Florida Squeezed

GOProud Honorary Chair Slams Transgender Women Out of Nowhere

2013-03-16T15:14:00.001-07:00

In case you ever thought that gay Republicans weren't completely self-sacrificing... Their absolute hero, Ann Coulter, said something very awkward during a Fox News hit-job on Sen. Feinstein's Assault Weapons Ban legislation:

“I used to think women just shouldn’t be able to vote. Now, I think at least liberal women should not be able to hold office, and by woman I do not mean to limit that to the biological sense.” - Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter herself is repeatedly teased and insulted for having physical characteristics that are atypical of her gender, so one would think that she would be more sensitive to the issue.

GOProud is an offshoot of the Log Cabin Republicans (an LGBT friendly political group) and their President Jimmy LaSalvia named Ann Coulter as "Honorary Chair" of the group in 2011.

Of course, the intended topic of discussion on the Sean Hannity show was supposed to be the debate between Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) about the feasibility of banning what are known as 'assault weapons'. That conversation went something like this:

How The Mighty Have Fallen

2013-03-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

Florida's Republican Lt. Governor Has Resigned Amid 2nd Major Controversy While Marco Rubio Continues His Assault on What He calls "Freeloaders".

Illegal internet gambling ring falsely led patrons to believe that their money was being directed to a charity for veterans... Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll (R-FL) created "Veterans of the World" scheme which may have even redirected millions of illegal dollars into Governor Rick Scott's campaign coffers:
NPR - FLA Lt. Gov. Resigns During Probe of Supposed Internet Cafes

Meanwhile, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) says that liberals and Democrats are America's "freeloaders" while touting a highly falsified account of his own personal struggle to pull himself up by his bootstraps and stay afloat:
Salon.com - Marco Rubio tells CPAC: "liberals are freeloaders"

In contrast to what he has previously claimed, Marco Rubio has never lived in meager circumstances and has always been well above "middle class". The most recent sale of one his properties is far pricier than anything a middle-class Floridian could ever hope to purchase:
Miami Herald: One of Marco Rubio's Not-So-Humble Homes Made More Money in 1 Month than Average Floridian Will Make in a Year.

What Would Happen if Ann Coulter Really Was Transgender?

2013-01-15T16:36:00.001-08:00

Every time I post one of Ann Coulter's outlandish statements on facebook, it's like clockwork... reliable. Without exception, someone will use her gender inspecificity to retaliate against her brash hatred for most Americans...

The comments will pour in:

"Don't you mean MAN Coulter?"

"She looks like a man in a dress!"
"She's really a sexist gay man pretending to be a woman."

"Did she say that out of her adam's apple?"

It's such a popular meme that one must wonder if there's any "there" there... Or at least I'm the kind of guy who wonders such things.

Believe it or not - it's not implausible for a transgender woman to be a hateful Republican. Florida is home to two or three such persons. One such transgender woman, Donna Milo, even mounted a failed congressional campaign against Florida's most gay-friendly Democrat, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

So, it makes me wonder - if Ann Coulter's laryngeal prominence really did turn out to be more of an "adam's apple" than an "eve's plum" (see what I did right there?) - would it ruin her, politically speaking? Honestly - I doubt it.

It's important to note here that what Ann Coulter is most infamous for is her outrageous attacks against women, gays, Jews and racial minorities. She's the mainstream media's "go-to girl" for such things. She's a ratings whore. Her most recent inflammatory sermon included the idea that women need high-capacity magazines on their assault rifles because they have incredibly bad aim compared to men.

I think Ann Coulter would be just as popular and perhaps even get MORE media appearances as a newly outed Transgender Republican Woman. Conservative Republicans can sometimes be most hateful toward people they have something in common with - it's an effect that comes from internalized prejudices and phobias.

Examples of conservative Republicans who are in what I call "Uncle Tom's Log Cabin" include but are not limited to:

Herman Cain - a black man who promotes an economic policy that is bad for most African Americans.
Michelle Malkin - a Fox News correspondent and blogger who is known for conducting wild character assassinations against other minorities via her website Twitchy.com.
Michael Alan Weiner - Who adopted the name "Michael Savage" to assail minorities on his radio show, apparently because he's ashamed of being Jewish (or because he's ashamed of what he's saying - you decide).
Michele Bachmann - who routinely votes against anything that women want or need in congress - whether that takes the form of equal pay, access to abortion or the ability to seek damages in court.
Marcus Bachmann - I know, I know... "You can't tell who's gay just by looking at them"... but listen to him speak too! Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's obviously closeted husband just loves to torture gay teens with "conversion therapy".
Rush Limbaugh - An addict whose drug of choice is hatred. But when he's not busy insulting the intelligence of other addicts - he loves to partake in overeating and painkillers that he doesn't have a prescription for.
Jimmy LaSalvia - A gay man who decided that the Log Cabin Republicans weren't self-hating enough for him and decided to form the uber-outrageous "GOProud" organization... which basically consists of him and one other guy constantly admiring Ann Coulter for no apparent reason.

As you can see, the Republican Party is rife with hypocrites on the attack against the enemy within. So it follows that a transgender woman who hates both women and gays will someday be very popular in the Republican Party. Issues that such a character would be useful for include limiting insurance coverage for gender reassignment surgeries, outlawing LGBT marriages, voting against access to abortion and generally starting/fanning the fires of fear in the gay/women's camp.

The Advocate already published a piece on why referring to people you don't like as transgender (or some variant of that) is wrong... which you can read here. But I'd just like to add to that the idea that "Coultergeist" as I call her - can only be made stronger by such taunts. She thrives on being hated - so it's just not worth it to drag (see what I did right there?) the trans community down to her level.

FAU Professor Incites Cyberbullying of Connecticut Victims' Families

2013-01-13T16:28:00.003-08:00

"Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn."

- C.S. Lewis

December 14th is my birthday. I am a Sagittarius. That is what I know about that date - the first thing I know about it, in fact. But for the people of Newtown, Connecticut, that date will be forever associated with a bloody massacre that ripped their families violently apart and shattered their spirit.

Imagine my disillusionment when I woke up that day expecting to see a long stream of "Happy Birthday" messages on my personal facebook timeline and only found worried messages of regret and heartbreak in my newsfeed. December 14th is now less celebratory for me too.

Information travels fast - faster than it can be verified and faster than it can be taken back. Nobody knows this better than countless embarrassed journalists and bloggers (including myself) who have accidentally put the wrong information into the working hands of an unassuming public. There is one person who has the ability and obligation to teach young journalists the magnitude or importance of getting it right and controlling their impulses when interpreting facts and opinions. That man is James F. Tracy, a professor of Media History and Analysis at Florida Atlantic University.

When it comes to analyzing the media coverage of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, Jame F. Tracy has grossly and obscenely ignored everything you could see as a hard fact and replaced these obvious truths with his own paranoid delusions of a government conspiracy.

In short, he went on a public access radio program out of Berkley, CA and spread bizarre rumors that the Newtown Connecticut massacre never really happened at all... or that if it did happen, it was because President Obama ordered it to happen. He theorized that the grieving parents and children of the victims were merely "actors" playing a role for the media. He told the show host that it was not possible for one shooter to fire off so many rounds in such a short period of time - because he refuses to accept the fact that the shooter had used a Bushmaster semi-automatic assault rifle.

This conspiracy theory that he's created plays just perfectly for homicidally insane connoisseurs of such weaponry. NRA members and right-wing extremists flocked to this idea almost instantaneously. It was a disaster... a 2nd disaster. The wound for victim's families has already been re-opened and salt poured into it.

Erica Lafferty is the daughter of Sandy Hook's dearly departed Principal. Dawn Hochsprung is her mother - who died on December 14, 2012. Erica is an avid Twitter user and just days before the incident, she was re-tweeting President Obama's remarks on the fiscal cliff negotiations. Then, on the day of the tragedy... she received the news and also took to Twitter.

The above tweet (and the community connected to it) does not exactly fit in with the conspiracy narrative that the Sandy Hook Tragedy may have been just a front for Obama to do his evil New World Order deeds. In fact, the victims themselves don't fit into any such narrative. Neither do internet lurkers such as myself.

James Tracy's exploitive fame-mongering theory is bad enough as it is... but it can get worse. Much worse. As I said before - certain types of people are drawn to this sort of kool-aid and they don't just swill it down themselves - they clumsily slosh it all over everyone else.

Enter a gun-rights advocate named Brodie. Brodie had been following the rants of other crazies like Alex Jones and re-tweeting Ultimate Fighting Champions when he happened upon Tracy's "Sandy Hook didn't happen" radio rant on the internet.

Brodie did what he thought was necessary to protect the reputation of this esteemed professor at FAU... He decided to question Erica Lafferty on whether or not the mother she is grieving really ever existed at all.

Erica had been busy promoting rubber support bracelets that read "WWDD" (What would Dawn Do) in memory of her mother's heroism. The proceeds from these bracelets would be donated to her late mother's scholarship fund. Brodie evidently did not bother to understand this before demanding that Erica defend the loss of her mother.

Can you imagine having to defend the fact that your departed mother really existed in the first place to random internet trolls while you're trying to get your friends excited about supporting her favorite cause?

Twitter has since suspended the @BrodieBrasseaux account, but like all conspiracy kooks, he's probably continuing his interrogations under another name. He is just one example of many.

But yet one more insult still lingers in this whole debacle... Florida Atlantic University has (so far) refused to let their esteemed colleage, Dr. Tracy take a vacation to the funny farm. The School even issued a press statement to such effect. They wish to make it known that they, as a school, cannot be held legally accountable for Dr. Tracy's flippant skewering of truth and justice... and he will remain a tenured professor at Florida Atlantic University.

Tracy did in fact issue an apology... but only a half-hearted one that was directed to the victims families all while still defending his conspiracy theories and not apologizing for planting this evil (yet totally absurd) seed in everyone's imagination to begin with. No - Tracy has in fact added NEW conspiracy theories on top of the old ones... because he's that convinced by his delusions.

What bothers me now is that FAU seems to have taken a "not really our problem" approach to handling this situation. Yet, until this man is no longer in their employ, a degree from FAU will not be worth the paper it's printed on.

That is certainly their problem to deal with.

- Jarrett Terrill

Could Susan Rice be the only Thorn in the Rose Garden?

2012-11-14T14:33:00.000-08:00

President Obama in the Rose Garden with Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton at his side.

UPDATE - See This Link To Rachel Maddow's Blog for recent revelations that the Director of Intelligence had originally chosen not to publicly implicate Al Qaeda in the Benghazi attacks. For this reason, Susan Rice cannot be held accountable for that particular fact being omitted.

It's now been just one and a half weeks since Obama's reelection was made clear. Our nation gave us a "Forward Mandate" and simultaneously, we gave the President a vote of confidence.

But is he maybe too confident?

I'm thinking he is... and he just might be shooting from the hip a little too soon in regard to Susan Rice, our nation's ambassador to the U.N. Just today, the President chastised the Tea Party Republicans for going after Rice in their conspiracy theories about Benghazi and the incident that happened there. The President has made it clear that he believed the attack to be "terrorism" by definition - but the conspiracy hullabaloo has not ended with that.

“If Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me,” said the President. “And I’m happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received and to besmirch her reputation, is outrageous.”

Right-wing operatives now want to pin the tail on the donkey. They want to make the President and his administration accountable for the deaths of Navy Seals and State Department officials. The fringe Republicans who claim to have supported Hillary Clinton in 2008 are now feigning concern that she has "fallen on the sword" for Obama and his "terrorism condoning" administration. How convenient that they can just separate her from that administration when it best suits them, right?

However - the point is that they are going after Rice. They say that the attack in Benghazi had nothing to do with the propaganda film against Muslims which Rice claimed to be the impetus. They say that Rice used the attack in an effort to wag her finger at Christian America and reduce terrorism to a mere difference in opinion.

I am almost inclined to think they could be right about that.

Susan Rice was indeed the first person to tell America's media that the attack was a response to our own anti-muslim propaganda. If the Benghazi attack and the outrageously offensive video were unrelated to each other, we deserve at this point, to know that. Obama has won his re-election and he can only benefit further from the truth being made clear.

Rice has been silent on the matter and has not stepped forward to defend the supposed intelligence that she made us all privy to. However, she did reiterate the same talking point on ABC a number of times without first informing the American people that her husband is the executive producer of that very media outlet. Now who's spreading propaganda?

As a liberal Democrat, I have not quite been as convinced as President Obama has to trust Susan Rice and I have my own reasons for that... You can read all about that here.

But my views on gay rights are not the only thing that puts me at odds with Susan Rice. I am not fond of political animals who think only of their prospects on election day... and I think that just might describe Rice perfectly. At the time of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, Rice reportedly said, "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?"

I am very happy that the President has won his reelection, but I don't know that we need him to tangle with John McCain again unless he's really sure that Susan Rice is not playing him for a rung on the ladder.

We're calling it... a win.

2012-11-06T21:14:00.002-08:00

FloridaSqueezed Would Like To Thank:

Debbie Wasserman Schultz (winner!)
Trayvon Martin (RIP)
The Trayvon Martin Family
The Dolphin Democrats
Sheriff Scott Israel (winner!)
Sen. Bill Nelson (winner!)
Florida's Liberal Majority (facebook group)
Sec. of State Hillary Clinton
Congressman Alan Grayson (winner!)
Women Who Say No and Meant What They Said
Planned Parenthood
The League of Women Voters
The ACLU
The Obama Family
Elizabeth Warren (winner!)
Joe Donnelly (winner!)
Tammy Baldwin (winner!)
Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Florida
Occupy Fort Lauderdale
Jill Stein & The Green Party (for fighting to be heard at all!)
Florida Media (who did not give up on us) Miami Herald, Nicole Sandler, MSNBC, Daily Kos, Huffington Post etc...
... and most of all... Florida Voters~!
Reasonable Republicans who were not afraid to share in our concerns... (Colin Powell, Chris Christie, etc.)
Also, The LGBT community in Orlando, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Key West and even out in the rural areas...

How to Win an Election in 18 Easy Steps (Republican Edition):

2012-10-23T11:57:00.000-07:00

1. Start by choosing candidates who have failed to win over 50% of the elections they've participated in... even within their own party.
2. Make sure that your candidate's income is so extravagant and secretive that it will be seen as a symbol of their "down home, just like you" personality.
3. Buy the voting machines.
4. Eliminate voting for people who may or may not be "eligible" to vote in our nation's "exclusive democracy".
5. Back up your wishy-washy candidate of last resort with a vice candidate who is best known for a legislative failure regarding the budget.
6. Ignore the media. Tell everyone that all media is against your candidates from the outset and nothing they read from any source will ever be truly true.
7. Make sure that women, gays, blacks, hispanics, religions or other minorities are alienated within the ranks of your party to the greatest degree possible.
8. Promise to stay focused on the economy when America has a bad economy. If that economy should happen to improve on any level, switch focus to "Muslim Terrorists" because that's a perennial winner for our side.
9. Switch your official campaign slogan as often as possible to keep everybody guessing.
10. Kiss up to the Queen of England because she just loves it when people imply that she shares their racist point of view.
11. Ignore the polls - polls are never accurate unless 100% of the respondents are from states whose names begin with the letter K.
12. Have your candidate deny his own religion and make sure that even the only minority to which he is a member is ultimately thrown under the bus in the end.
13. Defend your candidate with an army of has-been celebrities, strippers, porn stars, vegas casino tycoons and racist "reality TV" personalities.
14. Interrupt women at every opportunity and give them the "3rd Wife" treatment.
15. Assume that every veteran and every member of the armed forces is automatically on your side. After all, they take a pledge to uphold the Republican Party, don't they?
16. Do everything your father would be ashamed of you for.
17. Rely most heavily on Fox News as your "think tank" du jour and try not to think about the idea that they will only be successful in the media marketplace if your opponent retains his office and they have a "boogeyman" to sell.
18. When all else fails, which is known to happen as long as there is a black democratic President at the helm of your campaign, rig the machines... This will be easy since you bought the machines in step 3.

~ written by known communist and gay muslim sympathizer, Jarrett Terrill for FloridaSqueezed.com

More Right Wingers You Can't Trust With Kids...

2012-08-29T19:46:00.000-07:00

"Pornography is destructive and it can ruin a person's life," says Reverend Grant Storms, who calls himself a "fundamentalist Christian Patriot".
Storms was quite popular for leading anti-gay rallies in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana and protesting Mardi Gras in New Orleans due to the flagrant sexuality expressed there.
Storms was arrested after masturbating in a public park multiple times and no pornography was present during those times.
Read the story here.

Caleb Douglas Hesse, another Christian anti-gay activist who was slightly more centrifugal to the anti-gay movement in California was even worse... He was actually molesting kids... Here's a video you can watch about that:

Republicans: Cookin' Up a Whole New Batch of Crazy!

2012-08-23T08:55:00.001-07:00

Democrats shouldn't get too comfy between now and November because the Republicans are cookin' up all kinds of crazy and that always has its consequences for everyone... especially when there's a lot of money behind it.

Here's a brief rundown of the madness:

To refresh yourself on some of the GOP insanity from 2010, click here.

We'll kick off crazy-fest 2012 with our reigning queen of drunken bigotry, Jan Brewer. Since her mostly failed attempts at Birtherism, immigration deform and hating on gay people, Jan Brewer has taken it upon herself to join her Tea Party fan-base in defining "personhood". She says that the idea that women can secretly prevent pregnancy from rape is only "a little bit outrageous" and that it's totally up to legislators and voters whether or not they agree. Brewer has outlawed abortions in Arizona after 20 weeks... making NO EXCEPTIONS for the life/safety of the mother if the doctor doesn't feel like it. It's an outrageous law that is not seeing nearly enough media attention considering that a woman could conceivably die from this in Arizona before the election.

Of course, we can't really discuss fetal personhood without an honorary mention of the grandfather of all screwy looney-toons soundbytes, Todd Akin. By now, you should know all about the idiotic belief system he holds and the statement that stirred the pot. But if you don't watch Rachel Maddow, then you wouldn't know all of THIS. Akin's coo-coo for cocoa puffs lunacy stems from other pro-lifers with these crazy ideas before him... including a man by the name of John C. Willke. Willke, if you’re curious, endorsed Romney’s 2008 presidential run—a fact Romney freely boasted about at the time. “I am proud to have the support of a man who has meant so much to the pro-life movement in our country,” Romney said in a 2007 release, according to the New York Daily News. Even some Florida Republicans have seriously twisted ideas about rape.

Todd akin did not act alone in this insanity, though. Which brings us to your Republican Vice Presidential hopeful, Paul Ryan. “Nobody is proposing to deny birth control to anybody,” said Paul Ryan in a CBS interview where he backed away from every single point in the pro-life agenda. This is a very DRASTIC flip-flop for the congressman. Akins and Ryan had conspired immediately upon Ryan's entrance to the House of Representatives to draft a fetal personhood bill called H.R. 3 which, if it had become law, would have legislatively overturned the Roe Vs. Wade Supreme Court decision and made NO EXCEPTIONS for a woman who is raped or the victim of incest. The Paul Ryan lie that "nobody is proposing to deny birth control" is a BIG LIE indeed, however. You can read all about these attempts (by Catholic Republicans like Ryan, no less) right here, here and here.

From Paul Ryan on the subject of fetuses, we come to the big guy - Mitt Romney. The "fetal skeletons" in Romney's closet were LITERALLY swept away by his corporation called Stericycle. It was an awful blow to the pro-life movement when they discovered that Mitt Romney had inked the deal for his Bain Capital corporation to purchase Stericycle. It is a company that they had been protesting all the while because it facilitates abortions by removing the "medical waste" and disposing of it properly. I don't need to tell you why pro-lifers have a problem with the term "medical waste". This is just the tip of the iceberg with Romney and Bain though. The time at which Mitt Romney saw over the acquisition of Stericycle was a time that he said he was NOT in the employ of Bain Capital. Obviously, since the signatures are there, and it was Romney himself conducting this business, he lied. This is also, conveniently, one of the many years for which Mitt Romney never released his tax returns. But it gets EVEN WORSE for the Presidential hopeful... It turns out that Romney lied yet even once more before all of this about his taxes... and the consequences of this other lie are insurmountable for him in his bid for the Presidency. Mitt Romney never paid any taxes from an address in Massachusetts. Why is that important? Because his eligibility to run for Governor of the State of Massachusetts was entirely predicated on the idea that he had. Romney had not been a Massachusetts resident for the required seven years. He brushed that concern aside by LYING. He told the people of Masshachsetts that he had paid TAXES in Massachusetts for seven years. It turns out that everyone just assumed nobody would tell a lie that big... They had apparently never met someone like Mitt Romney before... because he did in fact, lie.

Somebody who's very concerned about how all of this will pan out for Republicans is a man by the name of Bryan Fischer. Fischer is one of those guys that Paul Ryan now claims doesn't exist. He is totally in agreement with the Akins fantasy about "legitimate rape" not causing pregnancies. He also doesn't want women to have access to contraceptives. Fischer heads up the American Family Association. Immediately, you recognize that name because they are the secondary source of all things "anti-gay" in the United States. The first and foremost source being the hate group known as the Family Research Council. While party leaders were immediately frightened by the onslaught of adverse reactions to Akins' crazy "magic vaginas" story, Fischer was upset with them for reacting to it. His Twitter account relays: "Akin staying in. GOP elites, by gangtackling Akin instead of having his back, have put this seat in play. Loss is on them." This is basically like saying that a legislator should not be held accountable for being wrong about something... That even if something is a total fabrication - we'll all be fine as long as we stick with it.

Bryan Fischer draws from the same fanbase as 700 Club Televangelist, Pat Robertson. Of course, Pat Robertson has the heavy burden of explaining to Christian America what should be done with all the "persons" who will not be aborted when Republican policies take effect... You can apparently do whatever you want with unwanted kids after they're born... as long as you DON'T dare adopt them, says Robertson. No man is going to want to be tied down to the "whole United Nations" which includes "weird" kids of other races "who may have been molested" he says.
Pat Robertson seems to be on a rampage against our nation's young people lately. The religious school that he owns is called Regent University. Of course, it's not a real university because it's a private religious school. The word "regent" means "governing in absense of a higher authority". School boards and county-area branches at all levels of government are often called "regents" or regencies. It has been this way for over 100 years, actually. But you guessed it... Robertson has assembled a crack-team of lawyers to restrict the government from being able to use the term. He is suing local community colleges and non-religious public schools to try to take ownership of the word that he's only been using since 1979.

Speaking of "other races" whose children one should supposedly not adopt, lest they find themselves hosting a United Nations convention in their living room - we would be remiss in not reminding you that the Tea Party Express still has plans to plow over every last brown-skinned American until there are none left. No man is better suited for this task than white America's favorite skinhead - Joe The Plumber. Joe has given up the glamorous job of plunging toilets so that he can enjoy Government funded healthcare at taxpayer expense as a United States Congressman. His plan is apparently to shrink the size of Government by adding himself to it. He is running in Ohio on a platform of "don't spread my wealth" and "let's start shooting at the Mexican Border". Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently, Joe is very sensitive about being called a racist by "liberal Obama supporters"... he routinely complains about that on his facebook page, but he just leaves that statement dangling there without apology. Apparently, if Marco Rubio's parents happened to be anywhere near the border between Mexico and the United States, Congressman Plumber would suggest that border police should shoot at them. No joke.

Let's not forget that Joe The Plumber was brought to us by the same public relations department in the GOP that delivered Sister Sarah Palin to us. Palin, if you recall, put shooting targets over a map of Democrats in the United States, including one over the name and location of congresswoman Gabby Giffords who was shot, almost fatally, yet still luckier than a number of other innocent people at her event. The mainstream media has failed to mention that Jared Laughner (the shooter in Arizona) listed "Mein Kampf" as his favorite book on his YouTube profile. He also had a very creepy video he took of himself burning the American Flag in the Arizona Desert. The media mostly in concert with CNN and Fox News, decided apparently that since Laughner was "crazy", that it somehow ruled out the possibility that he was ALSO an antisemitic white supremacist and gun-nut. Shockingly, violent racists who are connected in any way to Sarah Palin are never held up to scrutiny for their political alliances.

Since Palin has gone national with a lot of support from Fox News and the Oil and Coal lobby - a new Republican has emerged in Wasilla, Alaska. His name is Mark Ewing... Palin would be so proud of Ewing. Some of his latest stump speech talking points have included "I love coal. I love the smell of burning coal in the morning." and "We need to educate our children, but there are certain individuals that are just not going to benefit from an education... like kids who have a hard time making their wheelchair move."

Really? The latest Republican attack will be... against kids in wheelchairs! That's just made of win, isn't it?

Joe The Race-baiting Ohio Candidate Concerned About Mexicans Plumber

2012-08-22T06:40:00.000-07:00

One would THINK that a supposed "plumber" like Joe Wurzelbacher could stop himself from spouting crap...

Alas, The Ohio Tea Party candidate for Congress is unable to control his NRA-sponsored message:

Worthy Adversaries | What Obama is REALLY Up Against in November

2012-08-15T09:22:00.000-07:00

My friend Monica had an interesting little video clip on her blog this morning that shows the much maligned "liberal gotcha media" in action... Soledad O'Brien from CNN gets tough with John Sununu over the difference between his claim that Obama has cut Medicare for seniors and the reality that a Democratic plan would actually just do some funny math and subtract from some kind of future savings. We've seen this before when it comes to the Right Wing budget hawks... They take any savings that Democrats can muster up and chalk it up to a "heartless cut to essential programs"... which of course, never turns out to be the case and then the other shoe drops and it was THEIR cuts that turn out to be the harmful ones.

This is an example of the more obvious and predictable propaganda that we expect from the right in every election... Most of America just tunes it out. But this year, there are much bigger truth-benders out there that voters won't immediately be able to put a finger on.

In 2010, I highlighted the funding behind Tea Party anti-healthcare reform demonstrations and how astroturf shills would dress up as doctors and nurses and "regular concerned citizens" and scream at our legislators about dystopian Nazi death panels...

We later learned that we could place a big chunk of the blame for those demonstrations on Koch Industries, a chemical company that hates regulation of any industry... and probably hates a black guy sitting in the White House as well. But one, more obvious culprit sort of slid under the radar to most of America... That, would of course, be the insurance industry... See, when we talk about "the insurance industry", we're talking about a collective alliance between all different types of insurance. Health Insurance, Auto Insurance, Life Insurance, Homeowner's Insurance... They've all got each other's backs and they don't have yours! Everybody knows it's a racket... and everybody is intimately aware of how much that racket is costing them.

Progressive Auto Insurance has recently been exposed for putting money into the legal defense of vehicular manslaughterers in a desperate attempt to avoid paying out on policies that it created. You know Progressive, right? They have that cute liberal-looking chick named Flo in all of their advertisements...

I hate to break it to ya, America... but Flo and the GEICO gecko are manipulative assholes. There, I said it... These much beloved icons of TV advertising are hiding a sleezy underbelly of cutthroat political propaganda that you can't even fathom. Click here to see who REALLY best represents the interests of GEICO...

Progressive Auto Insurance, if you recall, was rumored to be the principal source of funding for the gay rights advocacy group called GetEQUAL. GetEQUAL spent way too much time maligning other gay rights advocates and Democrats in congress to have been truly helpful in repealing DADT and fighting for equality. Now many of the activists were not privy to these politics at the time they started screaming at the President through bullhorns - but that's how Tea Party-style astroturf works... You can get well-intentioned individuals to do some pretty counter-productive things if you really put your mind to it.

Moving right along... another massive propaganda front against the current President of the United States is being mounted by the FORMER President of the United States... You didn't really think that George W. Bush went anywhere did you? Of course not... and he's not going to sit on the sidelines in this election. Over 70% of Romney's Foreign Policy ministry is made up of old Bush pals... This is not a fact that Romney wants you to be overly familiar with. It's a reluctant alliance... Bush was never really fond of Romney in the beginning but the good people of Salt Lake City, Utah proved just tricky enough to finally secure their guy as the Bush Dynasty's latest incarnation. What does an alliance with Bush get you? One hell of a new "Swiftboat" campaign... complete with Bush loyalists like Chad Kolton and a bunch of Navy Seals who will pretend that Obama's "loose lips" are sinking their ships...
Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund Inc. (or "OPSEC" for short) has all the same trappings as The Swiftboat Veterans For Truth but with a little more of an authoritative air.

Of course, this would be Bush's contribution to the dialogue because one of the group's main objectives is to show that Obama is taking too much credit for the killing of Osama Bin Laden, which has been a wound that Republicans just can't stop licking.

Finally and perhaps the most destructive wing of the Republican Ministry of Propaganda that is active in the 2012 election cycle would be the small lobbying groups who control larger groups of ideologically driven special interest groups... These include, but are not limited to, Richard Berman's Center for Consumer Freedom, The Rand Center (which calls for "a revolt against today’s intellectual mainstream"), ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Commission), NRA (National Rifle Association) and the Family Research Council (FRC). In their alliances with right-wing "think tanks", these lobbyists produce massive quantities of anti-Democratic propaganda on a daily basis. They all work in tandem to create special right-wing "talking points" and then saturate the mainstream media with them. Many of the people associated with one of these groups are often associated with the others to varying degrees as well.

One of these very well orchestrated projects was "Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day" which disguised itself as a response to an impending boycott from LGBT persons but which actually ended up serving to create a new right-wing media personality out of a Chick-Fil-A employee named Rachel. (To read in detail how they pulled THAT one off, click here. To watch Rachel join Fox News in a senseless refutation of "Obamacare" on behalf of all women, watch here.)

Another project that these groups have been working on, which is truly frightening, is "The Real George Zimmerman". George Zimmerman, as everyone now knows is the white/hispanic guy who stalked, shot and killed an unarmed black teen named Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. Before that event had even entered mainstream news in any meaningful way, a few websites popped up online which presented a self-defense theory on behalf of Zimmerman. The creepy problem with this concept is two-fold: 1) Zimmerman hadn't even made a self-defense claim at the time and was in hiding while President Obama among others advocated on Trayvon Martin's behalf. 2) The claims being made (supposedly by objective 3rd parties) were all based on smearing the victim's character and circumstantial "evidence" which would later become the key points in Zimmerman's defense when he was finally arrested on charges. The smears, which sought to incriminate Martin in his own murder were entirely based on the victim's race and repeatedly invoked statistics about African Americans and crime levels in the United States.

In this last example, the "hidden agenda" is not merely freeing a supposedly "innocent" George Zimmerman - it is much more complicated than that. ALEC and the NRA have heavily lobbied Florida's government to enact laws like the now infamous "Stand Your Ground" rule of self-defense - an adjustment to the Castle Doctrine. The laws are far reaching and even nonsensical in their deregulation of firearm combat. The idea is that weapons manufacturers can use "panic" in the media to encourage more people to purchase firearms. A shooting like the one in Colorado at a movie theater can be turned into a reason to DEREGULATE gun ownership and encourage MORE people to carry concealed weapons around with them for supposed protection. However, the Stand Your Ground law fails to protect anyone at all and that becomes obvious when the Zimmerman/Martin case is considered. In order to dust away their own tracks and act like nothing shifty is going on, the NRA and ALEC need to do their very best to see it that the case goes down the way they want it to... as mere self-defense. They know that Zimmerman will have to go to jail - that is almost completely unimportant to them. The most important thing that the NRA and ALEC want, they've already achieved (as of yesterday), which is legally disconnecting the case from "Stand Your Ground". Another thing they hope to accomplish is putting enough racially motivated suspicion on the case to further implicate President Obama with the concept they've created from scratch - "black males who are going to get away with things if you let them".

Ricky Martin Defends Michelle Obama From Racist Republican Tweets

2012-08-08T18:18:00.000-07:00

Just last week, Puerto Rico was all turned upside down about Obama's birthday...

Although, Republicans in Puerto Rico were apparently very confused and thought it was Michelle's birthday. Some of them still don't understand that the President's birthday is August 4th and his wife's birthday is January 17th. It's such an easy thing to find out on the internet.

But that's not how Puerto Rican Republicans like to use the internet... They like to upload pictures of their buttholes and send hateful, racist rants directly to the White House.

When Michelle Obama's staff uploaded a beautiful photo of her presenting a birthday cake to her husband, a few people used Twitter to "cyberbully" the First Lady by "tweeting" nasty messages underneath... No big deal, right? Republicans do that all the time... It's to be expected from them.

Well... It was very different for a woman named Heidi Anne Wys Toro because she is Secretary and Chief Political Strategist to Puerto Rico's Speaker of the House, Jennifer Gonzales.

In typical Republican fashion, Heidi Wys sent her tweet without even understanding that it was the President's birthday she was protesting - not Michelle's. But it's even worse because the tweet was horribly racist. She tweeted about the First Lady feasting on bananas and being taken to Obama's "homeland of Kenya"... This is slightly worse coming from an official in the territory of Puerto Rico because they try so much to be afforded everything that comes with the right of voting in our elections.

Puerto Ricans were OUTRAGED.

But do you think that Jenniffer Gonzales (R) did the right thing and fired this "strategist"? Of course not! She even defended the racist tweet as "Freedom of Speech" and aims to put the whole thing to rest... The problem is that this isn't even the first time that these kind of messages have come from her office... Evidently she's becoming known for this kind of thing.

Enter Ricky Martin with his tweet:

"@Heidiwys - [Your] racist and xenophobic comments are unnacceptable."

Jenniffer Gonzales made sure to denounce the offending tweet but followed that up with the "free speech" defense and re-tweeted Ricky Martin's response in order to show her more reasonable side... Then she issued a lengthy statement on the matter that mostly just encouraged her fellow Republicans to remember that people can save things from the internet... so don't get caught being so typical because it will look bad for her come election time.

There's some irony in an "out of the closet" Ricky Martin stepping to the rescue here though... Particularly because of what I'm about to tell you next...

Gonzales is not the first Puerto Rican Republican to have "social networking" issues... Roberto Arango (R-PR) was quickly escorted out of prominence when he made Anthony Weiner's tweets seem like Sesame Street.... The anti-gay Republican, Arango, infamously came out of the closet with a series of photographs of his anus on full display using the gay iphone app called Grindr...

Randy Travis Vs. George Zimmerman: What a broken nose looks like.

2012-08-08T11:37:00.003-07:00

Two mugshots were released today... One highly anticipated, the other a sort of surprise...

The first mugshot was not a real mugshot at the time it was taken... It was a police evidentiary photograph of George Zimmerman, taken approximately one hour after he shot and killed an unarmed teen, Trayvon Martin, in Sanford, Florida.

Zimmerman later cooked up a story about the teen had supposedly attacked him and broke his nose, thereby giving him a self-defense claim for the shooting.

As you can see clearly here, Zimmerman's nose is NOT broken (at least not within that week)... A broken nose almost always causes a black eye. Zimmerman's nose bends to his left... indicating that he had suffered a broken nose a long time ago, maybe even years ago... but not recently.

The second mugshot is a genuine mugshot - a jail booking photo. Country music star Randy Travis, was arrested on DWI charges after he reportedly was driving around drunk... and COMPLETELY NAKED.

Randy Travis has had a troubled life - in the mid 90's he was photographed in gay nightclubs and LGBT rights activists urged him to come out of the closet... If Travis was indeed gay, he went further in the opposite direction, getting married and joining a radical fundamentalist and anti-gay church. From there, his career took a nose-dive and now he is an actor in anti-Muslim propaganda films. Yes, Randy Travis is now known for being a Michele Bachmann/Pastor Hagee styled Islamophobe.

As you can clearly see in Randy Travis' mugshot, his nose also bends to his left... and the break likely happened during the process of his arrest... because he has the black eye to prove it.

Sandra Fluke VS. Jenna Jameson (Sorry, no mud wrestling here...)

2012-08-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

Sandra Fluke was accused by right wing radio shock-jock Rush Limbaugh of being (among other things) a "slut" and a "whore" because she spoke to Congress in favor of healthcare laws that would permit coverage of contraceptives.

Jenna Jameson is widely known as the "Queen of Porn"... She has starred in such films as "Cum One, Cum All", "Convention Cuties", "I Love Lesbians", "Wicked", "Jenna Loves Pain", "Exposure" and "Dirt Merchant".

Here's what they have to say about the upcoming Presidential election:

Sandra Fluke: "I'll be standing with President Obama in Colorado because I believe we must defend [basic healthcare] rights for all women.When Obamacare takes full effect, we'll never again be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition like being a survivor of domestic violence or breast cancer, or having had a Caesarean section. Nor will we ever again be charged more than men for the same insurance just because we're women."

Jenna Jameson: "I’m very looking forward to a Republican being back in office... When you're wealthy, you want a Republican in office."

Nothing ironic about THIS situation, eh?

Chick-Fil-A Becomes Iconic for Neo-NAZIS & Tea Party

2012-08-02T21:16:00.002-07:00

Young-Adult fiction writer's idea accidentally leads to Arizona Chick-Fil-A protester being cyber-bullied by "White Power" website based in West Palm Beach, Florida

It's no secret that Arizona has become absolutely infested with Neo-Nazis since Jan Brewer took office... But their intermingling with the Tea Party receives very little media attention - until now. The "White Power" groups, it turns out, are BIG fans of Chick-Fil-A and have been resorting to well-orchestrated cyber-bullying attacks in order to fulfill their "chicken pride" dreams...

This story starts out with a Young Adult Fiction writer named Jackson Pearce... She's level-headed, witty, and her fans love her... She's a white, Christian girl who makes fun, upbeat YouTube videos and updates her Twitter account like every 10 minutes... seriously.

Jackson used to eat at Chick-Fil-A "all the time" until she decided that the company was indeed anti-gay and she joined the protest/boycott movement with this clever addition to the dialogue:

Now, as you can see from the above video, Jackson Pearce's idea is simple... Go to Chick-Fil-A during "chicken pride day" and ask them for a cup of free water... This, you should mention is a fulfillment of Biblical principle set forth in Proverbs 25-whatever...

But one Chick-Fil-A protester, Adam Smith in Tuscon, AZ sort of botched up the idea... He demanded "free water" without really asking for it... and he forgot to mention the Proverbs thingy... In short, you could say that Adam was a little bird-brained and forgot the key ingredients from the idea that Jackson Pearce cooked up... (See what I did right there?)

Here's Adam Smith's video upload that kind of botched Pearce's good intention:

But Adam Smith was indeed, over-all, respectful and did not "abuse" the Chick-Fil-A employee... This is very important to note. The Chick-Fil-A employee (identified only as Rachel) was VERY respectful and polite... Adam's protest made her uncomfortable but she didn't lose her cool... Chick-Fil-A has every reason to be proud of her.

But although Adam's protest was maybe a bit "bitter" in the sense that he questioned how "Chick-Fil-A employees live with themselves"... He was also very polite and said "Thank You" and told the employee that she "deserves better" than what Chick-Fil-A can offer her...

Now - here's where the whole clucking thing gets deep-fried and battered and comes up as a big smelly ball of gizzards for the Tea Party.

Adam was fired for this...

Adam got fired from his job right after he uploaded the video to his personal YouTube account. The video wasn't made on company time and he didn't connect his off-the-clock actions to his employment on any level.

Adam worked for a medical supply company called the Vante Corporation in Arizona... It remained unclear how Vante knew about Adam's protest video so quickly and took such swift action against him within 24 hours... But I am going to clear that up for you now.

Indeed, within 24 hours of Adam making his anti-chick-fil-a protest video, not only did he find himself out of a job, but he was stalked, bullied and cyberbullied by random people he'd never even met before. Furthermore, in that same brief period of time, Adam's name and photo and personal email address were being blasted all over Twitter and even corporate press-release websites such as Marketwire and Business Insider...

This is the work of a Neo-Nazi "White Power" hate-group website called Stormfront.org... I will not link to the offending portion of their website for obvious reasons... But I will show you a screenshot from their YouTube video re-upload of Adam's protest video...

On the website itself, users do not always take the requisite precautions to obscure their identities and their Twitter accounts as "Tea Party" activists are easily located by anyone who looks into such things. Stormfront.org was the first website to begin squawking and crowing (there I go again!) about their Chicken Pride Day success in getting Adam fired from his job at the Vante Corporation.

They had orchestrated the sabotage and were happy to log onto Twitter under their "Tea Party" identities (a friendlier face of hatred) and make sure that every "conservative" website was soon blogging about the "gay man" (not true in Adam's case) who had "assaulted" and "abused" an innocent Chick-Fil-A employee. Even Fox News has such a story... and it's been less than 48 hours since the event took place... However the real story here is how the story was fabricated by the Tea Party in conjunction with a Neo-Nazi website...

Another question remains... Will the Vante Corporation hire Adam back and admit that they have no business prying into the private lives of their employees to such a degree? Or will we forever suspect that Vante itself is somehow connected to Stormfront.org?

Update: Adam has contacted me and admitted that his actions in the video are not his personal best - which is why he originally attempted to erase the video.
Furthermore, I need to explain why I've copied both his video and Jackson's video for this blog post. Under the "fair use" clause in copyright terms, these videos are both "newsworthy" and should now be considered "in the public domain" since they are part of and directly relate to an ongoing issue in mainstream news.
I am not attempting to claim that these videos are my own or that I have any right to use them beyond preserving/displaying them for their newsworthiness alone. I was not the first person to copy and display these videos and specifically Adam's video is one that he did not wish to have online anymore - since others have begun to edit the video in order to further harass him, I feel obligated to show the untouched version here to counterbalance that. I do not attempt to make any money from these videos or connect their creators with the opinions expressed in this blog. The facts and opinions expressed on Florida Squeezed are the author's own and are not necessarily endorsed by any other parties discussed or mentioned on this blog. 08/04/12 (Original blog post at 08/02/12)

Watch Adam's sincere apology to Rachel here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmP9Shki6_I
It also contains some very interesting information about the way in which he was immediately bullied at work over something that people ordinarily wouldn't even have known about so quickly...

Good Chicken Without All The Controversy!

2012-07-28T20:42:00.001-07:00

I've been watching youtube videos and reading tweets from Chrisitian people all over America who are weighing in on the Chick-Fil-A controversy.

Some people, like Sarah Palin, have chosen to back the restaurant and even give them a bunch of free advertising because they donate to anti-gay groups. Palin is trying to counteract an LGBT boycott against the business which charges that people should not support a business that donates to anti-gay causes. Of course, the response from Chick-Fil-A supporters is predictable yet nonsensical: "It's not that we hate gays, it's that we support marriage."

If you support marriage, make it available to more people and then don't get a divorce. That's my opinion!

Now - having said that... There are many Christian Americans who are caught between a rock and a hard place right now... They love fried chicken, they love to support Christian family-owned businesses but they don't want to contribute to any controversy or feel like they're interfering with anyone's civil rights...

I have a solution for these folks... It's called Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken and it satisfies all of the above and THEN some.
Here's all your questions, answered:

Is it a big corporate chain or is it a small business?
It is a corporation, and yes, they have more than a couple locations. However, they are a smaller business than Chick-Fil-A and are likely to appreciate your business a lot more.

Who owns or runs Lee's Famous Recipe and what sort of things to do they care about?
Their name is the Stillwell family and the charity called Never Say Never is very dear to them. They aim to help people who are disabled participate in athletics (NSNF facebook page).

Do they donate to anti-gay or pro-gay causes?
None that I am aware of...

Are their employees happy on the job?
Yes - their employees seem to think their workplace treats them fairly and the owners are VERY much involved with the day-to-day business of Lee's Famous Recipe.

I strongly advocate that if you MUST eat fried chicken, you want it to taste good, and you don't want to contribute to any controversy - go with Lee's Famous Recipe if there is one near you... They have locations in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Virginia Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina.

Do you know of an American Family-Owned Business that deserves a little bit of attention? Please tell us about them in the comments section! FloridaSqueezed loves to support small businesses who make and sell their products in the United States!

Drunk On Sour Grapes - The Quotable Mitt Romney

2012-07-26T07:32:00.000-07:00

Back in March, Mitt Romney got a little taste of political success in Illinois. It was a mixed blessing, really, because the politics of Illinois (particularly Chicago) have become a dog whistle to Republican operatives seeking to tarnish Obama's reputation in the blogosphere and social media. While Obama's familial home-base is Hawaii, Republicans have had more than their share of self-induced political misfortune in the Aloha State, leaving them with only Chicago (and sometimes the Republic of Kenya) to alienate in their propaganda. For some unexplained reason, however, Romney's big win in the Land of Lincoln was short on dignity and long on misfired bravado. While Romney isn't known as a "guy you could have a beer with", the Huffington Post/AOL reported that Romney slurred his words and stumbled in laps around his perfectly working teleprompter.

That being said, it is not Mitt Romney's inarticulate moment that I want to call your attention to... I want you to notice what Romney had PLANNED to say... what his entire campaign presumed to be fit for the scrolling screen in front of their candidate. It's no "gaffe" that I'm sounding the alarms on here - it's what the so-called "Believe in America" troupe actually believes about America. Ironically, it was the following sentiment that Mitt Romney spoke clearly without stuttering:

"I have had many business successes and failures over the years. Each step of the way, I learned something about what it is that makes our American system so powerful. You can't learn that by teaching Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago."

This is a direct quote from a victory speech that the Romney campaign crafted and Mitt Romney read aloud from a teleprompter after an Illinois Republican Primary win. Not only is it rather unbecoming of any professional to mar a victory speech with unnecessary character attacks against their eventual opponent, but it's also very telling that Romney and his campaign chose this line of attack to commemorate their small victory in Illinois. Mitt Romney knows that our President's achievements are far greater than his few years spent as a civil rights attorney and college professor. Although Romney is 15 years older than President Obama, he received his Business Degree from Harvard University where Obama would ultimately become Editor and then President of the esteemed Harvard Law Review.

More egregious than the implied insult and elitist dismissal of both the President and the University of Chicago, is Mitt Romney's contempt for Constitutional Law itself. In Mitt Romney's world, the almighty dollar makes the world go around and there's no place for "governmental intrusion" in the private sector. It is this lack of ethics that has led Mr. Romney into trouble throughout his various attempts at political office. He has personally signed his name to the dotted line allowing American jobs to disappear into foreign sweatshops. He has hidden the majority of his income from taxation - ultimately depriving the United States of the only dues he owes to this great country. He has sought to convert the United States Government into an agency that conducts its affairs with his best financial interests at heart. He has built his entire campaign for the Presidency with insults and personal criticisms, all the while avoiding the requisite details to explain his own positions on important matters.

These transgressions are not just the mark of a bad politician... They are cowardly and selfish. They are bad for America. These immoral actions might be "business as usual" to someone like Mitt Romney, but small business owners and employees who pay their taxes and respect the laws founded in our Constitution will not likely adhere to Mitt Romney's myopic view of America as his personal ATM machine.

Mr. Romney never got around to explaining exactly "what it is that makes our American system so powerful". Hopefully, whatever it is, it will be used to help us all in our journeys toward freedom, independence and peace. We know it's already been used for quite the opposite purposes at times.

Why Jennifer Carroll's Comments Are Offensive to EVERYONE.

2012-07-18T16:59:00.002-07:00

UPDATE: Jennifer Carroll has written an apology to Floridians for her remarks. The FloridaSqueezed blog accepts Mrs. Carroll's apology and respects her ability to admit a mistake... It is this blog's policy not to remove content save for extreme error but the reader should know that Carroll has done her best to smooth things over since this post was written. - J.T. This update 07-27-12 Original post: 07-18-12

Florida's Lieutenant Governor, Jennifer Carroll recently made a comment that the Huffington Post passed off as "awkward" (video) but which were actually the height of utmost offense for someone in her position to utter. Here's her quote:

"The problem is that when you have these types of accusations that come out, it's not just one person that you're attacking. You're attacking an entire family... My husband doesn't want to hear that... He knows what type of woman I am and my kids know what type of woman I am.
I am the one that's married for 29 years. My accuser is the one that's single for 29 years... a long time (smiles)... So... (nervous giggle and flits hair) Usually black women who look like me... We don't engage in relationships like that. (nervous giggle turns into cackling)."

In the State of Florida, gays and lesbians are not only forbidden to marry, but under 2008's Amendment 2, they are not even allowed to have a Civil Union. Florida's Republican-led legislature is so obscenely homophobic that the subject has become a point of contention in politics around the globe. For the most part, black leaders have stayed out of gay rights issues or they have been helpful in changing the dialogue. Mrs. Carroll has done quite the opposite here. This also serves to highlight the fact that Florida Republicans have a LOT of gay skeletons in their closet... so the idea that she might have had some brush with homosexuality is hardly out of the realm of possibility.

The Lt. Governor has insinuated that black women will only "engage" in lesbian relationships if they are lonely or unwanted by men. She has gone further in touting her own beauty, implying that she's too attractive to fall victim to lesbianism. She refers to "accusations and attacks" but these statements (up until now) have been neither.

Lastly, her statement is grossly offensive to white people as well. Why? Because you can't claim that BLACK women are able to control their sexual orientation and make moral choices without implying that WHITE women are unable to do so.

Jennifer Carroll's ideology about race and sexual orientation would leave us open to make these kinds of judgments about her based only on her appearance... would she think this was fair?

Find Out Why You Should Boycott Chick-fil-A

VIDEO: Another FL Republican Goes Haywire...

2012-07-07T11:17:00.002-07:00

Representative C.W. Bill Young has held his place in Florida's Congress since 1970... That's about a decade before most of my friends were born... Old age has really done a number on this man's mental state because he finds himself unable to view "wages" as payment for work... He thinks that "wages" are something he's expected to "hand out" like freebies and pay for with his taxes... (More craziness, after the video.)

Watch the video here:

Let's not be ageist and pick on old Bill though... Many Florida Republicans lack a firm clutch on reality. We have a Republican Congressman who thinks that Democrats are all secret communists, we have another one who thinks that 11-year-old rape victims were "dressing like prostitutes", and yet another one who thinks that "midget tossing" is the first issue his constituents want him to put forth in the legislature...

God Save America's Sanity... starting with Florida Republicans...

Michelle Malkin's Minions Go All "PETA" on Me

2012-06-28T10:01:00.000-07:00

I may have cast a metaphorical stone at Michelle Malkin, it just wasn't the first one thrown... She's been in the stone-casting business much longer than I have and she's mastered the curve ball.

So, I've had a little bit of fun with Twitter lately, but overall, I've been unimpressed. In the Southeastern United States - where Twitter is waaay more popular than it is anywhere else, you just have way too many knee-jerk conservatives using it as a place to rant about Barack Obama or black people in general... When filling all 140 characters of a "tweet" seems like a daunting task, Twitter is just your size. It's a "safe place" for people who have been bullied on the playgrounds of their own imaginations.

Now don't let me mis-characterize good southerners and twitter users as racist unnecessarily... They hate lots of things aside from black people. One thing that I've learned about them is that they REALLY hate an organization called PETA. Now, I've been wanting to talk about this guy who started the "We Hate PETA" movement for quite some time now, but the subject is so overwhelming that I usually just end up linking to his wikipedia page and hope that people "get it".

He's a lobbyist for every industry that relies on the mass, unregulated killing of animals (and sometimes people) without compassion. With some sort of satanic stroke of brilliance, he decided to start the "PETA Kills Animals" website... Now he didn't have any sort of foundation for this claim, initially, but that had never stopped him before... Eventually, people filled in the gaps for him and now "PETA is sorta connected to some people who may or may not partake in the occasional observance of animal death".

Now, let's introduce healthcare-hater Michelle Malkin to those of you who are not familiar with her... Those of you who don't have Twitter accounts, that is... Malkin is best known as America's least professional yet most noteworthy Twitter user and Fox News' "go to girl" for any adverse coverage of non-white people in America. She's been described as a "self-hating", "unstable", "Tea Party mouthpiece" and "liar" on more than one occasion by more than one person. (Don't disappoint me... follow those links I just gave you!)

She says horrible things about people and makes sweeping generalizations about liberals, welfare recipients and Obama supporters all the time... She's turned it into an art form.

Now, the other day, I know all 40 of my Blogger followers just clamored to read my post about how Twitter can be used for cyberbullying... In it, I mentioned Michelle Malkin but I should have gone into more detail... she actually sort of invented it and turned it into an artform with a website called "Twitchy.com"....

Twitchy.com harnesses the power of Twitter and uses as a Human Flesh Search Engine to inspire people to attack others on Twitter based on their most thoughtless and insensitive tweets. Of course, since the site is run by Michelle Malkin and her Andrew Breitbart adoptees... their most offensive tweets are missing from the front page. They will tweet something so outlandish (like the idea that liberals are praying for the fire in Colorado to consume good Christians) and then filter through all the angry responses in order to find the most ill-conceived "loss of cool" commentary and repost it for the Tea Party to gawk at and use as a "hit list". It is what I call... "Michell Malkin's Pretty Hate Machine". Here's a post where she even holds Zach Braff accountable for what other people are randomly tweeting to him and falsely accusing racism on the part of Braff who apparently sees what we all see in Clarence Thomas.

Fans of Michelle Malkin are likely to believe the following "truths" to be self-evident:

Guns should be purchased, used, sold and waved around without any regulation.
Liberals, Blacks, Gays & Democrats are all in the same category of "undesirables" who are seeking "free stuff" from them.
The aforementioned "libtards" don't deserve healthcare or really even to live. They are "sick", "diseased" "sycophants" and hateful, racist non-people.
All animals except puppies are best served on a bun.
PETA Kills Animals and that's unforgiveable...

Do we see a glitch here? I hope so...

Now let's skip right along to the comment I left and why... After personally triggering what she hopes will be the new "monicagate" for President Obama, Malkin got distracted by a forest fire in Colorado... This forest fire is serious business and there have already been many victims... Not the least of which, Malkin will have you know, is her little Zebra-Striped Finch named "Tweety" (not-so-ironically).

"Sad News" she tweeted... Tweety died, supposedly from smoke inhalation. Now, I'm gonna go out on a limb here (see what I did right there?) and say that Malkin tweeted about Tweety more for the benefit of her insurance policy than for her followers to be "sad" about.

But nevertheless, a finch named Tweety has expired and the world must know about THAT.

So the following day, when Malkin discovered that the Red Cross was posing some competition to her with their coverage of #WaldoCanyonFire, and while those who were tired of praying for her bird decided to look elsewhere on Twitter for solutions to the disaster, she decided to tweet about those "despicable" liberals again. Twitchy/Michelle said it was all about those liberals who were sending their gay prayers to the dark one for good Christians to be consumed in the very fires that claimed dear Tweety's life!

I took the bait... I tweeted back...

Oh, the faux outrage and concern for humanity that ensued! I won't re-post the death threats. But here are just a small FEW of the hundreds of tweet-backs that I received in what had instantly become the busiest night my sad little twitter account has ever seen...

Comments written in GREEN are my thoughts added while reading them...

but wait... there's more... (click to view larger)...

In almost every single case where the Twitchy.com fanatic had claimed that I was insensitive, heartless, crazy, and death-worshiping, their preceding and following tweets were hypocritical examples of exactly that. I won't repost the racist and homophobic ones... but trust me, they're filed away in case any of these folks become the next George Zimmerman...

Now, I find it necessary, before I let you go, to also tell you 3 more things... First, from the very first one, almost every reply and re-tweet that came in was at least slightly mischaracterizing what I said... some even went so far as to suggest that I was hoping Michelle Malkin's children would die...

Secondly, this was not the first time I tweeted to Michelle Malkin... I've reasonably replied to her tweets countless times in the past and never received any sort of recognition of receipt.

Lastly, I am not a bird or animal hater of any sort... I have about 8 wild birds that frequent my backyard because they know I always leave food and water out for them... They include a Mourning Dove named Lucy (for her exaggerated facial expressions like Lucille Ball), a couple of blue jays (one is named Alphie or "Alpha 1" for his similarity to Air Force One), some almost-English-speaking wild green parrots and even a couple of Cardinals...

The difference between myself and Michelle Malkin's fanbase, is that I shoot birds with a camera and they shoot them with guns... The rest, they say... "is for the birds".

Enter The "Twitter-Bully"

2012-06-25T14:47:00.000-07:00

I have always been a big fan of Robert Greenwald... and have floated in a couple of the same circles as Art Greenwald... So when I saw that there was a gay left-wing blogger and fellow South Floridian writing for Salon.com named Glenn Greenwald, I figured he'd be a winner for sure.

Not so much, as it turns out...

I'm sort of new to Twitter and my blog's Twitter account has only above 80 followers thus far. A few of those followers have a propensity toward showing me their breasts... They evidently don't read my tweets or they'd know they're barking up the wrong tree. I'm still learning and only recently learned about how Tweetdeck helps a person.

I had avoided establishing myself on Twitter for the longest time because the only things I knew about it were that it limits your thoughts to 140-something characters or less and that it was, fittingly, the communications medium of choice for Sarah Palin.

Now, I know you're anxious for me to get to the point, so let me just brief you about my thoughts on "bullying" in general real quick. I'm not totally sold on the idea that bullying should be or can be legislated out of existence... but I do believe that bullying in it's myriad of forms is wrong. This might strike some as a bit hypocritical coming from me but I assure you it's not. As Dorothy Parker once said, "Every morning when I wake up, I brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue." That doesn't make me a bully, it just makes me one not to mess with.

Although I'm used to shaking things up politically and can hold my own in internet flame-wars... I support an organization called NVEEE that seeks to make life a little bit better for those who aren't so thick-skinned.

Now, here's where Glenn comes in... And I'm really sort of picking on him because he picked on me first. He's not at all the only Mainstream Media personality who does this. And what he did wasn't really all THAT terrible but it was immature and it was technically a form of cyberbullying.

He and I got into a day-long heated ~~discussion~~ argument about ~~Jimmy Carter~~ drone strikes. He's steadfast against them and I'm wishy-washy on the subject. In my opinion, we elected a President who assured us that he'd "bring a scalpel" to the war on terror and "not a sledgehammer" as George W. Bush had done. I think Drone Strikes might accomplish exactly that... provided there's enough transparency regarding their use.

Well, it didn't take Glenn Greenwald very long at all to start denouncing all Obama supporters as vicious child-murdering unsympathetic warmongers and yaddita-yaddita-ya... Of course, the terrorists who use children as body armor are just trying to get some long-awaited respect as far as Glenn is concerned... but I digress...

That part, I can handle - but where it got curious is when Glenn did what I've seen Michelle Malkin do before... He kept re-tweeting his responses to me over and over again. Now, I didn't know at first why he was doing this. I thought maybe his keyboard got stuck or something... (he might actually look at the pictures of the "cam people"). And when somebody "re-tweets" themselves using an application like Tweetdeck, Twitter doesn't tell them not to. Furthermore, the re-tweeted tweet just moves up on the feed again but retains its original position on the (twitterers?) account page, so it kind of even looks like they're not doing anything.

Then his "followers" started joining the conversation one by one... Some of them were very nice and some of them were "on my side" too. But not all of them. I suddenly realized that Glenn Greenwald was "Twitter-Bullying" me... He was taking advantage of his stature by using his number of followers to launch an attack in an effort to intimidate me and make me change my opinion. His staunch defenders - dare I call some of them "sheep" - would now commence unto bleating in my general direction.

Once I indicated to him that I was aware of what he was doing, he immediately stopped.

But let's not make this all about Glenn, ok? Let's imagine for a moment how this scenario would go down in a high school setting... In this alternate reality, I am the dorky fat gay kid and Glenn is the beautiful prom queen who has everything. Need I go any further with this?

As I've already stated, Glenn is not the only "blogosphere celebrity" doing this on Twitter, I've seen Keith Olbermann sort of do it too... and I've seen Cher come dangerously close. In Keith's case, he didn't re-tweet over and over again, but he made his responses to his detractors a little too personal to be comfy with. If you've been following this blog at all, you also know that I first pointed out the hypocrisy or at least the audacity of Dan Savage entering the nation's "bullying" dialogue - long before Breitbart did.

Now, I understand, that to those Twitter Superstars, they got #99Probs and a ___ aint one. Poor Meghan McCain was bullied by some of Michelle Malkin's evil minions (and other people I'm sure) and felt the wrath of Twitter... but I didn't say much at the time... because I know that Meghan's a big girl and she has lots of followers. But what if Meghan isn't the only person viewing the attacks against her? What if some random *other* heavy-set girl who supports gay rights was exposed to the attack? See, it's a problem no matter who does it or to whom...

I think it's wrong for mainstream media personalities (or even just popular people in general) to victimize their detractors (or random people) by inciting their "fans" to do their dirty work for them. What we can do to prevent this is three-fold:

1) When you see someone being "bullied" on Twitter, tell the participants to stop.
2) Unfollow the bully and start following the bullied victim.
3) Try to avoid the temptation to pick people apart personally. Stay focused on your point and not what you think of the other person when you argue.

I might just unfollow Glenn if he gets out of hand with this.

Rick Scott's Cuts To Mental Healthcare Have Led to ACTUAL Zombiism

2012-05-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

In a terrifying real-life headline from CBS News, "Miami Police Shoot, Kill Man Eating Another Man’s Face". The article quotes sources describing the most grizzly scene one can imagine - a naked man on the MacArthur Causeway is chewing on the flesh of another naked man's face in broad daylight.

Police made multiple attempts to stop the horrific scene before resorting to gunfire whereupon they shot and killed the apparent "Zombie", thus saving his victim who is currently being treated at Jackson Memorial Hospital. The wounds suffered by the victim of the attack are apparently not superficial either - one source says "the man had virtually no face and was unrecognizable".

One must pause when reading a story like this and wonder, first, whether such a story could be true. (I checked the URL to make sure I wasn't reading The Onion or some other farce.) The next thing that a person must wonder is "What causes this sort of thing?"

In an attempt to explain that latter question, I'll direct you to the fields of mental health and politics. Governor Rick Scott is infamous for, among other things, his budget cuts to the healthcare system in Florida. Cuts to programs such as ADAP (the state/federal cooperative program to subsidize the cost of HIV/AIDS medication) have real life consequences and many patients were left unable to afford life-saving medication. Those cuts were only shocking and frightening to people who know and love someone who has HIV... or at least they should have been. But as we can see now, the beginning effects of life without adequate mental healthcare can have truly disastrous consequences for the general public. Shock and awe, indeed.

Here are just a small few of the $142 Million line-item cuts that Governor Rick Scott personally made to the State budget back in April:

University of Miami brain and spinal research: -$400,000

Florida Medical Schools Quality Network: -$3,000,000

Inpatient hospital reimbursement ceiling exemption for community hospitals: -$2,006,000

Florida Council Against Sexual Violence to fund rape crisis centers: -$1,500,000

New Horizons Community Mental Health Center: -$100,000

Seminole Behavioral Health: -$350,000

Psychiatric medication assistance: -$500,000

Recovery House Central Florida: -$1,560,000

Alzheimer’s Family Care Center of Broward County: -$250,000

Mt. Sinai Brain Bank: -$100,000

McKnight Brain Institute Brain Tumor Registry: -$500,000

Sarasota Fetal Alcohol Clinic: -$100,000

Autism Center of Miami: -$100,000

WestCare substance abuse treatment program: -$150,000

Anyone who reads national news headlines can tell you that Florida is NOT the state that one should cut funding for mental health services in... Our headlines are a source of national embarrassment - everything from psychotic moms killing their babies to family Thanksgiving day shoot-outs. We have headless bodies washing ashore in Fort Lauderdale and kids partying on ecstasy with the bodies of their murdered parents in Port Saint Lucie.

Republicans these days are largely all on board with cuts to any program that is funded by taxes. Miami's Republican Mayor, Tomas Regalado, rarely protests the drain that Tallahassee has placed under his city. When questioned about how Republicans view things in the larger scheme, he gives answers that leave little hope for humanity. He says things like: "Miami is what the United States will look like in 25 years from now... and there's nothing we can do about it."

A Personal Thank You to The President of the United States of America

2012-05-10T09:09:00.001-07:00

Dear President Obama,

It is with great pride and sincere gratitude that I write these words. I began campaigning for you in the Summer of 2008 knowing that you were far and away more tolerant and equality-minded than your opponent John McCain. Like you, I thought that America was not quite ready to embrace gay marriage and I often explained to my friends and fellow activists that your administration was one that we could count on but shouldn't "expect too much from".
Yesterday, you proved me wrong about the latter half of that statement. You've proven to the LGBT community that we can not only "hope for change" but shoot for the stars! You could have just as easily taken the politically expedient route of holding Same-Sex Marriage back like a carrot on a string. You could have withheld your verbal support as incentive for LGBT persons to elect you to a 2nd term and in today's political climate, it would work. But instead, you chose to do the more politically risky thing because it is also the most honorable thing.
For this bold, meaningful support on your behalf, I say Thank You. I don't think I'm being excessive in saying that you have done more to advance my civil equality in this country than any other President I've had the experience of living under.
In closing, I pledge my support not only for your re-election to a 2nd term, but also to elect a Democratic Congress that will help you to achieve your vision of America... a vision I know we share.

- Sincerely,
Jarrett Terrill
Fort Lauderdale, Florida

6 Ways That the Republican War on Women Is a Real War

2012-04-26T15:07:00.000-07:00

There are Six Significant Ways That the Republican War on Women (RWoW) is a Real and Dangerous War:

Women are dying.
Soldiers are on the front lines.
Congress declared the war.
Propaganda is used to gain public sympathy.
Additional funding is sought from the public.
Women are questioned as to their allegiances.

Women are dying.

Let it be known far and wide that war kills people. In this case, the casualties are primarily but not limited to women. The first to die in the Republican War on Women (RWOW) are in the lower economic class. Take for instance, 29 year-old Anna Brown, who died in a St. Louis jail cell after being refused treatment at a local hospital and having the police called on her for trespassing. Her story is one of the private sector in healthcare refusing to do for a woman what it is required by law to do. The police of St. Louis made it a crime for Anna to seek medical help. One can only assume that this might happen to men too.

Women around the world (including the United States) die every year due to botched do-it-yourself abortion procedures where medical expertise is not sought. But the shocking truth is that these deaths are not only acknowledged legislatively, but even encouraged. Under the Bush administration and with a Republican-ruled Congress, the Food & Drug Administration considered the effects of a medication that poor women were using to induce abortion at home. Though more than 10 years of research has overwhelmingly shown that Cytotec is a safe way to induce abortion when administered correctly during normal pregnancies, the Food and Drug Administration has never approved this particular use. What the FDA did, in fact, recognize was the drug's use by obstetricians to induce contractions in routine deliveries – a method which they know causes extreme hemorrhaging and risk to both the baby and the mother's lives.

One of the most awe-inspiring discoveries made about the Republican Presidential candidates in the 2012 election so far has been the far reaching grasp they have on the mental health industry under the guise of religion under George W. Bush's “Faith Based Initiatives” program. Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry were all discovered to sit on boards, take ownership of or otherwise run pseudo-healthcare rehabilitation facilities that focus on teenagers and children. A majority of these supposedly “troubled” youths are female and “at risk” for lesbianism or abortion according to their religious “therapists”. At least two of these girls are known to have died under rather ominous circumstances.

Related News: Recent Fire-bombings of Abortion Clinics on Rise Again In Florida and Wisconsin.

A Christian Fundamentalist Holding a Sign
Celebrating the Murders of Women at a
Democratic Event in Arizona.

Soldiers are on the front lines.

On July 28, 2005 a female 'soldier' named Jamie Leigh Jones was stationed in Baghdad by a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root (called “KBR” in short) as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. On this day, Jamie Leigh Jones was, according to her and many witnesses (to varying degrees at various stages of the saga that was yet to come), gang-raped and then subsequently locked in a shipping container without access to a phone by her colleagues at KBR.

Three years after her rape (I refuse to use the word “alleged” on principal here), Jones lost her case against KBR and was counter-sued by the military-industrial contractor to the tune of $2million for what they claimed was a “frivolous” lawsuit. (A federal judge did at least dismiss those counter-claims). While the case was lost quietly, in comparison to the swell of outrage that finally led up to it, it is worth noting that none of the defendants were deemed innocent of having sex with Jones. Her case was lost primarily due to insufficient evidence that the sex was not consensual. Photos of the trauma to her vagina, anus, ruptured breast implants and torn pectoral muscles were not-so-mysteriously missing from the evidence collected by her colleagues themselves (the very defendants in the case).

Congress (30 white, male Republican Senators) Declared This War.

Jones' case against KBR (and thereby against the United States, considering the nature of their business), although certainly the most high-profile is not the only rape nor sexual discrimination case against a military-industrial contractor. What came to light in her 3-year struggle to face her attackers in a court of law was the audaciously horrible “mandatory arbitration clause” in her contract with KBR. KBR argued successfully that they had the right to deny Jones the ability to sue them for any reason at all. This contract, which was commonly administered to most contractors at the time, defied the very nature of justice and demanded that all legal disputes, no matter how severe or how outrageous the offense, would be handled “in-house” by the company itself – effectively giving persons wronged by the company NO RECOURSE to defend themselves legally.

One Senator, Democrat Al Franken, from Minnesota, had a serious problem with this injustice and drafted legislation which proposed that the United States stop doing business with companies that required such an egregious erosion of civil liability. When it came time for a vote on the Senate floor, the bill passed with bipartisan support. All were in favor of protecting women from becoming the Jamie Leigh Jones' of the future... Everyone except for the 30 White Male Republican Senators who voted against the measure. One such Senator, shockingly, was John Sidney McCain, whose daughter Meghan is exactly Jones' age.

The outcry and backlash from the public was widespread but short-lived. 30 White Male Republican Senators had essentially voted (albeit unsuccessfully) to legalize rape... Let the War Begin.

Pro-War Propaganda is Issued By Governmental Pundits and The Media

In any war, the real nucleus of the battle is known to be over “the hearts and minds of the people”, as George W. Bush famously noted. For that purpose, political propaganda is employed. There are currently no better propagandists in the world than our Republican party here in the USA. To illustrate this, there are far too many examples to simply list without format. The blogosphere is riddled with senseless arguments ranging from biblical scripture to ad hominemattacks against democratic female legislators and liberals. To provide this point with some citation at least, I've randomly selected a few of the most obvious attempts to culturally re-frame the RWOW as an acceptable and justified movement.

A female Republican legislator in Florida blames child rape-victims for dressing “like prostitutes”.
Due to pressure from Tea Party astroturfers, Republican legislators in Michigan spend weeks on end and countless public dollars on a law forbidding a kind of abortion that they admit is not even practiced in the state to anyone's knowledge. The procedure that they have incorrectly termed “partial birth abortion” is really called dilation and extraction and is only used by abortion doctors in 1/5 of one percent of all procedures and only when medically necessary.
An anti-abortion activist group called LiveAction sets up fake “sting operations” in which they target female employees of Planned Parenthood. Many professional women have their careers ruined by “Brietbart-style” video editing in which the public is falsely led to believe that Planned Parenthood is in cahoots with the perpetrators of human trafficking and sex-slavery.
Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), and Connie Mack (R-FL) all vote against their own best interests and against the interests of their female constituents by voting against the Paycheck Fairness Act of 2009. Fortunately, thanks to a Democratic Majority and the vote of only ONE Republican woman (Ileana Ros-Lehtinen), the bill passed anyway and now women must be paid equally for doing the exact same job as a man.
Florida Representative and amateur pundit Allen West launches a full-scale attack (in writing no less!) against Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz after she dared to call his judgment into question regarding detrimental cuts to Medicare. West sent out public emails that termed his female colleague “the most vile, unprofessional and despicable member of the US House of Representatives”, “not a lady” and “a coward” who “wants a personal fight” and needs to “shut the heck up”.
Georgia's Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss is also a legislator-pundit hybrid who advocates the most extreme measures to deal with the most insignificant of problems. When his office isn't busy sending death threats to gay bloggers, they are advocating legislation which would make it illegal to use your car for the purpose of driving a woman to a clinic known to have performed abortions.
Republican blogger and ALEC propagandist Michelle Malkin has given birth to what she calls “the war on conservative women” (her feeble yet not-too-timid attempt at counter-spin) and in a nutshell, this is just a steady stream of tweets (every 5 minutes, depending on the day) on her Twitter account which attack Hilary Rosen, the Democratic pundit who dared to question Ann Romney's fitness as her husband's appointed expert on “Women and the Economy”.

Stay Tuned Tomorrow for 6 Ways That RWOW is a Real War Part II – Funding and Allegiance

YouTube & MSM Once Again Helping Republicans Cover Their "Privately Owned" Tracks

2012-03-03T20:15:00.007-08:00

Thanks for visiting my blog! So glad you could make it...
Really... because who knows how long it will be available...

The entire internet could shut down at any given moment should we wake the sleeping giant...

Or that giant could simply take me down a peg or two... in your search results.

It doesn't surprise me at all when I see "unavailable" or "terminated" YouTube videos with "third-party" copyright claim notices like the one above... but it does sadden me. A capitalist "free market" and corporate, advertising-based media are practicing their secret handshake while consumers and voters are asleep at the wheel.

Here's how you notice it and why it should bother you as much as it bothers me:

I was busy promoting the Obama Campaign's Website En Español (just put /es after the .com) on my facebook page when I remembered to tell everyone that Republicans frequently tell lies in their spanish-version advertisements and to keep an eye out for that this year - especially in Florida. When they're not lying, they omit certain facts or give some irrelevant aspects of their campaign undue importance for spanish-speaking Americans.

Of course, I'm always called upon to prove these accusations when I make them, so I went to a few sites that I remembered having discussed the problem with Meg Whitman's English/Spanish propaganda and falsehoods campaign.

The Meg Whitman (picture a woman whose face just has "gringo" written all over it) Spanish Language Ads were probably the most egregious example from 2010... She might as well have said "I love you" in Spanish and "I hate those hispanics" in English. It was almost that stark in contrast between messages.

This kind of racist translation-exploitation and audacious hypocrisy, while standard fare for Republicans these days, is the kind of thing that will ensure Republicans take Florida... even if the Goldman Sachs-funded Marco Rubio isn't "coincidentally chosen" as Goldman Sachs-funded Mitt Romney's VP running mate. (That deal has already been sealed, by the way... you heard it here first.)

Not so much to my surprise, the videos associated with the "naughty meg's video" scandal have all been removed.

This is certainly NOT the first time this has happened, either.

The problem with this is two-fold:

1) YouTube is soooo popular that people don't even think to host their videos anywhere else. YouTube is able to censor videos en masse and delete anything it wants out of existence permanently... Their technology only takes mere seconds to scan their entire network of uploads and find every instance of a clip, image, scene, song, movie, or commercial... It's totally arbitrary whether or not YouTube and the mainstream media choose to delete or keep so-called "infringements of copyright" that appear on the video site. This has a propagandizing effect on the United States and other countries because people don't really think about what they're NOT seeing... They will simply scroll over to the next video by Lady Gaga and forget about the video that would have told them that their milk is poisoned.

2) It's actually ILLEGAL for YouTube to do this, but nobody is calling them on it... Our legislators are paid shills, so who is going to call them on it if not me? ... If not you?
The reason it's illegal (I see you rolling your eyes like you don't believe me), is that these types of videos (political campaign ads and controversial or "newsworthy renderings") fall under a category of materials called "fair use". All media events, whether copyrighted or not that can be deemed newsworthy or relevant enough to warrant illustration and dissemination are good candidates for "fair use" reproduction... This is so reporters, bloggers, artists, satirists, pundits, writers, researchers, teachers, students and pretty much everyone else can go about their daily business without having to ask permission from some corporation before every little move they make.

This is how they get away with it:

1) Most people don't notice because they don't do it on things that they know everyone is looking for at that moment. They do it incrementally. The Meg Whitman scandal has been out of the drive-by media's loop now... Therefore if you're one of the very few Americans who intends on remembering such details, you won't be able to prove anything and your facts suddenly become "assertations".

2) It's us versus them and "them" has all the power. Just try to stick up for your shoddy little YouTube video... but you better have the support of the ACLU or you're going to have to take out a 2nd mortgage for the legal fees.

3) YouTube will just "blame the government" since 70 percent of their takedown "requests" come from Government agencies anyway... Here's the thing to consider: Those "government agencies" are Republicans and Police. But by simply saying "the government told us to take them down", who do you think that benefits? Of course, only one party capitalizes on scary stories, half-truths and innuendo regarding a horrifically huge, all-powerful American Federal Government that won't allow them their "free speech".

My blog is mostly about politics - therefore, if I get a copy of the Meg Whitman campaign ads with translations in "mashup" format, it's FAIR USE and I will be posting them here on Google/Blogger/YouTube and if they dare try to take them down, I'll sue Google... and move my blog elsewhere, and stop using Chrome (even though I am starting to like it). These corporations want you to believe that they are "too big to fail" (and therefore we're supposed to let them write their own laws and them give million dollar bonuses just for screwing us)... But if Democrats win this next round, we'll be ready to remind them otherwise.

Unless Google has already taken over our nation's government websites and starts selling them on Ebay by November...

Ok, that last line was a bit of sarcastic hyperbole... It sounds as obtuse and imaginary as a Republican billionaire robber baron becoming Governor of a swing state and then being allowed to hand-pick only true believers of "Tea Party Economic Dominionism" to teach Economics classes at State Universities and Colleges.

Peace!

P.S. - After looking at the translated Obama site, the only element of possible pandering or clash of messaging that I noticed is that the campaign chooses to focus on the Dream Act instead of the fact that ICE deportations have dramatically increased under the Obama Administration... While that's not exactly an isolated fact that would score Obama the Hispanic vote, it is indeed something that might make moderates and libertarians consider his merit. Still, I think Obama should address the increase in deportations directly with Hispanic voters just to be clear and upfront.