TexasTowelie
TexasTowelie's JournalCalifornia Vice Mayor Calls Gay Men 'Faries' and Declares July 'Straight Pride American Month'
A California city's {Dixon} vice mayor is facing calls to resign after writing a stunningly anti-gay post on his website that calls gay men "faries" and "tinker bells," and suggests they don't have jobs or families. The post features an LGBT Pride flag with the "no" symbol on top of it.
"Now hundreds of millions of the rest of us can celebrate our month, peaking on July 4th, as healthy, heterosexual, fairly monogamous, keep our kinky stuff to ourselves, Americans," Ted Hickman wrote June 28. "We do it with our parades in every state and county in this country with families celebrating together."
"We honor our country and our veterans who have made all of this possible (including for the tinker bells)," he wrote, referring to gay men, as CBS Sacramento reports (video below), "and we can do it with actual real pride, not some put on show just to help our inferior complex 'show we are different' type of crap."
Hickman insists straight people "ARE different from them…We work, have families, (and babies we make) enjoy and love the company (and marriage) of the opposite sex and don’t flaunt our differences dressing up like faries and prancing by the thousands in a parade in nearby San Francisco to be televised all over the world," he lamented.
Read more: https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2018/07/california-vice-mayor-calls-gay-men-faries-and-declares-july-straight-pride-american-month/
High court removes Palm Beach County judge over campaign misconduct
A sharply divided Florida Supreme Court on Monday removed Palm Beach County Judge Dana Santino from the bench over 2016 campaign violations.
The 4-3 decision follows a recommendation from the state Judicial Qualifications Commission, which found Santino unfit for the job and lacking impartiality because her election bid smeared opponent Gregg Lerman’s criminal defense practice.
Following her removal, Santino provided a statement to the South Florida Sun Sentinel through her attorney, Jeremy Kroll, a former Broward prosecutor.
“I woke up every morning excited to go to work and to give the public a voice in our judicial system and I thank the people of Palm Beach County for that opportunity,” she said, in part.
Read more: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/palm-beach/fl-pn-judge-santino-supreme-court-ruling-20180702-story.html
Florida Democrats look for depth and clarity in the blue wave
Democrats agree that a good showing in Florida this November is a top priority if the party wants to reassert its power and combat the Republican party under Donald Trump.
They just aren't quite on the same page about the path: Does it run near the center or farther to the left?
The pull-and-tug in Florida's minority party was subtle Saturday as party leaders met in Hollywood for their annual leadership conference. Despite optimism following a spate of victories in competitive special elections – and an urgency to defend moderate Senator Bill Nelson against Gov. Rick Scott – friction exists about how to take back the governor's mansion and emerge from years of impotence in a bellwether state.
"It's been 20 years — 20 years — since Democrats have won the governor's race in the state of Florida," Andrew Gillum, the only African American in the governor's face, told the party's Black Caucus Saturday afternoon in a ballroom at the Diplomat Beach Resort. "These last two races for governor we have lost by less than 1 percent of the vote. Many of those votes are right there in our communities. Many of those voters feel talked past, ignored, uninspired."
Read more: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article214138729.html
Miami wants the 2020 Democratic convention. The county's top Democrat doesn't.
Miami-Dade has drawn an unlikely opponent to the county landing the 2020 Democratic National Convention. On Monday, the chairman of the county Democratic party urged national Democrats to look elsewhere unless Miami-Dade reverses a 2017 decision to comply with President Donald Trump's crackdown on immigration detentions.
Addressing national Democratic chairman Tom Perez on Twitter, Miami-Dade chair Juan Cuba wrote: "It's with great regret that I urge you to remove Miami from contention until they reverse their anti-immigrant policies of cooperating with ICE to deport our friends & neighbors."
Miami-Dade is one of three finalists bidding for the Democratic National Convention to be held July 13-16, 2020. If Miami-Dade wins, it would be the first time in nearly 50 years that the county will host a major political convention. Leaders from the county and the cities of Miami and Miami Beach made their pitch to the Democrats Friday in Washington D.C. Next, a committee of Democrats will visit the finalist cities and begin contract negotiations. The DNC plans to announce the 2020 host city in January.
The other two finalists for the 2020 Democratic convention — Houston and Milwaukee — also accept the federal detention requests at the heart of Miami-Dade's immigration controversy. But those jurisdictions had accepted the requests during the Obama administration, too, sparing them the national spotlight that came to Miami-Dade when it was the first major metro area to change policies after the 2016 presidential election.
Read more: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article214203294.html
New budget year brings boost in Florida spending
TALLAHASSEE — Florida’s new $88.7 billion budget took effect Sunday, but that doesn’t tell the whole story about spending on education, health care, transportation and other state programs in the new fiscal year.
Projected spending in 2018-2019 is greater than the budget bottom line because lawmakers and Gov. Rick Scott approved 16 bills during the 2018 legislative session that included additional funding totaling nearly $610 million.
The $89.3 billion in spending is $4.36 billion higher than the 2017-2018 budget year that ended Saturday, representing more than a 5 percent increase. It is more than $20 billion higher than the $69 billion 2011-2012 spending plan, which was the first under Scott, who leaves office in January because of term limits.
The state’s largest expenditures in 2018-2019 will be on human services, which include Medicaid and other health-care programs, accounting for 43.3 percent of the spending. Education will be the second-largest component at 28.5 percent.
Read more: http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/20180701/new-budget-year-brings-boost-in-florida-spending
Crash and burn. Watch Japanese entrepreneur's unmanned rocket launch end in a huge fireball
TOKYO — Talk about crash and burn. A rocket developed by a controversial Japanese entrepreneur burst into flames and crashed to earth in a fireball over the weekend.
The MOMO-2 rocket was developed by Interstellar Technologies, a startup that was partially crowd-funded and aims to lower the cost of space flight. Its founder is Takafumi Horie, a colorful Internet entrepreneur and convicted fraudster, who says he wants to start by putting small satellites into space and ultimately, like U.S. entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, send private citizens into space.
But his second major launch ended in spectacular failure on Saturday morning, according to Kyodo News. The 30-foot rocket was supposed to reach 60 miles into space: instead it barely managed to lift off before flames started to shoot from its base and it crashed back down to earth.
The crash, at a test site near the town of Taiki in Japan’s Hokkaido island, caused no injuries. It was the second failure for the startup after engineers lost contact with the first rocket 66 seconds after it launched last July. MOMO-1 fell into the sea after reaching a height of around 12 miles, the Nikkei Asian Review reported at the time.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/07/02/crash-and-burn-watch-japanese-entrepreneurs-unmanned-rocket-launch-end-in-a-huge-fireball/
A bad week for Democrats gives rise to a big problem: Outrage could become an obstacle in midterms
Growing liberal agitation over a pivotal Supreme Court retirement and a simmering crisis about immigrant child separation have left Democratic leaders scrambling to keep the political outrage they’d counted on to fuel midterm election wins from becoming a liability for the party.
Internal party debates have broken into public view over maintaining civility and the usefulness of liberal slogans like “abolish ICE,” which some Republicans have embraced to argue falsely that Democrats oppose immigration enforcement. At the same time, liberal activists have begun to argue for more radical measures to counter President Trump, who they assert presents an immediate threat to the republic.
The conflict comes after several weeks that have highlighted the consequence of Trump’s 2016 election and his continued political strength. As he promised during the campaign, Trump is changing the country in profound ways, including through harsh immigration enforcement measures. With the retirement announcement last week from Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Trump also has an opportunity this fall to remake the ideological balance of the court.
Democrats have had only limited options for fighting back, and many in the party are resigned to the confirmation of a new justice who could vote to undo key liberal victories, including abortion rights and legal protections that allow people with preexisting conditions to afford health insurance.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-bad-week-for-democrats-gives-rise-to-a-big-problem-outrage-could-become-an-obstacle-in-midterms/2018/07/01/98e31da0-7d40-11e8-bb6b-c1cb691f1402_story.html
Biden joins Maryland Democrats to rally behind Ben Jealous' campaign for governor
Former Vice President Joe Biden joined Maryland Democrats Saturday night at Camden Yards to rally support for Ben Jealous as he mounts his campaign against Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, just four days after winning his party’s contested primary.
The former Delaware senator said Democrats need to end inner-party bickering to take back Congress and win local and state elections to defeat a Republican Party that he said favors corporations and wealthy donors over middle-class, working families.
“We have to stop them,” Biden told a crowd of 250 at the Jealous fundraiser. “We can’t do it if we’re divided.”
Biden was joined by the Maryland Democratic Party’s biggest names and representatives of the campaigns that rivaled Jealous. Among the Democratic leaders were Sen. Ben Cardin, former Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, and Reps. Elijah Cummings, John Sarbanes and C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger.
Read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-joe-biden-democrats-20180630-story.html
Michael Cloud wins Texas' special 27th Congressional District race
Beating out eight other candidates, Michael Cloud secured his seat — at least for the next few months — as the new congressman for Texas' 27th Congressional District.
Crowds gathered at a Corpus Christi watch party for the former chair of the Victoria County Republican Party. There, his kids by his side, Cloud told his supporters he'd do his best to take his constituents' "voice to Washington."
"I'm very sober and mindful to the task ahead," Cloud told the crowed room. "There's a lot of work to be done."
But even with Saturday's victory, there's still another election just down the road: the Nov. 6 General Election. There, he and Democrat Eric Holguin will once again face off, this time with a full two-year term as congressman at stake.
Read more: https://www.caller.com/story/news/politics/2018/06/30/live-voting-begins-special-election-texas-27th-congressional-district/746604002/
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Gender: MaleHometown: South Texas. most of my life I lived in Austin and Dallas
Home country: United States
Current location: Bryan, Texas
Member since: Sun Aug 14, 2011, 03:57 AM
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