Supervised hot air

I see that the Republicans held another so-called debate. That is, another two hours of supervised hot air. I confess I don't see the point of these group sessions. So-and-so is given a question to which he gives a perfectly predictable answer. Then they go on to repeat the performance with the next guy in the barrel. Predictable questions, predictable answers. What bothers me the most about these performances is that I know full well that whatever they say in the context of one of these "debates" will have no necessary relation to anything they might do in the future should they become President. It's not that they are lying, it's just that you know they are saying whatever they're saying because they want to be elected. Getting elected and performing in office are not always related. Remember, for example, the "compassionate conservative" BS we were treated to in the 2000 fiasco. I tried to watch but it was so hopeless I quickly went back to playing solitaire. We never should have allowed them to start running for President two years in advance. Who makes these kinds of decisions in the first place?

The Craig situation is so dismally absurd there isn't much to comment about. I should think that even if Craig could win whatever it is he is trying to win he would never be cleared of his own idiocy. He has made himself and the State of Idaho laughingstocks, especially himself. "I have a wide stance." "I was just picking up a piece of paper" (off a public bathroom floor?). "I am not gay, and have never been gay" (even though people in Idaho and probably Washington D.C. have suspected for years that he was gay). His claim to not being gay is like the little boy who cried wolf too many times, no one really believes him anymore (even if, in fact, it were to turn out that he is not gay). He's in a deep hole. He should stop digging.

I have been reading some ethnographic classics of late, including The Todas by W.H.R. Rivers (1906). This must have been the most sexist society ever. First, they commonly practiced female infanticide. Second, they practiced polyandry. When a woman married she married her husband's brothers as well (and sometimes even some other man). Fatherhood was not established by physical paternity but, rather, by performing a ceremony that, when completed, gave the man who performed it the legal fatherhood. After the woman had two or three children another man could perform the ceremony and then he would be the legal father of the next children. When one of the husbands was visiting the woman he would leave a sign outside her door signaling his presence. Women were allowed no part in political, economic, or religious life. They were relegated to trivial tasks such as fetching water, firewood, and embroidery. Toda women were widely regarded as much less intelligent than men. When female infanticide was banned by the British administration the brothers would simply take two wives instead of one. In other words, as I read this, women were plain and simply brood mares, completely at the mercy of men and with no other meaningful tasks. I hesitate to call them sex objects as I don't think that describes the situation very well. I know nothing whatsoever about present day Toda life but I'm pretty certain it is no longer like it was, sexism carried to the extreme.

LKBIQ:
"I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property."
Alexis de Tocqueville