Fucking Glorious

Indiana and Arkansas took steps this week to quell the national uproar over their religious "freedom" laws. In short, they caved to the will of the free market.

And it was fucking glorious.

The revised Indiana law prohibits service providers from using it as a legal defense for refusing to provide goods, services, facilities or accommodations. It also bars discrimination based on race, color, religion, ancestry, age, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or U.S. military service.

You can almost here the slumped soldiers now that they can't refuse the gays anymore.

Arkansas was able to avert much of the fallout Indiana has seen by making changes before Hutchinson signed the law. The revised language more closely mirrors the 1993 federal law and only addresses actions by the government, not by businesses or individuals. 

People have focused on the call Governor Hutchinson got from Doug McMillon but consider the pressure Wal Mart is under from...well...US! My pals on the left like to squawk about corporate power but it has really been the people...the consumers that drive demand (that again?!? :)) that are putting the screws to these folks.

This whole affair was a massive statement on where we are at in 2015 in terms of civil rights. This country is not going to tolerate this bullshit anymore.

Thank God.

Focus on the Right Questions

The biggest problem conservatives have heading in to the 2016 election is they continually attack the person and not the policy. Actually, this is true even in political debates between citizens. I've noticed over the years that when the facts are against them (as they are often), conservatives switch to attacking me or some sort of trait/style that I have and run very quickly away from the issue.

Of course, they can't talk about the issues and run on policy because of stuff like this.

Walker's Wisconsin Still Lags Nation in Job Growth

It's also why they limit the availability of the media. They whine about "liberal bias" but reporters are going to ask him about his economic record and it's not good. Their policies don't work and they know it, hence the reason they switch to ad hominem.

This election should be about the issues and policies that each candidate is going to support and implement. It should not be about Hillary Clinton's personal life or Rand Paul's time at college. What are their plans for the problems we fact as a nation? Have these plans worked in the past? Where? How? These are the questions that should be asked and focused on intently in the next election.

That's what we will be focusing here at Markdelphia.

Vicarious Patriotism

As the reaction to the framework deal on Iran's nuclear capability poured in from the various corners of the globe, I noted the reaction from the hardliners. It was a resounding no. Then it occurred to me that perhaps the hardliners from Iran, Israel and our own country should leave. Perhaps a desert island where they can all spy on and fight each other would be more suitable.

I've spoken previously of the similarity between our conservatives here in the US and the conservatives in Iran. Both groups are religious zealots who support a theocracy. Both are intolerant of dissent and want an authoritarian government. And they all want war.

I posed a question on Quora recently regarding the conservative reaction to the Iran agreement. The top answer say it all.

Let's see: 

-The Prime Minister of Israel is upset because the United States of America is not doing what he ordered the United States of America to do regarding Iran. 

-A U.S. Senator who once falsely claimed to have been named "Intelligence Officer of the Year" (in 2002) and who also falsely claimed to have served during Operation Desert Storm (which I did serve in) thinks the negotiations with Iran are like "Nazi appeasement". 

-The Speaker of the House of Representatives, whose military service consisted of 8 weeks of Navy basic and a medical discharge for a bad back, wants to follow the orders of Israel's Prime Minister and move toward an eventual war between the United States and Iran as a means to protect Israel. Sorry, my cynicism is coming to the fore. 

I served in the U.S. military for 27 years, and I hate war. I have killed for my country and I have taken two bullets in the service of my country and I also suffer from PTSD. If necessary, I would fight again or support younger Americans fighting in my stead - but not to serve the foreign policy efforts of any country other than the United States (be it Israeli foreign policy or Liechtenstein's foreign policy). All too many Republican legislators are financially supported by individuals and corporations who make their living constructing and supplying war materials and who need wars to sell their products. 

These legislators see war as a means to help those individuals and corporations who helped them get elected, as a means to reduce unemployment by giving presently unemployed people jobs as soldiers or as workers making war materials and in many case they see war as a game played by others, like an American football fan who loves to watch the games but knows in their heart that if they put on a helmet and shoulder pads and actually played, they would get physically damaged - I call it "Vicarious Patriotism". 

It's not just the legislators. Their base suffers from the same delusions...

Willfull Ignorance on the Highways

Over the last 20 years, since the national 55-mph speed limit was lifted, many states have increased their speed limits. Most have raised it to 65 or 70, but some have raised freeway speeds to 75, 80 and 85 mph.

South Dakota just raised their speed limit to 80. Texas allows speeds up to 85. I suppose you can justify these limits on the basis that people should be made to spend as little time as possible in those states, but there are other considerations.

State legislatures who raise these limits have ignored one important thing: truck tires are not designed for speeds above 75 mph:

"It's a recipe for disaster," said James Perham, president of Extreme Transportation Corp., an automobile-hauling company near San Diego that filed a complaint with regulators about Michelin tires after seven blowouts caused an estimated $20,000 to $30,000 in damage to its rigs.

Even if you've never looked at a speed limit sign, the evidence of these increased speed limits is easy to see: these freeways are covered with shredded truck tires.

Shredded tires are major menace, especially to motorcycle riders. A 22-year-old motorcyclist died in Vadnais Heights, MN, when she hit tire debris on the road one night and was thrown into the path of an SUV. A tire flew off a trailer in Iowa and killed a motorcyclist in Iowa last August.

Officials from states with higher speed limits are completely oblivious to tire safety. Caught with their pants down, they have refused to answer questions from the AP, or they offer lame excuses:

In Wyoming, which raised speeds on some rural highways to 80 mph last July, "it doesn't look like necessarily there was any consideration of truck tire speed ratings," said Bruce Burrows, a spokesman for the state Transportation Department. Wyoming hasn't seen a spike in tire failures, he said.

Burrows also noted that the speed limit doesn't require truckers to go 80 mph, and said they should be aware of how fast their equipment can safely travel — a common refrain among state officials.

What planet do these guys live on? First, because time is literally money for truckers, they always go as fast as possible. Second, nothing inspires road rage more than someone poking along a highway at less than the speed limit. Third, disparate vehicle speeds increase the chance of accidents because there's more passing and a greater likelihood that inattentive drivers will rear-end slower vehicles. Fourth, most truckers have no clue that their tires aren't rated for more than 75 mph. They just assume that states wouldn't let them drive at unsafe speeds.

Then there's physics. Kinetic energy is related to mass times velocity squared. A truck traveling at 85 mph has twice the kinetic energy of a truck going 60 mph. Ergo, a truck going 85 takes twice as long to stop as one going 60.

Finally, there's human physiology. The average person's reaction time is 250 milliseconds. At 85 mph you'll travel 31 feet before your brain can even register that something has happened. Even the most conscientious driver can be distracted for a couple of seconds -- changing the radio station, adjusting the volume, cursing at some nitwit who cut him off at 90 mph. In that time you go the entire length of a football field and ramming into the back end of a family minivan "poking along" at 65.

Highways aren't NASCAR speedways. Trucks and cars are driven by regular Joes, not trained stuntmen. Animals run across highways all the time. Limits over 70 are just too fast for these conditions.

Not surprisingly, all the unsafe speed limits are in solid red conservative states. Are these legislators  just ignorant, selfish, impatient yahoos who don't give a damn who gets hurt? Or are they slyly making sure the numbers of self-inflicted gun deaths in their states don't exceed traffic fatalities?

The Closet Facsists

I love it when the Gun Cult pretends to be all about freedom and fake spits at all things authoritarian. Essentially, they are full of shit. Here is an example:

Do Gun Owners Need An App To Tell Them Where Anti-Gun-Violence Activists Live?

On Thursday morning, a handful of anti-gun-violence activists realized there is an app in the Google Play Store with their names on it—literally. The app, Gunfree Geo Marker, features a map pinpointing the home and work addresses of politicians, gun control organization employees, and "random anti-gun trolls" who "push the anti-gun agenda in any way, shape or form." 

I wonder what the Gun Cult would say if there was an app to track them...

Pants Shitters Unite!

The United States, Iran and five other countries that no one ever mentions came to a framework agreement yesterday regarding Iran's nuclear energy and weapons development. Before the details (which are included in the link above) were even released, we saw this.

John Boehner in Israel: ‘The world is on fire’

Iran nuclear deal threatens Israel's 'survival,' Netanyahu says 

Republican senator compares Iran deal to Nazi appeasement

O...M....G...!!!!

I don't think I have seen this much pants shitting since Obama got Osama!! Appeasement? I wasn't aware that we were granting large swaths of land in the Middle East to Iran...oh wait, maybe we are as we fight alongside them against ISIL:)

When I saw the reaction to the framework of this yet to be detailed and signed agreement, it became glaringly obvious what was really going on. Conservatives are going to have to endure yet another Obama success and they don't wanna hafta because he is a poopy headed fat face whose face is fat!!! (I put Bibi in this category as well since he has decided to behave as insecurely as the Republicans due to his impending irrelevance).

So, while the 8 year old boys have their little temper tantrum, take a look at the details of the framework. It's glaringly obvious that the effectiveness of the sanctions (which are now ookey-dokey with conservatives) have led Iran to this massive capitulation. It's a laundry list of actions that Iran has to take or else it's back to the Big Squeeze. They must really be hurting. In fact, I can attest to this personally.  

One of  my long time students is Iranian. She and I have had many conversations about relations between our two countries. Her and her family travel back to Iran frequently and she has noted just how angry the people are with their government. This is why they are giving up so much. The government is growing increasingly afraid of another uprising-one which they will not be able to quell as they have in the past. The younger people in particular want to be a part of the world community and look to the United States with great envy as a model for what they want their society to be someday. They are very tired of the old ways and crave change.

It's time to help them get there and this agreement is a very large first step. 

The Welcome Varies

New "Religious Freedom" Laws Try to Legalize Religious Intolerance

With all these religious freedom bills flying around the country, we need to examine what religious freedom really is.

The federal religious freedom law (RFRA) was passed so that Native Americans could conduct ceremonies on sacred lands that had fallen into federal hands, and to use peyote in religious ceremonies. The precedent for this sort of thing was recognized as long ago as Prohibition; the Volstead Act allowed the sale of sacramental wine.

Thus, the intent of the RFRA wasn't to let people use their religion as an excuse to express their hatred for other Americans, it was to  to prevent the government from interfering with religious practices.

But there have been several cases in recent years where businesses and individuals have insisted that it's their religious right to discriminate against and even harm others:

• Taxi drivers refusing to give cab rides to passengers carrying alcohol.
• Checkout clerks refusing to sell bacon to customers.
• Pharmacists refusing to sell birth control pills to unmarried women.
• Pharmacists refusing to sell certain other drugs (Plan B) to anyone.
• Bakers refusing to sell cakes and florists refusing to sell floral arrangements to gays and lesbians.
• Employers refusing to provide birth control coverage for employees. 
• Right-wing Christians murdering doctors who perform abortion and blowing up women's health clinics.

Whenever there are interactions between people, there's always going to be some contention between one person's rights and another person's responsibilities in a civil society. If we allow individuals and businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians on "religious grounds," then all these types of discrimination would also be allowed:

• Orthodox Jews denying services to men who are not wearing hats.
• Catholics denying services to Protestants.
• Christians and Jews denying services to persons of mixed race individuals and interracial couples (cf. Deuteronomy 7:1).
• Muslims denying services to women who are not wearing veils.
• Ultraorthodox Jews denying services to menstruating women (because they're "unclean"), and since they can't really tell by looking, to all women.
• Baptist cab drivers refusing to give rides to people who have been drinking.
• Christian Scientist cab drivers refusing to bring patrons to hospitals.
• Hindus, Jews and Muslims refusing to give medical treatments because they contain certain animal products.
• Jehovah's Witnesses doctors denying blood transfusions during surgery.

There's no difference between a white cab driver refusing to give a black man a ride, a Christian baker refusing to sell a cake to a gay couple and a Muslim cab driver refusing to give a ride to a miniskirted woman leaving a bar at two in the morning.

As soon as we let people start discriminating against other people based on their own prejudices all the crap that  took us centuries to get rid of (segregated bathrooms and lunch counters, miscegenation laws, you know the drill) will start popping up all over again, under the guise of "religious freedom."

It's not big a step is it for ultra-conservative Christians to claim their religion requires them kill Wiccans, based on Exodus 22:18, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," or their own children for cursing them, based on Leviticus 20:19, "For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is upon him." Eating shellfish is an abomination, according to Leviticus 11:12, so is it their religious duty to blow up Red Lobster?

Your religious rights end when you start violating someone else's civil rights.

Your religious rights end when you start violating someone else's civil rights. Anyone can make up their own phony religion and create whatever bogus dogma they want. Don't believe me? The Church of Scientology is a "religion," even though everyone knows it's just a gigantic scam expressly perpetrated by L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s to evade taxes. All it takes these days to be a religion is a lot of money, lawyers and a supply of suckers stupid enough to be led around by the nose.

But back to the matter at hand. If you don't want to sell cakes to gays, don't be a baker. If you don't want to sell birth control pills to women, don't be a pharmacist. If you don't want to sell bacon, don't work the checkout counter at Walmart.

Arkansas Balks

Arkansas governor urges changes to religious objection bill

Ah, the power of the free market...

I love how our country has changed:)

The Indiana Backpedal

Governor Mike Pence has caved.  He wants "clarification" legislation on his desk this week so there can be no mistake that Indiana SB 101 will allow discrimination against gays and lesbians.

So, once this gets all sorted out, how will businesses then be allowed to exercise their "religious freedom" if they view homosexuality as a sin? It seems to me that any clarification legislation will nullify the very goal of the law. Yet, conservatives are telling us that this was never the goal nor will it be so in the future. If this is the case, what was the goal?

Indiana A Go Go

Let the mad scramble to "explain" the new Indiana law begin!

I've watched with great amusement as conservatives in Indiana and across the nation have been falling all over themselves to reassure folks that their law does not allow discrimination against gay people. They've foamed at the mouth about "narratives" (code for "shit, we got caught with the truth again") and made false equivalencies to other laws which are supposedly the same thing. If they had only followed their own ideology of laws and unintended consequences, perhaps it might have turned out differently.

Instead, they passed a law to protect the thousands (see: absolutely fucking no one, misleading vividness) of people (see: Christians) being persecuted by the state (see: Obama...somehow) for their religious beliefs (see: making a cake for a gross gay couple) across Indiana. Didn't they realize that the free market (oh, hee hee hee ho ho...giggle fit complete with stomach grab) and the FIRST FUCKING AMENDMENT might not work in their favor?

Well, now Republican legislators are scrambling to add language to the bill that won't allow for discrimination against gays and lesbians. Shit...there goes the whole "I hate gays and won't serve 'em cuz my religion says so" point of this law!

AP has a nice summation of all of the latest, including this most excellent part.

Republican Senate President Pro Tem David Long stressed that the new law is based on the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which has been upheld by courts. But the Human Rights Campaign said it's disingenuous to compare the two laws. 

The campaign's legal director, Sarah Warbelow, said the federal law was designed to ensure religious minorities were protected from laws passed by the federal government that might not have been intended to discriminate but had that effect. The Indiana law, she said, allows individuals to invoke government action even when the government is not a party to a lawsuit. It also allows all businesses to assert religious beliefs regardless of whether they are actually religious organizations.

Disingenuous...shocking!

We've Already Had This Conversation

How The GOP Will And Won't Win in 2016

The New York Times has a piece up about the contrast within the GOP today and how that will play out in 2016.

On Jeb Bush...

That night, he told Republicans that their party had to “go out and reach out to people of every walk of life, not with a divisive message but one that is unifying.”

He is telling Republicans, in effect, that they must accept a changing country: that the path to the presidency will be found through appealing to voters who may not look like them, and with a standard-bearer whose state and immediate family resemble tomorrow’s America.

On Scott Walker...

...making his own maiden New Hampshire swing, proudly donned a hat given to him by a gun-rights group and, highlighting his frugality, bragged about the sweater he had bought at Kohl’s for a dollar.

He has succeeded by confronting his adversaries and by generating soaring levels of support from his fellow Republicans in a state they have failed to carry in a presidential race for more than three decades. The party’s way forward, by Mr. Walker’s lights, lies in demonstrating toughness in the face of intense opposition from the left and mobilizing those who are already inclined to support conservatism.

Gee, I wonder which philosophy can win a national election...:)

Fine Tuning the Gay-Dar

Indiana passed a law this week allowing business to refuse customers due to religious objections. Essentially this means that if a business owner sniffs out the gay on someone, the state won't be allowed to compel them to serve said sinner.

There are a number of profoundly stupid things about this law and we are now seeing the fallout. Businesses are scrambling for "We Serve Everyone" stickers. Angie's list is cancelling their plans to expand into Indiana. The NCAA is reconsidering its place in Indianapolis and for future Final Four events. Indiana tourism are worried that the 4.4 billion dollar a year/75,000 jobs industry is going to be hit. Even Indiana businesses, the ones that conservative ideologues in the state are saying they are "protecting" are in full on pants shitting mode.

But the one thing I can't figure out is this. How can someone who is one of these "religious freedom riders" tell if someone is gay who enters their store? Men carrying photos of themselves with a vagina? :)

Anger And What They Want To Hear

I'm not a fan of Lindsey Graham but I agree with this.

I’m not going to tell people things that they emotionally want to hear that I don’t think are going to happen. People are picking up on anger and frustration with the president, which I get. They are turning that anger and frustration into an emotional response to try to get people to vote for them. What I’m trying to do is talk about the anger and frustration but also try to get realistic assessments of how we solve these problems. 

You can’t govern the country based on being angry.

Exactly right. And this is why the Republicans are having such trouble winning national elections. All they have is anger and all they want is someone to tell them what they want to hear...

A Recipe for Total Disaster

Well, that didn't take long. Yesterday European authorities determined that the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 was depressed and responded by locking out the pilot and crashing his aircraft into a mountain.

Today we have people making suggestions like this:

With the news that the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, apparently brought down the plane deliberately, killing all 150 on board, we should quickly develop procedures and install equipment to allow air traffic control officials to override cabin cockpit controls. They could then take over a troubled flight — whether from an incapacitated crew or someone bent on malevolence — and fly the plane to safety, much in the way that drones are routinely operated.

This is, to put it mildly, a colossally stupid idea. Every day we hear more stories about hackers getting into bank computers, cash registers for major retailers, email accounts for major corporations, and nuclear power plants.

When you write code you either do it fast or you do it right.

Now they want to quickly place the thousands of airplanes flying through our skies at the mercy of hackers. As every software engineer knows, when you write code you either do it fast or you do it right. Mucking around with code that operates the flight controls of an aircraft and exposing them to external influence will introduce thousands of unintentional security vulnerabilities, especially if we rush to do so.

There are tens of thousands of flights per day. Terrorists could kill a hundred thousand people in a single day if they discovered a security hole in the remote control code for the Airbus 320. After 9/11 the airline industry was screwed up for years. If terrorists crashed 100 planes simultaneously the airline industry would never recover.

And even if the remote control code was 100% bulletproof, what if an unbalanced person or a group of terrorists or took over the remote control center itself?

In any case, remote control would be trivial to circumvent: would-be hijackers or suicidal pilots could simply jam radio signals on the plane. For decades the FAA has been afraid that cell phones, MP3 players and laptops would interfere with avionics, which is why we always had to turn them off during vulnerable times like takeoff and landing. Devices that intentionally jam radio signals could easily be smuggled aboard planes in the guise of those very same laptops, cell phones and MP3 players, rendering any form of remote control impossible.

There is no technological fix for a human problem

The reality is, there is no magic technological fix for what is essentially a human problem. All of our security ultimately relies on trusting human beings to do their jobs. Even the most popular idea, requiring two pilots in the cockpit at all times, isn't foolproof: it assumes that the pilot and copilot would never conspire in a suicide pact.

It also assumes that a pilot can't get a gun or knife aboard a plane and would never shoot or slit the throat of the other pilot. This is a foolish assumption, because it's ridiculously easy for airline employees to smuggle weapons onto airplanes, as we witnessed last year when Delta employees at the Atlanta airport smuggled hundreds of guns to New York aboard airplanes.

We also allow sky marshals to carry firearms on airplanes, and it would be trivial for them to shoot the pilots when the cockpit door is open. Given the recent spate of scandals at the Secret Service, I can't imagine the sky marshal service is any more rigorous in its screening of its employees, so there are without a doubt a few bad eggs there as well.

It looks like at least three airline pilots (on Egypt Air, Malaysian Airlines and Germanwings flights) have committed suicide by plane since 1999, despite rigorous psychological screening.

People need to stop running around screaming it's the end of the world and just accept the fact that it's impossible to be 100% safe. After all, there are 200 million idiots out on the highways, and you're far several thousand more times likely to be killed on the road by some drunken dolt on a Friday night than by a terrorist or suicidal pilot crashing a plane.

Yes, we need to take reasonable precautions, but in the heat of the moment we must not get sidetracked with stupid unworkable ideas in our attempt to pander to chicken littles who think the sky is falling, and avoid doing things that will only make us less safe.

It's Worse If You're Correct

I have come to the conclusion that when you are debating politics with a conservative, it gets worse the more you are accurate.

I recently engaged in a long discussion on Facebook over whether or not Barack Obama has destroyed our economy. I pointed out several key indicators (jobs, GDP, stock market, debt/deficit) which indicate that he has not "destroyed" our economy. In fact, it has vastly improved on his watch. As I presented them with more and more data, they grew increasingly hostile. One fellow named Dana eventually wrote this.

I hope that you and the rest of the liberals in this country do us a favor and end your own lives. 

I have to admit that I was pretty shocked by this statement. No one in the group (about 14 people) called him out on it. In fact, they kept piling on me. I did get a message from a guy named Connor who told me that Dana said the same thing to him. How can someone like this be so angry? The whole discussion certainly confirms many of the assertions I've made about conservatives in the past (adolescent, anger, hate, fear etc) but something new came out of it.

As we near the end of the Obama presidency, our country continues to improve in a number of sectors. Like the frustrated child that simply can't take someone doing a better job than they do, conservatives are going to grow more petulant...more hateful...more angry...and behave in ways that we probably can't imagine.

I'd advise all of you to be careful about future discussions like this and realize that facts may no longer help. It seems now that they make it worse.

Good Words

An Apology To Readers

I'd like to apologize to my 200-300 daily readers of this site for losing the courage of my convictions. It's been something that has been sticking in my craw for a while now and I felt it necessary to get it off my chest.

About a year ago, I noticed something about Benjamin Netanyahu and how he treated President Obama. It was merely how he treated him but how he looked at him. It reminded me a lot of how white men from the South look at the president. But I didn't say anything because I had doubt. That doubt was placed there by conservatives with their continual redirect and DARVOing. Being the reflective fellow I am, I listened to them and thought twice about putting up a post about how it's incredibly fucking obvious that Bibi no likey the blackies.

Yet now that he has made his comment about Arabs voting in droves, my suspicions are confirmed. So, I apologize, dear readers, for holding back. It will NEVER happen again. Clearly, their main goal in life is to foment doubt and act like adolescents. My days of listening to their garbage are over.

Now that we have comments cleaned up and monitored more closely, I encourage you to leave feedback and start some conversations. Registration is no longer required and you can post under any name you like..even anonymous. The comments will be moderated and checked for personal remarks to posters/commenters and spam so you will not be attacked by other commenters. The issues themselves will be the foundation of the discussion.

Thanks for sticking with us for all these years!

Fading Into Irrelevance

From a recent question on Quora...

If we look at the historical record. In the period from 1990 - 2915. You will find that the GOP has more consistently refused any Compromise. You also have GOP politicians stating that "there is no Compromising their values." Newt Gingritch was essentially de-throned as Speaker because he Compromised with Clinton. Conservatives try to pretend that "Democrats are exactly the same." But this would be nothing more than their continued slide into a Post-Modernist world where they can basically invent their own facts, rather than accepting that a consensus reality exists for which concrete observable facts are a part. 

And, it represents their failure to understand that on some issues (abortion, Global Warming, Religion, .....) that we have established laws, and they are trying to re-litigate these issues. Today's GOP has essentially become a mixture of the John Birch Society and Neo-Confederates trying to continue to fight the Civil War. And the fact that they have had to resort to cheats, gaming the system, and brinksmanship for EVERY ISSUE rather than let their ideas stand on merit shows that they are holding a losing hand (the only reason they remain in power in Congress is through a heavily gerrymanders majority, which defies the millions of votes more that went to Democratic Candidates than went to the GOP). 

 But... This will all get ironed out in 2016, when they are likely to fare even worse than they did in 2012, and by 2020, the new SCOTUS will likely undo all gerrymandering. So, by then, unless the GOP begins to accept reality, they will then fade into irrelevance as a regional party of grumpy old white guys.

Intelligent minds think alike!!