Hannah Denham and Andrew Ba Tran, Reporters - The Washington Post
Stephan: I find this story quite alarming. America already has a serious gun psychosis problem. How serious is this national mental illness? In 2020 19,223 people, were killed by guns, almost a 25% increase from 2019. There is no other developed nation in the world that has that level of gun death, both as an absolute number and as a percentage of population. Now gun sales are soaring into levels never before seen, which means that gun deaths are going to be going up. Here are the facts.
Firearm sales soared in January after a mob-led assault on the U.S. Capitol and the arrival of a new administration that favors tighter gun restrictions.
More than 2 million firearms were bought last month, according to The Washington Post’s analysis of federal gun background-check data. That is an 80 percent year-over-year spike and the second-highest one-month total on record.
Background checks, and sales of firearms and ammunition, have been increasing pace for months. The surge is in line with the record pace set in 2020: Nearly 23 million firearms were bought, representing a 64 percent jump year over year.
Stephan: Today we witnessed 199 House Republicans who were not willing to hold racist antisemite anti-democratic gun-obsessed Marjorie Taylor Greene accountable for what she has said, done, and advocated. The previous day they had given her a standing ovation. Why did the Republicans in the House do this? Because the people who voted those Republicans into office wanted them to. This is the cancer that is eating America from the inside.
Conspiracist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is far more popular than Rep. Liz Cheney among Americans who align with the Republican Party, according to a new Axios-SurveyMonkey poll.
Why it matters: As the House GOP caucus is being torn over calls to yank Cheney from congressional leadership for backing Donald Trump’s second impeachment, and strip Greene from committee assignments for her baseless conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric, these findings show how strongly Trumpism continues to define most Republicans.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is much more popular with Republicans than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the survey finds.
By the numbers: McCarthy enjoys the highest favorable versus unfavorable ratings (net favorability) of the four among Republicans, at 38%-16% (+22); followed by Greene, at 28%-18% (+10); McConnell, at 31%-46% (-15); and Cheney, at 14%-42% (-28).
Greene is the least well known of the four, with 51% of Republicans and Republican leaners saying they don’t know enough to say whether their impression is favorable or not. Respondents have the most fully formed views of McConnell.
Republican respondents are three times as likely to […]
Stephan: The alt-right whines that social media is biased against them. You have surely heard this claim. Like most Trumper claims it is a lie. Here are the facts.
After decades of claiming that everyone from the Los Angeles Times to Newsweek and Time has a “liberal media bias,” the far right has found a new target: social media. Countless Republicans — along with their allies at Fox News, Newsmax TV and AM talk radio — have been claiming that major social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have it in for conservatives. But according to a new study from New York University, there is no evidence that such a bias exists. And in fact, the study found that social media outlets and big tech have allowed conservatives to reach a larger audience.
“(The) claim of anti-conservative animus is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it,” according to New York University’s report. “No trustworthy large-scale studies have determined that conservative content is being removed for ideological reasons or that searches are being manipulated to favor liberal interests.”
In fact, some anti-Trump pundits have attacked social media for failing to adequately police content from […]
Stephan: Here is some more excellent news coming from the Biden administration and the Democrats in Congress. Finally, the obscene tax cuts passed by the Republicans that so favored the ultra-rich are going to be corrected. Bravo, Elizabeth Warren.
My first order of business on the @SenateFinance Committee – the committee that leads tax and revenue policy in the Senate – will be to introduce legislation for a #WealthTax on fortunes above $50 million. It is time to make the ultra-rich pay their fair share. pic.twitter.com/IccP6do57y
After announcing that she landed a spot on the powerful Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday said she plans to immediately introduce legislation to impose a wealth tax on individual fortunes above $50 million with the goal of reining in soaring inequality and funding “needed investments for working families.”
“My first order of business on the Senate Finance Committee—the committee that leads tax and revenue policy in the Senate—will be to introduce legislation for a wealth tax on fortunes above $50 million.” —Sen. Elizabeth Warren
“I’m very pleased to join the Finance Committee, where I’ll continue to fight on behalf of working families and press giant corporations, the wealthy, and the well-connected to finally pay their fair share in taxes,” Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement. “I look forward to being a progressive voice at the table to […]
Stephan: Here is more good news from the Biden administration. His Secretary of Defense is flushing out all the little incompetent Trump orcs and replacing them with competent people. Lovely story.
President Biden’s Secretary of Defense, retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin testifies at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee at the U.S. Capitol on January 19, 2021 in Washington, DC. Previously Gen. Austin was the commanding officer of the U.S. Central Command in the Obama administration. (Greg Nash-Pool/Getty
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered hundreds of Pentagon advisory board members to resign in a move aimed at removing Trump loyalists who were added to the boards in the final weeks of his presidency.
Austin removed all members serving on 31 of the Pentagon’s advisory boards and suspended the operations of all 42 boards amid a Pentagon review, according to a Defense Department memo first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Austin’s purge of the Pentagon’s 42 advisory boards, which advise the secretary on various areas of their expertise, came after former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller removed dozens of board members and replaced them with Trump loyalists like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the Vatican, and former acting Pentagon official Anthony Tata, a onetime Fox […]
