#texas Taliban

[trump666traitor]

[mitchipedia]

Although Congress requires emergency rooms to provide emergency medical care, that doesn’t include pregnant women, according to a Texas court.

[geezerwench]

Texas agriculture department's new dress code based on 'biological gender' : NPR

Dress code? Cowhide burqas for all the ladies?

[rejectingrepublicans]

[taviokapudding]

Sooooooo are we going to discuss South Carolina’s House Bill 3549 who’s goal is to execute abortion havers or…?

[nirivenova]

LET'S GO KAMALA

[mysharona1987]

The state of Texas: making frigging Afghanistan and the Taliban look positively progressive.

[bullet-prooflove]

Bad Timing: Tim Gutterson x Reader

Tagging: @kmc1989

It’s always a case of bad timing between you and Tim, it’s been that way since Afghanistan. A couple of stolen nights here and there before one of you departs for greener pastures. For him it was Iraq, for you it was an honourable discharge before you took up a position in the FBI.

When he becomes a US Marshal he figures the two of you will find your way back to each other again at some point, he just doesn’t expect it to be in some backwater shithole near Harlan in the midst of a raid. He doesn’t expect it to come with a punch in the face as you escape through an open window. He chases you for almost two miles before he catches up and that’s only because you let him.

Distance running has always been your thing, just like intelligence work.

“Fuck Lucky.” He mutters, trying to catch his breath as you slow to a halt outside the abandoned Anderson house. “Did you really need to run me out this far?”

The reason they call you Lucky is because back in Afghanistan no matter what fucked up shit you  were caught up in you always made it out. It didn’t matter what the odds were, the one thing he could always bet on was on you.

It had started because of those five days you spent hiding out in the hills, evading the Taliban with nothing but your wits and a combat knife.

Lucky is what they called you when you came stumbling through those gates looking like you’d been dragged through hell.

Fierce and smart as fuck is what he thought when they’d headed back to the caves and found the mess you’d left there, along with the intelligence cache you’d secreted away. He’d fallen a little bit in love with you right there and then.

“You looked like you could use the exercise.” You say, putting your hands on your hips with that devil may care smile on your lips.

Christ you look beautiful, even in the light from the shitty streetlamp overhead. He remembers the last time he’d had his hands on you. It was during that law enforcement conference up in Louisiana a couple of months ago. You’ve always been a little wild, a little crazy and that translates into the bedroom. He’s asked you to come stay with him in Lexington, give this thing between the two of you a real shot.

“After this assignment.” You had promised him as you straddled his hips. “Let me get these next couple of months over and done with and then we can talk about playing house together.”

You’d meant it, he could tell from the look in your eyes before you rode him into oblivion.

“That eye is gonna turn a pretty colour in the morning.” You say interrupting his thoughts as you reach out to touch the place where you socked him. There’s a tenderness in your touch, one that he spends his nights craving. This is the other side to you, the part he misses more than anything. The part that loves him, the one that will always love him.

“I’d take any hit you can give me as long as it means you’re safe.” He murmurs, his lips brushing over the tattoo on your wrist, the one of a four leaf clover. “When are you gonna be done with this undercover bullshit and come home to me?”

“When redneck militias stop buying up rocket launchers to blow up churches.” You tell him and he sighs because he knows what that means.

It’s not easy dismantling an arms ring, especially one with ties to the military. There jurisdictional issues in play, different agencies get involved which means more risk on your part. It also means a bigger investigation because operations like this filter into different states depending on what the hook up is. Guns from Texas, grenades from Florida, body armour from Kansas, the list goes on.

The two of you are looking at a year maybe, instead of the months you’d both thought.

“I guess we still have a case of really bad timing don’t we darlin?” He says, his heart aching at the prospect of spending another year without you.

“Yea Tim.” You say softly. “We sure do.”

Love Tim? Don’t miss any of his stories by joining the taglist here.

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Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

[homenecromancer]

comic by Tim Kreider; here’s the full text of his Artist’s Statement for this one:

I had already turned in my cartoon Friday afternoon when, Saturday morning, I read the news that Reagan’s health was failing. I began drawing immediately. I have had a rough draft of this cartoon ready for this occasion for years. As the day continued I kept getting e-mails and text messages from friends excitedly anticipating the Gipper’s impending death. Finally Steve, with whom I have planned for over a decade to hold a party on the day of Reagan’s funeral, called me from the track, where he was betting on the Belmont Stakes, to tell me that the old bastard was finally dead. He reported that there had been a perfunctory Moment of Silence, lasting approximately 1.6 seconds, before everyone went back to betting. It was beautiful. As the afternoon went on I got a flood of congratulatory calls from friends around the world—Ben in Boston, Megan and Mike in New York, Berkeley in Baltimore, even Allison in Bulgaria. I e-mailed this cartoon into the City Paper around seven P.M., begging them in the name of our sweet lord and savior Jesus Christ to stop the presses and please run this Wednesday, and then headed down to Baltimore to drink tiny beers and watch The Big Lebowski. The Reagan party will be held at my house this weekend.

Perhaps it may seem insensitive and unpatriotic to some for me to run such an ugly cartoon at this time of national mourning. To those of you who hold this view, I must respectfully say fuck you. Some of my younger readers may not even remember Ronald Regan’s presidency, and I would not want them to be misled by the onslaught of state propaganda they’ll be subjected to this week. Calling him the Great Communicator is like calling Hitler the Great Negotiator, and if we’re going to credit him with winning the Cold War we may as well credit him with the Challenger disaster and the return of Halley’s Comet. Let me tell you what it was really like:

Even at age twelve I could tell that Jimmy Carter was an honest man trying to address complicated issues and Ronald Reagan was a brilcreemed salesman telling people what they wanted to hear. I secretly wept on the stairs the night he was elected President, because I understood that the kind of shitheads I had to listen to in the cafeteria grew up to become voters, and won. I spent the eight years he was in office living in one of those science-fiction movies where everyone is taken over by aliens—I was appalled by how stupid and mean-spirited and repulsive the world was becoming while everyone else in America seemed to agree that things were finally exactly as they should be. The Washington Press corps was so enamored of his down-to-earth charm that they never checked his facts, but if you watched his face when it was at rest, when he wasn’t performing for anyone, you could see him for what he really was—a black-eyed, slit-mouthed, lizard-faced old son-of-a-bitch. He was a bad actor, an informer for McCarthy, and a hired front man for a gang of Texas oilmen, fundamentalist dingbats, and right-wing psychotics out of Dr. Strangelove. He put a genial face on chauvanism, callousness, and greed, and made people feel good about being bigots again. He likened Central American death squads to our founding fathers and called the Taliban “freedom fighters.” His legacy includes the dismantling of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the final dirty win of Management over Labor, the outsourcing of America’s manufacturing base, the embezzlement of almost all the country's wealth by 1% of its citizens, the scapegoating of the poor and black, the War on Drugs, the eviction of schizophrenics into the streets, AIDS, acid rain, Iran-Contra, and, let’s not forget, the corpses of two hundred forty United States Marines. He moved the center of political discourse in this country to somewhere in between Richard Nixon and Augusto Pinochet. He believed in astrology and Armageddon and didn't know the difference between history and movies; his stories were lies and his jokes were scripted. He was the triumph of image over truth, paving the way for even more vapid spokesmodels like George W. Bush. He was, as everyone agrees, exactly what he appeared to be��nothing. He made me ashamed to be an American. If there was any justice in this world his Presidential Library would contain nothing but boys' adventure books and bad cowboy movies, and the only things named after him would be shopping malls and Potter's Fields. Let the earth where he is buried be seeded with salt.

as of today, Ronald Reagan has been in Hell for twenty years

[gop-are-corporate-socialists]

Donald Trump killed her.

Republicans on the Supreme Court killed her. (John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett)

Governor Greg Abbott killed her.

Senator Ted Cruz killed her.

And if you voted Republican in 2016, you killed her.

If you contributed to any Republican at any level in 2024, you helped sign her execution warrant.

AND, if you continue to vote for Republicans at any level, there are thousands more women that will meet her fate - mothers, wives, sisters, aunts, cousins, friends - because of you.

The Christian Taliban must be stopped. They do not represent American values.

[trump666traitor]

[contemplatingoutlander]

Putting chaplains in public school is the latest battle in culture wars

Here comes the American far-right "Christian Taliban," all set to indoctrinate a new generation of Americans into a warped, right-wing "Christianity."

Our Founders must be spinning in their graves.

Lawmakers in mostly conservative states are pushing a coordinated effort to bring chaplains into public schools, aided by a new, legislation-crafting network that aims to address policy issues “from a biblical world view” and by a consortium whose promotional materials say chaplains are a way to convert millions to Christianity. The bills have been introduced this legislative season in 14 states, inspired by Texas, which passed a law last year allowing school districts to hire chaplains or use them as volunteers for whatever role the local school board sees fit, including replacing trained counselors. Chaplain bills were approved by one legislative chamber in three states — Utah, Indiana and Louisiana �� but died in Utah and Indiana. Bills are pending in nine states. One passed both houses of Florida’s legislature and is awaiting the governor’s signature. [color/emphasis added]

[See more under the cut.]

The bills are mushrooming in an era when the U.S. Supreme Court has expanded the rights of religious people and groups in the public square and weakened historic protections meant to keep the government from endorsing religion. In a 2022 case, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch referred to the “so-called separation of church and state.” Former president Donald Trump has edged close to a government-sanctioned religion by asserting in his campaign that immigrants who “don’t like our religion — which a lot of them don’t” would be barred from the country in a second term. “We are reclaiming religious freedom in this country,” said Jason Rapert, a former Arkansas state senator and the president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, which he founded in 2019 to craft model legislation, according to the group’s site. Its mission is “to bring federal, state and local lawmakers together in support of clear biblical principles … to address major policy concerns from a biblical world view,” the site says. The group hosted House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) late last year at its gala at the Museum of the Bible in Washington. The chaplain bills, Rapert said, are part of an effort to empower “the values and principles of the founding fathers.” Critics who compare such efforts with theocracy, he said, are creating “a false flag, a boogeyman by radical left to demonize everyone of faith.” Rapert says he’ll push in the next round of chaplain bills to make the positions mandatory. Heather Weaver, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, called allowing chaplains into public schools “a constitutional time bomb.” “It definitely would be a much more direct route to promoting religion to students and evangelizing them than we’ve seen in the past.” she said. [color emphasis added]

[edited]

[doremifasorashige]

courting

ftm!Tim/Raylan; southern charm courting

Tim has shared a desk wall with Raylan for one year, seven months, twelve days and four hours. Yes, he has been counting. He has been in love with Raylan for one year, five months, two days, and eight hours. And that is a problem.

It's beyond a problem because Tim doesn't fuck with coworkers for a laundry list of reasons that he doesn't like to think about, but at the top of the list is:

-this is central fucking Kentucky, where you can't get anymore meshed of Midwest and southern culture than here

-he lived through DADT and it was a fucking nightmare

and most importantly

-Raylan has no earthly idea that Tim is trans, and that scares him more than anything else on the fucking planet.

He'd rather face down the Taliban again than tell Raylan Givens, all southern charm, cowboy swagger that not only is he as gay as they come, but also his dick is detachable and sits in a box under his bed.

Most of the office doesn't know he's trans, aside from Rachel and Art which one was an accident and the other, well, Rachel is just really good at her job.

All of this to say, Tim is 99.9% positive Rachel is off her fucking rocker in thinking that Raylan has the hots for him because that boy is as straight as they come. Aside from Crowder that is.

But it needles at the back of his head, poking at him, prodding him, making him wonder. What if he isn't? Raylan may be a southern boy through and through, Harlan born and bred, but he's different than a lot of the other folks Tim's met during his time in Kentucky, as well as the folks that he grew up with in Texas. He wonders if maybe he'd at least be ok with the whole trans thing.

Not that Tim is itching to out himself, but. He wonders. A lot.

It all comes to a head when Raylan asks him to get drinks one day afterwork. a long week of a whole lot of nothing coming to a close, and while this has been one of Tim's better weeks mentally, the slow slog and drag of doing nothing but flipping through case files and waiting for some dumb fuck to do something monumentally stupid as worn him down in a different way than being busy all week usually does.

Fuck it, Tim thinks. "Sure, why not." He shuts down his computer, cleans up his desk and follows Raylan to the parking garage, then tails him to a bar near Raylan's motel. (Another thing that makes Tim really question if Rachel is insane or not, because what queer man lives in a fucking motel for longer than he has to?)

They're tucked away into a corner of the bar, the music and the voices a dull thrumming all around him. For the moment it's almost relaxing. With their drinks in hand Raylan finally looks at Tim, head on. His hat is tipped back on his head, revealing his eyes to the soft dim lights of the bar. They look warm and inviting, like a glass of whiskey. Tim has to tear his eyes away before he does something stupid, like kiss him.

Raylan takes a sip from his glass, the ice clinks against the side walls and each other. He sucks his teeth after that first burning sip. The sound of a long day being pushed away. Tim follows his lead and sips from his beer.

"Y'know," Raylan says, breaking their easy silence. "We've worked together almost two years--" one year, eight months, twenty two days and 9 hours. "--and I've realized, I barely know a thing about you Tim."

Tim snorts. Sips his beer. "What's there to know?"

"I don't know. Anything you feel worth knowing."

He glances at Raylan, takes in the easy, loose set of his shoulders, that soft tilt of his lips that says he knows he'll get his way, as long as he's patient. The strand of hair that's lost the slick of gel from the day and has slipped from the hold of his hat, curling on his forehead. Tim can't tell if this is a trap.

"I don't really know," he admits. "Been a long time since I really did the 'get to know you' thing." Tim learns about people, their fugitives, his coworkers, his neighbors (against his will), the guys in the army. That last one had just happened--you end up talking about yourself at times to fill the silence, to combat the fear. When you're alone out there with two, three other guys, thinkin’ this might be the one that ends it all you can't help but just talk sometimes, reveal little parts of yourself and gain parts of someone else. Tim's never actively asked someone about themselves, nor talked about himself. Not with intent. This. This feels like intent.

Raylan's smile doesn't change as he looks Tim over before turning his focus back on his glass. "Where'd you grow up? Gotta be the south, accent like that."

Tim licks his lips and looks down at the wood grain of the bar. "North Texas. Bumbfuck nowhere."

"So, not all that different from Harlan." He doesn't ask, but Tim supposes he doesn't have to.

"Somethin’ like that."

He hums. "I can guess what that's like."

Tim glances at him, and finds Raylan eyes already on him, boring into his own. What do you think it was like, he wonders, you couldn't possibly guess it all, not by looking at me now. Not even by looking at me then.

"You ever miss it?"

"Not much there for me to miss." He drains his beer, signals for another. This is not the night he thought he'd be having. He's starting to wonder if this wasn't a mistake. "No family, no friends. Even if I had ‘em, they wouldn't recognize me now." Tim thinks that if that teenager fresh out of basic, standing outside his dead daddy's trailer could see him now, he wouldn't recognize himself either. But that was the point.

Raylan's eyes are still on him when he chances another look. Expression unreadable. "Wonder what that's like. To not have everyone from your past come out at the woodwork and already have your name on their lips before you can get a word in edgewise."

"Well," Tim drawls out. "I suppose it helps if you don't dress in the most distinct way possible where someone can spot you from the otherside of the room." He doesn't look away as he takes a pull from his beer, long and slow.

Raylan blinks once. Twice. then laughs in that soft self-deprecating chuckle of his. Tim likes the way his crinkle at the corners and the way he self consciously slides his hat off and runs a hand through his hair, displacing that stupid strand back up with the rest of its brethren until it decides to break free once more. Raylan places the hat back on his head, still tipped back, leaving his face on full view.

"You've got me there," he admits.

"Helps when you make it easy." His eyes are bright when they meet Tim's again. "Why the sudden curiosity?"

"You're a mystery, Tim."

Good, he thinks, that's the point. "Not really," he laughs. "I'm a pretty simple guy. Work out in the mornings, sit next to you all day and listen to you speak the language of your people. I read children's fantasy novels in my spare time. And as a little treat I try not to think about what it was like to kill people through the end of a sniper rifle in the hot desert." He doesn't mean to be so blunt, it just tumbles out of him before he can remember to shut his mouth. He's just glad that he didn't slip out the part that once a month he injects himself with testosterone with a needle so large that he almost fainted for the first year every time.

"Very simple," Raylan says without missing a beat. He's slouched down along the bar top some, leaning his head on the palm of his hand, arm braced along the bar, edge cutting into the pit. He looks completely relaxed. soft. Tim's never seen him this way before, not even that time he played protection detail at the motel.

It's intoxicating to look at.

Raylan says something else, but Tim can't hear him past the rush of blood in his ears. He watches Raylan's lips move, captivated.

Tim blinks and the world comes rushing back around him. "What?"

A smirk plays at the corner of Raylan's mouth and he repeats himself. "Why children's fantasy?"

"oh. uh, anything is possible." he shrugs. "I needed an escape as a kid. Fantasy was my escape until I could do it on my own. and then again in the desert." he looks at his beer bottle, peels at the sticker. Anything was possible when Tim read those books, feeding his imagination. He could go anywhere and do anything. be anyone he wanted to be. Tim didn't have to be a girl when he was reading those books, he could be himself.

Tim clears his throat. "Um. I don't know, they just have more to offer me than anything else."

"An escape," Raylan repeats. "From the day to day reminder of how shit the world can be, with shitty people in it that we chase down."

He looks at Raylan, takes in his relaxed position, near full drink and the way he's given Tim his complete attention the entire time they've been at the bar. In all the time he's known Raylan, he has never once seen the man give something his complete undivided attention. Not a single task or person. Until now.

Tim licks his lips. Raylan's eyes flick down at the movement, then back up. blink and you'd miss it. Tim didn't blink.

He finishes his beer and places money on the bar. "There is one other thing." he says before he can chicken out.

"what's that?"

Tim's heart is hammering in his chest, beating out of control, pumping his blood so fast that its rushing in his ears and he can barely himself, let alone Raylan. "I--" he doesn't want to be in public for this. "Do you want to go back to yours?"

Raylan blinks, stares at him for a moment before reaching into his pocket to pay for his own drinks, then slides his jacket back on. The easy slope of his body is still present, but Tim clocks the minute shift, the worry that Raylan is trying desperately to hide. He wonders what Raylan has to be afraid of.

They park side by side outside of Raylan's motel. He watches Raylan exit his car and walk to the door, unlocking it before he turns back and meets Tim's eyes through the windshield. with a steading breath, he follows Raylan inside.

Tim finds it impressive how good Raylan is at keeping up appearances, at least in this moment. After he closes the door behind him, he watches Raylan move about the room, shrugging his jacket off, placing it and his hat at the single table by the window before unbuttoning his shirt.

briefly, Tim is distracted by how breath taking it is to watch Raylan do the most mundane things like fucking existing. he's pathetic.

"Do you want another drink?" Raylan asks from the far side of the room. He's got a bottle of Jim Beam in his hand and a plastic cup on the counter. Tim nods, watches him fill the cup. He's in love with a man who lives in a goddamn motel and doesn't even have real cups. Fucking pathetic.

He downs it in one go, wincing at the burn that he hasn't paid attention to in at least five years. Raylan's eyes are wide when Tim looks up.

"Do you enjoy working together?"

Raylan cocks an eyebrow and sits at the foot of the bed. "I'd say so."

Tim nods. Well shit. "I'm telling you this in confidence," he says, pushing the words past his lips. "And that if you have a problem with it, there's nothing I can do about it, but I expect to be respected all the same."

"Tim," Raylan says slowly. "Are you about to tell me that you're gay?"

Tim freezes. Shocked.

Raylan stares, unmoving.

"No, I was going to tell you that I'm trans," he says finally, matter of factly, all in one breath.

"Oh. So you're not gay?"

He blinks. "What?" He takes in Raylan's open shirt, the beater under it clinging to his torso and showing off his collarbones. Raylan's messy hair, and rolled up sleeves, and the fact that he's probably the most put together disaster on this side of the Mississippi and-- "I'm literally in love with you."

"Seriously?"

Tim rolls his eyes heavenward. "That's the big shock of the evening?"

"Um, yes?"

He takes a deep breath, then looks at Raylan. "I've been in love with you since like, two months after you got here." He probably shouldn't say the exact day. That's weird, right? Totally weird.

"Same."

"What?"

Raylan clears his throat and looks away, putting his cup down on the table. "I mean, not two months after, but. A while."

"Oh."

He watches as Raylan gets up from the bed and walks over to him, doesn't hesitate until he's standing right in front of Tim, looking like he wants to ask something but doesn't know how. He reaches out to touch, but pauses just before his fingers make contact with Tim's. Tim glances down at the hands, millimeters apart. He nods and Raylan takes Tim's hand in his own, calloused  fingers sweeping over his own.

"I guess I should admit something," he says, a soft self-conscious laugh. "I had this whole plan to court you? All southern boy charms." He shakes his head and it causes his hair to sway across his forehead. "Gotta say, I'm awful glad I didn't go through with it now. You'd hate me for sure."

Tim thinks this over and can't help but agree that if it had been before he'd told Raylan, he would've hated it, despised it even. It would've made him second guess every aspect of his current life and how bad he was at being himself that it was so obvious to the most oblivious man in the office that Tim was trans. He would've been humiliated.

Now, Tim thinks, he'd be open to it. just to see Raylan at his a-game, all cocky cowboy flirting.

he tangles his fingers with Raylan's, giving it a gentle squeeze. "I could be persuaded."

Raylan smiles and it's the most open smile Tim has ever seen him give. "I mean this in the gayest, non-heteronormative way possible. I'm going to court this shit out of you."

Bold, Tim thinks, but he likes bold. 

[doctortwhohiddles]

18 years old. She was only 18 years old ffs. She died in needlessly, in pain, because of a bunch of Christian talibans. Every family who lost a love one because of anti abortion laws should sue the state for murder. This is straight up feminicide. There's no other way to describe it. If the doctors had been able to do their job, both mother and child could have been alive today. Pro life my ass.

Also, why are hospitals allowed to be run by religious organizations? Religion has fuck all to do with healthcare. Only science does.

[freetheshit-outofyou]

Odd that the article goes out of it's way to paint this chunk of shit as the victim here, he's not. He abandoned his post, opened his FOB to possible attack, endangered hundred of troops looking for his ass and in the process got 6 killed. This POS should not still be breathing. The real victims here are the following: Staff Sergeant Clayton Bowen, 29, of San Antonio, Texas, and Private 1st Class Morris Walker, 23, of Chapel Hill, N.C., were killed by a roadside bomb in Paktika province on Aug. 18, 2009, while trying to find Bergdahl. Staff Sergeant Kurt Curtiss, 27, of Murray, Utah, died Aug. 26 in Paktika Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when he was shot while his unit was supporting Afghan security forces during an enemy attack. 2nd Lieutenant Darryn Andrews, 34, of Dallas, Texas, died Sept. 4 in Paktika Province when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device and a rocket-propelled grenade. Staff Sergeant Michael Murphrey, 25, of Snyder, Texas, died Sept. 6 in Paktika province after being wounded by an IED. On Sept. 4, 2009, Private 1st Class Matthew Martinek, 20, of DeKalb, Ill., was seriously wounded in Paktika province when Taliban forces attacked his vehicle with an improvided explosive device, a rocket-propelled grenade and small-arms fire. He would die from his wounds on September 11th. I always said Bergdahl should be brought home, I feel that everyone we send overseas should be brought home, but that fucking scum did not need to come back alive.