Morning Fun (and civic duty to resist)

The Coffee Shop Encounter by Jess Piper

A small town libertarian Read on Substack

I saw the email come in and I wondered why I wasn’t blocked from their list.

It was addressed to me from Americans for Prosperity, a group founded and funded by the Koch brothers. Kansas billionaires who changed the American political landscape with their wealth. Kansas brothers who have made this country worse.

There is only one Koch brother still living, Charles, and he continues with the mission of breaking the government. He is anti-union. Anti-public education. Anti-social safety nets. Anti-climate justice.

He is a committed libertarian.

Since the 1980s, the Koch brothers have steadily ramped up their political involvement and have constructed a vast network of organizations that pool hundreds of millions of dollars from their own pockets and other wealthy donors each year in support of the conservative idea generation, leadership training, election campaigning, and policy advocacy. Yet for all the groups the Kochs have created and funded, there is just one group that sits at the center of their network: Americans for Prosperity.

The email I received included an invitation to a local coffee shop about 25 minutes from home. Americans for Prosperity (AFP) was in town looking to connect with like-minded people who value freedom and community.

Free people. Free Missouri. Free coffee.

I decided I would go because if I love anything, it’s freedom. I can afford to buy my own coffee.

You probably already know this, but I don’t mind stirring the pot. I like to cause good trouble when I can. I like to be a burr under the saddle of those in power — a constant annoyance. I like to take up space and get in the way. I do this by giving no quarter and no space to the bourgeoisie who plan to plunder the resources of communities like mine.

I show up.

I knew I wasn’t the first to the meeting at the coffee shop that morning because I saw a car with a dented and battered Missouri license plate — a plate with a Gadsden flag. I knew a libertarian must be in close proximity. I was right.

I saw him sitting in the comfortable leather seat at the front of the coffee shop. I knew he was with Americans for Prosperity because it said so on his green hoodie. The color of money.

I smiled at him as I walked to the back to order my coffee. He smiled back…he looked familiar. He said, “Hi, Jess.”

Ope.

I was caught red-handed. Not that I was trying to attend the meeting incognito, but I didn’t plan on one of the Directors of the Americans for Prosperity calling me by name. My infamy precedes me…actually it’s my big mouth and my propensity for calling out Missouri Republicans. So be it.

I kept walking to the counter in the back.

I never know what to order at a coffee shop and I get a little anxious with a big menu. I drink most of my coffee at home because I am plain like that…steaming hot coffee from my old Bunn, poured into my old Lake Superior mug. I don’t take sugar, but I do mix in a couple of teaspoons of Walmart powdered creamer. Yes, I know.

Poor folks have poor ways.

I decided on a chai at the counter — the barista said she could make it a dirty chai. Who doesn’t like tea with espresso?

I returned to the front of the building to wait for the meeting to start. The AFP Director was on his phone. I noticed another local Democrat walk in. We chatted for a minute and my Democratic friend sat down next to me. We kept looking for folks to come in. They never appeared.

Not one person came to the meeting except the AFP Director and two Nodaway County Democrats.

I asked the AFP Director if I could pepper him with a few questions since there would not be a meeting. He kindly obliged.

He told me his name and I then realized why he looked familiar. He is familiar. He is from a town just west of mine. We know the same people.

He is a small town libertarian.

AFP is a libertarian organization that actually funds the GOP agenda in Missouri. They consistently endorse GOP candidates in races across the state. They also fund some of the most extreme Republicans running for office. Many of the candidates they endorse believe in abortion bans. They believe in book bans. They are anti-union and pro-privatization of institutions like public schools.

That is where I started.

Why do you want to defund public schools? He told me that defunding was not the goal, but that every parent should have a “choice” about where their kid attends school and that a voucher is useful for funding that choice.

I asked him where that choice was in Nodaway County. He didn’t have an answer, but I do. There is no choice. There is a K-8 private Catholic school in Maryville. It does not offer a high school or a non-religious curriculum. They also don’t offer Special Education classes.

There is no school choice in Nodaway County and the libertarian goal of school vouchers would be a death sentence to several rural schools in our county. Rural schools that support all kids, including those with a disability.

The small town libertarian listened politely as I spoke and I listened politely as he spoke. I pointed to a particular habit of speech he consistently used when speaking of public schools: He called them “government schools.” I asked him why he doesn’t refer to private schools who receive taxpayer money as “government schools” and his answer shocked me…

He said private schools receiving taxpayer money are not “government schools” because they don’t follow state standards for schools.

Oh my god.

They don’t have to answer to anybody. They don’t have to take standardized tests and they don’t have to produce results. If they are good, parents will flock. If they are bad, parents will find another school. It’s the market, stupid.

I had to think about closing my mouth. My jaw hung open in horror.

Market solutions do not work in education. Kids aren’t coffee. Or blueberries.

If they attend a bad school that closes, they just lost a year of education. It isn’t a minor flaw in the school choice design. It’s part of the scam. Make money with choice schools…find a community and open a fly-by-night school in an old Pizza Hut or in a church basement. Accept the taxpayer dollars, produce no results, close the school, and then run out of town with the money.

This wasn’t the only topic of our conversation. The small town libertarian relied heavily on philosophers to make his points. He asked me often if I had read this philosopher or that one and I noticed that we actually agreed on several topics.

I was at the coffee shop for nearly an hour. On my way home, the scene played out in my head. I am an overthinker. I came to a very quick conclusion about the reason the libertarian and I had disagreements — libertarians have no plan for poverty. Or disability. Or women. Or any community that is oppressed or marginalized.

The ideal libertarian comes across as selfish. And privileged. They would likely deny both.

I know the only way out of our current political position is to be in our communities. To physically meet folks — to look them in the eye and talk about our shared and common needs.

But, it’s not easy when I know I can’t change their minds — at least not in just one encounter. Maybe I can make them think, though? Maybe I can put a thought or two in their head? Maybe I can also learn not to be so rigid in my own ideas?

The first rule is “do not obey in advance” and in my mind, it looks like showing up and pushing back.

I don’t know that I changed anything with my meeting with the small town libertarian, but I know it didn’t hurt.

This feels like progress.

~Jess

Wow! What A Great Read.

The subject may not be for everyone; you’ll be able to tell by reading rawgod’s piece, and then decide whether to read the other blog posts. I am engrossed in this, because of raising a child, and later work in the schools here. Of course, there is another entire point beside that, which is humans keeping an open mind in regard to our treatment of other human beings. Give it a look!

A BRAVE SPIRIT TAKES A STAND

I’m Posting This for Fun.

Kirk Cameron Bringing The God Back To ‘Goddamn, This Is A Weird Children’s TV Show’ by Rebecca Schoenkopf

Next stop: anyplace but the Emmys. Read on Substack

*Just the weirdest-looking creature. Also there’s a puppet.*

Good news for all you people still disappointed that “Growing Pains” went off the air: Kirk Cameron is coming back to TV!

Sort of. By TV we mean more likely streaming services, and by streaming services we mean probably Christian-themed services like Minno and YippeeTV. But if you are someone still reeling from Cameron being denied his rightful Oscar nod for one of the “Left Behind” movies, here is your chance to ease some of your pain.

Cameron is teaming up with Brave Books, presumably to do to children’s television what they have tried to do to children’s literature and book fairs. Namely, they want to make it suck.

Cameron stars in and produces a new show called “Adventures with Iggy and Mr. Kirk,” which had its premiere in Nashville recently. He promises the show will “bring God into the forefront of children’s entertainment,” and will be a “tool” that can be used to “reach millions of children across America and spread the Gospel.” Just as soon as it finds distribution.

“Adventures with Iggy and Mr. Kirk” is set in a treehouse inhabited by Mr. Kirk and Iggy the Iguana, where they do stuff like read the anti-abortion book “Little Lives Matter” (subtle!) and listen to Kirk explain that Iggy is perfect the way God made him. No cross-dressing iguanas in this treehouse!

Possibly not coincidentally, Iggy looks like a cross between Pepe the Frog and the alien-human hybrid baby from the original “V” miniseries. Seriously, look at this thing. What is this abomination? Did they Island of Dr. Moreau him out of discarded Muppets?

We mean the one on the right, in case there’s any confusion.

Right Wing Watch captured a clip of Cameron explaining himself to “FlashPoint,” a right-wing themed show on the Victory Channel:

“For a couple of years I’ve been reading wholesome Christian children’s books, contra the drag queen story hours, and hearing from parents that they don’t want woke indoctrination for their kids. They don’t want gay dinosaurs and trans ducks teaching their children morality.”

Trans ducks? We haven’t been forced by a tiny person to watch “Daniel the Tiger” in a while but it sounds as if its makers might have been busy introducing some cool new characters.

“They want kids books and TV shows that are going to reinforce the stuff that parents are trying to teach their kids at home about the sanctity of life, about forgiveness, about family, about the dangers of socialism.”

Our experience is that most parents would like kids’ shows they can sit through without wanting to claw out their eyeballs and pour molten lead into their ears. They wouldn’t give a shit if Peppa Pig showed up dressed like Mao and hollering about the good of the collective so long as it shuts their kids up for half an hour.

Cameron and Iggy are joined on their adventures by a mailman, a vulture named Culture (again, subtle!), and Leigh-Allyn Baker, an actress with a legit career who became one of those anti-vax right-wingers who stands up at school board meetings to scream her opposition to mask mandates because … well, we’ll let her tell you:

“I would never put them in a mask because their brain needs oxygen to grow, which the neurologists can confirm.”

We’re not neurologists, but we’re pretty sure that’s … what’s the term? … batshit stupid.

The trailer makes “Adventures with Iggy and Mr. Kirk” sound like some sort of Bizarro Mr. Rogers that teaches about “wholesome values,” but Christianly. Cameron prefers to call it a “modernized Mr. Rogers,” which we take exception to. Mr. Rogers in this or any other era would preach tolerance and respect for everyone. He would reject demonizing anyone. Yes, even drag queens and liberals.

But what would Mr. Rogers know about Christianity, he was only an ordained Presbyterian minister.

The show is based off of Brave Books’ Freedom Island series. Like the company’s main catalogue, the Freedom Island books are written by such conservative luminaries as Ashley St. Clair, Dana Loesch, and Nazi Jack Posobiec. Loesch’s book is titled “Paws Off My Cannon,” and it not surprisingly preaches that everyone has the right to shoot things:

[F]ollow Bongo, a daring and hungry gorilla, who loves eating food, especially mushroom-shaped cupcakes. But one day, a villainous hyena shoots a coconut at Bongo and his friend Bonnie. Bonnie is so upset at this misuse of coconut cannons that she suggests the village ban all coconut cannons. Bongo thinks that the hyenas are the problem, not the coconut cannons.

We will very much look forward to the Very Special Episode of “Adventures with Iggy and Mr. Kirk” in which Iggy kills Culture the Vulture with a coconut cannon and Mr. Kirk explains that God wrote the Second Amendment to give all iguanas the right to self-defense.

Enjoy the show!

I dare somebody to watch, but I haven’t watched it. The bit above looks as if it’s just creepy. To me. – A

Letters From An American for 11/17:

This is pretty cool to read!

November 17, 2024 by Heather Cox Richardson Read on Substack

Tonight is a break from the craziness of the news.

I often say that 1883 is my favorite year in history because of all that happened in that pivotal year, and one of those things is the way modernity swept across the United States of America in a way that was shocking at the time but that is now so much a part of our world we rarely even think of it….

Until November 18, 1883, railroads across the United States operated under 53 different time schedules, differentiated on railroad maps by a complicated system of colors. For travelers, time shifts meant constant confusion and, frequently, missed trains. And then, at noon on Sunday, November 18, 1883, railroads across the North American continent shifted their schedules to conform to a new standard time. Under the new system, North America would have just five time zones.

Fifteen minutes before the time of the shift, the telegraph company Western Union shut down all telegraph lines for anything but the declaration of the new time. It identified the moment the new time went into effect in telegraph messages to local railroad offices and to the jewelers known in cities for keeping time. In offices that got the message, men had their timepieces in their hands and ready to reset when the chief operator shouted “twelve o’clock!”

In Boston the change meant that the clocks would move forward about 16 minutes; in New York City, clocks were set back about four minutes. For Baltimore the time would move forward six minutes and twenty-eight seconds; in Atlanta it went back 22 minutes.

The system was a dramatic wrench for the rural United States, bringing it into the modern world. Uniform time zones had been proposed by pioneering meteorologist Cleveland Abbe, who developed the U.S. system of weather forecasting. Having joined the United States Weather Bureau as chief meteorologist in 1871, he recognized that predicting the weather required a nationally coordinated team and worked with Western Union to collect information about temperature, wind direction, precipitation, and sunset times from across the country.

Coordinating that information required keeping time across all the stations he had set up. To do so, Abbe divided the United States into four time zones, each one hour apart, and in 1879 he suggested those zones might smooth out the chaos of the railroad systems, each trying to coordinate schedules across a patchwork of local times. Railroad executives, who were concerned that if they didn’t do something, the government would, listened to Abbe, and by 1883 they had concluded to put his new system in place.

Members of the new professional class who traveled by train from city to city were on board because they thought the need to regularize train schedules was imperative. But standard time was controversial. In the United States, people had operated entirely by the rhythms of the sun until the establishment of factories in New England in the 1830s, and most people still lived by those rhythms, their local time adjusting to solar time according to their geographical location.

Telling the time by sundial and history not only was custom, but also was understood as following God’s time. The idea of overriding traditional timekeeping because of the needs of the modern world seemed positively sacrilegious. “People…must eat, sleep and work…by railroad time,” wrote a contributor to the Indianapolis Daily Sentinel. “People will have to marry by railroad time…. Ministers will be required to preach by railroad time…. Banks will open and close by railroad time; notes will be paid or protested by railroad time.”

The mayor of Bangor, Maine, vetoed an ordinance in favor of standard time, saying it was unconstitutional, that it changed the immutable law of God, that the people didn’t want it, and that it was hard on the working men because it changed day into night. Those planning for a switch to standard time tried to ease fears by providing that Americans would operate on both local time and standard time, with both times represented on clocks.

On November 18, no one quite knew what the dramatic wrench into the future might mean.

What did it mean to gain or lose time? Many people expected “a sensation, a stoppage of business, and some sort of a disaster, the nature of which could not be exactly ascertained,” a New York Times reporter recorded. As the great moment approached, people crowded the streets in front of jewelers to see the “great transformation.”

They were disappointed when, after all the buildup, the future arrived quietly.

The New York Times explained: “When the reader of THE TIMES consults his paper at 8 o’clock this morning at his breakfast table it will be 9 o’clock in St. John, New Brunswick, 7 o’clock in Chicago, or rather in St. Louis—for Chicago authorities have refused to adopt the standard time, perhaps because the Chicago meridian was not selected as the one on which all time must be based—6 o’clock in Denver, Col. and 5 o’clock in San Francisco. That is the whole story in a nut-shell.”

—

Notes:

Chicago Daily Tribune, “At Noon today Most of the Railroads Will Discard the Old and Adopt the New,” November 18, 1883, p. 12.

Boston Daily Globe, “Modern Joshuas: They Make Clocks, If Not the Sun, Stand Still,” November 19, 1883, p. 5.

Boston Daily Globe, “At the Railroad Stations, At the Churches,” November 19, 1883, p. 5.

Washington Post, “New Time in Other Cities,” November 18, 1883, p. 1.

Chicago Daily Tribune, “Standard Time,” November 19, 1883, p. 1.

Indianapolis Daily Sentinel, November 21, 1883, p. 4, Quoted in Ian R. Bartky, Selling the True Time: Nineteenth-Century Timekeeping in America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 144.

New York Times, “Time’s Backward Flight,” November 18, 1883, p. 3. https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5748

Robert E. Riegel, “Standard Time in the United States,” American Historical Review 33 (October 1927): 84–89.

CBPP Statement: November 14, 2024 – For Immediate Release

Republican Economic Proposals Would Harm the People Trump Promised to Help

Statement of Sharon Parrott, CBPP President, on key priorities for the 2025 policy agenda

While the new President and new Congress will not take office until early next year, they have already put forward an agenda — through Project 2025, Republican budget plans, and campaign proposals — that would increase poverty and diminish opportunity. Their proposals would raise costs for basics like housing, food, and health care and take health coverage away from people; slash funding for schools where our children learn, roads and bridges we use to get to work, and scientific and medical research that improve our health and strengthen our economy; double down on tax giveaways for wealthy households and corporations while imposing tariffs that fuel inflation; and further widen already glaring differences in people’s well-being and opportunity across income, race, and ethnicity.

These policymakers campaigned on promises to make the economy work better for people without big bank accounts who are trying to get ahead. But their proposals to date seldom match those promises.

Instead, a policy agenda designed to advance economic opportunity and racial justice and help families make ends meet would:

Make it easier for people to afford housing, food, health care, and prescription drugs.
Support children and families with an expanded Child Tax Credit, especially for children who don’t get the full credit today because their families’ incomes are too low; more affordable child care; and investment in our schools so that all of our nation’s children get what they need to thrive.
Invest in the things that will keep the economy strong and growing, including basic building blocks like roads, bridges, and research, as well as protections that keep our communities’ food, air, water, and workplaces safe.
Support these investments with a fairer federal tax system that requires wealthy households and corporations to pay their fair share and strengthens our fiscal outlook.
Create an immigration system that recognizes the critical role that immigrants and their families play in our communities and the economy, eschewing harsh deportation regimes that separate families and embracing reforms that provide people with a workable opportunity to gain legal status and a pathway to citizenship.

This kind of policy agenda would build toward a nation where everyone — regardless of their income or their background — can get the health care they need, afford to put groceries on the table, live in safe homes and strong communities, and have the income, education, and child and home care they need throughout their lives. And it would reflect the truth that our nation succeeds only when all of us succeed.

We are eager to work with policymakers who put forward policies that advance this agenda and we — together with our partners — will work hard against policies that make people less economically secure, less healthy, and have less access to opportunity.

Peace & Justice History 11/16, 17:

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november16

Nice Abolitionist Helper Lady From Your ‘Racism Is Over’ 3rd Grade Textbook

[She] F*cked Plantations’ Sh*t Up For Union Army by Rebecca Schoenkopf

Tinker, Tubman, General, Spy. Read on Substack (Also be careful if reading in a workplace -A)

Mural depicting Harriet Tubman stepping out of a 'broken' brick wall in a city, reaching toward the viewer, as if to guide them into the painting of a Southern wilderness 'behind' the wall. A rowboat waits on a riverbank immediately behind Tubman to aid the 'escape' — ‘Take My Hand’ mural by Michael Rosato in Cambridge, Maryland. Photo by Kirt Morris on Unsplash

On Monday, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore honored one of his state’s most beloved military veterans, Harriet Tubman, by promoting Tubman posthumously to the rank of brigadier general in the state National Guard. Why yes, that’s General Harriet Tubman, who in addition to being a famous abolitionist and “conductor” on the Underground Railroad was also the first woman to lead a US military operation during wartime.

Tubman’s history of military service doesn’t get the same attention as her activities as an abolitionist and helper of those who freed themselves from enslavement, which was already plenty enough to make her a hero. But after her final expedition to guide escapees from slavery North, she put her skills of disguise, concealment, and familiarity with Southern territory to use for the US Army when the Civil War broke out in 1861, serving as a spy, scout, and eventually, as the joint leader of an 1863 Army raid on plantations in South Carolina, which freed nearly 800 enslaved people and burned several of the plantations.

Here’s a cool thing: A 2022 CIA website article acknowledges that well before she formally became a military operative, her work for the Underground Railroad “applied sophisticated tradecraft including the use of disguises, clandestine communication, and assets and allies, who provided safe houses, transportation, and funding” — genuine praise for an intelligence operative.

Tubman was recruited for the Union cause by Massachusetts Governor John Andrew and sent to Hilton Head, South Carolina, where she was assigned to work under Major General David Hunter, the head of Union operations there and in Georgia and Florida. As the CIA explains, she was trained as a nurse, and worked as one, but that also gave her the documents and funding necessary for her secret work, recruiting a spy ring of Black volunteers in the area, who gathered intelligence on plantations, commerce, Confederate troop positions, and the locations of “torpedoes” — barrels of gunpowder in rivers that could blow up any Union boats. Tubman was unable to read or write, but had an outstanding memory, making her a valuable spy without leaving any notes behind, encrypted or otherwise.

In 1863, Tubman moved from spying and reconnaissance to actually commanding Union troops in a raid on plantations along the Combahee River in South Carolina’s “Lowcountry” region. Although she was not a commissioned officer, she planned and shared leadership duties with Col. James Montgomery, an abolitionist in charge of a Black Army regiment, the Second Carolina Volunteers. The goal of the raid was to rescue enslaved people, recruit the freed men to join the Union Army if they were willing, and to wipe out the rice plantations in the area.

Montgomery commanded about 300 men, and to prepare for the raid, Tubman was in charge of a group of eight scouts who made maps of the area and helped her get news of the coming raid to enslaved people so they could be ready to run for the Union gunboats from which the attack would be launched.

“She was fearless and she was courageous,” said Kate Clifford Larson, historian and author of Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. “She had a sensibility. She could get Black people to trust her and the Union officers knew that they were not trusted by the local people.”

On the night of June 1, 1863, Tubman, Montgomery, and the troops boarded three Union gunboats to head up the river; on the way, however, one of the steamboats ran aground and the troops had to transfer to the remaining vessels. Tubman’s reconnaissance of the area proved invaluable in avoiding torpedoes in the river, and for guiding the ships close to shore, where they launched smaller boats full of raiders to attack the plantations.

Just before the raid got underway, the gunboats broke formation and headed to different parts of the river, with Montgomery commanding one, the Harriet A. Weed, and Tubman leading the 150 soldiers on the John Adams. Just want to underline this: Tubman wasn’t serving as an adjunct to Montgomery, she was in charge of half the attacking force. In the wee hours of June 2, they attacked their assigned plantations.

Tubman later recalled that when the signal to attack was given, she saw enslaved people running to escape toward the Union boats at the riverside, with women carrying their babies and children and whatever supplies they could take along, including chickens, pigs, and pots of rice. The enslavers tried to chase them down, firing guns on them, reportedly killing one girl. We’ll hand off the narrative here to History.com, and add that we’d watch this movie:

As the escapees ran to the shore, Black troops in rowboats transported them to the ships, but chaos ensued in the process. Tubman, who didn’t speak the region’s Gullah dialect, reportedly went on deck and sang a popular song from the abolitionist movement that calmed the group down.

More than 700 escaped slavery and made it onto the gunboats. Troops also disembarked near Field’s Point, torching plantations, fields, mills, warehouses and mansions, causing a humiliating defeat for the Confederacy, including the loss of a pontoon bridge shot to pieces by the gunboats.

After the raiding gunboats docked in Beaufort, South Carolina, the first press report of the raid didn’t name Tubman, but it did say that the raid was led by a “She-Moses” under the command of Montgomery, and that the raid came off without a single injury to the Union forces. A later report in a Boston newspaper named Tubman as the hero; the editor was a friend of hers. At least 100 men freed during the raid joined the US Army.

An old engraved magazine illustration showing (in not the most realistic scale) Union paddlewheel gunboats firing cannon on plantations from the river, a plantation building on fire, and in the foreground, strangely large black people nearly as tall as a nearby gunboat fleeing slave quarters. Yes, yes, it's meant to be 'perspective,' but not at all realistically so. — Illustration via Library of Congress.

For all the news the story made at the time, Tubman didn’t get paid, and even after the war her petitions to receive a soldier’s pay for the raid were turned down, because women simply weren’t allowed in the Army, you silly goose. She later received a military pension on behalf of her late husband, a Union soldier, but not for herself. But when she died in 1913, she was buried with military honors; the US Army’s Military Intelligence Corps also inducted Tubman into its Hall of Fame in 2021.

Prior to the war, in 1858, abolitionist and eventual insurrectionist John Brown met Tubman and nicknamed her “General” for her courage. That was made official by Gov. Moore’s Veteran’s Day proclamation Monday, naming her a one-star general in the Maryland National Guard.

After Moore read the official order promoting Tubman, he presented the proclamation to Ernestine “Tina” Martin Wyatt, Tubman’s great-great-great-grandniece, as a representative of Tubman’s family.

Thank you again for your service, General Tubman. Now if we can just get you on the $20 bill to replace that racist fuck-knuckle Andrew Jackson. (Snip)

Trump pledged to roll back protections for transgender students. They’re flooding crisis hotlines

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Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump walks from the podium after speaking at a campaign rally at Lee’s Family Forum, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, in Henderson, Nev. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

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FILE – Protesters advocating for transgender rights and healthcare stand outside of the Ohio Statehouse, Jan. 24, 2024, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Orsagost, File)

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FILE – Jude Armstrong and fellow Benjamin Franklin High playwriting class students perform their play, “The Capitol Project,” on the steps of the Louisiana Capitol in Baton Rouge, La., March 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

We knew he was going to go to this, but remember the only one talking about trans people was the republicans. Harris never mentioned them. This is totally a manufactured outrage. No one cared before a few religious republicans got talking constantly about it. I think you all need to ask yourself how trans people affect your lives? There are what 1,400 trans people in the country? There are 5 trans kids in sports? There has never been a trans woman sweep the awards at any event yet that was the constant talking point. Trans women who they mistakenly call men / boys are going to steal your daughter’s trophy. But it never happened and they couldn’t show it. How was this something people voted to switch the election on? Think on it right wing voters on how you were played. So silly and stupid. Plus the religious people now in charge of the military intend to remove trans people and gay people. That will not only harm readiness because the military keeps saying it doesn’t affect the readiness at all. I know from experience that if you remove the LGBTQ+ from the military, it will gut the military entirely and that will harm readiness. Hugs

By JOCELYN GECKER and SHARON LURYE

Updated 12:50 AM EST, November 13, 2024

Transgender youth in the United States have been flooding crisis hotlines since the election of Donald Trump, who made anti-transgender themes central to his campaign. Many teens worry about how their lives could change once he takes office.

During his presidential bid, Trump pledged to impose wide-ranging restrictions and roll back civil rights protections for transgender students. And his administration can swiftly start work on one major change: It can exclude transgender students from Title IX protections, which affect school policies on students’ use of pronouns, bathrooms and locker rooms.

One ad that aired over 15,000 times crystallized Trump’s stance on rights for transgender and nonbinary Americans: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

For one Alabama teen, the ad seemed to paint transgender and nonbinary people as a threat to society. The weekend before Election Day, the 16-year-old teen, who identifies as nonbinary and uses the pronouns “he” and “they,” called a crisis hotline at the Rainbow Youth Project. The group that serves LGBTQ+ young people has received more than 5,500 calls to its crisis hotline in the past 10 days, up from the 3,700 calls it typically gets every month.

The teen was in despair and struggling with suicidal thoughts, according to his mother, Carolyn Fisher. She said she hadn’t realized the depth of her child’s depression and how painful it was for him to see political ads that felt like a personal attack.

With the help of crisis counselors, Fisher said her teen has begun feeling better. But bullying at school has gotten worse, with some students telling her child Trump is going to make him “go back in the closet,” Fisher said.

”The kids who have taunted him are now proud of themselves, and they rub it in,” she said.

Opposition to transgender rights was a focal point of Trump’s campaign: Republican ads attacking political opponents over transgender or LGBTQ+ issues have aired over 290,000 times on network TV since March 2023, according to data from the media tracking firm AdImpact.

The messaging may have resonated with many Americans. More than half of voters overall — and the vast majority of Trump supporters — said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide.

President Joe Biden’s administration expanded recognition of transgender rights just this year. Interpretation of Title IX, a landmark sex discrimination law, is largely up to the executive branch, although court rulings can affect enforcement.

Originally passed in 1972, Title IX was first used as a women’s rights law. This year, Biden’s administration said the law forbids discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, but Trump can undo that. Biden’s new guidance had limited implementation in any case: After a spate of lawsuits, courts had issued injunctions pausing the rule in 26 states.

“Title IX will be a top priority. It is emblematic of all the culture war issues that have been created over the past few years surrounding gender identity versus sex,” said Candice Jackson, a lawyer who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in the first Trump administration.

Trump also has said he would ask Congress to pass a bill stating there are “only two genders” and to ban hormonal or surgical intervention for transgender youth in all 50 states. Most Republican-controlled states already have banned gender-affirming health care for transgender youth under age 18 or 19, and several have adopted policies limiting which school bathrooms trans people can use.

While Biden’s election-year guidance did not extend to transgender students in sports, Trump has promised to end “boys in girls’ sports.” The administration likely would “approach these issues from a traditional understanding” of what Title IX has meant, “with a biological, binary understanding of sex,” said Bob Eitel, who served during the first Trump administration as a senior counselor to the education secretary.

In the U.S., 3.3% of high school students identify as transgender and another 2.2% question their gender, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey released last month.

The survey found 72% of transgender and gender-questioning teens experienced persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness in the past year. These teens also reported higher rates of bullying at school compared with peers. About 1 in 4 transgender students said they had attempted suicide in the past year, the CDC said.

LGBTQ+ advocates are mobilizing to address the despair they see rising among transgender and nonbinary youth. The Rainbow Youth Project, for one, has increased virtual peer groups and town halls so LGBTQ+ youth can connect. Another organization, It Gets Better, has focused on reaching young people online through social media platforms like Twitch and YouTube to create supportive environments even if legal protections are rolled back, said Brian Wenke, the group’s executive director.

Across the country, particularly in conservative areas, LGBTQ+ youth are discussing whether it would be safer to live somewhere else.

Jude Armstrong, a transgender high school senior in New Orleans, has led protests against Louisiana laws that regulated pronoun usage and discussions of gender and sexuality in the classroom. With the potential for federal changes on the horizon, Armstrong, 17, said he has thought of going to school in the United Kingdom, but worries about leaving behind the queer culture and history he loves at home.

“How do you feel like you’re protecting your own community when you’re leaving that community and going to another country?” he asked.

FILE – Jude Armstrong and fellow Benjamin Franklin High playwriting class students perform their play, “The Capitol Project,” on the steps of the Louisiana Capitol in Baton Rouge, La., March 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Alejandro Jimenez, a sophomore at Texas State University, dreams of being a theater teacher in Texas. He knows how important it is for trans kids to see someone like them in the classroom. Now, he’s not sure if he’ll stay in his home state.

Already, tensions have risen on his campus in a way that makes him feel unsafe. The day after the election, two protestors held up signs that said, “Homo sex is sin” and “Women are property.”

“I feel it’s my duty to stay here, but I’m scared of being pushed out,” said Jimenez, who is transgender.

Under the new Trump administration, advocates worry efforts anywhere to accommodate transgender and nonbinary students could face scrutiny. Trump’s platform called for pulling federal funding for any school pushing “gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”

“It sounds really dystopian to say that trying to be more inclusive could actually result in punishment from the federal government. But that is a risk,” said Elana Redfield, federal policy director for the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

With so much uncertainty, Eli, an 18-year-old trans college student in New York, stressed the importance of community, especially online for youth who feel concerned right now.

“You are not alone,” said Eli, an ambassador for It Gets Better, who asked to be identified only by his first name for safety reasons. “We will come out the other side. There are queer adults who have lived long and happy lives, and you will get there too.”

Pendejo Express

by Clay Jones

Be careful with what you ask for. You just might get it. Read on Substack

Stephen Colbert made a joke about people telling comedians after the Trump victory (gag), “At least you’ll have so much material to work with.” Cartoonists were sick of that comment back in 2016. One of my colleagues and friend, Ward Sutton, drew a cartoon about it. It’s something we hear all the time and I don’t think people truly understand it’s the last thing we want to hear. In fact, it was repeated to me last night at a party for writers.

We don’t want to hear it. It’s empty solace and goddammit, we hear it too often. I’m going to hear it again before the day’s over. I would rather my nation survive and not turn into a fascist state controlled by racist goose-stepping troglodytes than have great material from it. And by the way, the material’s not that great. Another fact is that Trump cartoons are bad for business. Editors are scared shitless of them.

What I’m getting to with this in regards to today’s cartoon is that after posting on social media about the comment, a few people told me they will need to laugh to avoid crying and that’s what my cartoons will give them. Yeah, except I think each of my cartoons since last Tuesday has been sad. Proofreader Laura told me that at least twice, and I didn’t argue with her (she’s really smart and perceptive). Others have told me the same thing. Someone told me they couldn’t even click like on one of my cartoons because it was so sad, and I’m not even drawing dead puppies.

My last few cartoons have been kinda sad, like this one, or this one, or this one. And now many will find today’s cartoon sad. The Latino vote certainly depresses me.

Why would any Latino other than George Zimmerman vote for a racist who’s been shit-talking you for the past decade? Hmm? I will never understand the appeal of Donald Trump.

While Harris won the Latino vote with 53 percent, about 45 percent of Latinos voted for Donald Trump. Why? Tommy Vallejos wrote a column for The Tennessean in Nashville to explain it to all of us liberal dummies.

Vallejo’s first argument is that voting for Trump doesn’t make him or other Latinos racist. I’m not going to call Latinos racists for voting for Trump. I’m going to state the fact that voting for Trump means Latinos voted for a racist. They voted for racism. Donald Trump is a racist and nobody can make a strong case that he isn’t.

Voting for Donald Trump, at the very least, means racism is not a dealbreaker for you, no matter what race you are. And while you may wonder why a Latino would want to shit on other Latinos, I would like to have about 60 percent of America’s white population deported. Let’s send them all to Liberia.

Vallejo’s major reason for being a Trumper is the economy, so he claims. But if Vallejo is an intelligent person, he knows that’s a lie.

He writes that most Latinos who voted for Trump were concerned about jobs and the economy, forgetting that the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent when Trump left office. Trump inherited President Barack Obama’s economy and fucked it up. He left office with fewer American jobs than there were when he entered. He’s the first president to love more jobs than he created since Herbert Hoover.

There is no evidence that Donald Trump can rebuild an economy. There’s only evidence he can destroy it.

Trumpers will claim that’s not Trump’s fault. It was Covid’s fault. If you’re going to make that argument then you can’t blame President Joe Biden for inflation. In case you weren’t paying attention, inflation hit the entire planet. High gas prices hit every nation. Vallejo, who forgets Trump’s final numbers, blames Biden for inflation. He’s making an extremely dishonest argument in voting for Trump.

And if you voted for Trump because of the economy, here are a few other facts can chew on with your lying mouth: Under Trump, the trade deficit went up over 36 percent. Trump’s promising even more tariffs so enjoy your 20 percent tax increase on imported goods, fuckers.
People lacking health insurance rose by three million, and that’s even with Trump failing to repeal Obamacare. What are they going to do now? How many Americans will lose healthcare coverage in Trump’s second term?
Vallejo argues that under Biden, the government spent “freely and indiscriminately,” yet under Donald Trump, federal debt went from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion.
Under Trump, home prices increased nearly 30 percent while rising 20 percent under Biden.
Wages rose higher under Biden than they did under Trump.
The top 25 U.S. companies invested more than $900 billion in the economy, which is 40 percent higher than during the Trump regime.

Everyone who voted for Trump because the economy was their top concern should have voted for Harris.

Vallejos also argues that we need Trump to curb illegal immigration, but guess what, Buddy. In Trump’s last year, apprehensions at the southern border had a nearly 15 percent increase than President Obama’s last year in office. Even if you honestly wanted to reduce illegal immigration, do you really support deporting millions of people and tearing apart families by using the military? Seriously, Mr. Vallejo, how much do you hate Latinos?

Vellejos also cries that under Biden and with inflation rising, stagnant wages “failed to keep pace” and blames Biden for not reducing the tax and regulatory burden on “job creators.” But Trump’s huge tax cuts for asshole billionaires were still in place, so why didn’t corporate America come running to the rescue? Oh, yeah…trickle-down economics doesn’t work. Instead of cutting their own profits, Corporations jacked up prices and as inflation has been going down, their prices have not. In fact, Corporate profits continued to rise throughout the Biden administration. Exxon’s second-quarter profits this year were over $9 billion. Did they lower the price of gas at the fuel pumps? HAHAHAHAHA. You’re funny.

Despite Donald Trump tweeting in 2020, “If you want your 401k’s and stocks…to disintegrate and disappear, vote for the Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats and Corrupt Joe Biden,” the stock market did better under Biden than Trump. Fact fact fuckity fact fact.

The S&P 500 has posted a compound annual growth rate of 14.1 percent from Biden’s November 2020 election to the beginning of this month. The market returns under Biden are the second best in modern history, only trailing behind Bill Clinton’s, gasp, another Democratic president.

Vallejo accused Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of “fumbling” the economy which makes me think he doesn’t watch football and doesn’t know what a fumble is. Is it when the cheerleaders kick the ball?

Vallejo also wrote that Latinos voted for Trump because they are “supportive of the rule of law and desire an orderly process.” Now you gotta get the fuck out of here. Vallejo, like most MAGAts, is a liar who suffers from memory loss. Hello? January 6, fake electors, electoral fraud, 11,780 votes, stolen documents, assaulting women, corruption, violating the emoluments clause, etc. If you truly desire the “rule of law,” Mr. Vallejo, call the Trump team now and demand that he doesn’t fire Jack Smith.

Shockingly, Vallejo didn’t include that he voted for Trump so boat batteries would be lighter, the boats wouldn’t sink from their weight, and sharks wouldn’t eat you while you’re flapping around in the water.

At the end of his bullshit designed as a column for a newspaper’s opinion page, Vallejo writes, “Most importantly, we love the USA and cherish freedom and opportunity.” So you voted for the treasonous fuck who’s a subordinate of Vladimir Putin? You voted for the asshole who gave Putin classified information. You voted for our nation’s greatest national security threat who has been secretly talking to Putin since we fired him in 2020. You voted for the guy who says he wants to be a dictator, quoted Hitler, and said he wants to delete the Constitution.

Every reason Vallejo gives for voting for Trump is bullshit. That means I don’t know why in the hell Trump won 45 percent of the Latino vote. I just hope that when it burns them, they fucking get it.

And Mr. Vallejo, I changed my mind. You are a racist. It’s like anytime when someone says, “I’m not a racist, but…”

And hey, at least I have so much material to work with now.

Creative note: I drew most of this yesterday and all I had to do this morning was color it. I was all like, “Yay, I’m done by 1 p.m. and now I can go watch football…right after I write this blog. It’s now 3 p.m. Are my Saints winning?

Music note: I listened to Buddy Holly. I will never get over the hiccup thing he does at the start of Rave On.

(snip-More)

sanewashing and wishcasting: how the press continues to fail us

by Jeff Tiedrich

if we all click our heels together three times, everything will be okay Read on Substack (Language NSFW, as always with Jeff Tiedrich’s writing)

the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled media utterly failed us during the 2024 campaign season.

New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn came right out and said it: defending democracy is a ‘partisan act,’ and we won’t do it — and, fuck us all, the press kept their word, and didn’t do it. they enthusiastically put their fingers on the scale for Donny Convict.

arguably, the media’s worst transgression was the sanewashing — the cleaning-up of Donny’s incomprehensible blitherings, to hide his obvious cognitive disintegration and make him sound coherent.

a minutes-long disjointed word-salad about how tariffs on Chinese goods were going to lower the cost of childcare became “a major economic speech.”

Donny’s inability to keep his increasingly-demented mind on the topic at hand — his crazypants pinballing from they’re eating the dawgs to Hannibal Lecter wants to have you for dinner to would you rather be eaten by a shark or electrocuted — was explained away by Donny as his brilliant “weave.”

that explanation, to The New York Times, “did all sort of seem to make sense.”

post-election, the media has mostly moved on from sanewashing, and has now jumped feet-first into wishcasting.

what’s wishcasting? over to you, Wiktionary.

[Wishcasting is] the act of interpreting information or a situation in a way that casts it as favorable or desired, despite the fact that there is no evidence for such a conclusion; a wishful forecast.

sure enough, the media has now gone into overdrive, churning out piece after piece in which they promise us that if we all click our heels together three times, everything will be okay.

not twelve hours after the election had been called for Donny, the Times wasted no time in assuring us that the election of a vindictive fascist is an amazing opportunity for vindictive fascism not to happen.

as I wrote three days ago,

the New York Times can fuck all the way off.

what kind of magical, everybody-gets-a-pony thinking is this? just fucking stop it.

did Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat both experience some kind of recent head trauma that has caused them to forget the years 2017 through 2020? Donny’s first presidency was a dumpster fire of corruption, mismanagement and mass death — but somehow now, given a second chance to fuck shit up worse, Donny’s going to bring us an “American renewal”?

anything’s possible, right? overnight, Donny Convict could magically become a wise and fair statesman — also, technicolor pigs could fly out of my ass.

oh my god, the media never stops imagining that Donny is going to somehow become presidential. during his first term — over and over — every time Donny stopped short of taking out his dick and pissing on the floor, the press would fall all the fuck over itself in a mad dash to proclaim him presidential.

spoiler alert: Donny never became presidential. not from the the first time he threw a ketchup-hurling tantrum in the White House, to the moment he absconded back to his Florida golf motel, taking with him boxes of stolen classified documents.

now, what the small-batch artisanal fuck is this?

the premise here is that if we’re respectful to Donny — if we fucking kowtow to him, and stop opposing him — he’ll be nice to us in return. he’ll become — dare I say it? — presidential.

Stop indulging the fantasy that outrage, social stigma, language policing, a special counsel, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or impeachment will disappear him. And stop talking as if normal political opposition is capitulation.

Everyone should normalize Trump. If he does something good, praise him. Trump is remarkably susceptible to flattery.

Mike Luckovich, explain to the nice people at the Atlantic why they’re living in a fever-swamp fantasy world.

news flash for Newsweek: Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are not going to save us.

okay, I will grant that Newsweek may be half right. Lisa Murkowski seems to genuinely loathe Donny, and we can probably count on her to vote against the worst of his fuckery — but Susan Collins? the credulous naïf who assured us over and over again that Donny had learned his lesson, and would never transgress again?

now, let’s bask under some rays of hope from people who aren’t just blindly wishcasting, but are actually offering reasoned arguments.

in the middle of a fairly clear-eyed assessment of the Trumpian horrors to come, the Guardian gives us this:

Elaine Kamarck, a former official in the Bill Clinton administration, said: “For him to expand presidential power, Congress has to give up power and they’re not in the mood to do that. They’ve never done that. There are plenty of institutionalists in Congress.”

Kamarck also expressed faith in the federal courts, noting that judges appointed by Trump only constitute 11% of the total placed on the bench by former presidents. A Trump dictatorship is “not going to happen,” she added. “Now, there might be things that the president wants to do that people don’t like that the Republican Congress goes along with him on but that’s politics. That’s not a dictatorship.”

here’s Tom Nichols, in a piece titled Democracy Is Not Over.

Paradoxically, however, Trump’s reckless venality is a reason for hope. Trump has the soul of a fascist but the mind of a disordered child. He will likely be surrounded by terrible but incompetent people. All of them can be beaten: in court, in Congress, in statehouses around the nation, and in the public arena. America is a federal republic, and the states—at least those in the union that will still care about democracy—have ways to protect their citizens from a rogue president. Nothing is inevitable, and democracy will not fall overnight.

here’s Adam Serwer, from There Is No Constitutional Mandate for Fascism.

Americans cannot vote themselves into a dictatorship any more than you as an individual can sell yourself into slavery. The restraints of the Constitution protect the American people from the unscrupulous designs of whatever lawless people might take the reins of their government, and that does not change simply because Trump believes that those restraints need not be respected by him. The Constitution does not allow a president to be a “dictator on day one,” or on any other day. The presidency will give Trump and his cronies the power to do many awful things. But that power does not make them moral or correct.

I sure hope to fuck they’re right.

This is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means disengaging with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.