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New Balance’s $500,000 Romney Donation: An Open Letter To Its Chairman

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New Balance Chairman Jim Davis has sparked outrage with his half-million dollar donation to Mitt Romney, an anti-gay Republican presidential candidate. Journalist Scott Rose explains why in this open letter to Davis.

Dear Jim and Anne Davis:

Because Mitt Romney signed the so-called “National Organization for Marriage” pledge to re-inforce and expand political persecution of LGBT Americans, I wanted to 1) explain why I am outraged and 2) explain why I am calling on you to denounce NOM’s pledge, and to ask for Mr. Romney to return your donation(s).

The National Organization for Marriage is an anti-LGBT hate group.  In May, it sponsored an anti-gay hate rally in The Bronx, during which a Christian extremist yelled through a megaphone at a mob of gay bashers that homosexuals are “worthy to death.”  NOM’s anti-gay hate rally was overseen by a vicious anti-gay politician, New York State Senator Ruben Diaz.  Senator Diaz’s district is marked by frequent occurrences of anti-gay hate crimes.  Last fall, a gang of anti-gay thugs sequestered gay victims and tortured them for several days.  Diaz said nothing.  I have heard stories from gay hate crime victims in Diaz’s district that when they tried to report to police that they had been gay bashed, the police laughed at them and wouldn’t even take the complaints.

That is an attitude which NOM actively seeks to perpetuate.  NOM’s Maggie Gallagher has fraudulently alleged that because of marriage equality in Europe, European civilization has ended.  She says such things, as though Barcelona, Rome and Paris were no longer viable cities.  She follows up such remarks by saying that marriage equality if made law in the U.S. will cause the downfall of American civilization.  That kind of anti-gay hate speech gets translated into the torture of many young gay people in the nation’s schools.  NOM and Gallagher actually are opposed to anti-gay bullying policies that specify sexual orientation and gender expression as protected groups, because, they claim, that can only lead to acceptance of homosexual persons.

I want you to understand very clearly why it is so important for school anti-bullying policies to specify that sexual orientation and gender expression are protected groups.  A very influential Tea Party activist and blogger, Dr. Rich Swier, says that anti-gay bullying is a “healthy” form of peer pressure.  You see, where school districts are dominated by anti-gay bigots who think that way . . and where those school districts’ anti-bullying policies don’t specify sexual orientation and gender expression as protected groups . . the school boards, administrators and teachers actually themselves will bully gay students and never be punished for that bullying, because they are defining the bullying as “healthy peer pressure.”

You could redeem New Balance’s company reputation right now by publicly condemning the NOM pledge and asking for Mitt Romney either to renounce the pledge himself or return your donations to his presidential campaign.  I find wholly unacceptable your attempt to sweep New Balance’s crisis under the rug by saying that your donation to Romney was a “personal” donation that had nothing to do with the New Balance company.

I think you might have had the LGBT community confused with a bunch of cowardly idiots when you tried make this crisis go away in that manner.  You apparently wanted consumers to think “Oh well if it was only his personal $500K and nothing to do with the New Balance company he owns, then we can buy his shoes in confidence that none of the money will ever go to re-inforce the political persecution of gay human beings.”

I have no idea whether you are going to choose to do the right thing, Jim and Anne, but I can promise you that if you don’t, I together with LGBT rights activists around the world will do everything we can to see New Balance boycotted.

 

Sincerely,

Scott Rose

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‘Good Chance’ Trump Will Be Electorally ‘Humiliated’ in November: Carville

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Democratic strategist and pundit James Carville, responding to the international outcry and condemnation over President Donald Trump’s failed efforts to acquire Greenland, predicted that he will likely lose big in the November midterm elections.

“I think the world wants to return, with the United States as being part of the world,” Carville said on his podcast. “And I think the way that that happens is Trump has to be humiliated.”

“He has to be electorally humiliated, and I think there’s a good, good chance that’s gonna happen this November in our elections,” he said. “It’s not enough that he just walk away, and the Democrats take over the presidency.”

There has to be “a well laid plan and strategy to utterly humiliate him, to the point that everybody around the world says, ‘This m — —, or no one like this m — —, is gonna ever come back and lead the United States,'” Carville declared.

READ MORE: Trump ‘Miscalculated’ and It ‘Backfired’: Columnist Explains What Led to Trump ‘Failing’

“I think that’s the possibility, and I think if that happens, I think we can renormalize the world a lot faster than most.”

“And he’s completely crazy,” Carville also remarked. “He’s going downhill.”

According to the New York Post, Trump will be campaigning during the midterm elections as if he were on the ballot.

“President Trump will treat the November midterm election like a presidential campaign, his senior leadership team tells The Post — traveling like he’s on the ballot, flooding key races with cash and hammering home how his policies will help Americans with affordability,” the Post reported.

Susie Wiles, Trump’s White House Chief of Staff and his former campaign co-chair, told The Post, “He’s going to campaign like it’s 2024.”

READ MORE: Trump Unleashes Wild Ego-Fueled Social Media Grievance Storm After Davos Defeat

Image via Reuters

 

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Trump ‘Miscalculated’ and It ‘Backfired’: Columnist Explains What Led to Trump ‘Failing’

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President Donald Trump “miscalculated” his level of support — especially on the issues that won him re-election in 2024, and it has “backfired,” according to an opinion columnist.

In “Why Trump is failing,” Steven Roberts in the Columbia Missourian writes: “Trump has called 2025 ‘the greatest first year’ of any president, but a majority of Americans strongly disagree.”

“To hardcore MAGA loyalists, the president can do no wrong. But rabid Red Hats account for only about 35% of Americans,” observes Roberts.

He identifies where the president is losing support: “since Trump received almost 50% of the popular vote, that means about 15% of his backers were not true believers, and they are the ones who are slipping away.”

Roberts identifies why.

“The single biggest reason Trump won a second term was economic discontent with the Biden administration, and it’s the single biggest reason so many voters are now disillusioned,” he says, pointing to a CNN poll that, he writes, finds “55% say Trump’s policies have actually made things worse and almost two-thirds say he has not done enough to reduce their cost of living.”

But Roberts offers more.

READ MORE: Trump Unleashes Wild Ego-Fueled Social Media Grievance Storm After Davos Defeat

He explains that Americans supported Trump’s policies on immigration when it was about immigrants at the border.

“They were ‘others’: easy to demonize and dehumanize. They had no voice and no identity, and Trump and his media managers could control what voters knew and felt about them.”

But, he continues, “Trump miscalculated, and his show backfired,” because his targets are no longer “faceless hordes but real people with jobs and families, friends and neighbors.”

The came the shooting of a Minneapolis mother of three, Renee Good.

“The administration tried to brand her as a domestic terrorist who had caused her own demise by driving at the agent. But the videos — seen by more than 80% of Americans — told a different story,” he writes. “Good simply did not look like a terrorist. Plus, independent news organizations analyzed the cellphone footage and concluded that it ‘contradicted’ the official line.”

Trump “lost control of the narrative, and public opinion turned against him.”

The president’s other miscalculation: his stance on the affordability issue, an issue that arguably got him re-elected.

With just 36 percent of Americans saying Trump has the right priorities, Roberts surmises that is simply his “loyal MAGA base.”

And he warns that if this trend continues, voters at the polls in November will “take it out on his party.”

READ MORE: These 19 Democrats May Already Be Jockeying for a Presidential Run: Report

 

Image via Reuters 

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Trump Unleashes Wild Ego-Fueled Social Media Grievance Storm After Davos Defeat

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President Donald Trump on Thursday unleashed dozens of rapid-fire social media posts after what critics described as a difficult few days at Davos. His speech there reportedly further strained relations with U.S. allies, following his Greenland gambit, which produced few if any clear gains and drew criticism over its diplomatic costs. The rollout of Trump’s Board of Peace also struggled to gain traction, with a handful of European allies participating in the inaugural signing ceremony.

In spoke of the more recent posts, Trump went off on “Fake Polls,” while admitting that they have his approval rating “in the low 40s,” although The Economist shows his net approval rating currently at 37%.

“We have the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country, we have the Strongest Border in History, nobody has ever done a job like I have done, and they have me in the low 40s,” he complained. “The Democrats destroyed Healthcare, I’m trying to fix it, and they give me FAKE low numbers. Fake Polls on the Economy, on the Border, on just about everything, are ridiculous and dangerous. The REAL Polls have been GREAT, but they refuse to print them.

“The Times Siena Poll, which is always tremendously negative to me, especially just before the Election of 2024, where I won in a Landslide, will be added to my lawsuit against The Failing New York Times,” he wrote. “Our lawyers have demanded that they keep all Records, and how they ‘computed’ these fake results — Not just the fact that it was heavily skewed toward Democrats. They will be held fully responsible for all of their Radical Left lies and wrongdoing!”

READ MORE: Top Conservative Think Tank Roasted Over ‘Retrograde’ Marriage and Family Report

Some posts promoted questionable claims, including suggesting that annualized U.S. GDP grew to more than 5 percent — while most expectations and Congressional Budget Office predictions are currently about half that number.

He promoted a claim that he “helped create ‘The Martin Luther King Jr International Freedom Games’ in 1966,” when he would have been about 20 years old.

Other posts he promoted talked about the U.S. trade deficit, alleged illegal voting in the 2020 election, immigration, tariffs, globalism, Don Lemon, Supreme Court oral arguments for Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and one declaring Trump the “greatest President in the world.”

Another post offered the transcript and video of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller allegedly claiming, and without evidence, that James Comey, Jim Clapper, John Brennan, Lisa Monaco, and President Barack Obama “all conspired and worked together to sabotage, undermine, unravel, and overthrow the United States government and the democratic institutions and structures of this country.”

That post, as Raw Story reported, appeared to be in response to former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s currently ongoing congressional public testimony.

Another post included video of Argentinian President Javier Milei attacking “wokeism” while praising the “Americas.”

READ MORE: These 19 Democrats May Already Be Jockeying for a Presidential Run: Report

 

Image via Reuters 

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