Here We Go Again!

[Editorial;

Bathrooms, bathrooms, bathrooms! Back in the Jim Crow era, it was bathrooms… “Oh, my little Janie will be in a bathroom with a Black lady!” That was the cry all the way up to the 1960s when Civil Rights legislation started to pass (now the Supreme Court is dismantling a chunk at a time, but more on that in another blog post), and now we are the victims of the same injustice.

In Kansas, the guys are showing the “absurdity” and bigotry of the laws. In Kansas, the guys have come out in our defense!

“Bearded, burly” trans men enter women’s facilities to show “absurdity” of bathroom bans

They’re part of a protest group illustrating the absurdity of Kansas’ anti-trans bathroom ban.

LGBTQ Nation

Daniel Villarreal (he/him)

August 11, 2026

The manager of the Long Branch Lagoon Water Park in Dodge City, Kansas reportedly screamed and rushed children out of the women’s restroom and changing area on August 8 after three self-described “bearded, burly” transgender men wearing yellow “Compliance Crew” t-shirts followed state law and used the municipal facilities matching the sex listed on their birth certificates, trans journalist S. Baum reported.

The men neither removed their clothes nor made any crass comments while in the facility, but they had to provide police “uncomfortable descriptions” about their bodies and genitals in order to avoid arrest. The three are part of an activist group that has been entering girls’ and women’s facilities elsewhere in the state (as required by law) to protest the absurdity of Kansas’ transphobic bathroom ban. The police in this incident had neither heard of the ban’s passage last February nor their expectation to enforce it.

This is how crazy this all is… “neither heard of the ban’s passage last February nor their expectation to enforce it.” Us using bathrooms never had been a problem until they created it.

We need you guys! We need you to keep doing this, get arrested, and sue the pants off of them for false arrest. An opinion article in The New York Times wrote…

“Additionally, please note that the Legislature did not include a grace period for updating credentials,” the letter said. “This means that once the law is officially enacted, your current credential will be invalid immediately.” The law was going into effect the next day.

Kirchstein, who is 41, had transitioned in 2023. She had changed her legal name and her gender marker in the Social Security system, on her passport card and on her Kansas driver’s license. It required jumping through a lot of bureaucratic hoops — the name change alone required a court hearing and proof that Kirchstein had notified her bank, credit card company, landlord and others — but it was worth it, to make it official.

[…]

July: “It was soft fascism.” It was. Fascism usually begins with redefining the nation by excluding certain groups, which are branded threats to national health and unity. The Trump administration has fixated on two groups most of all — immigrants and trans people — in just this way, smearing us (I am a member of both groups) as predatory, sick, at once subhuman and terrifyingly powerful. Even before Donald Trump was elected for the second time, more than half the states had considered or passed legislation limiting the rights of trans people. The process has intensified in the last year and a half, and the law enacted in Kansas in February is one of the most restrictive pieces of anti-trans legislation passed in any state so far.

And they never even thought of trans men… because their transphobia is rooted entirely in misogyny and an obsession with policing women. When they write these laws, they are hyper-focused on controlling women's bodies, meaning trans men completely break their narrow mental models. Their disdain is so great they don't even think of the guys!

But trying to define Mother Nature is impossible.

These laws are not really about us or public safety; instead, they enforce rigid gender norms. Even if they start testing everyone’s DNA, it still will not show a person's true biological sex. For example, the SRY gene is a key part of male sex development. Without it, the developing embryo typically follows a default female developmental path, even though the DNA still shows XY.

Then we have the “gender police” going after women who don’t look like women! I have written about this many times: 2018's Caught Up In Frenzy, 2015's The Bathroom Police…, and back in 2006's Crossing the Gender Norms!

This is nothing more than conservatives trying to enforce their “1950s” anti-LGBTQ+ views upon us. but the modern legislative push goes far beyond simple 1950s conformity—it’s actively authoritarian.

[/Editorial]

Setting Us Up As Patsy

I retired in 2007, after taking advantage of my company's favorable IRAs and 401(k)s and building up a sizeable nest egg. The company had done away with its traditional retirement plan and moved entirely to IRAs and 401(k)s. At the time, the conventional wisdom was to put your retirement savings into interest-bearing investments. So I did, and I went for what I thought was the very best: AAA-rated, AIG-guaranteed Lehman Brothers bonds. The gold standard.

Then came 2008. In one week, I lost two-thirds of my life's savings. Now guess what? Trump wants to make it even riskier!

Wall Street Wants to Change the Rules for Your 401(k). It Could Put Your Retirement at Risk.

Financial firms want a bigger piece of the $10 trillion in America’s 401(k) plans, and the Trump administration is planning a regulatory rollback to encourage  less-regulated — and often riskier — investments.

ProPublica

by Paul Kiel

July 8, 2026

Most Americans don’t look to their 401(k) plans for excitement or experimentation, instead relying on the promise that steady saving and sober planning will guarantee security in their golden years. But the Trump administration wants to transform the well-worn patterns of retirement investing. 

To do so, it is moving to weaken the main protection workers have over their retirement money. The man in charge of the regulatory rollback is an industry insider whose former clients are among the large companies likely to benefit from his plan.

Since taking office last year, President Donald Trump has loudly called for plans to include less-regulated — and often risky — investments like private equity and cryptocurrency. To achieve that goal, the administration is softening one of the strongest legal protections American workers have: the right to hold an employer accountable when retirement savings are mishandled. The change is designed to give employers cover if their workers’ 401(k)s are deflated by expensive, opaque or unproven investments.

“What they have done is lower the standard for everything,” said Ali Khawar, a former senior official at the Department of Labor, which is charged with enforcing the federal law that governs retirement savings.

Of course he wants to do it! The billionaires make money whether the markets go up or down! You pay a commission on the trades.

But that's not all. Trump is rigging it so you are buying “a pig in a poke!” You see, at the same time they want to make this change, the SEC is changing its reporting requirements. The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance writes,

>    What could change? Meaningful relief is on the table. The Proposed Amendments would increase two important thresholds: first, the overall threshold for the requirement to file Form PF would increase from $150 million to $1 billion in private fund assets under management, and, second, the threshold for filing as a “large hedge fund adviser” would increase from $1.5 billion to $10 billion in hedge fund assets under management. The Proposed Amendments would also, among other things, eliminate quarterly event reporting obligations for private equity fund advisers and streamline a number of other reporting requirements applicable to other filers.

[...]

>   Adviser-led Secondary Transactions, Continuation Vehicles, and Other Liquidity Solutions: With respect to adviser-led secondary transactions, the Release indicates that the SEC in particular recognizes the increasing use and growing importance of continuation vehicles and other liquidity vehicles in the market, noting specifically that these vehicles “maximiz[e] the value of a high performing asset or provid[e] existing investors liquidity while attracting new investors.” This development is critical for private equity sponsors, not just under Form PF but also because it signals a broader acceptance by the SEC that these structures are ordinary-course portfolio management tools and not necessarily indicators of market stress. The proposed changes suggest a more practical regulatory view of these structures, contrary to the approach taken by the prior SEC, which subjected them to enhanced regulatory attention under both Form PF and the now-vacated Private Fund Adviser Rules.

What this boils down to is less reporting. Instead of quarterly reporting, it will no longer be required in some circumstances. And if the funds own any other funds, they used to have to report them, but not anymore. ProPublica goes on to write;

Tim Hauser, a 34-year-veteran of EBSA who was the highest-ranking career staffer there before retiring last year, said such ideas undermine the heart of ERISA. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, EBSA was “dedicated to protecting plan participants,” he said, but that has changed under Aronowitz. The ability of courts and regulators to hold employers accountable for using bad judgment when choosing 401(k) investments is “fundamental to this whole system,” Hauser said. “They are proposing to deprioritize it at the same time that they are encouraging plans to invest in more complicated, opaque investments. It’s infuriating.”

The shift at EBSA has also been evident in court. Over the last year, the Labor Department has filed amicus briefs — friend-of-the-court filings that lay out legal arguments for judges — in several class-action lawsuits on the side of the defendant company. In the past, the Labor Department’s briefs had generally sided with the employees. These amicus briefs can be influential. Recently, the agency interceded on Home Depot’s behalf in a case pending before the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs then dropped it.

The New Times wrote;

Pressed by his Wall Street supporters, President Trump is moving to liberalize the types of investments Americans can make with their individual retirement accounts. Instead of betting their retirement savings on plain vanilla stocks and bonds, account holders would be allowed to move their funds into sexy sectors like private equity, private credit and cryptocurrency — no matter their complexity, risk and illiquidity.

Supporters of the switch make the case that individuals should have the same access to private assets with potentially higher returns as institutions and the wealthy. But this argument rests on the false premise that most Americans are equipped to evaluate these complex, opaque investments. They are not. And expanding access to them risks doing more harm than good.

What does it mean to us? It means that the billionaires are going to make even more money from us peons. They are playing us for shill, patsy, and rubes and stacking the deck against us.

Soft On Crime!

That is the conservative mantra… the left is too soft on crime! How many times have you heard that? That states like Connecticut are pansies, that we are too soft on crime.

First, I looked at the recidivism rates for the states. Which states have prisoners returning to the justice system? It turns out you can’t figure out that simple question. Some states record something as minor as getting a speeding ticket as a return to the justice system, while other states look at additional felonies. So, it wasn’t comparing apples to apples. That doesn't mean recidivism numbers are useless. It means we need to understand exactly what each state is measuring before declaring a winner.

Next, I looked at the crime rate, and there the differences stood out!

State	Regional/Political Grouping	Violent Crime Rate (per 100k)	Homicide Rate Profile
Connecticut	Northern / Liberal	~181.6	One of the lowest in the nation.
Massachusetts	Northern / Liberal	~322.0	Regularly ranks in the top 10 safest states.
Vermont	Northern / Progressive	~222.0	Frequently named the #1 safest overall state.
Florida	Southern / Conservative	~380.0	Sits right around the national average.
Texas	Southern / Conservative	~430.0	Higher than the national average.
Mississippi	Southern / Conservative	~245.0	Features one of the country's highest murder rates.
Louisiana	Southern / Conservative	~620.0	Consistently holds the highest state murder rate.

Whoa. That is an amazing difference.

This morning’s CBS Sunday Morning had a segment that showed the harm that “lock ’em up and throw away the key” can do to people.

One woman accidentally ate an edible at a party where pot is legal. She went home to Idaho, where they test every baby for illegal drug use. BINGO!

How THC tests have landed more than a thousand new mothers onto child abuse registries

CBS News

By Erin Moriarty

August 9, 2026

Giving birth to her fourth child in January of 2021 was life-changing, says Nicole Hamann, but not in the way she ever imagined. While still at the hospital, Hamann was informed that both she and her newborn tested positive for a trace amount of THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. [A urine test is given to mothers, which is followed up by testing the umbilical cord.] "I felt like, all of the sudden, I was a criminal," Hamann said.

Hamann lives in Idaho, where marijuana is illegal. But a month before giving birth, Hamann, who has no criminal record, says she accidentally ate a pot-laced brownie at a relative's home in Oregon, where marijuana is legal. She says no one was interested in hearing her explanation of why she had THC in her system.

Child and Family Services began an investigation immediately, because in Idaho (and a number of other states), a single positive test result of THC in a newborn is considered presumptive evidence of child abuse.

[…]

Although social workers found no evidence of drug use, Hamann's name was still placed on the agency's child protection central registry – a list of child abusers. That means she can't work in hospitals or daycare centers. Even volunteering at her children's school is not allowed.

And Hamann's name remains on that list for a period of ten years. "It hurts … it hurts," she said. "It's heavy. It feels like somebody placed a big boulder on my shoulder and I have to carry it around for 10 years."

Hamann is not alone. At least a thousand new mothers in Idaho have been placed on that same registry, many for using marijuana products to relieve pain and severe nausea.

The harm that their get-tough policy is causing people is excessive! Yeah, pregnant women shouldn’t… But should they be sentenced to 10 years? Period. No courts, no hearings to explain. Just pot in your baby’s blood… guilty.

We are tough on drugs! But what does it do to the people?

Like Nicole Hamann, McGrath and her fiancé were investigated, and then cleared, by social workers. But McGrath says having her name on the child abuse registry has had devastating consequences. "My career as a healthcare worker is not just at risk; it's completely thrown away," she said.

What would happen here in Connecticut for a situation like this? Well, for one thing, you wouldn’t be reading about it here. Why? Because this type of drug use would never have automatically elevated the situation to the level of law enforcement. Yes, they do refer cases to the police, but not at this level! So, no criminal records!

Yeah, you can look at the numbers from above… but the numbers do not reflect the human costs!

---

I have one word for you... strawberries!

You know what is back in the news... the Reflecting Pool! Yes, Donny had a hissy fit over the case being dropped. So little Donny dragged the Washington, D.C. U.S. Attorney to the carpet... how dare she let that evil criminal get off!

Jeanine Pirro calls secretive grand jury in unusual move after Reflecting Pool debacle put her in Trump’s crosshairs: report

After repeatedly losing Trump-priority cases in DC, the DOJ may have discovered a workaround through Pirro’s office

The Independent

Alex Woodward

13 August 2026

Under-fire acting U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has taken a highly unusual next step after being sternly and publicly rebuked by President Donald Trump for dropping the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool case against a former Olympic rower, citing a lack of evidence.

The former district attorney, judge and Fox News personality — who now answers to Trump’s ex-criminal defense attorney Todd Blanche after his confirmation as U.S. Attorney General this week — is leading a special grand jury that could be used to investigate the president’s political enemies, according to The Washington Post.

Such a secretive special grand jury could be used to draft damaging reports about Trump’s critics, including current and former Democratic officials. The subject and scope of the special grand jury’s inquiry is unclear. The Independent has requested comment from Pirro’s office and the Justice Department.

Do you remember Captain Queeg in the movie "The Caine Mutiny" and Captain Queeg's obsession over strawberries... do you remember?

Do it remind you of anyone now?

Pirro brought box of evidence to show Trump what caused Reflecting Pool damage

By Sarah N. Lynch, Jennifer Jacobs

August 4, 2026 /

CBS News

The top federal prosecutor in the nation's capital carted a box full of evidence to the White House on Monday, in a bid to prove to President Trump that the damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by shoddy construction and not by vandals, sources familiar with the matter told CBS News on Tuesday.

U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro, a staunch ally of the president, made the case in a sometimes heated private meeting in the Oval Office Monday, hours after Mr. Trump had publicly rebuked her for dropping criminal charges against Olympic canoeist David Hearn. 

She was later photographed leaving the White House carting a large white box and other bags, which sources said contained all of the evidence collected from the Interior Department that exculpated Hearn and several others from criminal vandalism.

Think of a can of strawberries!

Mr. Trump earlier in the day had accused Pirro of folding "like an umbrella," after her office on Friday filed a motion dismissing the felony case against Hearn. 

Even with all this drama... remember in court the U.S. Attorney said it was poor workmanship, not vandals, that caused the damage, and that cannot be unsaid.

Loser! Loser

Everything Trump touches turn to… well dust!

And now said us, the U.S.

Live updates: Trump pivots back to sanctions for Iran as other strategies to end his war fizzle

Follow the latest news on President Donald Trump and his administration

AP News

By  BRIDGET BROWN, MICHAEL WARREN and CURTIS YEE

August 11, 2026

President Donald Trump on Monday said that since Iran is seeking compensation as part of any peace talks, he now intends to demand the same for the U.S. side. It’s part of a larger pivot this weekend by Trump to argue that Iran is now on the cusp of financially collapsing, even though it has already endured decades of financial sanctions, which are often a longer-term strategy rather than an immediate tool of warfare that can halt a conflict

[…]

Trump administration says more oil is flowing through Strait of Hormuz

By JOSHUA BOAK

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on social media that nearly 9 million barrels of oil a day are getting shipped through the Strait of Hormuz — as the administration is suggesting that the supply pressures tied to the Iran war are easing.

Wright said that along with additional oil flowing through pipelines total oil flows from the region are averaging roughly 15 million barrels a day.

U.S. oil futures prices remain above the pre-war levels, with a barrel trading on Tuesday afternoon at $83. The Trump administration has tapped the strategic petroleum reserve to steady the market and that reserve last week fell below 300 million barrels, down by more than 100 million barrels since the start of 2026.

Wright is setting expectations that oil will keep going through the strait.

Hey what is he smoking...I’ll have some of that. Iran fired on a ship a couple of days ago!

---

Unringing the bell!

Trump is having a bad day and is making another loser move... first a study by the Center for American Progress (CAP) that the National Guard has not made an impact on violent crime in D.C. and that it has cost the taxpayers over $1.6 billion!

And now this...

Jeanine Pirro just made a ‘rare move’ amid Trump fury: ‘This could be very interesting’

Mass Live

Aug. 12, 2026

By Rachel Cohen | NJ.com

In a “rare move,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro convened a special grand jury in Washington amid frustrations from President Donald Trump, according to a new report.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Pirro summoned a legal body that could allow federal prosecutors to investigate major and controversial cases, per government officials.

Trump claimed Sunday that a defendant was caught by a National Park Service employee, who he dubbed a “highly credible witness,” vandalizing the pool’s coating by “‘violently’ ripping and tugging” at it.

“There was substantial other damage to the Reflecting Pool, also but, unfortunately, there is no video or proof, other than the damage, itself,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

U.S. Atty. Pirro is now caught between a rock and a hard place; she cannot go and unspeak her words! She is walking a tightrope between perjuring herself...

Trump’s anger with Pirro first surfaced earlier this month, as the president bluntly wrote online: “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what she was thinking?”

He has continued to put pressure on the top federal prosecutor to revisit the case.

“Now that people are able to see it up close, they are reporting pure VANDALISM at The Reflecting Pool,” Trump said online on Friday, adding that it was a “hastily made decision” by Pirro.

He has had security cameras installed around the Reflecting Pool... this is reminding me of Captain Queeg and the strawberries. 

Bigotry?

The U.S. Department of Education held a contest for the Presidential 1776 Award for civics, and the three winners would meet Trump. But there was one small problem... some of them... God forbid... were... immigrants!

A tense wait for answers after Milford teen's mystery exit from national contest: Dan Haar

CT Insider

By Dan Haar, Columnist

Aug 11, 2026

It almost didn't happen at all for 15-year-old Aangad Singh, a rising junior honors student at Foran High School in Milford. 

Aangad made it to the regional semifinals of the Presidential 1776 Award for civics in Boston, then became one of 20 top finishers from across the United States invited to the nation's capital, then won a spot in the Elite Eight on stage June 9. 

Then, the dispute: Did Aangad answer enough questions correctly to land in the top three finishers, with a trip to the Oval Office to meet President Donald Trump and tens of thousands of dollars, as much as $150,000 in prize money? He and his family say yes. Many people on hand at the Kennedy Center the night of the show say yes. 

But something happened. The question is... what? Everyone watching thought he was one of the three winners.

But when the emcee – actor and TV personality Mario Lopez – read the names of the finalists, Aangad was not among them. Shocked, disoriented and perplexed, he took a seat in the audience with his family to watch the finals.  

As you can imagine, he was devastated. Other contestants came up and said they thought that he won and were perplexed. The website American Bazaar wrote:

What was designed as a program to showcase youth civics knowledge for the nation’s 250th anniversary has left several families questioning the transparency of federal organizers.

The Presidential 1776 Award competition, organized as part of America’s semi quincentennial celebrations, brought top high school scholars to the Kennedy Center in Washington.

[...]

During the taped broadcast, 15-year-old Connecticut contestant Aangad Singh answered a question regarding federal court jurisdiction under Article III of the U.S. Constitution and the on-screen graphics marked two of his points in red as incorrect, despite the phrases matching the Constitutional text.

The Indian Express said of the answers:

The family also disputed the marking of a lightning-round question asking which constitutional amendment abolished slavery. They said Aangad answered “the 13th Amendment”, but the response was marked incorrect, possibly because of pronunciation. They also pointed to auto-generated subtitles from the broadcast, which they said reflected the correct answer.

However, when questioned, the contest officials said the final scores were “proprietary.”

Did Trump Officials Rig High School Contest Against Sikh Finalist?

Everyone competing against Aangad Singh thought he’d won the Presidential 1776 Award competition. He wants to know why his answers were marked incorrect.

The New Republic

Hafiz Rashid

July 22, 2026

The Presidential 1776 Award competition was set up by the Trump administration to honor America’s 250th birthday with a civics contest for high school students.

But the family of 15-year-old Aangad Singh believes he may have been kept out of the competition’s final because of his Sikh background and visible turban, NOTUS reports.

[...]

Singh, a rising high school junior who lives in Connecticut, entered the competition in February just like other high school students around the country. He scored well enough to reach the finals in Washington, D.C., at the end of June and make the final eight. But his elimination after that left his family—and many of his competitors—puzzled.

Could it be xenophobia and/or Islamophobia? Was it his turban? He is a Sikh, and people often confuse them with Muslims, even though Sikhism is the world's fifth-largest organized religion and is not related to Islam.

The Wyoming winner was a homeschooled girl who would later be touted by the Department of Education for culture-war propaganda, and the Washington state winner told Trump at the White House that she wanted to attend Hillsdale College, a politically conservative school, to which Trump said he could give a recommendation.

And is it as simple as that... Trump couldn't be seen with a person wearing a turban.

---

Update: 8/13 @ noon.

KEYT News reported...

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy released a video last week where he alleged that Singh, who is the son of Indian immigrants, was sidelined to uplift contestants who better aligned with Trump’s agenda. All three of the finalists were White, and one identified as a Trump supporter in an interview with CNN.

“How do you justify running a merit-based competition based upon how much you know about American history, and then denying a kid a place in the winner’s circle, perhaps simply because his parents are immigrants,” Murphy asked.

In a statement to CNN, the Education Department said that all contestants had agreed that judges — fellows from the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation — “would judge the competition in good faith with full discretion over scoring.”

“They also understood that in the live competition, the judges would have to exercise their best judgment and deliberate in real time. It was a fierce and close competition, and Mr. Singh was an outstanding competitor,” the agency said.

But the question remains why haven't they released the scoring?

This Is Your Government!

I am not even to write anything, you have to read this! The whole article article... this is what Trump is doing to the country with his xenophobic adminstration in your name.

Society / August 11, 2026

One Woman’s Message From the Hell of ICE Detention

My husband, son, and I have been locked up for months—despite being permanent residents with no criminal record. It is an unendurable, unending nightmare.

The Nation

Maryam Tahmasebi

You got to read it! They are doing it your name, in the name of your country, you can't sit back say you never knew... because the truth is out there. It is on the internet. The Nation is a well respected magazine.

Some Deep Thinking

The primaries are over here in Connecticut, and I have some thinking to do. Lamont won—good! Luke Bronin won, too, but that one troubles me. I didn’t like him as mayor of Hartford. I don't know exactly why, but he just didn’t give me warm vibes when he was in office.

Who did I vote for in the primary? Jillian Gilchrist. Unfortunately, she received only 2,250 votes district-wide. Our paths actually crossed during the four years it took me to get my MSW. I interned at the Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund in the Hartford YWCA building, and her NARAL office was just down the hall from mine. Based on her time as a state representative, I really liked her voting record (and yes, folks, I actually looked up their records).

I couldn’t find any voting information on Bronin because, as it turns out, he has never voted on a bill. Since he was a mayor, voting on legislation wasn't part of his job. Instead, I had to judge him on what he did for Hartford—like bringing the city out of debt through a deal with the state.

I agree that it was time for Larson to go, but like many politicians, he didn't see the handwriting on the wall. I would have much rather seen Larson announce his retirement instead of losing an election. Bronin is definitely not my first choice, but I will still vote for him this November.