Thursday, August 03, 2023

How badly will he destroy Florida?

Another comic!!! Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Trump Charges Result In A GOP Slap Fight" went up tonight. 


slapfight


Next, check out this video regarding the Carlee Russell story.




And before I go further, read Ruth's "THE BLUE ALBUM: 1967 - 1970" about the Beatles.

Doo-Doo Ron Ron DeSantis continues to struggle.  THE MIAMI HERALD notes:




Gov. Ron DeSantis, it turns out, is no political genius.

Credited for his ability to sniff out conservative cultural grievances like no politician since Donald Trump, DeSantis became known for fighting drag queens, critical race theory and Disney. Buoyed by a landslide reelection last year, and his sense of self-importance, DeSantis based his presidential campaign in great part on his approach to the pandemic and being a culture warrior.

He miscalculated his appeal.

His polling numbers have sagged — they are worse than they were before he entered the GOP primary. His campaign has burned through cash and recently laid off 38 employees. National media that, after last year’s midterms crowned DeSantis Trump’s heir apparent, discuss his lack of charisma these days.

DeSantis has hit the reset button, shifting his focus to economic issues, as the Herald reported this week. He’s still rallying against what he describes as “woke,” but he’s poised to show his populist and sympathetic side. On Monday, he announced a set of conservative run-of-the-mill economic proposals, vowed to cut spending and even talked about the country’s wealth gap and college debt. He told reporters he would not answer questions on “anything that’s not about the economy.”

While some may welcome his sharpened attention to pocketbook concerns, we know better.

Even if DeSantis magically transforms into Ronald Reagan, the damage he’s done has been enshrined into every facet of Florida law and policy.

He has censored what teachers can say in classrooms about LGBTQ+ Americans and race. He’s railed against educators trying to “indoctrinate” kids while doing his own brainwashing. The Florida Department of Education has allowed schools to use teaching materials for children created by nonprofit PragerU. Founder and conservative radio host Dennis Prager has been blunt about the mission of PragerU Kids, the Herald reported.




“It’s true we bring doctrines to children.” Prager said at a conference for the conservative group Moms for Liberty in Philadelphia. “But what is the bad about our indoctrination?”




It really is winding down for him.  He is disgusting.  I agree with C.I. (see snapshot below), Dems should not be getting on stage with him to debate.  All it will do is elevate him and treat his absurd, racist, homophobic idiocies as worthy of debate.  They don't need to be debated, they need to be called out.



Just when you think that Governor Ron DeSantis' government in Florida has hit a new low, they sink even deeper.

Florida's new 2023 standards for social studies education include teaching that "slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit." You read that right. Florida public schools could soon be teaching students that slavery benefited Black people.

Even worse, the statement released by the Florida Department of Education defended the teaching point by listing a number of Black historical figures who were examples of enslaved people who "developed highly specialized trades from which they benefitted." One problem, a number of these supposed examples were never actually enslaved at all. The first name they listed, blacksmith Ned Cobb, was born in 1885, decades after slavery. The second name listed, Henry Blair, was not enslaved either. It's shocking ignorance of Black history by those purporting to write curriculum standards.


During the long history of slavery in this country, millions were enslaved; they were beaten, raped, separated from their families, bartered, and sold. It is unthinkable to look at that mountain of suffering and ask young people to consider some of the benefits. The specious argument about gaining skills gets it exactly backwards—one of the fundamental sins of slavery was that it denied people their humanity, ignored their skills, ignored their talents, and denied them control over their lives.

What's happening in Florida is part of an ongoing, and far from new, effort across the country to erase, distort, and deceive people about Black history and American history overall. Earlier this year, Florida's Department of Education banned an Advanced Placement course on African American studies and the state implemented new laws—championed by Governor DeSantis—that have led to more than 300 books being banned by local school districts. That includes literature related to Black history, from the novels of Toni Morrison to nonfiction books about Black life, culture, and the impact of racism.




To make sure we are all on the same page here, let us recall that slavery involved over 12 million Africans being dragged from their homes and thrown onto ships headed to the Americas. The bodies of the nearly 2 million of those men, women, and children who died during the treacherous Middle Passage journey were thrown overboard to feed hungry sharks. Those who reached American shores were rewarded with a lifetime of hard labor, abuse, degradation, and violation.

In her Nobel Prize-winning novel, Beloved—which is now banned in libraries and schools across Florida—Toni Morrison describes slavery as a jungle that spread so horribly that even white folks were “so scared…of the jungle they had made.” This jungle has since evolved into a system of oppression so pervasive that years later, we can spot signs of it in every corner of society: mass incarceration, economic inequality, racial disparities in education, and more.

How then can anyone argue that enslaved people benefited from their bondage? For some, this egregious bastardization of history is driven by a blind sense of so-called patriotism that forbids the acknowledgment of any wrongdoing on the part of the United States. (These are the same folks who proclaim, “America is not a racist country” to shut down uncomfortable conversations regarding structural inequality, privilege, and inevitably, slavery.) Others believe that since slavery was abolished over 150 years ago, it should cease to be a topic of conversation altogether. And then there are those who would rather dilute the horrors of slavery than acknowledge the truth: that white people—not enslaved people—benefited and continue to benefit from the institution of slavery.

While Black people were run into the ground, white people (specifically white men) were running their respective races to advance their educations, further their careers, and build generational wealth. Even after slavery, formerly enslaved people and their descendants received reparations in the forms of convict leasing, Jim Crow, segregation, redlining, and other discriminatory practices that have caused existing inequities to grow even deeper.

Today, there are Republican politicians in Florida—as well as states throughout the country—who hope that we will forget about the story of the jungle. But because they know that will not just happen, they are doing everything in their power to erase it from the minds of young leaders by erasing it from lesson plans and curricula. However, as Vice President Harris declared in Jacksonville in July: we will not have it. We know that revising—or even worse, denying—the history of slavery is erroneous and dangerous. When that occurs, our nation’s future leaders are hoodwinked and hamstrung in their ability to fix what is broken in this country. For that reason, we continue to speak out against these efforts and demand that students have the freedom to learn—and teachers have the freedom to teach—the full, accurate history of our nation, no matter how painful and shameful some of that history might be. In so doing, we allow our fellow citizens to grapple with that history and channel their emotions toward progress.




Statewide policies under Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis prompted the nation’s oldest Black fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, to pull its 2025 convention out of the state as a form of protest. But now, the group’s president, Willis L. Lonzer III, said he thinks his fraternity’s decision may galvanize other Black organizations to ditch Florida for their major events, particularly after the approval of a new educational curriculum that includes points indicating that some Black people benefited from slavery.


Lonzer said officials from each of the eight other Black fraternities and sororities, and leaders of other organizations have reached out to say they stand with the Alphas and are committed to not scheduling any additional events that would bring significant revenue to Florida. Even before the Alphas made their announcement, the National Society of Black Engineers last month pulled its scheduled convention from Orlando, with plans to move it to Atlanta in March for the same reasons the fraternity cited. 

“This is a multi-pronged armamentarium that we have to provide to attack racial prejudice and policies that are white supremacist in nature,” Lonzer said. “We have here, a situation where Jim Crow has morphed from what it was 40, 50 years ago. And we’re in the process of developing new tactics to attack this.”


Good for groups that are fighting back.  I think we all need to be doing that, working with one another to send a clear message that we do not support people lying that slavery was good or helpful.  It was torture and there's no justification for it.  And there's no justification for the people of Florida to let Doo-Doo keep destroying their state.  THE HILL reports:


The College Board announced Thursday that Florida has banned Advanced Placement (AP) Psychology from its schools over lessons pertaining to gender identity and sexual orientation. 


That is beyond stupid and is leaving children behind in Florida.  AP class?  High schoolers can take that to get a headstart on college.  But they can't do it in Florida thanks to Doo-Doo.  He's f**king with people education and future employment.  You should have run that trash out of town on a rail but instead you made the lunatic governor.  Too bad for you, we're not going to let you shove him off on the United States.  


Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Thursday, August 3, 2023.  The sinking Ron DeSantis is desperate for someone to elevate him -- no one should -- and much more.




The clash between Vice President Harris and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is heating up over education standards for teaching slavery, giving the vice president a hot-button topic to take on during the campaign and an enemy No. 1 in the GOP primary.

DeSantis earlier this week suggested the two debate the topic of teaching slavery, prompting the vice president to bash the idea and attack the education standards head-on during one of her recent trips to Florida on Tuesday.

While former President Trump, the GOP front-runner, is enemy No. 1 for President Biden, Harris is making a point to keep DeSantis and his policies in the spotlight as the governor fights to close the polling gap between him and Trump.

“Right here in Florida, they plan to teach students that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” Harris said Tuesday in Orlando.

“I’m here in Florida and I will tell you, there is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: There were no redeeming qualities of slavery,” she said.


Good.  She needs to keep speaking out against Ron DeSantis' racism.  I also agree with Marcia that she doesn't need to debate him.  DeSantis has already attacked history.  We do not need to pretend that slavery is up for debate.  It is not.  History has spoken.  The world has spoken.  We're going to listen to him mock or belittle and pretend that he has some standing or special education that justifies his speaking on this issue.  He is a liar and he's trash.  And we're not going to entertain the lie that there were benefits to slavery.  I know Gavin Newsom and I like Gavin but I'm not even thrilled with Gavin debating DeSatan on non-slavery issues.  

DeSantis is desperate for any life preserver to save his sinking campaign.  No doubt, he's praying harder than anyone in the country that Donald Trump is found guilty of something.  









Former President Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday on four felony charges stemming from his illegal and corrupt efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Trump will be arraigned Thursday before Federal District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan.

The prosecution and imprisonment of Trump for his actions leading up to and during the fascistic insurrection of January 6, 2021 is entirely justified and necessary. The charges brought by a Washington D.C. grand jury convened by Special Counsel Jack Smith are presented in cautious and legalistic language, but the indictment is nonetheless damning.

However, it details only a fraction of Trump’s crimes and is silent on his greatest crime: the attempt to overthrow the government by force and maintain himself in the White House as president-dictator.

The four charges detailed in the indictment are: conspiracy to defraud the federal government (through filing false slates of electors in seven closely contested states won by Democrat Joe Biden); conspiracy to violate the rights of the American people (the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted); conspiracy to obstruct a federal proceeding, namely the certification of the Electoral College vote by Congress on January 6, 2021; and actual obstruction of the federal proceeding, since the mob which he summoned to Washington and then unleashed on the Capitol did actually delay the congressional certification by many hours.

Nearly all 123 paragraphs of the indictment are concerned with Trump’s efforts to substitute bogus Trump electors for the Biden electors chosen by the voters in seven states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This involved various illegal backroom maneuvers devised by his lawyer co-conspirators, involving state legislators, the Department of Justice and Vice President Mike Pence.

These actions have become widely known over the past two years: setting up phony slates of Trump “electors,” who submitted false affidavits to Congress; seeking to induce state legislatures to claim the right to appoint electors to replace those elected in November; asking the Justice Department to send out letters to state legislatures saying that the DOJ was investigating credible claims of election fraud in their states; and finally, having Pence use his ceremonial position, presiding over the counting of the Electoral College votes on January 6, to block certification of Biden electors, either substituting Trump electors outright or sending the issue back to the states where Republican-controlled state legislatures would do the dirty job.

The indictment makes clear that Trump’s actions were an attack on democracy: “on the pretext of baseless fraud claims, the defendant pushed officials in certain states to ignore the popular vote; disenfranchise millions of voters; dismiss legitimate electors; and ultimately, cause the ascertainment of and voting by illegitimate electors in favor of the defendant…”

The indictment lists six unindicted co-conspirators only by number, although the description of their activities is so detailed that at least five have been identified, all lawyers: Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and Kenneth Chesebro, all working for Trump and his reelection campaign; and Jeffrey Clark, who was an assistant attorney general at the time.


They discussed this yesterday on BLACK POWER MEDIA's THE REMIX SHOW.




Again, no one wants to see Donald convicted more than the short man from Florida with the flat chested wife.

Let Ron sink.  I don't think Gavin should be debating him, I don't think any Democrat should be sharing a stage with him right now.  Let him sink and let him and his ugly wife go back to their hellish lives.  


He's desperate to get traction and have one of his many reboots finally succeed.  Let him sink.  There is no debate for slavery and he doesn't need to be humored, he needs to be called out repeatedly.



The tide of freedom in America is receding.  Reproductive rights, affirmative action, lgbtq+ rights and the accuracy and integrity of Black history have been crippled for the comfort and convenience of a radically conservative minority. A minority disproportionately represented in our highest court.

Since the abolition of slavery the fight for racial equality has moved at a glacial pace. Despite periods of stagnation, there has been relatively consistent forward motion.

Now, three rapid-fire reversals of Supreme Court precedents based on religious dogma and bigotry have set equality back decades for people of color, women and the lgbtq community. (Since its inception the court has reversed legal precedents in less than one half of one percent of its decisions) In its wake, the stench of newly created, whitewashed standards for teaching Black History have been passed by Florida’s Board of Education. Middle school students must now be taught the “benefits” of slavery such as, “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

These new standards are not just ignorant, they open generational wounds and incite rage among people of conscience. Forcing a false narrative upon a new generation undermines 250 years of hard-fought progress.

In my fifty years of social justice advocacy, from an early 1970s internship at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to serving as founding board president of Philadelphia’s 30 year old lgbtq youth center, The Attic, I’ve seen my share of social justice setbacks, but none so blatantly created by harnessing fear and hate. The atmosphere created by Ron DeSantis’ “war on wokeness” is rancid to the point of enabling the whitewashing of slavery. So let’s examine the source. Fear and hate. We know it’s learned. Can it be unlearned?

He is right.  This is a dangerous time.  20 years ago, did you think we'd have to be using public square time to call out slavery?  Didn't it seem like we were all agreed on this?

Yet here we are thanks to hate merchants.  They've worked very hard to mislead and to lie.  They've lied in court, they've lied to the court and this nonsense of a 'debate' with Ron?  No, there are no two-sides to this.  There is right and there is wrong and slavery is wrong.


We have some very dangerous people in Congress right now.  They are Republicans but they're the kind that their own party would have rejected even a few years back.  They preach hate, they lie about history and we're indulging these crazies at our expense, at risk to our own lives and liberty.  For example, just last week, Eric Hanonoki (MMA) reported on Paul Gosar:


Rep. Paul Gosar yesterday used his House.gov newsletter to promote USSA News, a fringe site that has posted content calling the Holocaust “the Holohoax” and telling readers to “stand up for Hitler.” Gosar’s promotion of the antisemitic outlet comes just months after he sent followers to a different site that has also denied the Holocaust and praised Adolf Hitler. 

Gosar has frequently promoted antisemitic media in recent years. He has met with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and repeatedly spoke at his conferences; and he’s promoted virulent antisemite Vincent James Foxx.

Gosar drew criticism in April after he used his newsletter to direct people to a story that praised him for attacking “Jewish warmongers” for their support of Ukraine. Gosar linked to Veterans Today, an antisemitic website that has called the Holocaust a “lie” and a “hoax” and praised Hitler as a “great man” and “a man of valor.” TPM reported in May that Gosar has employed an aide that's connected to Fuentes and the white nationalist movement.

In his July 23 newsletter, under the section “Gosar in the News and Other Must-Read Stories,” Gosar wrote: “USSA News: Biden White House Out To ‘Censor’ Press, ‘Silence’ Opponents, Lawmakers Charge” and sent readers to USSANews.com. Gosar was linking to the site even though the article is a repost of a piece from The Heritage Foundation publication The Daily Signal. (Elsewhere in the newsletter, Gosar writes that “there is zero room in our society for these vile, hateful and bigoted comments in the Halls of Congress” and “anti-Jewish and anti-Israel statements by members of Congress must be condemned.”) Gosar previously linked to USSA News on April 2 and August 7, 2022. 


How does garbage like that get into Congress?  

He needs to be called out and publicly rebuked.  There is no excuse for what he's done.  It goes against everything this country is supposed to stand for.  He's insulting survivors, he's insulting veterans, he's just a hate merchant.  

We do not elevate his hate by treating it as something worthy of a debate.  There is nothing to debate. 


Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Junior Topless, Nips To The Wind" went up last night. 


junior



We don't have time for crackpot crazy from the GOP or the Democratic Party side.  Junior's just another nut-job who has nothing to offer the American people.  Put a shirt on, your boobs are sagging.







A Super Pac affiliated with Robert F Kennedy Jr, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist running for president as a Democrat, owes half its cash to a longtime Republican mega-donor and Trump backer, according to campaign finance reports filed on Monday.

The group, American Values 2024, reported receiving $5m from Timothy Mellon, a wealthy businessman from Wyoming, according to NBC News and Politico. It registered with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in April, days before Kennedy officially launched his campaign, according to FEC records.

Mellon, 81, is the grandson of Andrew Mellon, a former US treasury secretary who made his fortune in banking. The Texas Tribune reported that Mellon, a top donor to Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election effort, supported controversial immigration laws and was responsible for 98% of the contributions to the Texas governor Greg Abbott’s fund to build a border wall. Mellon, who twice gave $10m to the Trump-aligned America First Action Super Pac in 2020, also used racist stereotypes to describe Black people in an autobiography he self-published in 2015.
[. . .]

The Super Pac, which described federal policies aimed at containing Covid-19 as “draconian”, received nearly all of the rest of its funding from another billionaire donor, Gavin de Becker, an author and security specialist associated with Jeff Bezos. De Becker has given to both Republican and Democratic candidates, according to FEC records, more recently including Ron Johnson, a Republican senator of Wisconsin, and businessman and the failed 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.

Together, Mellon and De Becker account for about 97% of total donations to the Super Pac.


Junior always dances with those who 'brung' him -- and he lets them lead.  Jon Jackson (NEWSWEEK) notes:


Steve Bannon has joined a growing number of conservatives who have suggested that a 2024 presidential ticket with Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could find success with voters.



Bannon, a one-time senior adviser to Trump, discussed the possibility during Sunday's episode of his War Room podcast. Though he noted the chances of Kennedy, a Democrat, running with the Republican former president would be a "long shot," Bannon said the pairing could win in a "massive landslide."
Kennedy, who has been accused by critics of promoting conspiracy theories, including those about COVID-19, has found favor with many conservatives. Federal Election Commission filings show he has received large contributions for his presidential campaign from donors who typically give to GOP candidates.




Elaine slid this over:


Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) suggested congressional leaders conspire to "trigger" her in hearings.

During an interview on Real America's Voice, Greene attacked Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) after he pointed out that Devon Archer, a business associate of Joe Biden's son, could not connect the president to any wrongdoing.



Although Goldman has held a job as a prosecutor, she claimed he "never worked a day in his life."

"And he uses his job every single day to continue to prosecute President Trump in our committee hearings, no matter the issue, no matter the topic," she complained. "He finds any way possible to attack President Trump in the five minutes that he's given on our very important committee hearings. Not only does he attack President Trump, he attacks me much of the time."


Greene said the Republican-controlled committees often scheduled Goldman to speak before or after her to make her look bad.



Elaine covers crazy MTG but she said, "You can note Chelsea Handler again."  Indeed we can so let's do it.


 




Marjorie Taylor Greene: I have people come up to me and say crazy things to me out of the blue in public places that they believe because they read it on the internet.

Chelsea Handler:  Well if that's not the pot calling the kettle QAnon.  This woman thought 9/11 was a hoax, that the Clintons killed JFK Jr. and that Jews are in charge of space lasers.  But please, don't come at her with some crazy ideas -- she might believe them. 




Okay, now Marjorie's being triggered, remember.  Now.  


They keep letting Dan Goldman  "speak before or after her to make her look bad."  The Republicans are doing that?  I don't have my decoder ring set to "crazy" so I may be missing something here.  But Crazy Marjorie has been in Congress since January 2021.  That's over three years.    And the idiot didn't notice that there's a rotation that's always followed?  It goes Chair, Ranking Member, and then party to party based on seniority.  I'm sorry she suffers from derangement.  Since Chelsea outlined the many problems with MTG, Marjorie has announced that the government is attempting to spy on her through her TV because it keeps acting weird and acting like it's just being turned on.  It's all a conspiracy against her, file it under FROM THE MIXED-UP MIND OF MS. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE.

Repeating.  There.  Is.  A.  Scheduled. Rotation.  In.  Every.  Congressional.  Hearing.  

The only way it changes is if someone has to step out.  So if Jim Jefferson is the Chair of the Jock Itch and Pervy Coach Wants To Inspect Your Crotch Committee and has to step out for a floor vote, he can designate Josh Hawley the acting chair and Josh would then speak in Jefferson's place.  The same is true for the Ranking Member.  As for the other Committee members, the rotation is the same unless people are leaving for floor votes.  So if Marjorie is so triggered by speaking before/after Dan, she could create her own safe space by stepping out of the hearing to make a vote (or for any reason) and then rejoin the hearing 15 or so minutes later and -- provided it wasn't winding down -- speak then.  


But there is no nefarious plot to gaslight Marjorie and drive her crazy by having Dan speak before or after her.  

Is it time to institute sanity tests for members of Congress?


Or maybe, (to the tune of John Lennon's "The Ballad of John & Yoko"),  Marjorie can just sing: "The way things are going, they're going to institutionalize me."

Let's all hope she gets the help she so desperately needs.  Before she further harms herself and/or others.  


There is no time to indulge hate merchants like Ron DeSantis and their desperate craving for attention.  Senator Patty Murray's office notes:


ICYMI: Murray Leads Senate Democrats in Pushing Commonsense Bills to Protect Women’s Fundamental Freedoms; Speaks on Senate Floor About Dobbs Fallout – MORE HERE

Pullman Planned Parenthood clinic has seen a 47 percent jump in patients since the Dobbs decision; Planned Parenthood Greater Washington and Northern Idaho has seen a 20 percent increase in patients overall

Senator Murray: “As long as I’m in DC, I’m going to keep fighting as hard as I can and at every single opportunity to protect abortion access from Republicans’ continued attacks, introduce new legislation that will help women and providers, and get the votes to reinstate Roe so we can guarantee that every woman in every state has the right to make her own health care decisions.” 

***PHOTOS AND B-ROLL OF THE EVENT HERE***

Pullman, WA – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a senior member and former chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), hosted a roundtable on women’s reproductive health and the challenges facing providers in East Washington in the post-Dobbs landscape. Senator Murray met with providers and staff from Planned Parenthood Greater Washington and Northern Idaho, as well as staff from WSU’s Women’s Center and a student from the University of Idaho. In the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, clinics in Eastern Washington have seen a more than 20 percent jump in patients, many of them from neighboring Idaho, which now has one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation. The Planned Parenthood clinic in Pullman alone has seen a 47 percent increase in patients over the last year.

At the roundtable, Murray heard from providers about the challenges they are facing and the federal support that would help, and spoke about her continued fight to reinstate Roe and protect women’s reproductive health care at every possible opportunity from Republican attacks—including as she works to write and pass the nation’s government funding bills.

“Since the Dobbs decision, 14 states, including Idaho, have passed total bans on abortions, and more than a dozen other states have severely limited abortion access or had their abortion bans blocked in court. This is not just harming people in other states—women and providers in Washington state are also really suffering the consequences,” said Senator Murray. “That’s why I’m here: to get a better sense of what you’re seeing and hearing on the ground, so I can take that back with me as I keep up the fight for women’s health care freedom in the other Washington. As long as I’m in DC, I’m going to keep fighting as hard as I can and at every single opportunity to protect abortion access from Republicans’ continued attacks, introduce new legislation that will help women and providers, and get the votes to reinstate Roe so we can guarantee that every woman in every state has the right to make her own health care decisions.”

“We want to thank Senator Patty Murray for meeting us here at the Washington-Idaho border at our Pullman health center where some of the greatest disparities in abortion access currently exist,” said Lindsay Johnson, Chief External Affairs Officer at Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho. “Our health center staff are delivering care to people every day who are experiencing the fear, chaos and confusion caused by the ban on abortion in Idaho.  It is more important than ever that we continue being there for local patients and those forced to travel outside of their communities for the care they need and deserve. We are grateful to Senator Murray for being a champion for reproductive health and rights in Washington and nationwide.”

Senator Murray is a longtime leader in the fight to protect and expand access to reproductive health care and abortion rights, and since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, she has led Congressional efforts to fight back. Murray led her colleagues at the very outset of this Congress to make crystal clear that Senate Democrats are continuing to fight to protect every American’s reproductive rights and will be a firewall against Republicans’ continued attacks on women’s rights—and that’s exactly what she’s doing now. Murray has introduced more than a dozen pieces of legislation to protect reproductive rights from further attacks, protect providers, and help ensure women get the care they need; she also co-led introduction of the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would restore the right to abortion nationwide.

Ahead of the one year anniversary of the Dobbs decision, Senator Murray led Senate Democrats in seeking unanimous consent on the Senate floor for four common-sense bills to protect women’s fundamental freedoms. After Senate Republicans blocked every single bill, Senator Murray spoke on the Senate floor about the health care crisis Republicans have created, and how Senate Democrats are standing with Americans across the country to fight back.

###


There are so many serious issues to address, we do not have time to legitimize hate merchants and their revisionary history by joining them onstage.


Molly Sprayregen (LGBTQ NATION) reports that DeSatan is now insisting that he's never demeaned anyone -- not as governor:

DeSantis’s claim that he has not demeaned anyone since his time in office is a direct contrast to the video’s message, which brags about the barrage of legislation he has signed decimating LGBTQ+ rights.

The ad opens with several clips of Trump expressing support for LGBTQ+ people, framing these comments as damning. After the clips of Trump – most of which came from before he was elected president in 2016 – the video abruptly shifts to intense music and a photo of DeSantis shooting lasers out of his eyes, followed by snapshots of headlines about the anti-LGBTQ+ laws DeSantis has passed.

The video proudly shares that DeSantis has been called “evil,” “dangerous,” “draconian,” and “public enemy no. 1” and even includes a clip accusing DeSantis of passing legislation “that literally threatens trans existence.” It also contains images of shirtless buff muscle men inter-spliced with these statements about how DeSantis is hurting LGBTQ+ people in his state.

DeSantis was universally mocked for the ad, but initially defended himself by saying, “Identifying Donald Trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream, where he was having men compete against women in his beauty pageants — I think that’s totally fair game. Because he’s now campaigning saying the opposite.”

While the video appeared to come from a supporter outside the campaign, it has since been revealed that staffers were involved in its creation and dissemination.

Despite it being “the weirdest ad in American political history,” as The New Republic called it, the video is nonetheless an accurate portrayal of DeSantis’s time in office – which he has devoted to attacking – or perhaps one could describe it as demeaning – LGBTQ+ equality, as well as the rights of people of color.

DeSantis has gone to war with Disney over its opposition to the Don’t Say Gay law, has launched numerous blindsides attacking “woke indoctrination” in schools, and has taken control of the state’s education system with handpicked administrators and the power of the bully pulpit. His staff has regularly smeared LGBTQ+ people and allies on social media with vile slurs and insinuations of sexual abuse.

The Don’t Say Gay law – which has been expanded to all grades – has led to the banning of LGBTQ+ books in schools and the forced outing of students to their parents by school administrators. 

In 2021, DeSantis signed a bill banning trans students from participating in school sports.

DeSantis has ranted against “woke gender ideology” and once claimed, “In the state of Florida, we are not going to allow them to inject transgenderism into kindergarten.”

LGBTQ+ students in Florida have been so scared of repercussions that many have refused to speak with LGBTQ Nation about their experiences. Earlier this year, a non-LGBTQ+ student told us that terrified queer students are learning to “shut up and keep their head low.”



Ron DeSantis is America's Moqtada al-Sadr.  And, yes, I saw the news of how Moqtada's again trying to alarm and enrage Iraqis.  


The following sites updated:




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