February 5
February 5. Facebook friends, events of the past week have forced The Jourmudgeon to abandon his customary cynicism and applaud the shared sense of national mission embraced by millions of Americans who agreed to set aside their demographic, geographic and ideological differences to try to determine what the people who designed our current system for electing a president were smoking. To wit:
1. Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton each claimed a sweeping victory in the Iowa caucuses, on the strength of Cruz winning less than 30 percent of Republican caucus goers and Clinton finishing in a near-dead heat with Bernie Sanders. Turnout was a whopping 16 percent of registered voters. In other words, Cruz attracted the support of a convincing 2.3 percent of Iowa’s eligible voters; Clinton snared almost 4 percent of them. Critics of the presidential primary system, citing the millions of unregulated dollars spent on Iowa alone and the incessant media attention it attracted for months, were silenced by the results: So far, Cruz has attracted an impressive two one-hundredths of 1 percent of eligible voters nationwide, with Clinton claiming twice that – a staggering four one-hundredths of 1 percent. In fact, none of the top five finishers in Iowa attracted less than two one-hundredths of 1 percent of eligible national voters. Clearly, any one of them has earned the right to be anointed president of the United States. Other naysayers who claimed that Iowa voters are unrepresentative of the rest of the country were also stilled by the data. While up to 99 percent of Iowa caucus goers are white, the nationwide figure of 63 percent is almost exactly the same. Similarly, four in 10 Iowa Republican caucus goers described themselves as “very conservative,” a figure that is nearly matched by the 10 percent of all Americans who say they are. And 64 percent of Iowa Republicans identified themselves as Evangelical Christians, almost identical to the 10 percent of the population nationwide who are. So, with the wind at their sails from limitless campaign contributions, 24/7 news coverage and incontrovertibly clear mandates, the candidate juggernauts headed to another just-like-the-rest-of-us state, New Hampshire, where in Tuesday’s primary they will split the vote of another 9 one-hundredths of 1 percent of eligible American voters. No wonder the pundits are so excited. Democracy in action is a beautiful thing.
2. In health news, the Zika virus began appearing in the United States. Spread by mosquitoes and sex, the virus was thought by public health experts to be little threat to the U.S. because sex with a mosquito is really, really hard for most people. But then a guy in Texas turned up with it. Officials from the Centers for Disease Control say he had been dating a mosquito for several months without realizing it “because she lied to him.” The virus, when contracted by pregnant women, is known to cause a birth defect that leaves infants with abnormally small heads. In New Hampshire, meanwhile, both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump hotly denied that their mothers had had Zika while pregnant. “Look at the evidence,” Trump snarled at reporters. “Nobody in the world has a head bigger than mine.” “I think we should carpet bomb my mother, just in case” Cruz said.
3. Despite Hillary Clinton’s vote totals in Iowa, her campaign fretted about new revelations last week that classified data had moved over her personal email server while she was Secretary of State. Clinton, whose poll numbers on trustworthiness have gone from marginal to classified, countered that none of the data in question were top secret when they first showed up in her server, and that by classifying them retroactively her opponents were cooking the books. “Trust me,” Clinton told New Hampshire voters, “I vetted all of those messages with Julian Assange. He assured me that he’d already shared them with everybody in the world, so they must be all right.” Late in the week, it was revealed that Colin Powell, Secretary of State under George W. Bush, also used an unsecured server for emails that were later deemed classified. Powell reacted angrily to the finding, but his remarks were quickly ruled “top secret” and were suppressed.
4. In North Carolina, state legislators have moved decisively to respond to revelations about animal cruelty and illegal practices in the poultry and swine industries, and abuses in nursing homes, day care centers and veterans’ facilities: They passed a law to punish just about anyone who exposes those transgressions. The law, which took effect Jan. 1, allows employers to sue workers or others who document abuses with undercover videos. The whistle blowers can also be fined up to $5,000 a day. The new law was seen as so egregious by nearly everybody that even Gov. Pat McCrory, big business’ lapdog, couldn’t swallow it. He vetoed the measure, but the General Assembly called McCrory a chicken, went whole hog, and overrode his veto.
5. In sports, fresh from victory in pro football’s Nationalist Conference playoffs, Isaac Newton prepared to lead the Carolina Panters into The Extremely Large Indeed and Don’t Give Us Any Crap About That Weeny World Cup Being Bigger Bowl. Newton first rocketed to international celebrity for his groundbreaking experiments with gravity while he was still a student at the University of Florida. The experiments involved throwing a stolen laptop out a second-story window. Denver, winner of the American by God Conference playoff, will attempt to defy Newton’s laws of physics, guided by their quarterback, 147-year-old Peyton Place. Fearing Newton’s skill and intellectual prowess, Denver team officials have confiscated all their players’ laptops.
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