Happy New Fortnight!

You heard me, Happy New fortnight. Because that's about all we're going to get before...you know, we loose whatever credibility we might have had left on the world stage when we swear in that unstable gameshow host most of us didn't vote for.

Above: A fort, at night, and don't say I'm better
than that because we both know it's not true.

No, that's not right, it'd be more like
banning cable knit sweaters because
 Isadora Duncan was killed by a scarf.

Anyway, speaking of that foretaste of the regressive bullshit on the horizon, remember when North Carolina got all rabid-foam crazy about the serious problem of pervy straight men pretending to be women and sneaking into the women's restroom so they could watch them pee? You don't remember this? That's because it's ridiculous poppycock that never happens. What did happen was a ridiculous law designed to assuage the baseless fears of ignorant people at the expense of the civil rights of others. It's like banning scarves because of how Isadora Duncan died.

Yes, Sierra Leone. You know, the
one with all the child soldiers?

Anyway, there was a big fight, famous people and porn refused to have anything to do with the state, Governor Pat McCrory got booted in what is otherwise deep Trump country but the legislature still failed to repeal the bill and now North Carolina is up there with Iran and Sierra Leone on the list of failed democracies. It was a preposterously transphobic law supported by rubes and enshrined in North Carolina law by bigots, so of course Texas lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was like, hey, why not Texas?

"Dolls? You like to play with dolls?
What are you queer or something?"

-Jesus, somewhere in the back

Because it's awful and he's an awful person for putting it on his legislative agenda for the new year, that's why not Texas. But I suppose this isn't like a total surprise coming from the lieutenant governor. Patrick is, if you recall, the guy who back when President Obama instructed schools to comply with the Civil Rights act and stop treating transgender kids like shit, compared him to the guys who bribed Judas to sell out Jesus. Because if there's one thing Jesus loves, it's ostracizing trans kids. That's in the Bible, right? Somewhere in the back? Right after the part where he rants about the estate tax and gun control.

The effect on sales of skinny jeans and
Skullcandy headphones would be devastating.

Fortunately, the State of Texas isn't completely without reasonable people in government, there's still The Texas Association of Business. The organization, whose entire job it is to make sure that people want to do business there, is strongly opposed to any form of discriminatory legislation and even put out a report about how catastrophic Patrick's ludicrous bill would be for the State's economy. It would hurt tourism, alienate corporations and drive away the most precious resource of all: millennials.

Sure, the TAB's report its mostly about the impact on business rather than rank injustice of insisting people provide proof of biological sex at birth before entering a public restroom, but Texas is a pretty red state and if you're want to get conservatives to listen, you kind of have to make it about money.

"Won't somebody please think of the children? Sorry,
did I say children? I meant economic repercussions."

-Some rich guy