Something happened in the nineties. That's when Republicans stopped being a party of integrity and gave the crazies in their parties the right to play dirty to win. And now it's all out of control. It's just chaos and dystopia.

From my observations, I have to add that they started small. With property rights. The process and strategy was so clear to see in Florida, but it worked for them. And from there, they used the same process on the National level. We saw it with Roe. But that isn't the final objective. That would be a mistake to think that way.

It's no surprise that De Santis is leading the way at a very rapid pace, denying freedoms to people in order to reach his utopian dystopia, because in Florida, nobody stopped them when they went after Growth Management and the same backwater methods they used back then, still apply today. This is Florida. Laws are laws until they get in their way. Then they use a process of misinformation and chaos to do whatever they want to do and when you realize they did it crookedly, they demand respect for their toughness.

The Florida legislature is clearly doing that now by stifling the First Amendment Rights for reporters, giving public figures the right to sue them for whatever criticism they don't like in the paper. I don't expect this will beat a challenge in the courts, but damn, those counter lawsuits are slow!

Let me tell you about the nineties so you can see how the process works. Here in my community there was a huge development where the original developer went bankrupt. So there was this plan for high density developments AND large swaths of open space to accommodate the population. I mean, there was everything you could think of including stables and bridle paths. The City made the first error by ignoring the vested rights in those plats. They took way too long to acknowledge that the original plats had rights. In fact, the City Attorney admitted something about the City being run without a Constitution. No blue prints. No Constitution. Sound familiar?

So, the City lost the original developer and the new developer sued them to develop property based on the original plat. Instead of proper hearings, that would have allowed people to get informed properly, what happened next was dystopian. In reality, there was lots of room for fair negotiations. Those open spaces were a bargaining chip for the community, that didn't want to see high density housing.

But the City kept those negotiations in house. They bent the rules for public notices and pubic speaking when land changes occurred. I personally can attest that they didn't use the proper large size notices in a paper that was widely used by the City population. This was a State law. I did my own private investigation, going into the City and discovered that they were using a small Sanford paper that didn't even have a distribution center inside the boundaries of the City. And when they posted in the Orlando Sentinel, it was the smaller advertisements, and not the large 2x8 or 10 inch advertisements required by the State. The secretary told me that they were saving the City money. Always deflection.

So, land plans were hatched out of court settlements and the local population were enraged. Without those public hearings they were left to accept whatever the City and a new developer came up with in court. And what the active population did made it much worse, which gave the developer reason for more lawsuits, including business interference conspiracy.

As a side note, if reasonable minds had been allowed to witness the negotiations that resulted in the settlement agreements, they wouldn't have been as angry. That is my opinion. Some of the things they came up with in the courtroom, were pretty reasonable, swapping the open space for lower density communities. When you look at it that way, it makes what happened next a tragi-comedy. Tragic for us who live here, and a comedy to everyone else.

What finally broke the minds of the people that fomented the charge into City Hall, was the loss of tennis courts. TENNIS fucking Courts, people. Tennis courts which are composed of fenced in poured concrete with painted lines. They could have built them anywhere else. But, that's when it happened. That's when you could plainly see how useful idiots are created. The population was so charged with misinformation that was intentionally meant to direct their ire at the new developer, that they couldn't see how they were being used. It turned out there was opportunity in a huge 3500 acre plat that was being dismantled, but for small groups that had connections to take advantage of the chaos. My smaller community was one of those prizes, which is why this is a lesson I will never forget.

And, DUers, I have seen that pattern repeated over and over again, watching it spread on a National level. They stir people up to attack whatever gets in their way, and while the population is being used as cannon fodder (i.e. January 6th), they are getting away with the real steal. Today, we know what that is. De Santis is showing us with brute force. They are slowly dismantling American rights that they don't like, just like they dismantled the plat. They are taking over this country in this manner, and their side is so blinded by rage that they can't see how they're being used for a purpose that they wouldn't agree to, if more reasonable minds prevailed.

If there are no consequences when they break the law, the message sent is that no one is going to go after them if they proceed with their objectives. So, I'm saying it now, giving the Secret Service a pass for not protecting those texts is a huge mistake. I heard someone on MSNBC say that they may have understood it was a law, but no one ever really made an issue about it before, so they really didn't think it was a big deal. Hence, they were guilty of being lax. Not crooked.

This is how institutions and communities begin to degrade to the point where there is constant division and hostility in the air.

I saw it for myself on a local level. This was back when I was new to the community and didn't have enough of the local background to understand just how far my neighbors were involved in a fight that involved the community leaders against a developer. In those early years they were talking to each other in front of me before HOA meetings began and it might as well have been a secret code, because I didn't have the context to realize what they were saying. For example, before one meeting, the Treasurer asked a question to an individual who played a major role in that ordeal. He was the Major's good friend. I refer to him as Resident Roy in my writing of my experiences.

Treasurer: "How is everything going?"

Resident Roy: "It's a House of Cards. One goes down, they all go down."

Did not know what that meant until years later. I didn't even know what a House of Cards was. But it's an important thing to remember if you're dealing with social networks in Central Florida.

Another thing I heard at a meeting: "No judge in the State will side with a developer against a homeowner." People agreed.

You see, because they believed they were immune, they went ahead supporting strategies that also had the effect of breaching fiduciary responsibility to the rest of us. They really believed they were Top Dogs and that no one would hold them accountable.

In many respects they did get away with it. The lawyers came up with a Settlement Agreement that contained a Confidential Clause and that helped bury the facts.

And that's how communities degrade. With that kind of cover, those who could, used the freedom from consequences to abuse the rest of us as they grabbed whatever they could to compensate themselves for their troubles. In my HOA, that would involve common grounds, as well as the trust and goodwill that is part of a healthy community life.

In sum, the Secret Service's excuse that no one has ever really made a big deal of record keeping is the kind of excuse that reinforces crooked behavior. And it would be a huge mistake to let them get away with it now, because the next time there might be even higher stakes involved.

From my experiences with bad political lawyers, they suddenly remember their ethical obligations when "word gets out on the street." That's an actual quote from a bad, good ole boy style lawyer in Central Florida. These are the kind of lawyers that work both the private and public sector. You'll find them as City or County lawyers at the same time that they represent private companies that are seeking approval from government.

It isn't uncommon for them to be members of, or even president of the Chamber of Commerce. With the connections they make working both sectors, it is easy for them to control the information that elected officials have in order to make decisions that will benefit the lawyer's clients, and their own pockets.

Because privacy is key to this process, communications are usually through phone calls. Back at the turn of the Millennium, I had a conversation with a group of ex-commissioners and they all told me the same thing. The City attorney would contact them by phone before City meetings and conversations would always be the same. He would impart the information and would say, I have already talked to so and so and they told me they're leaning in favor. Hard to argue with the lawyer when he's the one controlling the information on a subject they may know very little about. Especially when the lawyer goes out of his way to make them feel special, like telling them, "Don't worry, I've got your back." And they did feel special up until the moment they lost an election and were swiftly ghosted. He wouldn't even take their phone calls.

As you would expect, "regular" people who became part of this network believed they were suddenly bullet proof. They see another world that bends the rules to get whatever objective the government is reaching for under the guise of "public good." What happens when these people begin to weave their own personal objectives into this backwater framework? I can write that story.

Bottomline, lawyers can't control all that can go wrong when elected officials start to ad lib. This backwater world only works when there is secrecy and discretion. It is, afterall, a backwater, backroom, shadow government that they're running. Unfortunately for them, the most ethically fluid people may be the easiest ones to use, but they're also the most unpredictable. They talk, they're braggarts. And word finally gets out on the street.

I have to say that locally, they did a great job of tamping down on the public that caught on and tried to expose the group that went rogue here in the nineties, even when word got on the street. I could write that story. Fear mongering, bullying, and defamation. That's how they managed to silence everyone.

The only way out of this rabbit hole is through a formal investigation that will force the lawyers to talk. And some of them will talk because they know that it's the only way to save what's left of their professional reputation. Without it, you become a Giuliani. Someone who the public sees as a cross between a charlatan and con-man. I'm willing to bet that Cipollone is a step or two above Giuliani. He's the kind that will talk because word is now out on the street.

And for that, we have Cassidy Hutchinson and the J6 Committee to thank. You need both to break the pattern.

This is a reflection of the things that have occurred in my lifetime, where Republicans would not rely on a fair process because they knew or feared they would lose. So they relied on the one strategy that is slowly killing this country: Division and mob incitement.

I start with the Brooks Brother Riot because I see a clear tie-in to current events. I'm sure others have seen it too, but I'm taking time to connect the dots because I don't think we give Republicans enough credit for their transparent and obtuse strategies.

What was the Brooks Brother storming about? It was a group of Washington D.C. GOP operatives flying down to Miami to storm the narrow halls of a building where election counting was taking place. So, people from outside of this State managed to interfere with the State's election count. And they succeeded.

It created a situation for a lawsuit to be filed to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court did their best to hand the election over to Bush.

So, in my opinion, 2000 was just the first successful election interference by Republicans.

It's funny the things that stick in your mind. I don't know who said it, but in the early stages of the Florida voting mess, when Florida was going through its recount at the bequest of Gore, some bitter Republican said that Florida was not unique and that Republicans could do the same thing in other states to reverse the results.

I realize now, that was more a threat than a premonition.

And now we're at present day where the Jan 6th Insurrection Committee is doing a great job of connecting dots to show just how concerted and planned it was with all the pieces moving together for one desired goal. It started with the very same elements that were used for the Brooks Brother Riot. It required a mob creating chaos to stop a fair election process. Tomorrow we'll learn from the committee how they stepped it up by trying to force the votes of a fake electorate.

Here is where I throw a word of caution regarding policy by mob rule: I have seen this rallying the troops and storming the Bastille methodology since the nineties. On a local level it happened over a land dispute. The community I lived in was overrun with misinformation, forcing everyone's focus, energy and ire on a developer. And while the public supported the community leaders who most promised to achieve the desired objectives, from my pov, these leaders were opportunists. Not selfless humanitarians. They were people who would have found ways to profit from takings of the developer's property or community common grounds. Some would later find profitable positions in the government or private real estate sector.

I saw this forced policy-by-mob-rule again after 9/11. Most of us know what it was like being ridiculed and bullied by people who were more interested in the flag pin, than they were about following the truth. My husband lost his nephew in the Twin Towers attack so, afterwards, I spent a great deal of time on the online newspaper articles to try to find out what happened. I read a great many articles, especially from the Washington Post. I determined within weeks that the attack came from Saudi Arabia and I told my sister-in-law. She was so despondent that it didn't register. I again mentioned it a few years later, when I thought it was clear that Bush attacked the wrong country and her response was, "At least Bush did something." I didn't have the heart to remind her that Bush put the sons and daughters of many American mothers in harms way. Mothers who unjustifiably lost their soldier children and now shared the same pain that she did. No. I didn't say it, but I hope that others who subscribe to these faux-patriotic mob risings at least think about the possibility that they're being used as useful idiots.

I think it's important to talk about mob rule. And important to show how Republicans rely on confusing people in order to get their way. Sure, there will be people who are lost forever. But right now we're after the undecideds, the middle of the roads. And, as I see it, we're in a Civil War where the bullets are information and bandwidth. We need to keep blasting them with facts and the truth in a war that has no foreseeable end.

I keep harping that Democrats need to run on a safe schools program, and it keeps getting a cricket response. So, let's try again:

(1) Improve school design for public schools, where it's needed. I know some public school are built like fortresses, but not all. Some are built right off major highways where anyone can crash a barrier and run straight to a classroom. Those schools need to be fortified or redesigned. If there is no money in the school system, then it's time to get the money back from private schools. That transfer of public to private tax money is an abomination of the Constitution.

(2) Start now bringing in child psychology experts to explain that the GOP Conservative Anglo-indoctrination Camps that the Right is trying to turn our school into is going to create a lot of maladjusted kids. And with the prevalence of guns, it makes a bad mix. What a fucking right-wing quagmire. Republicans are going to create children with mental health problems, and when they go on a rampage, they'll say it was the mental health problem and not the guns.

Republicans just never think about the consequences of their policies. Or maybe they do. Maybe the reason why they want easy access to guns is because they are arming their people because they know that they can't push their policies on us without a fight? And, horrors of horrors, it never occurred to them that young men would buy those guns and storm schools?

We need to be the ones to protect our children, because Republicans are too compromised to be of any use.

And, I'm guessing that the demeaning environment made it too easy for him to drop out of school, making his situation worse.

Not going to defend him, but, this was foreseeable. The Columbine killer was also bullied. Ramos was a child that was left behind, and instead of getting help to rebuild his confidence and try again as an adult to find a productive place in this world, he instead did what this country does best. He purchased a military style weapon because our laws are permissive. And now we have a new massacre on the books.

I want to point out that this was not your ordinary Anglo-incel. This is something else. Maybe he was an incel, since he was aggressive to women, but not the typical White Supremacist type. And this should be a major concern for us because the American school environment is about to get worse for minority children in this country, and others who don't fit the Anglo mold.

I think the schools, in the way that Republicans are trying to change it, are creating a harsh place for non-white, non-conservative children to grow up in. The objective of the Anglo conservative culture has always been to make their perspective, the dominant one. It has confused young white men who are growing up in a world that is growing diverse and doesn't recognize their "birth-right" as the top dogs. Raised by racist parents, no surprised that they grow up believing that all their problems are due to people who do not look like them. Even if they know how absurd this is, they know that they will receive quiet approval from the people who believe like they do. The only people that matter to them.

Ramos suggest a different kind of misadaption, but with the same gruesome results. Young American men are solving identity problems by blasting away at defenseless people. It has now crossed cultural lines.

What we do now can save lives in the future. This should be enough for us to fight for our schools, and fight for our children. Subject material and topics taught in schools matter. Children are getting mixed messages from all sources, but school should no be one of them. We are a diverse country and we need to teach children how to deal with the differences of diversity in a safe school setting. And that includes the issue of poverty, which is what slowly destroyed Ramos.

And poverty isn't insurmountable. My own father was born on the floor of a migrant worker's shack and he still managed to rise up the ranks and reach his full potential. In my father's case, community was everything. The public school teachers in Ohio gave him the tools he needed at the right time in his life. When this country was faced with WWII, he answered the call and this country gave him the opportunity to serve. There was one blatant example of racism in the military, when no one offered to team up with him to put on his pack. Military packs were heavy back then, filled with equipment that today would feel like ironman material, which is why soldiers were taught to use the buddy system. My father just handled it the way he always handled these kind of things. On his own. He devised a way to prop up the pack on his bunk and sat on the ground, with his back to the pack and stood up, sliding into the straps.

The thing is, he would always end these kind of stories with such a positive spin. He would say, "learn to do things for yourself. People will respect you for it." But I don't believe that any more. This is not the kind of culture I would find when it was my turn to come to America. I see a lot of self-interested people coming together for all the wrong reasons, usually in secrecy, and it inevitably undermines the process that is supposed to protect all of us.

I guess my father lived in another time. He would find respect and strength through military service* AND through my mother's family in Panama. Most everyone that I knew in that country overcame some sort of poverty. But community and family kept everyone strong and they helped each other through it. I don't ever remember anyone mocking another for their financial status. There was lots of support for education, and recriminations for those who steered away from the straight and narrow. Family was family.

On the other hand, in America, poverty is mocked and put down, usually by those across the aisle. A double offense, because conservatives are the ones that create the obstacles that will make sure that people remain in poverty. By my observation, it is now creating mental issues in the young, who decide to take things out with guns. So, congratulations conservatives. Another assimilation hurdle conquered.

In sum, we need to go back to the lessons of Columbine and reaffirm anti-bullying programs. But we also need to create an environment in schools that doesn't mock children because they don't fit into the box that Anglo conservative are trying to define as an ideal. We are a diverse country, and the sooner we embrace this reality, the sooner we can raise well-adapted American children.


*After WWII, my father would use the GI Bill to get higher education. He would always remain close to the military, afterwards, working as a civilian for the Army and serving in the Reserves.

Take into account that this fear that the demographics in this country would one day flip was a common conversation among older white Americans back when I was young. They always feared that one day they would no longer be in the majority. From there, this fear went from the older generation to present day with the replacement theory, which I gather claims that dark skinned people and Jews, are going to replace Anglo-Americans, and particularly, white conservatives.

So, let's break it down further.

Tucker pointed out that he feared that his vote would get diluted every time we "import a new voter." So what he fears is people coming from other countries who know a different way of life, a different value system. Well, we all know that immigrants to this country were once white. And they brought with them a different way of life, a different value system. Somehow, we all made room for those differences and even thrived.

Those earlier immigrants, their grandparents, made the trek across the sea because they were told the streets were lined in gold. How many people know that? But the present day immigrants are coming here because of America's promise of equality and a better way of life. Which seems reasonable. But the reason why conservative white Americans fear them is because they're bringing with them a different way of life, a different value system and most importantly, one that doesn't see White People as a superior race.

This is one of the ironies in America. White conservatives have been battling against the concept of equality for nearly two and a half centuries. It is one of the most fundamental concepts in America. The one that makes America different from all the others. What do you say about that, textualist? Oh, I know what they would say. Equality is only for white people, since the founding fathers were white. You know, if you want to expose textualism as the con-job it is, why don't you start there? If we can convince them that argument doesn't hold true, then everything about the textualist process falls apart like a jenga tower without a foundation.

Anyway, these new arrivals to America do not, or will not comply with the Anglo concept of superiority. Thus, "imported votes" means conservative white Americans are going to have to deal with "uppity" new Americans. That's where we are today.

I think it comes down to the saturation problem they have with assimilation. I am a prime example. I grew up in a very diverse American enclave. The Canal Zone. We all got along. We were all Americans in a foreign land so we were daily reminded of what made us all the same. It was a bonding experience. When I was young, I was everything American. Country girl, hippie, Twyla Tharp dancer, even a hobo on Halloween (easy costume), Emma Peel...(Okay, I admit that sometimes I mixed the British with the American). But the point is, that when you were overseas, there were no lines that divided one kind of American from another.

It was a time when America was truly great. You could just say the words, "I am an American," and it was a passport to better treatment overseas. But back then, America was a kinder, gentler nation to the countries that hosted them. Not so much today, so no one should be surprised that the only thing they see is the ugly American. You know, those kind of American tourists who are so insular in their rural lives (metaphorically speaking) that they don't have the common courtesy or common sense to be civil in a foreign land.

Well, as these things go, they raised children who double-downed, and their kids are following through with the example by not being civil to other Americans in their own land. That's where we are today.

Anyway, I don't know if you can sort out from what I revealed about myself how I formed my first identity. So I guess I'll get to it. When I was living abroad, I knew that I was different from my Panamanian relatives. Unlike them, I related to all things American, including this shameful admission that I grew up thinking that I was white. It almost made sense. I didn't have to check off a box marked "Hispanic" until I applied to go to college in the U.S. In fact, it wasn't until my Senior year in college when I realized I wasn't white, at least not in the sense that America was sorting us out. I wasn't Anglo, which was the difference that kept escaping me, because, let's face it, everything we saw and breathed during the time that I was raised, was Anglo-oriented. You know it's true. It was the time of the white savior, where only the white character had the answers or the brute force and will to change anything. It was a time when Hollywood was casting goodness in a white light as was every other form of media. And, sad to say, they were just reflecting what white American society wanted at that time.

So, maybe I can be forgiven for my early identify confusion. I put it together in my Senior year of college when I volunteered to work in the school counselor's office. I was asked to compile the stats for the student body based on race. That's when I saw on paper, what was very apparent to the eye. My college's composition of white to minority student was 98 to 2 percent. But that's not the part where the light went on. The light went on when I found that I had to put myself down in the Hispanic section. The counselor may have even said, "Don't forget to include yourself."

It was a strange swing of emotions, because that was the moment I saw myself through someone else's eyes. And it wasn't the being an Hispanic part that was the problem. After only a few years away from home, I was already discovering the gift that comes with being bi-cultured. There is a hidden strength that comes from good memories from people who loved you and expressed their kindness and goodness in a different language than English. So, no, it wasn't that. It was that I realized in that moment, that I was being viewed and judged in a way that made me feel less than what I was.

I don't think that anyone who knew me back then, could have pictured how I would turn out after my years of fumbling to find my place in America. Bottom line, I never did find that place. I know that I probably won't be alive by the time America finally meets its promise of equality. But, what's important to know now is that I began to stop assimilating to the fraudulent version of America at some point in the nineties. That's when I stopped viewing the conservative white culture as an ideal that I aspired to be a part of. I couldn't see it before because the Hispanic culture is basically conservative. And some basic conservative choices in life are cross-cultural. But, then in the nineties, the hate talk began. That's when I found myself the lone voice in the room speaking up for minorities and heard comments like, "Why do you keep defending them. You're not Hispanic!"

And that should catch in your throat, given everything we're seeing about the Right's next move. Going back to Tucker's comment, about having his vote diluted, isn't it interesting that the conservative Supreme Court provided a fix for it? Now they're going to force women to breed voters for them, to fill in the shortfall. They will have a chance to indoctrinate them into their conservative Anglo-culture. The one that I rejected. And, guys, it isn't going to matter to them if they adopt Hispanic or black babies. They are going to get the first run to indoctrinate them into respecting their white dominance. What happened to me occurred by chance. Though it was a painful education, I don't regret what I went through because I have always valued truth and I prefer living in America with my eyes wide open, than feeling like I have to whittle away at my principles in order to be accepted by people who are too afraid to make waves against a toxic environment that is taking over this country.

But, it was a transition that I could make because my basic core was established in another time, with parents and aunts and uncles who gave me a strong foundation to work from. These babies that are going to be chatteled off to conservatives who long to protect a racist way of life they've grown accustom to; and their twisted perspective of good and evil, using religion to remove the power and rights from people they don't like...those chattled babies don't stand a chance.

What the conservatives plan to do to the next generation is social engineering. It's almost in Mengele territory, without the scalpel.

So, Tucker. I hear you. But, you see, I protest this move to chattel the next generation before they're even born, because the intention to indoctrinate them into a way of life adverse to my own, well, that will dilute MY vote.

Man, it's like the South really did rise again.

Does it make my butt look too big?

Seriously though, it doesn't happen often, but I think this one is for the times.

"It's a poor academic who does not take human suffering into account. The conservative Supremes can extrapolate abstract concepts to the moon, but the flaw in their reasoning will become apparent when people start turning blue in the face from the lack of oxygen."

innocent people? I mean, how more clear can it be? It's like the early days when drunk drivers got away with killing people with their cars. So many got away with next to nothing. MADD arrived, the laws changed and the number of incidents just dropped.

So, why can't we have a massive campaign to stop people from killing for hate? And it should begin with getting people off platforms where they can incite others to violence.

His trade agreement created shortages because his deal prevents us from importing it from other countries. Our shortage was caused by a recall of Similac due to a defective product. And now Trump's deal has kept us from backfilling the shortfall from Canada, for example, who has a surplus of the baby food.

Editing to add that we all know why Trump didn't write in a stopgap measure to account for shortfalls in supplies. It's because Republicans don't believe in safety nets. LOL!