Winning Omaha mayor by 12… whoo boy. RIP Don Bacon.
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) May 14, 2025 at 10:47 AM
Omaha's result comes weeks after a series of major losses in school board elections for conservatives who championed attacks on trans kids:
— Taniel (@taniel.bsky.social) May 13, 2025 at 10:41 PM
And important to note the Dem ran against the Repubs for being anti-trans.
— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) May 14, 2025 at 1:10 AM
Remember, claim that Dems are dumping on trans people is absolute bullshit, & fuck off to anyone who says they are. In House 2 Dems (from border districts in TX) voted for trans athlete bill & 204 voted no, then all 47 Sen Dems filibustered & killed it
Because it’s right, & bc it’s winning politics— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) May 14, 2025 at 12:34 AM
Jackie
Thanks for the new thread, AL!
I love that ad! Potties vs potholes! 👏🏻
JML
Doing the right thing is a winning political stance. Obfuscating, trying to be on both sides while straddling the middle, these are losing strategies. Standing up and saying, “I’m not voting for that. I think it’s wrong.” is a winner. People will respect the simplicity and clarity of it. The pivot you see in the Omaha mayor’s race is a good one.
Gin & Tonic
I suspect I disagree with Don Bacon on most issues, but he is a very strong and vocal supporter of Ukraine – more visible and vocal on the issue than an awful lot of Democrats are.
bbleh
It’s both interesting and heartening that two issues on which it appears Dems are campaigning and WINNING are Trans rights and Gestapo-style roundup and deportation of immigrants — two of the MAIN pillars of the kulturkampf that imo is about the only thing that holds the Republican coalition together.
And I think it’s both the “weird” aspect (h/t Tim Walz) and (even mainly) the ugliness of the Republicans’ positions.
We’re still losing in Congress and on some issues in the courts, but on the ground things appear to be looking up somewhat.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The Trans are reminding me of Gay Marriage; first everyone assumed it would never happened, then GOP made a big fuss about it, everyone realized they had no problem with it.
Jackie
Anyone following the Supreme Court’s hearing FFOTUS’s arguments to end Birthright Citizenship? It’s been contentious, divisive and Sauer is not doing a very convincing job for FFOTUS :-D
Geminid
I have a hunch Rep. Don Bacon already plans to retire. Next year is likely to be a tough one for Republican House members generally, and Bacon’s last three elections have been close. He’s already a retired Air Force general, and as a retired Congressman he’d be a hot prospect on K Street.
Josie
@Jackie: Contentious and divisive in what way?
Captain C
@Jackie: Nonetheless, I kind of expect Alito and Thomas to vote against birthright citizenship, Alito referring to some hallucinated Bronze Age legal nonsense and Thomas on the grounds of wants an expensive vacation this summer and also to stick it to someone, anyone.
Old School
@bbleh:
Leslie Jones did a “weird” bit on last night’s The Daily Show.
Well, OK, it was Leslie Jones. Hers was about “goofy motherf**kers.”
catclub
There is a rightwing habit of ignoring the clear text of the constitution when convenient, and calling it originalism. See: second amendment
bbleh
@Jackie: just reading liveblogs on TPM and CNN, but it kinda looks like the fix is in, however inept Sauer may be. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if this ends up kinda Bush v Gore -like — an outcome that favors the Republican position but is carefully circumscribed to avoid giving future Democrats the same advantage in any similar future situation — and avoids the primary issue — ie birthright citizenship — entirely and punts it back to lower courts.
catclub
@Gin & Tonic:
 
This is John McCain all over again. Democrats have consistently VOTED to back Ukraine. The GOP not so much. So Bacon gets extra credit for something sane.
RevRick
@JML: @bbleh:
I think Jackals need to watch Andor. It embodies what Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist and anti-fascist, popularized in 1920 with the slogan “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”
It’s the idea that forces of progress/revolution need to push forward, even when the outcome is uncertain and the future looks bleak.
I see in comments across many threads here wavering between pessimism and optimism, and I think Gramsci has an important message for us. Doing something positive has more power to make change than just debating about the merits of any option’s chance of success.
None of us may see the end of the most recent Trumpist variant of fascism. There’s no guarantee that even our grandchildren will see it. But it is incumbent upon us to give it our all to thwart and oppose them.
catclub
@bbleh: so ‘under the jurisdiction of’ gets completely swiss cheesed, as the Trump admin sees fit.
Ruckus
I believe the conservative view is that we have to restrict any activity or concept of humanity that we wouldn’t do ourselves, IOW everyone has to be just like us.
And that’s not humanity. While we are all humans, we do not all see actual life, who, what, how the same. The are looking for justification for their views, the we see life only this way and therefore no one can deviate from that concept idea. And it’s bull and shit. Humans are not all one and only a one way concept of being. Simply, they want 100% justification for their views, zero deviation from their concept of humanity. And that is not the world nor the humans that live in it. Just because they aren’t gay does not mean no one else can be either. And on and on. Many want everyone else to live like them to justify their decisions to be what they think they are is what it boils down to. And in a world of millions and millions of humans, that’s not how it works. And often a group, say straight humans, think that any deviation from how they see the world is wrong. But that is not how humanity works. The concept of harming others or not is not having the entire population being one and only one concept of human. That concept means that people cannot be themselves and fit into groups of like humans, they all have to be and act exactly the same. And that is not humanity. As has been proven too many times to even put a number on. There is no harm in being gay, but there is in demanding the exact same concept of living/being human of everyone. We are not exact copies of one view of humanity. There are valid variations. Homosexuality is one of those valid variables. Do we have a concept that all men must shave every damn day? No. Do we demand that no one can trim excessive hair, no matter it’s location? No. Do we demand that they do? No. There is give and take in humanity, being gay is one of those concepts/deviations. An attack is not, but a reasoned choice is. The number of humans is considered over 8 billion. There will be deviations. Some men shave regularly, some do not. Some believe not is wrong. But that is not their choice/decision.
French Onion Soup
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
It’s worth noting that Obama had to come out against gay marriage to get elected. Not only did he come out against gay marriage he reached out to and sat down with right wing evangelicals. It worked! He won several states. Of course Obama was lying to them and he got flack for it from the left but it did have to happen.
It’s important to remember what happened next. After gay marriage was legalized and Democrats dropped the mask and admitted they were always for gay marriage many white states Obama won turned blood red and are not gettable anymore!
It wasn’t blackness it was religious taboos around sex and gender that lost those states and turned them from Obama states to anti Democratic party states.
Trans issues will play out the same way. People will have to run from it to win a general election and then it will be legalized and people won’t care. But the price will be another huge swath of the population and thus even more states permanently gone for the Democratic party.
Gay marriage is a hopeful lesson for Democrats. But the politics around it and how Obama handled it to get elected and the fallout after it happened are grim for Democrats.
Soprano2
@bbleh: Yesterday a pretty popular Cuban restaurant here had to close its doors because the FFOTUS administration rescinded the work permits for all of their Cuban employees. This is not what people voted for, although it was funny to see people making comments about them being here illegally and lots of people telling those commenters to read the article, they had work permits!
Kirk
@Josie: Dunno about @Jackie but I laughed quite a while at the whole 2d amendment digression. That, simplified, is “if the reason this doesn’t apply is that classes didn’t exist when it was done, then the second amendment does not apply to modern firearms.”
hrprogressive
The consultant class pointed to Trump’s “They/Them” ad as a reason why Harris lost last year, but I strongly believe the ads that really hurt her were the ads where she failed to distinguish herself from Biden, and the ads where her and Biden claimed “The economy is great!” with a straight face.
It isn’t the culture war the Dems need to focus on. It’s the class war.
And until they get out from under the boot of corprofascist shareholders, it is a war they cannot win, not durably so, anyway.
MrPug
Hey, Gavin, you listening? That is a great ad and definitely the way to go after anti-trans people. The only people who are obsessed with transgender people are conservative creeps, so make it clear that they are creeps.
Timill
@bbleh: They’re not arguing birthright citizenship today, but nationwide injunctions.
schrodingers_cat
@hrprogressive: Are you a straight white man by any chance?
Your argument holds no water. The Biden economy was booming and everything Agent Orange has done, has weakened us economically both as individual citizens and the economy at large.
Raoul Paste
@Captain C: Superb and succinct take on Alito and Thomas
Ruckus
@French Onion Soup:
The world/humanity changes, grows. Sometimes actually grows up/forward. And all things considered it sometimes takes a bit of effort to show many that their way is not the only way. Humanity is/has been often a struggle to find out that there is not only one way to be human, to live, breathe and not hurt others. And seemingly as often there are groups actually fighting to restrict others to justify their concept of life, that no deviation from one path is the one way. Governments do this, some religions do this, but humanity isn’t one way. And the more humans there are increases the concept and likelihood that there will be differences. And open communications show us that there are. And often those differences do not harm others. Some think that differences are harmful, but very, very often they are not. Gayness does not hurt straight people. It does sometimes show them that they are less straight than they want/believe they are. Often some people do not want to be able to make a choice because it often means they have to make one. And they sometimes fear that.
Josie
@schrodingers_cat: It’s true the economy in general was good, but for people like me, who live from paycheck to paycheck, it was getting difficult to afford groceries and other necessities. Until Biden’s Social Security law gave me an extra boost, I was having to make some hard choices about were my money was to be spent.
I suspect there were quite a few people who were having similar difficulties and blamed Biden. They were wrong, but many people think the president has the power to change economic problems with a wave of his hand.
ETA: It remains to be seen if they blame Trump for what comes next in the economy.
schrodingers_cat
@Josie: Has the Trump 2.0 made things any better? We were on the right trajectory with Biden. The press spent enormous amounts of time bad mouthing Biden.
Baud
Baud
@Josie:
That’s why the oligarchs are oligarchs.
Paul in KY
@JML: Be proud to be a Democrat. Running as a Democrat! Our beloved Pres. Truman said many years ago ‘If the people have choice between a real Republican and a fake one, they’ll pick the real Republican every time’.
Still true.
catclub
@Baud: It is not who votes that matters, it is who counts the votes that matters. Who will be on the review committee?
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
THIS.
StringOnAStick
@Josie: the economy was great for those of us who had built some generational wealth, and was/is continuing to get harder for the paycheck to paycheck people. Now paycheck to paycheck incorporates a lot more than just hanging on workers, it’s too many of the young who can’t see a way to ever get out of being a renter or ever have the ability to afford having children. These are the people we lost with the “economy is great” talk; it was great for those of us already established, and still grinding downward for those who aren’t. tRump getting re-elected is making that worse for them of course, but all the propaganda and resentment that he represents led too many of them to think he was the better choice. I just wonder if they’re ever going to realize just what a bill of goods they were sold by voting for him or not voting at all.
The tariff climb down still won’t mitigate the shortages that will hit in June from the period where nothing was shipping, and if our Covid experience is any indicator this sudden reopening of the trade pipelines will be massively inflationary. It’s funny that the inflationary pressures from Covid are what kept people bad mouthing the Biden economy and lost it for Kamala, and yet the disruption the tRump goons have set in motion will likely be worse, and on top if the chaos of Project 2025. Interesting times indeed.
Josie
@schrodingers_cat:
No, he hasn’t made things better. I’m curious to see if people blame him for their troubles like they did Biden. You are correct about the press. They are always going to lean in for Republicans; just a fact of life.
Paul in KY
@catclub: Like being congratulated for paying your lawful taxes.
Josie
@Baud:
I know I’m being dense, but I don’t understand.
Trollhattan
Brit history propellerheads ascertain Harvard (yeah, I know) owns an original copy of the Magna Carta, a document they bought for a few bucks in the 1940s, not realizing its provenance. Honestly a very cool discovery.
More+pics here.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm23zjknre7o
Belafon
@schrodingers_cat: Harris lost by a thousand cuts, after the two stab wounds of being black and being a woman. Egg prices did factor in for a few people not really caring otherwise, but at that point is was more of how much was she going to lose by. As for the economy, she did actually make the statements that it needed to be made to work better for the people still living paycheck to paycheck, but it really didn’t matter. Who was going to report that for people to hear?
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: Alot of people (for whatever reason) didn’t think so. VP Harris should (IMO) have thrown Pres. Biden under the bus as much as she needed to get that from being such an albatross around her neck. She’d be lying about it, but when you are trying to keep TFG out of office, you gotta do what you gotta do…
NaijaGal
Oh, I love that ad so much. It works on so many levels. Thanks for sharing it, Anne Laurie. I’d heard about it but not seen it. I think more Dems need to use similar ads to describe the weirdness of the GOP.
Belafon
@Josie: Well, you can if you’re willing to toss the constitution.
Dog Dawg Damn
This is encouraging news, however, fringe trans issues are deeply unpopular and Democrats should not be sanguine about taking positions that ~60-80% of the public, including a majority of Dem voters, reject.
The fringe issues of biological males playing in women’s sports, self-identification alone being sufficient to garner one access to female spaces, and unregulated, full-throated support for the dubious medical practice of transitioning children.
Dems can moderate on the above three issues, while holding firm on core rights, and win the country. Just a few years ago, the trans bathroom bill in North Carolina (!) was a flop that produced an outcry. We can get back to that if we align our policy positions with the (rather large) majority of folks who want to protect the rights of transitioned people without opening the floodgates (and sports) to everyone.
Melancholy Jaques
@hrprogressive:
I don’t recall any ads like that. Do you have a link?
Jackie
@Trollhattan: I just saw that on the news! What an amazing and crazy find!!
eta: Crazy in the good sense :-)
Melancholy Jaques
@Josie:
And given that the president controls grocery prices, it makes sense that people would overlook the fact that Trump was a corrupt, lying, convicted felon, adjudicated sex offender, & incited a mob to attack the Congress to overthrow the government.
Stop saying people voted for Trump because of “the economy” – It’s bullshit.
Old School
@hrprogressive:
You must have seen different ads than me. The ones that aired around here had Kamala Harris talking about wanting to build an “opportunity economy” and didn’t feature Biden at all.
Professor Bigfoot
@Dog Dawg Damn: What do you consider “core rights?”
Dog Dawg Damn
@Old School: The story re: inflation was almost too difficult to get across in an ad.
Inflation was almost necessary outcome of the pandemic, but better than recession. It was actually down as under control as election was approaching. Not sure how easy that would have been to meme-ify.
Baud
@Josie:
People can’t fight the oligarchy of they lose their way searching for an instant or perfect fix.
The oligarchs gave a plan, and they stick to it.
Belafon
@Dog Dawg Damn: Especially to counter “Egg prices!”
Josie
@Baud: Got it, thanks.
anastasio beaverhausen
It’s a pet peeve, and I hate to mention it again, but it’s marriage equality, not gay marriage. Couples don’t get black married, or jew married, they just get married. We’re all equal. Not special, just equal.
Trollhattan
@Jackie:
Right? Has me wondering how many folks pulled it from the shelf over the last 80 years. “Aww man, this isn’t what I was looking for.”
One of civilization’s most important works.
Jackie
@Melancholy Jaques:
It was what the tunnel vision FAUX, Newsmax and MAGA podcasts viewers were told 24/7. So bullshit for some, but certainly not for all. Normies who didn’t watch the news at all, only saw with their own eyes, that grocery prices were high and not going down. Those people DID vote with their pocketbooks, and we all know many normies DO THINK the current administration is responsible – however misguided that is.
Belafon
@Dog Dawg Damn: Your floodgate was a few people that were made to seem like there were millions of men putting dresses on and trying to earn gold medals. There are like maybe hundreds, not thousands.
Yes, Democrats lost the “A trans woman is really a man and he’s just there to do something to my daughter” fight with the Right that I tried to fight against my cousin with. But there is no moderate position. They’re blocking trans people from participating in chess. Explain that with a “moderate position.”
There was no moderate position that could be taken with those who are anti-trans. The “moderate position” would just mean the Right would move the middle further their direction. And once that happens, they’ll go after other people, like they’re already working on ending gay marriage now.
Steve LaBonne
@Dog Dawg Damn: But now it can work for us. “Trump promised he’d lower grocery bills. Are you seeing lower prices at the supermarket?
Belafon
@Belafon: We were never going to win those people anyway. But they’re not the people who split this time, mainly those who couldn’t deal with a black woman, and those who had their pet issue that they couldn’t see in the larger context of what was going on. “Biden didn’t do what I want, so I’m not going to vote.” Yes, the percentage of those who voted was down from what I read.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
Only if voters grade is on the same curve.
But we have to try.
Lyrebird
@Gin & Tonic: He has also been willing to speak the truth about shameless, dangerous, and plain wrong behavior here in the USA.
If the MAGA folks don’t primary him and he doesn’t retire, he might well get reelected, and fwiw I appreciate his standing up for Ukraine and speaking out against Gaetz and other creeps.
Citizen Alan
While fundamentalist views of sexuality and gender were obviously important factors, your proposition ignores the fact that the dominant political forces in conservative Christianity are driven by Christian denominations that only exist because antebellum plantation owners in the Cotton Belt demanded preachers who would reassure them that God was okay with them raping their slave girls and selling the resulting bastard children on the auction block for profit.
Living in Fresno now, it is bizarre to me to that Clovis is described by everyone I’ve talked to as being a “racist” town. And it probably is. But for them, it’s theoretical because Fresno is less than 7% AA and Clovis is only about 2% AA. And I’m thinking “how have these people even met enough black folks to form any opinions about them based on objective experience, or is it all just driven by what they see on TV?”
I mean, racism was disgusting in Mississippi but it was, on some dark level, rational. Because to a large degree, it was driven by fears of white people who believed that blacks, whose ancestors had been viciously oppressed for centuries, would oppress them in turn in revenge for how their ancestors were treated if they ever had the power to do so. I still vividly remember one highly educated attorney of my acquaintance (and the public defender for his hometown!) telling me privately that he was terrified of Obama winning in 2008 because he “genuinely couldn’t imagine a black man becoming president and not using the power of his office against whites.”
But in Clovis? Where one might go days without even seeing a black person? It’s insane.
Paul in KY
@Dog Dawg Damn: She (and Pres Biden) should have said something to the effect of: ‘Alot of companies lost alot of money during the recent pandemic. They are trying to get that money back right now.’
They could also mention oil prices went up as many more people driving as we have gone beyond the pandemic times.
Both (to me) are fairly simple to comprehend and 100% true.
Paul in KY
@anastasio beaverhausen: Great point.
Paul in KY
@Steve LaBonne: Good point also! Hang it around his neck!
Melancholy Jaques
@Jackie:
I submit as
proofevidence that it’s bullshit that prices have not gone down, reports are that they are going up, but Trump is still more popular than Democrats. They love his stupid, bigoted cruelty. They know they are not supposed to say that is why they voted for him, so they say “the economy” because it’s acceptable.Lyrebird
@Old School: @hrprogressive:
I do believe the ads featured her saying, “Bidenomics is working” of course without context.
I don’t believe there was any one single factor that is THEEEE reason fascist man won.
I don’t think much will be learned from the success of that particular attack ad if people only look at the economics part and not also that the statement came from a highly intelligent Black woman. Heck, even Poppy Bush was required to dumb down how he spoke, and he was for sure white and male.
@Belafon: ditto to everything you said, too.
Jay
https://nitter.poast.org/MattBinder/status/1922713839566561313#m
Grok is inserting “White South African Genocide” talking points in to the answers to every question it is asked, even ones about toenail fungus.
When asked why, Grok explains that it was manually coded to do so and follows up with “White South African Genocide” talking points.
Baud
@Melancholy Jaques:
All alternative histories are bunk, but IMHO a Republican running on the “Biden economy” would have won in a landslide.
Melancholy Jaques
@hrprogressive:
I strongly believe the ads that really hurt were the ones in which it was clear she was a woman of color.
Old School
@Lyrebird:
Oh. So not a Harris ad, but a Trump ad about how Biden was destroying everything and Harris would do the same.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
Agree completely. Reagan’s “Morning in America” featured 4% inflation, 7% unemployment, & 13% mortgage rates.
zhena gogolia
@Melancholy Jaques: Right.
Jay
I wonder how much the “We’ve Got This/Blue Wave” discourse suppressed turn out.
Baud
@Jay:
I don’t remember much of that this time around, unlike 2016.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I don’t think that was it.
Numbers one and two were woman + Black.
Number three was media.
Number four was the spectacle of spineless elected Dems in June-July.
ETA: Sorry, had to do a Michael Palin Inquisitor revision.
lowtechcyclist
@Dog Dawg Damn:
Ain’t enough rolleyes for you, dawg.
Ain’t never seen you before that I can recall, and I ain’t gonna bother with you now.
rusty
@RevRick: Your quote reminds me of a comment by the black theologian James Cone. I don’t have the book at hand, but he said something along the lines of whites were always interested in they could win, whereas blacks fighting oppression just fought on. (If whites weren’t convinced they would win they wouldn’t fight on). This feels like a a parallel sentiment to Gamsci. The hope in continuing the fight is rooted in our faith, to overcome oppression is what we are being called to do.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
I’m going to limit my guessing. All I can say is I’m proud of how Biden handled the economy, given the mess he inherited. But I accept that I’m in the minority.
Barbara
@Baud: You’re not wrong. Warren Harding was elected essentially because people were tired of eating vegetables and it was easy to promise an all-dessert diet even if the messenger was an idiot. A lot of election dynamics are just baked into circumstances that political parties don’t influence. I don’t know how we get past the “binary” nature of our political choices.
kindness
@Citizen Alan: The Clovis/Fresno distinction probably meant more 30 years ago when there were still pastures and farm fields separating Clovis & Fresno. Now days, it’s all just one big suburban sprawl that you can hardly tell you entered a new city.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I can’t believe how calm I felt when Biden was president, compared to now.
Gretchen
@Dog Dawg Damn: Unregulated, full-throated support for transitioning children? What propaganda shop are you getting your information from? Medical care for transitioning is slow, careful, takes years, and starts with reversible steps. The idea that the school nurse is doing surgery over the lunch hour is a fever dream to whip people up.
Same with sports. The sports organizations have rules about who is eligible to play, and specifies things like hormone levels and time spent in transition to determine who can play. The idea that the entire men’s swimming team declared themselves girls so they can win more medals and scholarships is more nonsense.
Getting ignorant legislators involved in regulating this stuff results in absurdities like trans kids getting banned from the chess and fencing team where they have no advantage, and tall-short haired women getting kicked out of bathrooms by over-zealous security guards.
JoyceH
@Jay:
We know what’s going on here, right? People asked Grok about Trump’s claim for refugee status for these Afrikaaners he let in, and Grok correctly answered that Trump was not telling the truth. So Elon got in there and tried to make Grok match Trump’s lies (which he got from Elon in the first place), and since he codes as incompetently as he does everything else, he gave poor Grok a nervous breakdown.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Calm = boring, apparently.
Baud
Freedom (to betray your country) isn’t free
piratedan
@Baud: the decades of incremental progress being wiped out by a single administration of incompetence and no matter how fast the Dems acted to make the needed changes there was little latitude offered in the media explaining 1) how much damage was done and 2) how little interest the media had in explaining who was to blame.
If anything it shows how much messaging matters and having few media advocates to educate and inform people about how shit actually works. Dems are far from perfect, but that they are exponentially better than the current alternatives was never made clear. The very same people that were saved from being evicted from their homes by Dems and landing the pandemic plane in a worldwide economic contraction held the Dems to blame for the lack of economic mobility in urban areas.
Emily B.
@Dog Dawg Damn: “The fringe issues of biological males playing in women’s sports, self-identification alone being sufficient to garner one access to female spaces, and unregulated, full-throated support for the dubious medical practice of transitioning children.”
I find all of these assertions questionable.
1) Why are you calling trans women “biological males”?
Without male hormones, trans women lose muscle mass and their athletic performance drops substantially. They’re not actually competing as men.
2) Actually, in every single gender-restricted restroom I’ve ever used, entry IS based on self-identification, which is how it should be. I don’t want to have go through a genital check at the door.
(Truthfully, I still don’t get the fuss over trans women in women’s bathrooms. Ladies’ rooms have stalls. No one sees anything.)
3) Gender-affirming care for young people is hardly a “dubious medical practice.” It’s supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association. Kids deserve access to the medical care they need.
My understanding is that typically transitioning for youths is a multi-stage process that starts with substantial counseling. Gender-affirming surgeries are very rarely performed on underage transgender patients, as this Harvard study found. (In fact, the study found, the gender-affirming surgery most often performed on adolescents is breast reduction surgery for cisgender boys.)
Baud
Steve LaBonne
@Emily B.: Feeding a troll is rarely a rewarding activity. It isn’t going to listen to reason.
Trivia Man
@Dog Dawg Damn: If we start with a value of $100, then covid drops that measure to $90, then we recover to $99 the message was OMG OMG OMG INFLATION WAS 10% this year!!
Biden was ALWAYS compared against the trough so GOOD NEWS was punished.
catclub
@Melancholy Jaques: I was proposing ads along just those lines by Biden/Harris. I.e The economy is better now (2024) on inflation, unemployment and the stock market, than it was in 1984 when Reagan was saying it is morning in America.
Can I have a pony?
WTFGhost
One political win, of sorts, is, the Trump administration has so many bullshit arguments, for so many things, that it’s keeping in the news.
Tariffs are beautiful – we keep getting clobbered over them, and they’ll raise prices.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a terrorist – he’s an innocent man the SCOTUS said 9-0 needs to be treated as if he’d never been removed from the country
You’d have to be stupid to turn down a $400 million dollar bribe that’s a national security surveillance and safety nightmare! – self-negating.
“We need to use the alien enemies act to suspend Habeus Corpus!” – everyone, with any moral compass, is uniquely horrified, while two SCOTUS-judges (I can’t say “Justices” in context) disagree that there’s any horror, much less a unique one.
Man, if only Trump’s wild fumbling included a massive battle over re-opening the government, with Trump’s usual stupid bombast making Democrats appear reasoned and mature (though to be honest. most infants would also appear so, comparatively speaking). Can’t have everything, eh, Angry-letter Schumer?
People who are born in this country shouldn’t be citizens! – there’s no constitutional method
Trivia Man
@Belafon: it is really a little less than hundreds. There are like 5 men doing performance art as “transgender” that are the basis for all the hate. One man has done nothing but put on a dress and regularly books waxing sessions at women only salons, then gets aggressively sexual with the techs.
The teacher who wears size EEEEEEE boobs with visible nipples – but only at work, otherwise he lives as a man.
Bet: thousands of transgender people use public restrooms every day without being noticed.
Dog Dawg Damn
@Professor Bigfoot: employment, housing, etc. anti-discrimination laws.
I don’t believe that a natal male has a fundamental right to female spaces (prisons, shelters, sports teams and locker rooms) simply because they declare they are a woman. This isn’t controversial. It’s what vast majority of people believe.
Dog Dawg Damn
@Emily B.: I appreciate your response.
1) is just wrong. Natal males retain advantages after hormone treatment. Nevertheless, many competing in sports are not taking hormone treatment (at high school level, for instance, where it’s rather unregulated).
2) I don’t care much about bathrooms, it’s more locker rooms where woman and girls chance and get naked. Prisons and shelters as well. No I don’t think identifying as a woman should gain you access to these spaces.
3) Every systematic review has found the evidence for the treatment is of low quality. This is a fact. This is why Europe and the US are moving away. The HHS report. The Cass report. Dutch and Norway. The list goes on and on. The core claims — that GAC reduces harm is not substantiated. It also is very risky. No time to get into it but the outcomes of the original cohort that formed the basis for the Dutch protocol was abysmal. With one participant dying. Yes, it’s quite risky for something that has no substantial benefit. And we could go on about the ethics of it — how it is used to convert gender non conforming and homosexual kids, how those kids don’t have ability to make informed decisions about lifelong care (sterilization and reduced lifesoans)…. It’s deeply troubling and there is no clear cut answer. I have a moral opposition to it that could be swayed with better evidence but that evidence isn’t yet there.
Dog Dawg Damn
@Emily B.: they are biological males. That’s why I call them that. The word games are rather silly. You know what I mean.
even India Willoughby is on record that people who go through male puberty have advantages that are not erased after transition. Not sure why the trans lobby wants to die in this particular hill but they are doing a good job of losing.
Jay
@WTFGhost:
Emptywheel noticed that it is quite the “sign” that Harvard’s cheap copy of the Magna Carta turns out to be an original, not a cheap copy, right now,
and it was the first time that Habeas Corpus was coded into law.
Omnes Omnibus
Things must be looking up for Dem prospects because the people are showing up to say that Dems are going to lose huge numbers because of cultural issues. Squid ink.
WTFGhost
STRAW MAN? THAT’S WHERE YOU COME FROM? DO THEY SPEAK ENGLISH IN STRAW MAN?
ENGLISH MUTHAFUCKAH! DO YOU SPEAK IT?
SAY “STRAW MAN” AGAIN, I *DARE* YOU!
Republicans claimed Democrats were in favor of those things. Democrats did not press for any of those things. In fact, the idea that Democrats, or anyone who is above the metaphorical “drooling” level of intellect, pressed for those things is *RISIBLE*. (Look it up, floccinaucinilipilificatrix!)
Jay
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy keeps going on TV and insisting it’s safe to fly in and out of Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey, despite a string of extremely frightening outages and workforce shortages recently. But Duffy has now admitted he changed a flight booked for his wife on Monday so that she wouldn’t have to travel through Newark.
Duffy made the startling admission to David Webb, a conservative radio host, during his SiriusXM show on Monday. And it’s a shocking thing to hear from the guy who’s supposed to make sure American air travel is safe.
“My wife was flying out of Newark tomorrow. I switched her flight to LaGuardia,” Duffy told the host of The David Webb Show as they discussed the recent problems at the airport.
https://mockpaperscissors.com/2025/05/15/real-world-problem-for-road-ruler-duffy/
WTFGhost
@Jay: That was on my mind, but it seemed even more “out there” than many of my usual allusions (which some people term “illusions” until I fill them in on context – yes, there was *too* a superhero named Prince Planet, with his friends Dan Dynamo and the wizard whose name I never bothered to learn – Haji Baba, per DuckDuckGo).
I’m sure it doesn’t help that I’m often using herbal remedies while making weird allusions. :-)
Steve LaBonne
@Jay: These defectives think nobody outside the wingnut bubble can hear them.
WTFGhost
@rusty: One thing I don’t think ever gets touched on in US history is, Black America has only ever fought for justice, and they have fought for it with a patience and a classiness that’s unthinkable on the American Right.
The idea that, “we’re not sure we can win, but we’ll keep going,” feeds into the same idea. In a real sense, Black people first contributed the labor that built America, but are also the engine that powers American hopes, and dreams, of justice. Not dominance, not vengeful fire and fury, just… justice.
Just a thought that came to mind, reading your response.
Timill
@WTFGhost: Patisserie is good.
bluefoot
@Citizen Alan: I heard a Nobel Prize winner say almost exactly the same thing at a dinner to another high-prestige white man – “Those people hate us and would kill us if we gave them a chance.” Corollary being that’s why white people had to oppress people of color. Such insanity. No, assh*le, we want to be treated equally and left alone to live our lives.
Steve LaBonne
@WTFGhost: Tl;dr: We white people should lose the right to vote for two generations. Imagine what an unrecognizably better country we would become in that time.
Captain C
@bluefoot: Sounds like another case of confession by accusation.
bluefoot
@Captain C: considering multiple people in his lab pursued an anti-discrimination suit against him, I’d say yes.
NaijaGal
@WTFGhost: My sister-in-law (who voted for Kamala) sincerely believed that Kamala ran on a “lets force everyone to be trans” platform because Facebook told her so! I had to contain my anger talking to her about it until she realized that she never saw any ads from Harris about this issue, just ads from other people (most likely Republicans) *telling her that this is all Harris was talking about*.
She doesn’t watch Fox News or read the NYT/WaPo. We ignore social media at our own peril. She voted the right way but was very critical of Dems when we spoke and wanted Dems to “also talk about other issues” (they did, but she didn’t hear any of the proposals about wages, fair taxation, mortgage down payment assistance, etc.). I don’t know how to address this without rewarding Meta with counter ad dollars but it needs to be addressed.
Oh – and she didn’t hear about Project 2025 in any meaningful way!
Quiltingfool
okay, this is what bothers me about the whole “men wrapping a skirt around their hoo-haws so they can use the women’s restroom” scenario. And then those men would rape women,
Have there been lots of sexual assault in women’s restrooms? Has this been going on for a long time and nobody told us? I mean, yes, there have probably been women assaulted in a public restroom, but I’ll bet the dude wasn’t wearing a dress and heels.
There have been trans women for quite some time in our society. I’ll bet they used the women’s restroom BECAUSE THEY WERE WOMEN. I’ll go one further and say I’ve probably been in a public restroom with a trans woman, and I might have complimented her on her shoes, BECAUSE SHE IS A WOMAN. And I liked her shoes.
Also, there have been trans men in our society for a long time too. Nobody seems to have a problem with trans men as they do trans women (gee I wonder why?//) but there were women who dressed as men and fought in the Civil War. Now after the war, some women went back to skirts and corsets, but some didn’t do that; they didn’t go back home, they were men and that was that. Of course, they didn’t run around saying they had ladyparts, but TRANS WOMEN AND TRANS MEN DONT RUN AROUND TALKING ABOUT THIS EITHER.
I am sick of this insanity. I am sick of wanting to read the obituaries of the evil assholes we have in charge with pleasure and glee. Republicans and Trump have done horrible damage to the nation’s psyche.
NaijaGal
It never occurred to me to check in with people voting the same way about what they were actually hearing abut the candidates until the experience I describe above.
In an ideal world, USians would behave like the French and vote for Macron/Kamala even if they are staunch Melenchon/Bernie supporters, to avoid giving the LePens/Trumps of the world a win. But the US is different and people need to be courted individually and coaxed to vote the right way, in part because of racism and misogyny and in part because of disinformation.
I’ve said in the past that Fox News is the Hutu Power Radio of America. We now have even more sources of disinformation than Fox. Please read “Careless People,” Sarah Wynn-Williams truly shocking expose of Facebook, including how its indifference (and ignorance about anything non-US) enabled the Rohingyan genocide in a country where Facebook was the only face of the internet.
Dane
Did someone light the Jesse Signal?
Omnes Omnibus
@Dane: Ha!
Quiltingfool
@Dog Dawg Damn: Are you okay with trans men in men’s locker rooms? Or trans men in men’s restrooms? Or trans men on men sports teams?
I doubt that concerns you. How about this: maybe men need to start training other men not to SEXUALLY ASSAULT WOMEN.
I am fucking sick and tired of woman having to be responsible for men’s behavior. Yet here we are, once again, punishing trans women because men cannot keep their hands (and other body parts) to themselves.
Jay
@Quiltingfool:
Feeding trolls is counterproductive.
Professor Bigfoot
@Dog Dawg Damn: Pie. Just pie. 🙄
Quiltingfool
@Jay: Oh, I know I shouldn’t feed trolls, I usually just snort with derision and scroll right on by.
I’m just in a “sick of stupid shit” mood today.
Jay
@Quiltingfool:
I just go out onto the balcony, scream into the void, come back inside, go back to day drinking.
It’s actually more productive and effective.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dog Dawg Damn: You do know that other people can read what you are writing, right?
jonas
I think that’s the takeaway here: people are craving authenticity in politics. This is what Chris Murphy was talking about in that interview the other day — we don’t need to be “populist” in the conspiratorial, “screw-the-elites” kind of way, but populist in the “Republicans are phony, pandering sex weirdos who don’t give a shit about the real problems you face every day” way. This is why Gavin Newsom has fucked himself so bad on his pivot against trans rights — it’s so transparently pandering. He just pisses of the Democratic base and makes any independent or Republican voter roll their eyes in disgust. He’s not going to be president.
Jay
@jonas:
Well, he’s also lost most of the “unhoused vote” and the “one paycheck away from being unhoused” vote, maybe. We already know that 35% of US voters voted for the cardboard box and curtain rods scenario.
Miss Bianca
@Josie:
It remains difficult under Trump. Oh, no, wait – it’s *even more difficult.
Jay
@Quiltingfool:
Ancient Egyptians never expected that one day, their Daddy would become their Mummy.
Neither did the Kardashians.
Manyakitty
@Gin & Tonic: for which he genuinely does deserve credit.
Dog Dawg Damn
@Quiltingfool: it’s very difficult to respond to this because it’s not so much an argument but a rant.
As a gay man, I am not comfortable with females in male spaces. Several gay resorts have had to litigate this issue, or faced backlash, but I do not feel comfortable with it, no. Also, as a gay man, I don’t feel particularly responsible for straight men assaulting women. Agree we should do more to teach young men respect etc, but it’s hard to take you seriously when you won’t reckon with the fact that trans women are more likely to be sex offenders than non-trans women.
Finally, I don’t think I am attacking women because trans women are not in fact women. They are trans women. So it’s a conversation about them that acknowledges they are different than women.
I know this is an echo chamber but many many women agree with this viewpoint, as does the high court of the UK recently, and basic common sense.
Dog Dawg Damn
@Omnes Omnibus: You do realize this is a very insular echo chamber that is not engaging with material reality about the subject even as the facts on the ground change.
Jay
When the intro is “As a Gay man”,………………….. yeah they ain’t. Just a common garden variety troll. I prefer garden Gnomes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dog Dawg Damn: Um, wow. You packed a whole lot of bigotry in there. Well done?
Darkrose
@Dog Dawg Damn: Please take your lies and bigotry elsewhere.
Melancholy Jaques
@catclub:
If it were within my power, I would give you two ponies & a surrey with a fringe on top.
Dog Dawg Damn
@Jay: this is how warped this site has become.
I have posted on here off and on for over 10 years. I am a married gay man, democrat.
I am merely voicing opinions that are held according to polling by a majority of Democrats and this sites denizens are in absolute meltdown.
this is cult like behavior.
Dog Dawg Damn
@Omnes Omnibus: What bigotry ?
Trans women offenders have similar patterns of criminality to cis man offenders. They have the highest rate of sex offending of any group of the 4 (cis / trans, man / woman).
Now I know this is an inconvenient truth, but surely it’s something relevant to whether we house them with biological females no ?
Jay
LMFAO at the troll who keeps trolling, so badly.
Steve LaBonne
@Jay: I see only yummy desserts.
Jay
@Steve LaBonne:
I don’t pie. I seem to have a memory of trolls who come here. There are some commenters who’s nym’s I just skip.
chemiclord
The sentiment I’m getting at ground level in my very purple neighborhood is, “Trans people are still mentally ill. We still don’t like them and think they are delusional. We still think they’re trying to pretend to be women to rape women and beat them at sports. We just like the ideas the GOP is presenting to handle it even less.”
Which is a problem, because the instant some Republican makes up some bullshit like “Oh, we’ve invented a breathalyzer like contraption that detects the Y chromosome in a person’s DNA” the electorate will be right back on board with demonizing trans people.