Bad News!

Out of the courts comes more bad news! Down in Florida, the courts have upheld a drag ban for now!

Federal appeals court upholds Florida law restricting drag performances
Florida officials celebrated the decision as a defense of children, while critics said parents — not the state — should decide which performances families attend.

The Advocate

By  Desiree Guerrero

Aug 04, 2026

 

 

 A federal appeals court has ruled to uphold a Florida law that restricts minors from attending certain “adult live performances,” including drag, according to a report by the Tallahassee Democrat.

On Tuesday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled in favor of the state in HM Florida-ORL, LLC v. Secretary of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

[...]

 

The lawsuit challenged Florida’s Protection of Children Act, which prohibits allowing minors to attend adult live performances, including drag shows, that have been deemed harmful to their well-being. While the statute does not specifically mention drag shows, proponents of the law focused heavily on whether or not the state should allow kids to attend drag performances after its passage in 2023.

Isn't it funny how when Republicans are crying "parents' rights" all the time, it seems like they don't include us! The Tallahassee Democrat writes,

The crux of the argument is whether the law violated the First Amendment by threatening the free speech rights of patrons and of venues who wish to host drag performances. Hamburger Mary’s further argued that the law was vague on what performances were prohibited.

Bingo! "...vague on what performances were prohibited." And who determines what is and isn't an adult performance? Will reading children's books in drag be considered "an adult performance"?

As I wrote this morning... "The devil is in the details."

PSA

It is election time once again! The buzzwords are flying in ads, you know exactly what I mean: “Common-Sense Solutions,” “Holding Corporations Accountable,” “Reining in the Utilities,” and “Fixing the Broken Tax System.” But what do they really mean?

Here are a few things to think about:

#1. When they say they are not taking any PAC money: PACs are broken down into two flavors. The first is a traditional PAC that gives directly to a candidate; these are the PACs the candidates talk about. But then there are Super PACs, which also run campaign ads but are not controlled by the candidate.

#2. When candidates say they are cutting electric rates: Ask them how. In all 50 states, candidates say they will cut electric rates, but the price is actually driven by the cost of energy. Here in Connecticut, the electric companies only convey electricity, while private, unregulated power plants generate it. So when you hear candidates saying they will cut the cost of electricity, ask them… how?

#3. When candidates say they are going to cut taxes: Taxes are like a seesaw. To keep it in balance, when you cut taxes, you also have to cut spending. So when you hear Connecticut candidates saying they will cut car taxes, they either have to cut spending... which begs the question, what are they going to cut?—or they have to raise property taxes.

As the saying goes, “The devil is in the details.” When candidates promise a pie in the sky, ask them how!

Punitive or Oversight

The Republicans got their hooks into Dr. Fauci and they smell blood! The question is why? For that, we have to go all the way back to President Reagan! Under Reagan, Dr. Fauci became director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in 1984. He remained in that position all the way up to President Biden."

But what really got the Republicans' dander up was the mask guidance and pandemic restrictions. Then he really ticked them off by shooting down the Republicans' pet theory that COVID-19 may have originated from a Chinese laboratory.

As research into the causes of COVID-19 and the government's medical response progressed, some of the early assumptions and recommendations changed as new information became available. Now Republicans are seeking to hold Dr. Fauci accountable, arguing that he may have given misleading testimony under oath.

So now we are caught up to date.

The Republicans have been combing through years of testimony looking for inconsistencies.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has testified before Congress numerous times. Why take the Fifth now?

PolitiFact

By Gracey Abernethy and Louis Jacobson,

Jul 29, 2026

Dr. Anthony Fauci sat for a contentious hearing with the Senate Homeland Security Committee about his key role in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic starting in 2020. But most of what Fauci said July 29, regardless of the question, was identical: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”

He used the phrase more than 100 times over the three-hour hearing. In a brief opening statement, Fauci said his decision to take the Fifth — the constitutional protection against self-incrimination — was driven by a concern that the panel’s chairman, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., would twist his answers into fodder for prosecuting him. 

In his opening statement, Paul reiterated his claim that on Fauci’s watch, the U.S. funded Chinese research that caused the pandemic and lied about it to Congress. (Fauci disputes this.)

“Frankly the American people deserve an apology,” Paul said.

How dare Dr. Fauci dismiss Senator Paul's pet theory!

At the hearing, Paul’s Republican colleagues spotlighted discrepancies between Fauci’s public comments and his diary entries, which Paul released in the days before the hearing. PolitFact has previously factchecked many Republican assertions about COVID-19, ivermectin and whether, as Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson falsely said, COVID-19 vaccines are gene therapy. 

In his opening remarks, Fauci said he had testified before Congress more than 200 times. But he said given Paul’s “obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’”

And there you have the gist.

Trump turned against Dr. Fauci, and the Republicans jumped on the bandwagon. This is not an oversight hearing, but a witch hunt designed to 'get something' on him.

---

Updated: @ 5:45PM 

It Is As Simple As This...

We run. We win.

When we run for office, we win. Sarah McBride won. Danica Roem won. Joanna Whaley won her primary.

We've also won every ballot measure about our rights.

It's Republicans who try to demonize us. Voters see the candidate... not just the fact that they're trans.

What Is Socialism?

[Essay]

Is the new Republican boogeyman... Have you noticed that the Republican are labeling all the Democrat's socialist! So lets look at definitions:

Communism

noun

a

: a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism

Note: This doctrine was the official ideology of the Soviet Union.

b

: a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production.

Socialism

noun

1

: any of various egalitarian economic and political theories or movements advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

---

So what do we have that is called socialist?

Well, let's start with our oldest socialistic programs:

Social Security

Medicare/Medicaid

Unemployment insurance

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)

Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)

Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program

National School Lunch Program

And agencies like:

OSHA

EPA

SEC

The Department of Education

You might notice something about those programs: they are all the programs that the Republicans have targeted or cut in order to pay for their tax cuts for their billionaire friends.

Social Security is supposedly going bankrupt, which is exactly what the Republicans want, as conservatives were against it from day one! There are simple steps that can be taken, but Republicans hate them because they tax their billionaire friends. The first step is to take the $184,500 wage cap off, and anyone who has income above a certain level... say, over a million dollars, would not be eligible to collect Social Security.

Think of Robinhood, because that is how the Republicans think of it: robbing from the rich to pay the

peons. And that, my friends, is why they are trying to use "socialist" as an epithet against everyone. The peasants loved Robinhood; the ruling class thought him a thief! Hmm, can you think of any modern parallels?

Back in the days of the Robber Barons, Rockefeller, Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and Mellon were the ones in power, just like Thiel, Musk, Zuckerberg, Page, and Brin are today. And they are scared! They know history, they can see their empires facing the threat of being broken up, and they are dumping more money into elections than ever before. Musk bragged that he is personally dumping $200,000,000 into the election—that is how scared he is!

We peons need to come out in force this November; we need a Blue wave!

[/Essay]

Who Believes Them?

You know coming out of the White House is some creative thinking... like how can we spin the millions dropping out of healthcare?

Kennedy, Oz Contend Fraud Crackdown, Not Skyrocketing Prices, Led Millions To Leave Obamacare

CT News Juckie

by Julie Appleby, KFF Health News

August 4, 2026

The Trump administration credits its fraud control efforts for the disappearance of millions of people from Obamacare rolls rather than a sharp rise in premiums — a claim disputed by policy experts that glosses over the reality that many more Americans now find themselves without health insurance.

Enrollment in Affordable Care Act plans fell by nearly 3 million this year to about 19.2 million, following steep premium increases by insurers and the Republican-led Congress’ unwillingness to extend more generous premium subsidies. On average, ACA customers pay $178 a month in premium payments this year, a 58% increase from 2025, according to KFF, while their deductibles — the amount consumers must pay annually before insurers pick up their share — have climbed 37% to nearly $3,800 a year.

[...]

But a Department of Health and Human Services report released in June, written mostly by President Donald Trump’s political appointees and allies, asserts that 5.6 million people were fraudulently enrolled in ACA plans in 2025, and that the Trump administration removed 2.9 million of them — the same number as the 2026 drop in enrollment.

Trump & Company think we are all marks and don't remember what they did.

But health policy experts say that the administration is overstating the extent of ACA fraud and that the HHS report relies on debatable assumptions, such as that all sign-ups under the year-round enrollment program for low-income people were potentially fraudulent. ACA enrollment fell off a cliff because of escalating prices for insurance plans, policy analysts say, which the administration’s done nothing to stem.

“The top-level claim” that all the decline in enrollment since 2025 is because of improper or fraudulent enrollees leaving the market “is not remotely credible,” said Matthew Fiedler, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “We know that lots of people have seen higher premiums, and there’s really good evidence that when premiums go up, people drop coverage.”

That we are nothing but dumb rubes, ready to have our pockets picked.

online polls

It Doesn’t Make Sense

[Editorial]

I was reading a rant on a right-wing media outlet. In the article, the guy was saying that gays are the result of a wimpy father, and get this... we're the result of a domineering mother. Oh, he went off on a tirade that it was all the fault of women getting the vote! And all because women got their own credit cards... and started driving... and...

Then he laid into the guys—the wimpy guys. They needed to man up! Be macho men and set a good example for their sons!

But I thought, if we're the result of our parents, then why do they hate us?

[/Editorial]

MedEvac Crashes

As they flew right into the side of a mountain. You would think the helicopter GPS would have avoided the mountain, except for one little fact... the military was testing a GPS jammer at the same time!

Everyone knew of the jamming, and there was a "Notice to Airmen" about it.

Military jamming disrupted a medical plane’s GPS system before it crashed last month in New Mexico

AP News

By  JOSH FUNK

June 18, 2026

The GPS system on a small medical plane that crashed into a mountainside last month in New Mexico malfunctioned because the military was jamming that signal throughout the area at the time although pilots had been warned to expect that, according to federal investigators.

Four people died in the pre-dawn crash on May 14 that sparked a wildfire that burned for weeks in the rugged Capitan Mountains around Ruidoso where the plane was trying to land that night.

The National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report on the crash Wednesday that described the GPS problems the pilots encountered, but investigators won’t identify the cause of the crash until they finish their final report sometime next year.

Experts say the pilots should have been able to land safely by relying on ground-based navigation systems or flying visually, but relying on GPS is popular because it is so precise.

It sounds like the pilots had a problem flying under visual flight rules. There were no street lights, no moon, just dark mountain peaks

The NTSB said that after the pilots of the plane operated by Trans Aero MedEvac started having problems, the air traffic controller gave them headings to follow into the airport so they could get lined up for an approach relying on the airport’s instrument landing system. Three other planes in the area also reported GPS problems around the same time.

[...]

At one point, the controller even contacted the military and got it to shut down the jammers. But then shortly before the crash, the pilots told controllers they had the airport in sight and planned to land visually, so controllers gave the military the OK to resume jamming.

But the air traffic controllers were stressed by the extra workload the jamming caused. Wired.com  reported that,

Clark and Kawsara took off at eight minutes to midnight and initially headed due west, toward Ruidoso. The weather was clear, but because the night was nearly moonless and the area is rural, the only visual references available were the lights of scattered settlements. “It’s a black hole out there,” says Juan Browne, an airline pilot who hosts a crash-investigation podcast.

Unable to orient themselves without visual cues, the pilots called up Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center—Albuquerque Center, for short—and requested permission to fly instruments-only to Ruidoso. The request was approved.

Working weekends and extra hours took their toll on the air controllers.

In retrospect, tragedy might have been avoided if Albuquerque air traffic control had been able to pay closer attention to the young pilots in the King Air. But tonight they were busy. Three other aircraft also reported that they’d lost their GPS and needed help. One was struggling to get a bearing on a radio beacon.

It seems to have been a whole series of errors that led to the crash in the middle of nowhere, with a new moon, in mountainous terrain, and no GPS! Also, the Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center was understaffed in May of 2025, so the Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center was...

• Under staffing pressure (less spare capacity)
• Unusual operational conditions (such as GPS interference testing)
• An unscheduled medical flight with time pressure and a complex mission
• Aircraft flying where there were no street lights, no moon, just dark mountain peaks
• A system that has less margin for recovery.

As we used to call it... "A cluster fuck!"