After President Biden’s historic Pro-Democracy speech last night calling for a United America and the denouncement of divisive MAGA Republicans, the mainstream media showed how truly ugly they’ve become. Several outlets spun the speech into some divisive, anti-unifying performance, highlighting the Mainstream Media’s goal to both sides everything, and turn everything into a horse race. Meidas Contributor Texas Paul reacts.
DeathSantis is an arrogant bully, a thug who believes he is an absolute ruler and that Florida is kingdom to do with as he wishes. He is over the top unreasonable in his attacks on anyone who disagrees with him, and he uses the state government to viscously attack reporters or state workers who even mildly criticize him. The following article shows how facts do not matter to DeathSantis nor his staff and that they constantly smear their opponents or those they disagree with. Thanks to Ali for the link. Hugs
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on August 3, 2022 (Photo by Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Yesterday’s Popular Information newsletter exposed that DeSantis, his campaign, and the Florida Republican Party were smearing a political rival — Karla Hernández, Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Florida. DeSantis and his operatives were claiming that, as president of a teachers union, Hernández “protected a sexual predator for years and accompanied him through numerous investigations into his sexual assaults of multiple students.” The truth, as Popular Information documented, is that Hernández did nothing to protect the sexual predator, Wendell Nibbs, and never accompanied him to any investigative hearing or proceeding.
The DeSantis campaign did not respond to Popular Information’s request for comment prior to publication. Instead, after publication, the DeSantis campaign repeatedly attacked Popular Information on Twitter and accused this newsletter of promoting “disinformation.” On the campaign’s official Twitter account, @DeSantisWarRoom, it attacked Popular information at least 9 times. These tweets were then amplified by campaign staffers, including Director of Rapid Response Christina Pushaw.
The DeSantis campaign suggested Popular Information’s report that Hernández took office as president of the Miami-Dade teachers’ union (UTD) on May 2016 was inaccurate. Popular Information’s report, however, is correct. Hernández was elected to the position in March 2016 and took office two months later.
🧵Debunking disinformation from "Popular Information", a newsletter that is acting as Karla Hernández Mats' public relations firm:
1. Karla was elected president of teacher union in FEBRUARY 2016. Prior to that, from 2013-16, she was Secretary of UTD. Nibbs campaigned for Karla. pic.twitter.com/EajV86sESM
The exact date that Hernández took office is irrelevant to the very serious allegations the DeSantis campaign made against Hernández. But the DeSantis campaign is unable to provide any evidence to back up its claims. The Orlando Sentinel asked the DeSantis campaign to substantiate its allegations, and it did not go well:
Asked what proof the governor had for the basis of his allegations, Bryan Griffin, the governor’s press secretary, deferred the question to campaign staff.
The campaign sent a flyer from the Republican Party of Florida that repeated the allegation that Hernandez-Mats protected Nibbs and a Miami Herald article about the investigation, which also described his support of her candidacy for union president in 2016, but nothing that showed she protected Nibbs or hindered the investigation.
The DeSantis campaign is deeply committed to the fiction that a 2019 Miami Herald article supports its claims. It does not. The article describes the monstrous conduct of Nibbs and the failure of criminal and civil investigators to get him out of the school system. You can read it here.
Colleen Wright, the author of the 2019 Miami Herald article who now writes for the Tampa Bay Times, confirmed in a Tweet that claims Hernández protected Nibbs or accompanied him to any proceeding were false.
1) @FloridaGOP is wrong for saying Hernandez-Mats accompanied Nibbs in investigations. I have the names of the stewards who represented him, and she wasn't among them. That never happened. It is a union's job to represent their members.
In another tweet, the DeSantis campaign attacked Popular Information and attempted to offer proof that Hernández lobbied the Biden administration to stop collecting data about sexual assault in K-12 schools. But the information screenshotted in the tweet (from a right-wing research institution) establishes that the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), where Hernández also works, opposed an entirely different regulation imposed by Trump. The Trump regulation related to sexual assault investigations at colleges and universities. While the DeSantis campaign wants to paint Hernández and unions as permissive to sexual assault, the unions opposed the Trump rule because it created new obstacles to proving sexual assault claims.
The point of the DeSantis campaign’s attacks is not to establish the facts. The point is to deflect responsibility for pushing disinformation until people lose interest.
DeSantis and his operatives are not used to being held accountable.
But we stand by our reporting. And we will not be intimidated by these tactics.
Again the Libs Of TikTok with smears of pedophilia and attacks against teachers. Yet some people still believe the lies this group puts out about trans people, and kids being rushed into surgery or forced to transition. Hugs
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), his campaign, and the Florida Republican Party have launched a coordinated attack on Karla Hernández, the Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Florida. They claim Hernández, as president of the United Teachers of Dade (UTD) union, “protected a sexual predator for years and accompanied him through numerous investigations into his sexual assaults of multiple students.” This claim, Popular Information has learned, is false.
The allegation against Hernández appears to have originated on Twitter from a notorious right-wing disinformation account, Libs of Tik Tok. News of Hernández’s selection as the Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor, running on a ticket with Charlie Crist, was first reported on August 26 at 2:01 PM Eastern. At 8:36 PM, Libs of Tik Tok posted that Hernández was involved in a coverup “for a teacher who pled guilty to sexual assault of a student.”
But it is false that Hernández “protected” Wendell Nibbs or “accompanied him through numerous investigations.” The known allegations against Nibbs span from May 2004 to May 2016. Hernández did not become president of UTD, which represents more than 28,000 educators, until May 2016.
When an investigation into a teacher is criminal, UTD does not play any role, a union spokesperson told Popular Information. UTD confirmed that, after Hernández became president in 2016, UTD had no involvement with the investigation into Nibbs.
As the allegations against Hernandez failed to penetrate major media outlets, DeSantis himself voiced the debunked allegations. “You do not put union politics ahead of middle school students who are in danger of being sexually abused,” DeSantis said on Tuesday.
DeSantis Spreading False Libs of TikTok Claim Against Charlie Crist’s Running Mate: Report https://t.co/HBlezTxqaz via @mediaite
The UTD member Karla Hernandez Mats protected through years of investigations and student rape allegations pled guilty to rape of a child and was sentenced to prison in Jan 2020.
By May 2020, media was back to promoting Karla for her pro-lockdown stance.https://t.co/CmZ0UWxLOP
I wish people would judge someone by the tactics they stoop to. I don’t mind hardhitting stuff as long as it’s true. This acceptance of utter lying unapologetic spewing of batshit as a cool tactic is a major reason I despise any and all GOPers.
Well lets hope the democrats get a move on and are planning on calling the press together and call out the lies… and use the word LIES and point out how they have nothing to run on except fake take toc conspiracy theories and hate mongering . But it is Florida so ………..
What this guy is spouting is gaining traction all across the nation, not because more people are getting religious but because these type of assholes are pushing their Christian Taliban ideas backed up by the Republican political party and the violent maga brownshirt enforcers now enforcing a minority view on the public with little pushback from law enforcement. Hugs
Dalton Clodfelter accused The Satanic Temple’s Lucien Greaves of indoctrinating kids… by teaching them compassion
Dalton Clodfelter rants about Lucien Greaves (screenshot via Rumble)
If white nationalist Dalton Clodfelter has his way, the United States will become a Christian theocracy and The Satanic Temple’s co-founder Lucien Greaves will be imprisoned for life for his act of “terrorism” by… offering kids an After School Satan program to counter Bible clubs.
During his show Tuesday night, Clodfelter, for some reason, rehashed a story from January about an After School Satan club at an elementary school in Moline, Illinois. In short, the club was an alternative to a Christian club the district had already approved. Parents were furious because they assumed something evil was taking place (which is not true), and several of them protested outside the school, but administrators had no legal right to refuse the Satanists’ offer and said as much to the press.
Clodfelter didn’t mention any of those legal details. Instead, he just played a four-minute segment from KWQC before launching into his beliefs about how we ought to live in a Christian nation. He said Christianity should be the “national religion” and that the religion should be taught (presumably as fact) in every school. He claimed, with a straight face, that the ASS club represented “indoctrination of children.”
Then he launched into a broader attack on religious pluralism… before literally threatening Greaves:
After rehashing an old story about After School Satan clubs, white nationalist Dalton Clodfelter said non-Christians shouldn't be allowed to hold elected office… and that The Satanic Temple's Lucien Greaves should be charged with treason.
You see, I don’t believe that all religions are equal. I don’t necessarily believe that you should be able to serve public office if you are not Christian. I think if you are a Satan worshipper, if you are an atheist, if you are a Jew, if you are a Muslim, your interests do not equate the interests of the American people. You do not represent this country. This country was built on the backs of hard working Christian men, and what you are doing is simply an attack on faith.
…
I believe that we are going to take this country back and I believe that we are going to win. And when we do win, we will lock up The Satanic Temple guy, Lucien Greaves or whatever his name is, we will lock him up for attempting to indoctrinate children, because his plan is to destroy this nation’s morality. That is an act of terrorism and an act of treason.
Anyone who decided to indoctrinate a child into their false religion should be locked away forever for treason and domestic terrorism because they are destroying this nation from the inside.
Clodfelter’s arguments boil down to:
Non-Christians shouldn’t be in public office… violating the Establishment Clause and “No Religious Test” part of the Constitution.
Non-Christians “don’t represent” this country… when, by definition, they literally do.
The Founders were Christians… which is wildly inaccurate.
The mere existence of Satanists is an “attack on faith”… which is bizarre when you consider what the Satanists in question are attempting to teach.
Teaching kids compassion and empathy and humility and honesty and respect would “destroy this nation’s morality.”
Offering an explicitly non-Christian alternative to an after school Bible club is an “act of terrorism and an act of treason” and should be punished with a life-long prison sentence. (Technically, treason is punishable by execution, though he didn’t say that.)
It’s just Christian extremism, full of lies and threats, with no discernible pushback because he’s speaking in a right-wing bubble.
Despite that, Lucien Greaves laughed off the threat in an email to me:
I’m not familiar with this little Dalton fellow in the video, and I suppose that my immediate concern should be whether or not he’s attached to violent radicals, as he’s calling for me to be tried for treason. But, to be honest, it looks too much like a campaign video made by a kid running for middle school class president to be intimidating.
Poor Dalton tries to strike a commanding presence, but it is all too obvious that there is nothing that he doesn’t fear, as he fears what he doesn’t understand. But who knows? Maybe he’ll grow up and start experimenting—reading novels, eating “exotic” foods—and Dalton will start to appreciate, rather than fear, the unfamiliar world around him.
If not, I’m sure that when he and his friends come to arrest me for treason they’ll be wearing adorable little matching hats.
The problem with extremists like Clodfelter isn’t usually the guy himself, but rather what his followers may do. Here’s hoping no one’s listening.
Trigger warning for kidnapping kids, religious bigotry, child physical abuse, child sexual abuse, many laws broken to steal a teenager from a safe home and take him to a Christian prison until his father could rescue him, but it doesn’t tell how long the teen was there and what the dad had to do to rescue him. Hugs.
We have a serious problem with the Christian nationalist that feel only their church doctrines and made-up rules have to be followed and the laws of the nation are unimportant. Plus add to that the idea that children at all ages but even more troubling in their later teens are still the property of the parents or guardians. Property to do what you wish with them. Which when it comes to religions is scary as can be and opens the child up to abuse. Yes this is a story I should not have read. It set me back. Once I realized what it was before I continued, I took steps to protect myself and placed three video tabs on the other computer / monitor. All three are distracting and I can instantly switch to them and lose myself in them as needed. I have done that. If anyone noticed the delay in my morning posting it is because of this story and my need to walk away from it. But having read it I think it is really important other people know of this and we do all we can to stop it. Think of the lifelong damage this boy will have due to his mistreatment and abuse because some people see him not as a person but as property to be controlled. I am not going to color or highlight anything. I am just too shaky. I read it once to decide if I should post it. I read it a second time to copy and paste it. I am sick to my stomach and eyes are watering, and I just cannot deal with this anymore today. Hugs
The longtime former dean of Agape Boarding School in Missouri, Julio Sandoval, faces up to five years in prison
The former dean of Agape Boarding School in Missouri conspired with a California woman to have her son handcuffed and transported over 24 hours to that school, according to a recently unsealed federal indictment. The two people now charged with crimes face up to five years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine.
On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert announced that the man and woman in question had been arrested for the alleged crime.
The woman is 35-year-old Shana Gaviola. About two years ago, her son began living with a different family and demanded emancipation. He wanted a legal separation from his parents. He accused Gaviola of domestic abuse and obtained an order of protection to keep her away from him. She was legally forbidden from interacting with him or from taking away his phone.
The man is 41-year-old Julio Sandoval. He used to be the dean of Agape Boarding School in Missouri but has since transferred to Lighthouse Christian Academy in the same state. He also manages a business called Safe, Sound Secure Youth Ministries, which is essentially a service that takes kids against their will to Christian schools or treatment centers with the approval of their parents. (“The transport is the first phase of this amazing journey called ‘change’,” Sandoval writes on the website.)
Last year, the two of them worked on a plan to send her son to Lighthouse Christian Academy. But how could she do that when she wasn’t allowed to interact with him? Simple. They hired outsiders to do the job for them.
Despite the protection order, Gaviola and Sandoval made plans for Gaviola’s son to be forcibly transported from California to Missouri. On Aug. 21, 2021, individuals acting on behalf of Gaviola and Sandoval found the minor at a business in Fresno, handcuffed him, and forced him into a car. He remained in handcuffs for over 24 hours while they drove to Stockton, Missouri. He was then held at the boarding school until his father was able to free him.
The story is even worse in the actual indictment. Gaviola was also said to have forged a court document that said he had the right to do this.
All of that is awful enough. But it’s deeply troubling that Agape Boarding School, Gaviola’s former employer, is involved in all of this, because that school has been a hotbed of abuse in its own right.
Last year, five staffers at Agape were charged with over a dozen felony assault counts… and yet the state’s attorney general had originally recommended prosecutors go after 22 employees on 65 total counts. One of the victims said he was “beaten, assaulted, starved,” and that other kids had been “slammed on tile, concrete and asphalt.” The decision not to go after all those other adults infuriated the attorney general so much that he asked to be taken off the case.
In addition to all that, the school’s in-house doctor, David Earl Smock, was charged in December with—wait for it—”second-degree statutory sodomy, third-degree child molestation of a child less than 14 years of age and enticement or attempted enticement of a child less than 15 years of age.” The school’s doctor was accused of a slew of sex crimes! Smock has since pleaded not guilty. (A different child sued Smock for sexual abusethis week.)
All of this was so horrible that Republicans in Missouri’s legislature eventually considered and passed a bill requiring some oversight of these schools. Until recently, faith-based schools in Missouri had been exempt from any statewide regulations. Now they must meet some basic health and safety guidelines, conduct background checks on employees, provide students with basic necessities like food and health care, and give parents access to their kids at all times.
The federal indictment this week says the teenager was sent to a boarding school in Stockton, Missouri… which, as it turns out, is also the home of Agape.
For the mother’s part, her lawyer told The Daily Beast there’s more to the story,
Anthony Capozzi, the attorney defending Gaviola in court, told The Daily Beast, “What’s in the indictment is not totally accurate to what happened. It only presents one side of the story. If Shana Gaviola had known there was a valid restraining order, this wouldn’t have happened. That’s all I can say at this point.”
Gaviola “will be fighting this case, and will take it to trial,” Capozzi added, saying that there “is a reason she did what she did. To protect her son. And to protect others. There’s so much more than what’s in this indictment. So much more.”
Whatever happened with these people and at that school, there seems to be blame to spread around. The amount of torture and trauma is off the charts. The scary thing is that there seems to be no end in sight to the depths of the horrors. Each week brings with it a new revelation of how Christianity gave these people cover to inflict all sorts of pain upon children.
When it comes to creative methods of catching prey not many animals are able to rival spiders. Not just being among the small group of animals that create traps to catch their prey but also having many different methods of trapping the prey. And central to nearly all their trapping methods is their ability to spin a web. However, the way in which they do this is evolutionary puzzling because the way they catch their prey is quite advanced and it seems that the precursor to these abilities: just the ability to produce silk, would be useless to hunt creatures on its own. So how did spiders develop such complex prey catching abilities
I posted a great video clip from TYT where Cenk and Ana talk about how Tucker Carlson talks that it has been proven that the hospitals all over the country … are chopping up kids into to body parts. We know that for a fact he said. Well it is like when Bill O’Rielly called the abortion doctor Tiller the baby killer night after night. Someone killed him to stop the baby killing. So now the rabid right wing maga are threatening to bomb hospitals to save the kids. All because of lies. If you are part of spreading those lies, you need to understand first your lying and second you are inciting violence against both the LGBTQ+ and those that help them with medical best practices. Do you know there is genital mutilations done on babies that all these groups sanction including the government? Yes the cutting off of part of the penis that makes the gland less sensitive and deadens pleasure. It is called circumcision. Routinely done on baby boys. Go after that and leave the trans kids alone as they are not having surgery as kids. Hugs
The hospital has been the target of an online misinformation campaign because it helps transgender youth.
Following a weeks-long harassment campaign from anti-LGBTQ groups, police are investigating an anonymous bomb threat that was called in to Boston Children’s Hospital Tuesday night.
According to NBC News, the Boston Police Department sent its bomb squad to the hospital at around 8:14 p.m. on Tuesday, but found no explosive devices or suspicious items. On Wednesday morning, Detective John Boyle said that the investigation was still active.
“We are relieved no bomb was found and that employees and patients are safe,” the hospital said in a statement. “We remain vigilant in our efforts to battle the spread of false information about the hospital and our caregivers. We are committed to ensuring the hospital is a safe and secure place for all who work here and come here. We will provide additional information as we are able.”
In recent weeks, Boston Children’s Hospital, which ranks among the best pediatric medical facilities in the country, has been the target of what it has described as “hostile internet activity, phone calls, and harassing emails including threats of violence toward our clinicians and staff.” The harassment campaign is the result of misinformation that has proliferated on right-wing social media about the hospital’s Gender Multispecialty Service program, which treats children experiencing gender dysphoria.
On August 11, Chaya Raichik, who runs the anti-LGBTQ Twitter account “Libs of TikTok,” reposted an “expose” by Christina Buttons for the right-wing site Post Millennial, sponsored by conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, the CEO of My Pillow. The “special report” consisted of videos publicly available on Boston Children’s website along with commentary insinuating that children as young as two or three were receiving gender-affirming surgery at the hospital.
Fact-checking site PolitiFact later debunked the claims. Patients qualifying for gender-reaffirming surgery must be at least 18-years-old and have a “persistent, well-documented, gender dysphoria,” according to the hospital’s website. “All genital surgeries are only performed on patients age 18 and older.”
After the initial post went viral, Raichik posted an additional 13 tweets peddling misinformation about the hospital and Gender Multispecialty Service program.
In the weeks since Raichik’s tweets, Boston Children’s Hospital physicians have been inundated with death threats and harassing calls and emails. The hospital has also increased its security.
As the GOP lurches toward authoritarianism, one of its key tactics is to suppress free thinking. What better place to start that effort than in the schools (and by extension school libraries)? It’s no surprise that schools have emerged as one of the key battlegrounds in the culture war.
But what’s less noticed is that in branding itself the education party, the GOP is actually the ignorance party. Republicans’ constant attacks on bogus controversies like critical race theory are just an excuse to dumb down the school curriculum. That’s because Republicans believe that schools are where children should be taught how to become Republicans if they are taught anything at all.
Two things are happening as Republicans go after schools. One is to focus on public schools and make sure that students learn a right-wing version of history. That involves eliminating groups that the right doesn’t like, like LGBTQ people. Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill is an obvious example of erasing the visibility of non-approved groups from schools.
Then there are the bills that protect the tender emotions of white students. These so-called “divisive concepts” laws prohibit any discussion of race in the classroom that could cause students to feel “anguish, guilt or any other form of discomfort or stress.” In short, the bills are meant to denature history so that the ongoing quest for civil rights in the U.S. effectively ends with the Civil War.
Not content to remove current events and history from schools, Republicans have gone after other subjects as well. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) called for the removal of 54 math books because he claimed that they somehow slipped critical race theory into the multiplication tables.
Absent from any of this discussion is anything about academic standards or, you know, actually making students smarter. There’s a good reason for that. What Republicans are interested in isn’t making students smarter, it’s making them more Republican. Apparently, the way to do that is to keep them as ignorant as possible.
That’s where the second part of the plan comes in. Republicans have been pushing hard for “school choice,” which would use taxpayer money to fund private schools. This effort got a big boost from–you guessed it–the Supreme Court, which ruled in its last session that two anti-LGBTQ Christian schools in Maine were entitled to receive state funding.
As those schools proved, the curricula are not designed to educate but to indoctrinate. School choice options, like religious schools and, worse still, home schools, can be as political as they want. Indeed, a leading figure on the right–Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA–has started a chain of “anti-woke” academies based on “bedrock principles” that sound a lot like Trumpism.
Tucker Carlson is regurgitating conspiracy theories about children’s hospitals performing illegal experiments on minors. Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur discuss on The Young Turks.
“TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): In recent weeks, we’ve learned a lot about what is actually happening inside children’s hospitals around the country. Most people trust children’s hospitals implicitly. They just didn’t know the details but thanks to the internet we now do. It turns out some of these hospitals are performing horrifying experiments on children: elective hysterectomies on minors, physical and chemical castration, things you think would be crimes but that apparently aren’t and that are going on in children’s hospitals in the United States.”
SEPTEMBER 1, 2022
Photo: Shutterstock
Photo: Shutterstock
Scottie's Playtime 