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Comments
What's It Say?
I can guess.
She's got my vote!
...but then considering who the alternative is an inanimate carbon rod would have it too.
And this IS an issue that directly impacts my life as a transgender American.
I don't like bringing politics to BCTS, but these are complex times, in which we
avoid getting political at our own risk. It wasn't ME who made the political
discourse so personal to me, but I refuse to just lay down + take what
those who seek power thru villainizing us seem determined to do.
And yes, I'm talking PROJECT 2025...
~hugs, Veronica
We now return to our regular programming:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTl00248Z48
.
A Chicken in Every Pot
It's not politics when it's existential!
It would be hard to listen to Trump's inane screeds on trans and conclude that the gun pointed at BC by Project 2025 isn't held by him.
The primary goal of BC is to be a friendly place to read, write, and discuss TG fiction. To accomplish that goal BC must first continue to exist.
Financial failure has been a peril since day one. Erin has been pulling rabbits out of hats for decades. That's the nature of this beast. I sank a million dollars into a website before I finally realized that fighting Google was insanity. Website management is not cheap.
But as formidable a problem as finding fiscal remedies can be, the current political environment exceeds that risk.
BC is not, and never has been, pornography. The Republican answer is to change the definition of pornography to fit their needs. Just look at the proposed legislation in Oklahoma.
Further, the Republicans want to change the registration to gain access to sites like BC, so that your privacy will be taken away. That would probably be the doom of BC.
Like every other site, BC depends heavily on clicks to attract advertising dollars. If the number of eyeballs decreases so will the ad revenue.
I'm under no false impressions that the Dems are entirely pro trans. It is the party of Barney Frank who tossed us under the bus and then drove that bus over us.
Harris has a checkered past in regards to our issues. The Democrats have done little to condemn the anti trans bills the Republicans had sponsored.
The failure of the Democrats to unite against anti trans bills shouldn't be a surprise given that the BC community can't even agree that athletic apartheid is morally wrong.
Not talking about politics on this site is like failing to use a two-by-four to protect yourself from a man with a gun because you don't approve of violence.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Personal
"Do you expect me to talk, Mr.....?"
"No, Ms. DiMaggio. I expect you to die!"
Love, Andrea Lena
I Would Too
But it wouldn't be much use in Brisbane, Queensland!
articles 16 and 17 of the republican platform
"CUT FEDERAL FUNDING FOR ANY SCHOOL PUSHING CRITICAL RACE
THEORY, RADICAL GENDER IDEOLOGY, AND OTHER INAPPROPRIATE
RACIAL, SEXUAL, OR POLITICAL CONTENT ON OUR CHILDREN"
"KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORT" (underline added)
We don't have the democratic platform to compare yet but I expect this to be addressed primarily in terms of race. LGBTQ issues will be secondary. I do hope that she will talk more about what she will do and less about being a prosecutor which I don't see as a qualification for a president.
Caution
I hope that the admins will allow this discussion.
Prosecutor
I cringe at putting a lawyer in office, but at least Kamala has held a real job for 20 years, and has not been a career politician. Thank goodness the democratic party got rid of Biden, and finally putting a woman in office can only be a good thing. I was dreading having to choose between Trump and Biden, choosing the lesser of two evils. I believe the Democrats got it right, albeit by default. However, we will probably not know anything about Harris' foreign policy strategy or acumen until after the election, and that is an area where Biden was a dismal failure.
But this bait and switch brings up real issues for the future of primaries. Was this the Democratic strategy all along? Would Kamala have been the nominee if she actually had to go through the primaries? She certainly wouldn't have been able to snap her fingers and bring in $200 million overnight. Is there any reason to go through a primary season? It certainly was meaningless this time around. I don't think she'll choose Whitmer for VP, which is good for us in Michigan. I don't think Gretchen would add anything to the ticket, selecting someone like Mark Kelly would make a lot of sense. :DD
DeeDee
Short Leash
I'm guessing that your dismay over Biden's foreign policy has to do with Israel. I would have liked Biden to have given Netanyahu a present. . . a brand new choke collar on a very short leash. I think Biden deserves a lot of credit for his work with NATO/Ukraine. Putin seems eager to start WWIII. Anyone who has read a history book can explain what happens when you allow a tyrant to "just return to the Motherland (Fatherland) what should be part of Russia (Germany.)
I totally agree with your questioning of our primary process. Maybe not for the same reasons. I believe that people who attend primary caucuses are far from a cross-section of public opinion. I believe they tend to be far-right and far-left, which adds to the inability to elect moderate politicians.
I think you're giving the Dems way too much credit for long-range planning if you think they conspired to have Harris as their candidate. The ones who would have conspired would have selected someone like Jeffries, who has a penis.
These Dems were around when McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat from them. That took massive ineptitude.
Did you notice Netanyahu give Mitch the cold shoulder? Ah. . .Mitch . . . and there are Repubicans clutching their pearls over Biden's ability to finish his term. I wonder who walks Mitch to his office every day? I had a good friend who ran a senator's office, who was deep into dementia. No state wants to give up the seniority of a long-serving Senator. You just need someone to help him pull the right levers to vote.
Does anyone remember President Nancy? Not being able to think clearly has never been a criterion for holding high office.
More than half of our presidents have been attorneys. Obama, John Adams, Jefferson, and Lincoln are notables. About a fourth were generals. About a third were senators first.
All that being said. . .Harris has made her point about being a prosecutor and should dial back her strident talk about knowing Trump's type. Tell us what you'll do for us!
How about a plan to increase the housing inventory, thereby making housing more affordable? What do you think decreased lodging expenses would do to inflation?
Everyone has an opinion about the Orange Dictator. All Harris can do when she talks about him is make herself look bad.
He wants to erase us. What else does a trans person need to know?
He wants to give wealthy people huge tax breaks. What else does Joe Six-pack need to know? A gigantic 79% want to increase taxes for the wealthy.
He's too old. A poll this week showed 53% agree that Trump is too old for government work. I'm two years younger than Trump, and I forget where I'm going on the way to get the morning newspaper off the front step.
He's already screwed up the Supreme Court; why would you ever give him two more picks? Only 36% approve of how the SCOTUS is doing its job.
He wants to pull out of NATO, which stands between us and WWIII. Only 12% of US citizens want to pull out of NATO.
He wants a national abortion ban. Two-thirds of our citizens think abortion should be legal.
Lincoln warned us that a government based on minority rule cannot endure. I agree with Lincoln.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Actually...
My dismay over Biden's foreign policy starts with the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan. Did he learn nothing from Vietnam?? I think Biden is beholden to Ukraine for all the tens of millions $$ they funneled to him through his son. I seriously think we are on the brink of a limited nuclear war with Russia by shipping Ukraine such advanced weapon systems. And you can bet that China will use the chaos to move on Taiwan and N Korea on S Korea. And now that Biden is a lame duck, it puts us in an even weaker position.
I don't have an answer for Israel, Hamas, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, etc., etc., etc. but this is not it. Why in the world can we not negotiate a release of the hostages and a cease-fire? I can't think of any foreign policy wins for Biden.
I 100% agree with you on the primaries. Both parties march as far left and right as they can go to appeal to the extremists in the parties and then try to inch back toward the middle for the election. I don't think there is any scenario where Kamala would have tossed her hat in the ring and won. But I think she is clearly the best Democratic candidate, and it was obvious to everyone, even Biden, that he was not going to beat Trump in November. That was a tongue in cheek remark about the Dems secret strategy of their bait and switch. But was it legal? What about the millions spent by the states to hold their primaries? Can the Republicans switch out Trump when they realize he is going to get thumped in November (with someone with a brain?)
My jewish friends are embarrassed about Netanyahu. Like Putin in Ukraine, his rule will be over and done when this war is over, so they make excuses to keep the wars going.
I shudder at how many attorneys we have in office. They all turn into career politicians, whose only goal is to raise money and win the next election, becoming millionaires in the process with the best health care and retirement plans in our country. And I've never met an attorney who doesn't think he, or she, is smarter than everyone else. (My apologies to Emma and to the one or two others that don't fit my generalization.)
We agree on several things Jill, but Abortion doesn't seem to be one of them. The Supreme Court made an enormous mistake in Roe v Wade by making law (not their job) and simultaneously bypassing the national debate that we should have had before this law was established. Abortion is a terrible thing for all parties involved. Its casual use as a birth control method is an abomination and a total disregard for humanity. Fathers have no rights at all but are on the hook for 18 years of child support if the mother decides to not abort the baby. Medicaid pays for over 40% of abortions. That fact, to me, is staggering. Why shouldn't fathers get custody and mothers have to pay child support?
Lincoln also wrote that the solution to slavery was to repatriate the slaves to Liberia.
I do hope that Kamala wins, we simply cannot have another 4 years of Trump. :DD
DeeDee
Being Anti-Netanyahu
Is not the same as being anti-Semitic. He is his nation's equivalent of your orange-haired piece of shit, using a situation to keep himself in power when he is accused of corruption. His supposed justification of wiping out Hamas is never going to work. You cannot wipe out a movement that you reinforce by killing tens of thousands of the people inhabiting the same piece of land.
Surely nobody with any sense of moral responsibility can condone the murder of thirty thousand-odd people and the destruction of their homes and livelihoods in pursuit of that impossible goal. The small children who survive will carry hatred in their hearts for the Israelis and another generation of atrocities will occur. Don't get me wrong. I don't like Hamas either. They initiated this round of hostilities but the reaction has been unparalleled. This is a conflict that started as far back as 1917 and intensified in 1947. Reprisals from both sides have continued since then.
I don't have a solution other than to have two people from either side with goodwill in their hearts sit down and negotiate fair settlements. Not easy.
However, it's not fair to say that Biden's foreign policy failed because of this intractable problem. He has done a good job in supporting Ukraine and I'm sure behind-the-scenes actions have significantly deterred Putin from bringing on WW3. Support for Taiwan is crucial in preventing the invasion of the island. NATO is pretty much united, much more so than before he came to power.
Some achievements are quiet and don't attract headlines. You should be ashamed of some of your policies. Isn't there a statue that proclaims "Send me your poor..." ?
In case you accuse me of being a hypocrite, my country is no better. We send refugees to remote islands rather than having them loose in our very slightly populated country.
I don't condone that either. I can only hope that you, as a people, do the right thing in November and elect a sane administration and not one headed by a megalomaniac lunatic.