Not That Close

Here's a great piece from Charlie Cook on how the Clinton Trump race is not as close as it seems. The simple fact is that once the Hilz is the nominee, her numbers are going to return to what they were before Trump become the de facto nominee.

Released!

A judge has ordered the release of all documents related to the Trump University case.

And he's Hispanic....hee hee:)

We Remember

To those who serve and to the families of those lost, we remember...

Down 12%

After increasing in 2013 and in 2014, energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell in 2015. In 2015, U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions were 12% below the 2005 levels, mostly because of changes in the electric power sector.

Sweet!

The Rio Olympics Should Be Canceled

A hundred and fifty health experts have called for the Olympic Games scheduled to begin in Brazil this summer to be canceled or delayed:

With Brazil already swarming with Zika-loaded mosquitoes, hosting 500,000 foreign athletes and spectators for the 2016 Olympic games there in August poses unnecessary health risks and is downright “unethical.”

The Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization disagree, and have said the games should proceed.

But the problem with Brazil isn't just Zika: it's everything. As the Daily Show showed recently, Brazil is a disaster.

The former president of Brazil, Dilma Roussef, was recently deposed in a coup that was arranged by her political enemies in order to derail an investigation into their corruption. Their plot was divulged in a recording made public last week.

Brazil's economy and law enforcement are in a downward spiral because of low oil prices, problems that have been exacerbated by diverting billions of dollars to building facilities for the Olympics.

The ocean in which many of the events are scheduled to take place is filled with sewage, so loaded with bacteria and viruses that ingesting three teaspoons of seawater will infect a person with all sorts of nasty diseases.

The Brazilian government's response to Zika has been heartless. The worst thing about Zika is that it can cause babies to born with monkey-sized brains (microcephaly, or "pinheads," as Bill O'Reilly is so fond of saying). Last month the CDC definitively found that Zika causes babies to be born with tiny brains.

Brazil has severe restrictions on abortions, and no exceptions are made for babies born with microcephaly. Mothers are forced to bear children that will never be able to talk, care for themselves, grow up or ever really be human.

And then there's the epidemic of violence against women, exemplified by the recent gang rape of a sixteen-year-old girl by 30 men, which was recorded and posted online. There are at least 13 rapes a day in Rio de Janeiro, though the actual number is far higher because most rapes are never reported.

Brazil has become a third-world hell-hole in just a few short years. The country is incapable of hosting a safe and healthy Olympics. Athletes and spectators will contract diseases that they will bring home to their families and the rest of the world.

The Zika epidemic in Brazil was started by one traveler infected with the virus getting bitten by a mosquito in Brazil. It is the height of idiocy to send half a million people to Brazil so that they can get infected and bring the disease back to every corner of the world.

Let's Be Clear

The End of Oil

My favorite news organization, the Christian Science Monitor, has a great piece up about how oil is really at a turning point.

Even if the nearly 200 nations that negotiated the United Nations climate change agreement last December don’t meet their emissions-reducing commitments, they’re still worried about global warming and pollution. Major oil-consuming nations have policies in place to reduce their dependency on fossil fuels. Other pressures are building.

In five years, a fossil fuel divestment movement on a few college campuses has spread worldwide, with 518 organizations worth $3.4 trillion agreeing to sell off their coal, oil, and natural gas investments. These groups include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, heirs to the Standard Oil fortune, and the sovereign wealth fund of Norway, a top 20 oil producer. Even Saudi Arabia is moving to sell a portion of its state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, and diversify its economy.

One need only look at what's going in Venezuela to see what happens when you rely on oil these days. Man, I love the free market. Oh yeah....I also love this...

If the world is producing more oil, why are gas prices going up? 

Production is growing, but world demand, fueled by low gasoline prices, is growing even more. As a result, the oil glut is shrinking. By the end of the year, and perhaps as early as next quarter, production worldwide could fall below world demand. That would be the first time that’s happened since 2013.

Hmm...:)

Yay Hawai!

It looks like Hawaii is moving a more sane direction regarding guns. All firearms owners in Hawaii will now be in a federal database.

The bill involves an FBI database known as the "Rap Back" that currently tracks people who are in "positions of trust," such as school teachers and people who work with the elderly. Stephen Fischer of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division told The Associated Press. Hawaii would add gun owners to the list.

It's not too surprising that bowels are being blown in the Gun Cult. Oh well. Considering they fully support mentally unstable people acquiring firearms easily, they can fuck right off.

A New Approach to Gun Violence

NRA Members Want Background Checks?

I guess they do:)

Bathroom Wars Escalate into Violence

When this nonsense about needing to show birth certificates when using public restrooms started I asked myself how a parents with children of opposite gender would be able to bring their kids to the bathroom (and kids always gotta go...). Well, now we have the answer:

Utah dad says he was attacked for bringing 5-year-old daughter into men's bathroom

A Utah father said he got into an altercation with another man in a Walmart bathroom over the weekend after bringing his son and his daughter into the men’s restroom with him.

Chris Adams told Fox 13 Now Wednesday that he had taken his 7-year-old son and his 5-year-old daughter to shop for storage bins at the Walmart in Clinton. During their run, both children needed to use the bathroom.

Adams said he took both of his children into the men’s bathroom. He said another man inside the restroom saw his daughter with him.

“This guy walks in and goes to the bathroom, the urinal,” Adams told KSL Tuesday. “Then he just, like, turns to me and starts freaking out, dropping the ‘F-bomb,’ and what he was freaking out about was that my daughter was in the men’s bathroom.”

He said the man started a fight with him that carried out into the store. Adams said the other man kept saying it was inappropriate for his young daughter to be in the bathroom with him.

Was this grown man afraid that a 5-year-old girl with her dad and brother was a sexual predator? Or was he simply embarrassed that the girl had seen how tiny his penis was?

This crap about transgendered people in bathrooms is a red herring: it's just the Koch brothers or ALEC or some other conservative organization funded by billionaires trying to win the 2016 the same way they won the 2004 election.

As you may recall, 2004 was the year of the gay marriage scare. It played a large part in increasing turnout for Republicans, allowing Bush to win what was shaping up to be a tight race despite numerous dirty tricks played against John Kerry by Republican operatives.

But just a few years later gay marriage had become a reality. In large part because most Republicans themselves -- including Vice President Dick Cheney and Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager in 2004, who himself was gay -- actually support gay marriage.

The trans bathroom issue is nothing but a political stunt to drum up anger and hatred on the right. Republicans also have trans children, and after this election cycle is over, they'll all come out of the closet and tell us that they're actually against all this hysterical crap.

But, just as Republicans are all lining up behind Donald Trump's agenda of racism, misogyny and hatred, they'll fall in line with the trans bathroom issue just like they did with gay marriage.

The question is, in the meantime, how many people are they going to get beat up or murdered by idiots panicked by the idea that a girl piddled in the same bathroom that they did?

The Real America

A fascinating look into the Real America...wow.

Libertarians Chances

A recent piece over at Politico posits the question...does the Libertarian party actually have a chance this year? I think they do if they do a couple of things.

First, focus on the micro issues where the libertarian ideology actually works in reality. Education, which should be reformed from the local level outward, is one example. Legalizing all drugs is another.

Second, lose this nonsense.

If they can get the wingut out of their movement, they might actually peel away voters from both the Democrats and the Republicans.

When A Man Gets A Fever

Trump's Delegates Are....White Nationalists?

Donald Trump’s delegate ineptitude stumbles into white nationalism

Hoo boy...

The Challenge of One Size Fits All

The biggest challenge facing the gun rights position today is the one size fits all nature of 2nd amendment interpretations over the course of the last few decades. At the heart of this, is the concept of responsibility (individual versus societal) that dogs most issues of the day.

Defenders of gun rights fight for looser government regulations and champion easier access to firearms. By taking this position, they open up the door to a wide range of individuals, some of whom are irresponsible with firearms. Unfortunately, gun rights activists view this action as having a negligible on our society. Given that mass shootings have become the norm and toddlers shooting people  at the rate of one per week, I find this view most troubling and, quite frankly, heartless.

They also view these irresponsible people with firearms as being islands in our culture and any detrimental effect as being exclusively the fault of said person. Of course, this is the problem with the entire liberal versus conservative ideological wave length. Liberals tend to recognize that when you deal with a large group of people (aka the general public), a significant number of them are not intelligent, mature, or responsible. This is why liberals favor regulation and government control on a whole host of issues, not just guns. These irresponsible people are a drag on our society that inhibits progress. Conservatives, on the other hand, would rather leave the issue of responsibility with each person and let “free will” rule the day seemingly not caring about the effects nor our collective responsibility to society.

So, the biggest challenge facing the gun rights position today is the same one facing many of the other issues of the day. By loosening regulation on the financial sector, health care, the energy sector, and guns, people will behave in an irresponsible fashion and destroy lives. Because we live in a society where people are in a constant state of interaction, less regulated people will hurt or kill other people. It’s just that simple.

Dwarfed?

I was sitting watching my son play baseball the other day when the conversation with a fellow parent turned to politics. We talked for a bit about the election and then she said something that cracked me up.

"I just have this feeling that Trump is going to win."

I asked her on what she based her assertion.

"I don't know...just a feeling."

She was certainly not a Trump supporter as she told me she would be voting for Hillary Clinton and truly despised Trump's comments about women. Yet her comments made me wonder where all this "Trump feelings" stuff originates. I think part of it is his celebrity but I'll have a post about that in a few days. Most of it is merely slippery slope fallacy...he won the GOP primary when no one thought he could so therefore he will win the general when no one thought he could.

I don't think my fellow baseball parent is aware of the massive infrastructure advantage that Hillary Clinton has right now. The political world is, however, and it's pretty amazing.

Through the end of last month, the period covered by the most recent FEC filings, Trump’s campaign had spent less than a third as much Clinton’s ($57 million to $182 million) and had assembled a staff about one-tenth the size of her (70 employees to 732), with a fraction as many offices (Trump last month paid $101,000 in rent vs. $328,000 for Clinton), the analysis found.

Does Trump think he can get out the vote in a general election without field offices?

Polls A Go Go

I find it most interesting that everyone seems to be focusing on national polls (of registered voters no less..pee-yew) and not on the state by state polls. National polls don't really matter. It's the individual state polls that matter. And anyone that thinks this race is tightening ought to take a look at what Arizona and Georgia look like.

Here are some other notes about polls...

Nate Silver went on a pretty hilarious Twitter rant about polls in May. And a great mea culpa from Silve as well.

Speaking of 538, here's some great insight on the whole Trump supporters are in the closet meme.

Where are the Emperor's Clothes?

Welcome To Louisville