Bernie vs Hillary

As the photo implies, it's not exactly a no holds barred, bloody fight to the death with these two.  They've been almost shockingly cordial and policy oriented in their face-offs so far.  But it's the big question for dems right now: Bernie or Hillary?  Can he even win the nomination?  If he can, do I want him to?  I really am undecided for a raft of reasons.

So what do others think?  Please comment and discuss.

Madame President? Maybe not.

Is it time to degenderize the formal address for the office of the President, so it's not Mr. President and Madam President?  We've (mostly) gotten rid of actress and waitress and stewardess in favor of gender neutral terms (which i once found annoying but now realize is pretty obviously right).  So isn't it time that we did the same for what will be arguably the greatest feminist professional achievement in US history, instead of addressing a female president like it's 1885 and she shouldn't even be allowed to vote?

The Fake (but actually quite real) Gun Background Check Loophole

So for people who oppose Obama's policy change to expand background checks for gun purchases, I have a couple questions.

Q1) Do you think the loophole exists, or that it's a lie made up by the President?  

If you think it's a lie, well then first off you shouldn't care about this at all because nothing would change.  But it's also not a lie.  Here's some facts.

  Study finds vast online marketplace for guns without background check https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/new-study-finds-vast-online-marketplace-for-guns-without-background-checks/2013/08/05/19809198-fd73-11e2-9711-3708310f6f4d_story.html 

 Gun shows and the lack of uniform gun-control laws provide easy access to guns that can be used for criminal purposes, according to a new report from the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research 

The report features hundreds of photographs and some video that show: 

illegal straw purchases, whereby a surrogate buys from a licensed retailer on behalf of another

anonymous, undocumented private-party gun sales

widespread availability of assault weapons, .50-caliber rifles and the parts needed to make untraceable guns

links between gun shows and the neo-Confederacy movement and neo-Nazism

Program. http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/welcome/features/20090923_gun_study/index.html

Q2) If you do believe the gun show loophole exists, and that there's widespread evidence it's used for illegal purchases by criminals, do you think we should fix it?

Q3) If you don't believe we should fix it and prevent criminals and the mentally ill from getting firearms, while at the same time allowing law abiding citizens to purchase guns to their heart's content, then.....what the fuck?

Spousal Privilege and Disqualification in the Cosby Case

Magistrate Judge David H. Hennessy ruled that Bill Cosby's wife could not quash a subpoena for a deposition regarding the sexual assault charges against her husband.  I was curious about why, so I read through the ruling and some other case law, and found the the law was more complex that I had thought.  First off, in Massachusetts, spousal privilege not to testify and spousal disqualification from testifying are different things with different sets of rules.  Second, both have a myriad of exceptions and qualifications.  Hennessy's main contention is that Cosby asserted that the Disqualification Law, which would bar testimony at trial but not deposition as part of the discovery process.  Hennessy writes:

As she concedes, the marital disqualification rule “is one of disqualification and not of privilege,” and therefore concerns a party's competence to testify. See Com. v. Azar, 32 Mass. App. Ct. 290, 304 (1992). It is settled that "[t]he mere fact that a party may not be mentally competent to testify is not a sufficient reason to prohibit the other party from taking his deposition." Dang ex rel. Dang v. Eslinger, No. 14 Civ. 37, 2014 WL 3611324, at *2 (M.D. Fla. July 22, 2014) (citing cases). This is due, at least in part, to the fact that even though an incompetent witness’s testimony “might not be admissible at trial, his deposition could lead to admissible evidence.” See Fjellman v. Forest Hill Co-op., No. 06 Civ. 14470, 2007 WL 1806173, at *3 (E.D. Mich. June 21, 2007); see also Bucher v. Richardson Hosp. Auth., 160 F.R.D. 88, 93 (N.D. Tex. 1994) (“[P]laintiff is not entitled to quash the deposition merely because J.B. may be incompetent to testify at trial. The right to depose a witness and the right to use that testimony in court are separate and distinct.”) (citing United States v. International Business Machines Corp., 90 F.R.D. 377, 381 n.7 (S.D.N.Y. 1981)).6

The judge also argues that the undue burden argument fails because Cosby fails to show any undue burden.

I also found this 1990 Massachusetts case which covers the same issue, comes to the same conclusion, but with different reasoning.  This decision hinged on the business relationship between the spouses saying:

In the present case, the court concludes that business communications between spouses acting solely in the capacity of employer and employee are not protected conversation under G.L. c. 233, § 20. The court relies on the fact that when a conversation occurs in such circumstances, the marital relationship is only incidental to the employer-employee relationship. The two speakers, acting in their professional capacities, do not fit the terms “husband and wife” in an important sense. Moreover, excluding conversations made in an employer-employee relationship would not further most of the policy reasons behind the statute.  Therefore, G.L. c. 233, § 20 does not disqualify purely business conversations made by husband and wife when they are acting as employer and employee and where their marital relationship is incidental to the conversation.  http://masslawyersweekly.com/fulltext-opinions/1990/01/01/anderson-v-barrera-et-al/  

And I'm surprised Hennessey didn't cite this case as well, since Cosby's wife served as his business manager as well.

Your Conservative Friends Are Just Victims of Propoganda (As are we all...)

I saw some statistics today that made me think about something that I think many who have center-left or even liberal political leanings already inherently know, but which is rarely actually flushed out. David Atkins at the Washington Monthly touched on it in a post yesterday about the demographic that the Republican candidates seem to be focusing on, namely the angry 20-30% of the population that is either obsessed with gun rights, anti-immigration, or vehemently against a raise in taxes for the wealthy.

What he doesn't touch on there, (despite noting that 88% of Americans support stronger background checks for gun purchases, 70% of Americans support comprehensive immigration reform, and 63% support raising taxes on the wealthy), is that the angry 20-30% of the population they are focusing on DOESN'T KNOW THEY ARE IN THE MINORITY.

In fact, most of these people, due to the media distortion on both the right and left, the echo-chamber effect that comes from listening only to those views that support your own side, and the inherent inertia of viewpoints built up over their long lives, believe themselves to be part of the "Silent Majority."  This was a term coined by Nixon for the supposed majority of the country that believed in old fashioned values, or whatever it was he supported at the time.  Obviously, with the rise of social media, these people are far from silent.  However, they believe that the viewpoints they hold and trumpet in their latest Facebook post or Twitter rant, most of them fed to them by Fox News are held by a majority of Americans and they are merely the only brave soul willing to stand up to the insidious takeover by liberals who they believe to be a smaller subset of the population forcing their views on others.  Donald Trump is currently bringing back the idea of the Silent Majority at his rallies, notably in Alabama of all places.

The fault here lies with the media.  They of course refer to it as the 'liberal media,' and truth be told there is a fair amount of liberal media out there doing the same damage to its viewers and listeners all in the name of ratings and profits.  However, when the most profitable news cable news network by far is Fox News, and yet they still manage to brand themselves as the underdog standing up to big media, you can see the manipulation they are working on their viewers.  These viewers should be offended... clearly the network doesn't think much of them if it so callously manipulates them (mainly to the ends of the corporations they are currently raging at).

That being said, the point of this post is probably something along the lines of...  Your conservative friends on social media are brainwashed by right wing propaganda, and its not really their fault if they believe the NRA's views, endorsed by only approximately 12% of the population, are what the majority of the country stands behind.  Any proper news story should quote the above statistics, even if they want to editorialize against majority opinion. However, leading their viewers to believe that they are learning from Fox what the true majority of Americans believe is journalistic malpractice, and has lead to Fox News viewers being the least informed Americans. We get some brainwashing from our own echo-chamber as well, and as I've stated in the past we should all just stop watching cable news altogether, particularly any show that purports to put up two people arguing each side...  which is just an invitation to watch idiots.  If you want to see some fun political arguments, go watch the excellent documentary Best of Enemies. (Although those televised debates are pretty much what lead us to this current wasteland.)

Worst Church Ever

Star Wars Casting Choices

Am I the only one who thought it was weird to have Andy Samberg Play Kylo Ren?

JebBush.com

Forwards to https://www.donaldjtrump.com/.  Good planning Team Bush.  You only have a few
hundred million to spend, can't get bogged down spending 4 bucks for every possible domain name...that is also your candidate's actual name.  I'm sure there's tons of consultant fees and salaries that need taking care of instead.  

Ted Cruz was a Popular Fellow

Republican presidential candidate and amateur Blobfish impersonator +Ted Cruz is now the leading candidate in Iowa, displacing former frontrunners Carson and Trump.  Things are really coming together for the GOP, and just in case you thought "OH NO, this extremist, crazy guy who even his fellow GOP congressmen hate is completely unelectable and even worst than trump", just listen to this testimonial from his college roommate, someone without a partisan axe to grind who really knew the guy.

Can Trump Win the GOP Nomination?

image via Kevin Drum at motherjones.com

Ezra Klein had a funny quote about who will win the Republican nomination:

A lot of pundits — and I include myself in this group — have a sort of Underpants Gnomes theory of Marco Rubio's chances. Step one is Rubio is the only acceptable nominee to Republican elites. Step two is ... something. And step three is Rubio wins the nomination.

And I think the corollary  conventional wisdom is Trump can't win because....he's Trump, basically.  Too brash, too outrageous, too polarizing, too many outright lies, and basically too much of a fucking dick.  I mean, this is a guy who attacked John McCain for getting caught and tortured in a POW camp and made fun of a guy with a severe physical disability and called Iowa voters stupid and called Mexicans a bunch of rapists and...... The list is virtually endless.

But however funny Klein's quote is and however dickish and absurd Trump is, neither make Trump the impossible candidate party and media elites want him to be.  About a third of the GOP base love him according to polling.  And it seems to me they won't stop loving him no matter what crazy shit he says.  And that's because, despite many non-conservative positions he's espoused, he's "Conservative" with a "R".  And that "R" stands for Racist, and sexist and just generally hateful towards people the extremist GOP base hate.  The Takers, the Muslims, the Librul Eleets!  Even the sellout RINOs who have let America fail and helped elect a Kenyan Islamist as president.  These people don't give a shit about whose tax plan does exactly what, or other wonky, nerd nonsense.  They know Trump is on their side and not scared to tell the truth no matter how much the left wing, mainstream media attack him.  No matter how the notoriously biased "factinistas" claim he's objectively wrong.  And most definitely no matter how much the traditional GOP politicians and pundits tell them Trump is unelectable.  After all, that's what they said in 2008 and 2012, but "moderate" McCain and Romney both lost to Obummer (#thanksobama).

So I'll start with the premise the Trump can easily hold on to his current RealClearPolitics Average of 28%.  I'll also posit that Carson is going to fade and eventually drop out.  For him this was a money making scam to sell books and expand his brand.  He's been up to this kind of grifting for decades.  But the shine is coming off his brand as people look into the stories of him stabbing a friend and trying to kill his mom with a hammer and it turns out they're almost certainly lies.  I won't go into how surreal it is that these stories are somehow seen as good thing by his supporters.  But if Carson drops I think it's reasonable to think at least half of his voters could go to Trump's camp, adding another 10%.  Cruz will also drop and probably close to all of his voters will turn to Trump, adding about 12%.  That leaves about 50% for a single Trump alternative.  But of that 50% I could easily see 10%  voting for Trump instead of Rubio.  So in this totally speculative scenario 60% of the party could end up supporting Trump for the nomination.  Now there's lots of complications and super delegates etc in the nomination rules which I'm not well versed on and would come into play, but this is basically what I see as a feasible, totally believable, scenario for Trump being the GOP nominee.  Anyone discounting the possibility is fooling themselves.


Now, the polling could change drastically as we go forward as Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com argues, saying in part:

Quite often, however, the Trump’s-really-got-a-chance! case is rooted almost entirely in polls. If nothing Trump has said so far has harmed his standing with Republicans, the argument goes, why should we expect him to fade later on?
One problem with this is that it’s not enough for Trump to merely avoid fading. Right now, he has 25 to 30 percent of the vote in polls among the roughly 25 percent of Americans who identify as Republican. (That’s something like 6 to 8 percent of the electorate overall, or about the same share of people who think the Apollo moon landings were faked.) As the rest of the field consolidates around him, Trump will need to gain additional support to win the nomination. That might not be easy, since some Trump actions that appeal to a faction of the Republican electorate may alienate the rest of it. Trump’s favorability ratings are middling among Republicans (and awful among the broader electorate).....But there’s another, more fundamental problem. That 25 or 30 percent of the vote isn’t really Donald Trump’s for the keeping. In fact, it doesn’t belong to any candidate. If past nomination races are any guide, the vast majority of eventual Republican voters haven’t made up their minds yet.

But it's odd to see a statistics guy discount a case "rooted almost entirely in the polls".  Surely, polling is a decent, if limited, basis for an argument.  Particularly when Trump's polling has remained consistent for so long.

I still don't believe Trump in the most likely nominee, mainly for the same logically flawed reasons Klein and others put forward.  It just seems crazy.  But large parts of the GOP base are apparently crazy, so who the hell knows what's possible these days.