The Don’t Say Gay bill has passed the FL legislature and now goes to the governor’s desk. Let us be clear: should its vague language be interpreted in any way that causes harm to a single child, teacher, or family, we will lead legal action against the State of Florida to challenge this bigoted legislation.
We will not sit by and allow the governor’s office to call us pedophiles. We will not allow this bill to harm LGBTQ Floridians.
We will not permit any school to enforce this in a way that endangers the safety of children. We stand ready to fight for Floridians in court and hold lawmakers who supported this bill accountable at the ballot box.
Via press release from GLAAD:
This bill brands Florida land of the ‘less free’ by legalizing censorship and harming LGBTQ students and families. Banning discussion of LGBTQ people in school is an effort to silence and shame, to divide and disrespect, when all students should feel safe and learn about themselves and each other.
To every LGBTQ child and every LGBTQ parent in Florida, you do belong and we know that history is on our side. Governor DeSantis is playing political football with LGBTQ Floridians.
Other GOP leaders around the country who claim to be LGBTQ allies should be speaking against this ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, urging Gov. DeSantis to veto it, and fighting the tidal wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation around the country. Gov. DeSantis’ disdain and cruelty towards LGBTQ Floridians is noted and appalling.
Leaders in Florida have decided that bills based on hate & discrimination take priority over our students' pandemic recovery. My team & I stand with our LGBTQ+ students in Florida & across the country & urge Florida leaders to protect & support all students.
— Secretary Miguel Cardona (@SecCardona) March 8, 2022
Let us be clear: should the vague language of this bill be interpreted in any way that causes harm to a single child, teacher, or family, we will lead legal action against the State of Florida to challenge this bigoted legislation. https://t.co/pvGSJ4iMMP
Florida state Sen. Ileana Garcia (R) expressed her support for a so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill on Tuesday by arguing that “LGBT is not a permanent thing.”
During a 15-minute speech on the Senate floor, Garcia argued in favor of a bill that would prevent teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity with younger students.
“Gay is not a permanent thing, LGBT is not a permanent thing,” Garcia began. “This isn’t about targeting. This is perhaps about rerouting the responsibilities back to the parents.”
Garcia went on to spout fake statistics about LGBT suicide rates and told a story about a trans woman who prefers to date women. Which proves something, apparently.
Garcia is the founder of Latinas For Trump, for which Trump rewarded her with a Homeland Security post.
She was elected to the Florida Senate in November 2020 in the now-infamous “ghost candidate” scandal in which votes were siphoned away from the incumbent by a man with same last name. Garcia, allegedly, was not involved in the plot which has resulted so far in one arrest.
Florida state Sen. Ileana Garcia (R) expressed her support for a so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill on Tuesday by arguing that “LGBT is not a permanent thing.”
During a 15-minute speech on the Senate floor, Garcia argued in favor of a bill that would prevent teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity with younger students.
“Gay is not a permanent thing, LGBT is not a permanent thing,” Garcia began. “This isn’t about targeting. This is perhaps about rerouting the responsibilities back to the parents.”
The lawmaker insisted that her friends and family are “all LGBT but I don’t pander on that.”
Garcia then seemed shocked as she told the story of one transgender woman who prefers to date women.
“A friend of mine went through the whole transition as an older man, 58-years-old, became a woman and guess what?” she said. “He still likes women! He went through the whole process and we’d laugh together and I’d say, why do you want to deal with the hormones? Why do you want to worry about the extensions and the hair and boobs and the nails and he loved it.”
“So he had a sexual experience,” she added. “And he realized that he continued to like women.”
Garcia also shared false “statistics” about gender-affirming surgery, which has been shown to reduce suicidal ideation.
“You know, a lot of people don’t know that I think that the statistics are that 4 out of 7 people who do the full transition end up committing suicide because it’s tough,” she claimed.
Parents across the country are looking to national, state, and district leaders to support our nation’s students, help them recover from the pandemic, and provide them the academic and mental health supports they need.
Instead, leaders in Florida are prioritizing hateful bills that hurt some of the students most in need.
The Department of Education has made clear that all schools receiving federal funding must follow federal civil rights law, including Title IX’s protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
We stand with our LGBTQ+ students in Florida and across the country, and urge Florida leaders to make sure all their students are protected and supported.
“This one is personal to me. Because of my former boss. I have a 14-year-old son who is gay. Recently came out as gay. I have his permission to talk about this. He didn’t want to tell his friends where I worked.
“He was ashamed of where I worked, rightfully so, but also the fact that there’s this ‘don’t say gay’ – even slogan – out there, it’s making children feel different.
“It’s creating a problem where I don’t think there is one.” – Former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham, today on The View. Watch the clip.
Don’t bother vaccinating your kids against COVID, even though the CDC says it’s a good idea. Quit fussing; they’ll be fine. Dr. Joseph Ladapo promises.
You don’t have to wear that mask, either. Dr. Ladapo says it’s a lie that they save lives, and that doctors who believe otherwise are “zombies.” That was his actual word.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his recently confirmed surgeon general know they are a lot smarter than all those epidemiologists, virologists, cardiologists and pulmonary specialists at the Centers for Disease Control and state and local public-health officials. They are the heroes of the narrative they’ve created and they are ready to deliver the
Gov. Ron DeSantis held this slickly produced event on March 7, showcasing several COVID-denying medical experts. Screenshot from DeSantis’ YouTube channel. – Original Credit: YouTube screenshot (Courtesy photo)
message with lights, cameras and snappy catchphrases.
DeSantis has picked up the phrase “COVID Theater” and is using it a lot lately. It’s an odd choice coming from the office that has stage-managed a public health crisis into a series of sound bites and rants about freedom and jobs.
Monday’s 90-minute roundtable to announce the anti-vax position for kids took things to a whole new level. Shot in a studio, it featured a large table with DeSantis flanked, Last-Supper-style, by a cast of six COVID skeptics. Behind them, a giant, curved video screen displayed more than 200 individual (people pictured on) video feeds. According to the Tampa Bay Times, many of them were state employees, presumably getting paid to serve as living wallpaper. The screen would occasionally be taken over by the giant heads of more “experts,” including some of the nation’s most notorious anti-mask, anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine advocates.
All this time and money – taxpayers’ time and money – was devoted to delivering one message: Parents don’t need to vaccinate healthy children against COVID. But there was an insidious, ridiculous subtext that the bulk of the last two years has been an elaborate illusion crafted to make people afraid.
It’s a sharp contrast to the message being put out by the nation’s medical community. After two years of trying to predict an ever-shifting pandemic, health leaders are wearily gathering around this consensus: They are not really sure what’s coming next. COVID could be mostly gone by the end of the year. The highly infectious omicron variant could continue to infect people. Or we could see yet another variant – possibly even more contagious, or more debilitating, or more fatal. Which option is most likely? They don’t know.
All they can do is recommend the safest decisions, with the most medical support. And that means vaccination, for kids as young as 5. It’s true that children don’t catch COVID easily– at least, not the current variant. It’s also true that vaccines aren’t providing protection for as long as some people thought. Florida has dropped from its 60,000-plus peak of daily new infections to a still-grim 1,800. But COVID is still a threat, and about 170 people die every day. Kids are still getting infected as well. The vaccine reduces children’s chance of getting COVID significantly – up to 91 percent – and it lessens symptoms and duration. If another nasty variant emerges, it could save lives.
That doesn’t seem to move Ladapo or his boss DeSantis, who seems more concerned with coming up with new ways to make “Fauci” into a verb and yelling at high school students to take off their masks. They’ve co-opted a dangerous, highly infectious disease into a political stunt. And now they’re urging parents to ignore the best available protections for their children.
If this is a play, DeSantis is the one writing the script, seemingly blind to the reality that he’s directing a farce.
Michigan state and local Republican leaders are condemning comments made by a GOP state House candidate who recently suggested rape victims “lie back and enjoy it,” after he spent months parroting pandemic conspiracy theories and sharing anti-Semitic rhetoric.
However, Michigan Republican Party Chairman Ron Weiser and others affiliated with the party are not calling on Robert “RJ” Regan to withdraw from a special state House election, a race where he’s a heavy favorite.
“Having three daughters, and I tell my daughters, ‘well if rape is inevitable, you should just lie back and enjoy it so.’ That’s not how we roll, that’s not how I won this election. We go right at it,” Regan said, according to a video of the panel posted on Rumble.
Regan, the GOP-backed nominee for a Michigan state House seat, used the right-wing video site Rumble to endorse the killings of President Joe Biden, Prime Ministers Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand and Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, among others.
Regan has also frequently shared right-wing media-fueled conspiracy theories on social media, including advising people to “study” and “apply” QAnon to their lives like they do with the Bible, and falsely claiming that Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman “staged” his famous face down with insurrectionists inside the Capitol.
Regan is a 2020 election conspiracy theorist and has claimed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a “fake war just like the fake pandemic.”
Robert Regan, who just won the GOP primary for Michigan's 74th House district, said to those claiming decertification of 2020 is impossible:⁰⁰"It's like … telling my daughters, 'well, if rape is inevitable you should just lay back and enjoy it.'” pic.twitter.com/7oPx6RPqrb
Notie they not only want to block abortion in their own state, but want to prevent the people in their state from using a legal medical service in another state. Think of it. This is the party of Personal responsibility and small government. I guess they want to shrink government small enough to fit in your underwear.
The measure could signal a new strategy by the antiabortion movement to extend its influence beyond the GOP-led states poised to enact tighter restrictions if the Supreme Court weakens its landmark precedent upholding abortion rights.
Missouri state Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman (R) is shown in December in St. Louis. (Neeta Satam for The Washington Post) (Neeta Satam /For The Washington Post)
The pattern emerges whenever a Republican-led state imposes new restrictions on abortion: People seeking the procedure cross state lines to find treatment in places with less-restrictive laws.
Now, a prominent antiabortion lawmaker in Missouri, from where thousands of residents have traveled to next-door Illinois to receive abortions since Missouri passed one of the country’s strictest abortion laws in 2019, believes she has found a solution.
An unusual new provision, introduced by state Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman (R), would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident obtain an abortion out of state, using the novel legal strategy behind the restrictive law in Texas that since September has banned abortions in that state after six weeks of pregnancy.
Coleman has attached the measure as an amendment to several abortion-related bills that have made it through committee and are waiting to be heard on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Abortion rights advocates say the measure is unconstitutional because it would effectively allow states to enact laws beyond their jurisdictions, but the Republican-led Missouri legislature has been supportive of creative approaches to antiabortion legislation in the past. The measure could signal a new strategy by the antiabortion movement to extend its influence beyond the conservative states poised to tighten restrictions if the Supreme Court moves this summer to overturn its landmark precedent protecting abortion rights.
An abortion doctor from Kansas City, Mo., travels across state lines every month to provide care at clinics in the Midwest. (Whitney Leaming, Alice Li/The Washington Post)
** you may need to go to the link above to see the video, it wont post on here**
“If your neighboring state doesn’t have pro-life protections, it minimizes the ability to protect the unborn in your state,” said Coleman, who said she’s been trying to figure out how to crack down on out-of-state abortions since Planned Parenthood opened an abortion clinic on the Illinois-Missouri border in 2019.
A Supreme Court decision that undercuts Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion across the United States,probably would create a national landscape that encourages patients to cross state lines for abortions, with Democrat-led states moving to protect abortion rights as Republican-led states further limit them.
The trend has been apparent in Texas, where the majority of people seeking abortions since the state’s six-week abortion ban took effect in September have been able to obtain the procedure at clinics in neighboring states, or by ordering abortion pills in the mail, according to a report from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project. Demand for abortions has skyrocketed in Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico and other nearby states. Planned Parenthood clinics in states that border Texas reported that patient traffic increased by nearly 800 percent, and independent providers reported comparable increases.
Since Planned Parenthood opened its clinic on the Missouri-Illinois border in October 2019, 10,644 Missouri residents have received abortion care at the clinic, according to Planned Parenthood. By early 2021, the last remaining clinic in Missouri was typically providing between 10 and 20 abortions per month, according to preliminary data from the Missouri Department of Health.
Coleman said she hopes her amendment will thwart efforts by Missourians to cross state lines for abortions. The measure would target anyone even tangentially involved in an abortion performed on a Missouri resident, including the hotline staffers who make the appointments, the marketing representatives who advertise out-of-state clinics, and the Illinois and Kansas-based doctors who handle the procedure. Her amendment also would make it illegal to manufacture, transport, possess or distribute abortion pills in Missouri.
Olivia Cappello, the press officer for state media campaigns at Planned Parenthood, called the idea “wild” and “bonkers.” She called the proposal “the most extraordinary provision we have ever seen.”
If enacted, the measure almost certainly would face a swift legal challenge.
Elizabeth Myers, an attorney for Texas abortion rights groups in a court challenge to the six-week abortion ban, said states cannot regulate activities beyond their borders. She drew a parallel to marijuana laws, which also vary from state to state: While Texas lawmakers can outlaw marijuana, and punish anyone who uses the drug within Texas borders, she said, they have no jurisdiction over a Texas resident who uses marijuana in a state where its use is legal.
“A state’s power is over its own citizens and its own geographical boundaries,” Myers said. “These are limits imposed by the federal constitution and federal law.”
Coleman’s proposal still may succeed in deterring out-of-state abortions, said Myers. Like the Texas law, the proposal itself could have a chilling effect, where doctors in surrounding states stop performing abortions before courts have an opportunity to intervene, worried that they may face a flurry of lawsuits if they violate the law.
Coleman rejects arguments that her law is unconstitutional.
“That’s what they said about the Texas law, and every bill passed to protect the unborn for the last 49 years,” she said.
Supporters of abortion rights stand on both sides of a street near the Gateway Arch in St. Louis on May 30, 2019, as they denounce the Trump administration’s tightening of rules for federal funding of reproductive services. (Jeff Roberson/AP)
Coleman prayed outside the clinic on the Illinois-Missouri border on the day it opened, she said. Since then, she said, she’s been talking to “anyone who would listen” about legal strategies for decreasing the number of Missouri women who seek abortions in other states.
While Coleman says she has been happy to see the sharp decline in abortions in Missouri, she says she can’t fully celebrate the success when so many women are obtaining the same procedure a few miles away.
“It’s just tragic,” she said of the number of Missouri residents who get abortions in Illinois. “It feels very sad and heavy.”
Abortion clinics in states that support abortion rights are preparing for a surge of new patients if Roe is overturned. They are opening new locations and advocating for legislation that would allow them to accommodate more people. Lawmakers in several states have proposed bills this session that would allow nurse practitioners and nurse midwives to perform abortions, in addition to physicians, while others are planning to create statewide databases that will allow out-of-state patients to more easily plan their abortion care.
“We’ve got already half of states that have passed some kind of law to restrict or eliminate abortion access,” said California state Sen. Nancy Skinner (D), who has introduced legislation to help make California a “sanctuary state” for people seeking abortion access. “We definitely are and intend to be a national beacon for reproductive freedom and reproductive justice.”
NEW
A new Missouri bill would prohibit women leaving the state to get an abortion.
If this style of legislation is somehow found legal, it would have a huge impact in a post-Roe v Wade world. https://t.co/kpPiOzVj3J
Lou Engle is helping to send out calls to the body of Christ for prayer and fasting for the LGBTQ community. The call has become known as the Behold the Lamb Fast. This fast, which began Monday, March 7, prompts believers to pray for members of the LGBTQ community. People who participate in this fast will also take communion daily.
The focus of this movement is that the LGBTQ community will behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and its goal is that the LGBTQ might understand God’s great love for them and Jesus Christ’s sacrifice for them.
Lou has partnered with Jeffrey McCall and Freedom March in past years. Freedom March is a ministry that unites former LGBTQ to share their testimonies in major U.S. cities. The former LGBTQ individuals then march in the downtown of those cities, publicly professing Jesus is Lord.
That would be same Jeffrey McCall who recently confessed on Facebook that he just can’t stop hooking up with multiple men.
As for Lou Engle, he last appeared on JMG in March 2020 when he launched a fast for God to “stretch out his rod of authority” and “rebuke” the coronavirus.
Before that, Engle appeared here when he rallied with Kanye West ahead of leading a Boston “ex-gay march” with, ahem, Jeffrey McCall.
In August 2018, Engle launched a three-day fast to stop witches from blocking Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing before the Senate.
Engle first appeared on JMG in 2012 when he declared that abortions cause tornadoes and that his prayers caused the passage of California’s Proposition 8.
In the waning days of Donald Trump‘s presidency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identified specific threats ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol but didn’t share that intelligence until days after the violent siege, according to a government watchdog report.
The DHS Office of Inspector General released its report Tuesday more than a year after it launched its investigation into the “role and activity” of the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) “in preparing for and responding to the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
On that day, hundreds of Trump supporters overran the police and violently broke into the Capitol building in an effort to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden‘s win in the 2020 presidential election.
Homeland Security, according to the OIG report, had specific intelligence relating to what would eventually come to pass on Jan. 6 but didn’t share that information until two days afterwards.
“I&A identified specific threat information related to the events on January 6, 2021, but did not issue any intelligence products about these threats until January 8, 2021,” the OIG report says.
According to the report’s findings:
Open source collectors in I&A’s Current and Emerging Threats Center collected open source threat information but did not produce any actionable information. Collectors also described hesitancy following scrutiny of I&A’s reporting in response to civil unrest in the summer of 2020. Although an open source collector submitted one product for review on January 5, 2021, I&A did not distribute the product until 2 days after the events at the U.S. Capitol. Additionally, I&A’s Counterterrorism Mission Center (CTMC) identified indicators that the January 6, 2021 events might turn violent but did not issue an intelligence product outside I&A, even though it had done so for other events. Instead, CTMC identified these threat indicators for an internal I&A leadership briefing, only. Finally, the Field Operations Division (FOD) considered issuing intelligence products on at least three occasions prior to January 6, 2021, but FOD did not disseminate any such products ultimately. It is unclear why FOD failed to disseminate these products.
According to the report, even when threat information was sent to “local partners” via email, that information was “not as widely disseminated as I&A’s typical intelligence products,” resulting in I&A being “unable to provide its many state, local, and Federal partners with timely, actionable, and predictive intelligence.”
In a partially-redacted segment of the report, the OIG details the difference in leadership at I&A in the summer of 2020 and in January 2021. In connection with unrest in Portland related to ongoing protests and demonstrations over racial injustice sparked by the since-proven murder of George Floyd by former police officer Derek Chauvin, I&A “faced criticism for compiling intelligence on American journalists reporting on the unrest as well as on non-violent protesters.”
The result, according to the OIG report, was a change in policy at the department, setting a much higher bar for sharing intelligence information.
When we asked the Acting Deputy Under Secretary about the change in CETC’s approach to reporting, she noted that there was different leadership for the summer of 2020 compared to January 6, 2021. She said the prior leadership pushed collectors to report on anything related to violence, including potential threats or tactics and techniques used by individuals that may be associated with violence. In contrast, the new leadership encouraged collectors to issue intelligence reports on threats only when they were confident the threats were real. The Acting Deputy Under Secretary said this change in direction went too far and caused collectors to institute a very high threshold for reporting information.
In one instance, an investigator had collected information “about an individual arriving in the Washington, D.C. area and searching for a location for armed individuals to park their cars,” the report said. “The individual previously posted online that he would arrive in the area and he was Washington, D.C.”
However, a peer reviewer said that collector’s report didn’t meet the department’s reporting thresholds. The investigator apparently sought to disseminate the information by going up the chain of command, but by the time they had permission to do so — on Jan. 8 — it was too late.
In another example, analysis about “seven observed or partially observed indicators of potential violence associated specifically with the protests planned for Jan. 6” was used in an internal briefing only, and not shared with other departments.
In one illustrative chart, the OIG report compares indicators of possible protest-related violence from the summer of 2020 in Portland, Oregon, to indicators ahead of Jan. 6. Although investigators identified seven indicators ahead of the violence in Washington—compared to five indicators related to Portland—the Jan. 6 analysis wasn’t disseminated.
As a result of the report, the OIG recommend enhanced training and other processes to improve timeliness
The situation with the routers I thought was solved. I was unhappy but about to get even more unhappy. I opened programs and started adjusting setting on them. And hit a road block the size of a tank. On my browser I got the message that a third party organization was now in control of my browser settings. If you know me at all you know I cannot tolerate not having full control of my computers. So first I tracked down what the warning meant. It means a security setting was changing how my browsers were acting and what they would display. So in this case I had added two new security programs, one on the router I then cancelled but it wouldn’t stop until Apr 6th and the VPN I use had added a safety protocol add on that also was to prevent some of the very things the router added security did. Again some of that was done by sending all your traffic through their servers so they could monitor the addresses of where you went to make sure they were not on a malicious site list . I take my web surfing privacy seriously. To the point I wont let my ad blocker down even to access news / cartoon sites. I have three anti-tracker programs to block and trackers and then to find and delete any that get through. There is somethings you have to let happen and get through in order to surf the web, but that doesn’t mean you have to leave them on your system when you are done.
So what to do. I clearly couldn’t use the new router until after the 6th of April. I also needed to shut down the VPN add on. There was only one way to ensure it was fixed correctly. Yesterday morning I removed the new router and hooked up the old one. Hey the Russian hack was causing me less problems than the new router and my own security apps were. But a weird thing happened. When I went into the router settings, and I had full control again. I could set the settings I wanted to set the way I wanted them. Interesting. Was the fact that it was offline for several days so couldn’t contract its control network what cleared it? I thought I had unplugged it several times but maybe I did not? Or maybe I did not leave it unplugged long enough? Or was it something on my computers feeding that setting lock out. I did not know but it is still working correctly even today. Which makes me happy, but sets up more questions. Do I switch routers after April 6th?
So now I needed to reset everything one more time. So first I put the Windows USB in the video computer, restarted it coming up on the USB drive. I put the blogging computer into recovery mode / environment and set it up to do the factory wipe and install. Waited for that to be done on each. When they were done I went through the settings in the control panel and then the Windows settings menus. I renamed the computers. Hours slowly creeped by. I listened to podcasts while I worked. Then the going online to update Windows and install all the security and other programs. More hours went by. With Windows, between each set of upgrades the computers had to be restarted and the settings checked again. But late yesterday about 7 PM I had the computers loaded and checked. I was happy with the installs and the way the programs were working. But there was still work to be done. I had to run the defrag program I prefer and not only defrag the programs but the free space as well. I also had to move files from storage on the hard drives. So I set that to happen and took my sore tired body to bed. I got up at 4:30 to write this and get started on some posting. I have to go this morning to have my eyes again checked. The doctor was not happy with something happening in my left eye. So Ron has to go with me. My eyes will be dilated. So when I get home my posting will have to wait until I can see again. I may lose this entire day again. Sunday through Wednesday lost, and Friday morning will be taken up with the driver’s license renewal.
Scottie's Playtime 