Yes, this passed in the Senate, thanks to the VP’s tiebreaking vote. However, it’s still got rows to hoe in the US House; Spkr. Johnson wants to vote tomorrow. The thing to remember about our US Reps is, they’re up for election each 2 years. So, while firmly directing them in dealing with this dreadful bill, also firmly yet lovingly remind them that the OBBB will be hanging around their necks every step of the way of their campaigns like a bubblegum machine golden giant dollar sign necklace, if they vote in favor.
(Actually, if you didn’t when you contacted your Senators last week, you can still remind them of the same thing, unless they voted against, in which case, Thank Them. It took bravery to vote against, and they need to know we have their backs. And thank you very much. Now call.)
I cannot add up the number of times I’ve been told by good, liberal Dems that these issues won’t float. And that was back in the 1980s and 90s, not to mention the 2000s. Anyway, take a look!
Mamdani And The Left Are Moving The Window – Good by Oliver Willis
What if everything you believed since you have been politically awake is wrong? It isn’t that you have bad intentions or you’re fundamentally stupid, but what if instead you believed for so long that the existing menu of political options was one group of beliefs but in reality, that was a really limited menu that excluded some really tasty items you never considered before?
When a rising progressive figure like Zohran Mamdani makes bold statements about what he wants to achieve, it can make regular old mainstream Democrats/liberals like myself wince. Government supermarkets? We shouldn’t have billionaires? Immediately that kicks in concerns about how Democrats are perceived. It isn’t just Mamdani. Ideas like defunding the police, universal basic income, free health care, etc.? Sure, we say, they may sound good on paper – but they also sound like left wing fantasyland, they’re just not “practical.”
And maybe they are impractical, unworkable, and election losers. But – what if not? We should at least have the conversation, I think.
Because for decades now American political discourse has been operating within the parameters set by the right wing, not the left. Since 1980 we have had 20 years of Democratic presidents and while I think they did a decent job of domestic politics between the three of them (Clinton, Obama, and Biden), much of what they did was within the narrow paradigm of what was acceptable behavior.
Clinton frequently talked about cutting the size of the government, Obama spoke about lowering the deficit, and Biden also used the language of “fiscal responsibility” as the right envisions it. All three men accepted the existence of billionaires and even pushed policies that would theoretically create even more of them. None of them would argue that the police needed to be defunded, and in fact they all oversaw federal spending that sent billions to police departments.
I was among the millions who supported these three presidents, along with other Democrats who ran for office with a similar world view both at the presidential and congressional level to varying degrees of success.
But these people have all been operating within the right’s paradigms. Collectively we never openly debated how we could have it all wrong. Maybe the prison system should be abolished? Maybe billionaires should be taxed out of existence?
Even if we don’t ultimately reach those conclusions, these are debates worth having.
Because while we have been limiting ourselves, the right hasn’t. Since Barry Goldwater in 1964, the right has been shifting the Overton Window – what is considered acceptable public discourse – steadily to the right. We have gone from Republicans like Nixon creating agencies like the EPA to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush cutting funding for vital agencies to Donald Trump trying to completely destroy agencies like the Department of Education.
Things that Trump treats as uncontroversially right-wing today would have been laughed out of the room as the ravings of lunatics in 1958. The right has mounted serial challenges to what was the liberal orthodoxy (not on every issue but most issues) in the 1960s and they have molded public perception of what acceptable dialogue is.
We are worse off for this. One can praise what Democratic leaders have accomplished in a progressive manner (health care, infrastructure, overall policy) and still admit that the thinking has been severely limited and inhibiting.
Voters are making this clear to the party. They keep showing in multiple federal and state elections that they are unhappy with the status quo and in some instances, like with Trump, they are far too eager to flirt with fascism versus maintaining the system as-is.
Think about the world that millennials and Gen-Z have lived in for their entire lives. Not only has it been shaped by Reaganism and Trumpism, but it has also been peppered with Democratic leaders like Obama, Clinton, and Biden who didn’t fundamentally challenge the bedrock of what the right laid but instead focused on (well needed) nibbling at the edges.
It has been a very long time, probably not since the Great Depression, where Democrats articulated the notion that something beyond the acceptable was possible. When Franklin D. Roosevelt first took office, the consensus was that bad stuff just had to happen and that the government had to lie back, helpless. Herbert Hoover couldn’t truly conceive of a universe where the government swooped in and actively combated the forces making things worse for ordinary Americans. Roosevelt shifted the window and set up the infrastructure of the safety net that still exists today (for now). (snip-MORE, + Kal El photo. Click through!)
Also, to commemorate the final day of PRIDE month 2025, here’s an historic dance music video to celebrate. No matter what, we should never not dance again! 🎶 🌈 🎶 🫶
June 30, 1966 The first GIs—known as the Fort Hood Three, U.S. Army Privates James Johnson, Dennis Mora and David Samas—refused to be sent to Vietnam. All were members of the 142nd Signal Battalion, 2nd Armored Division stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. The three were from working-class families, and had denounced the war as “immoral, illegal and unjust.” They were arrested, court-martialed and imprisoned. The Pentagon reported 503,926 “incidents of desertion” between 1966 and 1971. 1961-1973: GI resistance in the Vietnam War View their pamphlet Ballad of The Fort Hood Three Pete Seeger
June 30, 1971 The 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, lowering the minimum voting age to 18 in all elections, was ratified after ¾ of the 50 state legislatures had agreed to it, a mere 100 days after its passage by Congress.
June 30, 1974 The Selective Service law, authorizing the draft, expired, marking the official end of conscription in the U.S. and the beginning of the all-volunteer armed forces.
June 30, 2005 Spain legalized same-sex marriage by a vote of 187-147 in parliament. Such couples were also granted the right to adopt and receive inheritances. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero spoke in support of the bill, “We are expanding the opportunities for happiness of our neighbors, our colleagues, our friends and our relatives. At the same time, we are building a more decent society. Read more
A High Court in India has ruled that trans women are women. (Getty)
A court in India has decreed that trans women are women.
In a landmark ruling for the country, after rejecting claims that womanhood was preserved only for those who can bear children, the High Court of Andhra Pradesh ruled that trans women were “legally entitled” to recognition as women.
Presiding over the case, justice Venkata Jyothirmai Pratapa decided that tying the definition of women to pregnancy was “legally unsustainable” and contradicted India’s constitution, which emphasises equality before the law.
Quoting a Supreme Court decision from 2014, which legally recognised the rights of “third gender” individuals, Pratapa said that prohibiting trans women’s right to identify as women “amounted to discrimination”.
The case was brought to the high court in 2022 after transgender woman Pokala Shabana looked to use a section of the Indian penal code to seek protection from her in-laws, whom, she said, had been abusive towards her.
The court sided with trans women. (Getty)
Her husband’s parents petitioned the court to deny her use of Section 498A, which protects women from cruelty by a husband or relatives, arguing that it only applied to cisgender women. They claimed that trans women don’t meet the legal definition of women under Indian law because they cannot get pregnant and said Shabana’s allegations of harassment lacked evidence.
However, the judge said that articles 14, 15 and 21 of the constitution, which guarantee a variety of discrimination protections, including the right to life and personal liberty, meant trans women’s rights to be recognised as women superseded the law.
“A trans woman, born male and later transitioning to female, is legally entitled to recognition as a woman,” he wrote in his ruling. “Denying such protection by questioning their womanhood amounts to discrimination.”
Trans activist and artist Kalki Subramaniam told the Washington Blade that she was relieved and delighted to see the court “upholding our basic human right to be identified as what we want.” She went on to say: “For [the] transgender community, especially trans women, this verdict means a lot.”
The Indian government has been under mounting pressure to modernise its laws and policies on LGBTQ+ rights. Same-sex marriage is still illegal, despite growing support for its legalisation.
Prime minister Narendra Modi’s government have previously labelled same-sex marriage an “elitist” viewpoint that “seriously affects the interests of every citizen”.
An affidavit establishing the government’s views on same-sex unions, in 2023, proclaimed that marriage was valid only between “biological males and females [and that] this definition [was] socially, culturally and legally ingrained into the very idea and concept of marriage and ought not to be disturbed or diluted by judicial interpretation”.
Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.
June 29, 1925 The South African parliament passed a bill excluding black, coloured (mixed race) and Indian people from all skilled or semi-skilled jobs.
June 29, 1963 A mass “walk-on” (trespass) was organized at a chemical and biological warfare facility in Porton Down, England. These weaponized agents had been researched and produced there since 1916; it’s now known as the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. Protesters demand an end to germ warfare in 1963 at Porton Down (Getty) Unconscionable activities at Porton Down (From 2004)
Before the establishment of the Hollywood Production Code in the 1930s, filmmakers deployed gender and sexuality stereotypes for glamour, humor, and drama alike.
With Pride month in full swing, it’s an ideal moment to look at historical queer representation, particularly in the early days of Hollywood cinema. The first few decades of the twentieth century were not only an active time for a growing medium, but also one in which crises of confidence, economy, masculinity, and culture changed how filmmakers presented queer characters and how (or if) audiences received them. Film professor David Lugowski summed up queer representation in early film neatly, writing that “[a]s cinema learned to talk, so did it also ‘speak’ about the gender roles so crucial to Hollywood film.”
Cinema moved from silent film into “talkies” in the late 1920s, with Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer typically credited as the first feature to integrate sound and dialogue (it may, however, be a more complicated exercise to locate a true “first”). The late twenties also saw the onset in America of the Great Depression, and, at least as far as entertainment is concerned, many scholars link displays of sexuality and queerness in films in the late 1920s and early 1930s to a larger crisis in masculinity. Economic collapse, the story goes, leads to a broader crisis of identity and gender role. “In short,” Lugowski writes, “men found their gender status, linked to notions of ‘work’ and ‘value’ promulgated by capitalist structures and ideologies, in jeopardy.”
As film became more pervasive and culturally integrated under these circumstances, stereotypes started to be read as evidence that gender performance was equivalent to sexual orientation. Basic types in Hollywood films were clear. For men, queer types were usually either the “dithering, asexual ‘sissy,’” writes Lugowski, or “the more outrageous ‘pansy,’ an extremely effeminate boulevardier type sporting lipstick, rouge, a trim mustache and hairstyle, and an equally trim suit, incomplete without a boutonniere.” Lesbian representation favored masculine drag—tailored suits, hair cut short or slicked back, and sometimes male-coded accessories like a monocle or a cigar. “Objections arose,” Lugowski explains, “because she seemed to usurp male privilege; perhaps the pansy seemed to give it up.”
Prior to the 1930s, these stereotypes appear to have been commonly understood and deployed, for glamour, humor, and drama alike. Audiences may have responded variably—with titillation, acceptance, or shock, depending on the individual—but no one could say the film industry wasn’t inclusive of different relationship story arcs.
In a Code world, no film should risk lowering an audience’s moral standards nor should evil or immorality be presented except as a cautionary tale.
In Pandora’s Box (1929) Louise Brooks wooed a father and son as well as a countess in a tuxedo. Greta Garbo portrayed the title character Queen Christina in a 1933 film about the seventeenth-century Swedish monarch, widely assumed to have been queer. Garbo, along with Marlene Dietrich and other leading ladies such as Joan Crawford, Myrna Loy, and Barbara Stanwyck, were members of a private professional group of Hollywood women—all of them quietly bisexual or lesbian—known as the “Sewing Circle.” Palmy Days (1931) features not only a proud flower-wearing “pansy” character, but drag, donuts, and a sexy Busby Berkeley dance number.
These portrayals took on new weight and context with the passage of the Hollywood Production Code. The Code, a set of self-regulatory guidelines applied to film production, was begrudgingly accepted by film execs, writes Steven Vaughn. That industry figures would accept content restrictions seems strange, until you consider that it was a hold-your-nose solution preferable to either intrusive government regulation or control by investment banks or funders, who preferred their investments be as stable as possible. The Production Code of 1930 therefore came into being, heavily influenced by religious collaborators and proclaiming two linked truths: “Motion pictures are very important as Art,” and “The motion picture has special Moral obligations.” In a Code world, no film should risk lowering an audience’s moral standards nor should evil or immorality be presented except as a cautionary tale.
The Production Code embraced a list of “don’ts” and “be carefuls.” On the “don’ts” list, films were to eliminate blasphemy and profanity, depictions of drug use, miscegenation, and “any inference of sex perversion,” which implied homosexuality. “Be carefuls” enumerated in the 1956 version of the Code urged “the careful limits of good taste” around bedroom scenes, hangings, liquor, childbirth, and “third degree methods.”
The well-known English critic Anthony Slide explains that the Code particularly targeted queer representation in film.
At first, to be honest, not much changed. Hollywood cinema remained as queer as ever, and during the harshest years of the Depression, the industry engaged in some of its most boundary-pushing and queer storytelling efforts.
“Not only does the number of incidents increase,” writes Lugowski,
but we also see more explicit references, longer scenes, and sometimes surprisingly substantial characters. Perhaps most important, the pansy and lesbian characters of the period remain, respectively, effeminate and mannish but become increasingly sexualized in 1933–34.
To wit: in 1934, Jack Warner (of Warner Brothers Studio) felt perfectly comfortable ignoring enforcer Joseph Breen’s firm letter and repeated phone calls about that year’s Wonder Bar. Starring Al Jolson and based on a Broadway musical of the same name, the film included a scene in which a tuxedo-clad man glides onto a busy dance floor and taps the shoulder of another man dancing with a blonde in finger waves and a white gown. He asks, “May I cut in?” The woman answers, “Why, certainly!” and reaches out her arms expectantly, at which point the two men embrace each other and whirl off down the dance floor. Jolson, from the bandstand, observes the exchange and quips, “Boys will be boys. Woo!”
By the end of 1934, though, the Code was more than just a feel-good document for moralists. It was enabled with specific enforcement machinery in response to religious lobbying and the threat of significant industry opposition from the Catholic church.
“[R]ather than risk possible state and federal censorship,” notes Chon Noriega, “as well as anticipated boycotts by the ten-million-member Catholic Legion of Decency, Hollywood studios proferred [sic] strict self-regulation, empowering the Hays Office—now under Joseph Breen—to enforce its four-year-old Production Code.”
Once the Production Code had teeth, filmmakers were restricted in what they could include in their work. If they violated Code standards, the Production Code Administration (PCA) could withhold its seal of approval, making distribution difficult. The possibility of appeal was slim to none, with a board of PCA directors making the call, not fellow filmmakers. In 1947, with the Code not even fifteen years in effect, writer and censor Geoffrey Shurlock noted with some pleasure that
Queer characters and storylines were less common, or circumscribed, until the Code weakened and ultimately fell in the 1960s (the success of boundary-pushing films like Some Like It Hot only helped in this regard). It remained true in film that villains, especially, were more likely to be accepted with queer coding. But a large number of films—more than perhaps one might expect—remain a testament to Hollywood’s longtime engagement with queer characters and themes. (snip)
June 28, 1916 A one-day strike by 50,000 German workers was organized to free Socialist anti-war leader Karl Liebknecht, charged with sedition for his criticism of the government and the war later known as World War I. He was the first ever to be expelled from the Reichstag, the German parliament, voted out for his opposition to Germany’s role in the war. ——————————————————————————————————— June 28, 1969 Patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, being subjected to routine anti-homosexual harassment by the New York City police raiding the bar, spontaneously fought back in an incident considered to be the birth of the gay rights movement. Riot veteran and gay rights activist Craig Rodwell said: “A number of incidents were happening simultaneously. There was no one thing that happened or one person, there was just . . . a flash of group, of mass anger.” About Craig Rodwell A group of drag queens, who had been mourning the death earlier in the week of Judy Garland, mocked the police and threw things at them, and police were forced to retreat into the bar as the crowd of supporters grew; disturbances continued for days. The bar is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Stonewall and all it has inspired —————————————————————————————————- June 28, 1987 The Iranian Kurdish town of Sardasht was attacked by Iraqi aircraft with chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War. Saddam Hussein had started the war expecting an easy victory against the new Shiite Islamic republic, even though Iran had three times the population. Victims of the mustard gas attack on Sarsasht, Iran ——————————————————————————————————- June 28, 2005 Seen in New York City on June 28, 2005
I’ve had this idea for a few days, but I wasn’t sure about it. Then Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unfairly exploded on a reporter for merely doing her job, so I decided he deserves this. Fuck Pete Hegseth (but not literally).
Stinky Pete attacked a reporter, from Fox News of all places, for doing her job. Her crime was asking Pete a question.
Jennifer Griffin of Fox News asked about whether there was any certainty that highly enriched uranium was stored at the mountain bunker bombed by the US, given that satellite photos showed more than a dozen trucks were seen there two days in advance.
Pete replied, “Of course, we’re watching every single aspect,” Hegseth said. “But, Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the president says.”
How did Griffin misrepresent anything that Trump has said with that question? The question was based on the fact that satellite photos showed trucks at the site days before the bombing,” and while Trump was publicly mulling over whether or not to bomb it. In fact, it’s a very important question and there’s nothing wrong with it, even to the point that it shouldn’t piss anyone off, even a goose-stepping drunky fascist who can’t keep his dick in his pants. But, I guess the question does challenge the talking points and propaganda the regime has put out. This question was apparently worse than the time Sean Spicer was asked about crowd sizes. How dare you!!!!
After the bombing, Trump said Iran’s nuclear program was “totally obliterated.” As it turns out, not so much unless “totally” doesn’t mean totally anymore. Maybe they could say it was slightly obliterated. This is like the time when the military killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Trump said he “died like a dog,” while telling other huge lies about the operation.
An early intelligence assessment leaked to media outlets on Tuesday suggested that the strikes only set Iran’s enrichment program back by a few months and did not destroy its core components.
Any challenge to the narrative that the sites weren’t “totally oblitereated” pisses TACO off nearly as much as being called TACO.
The preliminary analysis was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, and reportedly found that the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites sealed off the entrances to two facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings. Basically, Trump bombed the fuck out of their doors.
One of the idiot trolls at GoComics claimed the media was following Iran’s talking points, but no…we’re following US intelligence on this. By the way, US intelligence, or any other intelligence, doesn’t include Donald Trump. This is not the first time Trump has had issues with American intelligence. He once sided with Putin over US intelligence.
I don’t know which makes the regime angrier, the analysis or the leak. It sure pissed off White House SpokesBarbie Karoline Leavitt.
Leavitt rejected the intelligence report and accused CNN, which first revealed it, of “fake news.” She later sent a tweet. (snip-MORE, tweet’s on the page)
Scottie's Playtime 