Stephan: Day after day, week after week, month after month, as I survey literally dozens of media sources, both academic and general audience, I see the results of America's gun psychosis, and it is horrifying. As this research study says explicitly: "states with weaker gun laws make it easier to access firearms, and studies show that access to a firearm triples the likelihood of suicide, and a gun in the home is associated with more gun homicide." No other developed nation in the world has this problem.
Credit: flickr
Everyone in America wants the country to be a place where they’re safe from violence. But there’s a big difference in how people think we should achieve that goal. Some Americans think that tougher gun laws make it more difficult for people to commit heinous acts of violence. While others believe that people are safer when they have easy access to firearms to protect themselves.
A new study released by the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund has found a very strong connection between a state’s gun laws and its rate of gun deaths.
The analysis concludes that states with strong gun safety policies have lower rates of fatal shootings while states with weaker gun laws have higher rates of gun deaths, including homicides, suicides and accidental killings. Everytown for Gun Safety makes a pretty clear point by ranking states from strongest gun laws to weakest.
California has the strongest gun laws and some of the lowest rates of gun deaths per 100,000 residents, at 8.5. The
Stephan: I have been reading in both the liberal and MAGA media about how Biden is slow, his words stumble and slur, he was clearly aging and so forth, and wasn't able to get anything done. Then I watched his two-hour press conference in which he fielded questions in the moment, and was stunned at how much command he had over all the relevant information, how sophisticated and nuanced his answers were, and how accurate and truthful. Could you imagine Trump doing such a session, just doing two hours of spontaneous responses, and how many lies and how much nonsense he would spew out? While I have some problems with Biden and his administration -- why are they giving out so many oil leases, for instance -- on the whole, emotionally, I have felt he has been doing pretty well considering the hand he was dealt. But what were the facts? That made me start a list of what has actually gotten done in spite of the Republicans in Congress, and the MAGA majority in the Supreme Court who not only are trying to block Biden from governing, they are also doing everything they can to destroy democracy. So this morning, I went looking for something in the media that addressed what, by then, seemed apparent to me, and found this.
Joe Biden Credit: Brendan Smialowski AFP
As President Biden marked the anniversary of his first year in office Wednesday, the reviews have come in. A raft of pundits and pollsters describe him as “limping,” “struggling” even “failing.”
Have you people lost your minds?
The answer to the question “what grade do you give Biden’s first year in office?” is “A+.” Anything else is insane.
Think back to where we were by the second half of 2020, almost four years into:
Stephan: When I was in my early twenties I had two women friends my age who died as the result of kitchen table abortions (I was not the father, just a friend). Both women had made the pregnancy termination choice I learned from other women who were mutual friends because of the behavior of the men who were the fathers. Until that time I had never thought about abortion rights; I'm not even sure I had heard the word. But the loss of those two friends forced me to confront the issue of why a woman who accidentally gets pregnant must be condemned to an unwanted lifetime of motherhood of a child society saw as a bastard, or forced into an unwanted marriage?
An evangelical pastor I knew told me at the time that the women should have gone through their pregnancies and put their babies up for adoption. What about the social stigma I asked? What about the mother's feelings about giving birth to a child she would never see again. His response was that was the Lord's punishment for the women being sluts. Our acquaintanceship ended in that moment, and since those days I have been a strong supporter of a women's right to choose.
What has also always stood out for me in the choice debate is that the anti-choice community is also anti-childcare, anti-maternal leave, anti-family support. So they care about a handful of cells about the size of a marble, but once born those babies and mothers are on their own. I think that is a very sick anti-life worldview. This piece from The Washington Post expands on that.
Antiabortion activists protest outside a Planned Parenthood clinic on Jan. 20. Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty
A note to all the participants of Friday’s antiabortion March for Life rally, taking place in Washington:
I hope you’re preparing to make condoms rain from the sky. Buckets of them. Craploads, hurled from the cargo holds of the biggest planes you can find. Also, birth control pills. I hope every time a teenager opens their locker at school she finds 60 packs of Yaz.
You have been holding these marches since 1974, the year after Roe v. Wade, and guess what? You might have finally done it. You stacked the courts. Your lobbying efforts and voting patterns jammed three conservative justices on the Supreme Court’s bench during President Donald Trump’s term — never mind the hypocrisy of stonewalling Merrick Garland and then replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg (this isn’t the March for Constitutional Etiquette, after all). That same court is now preparing to issue rulings that might overturn the precedent that guaranteed women control over their reproductive futures. So, congrats?
HEMANT KAKKAR and ASHER LAWSON, assistant professor of management and organizations at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business | Asher Lawson is a Ph.D. student in management and organizations at Duke. - Politico Magazine
Stephan: Over the past five years we have seen a pernicious and evil trend come to dominate our politics -- dis and mis information deliberately used as a political weapon. Who spreads this evil? This report, based on actual research, offers at least a partial answer.
Trump supporters dressed in QAnon garbs protest the ratification of the 2020 presidential election’s results. Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty
Whether it’s anti-vaccine messaging or falsehoods about the 2020 election, it’s easy to blame conservatives or Republicans as a group for spreading misinformation, as many in the media and academia have done. But this message is oversimplified, and anyone who wants to fight back against the very real scourge of fake news in American politics should look more closely.
In newly published research, we found that it’s not conservatives in general who tend to promote false information, but rather a smaller subset of them who also share two psychological traits: low levels of conscientiousness and an appetite for chaos. Importantly, we found that several other factors we tested for — including support for former President Donald Trump — did not reliably predict an inclination to share misinformation.
Our findings suggest it is misguided to assign blame for misinformation to the political right broadly — indeed, doing so […]
Stephan: Like most of you I expect N95, and KN5 masks have become part of my daily dress. But there is an enormous amount of misinformation about them, can you reuse them, can they be cleaned, so I thought this might be helpful for my readers.
Credit: Sarah Kobos
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently updated its mask recommendations to align with what experts and many other people have long known: N95s and other respirator masks (when they are legitimate and fit properly) are more protective than most cloth face masks are. But these disposable respirator masks cost $1 to $3 apiece, and throwing them out as quickly as you would paper cups can add up, especially if you’re masking your entire family. You might also be concerned about the environmental cost of disposable masks, which are constructed from nonrecyclable materials. Fortunately, for most people and in most situations, you don’t need to chuck your mask after each use, or each day. Here are some answers to common questions about reusing your disposable mask.
How can I safely reuse a mask?
You can re-wear a mask after you have stored it in a paper bag for a few days, according to the CDC and multiple experts we’ve interviewed for our respirator […]
