IF YOU ENJOY SR AND FIND IT USEFUL WOULD YOU PLEASE DONATE
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: As I have watched the Republican convention this week, and listened to speaker after speaker spew baldfaced lies, describe the Pandemic in the past tense as 75,301 new cases were reported and 1,969 died, I saw the fantasy world of the Trumpers on display. The talk about how the violence we are seeing in the news each day is the fault of the Democrats. They describe how great the economy is, and how any problems are due to the Democrats, when Trump and the Republicans in Congress have controlled the economy for the past four years, and on and on. It made me think it would be useful to list all Trump's lies and failed promises on those issues. So here is a top 40 list -- the whole list would require you to read several hours worth of material. It will stand as the Friday Republican Scum Report.
Trump voters. Nearly 4 years in, here’s an updated list of Trump’s 40 biggest broken promises.
1. He said coronavirus would “go away without a vaccine.” You bought it. But it didn’t. While other countries got the pandemic under control and avoided large numbers of fatalities, the virus has killed more than 130,000 Americans*, and that number is still climbing.
2. He said he won’t have time to play golf if elected president. But he has made more than 250 visits to his golf clubs since he took office – a record for any president – including more trips during the pandemic than meetings with Dr. Fauci. The total financial cost to America? More than $136 million.Defend democracy. Click to invest in courageous progressive journalism today.
3. He said he would repeal the Affordable Care Act, and replace it with something “beautiful.” It didn’t happen. Instead, 7 million Americans have lost their health insurance since he took office. He has asked the Supreme Court to strike down the law in the middle of a global pandemic with no plan to […]
Stephan: As I have been watching the Republican convention four things have stood out for me. First, the grotesque violation of the Hatch Act and the misuse of our public properties and symbols; I wonder who is paying for all the staff these violations require. Is the RNC convention being funded by taxpayers? Has anyone else noticed that last night when Trump entered the scene with two marines opening the door and then standing at attention it was an exact mirror of Putin's entrance in the Kremlin? Second, the lies that make up almost every presentation. Third, the complete lack of any detailed policy statement; it is nothing but a homage do our "Dear Leader". Fourth, the blatant racism. It isn't just the endless White blonde-haired women, it is also the fear-mongering; they're (Black and Brown people) coming to steal your suburbs. And it is this last that particularly concerns me because it is deliberately designed to stimulate hate and violence.
Why am I so concerned about that. Precisely because of what just happened in Kenosha, Wisconsin. As you read this story note particularly the support these White militiamen received from the police. Remember that the police have killed over 700 people so far this year.
Note that this 17-year-old could not legally carry such a weapon, or even buy it. So who did buy it for him? Is he living at home? How did his parents let him go out armed like that? Why didn't the police confiscate the weapon?
I think we are moving into a period where violence caused by the White militias is going to become an increasing problem. These are domestic terrorists. They seek violence.
Kyle Rittenhouse
Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old charged with shooting three people — two of them fatally — during a Kenosha protest Tuesday evening, considered himself a militia member trying to protect life and property, according to videos, interviews and social media posts.
Video recorded in the hours before the shooting shows Rittenhouse hanging out with older armed men who say they’re protecting a car lot. Rittenhouse, of Antioch, Ill., also did a video interview with the Daily Caller in front of a boarded up building.
“People are getting injured and our job is to protect this business,” Rittenhouse says in the clip. “And my job also is to protect people. If someone is hurt, I’m running into harm’s way. That’s why I have my rifle; I’ve gotta’ protect myself, obviously. But I also have my med kit.”
Earlier Tuesday, a local militia group known as the Kenosha Guard created a Facebook event called “Armed Citizens to Protect our Lives and Property.” The invitation was re-posted by the far-right website Infowars.
The Kenosha Guard’s Facebook page, which was taken down late Wednesday morning, called it a social club. […]
Stephan: This article lays out some important facts about Trump, his administration, and White militia terrorism.
In my view, we are seeing this trend develop because it is being encouraged and stimulated by Trump, and I think that is undeniable.
Elizabeth Neumann spent March 13 and 14 of 2019 at a conference in the picturesque Spanish port city of Málaga. The topic: terrorism. Western leaders were deeply worried about the dangers foreign terrorist fighters traveling back from places like Iraq, Libya and Syria would pose to their home countries. And that’s what Neumann expected to dominate the two-day event.
Neumann was DHS’s assistant secretary for threat prevention and security policy at the time, handling counterterrorism work from the Department of Homeland Security’s headquarters. In Málaga, a history-drenched resort town on Spain’s Costa del Sol that once marked the fault line between the Muslim and Christian worlds, she and her counterparts from scores of countries spent long hours talking about the terrorism threats that concerned them most. After a while, she began to see a pattern: Though concerns about instability in the Middle East dominated most public discussions on counterterrorism, about 80 percent of the leaders at the conference ranked far-right extremism among their top concerns.
The next morning, when Neumann woke up early to catch a cab […]
Stephan: In the richest country in the world, the idea that hunger and food stress not only exists but is prevalent is hard for many to believe apparently, and yet that is the reality. This is one of the most fundamental demonstrations that we are a very sick culture whose values are badly dysfunctional.
Neisha Davis cradles brown paper lunch bags in the crook of one arm, while holding on to Demitri, her wriggling baby son, in the other and keeping a careful eye on Naya, her four-year-old daughter, as she runs around the church car park with another little girl.
It’s hectic but the free packed lunches have become a crucial part of their daily nutrition. So everyday at noon the family make the two-mile journey from Homewood, a low income predominantly African American Pittsburgh neighbourhood with no grocery stores, to the East End Community Ministry’s pop-up lunch stall in East Liberty.
“The lunches help a lot, the food is healthy and it fills them up, the food stamps are never enough,” said Davis, 36, who has enough freshly cooked hot dogs, fruit pots, carrots, and milk and juice cartons for her eldest two children who stayed home.
Once a week or so Davis also picks up groceries from the food pantry which provides fresh produce rarely available at her local convenience stores. “I was raised to be humble, and right now I’ve […]
Stephan: Eventually, the truth comes out. Here is Thursday's Republican Scum Report, an account of the reality that obtains inside the Trump bubble.
Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty
Miles Taylor, former DHS chief of staff, recalls the moment he said to himself “what the f*ck is happening” during a Trump meeting. Plus, the gang shits on night one of the RNC.
Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, joined Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast on this episode of The New Abnormal to share the eye-watering tales of what Trump is really like when the cameras are switched off.
The national security official couldn’t get through a meeting “without him doing 20 tangents, becoming irascible, turning red in the face, demanding a diet Coke, spewing spit,” Taylor explained. “Literally out of goddamn nowhere, he’d be like, ‘You know, who’s just my favorite guy? The MyPillow guy. Do any of you have those pillows?’”
When it came to the border wall, Trump would dream up “sickening” medieval plots “to pierce the flesh” of migrants, rip all the families […]
Stephan: Now the Trump insiders who had reached their nausea limit and left are beginning to speak out, and it is clear that inside Trump world it was even viler than those of us outside that fetid bubble could have imagined. In its own way, I consider this a good news trend.
President Donald Trump promised to pardon U.S. immigration officials if they were caught breaking the law by blocking immigrants, including refugees and asylum seekers, from entering the country, a former top Department of Homeland Security official says. Federal law clearly says certain people, like refugees, must be allowed entry into the country.
“It was April of 2019,” former Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor says, as The Washington Post reports. “We were down at the border, and the president said to the senior leadership of the Homeland Security Department behind the scenes we should not let anyone else into the United States.”
“Even though he’d been told on repeated occasions that the way he wanted to do it was illegal, his response was to say, ‘Do it. If you get in trouble, I’ll pardon you.’”
Trump told officials to tell those wishing to come to the U.S., “the bins are full.”
Maryanne Wolf, UCLA Professor and author of Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: My wife was a Waldorf elementary school teacher for many years, and has commented to me about her belief that the function of childhood is play with others, not looking at video monitors, and that doing so would change kid's brains. And that this may well turn out to be another negative social outcome arising from Trump's incompetence in handling the Covid-19 pandemic. She's right, and the neurological and psychological data supporting her observation is beginning to be published.
‘With millions of students learning at home, developing a biliterate brain – one adapted to both digital and traditional print literacy – has never been more important.’ Credit: JGI/Jamie Grill/Getty /Blend
Literacy literally changes the human brain. The process of learning to read changes our brain, but so does what we read, how we readand on what we read (print, e-reader, phone, laptop). This is especially important in our new reality, when many people are tethered to multiple screens at any given moment. With much of the world working from home, and millions of students learning at home, developing a biliterate brain – one adapted to both digital and traditional print literacy – has never been more important.
The poet TS Eliot presciently asked: “Where is the knowledge in our information? Where is the wisdom in our knowledge?” Neuroscientists and educators ask similar questions: will different mediums advantage or disadvantage our abilities to acquire information, distinguish what is true, immerse ourselves in the perspectives of others and turn information into knowledge, the precursor of wisdom? The emerging answers will have profound […]
Stephan: Remember the "bomb trains" of the last few years and the damage they did? Well, thanks to Trump who has relaxed the rules Obama put into place they may be back. This is what pandering to corporate interests even when it is against the interests of the people looks like.
The aftermath of a bomb train incident, this one in Quebec Canada. Credit: AP/Surete du Quebec/Canadian Press
A new Trump administration rule relaxing guidelines that govern the transport of liquefied natural gas could create “bomb trains” with enough explosive power to level whole cities, environmental groups say. A coalition of organizations led by the nonprofit Earthjustice has sued the administration, challenging the rule, which is scheduled to go into effect on Monday.
Under the new rule, trains would be allowed to transport up to 30,000 gallons of liquified natural gas (LNG) per tank, significantly more than has ever been allowed in the U.S., and there will be no restrictions on the number of LNG tanker cars in a particular train, nor on the routes these trains may travel, so they […]
