Obama about to call on – as in send guidance to — all public school districts nationwide to allow transgender students to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity really makes me crazy. This is just the kind of unthinking, insensitive threat to almost universally accepted social norms (sexual privacy norms!) that – whether Obama is right or wrong – chases people far, far from the Democratic Party, at just the wrong moment. But, dive in and crash the rest of us blindly our academic progressives will go.
“An earlier report published in April 2011 by the Williams Institute estimated that 3.8 percent of Americans identified as gay/lesbian, bisexual, or transgender: 1.7 percent as lesbian or gay, 1.8 percent as bisexual, and 0.3 percent as transgender.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States
* * * * * *
Transgender is a tragic condition, actually having the wrong gender body to go with your brain. I first became aware of what it was all about when I saw two NBC Nightly News stories in two nights portraying two young (maybe 8-10 years old), a physical girl and boy. The boy said “How could God make a mistake like that?”
The Times reports “They compared a group of 324 Swedish transsexuals for an average of more than 10 years after gender reassignment with controls and found that transsexuals had 19 times the rate of suicide … “
Number sorting: I have a hard time accepting one out of 300 persons have the wrong gender body to go with their brain. Could be. I don’t see a match either with one in 300 and 19 times the suicide rate.
May not matter policywise. If you are going to let people use the bathroom of their gender identity the basis may not matter.
Real world: Who is ready for mostly male looking-female identity (not necessarily female brain) routinely – not one in 20,000 — using the ladies room? That’s all there is to it.
It is not mostly a matter of crime (though that is certainly a possibility – Caitlyn is reportedly thinking of reversing because she still has an interest in women — she sure made enough babies while she seemed only a boy) … … it is an everyday, all day matter or privacy. One in a hundred if you go by the San Francisco school official — school children have no reason to make up a story (which school in the story is transitioning to all gender neutral-multistall bathrooms!).
Real world question: should we allow physically male, transgender women who admit sexual attraction to females into the ladies? (Another real world question: how upset are women going to be when physical females who are transitioning to male bodies to match their brains – hormone shots to grow body hair and such – decide to use the ladies, even though they are presumably harmless on the crime side?)
Repeat, it is a clear danger of crime – it is an ever-present (intolerable?) danger to privacy.
Also a danger from pushy, rushed taxi drivers like I used to be who if confronted with an out of order mens’ might not hesitate to push our luck with the ladies. They see men in their regularly – what are they going to say to me? When you got to go, you got to go.
Eventually restrooms will just be degendered. There was an interview on the subject the other day (maybe yesterday) on public radio, but I’ve agreed with the opinions expressed for a while.
If you’ve been to a convention or a shopping mall, you will quickly notice that either the mens or womens bathrooms get backed up, and the other has no users. It’s a ridiculous situation, and it is really only there to accommodate the particularly bad design of American public restrooms.
In Cambridge it is not unusual already for bathrooms to be unisex, even common ones, and the prevalence of “family bathrooms” is already proof that we know we need better facilities for all sorts of private reasons.
Meantime, where has Obama been on the economic issues that might have secured the blue collar who are defecting to the millionaires’ party?
Why hasn’t he been out front screaming that the minimum wage is $4 lower than it’s 1968 high point, double the per capita income since?
Why hasn’t he been excoriating Republican governors for rejecting Medicaid funds that their states have been sending to D.C. — those uncovered people going to end up being paid for with higher private premiums to cover their clinic and ER walk-ins — paying twice? Medicaid expansion pays 90% — madness not to take!!!
Why hasn’t he been out front explaining that our labor laws lack enforcement and spending all day every day explaining that our society cannot become healthy again without effective collective bargaining and lobbying by labor unions?
He made a speech at a high school touting that inequality as the “defining issue of our time.” It didn’t poll well next week — he forgot about it. Think he may have used the word “inequality” 27 times (where did I read that?). Of course, most people don’t know what you are talking about when you use the word “inequality” — but Obama doesn’t know much about most people. Will work hard for scaring off everyday, sensible people by making his big issue sending men all day, every day into ladies bathrooms for sea to shining sea. That he has energy for.
“If it is unfair for domestic firms to compete with foreign entities that are subsidized or propped up by their governments, is it not similarly unfair for domestic workers to compete with foreign workers who lack fundamental rights such as collective bargaining or protections against workplace abuse? Aren’t firms that despoil the environment, use child labor, or provide hazardous employment conditions also a source of unfair competition?
“Such concerns about unfair trade lie at the heart of the anti-globalization backlash.”
Imagine if European firms and labor unions objected to allowing US imports without tariffs on the basis of competing with low budget, unorganized labor. :-O
Because the blue collar workers going GOP are not going to listen to a black man under any circumstances.
One day people will figure out that half the GOP base cares about one thing, and one thing only, and that one thing is “those people”.
“During these hard days and hard weeks, everybody always
has it bad once in a while. You know, you have a bad time of
it, and you always have a friend who says “Hey man, you
ain’t got it that bad. Look at that guy.” And you at that
guy, and he’s got it worse than you. And it makes you feel
better that there’s somebody that’s got it worse than you.
But think of the last guy. For one minute, think of the last
guy. Nobody’s got it worse than that guy. Nobody in the
whole world. That guy…he’s so alone in the world that he
doesn’t even have a street to lay in for a truck to run him over.
He’s out there with nothin’. Nothin’s happenin’ for that cat.”
Arlo Guthrie
The Birchers just cannot stand not stand the thought that people of color are no longer always the last guy.
1968 and pre-USMC and college, I was working on the United of America building on Wacker Drive in Chicago (https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8868017,-87.6273335,3a,75y,171.37h,88.07t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sPWeHDUu3pWAXQUI5TTxxKg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 on the right next to the restaurant) about 20 stories on a cabled scaffold. We were re-caulking the joints on a white marble building. The old caulking had turned black from the Chicago air giving the building a blacked lined look rather than pure white. This caulking was supposed to be resistant to air pollution staining. It wasn’t either.
I was 19, fresh out of high school, working with the men my dad (he was there also) had worked with for years as a tuckpointer/bricklayer, and trying to decide what I was going to do “before” the draft snatched me up. The morning (3 AM) after Halloween, I spent sipping coffee in the restaurant (McCormack) watching the partiers come in to the restaurant still in costume trying to sober up. There was a lot of interesting things going on, saw “Chicken Charlie” for the first time one morning http://chicagohistorymuseum.tumblr.com/post/37412709730/casey-jones-also-known-as-chicken-charlie in “The Loop,” for a 19 year old and an abundance of young women who appeared to be interested in a young male. I had worked Summers with these men as a Laborer so I was kind of used to their views and the outlooks of them. Other than the jokes they would pull on me, they were kind to a young white male and I kept my mouth shut.
Lane Technical HS was a magnet school in Chicago located near Riverview Park and not far from Wrigley Field. I would take the Addison Avenue CTA to it each morning and sometimes with my drafting board tucked under my arm. The school was integrated and far different than the 99% all White (minority of Asians) grammar school on the northwest side of the city. It is still ranked highly for a high school education in the city. Even so I was still naïve to the world and attitudes around me. The crew I worked with on the United of America was a severe contrast to the high school I attended. Their views were also far different from the ones my parents had and how we were brought up by my father and mother.
One morning while we were working the window we were using to gain access to the scaffold opened and a man exited it and joined us on the scaffold. No big deal to me; but, it did make a big difference to the crew Foreman Marty Schleep. The new man was Black. “I am not going to have some N-word working on my crew, blah, blah, ba-blah. He continued on while the man was there and for some time afterwards. I never forgot that moment as the new man on the crew picked up his leather and canvas bag of tools (like I had) and left through the same window he had come through. As he was leaving, he cast a look at me and I could see the hurt and the anger in his eyes; but, he was silent as he left. Marty was over six feet tall and compared to my 5′ foot seven inch dad who I towered over at 6 feet 1 inch. Marty was always kind to me.
I did not understand Marty’s anger over working side by side with a Black man as I was brought up differently even though we were at the same lower end of the Middle Class. Perhaps an answer can be found in how things are perceived.
“The poor man’s conscience is clear . . . he does not feel guilty and has no reason to . . . yet, he is ashamed. Mankind takes no notice of him. He rambles unheeded. In the midst of a crowd; at a church; in the market . . . he is in as much obscurity as he would be in a garret or a cellar. He is not disapproved, censured, or reproached; he is not seen . . . To be wholly overlooked, and to know it, are intolerable.” John Adams
For the poor white man in the 19th century, poverty added the injury of being socially invisible when compared to a man of wealth or prominence. Not acknowledging their presence created a class of insignificance and effectively shamed into oblivion as a class not worthy of notice. John Adams did not speak of the Black man. Slavery took class distinction one step further creating a stigma worst than poverty and more shame inducing. Slaves were economic chattel to be disposed of at the discretion of their owners without observance of their being and as a separate class lower than that of the poorest white man. While not as overt in the 20th century, the distinction of black slave versus poor white man has kept the class system alive and well in the US with the development of a discriminatory informal caste system. This distraction of a class level lower than the poorest of the white has kept them from concentrating on the disproportionate, and growing, distribution of income and wealth in the US. For the lower class, an allowed luxury, a place in the hierarchy and a sure form of self esteem at the expense of others (~2005).
EMichael,
Maybe that is your (reverse) racism. Assuming the worst about a whole class of folks.
Meanwhile, without discussion, without democratic give and take — the academic liberals just tear the foundations of our world apart. Chicago Public Schools just bought into the whole thing (maybe Emanuel is a Judas goat for the Republican Party — he is big friends with Rauner). Women afraid to use the restrooms. Could actually cause a retail recession.
Remember this is all day and everyday about privacy more than crime.
Meantime, Trump may invite Caitlyn. Would he invite Bruce (fresh from his Olympic gold medal) into the ladies.? Would you (answer please — not that it matters what you or I think — only what the ladies think) invite Bruce? Apparently the lost-in-space Democrats would.
There are other races. This crap may be blowing multi Senate and Representative races just when we had a chance to reverse majorities. Scare everybody back in the grasp of the enemy. What do academic liberals care? Their nests are well feathered — they never cared about our economic welfare anyway.
Got nothing to do with class, it is all about race.
Every working class person of color votes Dem.
You better take a look at the states that have the minimum wage set by the Feds, and figure out why those working class people in those states vote against their interests.
EMichael,
I’m just reading Lion of the Senate and about the 1994 “electoral tsunami” that reversed the majorities in the House and Senate. The Contract With America was in big part what you say. But I don’t think that if there were no race in this country that all these people would be Democrats.
They are being conned by whatever play on words works for the moment. With Trump for a candidate it is possible to swing back the other way — otherwise impossible. Now with this undemocratic surprise attack on women’s’ most vulnerable safety — out of the blue — the Democrats could scare everybody off. Even if women were wrong about their safety (no way!) the political damage may still be the same.
Harold Myerson — top labor writer — did do an article that one reason the working class doesn’t protect itself in this country is that we are so diverse ethnically that we don’t naturally stick together the way all Danes might. http://prospect.org/article/europe-goes-american-and-ain%E2%80%99t-good
Doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to avoid winning the blue collar back.
I’m not clear what you’re trying to achieve with the bigoted scare tactics statements on bathrooms. This is a non-issue in 10 years. This is the next gay marriage.
Sighting of rare American human subspecies ( subspecies : Good person with courage of convictions ) :
” Dear Mr. President:
I hereby resign my commission as an Officer in the United States Army.
I resign because I refuse to support U.S. armed drone policy. The Executive Branch continues to claim the right to kill anyone, anywhere on earth, at any tie, for secret reasons, based on secret evidence, in a secret process, undertaken by unidentified officials. I refuse to support this policy of unaccountable killing.
I resign because I refuse to support U.S. nuclear weapon policy. The Executive Branch continues to invest billions of dollars into nuclear weapons, which threaten the existence of humankind and the earth. I refuse to support this policy of terror ad mutually assured destruction.
I resign because I refuse to support U.S. policy of preventive war, permanent military supremacy and global power projection. The Executive branch continues to claim extra- constitutional authority and impunity from international law. I refuse to support this policy of imperial overstretch.
I resign because I refuse to serve as an empire chaplain. I cannot reconcile these policies with either my sworn duty to protect and defend America and our constitutional democracy or my covenantal commitment to the core principles of my religious faith. These principles include: justice, equity and compassion in human relations, a free and responsible search for truth; and the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
“Imagine if European firms and labor unions objected to allowing US imports without tariffs on the basis of competing with low budget, unorganized labor.”
The difference is that our laborers have the option of NOT forming labor unions (and often choose not to form a labor union so they they stay competitive), while workers in China, India, Mexico, etc., generally do not have that choice.
If you can look at the electoral map since the civil rights act and still think race is not the sole reason for the GOP’s base from Nixon’s southern Strategy through Reagan’s welfare queens driving cadillacs right up to today’s latest installment we will not agree.
So, the GOP votes for the Civil Rights Act in higher percentages than do the Democrats, and the racists go over to the GOP? That just does not make any sense at all.
Warren the battle over the Republican Party in 1964 was largely framed as a fight between the Rockefeller Republicans based largely in the Northeast who did support Civil Rights and the newly insurgent Goldwater Republicans who at that time were largely based in the Southwest and California and vehemently opposed Civil Rights with the temporary victory going to the Birchers. While the Sun Belt Birchers got stomped that round they made a comeback in the person of one Richard M Nixon who decided that combining his two decade history of being the biggest Red Baiter around with a rejection of the Civil Rights movement in favor of a ‘Southern Strategy’ was the ticket to Republican success.
And so it proved. Nixon’s move via the Southern Strategy effectively marginalized and then drove out ALL those Republicans who had voted for the Civil Rights Act legislation and BTW the Great Society. Indeed by 1971 even the ‘liberal’ Nelson Rockefeller had tripled down on ‘Law and Order’ leading to Attica.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attica_Prison_riot
History is complicated. Jefferson Davis was a Democrat, early in his life Senator Byrd was a KKK member. Strom Thurmond originally led a faction of the Democratic Party that was forthrightly segregationist called the Dixiecrats. In the 60s lots of elements got shaken and stirred and fell out in different patterns mostly crystalized by 1968. And a big part of that shaking was that those elements of the Republican Party that supported the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964/5 were essentially ejected from the Party even as Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond became perhaps the most lionized Republican Senator of the last 50 years.
Your argument is puerile. Goopers who voted “for the civil rights act in higher percentages than do the Democrats” were by 1972 no longer active players in the Party. Dixiecrats who held out to the end against those Acts ended up as valued members of the GOP. Your argument simply ignores EVERYTHING that happened in this country between 1964 and 1968.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended up driving the formerly dominant Northeast Republicans from their place of influence in favor of converted Dixiecrats. This inversion resembled that of a melting iceberg where you have a similar reversal and what was up now becomes down.
1968 was a world historical year quite comparable to 1848. Somehow I suspect you are equally ignorant of the full range of events in either.
I see one Border State Republican who voted ‘Aye’. Thomas Curtis, MO 2. Other than that this is the last gasp of the Confederacy. Northern Rs and Ds voted Aye, Southerners voted Nay.
Also although the percentage of R’s who voted Aye over Nay exceeded that of D’s more D’s overall voted Aye. This is because the South was still reflexively hostile to Unionist Republicans and so there were not very many R’s. Once the Republicans convinced the South they could be even more racist than the Dixiecrats ever were do you find R’s getting voted into office.
“… Indeed, some Democrats reportedly are slipping into panic mode as they watch Clinton’s poll numbers tank and the Republican Party come to grips with the Trump phenomenon. The new storyline of Campaign 2016 is the tale of top Republicans reconciling to Trump’s populist conquest of the party. At least, these GOP leaders acknowledge, Trump has excited both average Republicans and many independents.
The obsessive media coverage of Trump’s meetings on Thursday with senior congressional Republicans made the narcissistic real estate mogul and reality TV star look like some major world leader being received in Washington as a conquering hero. And, with the GOP rallying behind Trump, the likelihood is that his poll numbers and favorable/unfavorable ratings will continue to improve.
So, instead of Democratic dreams of a landslide victory, the party insiders are worrying now about their decision to coronate a deeply flawed and wounded candidate in Hillary Clinton. Not only could she lose to Trump but she could take many of the House and Senate candidates down with her. It’s dawning on some Democrats that they may have squandered a historic opportunity to realign American politics to the left by promoting the wrong person in 2016….”
It couldn’t happen to a nicer political party , IMO. My only request is that the self-destruction of the Dems also results in a similar fate for their media pimps like Krugman and Delong , and all the other “liberal wonk” VSPs – you know , all the ones who constantly cite each other with references like ” the very clever …..” or ” the extremely smart …. ” (a sort of reciprocal narcissism that sickens me even more than Trump’s less subtle variety).
If Trump blows up the Dems , and a bunch of their neolib VSPs , think tanks and such , don’t despair too much – think of it as “creative destruction” or “clearing deadwood” , and then get the hell out of the way and let the younger generation clean up the mess and build something different.
Sounds like something the right wing used to excuse doing nothing about the Great Depression.
The younger and older generation can clean up the mess anytime they want once they realize what is responsible for the mess and how easy it is to reverse course.
Problem: total lack of economic and political muscle for the great majority brought about by the very pathological condition of DE-UNIONIZATION. Solve this or solve literally nothing — or be reduced to permanent whining.
Simple solution: make union busting a felony — just like every other form of serious market manipulation. Share a music file: technically could cost you $150,000 — we’ll take $3,000. Take a movie in the movies and face a couple of years in federal stir — mandatory, for real.
Fire a worker for organizing collective bargaining: re-hire and pay back pay difference (difference if any; normally not much) — then fire the (still unprotected by a contract) majority again for “something else” within a year.
Just thought of something: make it a law to protect the right to contract — good packaging?
Start by reinforcing federal labor law with state sanctions in progressive states (WA, OR, CA, NV, IL, MD, et al.). Just as political issues this would go down great in these states. Start the progressive ball rolling; let others see the right way to live.
Reportedly half the workforce would like to unionize now — so it may be just a matter of starting the ball rolling, breaking the ice, overcoming the inertia, more than anything else.
Don’t forget the gold standard of labor markets: centralized bargaining. Supermarket workers and airline employees would kill for centralized bargaining. Walmart closed 88 big boxes in Germany where they had to pay the same as everyone else — compete only on quality.
” the party insiders are worrying now about their decision to coronate a deeply flawed and wounded candidate”
Understandable, but at this point there’s nothing the GOP can do about Trump. Which explains why most of the serious discussion on the GOP side has turned to how to prevent a down-ballot bloodbath.
” So the people that actually voted for Clinton should sit back and be happy to let the DP make their votes worthless? ”
No , and I’ve never suggested as much. I think the rules should be followed explicitly , undemocratic as they may be. If Clinton wins by those rules , then her supporters should indeed get what they want and deserve . If she then wins the general election , those outside the top 1% will really get what they deserve , good and hard.
My comment in the previous post referred not to the primary , but to a the reconstruction of the Dem party following a Trump victory in November.
The only way that the Dem party “squanders” this incredible opportunity is if the BernieBros and Green Lanterns, like yourself, stay away from the polls.
Y’know, like ya’ll did in 2000 and gave us George Bush?
And even worse, if Sanders does not take full advantage of this real opportunity to move the Dem Party left(where it sorely needs to go), he will be responsible(with ya’ll) with setting back the progressive movement 40 years.
Ya’ll ought to spend some time reading the Constitution; looking at history; and adding up 1+1 and seeing where the best chance is to actually change this country.
But most of you are too fen stupid to do any that because liberals have such a high degree of “moral purity” they gladly cut off their nose to spite their face.
Run,
I think I think less about white so-called obsession on race because I wasn’t brought up in the most segregated city in America — I was brought up in the true melting pot where I like to say that we don’t have diversity; we have assimilation. If everybody is different, nobody is different; so we have more fun with your differences: “Speak English; you’re in American now!” All in fun.
Harder for me to buy into a so-called one-note obsession with race — just is.
When I moved into my brother’s half-black housing in Yonkers in 1979, right north of the Bronx, I did not notice it was half black for a year — possibly because they did not notice me — didn’t think about it more than a quarter of a second when I did. Arrived in Chicago in 1980 — aware of a much different white racial attitude here, back then.
* * * * * * https://www.yahoo.com/style/target-boycott-reached-boiling-point-140049014.html
This article restored my faith that my world may not be about to be blown apart — w/o warning, w/o democratic discussion. Or rather by the 4,000 mostly, or should I say almost universally vehement, windy opposing comments.
To wit: “As a grandfather this BS attacks my lady, my 3 grown up daughters, my 6yr old granddaughter, my 4yr old, & 8 month old grandsons & you piece of sht libs just don’t care about daddy’s little girls & you seem to think there is nothing us daddy’s can do about it, because Obama says so & makes it law & sht all over their privacy & culture they grew up with. You will be getting a very serious education very soon, if this bull sht does not stop!”
Wish I had saved the New York comment I read last night when there were only 400 comments. Pictured 18 teen age girls at a rec center who are afraid to use the girls shower and all crowd up in the family shower with one spigot. Seems a big part of this ideology is that no questions may be asked, no documentation, no physical exam may be imposed on anybody using any locker room or shower.
Just in time for an election that may decide whether democracy may any longer endure — just in time to scare everyone (every class) away from the Democratic party.
If only Obama had the same energy for the last seven years to make everyone aware:
the minimum wage is now $4 an hour below 1969 — double the average income later;
Republican governors fighting Medicaid expansion are fighting against recovering their own states’ tax federal money from DC — while those people are going to show up somewhere (ER, clinic), probably sicker and more expensive to treat, and their bill is going to be sicked on private premiums or other gov sources — paying twice;
the a de-labor-unionized economy is inherently pathological, the core cause of just about every other social and economic ill that faces us — that Americans are being denied “freedom of contract”(along with any significant political arm) — that making union busting a felony is even more critical to our national health than sending people to federal prison for a couple of years for taking a movie in the movies.
But for allowing virtually any man in the ladies he is a ball of fire.
Obama about to call on – as in send guidance to — all public school districts nationwide to allow transgender students to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity really makes me crazy. This is just the kind of unthinking, insensitive threat to almost universally accepted social norms (sexual privacy norms!) that – whether Obama is right or wrong – chases people far, far from the Democratic Party, at just the wrong moment. But, dive in and crash the rest of us blindly our academic progressives will go.
Some numbers:
New York Times story says “Although transsexualism (defined as those who want to change or do change their body) is very rare — a recent meta-analysis estimated the prevalence at about 5 per 100,000 … ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/opinion/sunday/richard-a-friedman-how-changeable-is-gender.html?_r=0
San Francisco Chronicle reports, “That, he said, means accepting and accommodating the 1 percent of all middle and high school students who identify as transgender — who add up to more than 300 students.”
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bathrooms-at-Miraloma-Elementary-in-S-F-go-6481544.php
“An earlier report published in April 2011 by the Williams Institute estimated that 3.8 percent of Americans identified as gay/lesbian, bisexual, or transgender: 1.7 percent as lesbian or gay, 1.8 percent as bisexual, and 0.3 percent as transgender.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States
* * * * * *
Transgender is a tragic condition, actually having the wrong gender body to go with your brain. I first became aware of what it was all about when I saw two NBC Nightly News stories in two nights portraying two young (maybe 8-10 years old), a physical girl and boy. The boy said “How could God make a mistake like that?”
The Times reports “They compared a group of 324 Swedish transsexuals for an average of more than 10 years after gender reassignment with controls and found that transsexuals had 19 times the rate of suicide … “
Number sorting: I have a hard time accepting one out of 300 persons have the wrong gender body to go with their brain. Could be. I don’t see a match either with one in 300 and 19 times the suicide rate.
May not matter policywise. If you are going to let people use the bathroom of their gender identity the basis may not matter.
Real world: Who is ready for mostly male looking-female identity (not necessarily female brain) routinely – not one in 20,000 — using the ladies room? That’s all there is to it.
It is not mostly a matter of crime (though that is certainly a possibility – Caitlyn is reportedly thinking of reversing because she still has an interest in women — she sure made enough babies while she seemed only a boy) …
… it is an everyday, all day matter or privacy. One in a hundred if you go by the San Francisco school official — school children have no reason to make up a story (which school in the story is transitioning to all gender neutral-multistall bathrooms!).
Real world question: should we allow physically male, transgender women who admit sexual attraction to females into the ladies? (Another real world question: how upset are women going to be when physical females who are transitioning to male bodies to match their brains – hormone shots to grow body hair and such – decide to use the ladies, even though they are presumably harmless on the crime side?)
Repeat, it is a clear danger of crime – it is an ever-present (intolerable?) danger to privacy.
Also a danger from pushy, rushed taxi drivers like I used to be who if confronted with an out of order mens’ might not hesitate to push our luck with the ladies. They see men in their regularly – what are they going to say to me? When you got to go, you got to go.
I very well might have (no kidding).
MIght still (no kidding).
“ … multiple sources close to the Kardashian family told him that Jenner might revert back because she retains her interest in females.”
http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/the-wrap/article/Caitlyn-Jenner-Experienced-Sex-Change-7462964.php
Eventually restrooms will just be degendered. There was an interview on the subject the other day (maybe yesterday) on public radio, but I’ve agreed with the opinions expressed for a while.
If you’ve been to a convention or a shopping mall, you will quickly notice that either the mens or womens bathrooms get backed up, and the other has no users. It’s a ridiculous situation, and it is really only there to accommodate the particularly bad design of American public restrooms.
In Cambridge it is not unusual already for bathrooms to be unisex, even common ones, and the prevalence of “family bathrooms” is already proof that we know we need better facilities for all sorts of private reasons.
Meantime, where has Obama been on the economic issues that might have secured the blue collar who are defecting to the millionaires’ party?
Why hasn’t he been out front screaming that the minimum wage is $4 lower than it’s 1968 high point, double the per capita income since?
Why hasn’t he been excoriating Republican governors for rejecting Medicaid funds that their states have been sending to D.C. — those uncovered people going to end up being paid for with higher private premiums to cover their clinic and ER walk-ins — paying twice? Medicaid expansion pays 90% — madness not to take!!!
Why hasn’t he been out front explaining that our labor laws lack enforcement and spending all day every day explaining that our society cannot become healthy again without effective collective bargaining and lobbying by labor unions?
He made a speech at a high school touting that inequality as the “defining issue of our time.” It didn’t poll well next week — he forgot about it. Think he may have used the word “inequality” 27 times (where did I read that?). Of course, most people don’t know what you are talking about when you use the word “inequality” — but Obama doesn’t know much about most people. Will work hard for scaring off everyday, sensible people by making his big issue sending men all day, every day into ladies bathrooms for sea to shining sea. That he has energy for.
Fairness and Free Trade, Dani Rodrik
“If it is unfair for domestic firms to compete with foreign entities that are subsidized or propped up by their governments, is it not similarly unfair for domestic workers to compete with foreign workers who lack fundamental rights such as collective bargaining or protections against workplace abuse? Aren’t firms that despoil the environment, use child labor, or provide hazardous employment conditions also a source of unfair competition?
“Such concerns about unfair trade lie at the heart of the anti-globalization backlash.”
Imagine if European firms and labor unions objected to allowing US imports without tariffs on the basis of competing with low budget, unorganized labor. :-O
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-market-economy-status-debate-by-dani-rodrik-2016-05
Dennis,
Because the blue collar workers going GOP are not going to listen to a black man under any circumstances.
One day people will figure out that half the GOP base cares about one thing, and one thing only, and that one thing is “those people”.
“During these hard days and hard weeks, everybody always
has it bad once in a while. You know, you have a bad time of
it, and you always have a friend who says “Hey man, you
ain’t got it that bad. Look at that guy.” And you at that
guy, and he’s got it worse than you. And it makes you feel
better that there’s somebody that’s got it worse than you.
But think of the last guy. For one minute, think of the last
guy. Nobody’s got it worse than that guy. Nobody in the
whole world. That guy…he’s so alone in the world that he
doesn’t even have a street to lay in for a truck to run him over.
He’s out there with nothin’. Nothin’s happenin’ for that cat.”
Arlo Guthrie
The Birchers just cannot stand not stand the thought that people of color are no longer always the last guy.
1968 and pre-USMC and college, I was working on the United of America building on Wacker Drive in Chicago (https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8868017,-87.6273335,3a,75y,171.37h,88.07t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sPWeHDUu3pWAXQUI5TTxxKg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 on the right next to the restaurant) about 20 stories on a cabled scaffold. We were re-caulking the joints on a white marble building. The old caulking had turned black from the Chicago air giving the building a blacked lined look rather than pure white. This caulking was supposed to be resistant to air pollution staining. It wasn’t either.
I was 19, fresh out of high school, working with the men my dad (he was there also) had worked with for years as a tuckpointer/bricklayer, and trying to decide what I was going to do “before” the draft snatched me up. The morning (3 AM) after Halloween, I spent sipping coffee in the restaurant (McCormack) watching the partiers come in to the restaurant still in costume trying to sober up. There was a lot of interesting things going on, saw “Chicken Charlie” for the first time one morning http://chicagohistorymuseum.tumblr.com/post/37412709730/casey-jones-also-known-as-chicken-charlie in “The Loop,” for a 19 year old and an abundance of young women who appeared to be interested in a young male. I had worked Summers with these men as a Laborer so I was kind of used to their views and the outlooks of them. Other than the jokes they would pull on me, they were kind to a young white male and I kept my mouth shut.
Lane Technical HS was a magnet school in Chicago located near Riverview Park and not far from Wrigley Field. I would take the Addison Avenue CTA to it each morning and sometimes with my drafting board tucked under my arm. The school was integrated and far different than the 99% all White (minority of Asians) grammar school on the northwest side of the city. It is still ranked highly for a high school education in the city. Even so I was still naïve to the world and attitudes around me. The crew I worked with on the United of America was a severe contrast to the high school I attended. Their views were also far different from the ones my parents had and how we were brought up by my father and mother.
One morning while we were working the window we were using to gain access to the scaffold opened and a man exited it and joined us on the scaffold. No big deal to me; but, it did make a big difference to the crew Foreman Marty Schleep. The new man was Black. “I am not going to have some N-word working on my crew, blah, blah, ba-blah. He continued on while the man was there and for some time afterwards. I never forgot that moment as the new man on the crew picked up his leather and canvas bag of tools (like I had) and left through the same window he had come through. As he was leaving, he cast a look at me and I could see the hurt and the anger in his eyes; but, he was silent as he left. Marty was over six feet tall and compared to my 5′ foot seven inch dad who I towered over at 6 feet 1 inch. Marty was always kind to me.
I did not understand Marty’s anger over working side by side with a Black man as I was brought up differently even though we were at the same lower end of the Middle Class. Perhaps an answer can be found in how things are perceived.
“The poor man’s conscience is clear . . . he does not feel guilty and has no reason to . . . yet, he is ashamed. Mankind takes no notice of him. He rambles unheeded. In the midst of a crowd; at a church; in the market . . . he is in as much obscurity as he would be in a garret or a cellar. He is not disapproved, censured, or reproached; he is not seen . . . To be wholly overlooked, and to know it, are intolerable.” John Adams
For the poor white man in the 19th century, poverty added the injury of being socially invisible when compared to a man of wealth or prominence. Not acknowledging their presence created a class of insignificance and effectively shamed into oblivion as a class not worthy of notice. John Adams did not speak of the Black man. Slavery took class distinction one step further creating a stigma worst than poverty and more shame inducing. Slaves were economic chattel to be disposed of at the discretion of their owners without observance of their being and as a separate class lower than that of the poorest white man. While not as overt in the 20th century, the distinction of black slave versus poor white man has kept the class system alive and well in the US with the development of a discriminatory informal caste system. This distraction of a class level lower than the poorest of the white has kept them from concentrating on the disproportionate, and growing, distribution of income and wealth in the US. For the lower class, an allowed luxury, a place in the hierarchy and a sure form of self esteem at the expense of others (~2005).
EMichael,
Maybe that is your (reverse) racism. Assuming the worst about a whole class of folks.
Meanwhile, without discussion, without democratic give and take — the academic liberals just tear the foundations of our world apart. Chicago Public Schools just bought into the whole thing (maybe Emanuel is a Judas goat for the Republican Party — he is big friends with Rauner). Women afraid to use the restrooms. Could actually cause a retail recession.
Remember this is all day and everyday about privacy more than crime.
Meantime, Trump may invite Caitlyn. Would he invite Bruce (fresh from his Olympic gold medal) into the ladies.? Would you (answer please — not that it matters what you or I think — only what the ladies think) invite Bruce? Apparently the lost-in-space Democrats would.
There are other races. This crap may be blowing multi Senate and Representative races just when we had a chance to reverse majorities. Scare everybody back in the grasp of the enemy. What do academic liberals care? Their nests are well feathered — they never cared about our economic welfare anyway.
Got nothing to do with class, it is all about race.
Every working class person of color votes Dem.
You better take a look at the states that have the minimum wage set by the Feds, and figure out why those working class people in those states vote against their interests.
EMichael,
I’m just reading Lion of the Senate and about the 1994 “electoral tsunami” that reversed the majorities in the House and Senate. The Contract With America was in big part what you say. But I don’t think that if there were no race in this country that all these people would be Democrats.
They are being conned by whatever play on words works for the moment. With Trump for a candidate it is possible to swing back the other way — otherwise impossible. Now with this undemocratic surprise attack on women’s’ most vulnerable safety — out of the blue — the Democrats could scare everybody off. Even if women were wrong about their safety (no way!) the political damage may still be the same.
Harold Myerson — top labor writer — did do an article that one reason the working class doesn’t protect itself in this country is that we are so diverse ethnically that we don’t naturally stick together the way all Danes might.
http://prospect.org/article/europe-goes-american-and-ain%E2%80%99t-good
Doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to avoid winning the blue collar back.
I’m not clear what you’re trying to achieve with the bigoted scare tactics statements on bathrooms. This is a non-issue in 10 years. This is the next gay marriage.
Sighting of rare American human subspecies ( subspecies : Good person with courage of convictions ) :
” Dear Mr. President:
I hereby resign my commission as an Officer in the United States Army.
I resign because I refuse to support U.S. armed drone policy. The Executive Branch continues to claim the right to kill anyone, anywhere on earth, at any tie, for secret reasons, based on secret evidence, in a secret process, undertaken by unidentified officials. I refuse to support this policy of unaccountable killing.
I resign because I refuse to support U.S. nuclear weapon policy. The Executive Branch continues to invest billions of dollars into nuclear weapons, which threaten the existence of humankind and the earth. I refuse to support this policy of terror ad mutually assured destruction.
I resign because I refuse to support U.S. policy of preventive war, permanent military supremacy and global power projection. The Executive branch continues to claim extra- constitutional authority and impunity from international law. I refuse to support this policy of imperial overstretch.
I resign because I refuse to serve as an empire chaplain. I cannot reconcile these policies with either my sworn duty to protect and defend America and our constitutional democracy or my covenantal commitment to the core principles of my religious faith. These principles include: justice, equity and compassion in human relations, a free and responsible search for truth; and the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
Respectfully submitted,
Christopher John Antal ”
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/05/12/army-chaplain-resigns-over-drone-wars/
I think I’ll have a drink. This made my day.
“Imagine if European firms and labor unions objected to allowing US imports without tariffs on the basis of competing with low budget, unorganized labor.”
The difference is that our laborers have the option of NOT forming labor unions (and often choose not to form a labor union so they they stay competitive), while workers in China, India, Mexico, etc., generally do not have that choice.
The exploding heads of mainstream politicos ( D & R ) would be visible from the space station if this ever happened :
http://www.trump-gabbard.com/
From the Bernie sistahood over to Trump ? Talk about a glitch in the Matrix.
I don’t think Gabbard would ever do it , but it would be pure genius if Trump pulled it off.
Dennis,
If you can look at the electoral map since the civil rights act and still think race is not the sole reason for the GOP’s base from Nixon’s southern Strategy through Reagan’s welfare queens driving cadillacs right up to today’s latest installment we will not agree.
I mean, it has been going on for 50 years.
So, the GOP votes for the Civil Rights Act in higher percentages than do the Democrats, and the racists go over to the GOP? That just does not make any sense at all.
Warren the battle over the Republican Party in 1964 was largely framed as a fight between the Rockefeller Republicans based largely in the Northeast who did support Civil Rights and the newly insurgent Goldwater Republicans who at that time were largely based in the Southwest and California and vehemently opposed Civil Rights with the temporary victory going to the Birchers. While the Sun Belt Birchers got stomped that round they made a comeback in the person of one Richard M Nixon who decided that combining his two decade history of being the biggest Red Baiter around with a rejection of the Civil Rights movement in favor of a ‘Southern Strategy’ was the ticket to Republican success.
And so it proved. Nixon’s move via the Southern Strategy effectively marginalized and then drove out ALL those Republicans who had voted for the Civil Rights Act legislation and BTW the Great Society. Indeed by 1971 even the ‘liberal’ Nelson Rockefeller had tripled down on ‘Law and Order’ leading to Attica.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attica_Prison_riot
History is complicated. Jefferson Davis was a Democrat, early in his life Senator Byrd was a KKK member. Strom Thurmond originally led a faction of the Democratic Party that was forthrightly segregationist called the Dixiecrats. In the 60s lots of elements got shaken and stirred and fell out in different patterns mostly crystalized by 1968. And a big part of that shaking was that those elements of the Republican Party that supported the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964/5 were essentially ejected from the Party even as Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond became perhaps the most lionized Republican Senator of the last 50 years.
Your argument is puerile. Goopers who voted “for the civil rights act in higher percentages than do the Democrats” were by 1972 no longer active players in the Party. Dixiecrats who held out to the end against those Acts ended up as valued members of the GOP. Your argument simply ignores EVERYTHING that happened in this country between 1964 and 1968.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended up driving the formerly dominant Northeast Republicans from their place of influence in favor of converted Dixiecrats. This inversion resembled that of a melting iceberg where you have a similar reversal and what was up now becomes down.
1968 was a world historical year quite comparable to 1848. Somehow I suspect you are equally ignorant of the full range of events in either.
Bruce:
Great summary. Not sure if you saw this. The interview as acquired by James Carter. http://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/
Civil Rights Act of 1964 – individual vote breakdown
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/88-1964/h182
I see one Border State Republican who voted ‘Aye’. Thomas Curtis, MO 2. Other than that this is the last gasp of the Confederacy. Northern Rs and Ds voted Aye, Southerners voted Nay.
Also although the percentage of R’s who voted Aye over Nay exceeded that of D’s more D’s overall voted Aye. This is because the South was still reflexively hostile to Unionist Republicans and so there were not very many R’s. Once the Republicans convinced the South they could be even more racist than the Dixiecrats ever were do you find R’s getting voted into office.
Bruce to Warren”
“Your argument is puerile.”
I get so mad when people are so much nicer than me.
“… Indeed, some Democrats reportedly are slipping into panic mode as they watch Clinton’s poll numbers tank and the Republican Party come to grips with the Trump phenomenon. The new storyline of Campaign 2016 is the tale of top Republicans reconciling to Trump’s populist conquest of the party. At least, these GOP leaders acknowledge, Trump has excited both average Republicans and many independents.
The obsessive media coverage of Trump’s meetings on Thursday with senior congressional Republicans made the narcissistic real estate mogul and reality TV star look like some major world leader being received in Washington as a conquering hero. And, with the GOP rallying behind Trump, the likelihood is that his poll numbers and favorable/unfavorable ratings will continue to improve.
So, instead of Democratic dreams of a landslide victory, the party insiders are worrying now about their decision to coronate a deeply flawed and wounded candidate in Hillary Clinton. Not only could she lose to Trump but she could take many of the House and Senate candidates down with her. It’s dawning on some Democrats that they may have squandered a historic opportunity to realign American politics to the left by promoting the wrong person in 2016….”
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/05/13/democrats-too-clever-by-half-on-clinton/
It couldn’t happen to a nicer political party , IMO. My only request is that the self-destruction of the Dems also results in a similar fate for their media pimps like Krugman and Delong , and all the other “liberal wonk” VSPs – you know , all the ones who constantly cite each other with references like ” the very clever …..” or ” the extremely smart …. ” (a sort of reciprocal narcissism that sickens me even more than Trump’s less subtle variety).
If Trump blows up the Dems , and a bunch of their neolib VSPs , think tanks and such , don’t despair too much – think of it as “creative destruction” or “clearing deadwood” , and then get the hell out of the way and let the younger generation clean up the mess and build something different.
Something decent.
“clearing deadwood”
Sounds like something the right wing used to excuse doing nothing about the Great Depression.
The younger and older generation can clean up the mess anytime they want once they realize what is responsible for the mess and how easy it is to reverse course.
Problem: total lack of economic and political muscle for the great majority brought about by the very pathological condition of DE-UNIONIZATION. Solve this or solve literally nothing — or be reduced to permanent whining.
Simple solution: make union busting a felony — just like every other form of serious market manipulation. Share a music file: technically could cost you $150,000 — we’ll take $3,000. Take a movie in the movies and face a couple of years in federal stir — mandatory, for real.
Fire a worker for organizing collective bargaining: re-hire and pay back pay difference (difference if any; normally not much) — then fire the (still unprotected by a contract) majority again for “something else” within a year.
Just thought of something: make it a law to protect the right to contract — good packaging?
Start by reinforcing federal labor law with state sanctions in progressive states (WA, OR, CA, NV, IL, MD, et al.). Just as political issues this would go down great in these states. Start the progressive ball rolling; let others see the right way to live.
Reportedly half the workforce would like to unionize now — so it may be just a matter of starting the ball rolling, breaking the ice, overcoming the inertia, more than anything else.
Don’t forget the gold standard of labor markets: centralized bargaining. Supermarket workers and airline employees would kill for centralized bargaining. Walmart closed 88 big boxes in Germany where they had to pay the same as everyone else — compete only on quality.
” the party insiders are worrying now about their decision to coronate a deeply flawed and wounded candidate”
Marko
So the people that actually voted for Clinton should sit back and be happy to let the DP make their votes worthless?
Because of some fen polls you suggest the DP ignore the votes of their members?
Reverse this situation and such a suggestion would lead you to insanity.
Berniebros are as bad as Trump supporters.
” the party insiders are worrying now about their decision to coronate a deeply flawed and wounded candidate”
Understandable, but at this point there’s nothing the GOP can do about Trump. Which explains why most of the serious discussion on the GOP side has turned to how to prevent a down-ballot bloodbath.
” So the people that actually voted for Clinton should sit back and be happy to let the DP make their votes worthless? ”
No , and I’ve never suggested as much. I think the rules should be followed explicitly , undemocratic as they may be. If Clinton wins by those rules , then her supporters should indeed get what they want and deserve . If she then wins the general election , those outside the top 1% will really get what they deserve , good and hard.
My comment in the previous post referred not to the primary , but to a the reconstruction of the Dem party following a Trump victory in November.
Marko,
The only way that the Dem party “squanders” this incredible opportunity is if the BernieBros and Green Lanterns, like yourself, stay away from the polls.
Y’know, like ya’ll did in 2000 and gave us George Bush?
And even worse, if Sanders does not take full advantage of this real opportunity to move the Dem Party left(where it sorely needs to go), he will be responsible(with ya’ll) with setting back the progressive movement 40 years.
Ya’ll ought to spend some time reading the Constitution; looking at history; and adding up 1+1 and seeing where the best chance is to actually change this country.
But most of you are too fen stupid to do any that because liberals have such a high degree of “moral purity” they gladly cut off their nose to spite their face.
I tend to agree with you. We are at the precipice of either doing something great or become one of the biggest failures in the last 50 years.
“. . . the reconstruction of the Dem party following a Trump victory in November. ”
Co-terminus with the first verified report of porcine aviation.
{And Marko, please spare us grownups the middle school epithets, m’kay?} Edit: agreed. Did the sparing for you. Bruce
Run,
I think I think less about white so-called obsession on race because I wasn’t brought up in the most segregated city in America — I was brought up in the true melting pot where I like to say that we don’t have diversity; we have assimilation. If everybody is different, nobody is different; so we have more fun with your differences: “Speak English; you’re in American now!” All in fun.
Harder for me to buy into a so-called one-note obsession with race — just is.
When I moved into my brother’s half-black housing in Yonkers in 1979, right north of the Bronx, I did not notice it was half black for a year — possibly because they did not notice me — didn’t think about it more than a quarter of a second when I did. Arrived in Chicago in 1980 — aware of a much different white racial attitude here, back then.
* * * * * *
https://www.yahoo.com/style/target-boycott-reached-boiling-point-140049014.html
This article restored my faith that my world may not be about to be blown apart — w/o warning, w/o democratic discussion. Or rather by the 4,000 mostly, or should I say almost universally vehement, windy opposing comments.
To wit: “As a grandfather this BS attacks my lady, my 3 grown up daughters, my 6yr old granddaughter, my 4yr old, & 8 month old grandsons & you piece of sht libs just don’t care about daddy’s little girls & you seem to think there is nothing us daddy’s can do about it, because Obama says so & makes it law & sht all over their privacy & culture they grew up with. You will be getting a very serious education very soon, if this bull sht does not stop!”
Wish I had saved the New York comment I read last night when there were only 400 comments. Pictured 18 teen age girls at a rec center who are afraid to use the girls shower and all crowd up in the family shower with one spigot. Seems a big part of this ideology is that no questions may be asked, no documentation, no physical exam may be imposed on anybody using any locker room or shower.
Just in time for an election that may decide whether democracy may any longer endure — just in time to scare everyone (every class) away from the Democratic party.
If only Obama had the same energy for the last seven years to make everyone aware:
the minimum wage is now $4 an hour below 1969 — double the average income later;
Republican governors fighting Medicaid expansion are fighting against recovering their own states’ tax federal money from DC — while those people are going to show up somewhere (ER, clinic), probably sicker and more expensive to treat, and their bill is going to be sicked on private premiums or other gov sources — paying twice;
the a de-labor-unionized economy is inherently pathological, the core cause of just about every other social and economic ill that faces us — that Americans are being denied “freedom of contract”(along with any significant political arm) — that making union busting a felony is even more critical to our national health than sending people to federal prison for a couple of years for taking a movie in the movies.
But for allowing virtually any man in the ladies he is a ball of fire.