US Election 2016
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ronrat
Joined: 22 May 2006
Location: Thailand
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| Wokko wrote: | Squatting is apparently much healthier for your bowels.
Using a third bathroom option is what I think would be best too, but trans advocates say that it's demeaning or something. |
Not with my back and the state they are left in.
They have a third or fourth one in the High Schools and the Universities here.So I am told. In some places they build one specifically for members of the Royal Family. Who might visit a place once in their lifetime. Perhaps they should do that for Donald trump.
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Annoying opposition supporters since 1967. |
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David 
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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| Wokko wrote: | | I think saying that a man who 'identifies' as female is in danger in a mens toilet is absolutely ridiculous, they might feel uncomfortable but a 6 year old girl seeing a grown man dressed as a woman going into the womens toilet will be terrified. . |
Perhaps you're unaware of the high rates of violence against trans people. They're one of the most victimised groups proportionally, and it's hardly much of a stretch to imagine that a public toilet might be a particularly unsafe place for them.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/2014-transgender-violence_b_5298554.html
But this isn't just about safety, it's about dignity. It's right and just that trans people be legally considered the gender they identify as, and that means being treated as belonging to that gender in all spheres of life. That's why the suggestion that they use the disabled toilets or some other designated 'third' toilet is offensive. This is a point that Trump, rather surprisingly, seems to understand completely.
As for the concerns about women and girls in public bathrooms, I think Stui's post hits the nail on the head. This is a moral panic mostly engaged in by people who think (or want others to think) that perverts wearing women's clothing are waiting around every corner to molest their children. I suspect a great number of people pushing these bills in North Carolina and elsewhere have ulterior motives, to put it lightly.
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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Dangles
Balmey Army
Joined: 14 May 2015
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More voting today in about five states and the word is Clinton and Trump have it sown up. It's all over. Can't believe so-called progressives would pick Wall Street Hillary over Bernie.  |
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Wokko 
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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Trump runs the table tonight, winning and winning big.
+40% in some states, pulling in 60% of the vote. |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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^ A lot of Democrats aren't really progressives at all, so it shouldn't be that surprising.
Clinton has won Delaware and Maryland, Sanders seems to have Rhode Island and he has a narrow lead also in Pennsylvania (Clinton is just in front in Connecticut). Trump's gone 5-0.
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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Pies4shaw 
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| Wokko wrote: | Trump runs the table tonight, winning and winning big.
+40% in some states, pulling in 60% of the vote. |
That's great news. All he needs to do now is get some Americans who can read and write on board and he's a chance. |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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Here's Rundle on the increasing desperation of the Cruz and Kasich campaigns (and, for some reason, the Desiderata):
http://www.crikey.com.au/2016/04/26/rundle-republicans-real-strains-rivers-ehrmann/
| Quote: | Republicans get real, to strains of Rivers and Ehrmann
Guy Rundle
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story …
— Desiderata, 1927
Stuff got real today in the great Republican race for the nomination/plunge into nothingness, ahead of the five-state east-central primary: Pennsylvania, Maryland, a few trash states. Stuff got real, and then it got unreal again, in the space of hours.
On Sunday, word crept out that Ted Cruz and John Kasich had concluded some sort of deal going into the final weeks. Kasich would concede Indiana to Cruz, and would not campaign there, and Cruz would stay out of Oregon and Montana further down the track. The reason for this late-in-the-day deal was the deepest passion in politics: the maths.
After Donald Trump’s yuuuuge win in New York, the two remaining candidates took a long, hard look at the numbers, and stopped spouting bullshit about all being in, etc, and made some moves to limit the possibility that Trump would get the nomination before the convention, with the magic 1237 votes. That turns on Indiana, which is a winner-take-all haul of 41 votes, if Trump could get above 50%. Though the state abuts Ohio and might be seen as Kasich territory, it is by far and away the most religious and socially conservative of the rustbelt states, a l’il chunk of the south in the north, and its inhabitants — “Hoosiers”, in common parlance — are known as having a far more reserved and inward countenance than those of the states that surround them. The place is the home of Max Ehrmann, the businessman/poet who wrote Desiderata, the homily that was on a poster in every rumpus room in the 1970s, next to the “oh shit” kitten and the skeleton on a toilet.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself …
— Desiderata
There is thus a bet that Trump’s schtick might not go over quite so well in the Hoosier state, and that Cruz may have a chance to either edge him out, or at least deprive him of the magic majority. Kasich was given a couple of states largely as a sop, a way of saving face. His delegates don’t matter, other than that he has some. He wants either a VP slot or a 2020 run, or that, looking at the polls, and in desperation, the Republican convention will turn to the only guy who can beat Hillary (and draws with Bernie), and batten down the hatches and bear whatever shit-storm is directed at them, and choose Kasich. Were they to do this, god knows what would happen in terms of some third-party challenge, from the Trumpkins, with a few Berneyites, and old Paulites (when your politics starts to sound like theology, well that’s a diagnosis of the problem right there).
But I know one thing: any Democratic supporter should be scared as hell of a Kasich candidacy. The man is like catnip. You can go into one of his meetings knowing his hard-right positions on welfare, unions, abortion and countless other things — and leave them floating on air, thinking you have found the one true man. All the more remarkable, given that many people who’ve worked with Kasich say he’s kind of a prick. Not on the Cruz level — no one’s on the Cruz level — but not exactly WYSIWYG. Is WYSIWYG still a thing …?
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
— Desiderata
By this evening, the deal was already falling apart. Kasich, interviewed, said he just wasn’t campaigning in Indiana, that’s all, and if you wanted to vote for him you should. Which is not exactly a pact, not even the beginnings of one, and suggests Kasich might be, well, a bit of a prick. Whether the pact would work at all remains to be seen. Denied a chance to vote for Kasich, I think his supporters might split evenly between “staying home” and Trump. I don’t think there’s much of a Kasich-Cruz transfer, and I don’t think many of Kasich’s supporters would feel the Republican Party was “saved” by having Cruz pre-empt Trump. Those who would go from Kasich to Trump are those who would believe that what is needed in the White House is a doer. They would see Kasich as a real one, Trump as a flim-flam man. But they would see Trump as someone who would at least shake things up.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be critical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
— Desiderata
Trump tried to be presidential for a few days. He even referred to Ted Cruz as “Senator Cruz” rather than “Lyin’ Ted”. The pose didn’t last. When the Kasich-Cruz primary deal became clear, Trump launched a fusillade. He didn’t have a nickname, but focused on Kasich’s trencherman application to the traditional New York political campaign duty, eating ethnic foods. Kasich took it on as some sort of challenge, inhaling pizzas, lasagnes, knishes, chow mein, paella, sandwiches named after long-dead theatrical agents, and on and on.
There was something just a little forced and performative about it, and Trump zeroed in on it immediately: “The way that man eats, my god, what is that? He eats like no one else ever ate, mwummwummwum …” Jesus it was funny. It was Trump back to his old schtick, something learnt, as any Queens kid rich or poor learnt it in the ’60s — watching Johnny Carson, and the stand-ups he had on. If you want the source of Trump’s pile on, well, despite all the alleged hyper-masculinism, it’s actually Joan Rivers. Trump’s monologues have the exact structure of Rivers’ pile-driver routines which, framed by the safe confines on evening TV, pushed past them conventional morality and what was hidden (“I’m getting older, I had a hot flush so bad it melted my IUD — OH COME ON!”). How weird that Trump is the safe masculinised version of Rivers’s far more edgy act. (If you want more, there’s also this — and a lot more on the ‘tubes.)
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
— Desiderata
Gahhhh, so where we? Trump cannot help himself. He’s a New York guy. The great hope of everyone is, he’ll get the nomination, be good for two weeks, and then go wild beyond measure, and it’ll be an incredible ride, and Hillary Clinton will get 45 states.
It’s this possibility, borne out by innumerable polls, that has really focused the minds of the Republican establishment — on the possibility that any shit fight is worth it, to deny Trump the nomination. That was buttressed by an interview with Charles Koch, of the notorious Koch brothers, who said there might not be a Republican candidate they could support, and that he would potentially vote for Clinton if no better alternative was presented. Which was another vote for Kasich, buried under many layers.
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
— Desiderata
(Those who want a soundtrack to the last part of this article, you might want to cue up Les Crane’s version.)
So it’s on to Indiana, after the results tomorrow, which should be a five-state Trump slam, with maybe one recalcitrant state. Pennsylvania is both key and irrelevant, since at least 50 of its delegates are free agents, even on a first ballot, in a system which no one really understands. So this round will deliver him not the 1237, but bragging rights. And they don’t really play in Indiana.
Max Ehrmann was an upper-middle-class type who returned from Ivy league in the early part of the century, determined to make it as a businessman — but only so he could pursue his career as a poet. Like that other businessman/poet — Wallace Stevens — Ehrmann recognised that daily work was a muse of sorts, a connection to the real flow of life, that might make something more than “poesy” possible. Unlike Stevens, Ehrmann was a terrible poet. His self-published volumes were saturated in the fascination with the East that took over the United States in the 1910s and ’20s and beyond — the essentially atheist musings of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, that became, for an educated class, a halfway house out of Christianity. Such a sensibility flows through Stevens’ poems, but he brings it under his control. It’s in Huxley, in Isherwood and many others of the time. Ehrmann had some inkling that he was not of their ilk, and he prayed — to whatever he was praying to — that he would get one chance to write a poem of the ages. Desiderata was something he worked and worked and worked and I reckon it is probably the finest example of that contradiction: a man with absolutely no talent, nevertheless creating something, that someone can take something away from, a poem planed so flat that the grain of life shows through.
Ehrmann had some luck with his poem in the ’30s — its idea of God “whatever you believe him to be” is clearly at the root of the “12 steps” of Alcoholics Anonymous founded in the late ’30s, and which, by the late ’70s, would become the most powerful spiritual movement in the US. But it was only when a New England vicar included a copy of it in care packages to serving soldiers in the brutal post D-Day campaign of 1944-45 that it took off. That led to a fortuitous misunderstanding — the vicar noted his 17th New England church as the source, of the particular pamphlet, and for several decades it was taken to be a 17th poem, even though the plain language clearly did not match the era. By the time that was sorted out, the hip ’60s outfit Athena Posters had done a version of it, selling in the hundreds of thousands, and the ’60s DJ Les Crane had been persuaded to do a spoken version of it, which became a huge hit, and extended its life all the way through the ’70s when, to be honest, people would believe anything.
In Australia it got a lease of life in the ’90s when Shirley Barrett included it in her great film Love Serenade — a movie which is really the completion of the whole Australian “new wave” cycle, the masculinsed Australian outback rendered as feminine yearning — as a track that the mysterious new DJ who comes to a country one-man radio station plays incessantly, to the general derangement of the entire village. It was a way, as this article is a way, of disguising one’s fealty to the poem, to its schlock version, without owning it. But hell, one can only dissemble so much. It is a ridiculously silly poem and song, but it has helped me through one or two dark times. I suspect a few listenings to it are equal to two or three of the cognitive behavioural therapy sessions Medicare offers, and I would urge Health ministry budgeters to consider this as a first line defence against the universal sadness of late capitalism.
Anyway, they’ve finally put up a statue of Ehrmann in Terre Haute, Indiana. The melancholy of this is that both Trump and Cruz are the anti-Desideratae, their spirits, in different ways antithetical to the poem. And so it is that, after tomorrow’s results, Indiana may surprise us all.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.
— Max Ehrmann, 1927 |
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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And Trump kicks arse winning 5 seats in a landslide. 
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Dangles
Balmey Army
Joined: 14 May 2015
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| Does anyone know how many votes Trump and Clinton have received during these primaries? It'd be interesting to know which of one them has pulled the most votes so far. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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Good question. Short answer, dunno.
They tend to report on how many delegates they won not how many votes they got and considering how the different states do shit different and the democrats and republicans are different again, it's hard to get a decent comparison.
Plus Clinton is in a 2 horse race whereas Trump has been in a large but narrowing field.
Anyway, it aint the votes in these primaries that will count in the end, other than to decide the candidates, it will be the votes in the actual election.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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Clinton : 12,135,166
Sanders : 8,968,267
Trump : 10,056,351
Cruz : 6,854,269
Rubio : 3,461,275
Kasich : 3,673,042
Can't guage much from that because Trump was running against like 16 opponents, Hillary against I think 3 (Only 1 for most of the contest).
To put it somewhat in perspective, Trump already has passed Romney's vote total and it's looking like a record Republican turnout. This may well translate to an energized base for the General Election which is half the battle. Romney lost because Republican voters stayed home. |
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Dangles
Balmey Army
Joined: 14 May 2015
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| Wokko wrote: | Clinton : 12,135,166
Sanders : 8,968,267
Trump : 10,056,351
Cruz : 6,854,269
Rubio : 3,461,275
Kasich : 3,673,042
Can't guage much from that because Trump was running against like 16 opponents, Hillary against I think 3 (Only 1 for most of the contest).
To put it somewhat in perspective, Trump already has passed Romney's vote total and it's looking like a record Republican turnout. This may well translate to an energized base for the General Election which is half the battle. Romney lost because Republican voters stayed home. |
Thanks for the stats.
It'd be bizarre if Trump's nomination energized the Republican base given that a lot of pundits have been more or less saying that Trump's rise has destroyed the party. |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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Any thoughts on Cruz's choice of Fiorina as hypothetical running mate? I can kind of see it might boost his (surely rock-bottom) cred with women, but I can't really see the prospect of Fiorina as VP adding much enthusiasm to his campaign.
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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Dangles
Balmey Army
Joined: 14 May 2015
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That Mason Cox article wasn't genuine? I had my doubts but I wasn't sure.
| David wrote: | ^ A lot of Democrats aren't really progressives at all, so it shouldn't be that surprising.
Clinton has won Delaware and Maryland, Sanders seems to have Rhode Island and he has a narrow lead also in Pennsylvania (Clinton is just in front in Connecticut). Trump's gone 5-0. |
Clinton is a self proclaimed progressive. But you're right about a lot of Democrates not being progressives. I don't know why they don't just go the whole hog and vote for the Republicans. |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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I think it's just a function of the Republicans being so far to the right. People like Turnbull, Pyne, Bishop etc. would probably have no choice but to vote Democrat at least some of the time. Even Abbott could have squeezed into the Democrats' Catholic right at one point in time.
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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