More Wednesday Male Beauty - Pt 2

 

Virginia Approved A Constitutional Amendments to Protect Same Sex Marriage

My husband and I got married in 2014 in the District of Columbia before same sex marriage became legal in Virginia.   Since the reversal of Roe by the extremist majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, many gay Virginians have feared that the Obergefell ruling striking down bans on same sex marriage could suffer a similar fate, throwing thousands of marriages in limbo at best.  To address this concern and also to protect abortion rights and restore voting rights, three constitutional amendments were on the ballot. Amendment 2 which repealed the 2006 ban on same sex marriages and added guaranties to protect same sex marriages passed with over 57% of the votes cast.   A piece in the Virginia Mercury looks at these constitutional amendments.  Here are excerpts:

On Election Day, Virginians approved three amendments to enshrine reproductive, marriage and voting rights for former felons into the state’s constitution, the culmination of a multi-year journey through the state legislature galvanized by lawmakers, advocates and major federal shifts. 

Over 61% of voters answered yes to Ballot Question 1 as of 10 p.m. Tuesday, according to unofficial results from the Virginia Department of Elections. It asked if access to contraception, fertility treatment and abortions should be protected. 

On Ballot Question 2, which asked if a defunct ban on same-sex marriage should be removed from the constitution, 56% of voters replied affirmatively.

The third ballot question asked whether the voting rights restoration process for formerly incarcerated people should become automatic or remain petition-based. 55% of voters said yes. 

The second amendment voters approved will lift a technical ban on gay marriage and affirm “that two adults may marry regardless of sex, gender, or race.” These unions must receive equal protection under the law. 

Since 2006, Virginia has technically banned gay marriage. 

The prohibition has been rendered moot since the Supreme Court ruled on Obergefell v. Hodges, which has upheld such unions nationally since 2015. 

But after federal abortion protections were removed by the Supreme Court, Virginia lawmakers set to work enshrining state-level protections moving forward. 

“Tonight’s victory belongs to generations of Virginians who organized, advocated and fought for equality, often without knowing whether they would live to see this day,” said Narissa Rahaman, Executive Director at Equality Virginia. 

More Wednesday Male Beauty

 

Voters Repudiate Trump as Democrats Rout Republicans

While some races remain too close to call, the take away from yesterday's elections is that the Felon and Republicans were dealt a massive defeat, with Democrats retaking control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate with comfortable margins.  Texas and Georgia both elected Democrat U.S. senators and governors and Kansas elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate for the first time in nearly 100 years. In state after state the GOP nightmare scenario unfolded  and locally in the 1st and 2nd congressional districts both incumbent Republicans went down to defeat. The Felon had demanded that voters act as if he were on the ballot and voters took that to heart and handed the Felon a huge repudiation and rejected numerous congressional Republicans who had repeatedly rubber stamped the Felon's horrible policies.  In most races, the Felon's hand picked candidates lost and the redistricting the Felon demanded in states like Florida and Texas failed to help elect more Republicans.  The Felon, of course, will take no responsibility for the electoral rout, but among Republicans it will be difficult to avoid the Felon for the disaster that unfolded. One question that remains is whether those Republicans who managed to cling to office will realize that the Felon has become toxic and that they are free to defy him.  One thing for certain, there must be ketchup all over the White House.  A piece at The Atlantic looks at the situation:

[The Felon] President Trump has been the dominant political figure of this century. He pulled off one of the most unlikely campaign victories in American history, and then staged the greatest political comeback. He has altered the United States’ relationship with the world, rewritten the rules and expectations of the presidency, inflamed the nation’s divisions, and changed how—and how often—Americans think about his office. He is omnipresent, and draws his power from that ubiquity.

But tonight, Trump has been forced to face his political mortality. He asked voters to make these midterm elections a referendum on him, to imagine that his name was on the ballot. They listened—and then rejected him. It is a stunning, widespread rebuke. Democrats appear poised to win the House and, if trends hold, could also capture the Senate after Americans registered their strong disapproval of the direction in which the president has taken the country over the past two years. Trump will now likely have to deal with congressional Democrats who could block his agenda and wield the power of the subpoena. He also must face the possibility that the political party he remade in his image may soon start looking beyond him. Donald J. Trump is now officially, thoroughly a lame duck.

But we haven’t heard the last of him. He remains the commander in chief, dominates global affairs, wields the expansive power of executive orders, and remains unequaled at capturing attention.

Yet for all his power, for all his volume, he cannot browbeat the unrelenting calendar: The next national election will be the one to replace him. Trump will before long begin to slip in the headlines, pushed off the front page by the presidential campaign. He’ll face the possibility of being succeeded by a Democratic president who could employ the Department of Justice to plumb the previous four years and look into Trump’s allies, friends, family, and businesses. And he’ll confront arguably his greatest fear: irrelevance. . . . . Tonight’s expected losses will not humble him. But they mark the beginning of the end.

Trump’s midterm campaign ended in the most ridiculous, yet predictable, way possible. For months, the president had been accused of being out of touch, of losing his once-unmatched feel for what animated his supporters. He has mocked affordability concerns while his own fortune has swelled, started a war that Americans did not want, remodeled the White House, and planned various monuments to himself. And then yesterday, he decided that the best way to push back against the accusation that he’d been consumed with vanity projects and corrupt bargains would be to deliver the final speech of the campaign cycle at the site of his most absurd, failed renovation project. . . . Worst of all, the detour to revisit the Reflecting Pool distracted from Trump’s true closing message: that Senator Jon Husted of Ohio has a great body.

Trump was a late entrant on the campaign trail, and had to be talked into holding rallies over the past month or so. But once he was, he insisted that the election be about himself and his successes, and make no acknowledgment of any missteps or empathy for those who are struggling. . . . But these road shows weren’t quite the same as those that became the defining political event of the past decade.

They were smaller than normal, and few were outdoors (in part because of security concerns). One rally in Ohio in the campaign’s final fortnight was held in a small gym, and others featured plenty of empty seats. More striking was where the rallies were held: nearly half in deep-red states where Trump has easily won in the past and has rarely needed to campaign. . . . But the geography also told a story: Trump had to visit Republican strongholds such as South Carolina and Montana because seats in those states were suddenly in play and his faithful had to be summoned. But once there, what did Trump really have to offer?

He forced out multiple incumbent senators for being disloyal and backed some problematic candidates, all of which put more races into play. He gave Republican candidates very little to run on, as voters furiously reacted to an economy that seemed to benefit only the rich (a category that includes the president’s family and Cabinet). Instead, Trump tried to recycle culture-war issues from campaigns past, including fears about transgender surgeries, Muslim terrorists, and even communism.

He seemed out of step not just with the public but, in many cases, with his own party. Despite warnings that AI could wipe out humanity (or at least a lot of jobs), Trump backed the nascent technology and its data centers—even as the public turned on them—because tech companies are propping up the stock market. He supported a controversial attack ad in the Ohio governor’s race that the state’s Republican governor denounced. He sided with Russia in its war with Ukraine. He threatened to once more bomb Iran. And there really was a lot of talk about butts, which will surely confuse future historians.

Trump took to social media to duck blame—and contradict the central message of his campaign, writing, “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” Trump is now in a new place, and one he won’t like.

In his first midterm election, in 2018, Democrats gained control of the House, but that victory was offset by GOP wins in the Senate.  . . . The Democratic Party’s approval ratings remain low, and although not being a Republican boosted many Democrats in this year’s campaign, that won’t be the case going forward. Jeffries has signaled that he will focus on measures to try to address affordability and health-care challenges. Democrats are going to say “no” a lot, and now that it appears that they will capture the Senate too, they will likely make it difficult for Trump to confirm any of his nominees, including possible Supreme Court justices.

But the Democratic Party’s base is hungry to hold the Trump administration accountable: for DOGE’s destruction of the government, for war, for foreign business deals masquerading as diplomacy, for profiting off the presidency. Accusations of corruption against Trump and his administration have proliferated compared with in his first term. Democrats have promised to issue subpoenas and parade administration officials through the Capitol’s hearing rooms . . .

Trump is leery about some of the possible investigations and does not want to be impeached again. (Democrats might be more inclined to try to oust a Cabinet member anyway.) The probes he likely faces next year could act as a preview of what would happen in 2029 if a Democratic president follows him. Trump enjoys a sort of immunity granted by the Supreme Court, and he has vowed to give preemptive pardons to many people in this administration. Yet advisers say he is unhappy at the prospect of his inner circle facing punishing investigations once he leaves office.

Trump also may start to see the complete fealty of the Republican Party erode. This stunning midterms wipeout suggests that Trump’s instincts and influence seem to be waning, and Republicans may be more willing to defy him. As the next round of presidential contenders begins to emerge, Republicans will begin to sort out what their post-MAGA future will look like—and what role, if any, Trump plays in it.

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

 

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Republicans Resort to Racism As Their Closing Argument

What do you do campaign on when your party has made good on none of the promises made by Republicans in 2024 and your only signature legislation is a bill that lavished tax cuts on the very wealthy and large corporations while slashing programs that benefited millions?  With election day today, Republicans have given a clear answer: resort to overt racism and transphobia and hope the fear tactics win over enough votes to stave off election disaster. We have seen this game plan for decades from the GOP, but this election cycle with no achievements to point to - other than bragging about tax cuts, but without being truthful that only the very wealthy really benefited - stoking racial and religious hatred against minority groups is all Republican candidates have left.  The actions of the Felon and Republicans who prostitute themselves to him have made costs soar for Americans and the explosion of the federal debt under the Felon makes claims of fiscal responsibility utterly ridiculous. As for Hispanics and young working class voters who - stupidly, in my opinion - shifted toward the Felon in 2024 appear to be either running for the exits to vote Democrat or will stay home wrapped in a sense of betrayal.  Race baiting and and utterly foul GOP ads about "men in women's bathrooms" hopefully fall on deaf ears.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the GOP's nasty closing argument:

Faced with flagging numbers over an unpopular and unnecessary war in Iran, inflation exacerbated by tariffs, lawless immigration enforcement, and corruption, Republicans have gone back to basics for their closing message: stoking hatred against minority groups.

The Michigan Senate campaign between the Republican Mike Rogers and the Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has been particularly ugly. Rogers has accused El-Sayed—without any evidence—of being “bought off by the Muslim Brotherhood.” At a recent rally, J. D. Vance said El-Sayed harbored “anti-white racial hate,” and President Trump called him a “jihadist” who would need to go through a “metal detector” to enter the Senate. The only time in recent memory that the Senate was subject to political violence, it is worth noting, is when Trump himself incited an attack on it.

Republican attacks elsewhere have also focused on vulnerable minorities. The Iowa Republican Ashley Hinson has accused her Democratic opponent, Josh Turek, of voting “to allow government employees to help their kids change their gender at school and keep it secret from the parents.” Anti-trans ads are a GOP staple in Texas, where Republicans backing the Senate candidate Ken Paxton have tried to turn allegations of corruption and infidelity into a positive by attacking the Democrat James Talarico’s masculinity. Also in Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who’s in a close race with the Democrat Gina Hinojosa, has accused his Catholic opponent of supporting “Sharia law.” On Halloween, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins posted a fake costume for a “SNAP fraudster,” complete with handcuffs and piles of “taxpayers cash,” that was little more than a racist stereotype about Black people.

All of this has coincided with Trump’s usual race-baiting about immigration. Pointing to unrest in France, the president posted on his social network that “the immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country.” The idea that there was no history of violent protest in France before immigrants got there is—well, let’s say you have to know very little about France to believe that one. Still, the message is pretty clear: If you let people who aren’t white into your country, you will get riots.

Overt bigotry is nothing new for Trump or the Trump-era Republican Party. One reason the GOP is betting the House and Senate on this approach working is that the electorate has not rebuked it often or forcefully enough. Republicans didn’t draw the line when Trump called Somalis “garbage” or when he slandered Haitian immigrants as pet eaters.

Put simply, bigotry remains a large part of American politics because some American voters like it, and many others do not find it disqualifying. If Republicans thought this kind of talk was politically ineffective, they would not engage in it.

MAGA has historically bet on white identity politics to mobilize white voters in large enough numbers to give Republicans an insurmountable advantage in the Senate and Electoral College. To this end, right-wing candidates have tried to make fears of minority groups as salient as possible every election cycle, even if it requires senseless conspiracy theories.

But at this point, Americans should recognize this campaign for the cynical gambit that it is. Trump’s scapegoating has not solved any problems. It has not brought down inflation or the cost of living; it has not raised wages or led to greater job growth. The only winners of the Trump administration are his family members, whose wealth has grown since he took office, and industries that have enjoyed favorable regulatory decisions or lavish tax cuts. For those at the top, bigotry provides a justification for unearned advantages—while for those at the bottom, it can serve as an explanation for life’s disappointments. One thing it can’t do, though, is provide the broad-based prosperity Trump promises.

At the turn of the 19th century, the populist Tom Watson wrote that Black and white laborers were “kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism that enslaves you both.” Tragically, Watson later abandoned this insight—he became an arch racist and anti-Semite. The bigger tragedy is that more than a century later, a major political party is still trying to make this scam work.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

 

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The MAGA Reckoning Hopefully Is About to Arrive

There is one more day until the 2026 mid-term elections and I remain cautiously optimistic that the Democrats can retake control of both houses of Congress and be in a position to rein in some of the Felon's worse abuses and also impeach and remove dangerous and unqualified cabinet members such as Pet Hegseth and RFK, Jr.   Like many, I am exhausted with the non-stop campaign ads - locally, the GOP ads are filled with outright lies - and look forward to the election being over, although I worry about illegal efforts the Felon may try to take if he drags the GOP down to a resounding defeat.  Nonetheless, one can also hope and pray that the election will prove to be a repudiation of the Felon and MAGA which can usher in the beginning of a rebuilding of the nation's morality.  MAGA has stood for renewed open racism and deliberate cruelty to American citizens and undocumented immigrants alike.  MAGA has also put on open display the moral bankruptcy of evangelicals and "conservative Christians" who remain the Felon's most steadfast base of support.  These people have demonstrated time and time again that despite their pretense at morality, they will countenance anything that the believe will give them power and allow them to mistreat others, especially blacks, Hispanics, gays and non-Christians. Their fake piety is betrayed by their embrace of cruelty and misogyny.  A piece at The Atlantic looks ate where we find ourselves:

In the first months of Donald Trump’s first term, as one moral outrage followed another, I often found myself repeating, in conversation, a seven-word phrase: Where there’s no bottom, there’s no bottom. However bad things got, they were bound to get worse. That applied above all to Trump, but also to his party, which was fusing with him.

We’ve since seen endless examples of what “no bottom” looks like. The latest is an ad from Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running for governor of Ohio. It features the estranged mother of Ramaswamy’s opponent, Amy Acton, calling her daughter a liar about her childhood and urging Ohioans not to vote for her.

Here is what we know about that childhood. In 1978, when Acton was 12, her stepfather, Cledith Arthur, was indicted for raping her. He fled to Pennsylvania, where he died as a fugitive in 2004. Acton and her brother were removed from their mother’s custody, and she has not spoken with her mother since. Her mother, Donna Arthur, stayed married to the man charged with raping her daughter until he died.

Ohio’s current governor, Mike DeWine, called the ad “deeply, deeply troubling.” But the two most important Republicans in the country, Trump and Vice President Vance, defended it. Trump called it “very powerful” and wrote, “Who wouldn’t use such an Ad? . . . . This is what family values look like to Republicans in the Trump era.

As a young conservative in the 1980s . . . . I was especially shaped by George Will’s 1983 book, Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does, which argued that statecraft is inherently “soulcraft,” the cultivation of public spirit and moral sensibilities. These thinkers shared the conviction that self-government depends on what Kristol called “republican virtue.”

They believed, too, that norms are fragile and that the membrane separating civilization from barbarism is thin. Character and conscience need to be cultivated. Public discourse either elevates or degrades, moving us away from or closer to a will-to-power ethic. The conduct of leaders, including political leaders, is educative. And when deviancy becomes widespread, we grow used to it. It was a Democrat, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who coined the phrase defining deviancy down, by which he meant that a society overwhelmed by destructive behavior lowers its standards rather than confronting it.

None of this means that conservatives, or the Republican Party, were paragons of virtue.. . . . But their aspirations were ennobling, and some of them lived lives that matched their words.

Today the American right is not merely indifferent to character formation; it is in the business of character deformation. It takes pride in its transgressiveness. The Ramaswamy ad embodies the “no bottom” ethic of the Trump-era GOP, and its wickedness comes in layers.

Cruelty and coarseness have momentum, but they also have limits. Political leaders who relentlessly push brutality do lower a nation’s standards, at least for a time. But if we’re fortunate, they also awaken its conscience. The revulsion comes first, almost physical, like bile rising in the throat. . . .The reckoning follows.

The anti-MAGA reckoning may have finally begun, though much later than it should have. Trump has lost most of the country. His hold on his own base is weakening; its members, like everyone else, are suffering because of the staggering incompetence of the president. And many of those who continue to support Trump are exhausted. In Ohio, a GOP poll shows that the Ramaswamy ad is backfiring. . . . those who said they were familiar with it said it made them more likely to vote for Acton.

But Ohio alone won’t be enough. A true repudiation of the politics of savagery will require a rebuke from voters in every region of America. It should come, and in a good society it would.

The Republican Party, after all, is led by a man found liable for sexually abusing a woman and then defaming her. The president has rallied behind an ad featuring a mother who, rather than stand by her 12-year-old daughter, sided with the man charged with raping the girl. Trump mocked the murder of one critic and openly cheered the death of another. He has called his political opponents “vermin,” said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country, . . His misogyny is undisguised; so is his bigotry. As president, he has enriched himself and his family by billions of dollars. He swoons over dictators while treating Canada as an enemy. He lies and distorts reality on a scale that was once unimaginable. He incited a violent attack on the Capitol in an effort to overturn an election. The list goes on. No American president has matched Trump’s limitless corruption or his cruelty.

The election, and especially the reelection, of Donald Trump caused me, for the first time in my life, to question the fundamental decency of America. I could not understand how anyone, especially my co-religionists, could look at such a squalid figure and vote for him, let alone support him enthusiastically. . . . . Don’t honor and integrity matter? Isn’t Trump’s peculiar form of madness an obvious disqualifier?

For tens of millions of Americans—more than 77 million in 2024 alone—the answer has been no. That stain is now a permanent part of the American story. But the story isn’t over. We can move beyond this grotesque chapter to something better, though the path won’t be smooth. Even if Democrats sweep the midterms, Trump will still be president, and his closing act will likely involve trying to tear the country apart. We can’t allow him to do that.

We need to get to the other side of this era with our institutions, our bonds to one another, and our commitment to justice and the rule of law intact, and then begin the work of reclaiming American ideals. A wipeout of the party of Trump on Tuesday would be an awfully helpful step in that direction.