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.
I am genuinely concerned that a part of MAGAt world already armed and not very emotionally stable may create serious civil violence, and the criminal Republican Party knows this and is betting on its happening. He is my take on consciousness, authoritarianism, and political violence, which I see as a major threat to our democracy.
White christofascist terrorism Credit: Go Nakamura / Reuters
Day after day as one watches their television or computer screen or reads most fact-based media, one sees an endless series of stories of Trump followers being called to commit acts of political violence, while social media apps fill the minds of Americans with weaponized disinformation specifically designed to enrage them, make them feel victimized and resentful, and encourage them to violence.1 This confluence of modern technology and long-established psychological manipulation techniques has produced something never before seen in the United States, and it has been going on for several years now. Judges are under threat. Their children are under threat; prosecutors have to have security protection. Since Trump began these calls for violence election workers by the score have been quitting their posts making conducting a safe and fair election in some districts increasingly problematic.2
Civil political violence particularly since the January 6th insurrection, has become one of the most notable features of the American political landscape, and two things stand out about this. First, […]
Associate Justices Samuel Alito is the most blatantly biased justice in the history of the United States, and Clarence Thomas is the most corrupt. And yet nothing is being done to hold either of them to account. It is all part of the christofasccist effort to destroy the integrity of our democracy in order to get voters to end it.
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, the most corrupt justice in the history of the United States Credit: npr
Supreme Court justices have received nearly $5 million in gifts since the early 2000s, and one justice in particular, Justice Clarence Thomas, accounts for nearly all of it.
Data released Thursday by watchdog group Fix the Court unveils a list of gifts justices have received since January 2004. The dataset was released ahead of an expected release of the justices’ financial disclosure reports Friday.
Thomas, nominated to the high court by former President George H.W. Bush,made headlines last year after an investigation found he had taken dozens of trips paid for by separate billionaire friends.
According to the data compiled by Fix the Court, since 2004, Thomas has accepted $4,042,286, or 193 gifts. The group reported that, for Thomas, there’s an additional 126 “likely but not confirmed gifts.”
Of the nearly 200 gifts, the group said Thomas only reported 27 of the gifts on his financial disclosures.
The dataset included current and former justices dating back to 2004, tallying their gift totals, including Thomas’s, to be about $4.7 million.
China is cleaning Americas clock on EVs and hybrids. Here is their latest offering, and look at the price.
1,305 Mile range BYD Qin Credit: BYD.
People, here’s a story that could alter the landscape for non-traditional automobiles — a plug-in hybrid from BYD that has a claimed total range of 1,305 miles. According to Autoblog, the latest versions of the BYD Qin L and Seal 06 sedans feature the Chinese automaker’s latest plug-in hybrid technology. With a fully charged battery and a full tank of gas, the technology can provide a driving range of 2,100 kilometers (1,305 miles), according to BYD chair Wang Chuanfu. The company’s PHEV technology, now in its fifth generation, achieves a record low fuel consumption of 2.9 liters per 100 km (62.1 miles), even after the batteries have been depleted. Google says that translates to 0.776 gallons. Divide that into 62 miles and you get a fairly astonishing figure of 80 miles per gallon. Wow!
Yahoo also ran the numbers and came up with 80 mpg, so that seems to confirm my calculations. If so, this is a very impressive achievement by BYD. We do not know what standard […]
MERIDITH MCGRAW and JESSICA PIPER, Staff Writer - Politico
Stephan:
I am simply amazed that the oligarchs are literally trying to buy the government they want with criminal Trump as their easily manipulated “leader” and most of the Trump followers don’t seem to comprehend what that is going to mean for them. If we become Hungary the era of United States leadership will be over and the decline in the social wellbeing of ordinary American voters who made it happen will be dramatic.
Criminal Trump, convicted rapist, and 34 count convicted felon begins his West Coast swing to rake in more millions from the oligarchs who want to buy the non-democratic government they want. Credit: Joe Raedle / Getty
Former President Donald Trump once declared California a “symbol of our nation’s decline” — but he sure likes its cash.
A week after he was convicted in a wide-ranging hush money trial, the former president is making a fundraising swing through the West Coast with stops in San Francisco — his first visit to the city in more than a decade — and Los Angeles. Trump is already raking in cash and trying to close the fundraising gap with President Joe Biden. His campaign and the Republican National Committee said they raised $141 million, while an associated super PAC took in $70 million, in May.
Trump’s visits to San Francisco, Beverly Hills and Newport Beach over the next three days for private events are expected to bring in millions. Top tickets for the Thursday fundraiser, hosted by Silicon […]
With the Dobbs decision and states laws passed in Republican controlled states immediately after its announcement, the Great Schism Trend that has been breaking the United States into two countries in a single nation has taken on a much more emphatic and dramtic dimension. Healthcare for women is being determined on the basis of religious and philosophical grounds with no consideration for good medical practice, and it is already clear that the effects are going to be much more complex than was at first apparent and are extending far beyond the abortion issue. And what is next? On the 5th of June 2024, just to test that question, the Democrats in the Senate introduced a Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to the Consideration of S.4381, the Right to Contraception Bill. It required 60 votes to go forward with the bill. The vote was 51 Democrats voting for the Motion, 39 Republicans voting against letting the bill to protect contraception go forward. The saga of politicians, not physicians making medical decisions is far from over.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans have blocked legislation designed to protect women’s access to contraception, arguing that the bill was just a political stunt as Democrats mount an election-year effort to put GOP senators on the record on reproductive rights issues,
The test vote won a 51-39 majority, but that was well short of the 60 votes to move ahead on the legislation.
It came as the Senate has abandoned hopes of doing serious bipartisan legislation before the election. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his Democrats are trying to instead spotlight issues they believe can help them win the presidency and keep the Senate in November. A similar vote on ensuring nationwide access to in vitro fertilization is expected next week.
That bill is expected to similarly stall in the Senate, where Democrats need 60 votes to move forward on legislation. Schumer said Tuesday that Democrats will “put reproductive freedoms front and center before this chamber, so that the American people can see for themselves who will stand up to defend their fundamental liberties.”
The effort comes as Democrats worry that reproductive rights will be further threatened after the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to an abortion two years ago and as they continue […]
DAN WITTERS, Staff Researcher - The Gallup Organization
Stephan:
Fears over the integrity or Medicare and Social Security are, I think, a major part of the fear that so infects American voters. And they should be worried. If criminal Trump and his Republican minions in the Congress come to power in November, I think both of these programs will suffer degradation and reduction, as will a woman’s right to control her body, the protection of libraries, and the very basis of American democracy.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Seventy-three percent of U.S. adults under the age of 65 report that they are “worried” (41%) or “extremely worried” (32%) that Medicare will not be available when they are eligible to receive it, a six-percentage-point jump since 2022, according to a new study by West Health and Gallup. The increase in concern is sharpest among those aged 50 to 64 (up 13 points to 74%) and 40 to 49 (up nine points to 83%, the highest level of all age groups).
Worries over Social Security are even higher and have also grown significantly — 80% of respondents report that they are worried (33%) or extremely worried (47%), compared with 75% in 2022. Among those aged 50 to 61 — the group closest to being eligible for Social Security — 81% are now worried, compared with 72% in 2022, a nine-point increase.
The West Health-Gallup 2024 Survey on Aging in America was conducted by web and mail Nov. 13, 2023-Jan. 8, 2024, with 5,149 adults aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of […]
The oligarchs are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into influencing the peasants to vote away their democracy by voting for criminal Trump and the Republican crime party. Can Americans really be that stupid and ill-informed? We are going to see in November but watching and reading what is going on today, and how people are reacting, I am not at all sure democracy is going to survive. The Republicans are so confident of their position that 39 of them in the Senate voted against protecting your right to use contraception today.
Robert Reich. Credit: Steve Russell / Toronto Star
Elon Musk and the entrepreneur and investor David Sacks reportedly held a secret dinner party of billionaires and millionaires in Hollywood last month. Its purpose: to defeat Joe Biden and re-install Donald Trump in the White House.
The guest list included Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Milken, Travis Kalanick, and Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s treasury secretary.
Meanwhile, Musk is turning up the volume and frequency of his anti-Biden harangues on Twitter/X, the platform he owns.
According to an analysis by the New York Times, Musk has posted about the president at least seven times a month, on average, this year. He has criticized Biden on issues ranging from Biden’s age to his policies on health and immigration, calling Biden “a tragic front for a far left political machine”.
The Times analysis showed that over the same period of time, Musk has posted more than 20 times in favor of Trump, claiming that the criminal […]
Thom Hartmann gives an excellent explanation of what Trump and the criminal Republican Party are trying to do. The question is: Is any of this penetrating through MAGAt social media? It doesn’t seem to be. What stands out to me is how confident the criminal Republican Party seems to be, and how openly they say what they have in mind to end American democracy. Almost everything they say about the Democrats is what they, in fact, are doing: projection at a historic level.
Two criminals confer, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin Credit: AFP
Trump lies that the guilty verdict against him — by a jury of his peers that his own attorneys picked — is an illegitimate, politically motivated show trial.
Trying to help Trump destroy Americans’ faith in our democracy and its justice system, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s spokesman today said of Trump’s trial:
“If we speak about Trump, the fact that there is simply the elimination, in effect, of political rivals by all possible means, legal and illegal, is obvious.”
Hungary’s dictator Viktor Orbán and Italy’s neofascist Deputy Prime Minister, Matteo Salvini, both also argued that Trump is the victim of political persecution.
Right wing media commentators and Republicans in Congress have leaped at the opportunity to echo Putin and Orbán.
This sort of propaganda is called “irregular warfare” (IW) — warfare by means outside of troops, bombs, navies, etc. — and the US used to be an expert at it. Typically, irregular warfare involves […]
