The past year was very bad for gun violence in Chicago: The city had 762 murders and 4,331 shooting victims in 2016, with homicides increasing by 57 percent over 2015.

Donald Trump apparently wants to do something about it. In a vague tweet sent out earlier this week, the president-elect suggested that Chicago’s mayor should ask for “federal help” to deal with the city’s extraordinary levels of gun violence.

It’s unclear what kind of federal intervention Trump is referring to in his tweet, though his transition team said on a Tuesday press call that it’s open to ideas from the FBI. (In the past, Trump has brought up Chicago’s violence to justify a call for “tough on crime” policing tactics.)

But there is one way Trump could help curb gun violence in Chicago: a federal gun control law.

Trump, of course, is on the record opposing stricter gun control measures, often calling himself “a Second Amendment person.” But if he’s serious about stopping gun violence in Chicago, he should reconsider his stance — because the research shows that stricter gun control measures really do help reduce gun violence.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/4/14157438/trump-chicago-murder-guns

Charles Wolford, a reporter for Louisville Magazine, visited Ark Encounter on its opening day this past July, and his article about the experience is now available online. While most of it is about his day at the attraction and some background on Answers in Genesis — not news to anyone who’s been following this site — there’s one conversation Wolford had with AiG’s director of research Andrew Snelling that is just unbelievable, even for Creationists.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/01/03/creationist-the-story-of-beowulf-is-an-eyewitness-account-of-humans-interacting-with-dinosaurs/

A handy guide for journalists.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-twitter-journalists_us_586c037fe4b0eb58648ad66a

Since it would appear that President-elect Donald Trump is not going to give up using his Twitter account ― which is probably the one good thing the social media company’s share value has going for it ― it would seem that journalists have a new problem: figuring a way to keep Trump’s insomniac utterances from making a complete hash of their work.

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Back when Washington Post reporter David Weigel was writing for the Washington Independent, he faced a similar conundrum with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who by the end of 2009 had taken to using Facebook as her communications medium of choice. As Weigel pointed out in a piece titled, “Why I Don’t Write About Sarah Palin’s Facebook Posts,” it was a key ingredient in a rather shrewd media strategy:

The problem is that Palin has put the political press in a submissive position, one in which the only information it prints about her comes from prepared statements or from Q&As with friendly interviewers. This isn’t something most politicians get away with, or would be allowed to get away with. But Palin has leveraged her celebrity — her ability to get ratings, the ardor of her fans and the bitterness of her critics — to win a truly unique relationship with the press. She is allowed to shape the public debate without actually engaging in it.


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Of course, at some point Trump will gain access to “@POTUS,” the legacy Twitter account established by the Obama administration. No matter how Trump uses it, It’s going to become tempting to view tweets from that account as the real deal ― the authentic voice of the White House. You might be inclined to accord that account full faith and credit. Don’t do this! As I said back when the Obama White House first built this infernal contraption, it doesn’t produce authentic events, either:

Anyone who thinks that this new outlet is going to be a venue for the president’s unvarnished, sincere opinion needs to get his head examined. And yes, that cute little exchange between Obama and former President Bill Clinton was absolutely a tidy bit of Oval Office kayfabe. Anything that gets posted to the @POTUS account will be vetted [by White House communications staff] within an inch of its life, and anything remotely interesting will be stripped out and watered down.

GM shares, which were at $34.38 in premarket trading before the tweet, fell to a session low of $34.22, or about a $244 million hit to its market value. However, shares have since come back to about half of where they were before the tweet.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/03/trump-blasts-general-motors-make-chevy-cruze-model-in-us-or-pay-big-border-tax.html

Ref: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028344908#post31