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 was about to use the JAMA paper but was concerned it was too technical when I found this Hartmann article, which makes the same point on basically the same data, citing the JAMA paper. The sad truth is there are a lot of Handmaidens in the U.S. who vote year after year for the Trump Christofascist Party candidates, even though it oftentimes puts their own life, or the life of their daughters, at risk. I think it is going to take thousands of more female deaths in Red states before the Hand Maids wake up, and I find that very sad.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
It sure looks like Republicans want women to die. Particularly if they’re teenagers and have the temerity to be sexually active.
This is highlighted by what has to qualify as the most shocking scientific study of the year, published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network and titled Teen Pregnancy and Risk of Premature Mortality.
The result of the study of over 2.2 million women who experienced teen and pre-teen pregnancies (the youngest in the study gave birth at 9 years of age, although most were older teens) is best summarized by the subhead in the article about it in March 14th’s New York Times:
“A large analysis in Canada finds that teenagers who had babies were twice as likely to die before age 31.”
This is not a statistic you’ll hear on Fox “News” or in rightwing hate media. Instead, they’re cheer-leading for raped little girls to experience “the miracle of birth.”
Leonard Leo is the Joseph Goebbels of the Trump Christofasct Party (TCP), and it is amazing to me that the media pays so little attention to him considering what he has accomplished for the christofascists and Trump. Just as Hitler and the Nazis were very clear about what they are trying to do, so the TCP and Trump are quite explicit, and their followers lap it up and ask for more. Listen to any Trump rally and it is very clear.
Leonard Leo, co-chair of the Federalist Society, speaks at its National Lawyers Convention in Washington on Nov. 16, 2017. Credit: Sait Serkan Gurbuz / AP
Conservative Activist and Supreme Court puppetmaster Leonard Leo recently outlined his pitch for billionaires on how they can help move the United States government and society to the right.
“It’s really important that we flood the zone with cases that challenge misuse of the Constitution by the administrative state and by Congress,” Leo said in a new podcast interview, calling on the ultra-wealthy to support these litigation efforts.
“We have a great Overton window in the next couple of decades to really try to create a free society,” Leo said of the Supreme Court. “And I think we should take full advantage of it.”
The co-chair of the Federalist Society, the conservative lawyers network, Leo is best known as the man who helped build the Supreme Court’s conservative 6-3 supermajority, in his role as President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser. Leo’s dark money network, which received a historic $1.6 billion infusion in 2021, additionally helps bring cases before the high court, influence which cases the justices consider, […]
The reality that there are already people who are richer than some countries, and they are getting still richer is a sign of how dysfunctional our national economy has become. This all happened because over and over the Trump Chritofascist Party (the former Republican Party) has cut taxes for the rich and rigged the tax system to favor them. On top of that the Supreme Court fascists legalized the bribery of politicians. These changes are the source of most of the problems the United States faces.
Illustration: Elia Barbieri / The Guardian
At the beginning of each year, the world’s corporate and political elite gather in the Swiss ski resort of Davos to pat each other on the back, attend seminars on “the fourth Industrial Revolution” – whatever that might be – and generally mull over the state of the world. Rarely is so much wealth to be found in so few conference rooms. And each year, Oxfam, the global development charity, takes the opportunity to run the numbers on the state of global inequality. Oxfam’s findings are often eye-catching, but this year especially so.
The wealth of the five richest people in the world, they found, has more than doubled, from $405bn (£320bn) in 2020 to $869bn in late 2023. That’s an increase of about $14m an hour, which is not bad going by anyone’s reckoning. Perhaps more strikingly, Oxfam calculates that on current trends the world is due to welcome its first dollar trillionaire within a decade. Elon Musk, the richest person at the time of writing, is worth about a fifth of that, at $210bn.
It may of course take longer than Oxfam predicts, but the global trends are […]
Here is a writer in the U.K. saying what I have been telling you for 20 years. I take this as a sign of the general awakening by journalists that all life is interconnected and interdependent. I did a media interview today, with Jeff Lippman, and most of the questions he asked me in essence dealt with this same realization. It is my view what has created the Trump Christofascist Party base is the precognitive but unconscious fear of what climate change is going to do to civilization.
“The health of humans, animals and our environment are woven together in a bond that is inextricable, yet fragile.” Credit: Surachet1 / iStock)
If our planet were a patient, it would be admitted to intensive care. Its vital signs are alarming.
It is running a fever, with each of the last nine months the hottest on record, as we hurtle towards the 1.5 degree threshold.
Its lung capacity is compromised, with the destruction of forests that absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.
And many of the earth’s water sources – its lifeblood – are contaminated.
Most concerning of all, its condition is deteriorating rapidly.
Is it any wonder, then, that human health is suffering, when the health of the planet on which we depend is in peril?
The health of humans, animals and our environment are woven together in a bond that is inextricable, yet fragile. We belong to the same unique, finely balanced ecosystem.
This is not a new realisation. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, wrote in the 5th century BCE that, “The physician treats, but nature heals.”
We are now re-learning what humans have always known, but which, since the industrial revolution, we have forgotten or ignored – that […]
Yesterday I told you that one of the defining characteristics of the MAGAt/TCP supporters is how ignorant they are. Here’s some proof of that. When asked questions immigrants are asked in order to get citizenship, they couldn’t. So most of the people who support Trump could not, in fact, obtain citizenship.
Trump TCP supporters who couldn’t answer a simple question about the U.S. government. Credit: ABC
On Monday, Kimmel upped the ante once more by showing just how little Trump’s die-hard supporters know about the world around them.
The late-night host sent writer Blaire Erskine to a Trump rally in South Carolina with one simple task: Get Trump supporters to agree to answer a few questions from the American Citizenship Test “to find out just how patriotic these patriots are,” Kimmel explained.
“The fact of the matter is the people who support Trump and the MAGA agenda are under the impression that America was founded on the idea of excluding those who do not share your beliefs, which is the opposite of the truth,” said Kimmel, which is […]
This is yet another story demonstrating what is happening in healthcare for women in the Red states. It is amazing to me that women in Red states still vote by the millions for Trump Christofascist candidates. Do they not realize that by their votes they put the wellbeing of the women in their state in serious danger? Apparently not.
Under Louisiana’s abortion ban, doctors face penalties of up to 15 years in prison, $200,000 in fines and loss of their medical license. Dr. Neelima Sukhavasi, a Baton Rouge OB-GYN, says that doctors are scared. Here, Dr. Sukhavasi poses for a portrait in Baton Rouge, La., on Monday, March 18, 2024. Credit: Christiana Botic
In the wake of Louisiana’s abortion ban, pregnant women have been given risky, unnecessary surgeries, denied swift treatment for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies, and forced to wait until their life is at risk before getting an abortion, according to a new report first made available to NPR.
It found doctors are using extreme caution to avoid even the appearance of providing an abortion procedure.
“We were stunned by just how much regular medical practice for pregnant people has been disrupted,” said Michele Heisler, the medical director of Physicians for Human Rights and one of the report’s authors.
It draws on interviews with 30 health care providers and 13 patients conducted in 2023, and was jointly supported by four groups that support abortion access: Physicians for Human Rights, the Center for Reproductive […]
David Badash, Senior Editor - New Civil Rights Movement
Stephan:
Have you noticed how many Trump Christofascist Party (TCP) supporters are openly criminal? Trump and those who support him come straight out of the Hitler playbook and even though the TCPs have done everything they can to rig the U.S. judicial system, from the top down, there are still enough honorable men and women on the bench and the legal system that these TCP minions keep getting charged, indicted, and found guilty — look at Peter Navarro going to prison today. We will see what happens with Gaetz.
TCP Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida was subpoenaed for having sex with an underage girl.
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) reportedly has been subpoenaed in a civil case against a young woman, involving allegations he had sex with her while she was an underaged 17-year old girl, according to ABC News. The case was brought by a friend of Gaetz.
“Gaetz was issued the subpoena, which has not been previously reported, by attorneys representing the woman who is now in her 20s and was at the center of a years-long investigation by the Justice Department into allegations that the Florida congressman had sex with her when she was a minor, sources said,” ABC adds.
The case “is part of a sprawling defamation and racketeering lawsuit brought by Gaetz’s longtime friend, former Florida House member and lobbyist Chris Dorworth, against the woman and others.”
ABC also reports that “Dorworth alleged in the lawsuit a complicated effort to falsely accuse him of ‘child sex trafficking, sex with a minor, prostitution, obstruction of justice, and an illegal ghost candidate scheme,’ according to the suit.”
Citing court documents, ABC News adds that “Dorworth filed a […]
Dan Foster, Contributing Writer - The Good Men Project
Stephan:
White Evangelicals, as a group, are poorly educated — according to statista only 15% are college graduates — and lower IQ — 34% of Americans have an I.Q. between 98 and 85, 78 is considered retarded. They tend to be fearful and resentful, male dominance-oriented, and racist. Also remember 54% of Americans can’t read beyond a sentence like: The man walked across the street. Nor are they numerate enough to calculate fractions. They are not literate enough to read Time Magazine, or The Washington Post, nor numerate enough to comprehend a Gallup Organization survey. I feel bad even writing this, but that is what the research tells us. Not everyone, of course, but that is the cohort profile. That’s the evangelical movement population, so it is no surprise they are easily manipulated into climate denial, as this article describes, by oligarchs whose money comes from polluting the earth.
Credit: The Good Men Project
In a baffling display of cognitive dissonance, two “Christian” Texas billionaires, Farris and Dan Wilks, have emerged as the patrons of climate change denialism. Their substantial wealth, built on an industry that contributes substantially to the destruction of the planet, now fuels a movement that contradicts both the scientific consensus and the teachings of their professed faith.
When he’s not pillaging the earth of its natural resources, one of the brothers, Farris Wilks is the pastor of a modest church known as the Assembly of Yahweh in Cisco, Texas… and a freaking rich Pastor, at that.
They have made their fortune from fossil fuel extraction using oil and gas fracking.
Unearthing the Roots of Denial
Fracking, the cornerstone of the Wilks brothers’ fortunes, is a controversial technique used by mining companies for extracting natural gas and oil from deep beneath the Earth’s surface. It involves injecting high-pressure fluids into rock formations, often causing environmental damage through water pollution, habitat disruption, and the release of greenhouse gases.
The industry that has propelled the Wilks brothers into the echelons of the super-wealthy is one of the major contributors to climate change. It’s no secret that […]
