Brain Teaser: An Impassioned Plea

But first: PRKR closed at $1.33 last night, up tenfold in 14 months. I’ve sold 10% (no taxes in an IRA) but plan to buy back on dips. Success in its May court case could loft the stock above $5. It could thus trade toward $2 as the trial approaches and more people decide to gamble on its outcome.

Second: This much-shared story from the New York Times — 77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election.

And now the brain teaser.

In a recent IPSOS poll, fully 83% of Americans — and 64% of Republicans — were good with President Biden’s “prohibiting workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

It was his most popular of the 14 first-week presidential actions polled.

(Just 27% of Republicans were okay with our rejoining the Paris Climate Accord.)

It’s amazing how far we’ve come on LGBT issues.

With that background . . .

Pennsylvania state rep Brian Sims gave “the most important speech of his career” last week.

“Non-discrimination came up for the first time in nearly eight years and I begged my colleagues to support it.”

Watch the speech and then try to guess the outcome.

What was the final vote?

(Hint: there are 203 members of the Pennsylvania House.)

Scroll down.

“In the end,” Sims reports, “every Democrat voted yes and every Republican voted no.”

The measure was defeated.

Fearful of a primary challenge from their right, elected Republicans often seem to be more extreme and unyielding than their constituents.

On a lot of topics — like insisting that climate change is a hoax and that Trump won by a landslide — they seem to mis-lead rather than lead.

Which leads me back to 77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election. Riveting.