Stephan: The American obsessive gun psychosis plus the frenzied, hysterical racism and hate in the White MAGAt community has made the U.S. an unsafe nation. And, as a society, we are not dealing with this properly. Here is a brief article that lays out some of the issues. It will be interesting to see whether once the Republicans take the majority in the House they do anything about this. My prediction is they will not, since the cohort that make America a dangerous country in which to live also constitutes the base of the Republican Party.
A man mourns at a memorial at the scene of a shooting at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York Credit: Lindsay Dedario / Reuters
The FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are failing to properly address the threat of domestic terrorism, predominantly from white supremacist and anti-government extremists, according to a Senate committee report released on Monday.
The Senate homeland security and governmental affairs committee spent three years investigating domestic terrorism and the federal response.
It found that the FBI and the DHS have “failed to systematically track and report data on domestic terrorism” and have not allocated sufficient resources to countering the threat.
The report comes after a spate of racist shootings in 2022. On Monday, a white man who shot 10 Black people to death in a Buffalo grocery store in May pleaded guilty to murder and hate-crime charges.
Both the FBI and the DHS have identified domestic terrorism, in particular white supremacist violence, as the “most persistent and lethal terrorist threat” to the US, the committee said.
But the federal government has continued to focus “disproportionately” […]
Margaret Talev and Sam Baker, Staff Writers - Axios
Stephan: We saw some excellent good news with the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act. For the first time in American history, driven by the change in the culture this article describes, we are making wellbeing and love the principal definer of marriage. We have crossed a threshold. That said, I find it very interesting that 36 Republican members of the Senate voted against the act. They did that because that is what their base of voters wanted. And their vote memorializes that their position is as a minority.
The big picture: Just 27% of Americans supported same-sex marriage in 1996, the year President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which denied federal recognition to same-sex marriages.
That’s flipped on its head: 71% now tell Gallup that same-sex and opposite-sex marriages should have the same legal recognition.
Driving the news: The Senate voted 61-36 on Tuesday to codify the rights to same-sex marriage and interracial marriage into federal law. The House is expected to quickly follow.
Twelve Senate Republicans voted for the bill. All 36 no votes came from Republicans.
What they’re saying: “This is a great example of politicians following public opinion rather than leading it,” Sasha Issenberg, author of “The Engagement: America’s Quarter-Century Struggle over Same-Sex Marriage,” tells Axios.
“That has changed the partisan dynamics around the issue: in the 1990s and 2000s, Republicans liked pressing for votes on marriage-related questions — not just DOMA but state and federal constitutional bans — because they unified their own coalition and divided Democrats,” he said.
“Now it’s Republicans who are torn between placating some of their loudest activists […]
Stephan: Here's some more good news. Far from perfect but a trend moving into increased wellbeing
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Rate has fallen from 35% to 12% in the past two decades
Young adults more likely to smoke e-cigarettes, marijuana than tobacco
Smoking among young adults may be shifting from tobacco to e-cigarettes
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As the percentage of U.S. adults who smoke cigarettes has reached a new low of 11% this year, much of the decline is tied to sharply lower smoking rates among young adults. From 2001 to 2003, an average of 35% of U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 29 said they smoked cigarettes, compared with 12% in the latest estimate.
This 23-percentage-point decline among young adults is more than double that of any other age group over that time. As a result of these changes, young adults have moved from the group most likely to smoke cigarettes to the second-least likely, with a rate higher than only the oldest Americans.
Gallup trends through 2012 showed that young adults were the age group most likely to smoke cigarettes. Between 2013 and 2015, their smoking rates dipped below those of 30- to 49-year-olds, […]
Stephan: This is the kind of new technology I am talking about. It fosters wellbeing and works with, not against, the matrix of consciousness -- life itself. This is the direction we have to go.
Floating wetlands along the Chicago River’s Wild Mile. Credit: Dave Burk / SOM
Five small islands roughly the size of backyard swimming pools float next to the concrete riverbank of Bubbly Creek, a stretch of the Chicago River named for the gas that once rose to the surface after stockyards dumped animal waste and byproducts into the waterway. Clumps of short, native grasses and plants, including sedges, swamp milkweed, and queen of the prairie, rise from a gravel-like material spread across each artificial island’s surface. A few rectangles cut from their middles hold bottomless baskets, structures that will, project designers hope, provide an attachment surface for freshwater mussels that once flourished in the river.
Three thousand square feet in total, these artificial wetlands are part of an effort to clean up a portion of a river that has long served the interests of industry. This floating wetland project is one of many proliferating around the world as cities increasingly look to green infrastructure to address toxic legacies. In the United States, researchers are conducting experiments in Boston […]
Annie Karni, Congressional Correspondent - The New York Times
Stephan: I have never understood the Right's hysteria about same-sex marriage. Why shouldn't an individual have the right to enter into marriage with anyone they love who loves them. It supports wellbeing, and creates happiness, so what's the problem? But we all know that this simple right to pick the partner you love, regardless of their gender makes MAGAt world crazy. Well, here is what looks like it is going to be good news.
Senator Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, led a bipartisan group that quietly built sufficient Republican support for the measure. Credit: Haiyun Jiang / The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Senate passed landmark legislation on Tuesday to mandate federal recognition for same-sex marriages, as a lame-duck Congress mustered a notable moment of bipartisanship before Democrats were to lose their unified control of Capitol Hill.
The 61-to-36 vote put the bill on track to become law in the final weeks before Republicans assume the majority in the House of Representatives at the start of the new Congress in January. It marked one of the final major legislative achievements for Democrats before Republicans shift the focus in the House to conducting investigations of President Biden’s administration and family members.
The bill must now win final approval by the House, which would clear it for Mr. Biden’s signature. Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader, said that chamber would move quickly to pass it, acting as soon as next week.
