And another day of confessions of a (former) Christian Nationalist, indictments, GOP racism, Trump promising doom that never comes, hurricanes, pregnancy-related crimes, pain differences, and ‘spookfish’ comes to a close:
“It’s a shocking thing to realize people love their hatred more than they care about their own actual lives.” — Fran Lebowitz
Confessions of a (Former) Christian Nationalist. In my third conversion, I realized that when religion is placed at the service of a political party, it corrupts both. To claim that one political figure uniquely represents God’s will for the body politic is a form of anti-Christian idolatry. To elevate one set of spiritual beliefs above another and do it by force of law removes a nonnegotiable tenet of evangelical faith—free will. We are born again when we choose to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, not when we’re forced to do so. Because it is immoral, I believe Christian nationalism is inevitably doomed. But in the meantime, the pain, suffering, and injury it will inflict will be enormous—just consider women facing difficult pregnancies, trans children seeking care, librarians attacked for certain books. “We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press—in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality, which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess.” This may sound familiar—maybe some overheated Republican talking points. In fact, it’s what Adolf Hitler promised the German people in 1933. — Read the rest for how we got here.
New York Mayor Eric Adams expected to face federal charges. The Adams administration was already reeling from a series of high-level resignations amid at least four federal probes.
Harris outlines $100 billion manufacturing plan, vowing pragmatism over ideology. Harris proposed an “America Forward” agenda that calls for tax credits to boost investment and create industrial jobs, along with investments in artificial intelligence, science and energy development, as well as supporting American-made products. "This plan will cost approximately $100 billion and will be paid for by a portion of the proceeds of international tax reform, which seeks to prevent a global race to the bottom and to discourage inversions, outsourcing, or international tax strategies designed by corporations to avoid paying their fair share to the United States," the Harris campaign said in a fact sheet. — Wow, a plan. Not a concept of a plan.
Trump is at 48 percent. How could this be possible but for widespread racism? Maybe Trump’s 48 percent don’t excuse his racism so much as get the message. They are inside a Republican Party that is 82 percent white. Most of those white Republicans are in small towns and rural areas...The 48 percent backing Trump try to move away from his racism by talking about the need for a better economy. But Trump’s main economic plan is to impose tariffs that will drive up prices. He has no plan to improve health care or provide more affordable housing. It was less than 30 years ago when Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican presidential nominee, stared down racism in the GOP. “If there’s anyone who has mistakenly attached themselves to our party in the belief that we are not open to citizens of every race and religion…,” Dole said at the 1996 convention, “the exits, which are clearly marked, are for you to walk out of as I stand this ground without compromise.” Where are those Republicans now?
GOP congressman tweets racist rant about Haitian immigrants. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., called Haiti the "nastiest country in the western hemisphere" in a post on social media Wednesday, saying migrants from the Caribbean country, the majority of whom are in the U.S. legally, should "get their ass out of our country." Higgins' rant on X — which was deleted hours later — came in response to an Associated Press story about a Haitian nonprofit group that filed a citizen criminal charge against former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance for their repeated baseless claims about migrants in Springfield, Ohio, including Trump's assertion at the presidential debate they were "eating the dogs" and "eating the cats." — Racism. It’s all Republicans have to offer.
Apocalypse delayed: Trump keeps promising a doom that never comes. Trump predicted that if Biden won, the economy would crash, crime would soar and Christmas would be canceled. None of that happened, but he's reusing those claims anyway. “If he’s [Biden] elected, the stock market will crash,” Trump said in October 2020 during his only debate with Biden. “If he gets in, you will have a depression the likes of which you’ve never seen." The depression never happened. Stocks rose during Biden’s presidency. But Trump recently predicted that a Harris victory would lead to “a massive [stock] market downturn” and “a 1929-style depression.”...In fact, crime has fallen, and Biden signed legislation increasing police funding...The suburbs still stand, as does the Second Amendment, backed by a conservative majority on the Supreme Court...Trump did, in fact, lose and did not flee the country. This year, as Trump faces off against Biden's vice president, he has reprised some of the same grim predictions for the future if he does not win. While Biden was a “Trojan horse for socialism,” Trump’s campaign said in a news release last month that “Kamala Harris is a Trojan horse for nation-destroying spending, communist price controls and open borders.”...Throughout his 2024 campaign, he has portrayed the election as an existential clash for the future of the country, using his first campaign rally last year to call the election “the final battle," invoking the Book of Revelation's portrayal of Armageddon and saying Harris would “destroy” America, “just like she destroyed San Francisco, just like she destroyed California.” And reprising his false prophecy from 2020, Trump has been telling supporters that this election, too, is a sure thing and that the only way he can lose is if it is rigged.
Why a scandal consuming a Trump protégé could harm the ex-president in North Carolina. An already fiercely fought presidential contest in the critical swing state was thrown into greater turmoil Thursday by a stunning CNN investigation revealing a porn-site scandal surrounding Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson. Lt. Gov. Robinson, whose politics and personality are extreme even by the standards of Trump’s MAGA movement, referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago and expressed support for reinstating slavery, CNN’s KFile reported. Many of the remarks were lewd and gratuitously sexual in nature.
A huge Hurricane Helene is expected to hit Florida as a major storm and strike far inland. An enormous Hurricane Helene swamped parts of Mexico on Wednesday as it churned on a path forecasters said would take it to Florida as a potentially catastrophic storm with a surge that could swallow entire homes, a chilling warning that sent residents scrambling for higher ground, closed schools, and led to states of emergency throughout the Southeast.
More women are charged with pregnancy-related crimes since Roe’s end, study finds. It became more common for authorities to charge women with crimes related to their pregnancies after the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, a new study found — even if they’re almost never accused of violating abortion bans...“It’s an environment where pregnancy loss is potentially criminally suspect.”
U.S. ranks last in health care compared with nine other high-income countries, report finds. The health system in the U.S. is failing, a startling new report finds. The U.S. ranks as the worst performer among 10 developed nations in critical areas of health care, including preventing deaths, access (mainly because of high cost) and guaranteeing quality treatment for everyone, regardless of gender, income or geographic location...Based on the new findings, people in the U.S. die the youngest and experience the most avoidable deaths, even though the country spends nearly twice as much — about 18% of gross domestic product — on health care than any other nation ranked.
Pain is ‘dramatically’ different in men and women. Women, in other words, are more sensitive to pain than men. They report feeling it more in just about every way: more intensely, more often, for a longer time. They grapple with more headaches, more painful gut conditions, more pain in their backs and pelvises and bones and, research suggests, virtually every other part of their bodies. Of the hundreds of millions of chronic pain patients around the world, they comprise roughly 70 percent.
A Rare, Deadly Mosquito Virus Has Emerged in New York. EEE only rarely interacts with humans, since we’re not its natural host and the mosquitoes that typically spread it live in freshwater swamps. But when the virus does invade our bodies, it can trigger a severe brain infection that kills up to a third of victims, so its arrival anywhere is concerning.
New Zealand scientists discover new 'spookfish' living deep in the Pacific. Scientists said Tuesday they had discovered a new species of ghost shark that lives exclusively in the waters off Australia and New Zealand...Ghost sharks, also known as chimaeras, are a group of cartilaginous fish closely related to sharks and rays. The newly discovered species has several distinctive features, including a long and narrow snout, broad pectoral fins, scale-free skin, and beak-like teeth. They are largely confined to the ocean floor up to 2,600 meters (8,530 feet) deep, feeding off crustaceans such as shrimp and molluscs.
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