This is the terrifying person the maga right conservatives want to erase and claim is a threat to society. This is a really informative video by a young man who describes the steps it took to get what he needed to be the person he really was. This person’s lived experience put to lie all the myths the anti-trans people claim are happening, like mass pushing kids to be trans, no medical checks, and just rushing kids to sex changes. It amazes me that in 2023 we still have throwbacks to dark ages in understandings of biology and social development. Notice this boy knew his gender was wrong most of his early childhood and even at 9 years old he knew he was not a girl but should grow up to be a guy, but it became a serious issue for him at 12 years old. Puberty time. This is the same period of time the maga religious right wants to claim kids don’t know anything about gender or sexual attraction. And even though this boy did not have teachers telling him about pronouns or gender expression, he still realized he was not his assigned sex / gender. He talks about gender conversion, gender dysphoria, and the misinformation about trans kids / people. His story is interesting. It also is very informative and destroys a lot of the trans haters talking points, even to the point of no harm and many benefits of letting kids socially transition. Well worth watching. Hugs
Talk about pushing your religious views on to people so poor as to need government assistance. This is more of the fundamentalist rights war on women. Look at the things the republicans have pushed, removing a woman’s right to her own reproductive care via abortion, removing a woman’s right to contraception, in 7 states the republicans are trying to outlaw no-fault divorce thinking it will force people to stay married, and of course outlawing anything but straight relations by overturning the right of marriage equality. This guy wants to force low income women to marry a guy, any guy, to be able to have a place to live. Plus the guy is a white supremacists racist. Hugs
“For whatever reason, the people who put together this bill, knew we needed work requirements for SNAP but they said we shouldn’t have them for Medicaid, which kind of, I predicted. But they left low-income housing untouched.
“I think as far as discouraging work and discouraging marriage, I think low-income housing is even a more dangerous program than the food stamps.
“So, I’m including low-income housing in the mix of having work requirements. The amendment is drafted to include Section 8 housing, which is an error on my part because there are other low-income housings as well.
“But that’s what we have before us.” – GOP Rep. Glenn Grothman, during last night’s House Rules Committee debate on the debt ceiling bill.
Grothman appeared here last week when he complained that Biden won’t nominate “straight white guys” to the federal judiciary.
He also appeared here in January 2023 when he posted a flag associated with the Christian nationalist movement outside his Capitol office.
Months earlier he gave a floor speech condemning the US Census for collecting data on LGBTQ Americans, which he found “horrifying.”
Before that he appeared here in June 2021 when he authored a bill that would ban teaching the history of racism in Washington DC public schools.
His first appearance here came in September 2011 when as a Wisconsin state senator he authored a successful bill that banned mentioning contraception in sex ed classes.
Grothman opposes recognizing Kwanzaa and Martin Luther King Jr. Day as state holidays. In 2015, he authored a bill to place a ban on same-sex marriage in the US Constitution.
Grothman: They left low income housing untouched. I think as far as discouraging work and marriage, I think low income housing is a more dangerous program than food stamps. pic.twitter.com/XpgiREMlAy
And they’re also horrified that poor people have decent smartphones – which might be their only connection to email and the rest of the internet, for school, finding jobs, keeping jobs, as well as being informed, entertained, and socially connected like more well-off folks.
They are complete monsters! Anyone who thinks of food stamps and low-income housing as “horrifying” is a heartless POS in my book. God forbid we should try to help the poor without making them jump through a bunch of hoops first. I hate these right-wing ghouls with a passion!
Not everyone can or WANTS to get married and have children. I know it sure as hell wasn’t for me. I still have to eat and pay rent. These assholes want to control every aspect of our lives. Next up, rules for how poor people brush their teeth and get dressed in the morning?
You know what discourages marriage and having children? The cost of living which has been too high for a long time, but has now soared through the roof. And what is the QAnonGOP’s plan to bring down the cost of living? Ban drag shows and investigate Hunter Biden.
You know what also dissuades younger people from getting married? Crushing college debt. A lot of those kids can’t afford a house, and put off marriage, until they’re in better financial shape, but this chud doesn’t want to actually do anything to fix that problem…does he? Guess what? He really doesn’t care about people getting married. He’s just looking for any reason to be a dick.
Not everyone needs to go to college, but those in the trades who went from apprentice to journeyman to master and other skill paths are also being crushed by energy sector price gouging, food price gouging and many other factors that dissuade them from getting married and starting a family.
TRANSLATION – ‘We need to manage the poors like we do a commercial livestock operation, ensuring that we get sufficient return on our investment of feed and shelter’.
Move comes as rightwing groups increase pressure to remove books, most written by or about members of the LGBTQ+ community and people of colour
Nate Coulter, executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System said the law would be ‘totally impractical to enforce.’ Photograph: Katie Adkins/AP
The American Library Association and the Authors Guild are among a group of organisations bringing a lawsuit against the state of Arkansas over a law which makes it a crime for librarians to give children books with “obscene” content.
The lawsuit involves 17 plaintiffs, including the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS), the Association of American Publishers and the American Booksellers Association.
The groups are aiming to challenge Senate bill 81, which exposes librarians who provide “obscene materials” to children to criminal liability. The law, part of Act 372 of 2023, is due go to come into force on 1 August.
It says that anyone will be allowed to “challenge the appropriateness” of a book, but it does not define exactly what is meant by “obscene” or “appropriateness”. Under the law, a group of people chosen by head librarians would review material that had been challenged, and vote in a public meeting about whether it should be kept on public display or moved to an area of the library inaccessible to those under 18.
CALS executive director Nate Coulter said this part of the law would be “totally impractical to enforce”, reported the Arkansas Advocate.
The board of CALS voted this month to file the lawsuit challenging parts of Act 372 of 2023. John Adams, a lawyer from Fuqua Campbell, the law firm representing CALS, said that librarians needed clarity on the law to ensure they could do their jobs without risking arrest.
American Library Association president Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada told Publishers Weekly that the lawsuit was “to vindicate Arkansas residents’ freedom to read”.
The lawsuit is expected to be filed in the coming days. It is the second high-profile lawsuit this year concerning the restriction of books available in libraries. Earlier in the month, PEN America, Penguin Random House, and a group of authors and parents, filed a lawsuit against a Florida school district for implementing book bans. The suit argues the removal and restriction of access to books discussing race, racism and LGBTQ+ identities violates the first amendment.
It comes after increased activity by rightwing groups to remove books from libraries and schools in the US. In 2022, calls to ban books hit the highest level ever recorded in the US, according to the American Library Association (ALA), which tracks requests for removal.
Last year, there were requests to ban 2,571 titles; up 38% from 1,858 titles in 2021. Most of the books for which removal requests were made, said the ALA, were written by or about members of the LGBTQ+ community and people of colour.
And yet history is repeating itself again. The very acceptance of homosexuality and personal sexual freedom experienced by German People was attacked by a movement that wanted to villainize it and made a virtue of not just all things heterosexual but of attacking the homosexuals along with those things that symbolized them or support for them. The things happening in Florida, on the Daily Wire, and in the fundamentalist Republican Party are the same steps taken by Nazi’s in 1930 Germany and in Russia more recently. As yourself, if the Nazi’s stopped with just the homosexuals or trans? Are you comfortable with the direction of the Russian / openly Nazi supporting Republican Party today? Hugs
The conversation had been growing and growing by the week. What started as murmurs of far-right thugs had developed into a fear of a coming political party. Across the bars and meeting places all over the country, the LGBT community of Germany could feel a storm coming. Homosexuality was illegal at the start of 20th century Germany but was counterweighted by a healthy thriving gay culture. Yet what was once angry grandstanding from a fringe socialist worker’s party soon became national policy. In 1933, Adolf Hitler would become Chancellor of Germany and enforced a thoroughly phobic policy agenda by the day. Barely a year later, following a Night of long knives, the Nazi police state made Germany’s homosexual population a primary target. Persecution, arrests, physical abuse, castration, and even the fate of the concentration camps lay ahead. Welcome to History on Fleek, today we examine the unspeakable fates of gay men in Nazi Germany.
The craziest Qanon fundamentalist Christian conservative ideologists have figured out that public schools teaching facts keep them from taking over. So they are going after the schools. That we have known for a few years. They have this idea that they can indoctrinate kids into myths, misinformation, and hateful ideas and the kids will continue that way all their lives, letting the crazies run the country as a dictatorship unquestioned. Here is an example. This person is going to be forcing the batshittery she spouts on public school kids whose parents do not have the time or energy to school their kids against her lies. She wouldn’t even let her children go to public school, she homeschooled them. Yet she will now have a say in what other parents kids learn. The US better wake up, public schools have been under attack in the US for generations with defunding and Christians trying to force their religion back into schools as factual learning material. Now the most fundamentalist crazies are taking over to finish destroying what is left of public schools. But notice this stuff is not taught in the wealthy elite private schools. Hugs
Last week, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R) announced that he had appointed Laurie Cardoza-Moore to serve on the Tennessee Standards Recommendation Committee to oversee “Social Studies materials being reviewed for use in classrooms statewide.” Cardoza-Moore, known for holding extremist views and promoting conspiracy theories, has called “U.S. history textbooks” currently used in classrooms the “greatest national security threat to the United States.”
With her new appointment, Cardoza-Moore will have the power to “submit final recommendations for [Social Studies] standards to the State Board.” In a statement about her new position, Cardoza-Moore said, “[t]he materials we will be reviewing can only accomplish the mission of educating good American citizens if our Tennessee textbooks are devoid of left-aligned historic revisionism and the toxic material found in the antisemitic Critical Race Theory; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Social-Emotional Learning and Ethnic Studies.”
Cardoza-Moore homeschooled her five children and has criticized the existing public school curriculum for exposing children to “anti-Semitic, anti-American, anti-Judeo-Christian content in our public schools.” In a radio interview on the Tennessee Star Report, Cardoza-Moore said, “[i]t’s ruining our children’s lives. Our children are depressed and unless we as parents… stand up and speak up and take back control of our children’s education, we are going to lose this country.”
In 2021, Cardoza-Moore was also appointed by Sexton to the Tennessee Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission, which is in charge of “recommend[ing] an official list of textbooks and instructional materials for approval of the State Board of Education.”
Sexton appointed Cardoza-Moore to important positions shaping state educational standards despite her repeated embrace of conspiracy theories. Over the years, Cardoza-Moore has promoted claims that 9/11 was an “inside job,” that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, and that January 6 insurrectionists were actually “Antifa.” In 2011, Cardoza-Moore claimed that former President Barack Obama was causing “horrific tornadoes” because he made a speech that discussed the plight of Palestinians. Asked if she still held these views, Cardoza-Moore did not respond.
Cardoza-Moore has few academic credentials, which she has attempted to bolster by padding her resume. She refers to herself as “Laurie Cardoza-Moore, ThD.” But her “doctorate” is “an honorary doctorate degree in theology from the Latin University of Theology,” an unaccredited diploma mill. According to Chalkbeat Tennessee, the only degree Cardoza-Moore holds is “an associate degree from the KD Conservatory College of Film and Dramatic Arts in Dallas.” It’s unclear how this qualifies her to set standards for millions of Tennessee students. Sexton did not respond to a request for comment.
Cardoza-Moore and 9/11 conspiracy theories
Cardoza-Moore is the founder and president of the nonprofit Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN), a Christian Zionist organization that claims to fight the “global war against antisemitism.” The group, which was once classified a hate group, has been a profitable endeavor for Cardoza-Moore. In 2019, she paid herself $145,000, paid her husband’s business $85,000, claimed $50,000 in occupancy expenses for her home, and spent $23,000 on meals and entertainment, among other things. The organization is also rated as a “two-star charity” on Charity Navigator, indicating that the organization “needs improvement.”
In March 2021, during a Tennessee State Senate hearing for Cardoza-Moore’s appointment to the Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission, Democratic Chair Raumesh Akbari asked Cardoza-Moore about PJTN’s statements questioning basic facts about the September 11 terrorist attacks.
According to Akbari, when reviewing a textbook passage, PJTN “suggest[ed] removing” a sentence stating that “members of al-Qaeda carried out” the September 11 attacks. PJTN cited a “plethora of evidence” for the suggested removal, stating, “This is a highly contested (per [A]rchitects and [E]ngineers for 9/11 Truth, and demolition experts) argument.” Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth was a group that falsely claimed that 9/11 was an “inside job” because they believed the impact of the planes into the World Trade Center towers could not have resulted in their collapse. According to Akbari, “the quote was pulled ‘directly from a review that [Cardoza-Moore] made.”
In response, Cardoza-Moore attempted to distance herself from the controversy. “I need to see the quote in the context that you’re pulling it [from],” Cardoza-Moore said. “Is that a Powerpoint presentation that I put together? Because I would never say that al-Qaeda didn’t participate.”
Cardoza-Moore and January 6 conspiracy theories
Cardoza-Moore also pushed false claims about the 2020 election and conspiracy theories about the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021. On December 9, 2020, Cardoza-Moore tweeted, “Calling on all citizens of the USA. Please contact your State Attorney General and let them know that as a citizen of your state, you want them to join the State of TX in the lawsuit filed against GA, WI, MI and PA for the fraudulent way their elections were held.”
On December 17, 2020, Cardoza-Moore responded to a tweet from former President Donald Trump claiming that there were “[t]remendous problems being found with voting machines.” Cardoza-Moore tweeted, “[w]hy aren’t these people being arrested? If the lawless get away with this, our Republic is lost! You’re a Churchill President Trump, PLEASE EXECUTE JUSTICE!” There is no evidence that any widespread voter fraud occurred in the 2020 election.
According to the Memphis Flyer, Cardoza-Moore also encouraged people to travel to D.C. on January 6, 2021, posting, “I’ll see you in DC on 1/6.” In a now-deleted post from December 28, 2020, Cardoza-Moore said, “Will you join me in DC to defend our Constitutional Republic? This is it! If we can’t defend our Constitutional Republic, we WILL LOSE IT! Make arrangements now!”
Cardoza-Moore continued to push conspiracy theories after the insurrection occurred at the Capitol on January 6, claiming that it was actually “Antifa” and not Trump supporters that stormed the Capitol. “Antifa stormed the Capitol! It wasn’t led by Trump Patriots,” Cardoza-Moore tweeted on January 7, 2021.
Cardoza-Moore defends plot to kidnap the Governor of Michigan
In spring 2020, Cardoza-Moore celebrated on social media as armed protesters stormed Michigan’s capitol to demonstrate against the state’s COVID-19 response. “ARE WE WATCHING THE BEGINNING OF A REVOLUTION IN AMERICA!” Cardoza-Moore wrote.
Later that year, when news broke that right-wing extremists were planning to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D), Cardoza-Moore also expressed support for the kidnapping plot.
“Am I missing something here? Didn’t the Founders address removing a tyrant from office in the Constitution?” Cardoza-Moore wrote in a now-deleted Facebook post. “Michiganders, it’s time to step up and defend your Constitutional rights!”
Cardoza-Moore and anti-Muslim bigotry
Cardoza-Moore is also notorious for spewing anti-Muslim rhetoric. She first came to public attention in 2010 when she led opposition to the construction of a Tennessee mosque and argued that the mosque was a “terrorist training camp.” That year, she also falsely claimed that 30% of Muslims are terrorists while speaking at a rally against the Islamic Center in New York City. She would go on to repeat this baseless claim on The Daily Show.
Aside from this, Cardoza-Moore has also spread rumors that Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
In 2021, during her confirmation hearing, Cardoza-Moore stood by her anti-mosque comments and falsely alleged that there were “absolutely” terrorists in the group. Despite this, she told Chalkbeat in 2022 that she’s not anti-Muslim.
Cardoza-Moore and racial discrimination
Endorsed by the right-wing parents group Moms for Liberty, Cardoza-Moore has also frequently accused schools of indoctrinating students—despite the fact that all five of her children were homeschooled.
Cardoza-Moore is also a staunch opponent of Critical Race Theory, calling it “anti-semitic.” She believes lawmakers should eliminate “socialist propaganda” from education and is against virtually any curriculum that makes mention of race or inequity.
During her hearing in 2021, she “declined to answer questions about her beliefs around teaching students about the nation’s history of colonialism and slavery.” At the time, she said this was because she was only reviewing math textbooks, “therefore her thoughts on history and social studies were not relevant,” the Tennessean reports. With Cardoza-Moore’s new appointment, however, she will be tasked with reviewing social studies standards.
Cardoza-Moore also doesn’t believe that systemic racism exists. In an email sent this month, she criticizes the incoming Tennessee education commissioner and writes, “To suggest that Americans are racist in 2023 because of our history is outrageous!”
“We, the majority of our society, have overcome that ideology. We elected a Black president; we have a Black Supreme Court Justice; we have Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Jewish leaders and on and on and on… Are there pockets of hate, racism, and antisemitism? Absolutely! Is it systemic? Absolutely not!”
According to Cardoza-Moore, acknowledging the country’s “systemic racism and social and financial inequity” is the “nightmare facing Tennessee.”
The Jesuits used to say ‘give me a child of seven and I will give you the man.’ They don’t any more, probably because a priest using the words ‘give me a child of seven’ will prompt any responsible parent to call child protection before the rest of the sentence is out of his mouth.
WHERE are the good people standing up to this bull shit. All this crazy isn’t happening in a vacuum. We are at a tipping point and it is getting tooooo risky for comfort. These nut jobs are evil. This fuck head is right out of central casting as an officer in the SS. My morning cup of madness is running over.
Everyday I get more and more ashamed of being an American. We put absolutely lunatics into office and think nothing of it. We have an entire party that is dedicated to turning the United States into a fascist theocracy. I honestly never thought I would see the day this would happen.
Never underestimate the damage even just one highly motivated individual can do. In fact, there’s a portion of the evangelical movement that dwells in a space believing in the power of positive thinking, and making a difference by being an influence on others.
That maybe doesn’t sound so bad, until you witness the reality of where it leads when paired with a religious agenda. It ends up manifesting with the sort of people who believe they must be an active force for spreading Christianity in the workplace. I once quit a job where the new personnel director was exactly such a person, and insisted on leading people in prayer before meetings.
I’m not talking about some small business. It was at the headquarters for a large business covering the midwestern United States, with sister companies covering other regions of the USA, and all of them just one piece of a much, much bigger international business.
The republicans don’t care about the economy, they want political power. To get it, they need to crash the economy or wipe out every thing Biden got done while getting concessions on the border and fewer regulations / more leases for drilling. This is a power play for 2024 elections. It has nothing to do with the debt limit other than causing hurt to the public that they can blame on Biden. They are already just making up things like how Biden is working for China. And stupid people believe their bullshit. Hugs
Republicans have often bristled at accusations that they are resorting to hostage tactics by refusing to raise the federal debt ceiling without securing spending cuts.
But on Tuesday, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz leaned into the charge as he explained to reporters that he and his fellow hardline conservatives would likely reject any sort of compromise deal that watered down the party-line bill Republicans passed through the house.
“I think my conservative colleagues for the most part support Limit, Save, Grow, and they don’t feel like we should negotiate with our hostage,” Gaetz told Semafor.
“I think my conservative colleagues for the most part support Limit, Save, Grow, and they don’t feel like we should negotiate with our hostage,” Matt Gaetz told @josephzeballoshttps://t.co/v96X36BMiB
Republicans have been trying to “starve the beast” for years. I don’t get how they think that helps the country but it might make the wealthy wealthier for the short term. Beyond that, the infrastructure will crumble and all supportive services will fail. And THEY WILL CELEBRATE THE COMING DYSTOPIA. This is what terrorism is about and why they are holding the country hostage – to ultimately destroy the government.
I honestly think this will backfire on the GQP. If McCarthy brings it to the House floor and can’t get enough of his “majority” to vote for it, any fault will have to be his.
Every government shutdown or other hostage-holding the USA that they’ve done in the past has backfired on them, every time.
The problem is that every time, Fox News then works incessantly afterwards on erasing their viewers fruit-fly-sized memory cells, and two years later they’re right back to spouting the same total bullshit that Tucker/Sean/Laura/Jesse/Maria spoonfeed them.
I figure he’s been set up as the fall guy by the ‘freedom’ wing. They’ll push for unreasonable things, negotiations will fail or result in a bill they’ll torpedo. Then they’ll use the “one vote to remove the speaker” option they set up at the start of all this and send him back. Then we’ll have more weeks of chaos as they all (including McCarthy) grift the cult even more. Most of them are in areas where they have safe seats, so it won’t matter either way – whoever has the R next to their name gets the vote.
So ultimately they don’t care about the harm this may cause. Working from that point of view, the rest of this follows.
And yet the very smart people are still both sidesing this and covering it like a back and forth sporting event.
It’s time for lawmakers to end the drama and come to terms and increase the debt limit. There has been little economic fallout from the political back and forth so far. But that is set to change quickly. https://t.co/ZA1mGWtWfb
It isn’t only our heritage at stake in this discussion. It’s our history. We’ve already spent that money, Doofus, with the approval of congress. Now you want to turn us into a deadbeat nation.
This “game” has been played all too often. In the past the GOP has paid the price, and I’d like to think they know this. So I have to wonder, are they really this stupid (evidence points to this), or do they have something new planned?
Nate Coulter, executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System said the law would be ‘totally impractical to enforce.’ Photograph: Katie Adkins/AP
Scottie's Playtime 