Below is a view of DC on a recent evening.
Marion Barry was not my favorite elected official, but I did vote for him the first time he ran.
GMA, Turkey earthquake: 2 men rescued from rubble 261 hours
later, official says One reportedly kissed the hand of
a rescuer.
Telegraph, How Turkish man pulled from rubble after 11 days
discovers his newborn baby survived
Animals seem able to anticipate earthquakes or at least their precursors by moving to safer places.
Back here at home, at age 89, Diane Feinstein is now the oldest currently serving senator. She will be 91 by the time her term ends in 2025, so she still has 2 more years to go and hopefully will make it to the end. At least now she has announced her pending retirement, so others can gear up to run for her seat. Age is more than just a number, as I am finding out myself.
Though I'd probably never vote for her, it’s good to see a woman like Nikki Haley throwing
her hat into the ring.
Unfortunately, the full funding request to return Peace Corps back to normal operations was not approved by the Senate in the waning hours of 2022, so the corps will continue for now by sending fewer mostly already experienced English or Spanish-speaking volunteers to selected countries for specific projects. Peace Corps magazine, Worldview, had photo of an indigenous girl in Panama next to her mother.
Inflation has been surging worldwide in an ever-rising spiral. Perhaps only a recession can tame it.
Every day that he remains in Congress, George Santos earns a day’s pay, so why not try to hang on as long as possible?
On a report on Yahoo News, I was surprised and pleased to see this notice of a bilingual news report: Nota de la sala de redacción: Estamos ofreciendo esta historia en inglés y español.
Wash. Post, Fox News feared losing viewers by airing truth about election, documents show
So, they knew from the start that Trump had lost.
Is Donald Trump now reaching a new low by calling Ron DeSantis a “pedophile”? DeSantis has retorted that he won’t waste his time attacking other Republicans. Just for good measure, Trump also bashed Rihanna’s half-time Super Bowl performance.
On Valentine’s Day, hoping for good news on a day heralding love, I turned on the radio only to hear about another mass shooting, this time in Michigan. Such shootings have become an epidemic
BBC News, Gun violence in US and what the
statistics tell us
Gun deaths and injuries have been rising, many
times greater her than the toll in other English-speaking countries. Even in neighboring
Canada, gun violence is less frequent. Are we helpless to do anything about
this carnage? A majority of Americans actually support stricter gun laws.
The “right to bear arms” needs urgently to be reinterpreted to actually protect not threaten the lives and safety of Americans. What’s most important? Your right to possess firearms or the right of the rest of us to live without fear of being shot? Mass murders are certainly not what our forefathers intended. To save lives, it would be worth compensating gun manufacturers to reduce their output. Despite the recent murder-suicide at the resort in W Va. where my son works, firearms are still sold openly in that town.
Wash. Post, Suspect
killed former partner, five others in Mississippi shootings, sheriff says
It’s happening every few days.
[Sometimes Post headline come out as intended, sometimes not.]
American women are less likely than men to be either perpetrators or victims of homicide, but when they are murdered, their male partners are much more likely than strangers to have killed them. That is, women in the U.S. are predominantly killed by men they know, by current or former intimate partners or family members, as happened to the former female partner of the man who just fatally shot 6 people in Mississippi. Then he took out 5 more people for good measure. Black and indigenous women are particularly at risk. And men’s violence against women is a leading cause of the premature death for women globally, not only in the US. It’s hard to argue against the death penalty for such wanton killers.
On the other hand, human females, also primate females and those of other warm-blooded animals, are much more likely than males to care for the young. Of course, only female mammals can nurse the young. As with aggression, nurturing behavior by human males can also be influenced by culture. Men who care for young children actually show decreased levels of testosterone. Non-human males usually don’t take care of the young, though male birds may sit on eggs and bring food to hatchlings.
Why am I even mentioning all this here? First to acknowledge that human behavior is influenced by both biology and culture, but also that not all behavioral differences between men and women can be eradicated by culture. Men everywhere engage in much more violent crime than women. This understanding of some innate gender differences also supports cultural encouragement of childrearing pairings between biological males and females, with different roles assumed by the genders, as indeed, as has occurred in most human pairings throughout history. Advocates of traditional marriage are actually supported by biology.
GMA, Moms react to Massachusetts mother charged with killing her 3 kids: 'It scared a lot of us'
While the Polish mother just mentioned may be overjoyed to
have now birthed 12 children, the post-partum period can also be distressing
for some new mothers, perhaps because of hormonal and metabolic changes. After
I gave birth to my daughter Stephanie, caring for her and my other 2 children
left me exhausted. I even imagined jumping out my 2nd-floor bedroom
window with the baby in my arms. I did recover after a kind neighbor offered to take
my 2 older children for 24 hours. allowing me to get some good quality sleep. Family,
friends, and neighbors do need to look out for and offer help to new mothers
for at least a month after a birth.
However, Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother who strangled her 3 children
was not suffering from the usual post-partum depression, as her youngest child
was already 8 months old. She is now paralyzed from the waist down after jumping out a window after
murdering them.
Crisis pregnancy centers, also known as pregnancy resource centers, encourage women to keep their babies or to consider adoption. They offer ultrasounds, counseling, and other services and items, such as diapers, baby clothes, car seats, and cribs, all without cost. Of course, to raise a child to adulthood incurs expenses and a commitment extending well beyond infancy. Parent-child is a lifelong relationship.
AP, War for control of Haiti's capital targets women's
bodies
In Haiti, women gang-raped by groups of strange men may then give birth to babies whose fathers are unknown. I also met women in Honduras with children alleged to have resulted from rape being raised by single mothers there, not treated any differently than other children in the community. A former fellow Peace Corps volunteer married one of those Honduran women and brought her and her young son, allegedly fathered by a rapist, to the US. He adopted the son, who stayed living with him when he and his wife later divorced. That son still lives with his adoptive father and is now a US college student. The mother later married another American and had another child. While most Americans, even pro-lifers, would support an abortion after a rape, life can still go on these days for both mother and child in situations and in countries where abortions are unavailable.
Whoever thought the time might come to encourage, not discourage, more births in our country and elsewhere? As said before, the population of the whole world or even a nation’s total population is not the only concern; rather, age distribution is also crucial. Now, with many Asian and European countries becoming top-heavy with elders, more incentives are being offered to boost births.
It may also be time now to downplay “abortion rights,” and to encourage more births in our own country. Births here are not reaching replacement level, which would require an average of 2.1 births per woman. In 2020, the US birthrate dropped precipitously, recovering somewhat since, now increasing to about 1.78, an improvement, but still not at full replacement. Many American women are marrying later, when their fertility may be waning and without many years left to produce offspring.
Whenever NPR now mentions “anti-abortion rights activists,” I mentally translate that into “pro-life activists.” “Rights, Freedom, Justice” says a Planned Parenthood ad solicitating donations. That’s not a plea for freedom or justice for someone just coming into being, though many don’t consider a still developing human to actually be worthy of existence and protection. Yet, when he or she finally emerges with the very first breath, then no effort is spared to protect that young life “Prevent death” say signs being carried by abortion supporters—whose death?
Before abortion was a legal option, though some may have sought abortions by risky means, most unhappily pregnant women simply went on to give birth and adjusted to their situation. Often their concern was about being shamed for unmarried sex and for an out-of-wedlock birth, but such births are much more accepted now.
Back in the day, my own great-grandmother living on farm in Alberta, Canada, probably was not thrilled when she became pregnant with her 12th child, who then became my own grandmother. But today’s families are much smaller and many women consider abortion their “right.” Yet, the current backlash against abortion in some US states may also reflect a societal need to maintain overall population, now falling below replacement in our own country, especially in some rural areas where anti-abortion sentiment is highest.
China, with an already shrinking population
due to the aftereffects of its ill-conceived one-child policy, then, more recently,
after the abrupt lifting of Covid restrictions without adequate vaccination,
has now, unofficially, seen more than a million deaths in only the short period
since those restrictions were lifted.
CBS News, Is Japan "going to sink, right along with its birth rate"? Sociologist Masahiro Yamada at the Chuo University is skeptical Japan will escape its existential crisis. ..."Japan is going to sink, right along with its birthrate," Yamada warned. "And South Korea and China will be right behind us."
Moving on now.
Reuters, Canada's Trudeau to deploy Navy vessels to Haiti for surveillance, presence
AP, Nicaragua's vote to strip opponents of citizenship
Around my neighborhood, pets still keep getting lost and found.
Many items are offered for sale on our neighborhood website, including “repurposed” baby and children’s clothes. I suspect few items get their asking prices and some may even be hard to off-load for free.
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