Bit Off More Than They Can Chew

I can think of so many cliché about the Republicans getting so upset over Dolly Parton support of the LGBTQ+ community. Now she has been a supporter of us for decades but just now the right-wingers are hopping mad over her!

Opinion: If Dolly Parton can be canceled, we’re in serious trouble

CNN

By Allison Hope

June 19, 2024

The most uncancellable person in US History — iconic American singer, songwriter and actress, Dolly Parton — has been caught in the crosshairs of cancel culture.

The country legend, also affectionately known as “The iron butterfly,” “The Smoky Mountain songbird” and “The backwoods Barbie,” among other priceless nicknames, has a blockbuster career that spans more than half a century and boasts more than 100 million records sold globally. Parton is, by all accounts, the top female country music singer of all time.

[…]

Conservative writer Ericka Andersen wrote earlier this month in the Federalist that Parton’s support of the LGBTQ community was “false gospel.” Andersen specifically said that Parton’s invoking her Christianity as the reason she is inclusive, is wrong (the writer refers to being LGBTQ as “immoral sexual behavior” and “unaligned with God’s vision for humanity”).

The post caused a windfall of right-wing vitriol aimed at Parton. Many people rallied behind the homophobic outcry while a huge contingent defended Parton. (“They came for Dolly. We ride at dawn,” one fan wrote.)

You know that this whole feign outrage is showing the truth about the conservatives that they attack a beloved person because she love everyone and doesn’t hate anyone.

Parton has long supported the LGBTQ community. She has not been afraid to stand on the stage at LGBTQ events and share that we ought to stop judging and love everyone. She has also risen above the catfighting that country music artists often spew in their lyrics and backstage and instead, shared something distinct — kindness. Her top hit, “Jolene,” is so kind in its portrayal of another woman, that academics have analyzed it as an encoded lesbian song.

Salon writes,

It was inevitable that Republicans would go after Dolly Parton. Under the leadership of Donald "Make America Great Again" Trump, Republicans have grown to loathe most everything they used to hold in high regard. Forget patriotism — nowadays, Trump rallies are replete with claims that the United States is a "s__thole." The Super Bowl is now derided as an "election interference psyop." Once-beloved Budweiser beer has become a hate object. The same conservative forces who used to pretend they were defending American icons like Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head from imaginary "cancelation" are now mostly in the business of canceling anything and everything that Americans might enjoy.

Edward R. Murrow asked once of Sen McCarthy “Have you no sense of decency.”  the HuffPost wrote,

On March 9th, 1954, Murrow—who was then perhaps the country's most highly revered journalist—devoted an entire episode of his CBS program "See it Now" to the words and deeds of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had already done much to earn his notorious place in history. Using McCarthy's own statements, Murrow painted a picture of a man whose recklessness with the truth and ugly attacks on his critics had contributed to a climate of deep fear and repression in American life.

And now they are attacking country singing legend Dolly Parton. Will this be an Edward R. Murrow moment?

Doctor Patient Relationship

We tend to think of our doctor’s visits as sacrosanct but now our visits to our doctors are being used to hang us.

Planned Parenthood vows to fight Missouri AG push for transgender youth medical records
Lawyers representing Planned Parenthood and the Missouri Attorney General argued Monday over HIPPA protections during a St. Louis Circuit Court hearing
Missouri Independent
By: Annelise Hanshaw
June 18, 2024

A circuit court judge heard arguments Monday over whether the Missouri attorney general’s efforts to access medical records of transgender youth violate privacy protections.

Monday’s hearing was convened at the request of Bailey in the hopes that the court would amend a previous order that requires patients to waive HIPAA rights before their medical records could be shared. If they don’t waive HIPAA, their documents would be exempt from the attorney general’s request for medical records.

HIPAA, which stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, protects patients from their providers disclosing their personally identifiable health information.

St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Joseph Whyte did not immediately rule following the hearing. Richard Muniz, interim president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, said if the decision is unfavorable, his organization will appeal.

Now the Republicans are weaponizing our own healthcare against… is nothing scared?

“Our commitment to our patients is that we will fight this as long as we need to,” Muniz told The Independent. “Today, we’ve already signaled that we are going to appeal because we think that we shouldn’t have to turn over documents, especially patient records, but we shouldn’t have to partake in this investigation at all.”

If our own medial records are begin used in criminal trails against us, where will it end? Will a woman’s reproductive health be questions? Will the attorney generals’ be digging through our medical records looking for “crimes.”

He said the attorney general’s civil investigative demands, which Eddy said were titled as an investigation into the Washington University Transgender Center, “had no allegations as to Planned Parenthood’s conduct.”

“He can’t point to a single complaint from a patient, a patient’s parent,” Eddy said.

Eddy said the attorney general “had 54 incredibly broad requests for information.”

“Included in the requests are information that would be deeply sensitive to transgender minors,” he told the judge.

Muniz told reporters one of the requests was for “any document that mentions TikTok,” calling the investigation a “sprawling phishing expedition.”

This is a witch hunt! Here in Connecticut we have laws blocking attorney generals from other states from fishing expeditions but what happens when it is your own state’s attorney general going after your medical records? How can you trust that your records will remain inviolate? What does it do to your doctor patient relationship?

 

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Then we have the case of the lying doctor’s!

Texas doctor charged with obtaining confidential patient information on transgender care
CBS News
June 19, 2024

A Texas doctor who calls himself a whistleblower on transgender care for minors is accused of illegally obtaining private information on patients from the nation's largest pediatric hospital who were not under his care.

Federal prosecutors said Dr. Eithan Haim, a 34-year-old surgeon, snatched the information and shared it with a conservative activist with "intent to cause malicious harm" to Texas Children's Hospital in Houston.

Haim pleaded not guilty Monday in federal court to four counts of wrongfully obtaining individually identifiable health information.

We have this doctor here who believes that the ends justifies the means, that an oath he took doesn’t mean anything.

Haim, a Dallas surgeon, previously did some work at Texas Children's Hospital as part of his residency. The indictment against Haim alleges that in 2023, he asked to reactivate his login there to access information on pediatric patients not under his care, including names, attending physicians and treatment codes, then turned over the information to a media contact.

He thinks of himself as a caped crusader but in reality he is the grim reaper! He is doing irreparable harm to these children!

Haim faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. He was released on $10,000 bond.

It should be for each record that he stole! Besides the criminal cases and jail time he should be his pants suited off.

Pride?

A local brew pub is having a Pride night that:

🌈🍻 Join us for an unforgettable Pride Night on June 12th!!! 🎉

Get ready for a night filled with fun, love, and community as we celebrate Pride with an amazing lineup:

- 🎶 A live DJ spinning your favorite tracks all night long

- 🧀🥪🔥 Delicious eats from The Whey Station

- 🛍️ Fabulous vendors offering unique and handcrafted goods, including:

🍪 Tony’s Flour Shop

🌱🚎 Lil’ Plant Shop’s Plant Bus

💎 Sammy Sparks Permanent Jewelry

💍 Rachel Ashley Designs

🪴 Terrariums by Gawa LLC

- 🎁 Exciting raffles with awesome prizes

Best of all, a portion of our sales, as well as all proceeds from the raffles and donations, will be donated to Q Plus (an organization dedicated to uplifting and empowering youth voices, and creating safe spaces for queer youth to be themselves). 🙌🏼

Come hang out, show your pride, and make a difference with us! 🍻

There are some who question the legitimacy of a non-LGBTQ establishment holding Pride celebrations just one day a year.

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Others also question corporations commitment to the ideas of Pride… are they with us or are they with the dollars?

The hollowness of corporate Pride
The troubling corporate pullback on Pride Month, briefly explained.
VOX
By Li Zhou
Jun 20, 2024

Corporations — entities that have long capitalized on social causes to chase profit — seem to be telling on themselves with an apparent pullback on Pride Month marketing this year.

“There’s been a definite scaling back in both big and small ways,” Joanna Schwartz, a marketing professor who studies outreach to LGBTQ audiences at Georgia College & State University, told Vox. “I had expected some brand caution, but this year seems [to be] a near full-scale retreat.”

Multiple marketing experts Vox spoke to noted that some stores have toned down their messaging or decided to offer less merchandise — and, as the Associated Press put it, “at some chains, there’s no trace of Pride at all.”

True allies take the heat and still support us like Dolly Parton.

Target, for instance, announced that it would limit Pride merchandise sales to roughly half of its stores, while Nike said it wouldn’t launch a Pride collection this year. (A Target spokesperson reiterated the company’s commitment to the LGBTQ community and pointed to its internal programs, Pride products, and its support of in-person events. A Nike spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

These announcements come in the wake of conservative backlash directed at Bud Light in 2023, following its social media partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Target, similarly, was the subject of Republican attacks due to its Pride displays and the trans-inclusive clothing it stocked.

True allies don’t back down, while allies in it for the money will back down and the opposition knows it.

“The goal is to make ‘pride’ toxic for brands,” Matt Walsh, a conservative pundit, said on X in 2023. “If they decide to shove this garbage in our face, they should know that they’ll pay a price. It won’t be worth whatever they think they’ll gain.””

True allies will stand beside us and be counted.

What are your thoughts?

online polls

History -- Sometimes We Forget

We forget our history, with all the lies out their it is important that we know our roots!

The Forgotten History of the World's First Trans Clinic

The Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin would be a century old if it hadn’t fallen victim to Nazi ideology

Scientific Amercan

BY BRANDY SCHILLACE

May 19, 2021

Late one night on the cusp of the 20th century, Magnus Hirschfeld, a young doctor, found a soldier on the doorstep of his practice in Germany. Distraught and agitated, the man had come to confess himself an Urning—a word used to refer to homosexual men. It explained the cover of darkness; to speak of such things was dangerous business. The infamous “Paragraph 175” in the German criminal code made homosexuality illegal; a man so accused could be stripped of his ranks and titles and thrown in jail.

Hirschfeld understood the soldier’s plight—he was himself both homosexual and Jewish—and did his best to comfort his patient. But the soldier had already made up his mind. It was the eve of his wedding, an event he could not face. Shortly after, he shot himself.

The soldier bequeathed his private papers to Hirschfeld, along with a letter: “The thought that you could contribute to [a future] when the German fatherland will think of us in more just terms,” he wrote, “sweetens the hour of death.” Hirschfeld would be forever haunted by this needless loss; the soldier had called himself a “curse,” fit only to die, because the expectations of heterosexual norms, reinforced by marriage and law, made no room for his kind. These heartbreaking stories, Hirschfeld wrote in The Sexual History of the World War, “bring before us the whole tragedy [in Germany]; what fatherland did they have, and for what freedom were they fighting?” In the aftermath of this lonely death, Hirschfeld left his medical practice and began a crusade for justice that would alter the course of queer history.

This reminds me of something that the Rev. Canon Clinton Jones* of Christ Church Cathedral in Hartford CT said about the early days of the Twenty Club trans support group.

The reverend talked about once, when he was running Project H a support group for gays in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was getting men show up saying that they were not gay but were women and the if how the Gender Identity Clinic of New England (GICNE) came about.

… One soldier with whom Hirschfeld had worked described wearing women’s clothing as the chance “to be a human being at least for a moment.” He likewise recognized that these people could be either homosexual or heterosexual, something that is frequently misunderstood about transgender people today.

Rev. Jones also noticed the same thing.

Hirschfeld’s study of sexual intermediaries was no trend or fad; instead it was a recognition that people may be born with a nature contrary to their assigned gender. And in cases where the desire to live as the opposite sex was strong, he thought science ought to provide a means of transition. He purchased a Berlin villa in early 1919 and opened the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (the Institute for Sexual Research) on July 6. By 1930 it would perform the first modern gender-affirmation surgeries in the world.

Kind of shoots down the Republican claim that we are a new phenomenon!

But then, in Germany the Fascists rose to power!

When the Nazis came for the institute on May 6, 1933, Hirschfeld was out of the country. Giese fled with what little he could. Troops swarmed the building, carrying off a bronze bust of Hirschfeld and all his precious books, which they piled in the street. Soon a towerlike bonfire engulfed more than 20,000 books, some of them rare copies that had helped provide a historiography for nonconforming people.

lg

The carnage flickered over German newsreels. It was among the first and largest of the Nazi book burnings. Nazi youth, students and soldiers participated in the destruction, while voiceovers of the footage declared that the German state had committed “the intellectual garbage of the past” to the flames. The collection was irreplaceable.

Sadly I have said it many times, that history is beginning to repeat itself!

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*I wrote about Rev. Canon Clinton Jones here and the Twenty Club here.

It Is All About Politics With Our Lives

When Trump was in the White House they were in favor of it, now that Biden is president they are against it. What is “it”? The banning of bump-stocks.

Republican senator blocks ban on bump stocks for guns brought by Democrats

Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., sought unanimous consent to pass the BUMP Act, but Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., objected for the GOP, effectively blocking the legislation.

NBC News

By Sahil Kapur and Frank Thorp V

June 18, 2024

Senate Democrats sought to pass legislation Tuesday banning bump stocks for firearms after the Supreme Court overruled a previous ban, but a single Republican objected on behalf of his party, effectively stalling the bill.

Backed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., sought “unanimous consent” to pass his BUMP Act that would prohibit the devices, which modify semi-automatic weapons to fire bullets more quickly.

The New Mexico senator said he’s a firearm owner who sees no purpose for bump stocks other than to facilitate mass shootings, as in Las Vegas in 2017, when a gunman killed dozens of people at a music festival and more than 500 people were injured.

But the Republicans now see an advantage in blocking the bill because now the bill is evil… it will take away your Second Amendment right… those evil Democrats always trying to take away your guns!

But the bill was met with an objection from Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., blocking it from moving forward. The objection was backed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and many other Republican senators, marking a turnaround after many of them championed a bump stock ban imposed by the Trump administration after the Las Vegas massacre.

Ricketts labeled the bill “a gun-grabbing overreach," saying it is written vaguely and could give the Biden administration power to target “common firearm accessories, not just bump stocks.”“That’s really, really scary,” Ricketts said, calling the measure an infringement on the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

Playing politics with your lives!

They are so Two-faced and they think you are that we the voters will not not notice it.

'Shame on him for disrespecting the dead': Nevada senator erupts after Sen. JD Vance's bump stock remarks

Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen is seeking re-election this year in Nevada, where a gunman killed 58 people in 2017 with firearms equipped with bump stocks.

NBC News

By Frank Thorp V and Sahil Kapur

June 17, 2024

Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., tore into Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, on Monday over remarks he made about bump stocks as the Senate grapples with whether to ban them.

Vance, who is widely considered a vice presidential contender on the GOP ticket with former President Donald Trump, called efforts by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and other Democrats to ban the devices “a huge distraction.”

“I think that we have to ask ourselves: What is the real gun violence problem in this country, and are we legislating in a way that solves fake problems? Or solves real problems?” Vance told reporters. “And my very strong suspicion is that the Schumer legislation is aimed at a PR problem, not something that’s going to meaningfully reduce gun violence in this country.”

Now this is from a Senator who approved Trump’s Executive Order ban on bump-stocks but now it has become evil because the Democratic introduced the bill!

Lets step back a bit… What did the Supreme Court do last week?

US Supreme Court rejects federal ban on gun 'bump stocks'

Reuters

By Andrew Chung and John Kruzel

June 14, 202

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday declared unlawful a federal ban on "bump stock" devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns, rejecting yet another firearms restriction - this time one enacted under Republican former President Donald Trump.

The justices, in a 6-3 ruling authored by conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, upheld a lower court's decision siding with Michael Cargill, a gun shop owner and gun rights advocate from Austin, Texas, who challenged the ban by claiming that a U.S. agency improperly interpreted a federal law banning machine guns as extending to bump stocks. The conservative justices were in the majority, with the liberal justices dissenting.

The rule was imposed in 2019 by Trump's administration after the devices were used during a 2017 mass shooting that killed 58 people at a Las Vegas country music festival.

Democratic President Joe Biden, whose administration defended the rule in court, said the decision "strikes down an important gun safety regulation."

"Americans should not have to live in fear of this mass devastation," Biden added, saying he has "used every tool in my administration to stamp out gun violence."

"I call on Congress to ban bump stocks, pass an assault weapon ban and take additional action to save lives - send me a bill and I will sign it immediately," Biden said.

But now Two-faced Trump did a 180 and is now against the ban on converting semi-automatic weapons to fully-automatic weapons!

Our lives are for sale for votes. Votes for Trump by the far-right gun nuts.

Watch the Republicans trying to squirm and weasel out of answering the questions!

Teachers Just Want To Teach

Chalkboard fight! Or who gets to control the chalk.

I used to work in a highly federally regulated industry, I didn’t mind because I knew that there would be tons of “Red Tape” but now teachers are facing over regulations that they were not expecting.

‘They Came for the Schools’ details how GOP targeted race and identity in classrooms
PBS News Hour
By Laura Barrón-López and Karina Cuevas
June 14, 2024

In 2021, an affluent, suburban school district in Texas gained national attention when parents and local conservative activists falsely accused the district of indoctrinating students with critical race theory. Mike Hixenbaugh's "They Came for the Schools" details how it became a blueprint for Republicans across the country and exposes their ambitions. Laura Barrón-López reports.

Amna Nawaz:
In 2021, an affluent suburban school district in Texas gained national attention when parents and local conservative activists accused the district of indoctrinating students with Critical Race Theory.

That drew the interest of Republican figures across the country and sparked a Christian movement beyond the district's borders to restrict what children are being taught in schools.

Laura Barron-Lopez has that story for our Bookshelf.

Laura Barron-Lopez:
Mike Hixenbaugh has been at the forefront of covering the events in Southlake Texas.

What started as an earnest effort by the Carroll Independent School District to confront racist rhetoric and bullying devolved into a battle about much more. Conservative parents and activists turned a district cultural competence plan into a fight over protecting their — quote — "traditional way of life."

The result? Books and classroom discussion about race, slavery, and sexual orientation were effectively banned. In his book "They Came for the Schools," released in May, Hixenbaugh details how this school district became a blueprint for Republicans across the country and exposed their ambitions, which go well beyond controlling what version of American history makes it into high school textbooks.

[…]

Laura Barron-Lopez:
When you started investigating, you discovered that there were a number of racist incidents at the schools in Southlake, some that go back decades, but, in particular, in 2018, when a video of white students saying the N-word went viral.

And the district promised action. What exactly was their plan in response to that?

Mike Hixenbaugh:
After the video came out, dozens of parents came forward and said, it's not just a video. My Black child has experienced these kind of racist slurs and jokes in the school for decades.

And so the district put together a committee. And they formed — they put together a plan called the Cultural Competence Action Plan. They worked for two years on this from 2018 to 2020, and the plan essentially called for diversity training for students and teachers, initiatives to try to hire more diverse teaching staff, a plan to go through the curriculum to make sure that kids were learning an honest and full picture of America's history.

Ah… the ol’ pass it off on a committee approach to get rid of a hot potato. But they got bit in the butt by their inaction when another incident made national news.

But all the racists had a fit over the “Plan,”

Mike Hixenbaugh:
It was remarkable to watch, because the people who were advancing this Cultural Competence Action Plan, many of them were themselves conservatives, Republicans.

But the Southlake Families PAC painted anyone who was pushing this plan as a radical leftist, as a Marxist. And it was around the same time that Critical Race Theory was entering the national conversation, this phrase that Chris Rufo used to try to describe any attempt to address discrimination in schools and other places.

It became a battle between adults over who was welcome in Southlake, whose ideas were welcome there. And that fight ended up spreading all over the country.

The racist won, they elected a right-wing school board

Mike Hixenbaugh:
There are elements of the Christian right in America that have long argued that the separation of church and state is a myth, that our country began to decline in the 1960s, when prayer and mandatory Bible readings were removed from schools.

And they have seized on this moment to say, parents are upset about schools. This is our chance to try to chip away at those foundational principles. And so you're seeing in Texas and all over the country moves to, in this moment, not just remove LGBTQ content from schools or to ban how — restrict how teachers talk about race and racism, but to replace those things with Christian symbols.

So with all this racist, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-Christain laws teachers are reassessing if they want to be teachers.

Survey: 37% of teachers will likely quit if K-12 censorship laws reach them
K12 Dive
By Anna Merod
January 24, 2022

Dive Brief:

•     Among 2,000 teachers surveyed nationwide, 37% said they are more likely to leave the profession at the end of this school year if a push for laws that “prevent honest teaching and conversations” reaches their classrooms, according to data from Stand for Children, a nonprofit advocating for equity in public education, and SurveyUSA, an independent research firm.
•    The Stand for Children survey further solidified previous data suggesting teachers are increasingly considering leaving the profession. Overall, nearly 3 in 10 teachers, or 29%, said they were likely or very likely to quit teaching at the end of this school year, according to Stand for Children.
•     On top of that, 93% of surveyed teachers agreed it’s important for children to “learn to value and respect the humanity of every person and to recognize and reject racism,” Stand for Children found.

And that was two years ago and it is only getting worst.

Another study reports…

Teachers Are Quitting at Higher-Than-Normal Rates
By NAM News Room (National Association of Manufacturers)
March 5, 2024

 Educators are leaving their jobs at a rate that is likely to prove unsustainable for the national school system in the long term, according to The Wall Street Journal (subscription).

What’s going on: “Public-school teachers … are still leaving the profession in higher numbers than before the pandemic, a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from 10 states show, though departures have fallen since their peak in 2022. The elevated rate is likely due to a combination of factors and adds one more challenge to schools battling learning loss and frequent student absences.”

    The figures are the most comprehensive recent collection of national teacher exit data.
    In some of the states studied, turnover was small, but in states including Virginia, North Carolina and Arkansas, “teachers were leaving in substantially higher numbers than they were prepandemic.”

[…]

Why it’s happening: The average teacher salary of $66,000 has not increased significantly in decades, adjusting for inflation, which could be making jobs offering remote work options more enticing.

    Some teachers who have left the schools cite a lack of support from administrators regarding student behavior, and others point to “political battles over issues such as how race and gender are discussed in class.”

Face it the Republicans are making it hard to teach, and that is exactly what they are trying to do, which is cause the public school system to fail.

Pew Research found…

Amid national debates about what schools are teaching, we asked public K-12 teachers, teens and the American public how they see topics related to race, sexual orientation and gender identity playing out in the classroom.

A sizeable share of teachers (41%) say these debates have had a negative impact on their ability to do their job. Just 4% say these debates have had a positive impact, while 53% say the impact has been neither positive nor negative or that these debates have had no impact.

And 71% of teachers say teachers themselves don’t have enough influence over what’s taught in public schools in their area.

In turn, a majority of teachers (58%) say their state government has too much influence over this. And more say the federal government, the local school board and parents have too much influence than say they don’t have enough.

They found….

This report also includes some findings from a survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 (Chapter 3) and a survey of U.S. adults (Chapter 4). For details about these surveys, refer to the Methodology section of this report. Among the key findings:

    *38% of teens say they feel comfortable when topics related to racism or racial inequality come up in class (among those who say these topics have come up). A smaller share (29%) say they feel comfortable when topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity come up.
    *Among the American public, more say parents should be able to opt their children out of learning about LGBTQ issues than say the same about topics related to race (54% vs. 34%).

So the parents want to raise racist, homophobic, and transphobic children.

What about us…

Gender identity
A diverging bar chart showing that most elementary school teachers say students shouldn’t learn about gender identity at school.

When it comes to teaching about gender identity – specifically whether a person’s gender can be different from or is determined by their sex assigned at birth – half of public K-12 teachers say students shouldn’t learn about this in school.

A third of teachers think students should learn that someone can be a boy or a girl even if that is different from the sex they were assigned at birth.

A smaller share (14%) say students should learn that whether someone is a boy or a girl is determined by their sex at birth.

Views differ among elementary, middle and high school teachers. But teachers across the three levels are more likely to say students should learn that a person’s gender can be different from their sex at birth than to say students should learn gender is determined by sex at birth.

Most elementary school teachers (62%) say students shouldn’t learn about gender identity in school. This is much larger than the shares of middle and high school teachers who say the same (45% and 35%).

So what does this mean? I think it means that they think we should hide in the closet again.

Just remember what people think is not necessarily right thing. If you took a poll back in 1850 about slavery in southern states the poll would probably be just about 100 percent in favor of slavery.

What it does show is that we need to get out and educate more. To make being trans not something abstract but familiar, and appreciate what it means to be trans.

Cuckoo Award

I really don’t understand the juvenile behavior of this legislator, she really does deserved the award, her behavior was cuckoo.

Vermont lawmaker apologizes for repeatedly pouring water in her colleague’s bag

AP News

June 18, 2024

A Republican state lawmaker from Vermont has apologized for repeatedly pouring water into a Democratic colleague’s bag, after he caught her doing it on video.

State Rep. Mary Morrissey publicly apologized to state Rep. Jim Carroll, colleagues and the citizens of Vermont from the House floor on Monday. Both are from Bennington, a town of about 15,000 in the southwestern corner of the state.

“I am truly ashamed for my actions,” Morrissey said of “her disrespectful conduct” toward Carroll. She said she had apologized directly to Carroll and would be working toward “resolution and restoration through out legislative process.”

In response, Carroll told the chamber that he heard the sincerity in her voice but that he had to be frank, saying: “For five months, I went through this,” and Morrissey had a choice each time she did it.

“It was torment,” he said.

Do you think that she is a little cuckoo to do a stunt like that.

Why Is Pride Necessary.

For those who wonder why we need Pride events, here are some comments on Yahoo about a discrimination court case that is being heard…

Why do these alpha bets insist on going to these places of business when they could to a 100 other bakeries?  It’s not so much the cake as it is to force their views and agenda on the business owner

We have to get these people some mental health assistance. Indulging their fantasy life is not helping them. I know we can't force them to get help but we should not be playing along. 2+2 does not equal 5!

The dangler/fruitypebbles crowd do not want freedom to be whatever the heck they are. They want "freedom" to force everyone else to grovel before them. 62

The GBT mafia will continue to drag businesses through the courts as a means of making "the process is the punishment" revenge.

It's a shame that the baker has to play a religion card to protect himself against a fruit card. He should be able to "no soup" anybody he wants.

I rest my case. 

Poison Pill II

I can see it coming when the Senate tosses out the House’s defense spending bill! The Democrats are anti-military! I can just imagine the headlines that the Republicans messages will tout how the Democrats vetoed the defense bill.

Defense Bill Comes With Culture War Fallout
Senate Version Includes $33 Billion For Connecticut Defense Contracts
CT News Junkie
By Hudson Kamphausen
June 17, 2024

The National Defense Authorization Act – one of the year’s most important and wide-reaching bills – was passed by the US House last week, but not without considerable pushback from Democrats because of several last-minute amendments.

Another similar bill – which will have to go through the Senate – got out of committee Friday.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – which is one of the only bills consistently passed by Congress each year – is an almost $900 billion endeavor that is needed to fund the nation’s expansive military each fiscal year.

The bill is typically passed with good bipartisan support, which was not the case this year because of some divisive amendments that will limit certain forms of healthcare available to members of the military.

The Republicans added a bitter poison pill that they knew the Democrats could not swallow, they loaded it up with…

Before the bill was voted on in the House – where it eventually passed 217-199 – Speaker Mike Johnson allowed Republicans in the chamber to add several controversial amendments that would, according to Politico:

•     Block the Pentagon from reimbursing troops who travel to seek abortions or other reproductive health care;
•     Block funding to cover gender-affirming care for transgender service members, and;
•     Severely cut Pentagon diversity, equity, and inclusion programs (DEI) and climate change efforts.

Rep. John Larson, D-1st District, said in a statement that Republicans in the House had politicized a bill that previously had bipartisan support.

They weaponized the weapons bill! Rep. Larson went on to say,

“Because of [Republican] amendments, this bill is no longer focused on our national security and supporting our servicemembers and is instead another culture war effort that will harm our troops and their families, especially those who are women, people of color, or LGBTQ+,” Larson said.

He continued: “It’s time for House Republicans to put aside the partisan games and put forth a clean NDAA and join us in working hand-in-hand with the Senate and President Biden to deliver for our service members, support our machinists, strengthen our national security, and reaffirm our relationships with our allies.”

The Republicans don’t care about the country, they are narcissistic just like their cult leader Trump. The only thing that they care about is POWER! They added this to get the vote from their evangelical base… “See we wanted to ban abortions and gays and trans people in the military but those evil unChristian blocked us!” You watch… that will be their massage to the followers.

The bill originally came out of committee with bipartisan support.

But the Republicans killed that with their poison pill.

 

---

Back in December everything was nice and rosy with a bipartisan bill,

Pentagon Abortion, Transgender Policies Safe, But Diversity Programs Take a Hit in Compromise Defense Bill
Military.com
By Rebecca Kheel
December 07, 2023

The Defense Department policy of covering travel and leave for service members seeking abortions will remain intact under a compromise version of the annual must-pass defense policy bill released Wednesday night.

Existing health care for transgender troops and dependents was also left untouched by the negotiated National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, that members of the House and Senate unveiled after months of hearings and negotiations.

Both have been political hot-button issues that now appear unlikely to change due to the omissions in one of the year's most important defense bills. While issues Democrats considered red lines that would force them to vote against the bill were dropped from the compromise legislation, conservatives notched some modest wins on provisions to curtail diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Negotiations over this year's NDAA turned into a culture-war minefield after the House loaded its version of the defense bill with a slew of proposals targeting what Republicans deride as "wokeness" in the military.

[…]

Neither the abortion measure nor transgender health-care restrictions are in the compromise bill.

Also not in the final bill is a ban on drag shows on military bases. The Defense Department earlier this year announced it was banning drag shows, something the NDAA negotiators noted in their report explaining the compromise agreement.

The bill does include a ban on displaying "unapproved" flags, a provision intended to target LGBTQ+ pride flags. But Defense Department policy already prohibits flying unofficial flags, a policy that was put in place in 2020 to rid military bases of the Confederate flag but that also applies to pride flags.

The bill also curbs diversity initiatives in several ways. While the compromise does not go as far as the House-passed bill in entirely eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs, it would freeze any new DEI jobs until the Government Accountability Office delivers a report on the DEI workforce. The bill would also cap pay for civilian DEI employees.

Notice the the original compromise included things that the Republicans wanted and things that the Democrats didn't want... it was a "compromise" but that wasn't enough for the Republicans they wanted the the whole enchilada.

  
In other-words… The Republicans want a racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic military just like it was back in the 50s before President Eisenhower ended segregation in the military.

Remember Only You Can Prevent

STIs & STDs, are spreads just like a wildfire but like a forest fire it can be prevented.

STIs, including syphilis, gonorrhea, increasing globally: WHO
The number of new syphilis cases rose to 8 million in 2022, the report found.
ABC News
By Mary Kekatos
May 21, 2024

The number of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) around the world is increasing and is a "major concern" for health officials, according to a new report published Tuesday from the World Health Organization (WHO).

The report found four curable STIs -- chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and trichomoniasis -- are responsible for more than 1 million infections daily among adults between ages 15 and 49. Cases of syphilis, in particular, have been rising rapidly.

The number of new syphilis cases among adults between ages 15 and 49 increased from 7.1 million in 2020 to 8 million in 2022, according to the report.

I was Trans volunteer at a health clinic helping trans people with their name and documents changes, they also did testing and I can tell you the AIDS, STIs, and STDs consular were not happy to tell people their status, it was very stressful telling clients their status.

STDs are surging. The funding to fight them is not.
 

The latest figures follow Congress’ decision last month to provide far less funding to sexual health clinics that provide free and subsidized testing.

CDC facing major funding cuts, with direct impact on state and local health departments
CNN

By Deidre McPhillips and Brenda Goodman

July 14, 2023

Last month, a local health department in Texas received notification that a pregnant woman living in the area had tested positive for syphilis and had fallen behind on her ob/gyn care. It was a troubling situation, one that has become increasingly common as sexually transmitted infection cases surge both locally and nationally.

Within days, a disease intervention specialist — a core public health employee who helps with contact tracing, screening, health education and linking people to treatment — got to work on the case. They were able to find the woman, reconnect her to prenatal care services and start treatment for syphilis, keeping her healthy and preventing severe outcomes for the fetus.

[...]

 

But the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is poised to lose about $1.3 billion in funds as a result of last month’s federal debt ceiling negotiation that were initially allocated through Covid-19 supplemental funding, the agency shared with CNN. An earlier estimate from the Congressional Budget Office estimated the impact on CDC to be closer to $1.5 billion, but there is ongoing analysis about exactly which dollars could be rescinded.

The grant that funded those disease intervention specialists across the country was one of the first things to be rescinded. The last two years of the five-year grant were slashed across the board, a more than $400 million blow.

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation writes,

San Francisco AIDS Foundation is greatly alarmed by the proposed fiscal year 2024 cuts to HIV funding in the Federal budget by the Republican-led Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education and Related Agencies Appropriation Subcommittee.  

The bill proposes eliminating all $220 million in funding for the CDC’s Ending the HIV Epidemics’ program, reducing the total CDC National Center on HIV, Hepatitis, STDs, and Tuberculosis by $226 million, cutting the Minority HIV/AIDS Fund by $32 million, reducing total funding for the National Institutes of Health by $3.8 billion, and reducing Ryan White Care Program funding by $238 million. Overall, the bill proposes an 18% cut to the Centers for Disease Control and a 12% cut to Health and Human Services.

My theory is that the Republican evangelical base expects everyone to keep their legs crossed until marriage... so only the sinners get STIs.

Off In La La Land.

The Supreme Court hasn’t been that great on us the LGBTQ+ community but there have been some important ruling like Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board but it keeps getting lost on lower courts especially by judges appointed by Trump.

Biden’s Title IX transgender protections blocked in federal court
Missouri Independent
BY: GREG LAROSE
JUNE 14, 2024

A federal judge has temporarily halted enforcement of new rules from the Biden administration that would prevent discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana issued a temporary injunction Thursday that blocks updated Title IX policy from taking effect Aug. 1 in Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and Montana.

In April, the U.S. Department of Education announced it would expand Title IX to protect LGBTQ+ students, and the four aforementioned states challenged the policy in federal court.

Doughty said in his order that Title IX, the 52-year-old civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination, only applies to biological women. The judge also called out the Biden administration for overstepping its authority.

“This case demonstrates the abuse of power by executive federal agencies in the rulemaking

Process,” Doughty wrote. “The separation of powers and system of checks and balances exist in this country for a reason.”

The order from Doughty, a federal court appointee of President Donald Trump, keeps the updated Title IX regulations from taking effect until the court case is resolved or a higher court throws out the order.

Okay judge… “ only applies to biological women.” I am not a lawyer but I can read!

In 1989… Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins the Supreme Court…

Discrimination against an employee on the basis of sex stereotyping--that is, a person's nonconformity to social or other expectations of that person's gender--constitutes impermissible sex discrimination, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The employer bears the burden of proving that the adverse employment action would have been the same if sex discrimination had not occurred.

Judge Doughty seems to have ignored the part where in their ruling the judges on the Supreme Court said “sex stereotyping” and not just applying to “biological women.”

And then we have the Supreme Court case of Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board, the ACLU wrote...

Represented by the ACLU and ACLU of Virginia, Gavin sued his school board for discriminating against him in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972, a federal law prohibiting sex discrimination by schools. After four years of litigation—including a trip to the Supreme Court and back– the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in favor of Gavin on all his claims. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the ruling in favor of Gavin on August 26, 2020.

Isn’t it nice that the judge convenient ignored all the courts case that didn’t fit ideology beliefs.

---

Speaking of the justice system a convicted felon is sprouting off about revenge… no not that convicted felon, the other one.

Bannon vows Trump’s opponents will be prosecuted in a second term
CNN
By Ali Main, Kim Berryman and Eric Bradner
June 15, 2024

Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of Donald Trump, vowed investigations and prosecutions of those who have probed the former president and his political allies, declaring at a conservative gathering Saturday that Inauguration Day in 2025 will be “accountability day.”

Pointing to Trump’s recent conviction in New York, Bannon told a crowd at Turning Point Action’s “The People’s Convention” in Detroit, hours before Trump was scheduled to speak, that the former president’s allies are going to “get every single receipt.”

“You are going to be investigated, prosecuted and incarcerated,” he said. “This has nothing to do with retribution. It has nothing to do with revenge. Because retribution and revenge might be another order of magnitude. This has to do with justice.”

Bannon was referring to recent comments by Trump vowing to be his supporters’ “retribution” and saying that “sometimes revenge can be justified.”

They broke the law and will pay for it, it is as simple as that. Juries found them both gulity as charged. So shut up and sit down!

Bannon’s incendiary speech comes two weeks before he is due to report to prison. He was convicted of contempt of Congress in 2022 after failing to provide documents and testimony to the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack. He was sentenced to four months in prison, and a federal judge earlier this month ordered him to report to prison by July 1.

Once a top adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign and a senior White House aide, the bombastic Bannon is now a right-wing podcaster with a following of loyal Trump supporters.

Hmm… I wonder if when they both get out of jail with Trump being a parolee will he be able to associate with another felon?

---

Update on the chemical sprayed at Baltimore Pride...

Chemical agent’ at Baltimore Pride event deemed to be Mace, injures 3, police say

Baltimore Sun

By TONY ROBERTS

June 17, 2024

The “chemical agent” released at a Baltimore Pride event on Saturday evening was determined to be Mace, injuring three people, Baltimore Police confirmed Monday.

During the annual Pride parade and block party, a fight broke out between two groups in front of the main music stage near North Avenue and Charles Street around 8:30 p.m., when the Mace was sprayed, police said.

Three people came into contact with the Mace and were treated and released at a local hospital, according to the police department.

Fireworks were set off around the same time, which led to a large crowd fleeing, causing “several” injuries, police said Sunday.

So it was gangs fighting at Pride, but no matter the cause the results were the same... fear. Individual fear and fear within the community.

In Their Eyes.

[Opinion]

I was watching PBS Rick Steves' Europe: The Story of Fascism in Europe and it got me to thinking.

Why is the far right so hateful of us?

And what dawned on me is that they are afraid of us. But more importantly they are afraid of change and in their simplistic eyes we represent change. They see the world in them vs. us. Everything bad in the world is caused by “us.”

They see…
Abortion,
Divorce,
Interracial marriage,
The pill,
Trans people,
Gays and lesbians,
As the cause of all the world ills.

They see the only education a perosn needs are the 3R’s… Reading, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmatic everything else changes the world with too much education. Education teaches liberalism!

They see us as choosing to be trans or gay, that we wake up one day and “Gee I think it will be fun being beaten by a 2 by 4, I want to be discriminated against.”

In their minds...

They still see gender in the 1930s view of XX = girl XY = boy. Period.
They still think that boys and girls should remain celibate until marriage.
They still think that a woman’s place is in the kitchen and not in the Boardroom.
They still think that Blacks are an inferior race.
They still think that interracial marriage is wrong.

They still think that same-sex marriage is an abomination.

 

They think that everything is the fault of liberals, that they are bring about change and change is evil.
The Republicans are using that fear to get votes, they are preying on them fear of things new, that the Republicans are the only ones who can control change.

In order for the Democrats to win in the fall they have to counter that fear.

---

 

They can do no wrong in their eyes as long as they believe a supreme religious deity or their hate is so deep that they want to cause harm. Yesterday there was an incident of a chemical agent being released at a Pride Parade. No one knows at this time if it was done on purpose to disrupt the celebrations or if it was a fight that broke out between gangs or protesters. The motive is unknown.

The incident reminded me of something thqt happened at a marriage equality rally at the state capitol. I was at the rally that was held at the capitol while the bill was being debated in the legislature.

Some kid left a jar of holly water on the steps on the north side of the building where the rally was there when the police came and closed down the rally… go get out! Leave! With no explanation. A lot of people were angry not knowing why but later in the news that night it was reported that the kid left the jar of blessed holly water on the steps. Because he thought god would end all the sinners blasphemy with the holly water.

It did. But it was because the police thought it might be some type of explosives device. And now when I hear about what happened at Baltimore Pride, the first thing that comes to mind is… “Was this done by some religious fanatic or a hate group?”

[/Opinion]

Breaking News: Chemical Agent Used In A Pride Parade!

Several injured after 'possible' chemical agent released during Baltimore Pride eventnull

Police did not specify whether all the injuries were caused by the chemical agent or a stampede that followed some fireworks.

NBC News

By Mike Gagliardi

June 6, 2024

Several people were injured after a “possible chemical agent” was released during the Baltimore Pride parade Saturday evening, according to the Baltimore Police Department.

Police said that a little after 8:30 p.m., attendees informed officers stationed at the parade that a chemical agent — potentially mace, hair spray or something else — was released into the crowd. Police confirmed it was not released by law enforcement.

Fireworks were also set off at the event, which police said caused a large crowd to flee, injuring several people. Police did not specify whether all the injuries were caused by the stampede or the chemical agent.

Fire officials treated individuals on the scene, and the event was shut down.

If this was done on purpose then there is only one word for this… terrorism.

In Poulsbo, Washington, 14 Pride banners were slashed on June 5. On the social media platform X, the Colorado Republican Party posted: “Burn all the #pride flags this June.” And in Carlisle, Massachusetts, 200 Pride flags were stolen from the town center.

In May, the State Department issued a global security alert warning Americans abroad that terrorists could target lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people and LGBTQ-related events during Pride Month.

He Is Just A Ramblin’ Man

Lord, I was born a ramblin' man
Tryin' to make a livin' and doin' the best I can
And when it's time for leavin'
I hope you'll understand
That I was born a ramblin' man
Ramblin’ Man by Forrest Richard Betts

 

He’s a rambling man but he wasn’t born that way, it just comes naturally with age.

Trump delivers rambling response to guilty verdict, falsely blasting ‘rigged trial'
A day after he was found guilty of 34 felony charges in New York, the former president launched into attacks on the judge and tried to repackage his conviction as fuel, not an impediment, for his latest White House bid.
NBC News  Associated Press
By Michelle L. Price and Jill Colvin
May 31, 2024

Donald Trump launched into attacks on the judge in his criminal trial and continued to undermine New York's criminal justice system Friday as he tried to repackage his conviction on 34 felony charges as fuel, not an impediment, for his latest White House bid.

Trump, as defiant as ever, argued the verdict was illegitimate and driven by politics and sought to downplay the allegations underlying the case.

“It’s not hush money. It’s a nondisclosure agreement, totally legal, totally common,” he said.

He knows that that wasn’t what the trial was about, it was hiding it in the books.

In his disjointed remarks, Trump initially started attacking Biden on immigration, saying the president is failing to secure the U.S.-Mexico border while repeating much of the same dark rhetoric on immigration that he previously said in launching his 2016 campaign.

"Millions of people are flowing in from all parts of the world, not just South America, from Africa, from Asia from the Middle East, and they're coming in from jails and prisons, and they are coming in from mental institutions and insane asylums," Trump said. "They're coming in from all over the world into our country."

Trump them pivoted to his criminal case, growling that he was threatened with jail time if he violated a gag order. He picked apart intricate parts of the case and trial proceedings as unfair, making false statements and misrepresentations as he did so.

Well, my father was a gambler down in Georgia[Naw his grandfather was the gambler and ran Canadian brothel during gold rush]
And he wound up on the wrong end of a gun
And I was born in the back seat of a Greyhound bus [Also wrong, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.]
Rollin' down highway 41

 I Listened to Trump’s Rambling, Unhinged, Vituperative Georgia Rally—and So Should You
The ex-President is building a whole new edifice of lies for 2024.
The New Yorker
By Susan B. Glasser
March 14, 2024

I’m sure you had better things to do on Saturday evening than watch Donald Trump rant for nearly two hours to an audience of cheering fans in Rome, Georgia. His speech was rambling, unhinged, vituperative, and oh-so-revealing. In his first rally since effectively clinching the Republican Presidential nomination, Trump made what amounted to his response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. It’s hard to imagine a better or more pointed contrast with the vision that, two days earlier, the President had laid out for America.

And yet, like so much about Trump’s 2024 campaign, this insane oration was largely overlooked and under-covered, the flood of lies and B.S. seen as old news from a candidate whose greatest political success has been to acclimate a large swath of the population to his ever more dangerous alternate reality. No wonder Biden, trapped in a real world of real problems that defy easy solutions, is struggling to defeat him.

Lord, I was born a ramblin' man
Tryin' to make a livin' and doin' the best I can
And when it's time for leavin'
I hope you'll understand
That I was born a ramblin' man 

CEOs at Trump meeting: Ex-president ‘meandering’ and ‘doesn’t know what he’s talking about’

• Former President Donald Trump failed to impress everyone in a room full of top CEOs this week, multiple attendees told CNBC.
• “Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said one CEO who was in the room.
• Several CEOs “said that [Trump] was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought [and] was all over the map,” Andrew Ross Sorkin, co-host of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” reported.

CNBC
By Christina Wilkie & Brian Schwartz
June 14, 2024

Former President Donald Trump failed to impress everyone in a room full of top CEOs Thursday at the Business Roundtable’s quarterly meeting, multiple attendees told CNBC.

“Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said one CEO who was in the room, according to a person who heard the executive speaking. The CEO also said Trump did not explain how he planned to accomplish any of his policy proposals, that person said.

Several CEOs “said that [Trump] was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought [and] was all over the map,” CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin reported Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Among the topics on which Trump offered scant details were how he would reduce taxes and cut back on business regulations, according to two other people in the room who spoke to CNBC.

[…]

The same CEOs who were struck by Trump’s lack of focus “walked into the meeting being Trump supporter-ish or thinking that they might be leaning that direction,” Sorkin reported.

Lord, I was born a ramblin' man
Tryin' to make a livin' and doin' the best I can
And when it's time for leavin'
I hope you'll understand
That I was born a ramblin' man

Okay, one of the reasons why I stepped down from the Executive Director of CT TransAdvocacy Coalition was it was getting harder to think on my feet, when given interviews to the news media I was having a harder formalizing my thoughts on camera, and I knew it was time to pass the baton on to others. The narcissist candidate has no qualms about ramblin’.

Watch the Ramblin' man...

 

---

 

The Presidential Debates should be interesting...

Biden and Trump campaigns agreed to mic muting, podiums among rules for upcoming CNN debate
By CNN Staff
June 15, 2024

With less than two weeks until the first presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle, CNN has released additional details on the parameters agreed upon by the Trump and Biden campaigns.

The debate, which will be hosted by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash in Atlanta on June 27, will mark the first in-person showdown of the 2024 campaign between President Joe Biden and his predecessor, former President Donald Trump. Both candidates have accepted the network’s invitation and agreed to accept the rules and format of the debate, as outlined in letters sent to the campaigns by the network in May.

The 90-minute debate will include two commercial breaks, according to the network, and campaign staff may not interact with their candidate during that time.

[…]

 Microphones will be muted throughout the debate except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak. While no props or pre-written notes will be allowed on the stage, candidates will be given a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water.

Some aspects of the debate – including the absence of a studio audience – will be a departure from previous debates. But, as in the past, the moderators “will use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion,” according to the network.

And who will be debating? Well it is rigged so only Trump and Biden… ans possible Kennedy.

All participating debaters must appear on a sufficient number of state ballots to reach the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidency and receive at least 15% in four separate national polls of registered or likely voters that meet CNN’s standards for reporting. Polls that meet those standards are those sponsored by CNN, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, Marquette University Law School, Monmouth University, NBC News, The New York Times/Siena College, NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College, Quinnipiac University, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

Though not impossible in Kennedy’s case, it is less likely that candidates other than Biden and Trump will meet those requirements.

Kennedy has received at least 15% in three qualifying polls so far and is currently on the ballot in six states, making him currently eligible for 89 Electoral College votes.

It should be interesting if Trump can put two thoughts together without rambling

This Is The 1930s All Over Again!

Refrain:

They burned our books and they forbid owning them.

They made us criminals.

They put us in concentration camps.

Trump on LGBTQ Rights: Rolling Back Protections and Criminalizing Gender Nonconformity

ACLU

June 13, 2024

Donald Trump’s administration initiated a sustained, years-long effort to erase protections for LGBTQ people. This included an effort to “define ‘transgender’ out of existence,” erode protections for transgender students and workers, and weaken access to gender-affirming health care that most transgender people already struggled to access.

While President Joe Biden’s administration reversed much of the Trump-era abuses, just last month on the campaign trail, Trump vowed to dismantle a new Biden administration policy that will offer protections for transgender students under Title IX, a federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

Translated: It will be a bad time for us.

The Facts: Trump has promised that, if reelected, his administration will rescind federal policies that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and will assert that federal civil rights laws don’t cover anti-LGBTQ discrimination. In addition to rolling back existing protections, a second Trump administration will proactively mandate discrimination by the federal government wherever it can. Lastly, and perhaps most ominously, if Trump returns to the White House, we expect his administration to use federal law – including laws meant to safeguard civil rights – as a cudgel to override critical state-level protections for transgender students and to force state and local governments, as well as private organizations, to allow or even perpetuate discrimination.

They burned our books and they forbid owning them.

They made us criminals.

They put us in concentration camps.

What Our Experts Say: “We have seen the disastrous consequences of a hateful campaign targeting LGBTQ people and their families with discriminatory laws, forcing many from their home states and denying many more the freedom to get the health care they need to live their lives openly, and even to decide what name to go by. We are determined to use every tool at our disposal to oppose any attempt to deny LGBTQ people the freedom to live and love freely and openly.” – Mike Zamore, national director for policy & government affairs

I fear that history is repeating! There are so many similarities between the 1930s and now, the 2020s.

Just look around the world, this is like the 1930s with one country warring with another and the formation of the Axis countries around the world. And now. China is stirring up trouble in the South China Sea and Taiwan. North Korea is stirring trouble in the region. And of course Russia and Ukraine.

And now we have this guy sprouting his hate, back in March PBS News Hour had this report,

How a second Trump presidency could impact the LGBTQ+ community

William Brangham:

On the campaign trail, Trump has been talking about what he plans to do if elected in November, and that includes rolling back the rights of millions of LGBTQ people.

It's part of a wider playbook to undo many modern civil rights advances for minority groups.

White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez has been following this, and she joins us now.

Hi.

So, on LGBTQ rights, what has Trump said he wants to do?

Trump has just about said he would be a dictator, the interview goes on…

Laura Barron-Lopez:

So, technically, this relies on Trump, if he is reelected, enacting a legal concept known as the unitary executive theory, and that's outlined in Project 2025.

And it essentially suggests that Trump could basically just work around or ignore congressional oversight. And we spoke to Kim Wehle — she's the professor — a law professor at the University of Baltimore — about Trump's ability to carry out Project 2025.

Kimberly Wehle, Former U.S. Associate Independent Counsel:

With Donald Trump , the question isn't so much what the law authorizes. It's that if he has an army of employees that are willing to be loyal to whatever he wants and they implement what he directs, then the question is, is there going to be pushback through Congress, through the courts, through the voters?

If there's no accountability and pushback, then the answer to your question is, yes, then these things can happen, because there's nothing to stop him.

Stop and think for a minute, when else in history did we have a leader who had such a loyal followers and was almost like a cult?

Refrain:

They burned our books and they forbid owning them.

They made us criminals.

They put us in concentration camps.

Saturday 9: Wait Till You See Him

On Saturdays I take a break from the heavy stuff and have some fun…
This weekend I have “men-in-tool-belts” at my house painting the trim on the cottage, it is a “typical Cape cottage” cedar shingles that have aged to the grey color and I have the classic white trim.

Welcome to Saturday 9. What we've committed to our readers is that we will post 9 questions every Saturday. Sometimes the post will have a theme, and at other times the questions will be totally unrelated. Those weeks we do "random questions," so-to-speak. We encourage you to visit other participants posts and leave a comment. Because we don't have any rules, it is your choice. We hate rules. We love memes, however, and here is today's meme!

Saturday 9: Wait Till You See Him (1967)

 

This song was chosen in honor of Father's Day. Hear it here.

1) This is Nancy Sinatra's celebration of her father, Frank. She singles out the sound of his laugh as something special. Do you know anyone who has a great laugh?
Not really, most people don’t laugh in public.

2) Frank Sinatra recorded this song himself a decade earlier. It was one of more then 1,400 recordings he made over his career. When you think of him, what song comes to mind?
Well actually no songs come to mind instead when I think of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop… the Rat Pack.

3) Nancy always called her famous father "Daddy," while her younger sister Tina referred to him as "Pop." How did/do you call your father?
“Dad” only two people in the world called him that.

4) Nancy went on to have two daughters of her own. The girls recall that their grandfather was loving and supportive, even when they went through a punk rock phase with spiky hair, lots of leather, and studs. Frank defended their extreme choices as a healthy means of self-expression. Did you have arguments with your parents over your clothes or hair? If you're a parent yourself, have you always approved of your kids' fashion choices?
HA! Are you kidding? I grew up in the sixties and early seventies… I was a hippy!

5) Back when our own Crazy Sam was in high school, her father gave her driving lessons. What grade would you give your driving today?
A+
Okay, here is a story on my driving test… I bet you all will be envious.
Nervous as heck, I go in the DMV and this big guy was going to witness my driving on a test drive. I passed the written test, the eye test, and now the driving test. We go to the car and it is a freaking blizzard. I start the car, clean off the snow from the whole car, the car is heating up and the ice on the windows is starting to melt. OK time to do the driving test, windshield wipers beating out a song…

On a long and lonesome highway
East of Omaha
You can listen to the engine
Moanin' out his one note song
You can think about the woman...

The DMV officer said take a left as I leave the parking lot, I drive about a half a mile and he says turn around you passed. No “K” turns, no traffic lights, not stop signs… just turn around you passed and we haven’t even gotten out of sight of the DMV building. I was the last driver tested that day, so if you ever have to take a driving test hope for a blizzard.

6) For family barbecues, Sam's dad dons his "Kiss the Chef" apron and mans the Weber. What's the last thing you grilled?
Oh… oh… last night. At the grocery store they had a sale on marinated sirloin tips on skewers that I did on the grill, they were very good. They are on my "Buy again" list.

7) Because he takes his grilling so seriously, Sam once invested in a pair of forged steel tongs for Father's Day. Does anyone on your gift list have a passion that makes them easy to shop for?
There is no one on my gift list. My father passed away in 2006, six days before his 95 birthday.

8) Traditionally the most popular Father's Day gift have been ties, wallets and belts. However experiences -- like tickets to a concert or a sporting event -- are gaining in popularity. Which would you prefer to receive: something to own and hold or an experience to remember?
Tickets for South Pacific. The musical is playing at Goodspeed Opera House (Updated 10 AM).

9) Random question: Have you recently mistakenly called someone by the wrong name?
Ha, ha… all the time. I am face blind, I usually can tell who they are but when it is not in a familiar setting I have a hard time recognizing people. One time standing in line at a bank I didn’t recognize my classmate… boy was she mad!

Thanks so much for joining us again at Saturday: 9. As always, feel free to come back, see who has participated and comment on their posts. In fact sometimes, if you want to read & comment on everyone's responses, you might want to check back again tomorrow. But it is not a rule. We haven’t any rules here. Join us on next Saturday for another version of Saturday: 9, "Just A Silly Meme on a Saturday!" Enjoy your weekend!

We Lost A Pioneer

On Tuesday I wrote the passing of Lynn Conway, now the mainstream news media picked up on her death.

Lynn Conway, microchip pioneer and trans rights advocate, dies at 86
After confiding to supervisors that she was transgender, she was fired from IBM. She later helped popularize a radically simplified method for microchip design.
Washington Post

Column: Lynn Conway, leading computer scientist and transgender pioneer, dies at 86
Los Angles Times

Lynn Conway, microchip pioneer who overcame transgender discrimination, dies at 86
AP News

Microchip pioneer and transgender activist Lynn Conway dies
Silicon Republic

‘The bravest person I ever knew’: Transgender computing pioneer Lynn Conway dies at 86
Born in a time when gender variance was violently suppressed, Lynn Conway helped invent the modern world – and ultimately found lasting happiness
Independent

I looked for her obit in the conservative media and couldn’t find any, I asked Perplexity AI…

While her life story and accomplishments were widely reported by mainstream media outlets, the search results do not indicate whether conservative media specifically covered her passing.

Chat GPT AI answered…

The death of Lynn Conway, a pioneering computer scientist and transgender activist, has not been extensively covered by major conservative media outlets. Most of the coverage has come from mainstream and progressive media sources, reflecting Conway's significant impact on both the tech industry and LGBTQ+ rights.

Townhall, a prominent conservative media site, did not feature any articles about Lynn Conway's death as of now​ (Townhall)​. Similarly, The Daily Signal, another conservative outlet, did not report on Conway's passing either​ (The Daily Signal)​.

Here she was one of the greatest computer pioneers and was awarded major recognition for her work but she doesn’t fit into the conservative view of us as degenerates. The right-wing media don’t want people to know about our success stories.

Squeeze Play

Here in the U.S. the ground that we have gained for our human rights is being threaten and have you notice that around the world far right candidates are winning?

Fighting to prevent an anti-LGBTQ backslide
The Hill
By Brooke Migdon
June 7, 2024

When Naomi Goldberg began working for the Movement Advancement Project, same-sex couples were unable to legally marry in more than half of states — including her home state of California — and LGBTQ Americans were barred from serving openly in the military.

[…]

MAP’s second equality-minded project, a campaign called “Open to All,” launched in 2017 as a response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. In that case, the court sided with a baker who refused to design a wedding cake for a gay couple, raising alarm bells for MAP and Goldberg, then the director of the organization’s policy and research teams.

“We recognized really early on that the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, while about a gay couple and a wedding cake, really had the potential to carve a huge hole through nondiscrimination laws for many people, including people of color, immigrants and women, as well as LGBTQ people and people who sit at the intersection,” Goldberg said.

You know that the Masterpiece Cakeshop didn’t happen in a vacuum, the far-right think tanks plotted ever legal move in advance and they were backed by billionaire. They picked where to file the case, they knew that district had the most conservative judges.

---

But the U.S. is not the only nation sliding backward,

The far right made big gains in European elections. What’s next, and why does it matter?
AP News
 By RAF CASERT and ANGELA CHARLTON
June 10, 2024

For decades, the European Union — which has its roots in the defeat of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy — confined the nationalist far right to the political fringes.

With a strong showing in elections Sunday, far-right forces could now influence or block joint EU-wide policies on migration, security and climate change.

[…]

The new parliament’s first session starts in mid-July in Strasbourg, France. Pro-EU conservative parties are expected to have the biggest group. Populist or far-right forces have more seats than ever, but their views diverge on many issues.

This is scary because the conservative governments are all anti-LGBTQ! Many of the EU nations have elected right-wing leaders who have passed or are trying to pass tough anti-LGBTQ+ laws.

Meanwhile, democratic institutions and values have faced growing threats in several EU countries, from political violence in Germany, Slovakia and Denmark, to Hungary’s crackdown on free media, and mistreatment of migrants across the bloc.

Undocumented immigrants are also a problem in Europe and that is one of the forces driving the EU to the right.

It is getting scary around the world for us and for democracy, Russia and China have become even more belligerent, and of course there is also North Korea who’s the little guy who wants to act like a big guy.

 

*****

 

Russia is trying a squeeze play on Ukraine

China is trying a squeeze play on Taiwan and the Philippines

Iran is trying a squeeze play on the Middle East

North Korea is dumping their garbage on the South.