BootmanLA

Criminal law exists primarily to define and punish transgressions against others. To the extent that the penalty provided therein acts as a disincentive to committing those crimes, that's a welcome bonus, but a bonus nonetheless. I think it betrays a certain mindset to say that laws can "also be used to help prosecute individuals that violate" as though all this criminal law stuff was just, you know, an afterthought. I'm not saying it's not important. I'm saying that at most, what such a small sample can do is provide anecdotes and possible topics for further study. In a sideline, for several years, I worked as an assistant to an ornithological researcher. At one point, she had trapped and marked an individual bird within a research tract at a national park. Later that day, the marked bird was seen at a feeder at the park headquarters, nearly a mile away from the capture point. The next day, she recaptured the bird about a half mile from the original capture point (opposite direction from the park), and when it was released, it flew to its nest in a nearby tree. What that tells us is that for that particular species of bird, in that habitat (which was fairly arid and barren), individuals can forage for up to a mile and a half from their home territory - a reasonable conclusion to draw based on the evidence. It's also demonstrated that other species in this family of birds have an aptitude for repeatedly visiting multiple feeding sites on a regular basis when they're "resident" in a given area (either breeding season or wintering season). Unfortunately, she treated this as evidence that all species in this family of birds - which are incredibly diverse - all (and I quote) "know where every source of food within a mile and a half" is from wherever they're residing. And that might be true, but it's not what the evidence shows. One species, in a habitat with limited food sources, ranged over that large distance. Other species, not even particularly closely related but in the same family, demonstrated knowledge of multiple food sources in a much more circumscribed area. But merging the two has zero evidentiary backing whatsoever. Or there is that old joke: A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are flying over Scotland when they saw a black sheep down below. The engineer thinks "So, Scottish sheep are black." The physicist mentally observes "Some Scottish sheep are black." The mathematician jots down a note, "There is, in Scotland, at least one sheep, black on top." First, we're talking about this specific law in question, not "law" in general. My point, which I keep making and you keep ignoring, is that the authors of this law specifically and clearly anticipated that the expression of consent would vary depending on context and situation and individuals, and wrote that into the law. And you go right on, jumping first to California law (which isn't cited here and thus we can't say what it does or doesn't do) and then from there, jump to how consent "is taught to students" - which isn't law at all, but university policy. And I get that you want to keep going back to university policy because that's where the most egregious mismatches seem to occur, but sorry, that's not the subject here. If you want to argue affirmative consent in general, go start a thread on that - I know you know how. But please stop hijacking a thread about a particular law in a particular country in order to sound the alarm about something markedly different. It may or may not be a well structured piece of legislation, but it does nonetheless address the specific complaint you've raised - that it doesn't account for how different populations indicate consent, which is what you keep dragging up, over and over and over and over. The law was restructured precisely because too many sexual assault crimes were going unpunished. You say "many legal scholars and advocates" agree on deficiencies in the law; every citation I've been able to find suggests that Australians are more interested in strengthening affirmative consent laws. And here's the core of my issue with your approach. I note your acknowledgment that you're an "both an advocate of consent and sexual assault survivors," but the historic problem with sexual assault has been that people were unwilling to punish someone for a sex crime unless there was clear and unequivocal evidence that the victim protested, fought, basically did everything possible to prevent the assault from happening. And even then, if she (and it was almost always a she) wasn't "the right sort" of victim, then conviction was even more unlikely. Rape was effectively not a crime if you were a sex worker. Not a crime if you had previously had sex with more than one man (not at once, just over time). The presumption was that, like wives, such women inherently consented to sex because they hadn't "proven" that they were virtuous. When the sexual revolution hit, instead of giving those women the status that "good" girls had always had, regarding the ability to consent, men used the opportunity to reduce all women down to that level. If it was no longer shameful for a girl to have sex before marriage, then clearly they were all "available" for sex and men didn't have to worry about things like consent because they weren't going to be sullying her reputation if they ignored it. THAT is the origin of affirmative consent laws: recognizing that sexual liberation does not mean sexual subjugation to the whims of those with power and strength. Have we over-corrected? I don't think so. Where we are, basically, is that men are expected to have clear consent established before they start, and to be on the lookout for signs of withdrawal of that consent as they continue. And frankly, I don't have a problem with that, and if a bunch of horny college boys find it harder to get laid because they have to be more careful, so fucking what? Part of the problem is that men - speaking in general, and yes there are lots of exceptions - tend to look at the kind of sex they want as the end goal, even if they have to practice deceit to get it. Hence stealthing: men don't like condoms, and they'll do anything to avoid having to use them for the duration of the sex, including lying about intent to use them, slipping them off mid-way, breaking them deliberately in the process, and having a second round of sex unprotected after establishing that they're "willing" to use a condom during the first round. All of that - ALL OF IT - is just crappy rationalization of the guy's desire to fuck unprotected, using any flimsy excuse for why he didn't "this time" or "the entire time" or whatever. Screw that. If the person's rules for having sex aren't acceptable, don't fuck them. And especially don't pretend to accept the rules and then try to evade them mid-way. That's what shitty fuckheads do.

"Shy" is not the same thing as "not willing to take a risk" at all. They're not even related concepts. Shy is the opposite of outgoing. Risk-averse is the opposite of risk-inclined.

Assuming for the moment that your perception is correct - that your morning erections are larger and firmer than others - then there could be one (or more) of several factors at play. For instance, it might be as simple as testosterone levels - which are highest just after waking up from REM sleep. One way to test this might be to try to arrange a sleepover date with someone where you postpone sex until the morning and see if you're harder then. If not, it could be that the problem is more at your subconscious level - having sex with someone may subtly trigger some deep-seated issue (insecurity, perhaps, about your cock size?) and thus it manifests by your body not responding at full capacity. It's my understanding that ED medications work to enhance erections if and when libido is already active - which would be the case here, so perhaps a moderate dose of an ED medication would be helpful. That's something to discuss with your physician, and I'd explain it in the terms you've laid out here: you're getting an erection, but it's not as reliable and firm as you'd like and you know you're capable of.

What makes you assume that because they're steering clear, they must be "shy"?

This is one reason why I seldom rely on hooking up via an app - I think they're a good way to meet people who are seriously interested in play, but finding someone and having him over five or six minutes after the first message not only isn't my style, but (in my experience and opinion) a recipe for disaster. Between those who are just looking for fapping material, those who are easily distracted by the next message that comes along, those who are too fucked up on drugs to remember what they just said they'd do, and those who are constantly holding out for something better, I don't often find anyone interested in connecting in a dependable way. I feel for you, though, because knowing your situation, you're limited (to some degree) to this kind of adventure - getting a room and taking on interested parties. It can be frustrating indeed.

There are also many different kinds of pain. There's the pain of being stretched out (for those who aren't already gaping open) by a thick cock. It can hurt, but you adjust to it, usually, and the subsequent pleasure makes it worthwhile. There's the pain of a long cock poking into the back of your throat, or a thick one stretching your jaw; for some men, those are pains absolutely worth experiencing because they're intrinsically tied to oral sex. There's the pain of being spanked or whipped. There's the pain of pinching nipples and slapping faces. There's slapping and twisting balls. And a whole lot more. Those are different kinds of pain, not directly tied to the "sex" act (ie oral or anal penetration) but which some men find sexually gratifying, either to administer or to receive (or, less commonly, to alternate between the two). Some men never experience the first kind because they're too scared a cock in their ass is going to hurt. Some men seek out ever-increasing levels of pain and rough play, pushing the limits of what they can handle. What matters isn't what other men want and enjoy; it's what YOU want and enjoy. If you don't like pain, then don't have sex that's painful. If you do, then decide what aspects are OK, and negotiate that with your partner(s).

Some men cheat, some don't. Some men who know they aren't the "one man man" sort are honest enough to make that clear to any long term partners, so they know what they're getting into. Others are dishonest enough to lie about being faithful in order to hook a partner who expects monogamy and then cheat. Only you can figure out what kind of man you have. But if you're the sort who starts wondering about cheating when your partner spends an extra 5 minutes in the bathroom, you're probably too paranoid for a monogamous relationship.

You put weight back on, not because you're poz, but because you're on medication that suppresses the virus. Not being poz you wouldn't have lost the weight in the first place.

An observation: As the rules change - and I'm in favor of rules changing as circumstances dictate, they're not holy scripture handed down from on high - topics and posts that once may have been acceptable might no longer be. In reality, the topic "Best Age for Starting Sucking Cocks" probably should be nuked, period. As the moderator in question explained, it's one thing to say "I started at X age"; it's another thing to say "Boys should start at X age" when X is most definitely illegal in most jurisdictions. And the topic of the folder, as titled, really suggests the latter rather than the former. I suspect the ONLY reason it wasn't deleted was that there are, in fact, a lot of posts of the first type (probably mostly bullshit, but I digress), and those are expressly permitted. The topic probably should have been renamed "What age did you first suck a cock?" but then there are probably half a dozen such topics already in existence because TOO MANY PEOPLE CREATE A NEW TOPIC EVERY TIME THEIR BRAIN FARTS INSTEAD OF LOOKING TO SEE IF ONE EXISTS ALREADY. But back to the rules changing: when they change, it would be a major undertaking to go through the forums looking for everything that violates the rules (and every acceptable post that nonetheless depends on a post that violates the rules). It's just not practical for a small volunteer staff to do. So all that they CAN do, really, is enforce the rules going forward as evenly as possible (NOT taking into account that posts that violate the new rules still exist).

Sadly, the same is generally true in the U.S., though in the last presidential race, turnout was extraordinary (compared with past elections, that is, not compared with an absolute standard). By percentage of registered voters, it was the highest turnout since 1900. That, at least, is one thing we can credit to Donald Trump: he turned his supporters out, but he also turned out the opposition even more.

Personally, I disagree on the idea that both parties "absolutely" suck; it's true that I'm not 100% in agreement with either party, but my quibbles with the Democrats are marginal at best. In fact, I think it's kind of hard to square saying both parties "absolutely" suck with saying one party sucks "hugely less". If that's the case, then the suckage in the first case isn't absolute, not by a long shot. More importantly: we do not have a 50/50 split in society. We have, at best, a 55/45 split broadly speaking, with the split increasing in width on particular issues, all in favor of the Democrats and their agenda in general. The problem is that the way our political structure works, a minority can, and often does, control. Consider: The last time a Republican candidate for president actually got the majority of the votes was in 2004, and that was when we were at war and not yet broadly aware of the false pretenses under which we went to war nor were we aware of all the atrocities we were committing there. Had we been, I don't think Bush II would have won a majority (and he might not have won re-election-even then, Bush only got 286 EVs, so still fairly close). The election before that where the GOP candidate got the majority of the vote was in 1988. The Senate's non-representational qualities are so well-known that it hardly bears repeating, but one statistic: The 50 Democrats in the Senate represent 41.5 MILLION more people than the 50 Republicans do. Since senators are elected statewide, they more accurately reflect the political will of an entire state than the makeup of the often gerrymandered House delegations. If senators were proportional to the population like House members, but still elected statewide, the Senate would never have been in Republican hands this century. The House was majority-Democrat from 1952 (!) to 1994 (42 years) for a reason - before extensive gerrymandering with the aid of computers, the House more adequately reflected the mood of the people, which was decidedly non-Republican. The House only flipped GOP under Gingrich because of a long campaign of disinformation and misinformation and outright lies (techniques the GOP hasn't abandoned since), And even with the huge shift toward the GOP in 1994, they still ended up with a 230-204 split, a spread that rapidly declined in subsequent elections; after a small rally under the sexual predator Dennis Hastert, the shift in the House went back toward the Democrats and culminated in taking the House in 2006. Only extreme gerrymandering after the 2010 census coupled with ugly racist rhetoric flipped the House back to the Republicans. In fact, in 2012, Democratic candidates for the House collectively got 1.4 million more votes than Republican candidates, but the GOP still kept control with 234 seats. The same happened in 2000; Dem candidates got more votes than R ones, but the Republicans kept control of the House. NEVER has the GOP won the popular vote while losing the House. More importantly: the points at which the GOP took control (always at midterms) were in very low turnout elections (lower than typical even for a midterm). The points at which the Dems took control (in 2006 and 2018) both were high-turnout elections and the margin of the Democrats over the Republicans was huge. On the issues: Two-thirds of Americans support same-sex marriage. 71% say abortion should be legal in at least some cases and a majority say those cases go beyond "life of the mother, rape and incest". Two-thirds of Americans think taxes need to be raised on the rich. A majority supports cutting defense spending. More than half of Americans support forgiving student debt (at least at the level Biden has moved to do), while even larger majorities support making higher education less expensive so that student debt isn't such a problem. We are not a 50-50 country and we are NOT, as certain asshole politicians and right-wing media figures like to lie, a "center-right" country that has been co-opted by the liberals. We are a center-left country under occupation by the GOP, and increasingly, that GOP is becoming more and more authoritarian, more fascist, and more desperate to cling to power by any means necessary.

To these comments I will add: you say you don't want to become poz NOW - maybe in the future, but not now. Get on PrEP, if your test is negative. HIV infections are declining in general, and have been since PrEP became widely available, but it's still a crap shoot if you're having unprotected sex. If, and when, you someday decide you're ready to become poz, you've seriously considered all the crap that comes with it, and you're sure of your feelings, you can go off PrEP at that point and take your chances.

Shouldn't this be posted in, say, "Fantasy things that never happened that I find erotic" or something like that? Or just write a fiction story about it and have an excuse for making it up.

I would like to see Cheney defeat Trump for the nomination, even though I don't want her to win the general election (she's still very much a right-winger, just one that doesn't countenance coups). Remember that she voted for all the bad things Trump wanted to do, and while she's FINALLY come around on same-sex marriage (after opposing it even while her lesbian sister was getting married), she's still very much a solidly Republican official - just not one enamored with the Mango Mussolini. But honestly, I don't see Cheney being able to defeat Trump in the primaries. While his iron grip on the party's faithful has slipped somewhat since he left office, the pro-Trump crowd in the GOP outnumbers the anti-Trump crowd. Things could change, especially if he's indicted and convicted by then, but even then I'm not sure I'd rule out him getting the nomination. I made the mistake of underestimating his appeal in 2016, thinking (like many) that there was no way he could win. Never again.

There is no "training" for this. As others have clearly stated, the colon is completely different from your rectum in terms of tissues, etc, and the problem you're encountering is almost certainly caused by the bend where the two connect. In some people, that opening is narrower than others; in some people, the angle is more acute than others. The muscles that line the colon aren't ones subject to conscious control, like your anal sphincter is; they have one function, and that is to move waste down the colon into the rectum as it's (usually) dried out through absorption of excess water. And because of the nature of those muscles, there's basically no way to "train" the junction to more readily allow something to traverse the opposite direction. Some people's systems can handle that, other people's systems cannot. A long enough dildo with a very soft end - say, one that's 12" long but where the 6" at the tip is very, VERY soft, almost floppy - might be able to slip through slowly and gradually without causing bleeding. But that's not going to "train" anything; it's just going to slip through without damage. When it's pulled out, your system is going to shift right back the way it was. Which means - even if you can get something up that far, you won't be able to pound it back and forth like a good fucking and not cause bleeding. For what it's worth, I'm guessing your system just isn't built for that kind of use.

Generally I agree, except that the more of them you push together, it becomes easier to see bigger trends even if the details aren't quite right. What it looks like, for now, is that Trump's death-grip on the GOP is hurting more than it's helping - that may not continue to be the case, but, as noted, in all five special House races this year, the Dems are outperforming how Biden did in that same district just two years ago, suggesting a broader movement against Trumpism. I don't think we'll see massive change either direction either. But with things as closely balanced as they are right now in Congress, even a little shift one way or the other could spell either massive success or dismal failure. For instance, if we pick up two Senate seats, that instantly sidelines Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema from their obstructionist agendas (as long as the rest of the Dems hold together). Things like a stronger reaction to climate change or closing the carried interest loophole suddenly become possible again (at least on the Senate side). And even things that haven't been pushed in the Senate yet might be seen as feasible. On the other side: we'd need to hold the House to get those things through, and that's a tougher order. I'm becoming more hopeful, though, that we can do that, and the Alaska flip is sweet, sweet news on that front (assuming Palin doesn't drop out of the race for the regular election this fall). If we lose the House, that's the end of any legislative achievements for the Biden administration, as the Republicans are as mad at him as they were at Obama for daring to win an election they think they own. At that point it becomes Executive Order City and, if we hold the Senate, judgeship confirmations galore.

The problem is, the hypothesis being tested is that a given person's sex drive increases after HIV infection. About the only way to test that would be to get a bunch of people who are negative and NOT on PrEP, and have some of them engage in unprotected sex with HIV+, detectable people, such that there are people who you can monitor as their infection progresses. And that would be a horribly unethical format for a study. In theory, I suppose, one could test a bunch of high-risk people, and keep testing them, having all of them log their sex drive as objectively as possible (as if that weren't already a big can of worms), and compare in a couple of years the ones who ended up poz versus the ones who did not. But even that seems pretty damned dodgy.

You quote me saying "you may find SUCH CONSENT RULES patronizing" (emphasis mine) and then go on to reword my statement as "consent in general" to make it easier to attack. If you're going to debate what someone has written, you have to actually engage with his words - or do they not teach that in universities any longer? Is it fair game to just change what someone said and then base your countervailing arguments on that? You say "the insinuation of such policies that all consent must look a specific way" while ignoring that I pointed out, VERY CLEARLY, that the law we're discussing says nothing of the kind. In fact, this law is expressly clear that how consent is shown or not shown in any given case is highly contextual. And laws making certain behaviors crime are not solely for the purpose of preventing those crimes. There's the very important purpose of punishing those who transgress. As for your paper: I've read it. I think it raises some interesting questions but that's about it. I don't think you can draw any conclusion from a study of ten - TEN - people selected at a gay pride event as indicative of anything. Given that almost all were students, it might be relevant to a study of student-specific experiences; but even so, that's an incredibly tiny sample of people who were already self-selected to some extent because they're ones who would show up at a Pride event - thus completely non-representative of those who aren't out or who otherwise dislike large, crowded events like a Pride festival. What I find especially problematic is your paper's sweeping statements - for instance, "Ultimately, gay men felt like affirmative consent, as well meaning as it was, was not created with them or the diversity of gay sexual culture and subcultures in mind, and that this made affirmative consent policies difficult to interpret or apply to their interactions." Again, that's based on conversations with just ten gay men. Period. I'll not address your methodology, other than to point out when you ask questions and "let" those lead into other areas of discussion - a tactic that can easily be manipulated to get a discussion going on what you want to prove - you're eliminating any hope that the "study" (if you can call ten interviews a study) is free of bias. Again - I don't disagree that consent can manifest itself very differently in different populations. But the law in question ALREADY ACCOUNTS FOR THAT. It sounds like you're bitching about something the drafters of the legislation worked hard to cover precisely because people are different. All I can take from that is that despite allegedly believing in consent, you aren't supportive of any attempts, no matter how well-structured, to penalize those who violate that consent.

If affirmative consent laws have a heterosexual bias, it's because the world has a heterosexual bias. Most lawmakers are heterosexual and their work is going to be shaped by their viewpoints unless they're challenged. It's the same reason "head and master" laws were the norm until the 1960's or later: the people making the laws virtually all lived in a world where husbands dominated and wives submitted. And the reality is that women are more subject to sexual violence than men are. Certainly men can be and are sexually assaulted, especially in situations like prisons and boarding schools and the like. But the numbers are with the women, and I don't think it's a big mystery why. You may find such consent rules patronizing. Those who have been raped, or forced to participate in sexual activities to which they didn't consent, might beg to differ.

Sad to see some users feel the compulsion to "vote down" posts from a moderator who's simply explaining the rules. How insecure must a person be to do that?

Finally: obviously this should be clear, but that's what I see at this point, two months out. I'm sure my view will change a little (or a lot) one direction or the other as election day in November approaches. So I'll be ignoring all the "Ha ha look how off you were" comments that only look at this post, and not any changes I acknowledge during the next couple of months. It's a current long-range forecast, which looks different than it did four months ago and different from what we'll be seeing November 1.

I'll go first: I don't see any of the current Democratic seats flipping to the Republicans. Only three were ever really possible flips: Kelly (AZ), Warnock (GA), and Cortez Masto (NV). The Dems had the advantage of only having 14 seats up for election and most of them are solidly, solidly blue. AZ was a possible problem, but Kelly leads Masters in virtually every poll, and it appears to be his race to lose. (The GOP's Senate fund has started canceling ad buys scheduled to run in AZ, a sign they think the money would be wasted there.) Warnock is in a tighter race in GA, but almost every day Herschel Walker sticks his foot into his mouth AGAIN, or another previously undisclosed child by yet another mother turns up, or fact-checkers find out he's lied about another part of his life story. Cortez Masto is leading in her race by 7 points and with the abortion issue now out front and center, in a state that was long noted as a place where women's rights (especially for quickie marriages and quickie divorces) are respected, she might well expand that margin. On the other side of the aisle, the Fetterman-Oz (PA) matchup seems almost like a rout, with Fetterman leading Oz by as much as double-digit margins in many polls. This seat looks like the most likely to flip. Ron Johnson's seat in Wisconsin also seems to be falling behind his challenger in recent polls, in part because he's seen as closely tied to Trump (and possibly participated in the attempts to have Pence throw out WI's electoral votes), and in part because of his vocal support of abortion restrictions (which play out differently now, in a post-Dobbs world, than they did a year or more ago). For the open seat in OH, J.D. Vance is struggling to raise funds, and his Democratic opponent, Tim Ryan, is both well-known and generally liked - and Vance, like Masters, Walker, and Oz, has Trump hanging around his neck. NC's race is also very close, but the polls are tightening and NC has a LOT of well-educated women voters who may very well respond to the Democrat (Beasley) rather than the Trump-endorsed GOP candidate (Budd). And finally, while Marco Rubio still leads his Democratic opponent Val Demings in Florida, it's also a tight race and one that could go south at any point for him - especially with the volatility of the governor's race also affecting turnout. My thought is that at least two of these five GOP-held Senate seats are likely to flip. As for the House, having flipped one seat (Alaska) and lost one seat (Texas) in special elections this term, the margin of control is almost as thin currently as the Senate's. And because of gerrymandering (which is more prevalent in Republican controlled states than in Democratic controlled ones, especially among the larger states), more voters preferring Democrats over Republicans doesn't mean Democrats are likely to control (or continue to control) the House. House races are won over much smaller districts and the vast majority are solidly in the hands of one party or the other. The national preference for who controls Congress is expressed as the winning party followed by the margin by which they're preferred over the other; for example, D+2 means roughly 51% want the Democrats to control Congress, 49% want the Republicans. If the national mood is D+2 or less, the Republicans usually win (or keep) control of the House. Even a D+3 is typically barely enough to maintain only a couple of seats majority. The good news is that lately, that number (on average, across multiple polls) has been more like anywhere from D+4 to D+8, on average, though it's varied considerably over the year. The trend, though, is in favor of the Democrats over the last couple of months (I think largely due to the abortion decision, and to Trump). The wildcard will be: how much more is going to come out about Hair Furor? Right now, his base, of course, is eating up his fury over the FBI's search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, but every new revelation in the case makes him look that much worse. The more he inserts himself into congressional races, the more he seems to spur turnout - for the Democrats. When he was on the ballot in 2020, his side turned out even more than they did in 2016 - but the Democrats bested that, with even more gains. This year, with the fury against him not subsiding and facing new legal challenges, some portion of his 2020 vote will stay home or vote third party or (in some cases) vote for the Democrat. I'm predicting that the House stays Democratic and maybe even gains a one or two seats; if it goes to the Republicans, it will only be by a few seats. And they will promptly fall into disarray because there's no one who can unite the Trump faction and the traditionalists.

I figured I'd start a new thread for folks to discuss the 2022 midterm elections (in the US, obviously) and beyond. Most of the time, in midterm elections (those which happen two years into a president's four-year term), the party to which the president does not belong usually makes gains, sometimes substantial ones, in at least one chamber of Congress and often both. We've seen this happen in 2018, 2014, 2010, and 2006 this century, and for many of the elections of the late 20th century as well. You'd have to go back to 2002 (when the Republicans gained seats in both the House and Senate while George Bush was president) to find an exception, but then the country was newly at war then, and Bush was riding high on approval at the time. Five or six months ago, pundits were predicting "the usual" for this year's midterms, with the Democrats projected to lose the House and Senate both. Given that inflation has been running high and we've very possibly been in a recession for some months - recessions are easier to diagnose retrospectively - things should be weighing even more heavily in favor of the Republicans this year. And yet... Looking at the Senate, it's looking increasingly like the Democrats will not only hold control of the Senate, but likely (by a small margin, but still) make gains of 2 or 3 seats. What once looked like a bloodbath in the House - the GOP was salivating over possibly gaining 40 or more seats - is looking more like a very close match. In the five special elections held to fill vacancies this calendar year, the Democratic candidate has outperformed Biden's 2020 showing in their particular district in every one - that is, in districts Biden carried, the Democrat won it by an even wider margin, and in districts Trump carried, the Democrat came closer to defeating the Republican candidate than the spread between Biden and Trump. In Tuesday's Alaska special House rate, in fact, the Democrat flipped the district from R to D (the Republicans had held the seat for nearly 50 years). Granted, that was partly to do with Alaska implementing ranked-choice voting; had the state held traditional closed primaries, the R vote might have consolidated around Sarah Palin. But perhaps not: what the ranked vote results show us is that only about half the voters who initially selected the second Republican marked Palin as their second choice; the other half chose the Democrat. It's pretty clear that a significant number of Alaskans did not want Palin, even enough usually solidly Republican voters, that when the choice came down to a Democrat or Palin, they chose the Democrat. And part of that is due to Trump's enthusiastic backing of Palin. While his endorsed candidates are often winning GOP primaries - see, for instance, Blake Masters, Mehmet Oz, Josh Mandel - many of them are facing a stiff challenge in states the GOP used to win handily. Just as disgust over Trump fueled the 2018 House Blue Wave, and swept Joe Biden into office, his insistence on being the public face of every race both boosts his endorsee with the GOP hard-core base and hurts him with moderate GOP-leaning voters while driving up turnout among Dems. Then, too, despite people months ago despairing over any part of the Biden agenda passing, But since then, he's gotten the Infrastructure Bill passed (after how many "Infrastructure Weeks" under Trump?), and the "Inflation Reduction Act" (which includes climate change provisions, drug pricing caps, extending ACA subsidies, and more), and he's taken executive action on things like student loan forgiveness and others - all told, far more actual legislating and action than The Former Guy got done in four years. And lastly, we can't discount the effect SCOTUS's overturning of Roe is having on galvanizing voters to turn out. In ruby-red Kansas, an attempt to strip abortion rights from protection in the state constitution failed by a huge margin - roughly 60/40 against taking away abortion rights. In KANSAS, a state that hasn't gone for the Democrats in a presidential election since 1964. So what are your thoughts on how the midterms are going to turn out?

For question 1: The law wouldn't change my behavior because I already disclose and receive consent for anything I'm involved in. As for dark rooms and steam rooms: if you can't identify the party who (might) have violated this law regarding consent, it's kind of irrelevant; there's nobody to charge with anything if you don't have and can't get a name. In other words, it probably technically applies, but it's like running a stop sign on a desert highway where you can see 5 miles in every direction and there's no other car to be seen: you're not going to get caught, so the law, while applicable, isn't going to impact you under those circumstances. For question 2: Stealthing, as defined in the law (assuming this newspaper summary is correct: the removing, tampering with, or not using a condom without consent) ought to be illegal. There's been a somewhat lengthy discussion about a holding of the Canadian Supreme Court on this issue - a man was found to have sexually assaulted a woman when she'd told him he needed to wear a condom for sex and (on their second go-round) he did not. I recognize the erotic appeal for many around stealthing, just as I can recognize the erotic appeal of forced sex in general while nonetheless recognizing that what we find hot to think about, and what we are permitted to do in real life, are not always congruent.

Some of us *are* older guys. Some of the people being approached *are* older guys. Assuming that only "hip" (does that date me?) language is an "acceptable norm of communication" on "da apps" is more navel gazing. But then I'm sure you consider me an old fogey, so....