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Anti-Gay Monster Rich Swier On WWPR

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The notorious anti-gay bigot, Red County blogger, and Tea Party activist Dr. Richard Swier has a regular talk show on WWPR radio in Tampa, Florida, during which he regularly promotes hatred of gays and lesbians. In giving him air time, and in not repudiating Swier’s dangerous bigotry, WWPR’s management are not behaving responsibly.

LGBT advocate Stephen Warne lives in Florida. He worked for ALSO Youth in Sarasota, which was founded to protect gay youth from bullycide. Warne also founded Step Out Sarasota, whose mission is to advance diversity, understanding, acceptance, and equality. “Rich Swier, Sr.,” Warne says, “has written very hateful things for many years about GLBTQ people – and attacked me personally while I worked at ALSO Youth.”

Swier, whose show on WWPR radio airs Monday through Friday at 11:00 AM, recently outraged the community by stating that anti-gay bullying is a “healthy” form of peer pressure. His current pretense for making that assertion is the existence of HIV. There is no logic, only anti-gay hate and militant ignorance to his assertion. Though lesbian women have an exceedingly low rate of HIV infection and an even lower rate of transmitting HIV, Swier is as violently and irrationally against acceptance and equality for lesbians as for gay males. And, though suicide claims by far more young lives annually in Florida than does HIV, Swier describes the bullying of young gay people as “healthy.”

St. Petersburg Victim’s Rights Attorney Robin Allweiss, meanwhile, describes bullying in Florida schools as being “out of control.” Alerted to WWPR’s broadcasting of Swier’s militant ignorance on HIV and public health, Thomas Liberti, Chief of the Bureau of HIV/AIDS of the Florida Department of Health wrote, “Thank you for informing us about this situation. I will be out of state for the next two weeks so I am going to ask my prevention director to look into this.”

Whereas multiple online bio blurbs for Swier state that he is involved with the School Board of Sarasota County, Superintendent Lori M. White says that Swier’s “views on this subject do not represent the views of our school district.”

Swier recently started a blog, Man Up, ostensibly dedicated to HIV prevention, but in fact given over to many of the most vicious and malignant forms of anti-LGBT bigotry. Two forms of anti-gay bigotry in particular figure prominently on Swier’s Man Up blog. One is the propagandistic notion that acceptance of and equality for gays will provoke America’s downfall. Swier, furthermore, maliciously portrays gay Americans as actively seeking the nation’s downfall. This was precisely Hitler’s message to non-Jewish Germans -– Jews are an internal enemy; treating them as equals will spell Germany’s demise.

Swier also fans bigots’ baseless fears that gay people are out to get their children. In that, Swier is using against gay human beings an equivalent to the infamous “blood libel” wherein Jews were said to kidnap and kill Christian babies to use their blood to make matzo.

Last November, immediately after the election, The Florida Independent reported, “The chairman of the Republican Party of Sarasota County — where the party swept every election last Tuesday — is crediting a controversial local blogger with a history of extremist statements with helping ‘shift the whole area right,’ in the process calling him a ‘great American’ and ‘part of the team.’

“The comments from Republican Party chairman Joe Gruters came in an election night interview with Red County blogger Richard Swier, who has called homosexuality a ‘destructive behavior‘ and compared murdered Kansas abortion provider George Tiller to a Nazi scientist.”

Florida Tea Party Spokesman Doug Guetzloe, however, say “The Florida Tea Party does not condone or support the comments put forth by Mr. Swier. The Florida Tea Party supports individual freedom.”

Speaking of babies, Ronnie Paris, Jr. was a three-year-old living in WWPR’s broadcast area in Tampa. His father feared that Ronnie seemed homosexual. Hoping to apply a sort of peer pressure that would keep Ronnie from being gay, he started boxing him and beat him to death. And WWPR is now giving air time to Richard Swier, who says peer pressure to keep young people from being gay is “healthy?”

WWPR and Swier’s level of aggressive ignorant adult bullying would not be tolerated against any other minority group and should not be tolerated against LGBT Americans, either. In giving air time to this anti-gay monster who says that bullying is a “healthy” form of peer pressure, WWPR apparently does not care whether Swier’s despicable jabbering leads to more Ronnie Paris-like murders, may that poor dear little angel rest in peace.

 

New York City-based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT-interest by-line has appeared on Advocate.com, PoliticusUSA.com, The New York Blade, Queerty.com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues.  Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs.  His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.


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‘Divine Providence’: Johnson Paints Trump as ‘Miraculously’ Spared by God

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House Republican Speaker Mike Johnson paid tribute to President Donald Trump on Tuesday, portraying him less as an elected leader and more as a divinely chosen figure. He declared that Trump had been “miraculously” spared from an assassination attempt during the 2024 campaign, so that he could go on to enact his “America First” agenda by signing into law the GOP budget—his so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, a sweeping package of tax cuts and government spending.

Speaker Johnson, widely viewed as a Christian nationalist, told reporters (video below) that during last year’s assassination attempt that left one bystander dead, “God miraculously spared the president’s life.”

“I think it’s undeniable, and he did it for an obvious purpose. And his presidency and his life are the fruits of divine providence,” declared Johnson. “He points that out, obviously, now all the time, and he’s right to do so.”

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“As President Trump has lived since with the acknowledgment, everyday since, he has acknowledged that each new day isn’t guaranteed to us,” Johnson claimed. “It isn’t to any of us, and that’s why we’re not wasting any time. That’s why he remains so strong and resilient. It’s why we have such a sense of urgency. President Trump took a bullet to his head. He got up shortly thereafter. He pleaded with the crowd to fight, and then he went on to win a historic election, less than four months later. America’s changed because he survived that day.”

Johnson’s rhetoric contains several hallmarks of fascistic rhetoric, including deification of a leader and positioning him as a figure chosen by God to do God’s work.

Critics responded to Johnson’s remarks.

“How far is it from divine providence to divine right and absolutism?” asked journalist and author Nikolaus von Twickel.

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“This is the Speaker of the House publicly and confidently espousing Christian Nationalist talking points and characterizing a profoundly, unrepentantly sinful man as a quasi-deity,” noted award-winning author Jennifer Erin Valent. “Every true believer needs to call this out for the blatant heresy that it is.”

Utah Democratic state Senator Nate Blouin declared, “this is insane rhetoric and it’s disturbing to see people of faith embrace it.”

“This nation was formed by patriots fleeing this kind [of] purple Dominionist cant,” television writer and playwright Hal Corley wrote. “Presidents are not anointed like divine right royalty and such doctrinaire rhetoric should be condemned.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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Trump Vowed to Slash Prices and ‘End Inflation’—Inflation Just Hit Highest Level in Months

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Despite President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that there is “no inflation,” consumer prices jumped in June, rising to an annual rate of 2.7%—the highest level in months. Economists cite the President’s tariffs, now beginning to take effect, along with rising costs for food, energy, and rent.

The Consumer Price Index increase “is slightly higher than expected and is up from an annual pace of 2.4 percent in May,” according to The New York Times.

ABC News called it “a notable surge of price increases as President Trump’s tariff policy took hold.”

“Worsening inflation poses a political challenge for President Donald Trump, who promised during last year’s presidential campaign to immediately lower costs,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday, noting that inflation “rose last month to its highest level since February as President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs push up the cost of a range of goods.”

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As far back as August of 2024, Trump vowed, “Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.”

Days later, he added, “Under my administration, we will be slashing energy and electricity prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months.”

Fast forward to just one day before Election Day: “A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper,” he promised.

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Economists and economic experts say the Trump tariffs, a tax on certain imported goods from certain countries that are expected to jump August 1, are leading to higher prices for American consumers.

“Tariffs are starting to raise prices,” observed Heather Long, a Washington Post columnist and the chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union.

“This is just the beginning,” she added. “But we need to watch food closely. Increases there are really tough on middle class and moderate-income households.”

Long pointed to several categories of imports and listed their price jumps:

“Linens +5.9%, Oranges +4.7%, Olives +4.4%, Cookware +4%, Audio equipment +2.9%, Major appliances +2.4%, Coffee +2.2%, Sports equipment +1.8%, Toys +1.4%,” while noting that eggs are down 10.8 percent.

Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden, a former top Biden administration official, wrote simply, “Thanks for raising our cost of living with your inane tariffs @realDonaldTrump.”

U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) noted, “Trump and Republicans are hurting our economy and increasing your costs.”

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Image via Reuters

 

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Rollins Slams Medicaid, Touts Healthy Food to Cut Health Care Costs—GOP Cut Both Programs

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U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins claimed Medicaid is “bankrupting” the states, while suggesting that “healthy” foods could serve to help reduce health care costs. Yet both Medicaid and nutrition programs like SNAP were slashed under President Donald Trump and Republicans’ so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law just ten days ago.

“Medicaid is bankrupting almost every state,” Secretary Rollins claimed in remarks on Monday (video below).

With the Republicans gutting over $1 trillion in federal Medicaid funds, and approximately $200 billion in SNAP funds, states face either picking up that massive shortfall or cutting some programs, benefits, or users.

Medicaid is “taking between 30, 40, 45, 50 percent of the state budgets, and has for a really long time, for those of us who come from state policy, we know this very, very well,” Rollins continued. State funds for Medicaid (not including federal matching funds) account for less than 20 percent of state budgets, overall, according to the Pew Research Center.

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Secretary Rollins previously served as a policy director for Texas Governor Rick Perry and led the right-wing Texas Public Policy Foundation. More recently, she headed the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank dedicated to advancing President Trump’s first post-presidency agenda.

Rollins decried what she says is the number one purchase using SNAP funds: “sugary drinks and junk food.”

“Frankly, we have to make a change,” she insisted.

“So there is a lot of wholesale across the government that we can do, but there’s also a recognition that a lot of these communities that are part of the Medicaid program, they don’t always have access to healthy food,” Rollins continued, not mentioning the billions the BBB Act gutted from both.

Rollins insisted the federal government has to do “a better job through our nutrition programs, through our partnerships, et cetera, of ensuring that those communities have access to healthy foods.”

“So on the back end, we have programs that are not bankrupting our government.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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Image via Reuters

 

 

 

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