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.
The boy in the article was bullied so bad he had to drop out of school. This policy not only harm trans kids and make them feel untrusting of their teachers, but it also encourages other students to attack the trans kids. How would you like your boss or co-worker to constantly misgender you, use the wrong pronouns towards you, or called you by the wrong name. And please tell me what about using the preferred name or pronoun that a person prefers is against the Christian bible? Where in the bible does it say a person can not change their name? Where in the bible does it say to call a person by a different pronoun is a sin? It is just using religion to justify hate, being mean, and being cruel. Just how it is loving to treat someone like crap, it sure doesn’t make them want to join your church. Plus as the boy in the article points out, cis kids do this stuff all the time and no one cares. Also the headmaster refused to let him change his names claiming it might confuse the younger student? Using the protect little kids to cause harm to another child. Plus kids are not confused by name changes and wearing different clothing. They really don’t care unless they are told to care / be upset by it. Plus in higher education the rule requires the request to use preferred pronouns or names must take into account how the other cis students will feel. WTF. If I was a kid in those schools I would misgender the teachers that misgendered me, I would not respond to the wrong pronouns or name. I would put my preferred name on all homework and tests. Hugs. Scottie
“It’s inexcusable to say a child needs to have permission to experiment with their name or wardrobe. Cis kids do that all the time without their parents being informed. The politicians behind this guidance don’t know what it is to be trans, they’ve never listened to a trans voice so they don’t know what damage it will cause.”
Schools and colleges are also required to consider the impact of affirming trans students on cis students. It also says no student or teacher can be required to use a trans student’s correct pronouns.
Newton Carey was bullied so badly that he dropped out of school. He says new guidance requiring teachers to out trans students would be disastrous.
A 15-year-old trans boy opened up about his own upsetting experience coming out at school in the wake of England’s new draft guidance that would allow teachers to misgender trans students and require them to out trans kids to their parents.
“Transphobic bullying is rampant and I think 100% this guidance only fuels that fire,” Newton Carey told The Guardian. “If I’d been able to exist in my school as a trans kid from the beginning, nobody would have complained because I wasn’t asking for anything special. The only reason other kids saw the difference was because it was pointed out to them.”
One of the bills would ban Pride flags even on government buildings
Carey detailed informing his teacher of his trans identity at the age of 11 and said the first thing he did was report it to the headteacher. The headteacher then called Carey’s mom to make sure she knew he was trans and ask if it was okay with her. “I wasn’t included in the conversation at all,” he said.
The headteacher then refused to let Carey change his name on school documents, claiming it could upset younger students. At the same time, he quit playing sports because the other boys were making fun of him.
“When I started secondary school I was allowed to use the disabled toilet but the lock on the door didn’t work and it didn’t feel safe,” he continued. “I was badly bullied and my mental health plummeted so I stopped attending and was home schooled for a year.”
Carey ended his story by blasting the politicians responsible for the new guidance that will undoubtedly cause trans students across the country to endure similar struggles.
“It’s inexcusable to say a child needs to have permission to experiment with their name or wardrobe. Cis kids do that all the time without their parents being informed. The politicians behind this guidance don’t know what it is to be trans, they’ve never listened to a trans voice so they don’t know what damage it will cause.”
According to the new guidance – which must still undergo a 12-week public consultation before it is finalized – schools do not have a “general duty to allow a child to ‘social transition’” and in the case of primary school-aged children (under 11), schools are banned from using pronouns that do not correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth.
School officials must inform parents if students request to change their pronouns or name or ask to wear school uniforms that do not align with the sex they were assigned at birth, except in “very rare situations where informing parents might raise a significant risk of harm to the child.”
Schools and colleges are also required to consider the impact of affirming trans students on cis students. It also says no student or teacher can be required to use a trans student’s correct pronouns.
Mermaids, an organization that advocates for transgender youth, called the guidance “unworkable, out of touch and absurd.”
Is the point we are at now, the anti-LGBTQIA haters can’t get the books they hate out of schools or public libraries, so they call the police and lie that porn is being shown to kids? These groups did a sneak attack and got into positions to act on their racism and their bigotry. But now people understand who they really are and the public is fighting back. The majority doesn’t believe what the haters do, just as the majority of the public doesn’t agree with the maga republicans and what they are claiming and want to do. Just as the maga republicans keep claiming that they speak for the country, they represent what the people want, which is clearly not true, it is the same with the haters. They also claim to represent the people, the public, the parents, everyone! Yet their ideas and what they want are very unpopular, so clearly they don’t speak for the majority, do they? This is like calling in bomb threats to stop drag shows. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t give you the right to deny it to everyone else. Hugs. Scottie
The ACLU is concerned about a police officer’s having searched a classroom at W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School for the coming of age novel, “Gender Queer” after receiving a complaint. The incident has prompted outrage in the school community.
AP FILE PHOTO
GREAT BARRINGTON — The plainclothed police officer who entered an eighth grade classroom to search for a book wore a body camera and recorded the incident, leading to more legal questions and concerns.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other free speech advocates say they are alarmed by the recording, as well as the entire Dec. 8 incident that took place after classes let out at W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School.
They also say they cannot recall any instances of police going to a school to search for a book. Schools and libraries have internal procedures for book challenges.
“That’s partly what is so concerning,” said Ruth A. Bourquin, senior and managing attorney for the ACLU of Massachusetts. “Police going into schools and searching for books is the sort of thing you hear about in communist China and Russia. What are we doing?”
The Berkshire Hills Regional School Committee and Superintendent Peter Dillion have, in a statement sent to the school community Tuesday, apologized for how it handled the situation, stating “clearly and unequivocally” that it does not support book banning, and committed to making all of its students feel safe.
“The recent incident at the middle school has challenged and impacted our community,” according to the statement. “Faced with an unprecedented police investigation of what should be a purely educational issue, we tried our best to serve the interests of students, families, teachers, and staff. In hindsight, we would have approached that moment differently. We are sorry. We can do better to refine and support our existing policies. We are committed to supporting all our students, particularly vulnerable populations.”
The ACLU has requested that body camera footage and other records related to the complaint and the investigation, Bourquin said.
It was an anonymous complaint that led Great Barrington Police to open a probe about whether parts of the book, “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe, could be considered obscene material or pornographic.
Police then notified the Berkshire District Attorney’s Office as per the department’s policy.
They also notified school and district administrators they were coming to the classroom, and the officer was escorted there by the school principal. The teacher, who kept the book in her resource library, was surprised to see the officer. The officer announced he was turning on his body camera and then looked for the book and did not find it.
The DA ordered the investigation closed. The matter of whether the book is appropriate now rests with the schools.
In its letter, the BHRSD School Committee said the incident “has challenged and impacted our community.”
“Faced with an unprecedented police investigation of what should be a purely educational issue, we tried our best to serve the interests of students, families, teachers and staff. In hindsight, we would have approached that moment differently. We are sorry,” the letter said.
The committee said it would work to collect feedback on how it can do better, starting by hosting a community meeting on Jan. 11.
“It is the obligation of the district to use its policies, existing or amended, to select curriculum. In this case, the content was not the issue. The process challenging it was. We want to ensure that students and staff feel safe and supported and that families’ voices are heard.”
“Gender Queer” is a coming-of-age memoir about reckoning with confusion about gender and contains sexually explicit illustrations and language.
It is this that many in LGBTQIA+ community say they believe is the reason for the censorship — not so-called “obscenity” concerns.
In Massachusetts the testfor obscenity is if the material is of interest sexually, depicts or describes sexual conduct “in a way that is patently offensive to an average citizen of this county,” and “has no serious value of a literary, artistic, political or scientific kind,” according to the state.
It was a complaint about so-called obscene materials in the classroom that police say led them there — something they said they had a duty to investigate.
But the ACLU’s Bourquin disagrees.
“We’re very troubled by this notion,” she said. “They say anytime someone could call they have an obligation to go marching into places wearing a body cam, and you know, interrogating people,” Bourquin said.
State laws, she said, are “pretty clear about police not having roles in this situation.”
Both the state and federal constitutions also protect the rights of students to receive information, she added, noting the ACLU and GLAD — Legal Advocates & Defenders for the LGBTQ Community — sent an open letter in January to school superintendents statewide given the rise in attempts to ban school library books.
The letter, also sent to the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, noted that legally such bans “may constitute unlawful discrimination.”
The letter says the courts “have recognized that the fact that some parents do not want their children to read certain books cannot justify depriving other students of their rights of access.”
The ACLU’s letter serves as a legal guide for schools and students’ rights to have access to information that is “free of censorship,” and says the ACLU stands “ready as a resource in this fight.”
The librarian at Du Bois middle school, Jennifer Guerin, made another point about that access. She said that it is “critically important for concerned community members to remember that the current situation is not about forcing a book into students’ hands.”
“It’s about the freedom to read,” Guerin said. “It’s about providing voluntary access to a well-written, highly acclaimed resource in a safe place for a teenager who might want or need it.”
A complaint that led police to search a middle school classroom for the book, “Gender Queer,” sparked a demonstration by Monument Mountain Regional High School students on Friday. The ACLU and other free speech advocates are worried both about the police involvement and about book banning in general.
HEATHER BELLOW — THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE
Using obscenity as an excuse to censor books with literary value is a heavy legal lift, said Bourquin. Obscenity laws have been “carefully crafted to ensure not tromping on constitutional free speech rights.”
If a book has value and isn’t meant to sexually arouse it will be hard for it to fail the legal test for obscenity, she said.
That test is “very specific,” and not something the average person or police officer necessarily would know, said Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition.
“It’s not a very easy test,” Silverman said. “And just because you have a community member pointing to something and saying, ‘That’s obscene,’ well, that doesn’t mean that it is obscene under the First Amendment.”
Like Bourquin, Silverman is stunned by the police involvement and thinks it wise to set a precedent for the future given the uptick in school book challenges.
“While it might be rare now, it doesn’t mean that it will be rare in the future,” Silverman said of police involvement in school literature. “I think the school and the police department have to come forth with a policy to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”
The American Civil Liberties Union says it has “deep concerns” after a police officer in plain clothes entered a classroom, turned on his body camera, and searched for a book someone reported was sexually explicit. https://t.co/Sn0hAqyuer
Someone called the police to report that a Massachusetts classroom was harboring obscene material: Gender Queer.
The book does not meet the legal definition of obscenity: "Many see it as an important story helping build empathy," said the superintendent. https://t.co/IzbIZ1k7RQ
This report is on the lies and atrocious propaganda of Israel and it’s supporters. Israeli authorities themselves have lowered the number of killed by Hamas to 1,000. The lies about all the babies killed was debunked as only one baby was killed by Hamas and the burned babies and others turned out to have been by Isra
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.
Listen to the student. He makes it clear that the attempts by people like Bridget Ziegler and other haters to make only one man / one woman cis straight sex acceptable, the students still are tolerant of other ways to express sexual enjoyment. What the students are not OK with is the hate and hypocrisy. He calls her out for teaching hate towards same sex relationships and the LGBTQIA while engaging in lesbian sex and FFM sexual relations with her husband, again while demanding it is wrong to have sex out of marriage. Hugs. Scottie
As the Sarasota County School Board convened for the final time this year on Tuesday, Bridget Ziegler entered the board chambers facing a rift largely driven by agenda item No. 1: a colleague’s resolution calling for her resignation.
Zander Moricz, who was the class president at Pine View School in Osprey and now attends Harvard, said Bridget Ziegler deserved to lose her job, but not because of her private sex life.
“That defeats the lesson we’ve been trying to teach you, which is that a politician’s job is to serve their community, not to police personal lives,” Moricz said. “So, to be extra clear Bridget, you deserve to be fired from your job because you are terrible at your job.”
Read the full article. The clip below has gone wildly viral with millions of views on TikTok, where I came across it a dozen times last night. Watch every second.
“You don’t believe in public schools — you send your kids to private… you deserve to be fired not because of a threesome, but because you are terrible at it.” pic.twitter.com/uehU7IIGp7
I would agree with that IF she agreed that other people’s private business is their own private business. But she vilified people for doing exactly what she was doing in her own bedroom. She’s bisexual but mistreated others for identifying as lgbt. She thought this was okay for others, so it’s good enough for her.
As J is pointing out, it’s not her sex life that’s the issue here – it’s her hypocrisy. Her bisexual, polyamorous sex life is evidence of the hypocrisy – that’s its only importance to anyone but herself.
That’s it. Her fellow conservatives would kick her off the school board on the irrelevant issue of her sexual “immorality.” He realizes it is her hypocritical judgmental sanctimony that is the real problem, not the issue of her private sex life.
The bottom line is this: Ziegler’s refusal to resign her School Board seat is more than just a morality play. If Ziegler steps down or is removed, three out of the five School Board seats, not just two, will be on the ballot in August 2024.
That’s right: What’s truly at stake here is that we could vote on a majority of the School Board’s seats on Aug. 20, 2024. And that would give us a chance to have a School Board with leaders who are more interested in students, teachers and academic achievement than posturing for a national audience in the culture wars.
“That defeats the lesson we’ve been trying to teach you, which is that a politician’s job is to serve their community, not to police personal lives,” Moricz said. “So, to be extra clear Bridget, you deserve to be fired from your job because you are terrible at your job.”
I had to look up the kid’s sweatshirt and it turns out that “you give me the ick” is teen slang for being grossed out by someone, often for undefinable reasons.
I think it can be both at the same time. Sort of like one of our cats. She will watch the dogs play with a toy she wants. When they are outside, she’ll bat it with all her might to move it under something like a grandfather clock from under which the dogs can’t retrieve it. She can’t, either, but the satisfaction she feels is tremendous. I try to stay on her good side.
That’s part of it. It’s also racism. Private schools were rare in the US until local districts were losing the last of their desegregation lawsuits in the late 60s and early 70s. (Yes, I know Brown was 1954. It was up into the 1970s for many districts to finally comply!) And then homeschooling also for the same reason. They can say whatever they want and some of it is religious and political but a lot of it is not wanting their kids to get to know black and brown kids growing up.
Context: This isn’t the first time Zander made a headline.
The class president at a Florida high school says he wasn’t allowed to share his experience as a gay student in his graduation speech or how the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law will affect students like him, so he got creative.
This video quotes a Harvard study that show 36% percent of trans kids are sexually assaulted when forced to use the sex on their birth certificate rather than the bathroom they gender identify with. Then the video talks about how the anti-trans bathroom laws physically harm trans kids while not help cis kids to stay safe at all. It is not cis kids in bathrooms being attacked, but trans kids. Hugs. Scottie
Thanks to Ten Bears for the link. This is for my readers in Oregon and surrounding areas. What is wrong with republican voters that they keep voting for wack job crazy people for state and federal office. These people love conspiracies and endorsing them. They prefer fantasy rather than facts or science. I guess it comes from believing in the myths about tRump instead of the facts, just as they ignore reality for a literal bible infallibility. There are videos at the link above. Hugs. Scottie
A pair of Oregon Republican legislators, state Sens. Dennis Linthicum and Kim Thatcher, have appeared on multiple QAnon-affiliated and far-right shows to promote a lawsuit they are involved with that claims the federal government inflated COVID-19 numbers.
The lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Oregon in March 2022 by Linthicum, Thatcher, and naturopathic doctor Henry Ealy, who has spread COVID-19 misinformation. It claims that the federal government “failed to ensure and/or willfully manipulated data being collected, analyzed, and published,” causing “a significant hyperinflation of COVID-19 case, hospitalization, and death counts,” which they claim was used to defraud taxpayers of at least $3.5 trillion in public funds between 2020 and 2022. (The claim that COVID-19 cases were overcounted during the pandemic is dubious.)
The plaintiffs want to empanel a special grand jury and present “evidence of alleged crimes relating to the federal government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.” The case was dismissed in November 2022, but the group appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In recent weeks, Linthicum — who is also a former treasurer of the Oregon Republican Party — and Thatcher went on several programs affiliated with the QAnon conspiracy theory to promote the case.
On November 17, Linthicum and Thatcher appeared on Right Now with Ann Vandersteel, which is hosted by a known QAnon supporter who also promotes the extreme ideology of the sovereign citizenmovement. During the interview, Vandersteel praised them and Ealy as “incredible” for “com[ing] together to adjudicate the problem that apparently our government seems incapable of doing” with the “COVID fraud.”
Linthicum also pushed COVID-19 misinformation during the appearance, falselyclaiming that “face masks don’t work.”
Later that month, Linthicum, Thatcher, and Ealy sat for an interview with QAnon influencer Michael Jaco in which Thatcher called for others to “duplicate” this legal effort “all over the United States, whether people want to go to their counties or whether they could go to their — you know, the state grand jury or even do their own federal grand jury,” and Linthicum criticized what he called “COVID fraud.”
Linthicum also claimed that people are “redefining … what a vaccine is, what a vaccine isn’t,” and Thatcher pushed election misinformation, calling for people to “overwhelm whatever cheating might be out there and get their votes in.”
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CitationFrom the November 29, 2023, edition of Unleashing Intuition Secrets, streamed on Rumble
In early December, Linthicum appeared on The Tina Peters Show, which streams on the QAnon-affiliated Badlands Media Rumble channel.
During the interview, Linthicum claimed that there was an “anxiety drive” and that authorities were “fearmongering with mediocre science and uncertainty, scaring the public into getting the vaccine and increasing uptake rates,” calling it “criminal fraud.”
Host Tina Peters praised Linthicum and the other plaintiffs, calling them “brave souls” and saying the lawsuit is “a solution to taking back our country.”
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CitationFrom the December 4, 2023, edition of Badlands Media’s The Tina Peters Show, streamed on Rumble
During the interview, Linthicum seemingly disputed death tolls reported in the news, saying, “There’s this disconnect between what we’re seeing on the news — the nightly, you know, scrolling numbers: ‘175,000 people died today because of coronavirus’ and whatever. And it’s like, you know, in the United States of America, I know there’s only been eight cases and we’re already talking vaccines. And then, you know, there were 17 cases and then there’s videos of people dropping dead.”
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CitationFrom the December 2, 2023, edition of Sons of Liberty Media, streamed on Bitchute
During the interview, Linthicum promoted the lawsuit, pushed false claims that the 2020 presidential election had been significantly impacted by election fraud, and promised Icke that he would come back on the show “whenever you please.” Icke praised Linthicum as “honorable” and thanked him for “all the work that you’re doing over there trying to expose” the “COVID fraud” and “election fraud as well.”
Linthicum and Thatcher’s appearances on the QAnon-affiliated shows are the latest example of an ongoing partnership between anti-vaccine and QAnon figures, with right-wing anti-vaccine figures using QAnon shows to spread COVID-19 and vaccine-related misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Scottie's Playtime 