Saturday Report 5/11/24 - Crazy Alert! Republican Senator Katie Britt proposes a national registry of pregnant women

The Best of the Rest of the News

— World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5° C target and say we’re heading for 2.5° C. Why isn’t this all over the media? The progressive British newspaper The Guardian reached out to all 843 authors of the IPCC’s most recent report asking if they expect the world to stay within the 1.5° C threshold the agency has been saying for decades represents the maximum amount of global warming our planet can tolerate without catastrophic consequences. Not a single one of those who responded said yes, and most argued we’re heading for at least 2.5° C, which will definitely lead to catastrophic consequences from massive fires to sea level rise to killer heat waves. Meanwhile, Donald Trump promised a fundraiser of oil industry executives that if they’d give him $1 billion he’d cancel all of President Biden’s climate projects and regulations. This is nothing more than theft of the future from our children, as I noted yesterday. It doesn’t get more disgusting that that.

— Vermont may become the first state to bill big oil for climate damage. Vermont lawmakers are proposing the state set up a $2 billion fund, paid for by a tax on the fossil fuel industry, to cover the costs of the damage from climate change-fueled extreme weather. While Republican-controlled states continue to suck up to the industry, four other Blue states are considering similar plans. Oil is the new tobacco, and it’s about time they started paying for the damage they’ve known for over 60 years that their products would inflict on this and future generations.

— MAGA is already doubting the 2024 election. Democracy isn’t some magic “hard reality” like a house or a car: it’s an abstraction, a concept, a system that requires both trust and active participation. Anne Applebaum recently wrote for The Atlantic about how both China and Russia decided a few decades ago that America wasn’t their enemy: it’s democracy itself. So, they set out to destroy Americans and Europeans confidence in democracy. And they’re succeeding, at least in the GOP and among followers of Russia’s #1 fanboy Donald trump. Over at The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson writes about how Trump has so damaged faith in American democracy that 62 percent of Republicans and 22 percent of Independents believe that the election was actually stolen from Trump by Democrats (no Democrats share that opinion, but don’t ask them about 2000 or 2004). This is a very real crisis for our nation and our form of government, and won’t be healed any day soon. This serial criminal doesn’t just rape women and rip off contractors and employees: he’s also raped our entire nation. Expect it to lead to violence this fall.

— Right-wing backlash around the world? Hungarians are growing tired of their “illiberal democracy” run by strongman Viktor Orbán, although there’s little they can do about it because he’s so successfully imitated US Red state gerrymandering and voter suppression that it’s almost impossible to dislodge him at the ballot box. Nonetheless, Péter Magyar, who’s only recently been engaged in politics, has become a star in the country by calling Orbán out for his fascistic behaviors and the way he and his oligarch buddies have drained the nation’s coffers. It’ll play out this fall in the all-Europe European Parliament elections: keep an eye on this. Hungary may be getting closer to some sort of revolution, although it’ll be a huge lift since Orbán and his friends own virtually 100% of the media in that nation. At least these are early cracks in Orbán’s armor…

— Chaplains could soon show up to “counsel” children in Florida public schools. While Texas and 15 other Republican-controlled states have early-stage legislation allowing schools to replace school counselors and psychologists with chaplains, Florida has actually done it. Starting July 1, the merger of church and state will be complete in the Sunshine State, at least with regard to public education. America’s Founders and Framers are rolling over in their graves.

— Good News Alert — Trump promised Wisconsin jobs, but he lied (surprise!); President Biden actually delivered them... When Trump was in the White House, he flew to Wisconsin with a spray painted golden shovel and talked the state into spending a half-billion dollars to bulldoze homes and farms out of an area three times the size of New York’s Central Park, saying a Chinese company would be building a factory there. The announcement was, to say the least, premature and never materialized. So this week President Biden went to the same place and announced that he’d worked out a deal with Microsoft for an AI data center that will create thousands of jobs. Construction will begin soon. Democrats deliver!

— Crazy Alert! Republican Senator Katie Britt proposes a national registry of pregnant women. Remember when 19 Republican attorneys general tried to get Blue states to fork over information on pregnant women from Red states who visit to get an abortion? Now that may become a reality. If the latest proposal from Alabama’s senator passes, when women show up in a doctor’s office with a positive pregnancy test, they or their doctors may enter them into a registry that can be easily searched by state law enforcement officers looking for women who might leave the state to get an abortion. If they want counseling or help, they’ll be directed to a “crisis pregnancy center” run by a church that will try to convince them that abortions cause cancer or some other such BS. Britt says it’s really all about the American Dream: “To all of my fellow moms out there,” she said in a recent video, “my goal is to give you and your children the opportunities to thrive and to live your American dreams.” Riiigggghhhhttttt. Dreams of life as a Handmaid…

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— Wisdom School Alert!

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