A4 THE BULLETIN • MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2021
Militias
DEAR ABBY
Continued from A1
Write to Dear Abby online at dearabby.com
or by mail at P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069
Dear Abby: My mother has
become very “spiritual” over
the last eight years or so. Re-
cently, it has become all-con-
suming and on the verge of
becoming detrimental. She
often refers to her “guides”
(she says they are feelings,
but I think she’s getting brain-
washed by human “guides”
online), who have convinced
her to withdraw thousands
of dollars from her bank
before the second wave of
COVID-19 hits.
I recently became engaged.
We don’t plan to be married
until 2022 so our guests can
have a fun, safe time at our
wedding. Mom wants to take
a “mediumship certification”
class, which will run for 18
months. The actual certifi-
cation is scheduled for the
month we told her we may
want to get married, so now
she’s trying to guilt me into
changing the date. She cop-
ied me on the email she sent
to the teacher in which she
said she would try to “di-
rect me to choose a different
date.” I let her know she’s not
going to dictate our wedding
day, but is there something
more here that needs to be
addressed?
— Certifiably Annoyed
Dear Annoyed: I don’t
think so. Your mother’s
spiritual life is her personal
business, and it would be a
mistake to attempt to make
it yours. Unless you are con-
vinced her spirit guides
cheated her out of the money
she withdrew — in which
case you should contact the
authorities and report it —
let her live her life as you are
pursuing your own.
Dear Abby: My husband
and I have been married
22 years. They have been a
rough 22 years, and I’m no
longer in love with him. I will
not be looking for another
husband should we get di-
vorced.
We tried counseling as well
as a Retrouvaille weekend,
which was hard emotionally
as we learned a new way of
communicating. However,
after the weekend, I would
always initiate the skills we
learned, but he would not.
He’s retired. I’m still work-
ing, yet nothing is getting
done around the house. I’m
tired of feeling stressed. I
don’t like cleaning up after
him and our daughters, and
I’m thinking of moving out.
I feel overwhelmed and
want to live by myself for a
period of time, but some-
thing is stopping me from
signing a lease. Our daugh-
ters are in college, and my
door will be open to them
anytime. Should I move out?
— On the Verge in Texas
Dear on the Verge: Per-
haps. However, before you
sign anything — including
divorce papers — please
consider discussing your
feelings of stress and being
overwhelmed with a licensed
psychotherapist. Some time
away from your stressors
might be helpful for you,
and a therapist may be able
to help you determine how
long a period that should be
before making anything per-
manent.
“Militias moved in to take
up some of that work, to act as
first responders,” he says.
The three most common
Oregon searches in Moonshot’s
data — and five of the top 10
— are tied to QAnon conspir-
acy theories. Coming in fourth
is “Anarchist Cookbook,” a ref-
erence to a 50-year-old manual
for bomb-making and related
DIY activities.
The London-based compa-
ny’s February report, “From
Sh--posting to Sedition,” also
found that Oregon has spread
a conspiracy theory that falsely
claims there are “FEMA con-
centration camps.”
The report references a 2020
YouTube video, shot outside
a fenced-off empty lot at NW
Broadway and Glisan streets in
Portland, that insists there’s a
“sinister plan dealing with the
homeless” in the city.
“The homeless will be
fenced in. Barbed wire,” the
video’s narrator says, before
adding:
“Everything that Alex Jones
talked about for decades now,
this stuff is becoming a real-
ity.”
(Jones, the founder of In-
foWars, is a well-known con-
spiracy theorist who has been
banned from Twitter and
Facebook because of his false
claims about school shootings
and other events.)
Lowndes, co-author of the
2019 book “Producers, Par-
asites, Patriots: Race and the
New Right-Wing Politics of
Precarity,” sees the decadeslong
development of conspiratorial
thinking in Oregon as espe-
cially relevant.
The state could be viewed
as a “case study of where the
Testing
YOUR HOROSCOPE
By Madalyn Aslan
Stars show the kind of day you’ll have
õ õ õ õ õ DYNAMIC | õ õ õ õ POSITIVE | õ õ õ AVERAGE | õ õ SO-SO | õ DIFFICULT
HAPPY BIRTHDAY FOR MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2021: Extremely
sensitive to beauty and your environment, as well being technical and ambi-
tious, you are quite a mixed bag. A touch of genius, when grounded in reality.
This year, you achieve your greatest masterpiece yet. Bravo. Don9t get swal-
lowed up in your role, and you9ll be successful. If single, you9re devastatingly
attractive, so you can have many partners, but you won9t commit this year.
If attached, you9ve found your twin, and you can only delight in each other.
LEO adores you.
ARIES (March 21-April 19)
õõõõ Associates have different thoughts and conflicting information.
Observe facial expressions and body language to aid in communication. Your
beloved is easier to understand. You can guide the course of a close relation-
ship. Tonight: The use of your intuition helps you win over others.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20)
õõõ It9s the perfect day to toss out debris and get your workspace neat and
organized. Minimize stress with efficiency. Other people need time to discuss
ideas and views. Patience and listening will bring you rewards. Tonight:
Those who lack confidence welcome your kind words.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20)
õõõõ There will be some divided loyalties between associates. Remain
impartial if there are conflicts and competitive feelings brewing. A liberal and
tolerant attitude carries you a long way. You will be understood. Tonight: You
experience major changes in self-awareness.
CANCER (June 21-July 22)
õõõõõ You feel a sense of hope and encouragement today. Insights are
revealing. Your optimistic, confident use of words will draw others to you.
Elderly and very young family members have new thoughts and needs. To-
night: Make sure you communicate with them.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)
õõõõ Making a game out of chores or adding humor to lighten an intense
conversation will be helpful today. There is a new alertness and cleverness to
your perceptions. Something that seemed hard to grasp before is now less
elusive. Tonight: Calls and emails.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)
õõõ There are some conflicting ideas voiced at work. Be patient and com-
promise for best results. There is an element of the unpredictable in financial
matters. Set aside a little extra money for an unexpected purchase or ex-
pense. Tonight: Keeping a sense of humor.
Continued from A1
The drop mirrors declines
across all major virus mea-
sures since January, including
new cases, hospitalizations and
deaths.
Officials say those encourag-
ing trends, together with harsh
winter weather, the end of the
holiday travel season, pan-
demic fatigue and a growing
focus on vaccinations are sap-
ping interest in testing.
“When you combine all
those together you see this de-
crease,” said Dr. Richard Pesca-
tore of the health department
in Delaware, where daily test-
ing has fallen more than 40%
since the January peak. “People
just aren’t going to go out to
testing sites.”
But testing remains import-
ant for tracking and containing
the outbreak.
L.A. County is opening
more testing options near
public transportation, schools
and offices to make it more
convenient. And officials in
Santa Clara County are urging
residents to “continue getting
tested regularly,” highlighting
new mobile testing buses and
pop-up sites.
President Joe Biden has
promised to revamp the na-
tion’s testing system by investing
billions more in supplies and
government coordination. But
with demand falling fast, the
country may soon have a glut
Ryan Brennecke/The Bulletin file
La Pine resident Mike McCarter is leading the Move Oregon’s Border ef-
fort that aims to transfer rural Oregon counties to Idaho. “Divisions in
Oregon are getting dangerous,” he said recently.
national Republican Party is
headed now,” he says.
Moving the border as a way
to ‘keep the peace’
Michael McCarter, who
heads up Move Oregon’s Bor-
der, a longshot effort to flip
most of Oregon’s rural east-
ern and southern counties
into Idaho, said in an email to
supporters last week that the
Moonshot report was proof
that his objective is necessary.
He argued that the liberal state
government in Oregon “pro-
tects Antifa arsonists, not nor-
mal Oregonians.”
“Divisions in Oregon are get-
ting dangerous, so we see the re-
location of the border as a way
to keep the peace,” he wrote.
The Moonshot report found
that, with population weight-
ing, Oregon led all states in
internet searches for armed
groups. Oregon was followed
by Wyoming, Tennessee, Ari-
zona and Idaho. Moonshot, in
partnership with the Anti-Def-
amation League, defines armed
groups as “non-state actors and
organizations that bear arms
to challenge the government’s
authority.”
Oregon also topped the list
of searches for conspiracy the-
ories, followed by Arizona,
Washington, Illinois and Cali-
fornia. And the state made the
top 5 in searches that showed an
“interest in political violence.”
Curry was the Oregon
county with the most per-cap-
ita searches “related to election
violence.”
Lowndes calls the Moonshot
report, which he’s read, “sound
enough as a research method; it
provides good hard evidence.”
He adds that one does have to
be “cautious about what you ex-
trapolate” from the data, point-
ing out that researchers don’t
know why people searched for
terms related to militia groups
and election violence.
What is Moonshot CVE?
Moonshot CVE, which is
funded by the United Nations,
various governments and big-
tech companies such as Goo-
gle, develops “databases of
First J&J vaccine shots set for Tuesday
Nearly 4 million doses of the newest COVID-19 vaccine were
shipped Sunday night and will begin to be delivered to states for in-
jections starting Tuesday.
White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients announced that the
entire stockpile of the newly approved single-dose Johnson & Johnson
vaccine will go out immediately. J&J will deliver about 16 million more
doses by the end of March and 100 million total by the end of June.
Though the new shot is easier to administer and requires only one
dose, the administration is not altering its distribution plans. Zients
says, <We9re distributing the J&J vaccine as we do the Moderna vac-
cine and the Pfizer vaccine.=
— Associated Press
of unused supplies. The U.S.
will be able to conduct nearly
1 billion monthly tests by June,
according to projections from
researchers at Arizona State
University. That’s more than
25 times the country’s current
rate of about 40 million tests re-
ported per month.
With more than 150 mil-
lion new vaccine doses due for
delivery by late March — and
a new single-dose vaccine ap-
proved for emergency use over
the weekend — testing is likely
to fall further as local govern-
ments shift staff and resources
to giving shots.
“You have to pick your bat-
tles here,” said Dr. Jeffrey Engel
of the Council of State and Ter-
ritorial Epidemiologists. “Ev-
eryone would agree that if you
have one public health nurse,
you’re going to use that person
for vaccination, not testing.”
Some experts say the coun-
try must double down on test-
ing to avoid flare-ups from
coronavirus variants that have
taken hold in the U.K., South
Africa and other places.
“We need to use testing to
continue the downward trend,”
said Dr. Jonathan Quick of the
Rockefeller Foundation, which
has been advising Biden offi-
cials. “We need to have it there
to catch surges from the vari-
ants.”
A week ago, Minnesota
began urging families to
get tested every two weeks
through the end of the school
year as more students return to
the classroom. “To protect this
progress, we need to use all the
tools at our disposal,” said Dan
Huff, an assistant state health
commissioner.
But some of the most vo-
cal testing proponents are less
worried about the declines
in screening. From a public
health viewpoint, testing is ef-
fective if it helps to quickly find
tens of thousands of keywords
which indicate risk — for ex-
ample, ‘join Oath Keepers’ —
and runs ads against those key-
words,” says company manager
Clark Hogan-Taylor.
The private company was
initially founded as an effort
to derail Islamic State online
recruiting. Now it has ex-
panded to address white su-
premacy and anti-government
activities.
Moonshot just opened an
office in Washington, D.C.
“It’s a very scary moment in
America right now,” Moonshot
co-founder Vidhya Ramal-
ingam recently told The Hill
newspaper. “I mean, the impli-
cations are so wide-reaching.
There’s just the potential for
so much more violence right
now.”
Those implications reach
deep into Oregon, the report
concluded.
Violence in Portland last
summer motivated militia
groups “to employ disinforma-
tion and propaganda to mis-
characterize protest-related
activities by their Black Lives
Matter (BLM)/Antifa oppo-
nents,” the study states.
It added: “Significant events
(in Oregon), such as the West
Coast wildfires and the Black
Lives Matter demonstrations,
have given rise to even further
disinformation in the state.
For instance, disinformation
regarding Antifa’s role in the
wildfires and alleged Fed-
eral Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) concentra-
tion camps in the state grew
throughout Oregon’s wildfire
season.”
The report argues that the
contentious 2020 election and
its violent aftermath “wasn’t
the beginning of the end, it was
the end of the beginning.”
the infected, trace their con-
tacts and isolate them to stop
the spread. In most parts of the
U.S., that never happened.
Over the holiday season,
many Americans still had to
wait days to receive test results,
rendering them largely useless.
That’s led to testing fatigue and
dwindling interest, said Dr.
Michael Mina of Harvard Uni-
versity.
“It doesn’t exactly give you
a lot of gratifying, immediate
feedback,” Mina said. “So peo-
ple’s willingness or interest in
getting tested starts to go down.”
Still, U.S. test manufacturers
continue ramping up produc-
tion, with another 110 million
rapid and home-based tests
expected to hit the market next
month.
Government officials long
assumed this growing arsenal
of cheap, 15-minute tests would
be used to regularly screen mil-
lions of students and teachers
as in-person classes resume.
But recent guidelines from the
Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention don’t emphasize
testing, describing it as an “ad-
ditional layer” of protection, be-
hind basic measures like mask-
ing and social distancing.
Even without strong fed-
eral backing, educational lead-
ers say testing programs will
be important for marshaling
public confidence needed to
fully reopen schools, including
in the fall when cases are ex-
pected to rise again.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)
õõõõõ Your mental attitude is more positive today. Your confidence and
concern inspire others to seek your advice. A group discussion can be espe-
cially fruitful in providing information and ideas. Tonight: If you sense you9re
expecting too much, pull back.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)
õõõõ Today makes you aware of your own deepest needs and desires.
Recognize that there is power in discretion and silence. Patience helps with
any difficult people. Support and recognition come as the day ends. Tonight:
Communication is a delicate matter.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)
õõõõõ Today allows you to release regrets concerning a long-lost love.
Friendly calls and emails arrive from old friends. Your keen intuition assists in
negotiating and sales. Those who have resisted your ideas can be won over
to respond more favorably. Tonight: An internal euphoria.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)
õõõõõ It9s a day for freshness and enthusiastic, dynamic expansion. Be
daring about trying a new interest or type of work. You9ll become highly vis-
ible and can assume a position of leadership. You9ll enjoy exploring ways to
make a difference. Tonight: Family provides a broader perspective.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
õõõõõ Others depend on you to make daily routine more agreeable. The
application of your natural genius for diplomacy helps. Your social calendar
becomes alive with attractive invitations. A courtship may ensue. Tonight:
You9re newly aware of how important you are to others.
We have had great results with
Whiteboard Media’s digital
marketing program. I have
a quarterly meeting with
Makenna Frickey, where she
covers everything in detail
and helps me make any
adjustments. She is very
thorough and helpful. Can’t
wait to see our results for
this quarter!
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20)
õõõõ Today draws a mystery into the open. You will display a flair for
research and detective work. Your desires can be directed toward making
a special acquisition or into establishing a personal relationship. Tonight:
Reach out to those you love and admire.
Find it all online
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www.bendbulletin.com
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Amy Remick
Offi ce Manager
Gilmore Dental
www.gilmoredental.com