“General” is an adjective/descriptor, so the proper plural is Attorneys General. 
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You could just avoid the whole thing and say, “… the people who are Attorney General in each state.”
Another day, another potential drilling ban.
Biden has done more to reinstate Iran and Russia’s power by boosting oil futures than anyone could have dreamed.
We went from being an exporter to an importer in less than half a year. Some is increased demand, but we stopped increasing production as well.
And it doesn’t even help the climate. Someone is still pumping it and we are still burning it. Its just not as safely or cleanly done and it travels thousands of miles instead of hundreds.
The media is learning stuff about Harris that it seems everyone else has known since she didn’t even manage to make it to the first primary. The media is now panicking about who will run in 2024.
Maybe “I’m not Trump” wasn’t the best person to vote for.
Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang are too “moderate” to win, and most of the others haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory lately. I’d bet part of what is happening to the Cuomos is battlespace prep for 2024. These allegations have been out there for years, but their cover was pulled.
Pelosi had another short circuit on live TV and rumors are that she is retiring. Chuck Schumer can’t control his own caucus. Odds are considering the approval ratings out there that they will both become minority leaders in 2022 anyway.
Some of us have known those things about Harris since she was AG of California. I wasn’t thrilled when Joe chose her as his running mate and the fact that she’s a woman and a POC had nothing to do with it. Andrew Yang has no platform besides UBI and hasn’t explained how he’d fund it so he’s a non-starter and Tulsi the transphobe can go die in a fire. The Dems are going to lose the House and Senate next year and most like the White House in 2024 and it’s mostly their own fault because they can’t get their shit together. I shudder to think what the party that Trump has remade in his own image will do with control of both the executive and legislative branches and a 6-3 majority in SCOTUS. If you’re queer or a POC (and God help you if you’re both) it’s about to get real dark.
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Yeah, because Democrat rule is so much better for minorities. Just look at downtown San Fran, Detroit, Denver, or Chicago, or NYC, or all the places where democrat run cities have police departments that keep shooting them.
Or the law in California that kills independent workers, an outsized portion of whom were minorities.
Or an infrastructure bill that provides money for the upper class and white collar workers but leaves scraps for blue and no collar workers.
Or the huge 1% tax break Biden and Congress are trying to pass right now to overturn Trumps increase on them. SALT exemptions are a prerogative of the rich.
College loan forgiveness where the top 40% of income earners owe 60% of the debt. Over 50% of it is held by MAs and PHDs.
As for the Latino vote…
I never said Democrats were perfect. However they’re also not actively pushing legislation to make me and millions of others second class citizens at best. I can overlook a lot of Democratic bullshit if that’s the alternative. TBH I think we need a viable third and fourth party in this country. Too bad that’ll never happen.
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Most of that is the reaction to the few that make it an issue. There aren’t many but there are people who report being raped or harassed by “trans” people in the bathroom. In prison its a whole other issue, but apparently no one cares about prison rape unless it’s a male guard and a female inmate. The other thousands can pound sand.
There have been kids in my daughter’s school that identified as female and became issues in locker rooms and bathrooms. And frankly, really not interested in my 14 year old seeing her first live penis in the girls locker room. Now, most of the trans people at her school are F to M, so that’s less likely, but there are strong rumors that one couple had one of them identify male so they get time in the locker room, something just stupid enough to sound true for a couple of 15 year olds. And the one who changes their gender throughout the day.
It’s not quite as easy as people like to think it is. And anyone saying otherwise is painted as transphobic, which is horseshit. I don’t have to hate cars to think that maybe going 90 MPH everywhere isn’t safe.
In addition there is the fact that there will few, if any, sports records held by AFAB people in the next decade or so. The swimmer at Penn is racking up the records right now. It’s no longer a what if, it’s happening right now. In almost every sport there is a huge difference between men and women, high school boys can often compete with professional women in many sports. Pretending that there isn’t just makes everything else people say questionable. Hell, just watch a person who was an average fighter as a man destroy all but the best female fighters as a woman.
A woman spends 50 years of her life as a woman, does amazing shit, and gets beat as Woman of the Year by a washed up Olympian who has been a woman less than a year. Men are so awesome they are better women than women in just a few months.
I am all for trans people being treated legally as their gender, if they care enough to file the paperwork. But casual gender changes like in high school I am not a fan of. She was a Foxperson last month, why believe she is a man now? Sports also need segregation, and affirmative action (Something I dislike anyway) needs to be looked at seriously. We already have 35% of white college applicants claiming false minority status, how many men would claim to be female to get that scholarship money?
I don’t mean for you, or anyone here, to be the standard bearer of trans rights. But the environment is so shitty right now on these subjects that there is little to no chance of reasonable discussion on it anywhere in the wild wild internet. I think there is room for nuance here, but most people aren’t interested in those sorts of conversations.
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Just because it’s a reaction to a few cases doesn’t make it any less of a threat. As for trans people (without quotes) assaulting women in the ladies’ room, there are zero documented cases of that actually happening. I know plenty of trans women who are terrified of using the women’s restroom for fear they might be accused of something untoward. So they hold it until they either get home or find a gender neutral bathroom. Those of us who do use public women’s restrooms keep our heads down, do our business, wash our hands, and leave for the very same reason. Yet the hysteria continues and will very possibly result in harmful legislation.
I don’t know enough to speak on the sports issue. I do know that for trans women to compete in the Olympics they must be on testosterone blockers and female hormones for a minimum of two years. There was a trans woman weightlifter from New Zealand in the Olympics earlier this year and everyone thought she’d run away with the gold medal. She came in fifth or sixth. Also speaking from personal experience of being on hormones for almost 3.5 years now, I’ve lost a lot of muscle. It’s a lot harder for me to muscle all the groceries up the stairs in one trip or lift heavy things.
Also not sure what do about the peeps in high school. It’s normal for kids that age to try on different identities. Hell if I could have tried out being a girl in 1989 with no repercussions I would have done it in a heartbeat. But I didn’t have that opportunity. Kids today do and I think it’s awesome. But since it wasn’t a thing when I was in high school and I don’t have any kids I lack perspective here. I do know that there are kids who are serious about it by that age though, and are already going through the process of getting their name changed, going on blockers in prep for the proper hormones when they’re older, etc. That’s a bit different than someone who just says they feel like a girl today. The trick here is to not gatekeep, and that’s a tricky tightrope to walk.
When it comes to someone with a penis in the girls locker room, or a vagina in the boys, gatekeeping is exactly what is needed. Experiment with your identity all you want, but it needs more than a verbal commitment to use the facilities. Shit, Bobby says he is femme and needs to use the girls locker room… Just so he can see boobs. If there is now gatekeeping then how so your prevent that?
And yeah, I was imprecise in my rape comment. Men pretending to be trans women have started issues. And with a homeless or transient population how so your determine if they are legit. Since we have disconnected behavior and appearance from the definition of man and woman how do you keep safe places safe?
College sports is requiring one year off. I think that requires blockers but not female hormones. Also notice the lack of trans men competing at almost any level of sport.
I am not trying to start a fight, it just really seems like people are pushing for inclusion without first deciding how that works and who that affects. Hell. Take a gap year and compete in college as female with a full ride and then stop the blockers, or try to fight your way through the thousands of men competing for the same spots.
Stop tying them to gender identity.
Why is Bobby seeing boobs a bad thing? Is it going to cause a spontaneous aneurysm? Is he likely to self-detonate just because he saw something that is just as easily found on the Internet or hell, even an anatomy textbook?
People need to stop demonizing anatomy and sex as bad things. Some girls have penises. Some boys have vaginas. That does not make them any less a girl or boy, respectively.
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There was a trans male high school wrestler in Texas a few years back who was on T, the whole nine yards. The state wouldn’t let him compete with the boys because his birth certificate said female. So he had to wrestle on the girls’ team and predictably destroyed everyone he wrestled against. Nobody won in that situation. I’d like to think the rules have changed since then but it’s Texas so probably not.
And tbh, aside from the sports angle, we need to stop demonizing sex and the parts that go along with it. It’s been 400 years and the Puritans are still fucking with us when it comes to that. And if you’re worried about predatory boys/men, there’s a cultural shift that needs to happen so that they don’t feel entitled to girls’ bodies and so that they actually experience some fucking consequences when they do step out of line instead of being treated like Brock Turner.
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Yeah, not going to work for women’s shelters. Where women go to be safe from men. Hell, one of the ones near me doesn’t even take male volunteers.
Or prisons. Or girls/boys schools.
I have an issue with it for my children. They have to grow up so fast anyway, I prefer they not be exposed like that in middle school.
Exposed to what? Trans people? Gender identity expression? Non-binary identities?
Get used to it. Trans people are people just like you are. They shouldn’t have to suppress anything about themselves to make you feel better.
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I could care less what their gender is. A young child doesn’t need to see the opposite genitalia at that age.
Or as I said are we repealing all the indecent exposure laws since it doesn’t matter anyway? I don’t expect people to be flaunting their genitalia on a regular basis, but I think we knew that one person who would stroll to the showers every day.
Why should we allow an expression of gender that would be a crime for doing the exact same thing with a different pronoun? And if you do allow it based on gender as declared how do you keep people from taking advantage?
Intent matters?
People, and I include myself here, are weird complicated multi-layered things. Assuming were fit in neat boxes is going to fail when it hits reality.
The ‘Sports’ thing seems to be based on rare anecdotes and fearmongering. There’s some valid incidents, but everything I’ve seen suggests they’re uncommon at best. And if you have a pool of contestants in a contest eventually they’re going to have circumstances that make any of them appear to stand out. It seems like we’re looking for the overlap of ‘good at sports’ and ‘transgender’ which is probably not a massive overlap.
The bathroom thing is even worse as it is still already illegal if an AFAB woman molests another AFAB women in a bathroom. The act is the problem, not a circumstance that might make it slightly more likely. And I’ve never been in a bathroom that required proving my genital history, nor would I want to use one.
the 99% Invisible podcast did a good episode on the bathroom issue and shows how it renders certain people reluctant to travel if they fear they’re being hassled. The last time the US really did that was wrong, too: The Sundown Towns which are mostly defunct today.
I don’t talk to kids much, but from what I can see they’re a lot more flexible than adults and are, as a whole, figuring a lot out. They need the space to do so and figure things out, not be told that they’re wrong or broken.
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Not in a lot of law. But I get your point.
Hormone blockers for at least a year, maybe two, a year out of competing in the sport, and zeroing in on the women’s records in freestyle by the end of the season.
High School boys can beat some women’s world records, all it takes is a few people and AFAB women in sports are replaced in the record books. Maybe that doesn’t really matter. I think it does.
I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this, but it’s an interesting site. There are a few articles comparing a couple of these individual events but this is the one I saw with cool graphs.
Not sweating bathrooms, especially as an adult. Hell, I’ve worked with enough trans people I could give two shits about 90% of the adult issues people complain about.
Age restricting viewing genitalia is not the same as demonizing. Just like my daughters weren’t allowed to watch shows with foul language at a certain age, or any dozens of things that kids can’t do. Some kids aren’t ready for it, and others just skip right along.
Kids are surprisingly accepting unless the adults in their lives have taught them not to be. My nieces were 8 and 12 when I transitioned and they didn’t bat an eye.
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There are a non-trivial number of people on the right who consider “noticing the existence of LGBTQ people” the same as “being under siege by liberal propaganda.” I have in-laws cancelling their Hallmark subscriptions in protest because, y’know, some dudes kissed.
The blue party is a dumpster fire full of a politically diverse set of interests which has trouble governing itself, let alone a nation. They take themselves far too seriously and their responsibilities not nearly seriously enough. The red party has largely turned into a bunch of proto-fascist no-nothings; most of the decent people gave up by 2016, and if you’re still there at the end of 2021, I’m not sure what to tell you. Lots of people have shown us who they are in the last five years; we should believe them.
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We’re just a few days away from the anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Let’s catch up on what’s been happening over the past few months.
In September, Mike Lindell sent a document titled “The Big Lie” to the State of Idaho, alleging widespread voter fraud there and votes were electronically switched from Trump to Biden, even though Trump won the state. There’s just a teeny tiny problem. Seven of the 44 counties do not use any electronic steps in vote counting. It’s all on paper because they’re small enough that they don’t need anything more than that. The chief deputy secretary of state is sending Lindell a bill for the audit.
Next, Lindell has officially said he will spend “whatever it takes” on fighting election fraud. His actions before indicated he would but now he’s said it. We can mark December 2021 as the point where the course of the My Pillow company changed from likely headed for bankruptcy to he’s locked the steering wheel in that direction.
Lindell also now says his Supreme Court complaint won’t “pull down” or undo the 2020 election, but it’s going to be pushed out to the states where it will do… something. Exactly what, I don’t know. He doesn’t, either, but that doesn’t matter because he’s saving the U.S. and its voting system, and when he does, people will come up to him and thank him for showing them they were wrong. That sounds like a messiah complex.
During 2021, there were about four times when security for a government meeting was increased because of the possibility of violence by QAnon or other groups. Three were for national government and one was for a state government. Even though about 400 of the people who were at the U.S. Capitol were arrested during the year and it’s weakened groups like the Proud Boys, there is still concern about what will happen this January 6th and in the future elections.
A few retired generals and other news articles have said that there’s a strong possibility that soldiers in the military could be faced with a choice of disobeying order for two different reasons. One is that there could be enough confusion surrounding the 2024 election that they wouldn’t know which president to follow: Biden or Trump. The second reason is that they may feel so strongly about supporting Trump that they make a decision to disobey orders based on those feelings and beliefs. Whether one or both leads to a military coup or a civil war is a possibility and steps are being recommended to identify which soldiers might disobey orders for those reasons.
Between the meetings with increased security and the fact that the idea of a coup or a civil war is even being talked about means for law enforcement and the military, the default has become to expect that Donald Trump’s followers will be violent.
Also earlier this year, a few Republican Senators or Congressmen were asked if they thought Donald Trump might interfere with the 2024 election. They hemmed and hawed, saying it was too early to even be thinking about that, he hasn’t announced he’ll run again, and he wouldn’t have the weight of the government behind him anyway.
The above possibilities with a coup or civil war show that, no, it isn’t too early to be looking at interference from him and yes, he might have the weight of the military portion of the government behind him. But besides that, those were answers to the wrong question. The question isn’t will Trump interfere with a future election. The real question is what incentive does Trump have to stop interfering with elections right now?
He began interfering with elections in 2015 when he claimed there would be voter fraud if he didn’t win the Republican primary. It continued with the same claim for the 2016 presidential election and again in 2020. The difference is that starting in 2020, he became more vocal, aggressive and frequent in that kind of interference. Most importantly, he is being rewarded for it on a larger scale by everyone who donates to him under the guise of finding fraud or “ensuring election integrity”. As of the last time it was reported a few months ago, he still had spent almost nothing of what he’s collected towards those efforts. Everyone else has been paying instead, which also includes the Republican National Committee paying for some of his legal bills.
Even right now he’s interfering in future elections. There’s Republicans that don’t want Trump to get involved in individual races, but he does anyway. He’s told Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy he’ll withdraw his endorsement of Dunleavy unless Dunleavy doesn’t endorse Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, also of Alaska. Dunleavy said okie-dokie. Trump’s endorsing Republican Mary Miller of Illinois so she can go against Republican Rodney Davis in his reelection bid.
Many Republicans are holding off their own announcements about whether they will run for president until Trump makes his decision, which he already did a few months ago but won’t say what it is. All he has to do is drop another hint or imply he will and that’s enough to make them back off.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan says, “We just have to limit the damage that he’s causing.” That sounds like Republicans might try appeasing him, which worked so well for Neville Chamberlain and has worked equally well these past six years in Trump becoming “so presidential you will be so bored”.
It won’t. No one dares risk angering him and they have four recent examples of why not. Murkowski and Davis are two of them. When one of the ten Republicans that voted to impeach Trump the second time announced they would be retiring at the end of their term, his response was, “One down, nine to go.” When a second one also announced they would be retiring, Trump’s response was “Two down, eight to go.” He does not forgive betrayal, and for him, betrayal is even the slightest wavering of loyalty.
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