As always I love that TG posts on Mock Paper Scissors. I know we share many of the same viewers … but this is too damn good not to repost. Thanks TG. Hugs. Scottie
This is complete nonsense. Our founding fathers were trying to escape the rule of a country run by kings and religion. They could have made Christianity the nations religion but they did not, and did not want that. I recently heard that the reason fundamentalist Christians want the ten commandments which is a Jewish symbol from the Old Testament instead of the beatitudes from the New Testament is they don’t like or follow Jesus but do like the vengeance, violence, and anger of the OT god. These people should be listed as domestic terrorists. They can not be compromised with. They can’t be happy with them being allowed to live as they want, they demand the right to force you to live as they do. They are a minority in a minority that is shrinking. Yet they managed to get their people into positions of power so they are even more dangerous. Hugs. Scottie
The Louisiana legislature has passed a bill that “requires schools that receive public money to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said on Thursday’s “Washington Watch,” and “the anti-Christian Left is convulsing.”
“We’re focused on the historical aspect of the Ten Commandments, which all of our laws are derived from,” bill sponsor Louisiana Rep. Dodie Horton (R) explained to Perkins.
Skeptics will still ask, but why are the Ten Commandments displayed and not other religious ethical statements, like the writings of Confucius or Native American myths? One answer is America’s historical development. This great nation was not built by Confucians or Muslims, but by people informed by the Bible and the moral teachings found therein.
Therefore, “We want our children to see what God’s standard for our moral conduct is,” urged Horton. “We’re not asking the teachers to teach it, but we want our children to be able to see one — that there is a God, and that he does have a moral standard [by] which they need to conduct themselves.”
Read the full article. In the interview below, Perkins tells Horton that lawsuits against posting the Ten Commandants in Louisiana schools will fail because “we’ve got a new [Supreme] court.” Horton replies, “We do, praise God!”
How can a Christian Nationalist group or groups dictate how public money, via taxes, be spent or allocated by forcing public schools to display religious text? That’s what Sunday school is for. When will all religions be taxed like any other corporation. Talk to me about grooming again.
Religion (of any type) belongs in their churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. It does NOT belong in our schools. The Christo-fascists are trying to force their beliefs onto kids and that’s just totally wrong. And should be illegal. And they are trying to force their religion into laws affecting everyone. Fuck that shit. I agree with so many commenters on here – religion is poison. Fuck their god, Jeezus and everything in their warped view of the world.
“This great nation was not built by Confucians or Muslims”
Christians wouldn’t have built shit without the mathematics the Muslims perfected, and Christians wouldn’t have “discovered” this continent if they didn’t have such a rabid taste for the goods the Confucians were selling them.
Fred Clark wrote about the history of the La. Commandments poster law.
Louisiana Will Post The Twelve Commandments In Schools
‘That’s a problem, because there are a lot of different versions of the Ten Commandments, all of which are phrased and enumerated differently. The version of “The Ten Commandments” mandated by Horton’s bill is not taken from any of those. It is, instead, the version concocted in 1950 by the Fraternal Order of Eagles and Cecil B. DeMille.
Yes, really.’
As you might predict if you didn’t know, the Fraternal Order of Eagles was a racist organization.
I want to thank Ali for the link to this story. I will try to post the comment she left pointing me to it. I do not mind a link here or there in the comments if it leads me to new good article on issues. Ali has offered me many links in the comments and all of them so far have been worth reading, and yes many I end up posting like this one. Thank you Ali. Hugs Scottie Below is Ali’s comment.
All is well. So many things tend to work out for the very best.
Here’s a new link. I’ve been reading Oliver Willis for years, and I really like his work. You’ve probably seen his work around. I now subscribe (for free) to his work on Substack, and here is the one he posted today. Bonus on each post is a photo of his doggy Kal-El, who looks like our Chrissy back when she was that age (she crossed the bridge in 2020 at age 21.) Anyway, back to the link: https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/how-boring-lgbtq-people-made-america . Enjoy when you get to it!
When I was a kid and well up until into my teens in the 1990s, the right wing in America sold us a dystopian vision of what would occur if gay and lesbian people were granted equal rights, most notably, the right to marry.
According to conservative pundits and politicians, if we allowed same-sex marriage to occur, every street in America would immediately, overnight, turn into the most extreme version of a San Francisco leather parade. Innocent families would be forced, Clockwork Orange style, to watch as bulging crotches were shoved into their faces, sparkling zippers twirling before them, women dressed in men’s clothes, men wearing dresses, the kinkiest sexual acts occurring in public at the drop of a hat.
On Fox News, the propaganda arm of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, equal marriage rights would surely end up in people marrying ducks, cows, goats, etc. Certainly.
But in the decades since then, after figures like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both now thankfully six feet under) blamed LGBTQ people for events like 9/11, none of that happened. For sure, there are sometimes leather parades, but they’re mostly happening in the same places where there have always been leather parades and nobody there is bothered by them.
Instead, after the epochal event of same sex marriage becoming legal, nothing happened. Nothing at all. No forced Pride parades breaking out in rural Alabama. No kids in Montana getting instructed on the fine art of same-sex kissing. No families in Orange County, California, compelled to learn the words to “YMCA” in gender reeducation camps. Nothing at all.
Why? Because the vast majority of LGBTQ people are just as boring as straight people. They have jobs, go to school and work, take care of their kids, have marital bliss and squabbles and all the rest of it. They aren’t activists militantly marching in the streets for issues or disco, but simply want to make it through another day in peace. Boring as hell, like all of us are.
And this is a triumph. Because for all of American history, the people in power – almost always wealthy, straight, white, men – have attained power and retained power by demonizing everyone else who doesn’t look like them. Black men were after their daughters, Muslim people are terrorists, women are emotional hysterics, and on and on and on. These people profit off of the dehumanization of others and by working overtime to scare people about the horror that could happen if we treated everybody with equality and respect.
Yet every time that the country gets over itself and fulfills the words of the Founders in ways that they could not comprehend in their limited view of the world and who truly deserved “liberty,” we collectively discover that the nightmare was always total nonsense.
This is a lesson to keep in mind as we watch in horror as the right whips up fears about immigrants, transgender people, and refugees from the Middle East in our current electoral cycle. Integrating LGBTQ families into the mainstream of American life made the country stronger, not weaker. Our collective understanding increased, the rich tapestry that is the United States benefitted from increased diversity. The only ones who lost out were close-minded bigots who can’t accept that the world doesn’t look like the deranged fantasies in their brains (and never existed in reality).
Boring is good. We’re all boring. Reject the lurid fantasy world of the haters and instead embrace the mundane reality of a diverse world. And throw a leather parade, if you feel like it. This is America, where you’re free to do so if you like.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis speaking at an elementary school in Florida, where teachers’ salaries are now the lowest in the nation.
Six states have now passed universal school choice programs, but Florida has been singularly effective at accomplishing what Republicans have had near the top of their agenda for decades: destroying public education.
As The Hill reports, public schools in Florida are shutting down in multiple districts due to a rapid loss of students. Meanwhile, private school enrollment is up by more than 50,000 students, and charter schools have picked up 68,000. Homeschooling has increased by 58.6%, which would likely be even higher if parents weren’t competing for a limited number of available homeschool vouchers. Despite those vouchers expanding by 40,000 a year, they still can’t keep up with demand.
No other state has seen anything even close to this vast shift away from public education.
So why are Florida Republicans so successful in reducing public school enrollment? Because they did their homework. They spent decades draining public school funding, making them poorly staffed, poorly run, and an overall miserable place to get an education. Then they created a voucher system that offers parents unmatched goodies for joining in the enterprise of keeping children ignorant while making right-wing “education” providers rich.
The reason that Republicans want to destroy public education has never been much of a mystery. As Barbara Miner at Rethinking Schools puts it:
Education is a multibillion-dollar market, and the private sector is eager to get its hands on those dollars.
Conservatives are devoted to the free market and believe that private is inherently superior to public.
Shrinking public education furthers the Republican Party goal of drastically reducing the public sector.
Privatization undermines teacher unions, a key base of support for the Democratic Party.
Privatization rhetoric can be used to woo African American and Latino voters to the Republican Party.
Few states have matched Florida when it comes to undermining public schools to make the alternatives look better.
In 2007, Florida’s investment in public education was about average. The state had one of the worst high school graduation rates in the nation and poor student performance in science, but those numbers were improving. But they didn’t keep improving.
The state did institute a funding program that rewards businesses with tax breaks for educational investments—so long as those investments go tovoucher programs. As a result, the program simultaneously feeds private schools by directly putting money in their pockets and starves public schools through loss of tax funding.
The combination of low teacher pay, poor student investment, harsh state oversight, and a restrictive curriculum that cripples students’ ability to learn has all but destroyed Florida’s public schools. It’s not hard to understand why parents and students would want something better. They deserve something better.
This is exactly how Florida created unprecedented demand for alternatives.
As a bonus for parents who choose to homeschool their children, the state is willing to coverDisney passes and giant televisions. No questions asked. So it’s absolutely no surprise that Florida’s available homeschool vouchers were all snatched up for this school year and areexpected to double next year.
But Florida isn’t the only state that has caught onto the make-it-terrible-and-they-will-leave system of driving kids to private schools. Tennessee now comes in just ahead of Florida on spending per student, and ranks No. 44 on teacher pay. Tennessee’s Republican legislature is considering the unprecedented step of turning down federal funding for education in hope of evading federal requirements on education. Not even Florida went that far.
Fortunately for Tennessee children, the legislature broke into factions and failed to pass Gov. Bill Lee’s voucher plan this year. But it will surely try again next year.
And Tennessee can always look to Florida as its model.
Ali also sent me this link on March 1st, and while it is more something Ten Bears would post at his blog (link will be below, one of the new ways that WordPress is messing up blogging in classic is that if I include a link it wipes the entire classic part out and changes it to a block) I will post it here to clear my tabs. Hugs. Scottie
(Photo by Wendy Maeda/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
February 29, 2024
Increased numbers of preterm babies, higher incidence of respiratory disease and death, and more children in hospitals are some of the health outcomes the world is facing from the impacts of extreme climate change according to a comprehensive assessment of climate change and children’s health.
A new study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment identified which particular climate-driven extremes are linked to certain detrimental health impacts for future generations.
The study led by Dr Lewis Weeda, a researcher with The University of Western Australia and the Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre at Telethon Kids Institute, and Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology, Corey Bradshaw, from Flinders University shows that the risk of a preterm birth will increase by 60% on average from exposure to extreme temperatures.
The researchers reviewed the results of 163 health studies from around the world to inform planning by governments that could mitigate and improve health outcomes for future generations against the impacts of climate change.
Bradshaw says the global data revealed a worrying increase in preterm birth rates that could cause lifelong complications for millions of children around the world.
Corey Bradshaw
“We identified many direct links between climate change and child health, the strongest of which was a 60% increased risk on average of preterm birth from exposure to temperature extremes,” he says. “Respiratory diseases, mortality, and morbidity, among others, were also made worse by climate change.
“The effects of different air pollutants on children’s health outcomes were smaller compared to temperature effects, but most pollutants still had an effect of some type, so the news is concerning. The children’s health issues we identified depend on weather extremes — cold extremes give rise to respiratory diseases, while drought and extreme rainfall can result in stunted growth for a population.”
Most of the analysed studies were in high-income nations, despite the fact that children in lower-income countries are most likely to go without adequate access to healthcare, infrastructure, and stable food supply.
The researchers warn that health risks vary across continents and depend on socio-economic circumstances. The research revealed that even advanced economies would not avoid the impacts of climate change on children’s health.
“Given that climate influences childhood disease, social and financial costs will continue to rise as climate change progresses, placing increasing pressure on families and health services. For example, asthma has been estimated to cost as much as US$1.5 billion due to a single fire season in the future,” Professor Bradshaw says.
Geography also dictated the health impacts of climate change. For example, in Australia, extreme temperatures have led to an increase in premature births on the East Coast, Northern Territory, and Western Australia and enhanced respiratory issues in Queensland, while similar temperatures have caused higher mortality rates in South Africa.
Dr Weeda said action is required to protect children from climate-related disease.
“The development of public health policies to counter these climate-related diseases, alongside efforts to reduce anthropogenic climate change, must be addressed if we are to protect current and future children.”
“Finding solutions and implementing climate adaptation and mitigation policies would positively impact multiple United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Climate change is universal and adversely affecting all countries and people, and we must prepare societies for mounting threats to child health.”
The Science of the Total Environmentpaper is titled ‘How climate change degrades child health: A systematic review and meta-analysis.’
NEW: Texas grade school curriculum would infuse the Bible with history and arts lessons under a new proposal from top education officials. MLK's Birmingham Jail letter, for example, would include Biblical stories on "civil disobedience." @PoojaSalhotrahttps://t.co/D3TyT9XpX5
Important story from @The74 The ostensible reason for the curriculum changes is to support cultural literacy. But do students need to read the Book of Matthew in public school to understand The Last Supper? https://t.co/jd0Wsufbjn
Little claims he’s been targeted for harassment and retaliation over his lawsuit. He’s being represented by the anti-LGBTQ hate group, the Thomas More Society, who claims that Little has a First Amendment right not to have the flag within his sight.
Per reports, Little’s salary is more than $200,000. In 2021, a Long Beach lifeguard tower decked out for Pride was destroyed in arson, much to the delight of commenters on the YouTube clip below.
A Christian lifeguard in California is suing his local fire department after it allegedly threatened to dismiss him for refusing to display a Pride flag at his workplace, court documents show. https://t.co/Bq7d9C3SWB
Last year the group’s founder claimed to The Federalist that his foie gras business was boycotted by local restaurants after he posted an anti-LGBTQ screed on Instagram, putting his family in a “dire financial situation.” In the clip below, he talks about that supposed betrayal and rants about “sexual degeneracy.”
With a month of pride celebrations kicking off tomorrow, a group of Catholic men from Louisianna are preparing a prayer rally to reclaim their town from the LGBT agenda.https://t.co/e6mw7eLGzj
Cultists are also raging in the comments of Walmart’s Instagram post. Sample reply: “Walmart and Pride whatever it is, I hate all this because you glorify everything in this world except what God has created to be from the beginning, which is a family, man married to a woman and their children!! Why don’t you give a true family unit a special month??? This evil agenda to shove all that’s unnatural down our throat will be your downfall one day!! God will not be mocked!! Yes, everyone has a right to choose how you live but why does it have to be glorified for a month??? Just wrong!!!”
If the goal was to make “Pride” toxic for brands, as conservative Matt Walsh urged, then mission accomplished. Now, thanks to Bud Light and so many other casualties of excessive Pride, Americans have started to realize how much power they have to change the corporate landscape.
And now for the tRump cult out cries about that guilty verdict.
I love how every accusation they make about Biden and the democrats / left turns out to be a confession by the republicans. For example they claim that Biden has weaponized the Department Of Justice and is controlling the AG Merrick Garland. But the republicans and trump have been calling for the locking up of his pollical opponent since his first run in 2016. He and his supporters have long called for locking up Biden. These people don’t want to run a country, they want to rule the country and everyone in it. They want to raid the treasury and hammer anyone who tries to stop them. Simply put they wrongly claim no one has ever been charged with this same crime, but it has been charged over 9,000 times. But they are now a cult and if the dear leader says it it must be so, reality be damned. Hugs. Scottie
Supporters of former President Donald Trump, enraged by his conviction on 34 felony counts by a New York jury, flooded pro-Trump websites with calls for riots, revolution and violent retribution https://t.co/l0ekYagThWpic.twitter.com/L8Lc6YAMo4
Wow! Joe diGenova suggests on Laura Ingraham's show that Republicans should buy guns because there is a civil war coming. "It’s going to be total war." pic.twitter.com/ctBB1ikrd0
JMG: Regarding Kelly’s lie about E. Jean Carroll, New York’s 2022 Adult Survivors Act was certainly not passed with her in mind and in fact resulted in lawsuits against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, NYC Mayor Eric Adams, and rapper Sean Combs. In total, nearly 3000 suits were filed before the law expired in 2023.
NBC News: Trump supporters are trying to doxx the jurors in Trump's criminal trial.
A non-profit that conducts public interest research found posts of the purported addresses of jurors on a fringe message board known for pro-Trump content.
believe that the woman in the back shouting “fuck the king and the queen” is the same one seen below bouncing her enormous bare tits earlier today.
'F*** the King': Furious moment Trump supporters clash with British couple outside his NYC hush money trial as cops escort them away after they visited 'purely for entertainment' https://t.co/5B0celZ9R1pic.twitter.com/vyuWS59LWF
— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) May 29, 2024
#NOW Trump Supporters TEAR UP SIGNS of Anti-Trump protester, shove boobs in her face and break into a SHOVING MATCH outside NYC Court during Trump’s Hush Money Trial pic.twitter.com/n6PVUOQunG
— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) May 30, 2024
NOW: An anti-Trump protester walks into the pro-Trump rally across from the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse and has her signs snatched and ripped
A pro-Trump protester then flashed her breasts in the anti-Trump protester’s face pic.twitter.com/EyaoQeVfWE
Footage relayed by a freelance journalist from outside the courthouse appears to show supporters of Donald Trump attacking a protester, repeatedly ripping up the person’s protest signs, and shoving and yelling “f**k that b**ch” in their face. https://t.co/IL7lsMLd35
Judge Merchan just told the jury that they do not need unanimity to convict. 4 could agree on one crime, 4 on a different one, and the other 4 on another. He said he would treat 4-4-4 as a unanimous verdict.
False reports about the jury instructions in former President Trump's New York hush money trial have led to online threats against Judge Juan Merchan. https://t.co/jnN52R0YGq
Trump called it ridiculous, unconstitutional and un-American “that the highly Conflicted, Radical Left Judge is not requiring a unanimous decision on the fake charges against me.” At first glance, it might appear that the former president doesn’t understand one of the basic tenets of the legal system: that guilty verdicts in criminal cases have to be unanimous.
The jury must be unanimous when it comes to determining whether Trump is guilty or not guilty of each specific falsifying business records count, and whether he did so in an effort to unlawfully impact an election, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said.
He added, however, that the panel did not have to be unanimous about which of those three types of crimes could serve as the underlying violation that brings the state election charge into play. In Trump’s case, prosecutors have offered three types of crimes that would make the state election-meddling charge come into play: federal election law crimes, tax crimes or false business records.
Leavitt went on to claim that President Joe Biden has targeted “innocent” Americans such as the Jan. 6 rioters charged for their roles in the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. “They’ve thrown [them] in the gulag in Washington, D.C.,” said Leavitt, who added that Trump said he’d pardon the rioters on “day one” of a second term.
Trump press secretary says their Project 2025 agenda will seek “revenge” on those who oppose Trump, adding that criticizing Trump is a “crime” that requires “justice” pic.twitter.com/HDUNeaIRsF
Watch: A Michigan man left a judge flabbergasted when he appeared in court via Zoom on suspended driver’s license charges, while driving his car. This occurred on May 15, 2024 during Washtenaw County J. Cedric Simpson’s criminal docket hearings. pic.twitter.com/WjqUHq3RCK
Rumors of Trump using the N-word during production of The Apprentice have swirled for years. Executive producer Mark Burnett has long refused to release any outtakes from the show. In 2018, Trump tweeted that the N-word “does not exist in my vocabulary and never has” and that Burnett backs him on this “fake news.”
For 20 years, I couldn’t say what Donald Trump did on the set of The Apprentice. Now I can. https://t.co/yHWnZYKy1l
Read the full article. Per Reuters, Yullo acted in response to the Parkland mass shooting. Yullo also fined insurers $13 million for providing the NRA’s “Carry Guard” coverage for members accused of wrongful death shootings.
Israeli forces are continuing to push deeper into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, despite growing international pressure over the war and the deadly weekend attack on a tent city. The White House says while the president’s red line was not crossed, it is monitoring developments hour by hour. NBC’s Raf Sanchez reports for TODAY.
The horror of the illegal Israeli strike in refuge camp Rafah, where Israel kept insisting all Palestinians MUST go to be SAFE, Israel has now been attacking. After Joe Biden, Mr lets play nice and get the Israeli’s to not do it, and the rest of the world body said stop the illegal action now, Israel has committed another war crime.
These people are trapped in a burning tent caused by the strikes, the injured / death toll is still coming but it is catastrophic because … Israel told these people to go there and they would be safe. Israel is shooting fish in a barrow, but these fish are humans, Palestinians, and Israel does not count them as human! Understand what Israel is doing and realize what the end goal always was. They want the eradication of Palestinian people and the land they are on. They have killed tens of thousands of them, and they want to kill the rest. Israel wants Gaza land for itself as even Jared Kushner tRump’s Middle East envoy said the land would make beautiful sea side resorts. In recent reports we learned Israel military were told to target aid workers and that they deliberately targeted medical people in any role. The goal was according to the military to stop, prevent, and keep others from helping Palestinians! When they tell you who they are, believe them the first time. Hugs. Scottie
In just two days following the International Court of Justice’s order for Israel to end its offensive in Rafah, the Netanyahu government is openly defying it in extreme fashion.
Gov. Ron DeSantis speaking at an elementary school in Florida, where teachers’ salaries are now the lowest in the nation.
(Photo by Wendy Maeda/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)February 29, 2024
Scottie's Playtime 
All is well. So many things tend to work out for the very best.
Here’s a new link. I’ve been reading Oliver Willis for years, and I really like his work. You’ve probably seen his work around. I now subscribe (for free) to his work on Substack, and here is the one he posted today. Bonus on each post is a photo of his doggy Kal-El, who looks like our Chrissy back when she was that age (she crossed the bridge in 2020 at age 21.) Anyway, back to the link: https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/how-boring-lgbtq-people-made-america . Enjoy when you get to it!