So much for eliminating traditional gender roles

In today's push for equality of the sexes we often hear that boys and girls act they way they do because society treats them differently. Girls play with dolls while boys play with cars because we give dolls to girls and cars to boys.

But it appears there's a complication to this narrative. With the recent emphasis on transgender rights and allowing children to declare their own gender, some appear to be pushing kids toward the gender the act out.

So instead of boys and girls being able to choose the activities they like, with boys able to play with dolls or girls with cars, still remaining boys and girls, their gender identity is being selected based on how they act. So a girl who would have been called a tomboy in the past is now assumed to be a transgender boy.

So a few years ago the effort was to stop pushing girls away from traditionally male occupations (like science and engineering). Now it appears that girls who are interested in traditionally male occupations are at risk of being considered transgender boys instead.

Strange bedfellows

The reactions to President Trump's decision to bomb Syria after the apparent poison gas attack have been interesting. While many have applauded his action, punishing the Syrian regime for crossing President Obama's "red line" (which Mr. Obama wasn't willing to do), more interesting is those denouncing the attack. They appear to be two distinct groups:

1. The hard left is complaining about the attack. This is to be expected. Anything Donald Trump does will have this group complaining.
2. The "alt-right". Yup, a number of populist, right wing leaders (Nigel Farrage of the Britain's UKIP party, Marie Le Pen in France, and some US bloggers) are speaking out against the attack, some saying they believe the Russian version of events (that it was a rebel chemical weapons dump that the Syrian attack hit). This is more interesting. Thirty years ago it was the Communist Party in various nations which followed Moscow's line without question. Today it's the hard right which is doing it, though it appears they are just enamored with Vladimir Putin, not under his orders.

Misogyny, misandry, and Clinton's election loss.

Hillary Clinton continues to talk about why she lost the election. In a recent Washington Post story she suggests misogyny may have played a role. And she's correct. There are bound to have been people who didn't vote for Mrs. Clinton because she's a woman.

Of course, on the other hand there were people who said they were voting FOR Mrs. Clinton specifically because she's a woman.

Not clear is whether gender helped or hurt Mrs. Clinton overall.

Trump's "short attention span"

I just read an interesting article about comments by the Afghan ambassador to the United States. The ambassador says he was told to "keep conversations short" and that President Trump "does not have a long attention span." Mr. Trump then proceeded to engage in relatively long, in depth conversations.

One has to wonder who told the ambassador about the short attention span. I can remember hearing comments of this sort, but they tended to be from Trump opponents who need Donald Trump to be stupid to fit their preconceived notions.

So I have to wonder -- are Trump staffers saying he has a short attention span or are these comments from outsiders without first hand knowledge of the president?

Always a negative spin

It's struck me for over a year how the press uniformly places a negative spin on any story about Donald Trump. We see another example in the New York Times story about President Trump asking (almost) all US Attorneys to resign.

The Times can't express outrage over the replacement of all US Attorneys. After all, President Clinton did the same thing soon after he took office and other presidents have acted similarly. But we need to provide a negative spin to anything done by President Trump, so the story emphasizes the sudden, unexpected nature of the move. It emphasizes that the former attorneys are being moved out more quickly than happened in the past, and outlines actions by conservatives and the conservative press to make this look like President Trump is bowing to pressure from the extreme right.

I don't know what's really going on in the Trump White House. Even through the filter of a biased media it's apparent that the new administration's actions have been a bit confused. Yet this is true of any new administration. Look at the Obama administration's "reset" with Russia where they couldn't even get the alphabet right on the button.

So I continue to watch the actions of the new administration and the news media which reports them. But, along with much of the country, I've learned to take the media reports with a healthy grain of salt, confident that whatever President Trump did this time it's not as bad as the media reports.

"Decaying infrastructure" -- who decides?

Again there is a news story about America's decaying infrastructure, this time saying instead of Donald Trump's $1 trillion we need to invest $4.6 trillion over 8 years.

This sounds like the country is falling apart around us. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gives the nation's infrastructure a grade of D+, not even a passing grade. Yet we seem to survive and some even think we prosper with this abject failure around us.

Before everybody panics, consider the source of these estimates. The D+ grade and $4.6 trillion estimate come from the civil engineering professional group. What do civil engineers do? They design, build, and repair infrastructure. What happens when infrastructure spending increases? More jobs for civil engineers!

We've been hearing about decaying infrastructure in the United States for years and years. The report cards all seem to give a grade of D and tell us how much more money we need to spend. However, while there is certainly infrastructure in need of repair in the United States, relying on a group which has a financial interest in fixing infrastructure seems the wrong way to judge.

A mixed message from Democrats

I finally got around to listening to President Trump's speech to congress along with the Democratic response. The Democratic response struck me for suggesting the parties work together while retaining the standard partisan stereotypes.

The Democratic Party response was given by Steve Beshear, former governor of Kentucky. He starts by talking about how he was governor during the Great Recession and he "put people first and politics second."

Having said this, does Mr. Beshear practice what he preaches in the Democratic response? Of course not.

After criticizing some of President Trump's first actions on taking office (no problem here, he disagrees politically), Mr. Beshear moves on to health care. He criticizes Republican alternatives to Obamacare, which is fair, but then goes back to standard, no-cooperation partisan politics attacking Republicans as insensitive monsters:

"Behind these ideas is the belief that folks at the lower end of the economic ladder just don't deserve health care."

Sorry Mr. Beshear, I don't think you'll find any Republican saying poor people should not have health care. I've only heard Democrats say that about Republicans (the Republican health care plan is this: "Die quickly." -- former Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida).

So partisanship continues.