US Presidential Contenders

[Rusty Edge]

Under the heading of gratuitous self-congratulation, here we have a Huffington Post story which validates my last post-

-women-flames_us_56fc47efe4b0a06d5804b0b4?]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-[Sleezebag]-women-flames_us_56fc47efe4b0a06d5804b0b4?
[Sleezebag]’s Tragic Flaw May Finally Send Him Down In Flames

“Hindenburg” [Sleezebag] is playing with matches.

 03/30/2016 06:23 pm ET

"WASHINGTON — Donald [Sleezebag] has defied the laws of political physics from the moment he rode down that gold-toned elevator in his own Manhattan tower to announce his candidacy last spring.

Time and again he’s proved every pundit and all of his fellow Republican candidates wrong, and he remains the only GOP contender with a plausible chance to collect a majority of delegates before the Cleveland convention in July.

But after a year of hovering above the skyline like a giant dirigible, [Sleezebag] is being brought down to earth by his most powerful enemy: his own need to demonstrate his masculine “strength” by disparaging others, particularly women.

It has taken a year for relevant, campaign-related examples to accumulate, but they reached critical mass just in time for a pivotal primary in Wisconsin next week that could see the start of a slow, steady decline in his chances.

He is simply so unpopular with female voters — who make up at least 54 percent of the turnout in presidential general elections — that a victory by him this fall seems all but impossible. In a new NBC News poll, [Sleezebag] is viewed favorably by only 1 in 5 female voters.

To be sure, his ratings among men aren’t dramatically better, and his main GOP rival, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, is almost as poorly regarded by women. Still, 1 in 5 doesn’t work.

“He can’t win, and women are a main reason why,” said Charlie Black, a Republican consultant advising Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

[Sleezebag] critics also note that, despite his vow to ferociously attack Hillary Clinton in a general election, his salvos could be countered by Democrats as just another example of his corrosive attitude toward women.

There are plenty of examples already: his long-running firefight with Fox anchor Megyn Kelly, which included a veiled reference to menstruation; his high-school-level disparagement of Carly Fiorina’s looks; his vow to “spill the beans” on Cruz’s wife, Heidi; and [Sleezebag]’s full-throated defense of his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was arrested this week in Florida and charged with using unwanted physical force to yank a female reporter away from his boss.

[Sleezebag]’s own family and close advisers have been worried about Lewandowski’s short fuse and aggressive behavior for months, but [Sleezebag] is sticking by him in the din.

Then, on Tuesday, [Sleezebag] struck a match to the whole pile, telling MSNBC host Chris Matthews that women who get “illegal” abortions (and [Sleezebag] wants to make them all illegal) should face “some form of punishment” — details unspecified.

In the hour long face-to-face interview — no phone-ins this time — Matthews pressed [Sleezebag] on whether he thought abortion should be illegal. The answer was “yes.” So if it is, should women be punished in some way? After hesitating several times, [Sleezebag] answered “yes.”

After meandering around on the issue for years, [Sleezebag] in the campaign has run as somewhat of a hard-liner: in favor of repealing Roe v. Wade and of banning so-called partial-birth abortions, but not endorsing a human life amendment or a ban on abortions even in cases of rape or incest.

But the comments to Matthews took him much further to the right, and away from the mainstream of female voters, 55 percent of whom think abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Minutes after the taping of the show, and the airing of that key excerpt, the [Sleezebag] campaign tried to walk the comments back, but it was too late. Democrats, liberals and leaders of women’s rights groups attacked with gusto.

So did Cruz, though his complaint came from the opposite political direction: that [Sleezebag] was masquerading as a totalitarian foe of abortion, a role that rightly belongs to the Texan.

We’ll know soon enough whether [Sleezebag] is on trouble, let alone going up in flames, when Wisconsin primary voters go to the polls on Tuesday.

The most recent poll, out on Wednesday and taken during the days that the Lewandowski story dominated the political news, showed [Sleezebag] falling behind Cruz by 10 points.

Look out below."

[Rusty Edge]

Here's a story from Vanity Fair News
-abortion-nuclear-weapons]http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/03/donald-[Sleezebag]-abortion-nuclear-weapons

Would Donald [Sleezebag] drop a nuclear bomb on Europe? He’s not ruling it out.


by Tina Nguyen,



Many parents worry these days about how to explain Donald [Sleezebag] to their children, fretting that the Republican front-runner’s crass language and occasional disregard for human dignity might set a bad example. But [Sleezebag]’s latest barrage of jaw-dropping statements is also an opportunity for education. (Education is, as [Sleezebag] recently, perplexingly claimed, one of the top three responsibilities of government.)

Try this topical word problem to share with your kids: Consider the seven most horrifying statements that Donald [Sleezebag] has made in the past 36 hours, and determine the rate per hour at which he said something that should automatically disqualify him from the presidency (but will not). Round to two decimal places and show your math.

March 29, 4:40 P.M.: [Sleezebag] tells reporters aboard his plane in Janesville, Wisconsin, that he will not fire his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was charged with battery for allegedly manhandling former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields. “How do you know those bruises weren’t there before? I’m not a lawyer,” he argued, lamenting a world in which the accusations of women could tarnish such fine men as Lewandowski. “Don’t you think she would have yelled out a scream?”

March 29, nine P.M.: [Sleezebag] appears at a CNN town hall in Milwaukee and suggests that Fields could have tried to attack him with either a “little bomb” or a “knife,” justifying Lewandowski’s actions. “She wasn’t dragged to the ground and all of the things that she said,” he told a bewildered Anderson Cooper, adding that he would stand by Lewandowski. “She’s not a baby, O.K.?”

March 29, minutes later: [Sleezebag] argues that America should just let other U.S. allies, such as Japan and South Korea, have nuclear weapons, since “it’s going to happen anyway.”

“It’s only a question of time,” [Sleezebag] shrugged, listing China, Russia, Pakistan, and North Korea as countries that possess the world-ending weapons, and fatalistically suggesting Iran would have one soon, too. To combat this, [Sleezebag] argued, more countries should arm themselves as well, so the U.S. wouldn’t have to waste so much money protecting them. “Now, wouldn’t you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons?” he asked.

March 29, minutes later: [Sleezebag] smashes his former pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee, setting up the scenario he alluded to weeks earlier in which he said there could be “riots” if he did not emerge from the G.O.P. convention this summer as the nominee.

March 30, mid-afternoon: During a rally in Appleton, Wisconsin, [Sleezebag] suggests doing away with the Geneva Conventions, a 152-year-old set of international treaties governing the treatment of wounded soldiers and prisoners of war. “The problem is we have the Geneva Conventions, all sorts of rules and regulations, so the soldiers are afraid to fight,” [Sleezebag] said, arguing that since the Islamic State “can chop off heads,” the U.S. should start to ratchet up its own response. “I think we’ve got to make some changes, some adjustments.”

March 30, five P.M.: During a pre-taped “town hall” on MSNBC, host Chris Matthews tries to get [Sleezebag] to say he will never use nuclear weapons in Europe. This is their exchange, taken from the transcript verbatim:

Matthews: How about Europe? We won't use it in Europe?

[Sleezebag]: I—I’m not going to take it off the table.

Matthews: You might use it in Europe?

[Laughter]

[Sleezebag]: No, I don’t think so. But I’m not taking . . .

Matthews: Well, just say it. “I will never use a nuclear weapon in Europe.”

[Sleezebag]: I am not—I am not taking cards off the table.

Matthews: O.K.

[Sleezebag]: I’m not going to use nuclear, but I’m not taking any cards off the table.

Matthews: O.K. The trouble is, the sane people hear you and the insane people are not affected by your threats. That’s the trouble. The real fanatics say, “Good. Keep it up.”

[Sleezebag]: I think—I think they’re more affected than you might think.

Matthews: O.K. Your call.

Donald [Sleezebag] likes to keep his enemies guessing, even in Europe.

March 30, minutes later: [Sleezebag], who still seems confused about how to properly pivot from being “very pro-choice” to being suddenly pro-life, as of 2011, suggests that if abortions are made illegal, “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who get them, though he did not say what that punishment should be.

“It will have to be determined,” [Sleezebag] said, after Matthews finally forced him to reckon with the potential consequences of outlawing abortion. Asked whether men should be held responsible under the same law, [Sleezebag] responded, “I would say no.”

Hours later, [Sleezebag] walked back his abortion comments after several pro-life groups, who advocate that only doctors who perform abortions should be punished, condemned his remarks. “The doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman,” [Sleezebag] says in a statement, adding that women are victims of abortion. “My position has not changed,” he says, unconvincingly.

Answer: [Sleezebag] has made seven potentially disqualifying statements within 36 hours, at a rate of one every 5.14 hours, or .19 horrifying statements per hour, or too many horrifying statements, period.

There are 221 days until the general election.

-----------------------------------------------------------

I think he should adopt Tom Petty's "Free Fallin' " as his campaign song.

[Rusty Edge]

-abortion-laws/index.html]http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/01/politics/donald-[Sleezebag]-abortion-laws/index.html

"[Sleezebag] says federal laws should not be changed to outlaw abortion
By Jeremy Diamond, CNN


CNN) — Donald [Sleezebag] on Friday appeared to again reverse his position on abortion, arguing that federal laws should not be changed to outlaw the procedure.

"At this moment the laws are set. And I think we have to leave it that way," [Sleezebag] said Friday in an interview with CBS's "Face the Nation." The full interview will air Sunday morning.

But soon after the comments became public, [Sleezebag] campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said [Sleezebag] was giving "an accurate account of the law as it is today and made clear it must stay that way now -- until he is president. Then he will change the law through his judicial appointments and allow the states to protect the unborn. There is nothing new or different here."

[Sleezebag]'s campaign has been engulfed in controversy since Wednesday, when he told MSNBC's Chris Matthews that women who undergo abortions should face "some form of punishment" if the procedure were outlawed. He walked away from that statement within hours amid bipartisan condemnation, saying if abortion was banned, it would be doctors, not women, facing punishment.

[Sleezebag] has articulated an anti-abortion position while surging to the top of the Republican presidential race. As recently as Wednesday, [Sleezebag] told Matthews that "you have to ban (abortion)." In the CBS interview, he said he "would've liked" for abortion to be decided on a state-by-state basis.


Abortion has been legal nationwide since the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision


A crucial social issue

The GOP front-runner's waffling on the matter raises questions about his authenticity on the crucial social issue and could undercut the support he has enjoyed among socially conservative and evangelical voters.

The New York billionaire has consistently proclaimed on the campaign trail that he is "very pro-life" and "strong on pro-life," but his latest proclamation puts [Sleezebag] closer to politicians who believe abortion should remain legal in the United States.

[Sleezebag] used to support abortion rights, and said in a 1999 interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that he was "very pro-choice" and said he was opposed to any abortion bans, including banning late-term abortions.

But as he courted the conservative base of the Republican Party in recent years before launching his presidential bid, [Sleezebag] firmly planted his flag in the anti-abortion camp.

He has said that he has "evolved" on the issue and explained that he changed his view on whether abortion should be outlawed based on one of his friend's experiences.

"One of the primary reasons I changed (was) a friend of mine's wife was pregnant, and he didn't really want the baby. He was crying as he was telling me the story. He ends up having the baby and the baby is the apple of his eye. It's the greatest thing that's ever happened to him. And you know, here's a baby that wasn't going to be let into life. And I heard this, and some other stories, and I am pro-life," [Sleezebag] said in a 2011 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network.

[Sleezebag] has repeatedly shared that story on the campaign trail at rallies and in interviews as he has sought to convince social conservatives and evangelical voters of the authenticity of his change of heart on the issue.

And as recently as last week, [Sleezebag] suggested that he would consider a judge's abortion views in considering his nominees for the Supreme Court.

"Yeah, we're gonna look at that. We're gonna look -- it's gonna be pro-life," [Sleezebag] said at a news conference in Washington last week when asked whether he would consider a potential nominee's views on abortion as a litmus test. "
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, our Nomo Robo is getting a workout intercepting calls from Cruz.

My wife was with her mother in the doctor's office. The doctor lost her composure and started complaining about [Sleezebag], then apologized. People here are uncommonly both political and polite. After the bitter battle of the Walker Reforms, we try not to talk politics with acquaintances , or even friends. But that's the sort of thing that happens now. People are having a hard time holding their tongues about [Sleezebag], and nobody is defending him. They just join in and commiserate.

[Buster's Uncle]

You know - THIS could finally be his undoing.  It's not what the bigots and morons can fool themselves into thinking is "tells it like it is".

I wonder if he's doing it on purpose...

[Rusty Edge]

It's going to take time to whittle down T rump. 

His negatives are too well known for harping on them to work, but people hate politicians THAT MUCH.  Thus far the "campaign" has played PERFECTLY to that, too.  YOU CAN'T GO NEGATIVE ON T rump.  Why? BECAUSE he's so polarizing.  Thus far, all the candidates that have attacked him have targetted his well known negatives, which just plays fully into his hands because he has a ready made "that's because I'm not a politician/I'm not politically correct/ the system is broken" answer, and IT WORKS. 

Last night, questions directed his way were PURPOSELY focused on the apparent negatives he has.  And, while I THINK this is attempting to be done to make the public wake up to the fact he has no chance in hell on a national stage, it's NOT how to tackle him in the primaries when the average Joe is going on name recognition and sound bites. 

Maybe I'm just THAT pessimistic in thinking the public is inherently stupid, but that's my stance. 

You want to take down T rump, you gotta stump him on the actual issues that he is in no way ready to handle.  One of the smartest things Kasich did that I saw (before I took Talia shopping for a skirt) was to NOT dismiss T rump out of hand over the boarder issues like other candidates did (or attack him on it, that's a losing proposition), but rather acknowledge T rump has struck a chord, but there are other solutions than just his sound bite answers.

QUOTED FOR PRECIENCE.

I was looking for that quote, because I often think of the gist of it.

Somebody should have listened to Uno and paid him a consulting fee.

[Dio]

I officially dub the "Hillary" a woman with slack pants. I figure it only seems fair to give Hillary a venomous slogan since T rump receives so much disgust on this thread. I continue to hear accusations from both candiates about Bernie Sanders during debates.

[Rusty Edge]

I hope you stay engaged in the thread, Dio.

Oh, I have contempt for the woman with slack pants. If there's one politician I hate, it's her.
There's just no point in repeating myself with the details..

I could talk about her hand gestures... Better yet, pay attention to them yourself the next time she's making a speech. Imagine 8 years of them.

I just like to rant about [Sleezebag] because he's such a loose canon that he might force me to vote for her.

Some days, I feel the same way about Cruz.

Bernie has the silliest ideas put forward by a presidential contender with a straight face, but the sad thing is, he's the most sincere of the final five, and that's the quality I respect most in a politician. In that regard, he's the anti-Hillary. So I give him a pass. 

---------------------------------------------------

Normally, I figure that we deserve what we get in terms of politicians. 
However, I don't think that my friends and family in Europe deserve to live in a fallout zone just because the Trumpkins are threatening to riot if they don't get their way. I don't think it's really fair to friends and family committed to serving in the armed forces to have The Leader tear up the Geneva Conventions.

I accept that [Sleezebag] will likely wreck the GOP. I draw the line at president [Sleezebag] the Superpower, wrecking the world because "They started it! I was forced to retaliate twice as hard."

[Unorthodox]

It's going to take time to whittle down T rump. 

His negatives are too well known for harping on them to work, but people hate politicians THAT MUCH.  Thus far the "campaign" has played PERFECTLY to that, too.  YOU CAN'T GO NEGATIVE ON T rump.  Why? BECAUSE he's so polarizing.  Thus far, all the candidates that have attacked him have targetted his well known negatives, which just plays fully into his hands because he has a ready made "that's because I'm not a politician/I'm not politically correct/ the system is broken" answer, and IT WORKS. 

Last night, questions directed his way were PURPOSELY focused on the apparent negatives he has.  And, while I THINK this is attempting to be done to make the public wake up to the fact he has no chance in hell on a national stage, it's NOT how to tackle him in the primaries when the average Joe is going on name recognition and sound bites. 

Maybe I'm just THAT pessimistic in thinking the public is inherently stupid, but that's my stance. 

You want to take down T rump, you gotta stump him on the actual issues that he is in no way ready to handle.  One of the smartest things Kasich did that I saw (before I took Talia shopping for a skirt) was to NOT dismiss T rump out of hand over the boarder issues like other candidates did (or attack him on it, that's a losing proposition), but rather acknowledge T rump has struck a chord, but there are other solutions than just his sound bite answers.

QUOTED FOR PRECIENCE.

I was looking for that quote, because I often think of the gist of it.

Somebody should have listened to Uno and paid him a consulting fee.

Why thank you. 

[Dio]

It appears that T rump made comments that unnerved U.S. Allies on the Nuclear Security Council. President Obama responded with statements that reassured our allies on the Nuclear Security Council about T rump's lack of foreign policy experience.

[Dio]

I hope to vote for Bernard Sanders because he holds the most honest convinctions about issues in our country. I know he continues to focus his attention on the state of New York.

[Unorthodox]

It appears that T rump made comments that unnerved U.S. Allies on the Nuclear Security Council. President Obama responded with statements that reassured our allies on the Nuclear Security Council about T rump's lack of foreign policy experience.

I cannot adequately articulate how utterly wrong the remarks he made were on that front, and wish someone would really call him to task on them.  (caveat, I've seen absolutely no news since Friday, and unlikely to for a week)

[Rusty Edge]

It appears that T rump made comments that unnerved U.S. Allies on the Nuclear Security Council. President Obama responded with statements that reassured our allies on the Nuclear Security Council about T rump's lack of foreign policy experience.

I cannot adequately articulate how utterly wrong the remarks he made were on that front, and wish someone would really call him to task on them.  (caveat, I've seen absolutely no news since Friday, and unlikely to for a week)

You refer to [Sleezebag]?

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm just plain running out of things to say in this thread, having said it all so many times, over and over - except that Kasich, Cruz and the Pig remind me of a joke a long time ago in Mad, that Larry Flint was what Bob Guccione needed to make him look respectable, while being, in turn, what Hugh Hefner needed to make him look respectable.


Posting this here instead of the Trans thread because of the larger Republican Party issue I've frequently talked about:

North Carolina shows GOP split extends to states, too
 Political shifts in thought Republican factionalism is now playing out in states where LGBT rights vs. religious liberty is the new flashpoint.
The Christian Science Monitor
By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer  April 2, 2016   



Demonstrators protesting passage of legislation limiting bathroom access for transgender people stand in front of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center in Charlotte, N.C., Thursday, March 31, 2016. Approximately 100 people gathered for the rally, many chanting and carrying signs.  (AP Photos/Skip Foreman)



Atlanta — In North Carolina, a bakery, a Christian bookstore, and a packaging company have put their names on a letter of support for a new law that bars transgender people from any bathroom where the stick figure sign doesn’t match their birth gender.

Threatening to boycott the state over the same law? Google, Apple, and Fox.

For many socially conservative Americans, it’s a little like David vs. Goliath, pitting the giants of commerce against the will of the regular people – or at least their representatives.

Yet after signing the bill late last month, Republican Gov. Pat McCrory faces mounting pressure to tweak or repeal the law – or face a blow to the state’s economy. Proponents say a majority of North Carolinians don’t care; they say allowing transgender people to choose which bathroom they want to use “defies common sense,” as Governor McCrory put it.

The new law stands as a major victory for Evangelicals and social conservatives in the wake of the Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage last summer. It shows how, in the words of Jane Robbins of the American Principles Project, matters of faith can thwart “corporate bullies” demanding that Christians set aside fundamental values in the name of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights.

But longer-term, political scientists say, the pressure cooker in North Carolina suggests that national fractures within the GOP are not limited to the presidential race or within Congress. They are increasingly playing out in states, too, where the party seems at war with itself over matters of faith and business, of trade and entitlements. The quandary for Republicans is to what degree such fundamental disagreements are irreconcilable.

“The factionalism within the Republican party that we are seeing in national politics is beginning to play out within some states,” says Richard Fording, chair of the political science department at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.

The state flash points are quickly mounting:
•On Monday, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R), who is not facing reelection, vetoed a religious liberty bill, saying his state did not need to “discriminate” against anyone. While the veto reassured those sensitive to LGBT rights, it alienated much of Governor Deal’s evangelical base, shaking his working relationship with Republican lawmakers.
•South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard, also a Republican, recently vetoed a bill requiring schools to enforce a “gender-at-birth-only” bathroom rule.
•Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslaam has slowed the movement of a bill very similar to the one in North Carolina. Governor Haslaam is a firmly pro-business Republican.
•This coming week, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant will decide whether to sign a new religious liberty bill. It's been described as the most radical religious freedom bill in the country, protecting from government sanctions anyone who refuses to serve LGBT people on the basis of religious beliefs. Gov. Bryant has said he sees no discriminatory intent.

In these cases, last year’s Supreme Court decision is playing a role, unleashing deeply held passions.

But the internecine statehouse battles also highlight other divides exposed by the candidacy of Donald T rump, whose attacks on banks and trade deals run contrary to long time pro-business, low-tax orthodoxy within the Republican Party.

Citing factional warfare on issues ranging from trade, foreign policy, entitlements and social issues, “the legislative battles … in state capitals across the country underscore the unusual level of disarray in a party that traditionally strives for order,” writes James Hohmann in The Washington Post.

North Carolina has emerged as a key battleground of ideas. After a list of boycott threats have grown and states and cities have begun issuing travel bans to North Carolina, McCrory faces a fundamental decision. He faces reelection this year and his opponent, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat who has called the law a “national embarrassment.” As another sign of how sensitive the issue is, the usually loquacious state Chamber of Commerce has remained mum.

The stakes are high. Google's investment chief has asked his employees to flag any venture capital ideas out of North Carolina. The state may even lose federal highway funding since the law contradicts federal guidelines.

On the other side, the success in passing a transgender bathroom bill in North Carolina has if anything emboldened social conservatives, including important voters that McCrory needs to win reelection.

It also comes as a group called First Liberty documented what it says are a spike in attacks on religious liberty at schools, in courts, in the public square, and in churches themselves.

Moves by social conservatives mainly in the South to push back against LGBT rights "is what the LGBT political machine has wrought ... they have to own up to that reality," William Perkins, editor of the Baptist Record in Mississippi, told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger this week.

Part of the looming problem for the party is that conservatives may be running out of room for compromise between the factions that Ronald Reagan famously called a “three-legged stool”: religious conservatives, national security conservatives, and economic conservatives.

In Georgia, lawmakers agreed to water down a more strongly-worded bill to exclude businesses from being allowed to reject gay people. But Deal vetoed it anyway, saying that there is no place in Georgia for discrimination.

That language, wrote conservative commentator Erick Erickson, essentially suggested that compromise on that issue is now off the table.

From the other angle, the focus by statehouse conservatives on curbing LGBT rights runs counter to a major partywide post mortem by Republicans after Mitt Romney lost to a vulnerable President Obama in 2012. One conclusion: Steer the party away from polarizing social issues.

What’s more, corporations, which have grown increasingly willing to take stands on social issues in order to attract values-conscious shoppers, have also been emboldened by the Citizens United ruling, which gave moneyed interests new levers to influence popular opinion.

Ralph Reed, the chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, told The Washington Post that probusiness and social conservatives are talking past each other on the fundamentals at hand, only compounding the disconnect.

His message to Republicans: Stop shouting so you can hear each other talk. The choice between money and morality is a myth. “The faith community needs to be clearer about what its objectives are, and some in the business community need to stop mischaracterizing what the legislation actually does,” he said.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2016/0402/North-Carolina-shows-GOP-split-extends-to-states-too

Incidentally, I cannot help feeling profoundly hostile to the Mayor of San Francisco, Big Brother Google and the federal Department of Transportation thinking they've got any business telling my state to stop being so retarded - and ashamed that so much of the push-back has to come from outsiders.

-This is a stupid hill for anyone involved to choose to die on, BTW - it's a big, big deal over a tiny, tiny fraction of the population.  The smart play would be to have the big fights over something not so desperately fringe; it's a classic progressive blunder - and swiftly becoming a classic social conservative blunder.

[Buster's Uncle]

[Buster's Uncle]

As per my policy of not being part of the problem, I only give the link, noting that the article is worth a peek.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/0331/Could-T rump-cost-GOP-more-than-White-House