Stigmabase | North America

Maybe this is how democracy ends - The election of Donald Trump has triggered as much wonderment abroad as it has in the United States. David Runciman, a professor of politics at the University of Cambridge, has written in the  London Review of Books  a provocative reflection on the nature of democracy in the age of Trump: “Is this how democracy ends?” There is much to praise in his essay, including his heavy qualification that we really don’t know for sure if what we are seeing is the end phase of mature Western democracies since we do not have the appropriate historical precedents to be certain. Runciman is correct; as an admirer of Karl Popper, I believe that there is no such thing as historical determinism, either in the form of the Marxist dialectical process, or in the guise of its mirror image, the invisible hand of  laissez-faire . Accordingly there is no surefire way to tell in advance whether Trump, Marine Le Pen or Geert Wilders would spell the end of democracy as

Religious "leaders" blaming Hurricane Sandy on the LGBT community : It is not the homosexual community that is the cause, it is the government of the United States making homosexuality an ordinance which is the cause of the judgment. If you commit the act of homosexuality that is between you and God. When a nation ...

Suicide is the 11th Most Common Cause of Death in the Nation : In the US, suicide is the 11th most common cause of death. For youth , the statistics are more grim. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college ... Ireland | United Kingdom | America | Las Américas | Stigmabase | eGAYlity

The real story of income inequality - Income inequality refers to the distribution of average income in a country. The argument presented by the left is that a plurality of the wealth is concentrated among the highest of income earners, and that this is unfair to the average worker. Many will say that this is a serious problem for the country, and cite the top 20 percent of income earners control nearly 80 percent of the nation’s wealth. However, this argument is misleading and does not tell the full story. Thomas Sowell, an economist and former Stanford professor, argued that the full story is not being addressed and that income inequality is not a problem.

The government is failing the most vulnerable – and doesn't care ... Some will argue that the increase in the numbers of people who are socially excluded is the inevitable result of the recession. But the over-riding test for any government is how well it treats the most vulnerable in society and the truth is that the ...

Psychologists have a duty to warn the country about Trump - In most cases, I would agree that psychiatric diagnosis is not a parlor game for celebrity gossip columns. But it is also in the ethical code of every mental health profession, and the law in all but a handful of states, that we must warn a potential victim of violence or harm, even if that requires us to violate the sacred principle of patient confidentiality. How much greater an ethical burden must we carry if the potential victims are in the millions, and the risk is to both to their lives and our way of life? As we learned in the 1930s, silence is a sin when a dangerously disturbed leader is on the rise. Defying the APA, and risking the loss of the licenses that allow them to practice their profession, 55,000 people have signed our petition for mental health professionals stating that Donald Trump is mentally ill and must be removed under the 25th Amendment.

This is the post-election meme Hillary Clinton likes best - In her first interview since losing the presidential election to Donald Trump, Clinton told interviewer Nicholas Kristof that she is “doing pretty well all things considered.” The sting of losing the biggest race of her life, despite winning the popular election, has been eased by long walks in the woods and laughing at the Republicans epic failure to successfully replace Obamacare. “I will confess to this: having listened to them talk about repeal and replace for seven years now, they had not a clue what that meant. They had no idea,” she said. “I don’t know that any of them had ever even read the bill – read the law, understood how it worked. It was so obvious. Health care is complicated, right? They don’t know what to do, and I do admit that was somewhat gratifying.”

Trump's Budget Is a Blueprint for a Banana Republic - The Trump Administration has officially unveiled its proposed budget to "Make America Great Again," and by all accounts it’s a total flop. Most news outlets are ignoring are the greater implications of what is proposed in the budget itself—the society America would become if the Trump budget became official. The specific elements of the proposal highlight severe cuts to programs that support the middle class and the poor, like the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps), a move that is worthy of disdain on its own. However, the general sentiments of the proposal suggest a perspective and intention that is far more disturbing and could transform America's constitutional Republic into a de facto military junta. Is this Trump’s true vision for American greatness?

Inequality Distortion is the Most Dangerous Game  - “Life is for the strong, to be lived by the strong, and if need be, taken by the strong. The weak of the world were put here to give the strong pleasure,” noted General Zaroff to Rainsford in Richard Connell’s classic short story “The Most Dangerous Game” (1924). The Russian Zaroff and the American Rainsford are from society’s elite, hunters who dominated an early 1900s landscape when unfettered capitalism fed a stark disparity

13 Reasons Why We Should Be Talking About Teen Suicide - The premise—in which the suicide has already been completed when the series begins—imparts a mistaken sense of inevitability to suicide, despite evidence that suicide is preventable, and its causes are treatable. Schools and professionals across the nation have warned parents against letting teenagers view the show alone, and have pointed out that, for some vulnerable viewers, seeing graphic depictions of suicide may increase the risk that they will act on suicidal thoughts. Nevertheless, the series is the most talked about series of the year on Twitter, and we are faced with a critical opportunity to open up the discussion and deepen the understanding of teen suicide. The loss of a young person to suicide is a tragedy. As a parent, my heart aches at the painful truth that more than a dozen families in the US will lose a loved one under the age of 25 tomorrow.

America's Health Inequality is the Third Worst In The World -  America's Health Inequality is the Third Worst In The World. Error loading player: No playable sources found. The United states has one of the largest ...

Sandy Rios Calls LGBTQ Relationships A 'Dangerous' And 'Sordid Business' - Anti-LGBT activist Sandy Rios of the American Family Association responded to LGBTQ Pride celebrations across the country on Monday by calling the lives of gay men the “most sordid business” and castigating church leaders who have accepted homosexuality because gay people are “really losing their opportunity to shake loose of it.” Rios claimed that the true nature of LGBTQ relationships is “so misunderstood” due to the “cleaned-up,” positive representations of LGBTQ couples on “HGTV, as though they’re a married couple, the same as a heterosexual couple, and that is just not true.” She then adamantly asserted that “sex between two men is not the same as sex between a man and a woman. You know, the process that God has created is a physical thing that physically completes one person with another, it is the way we are constructed, and anything other than that does not do that.”

McGill's half hearted email is an insufficient response to neo-nazism - In late November, flyers were posted near McGill’s downtown campus, with the words “tired of anti-white propaganda? It’s time to make Canada great again!” emblazoned over a maple leaf. The posters included links to white supremacist websites and crossed-out symbols that represent Islam, communism, and homosexuality. In response, Christopher Manfredi, McGill’s VP Academic, sent out an email on December 12 (“Flyers posted near downtown campus”) which denied any association between the posters and the University. The email stated: “To the best of our knowledge none of the flyers appeared on campus; nor do we have any information to indicate that the flyers are associated with any member of the McGill community. Nevertheless, I want to state unequivocally that the message communicated by the flyers, both in their text and the pictograms appearing on them, is contrary to McGill University’s values and firm commitm

Inequality between rich and poor is almost impossible to pinpoint - Pinpointing the inequality between rich and poor is notoriously difficult because the data is so squishy, and new research shows just how hard the job can be. The study is the first of its kind to quantify tax avoidance by nation. It kicks off this week’s economic research round-up and is followed by a look at the decline in innovative ideas, another on the trajectory for pricing power, and a final piece on inflation and wages in the US and Europe.

The more unequal your society is, the more your laws will favor the rich  - On the whole, there is a strong evidence to suspect that representative democracy is not compatible with deep economic inequality . The American  ...

The gay media can't hide the truth anymore: same-sex 'marriage' is the antithesis of marriage - Yet if a website visitor were to cast his or her eyes to the stories adjoining the video ad, a completely different picture of gay “marriage” emerges. This picture of same-sex “marriage” is rooted in truth, not Madison Avenue fiction. Suspension of disbelief becomes impossible. To one side of the ad – which ...

US is the most dangerous place in the world for newborns with more babies ... The U.S. is one of the most dangerous countries in the industrialized world for newborns due to high rates of premature births and babies born to teen mothers, according to a new study. For every 1,000 babies born in the U.S. , three die on the day of ...

Changing Gun Laws Is The Top Issue For LGBTQ People Going Into The 2018 Election - Changing the country's gun laws is the number one prioirity for LGBTQ Americans heading into the 2018 election, according to a survey by Whitman ...

Sugar is the 'alcohol of the child ', yet we let it dominate the breakfast table - Sadly, as the National Diet and Nutrition Survey found, what you’re really doing is giving your children a huge sugar load while sending them on their way: half of their daily intake on average. There’s a reason that the World Health Organisation and the United States Department of Agriculture have provided upper limits of sugar – because dietary sugar fries your kids’ liver and brain; just like alcohol.

Is the Decline of Unions Making Inequality Worse?  - Today’s wealth inequality is, in a sense, a return to the Gilded Age. In 1928, the economic divide was large: The bottom 90 percent of Americans earned 50.7 percent of all pretax income, while the top 1 percent earned 23.9 percent, according to research by Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez. The Great Depression and World War II acted as equalizers, and by 1944, the bottom 90 percent earned 67.5 percent of income, while the top 1 percent earned  just 11.3 percent.