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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: If you want to understand why I have placed such emphasis over the last years on the Republican restructuring of the American judiciary that has been going on under the control of Trump and Moscow Mitch, why it is so important, and how it directly can affect your life, read this.
People gather inside the Orange County Supervisor of Elections office to register to vote on Jan. 8, 2019, in Orlando, Florida. Credit: Phelan M. Ebenhack/The Washington Post/Getty
A breach of judicial ethics may have prevented up to 1 million Floridians from voting in November. On July 1, a federal appeals court lifted an order that had blocked Florida from imposing a poll tax on people convicted of felonies. The U.S. Supreme Court then declined to step in. If two judges appointed by President Donald Trump had complied with the judicial Code of Conduct, Florida’s discriminatory and unworkable poll tax might well have remained blocked through Election Day. And Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are now demanding that these judges explain their justification for flouting their ethical duties.
The two judges in question, Barbara Lagoa and Robert Luck, have served on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since late 2019. Trump elevated them to the 11th Circuit from the Florida Supreme Court, where each had served for less than a year. During their brief time on the state court, the justices heard a […]
Stephan: I hope that what is going on in Portland backfires on Trump and outrages Americans. But I don't think either the media or most Americans realize how fully fascist Trump has gone and is preparing to go. This story gives another hint, and I think things are going to get much worse. We are witnessing an attempted coup by Trump and his orcs to crush democracy and set up a full fascist government.
A Dornier Do-328 performs a fly-by as part of the 27th Special Operations Wing Capabilities Exercise on June 4, 2011, at Melrose Air Force Range, N.M. Credit: U.S. Air Force
While anonymous federal agents have thrown protesters into unmarked vans and fired tear gas at Portland’s mayor in recent days, an Air Force surveillance plane designed to carry state-of-the-art sensors typically reserved for war zones has circled the Oregon city’s outskirts from above.
The plane, a DO-328 “Cougar,” was spotted via the open source flight tracking website ADS-B Exchange, allowing the public to monitor its course. The Intercept reviewed this flight data, confirming tight, circular flights consistent with surveillance operations in and around Portland.
The aircraft is a twin-engine plane built in a modular fashion that allows it to be outfitted with long-range surveillance equipment suitable for supporting U.S. Special Operations commandos on the ground, according to Air Force documentation and previous public reporting. It was in Colorado earlier this month, looping over Denver and Boulder, before flying to Portland on July 19, and has been circling above Portland and […]
Stephan: Another example of Schwartz' Law of Climate Change which says new research will always reveal that the effects will be worse than previously predicted, and they will occur sooner than previously predicted. In this case it is the rise of temperature. We may be consumed with the disastrous mismanagement by Trump of the Covid-19 pandemic, but beneath that like the threatening bass line in a movie sound track, is climate change, and this new study tells us it is happening faster than previously predicted, and it is going to be much worse than previously considered.
A Cal Fire firefighter battles the Camp Fire in 2018. Global warming makes deadly and destructive wildfires more likely. Credit: Justin Sullivan (Getty
We know the planet is getting hot. Just how hot it will get is one of the biggest questions of the 21st century, tying up the fate of humanity and the biosphere in one neat hand basket to hell.
A 166-page study out today aims to help improve our understanding of how hot it will get by refining one of the most important metrics in climate science—what one researcher who worked on the paper dubbed the “holy grail” of research. The findings unfortunately show the best-case scenario is exceedingly unlikely, and heating will probably clock in on the higher end of previous estimates.
The metric scientists looked at in this massive paper, published Wednesday in Reviews of Geophysics, is something called climate sensitivity. It refers to how much the planet would heat up if we doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere compared to pre-industrial levels. That sounds like a simple thing to […]
Stephan: Here, I hope is some good news about cancer detection at a much earlier date.
Cancer survival rates dramatically increase when the disease is caught early, but there has not been an effective, non-invasive test that will detect most types of cancer early.
Now, an international team of researchers has developed a blood test that can diagnose certain cancers years before symptoms occur.
“What we showed is: up to four years before these people walk into the hospital, there are already signatures in their blood that show they have cancer,” study coauthor and University of California bioengineer Kun Zhang told Scientific American. “That’s never been done before.”
The test is part of a larger effort to create a “liquid biopsy” for early cancer detection, The Guardian explained. While other studies have reported positive results for blood tests that detect cancer relatively early, few can detect it before any symptoms develop.
But the new test, called PanSeer, detected cancer in 95 percent of asymptomatic patients who went on to receive a diagnosis.
The study, published in Nature Communications Tuesday, is also unique because of how the test was developed, […]
Stephan: Forty percent of Americans have never been outside the boundaries of the United States and don't hold passports. Thirteen percent report they have never been aboard a plane. Eleven percent have never been outside of their home state. So maybe that is why this is not a bigger story. But isn't it ironic? A president who does not understand the importance of immigrants to American history and culture, and who has made blocking entrance into the United States a leitmotif of his administration. And the social outcome? Because of his incompetence in handling the Covid-19 pandemic it is we, Americans, who have become the pariahs, blocked from entry into countries we want to enter. It's like a story from Greek mythology.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread around the United States, Americans have joined the ranks of people whose passports are viewed with suspicion by the rest of the world. Credit: Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Americans used to have one of the most prized passports in the world, considered a golden ticket to wealth, travel and opportunity.
With an American passport in your bag, you could arrive at the doors of 185 countries and get visa-free entry. No big questions — just business or pleasure?
But with the onset of COVID-19, Americans are limited to just 28 countries, mostly in the Caribbean and Eastern Europe. That number drops if you exclude countries that require a two-week quarantine, such as the the United Kingdom or South Korea.
On July 18, the European Union renewed its recommendation that U.S. residents be banned from entry to any member-states. The same day, Canada confirmed the U.S. border would remain closed to non-essential travel for another month.
More than 3.5 million U.S. residents have caught COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, […]
Stephan: There is a story like this almost every day. I really wonder if it is possible to be an ethical person and a Republican? But the bigger question is why do Americans put people like this into public office?
Rep. Matt Gaetz’s latest actions suggest a broader pattern by the second-term lawmaker of pushing the bounds of — if not outright defying — restrictions. Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty
Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz has privately engaged in several spending practices in his nearly four years in office that appear to be in conflict with the House’s ethics rules, a POLITICO investigation has found.
Gaetz, a close ally of President Donald Trump from the Florida Panhandle, improperly sent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to a limited liability company linked to a speech-writing consultant who was ousted from the Trump administration, in direct conflict with House rules.
In another possible violation, a private company installed a television studio in his father’s home in Niceville, Fla., which Gaetz uses when he appears on television. Taxpayers foot the bill to rent the television camera, and the private company that built the studio — which Gaetz refuses to identify — takes a fee each time he appears on air, his office said. It’s unclear how much it cost the private company to […]
Stephan: I am not sure that it is possible to be an honest and ethical person and a Republican official. Certainly, honorable behavior is not the hallmark of Wisconsin's Republican senator Ron Johnson. And once again we see a foreign government using the Republican Party to rig an American election.
Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson
On Monday, Politico reported that Democratic congressional leaders have sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray demanding a briefing on foreign efforts to target members of Congress as part of an influence campaign.
“Among the Democrats’ concerns is that a Senate investigation being led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has become a vehicle for ‘laundering’ a foreign influence campaign to damageDemocratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, according to two people familiar with the demand,” reported Natasha Bertrand. “Though the letter did not mention the Johnson investigation, it included a classified addendum that the two sources say identified the probe as one of the sources of their concern.”
The letter was signed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner (D-VA).Defend democracy. Click to invest in courageous progressive journalism today.
Johnson, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, opened the investigation ostensibly to audit the origins of the Russia investigation in the […]
BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN, NATASHA BERTRAND and DANIEL LIPPMAN, - Politico
Stephan: As I told you, and as John Alexander laid out in his essay, this is classic fascism, and Portland was just a test case designed to see how much pushback there would be if Trump created secret national storm troopers. At the local and state level there has been a lot of pushback but with the exception of Rand Paul, from the Republican senate and Moscow Mitch, it has been crickets. So Portland is going to be just the beginning.
Trumpian storm troopers in gear, on the streets of an American city, Portland Credit: Nathan Howard/Getty
Portland may just be the beginning.
Federal law enforcement agencies are gearing up to expand their footprint nationwide in the coming weeks, despite concerns about the recent scenes of violence and chaos in Oregon.
Department of Homeland Security officials have considered deploying mobile field forces to protect federal property in cities around the country that experience unrest, two people familiar with the discussions told POLITICO. And the Department of Justice is planning to expand “Operation Legend,” a law enforcement initiative launched by Attorney General Bill Barr earlier this month to fight “the sudden surge of violent crime” in Kansas City, Mo.
DOJ plans to announce this week that the operation, which involves agents from the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration, will expand into more cities, a DOJ official told POLITICO. “We are seeing success in our Kansas City operation and have already arrested some wanted fugitives,” the DOJ official said.
The discussions have followed weeks of clashes between federal agents and protesters in Portland, […]
