Plan? What Plan?

There is no plan

to fix anything.

The plan is to

tear everything down.

Today's Brian

Short Brian

What We're Up Against

To be sure, it's at least kinda probable that these jagoffs are just cashing in on the tax-free shit built into our fucked up tax code.

But that doesn't mean they're not planning some real shit, and that it's not just about milking the sheep.

Psalms 2:9-11 New International Version (NIV)

"You will break them with a rod of iron; you will dash them to pieces like pottery."

"Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear and celebrate his rule with trembling."

What is the significance of the iron rod?

A rod of iron conveys an image of a divine power that cannot be broken. Iron's strength and, at times, cosmic origin lent it a sense of power. That the rod in Lehi's vision and David's psalm is a symbol of strength and heavenly power and authority is made clear by its being made of iron.

And it's not unreasonable to think these clowns believe the "rod of iron" is a gun - it's right there in the graphic. Seems pretty obvious.

• God gave us the 2nd amendment
• The 2nd amendment gave us the gun
• The gun is a sacred tool
• We are here to do the lord's work with the tools he has given us

Sweet dreams, kids.

Aged Like Fine Milk

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

--Epicurus, Greek Philosopher

Jim Bakker from early 2023.

Pre-Born, You're Fine

... Pre-School, you're fucked.

The esteemed Mr Carlin:

Nancy MacLean

We pay attention to things so we're less likely to be fooled.

• We pay attention to our health so pharmaceutical ads are less deceiving
• We pay attention to economics so we're not as likely to be deceived by "Financial Reporters" telling us about indicators - leading or trailing or Market Basket or Durable Goods or interest rates or whatever
• We pay attention to politics so we won't be fooled so often by demagogues and dog-assed Republicans

Richard Uilein:

GOP megadonor pours millions into effort to hinder Ohio abortion amendment

New campaign finance records show Illinois Republican megadonor Richard Uihlein is funding the bulk of the campaign aimed at thwarting a constitutional amendment on abortion in Ohio.

Ohio is likely the only state this year to have a measure on the ballot to enshrine abortion access into the state constitution, setting up a test case for how the issue may drive voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election. A USA TODAY Network/Suffolk University poll released this week found 58% of Ohioans support a constitutional amendment.

That support may not be enough to pass. Currently, such amendments require support from a simple majority — 50% + 1 vote. But the GOP-led state legislature set up a special election for Aug. 8 to raise the threshold to 60%. That measure is known as Ohio Issue 1.

Uihlein, an Illinois shipping supplies magnate with a history of donations to anti-abortion groups, was the top funder of Protect our Constitution, the main group supporting Issue 1. Uihlein gave $4 million to the group, the bulk of the $4.85 million raised.

Last month, a CBS News investigation found Uihlein had an outsized role in getting Issue 1 on the ballot. In April, he gave $1.1 million to a political committee pressuring Republican lawmakers to approve the August special election. Financial disclosures show a foundation controlled by Uihlein has given nearly $18 million to a Florida-based organization pushing similar changes to the constitutional amendment process in states across the country.

Uihlein didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ohio Republicans pushing to change the rules over constitutional amendments originally billed the effort as one that would prevent outside interests from influencing the state constitution. But supporters, including Secretary of State Frank LaRose, have since acknowledged the change would make it harder for a constitutional amendment on abortion to pass.

Last year, voters in Kansas and Michigan chose to preserve abortion access in their state constitutions with just under 60% approval.

Once the August special election was approved, money began to flow in on both sides. The central group opposed to raising the threshold for passing an amendment to 60%, One Person One Vote, raised a total of $14.4 million. The Sixteen Thirty Fund gave $2.5 million to the effort, campaign finance records show. The group, based in Washington D.C., has spent millions on left-leaning causes, including the campaign against the confirmation of then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Overheard

Gay people aren't shooting up straight nightclubs.

A black man didn't shoot 9 white people at a prayer meeting.

Latinos aren't shooting up Walmarts filled with WASPy Americans.

Jews aren't shooting up Christians churches.

The shit is coming from one demographic: MAGA Radicalized White Men.

Today's Stochastic Thing

Cue the crazies in 3 ... 2 ...1

False flag!!

It was antifa!!

Libruls!!

Communists!!!

Man who crashed U-Haul near White House charged with threatening harm

U.S. Park Police arrested a man after a U-Haul truck crashed near the White House on Monday night, prompting the evacuation of the nearby Hay-Adams hotel.

The man, whom police did not publicly identify, was charged with threatening to kill, kidnap or inflict harm on the president, vice president or a family member, along with other counts including assault with a dangerous weapon and trespassing.

Police declined to provide further details early Tuesday about the nature of the alleged threat to the president, vice president or their families.

Officials opened an investigation after the box truck hit security barriers on the north side of Lafayette Square, the Secret Service said. “There were no injuries to any Secret Service or White House personnel,” agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said earlier Tuesday. He said a preliminary investigation indicated that the driver “may have intentionally struck” the barriers.

Earlier Tuesday, a Secret Service spokesman said the truck involved in the crash was “deemed safe” by D.C. police and that a driver was detained. Roads and walkways were closed during the investigation, according to the Secret Service.

It's One Big Hate Club

If you or someone you know is considering suicide,

help is available. Call 1-800-273-8255

to speak with someone now.

Or text START to 741741

to message with the Crisis Text Line.

This Moms For Liberty thing has all the earmarks of another bullshit astroturfing operation. It's irritating that VICE spends a total of 3 paragraphs speaking to the funding for these asshats.

And it's beyond annoying that there's nothing over at Southern Poverty Law Center about them either.

A Far-Right Moms Group Is Terrorizing Schools in the Name of Protecting Kids

Moms for Liberty has targeted teachers, administrators, parents, and school board members, orchestrating harassment campaigns that have left people fearing for their safety—and in some cases, their lives.

Tony was at church one Sunday when his boyfriend’s parents outed him as gay, walking over to his own parents and just blurting it out. They had found Snapchat messages the teenagers exchanged, and in an instant, Tony’s whole world fell apart.

His mother Carolyn, who was raised in the Southern Baptist Church and was her local church secretary at the time, was furious at her son. “She kept telling me that I was going to hell and that it was wrong, that I had to change my ways,” Tony, whose last name is being withheld for privacy reasons, told VICE News. Carolyn forced him into counseling sessions with his church’s pastor, who in turn told him that being gay was evil.

Tony’s mental health spiraled soon after being outed in January 2022. He stopped playing baseball, locked himself away in his bedroom, and eventually started cutting and stabbing himself with pencils. But he found some hope through the Rainbow Youth Project, an LGBTQ advocacy group whom he first contacted a month later, in February.

In late March, Carolyn gave her permission for Tony to start counseling with the group, and Tony felt that there was light at the end of the tunnel. Then, two months later, out of nowhere, his mother revoked her permission. Carolyn tells VICE News she’ll never forget how Tony responded to her ban: “Mom, you just killed me.”

Later that day, Tony attempted to die by suicide.

Carolyn’s decision didn’t spring out of nowhere: Moms for Liberty, an organization that calls itself a “parental rights group,” had convinced Carolyn that the Rainbow Youth Project was trying to “convince Tony to have his private parts removed and changed.”

Carolyn first contacted Moms for Liberty after she heard about them on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News in February 2022, believing they could help her find a “cure” for her son’s homosexuality, she asked for advice on Twitter.

Over the next couple of months, Carolyn was bombarded with information and directed to posts from the group’s co-founder Tiffany Justice, all of which helped convince her to revoke permission for Tony’s counseling.

A couple of weeks after Tony attempted to die by suicide, completely out of the blue, a member of the Austin chapter of Moms for Liberty knocked on Carolyn’s door. The woman, who introduced herself as Rebecca and was wearing a Moms for Liberty shirt, spent two hours sitting in Carolyn’s living room, telling her about evil books in school libraries and the horrors of drag shows, according to Carolyn. Rebecca also showed Carolyn information from hate-filled social media accounts like LibsofTikTok and Gays Against Groomers and even information taken directly from the notorious doxing and trolling website Kiwi Farms.

At the end of their meeting, Carolyn told VICE News that the woman suggested she sue the Rainbow Youth Project for “damaging” her son.

While this was all happening, Tony was down the hall, locked away in his bedroom, where he had painted the windows black to block out the outside world. After the meeting, Carolyn took Tony to another “Christian therapy” session. Tony’s already fragile mental health worsened, and in July, he once again attempted to die by suicide. It was at this point that Carolyn realized the damage she was doing to her son.

“Looking back, it was never about Tony. It was about them.”

“They were trying to indoctrinate me to be a foot soldier for their cause, to hold bake sales and raise money, go to the school boards and stand up and fight against them,” Carolyn told VICE News. “Looking back, it was never about Tony. It was about them.”

The influence Moms for Liberty had on Carolyn and Tony’s lives was not an isolated incident. Since the group’s founding in Florida in 2020, its influence over local and national Republican politics has grown exponentially: It’s now a nation-wide movement with 260 chapters that claims to be a “grassroots” group working to protect students and defend parents’ rights. Its members are leading the charge on book-banning campaigns across the country and the group says it has helped install 275 of its favored candidates on school boards in 2022 alone, dozens of whom don’t have any children attending public schools in their districts.

The group’s methods, however, belie the wholesome vision it tries to project. VICE News has spoken to students, administrators, parents, superintendents, school board members, and teachers who have faced vicious attacks by Moms for Liberty. Their stories paint a picture of a group that conducts orchestrated harassment campaigns against individuals, that’s resulted in many fearing for their safety and, in some cases, their lives.

“The greatest impact that Moms for Liberty is having is imparting fear, within the teachers and the educators and in the parents,” Laura Leigh-Abby, co-founder of Defense of Democracy, a nonprofit group advocating for inclusive education, told VICE News. “The true impact they’re having is really not calculable, because I’m seeing teachers who are afraid to speak out because they don't want to be targeted.”

In response to a detailed list of questions about the specific allegations made against Moms for Liberty in this article, Moms for Liberty pointed VICE News to a press release issued earlier this month speaking about a vague “coordinated effort” aimed at discrediting the group.

“We reject any accusations of dangerous behavior made against us as false,” Moms for Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich wrote in a joint statement. “We strongly reject any attempts to portray our members as violent or threatening.”

Tony has seen first-hand how widespread Moms for Liberty’s impact is. In a virtual peer group of 14 other young people organized by the Rainbow Youth Project: ”There are four others in there that have been through exactly what I have been, where Moms for Liberty and Fox News have totally pulled their parents into this same trap my mom went through.”

And Moms for Liberty is spreading its warped version of “parental rights” across the country.

According to the Moms for Liberty website, the group now has over 265 chapters in 43 states with a total membership of over 110,000. As the maps from the group’s website shows, the movement is strongest in its home state of Florida, but it is clear that Moms for Liberty is now very much a national organization, with dozens of chapters in blue states like New York and California.

In Pennsylvania, the leader of a local Moms for Liberty chapter allegedly hijacked a dead woman’s Facebook page to harass her enemies, including using the N-word and saying they should hang from a noose. In Arkansas, the head of communications of the Lonoke County chapter said that librarians should be “plowed down with a freaking gun.” In Chattanooga, Tennessee, a member of a local Moms for Liberty chapter harassed an opposing group, threatened to report them for child abuse, and called them “pedophile sympathizers.” In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, police had to be called to a school board meeting after members of Moms for Liberty accused attendees of being “groomers” and wanting to show explicit pictures to children. In Charleston, South Carolina, a Moms for Liberty-affiliated member of the local school board publicly stated he would show up at his son’s teacher’s doorstep with a gun if the teacher came out as transgender.

The group’s incredible growth over the course of two years coincided with—and helped create—a wider national debate about the politicization of the education system. But the group’s beginnings were focused not on the national fight, but on a hyper-local dispute.

A rallying cry for like-minded parents

Initially, Moms for Liberty was seemingly created to harass just one woman.

Tina Descovich helped found the group after losing a school board re-election in Brevard County, Florida, to a woman named Jennifer Jenkins. “In the beginning, I thought this was a joke because when they came to our school board meetings, I used to call them, jokingly, ‘Moms Against Jennifer Jenkins’ because they didn’t have this cohesive thought or mission,” Jenkins told VICE News.

But that quickly changed. As Moms for Liberty grew, Descovich was joined by Tiffany Justice, a former school board member in neighboring Indian River County, and Bridget Ziegler, a member of the Sarasota County School Board, and the trio officially incorporated Moms for Liberty as a 501(c)4 nonprofit in January 2021.

Ziegler’s involvement was key for the group’s evolution: She was deeply entwined with the GOP machine both locally and nationally. Her husband is the chair of the Florida GOP, and Ziegler has ties to national organizations like the influential Leadership Institute, an advocacy group that trains conservative activists. She was also photographed at her election night victory party last August alongside two members of the Proud Boys. Ziegler has denied any close links to the street-fighting group, labeling them “a menace” after she appeared in the photo with them. (Disclosure: Gavin McInnes, who founded the Proud Boys in 2016, was a co-founder of VICE in 1994. He left the company in 2008 and has had no involvement since then.)

Ziegler, Justice, and Descovich, who didn’t respond to VICE News’ request for comment for this article, quickly latched onto the titanic struggle over mask mandates that was raging across the country and used it as a rallying cry for like-minded parents.

They still remained focused, however, on Jenkins. At first, the group attacked her during board meetings over her support of COVID restrictions. Then, members of Moms for Liberty, which at this point had a few dozen members, began getting in Jenkins’ face at the meetings, recording videos of her and posting them on their Facebook page, where they would mock her.

Weeks later, Jenkins noticed that members of extremist groups were showing up at the meetings and standing with Moms for Liberty.

In February 2021, things turned nasty. Descovich posted the school district’s LGBTQ guideline document, which provides privacy rights to trans students, on her personal Facebook page and claimed the schools were implementing it behind people’s backs.

The document wasn’t actually new. The school board had been working on it for over a year, even when Descovich was a part of the school board. She’d even had meetings with the superintendent about the guidelines, Jenkins said. Mark Mullins, the superintendent at the time, did not respond to a request for comment.

“She disseminated it to the entire community as if it was brand new, because of one Democrat who’s on the board, and she spread it on Moms for Liberty and it created this insane rage in our community,” Jenkins said. “And that’s really when it started to get crazy.”

The outrage came to a head at a board meeting in March, which Jenkins described as a “mini-insurrection.”

While scenes of chaos at school board meetings are now all too familiar, the protests outside the Brevard County meeting that night were shocking.

LGBTQ students and their parents attending the meeting had to walk through a gauntlet of protesters shouting “shame on you.” Video footage from the event shows a truck with American flags driving up and down the street outside the building, with the driver shouting through a speaker, calling those protesting to support the rights of LGBTQ students “sick pedophiles” and “child molesters.”

“If you thought January 6 was bad, wait until you see what we have for you!”

“I became the focal point of their outrage because I was defending our LGBTQ students and staff. I wasn’t the only one on the board defending them, but I was definitely not afraid to say it loud and proud,” Jenkins said.

In April, the protests moved from the school board meetings to Jenkins’ house.

A group of protesters shouted the word “pedophiles” at the house. At one point, the crowd mistook two friends of Jenkins for her and her husband, shouting at them. In Jenkins’ recollection, the protesters shouted: “We’re coming for you. We’re coming at you like a freight train! We are going to make you beg for mercy. If you thought January 6 was bad, wait until you see what we have for you!”

A spokesperson for Moms for Liberty denied the group had any involvement in the protests at Jenkins’ house, pointing to previous comments from Descovich given to Florida Today in 2021: “First and foremost, Jennifer Jenkins is a mom and it’s unacceptable to have that kind of behavior in front of her home," Descovich said. "I don’t, I don’t agree with it. I don’t support it in any way at all and it’s just unacceptable behavior. It’s not good for our community."

While Jenkins said she mostly didn’t fear for her own life, she remembered one incident where a man was protesting at her house and then left to go to a school board meeting. On the way to the meeting, he filmed himself and claimed that he was going to shoot the entire school board. Nicholas Carrington did not respond to a request for comment and the charges against him were ultimately dropped by police.

“That freaked me out because we don’t have any metal detectors or protection in place for our school board meeting,” Jenkins said.

The harassment was nonstop. At board meetings Moms for Liberty members would shout and intimidate Jenkins as she walked to and from her car, to the point where she had to be escorted by security. During school board meetings, trucks adorned with Trump stickers parked outside her house, where her husband was at home with their four-year-old daughter.

“I cried every single day,” Jenkins said, describing the difficulty of this period. “It was awful.”

The Moms for Liberty group denied being involved in the protests at Jenkins’ house, but Jenkins said she saw members of the group standing outside her home. At one protest in September 2021, Jenkins said one protester shouted: ​​“Be careful, your mommy hurts little kids!” to her daughter. Others chanted “You’re going to jail.” Her neighbors informed Jenkins they had seen protesters brandishing weapons in the church parking lot behind her house.

The next day Jenkins and her husband found a large “FU” burned into the lawn with weed killer.

Hours later, a man knocked on her door and identified himself as an investigator from the Florida Department of Children and Families. Someone had made a false complaint that she was abusing her daughter. The investigator sat at her kitchen table and asked how she disciplined her daughter before accompanying her to the play date her daughter was on at the time to check for nonexistent burn marks beneath the child’s clothes. Jenkins’ account of this is backed up by emails from the department reviewed by VICE News.

The never-ending torrent of abuse meant that an extreme situation became normalized. “I’ve always been able to talk about it so freely and openly because I’m so desensitized by what happened to me because it just became the norm,” Jenkins said. “I couldn’t get away from it. It was all day, every day.”

“It’s absolute bullshit, but they have a great message”

While all of this was happening to Jenkins, Moms for Liberty continued to grow. It was beginning to get national media attention, with fawning profiles of the group claiming it was “channeling a powerful frustration among conservative mothers.”

The group quickly expanded beyond Florida, and began harassing people across the country. By December 2021, the group claimed 70,000 members across 165 chapters in 33 states. Moms for Liberty does not state on its website what it considers a “member,” but it appears that they are counting all those who are subscribed to the Facebook groups established for each of their chapters.

While critics of the group slam the organization’s actions, they can admit that the group’s numbers swelled so quickly because it was delivering a very powerful and targeted message.

“Part of what makes us so successful is pretending, ‘We’re moms, we’re a community, we’re just grassroots, we want to help protect your children.’ It’s absolute bullshit, but they have a great message,” Leigh-Abby from Defense of Democracy said. “There’s a reason they’re growing, because they’re smart.”

In Livingston County, Michigan, a chapter allegedly engaged with extreme methods similar to those of the original group, according to court documents and first-hand accounts of those targeted.

During a September 2021 board meeting to discuss mask mandates, Jennifer Smith, the chapter chair of the local Moms for Liberty group, sent the school board a chilling message: “We are coming for you. Take that as a threat. Call the FBI. I don’t care.”

One parent at the meeting, Sarah Cross, took up Smith on her offer and called the FBI. As a result, Smith was contacted by an FBI agent who was tracking possible domestic terrorism cases linked to school board meetings. A couple of months later, Cross was threatened directly.

“My first encounter with Moms for Liberty was at a school board meeting in 2021 when a parent threatened to punch me in the face,” Cross, a lawyer and the mother of a biracial student in the district, told VICE News about her encounters with the group.

Cross was at the Brighton Area School District meeting to speak out against an email a school administrator had sent comparing the masking of children to prevent the spread of COVID to the Holocaust. At the meeting, Cross asked a group of people wearing Moms for Liberty shirts to stop interrupting the speakers and talking amongst themselves, which is when one of the members threatened her.

But this was just the beginning of the harassment Cross faced from Smith.

“The local chapter leader”—Smith—“has become obsessed with me,” Cross told VICE News. “I had a restraining order against her for stalking. She’s made completely baseless allegations that I stalked and harassed her children and that I got her husband fired from her job. She shares my home address with people in the community because she wants people to harass me.”

Smith did not respond to a request for comment from VICE News.

Cross said that a number of other strange things have occurred as well: Someone appeared to have cut the cables to her outdoor lights; a nail was placed behind the tire of her car; someone tried to steal her dog, twice; and someone parked across the road and took pictures of her family.

Cross has even installed security cameras on her property, because of the harassment she believes stems directly from the Moms for Liberty group.

“My daughter is afraid to go outside,” Cross said. “She gets flipped off when she goes out to get the mail.”

Cross blames Moms for Liberty and believes that acceptance of the abusive behavior by adults is emboldening students in the area’s schools to follow suit. “My daughter has been called the N-word in school,” Cross said, adding that another student had a swastika drawn on their back.

“It’s not gonna go away,” Cross said. “It’s just gonna get worse. People don’t realize what they’re about, how powerful they are and the momentum that’s gaining and they’re not going to stop.”

Smith, the head of the local Moms for Liberty chapter, doesn’t appear to have been inconvenienced by these accusations. Instead, she’s been empowered further: Smith was elected as head of the Livingston County GOP in December 2022.

“Fewer and fewer reasonable people are willing to run”

One of those surprised by Moms for Liberty’s presence in the more liberal corners of America is Dianne Jones, who successfully ran for re-election to the Fremont Unified School Board in Alameda last year against Moms for Liberty-backed candidate Jennifer Kavouniaris.

“I live in the Bay Area in California, one of the most progressive places in the country. If a candidate like this can gain traction here, I’m nervous for the rest of the country,” Jones told VICE News. “The process of running against this candidate was grueling and, at times, frightening,” Jones said. “During the campaign I was called a tyrant, an extremist, a Marxist, a ‘groomer,’ and a danger to children. My family had to take extra security precautions.”

As well as attacking Jones publicly, Kavouniaris also sought to derail her opponent’s campaign privately, sending direct messages that called attention to the fact that Jones’ eldest child was transgender and had just qualified as a teacher. “There is a fine line between pride and grooming,” Kavouniaris wrote in one text message reviewed by VICE News, referencing a picture of Jones’ child in their classroom, which featured a trans flag.

When Kavouniaris lost, rather than conceding, she circulated voter fraud conspiracy theories and on her social media accounts continues to attempt to undermine social and emotional learning and sex ed curriculums in her local public schools—even though she has admitted her own daughter attends private school.

Kavouniaris did not respond to VICE News’ request for comment.

The COVID pandemic and resultant mask mandates have made school boards the frontline of the national battle playing out between the right and the left, and places that were traditionally safe and peaceful have become difficult and dangerous, Jones says.

“Fewer and fewer reasonable people are willing to run which is leaving a void for Moms for Liberty candidates to fill. The bottom line is that Jen and other Moms for Liberty candidates are inciting people with conspiracy theories and inflammatory accusations about grooming that put trustees, teachers, and LGBTQ students in real danger.”

“They felt I had an agenda”

Larry Leaven has dedicated almost his entire working life to public education, working as a teacher and a principal in New York and setting up an English-language school in Hong Kong before returning, in August 2021, to New York State, where he was appointed superintendent for the Florida Union Free School District.

But things quickly turned sour when a small cohort of local Moms for Liberty members began attending school board meetings to berate Leaven in person while simultaneously mounting an online harassment campaign calling for his resignation.

The attacks focused on the fact that Leaven is an openly gay man, and also highlighted that he had attended an event with author and religion professor Anthea Butler, who was speaking about her book, White Evangelical Racism.

One of the group’s biggest criticisms of Leaven related to the availability of the book Gender Queer, which was actually available in the school district before he was ever appointed. The attacks got worse after Leaven was invited to read to a group of kindergarten children at a local library and he chose to read the book Pink is for Boys.

“The [Moms for Liberty] group, because they have some type of mental illness, they felt I had an agenda,” Leaven told VICE News. “They took all of this as a threat and something that I was bringing to the district and that I was going to destroy the district.”

“I thought I knew how to handle these types of people because I grew up with it,” Leaven said, who was raised and educated in the white evangelical community.

But in November 2022, just over a year after taking up the role, he resigned.

“I’m absolutely shocked at how quickly they have been able to manifest and to really destroy communities, but I’m really not surprised,” Leaven said. “I don’t want to give Donald Trump more credit, but I really think that when leaders lead with hate and with violent comments, I think that gives permission to people and I think this group, it made it easier for them to be able to do this to the community.”

Leaven was not the only superintendent who was forced out as a result of Moms for Liberty’s attack campaigns.

Last November, two hours after being sworn in, six Moms for Liberty-backed candidates in Berkeley County School District, South Carolina fired Deon Jackson, the district’s first Black superintendent. The group also fired the district’s lawyer, banned critical race theory, and set up a committee to decide which books and materials should be banned from schools.

“Six new board members clean house first night on the job,” the administrators of the group’s Facebook page wrote the same night.

Weeks later in Sarasota County, Florida, the school board, which is now chaired by Moms for Liberty co-founder Ziegler, ousted Superintendent Brennan Asplen, who guided the district through the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Ian, without giving a reason. In Brevard County, public schools Superintendent Mark Mullins was forced out of his position as a result of Moms for Liberty-backed candidates taking control of the school board.

And it’s not just superintendents being forced out of their positions. Alexander Ingram, who worked in a public school in Jacksonville, Florida, resigned last year because of his school board’s failure to defend him against attacks from Moms for Liberty.

“I became a teacher to nurture young minds, and I think every teacher recently has had to imagine the scenario of what it would be like to shield their children from a hail of bullets in the event of an active shooter,” Ingram told VICE News. “So it is particularly hurtful when Moms for Liberty, and other far-right extremists come to school board members and call teachers, in the room, ‘groomers’ and ‘pedophiles.’”

Ingram was also doxxed by members of the group because of his off-duty activism around removing local Confederate monuments. “I received death threats like, ‘he shouldn’t be breathing, much less teaching,’ as well as people emailing my principal and our superintendent that I should be fired for ‘indoctrinating children’ and teaching ‘CRT.”

“I received death threats like, ‘he shouldn’t be breathing, much less teaching.’”

Even those whom Moms for Liberty profess to be protecting have denounced their methods.

“As a high school senior, I have witnessed first-hand the influence of Moms for Liberty and their fear mongering tactics,” Chloe Boggs, the president of the Youth Chapter of Women’s Voices of Southwest Florida, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting reproductive rights, told VICE News. “Countless students have explained to me their experiences with racism, antisemitism, and homophobia following the rise in political tension within Florida school systems. My peers and I are forced into the middle of all of this. We have watched our education become politicized day after day. We have no choice but to fight for our right to a safe, honest, and inclusive education in any way we can.”

Despite all of the damage Moms for Liberty members are doing across the country, the group has continued to grow its membership and as its influence in the Republican Party, as education shapes up to be one of the leading topics during the 2024 presidential election.

As Trump waded into the education wars last month by telling a crowd in Iowa that he would ban the teaching of critical race theory in schools and "bring back parental rights into our schools" if reelected as president, Moms for Liberty said that it would not play a formal role during the 2024 campaign for any one candidate, but given the close ties between the group and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—who spoke at its first national convention—it seems he’ll have Moms for Liberty in his corner.

“He has made a lot of decisions to make a lot of moms happy in this country,” Descovich told Reuters last month.

Despite Descovich’s claims that they are planning to stay out of the political sphere, the group’s members continue to harass and intimidate those standing in the way of their agenda.

Having the investigator for the Florida Department of Children and Families called to her home was a breaking point for Jenkins, who spoke out during a board meeting in October 2021. Footage of her speech quickly went viral and gained national media attention.

While the harassment of Jenkins has subsided, it has never fully gone away.

“I don’t think it’ll ever rise to the same level again, but I do fear that it is starting all over again, but in a different way, because they feel empowered and emboldened by two new members that are on the board,” Jenkins said referring to the election last November of two Moms for Liberty board members. “The two people who got elected are super extreme.”

One of those board members, Megan Wright, told VICE News she had nothing to do with the protests at Jenkins’ house, adding: “If Mrs. Jenkins thinks it’s “super extreme” to want only biological females to use the girls bathroom and biological males to use the boys bathroom, then I am guilty. “ The other board member, Gene Trent, did not respond to VICE News’ request for comment.

Tony, who is now 19, is still trying to recover and reclaim his life. Thanks to Rainbow Youth Project, he’s managed to move from his home in Texas to San Diego, where he’s back in school and playing baseball again. He’s in counseling and hasn’t self-harmed in four months. As for his relationship with his mother, it’s still a work in progress.

“A lot of people hold her responsible for what happened and she is partially responsible. We’ve had that discussion and she knows how I feel about that,” Tony said. “But she’s really trying. Our relationship is getting stronger. We’re not there yet, but it’s getting stronger.”

Carolyn says the memory of finding her son lying unconscious on the floor of his bedroom after taking an overdose will never leave her, and while she accepts responsibility for her actions, she knows they were based on information given to her by Moms for Liberty.

“I’m responsible because I was literally putting him second to all of this, for lack of a better term, bullshit, that they were giving to me, and I will never do that again. Ever,” Carolyn said.

“They are preying on people and when you have a question and you’re trying to save your kid, they took advantage of me and I honestly believe they do that with other parents.”

To Be Clear

(via Parler - because of course)

I realize most of us by now understand that whoever posted this wasn't just complaining about "the media".

Not that any of the clown platoon on Parler will bother to Google it, but:

So we know it's not true, but that's not the only point. There's a double- or triple- or fourple- or just plain ol' ordinary multi-whammy thing that's been going on that really is next-level shitty.

The poster is saying at least these 4 other things:

1. Black people are just as bad
2. White people are the real victims
3. Change the subject - don't let it be about the guns
4. "(((they)))" = "the Jews"

And not that anyone here is unaware of this shittiness, but it pays to reiterate.

Because we have to go on countervailing the fantasy scare-the-white-people bullshit coming from "the conservatives".

Good little liberals get tired of having to explain the same fucking thing over and over. And rightly so, BTW - you shouldn't have to plow the same ground - you shouldn't have to chew the same cabbage - don't keep pluckin' the same damned chicken (pick your aphorism and insert here). But repetition, over a long-enough timeline is how "the other side" gets the bullshit to stick.

So we have to keep applying the Mental Teflon.

COVID-19 Update

We should never celebrate the destruction of a fellow human being.

But being closely in touch with my Inner Asshole, I have to admit a smile will flash briefly across my psyche when this kind of news presents itself.

“Proud boy” leading member, Aaron Laigaie, died from Covid

Aaron Laigaie, one of the founders of the Proud Boys and a Covid denier and anti vaxxer has died of Covid.

ANTI-VAXXER Aaron Laigaie, who declared “covid is over”, said it was “a problem for the elderly” and said he didn’t need the vaccine because he previously had Covid-19 and “it sucked for 2 days and it was over”, has reportedly died from Covid-19.

According to a post that was published online by Geoff Guenther, Aaron Laigaie has unfortunately passed away. Coronavirus was the cause of death for Aaron Laigaie. According to the reports, Aaron Laigaie was a Trumpzi who asserted that he had “natural resistance” to COVID.

He was infected with COVID. Aaron was a COVID denier all the way through. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is the infectious agent that causes the disease known as coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

According to Google, the majority of people who become ill with COVID-19 will have symptoms that range from mild to moderate and will recover without the need for any special therapy. On the other hand, some of them will become gravely ill and call for medical assistance.

Aaron Laigaie’s refusal to get the COVID19 shot has come to light thanks to a number of people on social media. He was one of the original members of the MT Baker Proud Boys. The Proud Boys are an all-male, neo-fascist, far-right organization with its headquarters in the United States. They are known for their participation in political violence and for encouraging others to do the same. It has also been called a street gang, although the governments of Canada and New Zealand have classified it as a terrorist organization.

The Proud Boys are a well-known organization that criticizes left-wing and progressive groups and is well-known for its backing of former US President Donald Trump. Another Trumpzi who claimed to be “naturally immune” (from brains, I should guess) has passed away with COVID, Geoff Guenther said on Facebook. Aaron Laigaie, a proud boy, is no longer with us.

Review finds hybrid immunity provides best protection against Omicron

A review and meta-regression of 26 studies shows that hybrid SARS-CoV-2 immunity provides the highest level of protection against the Omicron variant, researchers reported yesterday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The authors say the finding of the study, the first to estimate the durability of protection conferred by hybrid immunity—the antibody response developed through a combination of SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination—could provide guidance on vaccine timing at both the individual and public health level.

Hybrid immunity highly protective against severe outcomes
Of the 26 studies reviewed by a team led by researchers from the University of Toronto and the World Health Organization, 11 reported on the protective effectiveness of previous infection, and 15 reported on protection from hybrid immunity; 7 reported on both. The studies looked at protection against reinfection, hospitalization, and severe disease caused by Omicron.

The effectiveness of previous infection against hospital admission or severe disease at 12 months was 74.6% (95% confidence interval [CI], 63.1% to 85.3%], with effectiveness against reinfection waning to 24.7% (95% CI, 16.4% to 35.5%) at 12 months. For hybrid immunity, protection against hospital admission or severe disease was 97.4% (95% CI, 91.4% to 99.2%) at 12 months with primary series vaccination and 95.3% (95% CI, 81.9% to 98.9%) at 6 months with the first booster shot. The effectiveness of hybrid immunity against reinfection waned to 41.8% (95% CI, 31.5% to 52.8%) at 12 months, and to 46.5% (95% CI, 36.0% to 57.3%) following the first booster shot at 6 months.

Further analysis of the 7 studies that reported on both types of protection showed that hybrid immunity conferred a significant gain in protection compared with previous infection alone—whether subjects with hybrid immunity had received the partial primary vaccine series, the full vaccine series, or the first booster shot.

The authors say the findings indicate that the protection conferred by previous infection should not detract from the need for vaccination, because infection-induced immunity wanes rapidly and vaccines increase the durability of protection. In addition, they suggest the results can be used to tailor guidance on the number and timing of SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations.

'Substantial durability' of hybrid immunity

"Our findings make clear the substantial durability of hybrid immunity and could help inform the timing and prioritisation of vaccination programmes in populations with high rates of past infection," the study authors wrote. "Policy makers can use these findings to project population protection from local vaccination and seroprevalence rates, helping to inform the use and timing of COVID-19 vaccination as an important public health tool."

They add that further analysis is needed to determine effectiveness of hybrid immunity against hospitalization or severe disease over a longer duration.

"A first-generation vaccine is still an excellent option when offered as a primary series in areas with a high rate of previous infection."

In an accompanying commentary, researchers with Brazil's Universidad Federal de Bahia say the findings demonstrate that the focus of first-generation vaccines should be prevention of severe disease.

"For this purpose, a first-generation vaccine is still an excellent option when offered as a primary series in areas with a high rate of previous infection, or with boosters, if a low infection rate has been observed," they wrote.

More Good Stuff From CIDRAP:

• First-wave COVID patients had much higher risk of death for 18 months
• More than 65 million people around the world may have long COVID
• Feds probe possible stroke link to new Pfizer COVID booster
• Spanish hospitals spent $1.33 billion on COVID patients in 2020
• Convalescent plasma may cut risk of death in immune-impaired COVID patients
• Almost a fourth of air passengers screened from China had COVID-19, report reveals
• Paying people to take COVID vaccine worked well, study finds

Cracking Down

Yes, the Jonathan Reesers of the world are stupid, brutish and dangerous.

But in one very real and very important way, they're the symptom of the disease, and not the cause.

The Setup

The Reveal

The payoff

And if there's any kind of "blessing" that could possibly grow from this irredeemable dung heap, it's that these jerks have been egged on to the point where they're doing their shit out in the open now. They've been conditioned to believe they're in the majority - that their shitty attitudes and shittier behavior are the norm - and will be rewarded - so they air it all out in the public square.

Kevin In The Middle

I keep thinking McCarthy could counter the Foil Hat Five by moving across the aisle and enlisting five Dems.

That's awfully improbable to begin with, unless he made enormous concessions to seal the deal, but he's making enormous concessions anyway, so WTF - why not?

And maybe he's tried that, but maybe he's as inept as Ryan and Boehner before him.

Maybe no one is "adept" enough to wrangle the crazies who have risen from the pits of dark money hell to become what is easily tagged as Minority Rule. They seem intent on destruction for its own sake. Which puts them squarely in line with my Project Plutocrat belief.

McCarthy’s Bid for Speaker Remains in Peril Even After Key Concessions

Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, is struggling to break through a wall of entrenched opposition from hard-right lawmakers even after agreeing to weaken his leadership power.

WASHINGTON — Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the party leader, toiled on Monday — 24 hours before Republicans assume the House majority — to lock down the votes he needs to be elected speaker because he had so far failed to break through entrenched opposition from hard-right lawmakers.

The recalcitrance among ultraconservative lawmakers, even after Mr. McCarthy made a key concession that would weaken his power in the top post, threatened a tumultuous start to the Republican majority in the House. The standoff underscored Mr. McCarthy’s precarious position within his conference and all but guaranteed that even if he eked out a victory he would be a diminished figure beholden to an empowered right flank.

In a vote planned for around midday on Tuesday, when the new Congress convenes, Mr. McCarthy would need to win a majority of those present and voting — 218 if every member of the House were to attend and cast a vote. But despite a grueling weekslong lobbying effort, the California Republican appeared short of the near-unanimity he would need within his ranks to prevail.

A group of five Republicans has publicly vowed to vote against him, and more are quietly opposed or on the fence. Republicans control 222 seats and Democrats are all but certain to oppose him en masse, so Mr. McCarthy can afford to lose only a handful of his own party members.

With little time left ahead of the vote on Tuesday, Mr. McCarthy attempted over the weekend to deliver the hard-liners a major concession by agreeing to a rule that would allow a snap vote at any time to oust the speaker.

Lawmakers opposing him had listed the change as one of their top demands, and Mr. McCarthy had earlier refused to swallow it, regarding it as tantamount to signing the death warrant for his speakership in advance. But in recent days, he signaled he would accept it if the threshold for calling such a vote were five lawmakers rather than a single member.

But that was not enough to sway the five rebels opposing him. and more dissenters emerged on Sunday night, after Mr. McCarthy announced the concession to Republicans in a conference call.

Roughly two hours later, a separate group of nine conservative lawmakers — most of whom had previously expressed skepticism about Mr. McCarthy’s bid for speaker — derided his efforts to appease their flank of the party as “almost impossibly late to address continued deficiencies.” The group included Representatives Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, and Chip Roy of Texas.

“The times call for radical departure from the status quo — not a continuation of past, and ongoing Republican failures,” the group said in a statement. “For someone with a 14-year presence in senior House Republican leadership, Mr. McCarthy bears squarely the burden to correct the dysfunction he now explicitly admits across that long tenure.”

Mr. McCarthy has pledged to fight for the speakership on the House floor until the very end, even if it requires lawmakers to vote more than once, a prospect that now appears to be a distinct possibility. If he were fail to win a majority on Tuesday, members would take successive votes until someone — Mr. McCarthy or a different nominee — secured enough supporters to prevail.

That could prompt chaos not seen in the House floor in a century. Every speaker since 1923 has been able to clinch the gavel after just one vote.

No viable candidate has yet emerged to challenge Mr. McCarthy, and it was not clear who would be able to unite the fractious Republican Conference if he proved unable to do so. Potential alternatives who could emerge if he fails to secure enough votes include Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, his No. 2; Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a onetime rival who has strong support among the powerful ultraconservative faction; and Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, one of his close advisers.

Laboring to avoid a scene and cement the speakership, Mr. McCarthy has made a number of concessions over the past few months in attempts to lock up votes of far-right members.

He has called for a “Church-style investigation” into past abuses of power by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency, a reference to the select committee established in 1975, informally known by the name of the senator who chaired it, Frank Church of Idaho, that looked into abuses by American intelligence agencies.

He toughened his language in response to hard-right demands to oust Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, calling on him to resign or face potential impeachment proceedings. He promised Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who was stripped of her committee assignments for making a series of violent and conspiratorial social media posts before she was elected, a spot on the coveted Oversight Committee.

He threatened to investigate the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, promising to hold public hearings scrutinizing the security breakdowns that occurred. Last month he publicly encouraged his members to vote against the lame-duck spending bill to fund the government.

It is unclear whether any single offering from Mr. McCarthy at this point would be enough to win over some lawmakers.

During the call on Sunday, Representative-elect Mike Lawler of New York, who has announced his support for Mr. McCarthy, pointedly asked Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a ringleader of the opposition, whether he would vote for Mr. McCarthy if the leader agreed to lower the threshold for a vote to oust the speaker to just one member of Congress. Mr. Gaetz was noncommittal, according to a person on the call who recounted it on the condition of anonymity.

The exchange underscored the challenge Mr. McCarthy faces in attempting to keep control of the House Republican Conference, which includes the task of bargaining with a group of lawmakers who practice a brand of obstructionism that former Representative John A. Boehner, the Ohio Republican who was run out of the speaker post by the far right, famously described as “legislative terrorism.”

GOTV

Never forget how deeply Republicans hate our traditions of democratic self-government.

Their project is to tear it all down and replace with a corporate plutocracy.

Duty To Warn

#UNTRUTH- Mini-Film from DSI Vid on Vimeo.

She Is At Home

It's been said, and it bears repeating: The fact that Marjorie Taylor Greene is a leader in the GOP is a very bad sign that should motivate everybody with a living thinking brain to do whatever it takes to stop this nonsense.

If there's any good news here, it's only that the percentage of Republicans voicing approval for freaks like Greene indicates that freaks are about all that's left in that party.

That's right - the "good news" is that one of the two main political parties here in USAmerica Inc has been taken over by the kind of booger-eatin' morons who vote for demagogues and dead pimps every chance they get, just to stick it to the libs.

(pay wall)

Welcome home, Marjorie Taylor Greene

The first time The Washington Post wrote about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) was in the context of what made her exceptional: She was an avowed adherent of QAnon. And not just of the this guy Q has some interesting thoughts variety; rather, Greene celebrated that “there’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles out” with Donald Trump in the White House.

This was June 2020, and Greene had simply made it to the runoff in the Republican primary. The article was caveated with ifs about winning the primary and then the general, but it was clear what path she was on. Reporter Colby Itkowitz contacted members of the Republican leadership — including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and the conference’s chair, Liz Cheney (Wyo.) — but they weren’t interested in offering comment.

What seemed to be afoot was that the Republican House caucus was adding another member to its fringe, someone who’d occasionally make headlines for saying something embarrassing or introducing some weird, doomed piece of legislation. That sense was probably reinforced when Greene, as a new member of the chamber, quickly generated headlines for past comments about leading Democrats; the Democratic majority stripped her of any committee assignments, moving her from backbench to no bench.

But that was not the path Greene was destined to follow. Past members of the right-wing fringe who earned spots in Congress responded largely by folding into the white noise of the legislative process. Perhaps in part because Greene so explicitly had no part in that process — or, more likely, because she never had any interest in it in the first place — Greene helped create a new style of fringe Republican legislator. She wasn’t former Texas congressman Ron Paul (R) wanting to eradicate the Federal Reserve and she wasn’t former Iowa congressman Steve King (R) advocating hard-line immigration policies well before Trump. She understood that the platform had more value for communications purposes than legislative ones.

In essence, election to Congress simply gave Greene a louder megaphone to attack the aforementioned cabal (even if she described them differently now). It allowed her to join her power with other fringe House members, such as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), to engage in an effort that’s equal parts trolling and exaggeration. Trump loved Greene from the outset, and her unwavering fealty to him has earned her the ability to hitch herself to him repeatedly. Trump rallies now regularly feature speeches from the first-term congresswoman from rural Georgia.

This is not because she is broadly popular. YouGov recently conducted polling for the Economist that asked people to evaluate a range of Republicans, from members of the media to politicians. Trump was the most popular among Republicans, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. Far fewer Republicans have an opinion of Greene than those more-famous names, but even if we adjust the responses, evaluating favorability just among those with an opinion, Greene was seventh of seven.

Yet, as the Associated Press reported Monday, Greene has been increasingly welcomed back into the mix with the Republican establishment. When McCarthy announced the party’s midterm agenda in Pennsylvania last month, Greene was seated right behind him.

“Greene’s political currency stretches beyond her massive social media following and her ability to rake in sizable sums from donors,” the AP’s Lisa Mascaro reported. “Her proximity to Trump makes her a force that cannot be ignored by what’s left of her mainstream GOP colleagues.”

This is the point: She may not be broadly popular or influential, but she is influential in a place that other Republicans aren’t. She’s popular with a set of Republicans who are antagonistic to people such as Kevin McCarthy.

It’s not entirely clear that McCarthy is extending an olive branch to the fringe. It’s that he can’t afford to let the fringe agitate at the fringe. In the minority (though perhaps not exclusively then), there’s more power in Greene’s approach to serving in the House — shouting into microphones and maintaining an omnipresence in conservative media — than in simply trying to come up with doomed legislation. Greene has some of that, certainly, but it’s often the case that she uses the policy documents to boost her media position and not the opposite. (She’s offered up innumerable impeachment articles, including several targeting President Biden.)

McCarthy, of course, has his own ambitions. If Republicans regain the majority in November, he’d like to be speaker of the House. Allying with Greene and Gaetz and that cadre of legislators will make such an ascension more likely. But it means that his party again shifts to the right, as it has over and over since at least 2010. In 2011, after the tea party wave brought a new contingent of conservatives to Washington, the New York Times profiled McCarthy’s tricky job in corralling their votes as majority whip. That’s still his job today but with a frequently more-extreme caucus. (And spotty success.)

Cheney, freed from the shackles of protecting the Republican caucus, is no longer refraining from comment on Greene. In August, she said she’d rather work with Democrats than with Greene. Of course, by that point she was freed of political shackles entirely, having lost her bid for reelection to a Trump-endorsed Republican primary opponent.

When she was conference chair, Cheney would often stand behind McCarthy as he spoke to the media. Cheney is no longer behind McCarthy. Greene is; her time in exile is coming to an end.

Consider the shift just since 2020. In two years’ time, who will be standing in the background as the leader of the GOP makes an announcement about policy and direction? More importantly, who will the leader be who is making the announcement?