Category: The Dish

A Pro-Life Election?

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Rebecca Leber worries that the GOP’s victories on Tuesday, especially in statehouses across the country, spell danger for abortion rights:

Before Tuesday, Republicans controlled 60 of 99 legislative chambers. Thanks to the election, they will soon control at least 66. Majority status in two others remain undecided, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The only two Democratic “successes” of the night were holding onto majorities in the Iowa Senate and the Kentucky House. The GOP also picked up three gubernatorial seats. This has bad implications for women, particularly on abortion rights. State legislatures were responsible for 200 new abortion restrictions between 2011-2013.

At the federal level, Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser celebrates the fact that “the next Congress will usher in a record-breaking number of pro-life women”:

The Congress that convenes in January will have at least 21 pro-life women, breaking a high of 18 following the 2010 elections. In 2010, there were no pro-life women in the Senate. In the next Congress, Iowa Senator-elect Joni Ernst will become the third pro-life woman to serve, joining Kelly Ayotte (R., N.H.) and Deb Fischer (R., Neb.).

While prenatal “personhood” initiatives failed by wide margins in Colorado and North Dakota, Robin Marty worries that personhood activists are already working on a new strategy focusing on the local level:

While North Dakota and Colorado were busy pushing for yet another statewide voter referendum, groups like the Personhood Alliance, a “life at conception” pro-life group formed by Dan Becker, president of Georgia Right to Life, intend to launch a “ground-breaking campaign” for 2015 that will introduce “pro-life ballot initiatives at the county and municipal level.” … By moving to a city-by-city strategy, anti-abortion activists can target just the places where actual abortions are being performed. There, at the clinic doors, they hope they might find some moderate success, since their statewide plans to pass personhood have been nothing but one failure after another.

Emma Green has more on at Tennessee’s Amendment 1, which will allow the state to enact more restrictive abortion laws:

The amendment language is specifically framed in response to the state Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Planned Parenthood [v. Sundquist]. In that ruling, the court overturned several state statutes, including requirements that abortion procedures must take place in hospitals; that women must get counseling from physicians before getting an abortion; that they must then wait two days until having the procedure; and that “a physician may bypass the requirements of [these statutes] only when ‘necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant woman,’ regardless of her health.” …

Now that the amendment has passed, the General Assembly may have more flexibility to legislate what women must do in order to terminate a pregnancy, including those “resulting from rape or incest.” State legislators still can’t create statutes that violate federal legal standards on abortion—it can’t be outlawed entirely, for example. But they will “almost certainly” have a greater ability to pass restrictions on how and where women get the procedure, said [Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee]—and they plan to, she added.

Reid Wilson notes that Tennessee was previously “something of an anomaly in the South, where it was the only state without significant abortion restrictions on the books”:

That meant a large number of women from surrounding states such as Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky would travel to Tennessee to receive the procedures. About a quarter of the abortions in Tennessee are performed on women traveling from out of state, the Tennessean reported.

Anita Wadhwani talks with a supporter of the law who “believes Tennessee lawmakers will now have the ability to pass laws that deter out-of-state women from coming to Tennessee for the procedure”

“If we have an informed consent law and a waiting period, the incentive for women to leave their home state to come to Tennessee will be reduced,” said David Fowler, president of Family Action Council of Tennessee and a former state senator who originally proposed the constitutional amendment in 2001. “Tennessee in my opinion took the notion of abortion on demand to a new level, saying you can show up in the morning, have an abortion and leave that afternoon,” he said. “When the state has a waiting period law, I think you will see fewer who will find it expedient to travel to Tennessee.”

When Does Exploration Become Abuse?

Certain excerpts of Lena Dunham’s book have led some to accuse her of having abused her sister when they were both children. Dunham denies this and may even sue. Dreher insists that the same story coming from someone without Dunham’s upscale background would be received differently:

I have known at least two friends over the years who were sexually abused by older siblings. In both cases, the abuse had profound and lasting consequences on their psyches. What Lena Dunham describes doing to her little sister is sick and disgusting. But her little sister Grace, all growed up and having embraced a lesbian identity, doesn’t necessarily agree with the critics. She tweets that critics are dedicated to maintaining “heteronormativity,” and that, “As a queer person: i’m committed to people narrating their own experiences, determining for themselves what has and has not been harmful.”

Now, imagine if Grace Dunham’s older brother had confessed to having done these things. Would he have any defenders? Imagine if the woman confessing to this abuse were not from a liberal Manhattan family, and had not been dubbed by some media outlets as the “voice of her generation,” but was instead a burger-flipper living in a trailer park, having confessed this on a blog. How would you feel about it then? What if an NFL player had written the same kind of thing in his memoir? Or a Catholic priest?

Jia Tolentino shows how such criticism of Dunham’s privilege has caught on among pundits on the left as well:

Childhood bodily play is peculiar and near-universal and complicated, with a thousand valid valences on the long spectrum from normative to predatory. To me, these stories are mostly early and wonderful examples of the body as a zone of curiosity free from the burden of adulthood and sex, but of course, in a few cases, they are darker: reminders that children don’t have a lot of agency, or remembrances of unplumbed abuse.

To some people, Dunham’s story looks very much the latter way. It was the conservative media outlet TruthRevolt that incited this discussion by posting the Not That Kind of Girl passage with Dunham’s age originally (and disingenuously) quoted as 17, under the headline “Lena Dunham Describes Sexually Abusing Her Little Sister.” Dunham responded to this “right wing news story” quickly and sharply. The conversation picked up as writers who are on the other side of the political spectrum—who I respect greatly, and are normally a gulf of ideology away from TruthRevolt or Return of Kings—voiced their fervent agreement. Feminist writer Mikki Kendall wrote, “The gap between the attitudes that let R. Kelly prosper & the ones who excuse Dunham is incredibly thin. Nonexistent to be honest.” Lachrista Greco, founder of Guerrilla Feminism, added, “It’s NOT NORMAL. It’s NOT OKAY.”

This is indeed where the sex police want to take us – and there are increasing numbers of those people on the new feminist left. Rich Juzwiak raises an eyebrow at such criticism:

Most of the analysis of Dunham’s account of her childhood behavior has been coming from amateurs, mostly with axes to grind. I thought, then, it might be useful to add an expert opinion into this stew of non-professional opinions about whether the incidents Dunham describes—examining her sister’s vagina, plying her sister with candy, and slipping her hand into her own “underwear to figure some stuff out” while lying next to her sister—constituted abuse.

I asked Sam Rubenstein, a psychotherapist who specializes in childhood abuse, for his take on whether what Dunham describes would be considered abuse in a clinical setting.

The short answer is: no.

Wanting Not To Waste

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Cecilia Chen, Dan Zook, and Dan Tuttle discuss how to reduce food waste:

The solution to feeding a growing population is not simply to produce more food, but also to save, preserve, or recycle the food already produced. Cutting current food wastage in half, for example, would yield enough food to feed one billion people—half of the additional population expected by 2050. …

Food loss, which accounts for 90 percent of unconsumed food in developing countries, refers to the decrease in edible food mass during production, postharvest processing, and distribution. The primary drivers of food loss are a lack of skills training for actors within the supply chain in handling, packaging, and storing food; insufficient on-farm storage technologies or postharvest storage facilities; and farmers’ poor market access, which leads to spoilage before products can be sold.

Food waste, on the other hand, refers to food that is fit for human consumption but is discarded by retailers or consumers. In developed countries, high aesthetic standards, stringent food company contracts, large portion sizes, and promotion-driven sales often lead to the overproduction of food, much of which is discarded. Food discarded by the consumer—the last actor in the supply chain—wastes the resources used in every previous step in the chain.

(Photo by Flickr user GloomyCorp: “A misshapen green tomato is menaced by its ripe, perfectly-proportioned brethren.”)

Nonstandardized Environments

Max Ehrenfreund shares some research out of Israel suggesting that “random events during an exam can affect not only test results, but college and career options and income for the rest of a student’s life”:

The authors of the [NBER working] paper studied test results for the Bagrut, a series of tests similar to the SAT that Israelis take when they finish high school. They compared those results to data on the students’ future earnings and to air pollution measurements on the day they took the test. They found that even a moderate increase in the level of air pollution on the days of the test reduced students’ incomes by about 2 percent by the time they became adults. That’s right: Air pollution had a small effect on test scores, but the ramifications of those small differences throughout students’ lives affected their careers and their incomes.

The findings prompt Max Nisen to question the logic of high-stakes standardized tests:

The authors argue these tests can lead to inefficient allocation of talent if a bad score matches a high-ability person with the wrong career or educational institution. The alternative is to reduce the random element, to diminish the importance of high-stakes tests in favor of the overall record. The high-stakes system, prevalent around the world, manages to create a tremendous amount of stress for no particular reason.

Oh Deer

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They’re hot to trot this time of year, and that means trouble for motorists:

On average, 2 million deer-vehicle collisions occur yearly, costing more than $4 billion in vehicle damage. About 5% of those collisions involve human injury, and sometimes deaths. Most of those collisions happen in November because deer are on the move, looking for a hook-up. As days get shorter, male testosterone production increases. Fall is rut season, and male deer roam widely in search of females. If you’re driving at dusk or dawn in November, you’re on a Highway to the Danger Zone: the majority of deer collisions happen this month. The average cost of a deer-vehicle collision is $8,388, and $30,773 for a moose-vehicle collision.

Updates from several readers:

The deer are crazy plentiful in San Antonio. The key to avoiding a deer car collision is to head straight for them.

This seems counterintuitive, but remember that the deer don’t understand evasive maneuvers, and swerving can result in something akin to a greeting between two different cultures you spoke of earlier. Deer are just trying to run away and if you maintain a course right at them they will usually get away unscathed.

Sometimes they will run right into the side of your car. I don’t get that at all, but knock wood that has never happened to me.  The city should hire a task of bow hunters to kill some of the deer and put the meat into the food bank.

Another reminds us that “Louis CK hates deer”:

Another reader:

This post pretty much requires me to share one of my favorite anecdotes on the topic. My significant other is from a small town in Northern, WI. There is one big feeder high school up there that all the “nearby” communities send their kids to and which she graduated from several years ago.  Every fall up there, the entire student body apparently knew exactly when that year’s driver’s ed class reached this important and (especially there in Northern Wisconsin) life-saving lesson in surviving a deer-car collision because of the memorable manner chosen by the instructor in order to drill it into the students’ heads. Specifically, on that day of the curriculum, the driver’s ed students could be heard throughout the school, in every hallway and classroom, as they chanted at the top of their lungs the following simple, memorable phrase, over and over: “Hit the damn deer! Hit the damn deer!”

Another did:

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Funny, I saw that post literally 10 seconds after I got this photo from a friend – the collision was last night.  Thankfully, all the people are OK.

(Photo by Fabrice Florin)

Longing For The Caliphate

Shadi Hamid offers his take on what attracts people to ISIS, and why that attraction is specific to Islam:

ISIS draws on, and draws strength from, ideas that have broad resonance among Muslim-majority populations. They may not agree with ISIS’s interpretation of the caliphate, but the notion of a caliphate—the historical political entity governed by Islamic law and tradition—is a powerful one, even among more secular-minded Muslims. The caliphate, something that hasn’t existed since 1924, is a reminder of how one of the world’s great civilizations endured one of the more precipitous declines in human history. The gap between what Muslims once were and where they now find themselves is at the center of the anger and humiliation that drive political violence in the Middle East. But there is also a sense of loss and longing for an organic legal and political order that succeeded for centuries before its slow but decisive dismantling. Ever since, Muslims, and particularly Arab Muslims, have been struggling to define the contours of an appropriate post-caliphate political model.

In contrast, the early Christian community, as Princeton historian Michael Cook notes, “lacked a conception of an intrinsically Christian state” and was willing to coexist with and even recognize Roman law. For this reason, among others, the equivalent of ISIS simply couldn’t exist in Christian-majority societies. Neither would the pragmatic, mainstream Islamist movements that oppose ISIS and its idiosyncratic, totalitarian take on the Islamic polity. While they have little in common with Islamist extremists, in both means and ends, the Muslim Brotherhood and its many descendants and affiliates do have a particular vision for society that puts Islam and Islamic law at the center of public life. The vast majority of Western Christians—including committed conservatives—cannot conceive of a comprehensive legal-social order anchored by religion. However, the vast majority of, say, Egyptians and Jordanians can and do.

The Demographic Party

Ed Morrissey interprets the exit polls’ breakdown of the electorate, particularly in terms of their implications for the GOP going into the next election cycle:

The GOP made slight gains in 2014 over 201o among blacks, 18-29YOs, the middle class, and a large jump among Asian-Americans. They lost ground among women, Latinos, independents, seniors and 30-44YOs, and both working class and the wealthy. None of these declines went into double digits, but aside from the income demos, they all exceed the margin of error in the polling.

Kilgore focuses on what Democrats will need to do to recapture their key demos in 2016:

[A]nother way to look at it is that minority voting preferences are returning to their pre-Obama level — still strongly Democratic, but not so strongly that in a poor turnout year they offset the heightened Republican preferences of white voters. … What are the implications, then, for the election cycle we have just entered? Some of the Republican advantage can be expected to melt away instantly due to the age and race/ethnicity differential for a presidential cycle. That shift will apply to downballot races as well. So a more favorable-to-Democrats electorate will vote on a Senate landscape as difficult for Republicans as this year’s was difficult for Democrats. The GOP will need all those wins from yesterday to survive Election Night in 2016 with a majority intact.

But more generally, and with respect to the presidential election itself, the big question is whether Barack Obama’s successor can recapture his extraordinarily high vote percentages among young and minority voters, and/or make inroads among the older and whiter voters who have now consistently rebuffed him and his party in three straight cycles.

Putting demographics aside, Sean Trende calls the election a victory for the fundamentals model:

Back in February of this year, I put together a simple, fundamentals-based analysis of the elections, based off of nothing more than presidential job approval and incumbency.  That was it.  It suggested that if Barack Obama’s job approval was 44 percent, Republicans should pick up nine Senate seats.  Obama’s job approval was 44 percent in exit polls of the electorate, and it appears that Republicans are on pace to pick up nine Senate seats. Moreover, only one Democrat — Natalie Tennant in West Virginia — ran more than 10 points ahead of the president’s job approval.

Artificial Obtuseness

Kevin Kelly believes the A.I. of the future might require built-in intellectual blinders:

Most of the commercial work completed by AI will be done by special-purpose, narrowly focused software brains that can, for example, translate any language into any other language, but do little else. Drive a car, but not converse. Or recall every pixel of every video on YouTube but not anticipate your work routines. In the next 10 years, 99 percent of the artificial intelligence that you will interact with, directly or indirectly, will be nerdily autistic, supersmart specialists.

In fact, this won’t really be intelligence, at least not as we’ve come to think of it. Indeed, intelligence may be a liability – especially if by “intelligence” we mean our peculiar self-awareness, all our frantic loops of introspection and messy currents of self-consciousness. … As AIs develop, we might have to engineer ways to prevent consciousness in them – and our most premium AI services will likely be advertised as consciousness-free.

The Best Of The Dish Today

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If you want evidence of the lack of enthusiasm for this week’s election or of the success of the GOP’s efforts to suppress voting among minorities and the young, it’s right there above. Click the link for state-by-state data. It’s worth remembering this very low turnout in the context of Republican triumphalism. They better not over-estimate their mandate.

Today, I took another solid whack at the emptiness of the GOP’s non-agenda, but questioned whether the president’s declared intent to go ahead with executive actions on immigration is the best opening salvo for his final two years.

I also doubted that the re-elected Scott Walker really has what it takes to be presidential material. Many readers – from Wisconsin and elsewhere – told me to look more closely:

Don’t make the mistake of underestimating Scott Walker, like Wisconsin Democrats have been doing for years. He’s canny as hell and has a gift for packaging severe conservatism inside bland affability. Walker raises money with no problem, connects with both wings of his party, and has spent the last five years winning three elections within a perpetual campaign. Nobody in the Republican field has his combination of trial and success.

Imagine it’s late February 2012, Tim Pawlenty hasn’t dropped out, and the “anybody but Mitt” crowd has a plausible alternative to the Bible-thumper and the whore. Now imagine that behind Pawlenty’s down-to-earth Midwestern exterior lies a merciless political mind and an unshakeable will. That’s Scott Walker. Would Obama have been re-elected so easily? Or at all?.

Another:

Speaking as a Wisconsinite who is no fan of Walker, I have to say it’s perilous to underestimate this guy. All he does is win. No one thought he could possibly be governor when he first ran, and he won. Apparently, there was similar sentiment in Milwaukee when he ran, and was elected for, county executive. And he’s unwavering in his commitment to his conservative positions. He’s almost disconcertingly ideologically pure.

And he’s Teflon. Nothing seems to stick to him. He promised to create 250000 jobs under his administration in 2010. By all accounts, not even half of that number have been created. Wisconsin has lagged behind most other states in our region in economic growth. He dismantled the state Dept. of Commerce and replaced it with the public/private Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, which has been beset with issues. Multiple members of his campaigns have been indicted. But he just keeps trucking along, seemingly unscathed. And he’s very skilled at calmly stoking the rural/suburban resentment towards perceived urban elites.

Seriously, the uncharitable side of me wants someone to check under his hair for a birthmark. But the pragmatist in me grudgingly has to give him credit for his ability to win and win and win.

Points well taken. One other post worth revisiting: why detente with Iran is easily the most significant and vital part of Obama’s agenda as he cements his legacy – and things just got a nudge forward.

The most popular post of the day was Where Did Obama Go Wrong? followed by A Victory For What?

Many of today’s posts were updated with your emails – read them all here.  You can always leave your unfiltered comments at our Facebook page and @sullydish. 22 more readers became subscribers today. You can join them here – and get access to all the readons and Deep Dish – for a little as $1.99 month. Gift subscriptions are available here. Dish t-shirts are for sale here, including the new “Know Dope” shirts, which are detailed here.

See you in the morning.

Is The “War On Women” Over?

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Reviewing some of the Democratic delusions shattered by Tuesday’s election results, Byron York remarks on how thoroughly the Democrats’ effort to paint the GOP as fundamentally hostile to women flopped:

There were times when the midterm Senate campaigns seemed entirely devoted to seeking the approval of women voters. The Udall campaign in Colorado was almost a parody of such an appeal to women, focusing so extensively on contraception and abortion that the Denver Post called it an “obnoxious one-issue campaign.” Beyond Udall, most Democrats hoped a gender gap would boost them to victory. As it turned out, there was a gender gap in Tuesday’s voting, but it favored Republicans. Exit polls showed that Democrats won women by seven points, while Republicans won men by 13 points. The numbers are definitive proof that, contrary to much conventional wisdom, Democrats have a bigger gender gap problem than the GOP. The elections showed precisely the opposite of what Democrats hoped they would.

Matt Lewis hopes this defeat marks the end of that scare tactic:

The war on women meme was always a farce to begin with. Republicans are moms, sisters, and wives. The attack rings especially hollow in a year when Republicans have elected so many firsts. West Virginia Rep. Shelley Moore Capito and Iowa’s Joni Ernst, for example, will both become the first female senators ever elected from their respective states. New York’s Elise Stefanik last night became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. And Utah’s Mia Love became the first Haitian-American member of Congress. I could go on…

But Ramesh doubts Democrats will give it a rest:

Gardner’s win and Ernst’s likely win won’t end this campaign tactic, because Democrats figure that it motivates low-propensity voters to show up–and therefore will assume it will work better in 2016. The tactic will have to be seen to fail in a presidential year before they will abandon it.

Marcotte blames the failure of the “war on women” talking point on the war on women itself, noting that the GOP’s 64 percent share of the white men’s vote was their widest advantage among that demographic in 30 years. That was no accident, she argues:

[I]f you turned on conservative media, you heard a much different story than the cautious moderation that actual Republican politicians were trying to sell. Conservative outlets spent the past few months really ramping up the narrative of poor, put-upon white men who are under attack by women. Or, more specifically, single women. A small sampling: Tucker Carlson of Fox News complaining that the country needs “Older White Guy Appreciation Day.” Rush Limbaugh claiming there’s an “all-out assault” on marriage from liberals and suggesting that single women need to be married off so they stop voting for Democrats. Kimberly Guilfoyle of Fox News arguing that single women are too busy being “healthy and hot and running around without a care in the world” to handle civic duties like voting and jury duty properly and therefore should busy themselves with “Tinder or Match.com” instead.

In addition to securing the female vote, this line of attack was supposed to help turn out young voters for the Democrats, but it didn’t do that either. Elizabeth Nolan Brown wonders if they might have had more success with Millennials if they had run on a broader youth-focused platform:

I’d love to be able to peer into some alternate reality where Democrats like Udall had campaigned on opposition to CIA torture and NSA spying; or had attempted to motivate their minority bases by focusing on issues like those coming out of Ferguson, Missouri; or had hitched their wagon to marijuana legalization in states where it was on the ballot. These are some of the issues that matter most right now to young voters …

Could campaigns that emphasized opposition to civil-liberties abuses, police brutality, and drug criminalization have captured more ballot-box love from millennials? As we’ve seen in poll after poll—from Harvard’s to Pew Research Center’s to our own here at Reason—millennials are massively dissatisfied with traditional partisan options and more likely than any young cohort previously to consider themselves political independents. And those issues are ones not necessarily beholden to a natural partisan divide. A Republican or a Democratic candidate who ran with them could well capture post-party, post-Hope millennial passions (along with older independents, too, of course).