MISOGYNIST POLISH SAUSAGE
Polish leader blames low birthrate on women using alcohol

IT'S MEN WHO GET DRUNK AND LIMP

Mon, November 7, 2022

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland's ruling party leader has triggered anger in the country and an explosion of jokes by claiming that the country's low birthrate is partly caused by overconsumption of alcohol by young women.

Opposition politicians and many other critics accused Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a 73-year-old lifelong bachelor, of being out of touch. They also argue that Kaczynski, the most powerful politician in Poland since 2015, is himself partly responsible for the the low birthrate in the central European nation of 38 million people.

In particular, critics point to restrictions on abortion that have discouraged some women from seeking to get pregnant. Others note the difficulty young people have in raising families due to rising costs in a country where inflation is now nearly 18%.

Kaczynski, leader of the populist ruling party, Law and Justice, made his remark on the weekend as he travels around the country seeking to rally support for his party ahead of next year’s parliamentary election.

Kaczynski explained to his audience Saturday that he didn't favor “very early motherhood” because a woman must first mature to become a mother. But, he went on, if women abuse alcohol up to the age of 25, then “it's not a good prognosis in these matters."

The remark triggered some predictable jokes along the lines of alcohol actually being helpful to conception, but also a lot of serious criticism.

When one government representative argued on a TV talk show that alcohol's influence on fertility is actually a legitimate matter for debate, an opposition lawmaker, Kamila Gasiuk-Pihowicz, shot back: “This is not a debate, it is insulting Polish women.”

The traditionally Roman Catholic country already had one of Europe's most restrictive abortion laws, with abortions allowed in very few cases, before 2020. Then, a new ruling said that women may no long terminate pregnancies in cases where the fetus has serious abnormalities and is not viable after birth.

That sparked the largest protests in Poland in decades. There have been cases since then of pregnant women dying even though a risk to the woman's life is a legal grounds for abortion under the current law. Women's rights advocates say such cases occur because doctors are afraid to terminate pregnancies even when the woman's life might be at risk, fearing legal consequences to themselves.

Another opposition lawmaker, Aleksandra Gajewska, pondered whether Kaczynski was speaking out of some political calculation, or not. “Is Jaroslaw Kaczynski a ruthless, mean cynic, or is he mentally ill?” she said.

Kaczynski defended himself, saying that “an honest politician, if he knows such a thing, must talk about it."

WEEP GOP WEEP

Cortez Masto wins Nevada — victory cements Senate control for the Dems

THE RED TINKLE

Bob Brigham
November 12, 2022

Catherine Cortez Masto / Shutterstock

Democrats have been projected winners of the United States Senate after Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto was projected winner of the battleground U.S. Senate race in Nevada.

According to projections from NBC News and CBS News, Cortez Mastro triumphed over Republican Adam Laxalt, the state's former attorney general, who also lost his 2018 campaign for governor.

After Friday night's projection that Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly had also won, Democrats are projected to hold 50 seats to 49 for Republicans.

This will slightly decrease the stakes of Georgia's Dec. 6 runoff election between Sen. Raphael Warnock and GOP challenger Herschel Walker. If Democrats prevail in the runoff, they will have some wiggle room of being able to lose a vote and still have Vice President Kamala Harris cast a vote to put the legislation over the top. In his first two years, Democrats Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Machin (D-WV) were able to single-handedly hold up legislation.

But Republicans also have a lot to gain, as keeping an evenly slip Senate is what allows either Sinema or Manchin to hold up the White House's agenda.

Jon Ralston, the dean of the Nevada political press corps, wrote "candidates and campaigns matter."

"Adam Laxalt is an abysmal candidate who has lived on his last name for credibility and fundraising since he moved here a decade ago," Ralston explained. "Anyone with an R after his or her name would be competitive this cycle, and his automaton-like performance, where he can disgorge puerile talking points to thrill the faithful and avoid any serious questioning (a candidate for governor and Senate who never debated!) has been something to behold. Laxalt’s campaign has been desultory and depressing. Cortez Masto is not exactly Rita Moreno on the campaign trail, but she has been disciplined and on message, and her media has been sharp and memorable."

Donald Trump has been spreading conspiracy theories about voter fraud in Nevada.

In a Thursday conference call hosted by National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott (R-FL), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) claimed without evidence that it was impossible for Laxalt to lose, Politico reported.

“There is no mathematical way Laxalt loses,” Graham falsely claimed. “If he does, then it’s a lie.”

Laxalt, who has been described as the "Nevada version of Rudy Giuliani," reportedly began preparing "voter fraud" legal challenges 220 days before the midterm election.

Democratic wins in Washington state buoy party hopes

SEATTLE (AP) — Democrats won a second key House race in Washington state Saturday — an open seat in a conservative region that long evaded the party.



Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto-shop owner who describes herself as an independent-minded Democrat, pulled off a victory against Joe Kent, a far-right “America First” ex-Green Beret who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, in southwest Washington’s 3rd Congressional District.

Combined with Rep. Kim Schrier’s reelection to what Democrats feared was a vulnerable seat, Gluesenkamp Perez’s victory helped buoy party hopes of keeping a majority in the House.

“I am humbled and honored by the vote of confidence the people of Southwest Washington have put in me and my campaign," Gluesenkamp Perez said in a statement.

The 3rd District, which narrowly voted for Trump in 2020, had been represented for more than a decade by Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler. But she failed to make it through the state’s top -two primary after angering conservatives with her vote to impeach Trump following the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

Schrier survived a challenge from Republican Matt Larkin to win a third term in the 8th District, which stretches from Seattle’s wealthy eastern ex-urbs across the Cascade Mountains to the orchard country of central Washington. Schrier, a pediatrician, in 2018 became the first Democrat to win the seat since its creation in the early 1980s.

“I don’t know which party will control Congress, but it’s races like mine — the ones that are sitting on a razor’s edge — that flip one way or another,” Schrier told The Associated Press. “If more of them flip in this direction, that may mean we have the majority and set the agenda.”

By flipping the 3rd District, which Democrats had not held since former Rep. Brian Baird retired in 2010, the party will now have eight of Washington’s 10 congressional seats. Herrera Beutler won 22% of the vote in the primary, and how her voters split between Gluesenkamp Perez and Kent may have been the deciding factor in the race.

Gluesenkamp Perez — who co-owns an auto shop with her husband just across the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon — said that as a small business owner who lives in a rural part of the district, she was more in line with voters than Kent, who repeatedly had to explain his connections to right-wing extremists.

Gluesenkamp Perez supports abortion access and policies to counter climate change, but also described herself as a gun owner who opposes an assault rifle ban, though she does support raising the age of purchase for such guns to 21. She wouldn’t be a “typical Democrat” in Congress, she said.

Kent, a former Green Beret who is a regular on conservative cable and podcasts, has called for the impeachment of President Joe Biden and an investigation into the 2020 election. He’s also railed against COVID-19 shutdowns and vaccine mandates and has called to defund the FBI after the search on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for classified documents.

In the 8th District, Schrier stressed results she’s achieved, including helping to secure money for road projects, rural broadband access and police body cameras. She also emphasized that as the only female doctor in Congress who supports abortion rights, she’s a bulwark against any GOP efforts to restrict abortion nationally following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

She called Larkin’s opposition to abortion rights disqualifying.

Larkin is a lawyer and former Washington attorney general candidate who works for his family’s company, which makes parts for water pipes. Unlike more extreme Republican candidates, Larkin says Biden was legitimately elected, though he also notes that many people disagree and are frustrated about it. He hammered Schrier on inflation, gas prices and crime, saying Democrats’ policies have aggravated all three.

____

Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections

Gene Johnson, The Associated Press

Revealed: Four US Supreme Court justices attended right-wing gala — risking the credibility of the court

Bob Brigham - Yesterday - RawStory

Four U.S. Supreme Court justices attended the black-tie dinner gala at the first Federal Society convention since the court overturned Roe vs. Wade in its controversial Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health decision.

Associated Press correspondent Mark Sherman reported Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh were in attendance at the group's 40th-anniversary celebration

Sherman noted it is four-fifths of the majority of the court that overturned Roe. Controversial Justice Clarence Thomas was the fifth.

Three of the four justices in attendance were nominated by Donald Trump.

"Leonard Leo, [Federalist Society] co-chair, helped Trump vet judicial nominees. Group says it’s independent of partisan politics," Sherman reported. "But there is close alignment with GOP priorities."

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance wondered if the justices at the dinner had forgotten their job.

"As with so many of our institutions, the judiciary can only do its work when the public has confidence in it," Vance noted. "Some of our judges seem to have forgotten that and that they have life tenure to serve the American people, not the political agenda of the people who put them in place."

Tucker Carlson's far-right candidates all went down in flames — with one notable exception
Bob Brigham
November 12, 2022

Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump / Shutterstock

Far-right Fox News personality Tucker Carlson suffered a dramatic rebuke from voters in the 2022 midterms.

Nikki McCann Ramirez described Carlson as having a "type" in a new report for Rolling Stone magazine.

"He likes hardline nationalists who can cosplay anti-elitism while pretending they didn’t go to an Ivy, or have an heiress mother, or have the richest people in the country funding their campaign," Ramirez reported. "He likes the kind of candidate who blends hateful nativism and a fear of the impending collapse of Western Civilization™, with mockery of blue-haired, cat-owning coastal liberals. Turns out Tucker’s type may not be super electable."

With Republicans pointing fingers at each other over disappointing results, Carlson may be second only to Donald Trump in creating the dynamics that resulted in Republicans doing far worse than expected.

"Carlson enjoys a position as a kingmaker and agenda setter for GOP politics," Ramirez wrote. "Look no further than how he almost single-handedly converted the 'great replacement' conspiracy theory from a white nationalist talking point to a major policy concern for conservatives. If there’s a man besides Donald Trump with the power to catapult local political hopefuls into national political figures — and who wielded that power with unbridled enthusiasm in the lead-up to the election — is it not the man with the most-watched cable news show in the country?"

The report noted that J.D. Vance, who successfully held a GOP-controlled Senate seat in Ohio, was on the candidate Carlson pushed hard who won.

"Blake Masters lost to Mark Kelly in Arizona, where gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is already resorting to claims of election rigging to explain her deficit to Democrat Katie Hobbs. In Washington state, the extremist-affiliated House candidate Joe Kent is on the verge of an unexpected defeat at the hands of Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez," Ramirez reported. "Vance, Kent, and Masters, were among Carlson’s most frequent guests on his flagship Fox News program Tucker Carlson Tonight. According to weekday cable segment data from watchdog group Media Matters, Vance, Kent, and Masters appeared on Carlson’s show 17, 14, and 10 times respectively in the year before the election (11/1/21-11/10/22). Vance and Kent were among the 20 most frequent guests on the show in that time period.

Read the full report.

Damning supercut compiles Fox News’ red wave predictions after Hannity said he 'can’t say for sure where rumors' started

Alex Henderson, AlterNet
November 11, 2022

Sean Hannity / Gage Skidmore

The 2022 midterms may be remembered as the worst humiliation that Fox News has suffered since 2012, when pundits at the right-wing cable news channel spent weeks insisting that then-President Barack Obama would be voted out of office — only for Obama to win a decisive reelection victory. GOP strategist Karl Rove, during an Election Night 2012 appearance on Fox News, was described by critics as looking like a deer caught in the headlights when then-Fox host Megyn Kelly informed him that Obama had won Ohio and been reelected — and now, Fox News is being mocked unmercifully for getting the 2022 midterms so wrong.

A video released after the midterms shows one Fox News pundit after another predicting that 2022 would bring a massive “red wave,” but that red wave didn’t materialize. Although control of Congress was still up in the air as of Friday morning, November 11, Democrats performed much better than expected — flipping a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania and winning gubernatorial races not only in Pennsylvania, but also, in Michigan, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland and many other states.

The video shows everyone at Fox News from Laura Ingraham to Greg Gutfeld to Maria Bartiromo to Sean Hannity stridently predicting that a major “red wave” would strike on November 8. Especially embarrassing for Fox News is a clip of Marc Thiessen saying, “It is going to be a red wave? Is it going to be red tsunami? I think it’s going to be a red hurricane” — the same Marc Thiessen who, after a lot of election results came in, acknowledged how badly the GOP had underperformed and called for serious “introspection” for his party. Thiessen even called the election results an “absolute disaster” for the GOP.

There was also talk of a “red wave” on MSNBC and CNN before November 8, but they were much more cautious, nuanced and analytical — noting how close many of the polls were and stressing that turnout would be key. MSNBC and CNN offered a lot of detailed analysis; Fox News and Fox Business offered a lot of Republican National Committee (RNC) talking points and cheer-leading for the GOP.

 

Talk of ‘Christian nationalism’ is getting a lot louder – but what does the term really mean?

Eric McDaniel, 
The Conversation
November 12, 2022

Reading the Bible (Shutterstock)

According to a May 2022 poll from the University of Maryland, 61% of Republicans favor declaring the United States a Christian nation – even though 57% recognized that it would be unconstitutional. Meanwhile, 31% of all Americans and 49% of Republicans believe “God intended America to be a new promised land where European Christians could create a society that would be an example for the rest of the world,” a recent survey from the Public Religion Research Institute found.

Those statistics underscore the influence of a set of ideas called “Christian nationalism,” which has been in the spotlight leading up to November 2022 midterm elections. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has openly identified as a Christian nationalist and called for the Republican Party to do the same. Others, like Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert and Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, have not claimed that label but have embraced its tenets, such as dismissing the separation of church and state.

Few Americans use the term “Christian nationalist” to describe themselves, but many more have embraced some aspects of this worldview. There is widespread confusion over what the label really means, making it important to clearly explain. My work on how race and religion shape Americans’ attitudes toward government led me to study Christian nationalism, and to co-write a book detailing how it shapes Americans’ views of themselves, their government and their place in the world.

Christian nationalism is more than religiosity and patriotism. It is a worldview that guides how people believe the nation should be structured and who belongs there.

Mission from God

The phenomenon of white Christian nationalism has been studied by historians, sociologists, political scientists scholars of religion and many others. While their definitions may differ, they share certain elements.

Christian nationalism is a religious and political belief system that argues the United States was founded by God to be a Christian nation and to complete God’s vision of the world. In this view, America can be governed only by Christians, and the country’s mission is directed by a divine hand.

In my recent book “The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism in American Politics,” written with fellow political scientists Irfan Nooruddin and Allyson Shortle, we demonstrate that this worldview has existed since the Colonies and played a central role in developing American identity. During the American Revolution, political and religious leaders linked independence from the British as part of God’s plan to set the world right.


‘Apotheosis of Washington,’ by John James Barralet, 

imagining the first president rising from his tomb.

Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images

From then on, many Americans’ belief that God favors their nation has guided their view of pivotal events – such as supporting Manifest Destiny, the idea that the U.S. was destined to expand west across North America; or framing the “war on terror” as a conflict between Christians and non-Christians in the 21st century.

Today, only about 4 in 10 people in the U.S. are white Christians. The thought of no longer being the majority has prompted some of them to see Christian nationalism as the only way to get the nation back on the right track. Christian nationalism typically restricts adherents’ view of who can be considered a “true” American, limiting it to people who are white, Christian and U.S.-born, and whose families have European roots.

Dissidents, disciples and laity

The majority of Americans do not embrace Christian nationalism. Even so, its echoes appear everywhere from American flags in church pulpits, to the Pledge of Allegiance, to “In God We Trust” on money, license plates and government vehicles.

My book co-authors and I argue that Christian nationalist ideas exist along a spectrum. For our book project, we developed a measure we refer to as “American Religious Exceptionalism” and used it to analyze nationally representative and state surveys from 2008 to 2020. Based on that data, we categorized U.S. citizens into three groups: dissidents, laity and disciples.

“Dissidents” reject the idea of the U.S. having a divine founding and plan, and express a more open understanding of what it means to be an American. Among the nationally representative samples, the proportion of dissidents ranges from 37% to 49% of the population.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the “disciples” strongly believe in the divine founding and guidance of the U.S. and express more restrictive ideas about who can be a “real” American and who should be allowed to enter the country. Disciples, who represent between 10% and 14% of the population, are more likely to see immigrants as a threat to American culture, and to express concern about the decreasing percentage of Americans who are white and Christian.

Those in the “laity” in the middle represent between 37% and 52% of the population. They demonstrate support for many of the same views the disciples do, such as anti-immigrant, anti-Black, and anti-Muslim attitudes, but less intensely.

Master salesman

Politicians can be thought about as entrepreneurs constantly looking for new consumers. Some of them have found a devoted audience among the disciples, who tend to be politically engaged and eager to vote for a candidate who will advance their view of the nation.

Former President Donald Trump has been particularly successful at attracting voters who are sympathetic to Christian nationalist ideas, by portraying himself as a defender of Christians “under siege.” In June 2020, in the midst of upheaval over police killings of unarmed Black Americans, tear gas was used to disperse protesters to allow then-President Trump to have his picture taken holding a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. His open animus toward Muslims has also helped bring Christian nationalists from the fringes into the mainstream.


Supporters of then-President Donald Trump pray outside the 

U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. 

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Images linking Christianity with the nation and with Trump, as part of a larger divine mission, were on full display during the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. In the most extreme Christian nationalist views, the government must be brought into alignment with this ideology – even if force is necessary.

Our research found that 68% of disciples agree that force may be necessary to maintain the traditional American way of life. Most disciples express strong support for representative democracy; however, 48% of disciples support the idea of military rule, compared with 6% of dissidents.

Heading to the polls

Christian nationalism’s movement toward the mainstream is evident in the 2022 midterms, as several candidates have announced their support for Christian nationalism or made statements highly in line with it. Not only does such rhetoric mobilize disciples, but it has the potential to persuade the laity that these candidates will best represent their interests. An atmosphere of increasing partisan polarization, where political debates are sometimes portrayed as between angels and demons destroying the country, provides a fertile environment.

What this means for American democracy is unclear. But as some white and Christian Americans fear a loss of status, I believe Christian nationalism is coming back – attempting to reclaim its “holy land.”

Eric McDaniel, Associate Professor of Political Science, The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

ETHICALLY CHALLENGED CAPITALI$M

A dozen Congressional members traded stock in companies owned by Elon Musk in 2022: report

Alex Henderson, AlterNet
November 11, 2022

Elon Musk AFP

As Elon Musk turns his attention to his recent Twitter acquisition, a new report is shedding light on Congressional lawmakers' stock investments in the billionaire's companies this year.

According to Business Insider, "at least 12 members of Congress or their family members personally traded stocks in Twitter or Tesla in 2022."

The news outlet's report includes the following lawmakers: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Reps. Pat Fallon (R-Texas), John Garamendi (D-Calif.), Mike Garcia (R-Calif.), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Kim Schrier (D-Wash.), Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas), Chris Jacobs (R-N.Y.), Kathy Manning (D-N.C.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and David McKinley (R-W.V.).

McKinley, Gonzalez, Garcia, Whitehouse, and Fallon personally purchased stock, and family members of the remaining lawmakers made the other purchases with values ranging from $1,000 to approximately $5,000,000.

The latest development comes as Congress deliberates over whether or not lawmakers, their spouses, and their dependent children should even have the opportunity to own or sell individual stocks. So far, lawmakers have failed to deliver on efforts to ban members of Congress from trading stocks.

"The delay is a momentous setback for the stock trading reform effort, which drew a rare confluence of support from an overwhelming majority of Republican and Democratic voters," the Hill reported.

“Passing a stock trading bill before the midterms would have been a good faith sign to the voters that Congress takes its responsibility to the public interest seriously,” said Danielle Caputo, an ethics lawyer for the Campaign Legal Center. “And so obviously, that’s disappointing.”

Other critics also expressed concern about a loophole in the bill that would still give lawmakers the ability to purchase stock. Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, an advocate working with the watchdog organization, The Project on Government Oversight (POGO), explained how the bill appears to be an example of "fake blind trust."

“The problem is that the bill allows people to create a trust that they can claim is blind and diversified, and yet it doesn’t actually have to meet the criteria that are currently in the law for it to officially be a blind trust,” said Hedtler-Gaudette.

“It’s basically a fake blind trust,” he said. “We don’t have that much trust in what the ethics committee is going to do because they’re notoriously weak in doing anything that’s particularly restrictive or robust around what happens internally.”

'Take some ownership': AOC hits back after defeated DCCC chair lashes out

Julia Conley, Common Dreams
November 11, 2022

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday evening rebuked outgoing Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who had earlier claimed in an interview with The New York Times that the progressive congresswoman contributed little to campaign efforts and suggested her policy priorities—several of them popular with Democratic voters—are harming the party.

Ocasio-Cortez has spoken at length to both the Times and The Intercept since Tuesday's midterm elections about progressive politics and the Democratic Party, taking aim at what she called a "calcified political machine" in her home state and blaming decisions by New York State Democratic Committee chair Jay Jacobs and the "infrastructure" built by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo for the party's losses in New York.

Republicans flipped four U.S. House seats in the state and now represent 10 of New York's 26 congressional districts.

The congresswoman, who easily won her own race with more than 70% of the vote, noted that the Republican Party poured millions of dollars into defeating a state ballot initiative which would have protected a district map that was favorable to Democrats.

"The New York State Democratic Party didn't drop $1 in making sure that we got this thing passed," Ocasio-Cortez told The Intercept on Wednesday.

Maloney sparked outrage on the left this year when he announced he would run in New York's 17th District instead of the 18th, which he has represented since 2013, ousting progressive Rep. Mondaire Jones.

Speaking to the Times on Thursday, Maloney brushed off the notion that redistricting hurt the party and suggested suburban voters in the state, like those in the district he narrowly lost in the Hudson Valley, are turning against the party due to Republicans' messaging on crime rates and are rejecting progressive policy proposals.

"You have these suburban voters who are experiencing those messages coming out of New York City outlets, which were heavily focused on crime," Maloney told the Times. "There are other voices who should be heard, especially when suburban voters have clearly rejected the ideas that [Ocasio-Cortez]'s most associated with, from defunding the police on down."

The congressman also accused Ocasio-Cortez of offering little help to her fellow candidates while claiming that funding she did offer wasn't wanted by other Democrats:
I didn't see her one minute of these midterms helping our House majority... She had almost nothing to do with what turned out to be an historic defense of our majority. Didn't pay a dollar of dues. Didn't do anything for our frontline candidates except give them money when they didn't want it from her...

She's an important voice in our politics. But when it comes to passing our agenda through the Congress, or standing our ground on the political battlefield, she was nowhere to be found.

Ocasio-Cortez took to social media to respond, noting that she campaigned for Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) in late October and saying Maloney had reached out to her regarding fundraising for House candidates.


She added that many members were happy to receive "early financial support to position themselves early" in the election cycle, and called on the corporate-backed wing of the party to "take some ownership" for rejecting more help from progressives.



At The Intercept, Ocasio-Cortez expanded on progressive Democrats' support for policies that are popular with crucial factions of the party's voter base, and the "moderate" wing's rejection of those issues, comparing Rep. Tim Ryan—a vocal opponent of President Joe Biden's student debt relief plan who lost a U.S. Senate race in Ohio—with Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a progressive who won the seat held by retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey:

I do hope that there is a reflection on being outwardly antagonistic towards a very enthused progressive base, especially one in which young people delivered these wins. If you look at the difference between Tim Ryan and John Fetterman, as races, some of the preliminary data is suggesting that they had the same turnout in almost every demographic except young people. And as we know, young people skew way progressive within the party. And so when you outwardly antagonize, and outwardly seek to belittle and distance oneself from progressive values, you demoralize your base.


"It's not to say that everybody has to be holding the same line on progressive causes dependent on their community," Ocasio-Cortez added "But it doesn't—I do think that this is a signal that being outwardly antagonistic, including trying to defeat progressive candidates, trying to demoralize those bases, is not healthy for the prospect of democratic gains."

Watch: Howls of protest at Biden's COP27 climate speech

Agence France-Presse
November 11, 2022



A quartet of protesters briefly interrupted US President Joe Biden's speech at the COP27 summit in Egypt on Friday by howling and trying to unfurl a banner before UN police removed them.

"Carbon offsetting is a false solution," one of them -- apparently an indigenous man from Latin or North America -- shouted as he was escorted away from the venue.

He was referring to a US scheme whereby business can compensate for CO2 pollution by investing in developing world climate projects that reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

"We are headed toward impended climate collapse, and Jeff Bezos will not save us," the man said.

The Energy Transition Accelerator carbon offset unveiled by US special climate envoy John Kerry this week in Sharm el-Sheikh is backed by the Rockefeller Fund and the Amazon founder through his Bezos Earth Fund.

The use of so-called voluntary carbon markets to drive down CO2 pollution remains highly controversial, with many analysts saying such difficult-to-monitor practices do not give business a strong enough incentive to reduce their own emissions.

During the 22-minute speech in COP27's packed plenary hall, the climate activists howled like coyotes and were unfurling a banner when UN police stopped them.

It is not known whether the protesters were arrested, escorted out of the conference venue or simply released.

New research disputes the “lazy stoner” stereotype

2022/11/11


New research casts doubts on claims that chronic cannabis use results in “amotivational syndrome,” which is characterized by a lack of enjoyment of everyday life and a loss of motivation. The study, published in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, found no difference in anhedonia, apathy, or motivation between cannabis users and non-users.

“Cannabis is the third most commonly used controlled substance worldwide, and with its legal profile currently changing in many countries it is more important than ever to know how cannabis affects the brain and cognition,” said study author Martine Skumlien, a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. “One common trope frequently perpetuated in movies, TV shows, and anti-cannabis PSAs is that of ‘the lazy stoner,’ which displays cannabis users as lazy, demotivated, and apathetic. However, this is based on a stereotype and not on scientific evidence.”

The researchers recruited 76 adolescents and 71 adults from the Greater London area who had been using cannabis 1 to 7 days per week, on average, over the past three months. Adolescents were 16-17 years of age, while adults were 26-29 years of age. The cannabis-using participants were matched with 63 adolescents and 64 adults who did not use cannabis.

“We compared teen and adult cannabis users and controls from the large MRC-funded UCL CannTeen study on several measures of reward and motivation, including apathy and willingness to expend physical effort for reward,” Skumlien told PsyPost.

The participants completed a measure of anhedonia known as the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale, in which they indicated the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with statements such as “I would find pleasure in my hobbies and pastimes” and “I would find pleasure in small things, e.g. bright sunny day, a telephone call from a friend.”

The participants also completed a questionnaire known as the Apathy Evaluation Scale, in which they indicated how well statements such as “I am interested in things” and “Getting things done during the day is important to me” applied to them.

The researchers found that cannabis users scored slightly lower than non-users on the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale, suggesting that they are better able to enjoy themselves. But there was no significant difference when it came to apathy. Skumlien and her colleagues also found no correlation between cannabis use frequency and anhedonia or apathy.

In addition, 139 participants completed two task-based measures of motivation, which assessed the willingness to expend effort for reward, reward sensitivity, effort sensitivity, reward wanting, and reward liking.

In the first task, participants were given the option to perform button-presses in order to win points, which were later exchanged for chocolates or sweets to take home. There were three difficulty levels and three reward levels; more difficult trials required faster button pressing. On each trial the participant could choose to accept or reject the offer; points were only accrued if the trial was accepted and completed.

In a second task, participants were first told to estimate how much they wanted to receive each of three rewards (30 seconds of one of their favourite songs, one piece of chocolate or a sweet, and a £1 coin) on a scale from “do not want at all” to “intensely want.” They then received each reward in turn and were asked to rate how pleasurable they found them on a scale from “do not like at all” to “intensely like.”

In line with the self-reported questionnaires, the researchers found no difference between cannabis users and non-users on either task. “I was somewhat surprised to find that the groups weren’t any different on the measures, as this is not what we hypothesised,” Skumlien told PsyPost. “We also expected adolescent cannabis users to be worse off than the adult users, as drug use in adolescence is often thought to be particularly harmful. However, we found no evidence of such adolescent vulnerability.”

“In short, we found no support for the idea that cannabis use is linked with amotivation,” the researcher said.

Co-author Will Lawn added in a news release: “There’s been a lot of concern that cannabis use in adolescence might lead to worse outcomes than cannabis use during adulthood. But our study, one of the first to directly compare adolescents and adults who use cannabis, suggests that adolescents are no more vulnerable than adults to the harmful effects of cannabis on motivation, the experience of pleasure, or the brain’s response to reward.”

“In fact, it seems cannabis may have no link – or at most only weak associations – with these outcomes in general,” Lawn said. “However, we need studies that look for these associations over a long period of time to confirm these findings.”

The findings provide evidence that cannabis use is not associated with persistent disruption to reward processing in adults or adolescents. But it is still possible that cannabis induces acute disruptions in reward processing.

“Crucially, participants in our study had not used any cannabis prior to participating. It is therefore still possible that people find themselves less motivated to do certain things while they are high,” Skumlien explained. “We plan to look at this in a future investigation from the CannTeen study! It is also worth emphasizing that motivation is a broad concept, and measures that assess motivation in a laboratory setting may not always translate to real-life situations.”

“Stereotypes can be stigmatizing and get in the way of harm-reduction messages around drug use,” Skumlien added. “We need to be honest about what are and are not potential consequences of cannabis use, and not use harmful and untrue stereotypes in efforts to discourage people from using cannabis.”

The study, “Anhedonia, apathy, pleasure, and effort-based decision-making in adult and adolescent cannabis users and controls“, was authored by Martine Skumlien, Claire Mokrysz, Tom P. Freeman, Vincent Valton, Matthew B. Wall, Michael Bloomfield, Rachel Lees, Anna Borissova, Kat Petrilli, Manuela Giugliano, Denisa Clisu, Christelle Langley, Barbara J. Sahakian, H. Valerie Curran, and Will Lawn.

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People who earn less than they think they should tend to attribute this to unfairness of the economy

2022/11/11


An online experiment on thousands of U.S. residents shows that people who are made to realize that their earnings are lower than their self-assessed earning ability tend to attribute this to the unfairness of the economy. They tend to believe that other people also earn less than their abilities merit.

 The study was published in theEuropean Journal of Political Economy.

People tend to be overconfident about their abilities in many situations. For example, a 1981 study in the US showed that 88% of respondents considered themselves safer than the median driver. In a similar manner, workers tend to overestimate their productivity and CEOs overestimate the returns on investment they are producing.

When it comes to earnings, overconfident people generally do not earn what they think they can. This means that they might be perceiving a negative gap between their economic results and their own evaluations of their abilities. But would the perception of this gap lead people to see the economy as unfair and support more income equality?

“Inequality is rising in the United States and other countries,” noted study author Daiki Kishishita, a junior associate professor at the Tokyo University of Science. “The existing studies have shown that the view on whether the economy is fair shapes the support for redistribution. We were interested in how people’s personal experience shapes the view whether the economy is fair. In daily life, people often complain that their income is too low compared with their earning ability. Motivated by this daily observation, we analyzed how this complaint shapes the perception about whether the economy is fair.”

Kishishita and two colleagues devised an experiment that was to be done in the scope of an online survey. The experiment was conducted on 4,697 MTurk workers from the US, who were each paid $1.00 for their participation.

At the beginning of the survey, each participant was asked questions on demographics, political attitudes (left, center or right-leaning), to disclose their household income, and to rate their earning ability. Respondents were asked to assess the relative location of their income relative to the income distribution in the US. If they answered incorrectly, survey would give them the correct result. This was done to make sure that all participants correctly assessed their relative income at the start of the experiment.

Based on the difference between the self-reported income of the participant and his/her self-rated earning ability, the authors of the study calculated a measure of the income-ability gap. 2,744 participants considered their incomes did not reflect their abilities correctly (61,4% of all participants). Of these, 1,526 considered their incomes to be lower than their abilities i.e., that their income-ability gap was negative (55% of the participants with the income-ability gap).

After this initial phase, participants were randomly assigned into one of the two groups. In the first group, participants were first reminded through a statement what their income and abilities are in evaluative terms (low, high, very high etc.). They were than asked to rate the gap between their income and their abilities (the income-ability gap). Researchers did this to make sure that the participants in this group will be aware of the gap going forward. The other group did not pass through this treatment, but proceeded directly to the final phase.

In the final phase, participants were asked to rate the unfairness of the economy and the preference for reducing income inequality. The former was done by asking participants whether incomes of ordinary people in the US are higher, equal to or lower than their abilities. The later was done by asking participants whether the US society should reduce income inequality and whether they would support government intervention to achieve this.

Authors report that realizing the negative income-ability gap through the experimental manipulation “increased the perceived degree of unfairness of the economy by 7.85 percent.” However, this manipulation did not increase the support for reducing income inequality.

“We expected that realizing the negative income-ability gap would increase support for reducing inequality. However, this was not supported by the data, which was pretty surprising,” Kishishita said.

There was no difference between left- and right-leaning participants in the effect of the experimental manipulation on their views regarding the unfairness of the economy, although the authors expected effects on left-leaning participants to be higher.

“People often complain that their income is too low compared with their earning ability, which can be regarded as overconfidence,” Kishishita told PsyPost. “This complaint induces them to think that the economy is non-meritocratic and unfair. However, this does not increase the support for reducing inequality. We hope that this finding will be helpful in understanding public opinion on inequality and redistribution.”

The study highlighted an important link between overconfidence and social perceptions, focusing on the views about economy. However, authors note that at least some of the respondents might have guessed correctly the goals of the study and provided answers in a way that they thought would satisfy the authors. To try to mitigate this fact, authors reanalyzed the data after excluding participants who could be identified as trying to satisfy desires of authors through their answers, but results remained the same.

“Our results would also be relevant for other countries because overconfidence is prevalent in many non-U.S. contexts,” Kishishita said. “However, we might expect some international differences because the view on whether the economy is fair differs across countries. Replicating our results in other countries is left to future work.”

The study, “Overconfidence, income-ability gap, and preferences for income equality“, was authored by Daiki Kishishita, Atsushi Yamagishi, and Tomoko Matsumoto.

© PsyPost