Lake County Ohio Weal

  Democrats Ahead of Republicans in Mid-Term Voting Intentions by  Katharina Buchholz,   Sep 2, 2026 With two months left to go until the midterm elections, the U.S. remains a deeply divided country. Approval ratings of the presidency and of Congress (all in the hands of Republicans) are both near all-time lows amid high inflation and the unpopular trade and actual wars of the current administration. President Donald Trump in recent interviews has repeatedly blamed Congressional Republicans for the expected midterm lull, saying they were more unpopular than him. According to data aggregated and weighted by Silver Bulletin, Democrats currently lead voting intentions for the midterms by almost 7 percentage points, with 48 percent of those surveyed saying they would vote for a Democratic candidate if the election took place today. Democrats have also been able to widen their lead – from fewer than 3 percentage points one year ago to 6.6 percentage points most recently. Desp...

  In Person Voting on Election Day Keeps Declining by  Anna Fleck,   Apr 10, 2026 Mail-in voting has become increasingly popular over time, with millions of Americans choosing this option. According to Census Bureau data analyzed by MIT’s Election Data & Science Lab, the share of ballots cast by mail rose from 8 percent in 1996 to 29 percent in 2024. During the pandemic, mail-in voting peaked at 43 percent in 2020 and remained relatively high at 32 percent in 2022. Although it declined slightly in 2024, the level still remains well above pre-pandemic figures. Early in-person voting has also grown significantly over the past three decades, increasing from just 3 percent in 1996 to 31 percent in 2024. As both mail-in and early voting have expanded, Election Day voting has declined. T he share of voters casting ballots in person on Election Day fell from 89 percent in 1996 to 50 percent in the 2022 midterms and further to just 40 percent in 2024. This means that, in the ...

  Women Less Likely To Talk About Politics On-line by  Katharina Buchholz,   Oct 26, 2026 Women are more likely to be hesitant in expressing their opinions about politics online than men, a survey by Statista Consumer Insights has found. This was the case in all of the 32 countries polled, with the gender gap narrowest in Italy at 3 percentage points (20 percent male, 17 percent female) a nd widest in Indonesia and Malaysia at 13 percentage points. Japan, Canada, Finland and Spain also saw narrower gaps at 5–6 percentage points, while larger gaps of 12 percentage points were observed in Sweden, South Africa and Austria . Even aside from gender, the degree to which people express their views on politics online varies greatly by country. In China, for example, only 14 percent of respondents on average said they had expressed their opinion about politics online in the past month. This includes having commented on or even liked a post related to politics on social media. In...

  Issues Most Important to Registered Voters in Mid-terms by  Katharina Buchholz,   Oct 26, 2026 In next week's midterm elections, U.S. voters and Democrats in particular rate the economy and the future of democracy as the most important topics influencing how they will decide. This is according to a recent survey by Pew Research Center. The issue of healthcare comes third on the agenda and is also favored by Democrats after President Donald Trump's unpopular reforms in the sector. Cuts to Medicaid as well as the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, are estimated to have cost millions of Americans their coverage while making it severely unaffordable for many more. Topics often favored by Republicans, like violent crime, education and immigration, appear further down the agenda. Just 52 percent to 62 percent of U.S. voters said they found them very important, compared to 84 percent who said this about the economy, 73 percent who picked the future of democracy an...

  Projected Party Seats for House and Senate Democrats Projected to Take House, Senate Still a Toss-up by Katharina Buchholz, Oct 26, 2026 In next week's midterm elections, Democrats are projected to win back the House of Representatives, while the Senate is still rated a toss-up between the two parties. According to poll averages calculated by RealClearPolitics, Republicans would lose control of the lower chamber of Congress even if they won all 25 toss-up races . Only 183 seats are projected as solid or likely Republican wins – too few to reach the House majority of 218. The Cook Political Report, with a similar approach to aggregating polls, calculates that 198 seats are safe or likely Republican wins – also not enough for a majority even if all 17 toss-ups projected by the source would end up decided in Republicans' favor. This would be a tighter win prognosis for Democrats nevertheless. RealClearPolitics sees only four House district currently or previously held by Democra...

  WARNING: WORK IN PROGRESS The GUIDE to each month's posts begins to take shape around the middle of the month when about half of the posts for the month are complete. It is posted with the warning label that it is a draft. It will usually be completed at the end of the month and moved into the featured post for the next month, in this case November. At the bottom of the post will be a link for the SEPTEMBER GUIDE which was the featured post during the month of October. At the bottom is also a VERY tentative schedule for future monthly themes.    Old Age Dependency UN Projections   The Looming Retirement Crises Employment Age 56-64 in Selected Countries Statistical Profile of Lake County Adults      Time and Money During Retirement   An Aging Boom for American Catholicism      Old Age is Not a Disease The People of God in Lake County Gardening, Canning, and "Gleaning" Gleaning and the Ten Commandments Why the SAINT GABRIEL HOURS Bl...

  The Ten Commandments from the Book of Exodus are very familiar. The next Book of the Old Testament Leviticus deals with the construction of the Temple. Chapter 19 of this Book deals with the issue of integrating the commandments about ritual and morality. So much of the Ten Commandments are repeated but a longer list of commandments especially in regard to ritual purity are added.  Below is a comparison of the short list of Exodus and the long list of Leviticus. ***************************************************************** The Douay-Rheims American edition of the Bible is a very literal translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible which is a literal translation of the Greek Septuagint Bible. Since the Greek Septuagint Bible (not the Hebrew Bible) and the Greek New Testament were the texts in use in the Early Church, they are the texts that I use for study of the Bible. When NT authors use a Greek word, they (and their readers) likely heard echoes of the use of the word in the ...

From Commonweal , by Heidi Schlumpt:   Immigration & the American Bishops Meeting in November Trump’s assault on migrants will likely be a major topic. At least five U.S. Catholic bishops made public appearances last week to denounce the Trump administration’s immigration-enforcement operation, which has resulted in record numbers of people detained over the summer. A few others, and the U.S. bishops’ conference, released statements for the Vatican’s 112th World Day of Migrants and Refugees on Sunday, September 27. Bishop Michael Pham of San Diego, who gained attention last year for showing up at his local courthouse to accompany migrants and asylum-seekers, urged the administration to stop detaining families and children, including unaccompanied children, and to cease family separation.  Two days earlier, Pham and Auxiliary Bishop Felipe Pulido led an interreligious procession of more than four thousand people around San Diego’s Balboa Park to proclaim “All are sacred” o...

  How Are AI Tools Used in News Consumption? by Felix Richter, Sep 28, 2026 According to the Reuters Institute‘s latest Digital News Report, 10 percent of the more than 90,000 respondents surveyed globally use AI chatbots for news on a weekly basis, with the uptake significantly higher among younger people and heavy news consumer, i.e. those that access news 10+ times a day. But how do people who use AI chatbots for news consumption actually use these increasingly popular tools? The most common use case, named by 42 percent of AI news consumers, is to ask a follow-up question about a news story, be it to better understand or to get additional context. 35 percent of users asked chatbots to give them the latest news, which is arguably more threatening to publishers, as these users likely use AI tools, not publisher websites, as their entry point for news consumption. This also explains why some publishers have started to optimize content for visibility in AI chatbots, as clickthrough...

What Keeps Workers from Using AI on the Job?   by  Felix Richter,   Sep 29, 2026 While 4 in 10 workers surveyed for PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey reported using AI tools at work at least weekly, making them an integral part of their work life, more than half of the almost 50,000 respondents said they used AI a few times a year or not at all, which was the case for 36 percent of workers. The reasons standing in the way of even broader adoption of AI tools are manifold. Among all respondents, concerns about accuracy and quality were the most cited barrier to AI use at work, named by 25 percent of all respondents and by more than 30 percent of frequent AI users. In second place was the lack of opportunities to use AI, which 23 percent of workers identified as an inhibiting factor to broader professional adoption. Interestingly, a perceived lack of opportunities to use AI was by far the most cited barrier among non-users at 34 percent. While there are certai...