Know I am safe. Ron is grocery shopping, but I have people to contact. Please understand once I got past the shock and could deal I texted Randy. But he is at work and the boss, so I am OK enough not to need his time, even though he offered. He is so grand, if the abused people ever had the same set-up as the AA / friends of Bill, he would be the world’s best sponsor. I am not in a safe enough mind place to tell everyone about the new memories / fragments. I have just stopped crying because I wanted to type and forced my attention on the keyboard. Every time I try to type what I remember, I fall apart. But part of me knows to turn to the computers, to Scotties Playtime, to focus hard on this … what ever this is. Because if I don’t the vortex may come. Even the thought of it just started body reactions I am struggling to control. Part of me is trying to deny the memories, to force them back into forgetfulness, to put them back in that chest wrapped with chains thrown into the deepest part of the ocean … but … I know enough to understand I can not heal or maybe even really deal with them until I am able to write them, to vocalize them, to accept them and then conquer them with all the strength of the person I am. I have to get the emotions under control. I want to slide into despair, wondering if it will ever stop, to what if I lose control, to wanting to hide, to crying / shaking / scared when as an adult right now in my home I have no reason to be afraid. I think that now that Ron knows so much more when he gets home, I should tell him about this. My instinct, what I have always done, is hide it from him. But maybe it will help if I tell him. Anyway. Got to go, everything hurts, I … Just have to go. Love and hugs. Scottie
Elyria, OH Police went to the wrong house to serve a warrant, now the mother of a special needs 17 month old says he was injured in the raid; police claim that isn’t true.
I am way behind in reading and replying to comments. But I am supper glad I saved them for getting to when I could. This comment from Suze is outstanding. I will first post the link she left it on, then her comment. Hugs. Scottie
I have visited Palestine twice….both in the early 2000’s. Kids were on the streets of Ramallah and Raffa everyday selling whatever they could for tourists spare change. I bought street food (falafel) for about ten kids one day…garnered a LOT of interest from Israeli police who seemed to think it was a strange activity. Those kids watched out for me though and led me to some truly wonderful shops where I could easily bargain. I made it a priority to purchase food every day in a Palestinian area to bring back to my hostel or hotel. On my last day in Rafah I was saying goodbye to a few kids and a funeral procession started down the street. One of the kids, a boy of about six, grabbed my hand and pulled me into a shop. I asked if he was okay and he said “missy, you stay off street, men are angry. I keep you safe” That little boy, if he has survived is a man now and I wonder about him every day. I get that Israel is all about their “homeland” but frankly it is the Arabs homeland too and they are treated like fourth class citizens. Apartheid is alive and well in the land.
Media call this a war. It is not. It is a slaughter, it is a state-driven terrorism with the goal of genocide, against a people with no air force or anti-missile technology to help them. They are sitting ducks in a pen, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no way to fight back. The Gaza civilians, women and children are not Hamas, they have no weapons to fight with. All they can do is suffer and die. Israel tries to justify it saying they were attacked, Hamas started. One boy hits another boy doesn’t give the struck boy the right to kill the other boy’s entire family and neighborhood. Israel lies about allowing food and other aid into Gaza because it is about causing as much hurt, pain, and destruction as possible. The Israeli government think they are above any attempts to stop them and have the right to do what ever they want to anyone they like. We need to show them they are wrong. Hugs. Scottie
With the Israel-Hamas war entering its 100th day, there is growing international concern about the increasing civilian death toll in Gaza as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to continue the assault. Meanwhile, vigils were held in Israel in support of those who remain held hostage in Gaza. Charlie D’Agata reports.
Over 23,000 Palestinians dead, about 11,000 are children, most of the rest are women. There are an estimated 2 million people homeless and displaced, with no shelter or food in the winter cold and rain. Israel said it won’t stop, it says it will continue what it is doing all through 2024. Their plan is for an incredible dense small area reservation tightly controlled by Israel, which hopes to force the Palestinians to become so desperate they will either overwhelm the Egyptian border or die off and leaving until there are no Palestinians left. Israel has said they are working to force deport the all Palestinians from Gaza and the West bank. This is a land grab genocide by Israel. Different officials in the government admit it. Bibi brags about knifing the US in the back as he has demanded more money, he laughs as he claims he prevented any attempt to form a two-state solution. He is as racist against Palestinians as republicans are toward brown people. Hugs. Scottie
Now 100 days old, the latest Israel-Hamas war is by far the longest, bloodiest, and most destructive conflict between the bitter enemies.
One minority group using keywords to promote a crisis that doesn’t exist to remove books with characters and plots they don’t like. One minority group pushing for the right to control the children of the majority who disagree with them. One of the board members claimed it was up to the parents to decide what was sexual explicit not educators, yet he also claimed that he wouldn’t tolerate tax money to be spent on what he called sexually explicit books, which we all know he means books with LGBTQIA characters or plots. So he is taking the rights from the parents he just claimed had the rights to make that judgement. Hugs. Scottie
Opposing parents pushed back against Moms for Liberty’s campaign, saying that removing books is censorship and that one group of parents shouldn’t decide what’s best for everyone. There was even an attempt to challenge the Bible to test the system.
None of the 61 books that were challenged was available to elementary students. They only lived on middle and high school shelves. That was until the superintendent removed them all, except for the Bible, until they went through the review process.
Whether it’s a textbook or a library book, it won’t be allowed in Carroll County Public Schools if deemed sexually explicit by school officials. That’s thanks to a new policy passed unanimously by its school board Wednesday.
The vote came after a monthslong campaign by the conservative parent group Moms for Liberty, whose members challenged dozens of school library books they say are inappropriate for students.
The board decided in the fall that staff should tighten the policy on textbook and library book selection and tasked them with creating a definition of “sexually explicit.”
“Instructional materials, including supplemental materials, shall not contain sexually explicit content,” the new policy states. “Sexually explicit content is defined as unambiguously describing, depicting, showing, or writing about sex or sex acts in a detailed or graphic manner.”
The policy doesn’t apply to materials used in the health curriculum.
Opposing parents pushed back against Moms for Liberty’s campaign, saying that removing books is censorship and that one group of parents shouldn’t decide what’s best for everyone. There was even an attempt to challenge the Bible to test the system.
None of the 61 books that were challenged was available to elementary students. They only lived on middle and high school shelves. That was until the superintendent removed them all, except for the Bible, until they went through the review process. She said it’s because reviewing such a high volume of books would take too long. And school officials said removing the Bible would be a constitutional issue.
Kathryn Berling, a parent and school librarian at Taneytown Elementary School, told board members that they nor the school system asked for librarians’ input on the books. While she spoke, a handful of attendees stood with her in solidarity.
Berling noted that librarians were not asked for input when the superintendent took away the books, nor on a new policy put in place at the beginning of the year that requires librarians to complete a time-consuming checklist policing a book’s content before selecting for the library.
The board also, she noted, did not ask librarians about defining “sexually explicit.”
“It’s a shame you cannot trust the professionalism of our CCPS media specialists,” Berling said.
Shortly before Wednesday’s vote, a few board members questioned how staff defined “sexually explicit” in the policy proposal. Sahithya Sudhakar, the student member, said she doesn’t think the definition suffices because graphic content can look different to different people. It’s a risk to content like literature that students read in class, she added.
“I’m worried we’re losing important content in our schools because a single line is taken out of context,” said Sudhakar, who does not have voting rights.
Fellow members Tara Battaglia and Patricia Dorsey, who ended up voting for the policy, echoed her concerns on the definition and asked if there was more they can do to make it less subjective.
But members Steve Whisler and Donna Sivigny saw no issue. Whisler said as an elected official he won’t tolerate any tax dollars spent on “sexually explicit” books.
“It is the job of parents, not educators … to determine what’s sexually explicit,” he said.
“We are treating adults like children, and children like adults.” -Tiffany Justice @4TiffanyJustice The material that 13yo’s have access to in schools should be very different that the content adults enjoy. We need to stop treating children like adults. pic.twitter.com/CAmLdDWqkL
— Kit Hart, American Girl (@5sweetharts_) July 13, 2023
The crisis was strategically created in order to gain control. By isolating children for years, forcing them to cover their faces, they hurt children.
By convincing children that they were born in the wrong bodies, and that the only way to fix them was with drugs and surgeries,… pic.twitter.com/tZ8vNQAUDY
And when you advocate for a better world, you become comfortable- and even embrace – controversy. Read my full commentary here. ⬇️ @Moms4Libertyhttps://t.co/5IqQhDWVfV
[Board member] Whisler said… “It is the job of parents, not educators… to determine what’s sexually explicit.”
Then why the fuck did he argue and vote for a policy that makes it the educators and school librarians responsibility to police the board‘s definition? Whisler’s just an anti-sex control freak.
I was reading books from the adult section of our libraries when I was in 7th grade. I came across depictions of sex acts. Somehow I survived. Thank God. /s
By third grade I was reading at the 12th grade level. Mostly science fiction but many biographies and other non-fiction. I was exposed to many words and terms and descriptions of things that I didn’t completely understand, but the help of the dictionary and my extremely well-read father, I quickly learned. My parents never treated me like a little kid when it came to my choices of reading materials, and I wasn’t in any way traumatized by anything I read in books.
By age 12, I was allowed to go off on my bike, alone or with friends, and frequently would be gone 8 to 10 hours on the weekends. Sometimes we’d be riding clear across town [Columbus, OH] or far out past the suburbs, going almost to Delaware, Grove City, Reynoldsburg and others. I was also allowed to go play down by the river behind the shopping center, where, in retrospect, one might even encounter somewhat shifty characters. I never got kidnapped, raped, assaulted or killed, or exposed to drugs or cigarettes. Most of those things happened at my school. I turned out ok, well-rounded, able to discern right from wrong, to make responsible decisions and other positive attributes.
hell, I was reading from the adult section of the library when I was in grade school. if I could read it, my parents let me and my dad would answer any questions I had about things. they were just happy I was reading. I remember seeing book about cattle breeds around the world and there was a photo showing the weinies of African tribal members, I loved that book!!! LOL
Christian privilege at it again. “[S]chool officials said removing the Bible would be a constitutional issue.” But it’s not a constitutional issue to ban speech unless it’s religious (Evangelical Christian). These assholes believe they’re both divinely and constitutionality sanctioned to dominate the rest of us.
The buy-bull….Talk about a book full of filth, violence and lies! No one should be exposed to it until old enough to realize is a work of fiction created by sun baked brains and changed over the centuries by crazies, drunks, and the power hungry.
“School officials said removing the Bible would be a constitutional issue.”
School officials were wrong. Applying a general law or policy without distinction and without bias against a religion is clearly constitutional. Also, the Bible is neither a textbook nor supplemental instructional material, so it’s presence is superfluous, already.
I guess it’s not within their definition of “sexually explicit” because it’s language is too ambiguous and lacking in detail when it describes sex acts with prostitutes, sisters, half-sisters, sisters-in-law, daughters, fathers, kings, concubines, refugees, war captives, under-age girls, slaves, maids, surrogates, men, donkeys, dogs, and goats.
As a voracious young reader, I had pretty much checked out everything in the kids section of our public library by age 10 and moved into the adult stacks.The librarians panicked the first time I brought a stack of Agatha Christie and John Creasey mysteries to the check out desk and refused to let me have them without parental permission. Infuriated, I ran to get my mom. She rolled her eyes and just said, “Let him read them”.
Until puberty hit, I skimmed over the sexy bits, then had an “a-ha” moment when I finally connected the naughty descriptions in the books with my own naughty bits. I think the only significant affect it had on me was using a lot of British sex slang until the 7th grade librarian asked me if I knew what “twat” actually meant.
P.S. The librarian became a lifelong friend. RIP Mrs. Pavitt.
The law he touts that would allow local police to arrest people they “think” are not here legally and a local judge gets to order their immediate removal. Guess what that means in reality? Arrest all brown people, charge them, quickly send them to Mexico at gun point … learn later they were here legally, or maybe even citizens. Ah who cares, they republican leaders get their nice white straight cis ethnostate where they are complete rulers over how people live. Hugs. Scottie.
The third-term Republican responded that the state is using “every tool that can be used, from building a border wall to building these border barriers.” He also touted the new Texas law empowering state officials to remove people from the U.S. who they suspect of being in the country illegally.
“… the new deportation law, which is set to take effect in March and threatens to upend longstanding precedent leaving immigration enforcement solely to the federal government. The law would allow any law enforcement officer in Texas to arrest migrants accused of unlawfully entering the state from Mexico and empower judges to order their removal”.
Department of Public Safety troopers stand guard over migrants in a detention area Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023, in Eagle Pass as a surge of migrants push across the border.
William Luther
WASHINGTON — Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas is doing everything to stop border crossings short of shooting migrants because the Biden administration would “charge us with murder.”
“We are deploying every tool and strategy that we possibly can,” the governor said in an interview with conservative commentator Dana Loesch. “The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border because of course the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”
The comments came during an appearance on Loesch’s show last week in which Abbott was asked what he believed was the “maximum amount of pressure” he could implement to secure the border.
The third-term Republican responded that the state is using “every tool that can be used, from building a border wall to building these border barriers.” He also touted the new Texas law empowering state officials to remove people from the U.S. who they suspect of being in the country illegally.
The clip was aired on Loesch’s program again Thursday without the line about shooting migrants. A version of the audio was also posted on social media by Heartland Signal, a progressive radio show based in Chicago.
Abbott said Friday that he was asked to point out where he was drawing the line on what the state can legally do to secure the border.
“I pointed out something that is obviously illegal,” Abbott said. “It’s that simple.”
The comments come as the Biden administration has sued the state to stop a slew of Abbott’s border security efforts, including the new deportation law, which is set to take effect in March and threatens to upend longstanding precedent leaving immigration enforcement solely to the federal government. The law would allow any law enforcement officer in Texas to arrest migrants accused of unlawfully entering the state from Mexico and empower judges to order their removal.
Abbott also has strung miles of razor wire along the border and deployed a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande, which the Biden administration is also fighting to have removed in a separate court battle.
But Abbott still has faced pressure from some conservatives to do more, and some in the GOP have called for the use of deadly force to stop suspected traffickers. Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis urged as much during a campaign stop in Texas last summer, saying those breaking through border barriers and displaying “hostile intent” should “end up stone-cold dead as a result of that bad decision.”
The Texas Department of Public Safety last month found no wrongdoing by agency officials after six troopers working for Abbott’s border security initiative alleged mistreatment of migrants last summer.
The complaints included an email from a DPS medic describing “inhumane” treatment of migrants he witnessed while deployed in Eagle Pass. The email said troopers had been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande and told not to give water to asylum-seekers even in extreme heat. The agency’s inspector general found that most of the incidents raised by the troopers did happen, but concluded that DPS officials did not violate law or agency policy.
Benjamin Wermund is the Washington correspondent for the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News. He can be reached at ben.wermund@houstonchronicle.com. He covers the Texas delegation and the many ways the state and its leaders shape national politics and policy. He’s a Texas native and a diehard Spurs fan.
People like Abbott are precisely the reason why laws exist. He has no moral compunction against murder, but luckily realizes it could land him in prison.
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Scottie's Playtime 