Sunday, January 30, 2022

And another day of dangling prospects, calling for protests, considering all possibilities, making platform rules public, vanishing child care workers, iguanas falling from trees, marijuana causing cognitive impairment, and Cheslie Kryst and Howard Hesseman passing on comes to a close: 

"I have no faith we will remain a democracy if Republicans win power." — Max Boot

Deaths

US: 907,190 (+1529 over two days)

World: 5,681,655 (+13,545)

Cases

US: 75,578,076 (+306,674 over two days)

World: 375,188,985 (+4,747,566 over two days)

Trump dangles prospect of pardons for Jan. 6 defendants. Former President Donald Trump is dangling the prospect of pardons for supporters who participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot if he returns to the White House. The offer, made at a Texas rally, represents an attempt by Trump to further minimize the attack.

"If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly, we will treat them fairly and if it requires pardons, then we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly." — Donald Trump, January 29, 2022

Trump calls for protests in DC, NYC, Atlanta, and other cities if he's prosecuted for crimes. — (video)

Majority of Americans want Biden to consider 'all possible nominees' for Supreme Court vacancy. A new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds that a plurality of Americans view the Supreme Court as motivated by partisanship, while President Joe Biden's campaign trail vow to select a Black woman to fill a high-court vacancy without reviewing all potential candidates evokes a sharply negative reaction from voters.

Spotify makes public platform rules that cover Covid-19 misinformation. Will it be enough? Spotify said it is adding a content advisory to any podcast episode that includes discussion about Covid-19. The advisory will direct listeners to a Covid-19 hub that will include links to trusted sources, the company said.

Mukilteo School District [WA] votes to remove 'To Kill a Mockingbird' from required reading. The district board signed off Monday of a request from students, parents and others to remove the book from the ninth grade required reading list, but it remains an option for teachers who choose to use it in their instruction…The Washington Education Association said the move gives educators a chance to find more current authors whose books better reflect current community values.

Northern Ireland commemorates 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when British troops opened fire on civil rights protesters. Five decades on, memories are still painful for the relatives of civil rights protesters killed by British troops.

Child care workers are vanishing and it's hurting the entire economy. The workforce reductions -- coupled with ongoing challenges of low pay and spotty benefits for workers -- have economists and policy experts sounding the alarm: If this industry falters further, it could spell trouble for the entire labor market as working parents scramble to find care for their kids.

Brrr! It got so cold in Florida, iguanas fell from trees. As for iguanas, well, that’s another matter. They are an invasive species, well accustomed to the trees of South Florida. When it gets cold, below 40 degrees Fahrenheit about 4 degrees Celsius), they go into a sort of suspended animation mode. And they fall to the ground. But they usually wake up with the sun’s warmth.

Marijuana use may cause cognitive impairment even when not still high. New analysis of previous research finds that many of the learning and memory problems caused by cannabis consumption can linger for weeks.

Former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst dead at 30. New York police said the body, which was found on West 42nd Street, appeared to have fallen from an elevated position and that Kryst's death was most likely the result of suicide.

RIP Howard Hesseman. He was 81. — Thank you so much for all the laughs. 

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.

Friday, January 28, 2022

And another day of staggering impacts, gerrymandering, mail-in voting laws, allowing legislatures to overturn elections, subpoenas, Omicron deaths, and seeing what else the child tax credit did comes to a close:

“Don’t trust the person who has broken faith once.” — William Shakespeare

Deaths

US: 905,661 (+3521)

World: 5,668,110 (+11,353)

Cases

US: 75,271,402 (+576,069)

World: 370,441,419 (+3,594,832)

We uncovered the impact of GOP voting restrictions in one key state. It's staggering. “States are not engaging in trying to suppress voters whatsoever,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared last year. Facts on the ground in Georgia tell a different story. A new data analysis by Mother Jones shows that the number of voters disenfranchised by rejected mail ballot applications skyrocketed after the GOP-controlled legislature passed sweeping new restrictions on mail voting last year. The law enacted in March 2021 shortened the time people have to request and return mail ballots, prohibited election officials from sending such applications to all voters, added new ID requirements, and dramatically curtailed the use of ballot drop boxes, among other changes. During municipal elections in November, Georgia voters were 45 times more likely to have their mail ballot applications rejected—and ultimately not vote as a result—than in 2020. If that same rejection rate were extrapolated to the 2020 race, more than 38,000 votes would not have been cast in a presidential contest decided by just over 11,000 votes. In November 2021, Georgians who successfully obtained mail ballots were also twice as likely to have those ballots rejected once they were submitted compared to the previous year. If that were the case in 2020, about 31,000 fewer votes would have been cast in the presidential election. This data from a key swing state suggests that voter disenfranchisement caused by GOP-backed voting restrictions could significantly increase in 2022 and 2024. People who vote in local elections are usually highly informed about how the voting process works and should be the least likely to have their ballots rejected, so the true impact of the GOP’s cutbacks to voting access will likely be felt even more in the fall, when a larger and less experienced electorate casts ballots.

How gerrymandering makes the US House intensely partisan. "Here in Austin, what the Republicans did was pack as many Democrats into as few districts as possible in order to shore up as many other Republican districts as they could to cement their majority in the Texas congressional delegation for years to come," Texas state House Democratic Caucus Chair Chris Turner said while walking down an Austin street. Regardless of the approach, gerrymandering is all about elected officials trying to keep their power by manipulating the makeup of the population that they represent, thereby making it easier for their party to win. The consequences are severe. Lawmakers in both parties speaking candidly admit that gerrymandering House districts is one of the big reasons that the chamber has become more partisan over the last several decades.

Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law unconstitutional, appeals court finds. In an opinion from Judge Mary Leavitt Friday morning, Commonwealth Court found that the law, which allows all Pennsylvanians to vote by mail without an excuse, was unconstitutional, agreeing with 14 House Republican lawmakers who filed suit against the law in September.

Arizona bill would allow legislature to overturn election results. An arch conservative member of Arizona’s state House of Representatives has proposed a mammoth overhaul of the state’s voting procedures that would allow legislators to overturn the results of a primary or general election after months of unfounded allegations and partisan audits. The bill, introduced by state Rep. John Fillmore (R), would substantially change the way Arizonans vote by eliminating most early and absentee voting and requiring people to vote in their home precincts, rather than at vote centers set up around the state. Most dramatically, Fillmore’s bill would require the legislature to hold a special session after an election to review election processes and results, and to “accept or reject the election results.” — Republicans know they can’t win without cheating.

Jan. 6 committee subpoenas fake Trump electors in 7 states. The House committee investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection subpoenaed more than a dozen individuals Friday who it says falsely tried to declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 election in seven swing states.

“A major music service picking Joe Rogan over Neil Young is everything Neil Young has been warning us about for fifty years.” — Seth Masket

Omicron drives US deaths higher than in fall’s delta wave. Omicron, the highly contagious coronavirus variant sweeping across the country, is driving the daily American death toll higher than during last fall’s delta wave, with deaths likely to keep rising for days or even weeks.

Sweden decides against recommending COVID vaccines for kids aged 5-11. "With the knowledge we have today, with a low risk for serious disease for kids, we don't see any clear benefit with vaccinating them," Health Agency official Britta Bjorkholm told a news conference.

US appeals court overturns convictions of former bankers prosecuted for rigging interest rates. It means that what has been prosecuted as interest rate rigging in the UK is not regarded as a crime in the US. The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that it was not against the rules to seek to influence the estimates a bank submits of the cost of borrowing cash. That directly contradicts a key British appeal court ruling that was used to prosecute 24 traders, nine of whom were jailed between 2015 and 2019.

The expanded child tax credit briefly slashed child poverty. Here's what else it did. For six months, the United States experimented with an idea that's new here but is already a backstitch in the social fabric of many wealthy nations: a monthly cash payment to help families cover the costs of raising children. Less than a year in, though, this U.S. experiment, known as the expanded child tax credit, has already been unwound by a deadlocked Congress. Still, it's worth asking: What did it accomplish? Here's what the data tells us.

• The benefit reached more than 61 million children in December

• The payments cut monthly child poverty by roughly 30%

• The expansion gave more help to millions of kids who needed it most

• Families spent the extra cash on basic needs

• The monthly payments slashed food insufficiency by a quarter

• There's no evidence the money drove caregivers to quit working

• The expanded credit also cost a lot more taxpayer money

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.

Thursday, January 27, 2022

And another day of announcements, ‘religious objections,’ neurological symptoms, FL curtailing school lessons on sex and gender, banning books, the dangers of gas stoves, and pardoning women executed for witchcraft comes to a close:

"The voter suppression emergency has turned into a voter suppression apocalypse." — Ari Berman

Deaths

US: 902,140 (+7260 over two days)

World: 5,656,757 (+22,641 over two days)

Cases

US: 74,695,333 (+1,246,148 over two days)

World: 366,846,587 (+7,607,893 over two days)

Biden announces Breyer's retirement, pledges to nominate Black woman to Supreme Court by end of February. "The person I will nominate will be someone of extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity, and that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court," Biden said. "I made that commitment during the campaign for president, and I will keep that commitment."

Mississippi bill would ban employers from requiring employees with "sincerely held religious objection" to get vaccinated. Mississippi's Republican-controlled state House on Thursday passed a bill that would bar public and private employers from requiring workers with a “sincerely held religious objection” to get vaccinated against COVID-19. The proposed bill, HB 1509, would also prohibit a number of government entities including state agencies, public colleges and city and county governments from withholding services or denying employment to unvaccinated people.

Man loses sight, other functions after contracting COVID-19. Dr. Frey says her brother is not the only one who has experienced disabling neurological symptoms from the virus. People can be healthy before the virus then after contracting it, they could possibly lose their vision, doctors say.

Florida GOP aims to curtail school lessons on sex, gender. Florida Republicans want to forbid discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity in schools with a bill that activists say endangers children and echoes a previous wave of laws that sought to squelch LGBTQ conversations in the classroom.

Melania Trump said 'no' when given chance to call for peace on January 6, sources say. The sources told CNN that Trump's aide Stephanie Grisham sent her a text that said, "Do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness and violence?" to which Trump replied with one word: "No."

Support your children if they are gay, pope tells parents. Conservatives in the 1.3 billion-member Church have said the pope - who has sent notes of appreciation to priests and nuns who minister to gay Catholics - is giving mixed signals on homosexuality, confusing some of the faithful.

Holocaust novel ‘Maus’ banned in Tennessee school district. A Tennessee school district has voted to ban a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust due to “inappropriate language” and an illustration of a nude woman, according to minutes from a board meeting.

Study: Gas stoves worse for climate than previously thought. Gas stoves are contributing more to global warming than previously thought because of constant tiny methane leaks while they’re off, a new study found. The same study that tested emissions around stoves in homes raised new concerns about indoor air quality and health because of levels of nitrogen oxides measured.

Catalonia pardons women executed for witchcraft. The Catalan regional parliament has formally pardoned hundreds of women executed for witchcraft between the 15th and 18th centuries. MPs passed a resolution by a large majority to rehabilitate the memory of more than 700 women who were tortured and put to death. Spanish historians have discovered that Catalonia was one of the first regions in Europe to carry out witch hunts. It was also considered one of the worst areas for executions.

Taking daily vitamin D and fish oil supplements may help protect older adults from developing autoimmune disorders, a new study found.

How to avert an asteroid apocalypse. NASA’s effort to dodge giant space rocks is going surprisingly well. “You can’t stop volcanoes erupting, or an earthquake happening, or hurricanes,” Andrews says. “But an asteroid? If you just flick it out of the way of the Earth, the threat is gone.” This may sound like science fiction, but scientists are already working on it. It’s arguably going a lot better than depicted in the film Don’t Look Up in which two astronomers struggle to convince the world that a deadly comet is coming. The US government is spending time and money to avert a future asteroid disaster.

Astronomers discover mysterious pulsing object that may be new class of star. Astronomers have discovered a mysterious object emitting a radio wave beam that pulsed every 20 minutes. The team behind the discovery believe the object could be a new class of slowly rotating neutron star with an ultra-powerful magnetic field. The repeating signals were detected during the first three months of 2018, but then disappeared, suggesting they were linked to a dramatic, one-off event, such as a starquake.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

And another day of investigations, the KS redistricting map, Pelosi running again, the faltering US booster drive, a ‘stealth’ version of omicron, the ‘lotus birth’ trend, hymen repair and virginity testing banned in UK, Neil Young, and the benefits of ten minutes of daily exercise comes to a close:

“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.” — George Carlin

Deaths

US: 894,880 (+3285)

World: 5,634,116 (+11,764)

Cases

US: 73,449,185 (+490,495)

World: 359,238,694 (+4,278,283)

Following the 2020 election, groups of Republicans in 7 states won by Joe Biden signed documents falsely saying Donald Trump was or may be the rightful recipient of their state's Electoral College votes. Now, prosecutors are investigating:

GOP map ties ‘woke’ Kansas enclave to Trump-loving areas. The Republicans who control the Kansas Legislature are close to passing a congressional redistricting plan that marries an eastern Kansas community proud of its “woke” politics to Trump-loving small towns and farms five hours west by car on the expansive and stark plains. -- Look at the map. Such total bullshit.

Pelosi says she will run for reelection in 2022. Pelosi, who was first elected to the House in a 1987 special election, said the U.S. democracy is “at risk,” which makes the upcoming election “crucial.”

COVID-19 vaccine booster drive is faltering in the US. The COVID-19 booster drive in the U.S. is losing steam, worrying health experts who have pleaded with Americans to get an extra shot to shore up their protection against the highly contagious omicron variant.

What’s known about ‘stealth’ version of omicron? Scientists and health officials around the world are keeping their eyes on a descendant of the omicron variant that has been found in at least 40 countries, including the United States. This version of the coronavirus, which scientists call BA.2, is widely considered stealthier than the original version of omicron because particular genetic traits make it somewhat harder to detect. Some scientists worry it could also be more contagious.

Elton John postpones Texas concerts after getting COVID-19. Elton John has contracted COVID-19 and is postponing two farewell concert dates in Dallas. John, who is vaccinated and boosted, “is experiencing only mild symptoms” and is looking forward to returning to the stage “shortly," according to a statement.

New birth trends, including ‘lotus births’ and placenta consumption, come with risks, report says. Few or no clinical studies have been done on some of the trends the report covered, such as so-called lotus births, which entail leaving the umbilical cord and placenta attached to an infant until the cord detaches naturally, as opposed to cutting it when a baby is born. But the document referred to incidents in which these untraditional moves resulted in medical emergencies. Lotus births, it found, had no clear benefit and in rare cases resulted in sepsis, an extreme response to an infection, in newborns.

Hymen repair surgery and virginity testing to be banned in UK. The government is planning on banning a cosmetic surgery called hymenoplasty across the UK. It attempts to recreate a woman's hymen, which in some cultures is linked to virginity, and has been described as a form of honour-based abuse. The procedure will be criminalised, as will virginity testing.

Study reveals impact 10 minutes of exercise can have on adults over 40. An increase of 20 or 30 minutes could lead to even more lives saved, the study noted.

Thailand becomes the first country in Asia to approve the de facto decriminalization of marijuana, though authorities have left a grey area around its recreational use.

Neil Young Demands Spotify Remove His Music Over ‘False Information About Vaccines’. “With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE, which is hosted exclusively on Spotify, is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence,” the letter reads. “Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy.”

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.

Monday, January 24, 2022

And another day of being on heightened alert, grand juries, emails revealing plots, Omicron on plastic, free N95 masks, SCOTUS and affirmative action, the school shooting generation, stampedes, Clapton, marijuana, and Webb reaches its final destination comes to a close:

“Beware of the politics of neutrality.” — Habiba Ibrahim

Deaths

US: 891,595 (+2428)

World: 5,622,352 (+7824)

Cases

US: 72,958,690 (+1,032,759)

World: 354,960,411 (+2,914,226)

US orders 8,500 troops on heightened alert amid Russia worry. The Pentagon ordered 8,500 troops on higher alert Monday to potentially deploy to Europe as part of a NATO “response force” amid growing concern that Russia could soon make a military move on Ukraine. President Joe Biden consulted with key European leaders, underscoring U.S. solidarity with allies there.

DA for Atlanta area granted special grand jury to probe Trump's election interference. Though the special grand jury does not have the authority to issue an indictment, the move will allow Willis to seat a panel entirely focused on gathering evidence in the Trump investigation. She said she needed such a grand jury in order to issue subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify and to gather additional evidence -- a step toward pursuing possible criminal charges.

New MAGA Emails Reveal Plot to Hand Arizona to Trump. Exclusive emails obtained by Rolling Stone expose an attempt to recertify the state as a victory for Donald Trump — and reveal top Trumpworld figures were complicit. The emails show how a group of fringe election sleuths pressed state legislators on a plan to disrupt the 2020 election certification and potentially change the vote count in a battleground state that helped deliver Joe Biden the presidency. The emails also reveal that several Trump advisers, including campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis and legal adviser Bernie Kerik, were included in the discussion…But while the Trump campaign knew about this plotting, it was the obscure investigators and researchers, the emails show, who made the case directly to Arizona legislators about how to find supposed fraud and potentially use that evidence to challenge the outcome. Those outside investigators remain active in the growing movement to find fraud in the 2020 election. What’s more, one state lawmaker included on the emails, Mark Finchem, is now running for secretary of state in Arizona. If Finchem wins, he would oversee Arizona’s elections.

Democrats make surprising inroads in redistricting fight. Democrats braced for disaster when state legislatures began redrawing congressional maps, fearing that Republican dominance of statehouses would tilt power away from them for the next decade. But as the redistricting process reaches its final stages, that anxiety is beginning to ease.

“Great news, but it’s sad that just not being able to blatantly rig our electoral system is framed by the media as some surprise win for Democrats.” — Politics Girl

Omicron survives longer on plastic, skin than prior variants; nose swabbing found best for rapid tests. On plastic surfaces, average survival times of the original strain and the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants were 56 hours, 191.3 hours, 156.6 hours, 59.3 hours, and 114.0 hours, respectively. That compared to 193.5 hours for Omicron, the researchers reported on bioRxiv ahead of peer review. On skin samples from cadavers, average virus survival times were 8.6 hours for the original version, 19.6 hours for Alpha, 19.1 hours for Beta, 11.0 hours Gamma, 16.8 hours for Delta and 21.1 hours for Omicron. -- When’s the government going to start passing out bubble suits to everyone?

US pharmacies are rolling out free N95 masks as free Covid-19 tests begin to arrive in the mail. The Biden administration seeks to ramp up access to high-quality masks amid the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant. Meanwhile, the free tests started shipping out last week, and are part of the administration's effort to increase access to testing around the United States.

US Supreme Court to hear challenges to affirmative action in college admissions cases. The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear challenges to the admissions process at Harvard and University of North Carolina, presenting the most serious threat in decades to the use of affirmative action by the nation's public and private colleges and universities. Despite similar challenges, the court has repeatedly upheld affirmative action in the past. But two liberal justices who were key to those decisions are gone — Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Their replacements, Trump appointees Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett are conservative and considered less likely to find the practice constitutional.

Pro-Trump death threats prompt bills in 3 states to protect election workers. In Vermont, lawmakers are considering bills to make it easier to prosecute people who threaten election officials. In Maine, proposed legislation would stiffen penalties for such intimidation. In Washington, state senators voted this month to make threatening election workers a felony. The measures follow a Reuters series of investigative reports documenting a nationwide wave of threats and harassment against election administrators by Donald Trump supporters who embrace the former president’s false voting-fraud claims. Sponsors and supporters of the legislation in all three states cited Reuters reporting as an impetus for proposing tougher enforcement.

The school shooting generation grows up. The kids who lived through the start of the school shooting era have grown up. Most of them came of age in the late ’90s and the 2000s, when mass shooters started showing up in schools in Pearl, Mississippi; West Paducah, Kentucky; and Springfield, Oregon (though some, like Leam, survived them even earlier). Now adults in their 30s and 40s, many with children of their own, they are navigating a world in which what happened to them was not an anomaly but the beginning of a recurrent feature of American life.

Graduation rates dip across US as pandemic stalls progress. High school graduation rates dipped in at least 20 states after the first full school year disrupted by the pandemic, suggesting the coronavirus may have ended nearly two decades of nationwide progress toward getting more students diplomas.

At least eight people were killed and 50 people injured after a stampede during an Africa Cup of Nations match in the Cameroonian capital Monday, state broadcaster Cameroon Radio Television reported.

Vaccine Skeptic Eric Clapton Claims ‘Subliminal’ Messages Are Convincing People to Fall In Line. Clapton, who has railed against COVID-19 measures, discussed a discredited theory that people are receiving pro-vaccination messages subliminally in videos. — Eric Clapton is way off in the deep end.

Using marijuana may affect your ability to think and plan, study says. Studies have long shown that getting high can harm cognitive function. Now, a new review of research, published Thursday in the journal Addiction, finds that impact may last well beyond the initial high, especially for adolescents.

The world's biggest and most powerful space telescope has reached its final destination 1 million miles away from Earth. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope fired its rocket thrusters Monday, putting the $10 billion observatory into orbit around the sun.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.

Sunday, January 23, 2022

And another day of war fears, states acting on abortion, Americans and who they trust, a ‘do not hire’ teacher’s list in TX, Christian nationalism, same-gender pay gaps, carjackings, and giving two thumbs up with one hand comes to a close:

"Post-truth is pre-fascism." — Prof. Timothy Snyder

“They might as well call the ‘March for Life’ what it really is, ‘March for forced Birth’. They don't give a fuck what happens after birth. Pro-Life my ass!” — Amy Lynn

Deaths

US: 889,167 (+1554 over two day)

World: 5,614,528 (+10,962 over two days)

Cases

US: 71,925,931 (+531,352 over two days)

World: 352,046,185 (+5,078,070 over two days)

US draws down Ukraine embassy presence as war fears mount. The U.S. State Department has ordered the families of all American personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine to leave the country amid heightened fears of a Russian invasion.

Russia toughens its posture amid Ukraine tensions. With tens of thousands of Russian troops positioned near Ukraine, the Kremlin has kept the U.S. and its allies guessing about its next moves in the worst security crisis to emerge between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.

Biden presented with options to bolster troop levels in Europe as Russian troops mass on Ukraine's borders. One option under consideration is moving between 1,000 to 5,000 troops, according to a senior defense official, and is intended both to shore up Eastern European and Baltic allies and to have them available to help get American citizens out, if necessary.

Dozens of Chinese warplanes fly near Taiwan after US-Japan show of naval might. The flights by the People's Liberation Army aircraft came a day after the United States and Japanese navies put on a massive show of force in the Philippine Sea, putting together a flotilla that included two US Navy aircraft carriers, two US amphibious assault ships and a Japanese helicopter destroyer, essentially a small aircraft carrier.

With Roe in doubt, states act on abortion limits, expansions. The activity in state legislatures was anticipated after the U.S. Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, signaled it was ready to make seismic changes to the nationwide right to abortion that has stood for nearly half a century. If the court overturns Roe v. Wade entirely, the decision on whether to keep abortion legal would fall to the states. More than 20 states already have laws on the books to ban or dramatically restrict abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned. As legislative sessions begin, several are considering new bans. — Remember, banning abortions will not stop abortions. It’ll stop safe abortions. 

Jan. 6 Committee Confirms it’s Already Spoken to Former AG Barr About Trump’s Plan to Seize Voting Machines. “We’ve had conversations with the former attorney general already,” Thompson told Margaret Brennan, the show’s host. “We’ve talked with Department of Defense individuals. We are concerned that our military was part of this big lie on promoting that the election was false. So if you are using the military to potentially seize voting machines, even though it’s a discussion, the public needs to know.”

Newt Gingrich said this morning that people serving on the J6 Committee are going to go to jail if Republicans take over Congress after the next election. — They are telling us who they are and what they plan to do. We should listen. 

“A former Speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent January 6 attack on our Capitol and our Constitution. This is what it looks like when the rule of law unravels.” — Rep. Liz Cheney

"That's just bizarre. I think Newt has really lost it. You know, it leaves me speechless. I mean, unless he is assuming that the government does get overthrown and there's no system of justice." — Rep. Zoe Lofgren responding to Gingrich comments

“Here's the deal: Of course it sounds absurd to hear these right-wing shitheels say that a GOP Congress will arrest 1/6 committee members or Biden. But they're gonna do it if they get power. They will shred every fucking thing. Smearing shit in the Capitol will seem quaint.” — The Rude Pundit

On Covid, Americans can be stingy with their trust. The latest poll numbers paint a new picture about whom Americans trust about Covid-19. And on the whole, it's not the CDC. Aside from partisanship, however, those numbers paint a remarkable picture. On the whole, the public is more likely to trust the non-experts that employ them and those who teach their children than they are to trust the government agency that is studying the virus. — We are doomed. 

Study finds vaccination doesn't reduce fertility for women, but men catching COVID might. Getting vaccinated against COVID-19 does not reduce the chances of successfully becoming pregnant for couples who are trying to conceive, suggests data from a study by researchers at Boston University. However, men in the study who tested positive for the virus appeared to have at least "a short-term decline in fertility."

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott introduces 'Parental Bill of Rights' targeting state education system. The governor proposed a bill that would allow parents to decide if their children had to repeat failed courses and potentially place teachers on a 'do not hire' list for providing students with materials deemed 'obscene' by the state. — Fascism has already arrived in Texas.

Christian nationalism is still thriving — and is a force for returning Trump to power. Christian nationalists believe, in general, that America is Christian, that the government should keep it that way, and that Trump was —and is— their best hope to accomplish that. — Christian nationalists abuse religion in their quest for absolute power. Stand against them. 

Arizona Democratic Party board votes to censure Sinema after pro-filibuster vote. The Arizona Democratic Party executive board voted Saturday to censure Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a rare rebuke from her own party that could complicate her political future. "While we take no pleasure in this announcement, the ADP Executive Board has decided to formally censure Senator Sinema as a result of her failure to do whatever it takes to ensure the health of our democracy," Arizona Democratic Party Chair Raquel Terán said in a statement.

Women in same-gender relationships face larger pay gap than men. LGBTQ+ women are subject to at least two wage gaps: one based on their sexual orientation and one based on their gender. On average, the combined income of married men in same-gender relationships is 31 percent higher than that of married women in same-gender relationships and 27 percent higher than the income of married opposite-gender couples, according to the report. Unmarried men in same-gender partnerships also take home more pay than women in same-gender relationships or opposite-gender couples.

Carjackings have risen dramatically over the past two years in some of America's biggest cities. Experts warn the pandemic's impact on minors is part of the reason why. "The majority of it is young joyriders. They're not keeping the cars. They're jacking cars to commit another crime, typically more serious robberies or shootings, or joyriding around for the sake of social media purpose and street cred," said Christopher Herrmann, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "It's a disturbing trend."

How to give two thumbs up with one hand: — It’s a video showing new science. It’s pretty cool. 

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.