David A. Fahrenthold, Josh Dawsey and Joshua Partlow, Reporters - The Washington Post
Stephan: Everything, and I mean everything, involving Trump is a grift of some kind. I think when we have some historical perspective it will become clear that Trump and his family worked the system to make millions of dollars in profits during his administration. What I want to know is who paid the costs to use the White House as a prop. You know it took cleaners and maids, and all kinds of other staff to get the White House and the grounds ready for that violation of the Hatch Act. Did we, the taxpayers pay for a partisan political event? I'll bet we did.
Members of the Secret Service stand guard as President Trump speaks during a Christmas Eve video teleconference with members of the military at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., last year. Credit: Andrew Harnik/AP
The Secret Service had asked for a room close to the president. But Mar-a-Lago said it was too late. The room was booked. Would agents like a room across the street from the president, instead?
“I do have a Beach Cabana available,” a staff member at President Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla., wrote in March 2017 to a Secret Service agent seeking rooms for the upcoming weekend. “Across the street at the Beach Club, North end of the pool.”
The next time, the Secret Service didn’t take the same risk. It paid Mar-a-Lago to book rooms for two weeks at a time — locking them up before the club could rent them to others, according to newly released records and emails.
For Trump’s club, it appeared, saying no to the Secret Service had made it a better customer. The agency was paying for rooms […]
Stephan: This is a follow up on the previous story. The other behavior trait that stands out for me about Trump, next to his consistent and vulgar criminality, is his bullying. Here's an example, although it is about one reporter I also see it as an attack on a free press.
The White House has warned The Washington Post that it’s collecting a “dossier” on one of its journalists after he reported that President Donald Trump’s private business, the Trump Organization, has charged taxpayers at least $900,000.
The chilling, Kremlin-esque threat was made in response to a story Thursday by Pulitzer Prize-winning Post reporter David Fahrenthold, Josh Dawsey and Joshua Partlow that the Trump Organization has charged the Secret Service steep fees for agents guarding the president during his multiple trips to his own properties.
The Secret Service has had to pay for rooms at Trump’s properties even when he is not present, has been charged daily “resort fees,” and was once billed $1,300 for a mysterious “furniture removal charge” during a presidential trip to Trump’s golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland, the Post reported, based on multiple interviews and newly obtained bills and emails.
Just two weeks after Trump became president, the Secret Service spent $10,666 at Mar-a-Lago for a single weekend while […]
Stephan: Trump has always aspired to be a fascist kleptocratic authoritarian so, if you think about it, there is nothing really surprising in this story; it is just what you would expect from such a man.
North Korean “Dear Leader” parade
President Donald Trump wanted his inauguration to be a show of might, according to a new tell-all book.
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s book Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady explains the planning process she participated in with Ivanka Trump for the inauguration, according to a new report by Politico.
“I want tanks and choppers. Make it look like North Korea,” Trump reportedly said.
“He really wanted goose-stepping troops and armored tanks? That would break tradition and terrify half the country,” she noted.
There were also discussions of using drones for the event.
“For the inauguration, Mark Burnett, the creator of ‘The Apprentice,’ the television show which paved the way for Trump’s popularity, also wanted to ‘light the sky with drones, and Donald and Melania loved the idea.’ No drones ended up being used to spice up the inauguration — they could have posed a safety risk,” Politico noted.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1299815976960229376&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rawstory.com%2F2020%2F08%2Ftrump-wanted-tanks-and-choppers-for-inauguration-reportedly-gave-order-to-make-it-look-like-north-korea%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&width=550px
Emily Wilder and Ian James, Reporters - Arizona Republic
Stephan: This is climate change made real. I have seen climate models suggesting that Arizona is soon to have up to 120 days a year with temperatures over 110°F. In the next two decades, I predict a large percentage of the people now living in Arizona will become climate refugees and internal migrants causing a collapse of the state's real estate market.
Credit: Arizona Republic
Friday marked the 50th day to reach 110 degrees or higher in the Valley this year, setting a record nobody wanted.
Before 2020, the previous record for most days in a calendar year to reach 110 degrees was 33 days set in 2011. Phoenix surpassed that on Aug. 9 and has beat it almost every day since then.
Phoenix passed the scorching milestone on Friday afternoon when the temperature at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport hit 111 degrees.
“It’s not like we barely broke this record,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Matthew Hirsch. “We sort of obliterated it.”
The heat, Hirsch explained, is largely a result of persistent high pressure this summer. High pressure normally produces warmer than average temperatures. Those conditions were exacerbated by an uncharacteristically dry summer. Phoenix experienced less than 4 inches of rainfall since the beginning of the year.https://www.usatodaynetworkservice.com/tangstatic/html/pphx/sf-q1a2z32fe45021.min.html
“When you don’t have moisture to cool it down, excessive heat can persist,” Hirsch said. “Essentially, we didn’t get any relief from monsoon storms.”
Stephan: If you live in Red value state governed by Republicans you literally do so at risk of your life. This is a report on the third study I have reported on concerning this trend (See SR archives), and they all reached the same conclusion: Republican policies will take years off your life. Could it be any clearer? And yet people continue to vote Republicans into office.
A major new study has documented how differences in life expectancy correlate closely with many state policies. Credit: Dana Neely/Stone/Getty
People in red states don’t live as long as people in blue states, often by a wide margin.
Now, a major new study demonstrates that differences in life expectancy correlate closely with many state policies: Most red states have adopted more policies that correlate strongly with lives cut short, while most blue states have adopted opposite policies.
The new study, conducted by well-known Syracuse University sociologist Jennifer Karas Montez and seven colleagues, notes: “State policies affect nearly every aspect of people’s lives, including economic well-being, social relationships, education, housing, lifestyles, and access to medical care.” Life expectancy is like a social mirror that reflects the overall health of a population. Longevity captures, in a single number, overall social, economic, physical and mental well-being.
In 2017, life expectancy (at birth) in West Virginia was 74.6 years, but in Hawaii, it was 81.6 years — a full 7-year difference. If West Virginia were a nation, it would rank #93 in the world for life expectancy, below Morocco, […]
Stephan: I have been covering and reporting on the trend of White supremacist militia members infiltrating the police in America for years (see SR archives), since I first saw a report from the FBI on this issue. Violence prone White supremacists in and out of law enforcement constitute the largest terrorist threat in the country. Even stranger the police command structure has failed to realize that these terrorists are a threat to the police themselves. For instance, two police officers this year have been killed by these thugs.
Riot police move protesters after confrontations between protesters and militia members in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Photograph: Nathan Posner/Rex/Shutterstock
White supremacist groups have infiltrated US law enforcement agencies in every region of the country over the last two decades, according to a new report about the ties between police and far-right vigilante groups.
In a timely new analysis, Michael German, a former FBI special agent who has written extensively on the ways that US law enforcement have failed to respond to far-right domestic terror threats, concludes that US law enforcement officials have been tied to racist militant activities in more than a dozen states since 2000, and hundreds of police officers have been caught posting racist and bigoted social media content.Far-right leader and Washington officers face civil rights lawsuit over violent incidentRead more
The report notes that over the years, police links to militias and white supremacist groups have been uncovered in states including Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.
Police in Sacramento, California, in 2018 worked with neo-Nazis to pursue […]
Stephan: There is something deeply wrong with the police in Kenosha, Wisconsin. They shout out their support and offer a water bottle to a teenage White supremacist murderer, but immediately arrest... well, you read the story.
Police officers stand guard inside of a fenced area that surrounds several government buildings on August 27, 2020 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers approved a request for an additional 500 National Guard troops to be deployed into Wisconsin on August 26. Many arrests have been made with the additional presence of law enforcement. Credit: Brandon Bell/Getty
Soon after their Wednesday arrival in Kenosha, Wisconsin, eight volunteers from Seattle-based Riot Kitchen who planned to distribute free food to protesters were arrested by law enforcement officials who emerged from unmarked cars, as the Seattle Timesreported.
Footage recorded by a bystander and widely shared on social media was featured in the Washington Post. The video shows law enforcement officers jump out of black SUVs and smash the window of a minivan before handcuffing both of the vehicle’s occupants:https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/9f6692e7-f639-4031-b6d9-e39539bb5fcd
Riot Kitchen board member Jennifer Scheurle told the Post that off-camera, officers arrested six additional members of the nonprofit group.
“Our mission is to feed people for free—protesters and everyone in need,” Scheurle told the Times. “We were from out of town—but that’s not illegal.”
On Thursday afternoon, Scheurle said four of members of […]
