Yay, indeed. Reading this was definitely a nice way to start the day.
There was one thing I didn't quite get, though, living in an Old World country where a moderate socialist party is a major player in the political scene (and even real communists still exist): the quip about how the writer 'never really considered the possibility of a Congress leaning that far left'. Honestly, I hadn't realised that in the US something like this would be considered a part of the right/left division. I've always thought that one is essentially about the philosophical distinction between 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' vs. 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their need'. Both a capitalist and a socialist ideology can be interpreted as encompassing gender variance or as stomping on it very hard -- and from what I remember (which admittedly isn't that much), there are examples in history of all the combinations.
Nfr