The senior lunch bunch did lunch at a restaurant in Cheshire, we have eaten there many time. There are five of us (And one was a famous blogger! And I can tell you that all of your emails and comments did the trick to get her blogging again.) and one spouse who go out for lunch once a month. There we 8 of us and we had no problems at all, other than the usual problems with getting old.
I remember when, the Sandy Hook school shooting took place, a friend's daughter was a teacher in the school system and my friend was scared that his daughter might have been killed because first information coming was very sketchy.
Alex Jones looked near tears as he revealed auctioneers were in his office as he spoke.
The New Republic
By Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling
November 12, 2024
InfoWars host Alex Jones appears to have issued his final broadcast.
On Tuesday, the virulent conspiracy theorist—who lost a $1.5 billion case for claiming that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that claimed the lives of 20 first graders and six adults was a hoax—announced that his right-wing media empire, InfoWars, was being staged for a federal auction.
“Wednesday afternoon, Infowars, the equipment, InfoWars.com, InfoWarsStore.com, and a whole bunch of other stuff, is at a federal bankruptcy auction, from the fake judgements and the rigged trials where I was found guilty beforehand, and they had literal show trials like out of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany,” Jones said in a video posted to X (formerly Twitter).
Well, I tell you this, the families were in hell and he poured gasoline on them, the families started receiving death threating phone calls, hate mail as they were going through the agony of losing a child.
In 2017, the InfoWars host lost primary custody of his children in a case that pinned him as a “cult leader” of an online conspiracy network.
Yeah, I can agree that he is a cult leader... or was.
Jones is still working to appeal the judgments against him. He now admits that the shooting was actually “100 percent real” but argues that his First Amendment rights should permit him to say that it wasn’t.
Oh gee, he admits it after wrecking all those families lives! Scars that will never heal.
Throughout Women's History Month, TENNIS.com will be highlighting some of the most significant achievements and moments that make our sport what it is today.
As Renée Richards walked through the winding, Tudor-lined lanes of Forest Hills, people from the neighborhood gathered around her to wish her luck. After seeing the ophthalmologist’s picture in the newspapers for months, the locals of Queens knew where she was going—the West Side Tennis Club—and the magnitude of what she was about to do.
It was August 1977, the closing weeks of the notorious Summer of Sam in New York City. Over three harrowing months, the crumbling metropolis had been rocked by terrorizing riots, a chaotic blackout and the frantic search for a serial killer. As autumn mercifully approached, though, tennis became the talk of the town, and Richards was, for the moment, the world’s most talked-about athlete.
Wow! I remember reading about her and admiring her, following her story and wishing her luck.
She had taken the plunge into that fishbowl in August 1976, when she entered her first pro tournament as a woman at the Orange Lawn Tennis Club in New Jersey. There had never been a debut quite like it. The Rolls Royce that took her to the grounds before her opening match was greeted by dozens of fans, autograph seekers and celebrity hounds. As the car approached the clubhouse, the mob surged toward it. Inside, Richards sank down in her seat. Was this private person ready for the public life that awaited her?
Her transition was a very big thing in the news and on the nightly evening news where millions of people watched the case play out. We are used to cases involving trans athletes in the news but back then the case was on the evening nightly news every night!
Beginning before Stonewall and continuing in the 50 years since, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have regularly turned to the courts for protection against mistreatment or to overturn laws that targeted them. From H.I.V.-based discrimination to the fight for marriage equality to President Trump’s attempt to ban transgender people from the military, courts across the country have played a key role in the story of L.G.B.T.Q. rights in America.
1958: One, Inc. v. Olesen – United States Supreme Court
In a one-sentence opinion, the Supreme Court provided constitutional protection for a gay magazine started by the Mattachine Society, reversing a lower court’s decision that had found the publication to be obscene.
1971: Baker v. Nelson – Minnesota Supreme Court / 1972: United States Supreme Court
Jack Baker and Michael McConnell asked the United States Supreme Court to declare that Minnesota’s failure to let the two men marry violated the Constitution. The court didn’t even hear arguments in the case, declaring the issue didn’t raise “a substantial federal question.”
1973: Jones v. Hallahan – Kentucky Court of Appeals
When Marjorie Jones and Tracy Knight sued to get a marriage license, the court denied the two women’s request, declaring that “what they propose is not a marriage.”
1974: Singer v. Hara – Washington Court of Appeals
John Singer and Paul Barwick cited Washington State’s new Equal Rights Amendment as a reason for requiring that state to allow same-sex couples to marry, but the court cited the Kentucky case in nonetheless rejecting their request.
1977: Richards v. United States Tennis Association – New York County Supreme Court
Renee Richards, a transgender woman, sought to play in the United States Open. After being denied entrance in 1976, she sued, winning an injunction under New York law and participating in the 1977 competition.
Then along came the cases that overthrew laws that criminalized being gay
2003: Lawrence v. Texas – United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court ended sodomy laws nationwide, reversing the 1986 ruling in a decision by Justice Kennedy that declared, “Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today.”
Now all of this is on the chopping block once again! Before then came Virginia Prince and his* trail for mailing pornography through the mail.
When we discuss the dangers of censorship, we usually talk about the importance of ideas and their free circulation. We would be wise to consider also the dangers censorship poses to the body. Restricting intellectual freedom is a means for oppressing communities – for justifying incarceration, for preventing education, for destroying networks, and for thwarting resistance.
Take what happened to transgender activist Virginia Prince. In late 1959, a friend put Virginia Prince in touch with a pen pal. For Prince, exchanging letters with strangers was nothing new. Seven years previous, Prince and a group of friends started a newsletter titled Transvestia: The Journal of the American Society for Equality in Dress. Transvestia was a part of Prince’s work to foster supportive community for people whom she described as “transgenderist.” The correspondence with her new pen pal, however, rapidly grew into something different.
Prince received a photograph from her new correspondent of two women being sexual with each other. Below was the caption “Me and You.” Prince’s pen pal invited her to “ask anything.” Their letters grew more intimate. Prince wrote a letter describing a sexual fantasy between the two of them. This story could have remained nothing more than an analog precursor to cybersex, but in 1960, postal inspectors questioned Prince. Prince was prosecuted for the crime of distributing obscenity through the U.S. post.
And then the heavy hand of the law fell on him for this was the time of the Lavender Scare! In the gay community like the trans community we starting to network, the gay Mattachine Society was busted for mailing smut through the mail, the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Then Prince’s case.
During the 1950s and 1960s, obscenity laws were wielded against trans and queer communities not because they were somehow more sexual than cisgender and straight people, but as a part of repressing their organizing. At stake during Prince’s trial was not just the free circulation of ideas, but also the freedom of bodies. Prince and her community were facing the possibility of prison. Further, their right to control how they dressed was being restricted. In fact, at stake was how we understand gender itself and whether a person’s self-understandings of their own body would be respected.
*Virginia always identified as male. Will we see more laws banning us from the internet, will we see laws that criminalized us and gays as being phonographic if we post on the internet? Will my blog be labeled as promoting pornography?
Will we see a law like “Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating a Denial of Traditional Family Values” that strips anything LGBTQ+ from the internet? Will we be able to post on Facebook rallies for our human rights like the one this Sunday in West Hartford?
We know that Trump’s idol is Putin and Putin passed the law to protect family values… the distribution of "propaganda of non-traditional relationships" among any age group, not just minors" among minors, will we see this here as reported on CNN,
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed into law a bill that expands a ban on so-called LGBTQ “propaganda” in Russia, making it illegal for anyone to promote same-sex relationships or suggest that non-heterosexual orientations are “normal.”
The ban was rubber-stamped by Putin just days after a harsh new “foreign agents” law came into effect, as the Kremlin cracks down on free speech and human rights as its military operation in Ukraine falters.
The new laws significantly broaden the scope of a 2013 law which banned the dissemination of LGBTQ-related information to minors. The new iteration extends the ban on promoting such information to adults as well.
The new laws make it illegal to promote or “praise” LGBTQ relationships, publicly express non-heterosexual orientations or suggest that they are “normal.”
Project 2025 equates being transgender — or adopting “transgender ideology” — to pornography and declares that it should be outlawed. Under this plan, the federal government would enforce sex discrimination laws on the “biological binary meaning of sex,” and educators and public librarians who spread the concept of being transgender would be registered as sex offenders. The plan says that children should be “raised by their biological fathers and mothers who conceive them,” unless those biological parents are found unfit by a court.
[…]
These ideas have drawn national attention for their far-reaching scope, but they didn’t appear out of thin air. They all have roots in anti-LGBTQ+ state legislation that conservative lobbying groups and think tanks have supported for years, like the law that took effect in Kentucky. Contributors to Project 2025 include senior staff from Alliance Defending Freedom, whose lawyers have helped write anti-transgender legislation in a number of states and defended those laws in court. Members of the conservative groups Family Research Council and the American Principles Project, which have similarly pushed anti-LGBTQ+ bills and anti-trans rhetoric, have served on the Project 2025 advisory board.
Hey! All you gays out there who like in Pastor Martin Niemöller poem, First they came for the the trans community, but I wasn't worried because they not coming for me... well guess again,
The plan states that policies supporting single mothers and LGBTQ+ equity should be replaced with those “that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families,” the authors write — and it lays out specific ideas of how American families should have kids. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate with ties to the Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin D. Roberts, has shared similar views publicly.
The Republicans have a trifecta, it will be like Florida on steroids.
“There is this paradox where a majority of Americans voted for Trump, who is extremely anti-trans, and yet many Americans also voted for out transgender candidates and in favor of LGBTQ rights in referendums,” A4TE executive director Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen told The Advocate.
Advocate
By Christopher Wiggins
November 07 2024
In a year dominated by anti-transgender messaging from Republican campaigns and the reelection of former President Donald Trump, a record number of transgender candidates celebrated historic wins across the United States after Tuesday’s election. These victories, ranging from the first out transgender person elected to Congress to historic firsts in state and local governments, have sparked hope and optimism among LGBTQ+ advocates who see these results as proof of growing support for equality.
I have already written about the election of McBride to the House last week.
In addition to McBride’s groundbreaking victory, transgender candidates won significant races across the country. In Kentucky, Emma Curtis made history as the state’s first out transgender elected official, winning a seat on the County Council for Lexington-Fayette District 4. Minnesota’s Leigh Finke retained her seat in the state House of Representatives for District 66A. Zooey Zephyr, once banned from the floor of the state legislature for speaking out for trans rights, was reelected to represent Montana’s House District 100, while Kim Coco Iwamoto won a seat in Hawaii’s state legislature.
Other notable wins include Brianna Titone, reelected to the Colorado House of Representatives, and Jennifer Williams, who secured a position on the Trenton City Council in New Jersey. Evelyn Rios Stafford was reelected as Justice of the Peace in Washington County, Arkansas, and Jo Miller won a seat on the City Council in Woodbury, New Jersey. In Illinois, Precious Brady-Davis was elected to the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Board of Commissioners in Chicago, while Vered Meltzer won a seat on the Appleton City Council in Wisconsin, and Alice Wade was elected to the New Hampshire State House.
You know that this is amazing that they won in this election, what does it say about the voters? The people don’t hate us, they didn’t vote against us, they voted for the Republican economics’ policies. Besides these candidates there were other victories, GLAAD reported…
Aime Wichtendahl will become Iowa’s first transgender state lawmaker after voters in Iowa House District 80, which covers northern portions of Cedar Rapids up through Hiawatha and Robins, elected the Democrat to fill an open seat.
[…]
Wick Thomas, who just won their election as Missouri State Representative for the state’s House District 19, is the first out nonbinary person elected to the Missouri legislature.
The election also showed we are not the ogre that they are trying to make us out as, it showed that the voters have no problem electing us to office.
The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund endorsed and tracked 477 of the LGBTQ candidates who made it to the general election. As of Friday afternoon, about three-quarters of those races had been called, with LGBTQ candidates having a success rate of approximately 80%.
“Candidates performed very well overall on election night, with historic firsts in many key races and increased representation in the U.S. House and retaining presence in the U.S. Senate,” Sean Meloy, vice president of political programs for LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, told NBC News. “These wins are hopeful, especially as their voices in federal government will be critical under the next administration.”
[…]
LGBTQ candidates won elections to at least 37 state legislatures this year, according to the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, and several were historic firsts. Three state legislatures — those of Hawaii, Iowa and Missouri — will welcome their first out trans members with Kim Coco Iwamoto, Aime Wichtendahl and Wick Thomas, respectively. Iwamoto and Thomas are the first out trans people elected to any statewide office in their states.
These results are a ray of hope in an otherwise bleak elections.
My prediction: The Post Office will see massive cuts designed to cripple it so that private companies can cash in on the by businesses
In the hunt for a scapegoat, some are arguing that there's been too much focus from Democrats on transgender rights. There's no evidence backing that up.
MSNBC
By Hayes Brown
November 8, 2024
Democrats are still reeling from the wave of defeats on Election Day that included Kamala Harris losing to Donald Trump. In the process of casting about for an explanation, one theory is that Trump won because the Democratic Party is disconnected from the concerns of average Americans. An example of this alleged disconnect is Democrats’ relative support of transgender Americans, compared to Republicans who’ve been engaged in a coordinated attack against trans people.
“The Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left,” Rep. Tom Suozzi, a New York moderate Democrat who won re-election Tuesday, told The New York Times the next day. “I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports. … Democrats aren’t saying that, and they should be.”
Thump… Thump… the sound of the bus running over of us.
There is no other way to put this but: No. Democrats absolutely should not be following Suozzi’s advice here. It is an instinct based on fear that should be rejected loudly and firmly from all corners of the party. From a human decency perspective, this moment, when trans people are most endangered, is not the time to throw them under the bus. It’s also wrong as political strategy in that the party would be trying to appeal to voters who would be no more inclined to lend the Democratic Party their support even if it abandons trans people.
People are trying to blame someone and we are the low hanging fruit!
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said on Sunday he agrees with Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) that the far left helped propel President-elect Trump to victory, adding that the most effective Trump campaign ad was “Kamala Harris is for they/them, and Donald Trump is for us.”
“Well, he’s absolutely right,” Christie said about Torres, in a panel discussion on ABC News’s “This Week” with Jonathan Karl, “because the Democratic Party, from 2017 through 2024, went off the deep end.”
[...]
“I mean, the stuff they have been saying is just offensive to a large percentage of the American people. The DEI stuff is offensive to a large swath of the American people,” Christie, who ran an unsuccessful 2024 presidential primary bid, continued, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
This is where the soothsayers are pointing fingers once again at the minorities in an attempt to demonize and make us the scapegoats for the fact that the only thing the voters cared about was the economy.
I’ve been looking for non-election trans news and there isn’t any!
Everything about us is about the elections, and that sadly says a lot. On a non-LGBTQ blog that I follow I wrote this comment…
One of my readers, Diana, put it this way in a comment to the previous post:
I can tell you that the transgender community is in shock! I see on Facebook… “I’m scared!” “What do we do now?” From all the anti-transgender rhetoric that came out of Trump’s campaign, everything from from rolling back non-discrimination laws to banning diversity in the workplace and schools. The community is worried that this is the start of what happened in the 1930s in Germany. There is talk about fleeing to Canada or some other country. Did you every think that here in America people would be worrying about being persecuted because who they are?
A friend on Facebook told me he’s worried someone close to him is actually contemplating suicide out of a deep level of fear for their own safety.
People are posting about fleeing to another country. People have written that they are going back into the closet. People have written that they are worried about their paper-trail. People are getting their passports update (Including me.).
I think what gets us the most is the unknown. Will we be safe in Blue states? Will we get our healthcare? What about the children?
Que sera, sera Whatever will be, will be The future's not ours to see Que sera, sera What will be, will be Songwriters: Raymond B. Evans / Jay Livingston
Donald Trump’s allies are celebrating the arrival of the Christian nationalist agenda.
The New Republic
By Paige Oamek
November 6, 2024
Project 2025 has begun. And Donald Trump’s allies are now openly celebrating it.
“Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda,” wrote conservative commentator Matt Walsh on Wednesday morning, adding “Lol” for good measure.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who was recently released from prison, responded on his live War Room podcast with one word: “Fabulous.”
Later during the livestream, Bannon could be seen holding a hard copy of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 “Mandate For Leadership” up to the camera in celebration. On election night, Bannon had vowed to eliminate Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, MSNBC, and the Justice Department in an unhinged rant.
[…]
Meanwhile, the key author of Project 2025 celebrated Trump’s victory in a statement Tuesday night.
“President Trump has achieved a historic and hard-fought victory: overcoming four sham indictments, surviving two assassination attempts, and overcoming an unprecedented mid-race candidate swap to become the first president since Grover Cleveland to win two nonconsecutive terms,” wrote Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts.
Did anyone else expect anything different? After all every word that comes out Trump’s mouth is lie.
The former president spent the campaign distancing himself from the draconian policy package. He and his allies no longer need to hide
The Rolling Stone
By Nikki McCann Ramirez
November 6, 2024
Donald Trump has won the election, and Republicans are now comfortable openly admitting that Project 2025 was the plan all along.
The draconian policy package prepared by the Heritage Foundation in preparation for a second Trump administration was so extremist that in the final months of the campaign, the former president took great pains to publicly distance himself from the project. Its contents, which include a broad expansion of executive powers, a de facto national abortion ban, increased restrictions on contraception, brutal policies against undocumented migrants, and the elimination of several federal agencies (including the Department of Education), didn’t sit well with prospective voters.
Trump feigned ignorance of the plan, despite his close ties to those involved in crafting it, while Democrats did all they could to warn about the conservative blueprint for a second Trump term.
Sure enough, less than 24 hours after the election was called for Trump, his allies, advisers, and prominent supporters were celebrating the now-open road to Project 2025’s implementation.
Trump, et al are just a pack of liars that said anything to get reelected and then the truth comes out once they are elected.
Democrats had attacked Donald J. Trump’s ties to the conservative policy blueprint for reshaping the federal government. Several of its authors served in his administration.
The New York Times
By Neil Vigdor and Simon J. Levien
November 6, 2024
As Donald J. Trump was closing in on the 270 electoral votes that sealed his astounding political victory in the early hours of Wednesday, one of the first groups to salute him was the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, a policy playbook that Mr. Trump had feigned ignorance about during the campaign.
[...]
Democrats had spent months trying to tie Mr. Trump to the 900-page plan to overhaul the federal government, one that they had said offered an unvarnished preview of a second-term agenda bent on giving him unchecked powers to exact retribution while undermining abortion rights and climate change reforms.
Despite several of the plan’s authors having served in Mr. Trump’s administration during his first term in the White House, he repeatedly disavowed it on the campaign trail, including when he debated Vice President Kamala Harris. He falsely claimed that he knew nothing about it or the people involved in it.
Trump is now the liar in chief.
Despite several of the plan’s authors having served in Mr. Trump’s administration during his first term in the White House, he repeatedly disavowed it on the campaign trail, including when he debated Vice President Kamala Harris. He falsely claimed that he knew nothing about it or the people involved in it.
[...]
Mr. Trump immediately rejected her statement. But the Harris campaign and its supporters had yoked Project 2025 around their opponent’s neck, repeatedly warning that it is his shadow platform and that it is evidence of an extreme second-term agenda. Over many months, they had called it an authoritarian blueprint in an onslaught of advertisements, social media posts and TV appearances.
Everyone knew the truth... but the truth didn't matter to them, they put their pocketbook before the country.
The lies continue! Did you hear what he said... "a new phenomenon" BULL! But he is an old man and he has selective memory loss... Does Renee Richards ring a bell? What about Christine Jorgensen? Then we have a case where a transgender person got hit over her head with a cane, in 1771 in the first case of "Trans Panic" defense!
US President-elect Donald Trump has made two more key appointments ahead of his return to the White House in January.
Tom Homan, 62, will serve as Trump's "border tsar", having previously served as the returning president's acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
[...]
Trump has confirmed that Homan will have a wide-ranging role overseeing border security and deportation policy - two of his main campaign issues.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said he would bring Tom Homan, a Project 2025 contributor, into his administration if he wins November's election.
In a Tuesday appearance on California's KFI radio station, host John Kobylt asked Trump what plans or proposals related to immigration he had "ready to go" if elected.
"You've seen Tom," the former president replied. "You've seen Tom Homan. He's coming on board."
Do you want to guess what part of Project 2025 he wrote? It will be interesting if more Project 2025 authors get appointed.
The House Democratic majority made net gains Tuesday night in the General Assembly, flipping at least six Republican seats and most likely losing two on a night marked by widespread frustration over slow and incomplete election returns in Connecticut.
Connecticut Democrats had a successful Election Day Tuesday, expanding their leads in both the state House and state Senate.
They will have four more seats in the House next year, giving them a 102-49 edge. They also added a seat in the Senate, giving them a 25-11 advantage in the halls of Hartford.
“There's a feeling the Democrats in Connecticut have the right temperature in the social and fiscal policies,” Rep. Matt Ritter, (D - Speaker), said.
The ballot measure also passed allowing mail in ballots.
The former president of a Moms for Liberty chapter is challenging Democratic incumbent Eleni Kavros DeGraw this November, seeking to represent parts of the Farmington Valley in the state legislature.
Republican candidate Manju Gerber previously led the Hartford County chapter of Moms for Liberty, a controversial conservative group that advocates for parental rights.
And now, she's running for the 17th House District, which comprises Canton and part of Avon, battling Kavros DeGraw for the seat she has kept blue since 2021.
Two of the blogs that I follow have gone dark… one after seventeen years and the other after nine year.
I don’t understand why they stopped publishing we need positive roll models now more than ever, through our blogs we reach more than the trans community. Wednesday last week I wrote “This Is How We Change People's Minds” we give hope to our community and now more than ever we have to show that we will not be intimidated into silence. That we will not be forced back into the closet!
I will continue to be a beacon of hope. I will not kowtow to them.
I am here and I am queer! And I will not be silenced!
1) This was Whitney Houston's first big hit, her introduction to a mass, national audience. But music was not her first career. While she was still in high school, Whitney was a model and Seventeen magazine covergirl. Is there a print magazine in your home right now? If yes, who is on the cover? Nope… everything is online now. Even my morning newspaper (That came about because with a hardcopy of the newspaper you got the online version of it also. Then one day during a blizzard I realized that I didn’t want to trudge outside in the morning to get the paper.)
2) During her modeling days, she also appeared on packaging for Simplicity patterns. Can you sew? A button on yes.
3) "Saving All My Love for You" was the record that made Whitney Houston a superstar in the UK. Let's flip that: Tell us about a British performer you enjoy listening to. Well anyone from the British invasion of the 60s and 70s.
4) This song was composed by Michael Masser. He left his career as a stockbroker to pursue his passion for music and scored his first major hit with "Touch Me in the Morning" by Diana Ross. Do you feel you have a greater affinity for the analytical/logical or the creative/emotional? I am not a wordsmith so I will have to go with analytical/logical.
5) The lyrics were written by Gerald Goffin. He, too, took a circuitous route to music success. After high school he joined the Navy. When that stint was over, he went to college and studied chemistry. He worked in a lab for a while, but that was just to earn a regular paycheck until he could support himself with songwriting. What was your first job after you finished your education? How long did you stay at that job? Making, testing, and installing EKG radios like this and I hated installing them around the country.
You might recognize this from the old TV show Emergency (We made them for the show, they were just dummies boxes with no guts inside)
I lasted less than two years before they went belly-up. I learned one thing from the job. When a company goes bankrupt the mortgage holders get paid before the workers.
6) While this week's song was Whitney's first hit, it wasn't her most biggest hit. That was "I Will Always Love You," from the soundtrack of her movie The Bodyguard. "I Will Always Love You" was written and originally recorded by Dolly Parton. The film's star and producer Kevin Costner called Dolly personally to get her permission to use her song, a courtesy she appreciated. Who has recently been thoughtful or kind to you? My brother... he called me the morning after the elections to see if I was okay.
7) Whitney was a big fan of tomato soup. So is Barbra Streisand. (Maybe is bestows some kind of musical superpower!) What's your favorite soup for an autumn day like today? Homemade chicken soup with spaetzles… runner up: Onion soup.
8) 1985 wasn't just big for Whitney. It was also the year Bruce Willis became a household name when his TV series premiered on ABC. Can you name it? Oh… Oh.. yeah… he co-stared with Cybill Shepherd! But I can’t remember its name. Well anyway I never watched it.
9) Random question: While dining out, have you ever sent food back? Nope. I never had a quality issues.
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!
Or the dumbing down of America. Have you wondered about why the Republicans are pushing school vouchers, why Trump’s Secretary of Education wanted to tear down public education in favor of private schools. Why the Republicans want to close the Department of Education? Do you know why they are pushing vouchers?
This week’s elections point out why… two factors stand out like a sore thumb. According to Axios: 55% of college graduates voted for Vice President Harris and 56% of voters without college degrees supported former President Trump.
People with college education think? And for the Republicans that is dangerous!
In 2020, President Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by improving on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance among almost every kind of voter in the state.
But there were exceptions.
More than two in five precincts across the state were worse for Biden than they were for Clinton. And while those precincts ranged from rural to suburban to dense urban areas, nearly all had one thing in common: On average, they had far lower rates of college education than the rest of the state.
In one heavily Democratic Harrisburg precinct, for example, Biden won — but by 314 votes fewer than Clinton had.
In red rural Leacock Township, Lancaster County, neither Biden nor Clinton cracked 20% of the vote — but Biden got 542 fewer votes than Clinton.
Education isn’t everything. While an Inquirer analysis found that college education was the single largest predictor of vote change from 2016 to 2020, other factors, taken together, mattered more. Voters’ preferences depend on a lot of economic and social considerations, many of which are hard to measure.
In other words… the rich voted for Trump because they want to protect their wealth and the less educated voted for Trump because they didn’t know Trump lies about the economy. I knew that tariffs drove up prices and cause retaliation by other countries that put tariffs on our goods.
“I don’t think it’s overstated to say that education, beyond any other demographic factor, has impacted American politics and polarization,” said Chris Borick, director of the Institute of Public Opinion at Muhlenberg College.
I think the Trump voters are going to be in a big surprise!
I feel more like the Democrat Party has left me, not that I have left them.
Judy Woodruff: He points to policies that he says have hurt the auto industry. Michigan has lost more than a third of those jobs since 1990, in part because of trade policies like NAFTA, increasing automation, and companies moving factories to non-unionized plants in the South and overseas.
Chris Vitale: They don't realize how much they damage our employers with the regulations and the mandates and the uncompetitive positions that we're forced into.
Judy Woodruff:
That message has resonated with Michigan autoworkers, who have historically voted for Democrats. Macomb County, home to many union and blue-collar workers, has been seen as a political barometer that's flipped Republican at the top of the ticket amid economic downturns.
Trump has vowed to strip the Department of Education… ABC 7News reported that,
Former President Donald Trump took aim at the way education is being handled in the country.
He said he wanted to dismantle the Department of Education and pull funding from public schools that taught certain subjects.
He discussed his plans during an interview Friday on Fox News.
"We're going to take the Department of Education and close it," Trump said. "I'm going to close it."
"Here's what bothers me about that," Brian Kilmeade said during the interview. "Let's say you have a liberal city, like Los Angeles or San Diego, and they just decide that 'we're going to get rid of that history. We have new history. This is America, built off the backs of slaves and on stolen land.' And that curriculum comes in."
"Then we don't send them money," Trump responded.
Trump went on to say states like California would have to be watched and "if they want to get cute, you don't send them the money."
All they want public school children to learn in schools are the “3R” while the rich get to send their children to private schools. There's a push to limit certain topics in schools, such as critical race theory and gender identity issues, which some Republicans view as inappropriate or politically motivated and just teaching the basics. Just look at the books that they are banning, it fits right in with the pattern of limiting exposure that make you think. Books like the "Brave New World", "1984", "Animal Farm", "Fahrenheit 451" or books on the Civil Rights movement or slavery.
Welcome to the new "Brave New World" which will be divided into a ruling class that's educated and the new proletariat class with only the “3Rs”.
Way… way back when the True Colors conference was still at Central Connecticut State University (Back when it was still called a college) I was tasked with collecting signature for a petition on the proposed non-discrimination bill.
I noticed something, it was so obvious that it stood out! Wow! Many, so many that I could see there was something going on. Amazing! What it was, was that many of the people signing the petition were left handed! I thought Na, this cant be right. But then the next person grabbed the pen in their left hand… well just a coincident. Then the next grabbed with the left hand.
Okay the engineer in me said this is worth looking in to. (More on this later.)
Left-Handedness and Cognition: New Insights A new study on left-handedness and cognition yields surprising insights. Psychology Today By Sebastian Ocklenburg, Ph.D. November 3, 2024
Key points
A new study investigated handedness and emotion lateralization.
People with moderate handedness showed better task performance.
People with a reversed asymmetry profile showed more social difficulties and self-diagnosed autism and ADHD.
You see the last one? That is true with me, the more that I look back and the more that I know about ADHD the more I see it growing up. When I was in social work grad school one of my professors was a LCSW who specialized in learning disorders and along come me.
So he is handing out the results of the mid-term exam and when he got to me he said “See me after class.” Holy Sh*t! What did I fu*k up now?
So I go to his office after class and he said, “Have ever been tested for dyslexia?” Hun?… Um… “No” Would you like to be screen for it now? He saw it in the pattern of my writing. (Hence all the grammar errors… those pesky little letters keep jumping around. Or I left out a word thinking it wrote it.)
Oh, did I mention that I’m left-handed?
Does left-handedness affect abilities like creativity or intelligence?
Most people are right-handed, but about 10.6% are left-handed (Papadatou-Pastou and co-workers, 2020). While some older studies suggested that left-handedness may be linked to artistic abilities or intelligence, most recent studies do not show such associations. Handedness, however, is not the only form of left-right asymmetry that people show. One idea that has been suggested is that it is not handedness per se that is linked to cognitive abilities, but how these asymmetries are distributed in the brain. To investigate this, the connection of handedness to cognitive abilities needs to be investigated taking other asymmetries into account.
[…]
New insights into handedness, emotional lateralization, and cognitive performance So, what did the scientists find out?
As was to be expected, most people were right-handed. Also, most people found faces with an emotional left half more expressive than those with an emotional right half. This bias for the left half of the face concerning emotion recognition is well recorded in the scientific literature.
The scientists then analyzed how handedness was linked to success in the pegboard task and found that people with moderate handedness were most successful, independent of whether they were left-handed or right-handed. Task success was also linked to language fluency, showing that there may be a cascading effect between handedness, task success, and cognitive ability.
The scientists then further tested whether the laterality profile of an individual volunteer had any effects. Overall, 53% of volunteers showed the standard profile (right-handed and left-dominant for visual emotion recognition). 12% of volunteers showed a reversed profile. 13% showed a left bias for both tests and 22% of volunteers had a right bias for both tests. Interestingly a reversed profile was linked to both more self-reported social difficulties and a higher self-reported rate of autism and ADHD. The scientists argued that people with the reversed profile do not align with the average of other people for both handedness and emotional lateralization, which may it make more difficult for them to properly time their reaction to social cues and may thus lead to social difficulties.
Although numerous researchers have hypothesized a biological factor in the etiology of homosexuality, there is a lack of empirical evidence. Previous investigations did not focus on behavioral functions of the brain. Using neuropsychological testing, we found an increased incidence of left-hand preference (defined as non-consistent right-hand preference) in a group of 32 homosexual women. A trend in the same direction was found in a group of 38 homosexual men. These results suggest that homosexual orientation has a neurobiological component possibly related to hemispheric functional asymmetry. The results are consistent with previous reports that (1) prenatal neuroendocrine events are a factor in the development of human sexual orientation and functional brain asymmetries, and (2) the mechanisms associated with homosexual orientation and related neuropsychological characteristics are different between the sexes, i.e. elevated levels of prenatal sex hormones in women and decreased levels in men.
The distribution of handedness scores was analysed in 1414 heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual men and women. Hand preference was assessed by a questionnaire that distinguishes consistently right-handed from partially or completely left-handed individuals, and sexual orientation was measured by the Kinsey scales. As expected from population-based studies, heterosexual men were, on average, more left-handed than heterosexual women. By contrast, gay men were more right-handed than lesbians or heterosexual men, and lesbians were more left-handed than gay men or heterosexual women. This crossover interaction suggests that a common variable influences sex, sexual orientation, and hand preference.
Another quirk in the statistics gay men tend to have an older brother, there has been less research in seeing if lesbians have older sisters.
The human brain is so amazing, we are all unique and so many factors go into making us who we are.
Delaware state legislator Sarah McBride won her momentous bid for the U.S. House this week, declaring, “Our democracy is big enough for all of us.”
The Washington Post
By Emily Wax-Thibodeaux
November 7, 2024
The tiny state of Delaware made history Tuesday night as a buoyant candidate in a cobalt-blue dress took the stage here, claiming the victory that will make her the first transgender member of Congress.
“Our democracy is big enough for all of us,” exulted Democrat Sarah McBride, a 34-year-old state senator whose meteoric political rise marks an extraordinary moment for the country’s trans community.
It’s also a rare high point, given the escalating violence that people such as McBride have faced across the country and the efforts by many legislatures — though not her own — to limit their rights. Last year, Reuters reported, lawmakers in 37 states introduced at least 142 bills to restrict gender-affirming health care for transgender individuals, nearly three times as many as the previous year.
So far the Republicans in Congress have remained mum about her. I expected that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert would had something to say about her,
“Since then, I have seen that change is possible,” she told delegates, then continued, “But despite our progress, so much work remains,” she continued. “Will we be a nation where there’s only one way to love, only one way to look and only one way to live? Or will we be a nation where everyone has the freedom to live openly and equally; a nation that’s stronger together?”
Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr won reelection in a race that will allow the transgender lawmaker to return to the House floor nearly two years after she was silenced and sanctioned by her Republican colleagues.
Zephyr, a Democrat, defeated Republican Barbara Starmer in her Democrat-leaning district in the college town of Missoula.
Zephyr, who was in her first term, was last permitted to speak on the chamber floor in April 2023, when she refused to apologize for saying some lawmakers would have blood on their hands for supporting a ban on gender-affirming medical care for youth.
[…]
She has since become a leading voice for transgender rights across the country, helping fight against a torrent of anti-trans rhetoric on the presidential campaign trail from Donald Trump and his allies. Her campaign season has been split between Montana and other states where Democrats are facing competitive races.
The Republicans are an equal opportunity discriminator… they discriminate against anyone who is different or a member of the opposition party,
Zephyr’s sanction came as minority party members nationwide were being penalized for speaking out in protest. Tennessee Republicans expelled Democratic Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson from the Legislature for chanting along with gun control supporters who packed the House gallery in response to a Nashville school shooting that killed six people, including three children. Jones and Pearson were later reinstated.
Oklahoma Republicans also censured a nonbinary Democratic colleague after state troopers said the lawmaker blocked them from questioning an activist accused of assaulting a police officer during a protest over legislation banning children from receiving gender-affirming care, such as puberty-blocking drugs and hormones.
It seems to me that the Republicans hold the Democrats to a higher standard than their own party legislator.
We live in a new world and we all have to find our way, will it last for only four years or will it be the “New Reich” or Putin have his stooge in power and cut support to Ukraine?
For us we also face a new unknown that we will have to find our way through. Erin In The Morning has a map of high risk states…
But in a week and a half the elections have made it obsolete… now the who country needs to be painted black.
Okay first off… we must curb the rampant fears, they could be justified in the future but lets cut back on the “Chicken Little” routine running around in circles flapping our wings.
We are only 0.5 percent of the population… that is a half a percent of the population! However, the last poll… Most favor protecting trans people from discrimination, even as growing share say gender is determined by sex at birth So what we need to do in my opinion is… education. We need our “think tanks” to start to work on an effective way to counter the lies from the right-wing Republicans.
We need to build allies, we are nothing without our allies. And an ally is not a person who agrees with us, and ally speaks up for us. An ally takes a What I learned when for four years I worked helping pass the non-discrimination law and other laws for us in Connecticut.
This is from one of our fliers back then…
CT TransAdvocacy Coalition, CT Women's Education and Legal Fund, Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, CT AFL-CIO, Anti-Defamation League CT, New Haven Pride Center, CT Sexual Assault Crisis Services, Transitioning and Loving Life (TaLL), True Colors Sexual Minority Youth and Family Services, CT American Civil Liberties Union, CT Outreach Society, NARAL Pro-Choice CT, The Connecticut Alliance for Business Opportunities, UConn Rainbow Center, UConn Women's Center, Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Unitarian Universalist Society: East, Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, New England Healthcare Employees Union SEIU 1199NE, CT Citizen Action Group, National Council of Jewish Women (CT), CT Chapter of the National Organization for Women, Triangle Community Center, CT Coalition Against Domestic Violence, CT Clergy for Full Equality, CT Latina/os Achieving Rights & Opportunities, Human Rights Campaign CT, PFLAG Hartford, PFLAG Southeastern CT, City of Stamford, City of New Haven, Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, City of Hartford Commission on LGBT Issues
We didn’t do it alone we had help, we had a lot of help!
From 2010 and Love Makes a Family
We tell our stories… stories are the biggest weapon we have. Back in the first decade of this century I traveled around with Love Makes A Family to go to “Town Hall” meetings, I remember many drives on a dark roads coming home from them, we had a car full traveling to New London, to Winsted, to the four corners of the state. This picture is from back then, taken when I was talking about the non-discrimination bill in Hartford at the UConn School of Law. After my talk a woman came up to me and said, I wasn’t going to donate to Love Makes a Family anymore because we are getting marriage equality here but listening to you I see our struggle for equality isn’t over.”
Our stories make a difference. There was a reason why the CT TransAdvoacy Coalition and the LGBTQ Aging Advocacy Coalition are called a coalition is because we cannot do it alone.
And donate to LGBTQ+ organizations, they have their work cut out for them.
Hey! We can't sit on our duffs. If you want change you have to get out and help to bring about change.
We are going through the 5 stages of grief.
The first comes Denial. Then grief. #5 is the Acceptance stage.
So what are you going to do about it? I think of the words of Harvey Milk...
Gay brothers and sisters, you must come out. Come out to your parents. I know that it is hard and will hurt them, but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives. Come out to your friends, if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors, to your fellow workers, to the people who work where you eat and shop. Come out only to the people you know, and who know you, not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths. Destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake.
Idea #1 Form an underground railroad to bring people to healthcare who cannot get it in their home states.
Idea #2 Find housing in your state for those who want to flee their states.
Idea #3 Build coalitions! Join with the abortion rights advocates. Join with immigrant groups. Join with anyone who will support us.
Idea #4 Build a speakers bureau to spread the truth. Polls have shown that over 60% of the people support us but they only knows the lies the Republicans put out.
Idea #5 Work with religious groups who are affirming, they cannot sit quite anymore because that is condoning the hatred.
Idea #6 Open your pocketbooks... donate to places like GLAD, Lambda Legal, ACLU, Lambda Legal, Sylvia Rivera Law Project and other transgender and LGBT legal organizations. It is going to take money to win our cases... the right has billionaires to support them while we just have ourselves.
So what are your ideas? So instead of sitting here moaning about fleeing the country which you all know you will never do... become an activist and fight for our human rights.
You all probably also know on Saturdays, I write "Saturday 9" meme. Most of the people who also play along on meme are Christian women. Well I have two comments from them, the first from So California...
Not a lot of transgender adds here in So CA, though it is an issue for the far right. I met my first transgender when I worked at the post office in the mid 70's. I also took a class in human sexuality that explained things and then had that same person as a guest. I don't understand a lot, but I do understand being kind. My neighbor is also a transgender and we get along fine. People are so quick to judge based on what they see. I am a Christian and I try not to judge. Jesus taught love, not hate. Too many people forget that. Oh, I voted for mail and have for years.
The other from Long Island NY...
I voted early. I am holding my breath until the results are final, I voted for my grandmothers, who fled the pogroms of Europe. I voted for my mother, who my father said “was a liberated woman before there was such a thing,”. I voted for my daughters, who should have the same rights I had. I want to cry tonight like I did in 2008, not line I did in 2016.
We shape many minds by just being ourselves, just by living our lives. Last week I wrote about voting and how while waiting inline I talked to other people around and just by being out we change people's minds.
What the Republicans want to do is bring us back to pre-Stonewall, to pre-Silver Lake's Black Cat Uprising, pre-Cooper Do-nuts Uprising, and the Compton Cafeteria protests, where you had to wear 3 items of male clothing (and socks counted as only one item.) or you could be arrested.
They want to force us the dark allies or the sleazed bars. I remember the hearing gay stories who they hop for bed to bed in one nightstands. That is what the Republicans want to force us back to the closet.
Yes, it looks like that the Republicans got a trifecta the presidency and Congress (The House vote is still in process but is leaning Republican).
So now we have to work on the back court game. Blocking legislation action, working with the state legislatures, and challenging every law in court.
And I will predict this… Vance will be president before the four terms are up. That Trump will either step down and let Vance to be president to finish is term, or the old man will die in office. I think that is the Republican long game, Vance is under the wings of billionaire Peter Thiel, a PayPal co-founder and I think that is the payoff for supporting Trump.
You are going to see me say that more often… "Ne permittas bastardus te deprimere" This is my new motto.
And here you thought I wouldn't be through writing about politics any more!
Don't forget that we will now have a trans woman sitting on the floor of the House! Sarah McBride won her election! And...
Montana Democrat, and the state’s first transgender representative, Zooey Zephyr, has been re-elected.
Pink News
By Amelia Hansford
November 6, 2024
Zephyr has become an increasingly prominent voice for LGBTQ+ rights in Montana and across the US. She was famously censured in 2023 over her vocal opposition to an anti-trans law.
She polled 3,370 votes, while Republican candidate Barbara Starmer managed just 703. In a post on X/Twitter Zephyr said she was honoured by the result and vowed to continue her fight for progressive policies in what is known as Big Sky Country.
“I promise to do as I have always done,” she said. “Fight for my constituents, stand up against those who seek to break democracy and be a bulwark against the rising tide of American fascism.”
One last thought... just before Thanksgiving a Constitutional question could arise. What happens if on November 26 Judge Juan Merchan sentences Trump to five years in prison?
By Devan Cole, Lauren del Valle, Kara Scannell and Jeremy Herb
November 6, 2024
Donald Trump has been reelected to the White House as a convicted felon who is awaiting sentencing in his hush money case in New York and still working to stave off prosecution in other state and federal cases.
It’s an extraordinarily unique position for him to be in: Never before has a criminal defendant been elected to the nation’s highest office, just as an ex-president had never been criminally charged until last year.
[…]
Should Merchan move ahead with sentencing, Trump could be ordered to serve as much as four years of prison time, but the judge is not required to sentence the president-elect to prison, and he could impose a lesser sentence, such as probation, home confinement, community service or a fine.
Any sentence, of course, will be complicated by the fact that Trump is set to take office on January 20, 2025. Trump’s lawyers are likely to shape their appeals to raise constitutional issues challenging whether a state judge can sentence a president-elect, which could tie the case up in courts for years.
Since it is a state case, Trump does not have the power to pardon himself next year after he is sworn into office.
Is Trump above the law? Will he get to serve his time in jail? It is a state court so he cannot grant himself a pardon.
"The public's confidence in the integrity of our judicial system demands a sentencing hearing that is entirely focused on the verdict of the jury and the weighing of aggravating and mitigating factors free from distraction or distortion," Merchan wrote in his ruling Friday. "The members of this jury served diligently on this case, and their verdict must be respected and addressed in a manner that is not diluted by the enormity of the upcoming presidential election."
[…]
Merchan's opinion noted that any conflict was of Trump's own making as the former president repeatedly sought to delay the proceedings.
"Notably, had Defendant been sentenced on July 11, 2024, as originally scheduled, there would of course have been no cause for delay," the judge wrote.
We never before had an incumbent president up for sentencing before, this happened before the he was president so it was before he had presidential immunity.
And let us not forget that there are more cases pending, how will they be affected by his incumbency? Will Trump be serving his presidency behind bars with Vance as the President?
I wrote this yesterday in hopes of a Harris win. The people voted their pocketbooks and it appears that they got the trifecta... the presidency, the Senate, and the House! God help us!
This is our motto: "Ne permittas bastardus te deprimere"*
We have to fight him in court.
We have to fight him in the Congress.
We have to fight him in the court of public opinion.
Now the waiting begins, will there be violence? Will there be tons of law suits? Will the Republicans certify the elections in the House? Trump said he and Johnson have something up their sleeves. People magazine wrote…
"We gotta get the congressmen elected and we gotta get the senators elected because we can take the Senate pretty easily, and I think with our little secret we’re going to do really well with the House, right?" Trump said while looking at Johnson. "Our little secret is having a big impact."
"He and I have a secret," Trump added. "We’ll tell you what it is when the race is over."
Are they going to gerrymander something up in the House when they seat new members, will they somehow try to nullify the will of the people?
I sat with some trans folks and we were talking about what we will do if Trump was elected. I tell you there are some very worried trans people out there. For us the wait is agony, we fear the worst under Trump’s dictatorship because that is what it will be, he already said he was going after enemies of the “state” and we are IT! NPR reported,
With just two weeks remaining until the presidential election, former President Donald Trump has used his most recent appearances on podcast and cable interviews to escalate attacks on fellow Americans whom he calls “the enemy from within.”
Will he criminalize us if he wins? The Guardian wrote,
Trump has also pledged to rescind federal LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination policies, which could mean a loss of protections in housing, healthcare, employment, education and a range of federal programs. He has promised new credentialing for teachers to “promote positive education about the nuclear family, the roles of mothers and fathers”. The Republican platform calls for advancing a “culture that values the sanctity of marriage”.
Project 2025, the rightwing manifesto authored by Trump allies, is even more explicit, saying Biden-Harris pro-LGBTQ+ policies should be replaced by ones supporting the “formation of stable, married, nuclear families” and “heterosexual, intact marriage”. It says adoption agencies, healthcare workers and businesses should be able to reject LGBTQ+ people, and faith-based government contractors should be allowed to deny services to people who don’t fit “biblically based” definitions of marriage.
Some legal scholars have warned that marriage equality, already endangered at the supreme court, could be further threatened under Trump, particularly if he gets the opportunity to appoint additional justices.
Over lunch at Transweek (Formerly know as Fantasia Fair) we talk what we would do if Trump win. I said I have an eye on Canada... maybe a little place in Nova Scotia overlooking the ocean. We said that we could start refugee community there, an enclave of trans expatriates, just like during the Vietnam!
It is a sad commentary on the new reality, because even if Harris and Walz win the Democrats take the House and Senate... there still are MAGAs out there that hate our guts.
On Nov. 5, voters across the United States will head to the polls to cast their ballots in the 2024 presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. But as was the case in 2020, they might not know the results on election night.
That’s because it takes time to count the votes — record numbers of which are being cast before Election Day. And in a race that’s expected to be extraordinarily close, more votes will need to be counted before a winner can be called.
[...]
“I think it’s likely towards the end of the week — Thursday, maybe Friday — we should have an idea of who won the presidency,” Becker said in response to a question from Yahoo News.
So now we wait, our lives in the hands of the voters and the courts because even through the networks called the election it is not over until the next president takes the oath of office… do we live here or do we flee the country where we were born and lived because a fascist dictator was elected.
Are we move forward or backward to the 1950s?
It is 1:30AM And I am scared. I am scared to live in my own country. I never thought that there was some much hate and bigoty in this country. I am scared that the man who said he will criminalize us might be the next president of the United States of America. It looks like the con artist will once again be president.
So Connecticut stays Blue and the ballot question wins.
I worry about my two grand-niblings, I don't have many years left before me (I will be eighty when his term is up), but they have their who life before them.
Democrat Sarah McBride is expected to make history next week as the first openly transgender person elected to the U.S. Congress.
She is no stranger to making history: In 2016 she became the first openly transgender person to address a major U.S. political convention and in 2020 became the first to serve in a U.S. state Senate.
McBride, 34, is favored to win Delaware's sole seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, after securing the Democratic nomination in a competitive September primary and is expected to easily win a seat that the three major U.S. nonpartisan political rating services rate solidly Democratic.
"The fact that the candidacy of someone like me is even possible... is a testament to Delawareans," McBride said in a Saturday interview.
However, she sought to play down the history-making nature of her nomination and expected election.
Wow! I bet she will be a burr under the Republican saddle.
McBride is not worried about working with people who oppose transgender rights in Congress, saying she will focus on members open to bipartisanship, even if they do not fully agree with her values.
"If democracy is going to work, we have to be able to have conversations across disagreement," she said. "There is a responsibility that comes with being first, but (that) doesn't matter if I don't fulfill the responsibility of just being the best member of Congress that I can be for Delaware."
She said her priorities in Congress will include passing the PRO Act, which would expand federal protections for workers to unionize, as well as affordable healthcare and childcare.
Notice it is not a trans bill but one that affects everyone!
"The country is faced with two very different visions for the future," Robinson said. "Her historic role as the first transgender member of Congress would be a testament to both the work she's done, and to the power of voters to embrace progress over fear."
This just goes to show you like this morning’s post it is only the Republicans that got their shorts in a knot, that most people we are not an issue.
Why us? What got me was the fact that the Trump campaign spent $65 million dollars against us! Whoa can you imagine what that much money spent helping us could instead of tearing us down?
If you’ve watched TV this month, you’ve likely seen campaign ads supporting Donald Trump by attacking Kamala Harris over transgender issues. From Oct. 7 to Oct. 20, Trump’s campaign and pro-Trump groups spent an estimated $95 million on ads, more than 41 percent of which were anti-trans. Independent journalist and LGBTQ+ activist Erin Reed joins Laura Barrón-López to discuss.
John Yang:
If you've watched TV this month, especially sports like football or baseball, you've likely seen campaign ads supporting Donald Trump by attacking Kamala Harris over transgender issues. Laura Baron-Lopez looks at what's behind them.
Laura Baron-Lopez:
Less than 1 percent of the U.S. population identifies as transgender. But this election year, Republicans have spent a considerable amount of money on ads demonizing transgender people. From October 7th to the 20th, Trump's campaign and pro Trump groups spent an estimated $95 million and more than 41 percent of those ads were anti-trans.
Can you imagine how much animosity and hate those ads have generated against us with his lies? His lies have real life consequences, violence against minority communities have skyrocketed in the last couple of years.
A party faction that includes several GOP governors says government shouldn’t get involved.
Politico
By Daniel Payne
October 31, 2024
Donald Trump is spending more on ads criticizing Kamala Harris’ support for transgender rights than he is on any other subject in the campaign’s closing days — and down-ballot Republicans are following suit, believing the issue can tip close races.
But nationwide, the GOP is finding it’s easier to oppose trans rights in theory than in reality — when it means kicking a child off a team or blocking parents from proceeding with medical care recommended by a doctor. Some Republicans are even warning their party’s stance conflicts with conservative values on individual and parental rights.
[…]
The sharp focus on transgender rights may not only lay the groundwork for the next phase of the culture war but also foreshadow more efforts to restrict federal protections for transgender kids’ ability to transition, play sports or use facilities in accord with their gender identity. The fights could test the party’s core beliefs — about using the power of federal and state governments in ways that affect localities and families.
That is what I fear, in January we will see more Republican states pass more draconian legislation against! That we will see Texas try to get medical records from out of state for not only us but for women also who may have had an abortion out of state.
In North Dakota, Gov. Doug Burgum said he was uncomfortable with the use of “the heavy hand of state government” in a bill he vetoed, which restricted teachers from using transgender students’ preferred pronouns without teacher and administrator permission.
Arkansas’ then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson said a bill he vetoed would have created “new standards of legislative interference with physicians and parents.”
And in Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine used the language of the anti-abortion movement in describing his veto of a bill banning gender-affirming care as “pro-life.”
They use us to rile up their evangelical Christians and there transphobic and homophobic base. The LA Times writes…
Gallup recently published a list of what Americans consider the most pressing issues as they choose the next president. Unsurprisingly, there is no overlap between Republicans and Democrats on the top five.
Republicans say they are concerned about the economy, immigration, terrorism and national security, crime and taxes.
Democrats are concerned about American democracy, Supreme Court nominations, abortion, healthcare and education.
Transgender rights — for or against — are nowhere to be seen among the top concerns of voters in either party. In fact, of more than 20 issues the pollsters asked about, transgender rights ranked dead last in importance to voters overall.
So why has former President Trump’s campaign been spending tens of millions of dollars on inflammatory ads attacking Vice President Kamala Harris’ support for transgender rights?
Since she is only following the policy that Trump okay-ed! Notice Trump has been silent about the fast that it is his policy.
Since the beginning of August, Trump and other Republicans have reportedly spent more than $65 million on anti-trans ads, concentrating on the battleground states — although even here in deepest-blue California, I can’t turn on my television without seeing them.
[…]
As the Harris campaign and others have pointed out, the ad is misleading. Federal policy, including under the Trump administration, has allowed incarcerated transgender people to receive gender-affirming medical care. Only two federal prisoners have ever received gender-affirming surgery, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and FactCheck.org.
His loyal cult followers just ignore those pesky little facts.
So what exactly is going on here? Is it as simple as demonizing a vulnerable group of people to score political points in a close race? Or is it something deeper?
“What Republicans are seeing or feeling is that people are anxious about the future,” M. Gessen said in a conversation about the ads with a New York Times opinion editor last week.
“They’re anxious about their economic future,” said Gessen, a nonbinary journalist who frequently writes about LGBTQ+ issues. “They’re anxious about their social future. And it can all be boiled down to this anxiety about one’s children — that one’s children are going to come home from school one day and speak a different language than the parents or use a different name and generally be a stranger.”
Thanks to the Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Alvarez otherwise known as the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 case.
There’s no law against lying in political ads, but I’m guessing Trump’s inane ramblings about school sex-change operations are too bizarre even for his ad makers. Picking on transgender incarcerated people and migrants must have seemed like the next best option. But the message is always about fear.
The PBS article says,
Erin Reed:
It's important to note that some of the biggest benefactors of the Republican Party, some of the most influential organizations in the party we're talking, groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, for instance, have made this their main issue.
If you're running a campaign in a place like Pennsylvania or Ohio or Michigan at any level, and you want money in your campaign, targeting trans people is a really good way to do that. But as for Trump, I think that there's something different at play here. I think that this is a classic fear campaign. We've just got polling today showing that Harris is catching up on the economy and on other issues that Republicans tend to pull well in.
And so the purpose of a fear campaign is to distract you from issues that you normally care about by making you so afraid of a group of people, of somebody like me, for instance, that you're willing to throw everything else away because you're scared.
[...]
Laura Baron-Lopez:
Who are these ads targeting? They run during major sporting events. They were just on during the World Series. Who is he trying to reach here?
Erin Reed:
The group of people that are watching these sporting events are young men. And I think in a lot of cases, the Republican Party is trying to tap into what they hope is some level of fear that they can draw up from that group of people. If you look at most polling and anecdotally, really, young people tend to understand trans people better than anybody else.
They're not as afraid of us. And I think that might be part of why this messaging campaign might be falling short.
And that is the bottom line… fear. Fear that the undocumented immigrants eating your cats and dogs. Fear of people who worship different religions. Fear of us. Fear of those who are different from them and the LA Times ends with this,
This presidential campaign is going to be over soon. But the damage Trump has done to transgender people — by fomenting fear, by scapegoating, by “othering” — will most assuredly live on.
Two take-aways from the video... WE VOTE! The percentage of LGBTQ+ people who vote is 94%! high. While at the same time these ads had zero influence on getting people to vote and zero influence on people changing their votes!
