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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.
I think Biden has made a serious miscalculation by continuing to support Israel’s attempted genocide of Palestinians and takeover of Gaza. Over 30,000 have died a large percentage innocent women and children, and hundreds of thousands more are facing starvation. That doesn’t justify what Hamas did but if Netanayou had been properly governing the Hamas raid would not have ended as it did. This has become such a big issue amongst Muslim and young American voters it may cost President Biden the election. Senator Schumer’s public statement rejecting Netanayou’s behavior has now placed Biden in a very awkward position.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., the only Palestinian-American in Congress, is joined at left by Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., as she speaks at an event to call for a cease-fire by Israel in Gaza, at the Capitol in Washington, Dec. 14, 2023. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / AP
The Wall Street Journal (2/26/24) is concerned that they live among us. They are Arab Americans. And what are they doing to threaten the United States? Voting.
The Journal’s editorial board sounded the alarm in response to Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a Palestinian American and a member of the left-wing voting bloc known as the Squad, calling for Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the Michigan presidential primary. “Will Dearborn, Michigan, Determine US Israel Policy?” the headline wondered ominously. The subhead explained: “The pro-Palestinian Democratic left wants to force Biden to stop the war in Gaza against Hamas.”
At issue was that Tlaib’s mobilization of the large Arab-American community of Dearborn, Michigan, against Biden’s pro-Israel stance could put Michigan in play in the 2024 presidential election, thus potentially swaying the incumbent to be more critical of Israel.
Voting as subversion
Expressing alarm at the idea of a president adjusting policy in response to democratic […]
Robert Reich, Carmel P. Friesen Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies - Robert Reich Substack
Stephan:
Robert Reich obviously feels the same way I do. Each of us must not only vote only for Democrats, we must do everything we can to get everyone we know to do likewise. This is not a typical election, Democrat vs Republican. This is a unique election in our history: Democracy vs criminal authoritarianism.
Criminal Trump
At a rally today outside the Dayton International Airport in Vandalia, Ohio, Trump warned that “if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath … for the country.”
He also warned that if he didn’t win, “I don’t think you’re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that’s meaningful.”
In the rest of the speech he repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, which have been utterly discredited.
He praised the people serving sentences in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol — calling them “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots,” commending their spirit, and promising to help them if elected in November.
He cast migrants as threats to American citizens — claiming without evidence that other countries were emptying their prisons of “young people” and sending them across the border. “I don’t know if you call them ‘people,’ in some cases,” he said. “They’re not people, in my opinion.” He later referred to them as “animals.”
Trump is clearly desperate. He knows that his future freedom and his fortune both depend on winning in November. He has no qualms about turning Americans against […]
Students prefer colleges with more restrictive gun regulations, as this Gallup Survey documents. I’m not surprised, given the U.S. murder rate in schools and colleges. It would certainly be a consideration if I were choosing a college. What this survey doesn’t address is the disproportionate effect this is going to have on colleges and universities in Red states as compared with Blue states. Like the OB/GYN issues that are leading girls to choose Blue state colleges over those in Red states, so this is going to do the same for college headed girls and boys. It is startling to watch voters in Red states destroy the quality of society in their states, but they are doing it year by year with each election.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
81% of current and potential students say gun policies influence enrollment
Most students prefer schools that restrict guns on campus
One in three students worry at least a fair amount about gun violence
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the wake of recent gun violence on college campuses in Virginia, Michigan, North Carolina and Nevada, as well as a major legal victory for gun rights advocates in NYSRPA v. Bruen, about eight in 10 current and prospective college students say a college’s policies related to firearms on campus are at least somewhat important in their decision to enroll or remain enrolled.
Regardless of age, gender or race/ethnicity, campus gun policies are at least somewhat important to more than three-quarters of current and prospective students. The largest importance gap across subgroups is a nine-percentage-point difference between Democrats and Republicans; however, more than three-quarters of current and prospective Republican students say campus gun policies are important in their enrollment decisions.
The latest results are from the Lumina Foundation-Gallup 2024 State of Higher Education Study, conducted Oct. 9-Nov. 16, 2023, via a web survey with 14,032 current and prospective college students. This includes 6,015 students enrolled in a post-high school education program […]
ALI SWENSON and KELVIN CHAN, Reporters - Associated Press
Stephan:
This is what really concerns me, not just for the United States but all the democracies of the world. If your source of information is social media, most of what you are reading is partial or complete misinformation. I fear it is going to warp the outcome of the U.S. election, where 54% of the adults can’t read past elementary school sentences such as: The man walked across the street. The only way through this miasma of misinformation, I can see is to only choose that or whom fosters compassionate life-affirming wellbeing. If we can get enough people to commit to that we may be able to save our democracy.
Paul Carpenter describes AI software during an interview in New Orleans, Friday, Feb. 23, 2024. Carpenter says he was hired in January to use AI software to imitate President Joe Biden’s voice to convince New Hampshire Democrat voters not to vote in the state’s presidential primary. Credit: Matthew Hinton / AP
LONDON, ENGLAND — Artificial intelligence is supercharging the threat of election disinformation worldwide, making it easy for anyone with a smartphone and a devious imagination to create fake – but convincing – content aimed at fooling voters.
It marks a quantum leap from a few years ago, when creating phony photos, videos or audio clips required teams of people with time, technical skill and money. Now, using free and low-cost generative artificial intelligence services from companies like Google and OpenAI, anyone can create high-quality “deepfakes” with just a simple text prompt.
A wave of AI deepfakes tied to elections in Europe and Asia has coursed through social media for months, serving as a warning for more than 50 countries heading to the polls this year.
“You don’t need to look far to see some people … being clearly confused as to whether something is real or not,” said […]
I have been telling readers for 15 years (see SR archive) that this was coming, and now it has begun. I have a friend in Key West who is selling his property because of rising sea levels, and another with a summer cottage on the Outer Banks of North Carolina also selling, both because insurance is becoming impossible, they see what is coming, and want to come away with something. This is just the beginning of the migrations I have been predicting. First, away from coastal areas. The second will be out of the Southwest because of lack of water and rising temperatures. The third will be out of the central states because of the destruction caused by violent weather events. By the end of this century there will be tens of millions of internal migrants.
Newsweek composite image. The number of “motivated sellers” in Florida has grown in the past two weeks. Illustration by Newsweek / Getty
The number of “motivated sellers” in Florida has grown in the past two weeks, as more homeowners are trying to offload their properties quickly amidst a worsening of the state’s insurance crisis.
As of Wednesday morning, 204,833 properties, including single-family and multi-family homes, apartments, condos, townhomes, and lots, were listed for sale on Zillow. Of these, 5,244 were listed by self-described motivated sellers—homeowners and agents willing to accept a lower offer than the price listed on their ads.
When Newsweek reported on the issue on February 28, there were 4,928 listings in Florida of properties whose sellers described themselves as motivated sellers out of a total of 202,000.
The Sunshine State’s number of motivated sellers on Zillow remained much higher than in other states like California and Texas. As of Wednesday morning, California had 1,032 motivated sellers for a total of 74,792 properties listed, while Texas counted 1,829 out of a total of 1818,888.
In California, the number of motivated sellers trying to offload their properties is now lower than a couple of weeks […]
MICHAEL ROTOLO, GREGORY A. SMITH and JONATHAN EVANS, - Pew Research Center
Stephan:
Christianity has profoundly altered in the United States. As this Pew Research survey shows people find religion a greatly diminished influence in American society. In my view, that is because Christianity for the evangelical/fundamentalist believers is less a religion and more a White supremacist, male dominance, fascist political movement — christofascism, or Christian Nationalism. Although it talks about society in Biblical terms, it has very little to do with Jesus’ teachings. It is not Christianity at all.
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 80% of U.S. adults say religion’s role in American life is shrinking – a percentage that’s as high as it’s ever been in our surveys.
Most Americans who say religion’s influence is shrinking are not happy about it. Overall, 49% of U.S. adults say both that religion is losing influence and that this is a bad thing. An additional 8% of U.S. adults think religion’s influence is growing and that this is a good thing.
Together, a combined 57% of U.S adults – a clear majority – express a positive view of religion’s influence on American life.
The survey also finds that about half of U.S. adults say it’s “very” or “somewhat” important to them to have a president who has strong religious beliefs, even if those beliefs are different from their own. But relatively few Americans view either of the leading presidential candidates as very religious: 13% of Americans say they think President Joe Biden is very religious, and just 4% say this about former President Donald Trump.
While the congregations of christofascist churches are growing, traditional real Christian churches are shrinking. To a point where, as this article describes, their congregations are considering other uses for their church buildings that reflect true Christianity. Meanwhile, the christofascist churches are buying their ministers bigger fancier cars.
The Rev. Chris Deacon delivers a Sunday service at Northwood Presbyterian Church in Silver Spring, Md., on Jan. 21, to a crowd that totaled 19 people. One attended online, he said. Credit: Danny Nguyen / The Washington Post
Northwood Presbyterian Church is, in a sense, a kind of home. People have gotten married in the cinder block building. They’ve sat with their kids in the pews and watched the Rev. Chris Deacon deliver sermons beneath the stained-glass cross for years.
But as the 15,000-square-foot church, which sits on seven acres on the edge of Silver Spring, Md., has seen its congregation shrink from 400 at its first service in 1958 to just above 100 in recent years, Deacon and his colleagues believe the church could be used to house people in a more literal way. Church officials have begun talking to developers about whether they can shrink the congregation’s physical space and convert parts of the property into affordable housing.
As churches across the region and the country have seen attendance decline — a decades-long trendhastened by the pandemic — some are examining creative ways to use their […]
Brooke Sopelsa, Editorial Director of NBC Out, NBC News - NBC News
Stephan:
Something is happening with younger women in the U.S., as this report describes. It is my opinion that this is happening because of what is happening with men, who are angry and resentful that women want and expect equality, and who are tired of men telling them the state (men) has control of their bodies. This has become part of The Great Schism Trend and, I think, the next chapter of this horror story will be attacks on contraception. TCP men are scared of women who seek equality, they want Hand Maids.
Women ages 18 to 26 were more than twice as likely to identify as LGBTQ than their millennial counterparts, the survey found.
The percentage of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer adults in the U.S. continues to increase, reaching an all-time high of 7.6% in 2023, according to a new Gallup report. Broken down by gender, the survey of 12,000 people 18 and older across the country found that women were nearly twice as likely as men to identify as LGBTQ.
“Almost 30% of Gen Z women identify as LGBTQ+, most as bisexual,” Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor at Gallup, told NBC News. “That’s where a lot of the growth seems to be happening.”
This is the first year Gallup has laid out its annual LGBTQ identification report in a way that breaks down each generation by gender. Looking at all generations, 8.5% of women and 4.7% of men identified as LGBTQ, the survey found. The survey reported margins of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points among LGBTQ respondents.
Parsing each generation, the gender story gets more interesting. In the three younger generations surveyed — Generation Z, millennials and Generation X — women are more […]
