If you watch or read nothing else I post, watch this. I have been watching it with the CC on and it is very good. After watching it ask yourself, if this was your country and your prime minister or president begging for help, how much good would the moral high ground do you? How much is it worth the deliberate targeting of civilians, the pregnant women and the scared children for you to say you are saving the possible deaths of others as these people die in front of us. If you are pro-life, a birthing hospital was deliberately targeted. Is that not the definition of your most evil acts? We play with money, while these people are paying with their lives. It sickens me as a former US military person, as a proud US citizen, that with all the money we spend to profit the industrial military complex denying our people the benefits of government that other countries have to support a bloated military, we are letting this happen. Either use the might we have to save lives, or cut the damn military budget in half, because it appears they are useless.
Great time to invest in alternative measures like mass transit, high speed rail, and electric vehicles.
You’re being gouged.
Crude oil is below $100/barrel. There are more taxes on gas now than in 2008.
Republicans are willing participants. Corruption is a pillar of authoritarianism.
Russia funds the GOP. GOP attacks democracy, non-whites, LGBTQ community, teachers, students, schools, and public health policy.
From Trump to entire GOP congress: they all take Russian money and parrot Russian active measures.
Russiafication of Red States.
When conservatives hyperventilate about Sharia Law, they are talking about themselves.
Tyrannical government is a conservative’s best friend.
Tucker Carlson takes his useful idiot job seriously.
While mask requirements are now removed where I live we are still wearing ours for a while to see if there is a new spike. It seems there is a Delta / omicron combination gaining traction.
Remember Colin Kaepernick? He is still banned from the NFL for kneeling to being attention to the abuse suffered by black people at the hands of police. Rodgers is a hero for fighting against public health measures that save lives and promoting harmful fake medical treatments.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
Clearly this is just butt kissing the oil companies butts by the right wing media. Nothing has been done to reduce the US supply by Biden. No new leases would increase supply as that takes years to set up. No pipeline would increase supply as it is already moving via other means and that oil was not for the US anyway. The US is exporting more oil than ever. More than ever! So you want to increase the US supply and lower prices, then nationalize the oil industry and take the huge profits out of it. nationalize it and keep it from leaving the country and we will have the cheapest gas. But that means doing for the people and not the big businesses who are sucking in incredible profits.
The right wing likes to claim that everything wrong with the country is Biden’s failed policies. However they never mention what these failed policy are. Biden has led the response to the war started by Putin pulling countries around the world together. Biden has over seen the greatest economic recovery since they started keeping track. Unemployment has dropped to 3.8%. What are the failed policies that are keeping the country back?
If the Republicans would stop blocking every attempt to pass legislation, then everything wouldn’t have to wait to be shoved into one very large bill. If the Republicans would govern instead of obstruction then the country would have decent bill passed and signed into law.
I would remind the right wing media that the US is the one that broke the deal under tRump to get more concessions from Iran including a change of their government to one we liked. A complete no starter. Biden sadly kept the tRump’s goals rather than try to get back to the original agreement that was containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It is about too late for any agreement. Iran will not change it’s government for any reason that is pushed from the outside. Change of government must come from inside the country by the people. At this point Iran is much closer to their goal of a nuclear weapon than they were under the original deal that tRump broke. So why when we broke the deal do we get to demand even more punishment and restrictions on them? Fact is they have seen that the US will break deals it makes and the US will attack only those countries without nuclear weapons. So they and all countries will do what ever they can to get them, so the US and NATO wont attack them.
Some people seem to react to the move away from fossil fuels like it will be an all or nothing move. That’s far from the truth. When automobiles started popping up, everyone didn’t just stop using horses. It took some time before there were enough gas stations, dealerships, repair shops and roads to support them.
Just a couple of points:
1. It will be a good amount of time before electric cars predominate. As of 2021, EVs were between 8-9 percent of vehicles sold:
2. The USA leads in EV technology but this is by no means guaranteed in the years to come. Look at the chart above. For the first time in 2021, the majority of electric car sales were in China. Right now, the USA is home to Tesla, the largest car manufacturer by market capitalization and the pioneer EV manufacturer. But China would love to steal that away, just as they grabbed the solar cell market when we were squabbling about Solyndra. We should not let that happen.
3. I don’t mind so much that we still generate electricity with fossil fuels. We managed a conversion from coal to natural gas fairly handily, and we can do the same with renewable sources.
4. It’s true that there is reduced solar capacity at night, but there is also decreased usage. Additionally, the US is a large country that has only a few hours of complete darkness from coast to coast. Also, the wind blows at night as well as by day. Further, there are old technologies such as pumped storage that may be utilized to store electricity for later use. Here is an example of a facility in upstate New York:
We need to get started on this! And if we don’t start the change, we won’t be able to finish. So let’s quit making excuses, especially for political reasons, and get started.
Personally, I’d like to see child-development science curriculum implemented for secondary high school students, and it could also include racial- and neuro-diversity, albeit not overly complicated. It would be mandatory course material, however, and considerably more detailed than what’s already covered by home economics, etcetera, curriculum: e.g. diaper changing, baby feeding and so forth. I don’t think the latter is anywhere near sufficient (at least not how I experienced it) when it comes to the proper development of a child’s mind.
For one thing, the curriculum could/would make available to students potentially valuable/useful knowledge about their own psyches and why they are the way they are. And besides their own nature, students can also learn about the natures of their peers, which might foster greater tolerance for atypical personalities. If nothing else, the curriculum would offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally/mentally compatible with the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood.
Meanwhile, a person can have an unlimited number of children regardless of one’s incapacity to raise them in a healthy manner, let alone according to child-development science. And consequential dysfunctional parenting occurs considerably more often than what is officially known or acknowledged.
Hello Fgsjr. My feeling is that students / children / kids / young people should be given more information not less. All these bills pushed and passed by Republicans are restricting information, restricting knowledge from kids. Why? They seem to be of the idea that if the kids that are not exposed to LGBTQ+ information then won’t be LGBTQ+, and they won’t be supportive of the LGBTQ+ other kids. It is like these people feel that being LGBTQ+ is attractive or better so if kids know it exists, they will do it also. That is silly of course. But I watched the guy who wrote and pushed the Florida “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and he made it clear this is not about keeping little kids from learning about sex, he is a real hard core bigot that hates gays and wants them erased from society. He is bothered by same sex marriage, he hates that gays can be teachers, that gays can adopt, and he feels there are far too many of them. Yes too many of them. I posted that he said he was very upset that kids who came out were accepted as OK and not ostracized and bullied like he felt they should be. He said they were nobodies who were treated like celebrities. So when people start to tell you they are planning to restrict information you have to ask why, what do they want to accomplish.
So the Republicans want to restrict kids from learning about history, diversity, slavery, any US committed wrongs, sexuality, gender, biology, evolution, climate science, and medical science. They are pushing all that under parents’ rights. What I see all these have in common is religion. IMO. US excellence says the US can do no wrong because we are god’s favorite, established by God himself, and all those things I mention are parts of the culture wars that the religious groups are waging and until 2016 were losing. This seems to be part of the Blitz project to return the US to more and more Christian control, more help to fight against the loss of religious privilege. To promote the enforcement of Christian doctrines in the US. What they learned from Russia is if you deny the gay groups a presence and the right to defend themselves then constant attacks on them can change public perception to deep negatives. In Russia gay people were making great advances in rights and acceptance, making the church furious. So they got Putin to make any positive mention of gays where minors could hear or see it illegal on the grounds it corrupted kids. It sexualized kids, it was grooming of kids. It was recruiting kids to be gay. It was denying parents’ rights to teach their kids the morals they wanted them to have, which was gay is wrong and evil. Same basically as being pushed here now by republicans. I wonder if that is why they love Putin? So when the gays went to defend themselves, they got arrested. They couldn’t even show their pride flag. No one could argue against the bill or a pro-gay stance in newspapers, books, TV, online or on any medium a minor could see or hear as that violated the law. It may corrupt that child. Where a minor could see or hear it was intended to be overly broad and vague to mean anything in the public or anything a child could accidently find. It was designed to take the voice way from the marginalized, and it worked. Gay representation in public disappeared. No gay people or programs on TV, none in schools, no support groups or posters at school, no books about gays or gay subjects, no gay people in movies, gays became invisible. No gay internet sites and no gay help sites for gay kids to go to in hopes of understanding themselves. The program worked as far as the church and government was concern, it wiped out the gays from society and returned them to hated status. It did not however stop young people from realizing they were gay. See what these people cannot understand is gays are not recruited, but they are created. But not by other gay monsters. The gay kids are created by straight couples who have kids and some of them will be gay. LGBTQ+, the same sex attraction, the gender ID, and all of it is born within us and formed in the womb. So no matter how hard you deny gay, lesbian, or trans people they will keep being born. But what these groups of bigots do that manage to change the laws to erase the LGBTQ+ from the public like in Russia really accomplish is to make life harder for every gay, lesbian, trans kid / adult that is born. It gives them nowhere to find acceptance, it gives them no medical help, it gives them nowhere to go to understand themselves, and it gives them nowhere to turn when / if they are abused.
The abuse one is not only limited to LGBTQ+ kids but all kids. Recently a religious group blocked a program to prevent child abuse that taught kids their bodies were their own and they had a right to say who touched them and why. The program taught that if their parents were touching them wrong and making them do sexual acts, they should tell another adult as that was wrong. That was the part the religious group demanded to have taken out and replace with “Parents should be trusted and obey at all times”. Doesn’t that set off alarm bells in your head?
So In Russia the public acceptance and presence of the gay people has plummeted. No gay pride flags. No gay pride parades. No gay newspapers, those few left were closed down by the state and the people arrested with long prison terms. The polling shows that gay / lesbian acceptance that was increasing yearly has plummeted. When asked why the people have negative feelings toward gay people the response now is that those people are targeting kids for sex, recruiting them to become gay monsters like they are. That is what these Republican assholes want in the US, and in the red states they are getting it. It really scares me. The state I am living in is returning to the way things were when I was a kid and everyone repeated Anita Bryant’s hateful slander of the gays including the teens and adult males who were raping me.
Fgsjr. Sorry for the rant. This got a lot longer and more emotional than I had intended. I am still having issues from the story I posted the other day. It has nothing to do with you and I thank you for the comment that I could reply to and get these things off my chest. I am going to proofread this, sent it as a reply, and then post it as a post on its own. Your comment was grand. It needs more people to see it. Thanks
Negotiations between the Florida Senate and House of Representatives, both controlled by Republicans, broke down, with the two sides unable to agree on a bill that would require inspections of aging condo buildings and mandate that condo boards conduct studies to determine how much they need to set aside for repairs. The talks were undone by a disagreement over how much flexibility to give condo owners in the funding of those reserves.
Read the full article. Florida Republicans managed to find the time to create new laws attacking LGBTQs, voting rights, women, and educators, but “ran out of time” to stop fatal building collapses.
The stalemate means that, barring a last-minute revival of talks, Florida condo law will remain unchanged despite broad calls for reform, and there will be no statewide requirement for safety inspections of older condo buildings. https://t.co/fV86UIII45
Don’t fall for this new Republican talking point “Florida session isn’t long enough & that’s why we didn’t pass property insurance reform! Or Surfside reforms! Or any meaningful policy!” Republicans set agenda. They chose culture wars over us b/c they want to distract, not serve.
The children were sexually abused and neglected while at The Refuge, a facility located in Bastrop contracted by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, according to a report from a current employee.
The Child Protective Services office at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services in Austin on Nov. 14, 2019. Credit: Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune
Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can receive confidential help by calling the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network’s 24/7 toll-free support line at 800-656-4673 or visiting its online hotline.
Employees of a Texas-contracted facility meant to care for female foster children who are victims of sex trafficking were discovered to be trafficking the same children, according to a federal judge.
Seven children, ages 11 to 17, were victimized by nine alleged perpetrators, according to discussions held during an emergency court hearing called by U.S. District Judge Janis Jack on Thursday. The children remained in the facility for over a month after the abuse was first reported before they were removed.
The children were sexually and physically abused and suffered from neglectful supervision and medical neglect while at The Refuge, a facility located in Bastrop contracted by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, a current Refuge employee reported to state authorities on Jan. 24. The court and the court monitors — watchdogs of the foster care system appointed by the judge — were not notified until Thursday.
That employee said a former staff member sold nude photos of two children in the facility’s care, using the proceeds to purchase illegal drugs and alcohol that were then supplied to the children, according to a letter from DFPS filed on Thursday notifying the court about the incident. Local law enforcement and the Texas Department of Public Safety were immediately notified, according to the letter.
“Has the governor seen it?” Jack asked, referring to the letter. No one answered.
In a statement Thursday evening, Gov. Greg Abbott said the Texas Rangers will investigate, arrest and pursue charges against any suspects related to the Refuge allegations.
“The reports of child sex trafficking at The Refuge in Bastrop are abhorrent,” Abbott said. “Child abuse of any kind won’t be tolerated in the state of Texas, and we are committed to ensuring these despicable perpetrators are brought to justice and punished to the fullest extent of the law.”
The identities of the suspects have not yet been made public.
Rich Richman, DFPS associate commissioner for child protective investigation, told the court the children weren’t immediately removed from the facility because investigators thought the person responsible had been fired.
However, several staff members were found to be allegedly responsible for the abuse of the children, some of whom were not immediately removed. A suspect has been arrested by law enforcement, and DFPS anticipates further arrests will be made.
Between the first report on Jan. 24 and March 4, DFPS received several additional reports about the staff member who was removed from the facility. However, during the investigation, DFPS “discovered several additional staff members still employed at the operation appeared to be involved, and that many of them were related to one another by blood or marriage and/or were cohabiting,” according to the letter. The operation’s residential care director is now believed to have known about the sexual abuse.
DFPS did not remove all of the children until Wednesday, five weeks after the first documented report of sexual abuse. The department sent Child Protective Services staff and off-duty law enforcement to the facility to “ensure the youth’s safety” a day prior. Eight of the nine children who were in The Refuge at the time have been placed with other facilities that specialize in serving victims of commercial sex trafficking, according to the letter. The remaining child refused to be placed in another facility and DFPS is searching for another placement.
“This is just shocking and shameful. Children are being subjected to terrible abuse in state care, and the agencies say nothing,” Paul Yetter, an attorney who represents foster care children in the federal lawsuit, said in a statement Thursday. “Texas is failing its most basic duty: keep these innocent children safe. And we all know who pays the price. Without the vigilance of the court monitors, and the Judge’s jumping into immediate action, who knows what kind of further abuse would be happening.”
Jack, who is overseeing a decade-old lawsuit against Texas over its foster care system, expressed horror over the discovery during Thursday’s hearing.
The judge blasted DFPS for not immediately removing the children when the allegations of abuse were first reported, calling it yet another failure of the system. Numerousbombshellreports have been released by the court-appointed monitors detailing abuse within the system, neglect and even the deaths of children.
Dozens of facilities contracted by Texas have recently closed down or had their license revoked after racking up numerous offenses and subjecting children to dangerous and damaging environments. Child advocates and the judge have repeatedly criticized Texas officials for failing to ensure facilities are safe for kids in the state’s care. From summer 2019 to May 2021, the court monitors discovered that at least 23 children died in Texas’ long-term foster care system in shelters and facilities licensed by the state.
DFPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The judge instructed the state to provide the court with the identities of the alleged abusers and victims by noon on Friday. She also asked for details on the care the children have received since they were removed.
I am struggling. I read this earlier and got triggered. I have been fighting flash backs since. I tried to lay down to get control but that made it worse. I am getting worse right now, starting to tear up. So while I have a lot of news tabs open and the email machine is full of posts I want to read, I am shutting down both computers. No more videos, no more news, no more stories of Republicans using kids lives and their sexual identities as props to rile up their base and win elections. I am going to take some medications to calm me and make me sleepy, then I am going to turn on my Xbox and play the new Halo. In there I am a powerful here winning the war against the bad guys. Night
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/39d52dc56083afac3802394368e2a321/Texas%20DFPS%20EG%20TT%2015.jpg)
Scottie's Playtime 
Personally, I’d like to see child-development science curriculum implemented for secondary high school students, and it could also include racial- and neuro-diversity, albeit not overly complicated. It would be mandatory course material, however, and considerably more detailed than what’s already covered by home economics, etcetera, curriculum: e.g. diaper changing, baby feeding and so forth. I don’t think the latter is anywhere near sufficient (at least not how I experienced it) when it comes to the proper development of a child’s mind.
For one thing, the curriculum could/would make available to students potentially valuable/useful knowledge about their own psyches and why they are the way they are. And besides their own nature, students can also learn about the natures of their peers, which might foster greater tolerance for atypical personalities. If nothing else, the curriculum would offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally/mentally compatible with the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood.
Meanwhile, a person can have an unlimited number of children regardless of one’s incapacity to raise them in a healthy manner, let alone according to child-development science. And consequential dysfunctional parenting occurs considerably more often than what is officially known or acknowledged.
Hello Fgsjr. My feeling is that students / children / kids / young people should be given more information not less. All these bills pushed and passed by Republicans are restricting information, restricting knowledge from kids. Why? They seem to be of the idea that if the kids that are not exposed to LGBTQ+ information then won’t be LGBTQ+, and they won’t be supportive of the LGBTQ+ other kids. It is like these people feel that being LGBTQ+ is attractive or better so if kids know it exists, they will do it also. That is silly of course. But I watched the guy who wrote and pushed the Florida “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and he made it clear this is not about keeping little kids from learning about sex, he is a real hard core bigot that hates gays and wants them erased from society. He is bothered by same sex marriage, he hates that gays can be teachers, that gays can adopt, and he feels there are far too many of them. Yes too many of them. I posted that he said he was very upset that kids who came out were accepted as OK and not ostracized and bullied like he felt they should be. He said they were nobodies who were treated like celebrities. So when people start to tell you they are planning to restrict information you have to ask why, what do they want to accomplish.
So the Republicans want to restrict kids from learning about history, diversity, slavery, any US committed wrongs, sexuality, gender, biology, evolution, climate science, and medical science. They are pushing all that under parents’ rights. What I see all these have in common is religion. IMO. US excellence says the US can do no wrong because we are god’s favorite, established by God himself, and all those things I mention are parts of the culture wars that the religious groups are waging and until 2016 were losing. This seems to be part of the Blitz project to return the US to more and more Christian control, more help to fight against the loss of religious privilege. To promote the enforcement of Christian doctrines in the US. What they learned from Russia is if you deny the gay groups a presence and the right to defend themselves then constant attacks on them can change public perception to deep negatives. In Russia gay people were making great advances in rights and acceptance, making the church furious. So they got Putin to make any positive mention of gays where minors could hear or see it illegal on the grounds it corrupted kids. It sexualized kids, it was grooming of kids. It was recruiting kids to be gay. It was denying parents’ rights to teach their kids the morals they wanted them to have, which was gay is wrong and evil. Same basically as being pushed here now by republicans. I wonder if that is why they love Putin? So when the gays went to defend themselves, they got arrested. They couldn’t even show their pride flag. No one could argue against the bill or a pro-gay stance in newspapers, books, TV, online or on any medium a minor could see or hear as that violated the law. It may corrupt that child. Where a minor could see or hear it was intended to be overly broad and vague to mean anything in the public or anything a child could accidently find. It was designed to take the voice way from the marginalized, and it worked. Gay representation in public disappeared. No gay people or programs on TV, none in schools, no support groups or posters at school, no books about gays or gay subjects, no gay people in movies, gays became invisible. No gay internet sites and no gay help sites for gay kids to go to in hopes of understanding themselves. The program worked as far as the church and government was concern, it wiped out the gays from society and returned them to hated status. It did not however stop young people from realizing they were gay. See what these people cannot understand is gays are not recruited, but they are created. But not by other gay monsters. The gay kids are created by straight couples who have kids and some of them will be gay. LGBTQ+, the same sex attraction, the gender ID, and all of it is born within us and formed in the womb. So no matter how hard you deny gay, lesbian, or trans people they will keep being born. But what these groups of bigots do that manage to change the laws to erase the LGBTQ+ from the public like in Russia really accomplish is to make life harder for every gay, lesbian, trans kid / adult that is born. It gives them nowhere to find acceptance, it gives them no medical help, it gives them nowhere to go to understand themselves, and it gives them nowhere to turn when / if they are abused.
The abuse one is not only limited to LGBTQ+ kids but all kids. Recently a religious group blocked a program to prevent child abuse that taught kids their bodies were their own and they had a right to say who touched them and why. The program taught that if their parents were touching them wrong and making them do sexual acts, they should tell another adult as that was wrong. That was the part the religious group demanded to have taken out and replace with “Parents should be trusted and obey at all times”. Doesn’t that set off alarm bells in your head?
So In Russia the public acceptance and presence of the gay people has plummeted. No gay pride flags. No gay pride parades. No gay newspapers, those few left were closed down by the state and the people arrested with long prison terms. The polling shows that gay / lesbian acceptance that was increasing yearly has plummeted. When asked why the people have negative feelings toward gay people the response now is that those people are targeting kids for sex, recruiting them to become gay monsters like they are. That is what these Republican assholes want in the US, and in the red states they are getting it. It really scares me. The state I am living in is returning to the way things were when I was a kid and everyone repeated Anita Bryant’s hateful slander of the gays including the teens and adult males who were raping me.
Fgsjr. Sorry for the rant. This got a lot longer and more emotional than I had intended. I am still having issues from the story I posted the other day. It has nothing to do with you and I thank you for the comment that I could reply to and get these things off my chest. I am going to proofread this, sent it as a reply, and then post it as a post on its own. Your comment was grand. It needs more people to see it. Thanks