Radical Right Republicans held another set of rallies over the weekend, presenting to us all the absolute worst that the Ultra-MAGA movement can provide. Meidas Contributor Texas Paul reacts to the nonsense.
This is the new talking point to delay or get out of answering on the new law to protect marriage equality. First they deny there is a threat to same sex marriage saying it is settled law. That was the code words they used with Roe and we see what happened with that right. Next they say it is a messaging bill, which in some respects it is. It tells same sex couples that the Democrats and the country support their marriages and will put them in law to protect them. The message the republicans are trying not to send is that they are against the marriage equality because they don’t want to piss off the gays that vote for them and the big money gays that donate to them. Also this is a case of something that is good for an elite lawmaker but not for the public. They can do it but make laws against you doing it. I hate that. Hugs
The gay son of Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., got married on Friday. A few days earlier, his father voted against the Respect for Marriage Act.
Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., leaves a meeting of the House Republican Conference at the Capitol Hill Club on Dec. 1, 2021.Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
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By Zachary Schermele
A Republican lawmaker attended his gay son’s wedding just three days after joining the majority of his GOP colleagues in voting against a House bill that would codify federal protections for same-sex marriage.
The gay son of Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., confirmed to NBC News on Monday that he “married the love of [his] life” on Friday and that his “father was there.” NBC News is not publishing the names of the grooms, neither of whom is a public figure.
Thompson’s press secretary, Maddison Stone, also confirmed the congressman was in attendance.
“Congressman and Mrs. Thompson were thrilled to attend and celebrate their son’s marriage on Friday night as he began this new chapter in his life,” Stone said in an email, adding that the Thompsons are “very happy” to welcome their new son-in-law “into their family.”
Gawker was the first to report on the nuptials in an article published Thursday, the day before the ceremony, though it was not reported whether the lawmaker would attend.
In an email last week to the local newspaper Centre Daily, Stone called the Respect for Marriage Act “nothing more than an election-year messaging stunt for Democrats in Congress who have failed to address historic inflation and out of control prices at gas pumps and grocery stores.”
Thompson, who represents the state’s 15th congressional district, was one of 157 House Republicans who voted against the bill on Tuesday. However, 47 of his GOP colleagues joined Democrats to pass the bipartisan measure following fears that existing same-sex marriage protections could be in the crosshairs of the conservative-leaning Supreme Court.
The Respect for Marriage Act is now being considered by the Senate, where 10 GOP lawmakers must join all 50 Democrats to send the legislation to the desk of President Joe Biden. One of five Republican senators who has already confirmed a yes vote on the bill is Rob Portman of Ohio, who declared his support for same-sex marriage in 2013 after his son came out as gay.
The bill comes at a time when 71% of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, supports same-sex marriage, according to a Gallup poll last month.
GOP congressman who voted against a House bill that would codify same-sex marriage protections attended his gay son’s wedding over the weekend.https://t.co/wdKLTHPqEm
Remember this was for older kids, and the parents could have just withdrawn from the classes. At the school board hearing there was 38 parents / students who wanted the books used and the classes given. Four parents were against it and only three of them spoke. Yet the maga minority got their way. Because of the way the law is written any parent can sue and get big money from the school district and the school personal personally. Same as the abortion laws, designed to cast fear of ruin for doing what the maga minority disapproves of. Hugs
CNN’s Alisyn Camerota talks to Miami-Dade School Board member Luisa Santos, who says there will be no sex education in Miami-Dade County schools because of controversy against the use of new textbooks.
Yes this is CNN and yes the CC is gibberish on that network. But if you stand to listen to them am post this to show how deluded and unwilling to face reality these people have become. I don’t know what is wrong with people like this or how to reach them. What makes them this way? Hugs
CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan visits Arizona and speaks with Republican voters at competing Trump and Pence events
The ad, released Monday by Mothers Against Greg Abbott PAC, shows a doctor explaining to an expectant couple that their new child will be born with a “catastrophic brain abnormality” and will only be able to survive a few hours after birth.
The crying mother then starts to consider the available options only to have the doctor tell her that “here is only one person who can make this choice, and that person is Greg.” The father wonders, understandably, “Who the fuck is Greg?”
The doctor then opens a locker with the face of the Republican governor and grabs a red phone and places a call. After a brief conversation, the doctor hangs up the phone and tells the parents, “Yeah, that’s gonna be a no. Best of luck to you.”
Read the full article. Watch both ads below. The second one went viral on Twitter last week.
A better one might be: “your fetus is going to die and you will probably die too.” “What can we do?” “It’s up to Greg… he says ‘sorry, best of luck but it’s in God’s hands now. Doctors are prohibited from helping you.’”
A horse dewormer and treatment for some human parasites, ivermectin was initially promoted, despite the lack of research, as a way to treat or prevent Covid infections. Now it is increasingly being marketed for long Covid, pushed by physicians with ties to political groups spreading anti-vaccine and anti-science messaging.
There’s no credible evidence that supports ivermectin’s use for this purpose, and doctors at long-hauler clinics say they frequently see patients who’ve tried the drug without relief. But anecdotes of ivermectin working as a miracle cure swirl around social media, repeatedly referenced on Facebook groups for people suffering from long Covid.
Two physician-led groups, America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) and Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), have been particularly active in promoting the drug, charging a minimum of $90 — and up to $1,650 to meet with the founder of the alliance — for online appointments to get an ivermectin prescription.
The leaders of groups promoting ivermectin for long Covid have achieved large followings on social media through ties to right-wing political organizations and Trump administration officials. https://t.co/erjXbsJqJE
While YouTube has started deleting videos promoting false information on abortion, the South Carolina Senate introduced a new bill that strives to block Internet users from talking about abortion truthfully online.
Known as the “Equal Protection at Conception—No Exceptions—Act,” the bill would ban any website from hosting or publishing any information about accessing or self-inducing abortion “knowing that the information will be used, or is reasonably likely to be used, for an abortion.”
Specifically, the bill restricts “providing information to a pregnant woman, or someone seeking information on behalf of a pregnant woman, by telephone, Internet, or any other mode of communication.” That includes restrictions against providing abortion referral services, including to doulas performing abortions, as well as hosting or maintaining a website that’s “purposefully directed to a pregnant woman” living in South Carolina. Less specifically, the bill notes that further restrictions will apply once the law becomes enforced.
The law is not designed to prosecute pregnant people—the one linked here does that—but instead expands the web of punishment by targeting the people who attempt to “aid and abet” an abortion. If it’s passed, felony charges could be brought against anyone who violates, attempts to violate, or threatens to violate the law by a range of stakeholders, including the state attorney general, solicitors, the father or grandparents of the unborn child, or the parents or legal guardians of pregnant minors. The punishment for the crime is the same for anyone who performs or induces abortion “knowingly or intentionally”: imprisonment “for not more than 25 years if the unborn child dies as a result of the violation” or “not more than 20 years if the unborn child is born alive despite the violation.”
In addition to these restrictions, the bill paints abortion providers as an organized crime syndicate that must be regulated as such and abortion pills as a street drug that senators predict will be trafficked like fentanyl.
No one’s sure yet if the bill will stand, even if it manages to get through the state legislature and to South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster’s desk to sign. Wired reported that any states restricting access to abortion pills would face challenges from the Food and Drug Administration, which has defended the legality of mail-ordering pills. And President Joe Biden says that pharmacies not filling abortion pill prescriptions violate civil rights laws. There are also First Amendment concerns. The Washington Post reported that “there’s broad uncertainty about how courts would interpret such bills,” but legal scholars say that regardless, the South Carolina bill will likely be “a harbinger of other state measures, which may restrict communication and speech as they seek to curtail abortion.” The bill notes that if any section is deemed unconstitutional, the rest of the sections will remain valid unless also successfully challenged in court.
McMaster and state senators sponsoring the bill did not immediately respond to Ars’ requests for comment. Because the legislation is not yet active, a spokesperson for online civil rights nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation tells Ars that they do not yet have an official position on the bill.
Proposed abortion laws broaden political divide
SC’s proposed “No Exceptions” Act is the most recent in a dizzying array of proposed laws seeking to regulate abortion more stringently since the Dobbs decision. Some states, like Louisiana, tried and failed to make abortion punishable by death, while Republicans in Idaho announced their party platform wouldn’t make abortion exceptions for pregnant people whose lives become endangered. The Washington Post reported that more Republicans are ready to do away with rape or incest exceptions, too.
A recent viral tweet also caused a stir by calling attention to a stalled North Carolina bill introduced last year that declared abortion would be treated like first-degree murder, punishable by death, and made provisions so that lethal force could be used to prevent someone from seeking an abortion. That’s seemingly not a looming reality right now, but it does show how extreme proposed laws can go to disregard the life of the pregnant person when restricting abortion.
Meanwhile, Congress is currently debating the “My Body, My Data Act” introduced last month, which attempts to restrict companies from sharing reproductive health data that could serve as evidence in states enforcing stricter regulations. Last month, President Biden said he would also support making an exception to the filibuster so that Democrats could more easily pass legislation protecting abortion access nationwide.
Gun owners allowed to carry handguns without permits or training. Parents of transgender children facing investigation by state officials. Women forced to drive hours out-of-state to access abortion.
This is Texas now: While the Lone Star State has long been a bastion of Republican politics, new laws and policies have taken Texas further to the right in recent years than it has been in decades.
Elected officials and political observers in the state say a major factor in the transformation can be traced back to West Texas. Two billionaire oil and fracking magnates from the region, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, have quietly bankrolled some of Texas’ most far-right political candidates — helping reshape the state’s Republican Party in their worldview.
Read the full article. It’s really something and yes, the word “oligarchs” is used.
"In their sermons they paint a picture of a nation under siege from liberal ideas
" 'The cornerstones of our government are crumbling and starting to come apart," Wilks declared in a 2014 sermon. 'It's because of the lack of morality, lack of belief in our heavenly Father' " 2/2
” ‘The cornerstones of our government are crumbling and starting to come apart,”
But he totally misconstrues the reason. It’s because people like him are buying politicians and judges and media and infrastructure and health care and everything needed to sustain life and society.
In other words, more rich people destroying America so they can strip it down and sell it for parts, leaving the rest of us to live in a fascistic, impoverished, environmentally devastated husk of what once was.
In other words, they oppose the will of their own God. Who they ‘believe’ gave everyone free choice. If people are walking away, that’s on them. If you try to force them to stay in the churches, you’re doing something that God is responsible for.
Blasphemers and wannabe gods, that’s what these preachers are. All of them.
Former President Donald Trump complained that he couldn’t give himself the Medal of Honor, America’s highest award to recognize valor in military combat.
Trump gave a speech on Saturday at the Turning Points Action conference in Tampa, Florida, where he lashed out at his political foes for the umpteenth time while going on several long-winded tangents. In one of these off-script ramblings, Trump recalled a chapter from his presidency when he flew to Iraq on Air Force One to assess the battle against ISIS, and he spoke of how they had to dim the lights on the plane to avoid detection.
Trump went on and on about the “central casting” pilots who fly Air Force One, and then went into a dramatized retelling of how he sat with the pilot in the dark cockpit as the plane began its descent.
“I said ‘Captain, we’re pretty low.’ I don’t see any runway. I don’t see anything,” Trump said. Recalling how the plane got closer and closer to the ground, Trump kept on expressing concern that he couldn’t see the runway, and he recalled “I told my wife how brave I was.” This included an aside where he mocked MSNBC’s Brian Williams over his Iraq War story fabrication.
“Captain, what the hell is going on?” Trump claimed he said as they got increasingly low. “You wanna pull up, Captain?”
In the end, the landing went fine, so Trump said he asked “how did I do, Captain? Wasn’t I brave? I didn’t think you were gonna land.”
“In fact,” Trump went on, “as president, I wanted to give myself the Congressional Medal of Honor but they wouldn’t let me do it. I’ve always wanted that, but they wouldn’t let me do it. They said that would be inappropriate.”
The Medal of Honor is awarded to servicemen in the armed forces who distinguish themselves by going beyond the call of duty and risking their own lives to advance America’s military operations.
Just for the record: Idi Amin, Gaddafi, Kim Jong Un, Hitler and many other dictators gave themselves medals. (Or ordered others to give them medals.)
Trump Complains He Couldn’t Give Himself the Congressional Medal of Honor: ‘They Wouldn’t Let Me Do It’https://t.co/Cb3DFiDDEI
Trump: As President, I wanted to give myself the Congressional Medal of Honor but they wouldn’t let me do it.. They said that would be inappropriate pic.twitter.com/n0Y2RRAeDx
Meanwhile, not only did he dodge the draft in Vietnam, he also likened avoiding contracting STDs during his single years to fighting in Vietnam. https://t.co/dMVQdpMIv4
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) July 24, 2022
I'm 50/50 on whether he was callously making light of the country's highest honor for bravery and sacrifice as a cheap joke or if he was just trying to scam the $1200/month pension that comes with the award. https://t.co/sMhZ72uRXO
