It is entirely predictable that a Utah Mormon would lead the charge against online pornography, for a couple of reasons. A) Mormons are legendary for their hypocrisy in privately consuming vice while publicly condemning it, and B) ignorant legislation would be pushed by someone who takes pride in declaring his ignorance of what he’s banning.

Mormons have been in a furor for years over the disclosures about their paid-porn watching habits.

That’s the conclusion of a Harvard economics professor who tracked subscriptions to online porn sites. Utah ranks No. 1 in subscriptions, according to Benjamin Edelman, who reported his findings in the article “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?,” published in the most recent edition of the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

The most porn-watching ZIP codes in Utah, “with unexpectedly high subscriptions relative to their population and broadband usage,” are 84766 in Sevier County, 84112 in Salt Lake County, 84018 in Morgan County, 84006 in southwest Salt Lake County, and 84536 in San Juan County.

A color-coded map in the journal article shows only two states with subscription rates higher than 3.6 per thousand home broadband users: Utah and Mississippi. Utah topped the list, with 5.47 users per 1,000. (Edelman says he took into account the amount of broadband access available in various regions and adjusted his data accordingly; porn users tend to favor high-speed data transfer that can download lots of the steamy visuals quickly.)

“Subscriptions are slightly more prevalent in states that have enacted conservative legislation on sexuality,” Edelman writes. In the 27 states where “defense of marriage” amendments have been adopted, there were 11 percent more porn subscribers than in other states, he reports. Use is higher also in states where more people agree with the statement “I never doubt the existence of God.”

Let me just say that when I lived in Utah, I was in the 84102 zip code. 84112 is the University of Utah, which is weird — to be fair, there is a higher proportion of non-Mormons there, but there aren’t a lot of people living there, outside of university housing.

Also, it’s a weird metric: there is so much free porn available all over the web, why would people pay for it? Perhaps this isn’t so much a commentary on Mormon porn habits, as it is on Mormon naiveté about online access.

I’m also reminded of the ubiquitous Mormon joke — even Mormons tell each other this one.

Why do ex-mormons always take two Mormons fishing?
If you take only one Mormon he drinks all your beer.

Todd Weiler is posturing in front of his congregation electorate, so of course he’s going to take the most sanctimonious position possible.

The Republican party has evolved into the party of disenfranchisement, dishonesty, and outright treachery. One place you might point to as the beginning of this sordid history is the presidency of the primeval ratfucker-in-chief, Richard Nixon. Newly discovered documents show that he intentionally scuttled negotiations to end the Vietnam War for political gain.

Richard M. Nixon always denied it: to David Frost, to historians and to Lyndon B. Johnson, who had the strongest suspicions and the most cause for outrage at his successor’s rumored treachery. To them all, Nixon insisted that he had not sabotaged Johnson’s 1968 peace initiative to bring the war in Vietnam to an early conclusion. “My God. I would never do anything to encourage” South Vietnam “not to come to the table,” Nixon told Johnson, in a conversation captured on the White House taping system.

Now we know Nixon lied. A newfound cache of notes left by H. R. Haldeman, his closest aide, shows that Nixon directed his campaign’s efforts to scuttle the peace talks, which he feared could give his opponent, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, an edge in the 1968 election. On Oct. 22, 1968, he ordered Haldeman to “monkey wrench” the initiative.

John Kerry once said, How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?. He should have said, “How do you ask a man to die in order to elect Richard Nixon?” Then later we get Reagan and Iran-Contra, and George W. Bush and the mega-cluster-fuck in Iraq.

Of course, the problem goes even deeper than that, to a winner-takes-all two party system that fosters insane levels of partisanship. I think we need to burn it all down and start over.

Oh, and there’s even more.

Time has yielded Nixon’s secrets. Haldeman’s notes were opened quietly at the presidential library in 2007, where I came upon them in my research for a biography of the former president. They contain other gems, like Haldeman’s notations of a promise, made by Nixon to Southern Republicans, that he would retreat on civil rights and “lay off pro-Negro crap” if elected president. There are notes from Nixon’s 1962 California gubernatorial campaign, in which he and his aides discuss the need to wiretap political foes.

Also the party of racism.

I knew a child prostitute once. She was 14 or 15 years old, and hung out near a bus stop in Seattle — I used to work late at the university while I was an undergraduate, and it would often happen that I’d have to wait a half hour or so at the stop before transferring, and I kept bumping into this scantily dressed girl shivering on the street. I bought her donuts. We’d talk, briefly. She was miserable and hungry, and there wasn’t much I could do other than a cruller and a little distracting conversation while she was warming up in the donut shop.

I guess I was handling the situation all wrong. I should have had her arrested.

The Tea Party is outraged because California legalized child prostitution…only they didn’t. California passed a law that changes the status of children in the sex trade from criminals to victims.

Does SB 1129 actually legalize child prostitution? No. No, it does not, and that’s an incredibly unfair reading of the law. What the law does is to actually transform a child prostitute — who is not legally capable of providing consent — from a criminal into a victim. The law is designed to aid child prostitutes pimped into the system by sex traffickers.

Sex traffickers and pimps will still be prosecuted. Men and women who sleep with child prostitutes will still be prosecuted. However, rather than arrest child prostitutes and put them in the juvenile detention system, the law provides money to pay for social services so that these children are protected. Police will continue to temporarily detain underage prostitutes, but rather than lock them up in jail, they are diverted into the dependency system, which centers on caring for abused and neglected children.

But you should see the online shrieking of the Trumpkins. All they see is that the damned liberals are trying to sell children into sex slavery, which is exactly the opposite of what’s going on. They are unable to see a young girl in a desperate situation as someone who needs help, rather than further abuse and shaming.

I sometimes wonder what happened to that kid at the bus stop. I graduated and left Seattle; I heard later that the donut shop got closed down because the owner was arrested for being the local fence. That area around 3rd & Pike (I think it was) wasn’t exactly a safe place back in the 1970s.

I believe Russia did meddle in American politics, at least in the sense of assisting Republican propaganda. I could easily accept that their tinkering, and partisan influence from what should be non-partisan bureaucracies (like the FBI) shifted the vote margins by a percentage point or two. You can even argue with me by how much of a percentage and I’d just shrug and go along with it.

But what made an even bigger difference, what really made Trump possible, was an incompetent, smug, conservative Democratic party that bumbled the election at every point. It looks like Matt Taibbi shares my opinion.

Did the Russians do it? Very possibly, in which case it should be reported to the max. But the press right now is flying blind. Plowing ahead with credulous accounts is problematic because so many different feasible scenarios are in play.

On one end of the spectrum, America could have just been the victim of a virtual coup d’etat engineered by a combination of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, which would be among the most serious things to ever happen to our democracy.

But this could also just be a cynical ass-covering campaign, by a Democratic Party that has seemed keen to deflect attention from its own electoral failures.

The outgoing Democrats could just be using an over-interpreted intelligence “assessment” to delegitimize the incoming Trump administration and force Trump into an embarrassing political situation: Does he ease up on Russia and look like a patsy, or escalate even further with a nuclear-armed power?

Emphasis is mine. All the news about Russian interference is just playing to the media and giving the DNC an excuse, all while distracting the party from actually confronting their deep internal problems and doing something about it.

Because, I fear, they don’t want to do anything about it.

Hold me, mommy, I’m scared.

I can see where turning patriotism into a game with a score and with government rewards would be incredibly effective. So let’s not, OK?

I don’t know about you, but I’m about as terrified of what dizzying incompetence the Democrats will display as I am of the Republican intent.

Have you been following the news about Donald Trump’s search for talent to perform at his inauguration? He’s not having much luck. Sad!

He does have the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, though, and some performer from a reality TV show. My favorites, though, are two bands I never heard of: The Reagan Years and The MIXX, cover bands that do oldies. The best part: they’re the same band! They use different names for different musical eras. So basically Trump gets to pad his list of performers by counting the same people twice.

But the saddest performers have to be the Radio City Rockettes. The inauguration committee has happily secured them by getting their “owner” to twist their arms. James Dolan, their boss, signed them up and told them that they are under contract and will be fired if they don’t dance for their new overlord. At least one of them has spoken up.

I usually don’t use social media to make a political stand but I feel overwhelmed with emotion. Finding out that it has been decided for us that Rockettes will be performing at the Presidential inauguration makes me feel embarrassed and disappointed. The women I work with are intelligent and are full of love and the decision of performing for a man that stands for everything we’re against is appalling. I am speaking for just myself but please know that after we found out this news, we have been performing with tears in our eyes and heavy hearts. We will not be forced! #notmypresident

They’ve also been informed by their union that they must perform.

We have received an email from a Rockette expressing concern about getting ‘involved in a dangerous political climate’ but I must remind you that you are all employees, and as a company, Mr. Dolan obviously wants the Rockettes to be represented at our country’s Presidential inauguration, as they were in 2001 & 2005. Any talk of boycotting this event is invalid, I’m afraid.

We have been made aware of what is going on Facebook and other social media, however, this does not change anything unless Radio City has a change of heart. The ranting of the public is just that, ranting. Everyone has a right to an opinion, but this does not change your employment status for those who are full time … Everyone is entitled to her own political beliefs, but there is no room for this in the workplace.

I have to agree (but not with the tone). If we can say that bakers don’t get to discriminate in making wedding cakes for their customers, we have to say that professional dancers have an obligation to do their work, no matter who pays for it.

Still, I thought unions were supposed to fight for the rights of the workers, rather than management — and that union representative is clearly not on the side of their constituents.

Also, if I were commissioning an art performance, and I learned that the artists did not find any joy in working for me and were at best going to make a workman-like effort with no heart behind it, I wouldn’t demand that they do it — there’d be no point to a celebration without a celebratory attitude. But from what I see of Trump, he’s probably getting an extra thrill out of subjugating reluctant women to his will.

He’s also getting desperate. If he can’t force people to sing and dance for him, he’s only going to have a bunch of no-talent hacks singing his praises.

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Some good news: the union has agreed that all participation in this event is entirely voluntary.

We love Snopes, the fact-checking web site founded by David and Barbara Mikkelson, and it’s useful now more than ever. Now, though, the Daily Mail has published a hit piece on Snopes — Snopes must have debunked a few too many Daily Mail crap stories.

The hit piece is 90% hot steaming garbage, but unfortunately, 10% of it is a matter for serious concern. First, let’s sweep away the garbage.

The piece focuses on the most useless bits of the story: Facebook ‘fact checker’ who will arbitrate on ‘fake news’ is accused of defrauding website to pay for prostitutes – and its staff includes an escort-porn star and ‘Vice Vixen domme’. Oooh. A couple of the people writing for Snopes are also sex workers. I don’t care, but apparently readers of the Daily Mail need a sanctimonious snit to get through the day. Sex work is work. It no more discredits the intellectual abilities of Snopes contributors than does the fact that I worked my way through high school doing agricultural stoop labor. Actually, sex work sounds like a smarter use of one’s time than spending long hours bent over pulling weeds.

The article obsesses over the fact that Kim LaCapria and Elyssa Young have and may still be working as escorts and models. Don’t care. Really, the only thing I care about is that the Daily Mail thinks shaming women is newsworthy. [A clarification: while the Daily Mail thinks this is the case, LaCapria herself has said that she is not and has not been a sex worker.]

They are outraged that a site billing itself as “non-political” has a woman writing for them who ran as a Libertarian for Congress on a ‘Dump Bush’ platform. I have no love for Libertarians, but if the only way a website can be non-political is if every writer for it never expressed a political opinion, then you’ve just created a filter that guarantees that only idiots will work for it. Everyone has political opinions, it’s human nature. What matters is if they take care to avoid using them to color their work. Or if they use the illusion of objectivity to justify defenses of the intolerable, which is the Daily Mail’s specialty. Fuck ’em. Don’t care.

They are also aghast that the Mikkelson’s went through an acrimonious divorce, with disputes about the management of the site ongoing. That two people are finding personal differences great enough to compel them to separate is not a problem — if you’re unhappy in a relationship, end it and move on. I watched my grandparents hate each other for decades, and I would rather have seen them happily apart, if that was possible. The Daily Mail does not get to tell people who should stay married to who.

But then we start getting into some real concerns. They are arguing over compensation, which is an internal concern, but one of the accusations is that David Mikkelson has been rifling through the company’s budget to pay for personal matters. If true, and of course David Mikkelson disputes it, that’s an ethical violation that also says management is not very tight. Healthy companies do not let the founder loot the treasury.

If true. I’d like to see evidence of professional management.

Mikkelson has also made a statement to address the Daily Mail’s objections.

David Mikkelson told the Dailymail.com that Snopes does not have a ‘standardized procedure’ for fact-checking ‘since the nature of this material can vary widely.’ He said the process ‘involves multiple stages of editorial oversight, so no output is the result of a single person’s discretion.’

He also said the company has no set requirements for fact-checkers because the variety of the work ‘would be difficult to encompass in any single blanket set of standards.’

‘Accordingly, our editorial staff is drawn from diverse backgrounds; some of them have degrees and/or professional experience in journalism, and some of them don’t,’ he added.

I think that’s a good response, actually. I agree that they should have a diverse staff, and that they’re dealing with all kinds of claims suggests that flexibility is important. But the key point is this one: “multiple stages of editorial oversight”. Say more. What exactly does Snopes do internally to verify their assessment, and how do they cross-check to prevent bias from creeping in? That’s something they ought to be able to explain.

So Forbes asked them for the details. David Mikkelson flubbed the answer.

Thus, when I reached out to David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, for comment, I fully expected him to respond with a lengthy email in Snopes’ trademark point-by-point format, fully refuting each and every one of the claims in the Daily Mail’s article and writing the entire article off as “fake news.”

It was with incredible surprise therefore that I received David’s one-sentence response which read in its entirety “I’d be happy to speak with you, but I can only address some aspects in general because I’m precluded by the terms of a binding settlement agreement from discussing details of my divorce.”

OK, details of your divorce should be off the table. But the details of how your company determines what is fit to post on your website? Nope. That’s the main concern and you should be able to discuss it. That the Daily Mail published a lot of salacious garbage ought to be ignored on principle, but the accusations that weaken trust in your organization ought to be answered promptly.

Unfortunately, the rest of the Forbes article is still tainted with bullshit.

When I presented a set of subsequent clarifying questions to David, he provided responses to some and not to others. Of particular interest, when pressed about claims by the Daily Mail that at least one Snopes employee has actually run for political office and that this presents at the very least the appearance of potential bias in Snopes’ fact checks, David responded “It’s pretty much a given that anyone who has ever run for (or held) a political office did so under some form of party affiliation and said something critical about their opponent(s) and/or other politicians at some point. Does that mean anyone who has ever run for office is manifestly unsuited to be associated with a fact-checking endeavor, in any capacity?”

That is actually a fascinating response to come from a fact checking organization that prides itself on its claimed neutrality. Think about it this way – what if there was a fact checking organization whose fact checkers were all drawn from the ranks of Breitbart and Infowars? Most liberals would likely dismiss such an organization as partisan and biased. Similarly, an organization whose fact checkers were all drawn from Occupy Democrats and Huffington Post might be dismissed by conservatives as partisan and biased. In fact, when I asked several colleagues for their thoughts on this issue this morning, the unanimous response back was that people with strong self-declared political leanings on either side should not be a part of a fact checking organization and all had incorrectly assumed that Snopes would have felt the same way and had a blanket policy against placing partisan individuals as fact checkers.

Mikkelson’s answer to that is actually on point. I agree. The author’s reply is crap.

We aren’t talking about an organization drawing on a sole political viewpoint, like Breitbart or Infowars. The Daily Mail found one person with open Libertarian leanings, and at the same time, found that the operation was loose and diverse. Snopes is not a propaganda organ for one point of view.

And Jesus fuck, what is a “partisan individual”? Where are you going to find all these boring neutered drones to act as the fact-check department for a news organization? That a bunch of suits at Forbes don’t like people who think differently than they do to work as fact-checkers is meaningless. Don’t care, again.

I would say that someone who worked at Breitbart and Infowars is disqualified from working as a fact-checker because those organizations don’t do any fact-checking, and seem to lack all principled motivation to search for the truth. That isn’t necessarily true for a libertarian, a conservative, or a liberal. Judge them on the quality of their work and their ability to separate the personal from the objective, not whether they have brains of purest pablum.

My opinion: most of the accusations against Snopes are irrelevant. But some do raise concerns: this is an organization that ought to strive for transparency, and they aren’t. I also get the impression it’s very much a David Mikkelson operation, and there ought to be management practices that shield the organization from the whims of the founder.