Category: Bigotry

Palestinian child prisoners ‘abused’

****   TRIGGER WARNING FOR CHILD ABUSE ****

In this video you will see the photos of a kid, yes a young teen who to me looks 13, just home from Israeli detention after being held and beaten for four hours, he was then charged and released for a later court date where he will be found guilty.  Once found guilty, the kid will be taken to a prison in side Israel where his family and any friends are not allowed to see him.   He will have no rights, and no one to help him.   

Picked up off the street, he was then beaten and abused.   Israeli spokes people are on every major news network claiming how brutal Hamas is, how they must be destroyed even if that means killing every Palestinian, man, women, and child.  Right now the confirmed totals are over 24,000 dead, 10,000 are children.  The estimated total is around 32,000 dead, another 64,000 injured and maimed.   This is the way Israel has long treated Palestinian children in detention, the Palestinians have long asked the international community for help in stopping it.  But no one could, because Israel treats Palestinians as bad or worse than black in apartheid South African and almost as bad as black slaves in the US.  Listen to how many Palestinian kids, minors from the West Bank where there is no Hamas in charge are taken in to custody and tried by military courts, they have no rights in these courts, nor does their families.   This is why there is no peace, why Hamas attacks Israelis.  Yet Netanyahu brags about denying the Palestinians a state and calls them animals.   Hugs.   Scottie 

Hundreds of Palestinian children are arrested by the Israeli military every year for throwing rocks at occupying forces. They are tried in Israeli Military Courts and human Rights organisations say the trials lack due process and are against international law. Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford reports from Abu Dis in the occupied West Bank.

Below there is another short video.   Please notice the date on this one.  It was ten years ago.  This is how they treated Palestinians ten years ago, how much worse do they treat them now!   This time of the Israeli military detaining, taking a five year old because he was throwing stones, they go collect the boy’s father.  Notice the video of the father and boy in custody, the father is bound and blindfolded.  He can not help his five year old son, and neither have rights under the military occupation.  While this is illegal internation Israel claims the child, a five year old, was a threat.   While they claim he was not arrested, think of the lifelong trauma of being taken, his father humiliated and unable to even comfort him.   Think he grew up to support Israel, or be another Hamas soldier?   Hugs.  Scottie

Jul 12, 2013

Video footage has emerged of a 5-year-old Palestinian child being detained by the Israeli army. 

Below in another video only one year ago, a 7 year old boy dies from fear while being chased by Israeli soldiers.  Children so scared of soldiers they fear them to death.  Why would a 7 yr old be so scared?  This was the West bank, not even Gaza, and again no Hamas.  Think to the many stories of abuse that are and have been coming out that Israel has long denied.   Seems they were true.   What other horrors is Israel lying about.   The people there claim the main goal of the army is to cause this fear and maintain complete control.   These are an occupied people in an open air prison.  No wonder they fight back, wouldn’t you?  Hugs.  Scottie  

Thousands of Palestinians have taken part in the funeral of seven-year-old Rayyan Sulaiman in the village of Tuqu near Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank. His family says he died out of fear after Israeli soldiers chased children in the village. The Palestinian Health Ministry says efforts to resuscitate him failed. Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim reports from the occupied West Bank.

The mistreatment continues.  This video was only 7 months ago, at the start of last summer.   By that time Israeli soldiers had already killed 155 Palestinians in the West Bank.   Remember the US military sniper that loved to kill little brown children in Afghanistan, he murdered detained prisoners by knifing them, he was brought up on charged yet tRump as commander in chief made the military give him back his awards and pardoned him.  Well Israel has lots of soldiers like him that feel that way towards the Palestinians.  They are nothing, they are simply fun targets to hurt, kill, torture, and destroy.   Like a live action video game.  Below the Israeli solders shoot a car with a man and a toddler … because they can.  Hugs.  Scottie.  



188,662 views Jun 6, 2023

Two-year-old Mohammad Tamimi — who was injured along with his father after being shot by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank — has died. Though the Israeli army says the toddler was mistakenly shot, the child’s father has denied the narrative

Just five days ago this inexcusable horror happened, Israeli soldiers stormed a building and in front of the family members stripped, tortured and beat the men, then executed them.  Like a gang of thugs on prey.  Then they left and knowing the women and children were still in there, Israeli solders shelled the building.  Horrible.  Hugs.  Scottie

412,724 views Jan 18, 2024 #Aljazeeraenglish #News

A Palestinian family in Gaza says they witnessed the summary execution of 15 men when Israeli soldiers raided their apartment last month.

Again please look at the date.  A year ago.  Two crying terrified children, not even teenagers.  Their crime, being Palestinian.   This is why there is no peace for Israel!  This is why there is anger.  The story says the soldiers arrested the kids, that means they did not go home, but instead into detention for processing.  Reports say this can take a day to four months, and the child has no rights, no legal council, even their family is often not notified.   It is complete terrorism.  It is designed to harass and break the Palestinian people, to try to get them to self deport to where they will have a chance for a decent life.  This short clip says it all.   A 6 or 7 year old kid begging and crying out “What will happen to us” and “What are they going to do to us”.   What are they going to do to us … if that was your child would you like the people / government that did that?  Or would you want to hurt them back.   Hugs.  

An Israeli soldier appears to arrest two frightened Palestinian children in occupied East Jerusalem

There are more, it seems an unending amount of these videos.   Going back decades.  Now that I have watched a few, the grand YouTube pusher wants me to view them all.   I can not.  I have done my part.  I just beg that others who can do more not only stop Israel, but punish them for what they are doing.   Hugs.   Scottie

JESUS 2.0 | Christopher Titus | Armageddon Update

What in the fuck is going on

How far the down in the gang thug chaos are the republicans wanting to go?  Attacking the defenseless simply because they already have nothing and nowhere to go.   What happened to bettering society, making things better for everyone?  These people only want to make it great for them, the rest are for exploitation and amusement.  This country, the US, had a brief resurgence of enlightenment and now in the last 8 years, especially the last 3, the right wants to tear it all down, destroy anything good or enlightened in the country.   They mock decency and act like they are superior for being cruel.   I am at a loss these days what is driving these people.   I have seen them before, in my childhood.  I thought they were going extinct, yet here they are within inches of full power over everything.   Hugs.  Scottie

The bill would at the same time enhance penalties for drug use (specifically fentanyl, as it is their go-to talking point at the moment), and making it a felony to run away from the police…

Just anything that is observed among those whose living situation is so desperate, and basically saying it is illegal for anyone from a minority community to be fed up with this shit..

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Also, considering the rate of LGBT+ homelessness compared to the general population. 5% of the youth population in general, yet accounting for 25% of homeless youth. I consider the Bill to be specifically targeted at LGBT+ people.

http://banconversiontherapy…

Considering the above. Some bigoted parents could disown their kid, kill them, and claim it was homeless trespass?

Some videos / new broadcasts on kids being bullied and how it is much worse now that maga wants to remove protections.

If the maga right wing have their way, any and all protections from students bullied because of being different or LGBTQIA.  New laws in red states like Florida remove not only the anti-bulling campaigns but also prevent teachers from stepping to defend the LGBTQIA attacked kid because that would be seen as promoting sexual orientation or gender identification.  All positive posters, safe space stickers, and rainbow acceptance stuff removed.  No more books or movies saying it is OK to be gay or different.  These laws take us back to a time when children were terrified to be outed as not straight or cis, and leave schools with no legal way to help these kids or prevent their abuse.   This is what the moms of TikTok and mom’s of liberty want.  This is what the maga Christian Republican Party want, to drive the kids who are different back into hiding who they are, push them violently back into the closet so that they will feel shame and fear over who they are.  Are we as a nation going to turn our backs on decades of work to promote tolerance and acceptance of those who are different?  Are we going to again return to a time when kids were terrified to learn or even be in school?  Will we let the maga thug mentality win as the way people in the US should act or be?   Hugs.  Scottie

These videos took me over a week to watch and then place here.  While some are out of date, I chose them instead of newer ones because this is the school world the maga Christians are fighting to return to.  Kids being different are singled out and collectively punished.   While watching these the ever helpful YouTube algorithm, or the push stay on our site what these next suggestion lists filled up with abuse videos.   So be careful if that bothers you as much as I, I finally took to watching them off-line.  Hugs.  Scottie

Michael Kuch, the father of 14-year-old Adriana, says his daughter was assaulted by other students and two days later, she took her own life. NBC New York’s Brian Thompson reports.
160,000 children stay home from school out of fear of being bullied.
Newly released video showed Gabriel, 8, being assaulted by another student in a school bathroom two days before the young boy took his own life.
An investigation is underway after a video showing a boy punched in the face multiple times in a boys’ bathroom is getting a lot of attention on social media.
As part of our continuing series “Assignment America,” Steve Hartman takes a look at bullying in America, and speaks to a victim of bullying – and the bullier, who has had a change of heart.
Shocking and emotional documentary about the pain and desperation of four young teenagers facing lives overshadowed by bullying.

Florida Bans The Dictionary

To avoid running afoul of state laws, a Florida school district has removed dictionaries that reference words like “sex.”

Republicans Are Fighting to Let Bigoted Foster Parents Abuse LGBTQ Kids They Adopt

A new rule proposed by the Biden Administration would protect LGBTQ+ youth in the foster care system by requiring adoption agencies to place them in homes that affirm their sexual orientations and gender identities. Republicans, however, have come out in opposition to the change.

Missouri just debated 8 anti-trans bills in a single day

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/01/missouri-just-debated-8-anti-trans-bills-in-a-single-day/

This is the most important issue the republicans think they have to deal with.  Trans and gay people / kids.  Not kids being hungry, not schools shootings, not educations test scores or financing.  Nope what bathroom a person can use and what medical treatment is available. 

The republicans think they have a winning issue with their base because these are hate bills, socially regressive bills.   But these are a driven minority fueled either by hate or driven by religious beliefs, possibly both.   The majority rejects that hate, that bigotry, that demand to control how others live.  These anti-trans bills mirror the anti-gay bills of the 1970s, and that mirrored the anti-race integration.  It is all about resisting changes in society and inclusion of those who are different.  It is about not progressing, instead wanting things to never change.  But look at history, every generation advances society in some way, with causing more friction with the older generations, that forget they changed society of their elders also.  Think of the bathroom bills and then think how white people did not want to share bathrooms or any place with black people.   The bathroom bills trying to keep trans kids from public bathrooms and out of locker rooms is the same bullshit that I faced as a gay man, these same people wanted to keep me from using bathrooms, using locker rooms claiming gay men would sexually attack straight men.  Sounds just like trans women would attack cis women.   The bills about keep trans people out of sports are very like the racial segregated sports teams in the 1950, claiming first black people were inferior then also saying that black men would take over the sports winning over the whites.  Does it all sound so familiar.  It is the same hate, same bigotry, just repackaged to use against a new group for these people to hate. 

Also these people just refuse to accept well known documented medical science / studies that show people are not made gay or trans, but born that way.   You cannot force a straight person to be gay, and you can not force a gay person to be straight.  Also while these bills forbid any mention of a non-cisgender or non-straight orientation, that requires the forced reinforcement of cis heterosexuality.  Hugs.  Scottie

The state is considering 41 other bills attacking transgender rights this year.
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An opponent of one of several anti-trans bills testifies before the Missouri House Emerging Issues Committee.
An opponent of one of several anti-trans bills testifies before the Missouri House Emerging Issues Committee.Photo: Screenshot

Lawmakers in both the Missouri House of Representatives and Senate debated a total of eight anti-transgender bills in a single day this week.

The measures, affecting trans people’s ability to access healthcare, bathrooms, and other facilities, and legal recognition of their gender identity, represent just a fraction of the 49 anti-trans bills Missouri Republicans have already introduced this month. Trans journalist Erin Reed described the latest wave of proposed laws as “a firehose of legislation that touches every aspect of trans people’s lives.”

RELATED:

Two students sue University of Missouri for denying trans-related healthcare

State law allows the university to provide gender-affirming care, but it still refuses to do so.

On Wednesday, Missouri’s Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee heard testimony on S.B. 728, one of two bills, which would establish a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” in the state. Among other provisions affecting school curriculum, S.B. 728 “prohibits public school officials from encouraging a student under the age of eighteen years old to adopt a gender identity or sexual orientation.” It also requires school officials to “inform a student’s parent within twenty-four hours if the student expresses confusion about their documented identity or requests to use personal pronouns that differ from their documented identity” and to “obtain written parental consent before allowing a student to use a name other than the name provided by the parent when registering the student for school and before encouraging a student to wear certain items of clothing.”

Effectively, the bill requires schools to out suspected trans and nonbinary students to their parents.

The committee was also scheduled to hear S.B. 770, another “Parents’ Bill of Rights” measure that included a ban on transgender girls participating in school-sponsored girls’ athletic teams. The hearing on S.B. 770 was canceled, however.

Meanwhile, in a nine-hour hearing, the state’s House Emerging Issues Committee took up seven separate anti-trans measures.

Two bills sponsored by Missouri state Rep. Brad Hudson (R) target access to gender-affirming healthcare. H.B. 1519 would allow healthcare professionals—including, as Reed noted, pharmacists, desk workers, and nurses—to refuse to treat trans people receiving gender-affirming care. During public testimony, opponents of the bill noted that it would not only legalize discrimination but could also result in cisgender, nonbinary, and intersex people being denied medication by providers who mistakenly assume they are trying to access gender-affirming treatment.

Hudson’s H.B. 1520, meanwhile, aims to strengthen and extend Missouri’s “Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act.” Signed by Gov. Mike Parson (R) last June, the law banned all gender-affirming care for minors but included an exception for trans young people who are already receiving such care, as well as a sunset provision, causing the law to expire in August 2027. H.B. 1520 would remove those provisions, forcing trans minors who are currently receiving gender-affirming care to detransition and extending the law beyond the 2027 expiration date.

State Rep. Ashley Aune (D) noted that the sunset provision was included in the SAFE Act so that lawmakers could assess the law’s “unintended consequences.” Hudson responded that there is already “enough evidence out there” and that he knows “these drugs are not good for kids.”

In fact, every major American medical association has acknowledged that gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, is evidence-based, safe, and effective for the treatment of gender dysphoria.

The committee also heard testimony on four bills aimed at banning transgender Missourians from using bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender identity. Proponents of such laws almost universally focus, without evidence, on the supposed threat transgender women pose to cis women in public restrooms. But during Wednesday’s hearing, opponents noted that, far from alleviating any discomfort, the bills would force masculine-presenting trans men to use women’s restrooms and also endanger trans women forced to use men’s facilities while doing nothing to prevent actual predators from accessing women’s bathrooms.

Additionally, one of the bathroom bills introduced by state Rep. Adam Schnelting (R), H.B. 2308, would legally define the terms “male” and “female” according to a person’s reproductive biology.

Similarly, H.B. 2309, also introduced by Schnelting, aims to legally redefine “gender” as synonymous with biological sex. According to Reed, the bill would end any legal recognition of transgender people in the state and would likely affect the gender markers on their birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and other forms of ID.

Schnelting testified that his bills would affect “bathrooms, dorms, shelters, everything” and might even “nullify sex-specific scholarships” given to trans individuals.

Democrats on the committee blasted their Republican colleagues’ seemingly single-minded focus on limiting the rights of transgender Missourians. State Rep. David Tyson Smith (D), who noted that Republicans make up 40 percent of his constituents, argued that people want lawmakers to address “inflation, grocery store prices.”

“People are wondering why we are spending time on this,” Smith said.

State Rep. Doug Mann (D) sounded an even more urgent alarm. “When it became no longer acceptable to be anti-gay in public, people moved to being anti-trans,” he said. “When you start to attack an already vulnerable group of people, you do not stop with that already vulnerable group of people.”

“I’m going to be honest, I do not trust that this is the end,” Mann said of the anti-trans bills. “Everything I have seen as a student of history, as a student from politics, as a student of government, tells me that it is going to go farther. Things are going to get worse, not better.”

Lauren Boebert & other conservatives rage at Pete Buttigieg over FAA policy promoting diversity

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/01/lauren-boebert-other-conservatives-rage-at-pete-buttigieg-over-faa-policy-promoting-diversity/

The right lives on hate, racism, and bigotry.  They can not allow other religions, minorities, people different from them to have the same rights and opportunities.   For some reason they feel that others having the same rights they have makes them less than, makes them lessor as people.  They take no joy in the happiness and success of others.  They hate the inclusion of anyone slightly different from them, and they react with temper tantrums.   Look at the meanness towards and smug superiority they think they have over others.  Instead of admiring the skill of the flight crew, the pilots and the plane stewards that saved lives, these people mock and slur others.     Hugs.   Scottie

They’re blaming airline safety issues on disabled people, Black people, women, and drag queens to gin up anti-diversity sentiment.
By  
 
Secretary Pete Buttigieg/Rep. Lauren Boebert
Secretary Pete Buttigieg/Rep. Lauren BoebertPhoto: Shutterstock

Conservatives are angry that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been, for at least a decade, trying to expand the diversity of its workforce, and they’re blaming gay Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

A terrifying video of a door blowing off Alaska Airlines flight 1282 went viral earlier this month. No one died, but the Boeing 737 Max 9 was forced to return to the airport and make an emergency landing. Some loose bolts around doors were found when other planes of the same type were later inspected.

RELATED:

Lauren Boebert asks Pete Buttigieg for $33 million after insulting him repeatedly

She didn’t hesitate to launch homophobic attacks on the out Transportation Secretary and his husband, but now that she wants some of that cash for her district, she’s trying to play nice.

While flying today is safer than at any time in the past and much safer than traveling by car, freak accidents like this still happen. And they can still be used to gin up anger at minorities, disabled people, women, and LGBTQ+ people.

“The FAA is the latest victim of the radical [diversity, equity, and inclusion] agenda,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) wrote on social media this week. “Instead of prioritizing the most qualified candidates, the FAA will now look for individuals with ‘severe intellectual disabilities.’ How can anyone feel safe flying when the people responsible for their safety are being hired based on DEI rather than qualifications for the position?”

DEI stands for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” workplace policies that seek to hire and support candidates from diverse backgrounds. Right-wingers have increasingly targeted these policies as a “woke” form of “identity politics” while ignoring the workplace disparities that they seek to address.

Boebert was likely referring to a story that spread like wildfire on conservative media. The conservative New York Post ran a story about the FAA policy – which the Post stressed is “overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation” – with the headline, “FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities.”

The story noted that the FAA has a diversity statement on its site that says it recruits people with disabilities, including “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.”

X CEO Elon Musk shared the Post’s story and wrote: “Just had a conversation with some smart people could not believe this is happening.” He also shared a post that claimed that Black airline employees lower the “average IQ of US Air Force pilots.”

“FAA ‘diversity’ push to hire workers with ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities sparks concern, mockery,” blared Fox News in the title of a video from their talk show The Five discussing the FAA in front of a giant picture of Buttigieg.

The problem with their explanation? The policy has been on the FAA since at least 2013, during the Obama administration, and the Trump administration didn’t do anything to remove it. The Post’s story didn’t mention the fact that the policy is from 2013 and instead just noted that the FAA’s website was updated in 2022, which isn’t a relevant fact to the story but may have been intended to imply that the policy was put in place during Buttigieg’s tenure.

“The FAA employs tens of thousands of people for a wide range of positions, from administrative roles to oversight and execution of critical safety functions,” the FAA said in a statement. The FAA has 45,000 employees. “Like many large employers, the agency proactively seeks qualified candidates from as many sources as possible, all of whom must meet rigorous qualifications that, of course, will vary by position.”

Snopes noted that the rightwing “media coverage provided no evidence linking any DEI initiative with the Alaska Airlines incident” and that the investigation into the Alaska Airlines flight is still ongoing.

But disabled and Black people aren’t the only group that conservatives are blaming for the incident. Hate influencer and former realtor Chaya Raichik – whose Libs of TikTok account has been massively influential in spreading anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and has led to hospitals getting bomb threats and queer and trans teachers getting death threats – decided it was women’s fault.

That’s because Southwest Airlines made an innocuous post about an all-women flight crew shortly after the Alaska Airlines incident.

“All female flight crew? Go off, queens!” the Southwest Airlines’s X post read. The post included a picture of six smiling women in a plane.

“They’re openly mocking us,” Raichik wrote, sharing the post. “They know what they’re doing.” The implication was that supporting women in the workplace was somehow inappropriate following the incident in the Alaska Airlines flight.

Her post was viewed around 300,000 times and widely shared on the platform. Southwest later deleted their post celebrating the women.

The Chaya Raichik tweet

Later in the week, Raichik raged at United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby doing drag at a Halloween party in 2011. Kirby is married to a woman and has seven children with her, but being a stereotypically masculine, straight, cisgender white man wasn’t enough to protect him from the right’s grievances about diversity in the workforce.

“This is Scott Kirby, the CEO of United. He’s a drag queen and has been incorporating drag into United,” Raichik wrote. “This video should tell you everything you need to know.”

Anti-trans activist and fifth-place swimmer Riley Gaines responded to the video, writing, “It’s time to bring back shame.” She also wrote that people “fly United at your own risk,” not explaining exactly how she connected the video to flight safety.

Cisgender, heterosexual white men on the right have donned drag in the past without controversy, including Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) boyfriend, rightwing media personality Brian Glenn. Greene, who has protested drag queen shows in the past, laughed off claims that there was anything inappropriate about her boyfriend doing drag because it happened “years ago.” The same grace, though, apparently doesn’t apply to CEOs of airlines that support diversity in the workplace.

Buttigieg, for his part, assured travelers that he has confidence in the FAA’s ability to keep flights safe, noting that they grounded 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 jets for further inspection following the Alaska Airlines incident. He explained that FAA staff is putting in extra hours to get to the root of the problem.

“I have confidence in any aircraft cleared by the FAA,” he told reporters last week. “The FAA’s doing a great job and [FAA Administrator] Mike Whitaker’s doing a great job.”

He added that, as a father, the images of the plane with the door blown out affected him.

“Anybody looking at those pictures has to be thinking about what you’d do in that situation,” he said, explaining that he was just on a flight with one of his children. “That is what’s on our mind.”

Gay couple sells restaurant after enduring years of torture from MAGA neighbors

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/01/gay-couple-sells-restaurant-after-enduring-years-of-torture-from-maga-neighbors/

Notice that the gay couple were there first.  But you know how tolerant and easy to get along with maga Christians are … only if they get their own way all the time.  Otherwise they are violent self entitled gang thugs who can not be talked to, reasoned with, coexisted with.  Look how tolerant these people are of LGBTQIA kids and people who are a different non-white skin tone, that is how they want communities and businesses to be run also, totally intolerant and aggressively unaccepting demands they be removed from the public.   Hugs.  Scottie.  

A slew of dirty tricks marked the MAGA family’s reign of terror, and the couple couldn’t take it anymore.
By  
Gay couple sells restaurant after enduring years of torture from MAGA neighbors
The Front Porch Market and Grill in The Plains, VAPhoto: Screenshot DMV Adventures

Gay restaurant owners William Waybourn and Craig Spaulding have hung up their aprons.

The longtime married couple have sold the restaurant they founded several years ago, the Front Porch Market and Grill in The Plains, VA. The new owner will change the name and try to make a fresh start with the restaurant’s combative Christian and MAGA-loving neighbors, Mike and Melissa Washer, who did their best to drive the gays next door out of business — and succeeded.

RELATED:

MAGA couple caught throwing rat in gay-owned restaurant’s property as part of a long war

They’re trying to get their gay neighbors’ restaurant closed by any means possible.

“In the end, the decision was easier to make than I expected,” Waybourn told The Washington Post, which detailed the years-long feud — instigated by the Washers not long after they moved into the neighboring property — last July.

News of the Christian couple’s dirty tricks and clinical obsession with making their neighbors’ lives miserable brought Waybourne and his husband support from around the world.

“On some level, I know I am disappointing many people, especially those who have stood by us these past three years, many of whom I have never met from places I’ve never heard of,” Waybourn explained.

But he said he knows that for his own health and well-being, and for his adopted town’s, he needed to step away from the toxic environment that the MAGA-loving Washers had created.

For the longtime gay rights activist, who proudly flew a rainbow flag from the restaurant’s porch since it opened, there was no compromising with people who planted a rat by his back door and then shared a picture of it with the local health department. Incessant complaints over garbage, deliveries, parking, noise, Covid mandates, permitting, no-trespassing orders on both sides, and a lawsuit followed.

Restaurant employees reported Mike Washer had called the owners “f****ts”.

The Washers were MAGA bullies, and there was no stopping them.

Last summer, Waybourn was knocked back with a mild stroke, revealing the toll the Washers’ campaign was exacting.

For a few months after that, things quieted down.

But in November, after the Washers’ son was elected to the Board of Supervisors, a fresh round of harassment came The Front Porch’s way. The restaurant’s so-called Christian MAGA oppressors were relentless.

“My presence became so personal with the Washers that removing myself would give the new owner and the restaurant a fresh start,” Waybourn concluded.

The couple sold the Front Porch at the end of December.

Waybourn describes the restaurant’s new owner, chef and restaurateur Shawn Malone, as “very laid-back.”

Malone has a five-year lease on the building from Waybourn and Spaulding, with an option to buy. Plans are for the new business to open in February under the name Bistro at the Porch. 

Waybourn hopes Malone can set the restaurant — and the relationship with his neighbors — on a new course. “I don’t think he’s going to personalize the Washers’ antics as much as I have.”

“I just can’t continue to have the emotional turmoil of owning a business that I can’t enjoy,” Waybourn said.

Netanyahu says Israel must Control from the River to the Sea, but it won’t cost him his Job as it does Palestinians

https://www.juancole.com/2024/01/netanyahu-control-palestinians.html

Thanks again to Ten Bears for the link.  If you ever run out of news and informative stuff to dive into, then seriously check out Ten Bears posts.   He puts a ton of links on a page, enough to last a day of reading if you are interested in them all.  https://homelessonthehighdesert.com/2024/01/19/frigsday-finally/  

When the right attacked people supporting the Palestinians who had used the phrase from the river to the sea, claiming it was a saying to wipe out all Israelis.  They got people fired over it.  However when Netanyahu (Bibi) demands it for Israel which means genocide of the Palestinians, the right is quite fine with it.  See it was not the phrase nor what it stands for that bothered the right, it was that some people defend the poor down trodden people being abused around the world.  The right doesn’t like the left and they hate their supported right wing leaders / countries justly attacked, so they lash out to destroy any complaints against their right wing abuse and tyranny.  Hugs.  Scottie

The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports on the press conference in Tel Aviv on Thursday evening of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He vowed to continue the war on Gaza and vowed to attack Iran. “Who says we won’t attack Iran? We will attack it.”

At one point Netanyahu insisted that in any foreseen arrangement for the future, “Israel must control all the lands west of the Jordan.”

(It is worth noting that such a massive annexation of Palestinian territory would expand Israel from the river to the sea, and would permanently destroy any possibility of a Palestinian state.

When supporters of Palestinian rights use this phrase, Zionists allege that it is murderous toward Israelis. They are wrong — it is a demand for political rights for Palestinians. Marc Lamont Hill was actually fired from CNN for using this phrase in a pro-Palestinian speech at the United Nations. The odious Rep. Elise Stefanik got Claudine Gray fired as president of Harvard because she would not categorize the phrase, used in pro-Palestinian student demonstrations, as Antisemitic.

But when Netanyahu says it, we should in fact understand it to be murderous toward Palestinians, since no one in history has killed as many Palestinian civilians as Netanyahu.)

Middle East Eye Video: “Netanyahu: ‘In the future, Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea.’”

Netanyahu said, “Complete victory requires the return of our hostages to their homes, the disarming of Gaza, and security oversight over what enters Gaza.” He emphasized that “ending the war before achieving our goals will harm the security of Israel for generations.”

He said that his government had passed an enormous military budget that would help the army realize its war aims and achieve victory. He cautioned, “Victory will take more long months, but we are determined to accomplish it.”

He “completely rejected” the repeated assertions by present and former Israeli political officials in television interviews that victory is impossible. Faced with protests over his failure to bring back Israeli hostages, he insisted that it was military pressure that would free them. He said that ending the war would broadcast a message of weakness and it would then be only a matter of time until there was another bloodbath. He was referring to the sickening Hamas attack of October 7, the bulk of whose victims were innocent civilians.

Regarding reports that he had rejected the American suggestion of establishing a Palestinian state, the embattled prime minister, who is deeply unpopular, attempted to tie his fate to that of the nation, replying, “What the political parties call in Israel ‘the day after’ means for them ‘the day after Netanyahu.’ . . . Whoever speaks of the day after Netanyahu in reality is speaking of the establishment of a Palestinian state via the Palestine Authority. That isn’t the day that follows Netanyahu but is the ‘day after’ for the majority of Israeli citizens.”

He said of US influence in Israel that the Israeli prime minister must be able to say “no” even to the dearest of friends.

Barak Ravid reported this week at Axios that US President Joe Biden is deeply frustrated with Netanyahu’s intransigence and has not spoken with him in nearly a month. Ravid says during that last conversation, Biden was pressing Netanyahu to restore the funding he had cut from the Palestine Authority (the West Bank rival of Hamas). Netanyahu rejected all of Biden’s suggestions for a workaround. Biden allegedly said, “This conversation is over.” And, it has been over ever since.

On Sunday, some 400,000 protesters demonstrated in Washington, DC, against the ongoing war, alleging that Biden is facilitating genocide. Democratic Party leaders such as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer have expressed anxiety about the impact of Biden losing the Arab and Muslim American votes, which have sometimes been swing votes in Michigan and some other key states.

Netanyahu is on trial for corruption and fears going to jail if he loses his current position. Opinion polling suggests that he and his coalition partners would be crushed at the polls if the government fell and new elections were held now. Some polls show that only 15% of Israelis want Netanyahu to remain at his post once the war on Gaza ends. Many Israelis blame him for the security failures attendant on the October 7 terrorist attack. He in turn has represented himself as the only one who can stand up to pressure for the establishment of a Palestinian state.