O-H-I-O Created DEVO-- Will The State Be Trump's Political Crypt?

In 2008, Obama's message of "Hope and Change" resonated in Ohio and he took the state, 51.5% to 46.9%. Four years later it was a little closer-- 50.7% to 47.7%-- but Buckeyes were still looking for the change Obama was promising. In 2016, the candidate promising change was Trump, while Hillary represented the status quo of an establishment the Midwest was sick of. Ohio-- like other Midwestern states that had backed Obama-- peeled off and gave Trump the presidency. Hillary took just 43.24% of the vote, a shockingly low number for a swing state. In fact, after Ohio slammed the door so loudly on her campaign, overnight "everyone" decided Ohio was no longer a swing state.

True, Ohio has the worst and least effective Democratic Party of any large state in the country-- even worse than Florida's. Although Democrat Sherrod Brown managed to hold onto his U.S. Senate seat-- he has his own organization and doesn't depend on the state party-- Republicans have come to dominate state elections. All six statewide constitutional elected leaders-- from governor to auditor-- are Republicans. The General Assembly is no longer competitive with Republicans holding 24 state Senate seats (to the Democrats' 9) and 61 state House seats to the Democrats 38. The gerrymandered districts are horrific for the congressional map and today Democrats hold just a pathetic 4 of Ohio's 16 seats, with no obvious changes in sight even if Trump loses in a November wave election. Recruitment, grassroots organizing and party support guarantee that Ohio could stay red even if Trump loses the state. Will he though?

The Associated Press piece, Trump's trouble in suburbs key to suddenly competitive Ohio by Thomas Beaumont and Dan Sewell, was picked up by the NY Times over the weekend. They wrote that "less than four months until this November's election, Trump is facing an unexpectedly competitive landscape in Ohio because he has lost ground in metropolitan and suburban areas, threatening the overwhelming advantages he has in rural areas, state data show. Trump's campaign has budgeted $18.4 million in television advertising in Ohio for this fall, second only to Florida, according to campaign advertising tracking data."

That's lot of money that would otherwise be spent in Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, states that-- even if the Trump campaign won't acknowledge it-- are all but lost already, making Ohio a do-or-die state, more likely a do-or-die-really-badly state. Trump has turned Ohio, North Carolina, Arizona, Iowa and even Texas into swing states. Not Biden, Trump. Biden hasn't even booked air time in Ohio and isn't counting on its 18 electoral votes as part of its path to victory.

Although Beaumont and Sewell made a half-assed attempt to mislead their readers into thinking Ohio experienced "a series of midterm" wins by Democrats in 2018, the Ohio Democratic Party didn't even put up a convincing fight anywhere, let alone win a single congressional seat in the midst of the anti-red wave.

This year the Democrats have weak, old-news candidates offering nothing different from more of what got Hillary rejected in the few districts that should be winnable. OH-01-- Cincinnati-- should be a blue seat but the Democrats have a typical DCCC yawn for a candidate, Kate Schroder. At least she's financially competitive, unlike the other Democratic candidates:

• OH-1 (Cincinnati- R+5)-- Steve Chabot (R)- $1,974,536, Kate Schroder (D)- $1,431,582
• OH-02 (southern Ohio- R+9)- Brad Wenstrup (R)- $1,212,781, Jaime Castle (D)- $124,641
• OH-04 (central and western Ohio- R+14)- Gym Jordan (R)- $9,114,164, Shannon Freshour (D)- $712,180
• OH-05 (Toledo- R+11)- Bob Latta (R)- $1,150,153, Nick Rubando (D)- $142,363
• OH-06 (Ohio River Valley- R+16)- Bill Johnson (R)- $1,408,761, Shawna Roberts (D)- $262
• OH-07 (Canton and Cleveland suburbs- R+12)- Bob Gibbs (R)- $579,047, Quentin Potter (D)- nothing as of June 30
• OH-08 (North Central Ohio- R+17)- Warren Davidson (R)- $737,880, Vanessa Enoch (D)- $15,729
• OH-10 (Dayton- R+4)- Michael Turner (R)- $1,107,654, Desiree Tims (D)- $596,527
• OH-12 (Columbus suburbs- R+7) Troy Balderson (R)- $1,333,727, Alaina Shearer (D)- $450,941
• OH-14 (Cleveland and Akron suburbs- R+5)- David Joyce (R)- $2,221,238, Hillary O'Connor Mueri (D)- $354,665
• OH-15 (Columbus suburbs- R+7)- Steve Stivers (R)- $2,192,653, Joel Newby (D)- $13,373
• OH-16 (northern Ohio suburbs- R+8)- Anthony Gonzalez (R)- $1,684,672, Aaron Godfrey (D)- $15,189

Beaumont and Sewell wrote that "Republican presidential candidates have been steadily losing support in Ohio's once reliably GOP suburbs around Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. But Trump's fall was particularly sharp, according to state voting data and census records compiled by Mike Dawson, a public policy consultant and creator of ohioelectionresults.com. For instance, in the affluent northern Columbus-area suburb of Upper Arlington, Republican George H. W. Bush won by 34 percentage points in 1992. Twenty years later, Republican Mitt Romney's winning margin there was 8 percentage points. In 2016, Trump lost Upper Arlington to Hillary Clinton by 16 percentage points. A similar picture emerged in the 10 wealthiest suburbs outside Cleveland in Cuyahoga County. In Franklin County outside Columbus, Trump lost nine of the 10 most affluent suburbs, a sharp decline from other Republicans over the past 24 years. The trend was worst in suburban Hamilton County outside Cincinnati, where Trump's losing margin in the 10 richest suburbs was at least 50% of Republicans' total decline since 1992." And yet... none of the Democratic candidates look like any of those suburbs are going turn to them, even as they turn against Trump. Disgust with Trump could throw the election to a worthless Democrat like Biden, but that isn't going to do the track for the kinds of congressional candidates running against GOP incumbents.

Murder/Suicide by Nancy Ohanian

“College educated suburbanites in Ohio, particularly college educated women, were not as supportive of the president in 2016 as they’ve traditionally been of Republican presidential nominees, and that will continue in 2020," said Karl Rove, senior adviser to President George W. Bush's presidential campaign in 2004, when the Republican won election in part by narrowly carrying Ohio. “Trump has a problem with them.”

...Rove said that Trump maintains a clear path to carrying Ohio: “It’s to repeat his 2016 performance in 2020."

That includes matching and, in some instances, exceeding his overwhelming margins in the GOP-heavy counties along the Indiana border and the struggling industrial Mahoning River Valley corridor and along the Ohio River to the south.

But Rove said Trump must also “do what he did in 2016 in suburban Cincinnati, Dayton, Cleveland and Columbus."

History suggests that's going to be hard, some Ohio Republicans say.

“Can the electoral leakage for Republicans in these first- and second-ring suburbs continue to be offset by running up the score along the Ohio River?” said former state Republican Party Chair Kevin DeWine, a former state representative and second cousin to Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. “We have to be honest as Republicans and say we are dangerously close to that tipping point.”

During an August 2018 special election, Danny O'Connor came within 1,700 votes out of more than 200,000 of becoming the first Democrat in 36 years to win Ohio's 12th Congressional District, which includes once solidly Republican Delaware County. Trump came to campaign for O'Connor's opponent, Rep. Troy Balderson, and helped pull him to victory.

Democrats continued making inroads in 2018, picking up six suburban state legislative seats.

That November, Erik Yassenoff, in losing his bid for a northern Columbus-area district, became the first Republican candidate for Ohio General Assembly to lose Upper Arlington.

“I think you’re seeing people in the suburbs align more with the urban populations," Yassenoff said.

Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper has watched as younger, educated and often more racially and ethnically diverse families have sought the top schools and other comforts of Ohio's booming suburbs since the mid-2000s.

The trend was especially clear last year as Democrats scored victories in local suburban elections.

"This is where the fundamental shift has happened, what used to be the base of the Republican Party, these larger, generally white-collar suburbs around Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland and Akron," Pepper said.

In Yassenoff's Upper Arlington, voters elected their first Democrats to its City Council. In nearby Hilliard, Democrats won their first seat on the City Council in three decades. There were similar Democratic municipal gains in Republican-leaning suburbs around Toledo and Dayton, as well as in communities outside Cleveland.

Perhaps most telling, southeast of Columbus in the old Republican suburb of Reynoldsburg, Democrats swept the municipal elections and elected three Black female council members, a first for the city.

“What it tells us is that more people are becoming engaged and involved," said Meredith Lawson-Rowe, among the new Reynoldsburg council members.

Even as Trump’s standing began to fall after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Ohio was not seen as a concern, campaign officials said. But polls in other states showing close races in Iowa, Georgia and even Texas have also now shaken the firm grip on Ohio.

Ohio started off well in the pandemic. Gov. DeWine was one of the most pragmatic and science-oriented governors in the country. The Republicans in the legislature and Trump destroyed all his work and now Ohio is spiking out of control. On Friday, Ohio reported 1,720 new cases and yesterday another 1,537, bringing the state's total to 73,858-- 6,319 cases per million Buckeyes, a little better the Spain (6,573 cases per million), a lot worse than Italy Italy (4,039 cases per million). Ten counties are pandemic hotspots (total confirmed cases) + 2016 Trump percentage:

• Franklin- 13,778 (34.7%)
• Cuyahoga- 10,438 (30.8%)
• Hamilton- 7,703 (43.0%)
• Lucas- 3,387 (38.7%)
• Montgomery- 2,939 (48.4%)
• Marion- 2,774 (64.6%)
• Summit- 2,570 (43.8%)
• Pickaway- 2,263 (69.2%)
• Butler- 2,091 (62.0%)
• Mahoning- 2,073 (46.8%)

Trump's response to his problem with college-educated voters in the suburbs is simple-- to beat loudly and incoherently on his racism drum while claiming that Biden-- or a nonsensical caricature of Biden that Trump's campaign team is trying to create-- and the Democrats want to abolish the suburbs. "Trump has launched a slash-and-burn campaign against an exaggerated caricature of his Democratic opponent," wrote Josh Dawsey in the Washington Post, casting former vice president Joe Biden as a destroyer of basic freedoms and a threat to voter’s safety who would 'let terrorists roam free' and 'abolish the American way of life.' His new dystopian vision, with militant and extreme language not typical in American politics, marks a sharp departure from Trump’s previous effort to cast Biden as 'Sleepy Joe,' an establishment politician with deteriorating mental abilities. It marks the latest effort, orchestrated by the Trump’s advisers, to shift the conversation from rising coronavirus infections and deteriorating public support for the president’s pandemic response. In new advertising, tweets and public statements that began to appear earlier this month, Trump has argued that the presumptive Democratic nominee is a harbinger of chaos and destruction, depicting a fantastical scarecrow largely divorced from reality."

I Think Danger Bred A Different Kind Of Gay Back Then

I was lucky; I came out when I was living in Amsterdam. I worried there was something wrong with me so I went to see a psychiatrist. I told him I thought I could be gay. He asked me why I was coming to him and if I was looking for addresses of gay bars and other places where gay people met. I didn't. I lived right across the street-- literally, 30 steps-- from a side gate into Amsterdam's biggest park (like their version of Central Park or Griffith Park). And it was a special entrance, as it turns out. At night there were always gay men in that part of the park eager to meet other men. So much better than a dark, smokey bar!

Being gay is easy and almost without a sense of social opprobrium nowadays. Gays can get married. It's no biggie. When I was a kid it was very different. And... well-- how do I put this? If you were gay, you were an outlaw, a rebel... like Jean Genet, like Truman Capote, William Burroughs, John Rechy, James Baldwin, Gertrude Stein, Gore Vidal, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Bowles, Jean Cocteau, Kenneth Anger, Anaïs Nin, John Waters, Jack Kerouac... role models. You know, who's a better role model Plato or a ribbon clerk?

Danny Fields, who I met when I was in college when I had booked The Doors to come play at my school and he worked for their record label, was the one who put the idea of ribbon clerks in my consciousness. He and Dee Dee Ramone wanted to go someplace "exciting" after The Ramones first show in San Francisco. I had no idea where to take them so I suggested the Eagle's Nest, a forbidding gay bar on Folsom Street. Danny made a face. "Ribbon clerks playing dress up," he sneered in his charming way. Eventually I started taking out of town guests to Mr. B's Ballroom instead. The DEVO guys, who I don't think were even gay, wrote a song about the night I brought them there.

Three cheers!
They're yellin' again
Three cheers!
They'll be at it to the end

So drink some big beers and go crazy tonight
They're all dressed up and they'll be gettin' it tonight
Big swingers in double knits tonight
Big babies gonna get in a fight
Actin' crazy, bustin' up the chairs
Doubled over gettin' sick on the stairs

They know the limits 'cause they cross them every night
The dull sensations as it turns real hot
Why, the guys in the back with their heads on the floor
Surrounded by their buddies, they're all hollerin' for more
Whoa, whoa, whoa
It's Mr. B's ballroom

Party time, turn the music up loud
Party time, lose your head in the crowd
Yellin',, laughin' tryin' hard to act smart
Put 'em under pressure and you watch them fall apart

Freeze! Come on out of there
Freeze! You ain't goin' nowhere
Freeze! Put your hands on your head
Freeze!
It's Mr. B's ballroom

Someone slipped in semen and fell down and we left. Books were easier-- and I've always been a bookish guy. There's a new movie that screened in NYC this week, Tom of Finland, and it's opening in New York on October 13 and in L.A. and San Francisco October 20... all the towns I lived in. Watch the trailer up top. I think Finnish director Dome Karukoski conveys what I'm trying to talk about far better than I am.

Tom of Finland was the pseudonym for Touko Laaksonen (1920-1991) and Wikipedia describes him as "a Finnish artist known for his stylized highly masculinized homoerotic fetish art, and his influence on late twentieth century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated primary and secondary sex traits, wearing tight or partially removed clothing." At the time, all his work had an implied sense of danger. The film company reminds critics that he was "a decorated officer" and that the film describes him as returning "home after a harrowing and heroic experience serving his country in World War II. But life in Finland during peacetime proves equally distressing. He finds post-war Helsinki rampant with homophobic persecution, and gay men around him are being pressured to marry women and have children. Touko finds refuge in his liberating art: homoerotic drawings of muscular men, free of inhibitions. But it is only when an American publisher sees them and invites Tuoko over to the West Coast that his life really takes a turn. Finally being able to walk free and proud in Los Angeles, Tuoko dives head first into the sexual revolution, becoming an icon and a rallying point. His work-- made famous by his signature ‘Tom of Finland’-- became the emblem of a generation of men and fanned the flames of the worldwide gay revolution."

But not today's gays I don't think. Yes, this is a real stamp:

Healthcare in Trump-Country: Ohio

Yesterday on ABC's This Week, Ohio Governor John Kasich dismissed the sweetener McConnell added to Trumpcare as a bribe/figleaf for mainstream Republicans-- $45 billion for opioid treatment-- for what it is: a bribe to "buy people off," people meaning Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and his own state's Rob Portman. "That would give me a billion over ten years? Not even quite that," said Kasich. "It’s anemic. As I said to Senator Portman at one point, it’s like spitting in the ocean. It’s not enough."

On Friday, Kasich was handed a two-year state budget passed in the Republican-dominated Ohio legislature-- the one elected in districts he helped gerrymander-- which is composed of 24 Democrats and 9 Republicans in the Senate and 65 Republicans and 34 Democrats in the House. Kasich used the line-item veto to kill a provision ending new enrollment in Medicaid beginning next year and another one that would have frozen Medicaid payment rates for hospital services and nursing home facilities for the next two years at the rates paid on Jan. 1 of this year.

Kasich has long been a strident defender on the national stage of preserving health care for the poor, particularly “people in the shadows”-- the drug-addicted and mentally ill. His veto faces potential override votes by legislators.

“We have some disagreements, and we’ll work through them,” Kaisch said at the Statehouse bill-signing ceremony. “We just don’t think it’s the right way to proceed” to withhold health-care coverage from the needy. “We have 700,000 Ohioans who have been able to benefit from the expansion... we want to be in a position to help the mentally ill.”

The House will attempt to override the veto on Thursday, which will take 59 votes. The Columbus Dispatch reported that "Democrats [in the legislature] portrayed the enrollment freeze as literally setting people up to die from a lack of health coverage."

Let me run some statistics by you. Obama won Ohio both times he ran-- in fact, the state was crucial to his two national victories. In 2008, he beat McCain 2,940,044 (51.38%) to 2,677,820 (46.80%), and in 2012 he beat Romney 2,827,709 (50.67%) to 2,661,437 (47.69%). Last year though Hillary got wiped out, seriously underperforming Obama while Trump did slightly better than both McCain and Romney. The final score was Trump 2,841,005 (51.69%) to 2,394,164 (43.56%).

Next is private polling from Save My Care that was semi-released yesterday. The data is national, not from just Ohio, although we'll get to Ohio in a moment. The reason I want to point out this poll is because it's thinly one available that was taken after the CBO report came out on the Senate's TrumpCare proposal. The conclusions:

• Support for the repeal bill has hit rock bottom-- facing intense opposition. After the CBO report, only 26% of voters support the repeal bill at all-- and only 8% strongly support it. On the other hand, 57% oppose it-- including 46% strongly opposing it.
• Senate Republicans can't defeat facts. Republican efforts to undermine the facts about their bill by attacking the accurcy of the nonpartisan experts' evaluations at the Congressional Budget Office isn't working. 42% of people believe the Congressional Budget Office rather than Senate Republicans, and only 9% believe Senate Republicans.
• The more people learn, the worse this gets for repeal. In just the first 24 hours, nearly 4-in-10 (39%) of voters had heard about the CBO's score. Among those who heard about it, it made 47% less likely to support it and only 12% more likely to support it.
• The American people are paying attention because they know the damage this bill could do to them and their families. 54% of voters believe this repeal bill would make their family either somewhat or much worse off while only 13% think it would make them better off.
• Voters want Congress to move on. By 57 points (75% v. 18%) voters want to "keep what worked in the Affordable Care Act and fix what doesn't" rather than repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety." Even among Trump voters, a majority (53%) want to "keep/fix" rather than "repeal" (40%).
• Abandon the promise to repeal. Voters want "Senators who promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act" to vote against repeal now because of the damage it will do rather than vote for it to keep their promise by a 25 point margin (59% v. 24%)-- almost the same as the margin within states that have Republican senators (58% v. 23%).

Now let's move to the poll by Public Opinion Strategies, a GOP-leaning firm, that was commissioned by the American Medical Association specifically of Ohio voters, albeit before the CBO report came out. Again, these responses are just for Ohio voters. Most of them (55%) feel that the Senate's TrumpCare bill is a bad idea and only a startlingly low 15% believe the legislation is a good idea. 86% of Democrats and 54% of independents believe it's a bad idea as do 19% of Republicans. And Republican support is very soft-- just 35%. A majority of Ohio voters (61%) want the Senate to either make major changes to the House legislation before passing it (26%) or do not want the Senate to pass any part of the House legislation which would mean keeping ObamaCare in place (35%). Only 7% of voters want the Senate to pass the House legislation as is and 21% want them to make minor changes to it and pass it. Only 3% of Democrats and just 2% of independents think the Senate should just pass the House bill as is. In fact, only 14% of Ohio Republicans think the Senate should pass the House bill as is!

Ohio Is All Gerrymandered Up-- And Of Course You Can Blame Arch Hypocrite John Kasich

Want to understand Kasichism? Ohio Governor John Kasich has a new book out, Two Paths: America Divided or United, and you don;'t even have to read it because he's on a media blitz to push it. On The View Tuesday he addressed the reason-- a 2020 presidential run-- most people are paying attention to it: "A lot of people say, 'Well, he wrote this be 'cause he wants to run for office or whatever.' No, I wrote this book because, folks, we can't live fighting, even inside our own families."

Later he was on Chris Hayes' show. It was so dull. Chris tried to make it interesting but Kasich didn't like being challenged on his conservative pieties. Eventually he just said, "We're not going to spend our time here arguing economics. You're a liberal, I'm a conservative... What I want to talk about is..." Chris, be a little more discerning with the book-writer guests.

Kasich ended the evening with Trevor Noah on the Daily Show, clip above, where he actually said something useful and interesting. And he actually brought it up himself, his very last point in the 15 minute segment. "A handful of billionaires," he said, "could pick a president and that's just dead wrong. It's a Supreme Court ruling and I'm against it."

Earlier he claimed to not like gerrymandering, although it's worth noting-- which Trevor didn't-- that one of the country's most repulsive gerrymanders-- Ohio-- was signed off on by Governor Kasich. It was done between Obama's two elections, when Ohioans were split down the middle. In 2008, Obama beat McCain 2,940,044 (52%) to 2,677,820 (47%) and in 2012 he beat Romney 2,827,710 (51%) to 2,661,433 (48%). In 2008 the Democrats won 10 congressional seats and the Republicans won 8 seats. Ohio lost 2 seats in the 2010 reapportionment and Republicans in the legislature-- with Kasich in the governor's mansion-- rejiggered the districts to give the GOP a 13-5 (and eventually a 12-4) majority. The 2016 Almanac of American Politics explained what happened:

Republicans had cracked Columbus into multiple districts to shortchange Democrats. But the state capital was growing and attracting progressive-minded voters at such a rate that neither the Republican-held 12th [Pat Tiberi] nor 15th [Steve Stivers] might hold until 2020.

So for three months in mid-2011, Republican legislative aides bunkered in a clandestine Columbus hotel room, and under the watchful guidance of U.S. House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, hatched yet another innovative scheme. Republicans would pack Democrats into a new Columbus 3rd District, merge Kaptur and Kucinich in a skinny 9th District stretching 100 miles along Lake Erie, and throw Sutton into a nearby 16th District favoring freshman Republican Jim Renacci. They would also have to sacrifice by merging two of their own, Dayton area Republicans Mike Turner and Steve Austria. But the creation of a Columbus Democratic vote sink would produce a beneficial ripple effect, allowing Republicans to shore up other freshmen and keep a 12-4 advantage.

The legislature and Gov. John Kasich easily approved the plan... 21 Democrats caved and voted with the Republicans... Republicans got the 12-4 delegation they envisioned in a state that Barack Obama twice won.

A constitutional amendment that would have established an independent congressional redistricting commission was defeated by voters on November 6, 2012. And last November Ohio gave Trump a pretty massive 2,841,005 (51.7%) to 2,394,164 (43.6%) win over Hillary Clinton. Trump won every Republican-held district and one Democratic-held district, Tim Ryan's 13th, where Obama's 62.9-35.4% win over Romney turned into a 51.1-46.6% Trump win.

The DCCC ignored Ohio entirely in 2016-- they didn't back one Democratic candidate-- and plan to do the same in 2018. Right now there are a handful of Democrats who are going ahead without DCCC help or backing. Janet Everhard and Richard Crosby are vying for the nomination to take on Brad Wenstrup (OH-02); Andrew Mackey is taking on Jim Jordan (OH-04); Michael Milisits ir running for Michael Turner's seat (OH-10); Betsy Rader is taking on David Joyce (OH-14) and Aaron Minnick will run against Steve Stivers (OH-15). Jim Renacci isn't running for reelection and there are likely to be several Democrats who run in the 16th district.

If the DCCC had plausible candidates in place and 2018 did indeed see an anti-Trump tsunami, Democrats would likely be able to win at least 4 seats: OH-01 (Cabot), OH-10 (Turner), OH-12 (Tiberi) and OH-14 (Joyce). But without plausible competitively-financed candidates they will win no seats in Ohio, which is part of the DCCC plan as of now. Here's the DCCC's Ohio Fight Song:

WHAT REALLY GOES ON IN MEN'S BATHROOMS? AND DO THEY DO THAT STUFF IN THE SENATE BATHROOMS TOO? MAYBE SNARLIN' ARLEN SPECTER KNOWS

A few days ago it may have seemed that everything was all set: arch-conservative/bathroom prowler Larry Craig would resign from the world's most exclusive club and Idaho Gov. Butch Otter would appoint arch-conservative Lt. Gov. Jim Risch to take over and hold the seat for the GOP in 2008. Not so fast. Craig says he intends to resign as of September 30 and he hired Michael Vick's attorney to see if... he can get out from under the charges.

None many people outside of Idaho know much about Risch. Is he as extreme a right wing loon as the voters of Idaho seem to relish? Here's something today's Guardian turned up about the gentleman regarding the anniversary of the devastation New Orleans was facing after Hurricane Katrina:

"Here in Idaho, we couldn't understand how people could sit around on the kerbs waiting for the federal government to come and do something. We had a dam break in 1976, but we didn't whine about it. We got out our backhoes and we rebuilt the roads and replanted the fields and got on with our lives. That's the culture here. Not waiting for the federal government to bring you drinking water. In Idaho there would have been entrepreneurs selling the drinking water."

No doubt. And regardless of how seriously Larry Craig and the traditional media take Arlen Specter's advice to Craig to withdraw his guilty plea and the resignation the far right forced him to submit, people still want to know what's going on in the secret world on homosexual toilet liaisons.

When friends of mine go to known humpy bathrooms for sex I always wait outside in my car. I find the whole idea really icky. I always associate sex with a bed with nice clean linens and a nearby shower and things like that. And a public men's room? Ewwww. I don't touch anything except with my shoe. (Disclaimer: I once brought the members of DEVO to a gay backroom called "Mr. B's Ballroom," and although a ballroom isn't exactly the same as a bathroom, I think this one was close enough. DEVO wrote a song about it. But Christopher Beam's piece in Slate a couple days ago went more precisely to Larry Craig Homosexual Toilet World.

Q: Is tapping your foot really code for public sex?
A: Yes. The signal has been around for decades in the United States and Europe. Generally, one person initiates contact by tapping his foot in a way that's visible beneath the stall divider. If the second person responds with a similar tap, the initiator moves his foot closer to the other person's stall. If the other person makes a similar move, the first will inch closer yet again. The pair usually goes through the whole process a few times, just to confirm that the signals aren't an accident.

Next, one of the men will slide his hand under the divider. This usually means he's inviting the other person to present himself, as if to say, "Show me what you got." The partner can respond by kneeling on the floor and presenting his penis or rear end underneath the divider. Or he can swipe his own hand under the divider, as if to say, "You go first." Some married men make a point of displaying their wedding band (like Sen. Craig allegedly did) to make themselves more alluring.

Q: Just how sexy can you get when there's a divider in the way?

A: It depends on the bathroom. If the participants were in the last stall in a long row, they might have enough privacy to get it on right there beneath the divider. Alternatively, one person can enter the other's stall by surreptitiously ducking out and back. Positions vary depending on the space, but one classic setup has one man sit on the toilet while the other straddles his legs and receives oral sex. (In the 1970s, some men frequenting the popular bathrooms at Bloomingdale's in New York would hide their legs by standing in a pair of shopping bags.)

Q: As a U.S. senator, doesn't Craig have special protection from the law?

A: Yes, but that doesn't mean he could have used it. In Article I, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution, the so-called "arrest" clause says that senators "shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same." At the time of Craig's arrest, he was on a layover during a trip from Boise to Washington, D.C., a Craig spokesman told Slate. Since he had votes to make that evening, he could have argued for the special privilege. That said, courts have ruled that the speech or debate clause doesn't protect members of Congress from arrest in criminal and civil cases.

Members of Congress have invoked the privilege before, but not always with good results. Former Iowa Sen. Roger Jepsen was widely mocked in 1983 for invoking the speech or debate clause to wriggle out of a traffic ticket. Back in the early 1960s, New York Rep. Adam Clayton Powell used the law to avoid facing a defamation lawsuit back home. Both of these cases drew a lot of attention to the lawmakers. So, if Craig wanted to let the incident pass unnoticed, he was smart not to invoke the clause.

Q: Can Craig still maintain his innocence after pleading guilty?

A: Sure, but that doesn't change his legal status. Whether or not he committed a crime, Craig may have hoped that pleading guilty would be the best way to avoid scandal. Either way, the plea counts. As Dahlia Lithwick wrote in a 2001 Explainer, "Since up to 90 percent of criminal convictions result from plea bargaining, and at least 90 percent of the people in prison seem to insist that they are innocent, it stands to reason that the criminal justice system will not necessarily invalidate a guilty plea simply because the defendant makes out-of-court statements about his innocence."

Q: Is it wise to use a "wide stance" when you go to the bathroom?

A: No. When you're sitting on the toilet, spreading your feet and leaning forward tightens the levator ani muscles that control defecation. If you're having trouble passing stools, you should take the opposite of a wide stance, and lean back. Doctors recommend this technique to relax the bowel muscles.