Zona Norte..

 

"I'm so scared for my health," said a sex worker in Tijuana, "I don't know if the person I'm with has the disease or not."

Tijuana, Mexico's famed red-light district, called Zona Norte, sits a stone's throw from the US-Mexico border. Called Coahuila, the area's main strip, is normally teeming with a frenetic action bathed in neon light.

Women in short dresses and the highest of high heels stand along the sidewalks, beckoning groups of men to spend some time and money with them. Massive strip clubs, some with hotels attached, act as de facto brothels.

Many specifically cater to the thousands of Americans who cross the border from California each month, looking for a kind of fun that can't be found legally in the United States.

Called Zona Norte, and it sits a stone's throw from the US-Mexico border.  Just a thought.

Polling...

 

“The narrative from the Beltway is not accurate,” said Joe Bush, chairman of the Republican Party in Muskegon County, Mich., which Trump lost narrowly in 2016. “Here in the heartland, everybody is still very confident, more than ever.”

At the center of the disconnect between Trump loyalists’ assessment of the state of the race and the one based on public opinion polls is a distrust of polling itself. 

Republicans see an industry that maliciously oversamples Democrats or under-samples the white, non-college educated voters who are most likely to support Trump. They say it is hard to know who likely voters are this far from the election. And like many Democrats, they suspect Trump supporters disproportionately hang up on pollsters, under-counting his level of support.

Ted Lovdahl, chairman of the Republican Party in Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District, said he has friends who will tell pollsters “just exactly the opposite of what they feel.” “I don’t like some of their questions. It’s none of their business what I do.”

Recalling that polls four years ago failed to predict the outcome, Jack Brill, acting chairman of the local Republican Party in Sarasota County, Fla., said, “I used to be an avid poll watcher until 2016 … Guess what? I’m not watching polls.”

Instead, as they prepare for a post-lockdown summer of party picnics and parades, Republican Party organizers sense the beginnings of an economic recovery that, if sustained, is likely to power Trump to a second term.  

Gaffe..

 

 

Joe Biden is 77, four years older than Reagan was during the 1984 campaign. If Biden is elected, he’ll be older on the day he takes office than Reagan was on the day he left office. So yes, his mental fitness is a legitimate issue.

There is plenty of cause for concern. Biden recently announced “I think we can win back the House” and promised to ban the “AR-14.” He mistook Super Tuesday for “Super Thursday,” and forgot the words of the Declaration of Independence, saying “We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are created, by the, you know, you know the thing.” 

In South Carolina, he misstated what office he was running for, declaring “My name’s Joe Biden. I’m a Democratic candidate for the United States Senate.” On three occasions, Biden declared he was arrested in South Africa trying to visit Nelson Mandela in prison  an incident his campaign later admitted never happened.

He earlier described meeting a Navy captain in Afghanistan, but The Post reported that “almost every detail in the story appears to be incorrect.” He claimed to have worked with Chinese leader “Deng Xiaoping” on the Paris Climate Accord (Deng died in 1997)/.

He claimed during a debate that “150 million people have been killed [by guns] since 2007” (which would be nearly half the U.S. population). He said he met with Parkland victims while he was vice president even though the shooting took place after he left office. 

He has declared that Democrats should "choose truth over facts” and that “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” He pledged to use biofuels to power “steamships.” He repeatedly gets confused about what state he is in; called “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace “Chuck”; said his late son Beau “was the attorney general of the United States”; and confused former British prime minister Theresa May with the late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

Any one of these gaffes in isolation would be nothing more than that. But taken together they form a pattern – and raise questions about whether Biden has experienced a cognitive decline. Biden’s defenders say this is unfair, and some have even suggested raising it is ageism. No, it’s not. 

His socialist rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is 78 — almost a year older than Biden — yet no one is questioning his mental fitness. On Monday night, Sanders spent an hour at a Fox News town hall where he was challenged to defend his policies and answered in great detail and without any gaffes or senior moments. Could Biden do the same?

Loneliness...

 

Marriage has become a trophy.

In his majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there. 

It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other.” This notion that marriage is the best answer to the deep human desire for connection and belonging is incredibly seductive. When I think about getting married, I can feel its undertow. But research suggests that, whatever its benefits, marriage also comes with a cost.

As Chekhov put it, “If you’re afraid of loneliness, don’t marry.” He might have been on to something. In a review of two national surveys, the sociologists Natalia Sarkisian of Boston College and Naomi Gerstel of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst found that marriage actually weakens other social ties. 

Compared with those who stay single, married folks are less likely to visit or call parents and siblings and less inclined to offer them emotional support or pragmatic help with things such as chores and transportation. They are also less likely to hang out with friends and neighbors.

Lens...

 

Most of the popular advice books adopt a psychological lens. These books start with the premise that getting married is a daunting prospect. Forty-five percent of marriages end in divorce; 10 percent of couples separate but do not divorce. 

The psychologists want you to think analytically as well as romantically about whom to marry. Pay attention to traits.   

Marry someone who scores high in “agreeableness,”  has a high concern for social harmony, good at empathy, who is nice. You want to avoid people who score high in neuroticism  who are emotionally unstable or prone to anger.  

Don’t think negative traits will change over time, they are constant across a lifetime. Don’t focus on irrelevant factors. Don’t filter out or rationalize away negative information about a partner or relationship.

Stop...

 

Notmy...

 

This is how the story ended.

Blasio...

 

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is the worst mayor "in the history of this great country," Rep. Max Rose, D-N.Y., told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" Friday.

Rose, who represents Staten Island and parts of southern Brooklyn in Congress, took specific issue with the city's guidelines to reopen schools this fall amid the coronavirus pandemic.

"They have not put out a plan for opening the schools," Rose said. "They have put out a prayer, an outline at best."

Thong...

“[It] shall be unlawful for anybody to be in the nude on any public beach, beach access, public waters or any public property in view of the public,” one officer reads from a booklet.

“I’m not nude,” Panda replies in the video.

“You’re in a thong,” the other officer explains.

The Myrtle Beach Police Department told TMZ that they were simply responding to a complaint of two women “who were wearing thong bikinis and a see-through top that were dancing and soliciting videos on the beach.”

Eventually, Panda and her friends were released without charges. Panda’s 20-minute Facebook video of the ordeal has over 375,000 views.

“Glad to know we’re still policing women’s bodies in 2020,” another wrote.

De-Face...

Two women were arrested Saturday afternoon for smearing black paint across the “Black Lives Matter” mural outside Trump Tower, with a city cop injured after he slipped while grabbing one of the suspects, police said.

The chaotic scene — the third attack by vandals targeting the Midtown street art in a week — began around 3 p.m. when a car carrying four women and 10 cans of paint arrived at the Fifth Ave. site, according to witness/street artist Nina Khan and a photo of the vehicle.

“We are taking our country back NOW!” a statement posted on the Facebook page of their At The Well Ministries reads.

In the statement they claim to have been treated like “royalty” by cops after their arrest.

“The police expressed their HIGH APPRECIATION for what Bevelyn and Edmee stood up for today,” the statement says. “They expressed their concerns and fears for their city. They are in fear for the sake of NYC and voiced that they need MORE people like them to help and stand up for what is RIGHT!”

Is this is considered a hate crime?   Just a thought.