The DisPol survey says…

Most of us political junkies here watched the State of the Union address this last Thursday night.  Usually, a sitting president gets a boost in the polls after a SOTU.  For what they’re worth, early flash polling seems to bear that out.   

They’re also saying it was Biden’s biggest fund raising day so far.

Now, granted, it’s long time until election day.  How long?  Long enough to “conceive and birth a baby” long (9-ish months)!  So, we all should be taking my questions with a grain chunk of salt.  Nothing is in cement… yet.  I won’t hold you to your current answers.  There are way too many variables still in the mix (jail time, heart attack and/or stroke time, dead time, … well, you see where I’m going here).

What a build-up! 😁 Now for the questions. 

At this point, and assuming no one suffers any of those dreaded variables I just listed:

1. Who will win the presidency?  Biden or Trump?
2. What will be the popular vote breakdown?
3. What will be the final Electoral College count?

No “I don’t knows” or “could be a tossup” answers please.  We all already know that.  Rather, I want a hard “Biden” or “Trump” on this one.  Bite your lip, close your eyes, think of the flag, and blurt/keypunch it out, as painful as it might be!  Then, if you feel you must, go ahead and bloviate to your little heart’s content.

BTW, I’m not trying to jinx it, for the superstitious among us!  I’m trying to determine where the prevailing wind is blowing.  Be honest, not emotional in your answers.

Thanks!

P.S. I may do this poll again, a week or so before the November election, to see if minds have changed.

(by PrimalSoup)

Rape and 64,000 forced births in two years in states with abortion bans

A research paper published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, Rape-Related Pregnancies in the 14 US States With Total Abortion Bans, asserts some truly shocking data. That paper is behind a paywall, but Scientific American published an article about it. SciAm writes:

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, total abortion bans went into effect in 14 states. Nine of these have no exceptions for rape. Now researchers have attempted to quantify the number of pregnancies that have resulted from rapes in states with a total ban—and the numbers they came up with are staggering.

A new study estimates that more than 64,000 pregnancies resulted from rape between July 1, 2022, and January 1, 2024, in states where abortion has been banned throughout pregnancy in all or most cases. Of these, just more than 5,500 are estimated to have occurred in states with rape exceptions—and nearly 59,000 are estimated for states without exceptions. The authors calculate that more than 26,000 rape-caused pregnancies may have taken place in Texas alone.

“Highly stigmatized life events are hard to measure. And many survivors of sexual violence do not want to disclose that they went through this incredibly stigmatizing traumatic life event,” says Samuel Dickman, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood of Montana, who led the study. “We will never know the true number of survivors of rape and sexual assault in the U.S.”

The researchers obtained their findings by combining data from multiple sources. Because state-level data weren’t available, the team analyzed national data from a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey on intimate partner sexual violence from 2016 to 2017. The researchers also used a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey on criminal victimization. Putting these together, they determined the number of completed vaginal rapes among girls and women of reproductive age—defined as between the ages of 15 and 45 (although some even younger girls and older women are also capable of pregnancy). 

The findings suggest that thousands of people who were raped became pregnant in states where abortion was banned. Even in states with exceptions for rape, very few people got an abortion—likely because of fear and intimidation, Dickman speculates. Some pregnant people in states with bans may have traveled out of state to obtain an abortion legally, but some would have needed to travel hundreds of miles—a journey that is impractical or impossible for many people.

A PBS interview with one of the authors, Dr. Sam Dickman includes these comments:

Interviewer: And you say in your report — or at least I take it you're saying that this could actually be an undercount.

Dickman: Some people will never report that they were sexually assaulted even on an anonymous survey. So that would cause our estimates to be too low. On the other hand, there are other assumptions that we have to make in a modeling study that might bias the estimates to be too high. So we think we use the best available data using published peer-reviewed research. But, of course, these are just estimates.

Interviewer: As we mentioned, there are five states that do have exceptions for rape, but under very tight restrictions. Given those restrictions, how meaningful are those exceptions?

Dickman: Those exceptions provide no meaningful abortion care for survivors of rape and sexual assault, full stop. There are no abortions happening for survivors of rape in states like Idaho that supposedly have exceptions for rape. But we know that, because of the extremely burdensome criteria for obtaining an abortion, not just on the survivor, but on the medical provider, that providers are essentially telling those survivors of rape that they need to travel out of state or find somewhere else to go or continue a pregnancy that was a result of sexual violence.

This is the face of authoritarian Christian nationalist, Christian Sharia law. It is brutal. It is an example of brute force theocratic dictatorship in action. We can expect this to get a heck of a lot worse if DJT gets re-elected.

Trust...

Are there any politicians you implicitly trust?

• If you can do it, give a list of 10 currently elected congresspeople you trust.

• Now give a list of 10 currently elected congresspeople you DON'T trust.

(by PrimalSoup)

News bit 'n chunk: Christian nationalism on family sex; The final reality of the TTKP

The Christian Post reports:

Megachurch pastor warns Christian wives not to withhold 

sex from husbands as it’s unbiblical

With the approval of her co-pastor husband, Reginald Steele of Kingdom Church in Phoenix, Arizona, Kelley Steele warned Christian women in her congregation to avoid withholding sex from their husbands because it’s unbiblical and they could push their husbands in the arms of “some trick, some ho, some homewrecker that will give him exactly what he needs with no rules.”

“I fear the Lord first, so it makes submission easy. If you don’t like what he’s doing, you still have to submit. If you don’t feel like submitting, you have to do it to honor Jesus,” Kelley Steel told her congregation.  

“What if he’s not acting right. What if he’s not following God? This is your husband now, what if he’s not living for Jesus. Let me tell you what the Bible says. In 1 Peter 3:1 it says, ‘wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives,’” she explained.

Woof!! Maybe this Christian nationalism thing is better than I thought. I thought it was just a creepy cult. But it is more, much more! (sarc) 

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MSNBC reports that DJT has formally taken control of the TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party) and is poised to turn it into his personal piggybank:

On Friday, the Republican National Committee officially voted to install Donald Trump’s hand-picked nominees to oversee the RNC’s operations — and, perhaps more importantly, its finances — in the run-up to this year’s elections.

After Trump and his supporters pushed out (now freshly resigned chair) Ronna McDaniel, the MAGA movement installed in her place a pair of even more ardent loyalists — exemplified by the former president’s own daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, who has vowed to spend “every penny” of the RNC’s money to elect Trump. Elected as her co-chair is Michael Whatley, an election denier who previously led the North Carolina GOP. And serving as the RNC’s chief of staff alongside those two is Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita, a Swift Boat campaigner who’s functioned as the former president’s personal attack dog.

With that, Donald Trump has essentially turned the Republican Party into another of his family businesses. It’s certainly insular and (if you take Lara Trump’s word for it) singularly focused on her father-in-law’s success. For Republicans’ sake, they ought to pray the RNC doesn’t go the way of other ventures that had "Trump" on the label, like Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump University, Trump Airlines, etc., etc.  

What makes the timing of this takeover more noteworthy is that it comes on the same day Trump meets with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a bigoted authoritarian who has sat atop his Fidesz Party for most of the last 30 years and used anti-democratic means — like gerrymandering and attacks on press freedoms — to harden its political power in ways some fear could keep Orban in power indefinitely. (He’s already the longest-serving leader in the European Union at 14 years.)

Trump’s RNC takeover, paired with his Orban meeting, signals the conservative [wrong, it is authoritarian] movement's race toward a truly illiberal agenda. Like Orban, Trump has assumed full control of his party. Now, I suspect, comes the self-serving spending and another Republican platform that's only designed to put Trump in the White House and to ensure he can stay there as long as he wants.

The moral rot that DJT spreads to everything he touches has now completely engulfed and destroyed what used to be the pro-democracy Republican Party. The floodgates of kleptocracy are open. If donors pay in enough to the TTKP, they can expect the services they want from DJT if he gets back in power. What services? The usual, more wealth and power, with less taxes, regulations and consumer and worker protections.  

Lest we forget, this 5 minute interview explains why the TTKP holds Viktor Orban in such high esteem. He knows how to efficiently kill democracy. The TTKP has learned from him. An earlier post about him is here.

• Orban gained power in 2010 based on nationalist and racist demagoguery and dog whistle culture war. People open to this kind of message flocked to him and put him in power. His demagoguery created a false narrative of White victimization and dire threat of Whites by non-White people and globalization. 

 

• Once in power Orban changed election rules to destroy free and fair elections. Elections after he came to power were heavily rigged. He has now been elected in three consecutive, heavily-rigged elections after gaining power in 2010. Those faux elections are the basis for his claim to legitimacy.

• At the same time he destroyed elections, Orban neutered other aspects of Hungarian democracy. He got rid of professional public servants loyal to the rule of law and the people of Hungary. He replaced them with people loyal to him. 

• Republicans see what Orban has done as a proof of concept in how to overthrow a democracy. The Orban democracy kill model is shockingly simple: 

(1) start with culture wars to whip up a loyal base of public support, 

(2) once in power, manipulate the rules of democracy and government functions to cement minority rule, and 

(3) “win” rigged elections to stay in power.

News bits: A tale of two brains: How about that SOTU by JB?; Etc.

Salon reports commentary about two old brains by psychologist John Gartner, who contributed to the book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President: 

I had to speak out now because the 2024 election might turn on this issue of who is cognitively capable: Biden or Trump? It's a major issue that will affect some people's votes. Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden's gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden's brain is aging. Trump's brain is dementing.

Old brain, demented brain, Abby Normal brain.

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Reporting by MSM sources generally say that Biden gave a pretty good State of the Union speech last night. It was better than I expected, despite some criticism that the speech was “too political”, whatever that means. The NYT reported that House Speaker Mike Johnson hated the speech and made it crystal clear in real time. He openly let his facial expressions show how repulsed and disgusted he was. I take Johnson’s insulting, childish insolence as a sign that Biden did well in the speech.

One can only wonder what is wrong with Johnson’s brain. Joe’s seemed to be more than adequate by the standards of the day. My professional diagnosis is that Johnson is a self-righteous, theocratic Christian nationalist, and a morally rotted, corrupt one at that.

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The HuffPo reports about what North Carolina TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party, formerly the Republican Party) voters picked as their nominee for governor:

Mark Robinson’s Bizarre Ramble: ‘I Absolutely Want To Go Back To The America Where Women Couldn’t Vote’ -- In a newly unearthed video from 4 years ago, North Carolina’s GOP nominee for governor says America was better then because Republicans “fought for real social change.”

In what is now the usual TTKP KYMS (Keep Your Mouth Shut) tactic in the face of inconvenient questions, Robinson’s campaign and his government office did not respond to requests for comment. 

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Bring in the “alternates”…

Thinking about alt-facts and alt-truths today.  What exactly are they?

• Subjective facts, seeking objective status
• The “other side of the story”
• Inconvenient facts/truths, dressed up in sheep’s (or wolf's) clothing
• Merely valid counterpoints
• The slings and arrows of deflection (aka, Carville’s “look over there at the little birdie”)
• Other

Q1: How do you see “alt-facts/truths”?

Q2: Do alt-facts/truths have a place in argument?  If yes, how so?  I.e., when should they be “pulled out” (as a useful weapon)?

Discuss.

(by PrimalSoup)