Stephan: The stress that is tearing America apart is causing all kinds of damage to young people. The November election is either going to foster the needed healing, or it will further exacerbate this damage which will, in turn, change the next generation of American culture profoundly. We need to recognize this and develop a universal birthright single-payer healthcare system based on fostering wellbeing. Because if we don't we are going to go through an extended period of civil violence.
The U.S. Surgeon General said he is gravely concerned about the “unprecedented” obstacles facing young people — from climate change and racism, to the “culture of comparison” embraced by social media.
“We think of high school as a time where your life is opening up for you, but nearly half of high school kids are feeling despondent about themselves and about the future,” noted Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, speaking at a Washington Postlive event on Wednesday.
According to a nationwide survey, 44% of high school students said they feel “persistently sad or hopeless.” Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, suicide rates jumped 57% among kids and young adults ages 10 to 24, and have only worsened in some states since.
On top of these alarming statistics, there are other concerns, Murthy said. For example, it takes, on average, 11 years for a child to receive treatment after developing symptoms of a mental health problem
Asked whether it’s possible that “social media contagion” has led susceptible children to mistakenly believe […]
Stephan: The MAGAt assault on public education is doing, and will continue to do, terrible damage on young people. It is straight out of North Korea, indoctrination instead of education as part of a strategy focused on power, race supremacy, male dominance. and christofascist economics. Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump have much in common.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 24, 2022 in Orlando, Florida. Credit: Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post / Getty
The GOP’s nationwide war on public education—specifically the teaching of race, U.S. history, and LGBTQ+ identities—has led to a 250% spike in state-level “educational gag order” bills this year, according to a report published Wednesday by the free expression group PEN America.
“This year’s bills have been strikingly more punitive.”
Titled America’s Censored Classrooms, the new report finds that lawmakers in 36 different U.S. states have introduced 137 gag order measures in 2022, up from 54 such bills last year. With the exception of a single Democratic bill in Arizona, all of the gag order proposals unveiled this year have been led by Republican legislators.
The analysis defines educational gag orders as “state legislative efforts to restrict teaching about topics such as race, gender, American history, and LGBTQ+ identities in K–12 and higher education.”
“Our report documents in alarming detail the threats to how young people learn and are taught in American schools,” said PEN America CEO […]
Stephan: Florida, like Texas, is becoming an authoritarian failed state, if social outcome data is your calibration. Abbott and DeSantis are both focused on power, and helping the individuals and corporations who bought them their position. They aren't focused on wellbeing at all. And the only thing that is going to stop this, is the voters of Florida. And then only if they vote all Democratic. The Democrats have many faults, but they do support democracy and, as the recent Congressional decisions have shown, they do seek to foster wellbeing. Your vote is a decision that is not so much political as a matter of survival. This is what the Republican Party has on offer.
A Republican candidate for the House from St. Augustine is banned from Twitter after advocating violence against the federal government. HD 20s Luis Miguel is still on Instagram though.
Republican Luis Miguel, running against incumbent Rep. Bobby Payne of Palatka in the redrawn House District 20, was suspended from Twitterafter a tweet advocating that Floridians should be able to shoot federal agents on sight.
“Under my plan, all Floridians will be able to shoot FBI, IRS, ATF, and all other federal troops on sight,” Miguel tweeted. “Let freedom ring.”
Miguel told Florida Politics Friday the suspension, which is “permanent” per a message he got on his Twitter app, “doesn’t affect (him) at all.” He stands by the proposal, which he says is justified because the IRS has been “weaponized by dissident forces.”
Miguel is still active on Instagram, where the post advocating shooting federal agents is still displayed, amid a host of other hateful graphics mourning the loss of confederate statues (“Southern memories,” he called them), advocating “complete enforcement” of the Stop Woke Act, and other such shout-outs to the populist right.
Stephan: How interesting that a Baptist school would expel a child for being reared by a same-sex couple, as if the child had any choice in that matter, while the Baptist movement itself is under federal investigation for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cases of clergy and staff sexual abuse of boys and girls and women. Do you think it is possible to get any more sexually screwed-up than this Protestant denomination?
A Louisiana five-year-old was allegedly forced out of her kindergarten class at a religious school because her parents are a same-sex couple.
Emily and Jennie Parker said they were informed by school officials at the Bible Baptist Academy in DeQuincy, Louisiana, during a meeting with the school’s director and a pastor that their same-sex relationship did not follow the teachings of the school and that they would need to find a new school for their daughter, Zoey.
“We got called into the principal’s office for a meeting, they informed us that Zoey wouldn’t be able to go to school there anymore because of our lifestyle choices,” said Jennifer Parker, 31, to KPLC, a local news affiliate.
Emily Parker, 28, said that the meeting took place only two days before the school year started. During the conference, she and her wife also were told that, as a religious-based school, the school would teach students that marriage was between a man and a woman.
The Parkers recently adopted Zoey, who is Jennie’s niece, after her father died in a workplace accident in […]
Josh Dawsey and Isaac Arnsdorf, Reporters - MSN / The Washington Post
Stephan: It isn't fashionable to say this, just as it probably wasn't polite or fashionable in 1930 to say that a lot of the German people supported Hitler and Nazism, but the truth is something like a third of Americans are racist christofascist nationalists. They don't like democracy, and they support and will support, Donald Trump no matter what he does. He knows this and is making millions of dollars even now from this community.
Trump rakes in millions off FBI search at Mar-a-Lago Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty
Contributions to Trump’s political action committee topped $1 million on at least two days after the Aug. 8 search of his Palm Beach, Fla., estate, according to two people familiar with the figures. The daily hauls jumped from a level of $200,000 to $300,000 that had been typical in recent months, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic information.
The donations stayed unusually high for several more days and are still above average, both of these people said, though they have leveled off in recent days. There are more contributors than usual, these people said, and the average donation has climbed.
The influx comes at a crucial time for Trump as he considers an early announcement for a 2024 presidential campaign and has seen dwindling returns on his online fundraising solicitations earlier this year. The former president’s PAC brought in $36 million in the first half of the year, dropping below $50 million […]
