The Politics of Polls

Take a look at today's president polls on a national level. The head to head match ups are very interesting. Clinton bests only Trump and is behind Cruz, Rubio, Bush and Kasich. Yet Bernie Sanders beats all of them handily. Why is that?

Well, for starters, it's polling registered, not likely voters. And we are looking at national numbers and not the coveted state by state numbers. It really doesn't matter how a candidate is doing nationally because the only polls that matter are the ones in the swing states. Candidates like to spin how well they are doing nationally but I'm only interested in how they match up in Ohio. Or Florida. Or Virginia.

Ending the Transgender Bathroom Hysteria

South Dakota is the latest entrant in the fearfest many Republican-run states have been whipping up over transgendered individuals and bathrooms. Mike Huckabee dialed up his creep factor to 11 last year when he said:

"Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE," Huckabee said.

The number of transgendered individuals in South Dakota high schools is going to be amazingly small. The number is estimated to be about 0.2 to 0.3 percent, or about 700,000 Americans. Given South Dakota's small population and lack of tolerance for transgendered individuals, there can't be more than a couple dozen in the entire state. So why the big stink?

The problem, as conservatives appear to see it, is that males claiming to be transgendered will be physically attracted to women and wish to spy on them in the toilet (because sitting in the stall next to someone taking a dump is so alluring).

However, many people born male who identify as women are attracted to men. And many people born female who identify as male are attracted to women. Which, in Republicans' minds, means they are gay. That means Republicans want to make people with homosexual tendencies use restrooms that are frequented by the sex they are physically attracted to.

In other words, Republicans want to force Mike Huckabee's wet dream on these transgendered individuals.

Not that long ago Republicans were going through a gay panic, worried that they would be trapped in a bathroom with a rapacious gay man. Now, just a few short years later, they want to force every allegedly gay man to share bathrooms with them, even when they've sex reassignment surgery, lopped off their penises, taken hormones and grown breasts.

Now, imagine how disconcerted Mike Huckabee will feel when he's taking a leak in the men's room and Caitlyn Jenner walks in. Wouldn't he rather she visit the ladies room and save everyone the embarrassment?

And how is this going to be enforced? Is South Dakota going to post toilet police outside every restroom and check your ID before they let you in? Or are they going to strip search everyone on the way in? With all those phony IDs floating around you just can't be too safe.

One thing these Republican men may not be aware of is that women's bathrooms provide a great deal more privacy than men's bathrooms. Men's bathrooms sport communal urinals, but women get private stalls. There's really nothing to see in a women's bathroom.

When I went to high school, boys showered communally, which I felt was a terrible invasion of privacy. Unlike Mike Huckabee, I didn't really like getting naked with a bunch of guys. However, my wife's school had private shower stalls in their locker rooms. The locker rooms in the women's sports programs at our local university have separate showers, the men shower communally. Even women's prisons, if Orange is the New Black is any kind of guide, have separate shower stalls.

So, sorry, Huck. Even if you had claimed you were a girl in high school, you'd be showering alone in a personal stall anyway.

Scanning the Internet, this seems to be the way it is across the country: women get privacy in their bathrooms, while men get communal urinals and sometimes even rows of toilets with no walls separating them.

Rather than fretting about transgendered individuals sneaking peaks, legislators should be taking steps to ensure everyone's privacy in the bathroom. Every student should be free from the prying eyes of other students, whether they're straight, gay or trans.

While we're talking toilets, there's another problem that deserves mention: in many places -- sports stadiums, for example -- there are nowhere near enough facilities for women. The line for the women's room is really long, while the men's room is empty. This has prompted some women to use the men's room instead.

Many public places now have three kinds of bathrooms: mens, womens and family -- the later being a single stool with a baby-changing station. This idea should be expanded: separate men's and women's rooms should be eliminated, replacing them with facilities that can be used by anyone in privacy. An adjacent penis-only urinal room could be provided for men who absolutely must flash their dicks for other men to see.

That would also put men and women on an equal footing waiting in line for toilet stalls.

The most dishonest thing about South Dakota bathroom scare is that trans kids are threatening anyone. By far and way the most frequent sort of sexual harassment in the schools is straight students harassing gays and trans kids.

But institutionalizing that harassment is the entire point, isn't it?

A Gun That Offered No Protection

Today, I'm wondering if Trisha Nelson knew that when she bought her gun and got her conceal carry permit that she would up being shot with it.

He had served his sentence and was on probation when he shot Nelson. He most likely used Nelson’s gun, for which she had a concealed-carry permit, Padden said.

Having a gun increase, not decreases, your chances of being shot.

Supreme Court Vacancy

A Cause We Believe To Be Just

"The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me." 

(Abraham Lincoln. Speech on the Sub-Treasury in the Illinois House of Representatives, December 26, 1839)

Our Diversity

"We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith." 

(Barack Obama, State of the Union address (12 January 2016), Washington, D.C.)

Celebrate The Past, Awaken The Future

"We celebrate the past to awaken the future."

("Remarks at the 25th Anniversary of the Signing of the Social Security Act," Hyde Park, New York August 14, 1960, box 910, Senate Speech Files, John F. Kennedy Papers, Pre-Presidential Papers, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.)

Undeserved Poverty, Self Serving Wealth

"The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth." 

(Franklin D. Roosevelt, Third Inaugural Address. January 20, 1941)

The Man Who Makes No Mistakes

"The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything." 

(As quoted by Jacob A. Riis in Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen (1904), chapter XVI A Young Men's Hero)

Internationally Minded

"No nation on this globe should be more internationally minded than America because it was built by all nations." 

(Harry Truman at Chicago, 17 March 1945, as recorded in Good Old Harry)

Things Just Crazier For 2016

With the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia, the political world has been thrown into more than just its usual upheaval. The Supreme Court is now drawn even at 4-4 and will likely vote that way on most of the incoming and most controversial cases. SCOTUS Blog has the best coverage available for exactly what it means in terms of these pending cases before the court.

President Obama has said that we will name a replacement quickly and expects the Senate to confirm his nomination. Mitch McConnell has said that such a nomination should be delayed a full year until the new president takes office. This tack was echoed last night by all candidates (save Jeb Bush) in the GOP debate. I guess the president's last year isn't exactly going to be calm.

Honestly, it's a lose-lose situation for McConnell. He stalls and the sheen that is on a somewhat productive Senate goes away during an election year. He allows a vote to go forward and the president gets to install a vote that will surely side with the four liberal justices thus tipping the balance. I think he's going to ride out that first choice as long as he can.

I hope he does:)

A Stew of Resentment and Victimization

From a recent, wonderful piece on Salon.com...

But what was most obvious in the long, long list of grievances that Fry, Anderson, her husband Sean, and the fourth person, Jeff Banta, was that these were people steeped in the muddled and reactionary right-wing politics that have turned the base of the Republican Party into a stew of resentment and victimization. 

These were people who have spent years being told by conservative media that everyone is out to get them and everyone is stepping all over them while minorities and liberals and immigrants and jackbooted federal officers steal their jobs and their guns and turn America into a giant, sharia-ruled suburb of Tijuana.

Sounds to me like a cult...:)

Or a gun blog...same thing...

The Trump Rally

The responses about China/Mexico and ISIS are pretty fucking hilarious.

 

What I Saw on my Winter Vacation

I just returned from a trip to Florida. We drove through Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and north Florida. Along the way we saw a lot of billboards. We watched local TV stations at night when we stayed in motels.

In Wisconsin and Illinois the billboards and TV commercials were pretty much the same as in Minnesota. But when we got into the Southern states, things started to change. There were a lot of billboards for porn shops, strip clubs, gun stores, Jesus, divorce lawyers and personal injury lawyers (ambulance chasers). There seemed to be a porn shop, strip club or gun shop every 20 miles or so along the freeway in the South. They don't outnumber the churches, but they're advertised a lot more.

Where we stayed in Cocoa Beach there was a "gentleman's club" called Cheaters across the street from a Catholic grade school. How do Florida parents explain to their children that the men who go there aren't cheating on their tests?

We have these things in the North. Porn shops and strip joints are usually buried the seedier areas of town. We have divorce lawyers and ambulance chasers, but they advertise on low-rent cable channels or late at night.

During prime time in Minnesota every other TV commercial is for cars. In the South, every other commercial is for personal injury lawyers. (No wonder Republicans are constantly yapping about tort reform -- they're constantly suing each other for car accidents.)

Now this seems counter-intuitive. The South is where Christianity is strongest. People are constantly yapping about God, and pushing their religion in everyday life (cashiers constantly order God to bless their customers). Conservative Republicans have a total lock on state governments in Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. They're always bitching the moral collapse of society, as evidenced by pornography, divorce, frivolous personal injury lawsuits and so on.

But based on the prevalence of vice in these states, they do seem to be more morally bankrupt than the "godless" Yankees.

The statistics bear this out: the South has more violent crime -- with only a quarter of the population, the South has 41% of the violent crime. The divorce rate is higher in the South. Even per-capita traffic death rates are higher in conservative states (partly because population density is lower and people drive further).

The question is, why? Do Southerners want more guns because there's more violent crime, or do they want guns because Southerners are more prone to violent crime? Are Southerners drawn to religion because of moral decay represented by high divorce rates, strip clubs and pornography, or this moral decay due to the hypocrisy inherent in a conservative religion that promotes the objectification and denigration of women?

Frequently, one of the best ways to get kids to do something is for their parents to tell them not to do it. Based on the outcomes, conservative Christianity seems to be the worst nagging parent ever...

And Then There Were Six

Jim Gilmore has just suspended his campaign. I realize this comes as shock to three people in the United States but they're just going to have to muddle through.

This leaves us with Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Bush, Kasich, and Carson.

Ted Cruz Is The Face of God

Just let them talk....

New Hampshire Fallout

The political universe is "stunned" at the results in New Hampshire last night. Hillary Clinton is in trouble, I guess? I have to admit that even I was surprised at how handily Sanders beat her in the popular vote. Of course, with the super delegates added in they still ended up splitting the delegate count 15-15. There have been reports that Bill has been pretty pissed about how the campaign has been organized. I would be too and said as much  last August. They should have made changes a long time ago but, obviously, with the South coming up, they are likely not too worried.

On the GOP side, Trump won to no one's surprise. As I predicted, Kasich came in 2nd and Rubio lost all of his momentum from coming in 3rd in Iowa due to his debate performance. How can he possibly go on now? Christie and Fiorina are out as of today. That leaves Trump, Cruz, Bush, Kasich, Rubio, Carson, and (why?) Jim Gilmore. Maybe Gilmore is hoping that if he hangs around long enough that it will be down to him, Trump, and Cruz and somehow, the establishment will fall in line behind him.

Next up is South Carolina for the GOP and Nevada for the Democrats!!

New Hampshire Predictions

Bernie wins on the Democratic side by around 10 percentage points....

Trump wins on the GOP side with Kasich coming in 2nd, Bush 3rd and Rubio 4th. Christie will have a strong showing as well. Rubio's debate performance hurt him and he's going to pay for it in New Hampshire.

Sasquatch?

The Contrast

Juxtapose the Democratic Debate last Thursday with the Republican Debate last night. See any stark differences? The former showcased two adults having an intelligent and vigorous debate that spoke to the ideological core of the Democratic party. The latter looked like a food fight at a middle school with Marco Rubio being the kid that everyone picked on.

As Steve Benen and Tegan Goddard recently noted, the big winner of the Democratic debate was...the Democrats.

“The real winners were Democratic voters,” Goddard wrote overnight. “Anyone who watched learned a lot. It made the Republican debates look like over-produced game shows.” 

I think that’s both true and important. I don’t doubt that Clinton’s and Sanders’ backers can make spirited cases why their candidate prevailed, but I hope they won’t miss the forest for the trees: for two hours, Americans saw two very capable candidates engage in a deeply substantive, engrossing discussion that mattered.

I'd add that Bernie Sanders has been exactly what the Democrats needed at this moment in time and he knows it. For too long, Democrats have succumbed to a sort of faux compromise where the Republicans (really, the Tea Party...now fully absorbed into the GOP) stake a claim so far on the right side of the field that any consensus inevitably ends up being a conservative (see also: non functional in objective reality) solution.

Now with Sanders on the scene, he pulls the party in the far left direction and any sort of compromise ends up where it should be...in the fucking middle. 

He makes Hillary a better candidate and so does the press...beating up on her from everything to her emails, to her Wall Street speeches, to her "lackluster" campaign and especially to her honesty gap. I say get all that shit out there now so she can get her game together for the fall. Force her to go farther left on some issues that she may feel comfortable with so the nation can benefit.

Because it's pretty clear the nation isn't going to benefit from any of the GOP candidates. Take a look at how the debate started off.


What a fantastic metaphor for the GOP in 2016. It only got worse from there.

Marco Rubio has been rising the polls these last few days but he really looked out of his league last night, repeating himself over and over again.


\

Wow.

The rest of the night showed 7 little boys sniping at each other that honestly reminded me of my 8th graders. Actually, I take that back. My 8th graders are more mature than these guys.

I'll have my predictions for New Hampshire on Monday night.