Thanks again to Ten Bears for the link. This shows the claim they are against indoctrination in schools is not true, but instead the goal is to indoctrinate kids in a hard right wing fundamentalist Christian ideology. It is a return to the fake myth of the 1950s society and the removing of everything LGBTQIA and gender identity. Total authoritarian back to the dark ages regression. It is a rejection of all the social advancements of the modern age. Hugs. Scottie
One thing that is seldom mentioned about the removal of books from Florida classroom libraries: much of this activity may be illegal.
The school board in Escambia County, Florida, for example, is being sued over their decision to remove And Tango Makes Three and other books from public school libraries. And Tango Makes Three is the true story of two male penguins, Roy and Silo, who lived in the Central Park Zoo and raised an adopted chick. The woman who challenged the book, notorious Escambia County English Teacher Vicki Baggett, told Popular Information she was concerned it exposes students to “alternate sexual ideologies.” Baggett said “a second grader would read this book, and that idea would pop into the second grader’s mind… that these are two people of the same sex that love each other.” The school board appeared to have similar concerns. “The fascination is still on those two male penguins,” school board member David Williams said. “So I’ll be voting to remove the book from our libraries.”
Florida English teacher pushing book bans is openly racist and homophobic, students allege
In May, Penguin Random House, five authors, two parents, and the non-profit group PEN America sued the Escambia County school board in federal court, alleging that the school board’s actions violated the United States Constitution. The lawsuit alleges that the school board banned and restricted books “based on their disagreement with the ideas expressed in those books.” In so doing, the school board has “prescribed an orthodoxy of opinion that violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
The lawsuit is ongoing, and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) has intervened in the case, arguing that it should be dismissed. In an extraordinary filing earlier this year, Moody argued that the First Amendment does not apply to public school libraries and that school boards can remove any book for any reason — even if the motive is discriminatory.
In Moody’s filing, Florida argues that the purpose of public school libraries is to “convey the government’s message,” and that can be accomplished through “the removal of speech that the government disapproves.” The issue of what books are allowed to be carried by school libraries, Florida states, should be settled at the “ballot box.” According to the state’s filing, public school libraries “are not a forum for free expression.”
Florida’s argument has serious flaws. Indeed, Florida’s filing acknowledges that no court has ruled, as Florida argues, that public school libraries are a form of government speech. The issues with Florida’s legal position were detailed in an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs filed by two dozen law professors.
Florida is arguing for an expansion of the definition of “government speech” to include public school libraries. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito — one of the court’s most conservative members — warned in the 1996 case of Matal v. Tam that the concept of “government speech” is “susceptible to dangerous misuse.” Alito, writing for the Supreme Court, wrote that “we must exercise great caution before extending our government-speech precedents” because it could be used as a pretext to “silence or muffle the expression of disfavored viewpoints.”
Currently, “the government speech doctrine only applies to state programs in which the government conveys an official message that the public would recognize as such.” Public school libraries do not exist “to carry official messaging” for the government, the law professors note. Therefore, “[a]pplying the government speech doctrine to school libraries would create a dangerous incompatibility with the nature and purpose of those libraries.”
A federal judge recently rejected a similar argument made by the Arkansas government regarding the removal of books from public libraries. “Defendants are unable to cite any legal precedent to suggest that the state may censor non-obscene materials in a public library because such censorship is a form of government speech,” the judge ruled.
The law professors highlight that there is a Supreme Court case that directly addresses the government’s role in curating school libraries, the 1982 case of Island Trees School District v. Pico. In Pico, the Supreme Court recognized that school boards have significant flexibility in determining the contents of school libraries. However, the Supreme Court was clear that the scope of the school board’s power over school libraries is limited by the First Amendment.
Citing previous Supreme Court decisions, the plurality opinion in Pico notes that “students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate” and the “school library is the principal locus of such freedom.” As a result, it is unconstitutional for school boards to remove books from a school library in a “narrowly partisan or political manner.’” This appears to be exactly what is happening. And Tango Makes Three was removed from Escambia County school libraries because it didn’t conform to the school board’s political opinions about LGBTQ people.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit note that the precedent goes beyond Pico: “Every court that has addressed that issue… has rejected the position that libraries — including school libraries — constitute Constitution-free zones in which government officials can freely discriminate based on viewpoint.”
Florida realizes that Pico and related cases present a serious challenge to its position. In its filing in support of the Escambia County School Board, Florida argues that Pico should be ignored because it was a plurality decision. But the fact is that, in the 40 years after Pico was decided, the Supreme Court has never repudiated the case.
From “parental rights” to “authoritarianism”
The significance of Florida’s filing was recentlycovered in the Tallahassee Democrat, which interviewed several experts about the implications of the state’s arguments.
Ken Paulson, the director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, noted that proponents of removing books from school libraries frequently say they are fighting for “parental rights.” But “[if] government speech determines what books can be in the library, the government is essentially saying your children can only see the ideas that the government has approved.” That is inconsistent, Paulson argues, with parental rights. “It’s authoritarianism,” Paulson said.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said Florida’s position goes against the fundamental principle “that no government entity can engage in viewpoint discrimination.” Caldwell-Stone said, if Florida prevails, it would transform schools from a place dedicated to “preparing individuals… to make decisions about their own lives” to “indoctrination centers for only one viewpoint.”
Thanks to ten Bears for the link. This is a scary and important read, and people need to understand what will happen this time if tRump and his ilk get into power again. We must put small time bickering of age and other things aside until the threat posed by these people are gone. If we don’t stand together and vote for Biden and other democrats in large numbers or democracy goes away and the US becomes a hell of inequality, no rights, no personal freedoms, and required living as you are ordered to do so. The LGBTQIA will be illegal, as will other personal freedoms. Reading material and movies will have to be state sanctioned and follow party lines, like in China. Hugs. Scottie
If you thought it can’t happen here, I have an old Sinclair Lewis book to share with you…
If Trump is re-elected, he’d be America’s 47th president, so he’s named the plans for his second term “Agenda 47.” At best, it’s a dystopian nightmare: at worst it means ending our current system of American government; aligning the US with Russia and other autocratic nations; and the USA leading the charge against democracy and in favor of authoritarian, strong-man forms of government across the world.
Over at his website, Trump lays out the details of his governing agenda, complete with short videos promoting each of the steps he plans to take. They, and his many statements about future plans, include:
Criminalizing homosexuality
Part of Agenda 47, Trump says, is “finishing the job” he started as president between 2017 and 2021.
Just two hours after he and Pence were sworn into office, they removed all mention of LGBTQ+ issues from the White House website.
Two days later, his State Department deleted former Secretary of State John Kerry’s apology to the nation for the “Lavender Scare” government persecution of gays and lesbians during the McCarthy era 1950s and early 1960s. A month later, Trump’s Justice Department announced they’d no longer defend the civil rights of trans kids.
His Education and HUD offices both withdrew their court defenses of queer people, particularly students and those in homeless shelters, and his Secretary of State refused to mention to the Russian Foreign Minister the detention and brutal executions of gay men by Russian soldiers in Chechnya. On May 4, 2017 Trump signed an executive order letting the DOJ ignore claims of illegal discrimination against queer people and women throughout every single one of the nation’s federal agencies.
In September, 2017, Trump’s Secretary of Education, billionaire Betsy DeVos, officially ended that agency’s Title IX guidance requiring schools to do something about sexual harassment, including sexual violence, against women and LGBTQ+ kids. In response to a question from the media about the change in policy and gay men, Trump said that his Vice President “wants to hang them all.”
In January of 2018, Trump rolled out the “Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom” at HHS, which would backstop people who wanted to use the excuse of “deeply held religious beliefs” to justify explicit discrimination against queer people and women, or to simply to make life difficult for government agencies.
All of this is just the beginning. The Human Rights Campaign has documented page after page of anti-queer policies put into effect by Trump that will be resurrected and put on steroids in a second term.
Destroy academic freedom and gut our public schools
In the Agenda 47 section of his website, Trump explains how he’s going to use our schools and colleges to indoctrinate young Americans in rightwing ideology. He explicitly says:
“When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics. We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges once again and once and for all.”
Any colleges that continue to teach “under the guise of [racial] equity will not only have their endowment taxed, but through budget reconciliation, I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.”
In other words, just like Viktor Orbán did in Hungary and Putin did in Russia, he’s going to bankrupt the nation’s schools and colleges if they continue to teach the true history of America and promote egalitarian values. As Trump notes at his website:
“[W]e are going to get this anti-American insanity out of our institutions once and for all.”
Gut the EPA, OSHA, CPSB, IRS, the Labor Department, and other federal agencies that keep our air clean, our water pure, and protect average Americans from predation by the morbidly rich and their corporations
Back in the 1970s, Richard Nixon said he was going to use “impoundment” to strip funding from agencies his donors didn’t like, claiming that, even though Congress had appropriated budgets for them, he could, as head of the Executive Branch, simply “impound” the money and refuse to spend it. His plan to remake the federal government was interrupted by Watergate.
In 1974, Democrats in Congress got together and passed legislation outlawing this and Jerry Ford signed it into law. But Trump’s lawyers apparently think they can get it overturned through their appointees on the courts or even, if they can take both branches of Congress, through new legislation. As Trump says on his website:
“I will use the president’s long-recognized Impoundment Power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings.”
Since the fossil fuel companies, banks, refineries, anti-union big employers, and their billionaires who fund the GOP hate all of these agencies, it’ll be a bonanza for them.
Not so much for working people, retirees, and those of us concerned about a livable future environment for our kids and grandkids, though.
Destroy the media and the truth
First, he wants to make it illegal for the federal government’s security services to notify social media platforms about Russian disinformation and other foreign efforts to swing elections, since nearly 100% of those efforts are coming from authoritarian countries in support of Trump and against democracy.
“I will ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as “mis-” or “dis-information,” Trump proclaims on his Agenda 47 website.
He also wants to force social media to carry his buddy Putin’s trolls’ lies and attempts to pit Americans against each other, and limit the companies’ ability to label or block lies and propaganda. As Trump puts it:
“I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk revising Section 230 to get big online platforms out of censorship business.”
In Hungary, one way Viktor Orbán got rid of actual news media and replaced the ownership of all the nation’s major radio and TV networks, websites, and newspapers was by changing the libel laws so that public figures (like Orbán himself) could sue for libel when they thought they were treated unfairly.
They then sued company after company, commentator after commentator, reporter after reporter, into bankruptcy.
Orbán’s rightwing buddies could buy the media properties out of bankruptcy which is why now virtually all the media in Hungary is like Fox “News,” broadcasting suck-ups to Orbán and criticism of “liberals,” immigrants, and gays 24/7.
Trump wants to do the same here in the US.
When Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury came out with some unflattering characterizations of Trump in it, the then-president said:
“We are going to take a strong look at our country’s libel laws so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts. And if somebody says something that’s totally false and knowingly false, that the person that has been abused, defamed, libeled, will have meaningful recourse.”
Simply reporting on what Trump’s up to could bring lawsuits that would bankrupt even the Times or the Post, and, like in Hungary and Russia, pretty much end the existence of a free and independent press in America.
Turning America into a vigilante police state
Trump has promised to pardon the January 6th insurrectionists who tried to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House (and whose actions led to the death of four police officers), and put into place a national “stop and frisk” law that upends the 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
It would also — like Duterte in the Philippines who executed over 10,000 people during his reign of terror — authorize the federal government to immediately execute anybody convicted of trafficking in drugs without further due process or appeals.
Republicans in Texas have already pioneered using vigilantes to hunt down women who’ve had abortions and the people who’ve helped them. Expect these vigilante-enforced laws to spread across the country with a second Trump administration, with groups like the Proud Boys and III Percenters becoming the modern-day equivalent of the old west’s 19th century bounty hunters.
In a flashback to Hitler’s “work camps” that preceded the death camps by five years, Trump’s also proposed building concentration camps around the country to house “millions” of undocumented aliens and his political enemies. As he noted in a speech on Veterans’ Day this year:
“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” adding that Russia isn’t a problem. Instead, he said, “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”
Presumably that means people like me and you, who would oppose his fascist agenda.
Corrupting the federal government
Way back in 1881, a man named Charles Guiteau thought he’d properly bribed President James Garfield by giving the president, during an in-person visit in the White House, a speech he’d written for Garfield to use. Garfield was polite but didn’t offer Guiteau a federal speechwriter’s job, which provoked a murderous rage: shortly thereafter, Guiteau met Garfield’s train and shot him twice, killing him.
The explicit and institutionalized practice of exchanging gifts and personal loyalty for federal jobs dated back to the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), arguably the second-most depraved president in American history behind Trump (which is probably why Trump hung his picture in the Oval Office; Jackson’s favorite nickname for himself — given him by the Cherokee he slaughtered — was “The Indian Killer”).
Jackson had elevated the practice of bribing the president — himself, at the time — to get federal jobs into an art-form: it was called the “spoils” or patronage system and was insanely corrupt. It was also, by Garfield’s presidency in 1881, routine.
After Guiteau failed to gain his “spoil” or “patronage” from Garfield and killed him, President Chester Arthur oversaw the writing and passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883.
It separated all those government jobs from the administration in power, turning federal workers from patrons of the president into permanent bureaucrats, whose first loyalty was to the nation instead of the guy who happened to be in the White House at any particular time.
It also explicitly outlawed bribing the president for a job. The goal, which it accomplished and has held for 140 years, was to end corruption in the bureaucratic branches of the federal government.
Donald Trump wants to functionally end the Civil Service system and replace the top levels of the nation’s 2.7 million federal workers with people loyal exclusively to himself.
He tried to do this in the last months of his presidency through an October 21, 2020 executive order, Schedule F, (which Biden reversed on his first day in office) that reclassified those workers out of their Civil Service jobs and into political appointee positions, doing the same work but now entirely dependent on the good will of the president to keep their jobs.
The next Republican administration will almost certainly put Schedule F back into force, reestablishing the 1829 spoils system for the federal government, and ending any possibility that people in the government will push back against Trump the way they did during his presidency.
Making the nation’s police into Trump’s private enforcers
The Department of Justice was established by President Ulysses S. Grant after the Civil War, in part to enforce federal laws protecting the rights of people who’d recently been freed from slavery.
After Richard Nixon tried to use it against his enemies (and his Attorney General, John Mitchell, went to prison for his efforts), Congress in 1978 passed the Ethics in Government Act which put a wall of separation between the DOJ and the White House.
Trump has explicitly proclaimed his intention to tear that wall down and go farther than Nixon ever imagined in using our armed investigative services for personal revenge and harassment of people he perceives as his enemies.
He wants the nation’s premiere police agencies to become his own personal enforcers, and has already said they will be hunting down “liberals,” Black Lives Matter protest participants, and Joe Biden, his family, and members of his administration.
He wants to imprison them, as well as the prosecutors and judges who have been participating in the effort to hold him to account for the crimes he committed over the past 7 years.
This politicization of law enforcement has been a first-order and primary feature of every authoritarian or totalitarian regime that’s risen to power over the past few hundred years, worldwide. It’s always one of the first things fascist leaders do when they seize power.
“Freedom cities”
In an apparent attempt to portray himself as a visionary like JFK, with his promise to send men to the moon and bring them back safely, Trump is promising to build “freedom cities” in his second term. The main feature he’s discussed is that people will get around in them in “flying cars.”
While it’s being portrayed as a goofy stunt designed to make him seem like an imaginative idealist, in fact there has been a movement among rightwing billionaires for some time to create cities that they basically run as little feudal fiefdoms, the same way the morbidly rich run their companies and their football teams.
Some libertarian billionaires assert that the only reason there’s never been a successful libertarian nation in the history of the world is because true libertarianism — government doing nothing but running the police, army, and courts and everything else left to private charity and business owners — “has never been tried.”
The ”freedom cities” could be a new libertarian experiment, or they may be the 21st century version of the old “company town,” where nobody has rights or protection of the law but is subject to the whims of the local billionaire owner. A group backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has already put forward what appears to be a plan to build a new city in California that they may or may not envision running along these lines. The group has so far purchased more than 53,000 acres of land, an area larger than the entire city of Beaumont, Texas, or Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Ending democracy across Europe and the world
Trump is also promising that he’ll end the brutal attacks against Ukraine on “day one” by simply turning the country over to his good friend, Vladimir Putin.
For the first time since World War II, this would legitimize a nation attacking another nation simply to seize their land, resources, and people.
It would greenlight China to do the same with Taiwan, and encourage every other tinpot dictator in the world to grab nearby territory that he wants. It would encourage war, and could very easily lead to a world war.
Abandoning Ukraine like this, along with Trump’s oft-stated preference to leave or end NATO and stop support for the UN, would lead the autocracies of the world — particularly Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and North Korea — to destroy the democracies in their sphere of influence, replacing those democracies with strongman autocracies.
The democratic experiment on this planet is only 250 years old, more or less, and this would signal a return to the way the world had been ruled for the 7,000 years prior to that: by kings, popes, mullahs, strongman warlords, and the morbidly rich.
Between Agenda 47 and Project 2025, Donald Trump and the rightwing billionaires who own the GOP have big plans for this nation, regardless of which Republican takes the White House next. They’re dead serious and far more well-funded than any of the groups that fight for and advocate democracy.
If you thought it can’t happen here, I have an old Sinclair Lewis book to share with you.
Triple check your voter registration, especially if you live in a Red state where the voter purges have already begun, and make sure everybody you know is registered vote.
Thank you for reading The Hartmann Report. This post is public so feel free to share it.
FILE – Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at an annual Basque Fry at the Corley Ranch in Gardnerville, Nev., Saturday, June 17, 2023. The mother of a transgender girl sobbed in federal court Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023, as she contemplated having to move away from her Navy officer husband to get health care for her 12-year-old if Florida’s ban on gender dysphoria treatments for minors is allowed to take affect. (AP Photo/Andy Barron, File)
A federal judge hearing achallenge to a transgender health care ban for minorsand restrictions for adults noted Thursday that Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly spread false information about doctors mutilating children’s genitals even though there’s been no such documented cases.
The law was sold as defending children from mutilation when it is actually about preventing trans children from getting health care, Judge Robert Hinkle said to Mohammad Jazil, a lawyer for the state.
“When I’m analyzing the governor’s motivation, what should I make of these statements?” Hinkle asked. “This seems to be more than just hyperbole.”
Hinkle said he will rule sometime in the new year on whether the Legislature, the Department of Health and presidential candidate DeSantis deliberately targeted transgender people through the new law. He raised some skepticism about the state’s motivation as lawyers gave their closing arguments.
Jazil said the motivation behind the law was simply public safety in an area that needs more oversight and can have permanent consequences.
“It’s about treating a medical condition; it’s not about targeting transgender individuals,” Jazil said.
Jazil added that if the state was targeting transgender people, it could have banned all treatment for adults and children. Hinkle quickly replied that Jazil would have trouble defending such a law.
At least 22 states have now enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, and many of those states face lawsuits. Courts have issued mixed rulings, with the nation’s first law, in Arkansas,struck down by a federal judgewho said the ban on care violated the due process rights of transgender youth and their families.
Enforcement is blocked in two states besides Florida, and enforcement is currently allowed in or set to go into effect soon in seven other states.
Thomas Redburn, a lawyer representing trans adults and the families of trans children, said DeSantis and the Legislature have shown a pattern of targeting transgender people. He listed other recent laws that affect the community, including restrictions on pronoun use in schools, the teaching of gender identification in schools, restrictions on public bathrooms and the prohibition of trans girls from playing girls sports.
Read the full article. Hinkle first appeared here in 2021 when he blocked Florida’s law that sought to prevent social media platforms from banning users for hate speech.
A federal judge says Florida Gov. DeSantis repeatedly spread false information while advocating for a transgender health care ban for minors law in his state. https://t.co/SEEpu8rmxR
So he wants to pass a law to protect children against genital mutilation that doesn’t exist and even if there was genital cutting it would be done on a person old enough to ask for it. Yet countless thousands of boys in the state of Florida have part of their genitals cut off without their consent every year and no one has even considered a law protecting males from involuntary genital cutting. I’m all for anyone doing anything they want to their own genitals when they’re old enough to make the decision themselves but 100% against anyone having anything unnecessarily cut from their body without their consent.
Circumcision performed on a male before he’s old enough to understand and consent to the procedure is involuntary genital mutilation, plain and simple.
The Genital Autonomy Legal Defense and Education Fund (www.galdef.org/equal-protec… has a strategy to remedy the fact that over 1.25 million baby boys in the U.S. each year are subjected to medically unnecessary genital cutting with no legal protection of their bodily integrity or eventual autonomy. Subscribe to GALDEF’s newsletter at their homepage and help them build their war chest to launch an equal protection lawsuit.
The practice started in Egypt millennia before the Israelites were a people. They adopted circumcision from them, in the same way they adopted monotheism from the Babylonians.
Not quite. Christianity did away with the Jewish requirement for male circumcision at the Council of Jerusalem or Apostolic Council, circa, 48-50 CE. It was the fear of masturbation which sparked its resurrection in the U.S. in the early 1870s.
Hinkle said he will rule sometime in the new year on whether the Legislature, the Department of Health and presidential candidate DeSantis deliberately targeted transgender people through the new law.
For those wondering, Robert Hinkle is a judge put on the courts under Bill Clinton and is a longtime LGBT ally. But both sides are the same right? I’m sure someone like this would totally have been put on the courts under Trump or George W or a Cruz etc. Oh wait…
DeSantis is a laughing stock at this point in time. The stuff of SNL. Even if Trump were to disappear, there’s no way in hell that the Republicans would nominate DeSantis as their 2024 candidate.
Besides being a total asshole, he is SO weird and awkward. We need to get rid of him and his government in Floriduh as well.
I’m just chilling with my long time best friend (60 years) in Delray Beach, having a tasty Knob Creek 9 on the rocks. Gonna get gummied soon. Nice plans for the Christmas weekend here. Wishing your and your hubby a wonderful holiday weekend!! Cheers!!
DeathSantis keeps claiming that no books are being banned in Florida, that it is a hoax spread by groomers and democrats. Which to him and his ilk are the same thing. But he also claims the don’t say gay laws don’t target the LGBTQIA, but the way the laws are written they do have the effect of wiping out any representation of the LGBTQIA or the symbols of those groups from schools. Even anti-bullying programs had to be stopped because the way the laws are being interpreted they can not tell cis kids not to target or bully LGBTQIA kids. The real object is to drive any kid who is not cis or straight into the closet, into hiding, and instead of teaching respect, tolerance, and acceptance it teaches hate and bigotry. Hugs. Scottie
A quote from the linked article.
“It’s creating this culture of fear within our media specialists and even teachers who just want to have a library in their classrooms, so kids have access,” said Castor Dentel, a former OCPS elementary school teacher.
Parents, she said, can restrict what their own children read, making it hard to justify pulling so many books from classrooms. “They’re in a pile of we’ll-get-to-it-later and in the meantime, no one can read those books.”
The harm of so much censorship far outweighs the benefits of finding “a book or two that is offensive,” Castor Dentel added. “Look at all the chaos that has been created. It’s not worth it.”
A total of 673 books, from classics to best-sellers, have been removed from Orange County classrooms this year for fear they violate new state rules that ban making “sexual conduct” available to public school students.
The list also includes popular novels by Stephen King, Sue Monk Kidd and Jodi Picoult, classics like “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” “Jude the Obscure,” and “Madame Bovary,” and award-winning books like “A Thousand Acres,” “Beloved,” and “Love in the Time of Cholera.”
The rejected books include ones teachers say were once regularly taught in high school classes, such as “The Color Purple,” “Catch-22,” and “Brave New World.
Orange schools reject 673 books from classroom libraries for fear they violate new Fl law. The rejected books include "Paradise Lost," "East of Eden," "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and "Madame Bovary." Story and list (first obtained by @FLFreedomRead): https://t.co/xNWZldrgeS
To fact-check Ron DeSantis’ claim that book bans in Florida are a “false narrative,” we started with the Florida Dept. of Education’s list of currently banned books https://t.co/rzGRjGtmRf
Yet as bad as these bans are, the thing that truly does piss me off the most about what Governor Puddingmitts and his fascist Rethugs are doing is they then LIE about it and insist they aren’t banning any books at all, not a one.
“It’s not censorship, if we do it. It’s restoring ‘parents’ rights’ to approve the curriculum.” That would be certain right-wing parents’ rights, and no one else’s.
Fudd looks kinda like Vivian Vance, like in that wonderful story from Tim Gunn’s childhood about meeting Miss Vance in J Edgar Hoover’s office, except that J Edgar wasn’t there too.
Paradise Lost, a 17th Century epic poem by John Milton which has been banned along with dozens of other absolutely classic works of literature, has NO sexual content, gay or otherwise.
It is being removed solely because radical fundamentalist Evangelicals object to its subject matter, namely the depiction of a former high angel who becomes jealous of Yahweh’s new favorite hominid toys and leads a revolt. As a consequence, Lucifer and his allies are cast down to Hell. That’s it. That’s the story.
But fundies hate it because Lucifer isn’t portrayed entirely as an unsympathetic character and because the story it tells doesn’t comport with their biblical dogma.
I’ve was suspicious that the buybull only tells one side of the story about Lucifer’s fall and his mission against humanity. Shouldn’t we hear from the other side too? I just love mythology.
The real message in Milton’s poem is a common but very true theme: “No one believes they are the villain in their own story.”
Essentially, what he was trying to do was to create a framework, a rationale to explain how and why a figure like Satan could come to be. In the end, the conclusion really was that the former angel Lucifer essentially got what he deserved.
But like I said, this whole story gets in the way of radical fundamentalist dogma, which when you think about it is at the core of all these book bans.
We know that tRump hung out with mobsters, and acts like a mob boss wannabe. The maga cult is all thugs and gang bangers who want to rule by force in might makes right violence. I have often looked at how fast Lindsey Graham went from tremendously anti-tRump to in one gold game with tRump coming out a whole owned servant to tRump’s and a person willing to do crazy things to support the hard right. We know many republicans are owned / paid by Russia. That may include blackmail as this congress person admits. If you watch the video, he says the people behind it want to control the world. He claims Jeffery Epstein was killed as he was blackmailing people, both men and women, selling that information to foreign intel agencies, and he knew too much while not being useful behind bars. Hugs. Scottie
December 21, 2023
“Why in the world would good conservatives vote for crazy stuff like what we’ve been seeing out of Congress? Here’s how it works. You’re visiting, you’re out of the country or out of town or you’re in a motel or at a bar in DC and, whatever you’re into – women, men, whatever — comes up and they’re very attractive and they’re laughing at your jokes. And you’re buying them a drink. Next thing you know, you’re in the motel room with them naked.
“And next thing you know, you know you’re about to make a key vote. And what happens? Some well-dressed person comes out and whispers in your ear, ‘Hey, man, there’s tapes out on you.’ Or, ‘Were you in a motel room or whatever with whoever?’ And then you’re like, ‘You really ought not be voting for this thing.’
“You know? And what do they do? It’s human nature. And, you know, no man or no woman actually is an island. And they know what to get at. You know, if it’s women, drugs, booze, it’ll find you. And they say, and in most elected offices, and that’s what people of power and influence do.
“And it’s just, you know, I’ve been in this game my whole life. I spent 16 years in the state legislature in Tennessee and eight years as county mayor. And now I’m in my fifth year in Congress. But it’s just — the stakes are higher. But the game is still the same.” – GOP Rep. Tim Burchett, speaking to far-right podcaster Benny Johnson.
And how many out of town motel trysts are necessary for one or enough of them to be honey-traps? His explanation doesn’t sound like he’s made any attempt at monotony, I mean monogamy.
“Responsible nonmonotony” and “responsible nonmonopoly” are how Dr. Deborah Anapol riffed on “responsible nonmonogamy” in her (useful and otherwise quite serious) book Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits.
(It includes a chapter on various scenarios of “making the transition to polyamorous relating”. Easiest case: you’re currently single and unattached. Hardest: you’re in a monogamous relationship and one of you has cheated. In between: you’ve made a monogamous committment you wish you hadn’t.)
You too, huh? I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me. I’m walking along, minding my own business, and the next thing you know, I’m having naked motel sex with a stranger or strangers, depending.
It’s so inconvenient. I wish there were something I could do about that.
Interesting that he only focused on conservatives votes being blackmailed this way. Could it be that those who constantly trying and regulate the sex lives of others are more likely to succumb to this kind of activity?
It’s like they say: DC prostitutes, male and female, LOVE it when Republicans become majorities in Congress. “…because Democrats don’t have to pay for sex.”
Actually, DC prostitutes love it when the republicans and christians are in town for a convention. Business booms. They cry when the doctors are in town, because they never want to hook up.
Remember state national guards are under the control of both the state and the DOD, and have to observe military rules. Deathsantis created his own militia, totally under the singular control of the governor of Florida. It is the governor’s private army. The republican legislature gave Deathsantis a huge amount of money from the Florida taxpayers for this, and then twice added even more millions. Normally these types of state national guards are there to help with national disasters like floods and hurricanes and are trained for that work. But the governor’s private army is training with weapons, boats, and aircraft to attack people, non-white people. Right now DeathSantis makes it seem Florida is being overrun with migrants and illegal immigrants, but remember when he needed a press stunt to fly immigrants out of state they had to go to Texas to get enough to partially fill the plane. We get most of our undocumented immigrants from Cuba, but because there is a huge republican voting group of Cubans in Florida. While DeathSantis keeps pretending to be a tough man by threatening to “flatten” the Bahamas, which is a place that has never threatened or been a threat to the US, yet he ignores that Cuba once did have Soviet bases they were going to put missiles in, and now has a Chinese spy base designed to hear US military traffic. But that is what happens when you are pretending to be a tough guy instead of being one. Oh, and did I mention you have to pass the ideological screening to be a member, which means you have to be a republican maga white supremacist Christian nationalist bigot who hates the LGBTQIA and wants kids indoctrinated with Christian hate. Oh did I mention that DeathSantis insisted that they be given arrest powers so they can arrest / detain, and remove people including those the governor thinks shouldn’t be voting. Hugs. Scottie
A select group of volunteers expected to help Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis intercept migrants at sea gathered at a Panhandle combat training facility this fall for lessons on how to use rifles and pistols, treat “massive hemorrhages” and practice “aerial gunnery.”
A $1.2 million purchase order signed in August makes clear the DeSantis administration felt it had an “immediate and emergent need for specially trained personnel” to intercept migrants traveling by boat.
A draft plan of instruction shows the vendor, Stronghold SOF Solutions, offered to recruit, vet and train volunteers at its facility in Defuniak Springs. The contract was executed without a competitive process, made possible after DeSantis declared a state emergency in January related to illegal immigration.
Read the full article. Earlier this year some members of DeSantis’s private army quit during training, saying they didn’t sign up to be part of what they feel is a militia.
You can’t charge someone with breaking a law until they have broken it. It’s more likely than not, the FBI has underground observers in the ranks. The FBI is unlikely to announce who and what they investigating.
“States have the power to create defense forces separate from the national guard, though not all of them use it. If Florida moves ahead with DeSantis’ plan to reestablish the civilian force, it would become the 23rd active state guard in the country, DeSantis’ office said in a press release, joining California, Texas and New York. These guards are little-known auxiliary forces with origins dating back to the advent of state militias in the 18th century. While states and the Department of Defense share control of the National Guard, state guards are solely in the power of a governor.
The Florida State Guard was created in 1941 during World War II as a temporary force to fill the void left behind when the Florida National Guard was deployed to assist in the US combat efforts. It was disbanded after the war ended, but the authority for a governor to establish a state defense force remained.”
The stupidity here is that it’s the migrant farm workers who are picking Florida’s oranges and winter vegetables. Go right ahead and shoot yourself in the foot … morons!
Oh they’re going to do away with child labor laws and send the little brats out to do that work. Kids don’t need education–they might get woke and start thinking for themselves and grow up to vote democrat. (sic) And what the hell? 6 year olds with machetes. What could go wrong?
To republicans in government being poor is a sin, it is the poor person’s fault. I guess they should have chosen to be born in a wealthy family. The republicans love the phrase pull yourself up by your bootstraps which is impossible to begin with, but even more impossible if you don’t even have boots. The governor won’t say why he is refusing the assistance for poor kids but normally these programs come with nondiscrimination clauses, but also the state would have to pay an estimated 300,000 dollars to administer it. It would keep an estimated 150,000 kids from going completely hungry when school is out, but the governor said there were other places the kids could go to get food, like summer camps. But normally the only free camps are religious sponsored ones that preach the bible and Jesus to kids. Is this the governor’s way to get the kids into churches? Hugs. Scottie
“If it’s an ideological issue, how can deciding that economically disadvantaged children are better off going hungry make moral sense?”
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen’s administration has decided not to participate in a new, more permanent Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer program aimed at supplementing other efforts that target child hunger. (Courtesy of Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Gov. Jim Pillen’s administration has decided that Nebraska won’t be participating in a new national child nutrition program that could have delivered an estimated $18 million in grocery-buying benefits next summer to kids and their families.
The decision comes despite a months long effort by food banks and other advocates to persuade the governor to opt into the Summer EBT program.
A sign noting the acceptance of electronic benefit transfer, or EBT, cards that are used by states to issue benefits is displayed at a convenience store in Richmond, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
States across the nation face a Jan. 1 deadline to let the federal government know if they intend to be part of the summer electronic benefits transfer program.
Pillen spokeswoman Laura Strimple, responding to a query from the Nebraska Examiner, said free meals continue to be available to youths during the summer through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and summer camp programs, schools and community centers.
“In addition to in-person meals, those locations offer recreational, educational and other enrichment opportunities, as well as resources, that are of added benefit to kids and important for their development,” Strimple said.
She offered no additional explanation.
Nebraska Appleseed and area food banks were among groups urging Pillen to opt into the program. Eric Savaiano, Appleseed’s food and nutrition access manager, said the nonprofit was “deeply disappointed” and found the decision “difficult to understand.”
“Come summer, we know that more families will struggle with food insecurity because of this decision,” Savaiano said.
Appleseed estimated that 150,000 Nebraska kids would have benefited next summer if the state had opted into the new program. Modeled after pilot projects and a nationwide pandemic-era initiative that’s now ended, Congress authorized the more permanent summer program through the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023.
The program offers an electronic benefit transfer (EBT) card to children whose household income makes them eligible for free and reduced school lunches during the school year. Each of those Nebraska youths would have received a card loaded with $120 to help buy food during months that school is out.
Based on Nebraska’s participation in the pandemic program, Appleseed’s review showed that Nebraska would have to pay up to $300,000 annually to administer the Summer EBT program, which was a change from the pandemic-era program, where the federal government paid all administrative costs. States would be tasked with outreach efforts and would facilitate collaboration among involved agencies.
Said Savaiano: “If it’s a money issue, how can spending a mere $300,000 in state funds for administrative costs and receiving $18 million — a 60-fold return on investment — not make financial sense?”
State Sen. Jen Day of Gretna. (Courtesy of Craig Chandler/University Communication)
He added, “If it’s an ideological issue, how can deciding that economically disadvantaged children are better off going hungry make moral sense?”
A group of 15 state senators, upon learning of the decision, sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services asking the administration to rethink the situation. The letter said that while the governor has the final say, DHHS and the Department of Education “also have decision-making power on this matter.”
“So many Nebraskans are struggling with the cost of living right now and, as a result, people are growing hungry,” said Sen. Jen Day of Gretna, who led the letter-writing effort. “Opting into this program is imperative and not doing so is a huge moral and economic failure.”
In addition to Day, those signing the letter: Sens. Carolyn Bosn of Lincoln, Jana Hughes of Seward, Machaela Cavanaugh of Omaha, John Cavanaugh of Omaha, Megan Hunt of Omaha, Eliot Bostar of Lincoln, Tony Vargas of Omaha, Terrell McKinney of Omaha, George Dungan of Lincoln, Jane Raybould of Lincoln, John Fredrickson of Omaha, Danielle Conrad of Lincoln, Lynne Walz of Fremont, Carol Blood of Bellevue.
The funding for the program through the U.S. Department of Agriculture is intended to supplement, not replace, existing programs that help families, including summer meal sites and the year-round SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).
According to the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, which oversees such nutrition programs, more than 29 million children across America could benefit from the 2024 Summer EBT program.
In early January 2000, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was at a five-star beach resort in Sea Island, Georgia, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends.
At the resort, Thomas gave a speech at an off-the-record conservative conference. He found himself seated next to a Republican member of Congress on the flight home. The two men talked, and the lawmaker left the conversation worried that Thomas might resign. Congress should give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, Thomas told him. If lawmakers didn’t act, “one or more justices will leave soon” — maybe in the next year.
Congress never lifted the ban on speaking fees or gave the justices a major raise. But in the years that followed, as ProPublica has reported, Thomas accepted a stream of gifts from friends and acquaintances that appears to be unparalleled in the modern history of the Supreme Court.
A "delicate matter." Hundreds of thousands in debt, Thomas privately told a GOP lawmaker that Congress should give SCOTUS justices a pay raise. If not, “one or more justices will leave soon.”
Clarence Thomas threatened to quit SCOTUS unless he could get rich, so Republican politicians arranged for billionaires to start inundating him with money and gifts in exchange for his continued service. He gladly accepted the trade-off. https://t.co/AIVt3gBXSl
Thomas wanted to hang out with the 1% and didn’t hear a 1% kind of income or have a trust fund. So he learned to grift off them. Honestly I’d rather do without than beg, but that’s just me. Like any of those billionaires ever considered him their equal. Is he that stupid? Yes. This is a man who doesn’t hang his law school diploma on his wall because he believes it is “cheapened” because he got in on affirmative action. (Which to me means he thinks he didn’t really deserve his spot in that year’s class. I’m tempted to agree but maybe his grades were that good.) He still had to do the work and pass all the classes to graduate. But that’s the chip on his shoulder. For me that explains a lot of what he’s like. He should never have been on the court, but Thurgood Marshall had resigned and Bush thought he could only get a replacement confirmed if he found a black conservative judge and who else was there? He’s the poster child for unearned promotion. And deep down he knows it and resents it. What else was there to do but cash in? What a sad, sorry, excuse for a human being. He’s unworthy to be mentioned in the same paragraph as Marshall much less sit in his seat.
His chip goes back further than that, to childhood color discrimination. He was known—to his Black classmates!—as “ABC”, for “America’s Blackest Child” (to be clear, as an insult).
If one goes deeply into debt on that income, it should raise questions about how competently one manages personal finances, sort of like those poor credit ratings adversely affecting getting a job.
That is more than a sufficient salary as it is. And I understand that at the time he complained, it was relatively higher when adjusted for inflation. It’s still a really good salary.
Scottie's Playtime 