The Fall of Roe v Wade: US Politics, June 2022

I'm definitely seeing a lot more gray in my beard lately, and some at the temple/sideburns area, but not enough that it's super noticeable, especially since now that my hair is long it seems blonder than when I kept it short, too.

I get that there's a lot to despair about but I have noticed that the teenagers of today are way more educated & savvy when it comes to political issues than my generation was

xpost - my salon still just flat out won't do beard trims at all, breath holding or no. They wouldn't even trim under the beard if I left the mask on, lol. I've gone twice to the other place in town that I like a lot less to get it trimmed, lest I start to look too unkempt.

Thankfully, so far, all of my gray is in the beard and not on the top of the head. I don't mind that at all.

I think what we all need is for reporters to start asking Ted Cruz about his beard regimen.

“Any grooming tips for your fans, Rollie?”

Pretty sure I'm good without ever knowing more about any of the Zodiac's regimens.

I've seen people suggest that Biden should grow a beard. He'd be the first since Benjamin Harrison, and the first with any facial hair since Taft.

Biden should grow a beard. It's been a century since a president sported any facial hair. The time is now. pic.twitter.com/rM6VSjUMn1

— Mitchell Nagy (@mryannagy) November 12, 2020

lol just imagining all the Duck Dynasty people immediately shaving

Nah, all those assholes are rocking the Stonewall Jackson. Biden would have a tidy U.S. Grant beard.

https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/streams/2013/October/131017/8C9410060-131017-ent-duckdynasty-hmed.jpg

"You can bang the gavel all you want but I don't really care" -- Republicans are turning the Washington Commanders hearing into a circus. I guess we shouldn't be surprised they're doing the bidding of toxic men. pic.twitter.com/JSsfrZpOs0

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 22, 2022

"You can bang the gavel all you want but I don't really care"* for July thread title.

*or maybe "A TAMPON CRISIS!"

I think the first option is a really good one!

How about we end all this cutsie bs and just say, "I knew it was going to be bad, but it was worse than even that." Then we don't need a new fucking title every month is where my heads at right about now.

Sorry, that video just triggered me or something. Carry on.

Biden's approval among the youngest voters is 25% in the latest Quinnipiac poll, the lowest of any group but Republicans, and 30 points underwater. Somehow his obliteration among this huge, progressive group has merited scarcely a word of press coverage. https://t.co/SXvgziHL15 pic.twitter.com/0h6NI70Mqi

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) June 22, 2022

i wonder why, what an absolute mystery

They should hang out in diners more often.

This is going to be great. We're going to get an uncontrolled experiment in how well "who else are you going to vote for" actually works.

Not fucking Biden

Well, this is the segment I gotta canvass in November and in 2024. Wish me luck. Rattle the ice in your Negronis!

Imagine being 24 years old right now, being told that you need to vote for a racist fossil human stand-in for a corporation in order to “save democracy.”

racist fossil human stand-in for a corporation vs.
racist fossil human stand-in that is a corporation

What A World

World, hell, ymmv

"Vote for us or else gas is going to be $5 a gallon and rent will increase 25% year over year."

(yes, gas prices are not Biden or Democrats' fault - but we all know that doesn't actually matter)

A great point that got lost in yesterday's hearing was that a big part of why there appeared to be discrepancy in the Georgia ballots was that many voters voted for every office and measure EXCEPT for President. And people's takeaway was fraud instead of both candidates sucking.

we all know that doesn't actually matter

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81NZ+SaFGTL.jpg

Breaking news: The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that boycotts are not protected by the First Amendment. @ACLU has confirmed it'll take the case to the Supreme Court, with huge implications for free speech in America.🧵

— Julia Bacha (@juliabacha) June 22, 2022

heeeeey I wonder how this Supreme Court will rule

Thanks for the confidence, all!

If I was a Floridian I'd start working on personhood and citizenship for aquatic life and hope that can swing the state back to purple by 2050.

Manatees are definitely libs.

Quite helpful.

heeeeey I wonder how this Supreme Court will rule

But but but Conservatives LOVE Boycotts!

too little, too late for the Botha government

Sorry, Alfred— the power of local elections is really important, much respect for your canvassing.

But let’s be real: there’s no way to deny that the lack of enthusiasm for the guy in charge trickles down to local elections, too, and while that’s unfortunate, I also don’t blame the youth for feeling as they do.

I don't either, and I had drinks last night with a 25-year-old who repeated some of these points; but to realize my age motivates me to say, "Biden's a doddering old man, but I've lived with GOP majorities in Congress, and shit's gonna get bad without the doddering old man and his Congress" is shattering, and to be paralyzed thinking this is my own old man shit is sobering.

To my mind Biden's done good, he would've done better with a Senate majority he didn't expect but nevertheless dominated by two jackanapes and their cowardly silent colleagues, but I think y'all forget how flash is the 21st century presidential mode. Obama was always glamorous, whatever his flaws, and my boy voted for him; Trump was loud, all the time, on Twitter or whatever. Biden owns being an fossil. That doesn't matter to me, not when the alternative was worse. My job is to persuade.

On that 8th Circuit ruling: I'm not a lawyer, just a guy reading Twitter, but this seems like it's kind of at odds with the whole idea that "money is speech" undergirding Citizens United etc. Not that a wily strict constructionist can't find a way around it, of course.

The ruling, by Judge Kobes (a Trump appointee who received a “not qualified” ABA rating) claims that a boycott is simply economic activity, without expressive qualities. Kobes used to be the General Counsel for Senator Mike Rounds (SD), a co-sponsor of the federal anti-BDS law.

— Julia Bacha (@juliabacha) June 22, 2022

xpost My job Yes indeed. Also, I've heard several interviews with this author, speaking of local initiative:

Waste
One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret
Catherine Coleman Flowers
With a foreword by Bryan Stevenson

The MacArthur grant–winning environmental justice activist’s riveting memoir of a life fighting for a cleaner future for America’s most vulnerable

“To Flowers, the neglect of the sanitation problem in Lowndes County is as obvious an environmental injustice as the contamination of drinking water in Flint, Michigan.” —The New Yorker

One of Smithsonian magazine's Ten Best Science Books of 2020

Catherine Coleman Flowers, a 2020 MacArthur “genius,” grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that’s been called “Bloody Lowndes” because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it’s Ground Zero for a new movement that is also Flowers’s life’s work—a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many people, especially the rural poor, lack an affordable means of disposing cleanly of the waste from their toilets and, as a consequence, live amid filth. Flowers calls this America’s dirty secret. In this “powerful and moving book” (Booklist), she tells the story of systemic class, racial, and geographic prejudice that foster Third World conditions not just in Alabama, but across America, in Appalachia, Central California, coastal Florida, Alaska, the urban Midwest, and on Native American reservations in the West.

In this inspiring story of the evolution of an activist, from country girl to student civil rights organizer to environmental justice champion at Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative, Flowers shows how sanitation is becoming too big a problem to ignore as climate change brings sewage to more backyards—not only those of poor minorities.

So, not hopeful, but some shit did just happen. FBI search warranted and seized the cell phone of Nevada's top GOP asshole (which implies evidence of criminality), DOJ subpoenaed the top GOP asshole in Georgia (same), Mo Brooks (having lost his Alabama race and supposedly retired from politics) reportedly *now* is open to cooperating with the J6 committee ...

Still, all these assholes, so close to jail, yet so far. Like, the Texas AG, hasn't he been under indictment for years? Literally seven years ago?

Good news on a dark day:

On the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the Biden administration proposed sweeping changes to the landmark law that would bar schools, colleges and universities from discriminating against transgender students, a move that comes as the battle over transgender rights moves to the front lines of the culture war.

The proposal would extend the protections of Title IX, which prohibits schools that get federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex, to transgender students, compelling schools to accommodate and protect them. This includes permitting them to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity, using their correct pronouns and addressing bullying based on their gender identity.

It would also amend the rules that govern how schools, colleges and universities investigate and resolve claims of sexual assault and sexual harassment. Over concerns that people were being wrongfully punished, President Donald Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, revised the rules to make them more accommodating to the accused. Critics assailed the changes, saying they would discourage sexual assault survivors from coming forward to report assaults or harassment.

Where is my tiny violin?

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/23/trump-aides-book-00041620

Those Title IX rules are good, but how easily can they be thrown out by the next administration? (The whole administrative rule-making process baffles me.)

The memoir of Deborah Birx, the Covid response coordinator under Trump, has sold fewer than 6,000 copies;

i have made a pledge to stop typing or thinking "FUCK YOU!" in situations like this. yes, i have made that pledge and i am just noting that right now.

Ffffffffffriggin

Publishing companies will soon require a billionaire bulk-buyer to be on-board before publishing a political memoir

Lol

A lot of this is down to timing, I think. Many of these books, if published while Trump was still president, would’ve done better.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/22/gop-senator-considering-blocking-school-meal-funding-deal-over-transgender-policy-fight-00041366

There's a veiled implication that most of these anti-trans laws are there to 'protect the children' or 'stop grooming' or whatever, but this guy is ready to have all children go without free or reduced-price lunch to uphold his values... at least he's consistently anti-child

The fact that there are maybe 1000 real people who genuinely wanted to read Birx’s memoir is incomprehensible.