Despite having been slapped down by the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court, the hate groups and Republican activists behind Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment that outlawed same-sex in California, have not given up. They announced last week that they will waste more of the taxpayers’ money with an appeal to the California Supreme Court to once again halt gay weddings in the state:
When members of the Westboro Baptist Church showed up at Santa Monica High School today to conduct an anti-gay protest, they were in for a huge surprise.
That surprise was a huge crowd that was on hand to counter-protest the group known to protest at military funerals carrying signs that say such things as ‘God Hates Fags.’
…The church members stayed only a brief time as they found themselves faced with scores of students who were well-prepared for their arrival.
Students and others were holding rainbow flags large and small and waving signs with such messages as ‘God Cares for All Creation,’ ‘Ain’t Nobody Got Time for Hate’ and ‘God Hates People Who Say They Know Who God Hates.’
The video … shows the spirited crowd of students and a dispirited small group from Westboro walking away from the scene as someone in the crowd yells: ‘Go back to Kansas!’
FLASHBACK: Here’s a clip of from CNN’s “Larry King Live” from 2006 in which Bill Maher outs Ken Mehlman during the live broadcast:
CNN edited out Maher’s mention of Mehlman’s name in the re-broadcast.
The fact that Ken Mehlman is gay was one of the worst kept secrets in modern politics — now he has come out of the closet in an interview with the Atlantic’s Mark Ambinder:
Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.
Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter’s questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California’s ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8.
“It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life,” Mehlman told Ambinder. Mehlman also said his friends and family have been “wonderful and supportive,” and that coming out has made him a “happier and better person”
“It’s something I wish I had done years ago,” Mehlman said.
The United States and Ukraine no longer seem to be in synch,
After Trump lifted Russia sanctions with a grin and a wink.
Trump coordinated it with Putin,
Who ramped up the drone shooting,
After Trump and Elon Musk throttled Ukraine’s Starlink.
“Take, for example, the French Revolution. Remember when Marie Antoinette said, ‘Let them eat cake’? Now, is that a problem of accountability and tyranny, a corrupt government? Or is it a problem of affordability and standard of living? It’s both! Authoritarianism and tyranny are extremely expensive for the people. And it’s the exact same thing when you go down the line with Donald Trump. So, are we going to go after the corruption? Yeah, you’re damn right. And are we going to go after affordability and making people’s lives easier? Yeah, you’re damn right. We’re going to do both of them.”
“Here’s the problem with the red meat: It becomes an addiction. Once you go there and you put that out there, then you’re forced to defend it. So what do they do? They double down. They triple down again.”
— Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D), quoted by the Washington Post, on Republicans relying on anti-Muslim attacks in the Michigan U.S. Senate race.
“If it wasn’t for President Trump the United States of America would not exist right now. This man saved America. He saved our military from collapse. He saved our economy from destruction. He saved our border from annihilation. He saved our country from threats at home and abroad which would have been the end of the American dream for ever.”
— Stephen Miller, quoted by The Guardian, pledging “total devotion” to President Trump.
A record number of women are running for state legislative seats this November, more than two-thirds of whom are Democrats, reports Florida Phoenix. Across the 46 states with legislative seats on the ballot, a total of 3,824 women are running — up from 2022’s previous record of 3,621 women candidates, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Women make up 35.5% of all state legislative candidates this cycle. Currently, women hold about one-third of state legislative seats across the country — a record level of representation but nowhere near parity.
“Prediction markets about the 2026 midterm elections have surpassed $1.4 billion in trading volume as Election Day fast approaches,” CNN reports. “This year has seen massive growth in the prediction industry, where people can bet on real-world events like sports, entertainment and the weather. While small-scale election markets have been around for a while, they gained traction before the 2024 presidential election and have seen huge numbers for the 2026 midterms.”
G. Elliot Morris: “Low-knowledge 2024 voters say they backed Trump by 8 points, according to our poll. Today they give him a net job approval of ?27, a 35-point shift. Compare that to Trump’s approval rating among voters who got both questions right: These voters backed Harris by 1 point and now give Trump a net ?24 approval, a 23-point shift. … Low-information voters have moved against Trump at a higher rate than high-information voters, by 12 points.”
President Donald ?Trump’s approval rating fell to a record low as Americans worried about high gasoline prices and appeared ready to punish his Republican Party in the November 3 congressional elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday. Some 31% of Americans approve of Trump’s ?performance in office, down a percentage point from two weeks earlier and the lowest level in ?either of his presidential terms, the four-day poll showed.
KFF Poll: “With the 2026 midterm campaigns in full swing and early voting about to begin, there is a wide enthusiasm gap between partisan voters, with Democratic voters 25 percentage points more likely than Republican voters to say they are ‘more motivated’ than usual to vote (63% vs. 38%).”
