North Carolina Republicans learn no lessons

You might have thought the fallout from the infamous bathroom bill would have taught them something. If so, it seems you'd have thought wrong.

Although it fortunately stands little chance of becoming law as long as the state has a governor with any sense and the GOP lacks the numbers in the legislature that would be needed to override a veto, North Carolina's SB 514, introduced on April 5 by a group of three Republican state senators, has some truly disturbing provisions that eclipse even Arkansas's recently-passed HB 1570, currently the most brutal anti-trans law in the nation, though similar bills are pending in other states, including at minimum Alabama and Tennessee.

Demographics Done Wrong

The wave of pointlessly cruel discriminatory transphobic hate bills sweeping the nation wherever the party of Trump holds power (not to mention their similarly repugnant voter suppression efforts) is more than I feel up to addressing right now without descending into incoherent expletives, so I won't. Look to people like Chase Strangio or Katelyn Burns or Esther Wang, or organizations like the ACLU or the Trevor Project, or heck, even this satire by Lily Osler for more on those and why they're garbage.

Just reading about all that is bad enough; I'd rather not torment myself by going into enough depth to write about it. Party of personal freedom and small government—up until they decide you're trying to do something they think is icky or that threatens their power, and then suddenly they're all for intruding in everyone's bedrooms, bathrooms, wardrobes, smartphones, and voting booths. And meddling in corporate decisions, too, which the party is ostensibly firmly against, but apparently a publisher isn't even allowed to discontinue printing new copies of a few unprofitable books that are bad for the brand's image without the party trying to make a law about it, now.

Anyway. Let's instead cover something that speaks to the level of cluelessness we're often dealing with: demographics questions.