Wednesday, June 12th, 2019
Matthew Rozsa, - Raw Story
Stephan: The christofascist Red Value states are rapidly becoming foreign cultures to those of us who live in Blue value states. It is hard for me to imagine, particularly if you are a person of color, and a woman, what it is like to live in Alabama.
Republican Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signs the chemical castration bill
A controversial chemical castration law has been signed by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey in an attempt by the state to reduce the number of sex crimes against minors.
“This bill is a step toward protecting children in Alabama,” Ivey said in a statement to CNN. The new law dictates that individuals convicted of sex crimes involving minors under the age of 13 must begin the process of chemical castration the month prior to being released from custody. Although offenders must pay for their own chemical castration, but they cannot be denied parole for their inability to afford the procedure.
The bill defines chemical castration as “the receiving of medication, including, but not limited to, medroxyprogesterone acetate treatment or its chemical equivalent, that, among other things, reduces, inhibits or blocks the production of testosterone, hormones, or other chemicals in a person’s body.”
The law also makes it clear that individuals required to use chemical castration risk losing their freedom should they stop doing so. The language states that “a […]
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Kiley Kroh, - Think Progress
Stephan: Right now we should be gearing up for climate change remediation as we geared up for World War II, by which I mean an all-hands effort coordinating both government, the corporate world, and the American populace.
Instead, we have a government actively trying to do everything it can to stop any effort to prepare for this civilization threatening reality, while the Democrats, by and large, seem to run around waving their hands in the air shouting the sky is falling.
Less drama more policy is what is required. Everything is going to depend on preparation.
Credit: Michael Tercha/Getty
The Trump administration is intensifying its effort to discredit climate science by recruiting a select group to try to cast doubt on the facts it doesn’t like — all under the guise of an official review.
President Donald Trump, who dismissed climate change as a “hoax” on the campaign trail, has filled his administration with people who would go to great lengths to stifle, obscure, and mock any evidence to the contrary. Even though the actual science regarding the effects of climate change has only grown more robust and stark during Trump’s time in office, the administration seems to be digging deeper into its proverbial hole in the sand — burying its head to shield itself from the reality of the world.
William Happer, the senior director of emerging technologies at the National Security Council, is advancing his plan to reexamine thoroughly-reviewed climate science and briefed Trump on it earlier this month, E&E News reported Friday. (This appears to be one of the only briefings related to climate policy […]
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Kitty Block, President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and Humane Society International - truthout
Stephan: Trump and his minions are capable of almost anything that harms and degrades America's precious public lands, the heritage that one generation hands down to the next one -- or not, as long it enriches them and their friends. With Trump it is always "or not."
His sons like to kill big animals -- please don't call this a sport, there is no sport, just people with insecurity issues -- and it would not surprise me that they and others who think similarly lobbied for this stupid policy.
Brown bears fishing for salmon on the Moraine River on August 20, 2017, in Katmai National Park, Alaska.
Credit: Ronald C. Modra/Sports Imagery/Getty
A video featuring a father and son slaughtering a mother black bear and then her two screaming newborn cubs in their den has ricocheted around the world, drawing obvious comparisons to the killing of Cecil, the African lion, by a Minnesota dentist several years ago.
Sadly, the shocking brutality the two men displayed for the world to see could soon be sanctioned by this administration. The Department of the Interior proposes to make legal these and other venal trophy-hunting practices on more federal public lands in Alaska. In 2017, Congress and the president overturned a 2016 rule governing 76 million acres of National Wildlife Refuge System lands, and effectively prohibited the trophy hunting of hibernating black bears.
This administration has shown a penchant for supplicating itself to trophy hunters and trappers. At a time when most Americans regard trophy hunting with revulsion, the Trump administration plans to overturn two federal rules […]
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Daily Kos Staff, - Daily Kos
Stephan: If you live in one of the central rural Red value states that voted for Trump you condemned yourself to second rate healthcare, even by the degraded American standards of healthcare offered by the illness profit system.
How did you do that? Because Trump's racist push against legal immigration has had the effect of radically decreasing the immigration of doctors and nurses into this country. Why does this matter? It matters because native-born Caucasian doctors and nurses don't ch0ose to go into those rural states. People that staff those hospitals and clinics make less money, their kids have less opportunities, and social-cultural resources are greatly reduced. So who does staff those health facilities? As this article lays out, mostly immigrants, only they are no longer coming to America. Stupid is as stupid does.
Immigrant medical staff in a rural American hospital
Credit: Getty
Fueled by white nationalist arguments and a need to placate a racist base, Donald Trump and his team have repeatedly pushed for sharp new restrictions on legal immigration to this country.
Add America’s already-strained healthcare systems to the list of potential crises-in-waiting if Trump’s advisers get their way. Because immigrants make up a very significant portion of our healthcare workers.
The study finds more than one-fourth of direct care workers and 30.3 percent of nursing home housekeeping and maintenance workers are immigrants, underscoring their key role as the U.S. population ages. They make up 18.2 percent of the total health-care workforce at more than 3 million people.
What’s the plan to replace those workers? There isn’t one. It’ll just (waving hands) be fine, somehow. Luckily it’s not bloody likely Trump will get his way on harsh limits to legal immigration; when Republicans held the House and Senate both, they conspicuously ignored the White House’s most radical demands. But that doesn’t mean he won’t ramp […]
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Travis Gettys, - Raw Story
Stephan: There is nothing Christian about American christofascists except they cloak themselves with Christian language references. What they are really about is power, ignorance, and the suppression and control of women, just like every other fundamentalist movement in the world.
A Christian publisher isn’t backing down from criticism over its vacation Bible school curriculum that asks students to role play as slaves and teaches that African people are “wild.”
The Group company published the learning materials called “Roar” this year, taking students on an “epic African adventure” — but many church leaders who’ve used it say the curriculum is filled with racial and cultural stereotypes, reported the Friend Atheist blog.
They complained about a role-playing exercise where some students pretended to be “hopeless” slaves while one of them played a “mean Egyptian guard” who unspooled a litany of demeaning comments to teach how “unfair” life was for the enslaved Israelites.
Students are also shown video of Maasai warriors jumping up and down, and are asked to imitate them so “their feet make the sound of a crazy stampede,” and they learn to produce clicks with their tongues to imitate African dialects.
The curriculum contains misspellings and refers to Africa as a country.
“You’ve been able to see some of the people in Africa and the amazingly wild things they do!” the material […]
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John NIchols, - The Nation
Stephan: The Republicans are a corrupt racist cult and the Democrats are a spineless group of handwringing progressives who will not stand up for the Constitution. And neither want to talk about the civilization-threatening climate change that is already reshaping the world. American democracy hangs by a fraying thread.
Democratic Washington state governor Jay Inslee
Nothing about the Democratic National Committee’s approach to organizing debates featuring the several dozen contenders for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination inspires confidence. But something about the party’s approach should inspire fury.
The DNC is refusing to organize a debate on climate change, and it is clinging to rules that could effectively block candidates from participating in independent debates on the issue.
This is morally wrong and practically foolish.
Most of the candidates acknowledge that, as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders says, climate change represents “an existential crisis that impacts not just you and me and our generation but our kids and our grandchildren, and we must accept the moral responsibility of leaving these kids, future generations, a planet that is healthy and habitable.” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren says, “When it comes to climate change, our very existence is at stake. But Washington refuses to lift a finger without permission from the fossil fuel companies. That’s dangerous and it’s wrong!” Washington Governor Jay Inslee has staked his nomination bid on […]
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Julia Conley, Staff Writer - Common Dreams
Stephan: In my opinion, right now, we should be deep into impeachment hearings, listening to Mueller and others testify. The cynical calculating Democratic leadership, however, blathers on but does nothing. And so this is what is happening in Trumpworld.
State Department intelligence analyst Rod Schoonover’s testimony was nearly suppressed last week by the Trump administration. Schoonover testified before a House committee about the national security risks posed by the climate crisis.
Credit: Environmental Change and Security Program/Flickr
The Trump administration issued one of its most blatant attacks on climate science this past week when it tried to stop a State Department employee from testifying on the climate crisis, reports showed on Saturday.
As the Washington Post reported, intelligence analyst Rod Schoonover’s testimony was submitted to the White House for approval ahead of his planned appearance before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. His remarks focused on the national security risks posed by the climate crisis.
The Trump administration refused to approve the testimony for entry into the congressional record, noting that the data Schoonover planned to present—drawing from top government scientists’ research and peer-reviewed scientific reports—did not align with the executive branch’s views.
National Security Council advisers wrote a number of comments on Schoonover’s draft, saying […]
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Stephan: And the American Titanic band plays on, and the dancers pay no attention.
Villagers on the island of Abaiang had to relocate their village, Tebunginako, because of rising seas and erosion.
Credit: Justin Mcmanus/The AGE/Fairfax Media via Getty
Anote Tong can remember when Tebunginako, on the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati, was a thriving village.
But beginning in the 1970s, the tide started inching closer to the houses in the village. Over the years, as strong winds whipped up monster waves and climate change caused sea levels to rise, water inundated the island, overwhelming a seawall that had been built to protect the community.
Barely anything remains of the village today.
“It’s no longer there,” Tong said. “What we do have is a church sitting in the middle of the sea when the tide comes in.”
Tong served as president of Kiribati, a country made up of 32 atolls, from 2003 to 2016. Over that time, he watched as erosion damaged food crops, seawater flooded freshwater ponds and residents were forced to retreat.
He has become outspoken in describing the “existential threat from […]
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