Conservative activist Steven Hotze on Wednesday was indicted on two felony charges related to his alleged involvement in an air conditioning repairman being held at gunpoint in 2020 during a bizarre search for fraudulent mail ballots that did not exist, according to his attorney, Gary Polland.
Hotze, 71, was indicted by a Harris County grand jury and faces one count of unlawful restraint and one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
The charges stem from Hotze’s hiring of more than a dozen private investigators to look for voter fraud in Harris County ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Hotze last appeared on JMG when he left a voice mail for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, telling him to “shoot to kill” Black Lives Matter activists.
You may recall that Steven Hotze has compared gays to “communist termites” eating away at America’s moral fabric. He is also fond of declaring that it’s now a hate crime to denounce homosexuality.
It was Hotze who bankrolled the successful campaign to repeal Houston’s “wicked, evil, Satanic” LGBT rights ordinance, during which he compared gays to rapists and murderers.
According to Hotze, same-sex marriage will result in children “practicing sodomy” in kindergarten.
In 2017, he appeared here when he “prophesied” that God will deliver “just retribution” to lawmakers who vote for LGBT rights.
When he’s not calling on God to kill politicians or for the governor to kill Black Lives Matter activists, Hotze sells “miracle” supplements because high cholesterol doesn’t really cause heart disease.
Hotze regularly quotes QAnon slogans.
Breaking: GOP activist Steven Hotze was indicted Wednesday on two felony charges related to his alleged involvement in a repairman being held at gunpoint in 2020 during a search for fraudulent mail ballots that did not exist. https://t.co/8bKjB66Qt4
I have waited to post about this as I wanted to be sure what the real issues were. The violent family’s lawyer has tried hard to muddy the water with attacks on the character of the victim. This was a horrible attack that left the victim badly injured, afraid and from reports blinded all because the family found out that the adult younger son was having a secret sexual affair with the victim. From what I have read prior the family forced the adult son that was having sex with the victim to accompany them to the victim’s home and help them get the victim to let them into his home and then injure, rob, and restrain / detain him. All of this because the parents and older brother couldn’t stand the idea of the younger adult son have male with male sexual relations. This is the results that come from the right-wing hate preaching about gay people, this is the results of don’t say gay talk about the LGBTQ+ are pedophiles that want to rape and sexualize children. This shows clearly how dangerous this talk pushed on the right is.
Members of a Ukrainian refugee family appeared in a South Florida courtroom on Wednesday. That’s where they are facing hate crime and attempted murder charges for an alleged family ambush.
Police say Oleh Makarenko was in a nine-month homosexual relationship, which would end with his lover being beaten so badly by Makarenko’s family that the victim became blind. Authorities allege that Oleh Makarenko, who is also known as Alex, was being forced to marry a woman by his mother.
On Aug. 6, three members of the Makarenko family barged into the victims home, according to police. A police report stated that, “All four of the suspects continued holding him and began punching, kicking, and hitting him all over his face and body.”
According to the arrest documents, 19-year-old Oleh Makarenko and the victim had been romantically involved for about nine months, but the victim said Oleh told him his father was not accepting him as gay.
After a two-week break in the relationship, on Aug. 6, the victim said he remotely opened his community’s gate believing it was a friend when it was actually the Makarenko family. The victim went outside but quickly went back into his apartment.
“There’s no indication that anything was said or done to show that they had specific intent to kill,” said public defender Katherine Lopez. “It seems like, based on my reading, that their probable cause for beating him was because of a relationship with a family member of theirs.”
In the non-embeddable video at the first link, the female fiance of the gay son denies everything because she has an engagement ring.
HATE CRIME CHARGES – Members of a Ukrainian refugee family appeared in a South Florida courtroom on Wednesday to face hate crime and attempted murder charges for the alleged family ambush of a gay man. https://t.co/vSto06xwG7
New details and a possible motive have been released about a brutal beating that left a man blind and landed a family behind bars. https://t.co/pZc4HU9t6A
Evangelical groups in the U.S. have been, for at least a couple of decades, sponsoring immigration of a small subset of Ukraine’s population that is too extreme in its religious viewpoints to get along well with anyone else in Ukraine. They arrive as religious refugees and immediately join with their U.S. evangelical sponsors to try to impose their religious extremism on others. I don’t know if that is this family’s story, but their actions fit the profile. I have friends in Ukraine that I chat with every week, and I have no sense that the evangelical-sponsored religious refugees are at all typical of the Ukrainian population as a whole. In fact, that is why they leave Ukraine, because Ukraine isn’t oppressively religious enough for them.
I can just imagine the family’s defense to this awful crime: “[the victim] was grooming our child.” That should at least earn them pardons from De Santis.
Those are already close to the claims being made by their friends. They would have us believe that the family are falsely accused Christians who pray a lot.
“They are a Christian family, believers in God, members of the church and get together on the weekends to pray in their family circle and community.”
Interestingly, the arguments that their friends use for why they must be innocent, make me more likely to believe they are guilty.
Unfortunately way to many societies around the world are so brainwashed by The CHURCH this shit is far to common. They move to a new country to start a new life and because of their blatant ignorance taught by the CHURCH it all goes up it smoke Wake up Frankie Graham and all you other NUTZ quit spreading the hate
The Christian Right has been importing Christian Righties and their thuggery from Eastern Europe for some time, taking advantage of these programs, then of course projecting that onto Democrats and brown people.
Presumably his parents and his church succeeded in creating such an astounding level of shame and self-loathing about being gay, that he was willing to participate with his family in the attempted murder of his boyfriend. The seething hate that is required to do something like this is so disturbing.
Wow, a women / gay hater who doesn’t understand history or science. I am so stunned at how open these people are about restricting voting to only the people they like or that are like them. They do not seem to understand the term democracy. I worry about the people attracted to this stuff.
“I have to double down on this. They care so much about everybody voting and democracy. And it’s like, if you went back to the founding and the founding fathers would have probably said something like, ‘Women and probably feminine men shouldn’t be allowed to vote because then their chaotic nature would just manifest throughout society.’
“And you would say, ‘No, that’s not right. That’s mean. You’re probably an incel.’ And then the founding father would just say, ‘Oh, well, do you have any evidence from your time to contradict this?’ And you’d just be like, ‘No, not exactly.’ So it would seem that they were actually right.” – Podcaster John Doyle, speaking at an American Populist Union event.
Far right YouTuber John Doyle said the founding fathers “were actually right” to restrict women from voting citing their “chaotic nature.”
Doyle was speaking at an American Populist Union event, a group that has endorsed Kari Lake. pic.twitter.com/ajIhMFC2ZD
At an event for the American Populist Union, far right YouTuber John Doyle said masks are “gay” and being worn by people hiding their lipstick they want to use to kiss men.
If you go to their website APU is only 6 individuals – all of them complete unknowns and all early 20s I would guess. I predict they will bitch flame out in about 1 month
I just have no idea what goes on in the head space of these people? Really the idea that gays are hunting killing preachers in the pulpit is more than nuts, it is trying to claim the very harm hate preachers do from the pulpit to / against gay and LGBTQ+ people.
“They call it ‘Don’t Say Gay’ and it’s not true. It’s not even in there. I’m asking the woman of wisdom here what to do. Because I get fought on every hand if I mention anything. And it’s going to be preachers – we’re not going to be able to preach much longer. Because they’re going to shoot us in the pulpit. They will kill us in our pulpits. You don’t believe me? They’re already doing it.” – Scamvangelist Jim Bakker, on today’s show.
Jim Bakker claims Christian pastors are being murdered for preaching on controversial social issues: "We're not going to be able to preach much longer because they'll shoot us in the pulpits. They will kill us in our pulpits. You don't believe me? They're already doing it." pic.twitter.com/SYF1qeU15w
If you look at the numbers, you will notice that traffic deaths among African-Americans in the year 2020 surged in the month of June. Fatalities among Black drivers in June 2020 were fully 55 percent higher than they were in June of 2019. You never see increases like that. What could have happened?
Well, let’s see. It was in the last week of May of 2020 that a convicted felon called George Floyd died in police custody in Minneapolis and after that, you’ll recall, everything changed.
What changed most of all was how we regard the rule of law. As Russ Martin of the Governors Highway Safety Association put it, Floyd’s death, quote, “accelerated national discussion about equity in transportation.” And that discussion would include, quote, “questions about enforcement.” Oh, there it is, right there. That’s the answer.
Cops across the country were told to stop enforcing traffic laws against Black drivers. No one wanted to be accused of arresting somebody for the crime of, quote, “driving while Black.” So, in the name of equity, the law no longer applied to huge numbers of people. Result? Thousands of Americans died.
Carlson had a point he wanted to make (Black Lives Matter is bad), so he threw some shit together. It doesn’t have to be true or make sense or have any facts behind it. His audience doesn’t care about any of that, only that he tells them what they want to hear (BLM is bad). Remember, Fox New is an entertainment network, not a news network.
Tucker makes shit up again. Actually *general* traffic fatalities went up during the pandemic by a lot because there was a lot more room on the road for people not used to driving very fast to drive too fast. Pointing out this applies to black people too doesn’t mean it somehow has to do with a lack of traffic stops, cause those went *up,* too.
The right / Republicans are sure there is voter fraud and that is because they are the ones doing it. They accuse the Democrats of course because every accusation is a confession for the Republicans.
Voter-list maintenance is one of the dividing lines in American politics. Republicans argue that if voter-registration records are not regularly purged and updated, election fraud can take place. Democrats push back that too many voter-list purges are conducted haphazardly, removing eligible voters who don’t learn they are no longer listed until they show up to vote.
Now it turns out that until last week, Meadows was simultaneously registered to vote in three different states — North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina — according to state records obtained by The Fact Checker. The overlap lasted about three weeks, and it might have continued if revelations about Meadows’s voting record had not attracted scrutiny in North Carolina. Meadows is still registered in Virginia and South Carolina.
DeathSantis doesn’t care the cost to the people. People mean nothing to the Republican ruling class. DeathSantis is sending a warning shot across the bow of big business, large corporations, support us with money and keep your mouth shut or we hurt you. Even when Disney said they would work to overturn the don’t say gay bill the Republicans did not turn on them. Disney bankrolls a lot of the Republican party in Florida. DeathSantis is sure he is going to be President after the 2024 election. He is raising money like a pirate. But then Disney threatened to withhold the donations they were giving the Republicans. Granted they said the donations they were giving both parties. That is when the Republican shit hit the fan. That is when at the orders of emperor DeathSantis the Republican cult wrote the bill taking away the special district Disney had. That it hurts the public of that area doesn’t matter. What is important is the money must flow.
Dissolving Walt Disney World’s Reedy Creek Improvement District could saddle local taxpayers with about $1 billion in debt and leave local governments scrambling with how to take over vital services for Florida’s top tourist attraction.
What happens next is unclear, but Orange County’s tax collector and other opponents of the bill say ending Reedy Creek could lead to higher taxes for Orange and Osceola residents. The Legislature did not conduct an economic study on the ramifications of dissolving the district.
Legislators spent only two days examining the bill, unveiled on Tuesday, providing little opportunity for public input. Reedy Creek collects about $164 million in property taxes to maintain roads, utilities and other services, which is almost entirely paid by Disney.
One of the biggest myths circulating on the internet is that the end of Reedy Creek will finally force Disney to pay its fair share of taxes, boosting the economies of Florida and the counties its resorts are located in.
Let’s dispel that rumor right now: not only is it wrong, it’s the opposite that will take effect.
Despite zero debate or public comment, and the near-total opposition of Central Florida’s delegation to this maneuver, Orange and Osceola County taxpayers will shoulder the hit alone, leaving both counties staring at financial ruin.
Disney World’s Reedy Creek: What happens next? Will Orange and Osceola county families face $2,200 in additional taxes, as Democrats suggested, to cover the costs? https://t.co/P7dc0oMp1c
Yes, he only cares about his own selfish political ambitions. Fuck the people and businesses of Florida or anyone else. It’s all about him. He is the “new Trump”.
