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,