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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: I live in a state where everyone votes by mail, and we have done so for years. No problems ever arise. Many Republicans in Congress vote by mail, the President and Vice President vote by mail. But Republicans do not want vote by mail to expand because more non-Whites, and young people will vote, and they will vote against Trump and the Republicans in Congress. So, the Republican Party in a great act of hypocrisy is doing everything it can to stop the expansion of vote-by-mail.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel Credit: AP /Paul Sancya
Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel frequently voted by mail before leading a lawsuit against California over the state’s mail voting expansion, according to voting records.
McDaniel announced on Sunday that the RNC, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the California Republican Party had sued Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom after he announced that all registered voters in the state would receive mail-in ballots for the upcoming elections.
“Newsom’s illegal power grab is a recipe for disaster that would destroy the confidence Californians deserve to have in the security of their vote,” she said in a statement.
But voting records provided to Salon by the advocacy group Progress Michigan show that McDaniel has voted absentee in Michigan’s elections for years, including earlier this year.Igor Derysh✔@IgorDerysh
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel repeatedly voted by mail before leading California mail voting lawsuit, according to voting records obtained by @ProgressMich
“Voting by mail is safe and secure, and Ronna Romney McDaniel knows […]
MICHAEL MURRAY, Retired Superintendent of the Outer Banks Group, Member of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, - The Hill
Stephan: Is there anything too despicable to which Trump will not sink in his attempt to get re-elected? As this sad little story illustrates, it appears there is not. He thinks, the Magas who like killing animals, thinking of it as a sport, which it is not, will be convinced by this nastiness to vote for him. They probably will.
Many people would agree that hunting methods such as killing black bear mothers with cubs in their dens, “harvesting” grizzly bears over bait, “taking” female wolves and coyotes and their pups during denning season, are deeply offensive, particularly on public lands, like the national preserves managed by the National Park Service in Alaska.
Yet, Secretary David Bernhardt’s Interior Department has pushed the Park Service to revise its 2015 Alaska national preserve hunting regulations that prohibited these despicable hunting practices.
The National Park Service manages 14 park units in Alaska, including some that Congress established as “national preserves.” Sport hunting in the national preserves was authorized under the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). Under ANILCA, Alaska State hunting regulations generally apply in national preserves except when in conflict with federal regulations.
Under the “conservation mandate” of the Organic Act of 1916, the National Park Service manages native wildlife populations to maintain the natural abundance, diversity and distribution of those populations in all park units throughout the country. […]
Stephan: With this pathetic little story, I'm just going to let Trump speak for himself.
As he headed into Memorial Day weekend, Donald Trump complained that he was COVID-19’s biggest victim. “He was just in a fucking rage,” said a person who spoke with Trump late last week. “He was saying, ‘This is so unfair to me! Everything was going great. We were cruising to reelection!” Even as the death toll neared 100,000 and unemployment ranks swelled to over 38 million, Trump couldn’t see the pandemic as anything other than something that had happened to him. “The problem is he has no empathy,” the adviser said. Trump complained that he should have been warned about the virus sooner. “The intelligence community let me down!” he said.
The White House declined to comment.
Trump’s outburst reflected his growing frustration that, at this stage of the race, he is losing to Joe Biden. According to a Republican briefed on the campaign’s internal polls, Trump is trailing Biden by double digits among women over 50 in six swing states. “Trump knows the numbers are bad. It’s why he’s thrashing about,” the Republican said.
David Corn, Washington, D.C. - Bureau Chief - Mother Jones
Stephan: The whole Michael Flynn business has been classic Trumpian grift. Michael Flynn, as this report lays out, is everything he pleaded guilty to. But that is just part of it, and David Corn, in my opinion, has it right. Trump's psychological issues dominate any consideration beyond himself. As a result, the damage Trump and his minions are doing to the United States will be studied by scholars and scientists for generations. Unfortunately, we have to live through the debacle of his presidency, and its effects.
Trump and Flynn
Michael Flynn did something far worse than lie to the FBI. He betrayed the United States. That’s the major revelation of the just-released transcripts of the conversations he had during the presidential transition with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Trump and his crew tried to undo reality and whip up a baseless conspiracy theory that Trump has dubbed the “Obamagate” scandal, with a supposedly victimized Flynn in a starring role.
Up until now, the Flynn scandal has generally centered on his criminal case, in which Flynn, Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, was charged with—and pleaded guilty to—lying to FBI about his calls with Kislyak. Flynn told bureau agents that he had not discussed the sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration in response to Vladimir Putin’s attack on the 2016 election. Well, he had. And Flynn had even encouraged the Russians to not retaliate severely, suggesting that when Trump took office things between Moscow and Washington could be smoothed over. The FBI knew this because US intelligence had intercepted those calls, presumably part of routine surveillance of […]
Stephan: The Magas, willing peasants in the service of a small group of rich White billionaires gets its marching orders from the rightwing media establishment led by Fox and its disinformation specialists. At one level it is laughable. At another, it purveys a daily poison that is slowly toxifying American society with its lies and propaganda. The effects can be objectively measured.
Sean Hannity, Fox’s most popular propagandist
Donald Trump wants to go after social media because Twitter pointed out one of his lies. And, in fact, social media has done a lot of damage to America and the American body politic, with the most visible example being its help in putting Donald Trump in the White House in 2016.
But even more concerning should be Fox News and right wing hate radio. A new study out of Columbia university finds that when people in any particular ZIP Code experience a 1% increase in Fox News viewership, it “reduces the propensity to stay at home by 8.9 percentage points compared to the pre-pandemic average.”
In other words, one of the reasons that so many people have died in America right now is because conservative media has been repeatedly and consistently promoting the idea that this virus is a Democratic hoax or a “bad flu.“
Right wing media has gone from being the fringe home of crackpots and paranoids to a major influence in American culture and politics.
Stephan: And here is further data demonstrating the proof of the process I described in the previous article. This is not a political or partisan statement. it is objectively verifiable.
The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, found that a 1% increase in Fox News viewership in a zip code “reduces the propensity to stay at home by 8.9 percentage points compared to the pre-pandemic average.”
“We show that exposure to Fox News has led to substantially lower compliance with social distancing regulations,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrey Simonov, a professor at Columbia Business School.
The researchers used a “quasi-experimental” method, using social distancing data aggregated by the geospatial data firm SafeGraph. The company, which collected 45 million anonymized GPS pings from 45 anonymized mobile […]
Stephan: As I have said several times, at the present time I think New Zealand is the most interesting nation on earth, and its prime minister Jacinda Ardern the most interesting politician. Why? Because under her leadership New Zealand has committed itself to fostering wellbeing at every level as its first priority. How New Zealand has dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic as compared to the nightmare failure of the United States under Trump illustrates this difference very clearly.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
To learn how New Zealand has largely eliminated COVID-19, we continue our extended interview with Michael Baker, an epidemiologist who is a member of the New Zealand Ministry of Health’s Technical Advisory Group and advising the government on its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He describes how the country’s response compares to the government actions in the United States and worldwide.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we bring you Part 2 of our discussion of New Zealand.
Yes, much of the world is looking at New Zealand as a beacon of hope. It just hasn’t just flattened the curve of the coronavirus, but apparently squashed it. New Zealand began its lockdown early, went hard with widespread testing. What did all of this entail, and what can we learn? Is it just that it’s a small nation of 5 million? Or does it have a lot to teach much larger nations in the world that are dealing with massive infection and death rates, like the United States?
Definition of insurrection: an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government. Donald Trump, the President of the United States openly supports civil insurrection. That would be grounds for impeachment if we had a Congress, particularly a Senate, that was a functioning entity working on behalf of the wellbeing of Americans, and the American democracy.
As I read the news of the Pandemic, and the crisis going on because of racist police in Minneapolis, I find myself thinking: If Mitch McConnell and the other Republican senators had had the integrity to do their duty and convict Trump and Pence, and remove them from office would 100,000 Americans have died from the Covid-19 virus? Would Minneapolis be on fire? Would the rest of the world now hold us in such contempt? What do you think?
A screenshot of the video retweeted by President Donald Trump in which Otero County, New Mexico Commissioner and Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin says, “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”
President Donald Trump early Thursday boosted a comment from the founder of the group Cowboys for Trump that “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”
In his midnight tweet, the president responded to a video clip of Otero County, New Mexico Commissioner and Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin making the remark, tweeting from his phone: “Thank you Cowboys. See you in New Mexico!”
According to the Sante Fe New Mexican, Griffin’s comment came in a speech that took place at a rally at church in the city of Truth or Consequences.
After the “dead Democrat” remark was met with cheers, Griffin couched the comment, adding, “I don’t say that in the physical sense.”
“I say that in the political sense because because the Democrat agenda and policy is anti-American right now,” he claimed. “Our country is coming to a place if you love or hate America.”
