All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Tendrin]

I see what you're getting at. So it's probably to sway the center and those who would otherwise be undecided or indifferent, then.

The idea is that the Dems correctly describing conservative candidates is 'boosting' them. Here's an article that's an example of the problem the political press is having in talking about this. They're not giving them money. They're not funding them. They're just ...running ads that call them extremists. And they are.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-was-that-wise

The president’s party historically loses ground during the midterms. Decades-high inflation and widespread frustration with leaders in Washington have dragged Joe Biden’s approval ratings to record lows, hampering Democrats’ efforts to preserve their razor-thin majorities in Congress.

The ads run by Democrats and their allies are ostensibly scripted as an attack – highlighting a candidate’s loyalty to Trump or their conservative views on abortion, for example. In Michigan, Democrats charged that Gibbs was “handpicked by Trump to run for Congress” and “too conservative” for the district. But when aired during a competitive primary, the message is intended to appeal to the Republican base.

The Dems *correctly defining and describing a GOP candidate* is 'boosting' them because it made the *extremist GOP base* more likely to vote for them. Let's think about that for a while. Instead of talking openly about the extremism of the GOP base, instead, we're talking about the Dems 'enabling' this by ... describing them correctly in advertising. The more the dems pointed out these things, the more likely the conservatives were to vote for a raving lunatic to own the libs, and the political press can not talk about this correctly because they are part of the problem. Instead, it's about the tactics of the Democratic party ... correctly describing the lunatics that primary-voting Republicans are themselves *actually* elevating.

And what happened when the Mejier was beaten? Instead of pointing out the extremism of his opponent, the guy who voted for impeaching Trump and lost his primary for it in turn endorsed the stark raving lunatic that the primary voters chose, showing once again *what the actual problems are*.

[worstblogever]

I'll be honest [No, I'm not going to sneak around Bedminster looking for the Documents], it is getting too weird for me to even try to come up with an explanation.

Trump took the documents, okay. For whatever reason, he took the documents. He gave some back, but the FBI had to come in for the rest, okay, Trump got possessive maybe? Forgetful? Greedy?

But this?!? Assuming that it is what it looks like, why is he so desperate to hold onto the documents that he would fly them all the way from Florida to Jersey?

The strangest part of this for me is that, there is a good chance that Trump doesn't even know himself what is in most of the documents. he knows that they are classified, that they belong to the government, but as for the contents? Everything we now about Trump in this regards is that he is borderline illiterate. He rarely reads unless it is something about himself. He doesn't have the intellect to understand the technological and aspects of the documents.

If he just wanted to take the love notes between himself and his autocratic best friends overseas, or maybe something that implicates him in a criminal act, but the rest? If he hasn't sold the documents already, he isn't ,likely to. So why is he so desperate to hang onto them?

I don't know where the bottom is for Trump's arrogance and/or stupidity.

But given he was dumb enough to take them in the first place, and fight kicking and screaming until the feds went to Mar-a-Lago to just take them back.... I can't say it's a probability of zero that he still tried to relocate them to his golf course in New Jersey.

Like, almost every time a Trump "whisper" happens, we see it confirmed, with the one exception having been a pee tape. But Michael Cohen has said that scenario DID happen.

I would lean in the direction of him still having some at one of his other properties.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published profiles of Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, a Christian theocrat who has somehow, in her mad quest to allow religion to be allowed in state schools and government buildings (including having a pastor brought in to anoint furniture in the state legislature with holy oil), opened a loophole that allowed a Satanic Temple to build a statue of Baphomet, just to prove a point to her about the separation of church and state. Fallin also oversaw a botched double-execution from the comforts of an Oklahoma City Thunder game, not wanting to answer her cell phone while a man died in agony on her watch. Her administration’s oversight, or more specifically its lack thereof on the oil and gas industries in Oklahoma has been so lax that a state whose only concern for natural disasters used to be tornadoes has allowed unregulated fracking so that they now are getting more frequently hit with earthquakes. That’s not hyperbole, either, at one point in August 2017, Oklahoma had 7 earthquakes within a 28 hour span and the strength of the quakes are intensifying, now reaching up into the high 5s on the Richter scale. That’s what happens after seven years of Fallin leadership. And taxing the wealthy and those energy companies? Ha! Oklahoma had up to $1.3 billion in annual budget shortfalls during her tenure. She’s also infamous for trying to shut down all the abortion clinics in her state, signing a ban on minimum wage increases during our greatest time of economic inequality in almost a century, and trying to do away with the entire state Supreme Court for not granting her absolute domain to do as she pleases (like not allowing her to put monuments of the Ten Commandments up on government property). Not that she understands the role of the courts as one of the three branches of government, of course, because she failed to be able to correctly list all three during a 2015 speech. In the meantime, Fallin continues to make Sarah Palin seem perhaps less like white trash by allowing her 28-year-old daughter to live on the grounds of the governor’s mansion in her very own trailer, rent-free and siphoning utilities. Mary Fallin is so utterly clueless that she went on CNN in July of 2016 and actually made the ludicrous claim that Donald Trump was “trying to campaign as a racial healer”. Yeah, the guy whose campaign began by saying Mexicans are murderers and rapists, and soon called for a ban on Muslims was trying to unify people of all colors and backgrounds, sure Mary. Only eight days later, she went back on CNN after the release of the 2016 Republican Party Platform, which people on both sides of the aisle recognized as the most anti-LGBT platform the GOP have ever produced (Republicans boasted of this like it was a good thing), but Fallin thought that simply just couldn’t be the case because, “there was a gay person on the committee”. She neglected to mention that the one person on that committee was vocally opposed to every one of those anti-gay measures, and was ignored by the majority. Because of course, that’s just a nagging little detail. In October 2016 she actually declared a “Oilfield Prayer Day”, where she no-s***, called for people in her state to ask God for his protection over the oil industry. She then quickly had to correct herself that the prayer was open to people of all faiths, because she didn’t want Satanists to assert their dominance over Oklahoma’s oil and gas industry. She would become even more of a pariah after a successful statewide teachers’ strike during her final year in 2018, Gov. Fallin officially became the least popular governor in the country as her approval ratings dropped to a staggering 19% as she left office.

On this date in 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profile, where today we’ll be discussing Christopher Barnett, a 2018 candidate to be the Governor of Oklahoma, seeking to be the first openly gay man to hold that office. That might not sound like a traditional Republican, and neither does the fact that Barnett was running a marijuana growing facility. Barnett exhibited some… shall we say… less-than-Christian ideas for government during his campaign when he posted the suggestion on his Facebook page that the poor and disabled should be euthanized, “The ones who are disabled and can’t work…why are we required to keep them?. Sorry but euthanasia is cheaper and doesn’t make everyone a slave to the Government.” Barnett tried claiming that his “”, and soon claimed to be receiving death threats for “comments he didn’t make”. Christopher Barnett ended up finishing eighth out of ten candidates in the GOP Primary to be the Governor of Oklahoma, with 1.2% of the vote, which only begs the question of “How terrible did the two people who finished behind him have to be to get less votes?” Like, did they want to execute the poor by having them choked to death by forcing puppies down their throats until they asphyxiate, or…? If it weren’t clear that maybe Christopher Barnett wasn’t a great example of modern Republicans, we’ll add that in August of 2019, he was arrested for shooting a process server, and threatening “large amounts of deaths”. Barnett intimated that he will use a “Stand Your Ground” defense because the process server was armed, and on his property, there is video of the shooting that shows the server never drew his weapon, and was walking away after serving Barnett when he was shot. Also, the audio has him literally saying, “Get off my property or you’ll be dead,” and the server was LEAVING. Barnett claims to be the victim of a vast conspiracy as his defense, and says the video and audio were “fabricated”. That is even less plausible because prior to the shooting, Barnett’s Google browser search history shows he Googled “can you shoot a process server”. Barnett was sentenced in May of 2020 to 32 years in prison, so we’re unlikely to see him running for office again anytime soon.

On this date in 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Dan Belcher, a 2020 candidate for U.S. House of Representatives for Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District who was an unsuccessful candidate for Oklahoma State Senate in 2018. Belcher, who of course brandishes the nickname “Dan the Man”, is a real estate agent who’s on the long list of 2020 candidates for the GOP who love the Qanon conspiracy theory. Among the Qanon support Belcher showed on social media included repeating both the group’s slogan and hashtag, adding the Qanon logo under his campaign logo, and posting video where he said the Qanon motto. His Facebook page also ran ads with the Qanon slogan, and when he started to get flagged for promoting the conspiracy theory, he only got more paranoid and started ominously quoting, “The Storm is Upon Us”, referencing the part of the Qanon theory where Trump would arrest his enemies and place them in military tribunals. We cannon speak to much of his political beliefs outside of that, because other than a few posts on Facebook where Belcher showed support for term limits on members of Congress, interest in repealing existing gun control regulations, and spreading further conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein… he only presents as the sort of Republican who “supports Trump” like a blind follower. There’s no other conservative policies he even bothers to define. Dan Belcher dropped out of the race on February 7th, 2020.

On this date in 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Logan Cunningham, who was a 2020 candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, hoping to unseat Democratic Congressman Joe Cunningham apparently just by hoping people would get confused about which one wasn’t the deranged MAGA fanatic on the ballot to win. But first, he would have to win the Republican primary by showing his brilliant fashion sense that’s half Colonel Sanders and half Tucker Carlson… The problem with him winning was, of course, he’s also too nuts to win in a swing district, what with him being yet the lastest person we’ve profiled who was an adherent of the Qanon conspiracy theory. In particular, he seemed focused on a forthcoming “Great Awakening” that has yet to, and will never come. We’ll add that he was also a supporter of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant vanity project and abject failure, a border wall on the U.S./Mexico border. Oh, and he’s been anti-mask and anti-vaxx, as well as railing against Critical Race Theory on social media. Logan Cunningham dropped out of the race prior to the GOP Primary. As he seems to be only a “perennial candidate”, we’ll set aside his profile at this time to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1135-55, since this was established in July 2014.

[worstblogever]

John Ventre
Welcome to what is the 1135th original profile here at “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling John Ventre, a 2022 candidate to be the next governor of Pennsylvania. And uh… yeah, Ventre is the head of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON for short and he is a “go to” guest on the History Channel’s most bulls***-filled show, “Ancient Aliens”. So suffice to say, being into gray aliens and flying saucers being the true architects of several wonders of the world make him a pretty eccentric candidate.

It’s not that which gives us pause, it’s more that he writes a weekly newsletter called “Never Socialist” where he rants about, of course, Democrats, and that he works towards subverting American democracy as he spreads the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election.

Oh, and that MUFON is trying to force him out of the organization, because he’s espoused white nationalist viewpoints like “white genocide”, which he accuses Netflix of promoting, or citing further alternative histories not involving aliens where he credits the inhabitants of ancient Europe invented the calendar, the wheel, and numbers… which is patently false. The exact quote:

”Everything this world is was created by Europeans and Americans. F'ing blacks didn't even have a calender, a wheel, or a numbering system until the Brits showed up.”

We are glad to report that John Ventre did not win that GOP Primary (sadly, Doug Mastriano did). We would like to tell you MUFON is going to be rid of him soon, but it looks like he’s determined to fight and claw to stay in control of Pennsylvania’s chapter until the gray aliens come for him, or death does.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published profiles of the U.S. House Representative from Texas’ 6th District, Joe Barton, a man most renowned for taking climate change denial to a degree that’s noteworthy even for the modern GOP, claiming that we should not invest in wind turbines because “wind is a finite resource” and that The Great Flood from the Bible was proof against humans having a role in climate change. He’s clearly in the pockets of big oil, and if there was any doubt of that, keep in mind we’re talking about a guy who when the CEO of British Petroleum was called to testify before Congress after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill… Rep. Barton had the gall to APOLOGIZE TO HIM for the “White House shakedown” of his company, that a sane person would realize was an surprisingly low fine for causing the greatest ecological disaster of our generation. Meanwhile, Barton has also talked openly about abolishing the minimum wage. In March of 2018, Joe Barton may have given any political opponents against him ammunition when he actually attended a town hall, but while a constituent began asking him about various votes he made against legislation that would prevent violence towards women, Barton received jeers from the crowd, and pointed to the man and told him to shut up. The crowd then erupted, and began shouting “You work for us” at him. So, not long after Barton confirmed that he would be running for re-election in 2018, a graphic nude photo of him began circulating online, which he claimed was taken not long after he was separated from his second wife (uh huh… this may have been why they separated). Turns out, Barton is dumb enough to think women on Facebook get turned on by seeing nudes of wrinkled-ass old Congressmen (PRO-TIP: They don’t.) And then, … Joe Barton announced he would retire, after all.)



On this date in 2019, 2020, as well as 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled the U.S. House Representative from Texas’ 21st Congressional District, Chip Roy, who was elected to office for the first time in 2018, and whose prior political experience was working as a staffer for the loathsome Sen. Ted Cruz until he saw a plum GOP-leaning seat left behind by retiring Congressman Lamar Smith. And boy oh boy, is Chip Roy showing us that he’s just as much of an ***hole as his former boss.

In May of 2019, a bill cleared the Senate to approve $19.1 billion in disaster relief funding for victims of wildfires and hurricanes, which included areas of Texas damaged by Hurricane Harvey. On May 24th, 2019, it was expected to pass the House with a simple voice vote, and most of the GOP content to let it pass by a simple voice vote, provided no objections were presented by Republicans. GOP House leadership had no intention of doing so… BUT CHIP ROY is just that much of an ***hole, and he decided to hold up the needed disaster relief bill because Nancy Pelosi thought a voice vote would suffice. Remember, though, this was a bill that got fired through Mitch McConnell’s Senate, and BOTH Texas Senators voted for. But Chip Roy wasn’t gonna let Pelosi get away with… whatever she was doing that all his fellow Texas Republicans wanted.

That isn’t a one-off for how obsessive Rep. Roy is, as he’s kept members of Congress up until 4AM to try and secure money for Trump’s novelty project and all around stupid idea, the border wall… and it wasn’t just that he did that to just be a jerk to Democrats, who obviously have the majority and were gonna shoot that down… but it was that Roy ditched his own wife on their 15th wedding anniversary to do so. What a lucky gal she must be.

Meanwhile, in House Oversight Committee hearings, Roy has turned up to play defense as much as he can for the Donald Trump and his clusterf*** of an administration, including trying to insinuate during the Michael Cohen hearings that Cohen had only turned on Trump because he was bitter he didn’t get hired to work in the White House. He's been far worse during hearings questioning the actions of ICE for locking children in cages, where he claimed to have been to the border many times and never saw a child in a cage (in spite of photos showing this leaking to the public), he went on to say Democrats don’t actually care about the kids and are just attempting to “score political points”. (Motherf***er, this isn’t a game. THOSE ARE CHILDREN IN CAGES. NOBODY IS PLAYIN’ WITH THAT.)

[worstblogever]

His voting record is, as you’d expect, one of the most rabidly conservative in all of the Republican Caucus:

• January 22nd, 2019: Roy votes against HR 676, which would prevent Donald Trump from doing the unthinkable and walking away from our allies in NATO to appease the Russians.
• March 7th, 2019: Roy votes against HR 183, a resolution to condemn anti-Semitism as a hateful extension of intolerance.
• October 17th, 2019: Roy bravely votes “PRESENT” on HJ Res 77, which opposed Donald Trump’s disastrous decision to abandon Syrian Kurdish forces in Northeast Syria to the mercies of a Turkish invasion.
• December 18th, 2019: Roy ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
• July 30th, 2020: Chip Roy went full-on conspiracy theorist and claimed that the entire Covid-19 pandemic was a “hoax” invented to hurt the GOP.
• January 13th, 2021: Rep. Roy votes against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, because the Republican Party no longer feels like they should be accountable for anything, including failed coups that result in the deaths of both their participants and police officers.
• February 4th, 2021: Chip Roy votes to keep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments, because he wouldn’t want her to be accountable for all the bigoted remarks and conspiracy theories she’s spread online (probably because she’s a kindred spirit).
• February 25th, 2021: Roy votes against the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Roy votes against HR 1, a bill created to prevent the corruption of money in politics, and protect voter access to the ballot box.
• March 3rd, 2021: Chip Roy votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Roy votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
• March 17th, 2021: Rep. Roy votes against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
• March 18th, 2021: In a Congressional hearing held to address the problem of rising violence against Asian Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic, Chip Roy begins echoing the rhetoric that spurred a rise in those attacks, blaming the Chinese government for the spread of the virus, and furthering the conspiracy theories about the origins of Covid-19.
• May 19th, 2021: Rep. Roy votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
• May 20th, 2021: Roy is one of 63 Republicans who vote against the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act.
• June 15th, 2021: Rep. Roy is one of twenty-one Republicans who pick a side to have rooted for in the failed coup attempt on 1/6/21 and votes against awarding Congressional gold medals to members of the Capitol Police who bravely defended members of Congress during the attack.
• June 16th, 2021: Chip Roy is one of 14 Republicans who vote against celebrating Juneteenth as a federal holiday.
• July 22nd, 2021: Rep. Roy is one of 16 Republicans who vote against HR 3895, the Allies Act, which was passed without his support to raise the amount of visas offered and to expedite their issue to Afghan translators and their families to honor our promise to protect them against the Taliban after U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, thus feeling we should go back on our word and leave them to die.
• July 28th, 2021: Chip Roy rages on the floor of the House against mask mandates for members of Congress as advised by the attending physician for the House, saying that if he is required to wear one, instead, all of Congress should just be “adjourned and shut this place down”. He continued rambling and publicly questioning the efficacy of vaccines, while he was at it.
• November 5th, 2021: Chip Roy votes against HR 3684, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
• February 28th, 2022: Chip Roy is one of only three Republicans who vote against the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act.
• March 31st, 2022: Roy votes against HR 6833, the Affordable Insulin Now Act, which would limit the cost that drug companies could list insulin at to $35 and make sure no diabetic was priced out of surviving their condition. Chip Roy would rather they be gouged by pharmaceutical giants and/or die.
• May 18th, 2022: Rep. Roy votes against HR 7791, to amend the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 so that waiver authority could be granted to solve supply chain crisises for shortages of baby formula.
• May 18th, 2022: Chip Roy is one of 192 Republicans who vote against HR 7790, to create supplemental funding for infant formula (while claiming to be pro- life).
• May 18th, 2022: Rep. Roy votes against HR 350, the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, because these days, a plank of the Republican Party is ostensibly domestic terror.
• May 19th, 2022: Roy votes against HR 7688, a bill which would help prevent gas companies from gouging customers on prices.
• July 15th, 2022: Chip Roy votes against House Amendment 262, which would require the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and Secretary of Defense to publish a report on the infiltration of American law enforcement by Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, offer measures to be taken to remove them from their ranks, and prevent further infiltration by others.
• July 13th, 2022: Roy votes against the Honoring Our PACT Act, to provide healthcare to veterans affected by toxic burn pits while serving in the War on Terror that leave them more susceptible to forms of cancer.
• July 19th, 2022: Rep. Roy is one of 157 Republicans who vote against the “Respect for Marriage Act”, which would codify same sex marriage into law nationally.
• July 21st, 2022: Roy is one of 195 Republicans who vote against the Right to Contraception Act, which codified the right of Americans to have access to birth control.

Chip Roy is currently making headlines for some brazen sexism. There’s talks of making women eligible to file with selective service so they could be drafted should the U.S. ever have to have one for an armed conflict, and this simple equality has led him to have quite the fit, saying those looking to make women eligible “can go straight to Hell”. He also has ceased to have any kind of poker face about partisanship, admitting in a video he posted online that he views his role in Congress is to sow “chaos and an inability to get stuff done”, specifically in the hopes of helping Republicans’ cause in the 2022 mid-terms.

Maybe that’s because he knew it was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped, which would have been in April of 2022 when we learned from January 6th Committee investigations that Chip Roy was in frequent conversations with Mark Meadows at the Trump White House trying to get “ammo” in the form of stories about purported voter fraud for him to flog in the public. Those were found to have come both before, and after the attack on the Capitol.

This man is clearly the kind of ***hole who would work for Ted Cruz, all right.

[Ragged Maw]

The idea is that the Dems correctly describing conservative candidates is 'boosting' them. Here's an article that's an example of the problem the political press is having in talking about this. They're not giving them money. They're not funding them. They're just ...running ads that call them extremists. And they are.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-was-that-wise



The Dems *correctly defining and describing a GOP candidate* is 'boosting' them because it made the *extremist GOP base* more likely to vote for them. Let's think about that for a while. Instead of talking openly about the extremism of the GOP base, instead, we're talking about the Dems 'enabling' this by ... describing them correctly in advertising. The more the dems pointed out these things, the more likely the conservatives were to vote for a raving lunatic to own the libs, and the political press can not talk about this correctly because they are part of the problem. Instead, it's about the tactics of the Democratic party ... correctly describing the lunatics that primary-voting Republicans are themselves *actually* elevating.

And what happened when the Mejier was beaten? Instead of pointing out the extremism of his opponent, the guy who voted for impeaching Trump and lost his primary for it in turn endorsed the stark raving lunatic that the primary voters chose, showing once again *what the actual problems are*.

Isn't this kind of assuming that the more extreme candidate would've won their primary whether or not such ads were aired?

[Tendrin]

Isn't this kind of assuming that the more extreme candidate would've won their primary whether or not such ads were aired?

I mean that has been the trend for the gop.

[Ragged Maw]

I mean that has been the trend for the gop.

Ah, I see. So it may all simply be a preemptive but otherwise straightforward campaign against said candidates that has been somewhat humorously misinterpreted. While I'm still unsure myself of that, I'll keep it in mind.

[Tendrin]

Ah, I see. So it may all simply be a preemptive but otherwise straightforward campaign against said candidates that has been somewhat humorously misinterpreted. While I'm still unsure myself of that, I'll keep it in mind.

I don't know about that. My point is that the press is calingl it 'boosting', as if the Dems are 'helping' the candidate in some way, but seem unable to put it in an appropriate context.

Even in this thread, someone thought they were giving money to extremist GOP candidates by what is being talked about, because what a lot of people *don't* talk about is wdhat the 'boosting' consists of.... which is the dems ... attacking a GOP candidate for office by accurately describing their record and extremism.

[Tami]

This is why I still like Al Franken, he knows when someone is lying and he calls them out on it.

[Ragged Maw]

I don't know about that. My point is that the press is calingl it 'boosting', as if the Dems are 'helping' the candidate in some way, but seem unable to put it in an appropriate context.

Even in this thread, someone thought they were giving money to extremist GOP candidates by what is being talked about, because what a lot of people *don't* talk about is wdhat the 'boosting' consists of.... which is the dems ... attacking a GOP candidate for office by accurately describing their record and extremism.

Ah, okay. Relatively straightforward highlighting of the GOP's most extreme runners and no money changing hands. I think I've got a better mental roadmap of the whole thing now.

[Reviresco]

The state of Florida is trying to medically detransition all kids and all adults on medicaid. Mets trying to convince us that the current administration isn't anti-gay and anti-trans is just another example of his willingness to play dumb when it benefits his politics, like assuming teachers are being 'malicious' and not the people passing anti-gay legislation.

It's blatantly clear what is going on in FL, and TX. What I don't understand is why the people living there are willing to put up with it. It's insane. Of course, I live in a red state, so I often ask myself the same question, but nothing on the scale of those two states.

From my reading of the article, the question was whether coverage of the Supreme Court cases should be mandatory in schools, so it's not about banning or restricting.

If you think these cases are so important that it should be a part of the K-12 education of every child in America, that argument should be made explicitly. The same would be true if you think this should be mandatory for Florida children, but not children in other states.

Actually, the article doesn't say anything about it being a mandate. It straight out says they can't teach those two Supreme Court cases so it is about restricting / erasing civil rights cases about the LGBT minority. Again, how is teaching Supreme Court cases indoctrination, which is the exact word the school board used? Is it indoctrination to teach about Kormatsu? Brown? Loving? And it wasn't for K-12, but the 12th grade.

Likewise, it's discriminatory to allow Black History, Hispanic Heritage, and Women's History months, and NOT allow LGBT month.

The article also says the board is quoting DeSantis' Don't Say Gay bill, when that bill only covers K-3, NOT the 12th grade, which is who the teaching of the Supreme Court cases applies.

I think schools should be about learning all subjects NOT about restricting and censoring what is taught, which, ironically, IS indoctrination. When you start doing that, restricting, erasing, censoring, you are raising a generation that is ignorant, which should be opposite mission statement of a school board. And yes, I think teaching about Civil Rights should be mandatory for all schools -- if we don't, we won't be a society who at least attemps equality for everyone.

[scourge]

It's blatantly clear what is going on in FL, and TX. What I don't understand is why the people living there are willing to put up with it. It's insane. Of course, I live in a red state, so I often ask myself the same question, but nothing on the scale of those two states.





Actually, the article doesn't say anything about it being a mandate. It straight out says they can't teach those two Supreme Court cases so it is about restricting / erasing civil rights cases about the LGBT minority. Again, how is teaching Supreme Court cases indoctrination, which is the exact word the school board used? Is it indoctrination to teach about Kormatsu? Brown? Loving? And it wasn't for K-12, but the 12th grade.

Likewise, it's discriminatory to allow Black History, Hispanic Heritage, and Women's History months, and NOT allow LGBT month.

The article also says the board is quoting DeSantis' Don't Say Gay bill, when that bill only covers K-3, NOT the 12th grade, which is who the teaching of the Supreme Court cases applies.

I think schools should be about learning all subjects NOT about restricting and censoring what is taught, which, ironically, IS indoctrination. When you start doing that, restricting, erasing, censoring, you are raising a generation that is ignorant, which should be opposite mission statement of a school board. And yes, I think teaching about Civil Rights should be mandatory for all schools -- if we don't, we won't be a society who at least attemps equality for everyone.

The bill only covering K-3 was a blatant lie. Hell the one who wrote it outright admitted it was meant to target every school and was not hiding their open homophobia and transphobia.

[Mister Mets]

It's blatantly clear what is going on in FL, and TX. What I don't understand is why the people living there are willing to put up with it. It's insane. Of course, I live in a red state, so I often ask myself the same question, but nothing on the scale of those two states.





Actually, the article doesn't say anything about it being a mandate. It straight out says they can't teach those two Supreme Court cases so it is about restricting / erasing civil rights cases about the LGBT minority. Again, how is teaching Supreme Court cases indoctrination, which is the exact word the school board used? Is it indoctrination to teach about Kormatsu? Brown? Loving? And it wasn't for K-12, but the 12th grade.

Likewise, it's discriminatory to allow Black History, Hispanic Heritage, and Women's History months, and NOT allow LGBT month.

The article also says the board is quoting DeSantis' Don't Say Gay bill, when that bill only covers K-3, NOT the 12th grade, which is who the teaching of the Supreme Court cases applies.

I think schools should be about learning all subjects NOT about restricting and censoring what is taught, which, ironically, IS indoctrination. When you start doing that, restricting, erasing, censoring, you are raising a generation that is ignorant, which should be opposite mission statement of a school board. And yes, I think teaching about Civil Rights should be mandatory for all schools -- if we don't, we won't be a society who at least attemps equality for everyone.

Whether the school board says they can't teach the Supreme Court cases, or whether they said this is something that shouldn't be mandatory, should be an easily resolvable factual question.

School board decisions are typically about what's part of a curriculum, as opposed to what shouldn't be taught at all.

Looking at other Miami Herald articles, it seems that the plan called for the cases to be covered in Social Studies classes, although students could opt out.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/loc...265405151.html

Last year, the Board voted 7-1 to recognize October as (LGBTQ) month, but last year’s measure did not include the provision to add the two Supreme Court cases to the 12th grade coursework.

Baez Geller reiterated that parents could opt out of the 12th-grade lessons on the Supreme Court cases, but noted that students already learn about other Supreme Court cases that have become the law of the land, and these two cases are no different, she said.

The Parental Rights in Education bill is more relevant in the opposition to LGBT month.

As for the indoctrination question, that can get messy. The word seemed to come largely from parents who testified. They seem to suspect that the coverage of Obergfell VS. Hodges and Bostock v. Clayton County will be largely favorable. There is an argument that these are decisions as correct and noble as Loving and Brown, with opposition to it as obviously wrong as support for Korematsu, although that should be made openly. There will also be pushback from parents who disagree.

As for comparisons to other months, discussion about sexuality is loaded because we don't necessarily know who is going to be gay. It's kinda like religion, in that ultimately discussion is about something that is not always clearly articulated, what people believe in their heart of hearts, and parents generally
don't want schools encouraging kids to explore other faiths.

* Edit- Korematsu is instructive here. Right now, it's correctly seen as a bad Supreme Court decision. If it was mandatory to cover it in schools in the late 1940s when the decision was much more recent, it might have been described much more positively.