Lessons of History and Trying To Avoid the Same Mistakes

[Sixties Fan]

“It’s now economically absurdly risky for a consumer to file a lawsuit, and it’s going to be incredibly hard to find a good lawyer,” says Amy Bach, the executive director of United Policyholders, a nonprofit that advocates for insurance holders.

“You get victimized twice. Once by the storm. And second, by your own insurance company.”
Moreover, the legislation shortened the window in which policy holders can file claims with their insurers, invested $1 billion of taxpayer funds into a state-run reinsurance fund to help insurance companies mitigate their losses in the event of catastrophic events, and narrowed eligibility for Citizens, Florida’s state-run nonprofit insurance company that provides insurance to people who cannot find affordable coverage on the regular market.

It was DeSantis who urged the three-day special legislative session in December 2022 that led to the hasty 105-page rewrite of the state’s long-standing insurance code, which DeSantis then signed into law the same month.


(full article online)

Insurers gave Ron DeSantis millions. He made it harder to sue them.

The Florida governor's insurance overhaul is hurting homeowners—and possibly his presidential campaign.

www.motherjones.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

[The Party of Law and Order ]

“The situation at CPAC has become such that I felt compelled to resign,” Gerow said when reached afterward.

Gerow’s resignation follows months of turbulence at the prominent conservative organization, where Chair Matt Schlapp earlier this year was suedby a former Herschel Walker Senate campaign staffer over allegations of sexual assault. Board member and treasurer Bob Beauprez resigned from his positionin May, citing concerns over the organization’s financial reports, while Randy Neugebauer and Mike Rose also stepped down from the board earlier this year.

Just last week another board member, Timothy Ryan, also resigned, according to a person with knowledge of the organization’s operations. Ryan’s resignation has not previously been reported.

The series of departures by longtime board members — as well as high staff turnover within the organization in the last year — have not prompted any meaningful changes at CPAC, Gerow said.

Schlapp has denied accusations of misconduct.


(full article online)

CPAC vice chair resigns amid turmoil

Charlie Gerow is calling for investigations into the group’s top leader and its financial practices.

www.politico.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

WATCH Trump supporters yell about stuff they have no clue about

 

[Sixties Fan]

The 7 DUMBEST Trump Statements​

 

[Sixties Fan]

MAGA Mom Confesses The One Thing That Disqualifies Trump From Office​

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Kondor3]

https://twitter.com/MarkJacob16

With all the arguments over whether MAGA Republicans are fascists, I reread William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” to see how much the rise of Hitler and the rise of MAGA smell similar. Conclusion: They do. This thread lists 10 ways. Please take a look.

1. A big lie about treachery is used to foment resentment. Nazis: We didn’t really lose World War I. It was a “stab in the back” by Jews and other "November criminals." MAGA: We didn’t really lose the 2020 election. It was a “steal” by politicians and Blacks in big cities.




2. There’s an obsession with purity of the culture. Nazis: “Racial mixture” was a threat to Aryan culture, Hitler wrote. MAGA: “Great replacement theory” says immigrants threaten white culture.



3. Chaos is something to be exploited, not addressed. Nazis: Economic distress is a great political opportunity. MAGA: Economic distress is a great political opportunity.



4. The super-rich bankroll the right-wing seizure of power. Nazis: Thanks to I.G. Farben, Deutsche Bank, Thyssen, Krupp, etc. MAGA: Thanks to the Mercers, Uihleins, DeVos, Thiel, etc.



5. Some people think the fascist threat is overblown. Nazis: While Hitler posed a major threat, some said he "ceased to be a political danger.” (2 weeks later, he was chancellor.) MAGA: While Trump poses a major threat, many people think it’s “just politics,” no worries.


6. There’s a cult of personality. Nazis: The German army made a pledge of loyalty to Hitler personally. MAGA: Trump’s supporters bill him as “the most moral president” in U.S. history.



7. Christianity is used to legitimize the movement. Nazis: “The party stands for positive Christianity.” MAGA: Trump is described as the “Chosen One” protecting American Christianity.





8. Books are the enemy. Nazis: Any book that “acts subversively on our future” must be burned. MAGA: “I think we should throw those books in a fire,” says a Virginia school board member.




9. An independent news media is the enemy. Nazis: Any newspaper that “offends the honor and dignity of Germany” must be banned. MAGA: The press is the “enemy of the people.”



10. Educators are pressured to be politically compliant. Nazis: Teachers took an oath to “be loyal and obedient to Adolf Hitler.” MAGA: Florida’s DeSantis accuses teachers of “indoctrination” and pressures them to avoid references to America’s racist history and LGBTQ people.



I'm not saying that MAGA will end up as horrifically as Nazism. I am saying that America 2022 feels too much like Germany 1932, and I don't want to take the risk of watching MAGA cultism play out. We have to stop it now.



Why did Twitter put a “sensitive” warning on this thread? Who knows? My only theory is that it has a “hateful symbol”—a swastika on the cover of Shirer’s book about Nazism.

Brown Shirts are Brown Shirts, no matter which side of The Pond and which decade they reside in...

MAGA Red Caps... with their fanatical devotion to their Fuhrer... are cause for similar concern, today, on this side of The Pond.

I actually tend to agree with many of the precepts they voice... but I take exception to their Cult leadership and methods.

We are a nation of Laws and many of these Red Caps are entirely willing to set all that aside in order to empower their Fuhrer.

Sounds depressingly familiar to any serious student of history, and should ring alarm bells for Americans loyal to the Republic.

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

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[DBA]

WATCH Trump supporters yell about stuff they have no clue about

Many/most Democrats/Independents are completely fooled by MSM rhetoric and omissions that favor Biden and the Democrats.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Many/most Democrats/Independents are completely fooled by MSM rhetoric and omissions that favor Biden and the Democrats.

This nonsense has been tried again and again. It fails miserably. Republicans continue to lose even White Republicans who are now voting for Democrats for the issues important to them.

Maybe keeping Blacks from voting, as in Harris County, Texas will do the trick, hey?

 

[DBA]

This nonsense has been tried again and again. It fails miserably. Republicans continue to lose even White Republicans who are now voting for Democrats for the issues important to them.

Maybe keeping Blacks from voting, as in Harris County, Texas will do the trick, hey?

The ignorance problem is certainly not race specific. Many former White Republicans are falling for the sham too. They don't do their due diligence. They read MSM headlines and take them at face value. Informed people don't fall for the rhetoric the MSM tries to spoon feed them. Sadly, there are less and less informed Americans every day, thus why we elected a man like Biden.

 

[Sixties Fan]

The ignorance problem is certainly not race specific. Many former White Republicans are falling for the sham too. They don't do their due diligence. They read MSM headlines and take them at face value. Informed people don't fall for the rhetoric the MSM tries to spoon feed them. Sadly, there are less and less informed Americans every day, thus why we elected a man like Biden.

Keep trying. When you succeed, let me know.

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[DBA]

So many things wrong with this, but one in particular stuck out.

Oh the horror of checking to make sure you are a biological boy if you want to participate on a girls team. What’s next, checking their birth certificate for ages? I mean, what could be wrong with allowing a 13 year old to participate with 6 year olds? Can‘t a 13 year old just identify as a 6 year old? Isn’t that good enough, besides, we don’t want to discriminate based on age. Seriously, the fact that they would even put this in this nonsense shows just how disturbed and illogical the Democratic base really is.

 

[Sixties Fan]

So many things wrong with this, but one in particular stuck out.

Oh the horror of checking to make sure you are a biological boy if you want to participate on a girls team. What’s next, checking their birth certificate for ages? I mean, what could be wrong with allowing a 13 year old to participate with 6 year olds? Can‘t a 13 year old just identify as a 6 year old? Isn’t that good enough, besides, we don’t want to discriminate based on age. Seriously, the fact that they would even put this in this nonsense shows just how disturbed and illogical the Democratic base really is.

I do hate to break this to you and all others.

Republican parents DO HAVE TRANS CHILDREN, TOO. !!!!!!

And many of those Republican parents are NOT HAPPY with the way the Republican Party has been attacking their Trans children.


Since you have no knowledge on the subject and truly could NOT CARE LESS about any of those families, it would be nice if you stayed away from what you keep hearing from the GOP, and tried to listen more to experts and the schools and the sports and what THEY are going to decide to do with Trans kids in sports.


Really !!!

 

[Sixties Fan]

The decline of Florida’s education system under Ron DeSantis continues unabated. There’s so much craziness going on that it’s hard to keep track. One underlying theme of the DeSantis regime’s current assaults on education are efforts to erase a full and accurate teaching of African American history, and to erase the LGBTQ+ community altogether. The wingnut-led book banning movement is one strand of those assaults, not just in Florida but around the country. Book banning efforts in Florida have been energized by the passage last year of the DeSantis-led “Parental Rights in Education” bill, which bars any discussion of gender or sexuality in classroom instruction (even though the bill doesn’t apply to school libraries, the bill has still fueled complaints to remove books from libraries).

But in what may be a sign of the apparent lack of enthusiasm among voters, even Republican voters, for the Republicans’ anti-woke culture war frenzy, of which DeSantis is the movement’s most prominent and frenzied leader, a new analysis by the Tampa Bay Times shows that the vast majority of complaints filed in Florida over books in school libraries since July 2022 were in just two of the state’s 67 school districts — and the majority of those complaints came from just two people.

The analysis showed that only 26 of the state’s 67 school districts (in Florida, each school district covers a county) received any complaints about books. And of the roughly 1,100 complaints filed, more than 700 (64%) came from just two school districts: Escambia County in the western Panhandle and Clay County near Jacksonville. (By comparison, the state’s 10 largest districts each reported complaints on fewer than 15 titles.) Although these two districts make up less than 3% of the state’s total public school enrollment, they have been the recipients of 64% of all of the state’s book complaints. And more than half of the complaints in those two counties came from just two people: Bruce Friedman, a parent, who is responsible for more than 400 complaints received by the Clay County school district; and Vicki Baggett, a Pensacola high school teacher, who has submitted at least 178 complaints — representing 80% of complaints filed in Escambia County.

The data illustrates how a tiny minority of activists across the state can overwhelm school districts while shaping the national conversation over what books belong on school library shelves.

The Tampa Bay Times reveals how much of a sham these book complaints really are. For example:

Many of Friedman’s written complaints provide little more explanation than “Protect Children!” and “Damaged Souls!” Some of his filed complaints appear to be direct photocopies with only the title and authors changed, the Times found.

And...

On each of her 178 complaints, Baggett indicated she had read “the material in its entirety.” But the Times found that language in many of the complaints appears to be pulled from reviews published by the website BookLooks.org, which flags titles for “objectionable content, including profanity, nudity, and sexual content.”
According to a state filing, the website was launched last year by Emily Maikisch, a member of Moms for Liberty, an increasingly influential group that has been active in the movement to challenge books.

A running theme in many of the book complaints are opposition to anything having to do with LGBTQ+ issues or any reference of any kind to sex. For example, Friedman filed a complaint against the children’s picture book “Arthur” because it depicted a game of “spin the bottle”; Baggett objected to “And Tango Makes Three,” a children’s picture book about two male penguins in the Central Park Zoo who raise an adopted hatchling, because she claimed it promoted an “LGBTQ agenda using penguins.”

The Times provides a full list of all book complaints filed in the state, and actions taken (when known), which includes a suspiciously high number of books by prominent African American authors: “Beloved” by Toni Morrison (Clay County removed it); "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Clay County retained it); "Black Brother, Black Brother" by Jewell Parker Rhodes (retained in 3 counties); "Booked" by Kwame Alexander; "Born a Crime" by Trevor Noah; "Born on the Water" by Nikole Hannah-Jones (that’s a partial list just through the “B’s” — the list goes on and on and on).

The constant frivolous book complaints from just these two people are resulting in a massive waste of taxpayer resources, the Times story reveals. In Clay County, for example, Roger Dailey, Clay County’s assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, personally reviesws every book complaint that the district receives, which takes 10-15 hours of his time each week. “I’ve had weeks totally hijacked by this book thing,” said Dailey. What’s worse, Dailey points out that nobody really cares about this except a few fringe wingnuts.


(full article online)

"Totally hijacked" - Most book complaints in FL coming from 2 people, new study shows

The decline of Florida’s education system under Ron DeSantis continues unabated. There’s so much craziness going on that it’s hard to keep track. One underlying theme of the DeSantis regime’s current assaults on education are efforts to erase a full...

www.dailykos.com