The ammo that will wipe out Congress is in the GOP's own slogan

In a nationwide poll conducted a few weeks ago and reported on by Axios, the majority of all registered voters surveyed said the number one word to describe Donald Trump is “corrupt.” This represents a massive opportunity for Democrats both now and for the next two years.And the experience of candid...

rawstory.com

Soldiers Wounded in Iran Say Pentagon Made Them Fend for Themselves

In the early hours of President Donald Trump’s military campaign against Iran, Tehran targeted a makeshift tactical operations center in Kuwait, killing six U.S. military personnel and injuring more than 30 others. Not only did the Department of Defense fail to provide the personnel stationed there with the necessary tools to defend themselves, but multiple service members who were injured in the attack say their government also neglected them in the aftermath. The Associated Press spoke to a group of nine service members who all claim that the U.S. military’s medical system failed them after they were injured in the deadly attack on March 1. Army Lieutenant Colonel Arturo Lincón, a veteran of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, suffered extensive injuries from shrapnel, including to his left vertebral artery, which put him at risk for a stroke. However, his injuries were not considered serious enough to get him admitted to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Instead, he was dismissed to the Army barracks and instructed to schedule outpatient appointments. “I was just kind of on my own, at least it felt like that,” Lincón told the AP. He underwent weeks of specialized outpatient care at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington. Months later, he is still struggling to receive traumatic injury benefits under the Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance. Another service member, Major Stephen Ramsbottom, said he waited over four months to receive MRI results after he had shrapnel removed from his head. “I’ve had to build my own case for everything,” Ramsbottom told the outlet. “It’s very frustrating.” While some of the most injured service members were evacuated within two days of the attack, others weren’t so lucky. One group was not evacuated out of Kuwait for 10 days after the attack, including Chief Warrant Officer 4 Rodney Bearman, who had shrapnel embedded in his face and legs. When the soldiers were eventually evacuated, they were strapped to the floor of a cargo plane and taken to Germany. When the group arrived, Bearman said he learned that the military had not documented them as wounded in combat, so they would not receive medical treatment at Landstuhl. Bearman told the AP they were not documented as wounded in combat due to a coding error. “Never did I think that if I was wounded that these things would happen,” said Bearman. “Some sacred trust that I thought would never be broken was broken.” The military also failed to provide timely evaluations of the soldiers. Some soldiers told AP they they only learned they had traumatic brain injuries after they returned back to the United States. Many of the troops who spoke to AP did not know the severity of their own TBIs. “It’s disappointing but not surprising,” said Dr. James Kelly, chief medical scientist at the Invisible Wounds Foundation, a group that studies brain injuries in the military. “In a war scenario, it goes on a fair bit.” It seems that the Department of Defense’s failing medical system is the system working as it was designed: The Pentagon has shuttered large military hospitals in the Middle East and regularly redeploys troops after they receive a mild TBI diagnosis. The Pentagon downplayed the severity of the retaliatory strike, and U.S. Central Command initially claimed that only five service members had been seriously wounded. The day after it happened, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the deadly strike in Kuwait “a squirter,” and later complained that reporting on the troops killed was a ploy to make the president look bad.

newrepublic.com

Original post on mastodon.murkworks.net

mastodon.murkworks.net

Trump's monstrous taunt is more than insanity — it's a demand for civil war

As a human being, I was appalled.As an American, I was embarrassed.As a Californian, I was alarmed.As a citizen, I was unsurprised.It’s apparently OK now for the President of the United States to threaten two of the most populous cities in the union, Los Angeles and San Diego. It’s even permissible ...

rawstory.com

Sharon Cathcart is taking part in Walk the World

Donate to Sharon Cathcart who is fundraising for Blood Cancer UK

walktheworld.bloodcancer.org.uk

Original post on universeodon.com

universeodon.com

Power To The People Festival Fund

By Power To The People Festival Fund

givebutter.com

Kyiv Wants Sanctions on Firms Linked to a Starlink Rival Network | WION News

Kyiv is pressing the United States to impose sanctions on Russian and Chinese entities supporting the development of Rassvet, a low-Earth orbit satellite int...

youtube.com

PUC takes further action to deal with times when electricity supplies may be strained

As data center development adds new demand to the regional electric grid, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission is advancing proposed safeguards aimed at protecting consumers and preserving electric reliability during

indianagazette.com

Original post on mastodon.social

mastodon.social

Real Climate Solutions Versus “Greenwashing Tricks”

The biggest news during last week’s Climate Week NYC came not from the United States but from Germany, where the government of the world’s third-largest economy committed to phasing out fossil fuels by 2045. It was the first time Germany has explicitly made such a promise, Fiona Harvey noted in _The Guardian_. Germany’s previous pledges, Harvey added, “were only for ‘carbon neutrality,’” an important distinction. Carbon neutrality allows continued fossil fuel use if the emissions are offset—for example, by additional clean energy or tree planting. But only a complete phaseout of fossil fuels can halt global temperature rise. Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, the world’s fourth-largest economy, hailed his state’s decarbonization efforts, saying in an interview with Covering Climate Now that California has run on 100 percent clean electricity nine out of every 10 days so far in 2026. And as the costs of solar, wind, and batteries continue to fall, while the Iran war makes gasoline and diesel more expensive, “the markets are moving in our direction,” said Newsom, who’s widely expected to run for president in 2028. “Globally, people are realizing [that clean energy] is the better option.” An overwhelming majority of people around the world want their governments to take stronger climate action, the Associated Press noted in an article about the global oat milk company Oatly endorsing CCNow’s 89 Percent Project. “Companies should be taking much more responsibility, not only in reducing their own environmental footprint, but really working out how they can use their platform to drive a positive future,” Caroline Reid, senior sustainability director at Oatly, told the AP. Mirroring this public sentiment, Germany and California are key members of a “coalition of the willing” that emerged from last year’s COP30 United Nations climate summit, after petrostates vetoed calls from 80-plus countries to develop a global “roadmap” to phase out fossil fuels. Collectively, this coalition amounts to the biggest economic superpower on earth. In April, many of its members met in Santa Marta, Colombia, to begin discussing, in U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’s words, how “to sequence the decline of fossil fuel investment with the rapid scale-up of clean energy.” Journalists have a critical role to play as governments work to phase out fossil fuels. That goal can only be achieved quickly—and speed is of the essence, scientists emphasize—if countries implement genuine climate solutions and shun false ones. News coverage that makes clear how well a given policy measures up to what’s needed, as Harvey did with her distinction between “carbon neutrality” and a fossil fuel phaseout, can keep the public informed and hold policymakers to account. France and The Netherlands are two more big economies that have released road maps to phase out fossil fuel use. If enough other countries present credible plans for doing so, it “would send an unmistakable message that the age of oil, gas and coal is ending, and the smart money is shifting,” Mohamed Adow, director of the nonprofit Power Shift Africa, said in an interview with _The Guardian_. As the costs of clean energy fall, humanity is in a “final battle” against the “evil forces” trying to keep the world dependent on fossil fuels, said Johan Rockstrom, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany, at a Climate Week event. Scientists at Rockstrom’s institute have studied which policies significantly reduce emissions and which don’t. A paper published in _Science_ evaluated “1,500 climate policies implemented … across 41 countries” and concluded that only 63 of them delivered significant reductions. There is no “one-size-fits-all” solution, but getting fossil fuel prices right—by slashing subsidies and otherwise challenging what U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse calls Big Oil’s “pollute for free business model”—is essential. Complementary research the Drawdown Institute released during Climate Week highlighted a number of supposed solutions that are anything but. The institute’s list of “weak ideas and greenwashing tricks” includes carbon capture and storage, direct air capture of carbon dioxide, blue hydrogen, and corn ethanol. A frequent topic of conversation at Climate Week was the U.S. midterm elections, which could curb President Donald Trump’s acceleration of climate breakdown if Republicans lose control in Congress, though most Democrats (with important exceptions like Newsom and Whitehouse) are saying little about climate change on the campaign trail. Considering that 80 to 89 percent of the world’s people, and 74 percent of Americans, want stronger climate action, why do so many politicians practice “climate hushing”? And why do so many voters end up backing candidates who are indifferent at best to tackling climate change? “We need to remember,” Rockstrom said, “that citizens have many other problems besides climate change, especially the cost of living. So we need to make it easy for them to choose clean energy options, and that requires good policy.” It also requires, Newsom said, talking plainly about both the dangers and the solutions to the climate crisis. Leaders need to “connect the dots” between the heat, drought, and other afflictions driven by climate change and “kitchen table” issues like the price of beef, coffee, and home insurance. “The cost of inaction,” Newsom added, “is incalculable.” _This article is published as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now._

newrepublic.com

Eye-eating amoeba resists treatment—understanding its biochemistry could help

In water, soil and air all around us lives a free-living, single-celled organism called Acanthamoeba. Most of the time, Acanthamoeba keeps to itself. On rare occasions, though, the amoeba infects humans and can cause severe infections of the eyes, skin and even the brain. What's more, doctors can struggle to diagnose and treat the eye infection caused by the organism, called Acanthamoeba keratitis.

phys.org