Showing posts sorted by relevance for query bathrooms. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query bathrooms. Sort by date Show all posts

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Boys will be boys; and we all need a potty break....

"As soon as you flush the toilet, you're right in the middle of ideology."--Slavoj Žižek

No, it's not the scholarly research I'd prefer to do, but I'm lazy and Google makes things easy.

The conservative idea that civil rights protections sexually endanger women and children in public bathrooms is not new. In fact, conservative sexual thought has been in the toilet since the 1940s. During the World War II era, conservatives began employing the idea that social equality for African-Americans would lead to sexual danger for white women in bathrooms. In the decades since, conservatives used this trope to negate the civil rights claims of women and sexual minorities.

And if you want to get all historical about it, blame the Victorians!

The commode has been at the center of civil rights battles since the first modern public lavatory with flushing toilets opened in Victorian London.

Who were the interlopers back then? Women, of course, and they’re still fighting for “potty parity”. The US Congress, for example, has yet to pass the Restroom Gender Parity in Federal Buildings Act to make sure government buildings are built or leased with, at minimum, the same number of toilets in women’s restrooms as in men’s. Urinals are included in the count.

Public bathrooms are places 'where people’s level of discomfort is accentuated and magnified'  In the segregated south, Jim Crow laws banned black people from public “whites only” bathrooms until the 1960s, in perhaps the most elemental form of segregation. People with disabilities were not promised access to public lavatories until the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law by then-president George W Bush in 1990. Homeless people still struggle to find restrooms they are allowed to use. 
See?  Technology does make everything better!  Well, except for human nature and our tendency to identify an "other" who makes us feel vulnerable.

Public bathrooms are “a flash point” because they are places “where people’s level of discomfort is accentuated and magnified in ways it isn’t in other places,” says Kathryn H Anthony, professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“People are afraid because they’re exposed,” says Anthony, author of Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession. “There’s a vulnerability we feel in public restrooms we don’t feel in other places.”

Why is this important? As she told the House committee on oversight and government reform in 2010, the average person uses a toilet six to eight times a day.

Toilets are everywhere. At least, they should be.

Or, to quote Katie Brossard:  "You pee differently than I do.  It's a very basic human thing."

So, more stalls with doors?*

*My college dorm had two bathrooms (there were baths there, not just toilets and sinks) on each floor. It was the largest room on the floor, and the walls and floor were covered with tile.  The shower was a room behind the sinks, but about as private as a public plaza.  The toilets were all stalls (IIRC), without doors.  Nobody used the first two toilets, because they had full visual access to anyone who walked in the door.  You also didn't really want to use them (when you had to be seated) when someone was taking a shower, as most of them had a prime view of that room.  Somehow we survived.

Although my favorite story was when some friends turned off the lights and threw a string of firecrackers in the bathroom when their friend went in to relieve himself.  With all that tile, it sounded like a bomb had exploded.  My guess is his ears stopped ringing after a few days.....


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Tuesday, November 03, 2015

Election Day U.S.A.

Still my favorite modern artist

I wasn't going to write about this, even though it's getting national attention, but this is a pretty good introduction to the issue, and a good place to start.

To begin with, I didn't know what about Annise Parker.  I just knew she was a good mayor who would probably get re-elected if not for strict term limits (a dumb idea, but that's another day).  Montrose is still the "gay" neighborhood of Houston, but more as a tradition than a necessity, and if Houston weren't so gerrymandered on the state and federal level, we'd send a great deal more Democrats to Austin and D.C. than we do now.

As for HERO (Houston Equal Rights Ordinance), it's had a checkered career.  This is the ordinance that the City Council passed that was challenged with petitions which were thrown out, and then there were more petitions and more court cases and even I lost track of how it wound up before the Texas Supreme Court who ruled HERO had to be but on the ballot (or rescinded, or something; who cares anymore?), but the fight at that time was by and large pure old-fashioned hate:  HERO would mean people couldn't discriminate against gays and transgendered, and that was not AMERICAN, where we have to be free to hate somebody!

Lest you think I exaggerate:

It is astounding to have to say that most Houston citizens – including most Christians and pastors – are still unaware of the radical nature of Mayor Annise Parker’s commitment to imposing the full “San Francisco Style” Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, etc. agenda. … We have a sin-sick city and we need the power of God through Jesus Christ changing lives and changing City Hall!
Yeah.  Well, that kind of language has faded away.  The new argument is all about toilets and who gets to use 'em, because if we pass this ordinance we'll have to take the doors off the bathrooms and remove the stall dividers and put in sound-proofed rooms for predators to take the children.  Well, maybe that last bit goes too far, but again maybe not, if you've seen the "toilet ad" that's running down here.  (UPDATE:  I found it here.  Don't say I never do anything for you.)

Interestingly, the pro-HERO ad I've seen never mentions the acronym "HERO" (apparently that has been banned from this discussion, to avoid or create confusion, I'm not sure).  It focusses on non-discrimination against veterans (?) coming home from service, and women and people because of race or gender or religious belief (the Civil Rights Act language, basically), oh, and of sexual orientation.  Frankly, in a city with a lesbian mayor for two terms, who could win again if she could run, that last is not all that controversial.

And the opponents of HERO know it, so they are running the "toilet" ad, which is worse than you think, complete with ominous narration about what will lurk in Houston restrooms if we let it, and ends with a very young, very doe-eyed white girl, in grainy black and white, staring up off camera as a shadow looms over her, backing her into a corner against tile-covered walls.

Get it?  Pass HERO, and predators will stalk your children in public bathrooms, business will HAVE TO ALLOW THIS!  Never mind sexual predation is a violation of state criminal law, and people entering bathrooms with the intent of preying on women and children (always the "weak", right?) are already subject to arrest, and most of us spend as little time in public bathrooms as possible (except those at Buc-ees, which are so clean and bright and welcoming they are a religious experience; but also so open you couldn't drag anybody into any stall without twelve people knowing about it, including at least two store employees.  I mean those restrooms are NEVER empty!  But I digress.....).  No longer is the argument about the religious freedom to condemn gays (Obergefell pretty much marked paid to that argument, and Kim Davis did it no favors on her way out of the public eye), now they've latched on to sexual predators and restrooms where you go because you have to and where it's not private anyway because it's PUBLIC!  O the shame!  O the humanities!  To expose your nether regions in a place that is not your own!

Here's hoping, and expecting, it passes.  The toilet ad is really pretty heavy-handed, I expect it to backfire.  Besides, the only "man" you'll find in a woman's bathroom would be Caitlyn Jenner or someone like her, and I don't expect Caitlyn to walk in looking for a urinal on the wall, do you?

This just really is stupid.

Tedious update the second:  there are over 1 million registered voters in the city of Houston.  Interviewing 24 of them and deciding from that you know the status of this issue in the minds of Houston voters, is a whole different kind of dumb.
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Monday, May 22, 2017

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do....



Lite Guv. Dan Patrick wanted to pass a "bathroom bill" a la North Carolina's, because of bathroom predators and bathroom privacy and reasons.

The "predators" idea is what sank the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance ("HERO"), something that gained national attention for Houston (o boy!) and which Patrick was deeply familiar with, he being from Houston and all.

Now you have to realize the Texas Constitution doesn't give power to any one person.  The Governor and the Lt. Gov. are elected separately, and while the latter presides in the Texas Senate and the former is the only person who can call special sessions and decide precisely what the special session will try to pass (and once passed, the session is over; no hanging about passing any other laws not put on the agenda by the Guv.), that's about as powerful as the offices are.  It's largely a matter of political clout as to how much you can do in either position.  Bob Bullock was a legendary Texas pol who knew where ALL the bodies were buried in Texas, and he ran the state as Lt. Guv.  He even got a Texas history museum named after him in Austin.  Former Gov. Dolph Briscoe has his name attached to a museum on UT campus in Austin, but that's because he was rich and left a lot of money for it.  Everybody still remembers the long shadow Bullock cast; Briscoe is a phantom of some very long memories (like your host's).

So Dan Patrick was determined to "North Carolina" Texas.  Except Texas business interests didn't want to see that happen, and Joe Strauss, Speaker of the Texas House, listens to the bidness men.  Patrick's bill passed the Senate, but never had a prayer in the House.

Texas has one of the shortest legislative sessions in the country:  six months every two years.  Anything outside of that is a "special session," called by the governor, limited to what the governor puts on the agenda.  The Governor is not anxious to put Patrick's "bathroom bill" on the agenda; but he's not anxious to cross the crazies Patrick and the Texas Senate represent.  Strauss doesn't care; he's not letting Texas become the next North Carolina.  Patrick decide to flex his muscles and demand that bill (and a few others) get to the House floor, or he wouldn't pass the state budget, the only law the Lege has to pass in regular session (or come back immediately in special session).

Texas legislators don't get paid well to come to Austin for six months, and they are anxious to leave when the whirlwind is over.  But the law is the law, and a budget must be passed, before the end of the month, or in the summer.

And then this morning I learn that a "compromise" has shown up in the House, an amendment to another bill, that would limit the "bathroom bill" to public and charter schools.  K-12, so as not to bother the NCAA (of course).  The original bill applied only to public buildings, so you're local restaurants public bathrooms would not have been affected.  But if Caitlyn Jenner were to visit your local Texas courthouse or city hall, she'd have been directed to the men's room; presumably.  If she was recognized (the only reason I mention her); and if there was a policeman ready and willing to do his/her duty under the law.  Fat chance, IOW.  Still, that risk could be removed if this amendment makes it to the Senate and the Senate decides half a loaf is better than a special session.

Of course, the only people even Patrick's original bill would apply to was students in public schools.  There was a question of whether publicly owned football stadiums would be covered, and I never envisioned police standing before the bathrooms checking birth certificates and...well, what?  The premise of the bill was to enforce privacy, right?  So in the name of privacy we make you drop drawers and show a piece of paper besides?  Yeah, right.

The first excuse was predators:  men in women's clothes looking to rape our innocent white young girls.  That worked in Houston, but it won't work again, and it's pretty much gone as an argument.  Privacy was next, but bathrooms are supposed to be private, and unless transgendered women are gonna belly up to the urinal, whose to know, unless we remove the doors on stalls in the name of privacy?  So we're down to the point of this bill all along, and the only population it could ever apply to:  public school students.

The schools know who you are, and what it says on your birth certificate, and the schools alone can police their bathrooms in the ways no other institution can.  Even the broadest reach of Patrick's fevered dreams was only ever going to come down to public school students.  Apparently public school isn't hard enough, we have to make it tougher.

Then again, this may not pass muster in the Senate, because it allows an out:

The last-minute vote amended a Senate bill focusing on school districts' emergency plans and added language requiring K-12 schools provide single-stall restrooms and other public areas to a student "who does not wish" to use facilities designated by "biological sex."
So they don't have to pee where they want to pee, but they don't have to pee with other people, either. Hey, it's compromise, right?

The result is the same:  Dammit, we gotta discriminate against SOMEBODY!  What's the point of having a legislative session in Donald Trump's first term if we don't do that!

And while we're talking about schools, Patrick still insists on a sop to hard-working rich people:

HB 21 now includes a provision the House hates and Patrick wants: state subsidies for parents who want to send their children with disabilities to private schools or need money for services to educate them at home.
The amount involved is about $8000.  That won't pay tuition at many private schools, if you can get in (most around here have waiting lists.  Well, the better ones.).  And those aren't even the schools targeted.  Fewer and more expensive and more exclusive are the private schools that take children with disabilities.  Such schools limit enrollment, as all private schools do.  So if you think you can take that voucher and put your kid in a private school that will deal better with her needs, I'm afraid that won't happen.  But if you have the money for that school, $8000 is nice refund on the costs you're paying.  As I say, this won't help people who can't afford those schools; it will only help the people who can.

The flip side of this is that Texas tried something like this years ago, allowing people to take the money and spend it on private schooling of almost any description.  A huge number of fly-by-night schools opened, took the money, and ran.  Imagine how much worse that would be for poor parents with children who need help and get the minimum Texas will pay for and the federal government will  provide; and then they go to a private school that has no interest beyond getting that voucher coupon cashed.  We've seen this movie, we know how it turns out; and now we're gonna sit through it again.

And for those kids who can't escape the public schools, we'll make sure to shame them as much as possible about where they go to relieve themselves.  Why should life be easy for kids whose parents aren't rich, right?
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Friday, January 11, 2019

Meanwhile, In Texas


Two years ago Lite Guv Dan Patrick (a constitutionally mandated office in Texas) was tearing around the Great State of Texas accusing schools district (independent governmental agencies in Texas) of all manner of immorality and transgression for trying to accommodate transgendered students with bathrooms they could use, too.  He fought that fight viciously in the Lege, losing it because a more sensible Speaker of the House wouldn't bring it up (Lite Guv presides in the Texas Senate).*  Then came the thrashing of Texas Republicans last November, some of whom lost, many of whom barely won what should have been walking away victories.

At a Governor’s Mansion press conference on the second day of this year’s legislative session, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — who last session was the top state leader championing the measure, which would have regulated the use of certain public facilities for transgender Texans — suggested there’s no need to bring back the divisive proposal that headlined the last legislative year in 2017, but failed to reach the governor's desk.

“When you win the battle, you don’t have to fight the battle again,” Patrick said, sitting beside Gov. Greg Abbott and recently elected Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton. “I think it’s been settled, and I think we’ve won.”

Without citing evidence, Patrick claimed that the school district behavior he said necessitated the measure has “stopped.”

"Sometimes a bill doesn't pass, but you win on the issue,” Patrick said. He added later in the day at an event with Texas Realtors that “school districts have stopped this policy.”

“There aren’t any school districts forcing students — as one school district was — to share showers, lockers and bathrooms,” Patrick said.

But experts said most school districts work to accommodate transgender students on a personalized basis, and that that approach has not changed in light of the debate at the Capitol in 2017.

“Most districts deal with this kid by kid,” said Rebecca Robertson, chief programs officer for Equality Texas, an LGBTQ advocacy group. “For Dan Patrick to say now that schools have abandoned these policies and reversed course — I don’t know of anything to support that claim.”

The Lege only meets for 140 days every two years, which understandably makes every day of the session count.  Not to Lite Guv Patrick, though:

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick missed the first day of the Texas Legislature on Tuesday to attend a last-minute border security meeting at the White House, where he helped with President Donald Trump's nationally televised address from the Oval Office and met with the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

That message — in which Trump continued his long call for the construction of a border wall — came on day 18 of a partial shutdown, the long-running result of a stalemate over the wall.

Patrick, a staunch supporter of the president who served as the Texas chairman of Trump’s 2016 presidential run, will also join Trump for a briefing in McAllen on Thursday, his office announced. Patrick has long been a vocal advocate of the border wall.
Well, the less he's in Austin, the better.  He's doing Trump about as much good as he's doing us.  Patrick staunchly denies his time in D.C. indicates he's pursuing a job there, the answer to a question nobody asked. ** Usually that means he has had an offer, or he'd welcome one.  Again, it would improve Texas and not make any difference to D.C. at all.  Then again, if wishes were horses....

*and if you think that's a dead, or even irrelevant, issue on the national stage:

“I don’t want the next national emergency to be that some Democrat President says we have to build transgender bathrooms in every elementary school in America,” [Rep. Matt] Gaetz [R-FL] said.

**Apparently Patrick offered for Texas to build the wall, in Texas at least, providing the Feds reimbursed the cost.  Not only would such costs include construction and materials but, of course, eminent domain claims the state would have to pursue, hardly a politically popular circumstance in this state in the best of times.  And then there's the matter of the Congress holding the pursestrings, not the Administration.  If you haven't noticed, Trump's clout with the House, where all funding approval must start, is not the greatest just now.  Trump did tell the press it would be a "relatively small amount of money," which shows Trump has no clue, either.  Yeah, nobody ever accused Dan of being the sharpest blade in the drawer.

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Tuesday, February 02, 2021

Everything Old....

I just typed the word "bathrooms" into my blog's search function, and the first post is from 2016.  Seems fear of who was peeing next to you started in the '40's in reaction to nascent civil rights efforts.  Now that we accept skin color (legally, anyway, if not in reality) and haven't yet figured out how to ban religious groups from bathrooms, we turn at last, as Popehat says, to trans persons.

Reading down, the problem goes back to 2015; in Houston, anyway.  I think it was kicking around in North Carolina about that time, too, but I haven't done the research to pin that down.

Dan Patrick tried to make himself a national figure with it in 2016; by 2019 he was on to Trump's border wall, and through with bathrooms (he got nowhere with it, although he holds a statewide elected office and didn't lose that office either, not to the present day).

And now somebody in the WSJ wants to revive it?  Why?

"These things that pass for knowledge I don't understand...."
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Thursday, August 31, 2023

People Fleeing For The Exits

 Behold the genius of Donald Trump:

The first time Donald Trump was deposed by New York Attorney General Letitia James – who's spent more than two years calling him an inveterate fraudster – the former president pleaded the Fifth repeatedly.

But in a second deposition held this past April, the AG's office couldn't get him to shut up, including about the "beautiful" marble bathrooms in his "tremendous" properties, a newly-released transcript shows.

In a seven-hour grilling that's a prelude to Trump's October 2, $250 million civil fraud trial, his answers were so long-winded, that one of James' lawyers worried aloud that if he didn't speed it up, everyone in the room would "be here until midnight."

At least, I expect it to be reported that way by mainstream media:

"We're going to be here until midnight if you keep asking questions that are all over the map," Trump's lawyer Chris Kise complained early on to one of James' top lawyers on the fraud case, Kevin Wallace.

"Chris," Wallace responded, "we're going to be here until midnight if your client answers every question with an eight-minute speech."

Trump had just launched into a stem-winder about his "brand" when the tiff broke out.

"If I wanted to build a big statement just for the sake of a statement, I would go out and I would value the brand and — which is much more than the $3 billion," Trump said. "And as I said once before today, I became President of the United States because of my brand."

Wallace attempted to get Trump back on track. 

"I just want to go back to a couple of things you said," Wallace said. "The first is, you said, 'I didn't need banks for the most part.'"

"So why did you use banks?" he asked.

"Because you do it. It's better tax wise," Trump said. "You do it."

Trump told the lawyer he paid off all the loans that he took out from banks to pay for his properties.

"Politics hurt. When I get sued by you — fortunately, I don't need banks," Trump continued. "I mean, paid off all that stuff that you used to talk about. I paid it off."

He went on to claim that "prior to [getting] sued by the Attorney General of the State of New York, banks wanted to do business with me so badly."

In other ramblings, Trump launched into a soliloquy about the beauty of the marble bathrooms at his Miami golf resort, Trump National Doral Golf Club.

"In the case of the villas, 800 rooms, they were gutted out down to the steel and rebuilt and they're incredible," he said of his renovation of the property.  

"I could have done what I called a paint and wallpaper job. You just paint and wallpaper it.  But it was time — it was tired," he said.

"I started using marble instead of carpet," he added, continuing a line of thought that was irrelevant.

"They're all marble bathrooms. I mean, they're beautiful."

There's a character in "Derry Girls" who always starts giving long, rambling stories at the drop of a hat, meandering tales that somehow relate to the conversation, if you've got the time.  People around him start looking for the exits when he starts one of those.

Trump sounds like that, except he thinks that, as long as he talks, he's winning.  This is not a "beautiful mind" at work, or a feral genius cunningly eluding the traps laid by his interlocutors.  This is a rambling old fool who still equates "fancy" with "better," "talking" with "obfuscation," and who can't clearly answer business questions related directly to the business he's been operating for decades:  

"So why did you use banks?" he asked.

"Because you do it. It's better tax wise," Trump said. "You do it."

...

"Politics hurt. When I get sued by you — fortunately, I don't need banks," Trump continued. "I mean, paid off all that stuff that you used to talk about. I paid it off."

He went on to claim that "prior to [getting] sued by the Attorney General of the State of New York, banks wanted to do business with me so badly."

I'm not saying he gave away the store here, revealing matters that clinch the case for the NYAG.  I'm saying this is hardly the voice that commands millions and holds them in his thrall.  This is a sad, rambling old clown who would need directions to the bathroom written down for him.  This is not a commanding figure the jury will see as a wizard of Wall Street and a titan of New York real estate.

This is Grandpa telling you a long, pointless story at Thanksgiving. 

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Wednesday, November 04, 2015

The wages of fear is....

What can I say?  I like Duchamp.

The post-mortem no one is asking for.

Yes, the defeat of HERO yesterday shows that Houston is not as progressive as Houston likes to think it is.  Every other major city in Texas, including Dallas, former home of some of the sleaziest of the TV evangelists of the '70's and '80's (my, how times change), Austin (quelle surprise), San Antonio, even, IIRC, El Paso.  The major impetus for this ordinance (aside from the fact homosexuals and transgendered are not a protected class under the Civil Rights Act, but should be; nor under Texas law (again....)), was that Houston shouldn't be left hanging out on an issue like this.

Now, if it affects the NFL's decision to hold the Super Bowl here again (set for 2017), things could get interesting.  But that's no more than rank speculation at the moment.

So we turned it down, and I sincerely hoped the more progressive voters in Houston would turn out to support this thing.  Well, they did; the turn out was higher than usual for an off year election with a trove of mayoral candidates (a baker's dozen, or so) and a slew of county bonds to vote for (all passed), city ordinances to approve, and state constitutional amendments to pass (they did, including one which will lower everyone's property tax bill by about $8 a month.  You are now free to buy those two extra lattes at Starbucks every month, and you can thank your house for it.  How that affects schools, which raise taxes from property values to pay for teachers and buildings; well, don't worry about that right now.  Enjoy your latte.  I'm sure a teacher would; if they could afford Starbucks on their salary.).  Then again, only 12% of registered voters in Houston actually voted on this ordinance.  So is this who Houston is?  Or are we the silent and apathetic majority?

Still, the main reason the law failed, or the opposition won, is because the issue was turned into a matter of public toilets.

Yes, this is an old trope.  Yes, it is ironic, too; considering that today the victory cry is that bathrooms and locker rooms are now safe from invasion.  Ironic because the DOJ is pressing an Illinois school district to give full access to the girl's locker room to a transgendered student.  If something like that comes up in Houston, watch for exploding heads.

Houston bathrooms are no safer or more dangerous now than they were yesterday at this time.  If you attack someone in a restroom, you deserve to be arrested.  If a man wanders into the women's restroom, he deserves to be (at least) escorted back out again.  But now we are apparently safe from transgender predators, because that's what the "anti" campaign was all about.  And the "pro" campaign needs to carry much of the blame for that.

The "pro campaign" was an anodyne production featuring relying on an ad containing mostly white people and a few Hispanics (and probably one black, what we would have called a "token" back in the day), so as to offend as few white Houston voters as possible.  This is the most ethnically diverse city in the country (per the Census Bureau), but we don't yet self-identify that way, so don't put it in our face; that, at least, seemed to be the reasoning.  And rather than point and laugh at the bathroom campaign and say publicly and loudly "ARE YOU SERIOUS?  ARE YOU KIDDING ME? ARE YOU CRAZY?  HELL, NO, WE'RE NOT GONNA LET SOMETHING LIKE THAT HAPPEN!  THAT'S INSANE!", with a big ol' Molly Ivins-style grin on your face, we had an ad that appealed to equality for all, without ever explicitly saying "including homosexuals and the transgendered."

Because, you know, that might scare people.

Yes, I'd hoped this would go the other way.  But the old lesson is still the only lesson:  people will not vote for unless you give 'em a damned good reason to.  It's easier to vote against, or better, just don't vote at all.  The vote against is always motivated.  The vote for needs just as much reason, even stronger reasons, to be motivated.  I suspect the majority of Houstonians support equal treatment for everybody; but when you start talking about extending that, it first sounds like somebody's gonna get something you don't get, and how unfair is that?  So if you want to extend rights, you have to make that case, loud and long and as often as possible.  And when you are up against a fear-mongering campaign, the response is not to ignore it and hope it will go away.

Because fear works.


It is, for me, a golden oldie.

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Wednesday, January 26, 2022

VOTE EARLY AND OFTEN!

 


I received this in the mail recently, from the locally infamous Steven Hotze.*  I know it's pretty much illegible in the photograph, but I just looked at it again (before tossing it in the shredder) and I found the blue side hilarious.

First, let me explain:  this is a solicitation that I fill out an application to vote by mail, something "seniors" like yours truly, "love" to do (vote by mail, I mean.  The damned application is a pain in the a**.  I'm quite sure this will be removed from the law by 2024, because of what the Lege is going to hear this year and next.).  Anyone over 65 in Texas can vote by mail just because they're over 65.  So I'm on the list.  The local county officials can't send me one of these, under new Texas law (they did until this year); but private parties can.  Don't get me started on how stupid that is; or how likely it is by the next legislative session this provision (must apply annually to vote by mail) isn't rescinded, especially since Hotze and so many GOPers in Texas assume I'm gonna vote GOP because now I'm...on Social Security?  Remind me again who started that?

Anyway....a partial reading of the "blue list" from the above.

The column is captioned "LIBERALS, LEFTISTS, SOCIALISTS, COMMUNISTS".  It's just a spectrum, ya know, from bad to worst.  The red column is "CHRISTIANS, CONSERVATIVES, PATRIOTS."  Because Communists are godless ("under God" wasn't shoved into the Pledge for nothing!), donchaknow?  This is a "good/bad" arrangement, as you can guess.  I'll just give you some of the "bad":

"Atheistic, Secular World View--"Might makes right."

That one amuses me most.  Apparently us godless commie liberals are in charge, and squashing our opponents because we can.  I always thought "Might makes right" was a peculiarly right-wing, militaristic, even patriotic, stance.  I'm confused....

"Support New World Order agenda."

That would be the thing Poppy Bush first labeled and announced?  We have an "agenda"?  Funny how "agenda" is automatically a bad thing, huh?

"Tolerate criminal behavior, rioting and looting during protests.  Defund the police."

The almost wholly Democratic special committee of Congress couldn't be reached for comment.  Nor the dead and wounded Capitol Police officers, nor all the incarcerated or arrested protestors from January 6 who engaged in criminal behavior, rioting, and looting, all in the name of protest.

"Open borders to create chaos."

You mean like the chaos of stripping families of their children under no legal authority whatsoever, then forcing government agencies and NGO's to struggle to reunite those families?

"Teach children to accept the perverted transgender lifestyle."

We've moved on from gay marriage; that's a lost cause.  And yes, this is the guy who tried to scare all of Houston about transgendered persons going into public bathrooms to rape young white girls.  As if public bathrooms were private dungeons, and as if transgendered persons were all child molesters.  This one, by the way, is contrasted with the "Good" position: "Protect children from being perverted by liberal sex programs in school."  Which basically means we're teaching children to be gay.  Moving on...

"Support business' and government's [yes, just one, even though there are at least 3 in Texas alone, aside from the federal government] authority to mandate experimental 'vaccines' and medical treatment."

This from the same people clamoring for experimental treatments for covid (have monoclonal antibodies been more rigorously tested or used longer than mRna vaccines?).  

"Approve homosexual 'mirage.' Everyone must accept, affirm and celebrate perverted sexual lifestyle.  Promote pedophilia by supporting Drag Queen Story Hour for children.  (Romans 1:18-32)"

I honestly don't know if "mirage" is supposed to be some kind of swipe at "marriage," or if he means homosexuality is fake.  In either case, that Drag Queen Story Hour really sticks in his craw.  In 2018 he sent out a flyer to get people to vote for the GOP slate of district court judges.  The Democrats swept the elections for those positions:  all black women.  And as far as I know, no one was rounded up and forced to bring their child to Drag Queen Story Hour. (Come to think of it, no one's forced us to "gay marry," either.  Whatever happened to might making right?  Are we godless liberals using it wrong?) I guess we didn't think might makes right 4 years ago.  I'm not gonna bother with the reference to Romans.  It's the usual proof-texting bullshit that's not worth responding to.

"Pro-death - For killing unborn babies.  Communists kill political opponents."

Babies are the political opponents of liberals?

"Increase taxes to redistribute income.  Tax the producers to buy votes."

You know, all taxation redistributes income.  My income for 20 years has come from a state-supported community college.  The Lovely Wife works for a school district, supported by tax dollars.  My federal taxes go to federal employees, defense contractors, even national park rangers (yay, park rangers!).  I'm perfectly happy to see some of my income redistributed, even to clowns like my U.S. Senator and Representative.  Even my personal spending redistributes my income.  That's how economies work.

"Support government controlled healthcare."

You mean, like Medicare?  Does he realize the people he's sending this to are most likely on Medicare?  Remind me again who started that? 

And most of us go on it ASAP because we're tired of the "free market solutions to health care" CHRISTIAN, CONSERVATIVES, and PATRIOTS uphold.  Because we've dealt with that "solution:" it's called "health insurance."  And it sucks!

Anyway, I'm convinced that, once again, I need to vote.



*Hotze signs himself as an M.D.  What is it about medical degrees and rabidly conservative people?  Does medical training addle your brain?
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Sunday, May 15, 2016

Of Bathrooms and their patrons

Still crazy after all these years

First, I have to say this whole "bathroom" kerfuffle seems to have started in Houston (sorry).  The former Mayor of Houston pointed that that HERO (Houston Equal Rights Ordinance) came up for a referendum vote (after a protracted court battle that went to the Texas Supreme Court, which forced the referendum) after the Obergefell decision was handed down.  So opponents of Obergefell were hungry for their pound of flesh, and in HERO they found it.  (The terrifying "toilet ad," complete with wide eyed young white girl gazing off camera at a "predator," can still be found here.)  From that little acorn (which turned the tide against HERO) sprang "bathroom" laws across the country, which have morphed from fears of predators to fears of violations of privacy (somehow privacy is not violated when we deny women abortions, but is when we allow transgendered women to use a stall in a public toilet.  No, I don't understand, either.)

So:  sorry about that.

But the real point is, the argument of the opponents, be they the governor of North Carolina or the Lite Guv. of Texas, are crap.  Watch the Ashleigh Banfield interview, if you must, to see Dan Patrick splutter and insist his version of reality, even as she takes it away from him, is still the Truth!  It's bollocks; utter bollocks.

And the lesson of the beam in your eye returns to us, because  the people opposed to allowing the transgendered into bathrooms (who themselves only want privacy in public to use the facilities as the rest of us do.  Do you want public attention when you urinate or defecate?  Neither do I.) do it in the name of avoiding violence are probably, themselves, prone to violence.  Too many arguments about what "they" will do usually cover desires for violence in the ones who see it in others.

But the real argument is to see the transgendered simply as human beings.  Unsurprisingly, that's the Christian argument, too:

In an email sent to The Huffington Post on Saturday morning, Boylan said her “only intention on that show was to be respectful and loving to a person who I knew did not understand me.” She continued, “I hoped if I showed a little kindness, it might make him stop and think, Hmm, well what is the proper Christian response to someone who is vulnerable and in trouble?“

Boylan says she didn’t expect her strategy to work. “I figured that my own humanity is of so little reality to these people that nothing would make any difference,” she noted in her email. But she was surprised that “it appeared to completely shut him down.”

“I can’t explain it,” Boylan said. “Is it possible that for a moment he recognized me as someone human, someone just like him who deserves love and understanding?”

She ended up walking away from the experience with an outlook that translates into what might be some of the best advice we’ve heard in a long time: “Love your enemies. It messes with their minds.”

To which I would only add:  love them anyway.  It's the right thing to do.
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Friday, August 05, 2022

Irony

Orban told the crowd Hungary is the “Lone Star of Europe.” Which is the irony.
Stuart Stevens, the Lincoln Project strategist who has worked on five GOP presidential campaigns, posted, without attribution, “This is why we have always fought: we are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race.” 
"That’s not David Duke, it’s Viktor Orban, the star of CPAC, the new darling of American conservatism," Stevens noted. "Bathrooms, bedrooms & race. That’s who they are."
Texas already tried that. Dan Patrick ran around the state a few years ago trying to drum up interest in a “bathroom bill” that would prevent public schools from providing accommodations for all students. It didn’t go anywhere, and hasn’t come back since.

And yeah, I know, C-PAC seems more dominant in the GOP since the days of Gingrich. But does that mean it has a foothold among the general populace? I’m not sure it’s all that potent in the GOP.
There’s a reason Abbott hasn’t done that, and won’t. He wants to get re-elected. "Miserable fat Belgian bastards!”

I post this only to point out how out of the mainstream Trump and his supporters are. Trump wanted to nuke NATO; the only support for that he got in the Senate this week was from Josh “Brave Sir Robin” Hawley. Hawley cast the lone vote to not allow Finland and Sweden into NATO. I don’t think that vote will feature prominently in his re-election campaign.
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Wednesday, June 01, 2016

It's still raining down in Texas


The flooding in Texas is due to climate change, no doubt.  Recovery from the severe drought has now turned into flooding and far more rain than we needed.  But climate change is a nebulous theory and too easily blamed for whatever ails you, and just as easily dismissed as irrelevant to any immediate crisis.

It doesn't help that the leaders of Texas dismiss climate change out of hand.  But where those leaders are definitely culpable is in disinterest to flood control or to controlling urban sprawl:

“The main challenge to rational planning for flood risk in the country is that private property rights trump even modest limitations on floodplain development,” Nicholas Pinter, a professor of geology and environmental resources and policy at Southern Illinois University, told the Times. “And that sentiment runs deep in Texas. The result is unchecked construction on flood-prone land, up to the present day and in some places even accelerating.”

The flooding risk in parts of Texas and communities’ vulnerabilities are well-understood, even by state officials, but it’s unclear if authorities will take steps to mitigate exposure to flood hazards and build more resilient cities.
Houston faces major challenges from flooding, challenges it has effectively ignored for generations.  It isn't hard to find someone here who has lived here long enough to know someone who's house was eventually razed due to flooding, flooding that never occurred until even more development (and the impervious cover it brings) went in near them, causing them to be flooded out.  The consistent response to that by local officials was to ignore the problem, deny the problem, and when all else failed, buy and destroy the flooded neighborhoods and so eliminate the problem.  Anything rather than control the developers and their desire to put down even more impervious cover than before.

I-10 runs near me.  It was widened considerably a few years ago, and flooding in my neighborhood has been worse since.  It isn't a simple correlation, since my neighborhood is actually uphill from I-10.  But water that once drained away from my street now drains much slower because there is so much more water downhill from me in the system, water pouring off the freeway which was doubled in size (16 lanes, up from 8) and dumping in the same storm sewers which were always there.   There is also a large shopping center which was once more open field than concrete, and no provision in that parking lot for any runoff abatement (the kind of thing the city of Austin required after the Memorial Day flood in 1981).  We know how to do this, in other words; we just don't.

Sucks to be you, pilgrim.

What are our leaders worried about?  Bathrooms.  Our schools may be closing due to rising flood waters, but at least Dan Patrick and Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton are keeping their bathrooms safe from transgendered students. of which I'm sure there are at least a few in all of Texas.*  The number of people being flooded out of their homes and businesses?  Well, at least the Mayor of Houston is worried about it.  He understands that, if people can't live here, they won't.  Whether the other powers of Houston, and Texas, recognize that remains to be seen.

*Patrick is asking Paxton to issue an AG's opinion on the policy of the Fort Worth ISD.  People are drowning, houses and cars are floating as I write, and Dan Patrick is afraid that someone somewhere in Texas might be treated like a human being.

I'll retire to Bedlam.
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Tuesday, October 01, 2024

So…

 Power is out at Chez Adventus (work in the area, shouldn’t be long, small 🍺), and I’m randomly reading the news/tweets. It seems Grandpa Shouty is loose again:

🤷🏻‍♂️  Pretty sure the education caused the student loans. And between “what they want” and “what we want” and “what [he] get[s],” even with my education, I’m just full blown gonzo confused. 🫤  Is this why he thinks tariffs are good? Because he’s unstuck in time? Nobody did; never happened. Grandpa needs his meds. Says the convicted felon facing two more criminal trials he can only escape by becoming POTUS and directing his AG to dismiss all charges. 🎶 “Cherish is a word I use to describe…🎶…well, not Trump. (I’m glad Midwestern towns where I have family and not become urban hellscapes. That’s reassuring.) Trump reportedly never exercised because he believed he was born with a certain store of energy, and using it in exercise would shorten his life. He seems to be running out anyway. He’s also repeating himself: (Not being “woke” means they’re gonna be openly racist. Just so we’re clear on what he’s saying.)  That line must be in his teleprompter, because he’s been repeating it since last week. He’s certainly not sounding any zippier when he’s supposedly free to speak his mind. And speaking of repeating himself: Yes it was large; and devastating. But this is mid-season, predictable for the massive heat build up early in the year that had to dissipate (essentially what hurricanes do). There are two months of “hurricane season” to go. November hurricanes are not unknown, and frankly are likely this year. That ocean is still very hot.🥵  Except the predictions of global warming are proving true. Does he mean where he is? Not in Florida? Because it is late summer; although where I am, September was hotter and drier than August. "The hat”? Does he think he’s at Hogwarts? "Call the app”? I guess we still don’t know what apps are? "Everything You Know Is Wrong!” was funnier when the Firesign Theater did it. You just know he wants to say “deepest, darkest Africa,” but it’s too many syllables. The way he cut Twitter’s value by almost 80%? His co-investors are certainly feeling that. (This is a press conference?!? 🫨) He goes for the “I” states because…well, it’s his favorite word. How would you do either one? And considering the success the campaign has had outsourcing GOTV to the PACs ( hint: none)… Ummmm… 🤨 They are “public schools” for a reason. And parents don’t run them because few have the time, or ability, to home school. And why is he so obsessed with his monolingualism? Is it because he has a vocabulary of about 800 words? Neither statement is believable. Not makes any sense. Which is the only believable thing about them (consider the source). He was responsible for the Abraham Accords. Is he already denying that? Or has he already forgotten?

“Trump Critiques Biden/Harris Middle East Policy.” The headline somewhere tomorrow. We can’t believe you got elected, either. Or that you’re the candidate of a major political party for the third time. You’ll be a private citizen who needs all his money to pay the lawyers for your criminal trials and your 5 pending appeals. Who cares what you think? DO NOT TOUCH THE BUBBLE! 😝 (And yes, it was Iran…) Suckers and losers. “GIVE THIS MAN THE NUCLEAR FOOTBALL NOW!,” said no one, ever. Okay. We’re done here. Because that’s all I can cope with, and more than I meant to post. I’ve done my duty as I see fit. According to Albert Alligator, that’s all a citizen can do.
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Friday, January 13, 2023

The 🔥 Next Time

The consistent reports on this problem (I first heard about it on NPR some months ago) is the risk it poses to children.  That risk is increased in cases of poor ventilation, a problem that applies much more to low-rent housing than it does to a home where they can afford a Wolf range (all the rage 20 years ago; probably not selling at all now.  What do I know?). 

And I'm still seriously confused why this isn't a problem for gas water heaters and gas furnaces.  I have both, and neither has a special powered vent that lets the NO2 escape the confines of the house.  There is a vent for the water heater, but it's just a draw flue similar to a fireplace chimney in function.  The furnace is in the attic. (I grew up with one on the house proper).  I can smell it everytime it fires up (rare here on the Third Coast, but still).  It has no separate vent through the roof, as the water heater does.  I don't know the properties of NO2: does it sink, rise, hover, dissipate easily? slowly?  Ever?  If it's a problem for a gas stove, why not for the other gas appliances?

I mean, I think burning natural gas in a house is an issue, but how much of one?  I also have two space heaters in the bathrooms (one each).  Same type I grew up with.  They definitely were used in a closed space (the whole point was to trap heat in the bathroom, so you closed the door). They were our only source of heat for a week during the infamous February winter storm two years ago. Can't say as I suffered any real cognitive deficit because of my childhood, or after that week of keeping our bathrooms closed and warm.

I'm not saying this to draw conclusions, I'm saying I agree with the posture of the one director of the CPSC who raised this issue:  study and research needs to be done.  But I also agree with emptywheel: I grew up with an electric stove (induction didn't exist) and I got gas as soon as I could.  I've seen induction cooktops.  They're just electric stoves without the element ring, to me.

OTOH, I do turn on my ventilation fan whenever I turn on a burner.  Didn't used to do that.  On the other, other hand, when I was a child I had asthma.  No, not from a gas stove (my mother insisted on electric); because my father smoked like a chimney.  I have memories from childhood of standing in the den where the smoke from his pipe (he tried to give up cigarettes for a while) was a dense layer hanging at about the height of my head in the room.  It was all of LA in a small space.  I figure I survived that, I'll survive a gas range burning once in a while.

But study and research are the key.
That doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with it.
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Monday, March 18, 2019

Keeping up with the Memes's


Texas may have the bullets, but it specifically and explicitly refused to decide who could, and could not, use which bathrooms based on gender at birth; and the politicians who pushed that issue 2 years ago have specifically and explicitly decline to raise it again (the Lege is currently in session).

So I have no idea what this graphic is trying to convey, other than "Texas Secede" was a tongue-in-cheek marketing campaign (i.e., it was a graphic put on bumper stickers and coffee mugs) about...40 years ago.

These things that pass for knowledge I don't understand.
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Friday, March 24, 2023

Since The Manhattan Grand Jury Won't Meet On Trump Again Until Monday...

Classic example of the "uncanny valley." But I really came here to discuss books. "Is our children learning?"

In his speech before the bill passed, Speaker Kevin McCarthy declared, "We believe parents should know what your children is [sic] learning."

Among other things, H.R. 5, also known as the “Parents Bill of Rights Act,” would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to require schools to provide parents with a list of books and reading materials available in the school library as well as posting curriculum publicly.

It would also require elementary and middle schools that receive federal funding to obtain parental consent before “changing a minor child’s gender markers, pronouns, or preferred name on any school form; or allowing a child to change the child’s sex-based accommodations, including locker rooms or bathrooms.”

Do other parents get a say?  It's a "bill of rights," right? 


Additionally, the legislation affirms parents’ rights to address school boards and receive information about violent activity in their child’s school.

If you're not getting that already, you need to be more involved in school board elections. 


Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said the Republican bill “will not see the light of day” in the Senate and has called the legislation “Orwellian to the core.”

In remarks on the Senate floor Thursday, Schumer described the measure as a “school control bill.”

“If passed, schools across the nation would be forced to adhere to a panoply of federal regulations that take power away from parents and school districts. Again, let me repeat that: it would take power away from parents and school districts, away from educators, and put it in the hands of elected politicians. Again, the GOP that treasured small government, local control, is long since gone, replaced once again, by hard right MAGA ideologues,” Schumer said.
Brought to you by conservatives who think government is too big!  Unless it's doing what they want done.
I agree with this argument/example, even though: A) Nobody reads the Bible; and B) it isn't meant to be read by children; C) or as a novel, or an ethics manual, or in any manner except as the scriptures of a religious community (and so read in the context of that community). This passage from Ezekiel, for example, is aimed at Israel for its faithlessness which has landed it in Exile (Ezekiel writes from Babylon).  It's really not unusual language for the Exilic prophets in denouncing Israel, but no, it's not the stuff I would read to an elementary school kid.  And it definitely needs to be read in the context of a believing community, not as history or a narrative or even literature.  (I have nothing against teaching the Bible as Western literature.  I've done it myself.  But if you're going to provide context for Twain's use of the "N-word" in Huckleberry Finn, well....).

But the jab against "I don't like what I've heard about that book so git it outta tha liberry!" is a sound one, even when the Bible is the example of the falsity of such notions.  There's quite a bit in scriptures that would attack selfishness and greed and capitalism and "The American Way," which people routinely ignore in proving the Bible is a classic in Twain's sense (at least it's usually attribued to him):  "A book which everyone praises and no one reads."
"So much of it"? All of it. Just simply: all of it.

And since the grand jury in Manhattan isn't doing anything today (but Corcoran is testifying!  Too bad that's not on TeeVee):
"Breaking"? I'm so ready for this case to leave the grand jury and enter the courthouse. The number of legal pundits who haven't a clue but KNOW Bragg does/does not have a case, is growing tiresome. The most wrong a lawyer can be is to be sure he/she knows the quality of another lawyer's case that the first lawyer has NO involvement in.
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Wednesday, August 04, 2021

The Cruelty Is The Point

I will accept this would probably make it through the Texas House (although it might not); but it can't right now, and it won't in this session (which ends Friday, August 6, sine die; meaning all bills not passed end with it).

Abbott has promised to call a second special session to pass the GOP’s priority voting bill, but the exact timing is uncertain. Abbott also has yet to detail what other items, if any, he intends to include on the agenda for the next special session. And House Democrats have not yet revealed what they have planned after the session ends this week.

Abbott has to call a session soon to handle redistricting.  The Lege may refuse to work in September without paid staff and access to agencies connected to the Legislature's budget (Abbott vetoed the whole enchilada).  The House Speaker never moved to issue arrest warrants for all the "escaped" House members.  A majority of them could just go on vacation for the rest of August.  Anyway, this has to start over in a new session, which gives them a few days to come home, even if Abbott decides to announce the new session Friday, to start Saturday.

But he'll put bail reform back on the agenda.  The cruelty, as ever, is the point.

It remains to be seen if Abbott will add to this agenda in the second special session, though one thing is clear — he does not plan to curtail it. He has said he “will keep calling Special Sessions until we address every emergency item,” referring to the 11 issues he laid out at the start of the first special session, such as pushing back against social media “censorship” of Texans and the teaching of critical race theory in schools.

That's not going to play out as well as he thinks it will, especially with parents worrying about their children getting covid in school, and cities telling the governor to show up and make 'em repeal mask mandates:

Local mask mandates are popping back up across Texas — even as Gov. Greg Abbott has stressed that local officials who try to enforce restrictions aimed at reducing spread of COVID-19 will be penalized.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner is the most recent to defy the governor’s order. He announced Monday that the city’s nearly 22,000 city employees will be required to mask up inside city buildings where social distancing is not doable, such as bathrooms, elevators and conference rooms.

“The mayor has a right and responsibility to ask city employees to wear face coverings indoors to help stop the virus from spreading,” Mary Benton, a Turner spokesperson, said to the Houston Chronicle. “With the rise in the delta variant cases and high numbers of unvaccinated individuals, Mayor Turner is doing what is necessary to keep [city] employees healthy.”

The seven-day average of new daily cases in Harris County is 1,761 as of Tuesday, compared with 59 cases in the first week of July.

Abbott's authority is not really what he pretends it to be:

A handful of courthouses have also implemented mask mandates, arguing that Abbott’s executive order doesn’t affect the judicial branch of government.

A Dallas administrative court judge ordered that everyone inside Dallas County’s courthouses — the George Allen courthouse, the Frank Crowley courthouse and the Henry Wade building — must be masked. This came as Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins announced Tuesday that the county has increased its coronavirus threat level to red, the highest level of threat in its assessment system.

Again, a reminder:  the County Judge in this context is a county executive, not a court at law judge.

“We have to always remember that the enemy in COVID is not one another, it’s the virus,” Jenkins said. “And if people are going to be required to come to court, it’s my job to keep them safe.”

A judge in Williamson County also is requiring visitors and employees entering the Williamson County Justice Center to wear masks as the county recently entered its red COVID-19 risk level.

...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Travis County and Austin officials in March for imposing a local mask mandate despite Abbott's order which prohibited such requirements at the time. A district judge denied Paxton’s request to immediately block the local mandates, and the lawsuit fizzled out after both parties agreed to dismiss the case after the local order expired and Abbott issued a new executive order.

School districts could make the same argument as the judiciary, as they are independent state agencies not subject to the authority of the governor.  But the cost of lawyers is steep, and not everyone in the district is going to be best pleased with challenging the order (although many more would prefer it, in general).  Odds are challenges to it would push it over like a match-stick house. Indeed, if Paxton doesn't crack down soon, the order could fall simply for lack of enforcement.  Abbott doesn't care.  As long as his insane clown posse GOP primary voters are appeased with his "tough guy" stance, he's golden.

Or so he thinks.

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