Sorry just got up at 4:30 PM. I slept most of the day. No I am not sure why I am so tired again. Ron is going to get me the B+ complex the endocrinologist said I need that I stopped taking. My next labs with him will check those levels. Just took my blood sugar to have supper, 283. No that is not good. yes it could explain why I was so sleepy. No it was not that high this morning. No I did not eat anything to do that (donuts, cakes, pies, sweets of any kinds are off limits to Scottie) Just had a small supper, but the insulin is surging through me and I want to go back to bed. And I am sweating. When the insulin and blood sugar are surging to battle in my body I sweat, and sweat, and sweat … regardless of the temp in the house. I am so sleepy again. Hugs
On to the story, why are the poor black kids being shoved into the J.R.O.T.C. programs? Really asking why poor kids, and black kids are being shoved without being asked or even allowed to get out of these military programs? Something really is wrong in the US. Hugs
J.R.O.T.C. programs, taught by military veterans at some 3,500 high schools across the country, are supposed to be elective, and the Pentagon has said that requiring students to take them goes against its guidelines. But The New York Times found that thousands of public school students were being funneled into the classes without ever having chosen them, either as an explicit requirement or by being automatically enrolled.
A review of J.R.O.T.C. enrollment data collected from more than 200 public records requests showed that dozens of schools have made the program mandatory or steered more than 75 percent of students in a single grade into the classes. A vast majority of the schools with those high enrollment numbers were attended by a large proportion of nonwhite students and those from low-income households, The Times found.
So according to the right wing, it’s illegal for schools to teach Critical Race Theory (whatever that is), and universities may not use race as a criterion, not even to ensure a ethnically diverse student body.
It is nice to see the people turn out to support the LGBTQI+ youth. I know there are far more people that are accepting of the gay, lesbian, and trans people than there are of the haters. The haters are just louder and willing to use violence. They wanted to mark the books so it would be easy for others to identify the kids who checked them out. A big old scarlet letter. It is the same for putting them in a different section all by themselves, nice big scarlet letter to paste on any kid who checks them out. Look at the gay kid, attack him, hurt him, making her cry. It was one kids who took a book home that had some LGBTQI+ subject material and one set of parents that complained so vigorously that an entire community was made to suffer, to be denied access to not just those books but the entire library. The school stopped sending the kids to the library because of the complaint of one parents. The school punished an entire school and all the kids to deny acceptability of the LGBTQI+ as one parent demanded. Hugs
The Crook County Library Board of Trustees voted Thursday night not to label LGBTQ-friendly children’s books or segregate them into a separate section.
In an unusual sight, people packed into the Crook County Library on Thursday night for a meeting of its board.
The topic at hand had drawn the standing room crowd: namely, whether or not to segregate LGBTQ-friendly children’s books into a separate section.
The Crook County Library Board of Trustees voted Thursday night not to label LGBTQ-friendly children’s books or segregate them into a separate section.
Adrian Vamanu
By the end of the night, the crowd had spoken overwhelmingly in support of keeping the books where they are, and the board voted 4-1 to not place the books in a special section of the library.
Library Director April Witteveen said the debate started in May when a group of local elementary school children visited the library. One student took home one of the library’s LGBTQ books. Soon after, with little to no explanation, the school stopped sending children to the library during school hours. Witteveen said the school does not have a library and students haven’t returned since.
Speaking at Thursday night’s meeting, former library board member and president ZueAnne Neal said she had started falling for the rhetoric around the books, as some community members called them dangerous for children.
Neal, appearing to be on the verge of tears, apologized to the crowd for at one point recommending the books be marked with a sticker or other identifying mark as a way to compromise between the sides.
“That was a sad, sad day,” she said.
Neal noted that after she did more research on the books, she found them to be age-appropriate and that placing the books into a separate section could create stigma, as well as potentially cost the library through lost funding and First Amendment lawsuits.
Some speakers pushed back on the notion that marking the books would ostracize people who wanted to check them out, calling such descriptions “misinformation.” Supporters of the move said marking the books would make it more clear for people who wanted to view the material, as well as those who wanted to avoid it.
Crook County is just one of hundreds of libraries across the country that have been targeted for allegedly making available LGBTQ books that contain child pornography. It comes amid a broader national debate over what educational materials should be available to children, especially those discussing racism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination.
Labeling queer people as pedophiles and dangers to children is a strategy used by anti-LGBTQ activists for decades.
One library in Jamestown, Michigan, found itself in a similar situation to Prineville in August, with residents there voting to block a tax levy on two separate occasions, meaning the small library lost 84% of its funding. The presence of LGBTQ books sparked the demand to cut the library’s funding, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Neal, the former library board president, said after looking into the issue, she ultimately came to see segregating books as a form of hate.
“If it roots here, it won’t end here,” she said. “It will just grow.”
The book issue in Crook County isn’t the first time Central Oregon has recently been roiled by misinformation involving LGBTQ people. In October, the Culver School District in nearby Jefferson County found itself in a controversy after pulling young students from a camp over false allegations about non-binary counselors.
Part I left out of this story was when one speaker read a Bible passage that described a man's genitals being like a donkey's, and then asked why that book was available in the library.
Shout out to that guy for doing homework for his testimony.
Just imagine being the poor kid that may have thought it was a good story, or that it applied to them. Then having your parents make such a fuss that your whole class can’t go back to the library. Religious indoctrination at it’s best.
This is gang rule. This is what the right wing / republicans are driving. Outrage against one segment of the population. We have seen this before, and it doesn’t end well. If they succeed in making the LGBTQI+ disappear who will be the next scapegoats? Who will be the next targets? The right wing groups that stoked this outrage and attack that could have caused death removed their inciting posts as soon as they got their way. Just like Fox news acts, drive outrage and then claim they did not do anything. Think of the preparations the shooter did, removing the license plate also wearing a mask and gloves. I wonder if the car was “borrowed”? Otherwise why wear gloves in your own car? And where are the police in all this, they set up cameras, for a masked person? Why not have increased patrols, why not have a news conference saying these acts of terrorism won’t be tolerated? Why don’t the police protect the attacked communities? Hugs
The conservative organization “Wake Up WA State” has removed posts from its Facebook page targeting the bar in the wake of the shooting.
A Seattle-area pub was hit by gunfire yesterday, days before a scheduled drag queen story hour and bingo night.
The Brewmaster’s Taproom in Renton, Washington, just south of Seattle, was hit a single gunshot to their front window in a drive-by shooting around noon on Wednesday. The pub’s monthly Drag Queen Storytime and Rainbow Bingo events will go on as planned on Saturday.
Brewmaster’s owner Marley Rall told LGBTQ Nation she was working at home when she got a text from an employee at the coffee stand next door to the pub. “They just texted me and said, ‘Hey, I just watched this.’”
Rall said the assailant had removed the license plates from the car and was wearing a mask and gloves.
Rall posted to Facebook: “So just an update for everyone. Our taproom was shot at today around noon. We believe it has to do with the people who are upset about our Drag Queen Story Time. We would like you to know we are still going to have drag queen storytime. But we also want to be transparent with parents. Renton PD is aware and has set up cameras.”
“Hatred isn’t pretty,” one commenter posted. “Hang in there. A lot of us will be there to support you! Grateful for your inclusion of all people.” Rall, who lives with her husband in Renton, calls herself a staunch ally of the LGBTQ+ community.
The shooting comes after plans for a protest at the event by right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ groups came to light. “We are aware of the chatter and threats,” Rall wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday. “Every month we get emails and phone calls about our Drag Queen Story Time. Never have we had issues, but this time feels different.”
The single gunshot came from a silver four-door sedan hours later.
Rall said she noticed unusual activity on the tap room’s Facebook page Monday night. “I get a notification,” Rall said, and a woman “had posted on our newsletter, ‘This is fucking disgusting,’ and ‘You’re fucking groomers and you’re pedophiles,’ and then had scrolled through our Facebook page to go find another post from the month before, specifically for our drag queen storytime and bingo.”
Rall was also made aware of a protest flyer originating with right-wing group Wake Up WA State that had spread across social media and was shared by advocacy group LGBTQIA+ Renton and a local councilwoman. Calls for protest also made their way to Reddit, where one poster suggested shooting up a transformer to deprive Brewmasters of power during the event.
“So I screenshot it and send it to the city,” Rall says. “This is a thing and somebody clearly wants to replicate what was going on in North Carolina.” She was referring to a
Following the shooting Wednesday, Wake Up WA State scrubbed their Facebook account of any reference to the event.
“Wake Up WA State is shutting its pages down at least for now,” wrote group organizer Justine Andrina. “We talked about it a lot and made this decision because the people running the groups are putting themselves at risk at this point and the benefit is outweighing the risks [sic].”
A deleted post archived by a Brewmaster supporter illustrated Wake Up WA State’s role in the protest and purported cancellation.
Andrina shared: “Per the organizer holding the protest: ‘Based on some recent developments we’ve decided to pull the plug on Saturday. Someone took a shot at the bar today.’ I don’t know if it was a false flag or a patriot who got too hotheaded. Either way, it now seems like a major security issue and since children will be present, we made the decision to cancel. If you are able to make a note of that on Wake Up WA FB, it would be appreciated. Thanks.”
“Whoever did this to Brewmasters,” Andrina wrote, “you’re sick in the head.”
Rall says both her parents lost family in the Holocaust, and they made sure she could recite the poem First They Came.
“Just because it doesn’t personally impact you, one day, you’re going to turn around and nobody’s going to be there, because it will,” she said. “This is about keeping everybody safe, and making sure that everybody continues to feel comfortable coming out and being their authentic self.”
Again it is about making those different from them disappear from society. It is about erasing the LGBTQI+ from public view and driving them back into the closet. This is another attempt to drive / regress the country to the past in an attempt to wind back the social acceptance clock. This is religious driven hate. Again as I posted this morning, another push by Christians to demand their religious views be imposed on everyone, that their ideas of morality be taken as the only acceptable ones. These Christian nationalists not only want a US Taliban, but they also fund raise constantly off their hatreds. They are proud of their attacks on the LGBTQI+ and take their incivility as a badge of honor. Hugs
She was forced to listen to a hate group member misgender her while he blathered about critical race theory and “sexual immorality” in school.
A transgender member of the Asheville City Board of Education has resigned after a months-long campaign of harassment by a representative of a national hate group.
Peyton O’Conner announced her resignation from the board on Monday night, effective immediately.
Ronald Gates, a self-described pastor and “ambassador” for the Arizona-based hate group Alliance Defending Freedom, started showing up at Asheville City Board of Education meetings in October, hectoring the board with anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, denouncing critical race theory, and misgendering board member O’Conner.
“Mr. Gates is a fascist whose hatred and fear-mongering have no place within the Asheville City School’s community,” O’Conner wrote in her letter of resignation to the board. “He is dragging a well-funded group of fascists into our town in order to claim his own 15 minutes of fame. His views are ignorant, disgusting, and vile.”
O’Conner was appointed to the seat in March 2021 by the Asheville City Council to fill a term ending in 2024.
O’Conner’s resignation follows a board meeting at which she ripped up a letter transmitted by Gates that demanded “parents, school board members, and local clergy be informed if teachers plan to allow ‘indoctrination teaching’ in the school system.”
Alliance Defending Freedom identifies itself as a “legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, the sanctity of life, parental rights, and God’s design for marriage and family.” The Southern Poverty Law Center describes it as a “hate group.” ADF has joined with like-minded organizations in Europe in support of forced sterilization of transgender individuals.
When Gates took the mic for public comment, he repeatedly misgendered O’Conner, despite rebukes from the board chair. O’Conner interjected: “Mr. Gates, I would ask that you refrain from bigotry and hate speech. That is not my gender.”
Gates went on: “We should be focusing on reading, writing, math, and history, true history, instead of sexual immorality or indoctrination or CRT. As I shared, the submittal of the information, it was submitted before the board, respectfully, and the individual that took time to rip up that information is not known, as you reflect it, as ‘Miss.’ I will say ‘Mr.’ if the blood was drawn XY, which is a male.”
Board members can be heard repeating “no,” and Gates is gaveled out of order and told to yield his time. The pastor and his supporters were escorted from the room by security, as Gates continued his rant.
“The ADF has a playbook,” O’Conner wrote in her resignation letter. “Essentially, Mr. Gates will continue attacking until he is censured in a way that allows him (with the assistance of the ADF) to create a lawsuit and turn our district into the circus and s**t show that he and the ADF desire. This isn’t a guess, the ADF makes no attempt to hide its tactics. It’s a group with 1.6 million followers, they are looking for their next opportunity for their next Fox News press blitz.”
Asheville is one of the most progressive cities in the southeast. According to the last U.S. Census, the Asheville area has 83% more LGBTQ+ people than the typical American city or town. In 2021, the city council unanimously passed one of the country’s most sweeping anti-discrimination ordinances, protecting residents based on sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, and several other classes.
Again Christian Nationlists are demanding their religion be forced on everyone here in the US. As the article says the town is only 1/3 Christian yet the Christians act as if they represent 100% of the population. They do not care about other peoples ideas, other peoples rights, only with enforcing a tradition that promotes their religion. Read how many assume that stopping those traditions are a direct attack on the Christian religion. Not promoting Christianity is an attack on Christianity in their minds. Hugs
Owosso City Council member Emily Olson believes local government should remain secular. Christians in town can’t handle it.
Emily Olson doesn’t believe Christianity should be the default religion for the local government (screenshot via YouTube)
Reading Time: 6MINUTES
Emily Olson, the newest city council member in Owosso, Michigan, is already making waves—and getting threatened—for trying to end the tradition of Christian prayers at meetings and refusing to stand during the Pledge of Allegiance.
Emily Olson remains seated during the Pledge of Allegiance at a meeting of the Owosso City Council
Olson was just elected to one of seven seats on the Owosso City Council. She moved to the city last year, opened up a local store, began a group for progressive women (“The Fair Mavens“), and ran a successful campaign for one of the city’s four open council seats. She’s perhaps the best sort of local champion: someone who chose to live there, runs a small business, and wants to make the city more welcoming to others.
But when she sat in on a city council meeting before her election, she was surprised to see how much religion was baked into it. The meeting began with a Christian prayer and included a formal recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. While saying the Pledge isn’t all that unusual, the default Christian invocation was a legal liability.
So after she got elected, during her first meeting on November 21, Olson proposed eliminating the prayers from the Owosso City Council agenda (21:56) and remained seated during the Pledge (0:45 mark).
… I can tell that everybody fervently applauded at the idea of keeping the prayer, and I just question: What is it that’s lost by making the room more inclusive? Where’s the harm…? No one’s—I’m certainly—I respect everybody’s religion. I just don’t know that it belongs at the outset of a government meeting. So I do wonder, in your decision, where do you find the harm in removing it?
She didn’t get a good answer to her questions.
One council member, Daniel Law, reacted by saying removing the prayer would be “exclusionary to Christians,” proving yet again that Christian Nationalists treat neutrality as oppression. He later added “This is a Christian city.” (Olson responded by pointing out how those comments merely reinforced her reason for suggesting prayer should be kept out of meetings.)
Law also said to Olson that she should respect their traditions. “When you go visit a friend’s house,” he told her, “if they ask you to take your shoes off, you do.” That analogy didn’t sit well with Olson. As she later told me, when it comes to the city council, everyone owns this house.
Mayor Robert J. Teich Jr. then noted that, in his seven years on the council, no one has ever told him “they felt excluded [by] having prayer“… which only suggests no one feels safe talking to him about their concerns. Olson even wondered when he said that, How many times have you asked?
One of the attendees even responded directly to his misguided statement, saying during the public comments portion of the meeting that she was “uncomfortable with the prayer.”
Predictably, the vote to get rid of the Christian invocations failed 5-2, with only council member Janae Fear joining Olson in wanting to remove the religious ritual (offering to replace it with a moment of silence). Teich then said, with all the cockiness of a petty dictator, that he would forbid the topic from coming up again during the two years of his term.
As for the Pledge, I’ve made an entire podcast series about its history, but just to go over the biggest concerns, the phrase “under God” pushes religion onto people who may not be religious. It falsely suggests that we have “liberty and justice for all.” It was originally written to promote anti-immigrant sentiment. And frankly, our country isn’t always one that deserves admiration.
Anyone who wants to stand for the Pledge is welcome to do so, but there’s nothing unpatriotic about remaining seated during it, whether you’re a student, teacher, or city council member. In fact, there’s a strong argument to be made that it’s extremely patriotic to remain seated because the alternative is rote recitation of a memorized script.
Neither of these things should be controversial. A city council meeting isn’t a church service and there are all kinds of reasons to protest the Pledge of Allegiance.
But this is a very, very Republican community. As you can imagine, most people flipped out as if Olson’s mild protest against religious tradition was an act of heresy.
That’s not an understatement either. One local blogger wrote Olson a letter saying he had a “vision” from God that she would be shot while leaving her business one night.
“I was given a vision, a very detailed vision,” Tom Manke wrote to Emily Olson in a letter, which he left on her council seat in a sealed envelope marked ‘private’ before Monday’s council meeting. Olson apparently did not read the letter until the meeting’s conclusion.
“My observation point in the vision was from your back parking lot,” Manke’s letter says. “It’s cold out, winter, you have a coat on and are leaving your store. Your back is to the parking lot and you are locking the door. A man, 5’10”, 50-60ish, white, neatly dressed wearing an overcoat and dress hat walks up to you from the north side. You see him — you know him — you smile, and without saying a word he shoots you. He calmly walks away and leaves in a dark-colored vehicle.”
It’s irrelevant that the letter implies the writer wouldn’t commit the act himself… partly because, according to Olson, he fits the very description of his imaginary assailant.
Olson told me she’s working with local law enforcement officials regarding how to handle this. Even if the letter writer insists this isn’t a threat, it’s hard not to think otherwise when you’re on the receiving end of it. (Based on what The Argus-Press reported, Manke is a right-wing conspiracy theorist who thinks Olson is just trying to get media coverage. The newspaper noted that, in the past, Manke told a local school board member that she would “face God’s wrath” unless she voted to sell a former middle school to a church.)
Make of that letter what you will, but given the typical response from conservative Christians when anyone challenges their hegemony, this feels all too familiar.
There was plenty of pushback beyond the threat, too. Here’s former Shiawassee County Commissioner Barb Clatterbaugh:
“I think that hit a nerve,” she said of the new council member’s actions. “She hit the Christians, the church-goers and the veterans … I don’t know how you can alienate so many people” in just one meeting.
Clatterbaugh is the sort of person who thinks kneeling during the National Anthem is an act of treason while the people promoting systemic racism are automatically patriots because they stand and say the Anthem with hands over their hearts.
At the next council meeting (this past Monday), plenty of community members also weighed in against Olson’s decision to remain seated. They have every right to do that, but their comments were the usual blend of ignorance and arrogance.
One veteran, Gary Duehring, acted like not standing for the Pledge was disrespectful to the flag and the troops… as if freedom of speech requires blind loyalty to a piece of cloth. Apparently everyone is free to have their opinions, except in this one case, when he gets to dictate their body positioning.
Other citizens demanded a recall election. Said one, “Recall should be warranted because you took an oath to upstand [?] the flag, and you mock it and throw it in our faces.”
One high school senior demanded that she “respect these men,” referring to veterans, by standing up against her wishes.
Olson publicly explained her position at the meeting and on Facebook, saying she’s not anti-American, just anti-shoving-Christianity-down-everyone’s-throats. She also told local media that about a third of the city is Christian, yet the council’s practices treat that number as if it’s 100%. She added that she’s received plenty of positive feedback from people who finally feel “seen and heard.”
During a lengthy chat with me yesterday, Olson said she was seriously hoping for the best and didn’t see this backlash coming. Olson assumed the prayers and Pledge were merely Owosso traditions that went unchallenged and that, as soon as she explained her concerns about them, her colleagues would understand and act accordingly. That obviously didn’t happen.
At this point, she doesn’t have much choice but to give up the prayer fight and simply remain seated during the Pledge. Olson told me she welcomes people in Owosso speaking out about the situation, especially if they’re uncomfortable with the prayers. Maybe hearing more voices will help some of her colleagues realize they’ve been living in a Christian bubble.
During our conversation and even in her interviews with local media outlets, it’s been interesting to see how little Olson references her own beliefs. That’s mostly because they’re irrelevant. (In case you’re wondering, she’s an atheist.) Yet her concerns represent people all over the religious spectrum. That’s no doubt true of non-Christian faiths, but it’s also true of Christians, many of whom don’t want government prayers either. In fact, the city manager told them before the meeting that a neighboring community that used to have invocations got rid of them after a pastor was elected mayor and directly called for the tradition to end because city council meetings were “not the time or place” for prayers.
But in Owosso, the prayers will continue because the Christians in charge don’t want to let them go no matter what Olson says. They would rather force their religion upon the community than admit government meetings ought to be religiously neutrality. It’s a completely irresponsible move. Unfortunately, it may not change unless Satanists or other non-Christians begin demanding invocation slots.
Former National Security Adviser John Bolton has revealed that Donald Trump turned down the chance to secure Paul Whelan’s release two years ago – despite the former president claiming to be outraged over the Biden administration’s deal which freed Brittney Griner but left the US marine in Russian custody.
Mr Bolton, who was the national security adviser under Mr Trump for 17 months from 2018 to 2019, told CBS that the Trump administration had the opportunity to trade Mr Whelan for convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout in 2018.
“The possibility of a Bout-for-Whelan trade existed back then and it wasn’t made, for very good reasons having to deal with Viktor Bout,” he said.
Read the full article. There is no record of Trump ever publicly mentioning Whelan’s name while in office.
Reminder that despite being besties with Putin, Trump failed to bring Paul Whelan home for more than 2 years pic.twitter.com/dc6V3ocyiC
Always deflecting, blaming others for his own failure.
Roberts: Is that true? Pence: I would defer to John.. Roberts: You were Vice President, you knew Pence: We weren’t in the business of prisoners swaps pic.twitter.com/VPvF1jARUI
I am so sick of the cries of fear and doom, of how their rights to discriminate against us gays are the only thing these Christians can see when it comes to same sex marriage. It has been the law of the land for over 7 years and no church has been forced to do a same sex marriage, no one has been jailed for refusing to enter into a same sex marriage, the sky has not fallen nor has their god rained fire and brimstone on the US. All that has happened is the same thing that happens when a marginalized minority gets their equality / civil rights entered into law in the US, more people are able to enjoy the rights the white Christians have always had. I am so tired of this shit. What this woman and those like her are demanding is follow my religion or Everything we love will be destroyed which is our right to deny you the same rights we have. We need that to feel superior to you, praise our god! Her own very cute nephew responded to this destroying her arguments here. Sadly this grand Christian woman is part of a family that told that nephew that he was no longer welcome to family holiday celebrations including Christmas because he has the dreaded gay disease. I will try to find the link and put it here. Love you all but this shit is getting really hard on me personally. The drive to make us conform to their straight is accepted only due to their religion lifestyle or they will kill us / drive us from society is too much now. It seems they are on a desperate push, and either make or break to drive the LGBTQI+ from society and install their own scriptures as the rules we must live by. Anyway. Hugs
Vicky Hartzler’s gay nephew Andrew posted about his aunt crying over gay marriage on the House floor pic.twitter.com/Kxwt4DLEnF
Scottie's Playtime 