The Clown Car

Once again the Republican Clown Car is running in circles.

Get a load of these clowns!

Rachel Maddow Apologizes for Trump Trial Outburst: I ‘Snorted Out Loud’ at This Shocking Revelation
“A fall-off-your-chair moment,” the MSNBC anchor says
The Wrap
By Natalie Korach
April 23, 2024

Rachel Maddow apologized to journalists sitting near her at Donald Trump’s trial Monday in Manhattan after she “snorted out loud” when prosecutors revealed that one of the former president’s advisors had physically written down the very hush-money reimbursement plan that the jury is considering for criminal charges.

What did Ms. Maddow find funny?

The moment came when prosecutor Matthew Colengelo revealed that Trump ally Allen Weisselberg “wrote everything down” when he met with attorney Michael Cohen to negotiate a reimbursement plan for a hush-money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

“Weisselberg, you’ll remember, was the Trump Organization chief financial officer and he was one of the defendant’s longest-serving and most trusted employees,” Maddow said. “Neither Trump nor the Trump Organization can just write a check to Michael Cohen for $130,000 with a memo line that said ‘reimbursement for porn star payoff’ … they had to disguise the nature (as employment compensation) so they agreed to cook the books.”

[…]

“I annoyed the people sitting near me because I snorted out loud – he said he wrote it all down! If you’re a fan of ‘The Wire,’ this is the scene where Stringer Bell turns to the young man and says, ‘Are you taking notes on a criminal conspiracy?’ … yes, he was taking notes on a criminal conspiracy.”

And according to prosecutors, they have receipts:

“You will see in this trial Allen Weisselberg’s handwriting down the side of that bank statement laying out every one of the steps that I just described showing how they converted the $130,000 payoff,” Maddow said.

What are bumbling bunch of clowns! And these are Trump cronies what does it say about the quality of people Trump has surrounding him?

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They are so inept that the judge said something about it!

Judge Warns Trump’s Idiot Lawyer His Entire Credibility Is at Risk

Todd Blanche appears to be quickly making things worse for Donald Trump in the hush-money trial.

The New Republic

By Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling

April 23, 2024

An attorney for Donald Trump’s legal defense in his New York criminal trial took a serious misstep on Tuesday that resulted in a critical warning from Judge Juan Merchan.

On the second day of the trial, attorney Todd Blanche attempted to portray Trump as an individual fully aware of the limitations of the partial gag order imposed on him in the trial, which forbids him from speaking publicly about courtroom staff, prosecutors, or any of their family members. Comments about jurors are also prohibited, as well as comments about witnesses, though comments about Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg are still on the table.

Still, Trump has already managed to violate the gag order about a dozen times, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

[…]

“He’s allowed to respond to political attacks, your honor,” Blanche said, according to MSNBC’s Adam Klasfled.

But Merchan remembered the order of events, reminding Blanche that Trump’s disparaging remarks had in fact come before the others’.

Opss… I don’t think that he should have said that! And he didn’t shut up, he continued to put his foot in his mouth.

The ensuing back-and-forth between Blanche and Merchan continued to a rolling boil until Blanche suddenly claimed that the violations at hand—which involve Trump “reposting an article from a news site” or a “news program”—don’t actually violate the order. Still, Blanche had no precedent or case law to support such a claim.

“I don’t have any case law,” Blanche said, instead calling it “common sense” and doubling down that Trump had been “very careful to comply” with the order.

Um… that was even worst. Telling a judge to use common sense and not the law. Tisk, tisk!

That was, apparently, the straw that broke the camel’s back, after which Merchan dropped that the attorney had gone too far.

“Mr. Blanche, you are losing all credibility with the court,” Merchan said, according to LawFare’s Anna Bower.

Where does he get these guys? Did they take correspondence school law courses?

Banning The Ban.

Banning The Ban.

There is a bill in the Connecticut to ban the banning of books because of a protected class. In other words… you cannot ban a book on slavery because that is racist. You cannot ban a book about LGBTQ+ people.

There’s a revolution happening in children’s publishing—you can thank the book bans

Publishers are fighting back on book bans by flooding the market with books representing diverse points of view.

Fast Company

BY ELIZABETH SEGRAN

April 22, 2024

Nikkolas Smith knows a thing or two about book bans. The illustrator has created five picture books over the last three years—four of which have been yanked off library shelves. There’s I am Ruby Bridges, about the civil rights icon; That Flag about the confederate flag; Born on the Water, which explores slavery; and The Artivist which features a child supporting trans kids. 

Book bans aren’t new; the practice is centuries old. But over the past four years, right-wing organizations have been on a crusade to remove books from school libraries and classrooms. Last school year, these groups challenged more than 3,000 titles. The top reasons for contesting books is that they deal with LBGTQ+ issues or shine a light on racism. As someone who tackles both of these issues in his work, Smith has gotten used to his books being challenged. “In many cases, librarians don’t even bother buying them, because they know parents will contest them,” he says. “They don’t even have a chance to be banned.”

Banning a book because there is a sex scene in it is one thing but banning a book because two boys are holding hands is another thing altogether. 

Smith isn’t alone. Publishers, writers, and progressive organizations across the children’s book industry aren’t letting the book bans hold them back. Instead, they’re turning the bans into a rallying cry to publish even more diverse characters and points of view. Indeed, over the last five years, there has been a steady increase in books by and about people of color. And people are finding creative ways to make sure these books get out into the world.

You shouldn’t be able to ban a book because there is a trans child in the book. And they even banned “The Diary of Anne Frank!” 

“This parent didn’t want the book to make children dislike German people,” she says. “I was teaching 250 kids a day and this was just another problem I had to deal with. It meant that I was no longer really free to teach what I felt was important.”

I keep coming beck to the musical South Pacific, “You got to be Carefully Taught,”

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,

You’ve got to be taught from year to year,

It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear—

You’ve got to be carefully taught!

And the conservative don’t want racially integrated school because they might have a Black or a Latina or an Asian friend.

Book banning only accelerated as the Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate movements spread across the country. “They began pursuing an agenda of silencing the voices of marginalized communities and erasing their stories from library shelves so that young people could not access them,” Caldwell-Stone says.

Think about the children.

That is what the right-wing conservatives say all the time. But that is only for parents who want to ban the books for stop the integration of school. The Century Foundation writes,

The Center for American Progress’s (CAP) recent research brief, “The Racist Origins of Private School Vouchers,” highlights a dark period in the history of voucher programs. Following Brown v. Board of Education, many Southern states established voucher, or “tuition grant,” programs for white students to attend segregated private schools when public school systems were ordered to desegregate. The brief argues that it is crucial to acknowledge and learn from this historical context when considering education policy today, in particular, as civil rights protections tied to federal funding were established during that difficult era.

[…]

Earlier this year, The Century Foundation documented several schools in North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship program that openly discriminated against students by religion and LGBTQ status, charged additional fees that excluded poor children from gifted and dual enrollment programs, employed racially and religiously discriminatory dress codes, and used textbooks that—among other things—offered sympathetic portrayals of the KKK and whitewashed slavery. We should not expect for federal involvement to improve this civil rights dilemma, as U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has testified before Congress that states should “set up the rules around that.” And while the data on voucher student achievement is complicated, the most recent studies of three of the largest programs—Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio—and in the nation’s only federally funded program in Washington, D.C., showed that students accepting a voucher and transferring to a private school fared worse academically than their counterparts who did not. Clearly, none of these issues benefit black people.

Think how a Black, or Asian, or Muslim, or a trans student feels what they cannot find any book about people like them in the library, how it must make them feel… dirty, that somehow they are bad. What about straight children? Bullying in schools is skyrocketing as they pick on minorities 

I believe that the ultimate goal of the Republicans is to do away with public school as we know it and only those who can afford private education will have an education beyond Reading Riting, and Rithmetic.

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HB5417: AN ACT CONCERNING PUBLIC SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

The bill reads in part...

43 (c) Each local or regional board of education shall provide a reason

44 for the removal or restricted access to any library material belonging to

45 the collection of a school library or media center as a result of the process

46 prescribed by the policy established pursuant to subsection (b) of this

47 section. No board shall remove or restrict access to library material

48 because of any of the following:

49 (1) Partisan content or views contained in any library material;

50 (2) An author's race, nationality, gender identity, sexual orientation

51 or political or religious views;

52 (3) The personal discomfort, morality or political or religious views

53 of a member or members of the board;

54 (4) An author's points of view concerning current events, whether

55 international, national or local;

56 (5) The race, nationality, gender identity, sexual orientation or

57 political or religious views of a protagonist or other characters or as

58 otherwise represented in the library material; or

59 (6) The content of the library material is related to sexual health and

60 addresses physical, mental, emotional or social dimensions of human

61 sexuality, including, but not limited to, puberty, sex and relationships

62 based on the age, development and grade level of students.

This bill will not prohibit banning of books because of sexual conduct or vulgar language.

This morning I am at the Legislative Office Building lobbying for this bill and other pro-LGBTQ+ bills. If you are a Connecticut resident please call your legislator to support the bill (You can find you legislator here.).

 

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Well that plan went out the window.

 

Last night I was laying on the couch watching the streaming of my grandnephew's high school concert and after it was over I went to sit up and my back just went out. I've been on a heating pad and doing back exercises since.

We Won!

Texas wants your medical information… The hospital said no.

Seattle hospital won’t turn over gender-affirming care records in lawsuit settlement with Texas
AP News
BY JAMIE STENGLE
April 22, 2024

 Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is dropping a request for a Seattle hospital to hand over records regarding gender-affirming treatment potentially given to children from Texas as part of a lawsuit settlement announced Monday.

Seattle Children’s Hospital filed the lawsuit against Paxton’s office in December in response to the Republican appearing to go beyond state borders to investigate transgender health care. Paxton, a staunch conservative who has helped drive GOP efforts that target the rights of trans people, sent similar letters to Texas hospitals last year.

The Seattle hospital said in a statement that it had “successfully fought” the “overreaching demands to obtain confidential patient information.” A judge in Austin dismissed the lawsuit Friday, saying the parties had settled their dispute.

The Attorney General said that they won but,

As part of the settlement, according to court records, the parties agreed that Seattle Children’s Hospital would withdraw its registration to transact business in Texas. But a hospital spokesperson said in a statement that they don’t operate health care facilities or provide gender-affirming care in Texas.

What I found interesting was,

In court records, the hospital had previously stated that it had a “limited number” of people who work remotely and live in Texas but that none were involved in gender-affirming care. It also said it did not advertise its services in Texas.

I found “...people who work remotely…” very interesting. Does that mean when someone works remotely in a state where the business is illegal in the state where they live but where the business is located is legal that the employed is breaking the law? Suppose the person who is an accountant for a marijuana store in Connecticut and lives in Texas, can the state of Texas arrest the accountant for selling marijuana? According to the Attorney General Ken Paxton the answer would be yes.

This whole flap was started by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton back in December…

Seattle hospital says Texas attorney general asked for records about transgender care for children
AP News
BY PAUL J. WEBER
December 22, 2023

 Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked a Seattle hospital to hand over records regarding gender-affirming treatment potentially given to children from Texas, according to court filings that appear to show the Republican going beyond state borders to investigate transgender health care.

Seattle Children’s Hospital filed a lawsuit in Austin, Texas, this month asking a court to invalidate or narrow the requests from Paxton, a staunch conservative who has helped drive Republican efforts that target the rights of trans people. His office sent similar letters earlier this year to Texas hospitals.

[…]

The hospital argued Paxton’s office was overstepping its jurisdiction and had no authority to request the records.

By the way, Connecticut has a law banning any reproductive health being sent out of state without the patient’s consent. PA 22-19 AN ACT CONCERNING THE PROVISION OF PROTECTIONS FOR PERSONS RECEIVING AND PROVIDING REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CARE SERVICES IN THE STATE AND ACCESS TO REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CARE SERVICES IN THE STATE
I have been told that trans healthcare involves reproductive healthcare.

The Clash

No not the rock group but rather between the pro- and the anti- LGBTQ+ groups.

Queer protestors shut down on-campus speech by anti-LGBTQ+ educational leader

Protestors angrily called him a “power-hungry fascist,” and said that a deceased LGBTQ+ student's blood was on his hands.

LGBTQ Nation

By Daniel Villarreal

April 18, 2024

Ryan Walters, the right-wing superintendent of the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE), only spoke for about 12 minutes before ending his talk at Oklahoma State University (OSU) yesterday. During his on-campus appearance, pro-LGBTQ+ protestors angrily shouted him down, calling him a “fascist” and saying that the blood of a recently deceased nonbinary student was on his hands.

Walters had been invited to speak by a campus chapter of Turning Point USA. The organization’s founder, Charlie Kirk, has attacked transgender people and described opposition to religious exemptions as “fascism.” About 100 people attended Walters’ talk in the campus engineering building. Walters spoke without a mic and barely got a word out before protestors began shouting.

“You’re a power-hungry fascist,” one protestor in particular yelled, adding, “Nex’s blood is on your hands!”

Once again the right-wing conservatives tend to ignore the First Amendment and other laws in their onslaught of anti-LGBTQ legislation!

Walters, who wants to ban LGBTQ+ books but teach the Bible in public school history classes, has previously pushed the transphobic lie about schools providing litterboxes to students who identify as cats. He also referred to teachers’ unions as “terrorist organizations” and illegally tried to make rules banning LGBTQ+ books and transgender bathroom access in schools. He has appeared at events hosted by Moms for Liberty, a right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ “parent’s rights” group that has been called an extremist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Walters also appointed Chaya Raichik, an anti-LGBTQ+ activist who goes by Libs of Tik Tok online, as a Library Media Advisor for the state (even though she has no educational experience, doesn’t reside in Oklahoma, and has made posts that have led to bomb threats against students).

They believe that they ar eon a mission and anything that gets in their way if fair game… full speed ahead and damn the Constitution!

My stand on the issue of protests is that we have to allow both for and against us, we cannot not demand our rights when we deny the right to protest by others.

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If all went as planned I should be home from my cousin's funeral in New Hampshire. I hate attending funerals, I went up on Friday and came home this morning after the burial. I just go to pieces, I carried a pocketbook full of tissues.  

Down On Long Island

A judge will have none of that! A judge tossed out a lawsuit to keep Nassau County  ban on trans students.

Judge tosses out Nassau County lawsuit defending ban on transgender women at sports facilities
By CBS New York Team
April 12, 2024

A federal judge has tossed out a lawsuit from Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman who had been looking to stop a challenge from New York Attorney General Letitia James over his decision to ban transgender women from playing sports at county-owned facilities.

In March, James demanded Blakeman rescind an order banning those athletes.

The ban still remains in effect, but now the attorney general's lawsuit can move forward.

In February, Blakeman signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from competing in girls' and women's sports at county facilities. Under the order, sports leagues now must submit documentation of their players' biological sex at birth.

Whenever anything goes before a judge, it becomes a crapshoot, and I’m always bitting my nails.

In a statement Friday, James said, "This decision is a tremendous victory for justice and the rule of law, but our work here is not done. County Executive Blakeman's executive order is transphobic, and we have no room for hate in New York. It's past time for Nassau County to rescind this order and treat all our communities with the basic respect and dignity they deserve."

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While out in California the state says no way to a country ban on us.

Murrieta schools ordered to stop enforcing transgender policy
State education officials say parental notification policy is illegal
The Press Enterprise
By JEFF HORSEMAN
April 11, 2024

Murrieta’s school district must stop enforcing a policy that requires parents to be notified if their child identifies as transgender, the California Department of Education ordered after finding the policy discriminates against transgender youth.

The Wednesday, April 10, letter gives the Murrieta Valley Unified School District five days to tell staff and students that the policy, approved in August, will not be implemented.

Department spokesperson Scott Roark said via email that the department “is unable to comment on pending investigations.”

[…]

Last month, the board voted 3-2 to keep the policy after Superintendent Ward Andrus proposed rescinding the rules. At that meeting, the board approved a motion “to develop and approve an administrative regulation with further clarifications on implementation of the new policy,” Gutierrez said.

Have you noticed something? The Republicans are for “Parental Rights” except when the parents don’t want what the Republicans beliefs.

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For the last 4 days I have been up in New Hampshire for the funeral of my cousin, he was the last of my cousins on my mother’s side of the family. It is just my brother and me who are left of my maternal grandmother’s children.

They Got It Backwards!

[Editorial]

They got it wrong! The Republicans are in a tizzy over the vote on the foreign aid bills. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the far right-wing House members Freedom Caucus are threatening to kick out House Speakers. Johnson because pf the vote. According to the New York Post,

“All of this was possible because of the betrayals of Mike Johnson. He has completely betrayed the Republican Party,” Greene fumed. “He has completely betrayed Republican voters all over the country.

“And he is absolutely working for the Democrats passing the Biden administration agenda. This is a speakership that is completely over with.”

They got it wrong. They are supposed to put the country before the party!

In an authoritarian country they put the party first. Not in a constitutional federal republic.

What Speaker Johnson did is what Congress has done for the last two hundred and thirty-six years… pass legislation with bipartisan support.

No, the Republicans got it wrong they were elected to represent the people and not the party.

[/Editorial]