Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

The revolution will be supervised.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Republicans don’t trust women.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

People are complicated. Love is not.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

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Reader Interactions

37Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    Alabama Juicers say Doug Jones has a shot. I don’t know, but what a political earthquake that would be.

  6. 6.

    Yutsano

    @Baud: If the Democrats can get enough folks around the voter suppression rules…it might happen. But honestly if Jones wins there’s no reason the Senate can’t be a total bloodbath for the Republicans. Hell maybe even Machin might keep his job.

    (Is it just me or am I strangely not worried about Heitkamp? Or is she bailing for gov for sure?)

  8. 8.

    Roger Moore

    @Yutsano:

    But honestly if Jones wins there’s no reason the Senate can’t be a total bloodbath for the Republicans.

    It would also critically narrow their margin for things like ACA repeal and tax cuts. 51-49 is notably tighter than 52-48.

  9. 9.

    debbie

    Dotard supports Strange; Bannon, Palin, etc. support Moore. This may be interesting, especially if Dotard is on the losing side.

  10. 10.

    1000 flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    I just want to say that I would be happy to share my bathroom with any active-duty, reserve, discharged, or retired trans members of the US armed forces. They’ll have to deal with the cats not believing in closed doors, though.

  14. 14.

    LurkerNoLonger

    Jesus fucking Christ with this bathroom shit! (no pun intended) Who fucking thinks about public bathrooms this much?! When I’m in a public bathroom I try to get in and out as quick as possible. I’m not studying the genitals or facial features of the other people in there to determine what their true gender is.

  15. 15.

    efgoldman

    Ordinarily I’d think that Judge Moore is to woo even to get elected, like Akins in MO and the chicken lady in NV. But in Alabama? Statewide? I’ll be surprised if he loses.

  18. 18.

    Lyrebird

    @LurkerNoLonger: Yeah I don’t get the obsessors either. I guess they must not be traditional bathroom fetishists, because if they were, they would know about this MARVELOUS technology known as the STALL! And of course for people who want to wear them, there’s an even older device known as a SKIRT!!!! Both of these amazing inventions obscure the private parts and shield them even from the prying eyes of vindictive legislators.

    I wish we could just construct new toilets and label them “WC” (“water closet” – what they are called in France) and be done with it.

    For people who need a reason to smile and believe in decent humans after reading this post, try these videos from the Center for Trans Equality. Google helped and gets promoted a tad, but the people featured in the video, incl at least one veteran, are just lovely people. (ETA “lovely” not about attractiveness to me, about human beings that restore your faith in human beings)

  22. 22.

    Gvg

    @LurkerNoLonger: old people I am afraid. Like my liberal parents in their 70’s always vote democrats, but think that the party made a mistake “spending too much time on the bathroom issue”. Did not listen when I pointed out we didn’t start it. Also think Hillary should have known better than to talk to Wall Street etc. rather shocked me but they retired over a decade ago and I think they haven’t met enough new people since. I work on a big University campus and read academic progress petitions all day which is what is going on that made you do poorly and is it extenuating, with documents. It keeps exposing me to many different emotional lives. Parents also still listen to TV news (not fox but still) and read the NYT. They are real liberals though, so we do need to pay some attention. Not everyone on our side is protective of…newer types of persecuted. My parents came of age defending black civil rights and women and got comfortable with gays over the years but I don’t think they have stretched beyond that. Just assume some of our side are maybe where you were 10 or 20 years ago as opposed to being from the 50’s or 1860 or the Middle Ages like republican’s.

  25. 25.

    SiubhanDuinne

    O/T. Rachel just said that all fifty state Medicare directors have come out against Graham Cassidy.

  26. 26.

    catclub

    isn’t there an Amendment to the constitution that forbids quartering trans soldiers in our bathrooms already?

  29. 29.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Peale: It’s even stupider than that. The thing they think will happen is that perverts will PRETEND to be trans to have easier access to bathrooms where they can be creepy, because a creeper man will put on a dress and say when he’s told he’s making people uncomfortable, “but I’m trans, you can’t throw me out!” And somehow the solution to this supposed thing that could happen is forcing people to use the bathroom designated for their sex assigned at birth, even though that would make it MORE LIKELY for someone who presents to the world as male to show up in a bathroom with a woman sign on it. It’s beyond stupid and takes like 10 seconds to dismiss. Which is why it’s galvanizing morons all over the country.

  30. 30.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Peale: Exactly. Although they’re generally only scare-mongering against trans women (because we’re actually men in dresses doncha know). //

    Also it’s part of coordinated effort by the Talibaptist to legislatively harass us out of existence — it’s literally point #3 of a 5-point plan. I’m dead serious, see: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/9258678

    In earlier years, I avoided using public bathrooms out of fears about someone causing a scene. And yes, holding it in could be painful and problematic.

  31. 31.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Sister Golden Bear: This may be ignorant on my part, and, if so, I apologize, but if you present as female how would anyone know? I have trans friends who present as far more female than some of my lesbian friends (some of whom are far more butch than I am),

  32. 32.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Omnes Omnibus: No worries.

    Like many trans women who weren’t blessed by the androgyny fairy, I’m much taller and stockier than a “typical” woman, with big hands and feet. Albeit when I went to Kansas City earlier this year, there were a number of women with similar builds, likely because they also were of German heritage.

    Thankfully, my Adam’s Apple is hidden by a protective layer of fat — but that can be another “tell” for some of my sisters. I am lucky to not have had a particularly masculine face — and it looks far more feminine thanks to hair transplants (to create a rounded hairline) as well as undergoing what’s called “facial feminization surgery” (I’m fortunate to be able to afford both procedures.)

    So there are “tells” that can tip people off that I’m probably trans if they know what they’re looking for.

    So these days I’m not particularly worried, even if I still get occasionally misgendered. Particularly in light of the tremendous social changes during the past few years. Even 10 years ago — when I first started going on in public — things were very different, even in the Bay Area.

    But honestly it doesn’t matter what you look like if the Talibapists get in your head — which is more the point of the bathroom bills anyway. Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it.

  33. 33.

    Peale

    @Omnes Omnibus: I think when we think of “public” restrooms, our definition is clouded by the idea of having to pee in the ballpark or stop at the rest stop on a road trip, where everyone is unknown. But public restrooms include the one in your grade school where everyone knows who you are, or your office, or the local restaurant where people aren’t strangers. But a person who isn’t a stranger isn’t necessarily a friend.

  34. 34.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Omnes Omnibus: Also cisgender butch women do occasionally get gender policed in public bathrooms (and even thrown out of them). There was a rather famous case a couple years ago involving a butch women who was thrown out of a restaurant in NYC’s West Village (during Pride weekend no less) by a bouncer who insisted she was using the “wrong” bathroom, even after she showed him ID.

    Just yesterday, a cisgender woman in Cleveland was threatened by a couple with a gun, who insisted that she show them her vagina to prove she wasn’t transgender: http://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/oh-cuyahoga/euclid-woman-threatened-to-expose-herself-accused-of-being-transgender

    So yeah, gender policing is real, and affects more than just trans people.

  36. 36.

    low-tech cyclist

    I think this is where we conclude that Neil Young, from Canada, understood Alabama better than Lynyrd Skynyrd understood their own state.

  37. 37.

    low-tech cyclist

    A friend of mine’s a transman, and looking at him, you’d have no idea he started off life as a girl. If he walked into the women’s restroom, people would get quite upset because what’s that man doing, using the women’s restroom, but that’s what Moore and his legion of idiots are demanding.

    IOW, they’re demanding the very thing they say they’re afraid of – men in the women’s bathrooms.

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