Stephan: I am always amazed at how little attention is paid by the media about something that seems very glaring to me. I am speaking of the Republican christofascist obsession about how people define themselves sexually, and what they do with their genitals. I can understand that it would be a factor, like race or religion. It's a fact. The fact isn't the issue. It is how one reacts to that fact, and this LBGTQ assault is weird and defining. Attention should be paid to this reality because it is shaping social policy and yet is held by only a third of Americans, and it does not foster wellbeing.
Aerin Geary, 15, is paying close attention to a South Dakota bill that would prevent them from being prescribed puberty blockers. Credit: Aerin Geary
Like most high school students, Aerin Geary does not typically pay attention to state legislation. However, the South Dakota teenager has been closely following House Bill 1057, a Republican proposal that would make it a felony for medical professionals to provide transgender health care to minors.
“This bill makes me feel scared, since this is something that affects me deeply,” Geary, 15, who identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, told NBC News. “Transitioning is something that I’ve been hoping to get and been yearning for for years.
The high school sophomore is afraid that if the legislation passes, plans to take puberty-suppressing medication will be delayed indefinitely.
“I recently managed to convince my family to allow me to start transitioning, and I’m so close to getting there,” Geary said. “To take it away from me when I’m so close would be a huge blow to my hope.”
Stephan: One of the hallmarks of christofascists is their extreme sexual dysfunction. They are always obsessed with what other people are doing sexually; it is a kind of mental Peeping Tomism.
Donald, "grab'em by the pussy", Trump is a proven lecher and molester of women, and he understands his cult's insecurity. By his judicial appointments and what he promotes, like this speech by his familiar Mike Pence, he manipulates their obsession to bond them to him.
Vice President Mike Pence delivers blatantly homophobic remarks at a Church Service at Holy City Church of God in Christ Credit: The White House
The White House streamed a homophobic church service attended by Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday, during which a preacher claimed that a “demonic spirit” is behind homosexuality.
The video, which is still available on the official White House YouTube page, showed Pence promising to “stand strong for the values that you hold dear” while speaking at the Holy City Church of God in Christ in Memphis.
Moments after Pence’s remarks, Bishop Jerry Wayne Taylor launched into a rant about homosexuality.
“We have to encourage young men and women to get married,” Taylor said. “It’s a demonic spirit that causes a woman to want to lie with another woman. It’s a demonic spirit that causes a man to be attracted to another man.”
Taylor claimed that gay people were “trying to destroy” the principle of marriage and “cut off the reproduction process.”
Stephan: One of the effects of climate change is going to be a radical alteration in global health, with epidemics, and plagues of infectious diseases. The 2050 remote viewers predicted this beginning in the 1980s. We are woefully unprepared. Am I exaggerating? Here is the World Health Organization assessment, and this is what must be done. It is a restatement of the Theorem of Wellbeing.
Credit: Probst/ullstein bild /Getty
Government leaders need to implement a “decade of change” and invest more in the key health priorities and systems to prevent global health threats over the next decade, the World Health Organization warned last week.
What’s new: Climate change, infectious diseases and epidemic threats, socioeconomic inequalities, and conflicts are some of the 13 urgent challenges WHO says will imperil global health — but addressing them is “within reach” if action is taken now.
What they’re saying: Eric Toner, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins’ Center for Health Security, tells Axios “the threats posed by nearly constant infectious disease outbreaks and the looming threat of another pandemic are very real” and should involve both the private and public sector in crisis preparations.
“As we demonstrated in our Event 201 exercise in October, the world is ill-prepared for a severe pandemic. Such a global disease outbreak would not only cause widespread illness and death but there would be severe societal and economic consequences […]
Stephan: The growing wealth inequality that is going on around the world, and the greed sickness that capitalism stimulates is, in my view, leading us to inevitable violent social unrest. Here are some of the hard data that leads me to this conclusion. Note that in the U.S. we still believe what Gordon Geeko said, "Greed is good." That is why I think we are headed into a social crisis.
It is not that a company or a person cannot make a profit, it is that it has to be done within a first priority of fostering wellbeing.
The national flags of several countries and a flag with the logo of the World Economic Forum (WEF) fly at the roof of the congress center during preparations for the annual WEF meeting in the Swiss Alps resort of Davos, Switzerland January 19, 2020. Credit: Reuters/Denis Balibouse
LONDON – A majority of people around the world believe capitalism in its current form is doing more harm than good, a survey found ahead of this week’s Davos meeting of business and political leaders. (emphasis added)
This year was the first time the “Edelman Trust Barometer”, which for two decades has polled tens of thousands of people on their trust in core institutions, sought to understand how capitalism itself was viewed.
The study’s authors said that earlier surveys showing a rising sense of inequality prompted them to ask whether citizens were now starting to have more fundamental doubts about the capitalist-based democracies of the West.
“The answer is yes,” David Bersoff, lead researcher on the study produced by U.S. communications company Edelman.
SAMANTHA MALDONADO, BRUCE RITCHIE and DEBRA KAHN, Reporters - Politico
Stephan: The curse of America is greed, the sick lust for money that trumps all other considerations, and nowhere is that clearer than in the drive to get rid of plastic bags.
TRENTON, N.J. — The plastic shopping bag has long been hunted by state and local policymakers pushing for its extinction. But still it thrives, thanks to the deep-pocketed chemical industry that birthed it and the political influence of retailers and restaurants. Only eight states ban single-use plastic bags. Nearly twice as many have laws protecting them.
To take on a global and well-heeled industry, U.S. environmentalists have adopted a strategy of winning hyper-local grassroots victories to build momentum to ban the bag and other plastics. The approach helped California environmentalists win a referendum to uphold a bag ban in 2016, and, in 2019, legislation to phase out plastic hotel toiletry bottles.
Other states are attempting to follow suit. New York is implementing a bag ban passed in 2019, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to do away with plastic foam. In New Jersey, at least 46 municipalities already limit plastic bag use, and the Legislature last week was on the verge […]
TRENTON, N.J. — 
