RETURN OF THE EIGHTIES

The USA Kids Mullet Championship finalists are in and they’re incredible

Niamh Spence

Published 07 August 2022

If you've ever wondered what your child might look like with a mullet, then we've got the answer. The USA Kids Mullet Championships are here, and they're everything we need them to be.

The finalists have been announced and it's the ultimate throwback as the mullet hairstyle seems to be making an official comeback with these juniors.

Credit: mulletchampUSA/Facebook

With celebrities including singer Halsey and Stranger Things' Eddie rocking the 80s style haircut with shorter locks on top and a longer 'tail', it's no wonder it's come down to kids too. And these kids are rocking it.

The official Facebook page for the hairstyle competition revealed the 25 finalists before they choose their winner later this year.

The official page said: "Let's give it up for the 2022 Kids Top 25 ! It was a close race at the finish for those last few spots into the finals.

Credit: mulletchampUSA/Facebook

"We will now take a short break before the Final round takes place. Voting will happen on our website (Date-TBD).

"Parents will be contacted this week as well to go over how the finals will work.

"Thanks again to everyone who voted for all these amazing kids! We hope you are having a blast."

Of the 25 finalists, the hairstyles vary from short mullets to curly and longer styles too. And fans of the page have gone wild for the shortlist.

Credit: mulletchampUSA/Facebook

One fan commented: "How to pick one? They're all glorious."

"Every single one of these haircuts is certified bad ass i dont know how anyone could choose just one," said another.

A third wrote: "Any human with a mullet is a winner."

Credit: mulletchampUSA/Facebook

However, some people have taken issues with the competition and even called it 'child abuse'. One commenter wrote: "Somewhere between child abuse and cruel and unusual punishment."

Another echoed their thoughts, adding: "This is child abuse."

Credit: mulletchampUSA/Facebook

However, one fan clapped back, saying it was all in the name fun: "I’m all about making fun of folks and making them feel bad when they deserve it but these are children, they don’t deserve it and they look great. Adults need to shut their traps and let these kids have fun. These are just little guys."

Credit: @mulletchampUSA/Facebook

However, the hairstyle competition isn't just a bit of fun — it raises money for charity, too.

The Facebook page revealed the kids and teens competitions have raised $3,500. The page wrote: "We are thrilled to announce that through our 2022 Kids/Teens contest we were able to donate $3,500 to Maggie's Wigs 4 Kids of Michigan, Inc.

"Our donation was made this morning and we are hopeful that we can make a small difference in some kids!

"We hope that this contest can continue to bring some fun and smiles to everyone and we can give back along the way.

"Thanks everyone who participated so far in 2022. We appreciate It."

If you have a story you want to tell, send it to UNILAD via story@unilad.com 

Featured Image Credit: @mulletchampUSA/Facebook

Topics: News, US News, Beauty, Parenting

Rubio tries to hit back after a Pete Buttigieg zinger lands, but he's outclassed and out of touch

Laura Clawson
Daily Kos Staff
Monday July 25, 2022 ·

 
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has Republican Sen. Marco Rubio on the defensive over marriage equality—just as Senate Republicans more generally are fretting about what to do on that issue.

On Sunday, Buttigieg, who is the first openly gay Cabinet member, commented on a marriage equality bill in Congress during a CNN appearance. Buttigieg talked about the importance of his own marriage in his life, saying, “I don't understand how such a majority of House Republicans voted 'no' on our marriage as recently as Tuesday hours after I was in a room with a lot of them talking about transportation policy, having what I thought were perfectly normal conversations with many of them on that subject only for them to go around the corner and say my marriage doesn't deserve to continue.”

He also took specific aim at Rubio, who previously described a bill codifying the right to marriage as “a stupid waste of time.”

“If he's got time to fight against Disney, I don't know why he wouldn't have time to safeguard marriages like mine. Look, this is really, really important to a lot of people. It's certainly important to me,” said Buttigieg, who also noted, with regard to the House vote, that, “If they don't want to spend a lot of time on this, they can vote 'yes' and move on, and that would be really reassuring for a lot of families around America, including mine.”

Exactly. Taking a noncontroversial vote—71% of Americans told Gallup they support legal recognition of same-sex marriage—shouldn’t take up a lot of time. Unless Republicans drag it out, that is.

Buttigieg’s comment about Rubio apparently stung, at least enough to Rubio to sit down and make a video attacking Buttigieg as “a Harvard-educated transportation secretary ... who apparently never learned that there’s a difference between the state level and the federal level,” since the Florida Republican fight with Disney was over a state law. But that’s kind of the point: Rubio had time to insert himself, as a federal official, into that particular state-level dispute, but he’s saying he doesn’t want to waste his time on a vote over a federal marriage law.

What Rubio is really saying is not that this is a waste of time. He’s saying that he opposes—as a practical matter—the right of people to marry who they choose. He’s saying this in a context in which one Supreme Court justice has already formally put on the table the overturn of Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that in 2015 affirmed the federal right to marriage equality. That’s a pretty direct threat given that the Supreme Court just overturned the nearly 50-year precedent of Roe v. Wade. If the court overturns Obergefell, as Justice Clarence Thomas suggested, same-sex marriages would be instantly banned in at least 25 of the 32 states that currently have anti-equality laws on the books.

A CNN canvass of Senate Republicans last week found five—Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman, Ron Johnson, and Thom Tillis—saying they would or probably would vote for a marriage bill, and eight—Rubio, Bill Cassidy, John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, Jim Inhofe, and Roger Wicker—saying they would vote against it, with others either not responding or dodging the question.

Democrats need to hold this vote as soon as possible (yes, canceling August recess should be on the table), because they’ve got a widely popular and very important policy that at least a few Republicans are saying they’ll vote for. Taking marriage equality out of the hands of Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh is desperately important. Pinning Republicans down on an issue where the politics are bad for most of them, thanks to the fact that they are out of step with the public, is a very nice bonus for Democrats. Rubio’s defensiveness here speaks volumes. 

Volume One: Hold the Vote Now.

GOP in disarray on LGBTQ rights: State Republicans double down on bigotry as national lawmakers flee


Kerry Eleveld for Daily Kos
Daily Kos Staff
Monday July 25, 2022 · 


When House Democrats put a bill on the floor last week protecting same-sex marriage rights, something astonishing happened—nearly 50 House Republicans voted with Democrats to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, 267-157.

Sure, more than three times that number of Republicans voted against the bill, which would codify into federal law both interracial and same-sex marriage rights. But the unprecedented assist from House Republicans immediately made the bill a contender for floor time in the Senate based on the very real possibility of attracting the 10 Senate Republicans needed to beat an inevitable GOP filibuster.

Senate Republicans suddenly realized they had a political hot potato on their hands. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had been laboring to steer his caucus clear of divisive cultural hot-button issues in the lead up to November. McConnell needs Republicans to appear palatable enough to attract the support of the same suburban voters who largely abandoned the party during Donald Trump's disastrous tenure.

Indeed, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, arguably Senate Republicans’ most endangered member, bit the bullet Thursday and said he would vote for the marriage bill if it reached the floor of the upper chamber.

"Even though I feel the Respect for Marriage Act is unnecessary, should it come before the Senate, I see no reason to oppose it," Johnson said in a statement.

As a political party, Republicans have increasingly waved the white flag on same-sex marriage for the last handful of years. As a presidential candidate in 2016, for instance, Donald Trump pledged to nominate justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade in one breath only to claim in the next breath that the freedom to marry wouldn't be jeopardized by those very same judicial appointments.

"It’s law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean it’s done," Trump said of marriage equality in November 2016.

Trump along with many Republican strategists wanted to wash their hands of an issue that quickly grew into a total political loser for them. Their evangelical backers, however, were never going to let it go. And sure enough, just as soon the radicalized Supreme Court majority took out Roe, same-sex marriage was back on the chopping block. In fact, Justice Clarence Thomas wasted no time putting a target on marriage rights in his concurrent opinion.

But here's where the GOP's fundies and their political strategists part ways. Today, marriage equality is a 70-30 loser for Republicans, a far cry from the wedge issue everyone thought it was in the mid-aughts. Yet, just days after that Supreme Court gutted Roe, none of the Michigan GOP's five gubernatorial candidates took up for marriage equality during a primary debate when asked about constitutional protections for gay rights.

“They need to revisit it all,” candidate Garrett Soldano said of LGBTQ rights at the debate in Warren, Michigan.

Several weeks later, however, two West Michigan Republican congressmen, freshman Rep. Peter Meijer and veteran lawmaker Rep. Fred Upton, became two of the 47 House Republicans who backed the Respect for Marriage Act in the successful House vote.

This is where congressional and state Republicans are diverging: At the national level, many Republicans are dodging, downplaying, or even supporting LGBTQ rights, but at the state level, Republicans are largely sticking to a virulent anti-LGBTQ strategy that hasn't yielded fruit as a wedge issue for well over a decade.

The fashion of the day for the state-level GOP bigots is to target a highly vulnerable subset of queer Americans—the transgender community, perhaps because the very same bigots already crashed and burned on marriage equality. As same-sex marriage slipped from their grasp, state GOP lawmakers have homed in with gusto on attacking transgender Americans and youth—who also suffer from disproportionately high levels of suicide. This year alone, Republicans have introduced over 300 bill aimed at restricting LGBTQ rights. The New York Times writes:

In June, Louisiana became the 18th state, all with G.O.P.-led legislatures, to ban transgender students from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity. Laws to prohibit transitioning medical treatments to people under 18, such as puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries — which advocates call gender-affirming care — have been enacted by four states. And after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a law in March banning classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades, more than a dozen other states moved to imitate it.

The bigots may have shifted their tactics slightly, but this is by no means the first time they have sought to resurrect a one-time political wedge issue through the lens of transgender issues.

Enter Terry Schilling, president of the anti-LGBTQ group American Principles Project.

“I believe these are enormous issues for swing voters and moderates,” Schilling told the Times, saying that his group plans to spend up to $12 million on anti-trans ads before November.

"I believe" are truly the operative words in that sentence because this isn't Schilling's first rodeo.

Unfortunately for his donors, Schilling's theory of the case is already a two-time loser. In 2019, Schilling sought to use his strategery to help reelect Kentucky's incumbent GOP Gov. Matt Bevin. Schilling’s group focused on making ads that questioned whether “men” (i.e. transgender women and girls) should be allowed to use women's restrooms and participate in sports for women and girls. The idea was to paint Bevin’s Democratic rival Andy Beshear as “extreme” for supporting transgender rights. It failed. But when Bevin ultimately lost to Beshear in November 2019, Schilling's group commissioned its own study that apparently determined the organization’s anti-trans messaging cut Bevin's loss by 13,000 votes. The American Principles Project immediately morphed Bevin’s loss into a win for the group.

In the 2020 cycle, Schilling went to work selling that losing strategy as a silver bullet that could really turn things around for Trump with suburban voters and moderates.

“We wanted Bevin to win, but more than anything, we wanted to test this out before trying it at a much larger scale," Schilling told Politico in August 2020, as Trump's reelection prospects were dimming. "Now, donors understand that although we came up a few votes short in Kentucky, this can still work."

Only it didn't work in 2020 either—suburban voters mostly stuck with Democrats, forming a critical part of the anti-MAGA coalition that would eject Trump from office.

Now Schilling—who’s zero for two—is apparently back to working his wizardry. Maybe he figured he could piggy back off a good Republican cycle to finally claim credit for what was assumed would be a big GOP rout. Only once again, for all the energy Republicans have put into vilifying transgender Americans and branding Democrats as extremists for supporting them, voters just don’t seem persuaded.

In fact, recent polling suggests that a majority of Americans view Republicans as the real extremists. In May, a CBS New/YouGov poll found the top two words people chose to describe the Republican Party were "Extreme" (54%) and "Hateful" (50%). Respondents' top two choices for Democrats were "Weak" (51%) and "Extreme" (49%).

Polling last week from Navigator Research also found a 44% plurality of Americans agree that "people who support the Republican Party are inclined to resort to violence" in order to push their agenda. Just 35% said the same of Democrats.

The number of Americans who view Republicans as extreme—particularly the suburban swing voters that Schilling hopes to sway—is only likely to increase as Republicans at the state level continue targeting trans kids and same-sex marriage rights, devising draconian abortion bans, trying to place a stranglehold on birth control, and baselessly claiming widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

The Republican Party , whatever it once was, has quickly become the party of government intrusion into Americans’ personal lives. They want control over who Americans marry, their most intimate healthcare decisions, how and when they start a family, how they choose to raise that family, how they parent, the curriculum at their schools, and what books they can read. It is arguably the most extreme agenda put forward by a party in modern American politics.

So despite what Schilling is selling to the press and his donors, targeting transgender Americans won’t pay off for Republicans at the ballot box this November, just like it didn’t work for former North Carolina Republican Gov. Pat McCrory in 2016, it didn’t work for former Kentucky Gov. Bevin in 2019, and it didn’t work for Trump in 2020.

In the meantime, the overt bigotry of state-level Republican officials and activists like Schilling will blow up any effort by some congressional Republicans to moderate on popular social issues like LGBTQ rights. At the national level, some Republicans may desperately want to move on, but their state counterparts are dedicated to reminding voters just how antiquated and extreme the entire party is on a host of social issues where voters recoil at the notion of government interference.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M;GHO$TING

Bolt Mobility has vanished, leaving e-bikes, unanswered calls behind in several US cities

Rebecca Bellan
July 31, 2022·



Updated: Article updated to add the city of Richmond and the county of Montgomery in Virginia, as well as St. Augustine, Florida also confirming service has ended there.

Bolt Mobility, the Miami-based micromobility startup co-founded by Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt, appears to have vanished without a trace from several of its U.S. markets.

In some cases, the departure has been abrupt, leaving cities with abandoned equipment, unanswered calls and emails, and lots of questions.

Bolt has stopped operating in at least eight U.S. cities, including Portland, Oregon, Burlington, South Burlington and Winooski in Vermont, Richmond, California and Richmond, Virginia, and St. Augustine, Florida according to city officials. Some city representatives also said they were unable to reach anyone at Bolt, including its CEO Ignacio Tzoumas.


TechCrunch has made multiple attempts to reach Bolt and those who have backed the company. Emails to Bolt’s communications department, several employees and investors went unanswered. Even the customer service line doesn't appear to be staffed.

Bolt halted its service in Portland on July 1. Because of the company’s failure to provide the city with updated insurance and pay some outstanding fees, Portland subsequently suspended Bolt’s permit to operate there, according to a city spokesperson.
Bolt zooms then stalls

Bolt Mobility (not to be confused with the European transportation super app also named Bolt) was on what appeared to be a growth streak about 18 months ago. The company acquired in January 2021 the assets of Last Mile Holdings, which owned micromobility companies Gotcha and OjO Electric. The purchaser opened up 48 new markets to Bolt Mobility, most of which were smaller cities such as Raleigh, North Carolina, St. Augustine, Florida and Mobile, Alabama.

After purchasing Last Mile's assets, Bolt agreed to continue as the bike-share vendor in Chittenden County, Vermont, including cities Burlington, South Burlington and Winooski.

That license was even renewed in 2022, said Bryan Davis, senior transportation planner of the county.

“We learned a couple of weeks ago (from them) that Bolt is ceasing operations,” Davis told TechCrunch via email, noting that Bolt ceased operations July 1, but actually informed the county a week later. “They’ve vanished, leaving equipment behind and emails and calls unanswered. We’re unable to reach anyone, but it seems they’ve closed shop in other markets as well.”

Sandy Thibault, executive director of Chittenden Area Transportation Management Association, told the Burlington Free Press that Bolt communicated that employees were being let go and the company’s board of directors was discussing next steps.

A spokesperson at Burlington relayed similar information.

“All of our contacts at Bolt, including their CEO, have gone radio silent and have not replied to our emails,” Robert Goulding, public information manager at Burlington’s Department of Public Works, told TechCrunch.

Davis went on to say that about 100 bikes have been left on the ground completely inoperable and with dead batteries. Chittenden County has given Bolt a time frame in which to claim or remove the company’s vehicles, otherwise the county will take ownership of them.

Bolt also appears to have stopped operating in Richmond, California, according to Richmond Mayor Tom Butt’s e-forum.

“Unfortunately, Bolt apparently went out of business without prior notification or removal of their capital equipment from city property,” wrote Butt. “They recently missed the city’s monthly meeting check-in and have been unresponsive to all their clients throughout all their markets.”

Butt went on to say that the city is coming up with a plan to remove all the abandoned equipment -- about 250 e-bikes that were available at hub locations like BART stations and the ferry terminal -- and asked people to refrain from vandalizing the bikes until the city could come up with a solution.

Service has also ended in Richmond, Virginia. The city confirmed that Bolt Mobility’s permit with the City of Richmond ends today, August 1, 2022.

"The city was informed June 7, 2022 that Bolt Mobility would be ceasing their operations in the City of Richmond (Virginia)," a company spokesperson said in an email. "Scooter companies operate on an annual permit, Bolt paid all its fees with the City of Richmond on August 1, 2021."

The Roanoke Times recently reported that Bolt's bikeshare service, operated under the name RoamNRV, has been inoperable in Montgomery County, where the university Virginia Tech is located, since July 6. Representatives from the town of Blacksburg, where most of Bolt's service was located, could not be reached in time for comment, but the local outlet reports that there are signs posted where the bikes are parked stating they're not operational.

TechCrunch has reached out to several other cities in which Bolt operates and has not been able to confirm that the company has stopped operating entirely. A spokesperson from St. Augustine originally told TechCrunch Bolt’s bike share was running as usual there, but after looking into the matter further, has since confirmed the service is suspended.

Bolt’s social media has also been rather inactive in recent weeks. The company hasn’t posted on Instagram since June 11 or on Twitter since June 2.

The last time TechCrunch heard from Bolt was nine months ago when the company was peddling its in-app navigation system that it dubbed “MobilityOS.” At the time, the startup promised that its next generation of scooters would include a smartphone mount that would double as a phone charger, but it’s unclear if those scooters ever hit the streets.

Bolt has publicly raised $40.2 million, an amount that doesn’t include an undisclosed investment from India’s Ram Charan Company in May. Investors there could not be reached for comment.

Why the Hell Isn’t Biden Ending the Federal War on Cannabis?


Ben Burgis
July 13, 2022·

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty

Joe Biden and the Democrats are in deep trouble. The president’s approval ratings are in the sewer and all signs continue to indicate that his party will be pulverized this fall.

It’s not surprising. Biden enjoyed public support at the beginning of his presidency when he was actually doing things for the public (like economic stimulus and child tax credits). All of that’s a distant memory now. The president and his spokespeople barely even talk about the ambitious legislative proposals they introduced with so much fanfare in 2021. And gas and food keep getting more expensive.

Under these circumstances, you would think that the administration would be leaping for any action they could possibly take that lies in the overlap area of the Venn Diagram of (a) promises that Biden made during the 2020 campaign that (b) can be carried out by executive action (no need to get the often recalcitrant Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema on board), and crucially (c), are extremely popular.

And yet.

Culture-War Red Meat Is All the GOP Serves the Working Class

Descheduling cannabis from Schedule I—the DEA’s classification for drugs with the highest risk of abuse and no medical benefits—and pardoning every federal prisoner serving time for non-violent weed offenses would check all three boxes. Amazingly, Biden hasn’t done it.

Promises, Promises

In a campaign ad that hit YouTube seven days before the 2020 election, Biden said, “As president, I’ll work to reform the criminal justice system, improve community policing, decriminalize marijuana, and automatically expunge all prior marijuana convictions.”

He didn’t leave himself a lot of wiggle room there. And while those first two elements could have legislative components for which the standard excuses would apply—Manchin! Sinema! The Republicans! The parliamentarian!—no one doubts that the last two could be done by Biden alone. Any day that he decided to swing into action on this, it wouldn’t even have to take up his whole afternoon.

And yet.

When then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about this in a press briefing on (ahem) April 20, the best she could say was that Biden was “continuing to review his clemency powers.” Oh, and did she mention that the DEA expanded the list of authorized manufacturers of cannabis for research purposes? Don’t forget that part!

Not only has no one had their criminal record expunged but Daniel Muessig, for example, just started a five-year sentence in federal prison for non-violent marijuana offenses. Biden promised that he would release everyone in his situation, but Daniel’s wife, parents, and all the other people who love him won’t get to see him for five years. Morally, that’s outrageous. Politically, it’s jaw-droppingly stupid.

According to a Gallup poll last fall, 68 percent of Americans said that they wanted to go beyond Biden’s promise. They want full federal legalization of the recreational use of marijuana by adults. The kinds of big dramatic steps in that direction that Biden promised would be attention-grabbing and base-mobilizing (it has 83 percent support among Democrats)—but best of all it wouldn’t even be a potent issue for mobilizing conservative voters.

That poll showed slightly more Republicans were for it (50 percent) than against it (49 percent). Other polls in the last few years have put the Republican “for” number even higher. A Pew poll in November 2019 found that 55 percent of Republican-leaning voters were pro-legalization.

Hell, there's even a case for it from a pro-business Republican perspective. Legal weed businesses would finally be allowed to accept credit card payments.

Ignoring an Open Goal

There are a lot of popular things Biden and the Democratic leadership might have been able to do by this point in the president’s term with just a little bit more political will. They absolutely could have ignored the Senate parliamentarian, for example, when that staffer—who issues non-binding opinions and who could simply be fired at any time—told them they couldn’t use the reconciliation process to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour a year and a half ago. About 62 percent of Americans support that one. Moreover, many low-income Americans would know they owed the raise that brought them out of poverty to Democratic action—which might have helped the party avoid the coming electoral apocalypse.

But changing the administration’s weed policy would be even more popular and the fucking parliamentarian wouldn’t even have to be consulted. It’s a no-brainer. A wide open goal.

And yet.

Back in April he was “reviewing” powers that no one anywhere doubts that he has. (Seriously, if anyone has a novel legal theory according to which the president can’t deschedule marijuana by executive action and pardon any federal prisoner he chooses to pardon, I’d love to hear it.) What’s happened in the last three months?

Bernie Sanders’ Democratic Socialist Successors Are More Woke Than Progressive

Has Biden just forgotten? Unlikely. Just last week, three of the most high-profile senators in the Democratic Caucus (2020 presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker) sent Biden a letter urging the administration to “use its existing authority to (i) deschedule cannabis and (ii) issue pardons to all individuals convicted of non-violent cannabis-related offenses.”

Y’know, folks, it’s just like Biden promised—explicitly, more than once, and in so many words—he would do when he was running for president. It’s also just like the overwhelming majority of Americans want him to do.

Biden was a hardcore War on Drugs hawk for most of his Senate career. He’s one of the villains of Radley Balko’s excellent 2014 book Rise of the Warrior Cop. Maybe in his heart of hearts he wants federal weed-smokers to rot in jail. If so, though, why did he promise to deschedule cannabis, pardon the federal prisoners, and expunge the ex-cons’ records when he was running for president?

It's hard to see an answer to that question other than “he knew it would be good politics.” It would be even better politics for him to actually do it now.

And yet.