why come they called him “beast” in the castle when everyone knew his name cuz they’d been working for him forever anyway? like …. i would just be like “hey chewbacca-Adam” or some shit, there’s no reason to call him beast … id hide in my room all day too if my employees started making fun of me..
If my manager decided to pull some rude ass shit with a witch and got me living the next ten years of my life as an immortal singing toaster oven you can bet your ass I’d wake him up every goddamn morning with a flaming panini directly to the face. rise and shine, you ugly fuck, time hear a song
The Republican-led Congress is wasting no time forcing through the most horrendous bills seen in decades while America’s eyes are on Russia. With both houses...
1. H.R. 861: To terminate the Environmental Protection Agency
This bill — cosponsored by Republican members of Congress from fossil fuel-producing states — is just one sentence long, and says nothing about what would happen to the multiple environmental regulations the EPA has instituted since 1970, or its multibillion-dollar budget, or its thousands of staffers. H.R. 861 is currently awaiting action in the subcommittee on environment.
2. H.R. 610: Tax dollars for private schools
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) introduced this bill in January, which would redistribute funding earmarked for public schools in the form of vouchers for parents to send children to private schools. Over the long term, this would eventually bankrupt public schools, and create a stratified education system in which cash-strapped public schools would be unable to meet the educational needs of low-income students. The bill is awaiting action in the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
3. H.R. 899: To terminate the Department of Education
If this bill, introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), becomes law, the U.S. Department of Education would terminate by the end of 2018. The bill’s brevity leaves many questions unanswered, like what would happen with Department of Education grants for public schools and universities, its budget, or its staff. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has said she would personally be “fine” if the agency she heads were to be abolished.
4. H.J.R. 69: To repeal a rule protecting wildlife
Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), whose constituents likely include hunters who kill wildlife for sport rather than for food, introduced this joint resolution voicing displeasure with a Department of Interior rule that prohibits “non-subsistence” hunting in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. The resolution passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate.
5. H.R. 370: To repeal the Affordable Care Act
While President Obama was in office, House Republicans voted at least 60 times to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — despite its futility. However, the Trump administration has made the repeal of Obamacare a top priority, meaning the repeal bill from Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas) is likely to pass.
6. H.R. 354: To defund Planned Parenthood
Despite the widely publicized debunking of the video alleging the women’s health nonprofit was selling human organs, Republicans are still refusing to stop destroying Planned Parenthood. Rep. Diane Black (R-Tennessee) introduced a bill that would prevent any federal grants from going to Planned Parenthood for a full year unless they swore to not perform abortions. As the chart below from Planned Parenthood shows, only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood resources go toward abortions, while the vast majority of funding is used to help low-income women get STD tests, contraceptive care, and breast cancer screenings:
7. H.R. 785: National Right-to-Work legislation
Conservative ideologue Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is aiming to cripple unions at the nationwide level with a bill that would systematically deprive labor unions of the funding they need to operate. Unions often provide one of the crucial pillars of support for Democratic candidates and causes, and conservatives aim to destroy them once and for all by going after their funding. It’s important to note that right-to-work is bad for all workers, not just union members — in 2015, the Economic Policy Institute learned that wages in right-to-work states are roughly 3.2 percent lower than in non-right-to-work states.
8. H.R. 83: Mobilizing Against Sanctuary Cities Act
Multiple cities and states around the country have openly stated that they won’t abide by President Trump’s plan to aggressively round up and deport undocumented immigrants. A bill by Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pennsylvania) would strip all federal funding of any city that doesn’t obey Trump’s immigration policies for up to a year.
9. H.R. 147: To criminalize abortion
Rep. Trent Franks (R-Arizona) wants to aggressively prosecute pregnant women seeking abortions, along with abortion providers, by making abortion a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. The bill is currently awaiting action in the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice.
To fight back against these bills, call 202-224-3121, ask for your member of Congress, and tell them to vote no.
The adults are the problem — they inject their politics and ignorance into the lives of young people.
When I was a high school freshman in Honolulu, I would sit with my girlfriends on the bleachers of the school amphitheater every morning. We’d meet in the same spot and chat for an hour, before homeroom began. We’d gossip and giggle, swoon over Justin Timberlake and sip from our coffee cups, which made us feel so adult. It was our version of Central Perk on “Friends.”
I felt like any other student, just one of the girls, until one morning when a vice principal, who had always looked at me curiously, blocked me as I was following my friends into the girls’ restroom. The administrator told me to come with her. We walked to the nurse’s office, a five-minute trip from my homeroom, where she pointed to a single-stall restroom.
“This is where you go,” she told me.
I walked into the restroom in silence as the vice principal and the nurse looked on.
I was only 15, and I obediently used that restroom for the rest of the year. I didn’t know then that I had agency and could defend myself against authority figures. I was also used to making compromises so that the adults around me felt comfortable. That was 1998.
Nearly two decades later, President Trump’s administration has rescinded guidelines put in place by the Obama administration that directed schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms that correspond to their gender identity.
But not without a fight. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was resistant to the retreat on the restroom policy at first. The classical singer Jackie Evancho, who sang the national anthem at Mr. Trump’s inauguration, requested a meeting with the president to discuss transgender rights with her sister Juliet, a trans teenager. Activists protested Wednesday night in front of the White House alongside Gavin Grimm, a transgender 17-year-old student from Gloucester, Va., whose case for using the boys’ restroom at his high school will be argued by the American Civil Liberties Union before the Supreme Court in March.
By overturning this nondiscrimination protection, the Trump administration claims it’s protecting children — not from bullies or menacing adults, but from their own peers. This infuriates me. I know how messy things can get when adults overstep their boundaries and insert themselves — their politics, their fears, their prejudices, their ignorance — into the lives of young people.
Behind the closed door of the nurse’s office restroom, I cried at the rejection and the embarrassment of being separated from my friends and told I did not belong with them. I arrived at homeroom that morning 15 minutes late with puffy eyes. I met the curious, sympathetic stares of my friends who wanted to know what was up. I didn’t have an answer for them.
I was in the seventh grade when I first began to identify as trans and express my gender identity as a girl. My social transition began with growing my hair, and wearing clothes and makeup that made me feel like Destiny’s Fourth Child. This shift in my personal aesthetic made me feel good about my body, confident in my appearance and at ease in social settings where my peers and classmates were also exploring, changing and growing.
We were all in process — a generation that came of age watching gay people on television, like Wilson Cruz on “My So-Called Life” and Ellen DeGeneres on the sitcom “Ellen.” We were raised with the knowledge that we were not all the same, and that was O.K.
Toward the end of my freshman year, I began my medical transition. Soon after that, I reintroduced myself as Janet to my classmates at a back-to-school assembly. My peers, who voted me into student government the previous semester, applauded.
To say that I loved school would be an understatement. It was my oasis, my sanctuary.
I was our class treasurer, a peer mediator, the captain of the volleyball team and a tuba player in the marching band. I was that eager student who could often be seen running through the halls — from a student council meeting to a newspaper brainstorming session and to the gym for practice.
But things began to shift after that administrator blocked me from going into the restroom with my girlfriends. I was pulled out of class my sophomore year whenever I wore a skirt, a blouse or a dress — anything that didn’t fit the school’s binary constrictions. I was sent home to change a dozen times that year. I was repeatedly called out of my name and by the wrong gender pronoun by school bullies — but most often by the adults charged with creating a safe, welcoming and affirming space for students.
I was a black and Native Hawaiian trans girl from a single-parent home. I was not naïve. I knew that struggle was part of my coming of age, so I wore a smile every day as part of my armor. I didn’t want anyone to see that I was in pain, that I felt like I did not belong and that my body, my clothing, my being was wrong.
Despite my resilience, I nearly did not make it past my sophomore year. I would go home at night and contemplate never coming back. The struggle of waking, getting dressed, walking to school each day and being met with hostility took a toll on me.
Thirty percent of transgender youth report a history of at least one suicide attempt, according to a study published last year, and nearly 42 percent have injured themselves. I know firsthand how vital it is for young people — for all of us, actually — to be met with nods, applause and open doors. It’s even more urgent for marginalized students, regardless of their ability, race, class, immigration status, religion, sexual orientation, and gender expression and identities.
Eventually, with the help of my mother, I transferred to a school in my junior year that offered me the support I needed, where the adults actually were advocates for me. I was growing comfortable in my own skin while discovering what I loved, what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be and what I felt I could do. I was given equal access to facilities and called by my name, and graduated with an academic scholarship to college.
My teachers invested their time in me, and their belief in me enabled me to become the first in my family to go to college. I went on to attend graduate school at New York University, work for People magazine, produce and host path-clearing television projects, high-five Oprah Winfrey on national television, take the stage at the Women’s March on Washington and write two books about my experience.
Young people overwhelmingly get it. It’s adults like those in the Trump administration who don’t realize the consequences of pitting young people against one another, which encourages some to be bullies and turns others into sinister objects.
These ridiculous wedge topics are a waste of our time and our resources. We’re talking about restrooms here — people should be able to do their business in peace.
When trans students are told that they cannot use public facilities, it doesn’t only block them from the toilet — it also blocks them from public life. It tells them with every sneer, every blocked door, that we do not want to see them, that they should go hide and that ultimately they do not belong. When schools become hostile environments, students cannot turn to them. Instead they are pushed out. And without an education, it makes it that much more difficult to find a job, and support themselves and survive.
That is the situation the Trump administration is creating. Despite the culture of fear, ignorance and intolerance that permeates our country right now, I am here to tell each and every student that you belong, and that nothing — absolutely nothing — is wrong with you.
Janet Mock (@janetmock) is the author of “Redefining Realness” and the forthcoming book “Surpassing Certainty: What My 20s Taught Me.”
A must-read: In 2004, the Bush administration granted press briefing access to a right-wing shill with a fake name who they could call on to bail Bush out when he got asked a tough question. But Trump doesn’t want just one shill—he wants a room full.
The president-elect announced his pick Sunday. Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, brings establishment credentials, while Bannon has long been a firebrand of the far right.
Steve Bannon, whom trump has officially chosen as his Chief Strategist, is an anti-semitic white supremacist, who formerly ran the ultra conservative website Breitbart News.
Putting a man of his ideology in a position to shape a president’s policy objectives is incredibly dangerous, and must be met with strong resistance.
It is important that we educate ourselves and each other about Bannon and the other members of trump’s cabinet so that we can focus our protest against them and their policies in informed ways.
Bannon, the former chairman of the conservative Breitbart News, was named Drumpf’s chief strategist and senior counselor on Sunday. He was notably listed higher in the press release announcing the two appointments, suggesting that he will play a major role in the Drumpf administration.
Breitbart promulgated much of the white nationalist and racist rhetoric that served as a foundation of Drumpf’s presidential campaign. Bannon has also espoused white nationalist ― and reportedly anti-Semitic ― views of his own.
“Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory,” Drumpf said in the press release announcing the appointments. “Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again.”
In his role at Breitbart, he promoted and legitimized the modern white supremacist movement, sometimes euphemistically referred to as the “alt-right.”
Ben Shapiro, who worked alongside Bannon for four years as Breitbart’s Editor-at-Large, wrote that Bannon “openly embraced the white supremacist alt-right.” According to Shapiro, “Breitbart has become the alt-right go-to website… pushing white ethno-nationalism as a legitimate response to political correctness, and the comment section turning into a cesspool for white supremacist mememakers.”
Shapiro describes Bannon as “a vindictive, nasty figure, infamous for verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies.”
okay but watching the latest Trump meltdown is amazing since one of the primary defenses I’ve heard of his behavior is “all guys have said stuff like that”. after several years of “not all men” every time we try to talk about sexual harassment. suddenly it is, in fact, all men. that is some kermit-drinking-tea level cognitive dissonance. thank you and good night.
