Author: John Hanno

Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Bogan High School. Worked in Alaska after the earthquake. Joined U.S. Army at 17. Sergeant, B Battery, 3rd Battalion, 84th Artillery, 7th Army. Member of 12 different unions, including 4 different locals of the I.B.E.W. Worked for fortune 50, 100 and 200 companies as an industrial electrician, electrical/electronic technician.

Extremists in Uniform Put the Nation at Risk

The Editorial Board – Nov. 13, 2022

Credit…Justin Metz

This editorial is the second in a series, “The Danger Within,” urging readers to understand the danger of extremist violence and possible solutions. Read more about the series in a note from Kathleen Kingsbury, the Times Opinion editor.

On May 29, 2020, Steven Carrillo decided that his moment to take up arms against the government had arrived.

It was a Friday in downtown Oakland, Calif., and at 9:44 p.m., Mr. Carrillo opened the sliding door of a white van and, according to court documents, opened fire with a rifle at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building and courthouse. Officer David Patrick Underwood was killed inside a guard booth, and his partner was seriously injured. The van sped away into the night.

About a week later, Mr. Carrillo, who was tied to the antigovernment paramilitary boogaloo movement, was arrested after he ambushed and murdered a police officer and wounded several others with homemade explosives and an assault rifle in another attack some 60 miles away. Mr. Carrillo wasn’t just linked to an antigovernment paramilitary group; he was also an active-duty sergeant in the Air Force. This summer, he was sentenced to 41 years in prison for attacking agents of the government he’d sworn to protect and defend.

There has been a steady rise in political violence in the United States — from harassment of election workers and public officials to the targeting of a Supreme Court justice to an attack on the husband of the speaker of the House of Representatives and, of course, the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. An alarming number of Americans say that political violence is usually or always justified, and this greater tolerance for violence is a direct threat to democratic governance.

America needs to reduce this threat. In recent years, the majority of political violence has come at the hands of members of right-wing extremist groups or unaffiliated adherents of their white supremacist and antigovernment ideologies. This editorial board argued in the first of this series that better enforcement of state and federal laws banning private paramilitary activity could help dismantle some of the groups at the vanguard of this violence.

One of the most troubling facts about adherents of extremist movements is that veterans, active-duty military personnel and members of law enforcement are overrepresented. One estimate, published in The Times in 2020, found that at least 25 percent of members of extremist paramilitary groups have a military background.

Still, only a tiny number of veterans or members of the active-duty military or law enforcement will ever join an extremist group. Their overrepresentation is partly due to extremist groups focusing on recruiting from these populations because of their skills. But the presence of these elements within the ranks of law enforcement is cause for extra concern. Of the more than 900 people arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attacks, 135 had military or law enforcement backgrounds. The Program on Extremism at George Washington University found that among those in policing, 18 are retired, and six are active. One Capitol Police officer who was not on the scene that day but was aware of the attack later advised a participant on how to avoid being caught.

For decades, police departments, the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs have known about the problem, yet they have made only halting progress in rooting out extremists in the ranks.

Jan. 6 changed that. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was so alarmed by the events of that day that he ordered all military commands to reinforce existing regulations prohibiting extremist activity and to query service members about their views on the extent of the problem. The Defense Department standardized its screening questionnaires for recruits and changed its social media policies, so that liking or reposting white nationalist and extremist content would be considered the same as advocating it. Service members could face disciplinary action for doing so. The department also began preparing retiring members to avoid being recruited by extremist groups.

But those reforms were more easily ordered than executed. A department inspector general report released this year found that the Pentagon’s sprawling bureaucracy was unable to identify the scope of the problem across the services because it used numerous reporting systems that were not interconnected. Commanders often didn’t have a clear understanding of what was prohibited. As a result, the department “cannot fully implement policy and procedures to address extremist activity without clarifying the definitions of ‘extremism,’ ‘extremist,’ ‘active advocacy’ and ‘active participation,’” the report concluded.

After 20 years of the war on terrorism, the country is now seeing many veterans joining extremist groups like the Proud Boys.

The end of wars and the return of the disillusioned veterans they can produce have often been followed by a spike in extremism. The white power movement grew after the end of the Vietnam War, with veterans often playing leading roles. Antigovernment activity climbed in the 1990s after the first Iraq war, culminating in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh, an Army veteran who had served in Operation Desert Storm. “These groups can give disaffected veterans a sense of purpose, camaraderie, community once they leave military service,” said Cassie Miller, an extremism researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In 2012, Andrew Turner ended his nine-year Navy career at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center with a shattered hand and loathing of the government. He’d served around the world, from South Korea to Iraq, and the experience had left him disabled and furious. “When the military was done with me, they threw me on a heap. I took it personally and was so angry,” he said in an interview.

In 2013 a fellow service member suggested that he check out a group called the Oath Keepers. Mr. Turner, then 39, joined the Maryland chapter, paid his dues and “initially felt that esprit de corps that I’d missed from the military,” he said. He felt a bond and even spent time with the group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, who is currently on trial and charged with seditious conspiracy for his role in the Jan. 6 attacks. (Mr. Rhodes has denied ordering the group to attack the Capitol and stop the certification of the 2020 election results, as the government contends.) There’s a photo of them at the World War II Memorial in Washington, holding an Oath Keepers banner.

But Mr. Turner soon realized that the group was not the apolitical, service-oriented veterans’ association he thought it to be. In private online forums, discussions were full of racist language, and members flirted with violence. He walked away after six months. “It’s easy to find vulnerable people at their weakest moments. I was naïve, but if anyone joins the Oath Keepers today, they know exactly what they’re getting into,” he said.

Experts in the field recommend some basic steps the military should take that could make a difference. Better training, counseling and discussion of the true nature of extremism are vital and must start long before service members retire and need to continue after they do. Better staff training and better funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs are also critical to meeting this challenge, so that members who are struggling can be coaxed down a different path.

While the military can exert fairly strict control over men and women in uniform, civilian law enforcement agencies face a different set of challenges in addressing extremists or extremist sympathizers in the ranks.

At least 24 current and former police officers have been charged with crimes in relation to the Jan. 6 attacks, and dozens of others have been identified as part of the crowd at the Capitol. Some officers who participated wanted things to go further than they did. “Kill them all,” Peter Heneen, a sheriff’s deputy in Florida, texted another deputy during the attack. The streets of the capital, he wrote, needed to “run red with the blood of these tyrants.”

Experts who track the tactics of extremist movements have been sounding the klaxon about the growing presence of antigovernment and white supremacist groups in law enforcement for years. “Although white supremacist groups have historically engaged in strategic efforts to infiltrate and recruit from law enforcement communities, current reporting on attempts reflects self-initiated efforts by individuals, particularly among those already within law enforcement ranks, to volunteer their professional resources to white supremacist causes with which they sympathize,” an F.B.I. intelligence assessment concluded in 2006.

Last year a leaked membership roster of the Oath Keepers, a violent paramilitary group involved in the Jan. 6 attacks that recruits police officers and military personnel, included some 370 members of law enforcement and more than 100 members of the military, according to an Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism analysis. An investigation by Reuters this year found that several police trainers around the country — who together have trained hundreds of officers — belong to extremist paramilitary groups or expressed sympathy for their ideas. One trainer, for instance, posted on social media that government officials disloyal to Donald Trump should be executed and that the country was on the brink of civil war.

A recent investigation by the Marshall Project found that hundreds of sheriffs nationwide are part of or are sympathetic to the ideas behind the constitutional sheriffs movement, which holds that sheriffs are above state and federal law and are not required to accept gun laws, enforce Covid restrictions or investigate election results. The Anti-Defamation League describes the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association as an “antigovernment extremist group whose primary purpose is to recruit sheriffs into the antigovernment ‘patriot’ movement.”

Identifying members of extremist groups and those sympathetic to their ideology to make sure they don’t join the thin blue line in the first place should be a priority for departments and governments nationwide. Yet most departments don’t have explicit prohibitions on officers joining extremist paramilitary groups, according to a 2020 study by the Brennan Center for Justice.

Since Jan. 6, however, some states have successfully pushed for reforms. This fall, California passed a law that requires law enforcement agencies to screen candidates for participation in groups that promote hate crimes or genocide. In April, Minnesota’s police officer standards board proposed a series of rule changes, including barring people who belong to or support extremist groups from getting a law enforcement license. Public hearings‌, which are set to be held‌ on those changes, deserve support. Other states and communities should look closely at these measures as a model.

Prosecutors in communities all over the United States also have a powerful tool already at their disposal: cross-examination during criminal trial. All defendants in criminal cases have a constitutional right to know about potentially exculpatory evidence. If an arresting officer is a member of a hate group or expresses extremist beliefs, that should be a subject of cross-examination by the defense.

If prosecutors were more aggressive about vetting police officers for extremist views, “defendants will get fairer trials, the public will be informed of problem officers through public trials, and police and prosecutors get the opportunity to identify problematic police officers and take action to rid the force of these officers,” wrote Vida Johnson, a professor at Georgetown Law, in a 2019 law review article.

Americans have a nearly unlimited right to free speech and association, and any effort to stop extremist violence must ensure that those rights are protected. Reforms should be carefully structured to avoid the abuses that occurred in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks — the violations of civil liberties, mass surveillance and the accelerated militarization of the police, to name a few. But protecting freedom of expression need not stand in the way of tackling extremism in police departments.

Officers around the country have rightly been fired for racist or extremist actions. But punishment for harboring extremist sympathies is a finer line, because Americans have the right to believe what they like. So, the treatment of officers with extremist beliefs and extremist connections is often uneven. This year, a New York prison guard who belonged to a right-wing hate group was ultimately fired — not just for membership but also for trying to smuggle hate literature into the prison. This may be a useful model in determining where extremist ideology crosses the line to actions that can be addressed by law or regulation.

Other recent attempts to root out extremism have been less clear-cut. An unidentified police officer in Chicago was given a four-month suspension but was not dismissed after it was discovered that he had ties to the Proud Boys. Last month, a police officer in Massachusetts was found to have been involved in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. He resigned, and the district attorney announced an investigation into all closed and pending cases he had worked on.

Coordinating the efforts of the nation’s roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies has been notoriously difficult. Federal standards or even guidelines about how to deal with extremism — in recruiting officers, disciplining existing ones or even sharing information — would go a long way toward harmonizing law enforcement’s response. But carrying out such changes would require both local attention to detail and the political will to do so. It would also require staffing law enforcement with people committed to the rule of law, rather than rule by force. As one congressional staff member working on homeland security issues put it: “People have to decide this is a priority. We can’t legislate hearts and minds.”

Across the board, extremists and their sympathizers, whether they act on their beliefs or just spread them, erode the public’s trust in the institutions that are designed to keep the country safe. Extremists bearing badges can put at risk ongoing police investigations by leaking confidential information. In the military, extremists pose a threat to good order and discipline. In law enforcement, extremists — particularly white supremacists — pose a threat to the people they are meant to protect, especially people of color. In federal agencies, extremists can compromise national security and make our borders even less secure. Protecting those institutions and the nation they serve demands urgent action.

With Herschel Walker, the Stupidity Is the Point

Rolling Stone

With Herschel Walker, the Stupidity Is the Point

George Chidi – November 13, 2022

herschel-walker-greatest-asset.jpg - Credit: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images
herschel-walker-greatest-asset.jpg – Credit: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

About half of Georgia voters cast a ballot for Herschel Walker on Tuesday. Most of these voters wouldn’t trust Walker to run the check-out at a Family Dollar. But that’s the whole point.

Herschel Walker has repeatedly proven himself to be stupid. Herschel Walker’s voters aren’t necessarily stupid. That’s too easy.

More from Rolling Stone

Georgia Republicans aren’t stupid. But they see safety in stupid politicians. The stupidity of Herschel Walker isn’t a problem for them. It’s a feature. And writing off Georgia Republicans as country idiots is a kind of smug, lazy thinking that oversimplifies a complicated political problem, not just in Georgia but across the country.

Herschel Walker was not nominated to govern. He was not nominated to bargain. He was not nominated to formulate policy. He was not nominated to exercise judgment. He was nominated to mash the R button whenever a vote comes up, no matter what.

“It could be Daffy Duck for all I care,” one such voter told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at a Walker rally in Baxley, Ga. “Just get the Democrats out of Washington.”

Electing Walker is like replacing that check-out clerk with an automated self-scanner.

A smart man certainly wouldn’t have held up a fake badge during a debate after being accused of pretending to be a police officer. Rather than own up to the mistake, Walker started doing interviews with news reporters while wearing the badge. The number of children Walker was publicly willing to acknowledge were his has grown twice over the course of the campaign, surprising his own campaign staff with the revelations. Walker’s response to the revelations has been to argue that the children he doesn’t see aren’t campaign props, and please ignore the one who is shouting from the high hilltops about having to move six times in six months as his mother evaded Walker’s abuse.

Walker has argued for a national ban on abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest in interviews as late as August. He denied that he ever said he held a position that extreme, in his first debate with Warnock, but the record of his comments is crystal clear. “I believe in life,” Walker said at a forum in August. “And I said, you know, if anyone wants to have an exception, I said, ‘Not in my book,’” Walker said. “I said, ‘I’m sorry. I feel bad for anyone that’s a victim of any kind of crime.’ I do. I feel like that. That is terrible and that’s horrible, but we deal with that as it comes.”

He’s plainly a pro-life candidate either way.

Two women have come forward to say that Walker pressured them into getting abortions. One, the mother of one of Walker’s (known) children, had a check signed by Walker and a receipt from the abortion clinic. Normally, this would fall into the category of career-ending political scandals. But Walker’s stupidity is an asset. Wisdom might prevent mistakes, but it also generates the kind of self-reflection that creates a conscience, and that’s a problem.

On Tuesday, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp earned roughly 200,000 more votes than Herschel Walker, out of about four million cast. Sen. Raphael Warnock earned about 140,000 more than Stacey Abrams. That means that only about 1 in 20 voters saw the trainwreck that Walker presented – a history of mental illness, violence against women, plain lies about his charitable work with veterans and his business dealings, an absolutist stand on abortion and his connection to Donald Trump – and bailed. Only about two-thirds of those voters who walked away from Walker were actually willing to cross the aisle and vote for Warnock.

If you want a clearer example of bipartisanship’s death, well… you’re not going to find it.

An introspective candidate with Walker’s skeletons would never have run in the first place. But an introspective candidate wouldn’t have had Walker’s skeletons. This may seem counter-intuitive, but for a lot of Georgians, these kinds of mistakes solidify the view among Georgia’s right that Walker must have never thought he would go into politics and hasn’t lived the sterile careerist lifestyle of the political elite … which is the best qualification they know for higher office.

So rather than slink into a corner and collapse after the abortion stories, Walker simply denied everything and threatened to sue The Daily Beast for its reporting on the abortions he allegedly paid for. (So far, he hasn’t followed through on the threat.) He has continued to campaign on an unapologetically pro-life platform.

Wednesday, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America announced it would back Walker with $1 million in spending on the runoff.

A senator who stops to consider the personal or political consequences of his actions might vote for bills that don’t “own the libs.” For many Republican voters, this alone is enough reason to vote for Walker.

For example, Georgia did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. The state contributes extra money into the national treasury for medical care that it does not receive, for no real reason other than keeping doctors away from poor people. Hospitals are closing across the state, mostly in communities with poor white residents, though the most significant recent closure was of a major Level 1 trauma center in downtown Atlanta.

The policy is profoundly stupid. It also hurts more Black people than white people in Georgia, so many Republicans support it. A smart politician would be looking for a policy workaround that brings that money to Georgia. But Republicans don’t want a smart politician. They want Walker.

Before you start feeling superior about your choices, the tribal desire to beat a political enemy is also the fundamental political motivation for most Democrats. Even Raphael Warnock has had issues surface during the campaign which might give voters a pause.

Warnock was arrested in 2002 and briefly accused of obstructing an investigation into child abuse at a summer camp. The charge was dropped once it became clear to a judge that Warnock was trying to prevent children from being questioned by police without parents or a lawyer. Walker’s campaign ran ads showing police body camera footage from a domestic case, where Walker’s ex-wife told cops he ran over her foot after an argument in 2020. Paramedics found no injuries on her.

Warnock’s church, the famed Ebenezer Missionary Baptist of Atlanta, owns a nonprofit which owns Columbia Tower at MLK Village, a senior residential housing complex. Some of its tenants have been served eviction notices for paltry sums in recent years, a point that Walker gleefully made during their debate. Warnock replied that no one had actually been evicted.

As a practical matter, none of these attacks mattered. Democrats voted for Warnock anyway. Politics have become tribal in Georgia.

That means a government that’s more dysfunctional, where there’s no incentive to agree to help people. That’s the whole point.

Tucker Carlson and others on the far right have been steadily reinforcing fears of the “Great Replacement” in the hearts of America’s white middle class. The threat of demographic change – and the concomitant political change – is the heart of this message. Sooner or later, they tell white conservatives, you’re going to be outnumbered. Once that happens, white nationalists argue that white people will become the targets of discrimination (instead of Black people.) They’re already arguing that in Georgia: Steven Miller’s team flooded TV and mailboxes with ads reminiscent of Jesse Helms’ “White Hands” ad with White people need not apply messages on jobs. The less functional and less legitimate that government is when the turnover happens, the easier it will be to fight.

Disabling the government is fundamental to white nationalist politics, and those politics have an audience in Georgia. But they can’t say that directly, because most voters reject that message and don’t like who is delivering it.

To be clear: most white Republicans are not crypto-white nationalists. But virtually all white nationalists will vote Republican, and they form a large-enough bloc within the party to influence primary contests in Georgia.

Ironically, Walker’s ethnicity is an added asset here. It’s harder to describe a Black man as a shill for a white nationalist agenda. Win or lose, it amuses the 4Chan wing of the party to amplify all the things they can’t say aloud in the voice of a Black man.

Usually, that play doesn’t work this well. Vernon Jones, a former CEO for majority-Black DeKalb County turned MAGA provocateur, ran for Congress with Trump’s blessings. He made it to a runoff and was thoroughly trounced.

It didn’t used to be like this. Georgia has produced highly educated, politically savvy, even smart Republican leaders over the years, from Newt Gingrich to David Perdue. The problem for the common Republican voter is that these guys – and they’re usually guys – have also tended to be corrupt. Elites are part of the problem. They know how to save their own skin if the ship is sinking. Georgia’s Republicans have decided it’s better to send in someone who wouldn’t know better.

And given the choice between a crooked brainiac and a simpleton, today’s GOP has made its preference clear.

As world population hits 8 billion, China frets over too few babies

Reuters

As world population hits 8 billion, China frets over too few babies

November 13, 2022

FILE PHOTO: People walk and ride vehicles along a street, amid the coronavirus disease pandemic, in Shanghai

BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Chinese software developer Tang Huajun loves playing with his two-year-old in their apartment on the outskirts of Beijing but he said he is unlikely to have another child.

Such decisions by countless people like Tang will determine the course not only of China’s population but that of the world, which the United Nations says is projected to reach 8 billion on Tuesday.

Tang, 39, said many of his married friends have only one child and, like him, they are not planning any more. Younger people aren’t even interested in getting married let alone having babies, he said.

The high cost of childcare is a major deterrent to having children in China, with many families in an increasingly mobile society unable to rely for help on grandparents who might live far away.

“Another reason is that many of us get married very late and its hard to get pregnant,” Tang said. “I think getting married late will definitely have an impact on births.”

China was for decades preoccupied with the prospect of runaway population growth and imposed a strict one-child policy from 1980 to 2015 to keep numbers in check.

But now the United Nations expects China’s population will start shrinking from next year, when India will likely become the world’s most populous country.

China’s fertility rate of 1.16 in 2021 was below the 2.1 OECD standard for a stable population and among the lowest in the world.

The anguish of the coronavirus pandemic and China’s strict measures to stamp it out may also have had a profound impact on the desire of many people to have children, demographers say.

New births in China are set to fall to record lows this year, demographers say, dropping below 10 million from last year’s 10.6 million – which was already 11.5% lower than in 2020.

Beijing last year began allowing couples to have up to three children and the government has said it is working towards achieving an “appropriate” birth rate.

OLD PEOPLE, NEW PROBLEMS

For planners, a shrinking population poses a whole new set of problems.

“We expect the aging population to increase very rapidly. This is a very important situation facing China, different to 20 years ago,” said Shen Jianfa, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The proportion of the population over the age of 65 is now about 13% but is set to rise sharply. A declining labour force faces an increasing burden of looking after the rising numbers of old folk.

“It will be very high for some years,” Shen said of the proportion of elderly in the population. “That’s why the country has to prepare for the coming aging.”

Alarmed by the prospect of an ageing society, China has been trying to encourage couples to have more children with tax breaks and cash handouts, as well as more generous maternity leave, medical insurance and housing subsidies.

But demographers say the measures are not enough. They cite high education costs, low wages and notoriously long working hours, along with frustration over COVID curbs and the overall state of the economy.

A key factor is job prospects for young people, said Stuart Gietel Basten, professor at Hong Kong’s University of Science and Technology.

“Why would you have more babies when the people you have cannot even get jobs?”

(Reporting by Thomas Suen and Farah Master; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Climate change: Dimming Earth, mustard shortages and other odd side-effects

BBC News

Climate change: Dimming Earth, mustard shortages and other odd side-effects

Victoria Gill and Ella Hambly – BBC News – November 12, 2022

Siberian crater
Scientists believe warmer ground temperatures have caused underground pockets of gas to spontaneously explode beneath permafrost

Birdsong, snowdrops, blossom and midge bites – these are not things you associate with November in the north of England.

But these are just some of the milder side effects of a warming world.

As well as fuelling deadly floods and drought, rising temperatures are cited as a cause of spontaneous explosions of Siberian permafrost, mustard shortages and the planet becoming dimmer.

Many of the impacts of climate change are devastating. Some are weird.

Exploding tundra and ‘earthshine’

Giant craters in thawing Siberian permafrost have been attributed by some Russian scientists to warmer ground temperatures causing underground pockets of gas to spontaneously explode. Permafrost is defined as land that has been frozen continuously for more than two years.

It’s only one hypothesis to explain the formation of giant craters in the Arctic landscape.

As this BBC Future article highlighted, they are a “disquieting sign” that this cold, largely unpopulated landscape at the north of our planet is undergoing some radical changes.

Recent research also showed that the Arctic is warming even faster than previously thought – four times faster than the rest of the world.

Crescent moon with the dark part of the Moon slightly illuminated by earthshine
Crescent moon with the dark part of the Moon slightly illuminated by “earthshine”

And as well as blasting holes in Earth’s wilderness, climate change could also be dimming the planet’s “shine”, according to scientists at Big Bear Solar Observatory in New Jersey.

By measuring the sunlight reflected from Earth to the dark part of the moon at night, scientists measured what they call “earthshine” or albedo – basically Earth’s reflectiveness.

The studies suggested that the amount of low cloud cover over the eastern Pacific Ocean is reducing due to warming ocean temperatures.

Since these clouds act like a mirror, reflecting light from the Sun back into space, without them that reflected light diminishes. So, according to these scientists, we might actually be taking the shine off our little blue dot.

Sex-changing reptiles

While we might be causing global warming, we’re not the only species experiencing it. Some creatures are affected in truly surprising ways.

In some reptiles, the sex of offspring is partly determined by the temperature at which the eggs are incubated. Genetically male central bearded dragons – a species of lizard found in Australia – will actually change from male to female when they are incubated over a certain temperature. So scientists are concerned that males could become increasingly rare as the world warms – putting the species at risk of extinction.

In the ocean, rising levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide could be causing fish to lose their sense of smell.

Day-old great tit nestlings in the palm of a scientist's hand
Day-old great tit nestlings in the palm of a scientist’s hand

Climate change is also measurably messing up seasonal synchrony. In Wytham Wood this April – the UK’s most scientifically studied woodland – great tit hatchlings emerged from their eggs up to three weeks earlier than they would have done in the 1940s.

The entire spring food chain has shifted with warming – the caterpillars the birds eat, the oak tree leaves the caterpillars eat – all reach their peak weeks earlier than they did before we warmed up the world.

While the seasons shift, many birds are adjusting – or just moving. This year, bee-eater chicks hatched in a Norfolk quarry – they are usually found in the southern Mediterranean and northern Africa.

Even the soundscape is shifting. London’s now a hotspot of unseasonal birdsong. One study has even suggested that forest birds were moving higher up in the trees to sing, possibly to avoid their calls being muffled by earlier foliage.

A shortage of flavour

Extreme weather is also making it harder to grow food. Staples like wheat, corn and coffee are already being affected. And this year, there have been some notable condiment shortages.

In April, Huy Fong Foods, a California-based company that produces around 20 million bottles of Sriracha chilli sauce every year, sent a letter to customers warning of a “severe shortage” of chillies.

In summer, supermarkets in France started to run out of Dijon mustard – a problem that could be traced to bad weather in the Canadian Prairies, where most of world’s mustard seeds are grown.

And the reality of climate change is even hampering efforts to go carbon-free. In August, the energy company EDF had to cut output from nuclear power stations situation in France, because there wasn’t enough cool water in French rivers.

The answer – being discussed by 200 countries at the UN climate summit right now – is a dramatic cut in those planet-heating gases.

But we’ve already transformed our world by warming it up – and there are likely to be many more unexpected, and surprising, consequences.

Finding safe haven in the climate change future: The Midwest

Yahoo! News

Finding safe haven in the climate change future: The Midwest

David Knowles, Senior Editor – November 12, 2022

This Yahoo News series analyzes different regions around the country in terms of climate change risks that they face now and will experience in the years to come.

As the negative consequences of rising global temperatures due to mankind’s relentless burning of fossil fuels become more and more apparent in communities across the United States, anxiety over finding a place to live safe from the ravages of climate change has also been on the rise.

“Millions and likely tens of millions of Americans” will move because of climate through the end of the century, Jesse Keenan, an associate professor of real estate in Tulane University’s School of Architecture, told Yahoo News. “People move because of school districts, affordability, job opportunities. There are a lot of drivers and I think it’s probably best to think about this as ‘Climate is now one of those drivers.’”

A structure is surrounded by floodwater.
A building is surrounded by floodwater in 2019 in Atchison, Kan. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

In late October, a report by the United Nations concluded that average global temperatures are on track to warm by 2.1 to 2.9 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. As a result, the world can expect a dramatic rise in chaotic, extreme weather events. In fact, that increase is already happening. In the 1980s, the U.S. was hit with a weather disaster totaling $1 billion in damages once every four months, on average. Thanks to steadily rising temperatures, they now occur every three weeks, according to a draft report of the latest National Climate Assessment, and they aren’t limited to any particular geographic region.

To be sure, calculating climate risk depends on a dizzying number of factors, including luck, latitude, elevation, the upkeep of infrastructure, long-term climate patterns, the predictable behavior of the jet stream and how warming ocean waters will impact the frequency of El Niño/La Niña cycles.

“No place is immune from climate change impacts, certainly in the continental United States, and throughout the U.S. those impacts will be quite severe,” Keenan said. “They will be more severe in some places and less severe in other places. Certain places will be more moderate in terms of temperature and some places will be more extreme, but we all share the risk of the increase of extreme events.”

In this installment, we look at a region that is already used to weather extremes and where, thanks to climate change, even more are coming into view.

The Midwest

Made up of eight states — Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin — the Midwest has found itself over recent centuries at the intersection of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and frigid polar vortexes that dip south from Canada. As with other regions of the country, climate change is already upending weather patterns in the Midwest and will, in the years to come, alter precipitation trends, food production, humidity and overall heat in profound ways.

Of the top 10 counties rated safest to live in the Midwest when it comes to climate change risks, six — Menominee, Vilas, Winnebago, Shawano, Portage and Polk — are located in Wisconsin, according to a 2020 analysis by the New York Times and ProPublica based on findings provided by the Rhodium Group, a data analytics firm. The remaining four in the top 10 Midwestern counties — Keweenaw, Luce, Crawford and Alger — are found in Michigan.

Many other counties in those two states and in Minnesota also ranked highly based on a cumulative scale that examined six major categories — heat stress, humidity (“wet bulb”), wildfires, crop loss, sea level rise and overall economic damages — and two emissions scenarios, high and moderate.

While northern counties in the Midwest offer relative protection from climate change risks, those further south, such as Missouri’s Camden, Hickory, Wayne, Bollinger, Dunklin, Maries, Phelps and Ripley counties as well as Illinois’s Alexander and Pulaski counties, all ranked lowest in the region, in large part due to poor scores on farm crop yields, heat and wet-bulb effect.

The bones of a fish lie in a field of destroyed soybeans.
The bones of a fish washed ashore lie in a field of destroyed soybeans next to the Missouri River near Omaha in 2019. (Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images)

While many Americans may not yet be familiar with the term “wet bulb,” they certainly will in parts of the Midwest before long. It refers to a potentially fatal combination of hot temperatures and high humidity that conspire to prevent the body from being able to cool itself down through the evaporation of sweat. That dynamic explains why even excessive “dry heat” feels less oppressive than less severe temperatures coupled with high humidity.

NASA predicts that Midwestern states like Missouri and Iowa will “hit the critical wet-bulb limit” in the next 50 years, leading to higher rates of weather-related deaths.

On average, the Midwest can expect dramatic shifts in temperatures if emissions continue at their current pace that will have a wide range of negative effects on human health.

“Compared to other regions where worsening heat is also expected to occur, the Midwest is projected to have the largest increase in extreme temperature-related premature deaths under the higher scenario,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states on its website. “Northern midwestern communities and vulnerable populations that historically have not experienced high temperatures may be at risk for heat-related disease and death.”

As temperatures continue to rise, the Midwest will also find itself dealing with poor air quality, a risk category not included in the New York Times/ProPublica rankings.

“Increases in ground-level ozone and particulate matter are associated with the prevalence of various lung and cardiovascular diseases, which can lead to missed school days, hospitalization, and premature death,” the CDC states. “In the absence of mitigation, ground-level ozone concentrations are projected to increase across most of the Midwest, resulting in an additional 200 to 550 premature deaths in the region per year by 2050.”

An American flag stands alone in an area swept by a tornado.
An American flag remains standing after a tornado tore through rural Kentucky. (Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The CDC also warns that some of the climate change consequences forecast to hit the Midwest, such as drought, severe flash flooding and diminished air quality, can cause mental health problems like anxiety. Kristi White, a clinical health psychologist in Minneapolis, has already been treating young adults for anxiety born of climate change.

“Some of the things in the patients that I work with are things like asthma exacerbation due to poor air quality from wildfires [and] concerns around the risk for heat-related illnesses during extreme heat waves,” White told Yahoo News earlier this year.

While the climate change risks to the Midwest and other regions of the country have long been predicted by climate scientists using computer modeling, there’s still a large element of surprise when it comes to pinpointing which parts of the region can expect to see extreme weather events and exactly how bad they will be.

In early August, Newton, Ill., was pounded with 14 inches of rain in just 12 hours, according to the National Weather Service. That qualified it as a so-called 1-in-1,000-year rain event, meaning a precipitation event that extreme has only a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year. The deluge would have seemed like more of an anomaly except for the fact that it was the third 1-in-1,000-year rain event — one in Illinois and one each in neighboring Kentucky and Missouri — in a single week.

Indeed, this summer it seemed as though 1-in-1,000-year rain events traveled in threes.

One increasingly glaring problem with rating extreme rainfall events in terms of their historical likelihood is that the changing climate has rendered such scales woefully out of date.

“If you build a statistical model based on a climate that no longer exists, it’s not going to be too surprising that it fails,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, who also consults for ClimateCheck, a company that provides climate change risk assessments on real estate nationwide, told Yahoo News. Most “hydrologic models and the Army Corps of Engineers” do not factor in the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, which describes the increase in atmospheric moisture that results from every degree of temperature rise, into their modeling, Swain added.

Simply put, more atmospheric moisture can result in more rainfall. Overall, the Environmental Protection Agency has found that rainfall across the Midwest has risen by 5 to 10% in the past 50 years on average. Though average annual rainfall won’t rise at an equal pace across the region, the trend line based on current greenhouse gas projections is clear.

A flooded street.
A street is flooded after water from the Tittabawassee River breached a nearby dam in 2020 in Sanford, Mich. (Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

“Precipitation in the Midwest is expected to become more intense, leading to increased flood damage, strained drainage systems, and reduced drinking water availability,” the EPA says on its website.

But the other major aspect of the Clausius-Clapeyron equation is that warmer temperatures dramatically speed up evaporation rates so that even when a region sees an uptick in the amount of annual precipitation, it remains susceptible to drought. In 2021, for instance, 27% of the Midwest experienced a drought, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including 70% of Michigan and 57% of Iowa.

In 2022, despite record-setting rains in some states, large portions of Iowa, Missouri and Minnesota now find themselves in severe or extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

To be sure, while the Upper Midwest — including northern Minnesota and Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — offers cooler average temperatures than other parts of the region, it has also been warming fastest in the region in recent years. Ice on the Great Lakes continues to melt away earlier and wintertime average temperatures across the region have risen significantly. For a little while, that might all seem like good news, sparing residents from the unrelenting winters of past decades. But should emissions continue at their current levels, the changes to the Midwest will be jarring.

Ice forms along the shore of Lake Michigan. Chicago skyscrapers can be seen in the background.
Ice forms along the shore of Lake Michigan as temperatures hang in the single digits on Jan. 26 in Chicago. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

A 2020 report by Notre Dame’s Pulte Institute for Global Development noted that “Indiana’s annual average temperature will rise 5 to 6°F by mid-century and as high as 6 to 10°F by late-century, depending on global efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions.”

For Hoosiers, that will mean an increase from seven days per year of temperatures exceeding 95°F at present to between 50 and 89 of them by the end of the century. That heat will, in turn, further decrease crop yields for corn and soybeans, potentially upending a way of life.

In some ways, the Midwest epitomizes the folly of trying to outrun climate change. For every global warming advantage that is offered in places like northern Michigan and Wisconsin, other hazards are poised to present themselves. In its entry on the Midwest, the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit highlights those emerging risks.

“Climate change is expected to worsen existing health conditions and introduce new health threats by increasing the frequency and intensity of poor air quality days, extreme high temperature events, and heavy rainfalls; extending pollen seasons; and modifying the distribution of disease-carrying pests and insects,” the website states.

‘A public health crisis’: How access to food, care shape region’s high blood pressure woes

Cincinnati.com – The Enquirer

‘A public health crisis’: How access to food, care shape region’s high blood pressure woes

Brooks Sutherland, Cincinnati Enquirer – November 11, 2022

When Dr. Benjamin Peterson advises patients seeking help controlling their blood pressure, he typically starts by talking with them about their diet, detailing why certain foods exacerbate preexisting health problems.

“The advent of a lot of processed foods is worsening a situation that’s already there,” the St. Elizabeth’s cardiologist told The Enquirer. “There’s definitely a lot of genetics involved (in high blood pressure) but the American diet and processed foods really accelerate that.”

“I would say it’s a public health crisis,” he later added.

‘A racial issue:’Black Cincinnatians face the health disparity of higher blood pressures

Why Cincinnati has high blood pressure:What the numbers tell us

Fried foods, fast food and processed foods can lead to unhealthy outcomes. But Peterson acknowledges that the choice of what we eat, our smoking habits and the amount of exercise we engage in aren’t always direct lines to good health. Other factors can be at play.

“I tell (my patients) try to quit smoking, try to do their best with diet and exercise,” the doctor said, “but even if they make big improvements in their lifestyle, I don’t want them to be too hard on themselves if their blood pressure doesn’t come down a whole lot. It’s still a huge benefit to them to try to eat healthy, that’s still going to help them add longevity even if their blood pressure didn’t come down a whole bunch.”

Go inside the numbers:Learn more about local demographics from The Enquirer’s Cincinnati report card

Menthols now banned:Black Americans were targeted by cigarette makers to buy them. Will they benefit from ban?

Traditional public health advice centers around choice. If an individual improves lifestyle choices, mainly diet, exercise, and smoking habits, their health outcomes will also improve. But what happens when healthy choices aren’t always an option? Location, access, genetics, health inequities, and community resources are factors experts have begun to focus on through years as peer-reviewed studies have pointed to the importance of location. And locally in the Cincinnati region, Lauren Bartoszek, senior manager of population health strategies at the Health Collaborative, wants health organizations to partner to think boldly about how important location is to health inequities.

“As a community, it’s really important for us to redefine what we mean by lifestyle,” said Lauren Bartoszek, senior manager of population health strategies at the Health Collaborative, the coordinating body of the region’s 40 hospitals. “Historically, the frame that was taken was around lifestyle being purely a choice. But what we’ve come to learn over the last handful of years … is that lifestyle is really a result of conditions. You don’t really have a say in your community, whether or not more or less fast food restaurants are there. You are living somewhere based on your economic and financial ability to live there.”

A health problem in Cincinnati made worse by societal, other barriers

Heart problems are common in the Cincinnati region, but they’re worse among Black residents here (as they are elsewhere in America).

High blood pressure occurs when arteries that give blood to the body get stiffer and then don’t respond as well to the pressures of the heart, making the heart work harder to get blood out to the rest of the body. The leading contributor to cardiovascular disease is untreated high blood pressure, according to the Mayo Clinic.

In the Cincinnati region, 4 in 10 residents report having high blood pressure, according to a survey conducted by Interact for Health. Three in 10 report needing treatment for hypertension, the Health Collaborative found in its annual Community Health Needs Assessment. Regional death rates due to high blood pressure are 15% higher among Black residents and cardiovascular-related health conditions rank first among health conditions in the region, Interact’s survey found.

The causes of high blood pressure begin with diet and exercise but can extend to smoking and even environmental factors such as weather, experts have found. The risks are significant, particularly when untreated.

“One of the biggest issues is there’s really no symptoms until something untoward happens,” said Dr. John Szawaluk, a cardiologist at the Christ Hospital. “Hypertension is a huge risk factor for heart attack, stroke, heart failure, kidney dysfunction, renal failure. So, a lot of times, someone who is not getting regular medical care does not know they have high blood pressure. It’s not diagnosed until one of these things rears its head.”

Because of that unpredictability, health organizations have taken it upon themselves to reach out to vulnerable communities and provide free health screenings, follow-ups, and dietary advice. Organizations such as Interact for Health use data to map out inequities and coordinate plans to aggressively attack disparities. That work is being done specifically in Cincinnati, where Black majority neighborhoods account for the city’s 10 highest rates of high blood pressure.

“(African Americans) get it at a younger age, and they’re more likely to suffer from complications,” Dr. Meron Hirpa, a physician at the Cincinnati Health Department, said while detailing why innovative approaches must be used to reach more communities.

The inequities extend to other health factors that contribute to high blood pressure as well. In Cincinnati, seven of the 10 highest neighborhood smoking rates are also Black majority, according to an Enquirer analysis of CDC data.

“A lot of it exists because we haven’t reckoned with these broader environmental factors that lead to disparities in health based on where you’re born and where you live,” said Kate Schroder, president and chief executive officer of Interact for Health. “There’s factors around access to healthy food, around the amount of tree cover and green space and how it impacts your health. If you have a higher rate of pollution in your neighborhood, water quality, poverty.”

Hypertension’s grip in a region with many health resources

The top cause of death in the Cincinnati region is heart disease. That isn’t atypical as heart disease is also the top cause of death in the nation. But contributing factors to heart disease such as smoking, hypertension, and obesity are above national averages. That troubles Bartoszek considering the area.

“The most fascinating part, fascinating in a negative way unfortunately, is we have one of the most dense regions for health care resources,” she said. “If you were to add up things like hospitals and things like (federally qualified health centers), clinics, health departments and social service agency organizations like nonprofits, the resources are there but we continue to rank pretty poorly in our health. At the end of the day, something’s not working.”

One major factor Bartoszek and other contributors to the report identified is that the structure of the Cincinnati region doesn’t always support a healthy lifestyle. The community must take a harder look at some of these deep-rooted issues, she argued.

“We’re thinking about that from the ability of different sectors to collaborate with one another,” she said. “We think about of that from the structural divide between systems, from clinical to social service. That ability of somebody to have a really strong care coordination and to get from their doctor to the food pantry or from their clinician’s office to their work through transportation. All of those things really go into the infrastructure of our region. And it’s lacking. There’s problems.”

Ukraine war’s environmental toll to take years to clean up

Associated Press

Ukraine war’s environmental toll to take years to clean up

Sam Mednick – November 11, 2022

A view of a fuel depot hit by Russian missile in the town of Kalynivka, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) southwest of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 27, 2022. Environmental damage caused by Ukraine’s war is mounting in the 8-month-old conflict, and experts warn of long-term health consequences for the population. (AP Photo/Andrew Kravchenko)
A view of a fuel depot hit by Russian missile in the town of Kalynivka, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) southwest of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 27, 2022. Environmental damage caused by Ukraine’s war is mounting in the 8-month-old conflict, and experts warn of long-term health consequences for the population. (AP Photo/Andrew Kravchenko)
Workers inspect a fuel depot hit by Russian missile in the town of Kalynivka, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) southwest of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 27, 2022. Environmental damage caused by Ukraine’s war is mounting in the 8-month-old conflict, and experts warn of long-term health consequences for the population. (AP Photo/Andrew Kravchenko)
Workers inspect a fuel depot hit by Russian missile in the town of Kalynivka, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) southwest of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 27, 2022. Environmental damage caused by Ukraine’s war is mounting in the 8-month-old conflict, and experts warn of long-term health consequences for the population. (AP Photo/Andrew Kravchenko)

DEMYDIV, Ukraine (AP) — Olga Lehan’s home near the Irpin River was flooded when Ukraine destroyed a dam to prevent Russian forces from storming the capital of Kyiv just days into the wa r. Weeks later, the water from her tap turned brown from pollution.

“It was not safe to drink,” she said of the tap water in her village of Demydiv, about 40 kilometers (24 miles) north of Kyiv on the tributary of the Dnieper River.

Visibly upset as she walked through her house, the 71-year-old pointed to where the high water in March had made her kitchen moldy, seeped into her well and ruined her garden.

Environmental damage from the 8-month-old war with Russia is mounting in more of the country, with experts warning of long-term consequences. Moscow’s attacks on fuel depots have released toxins into the air and groundwater, threatening biodiversity, climate stability and the health of the population.

Because of the war, more than 6 million Ukrainians have limited or no access to clean water, and more than 280,000 hectares (nearly 692,000 acres) of forests have been destroyed or felled, according to the World Wildlife Fund. It has caused more than $37 billion in environmental damage, according to the Audit Chamber, a nongovernmental group in the country.

“This pollution caused by the war will not go away. It will have to be solved by our descendants, to plant forests, or to clean the polluted rivers,” said Dmytro Averin, an environmental expert with Zoi Environment Network, a non-profit organization based in Switzerland.

While the hardest-hit areas are in the more industrial eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where fighting between government troops and pro-Russian separatists has been going on since 2014, he said, the damage has spread elsewhere.

“In addition to combat casualties, war is also hell on people’s health, physically and mentally,” said Rick Steiner, a U.S. environmental scientist who advised Lebanon’s government on environmental issues stemming from a monthlong war in 2006 between that country and Israel.

The health impact from contaminated water and exposure to toxins unleashed by conflict “may take years to manifest,” he said.

After the flood in Demydiv, residents said their tap water turned cloudy, tasted funny and left a film on pots and pans after cooking. The village was under Moscow’s control until April, when Russian troops withdrew after failing to take the capital.

Ukrainian authorities then began bringing in fresh water, but the shipments stopped in October when the tanker truck broke down, forcing residents to again drink the dirty water, they said.

“We don’t have another option. We don’t have money to buy bottles,” Iryna Stetcenko told The Associated Press. Her family has diarrhea and she’s concerned about the health of her two teenagers, she said.

In May, the government took samples of the water, but the results have not been released, said Vyacheslav Muga, the former acting head of the local government’s water service. The Food Safety and Consumer Protection agency in Kyiv has not yet responded to an AP request for the results.

Reports by other environmental groups, however, have shown the effects of the war.

In recent weeks, Russia has targeted key infrastructure like power plants and waterworks. But even in July, the U.N.’s environmental authority already was warning of significant damage to water infrastructure including pumping stations, purification plants and sewage facilities.

A soon-to-be-published paper by the Conflict and Environment Observatory, a British charity, and the Zoi Environment Network, found evidence of pollution at a pond after a Russian missile hit a fuel depot in the town of Kalynivka, about 30 kilometers (about 18 miles) southwest of Kyiv.

The pond, used for recreation as well as a fish farm, showed a high concentration of fuel oil and dead fish on the surface — apparently from oil that had seeped into the water, A copy of the report was seen by the AP.

Nitrogen dioxide, which is released by burning fossil fuels, increased in areas west and southwest of Kyiv, according to an April report from REACH, a humanitarian research initiative that tracks information in areas affected by crisis, disaster and displacement. Direct exposure can cause skin irritation and burns, while chronic exposure can cause respiratory illness and harm vegetation, the report said.

Ukraine’s agriculture sector, a key part of its economy, also has been affected. Fires have damaged crops and livestock, burned thousands of hectares of forest and prevented farmers from completing the harvest, said Serhiy Zibtsev, forestry professor at Ukraine’s National University of Life and Environmental Sciences.

“The fires are so massive,” he said, adding that farmers “lost everything they were harvesting for winter.”

The government in Kyiv is providing assistance when it can.

In Demydiv and surrounding villages, flood victims were given the equivalent of $540 each, said Liliia Kalashnikova, deputy head of the nearby town of Dymer. She said the government would do everything it could to prevent long-term environmental effects, but she didn’t specify how.

Governments have an obligation to minimize environmental risks for the population, especially during war, said Doug Weir, research and policy director for the Conflict and Environment Observatory, a U.K.—based monitoring organization.

Some Ukrainians have already lost hope.

“I feel depressed — there’s water all around and under my house,” said Demydiv resident Tatiana Samoilenko. “I don’t see much changing in the future.”

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

This version has been updated to correct the surname of the deputy head of Dymer to Kalashnikova, not Kalashnikovel,

Gov. Stitt claims Oklahoma for Jesus, but Tuesday showed America is still a secular nation – for now.

DailyKos

Gov. Stitt claims Oklahoma for Jesus, but Tuesday showed America is still a secular nation – for now.

Aldous J. Pennyfarthing – November 10, 2022 

Abortion rights activists hold signs reading "Abortion is Healthcare" as they rally in Miami, Florida, after the overturning of Roe Vs. Wade by the Supreme Court on June 24, 2022. (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP) (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)

If there’s one big takeaway from Republicans’ tepid showing on Tuesday, it’s that women don’t want Jesus as their OB-GYN. I mean, he was a carpenter, after all. It really doesn’t translate. And it’s a totally different set of tools. Well, in most of the country, anyway. Not so sure about Oklahoma.

In the days leading up to the midterms, Republicans were pretty confident that they’d ride the inflation steamroller to a decisive congressional sweep. Instead, two days later, control of both houses remains in doubt, and the GOP is gobsmacked. Of course, religious extremism—mostly in the form of cruel and draconian abortion restrictions—played a big role in that belly flop. Have they learned their lesson? Pretty doubtful, since many of them have a really long way to go when it comes to fully endorsing religious diversity and the equal rights of nonbelievers.

Case in point: Gov. Kevin Stitt, who won reelection in ruby red Oklahoma on Tuesday, was filmed before the election claiming Oklahoma for Jesus. The whole state. Not just the churches and the Hobby Lobbys. Everything.

RELATED: Five Tribes endorse Hofmeister, call Stitt ‘most anti-Indian governor in the history of’ Oklahoma

Watch:

STITT: “Father, we just claim Oklahoma for you. Every square inch, we claim it for you in the name of Jesus. Father, we can do nothing apart from you. We [wind noise] battle against flesh and blood, against principalities of darkness. Father, we just come against that, we just loose your will over our state right now in the name of Jesus. … We just thank you, we claim Oklahoma for you, as the authority that I have as governor, and the spiritual authority and the physical authority that you give me. I claim Oklahoma for you, that we will be a light to our country and to the world right here on stage. We thank you that your will is done on Tuesday and, Father, that you will have your way with our state, with our education system, with everything within the walls behind me and the rooms behind me, Lord, that you will root out corruption, you will bring the right people into this building, Father, from now on.”

“Are you there, God? It’s me, MAGA-rat. Can you maybe dial down the wind for a second until Gov. Stitt finishes shredding the First Amendment? That’s too much cacophony all at once, brother. Thanks!” 

Now, it’s pretty bold—not to mention exclusionary and wildly inappropriate—for a sitting governor to claim an entire state for a single deity. Can we maybe set aside one synagogue and maybe an ashram or two for someone other than Jesus? Jesus doesn’t step foot in synagogues anyway, except maybe to ask for directions to Kirk Cameron’s house. But these folks have long had trouble imagining what it might be like to walk in someone else’s shoes—and they’re really not keen on secular government, which is supposed to represent everyone, whether they believe in Kevin Stitt’s god or not.

Of course, if Stitt wants to lay his grubby hands on Oklahoma on behalf of Jesus, he better get moving, because he’s running out of time. Tuesday made clear that Americans as a whole don’t want too much religion sprinkled in with their politics, and new polling backs that up.

A Pew Research survey conducted in September and released two weeks before the election found that while 45% of Americans want the U.S. to be a “Christian nation,” far fewer want religion to encroach on the political sphere. And while Christian nationalism is rising, it’s still running up against a firewall of church-state separation.

Overall, six-in-ten U.S. adults – including nearly seven-in-ten Christians – say they believe the founders “originally intended” for the U.S. to be a Christian nation. And 45% of U.S. adults – including about six-in-ten Christians – say they think the country “should be” a Christian nation. A third say the U.S. “is now” a Christian nation.

At the same time, a large majority of the public expresses some reservations about intermingling religion and government. For example, about three-quarters of U.S. adults (77%) say that churches and other houses of worship should not endorse candidates for political offices. Two-thirds (67%) say that religious institutions should keep out of political matters rather than expressing their views on day-to-day social or political questions. And the new survey – along with other recent Center research – makes clear that there is far more support for the idea of separation of church and state than opposition to it among Americans overall.

While it’s alarming that so many Americans think the Founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation (narrator: they didn’t), it’s a relief that most would still rather leave secular matters up to secular authorities. And it’s reasonably safe to assume that this is the high-water mark for religious fervor in this country. Gallup has been tracking religious sentiment in the U.S. for decades, and the number of people who claim to have no religious affiliation—currently at 21%—has steadily increased over the years. As recently as 1985, that number was just 1%. Meanwhile, the nation’s share of Christians continues to fall. 

Could Tuesday be one of the first indications that the noxious religious-political stew that charlatans like the Rev. Jerry Falwell started cooking up in the ‘80s is finally about to spoil? They’ve brought us to the brink, but it appears they’ve gone as far as they possibly can if they want to keep dipping their fungal right-wing evangelical toes in our secular humanist soup. 

Of course, that’s assuming they don’t take control by force and turn us into Gilead overnight. But that seems less likely now, even with this dude still looming out there:

ScreenShot2022-11-06at10.03.49AM.png

Yeah, I didn’t want you to get too comfortable just yet. Sorry. Now do your best to enjoy the sad remainder of your now-squalid lives. I’ll see myself out.

Teenager’s defiance sums up Ukraine’s resilience amid Russian onslaught

Reuters

Teenager’s defiance sums up Ukraine’s resilience amid Russian onslaught

Felix Hoske and Anna Voitenko – November 9, 2022

Outages hit family living in the bombed out village near Kyiv
Outages hit family living in the bombed out village near Kyiv
Outages hit family living in the bombed out village near Kyiv
Outages hit family living in the bombed out village near Kyiv
Outages hit family living in the bombed out village near Kyiv
Outages hit family living in the bombed out village near Kyiv

MOSHCHUN, Ukraine (Reuters) – In a village devastated by Russia’s abortive assault on nearby Kyiv in March, Kateryna Tyshchenko lives in a cramped temporary housing container next to the ruins of her fiancé’s family home that was destroyed by an artillery shell.

Tyshchenko, 18, shares the container with her in-laws, fiancé and her nine-year-old half-sister. Regular power outages caused by Russian strikes on Ukraine’s vital infrastructure mean they can only heat their tiny makeshift home sporadically.

Next week, night-time temperatures are forecast to drop below zero in the village of Moshchun, where some residents complain they have to forage for firewood in a forest that contains landmines in order to heat their homes.

Tyshchenko, who does not own a wood-burning heater, says she has no idea what lies ahead but she has no plans to abandon her home and village this winter even if things get much worse.

“Even if we don’t have power for good, we’ll endure it and survive. We just don’t want to be shelled – everything else we can endure. The most important thing is that the (Russians) don’t return. Apart from that, everything is fine,” she said.

With the war in its ninth month, Russia is pounding energy infrastructure with drones and missiles, leaving millions of Ukrainians without power and even access to running water in a country where winter temperatures regularly hit -15 Celsius.

Moscow said last month it had launched strikes against energy, military and communications infrastructure as retaliation for what it called a “terrorist” attack on Russia’s bridge to the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.

Ukraine says the Russians are the “terrorists” and that it is fighting a defensive war for its survival.

Despite the hardships, many ordinary Ukrainians are enduring and adapting, and there is little sign for now of civilians turning on their leaders or pressuring them to negotiate a swift end to the conflict.

EMERGENCY BLACKOUTS

Moshchun, which is surrounded by pine forests and had a pre-war population of 800, was never fully occupied, but it was the site of fierce fighting before Russian troops withdrew in late March. Some 650-700 residents are still living in Moshchun, the local mayor said.

Tyshchenko fled Moshchun on March 4 and returned in April to find her home destroyed. Her own parents now live with friends while she moved into the housing container put up by volunteer activists in September.

Moshchun, located a few miles (km) north of the capital Kyiv, has been particularly badly affected by the Russian air strikes on nationwide infrastructure that began on Oct. 10.

Authorities say 40% of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been seriously damaged, forcing them to introduce rolling blackouts. At such times Tyshchenko’s household cannot use their sole electric heater and mobile phone signals cut out.

“I hope some volunteers will bring us a firewood boiler before winter starts,” said Tyshchenko, who has been unemployed since the invasion. She has put off wedding plans until she and her fiance have a proper home.

“We didn’t have power at all for a month and a half (when we returned to Moshchun). We lived here without crying and complaining.”

A travelling dentist service operating out of the back of an ambulance visited the village this week, using a generator given to them by residents to power their tools because there was no electricity.

“Yesterday, the pain in my tooth got much worse. I was thinking of taking medicine, but I didn’t know which pills to take,” said Antonina Telychko, a 70-year-old resident who had a bad tooth removed in the ambulance.

“I thought I wouldn’t endure until the next day.”

PUBLIC RESOLVE

The public’s resilience may prove a vital factor in the war, as Russia tries to break Ukrainian morale and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy insists that peace talks can only resume once Moscow gives back all the land it has occupied.

Anton Gushetsky, deputy director of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, said polling data showed 86% of Ukrainians still supported the idea of continued resistance against Russia.

The poll was conducted almost two weeks after Russia began its infrastructure attacks and there is no evidence, for now, of any impact on Ukrainian resolve to battle Russia, he said.

“The winter months could affect the situation and perhaps slightly more people could support negotiations… But we do not (currently) see a tendency to make concessions with Russia,” he said.

Tyshchenko is determined to stay put.

“My soul belongs here, it’s my yard, and living here means I can work in my garden and yard,” she said. “But when you stay with your friends, you can’t work in the yard because it’s not yours.”

(Writing by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Gareth Jones)

Vote like your life depends on it, because it does!

The Tarbabys Blog

John Hanno – November 7, 2022

To American’s who still believe in Democracy and in the Democratic institutions that have sustained our Republic as a beacon for the world to admire and emulate, this is not the election to take a pass on.

To all the true Republicans who have been drummed out of your party or have fled the MAGA insanity, please take a stand for representative government.

To all eligible voters who are turned off by the toxic state of our political system, refusing to vote will only make that worse. Sometimes, even a small number of votes in close elections can make a critical difference.

To those who believe they’re not political or aren’t the least bit interested in our political systems, believe that every moment of your family’s existence is impacted by politics, both good and bad. And your vote could make our two party Democratic system much better, and more responsive and accountable.

Erstwhile Republican’s Rep. Liz Cheney, Rep Adam Kinzinger and others have been sounding the autocratic alarm bells even before trump and his MAGAnian conspirators commandeered the Grand Old Party and turned it into the wholly owned trump cult militia, that swarmed, assaulted, terrorized, pummeled and even killed Capitol police officers on January 6,2021, in a futile but consequential attempt to overthrow our Democratic government.

And where would we be if they had succeeded?

The hundreds of state laws republicon legislatures already authored and implemented to restrict voting rights and Democratic representative government would have already become the law of the land.

A women’s right to chose what happens to her body and reproductive rights would have been turned back to the 19th century, in all of America; with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. Children as young as ten years old would have been forced to carry another child to birth.

The progress made by workers to improve labor’s rights and increase their diminishing wage value would have been overturned.

Progress made on fighting global warming and the remarkable improvements in alternative energy, would be pushed to the back burners of history.

trump and his republicon party sycophant’s march towards personal wealth enrichment would again be front and center of any legislation or executive orders. His gold tipped sharpie would again be busy rewarding the trump family criminal enterprises and the republicon’s most generous donors.

The separation of church and state would be but a distant memory; and they would proclaim White Christian dogma and the bible as governing principles. Many other parts of our constitution would be in jeopardy, all but the Second Amendment.

I could go on all day, pointing out the chaos created the last time trump held power, but I’ll conclude with reminding voters about the scores of criminal types in trump’s administration, who were forced to resign, were fired, went to prison, were indicted, pardoned or ended up in the right wing media.

Republican’s stated plans if they take control of congress, is to hold the government budget hostage until they get concessions on cutting, or eliminating altogether, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But the safety net assault probably won’t stop there, continued support for programs like food stamps and even military and humanitarian support for Ukraine’s war with Russia are also on the MAGA chopping block.

And the extreme members of a republicon controlled House of Representatives will have as its main goal, a two year long investigation of a long list of their political opponents. Any progress the Democrats and the Biden administration have made addressing America’s critical problems over the last two years, will have to take a back seat to political witch hunts and futile attempts to overturn that progress.

And all this just so they can make permanent, the enormous tax cuts that trump and the republicon’s in congress awarded to their rich benefactors, the last time they held control. America’s colossal wealth disparity between the 1% and all the rest will again be on steroids.

For those who emphatically believe MAGA World is synonymous with freedom, believe me: “Freedom is just another word for, nothing left to lose”

If you paid close attention to the videos of Russian citizens protesting Putin’s “Special Operation” in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg, you couldn’t help but notice there wasn’t one single assault weapon or high capacity magazine in sight, and no hunting rifle, handgun or even a pea shooter. Why? Because it’s against putin’s laws to have those weapons in public, if at all. And what we call our First Amendment Rights to say anything that comes to mind, forget it in Putin’s Russia or trump’s America. I remember one courageous Russian women holding up a blank sign, apparently afraid to call Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a war, for fear of the consequential 15 year prison term, yet still wanting to register her displeasure. Unfortunately it didn’t succeed, within 2 or 3 minutes, 4 or 5 security troops dressed in black whisked her, and her blank protest sign, off and into a police van headed for the gulag.

It’s no secret that trump and many congressional republicons admire and support war criminal Vladimir Putin and his invasion and genocide against the Democratic people of Ukraine. They admire strongmen fascists and autocrats like putin and trump and denigrate Joe Biden as weak. Apparently raining down missiles and rockets on innocent civilians, on schools and medical facilities, on apartments, libraries, and shopping centers, killing and maiming children, women, and disabled old folks is manly, but also isn’t a bridge too far for this new MAGAnian cult, as long as the reward is omnipotent power and wealth. Mass graves are just necessary collateral damage.

For those who believe the republicon’s are better on the economy or will do a better job fixing inflation, I’ll repost this November 4th, David Rothkopf and Bernard Schwartz article from the Daily Beast.

Republicans Are Bad for the Economy. Here’s Why.

According to a wave of recent polls, the economy is the dominant issue on the minds of Americans going into next week’s elections.

A recent Pew poll concluded nearly eight in 10 voters said the economy will be “very important” to their voting decisions. Another such poll, by ABC News and Ipsos, showed that almost half of respondents cited either the economy or inflation as the issue about which they were most concerned. The poll indicated that concerns about the economy and inflation are “much more likely to drive voters towards Republicans.”

But that impulse is not only ill-considered, every bit of available evidence makes clear that the GOP is the wrong party to which to turn if you seek better U.S. economic performance in the future.

In fact, it is not close. When it comes to the economy, the GOP is the problem and not the solution. If anything, it is a greater obstacle to our economic well-being today than it has ever been.

At the same time, the economic record of President Joe Biden and the Democrats is not just consistent—in creating jobs, reducing the deficit, and enhancing our competitiveness—during the past two years their record has been one of extraordinary, often record-breaking success.

History tells a very stark tale. Ten of the last 11 recessions began under Republicans. The one that started under former President Donald Trump and the current GOP leadership was the worst since the Great Depression–and while perhaps any president presiding over a pandemic might have seen the economy suffer, Trump’s gross mismanagement of COVID-19 clearly and greatly deepened the problems the U.S. economy faced. Meanwhile, historically, Democratic administrations have overseen recoveries from those Republican lows. During the seven decades before Trump, real GDP growth averaged just over 2.5 percent under Republicans and a little more than 4.3 percent under Democrats.

Republicans have also historically presided over huge expansions in the U.S. deficit, while Democrats (since Bill Clinton’s administration) have overseen dramatic deficit reduction. Ronald Reagan more than doubled the deficit from $70 billion to more than $175 billion. George H.W. Bush nearly doubled that to $290 billion. Clinton ended his administration with a $128.2 billion surplus.

George W. Bush inherited that… and left office with a record deficit of more than $1.4 trillion. Obama reduced that by very nearly $1 trillion. Each of Donald Trump’s last two years in office saw federal budgets with deficits of over $3 trillion. In fact, in total, the national debt rose almost $8 trillion during Trump’s time in office. According to ProPublica, it was the third biggest such increase in U.S. history—after George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War years.

What about job creation?

The U.S. lost jobs under Trump and created relatively few under George W. Bush. Of the 14 presidents since World War II, seven were Democrats and seven were Republican. Of the seven with the highest job creation rates, six were Democrats. Of the seven with the lowest job creation rates, six were Republicans.

There’s No Democrat Equivalent to GOP Election Deniers’ Scumbaggery

What about now? Biden and the current Democratic Congress have created more jobs than the past three Republican administrations combined.

The job creation rate in 2021 was the most ever in a single year. GDP growth in 2021 was the highest since 1984. This year, the unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent, its lowest level in 50 years. As part of that, we are seeing record low unemployment for Blacks and Latinos.

Ok, you might say, but what about inflation?

Rising prices are a real problem for many Americans. But the origins of inflation have very little to do with the Biden administration or the Congress. Inflation is a global problem that is related, according to economists, primarily to supply chain problems associated with COVID, Vladimir Putin’s escalation of the war in Ukraine, and corporate profiteering.

Dems Do Big F*cking Deals, the GOP Does Fake Big Dick Energy

What makes the Republican focus on this issue so shockingly hypocritical is that Trump’s mismanagement of the COVID crisis, his support for Putin, and Republicans’ protection of Big Oil (and big businesses) actually helped create the conditions that have driven prices up. Further, Republicans unanimously opposed every single measure by the Biden administration to reduce prices and help those hit by inflation—including the landmark Inflation Reduction Act’s efforts to lower drug costs and to help those hardest hit.

Meanwhile, the U.S. just reported stronger than expected growth in the last quarter and the price of gasoline, an oft-cited sign of inflation, has been falling for months.

At the same time, a substantial majority within the GOP have sought to block virtually every single new economic measure proposed or passed by Biden and the Democratic Congress. That includes the America Recovery Act that lifted millions out of poverty and drove job creation, the Chips and Science Act to enhance competitiveness, and even the so-called “Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill” which garnered the support of fewer than half of the GOP caucus in the Senate.

You might assume that if the GOP opposed these initiatives but were critical of what Biden was doing, that they had alternative plans that they have presented to the American people. But, you would be wrong. In fact, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has bragged that he would not even discuss his agenda until after the election. They have no inflation plan. And the plans they’ve said they admire—like that of the United Kingdom’s prime minister-for-a-second Liz Truss—have been a catastrophe.

The last time the Republicans were in charge, during the Trump years, they passed precisely one significant piece of economic legislation, a tax cut that benefited the very rich at the expense of everyone else and, as we have established, helped explode the federal budget deficit.

Putin’s Last Hope to Win in Ukraine Is a GOP Victory in November

Republicans are just plain bad at managing the economy. They have been for as long as anyone who is alive can remember. And they continue to be—although they are achieving previously unattained new levels of cynicism and obstructionism that make the current crowd of Republicans look even worse than their very unsuccessful predecessors.

History and data make it clear that Democrats are good for the economy—while Republicans, especially the current Republicans in Congress, are not.

Up next for the Republicans are plans to cut Medicare and social security, plans to increase costs for average Americans on a wide variety of fronts, and they’re even contemplating reducing support for Ukraine—at a critical moment in its war to defend its democracy and stop the Russian aggression that threatens not only them, but the West.

Republicans have done a great job fooling voters into thinking that their simplistic economic philosophies of tax cuts and minimal regulation are “good for business.” But facts, history, and logic show otherwise.

David Rothkopf and Bernard Schwartz conclude their case with: If you care about the economy, want to fight inflation, want to create jobs, want a better life for your family, want to preserve democracy, and want to defend your fundamental rights, then you should vote for the Democrats.

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John Hanno: And if you’re still inclined to reverse the remarkable progress made by the Biden administration and the Democrat’s thin margin in congress over the last 2 years, and also willing to turn over your children’s and grandchildren’s future to these wannabe Putin like autocrats, think about this latest bit of news:

The world’s richest person and Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, implored his more than 110 million followers on Monday to support Republicans in Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections, saying that Republican control of Congress would act as a balance against Democrats and the Biden administration. Could it be because of the Biden administration and Democrats proposals to tax billionaires and give more tax incentives to union-made electric vehicles. Musk’s Tesla does not have any unions at its U.S. factories. Apparently the world’s richest person doesn’t have enough billions of dollars to pay income taxes, pay prevailing union wages or to live comfortably. That should tell you exactly where this MAGA cult is headed.

Democracy and the big lie are on the ballot today. trump has endorsed those more than 250 election deniers running to thwart one person one vote, free and fair elections. Overwhelm these Democracy deniers with a monumental blue wave.

Like I said, vote November 8th like your and your families lives depends on it, because it surely does.

John Hanno, The Tarbabys Blog