Funny ad about 'creepy MAGA Republicans ' goes viral and triggers certain people

This is probably the creepiest (and the funniest) ad of the 2024 political season by far and it has intensely triggered MAGA Republicans online, especially on Twitter. Their anger could be seen as a perfect example of how the truth hurts.  But they only have themselves to blame. When you are obsessed with passing legislation designed to control people's bodies, what do you expect people to think of you?

But I'll let you, dear readers, decide.

From the group Won't Pac Down:

Inspired by Project 2025 and the bizarre beliefs of JD Vance, the weirdos are organizing. They’re voting. Are you?

'Detransitioner' Chloe Cole testifies to making up to $200,00 via her anti-trans activism

Chloe Cole

Via trans activists Erin Reed and Alejandra Caraballo comes interesting (and not altogether shocking) news about alleged detransitioner Chole Cole. Her national and international trarvel while weaving her (unverified) story of being "deceived into being transgender" is a very financially lucrative endeavor.

According to new and explosive reporting by the Los Angeles Times, advocating against transgender people has become a lucrative business for prominent political detransitioner Chloe Cole. A newly released audio recording reveals that Cole earns upwards of $200,000 for opposing transgender care, primarily through speaking engagements, donations via Donorbox, and her employment with the far-right organization Do No Harm, which facilitates her access to opportunities to testify.

The recording, which comes from Chloe Cole’s testimony during a court hearing in Ohio regarding the state's gender-affirming care ban, features Cole discussing her income and funding (with cleaner, trimmed audio also provided by Civil Rights Attorney Alejandra Caraballo: 

 Attorney: “You don’t have any first-hand knowledge of how gender affirming care is provided in Ohio, is that right?” 

 Cole: “No, not from personal experience.” 

 Attorney: “I understand you’re employed as a senior fellow at Do No Harm?” 

 Cole: “Yes” 

 Attorney: “And Do No Harm’s mission is to fight against the current model of care in place for gender dysphoria, is that right?” 

 Cole: “Yes…” 

 Attorney: “And you submitted testimony in support of HB68 as part of your job in Do No Harm, is that right?” 

 Cole: “Yes” 

 Attorney: “And Do No Harm has helped you find other opportunities to testify in state legislatures, is that right?” 

 Cole: “Yes” 

 Attorney: “Do No Harm paid you $2,000 a month for that work, is that right?” 

 Cole: “Yes” 

 Attorney: “And you make between $50-$100,000 in speaking fees in [unclear] is that right?” 

 Cole: “Yes” 

 Cole later added that she additionally makes up to $100,000 in donations through her Donorbox, separate from the income she earns from speaking engagements.

It looks like Cole refutes the adage of "when money talks, bullsh!t" walks. Apparently "bullsh!t stays specifically where the money is.

'FL school district employee who let trans daughter play school sports won't lose her job' & other Sun/Mon news briefs

Editor's note - while our eyes are on the national scene (and for now, it is looking good) let's not forget the local fronts. 

Mom who let her daughter play volleyball in Ron DeSantis’s Florida won’t lose her job - A convoluted mess of a situation which should have never happened to begin with. It goes to show the full harm these anti-trans athlete laws can fully cause. 

Nebraska Supreme Court upholds gender affirming care ban & abortion restrictions - Meanwhile while we take one step forwards, certain entities try to pull us two steps back. 

Thrice-divorced Kim Davis is back with a court case to try & get SCOTUS to overturn marriage equality - Meanwhile, Kim Davis is trying to use her case as a means to get SCOTUS to overturn marriage equality. Will she succeed? Let's hope not in spite of the court's make up. 

Kim Davis wants to overturn gay marriage ruling. Legal scholars weigh in on her chances - Legal scholars aren't in her favor. They say there are no grounds in the case to overturn marriage equality. 

More than 20,000 people show up for Kamala Harris's LGBTQ+ community call - We have to keep pushing. 

LGBTQ Americans coming out earlier in life: Gallup - That's right and I am SO here for it.]

1992 Flashback - Houston police go undercover as gay men to bust gay bashers

 

I saw this video Monday night and it moved me so much that I simply had to share it with folks, particularly the younger LGBTQ generation.

From Wikipedia: 

 Paul Broussard, a 27-year-old Houston-area banker and Texas A&M alumnus, died after a gay bashing incident outside a Houston nightclub in the early hours of July 4, 1991. Nine teenaged youths, ages 15–17, and one 22-year-old were intoxicated on drugs and alcohol when they left a high school party in the suburb of The Woodlands and headed for Houston's heavily gay Montrose area in an attempt to gain admittance to dance clubs located in the vicinity. After being refused entry to several establishments, they pulled into a parking lot where they encountered Broussard and two friends, who were also intoxicated. 

They then attacked Broussard and his friends. Broussard was beaten and stabbed twice with a pocket knife belonging to 17-year-old Jon Buice. He died several hours later as a result of both internal injuries as well as what an expert medical examiner termed "a delay in treatment" (in the early days of the AIDS crisis, police and medical personnel were slow to respond to calls from the Montrose area for fear of AIDS contamination). 

 When Houston gay rights leader Ray Hill confronted police about solving the murder, he was told that they had no intention of doing so. Gay rights advocates, frustrated about being ignored and persecuted by city officials, marched through the streets and in front of the Mayor Kathy Whitmire's home for several days in what became Houston's largest and long-lasting gay rights demonstration in history. Ultimately, the juveniles – labeled "The Woodlands Ten" – were apprehended and plea bargained into prison without a trial for the murder of Broussard. 

The video above is what happened after the murder. The outcry after Broussard's murder was so loud that police went undercover in a sting operation to stop groups of teenagers who went looking to bash gays. It sounds like a corny television comedy episode, but it's anything but that. These policemen found out the hard way what gay men go through when several of them got injured. 

 This video is not for everyone, and I strongly advise folks with triggers to be careful in watching it. There is no physical violence, but plenty of ugly moments which reflect a scary summation of how things were for us back in the day.  Probably the most chilling portion of the video starts at 7:32 when an unnamed teenager nonchalantly compares beating gay men with the "joke" of smashing pumpkins during Halloween because he and his friends never thought of us as human beings.

Editor's note - I know how some in the community feel about the police in general, but this post isn't about them. It's about remembering our history, both good and bad.

Pastor publicly blasts Franklin Graham, calling him a 'liar' and 'poster child for Christian nationalism'

With everything going on lately (Biden dropping out of the presidential election and Harris taking up the mantle to run), I've got bogged down and behind on my blogging. I almost missed this incredible moment of basic truth. 

Recently Mark Wingfield, executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global, verbally ripped into Franklin Graham, calling him a " the poster child for Christian nationalism" and " "liar" for his speech during the recent Republican National Convention in support of Donald Trump.

The basic point of Wingfield's piece, underscored by the passage below, is that when it comes to Graham, it's all about earthly power and he's willing to exploit his faith to shield any liar who will give it to him.

 To understand the insidious nature of Christian nationalism, look no further than Franklin Graham’s appearance at the Republican National Convention last night. Graham already has demonstrated he knows no shame in endorsing, blessing and lionizing the most corrupt president in American history, yet people continue to send his nonprofits millions of dollars, enriching him as one of our most highly paid partisan preachers.

 . . . Graham started telling flat-out lies. 

“For as long as I’ve known President Trump, I’ve found him to be a man of his word,” he declared. 

Apparently, Graham hasn’t listened to any of the small-business owners who have been jilted by Trump through the years, hasn’t listened to any of the women who say Trump assaulted them, hasn’t paid attention to the hundreds of documented lies Trump spews between breakfast and dinner each day. 

 No, it turns out Graham has some other measure in mind: “When he told me and our country in 2016 that he was going to appoint conservative justices, guess what, he did. In 2016, he said he would defend religious liberty and, guess what, he did.”

 By “religious liberty,” of course, Graham means the liberty of evangelicals like him, not the liberty of all people. 

 And then Graham threw out this whopper: “In 2019, I was with him at the United Nations when the first president in the history of this country stood there to advocate for religious liberty worldwide.” 

 So no other U.S. president in history has advocated for global religious liberty? That is patently false and insulting. It makes Trump out to be a hero he is not. Not only have other presidents advocated for worldwide religious liberty, Trump has not. He doesn’t want religious liberty for Palestinians. He doesn’t want religious liberty for Muslims. He doesn’t want religious liberty for Democrats. 

 Like Graham, Trump has only shown interest in advocating for religious liberty for his political base. All others be damned.

'Moms for Liberty trying to abandon 'extremist' image, LGBTQ actors make Emmy history, 144 out athletes at upcoming Olympics' & other Wed/Thur news briefs

Moms for Liberty tries to abandon 'extremist' image with RNC rebrand​ - It ain't gonna happen. Moms for Liberty got a paper trail and folks aren't going to forget.

John Deere to abandon pride festival sponsorships following online right-wing pressure campaign - Simple cowardice which will empower more foolishness. 

 4 out actors were nominated for Lead Actor in a Limited Series at the 2024 Emmys - This is historic and should be recognized as such. 

 We're rooting for these LGBTQ+ nominees at the 76th Primetime Emmys - And those four weren't the only LGBTQ folks rewarded with Emmy nominations. 

 Ohioans explain abandoning Republican Party for love of their transgender grandchild - There are so many stories like this out there. 

 JD Vance faces criticism from advocates for his 'cruel' record on LGBTQ issues - He's a prominent Republican. What do you expect? 

At least 144 out athletes are headed to the Paris Olympics. Meet Team LGBTQ. - Not bad. Not bad at all.

Trump's VP pick JD Vance went from calling Trump 'America's Hitler' in 2016 to allowing Trump to publicly humiliate him in 2022.

 If you haven't heard, Trump picked Ohio senator JD Vance as his vice-presidential pick, which is going to make things very interesting seeing the stuff Vance has said about him in the past. 

From Reuters:

Eight years ago, in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, J.D. Vance was a bitter critic of Donald Trump. Publicly, he called the Republican presidential candidate an "idiot" and said he was "reprehensible." Privately, he compared him to Adolf Hitler .

But by the time the former president tapped Vance to be his running mate on Monday, the Ohio native had become one of Trump's most ardent defenders, standing by his side even when other high-profile Republicans declined to do so. James David Vance's transformation - from self-described "never Trumper" to stalwart loyalist - makes him a relatively unusual figure in Trump's inner circle. Democrats and even some Republicans have questioned whether Vance, who wrote a bestselling memoir "Hillbilly Elegy" and is now a U.S. senator from Ohio, is driven more by opportunism than ideology. 

 CNN has also come out with more: 

 Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a leading candidate to be Donald Trump’s vice president, liked tweets in 2016 and 2017 that harshly criticized Trump and his policies — including one speculating that Vance could serve in former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s administration. 

Other tweets liked by Vance said Trump committed “serial sexual assault,” called him “one of USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs,” and, in a since-removed set of tweets, harshly criticized Trump’s response to the deadly 2017 White nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia – something Vance now defends Trump over. Vance’s past anti-Trump stances have been well-documented, but these new examples, unearthed by an extensive review of Vance’s past social media activity, demonstrate they were more widespread and scathing than previously known. 

 . . . His subsequent transition from vocal Trump critic to staunch supporter has been widely scrutinized. Vance has become a key surrogate for the former president and routinely defends Trump on television, including during his hush money trial in New York last month. Vance also helped orchestrate Trump’s June 6 fundraiser in San Francisco with tech industry donors. Trump is expected to meet with congressional Republicans in Washington, DC, on Thursday. 

In a statement to CNN, Vance cited Trump’s “many successes in office” and claimed that realizing the “corporate media and Deep State’s” coordinated efforts to undermine Trump changed his perspective.

Vance claims he "changed his perspective" because of Trump's supposed successes and the "deep state." However, an incident in which Trump publicly humiliated him in 2022 during an Ohio rally may give a more honest perspective of his embrace of Trump

According to at the time CNN editor Chris Cillizza:

At a rally on Saturday night for Ohio GOP Senate nominee J.D. Vance, Trump made sure the crowd knew that Vance was subservient to him – big time. “J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support so bad,” Trump said. Trump was reacting to a New York Times story that reported Vance had not actually invited Trump to campaign with him in the state. Instead, Trump’s team had simply told Vance that they would be coming to Ohio for a rally. Trump’s campaign stops have always been, primarily, about Trump. 

You can tell that by the amount of time he spends talking about himself (a lot) versus how much time he spends talking about the candidate for whom he is ostensibly campaigning (very little). But he has rarely thrown a candidate he endorsed so directly under the bus as he did Vance over the weekend. 

“He made J.D. Vance look like a mouse, not a man,” former Virginia Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock told CNN of the moment. “It was humiliating.”

JD Vance went from calling Trump "America's Hitler" in 2016 to allowing Trump to publicly humiliate him at a 2022 rally. Vance was probably picked because he embodies the quality Trump looks for - a complete lack of self-respect.