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RIP Harvey Bernard Milk: May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978

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“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”

“I finally reached the point where I knew I had to become involved or shut up.”

33 years ago today: November 27, 1978, the George Moscone – Harvey Milk assassinations occurred in San Francisco.

Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot and killed in San Francisco City Hall by former Supervisor Dan White. White was angry that Moscone was refusing to re-appoint him to his former Board seat, from which had resigned for personal reasons, and angry with Milk for having
lobbied against that re-appointment. These events also launched the political career of Dianne Feinstein, one of White’s allies on the Board, who became a U.S. Senator 14 years after these events.

Gaywisdom.org recounts the event:

White requested a meeting with the mayor and Moscone met White in the outer office,
with White confronting the mayor about his perceived betrayal. White asked
again to be re-appointed to his former seat on the Board of Supervisors. When
Moscone declined, their conversation turned into a heated argument.

Wishing to avoid a public scene, Moscone suggested they retire to
a private lounge attached to the mayor’s office, so they would not be overheard
by those waiting outside. Once inside the small room White pulled his revolver
and shot the mayor twice in the abdomen. White then shot Moscone twice more in
the head.

White reloaded his weapon and left the mayor’s office, observed by
an unwitting Dianne Feinstein — herself a supervisor at the time —
who attempted to engage him in conversation. Brushing off her attempts at
conversation, White made his way to the opposite side of City Hall and down a
corridor to Milk’s office. There, he asked for a private conference in an
adjacent room.

Behind closed doors, White confronted Milk. White reported that he
began to scream at Milk and that Milk then arose from his seat. With that,
White pulled his gun and shot the supervisor multiple times: three times in the
chest, once in the back and two times again in the head.

White then fled City Hall unchallenged as chaos reigned inside and
turned himself in to two detectives. Feinstein discovered Milk’s body, but attempts to resuscitate him were in vain.

White was subsequently convicted of voluntary manslaughter,
rather than of first degree murder. The verdict sparked rioting in San
Francisco — the so-called White Night Riots and ultimately led to the state of California abolishing the diminished capacity criminal defense. The Twinkie Defense,
popular shorthand but incomplete description of the diminished capacity
defense, gained currency during the trial.

White was paroled in 1984 and committed suicide less than two
years later.

“I ask this… If there should be an assassination, I would hope that five, ten, one hundred, a thousand would rise. I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out – – If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door… And that’s all. I ask for the movement to continue. Because it’s not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power… it’s about the “us’s” out there. Not only gays, but the Blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us’s. Without hope, the us’s give up – I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. So you, and you, and you… You gotta give em’ hope… you gotta give em’ hope…” Harvey Bernard Milk, May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978

(Image by Daniel Nicoletta)

Stuart Wilber. Photo by Mathew Ryan Williams

 

Stuart Wilber believes that living life openly as a Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender or Allied person is the most powerful kind of activism. Shortly after meeting his partner in Chicago in 1977, he opened a gallery named In a Plain Brown Wrapper, where he exhibited cutting edge work by leading artists; art that dealt with sexuality and gender identification. In the late 1980’s when they moved to San Clemente, CA in Orange County, life as an openly gay couple became a political act. They moved to Seattle 16 years ago and married in Canada a few weeks after British Columbia legalized same-sex marriage. Although legally married in some countries, they are only considered domestic partners in Washington State.  Equality continues to elude him.

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Trump ‘Let Americans Die’ By Secretly Handing COVID Testing Machines to Putin: US Senator

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October 9, 2024

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A leading Democratic U.S. Senator is calling Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s alleged handing over of COVID testing machines to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the height of the pandemic, “damning” and “disqualifying.”

“So, news just broke that Donald Trump, when he was president, at the beginning of the pandemic—when we didn’t have enough supplies to keep people alive here in the United States—sent critical in-demand testing equipment to Vladimir Putin,” explained U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT). “Donald Trump chose to keep Vladimir Putin alive and let Americans die.”

“That revelation alone should disqualify Donald Trump from being President of the United States,” said Sen. Murphy, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“Donald Trump helped Putin and hurt us at a moment where we didn’t have enough testing equipment to go around in this country, at a moment where our lack of testing equipment was resulting in Americans unnecessarily dying and even worse, he hid the fact that he gave Putin the testing equipment from the American public,” Murphy added.

READ MORE: Trump’s Upcoming Madison Square Garden MAGA Rally Sparks Comparisons to 1939 Nazi Event

Senator Murphy was responding to news this week from Watergate journalist Bob Woodward’s latest book, “War,” that reveals Trump handed the vital testing machines—not boxed tests but “point-of-care” fast-testing devices, to Putin, an alleged war criminal who is conducting an illegal war in Ukraine.

“Donald Trump should not be President of the United States,” Sen. Murphy continued. “Nobody should be president of the United states who puts the health of a brutal dictator, an enemy of the United States, ahead of the health and well being of Americans, not during the pandemic, not ever.”

The Kremlin confirmed Trump gave Putin the testing machines, Politico reported, adding that “Woodward writes in his book that when Trump was still president in 2020, he ‘secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use’ during a time period when Covid tests were scarce.”

“This is a moment when COVID is running wild, not just in the United States, in the world,” Woodward told “CBS Sunday Morning” in an interview, the news network reported Wednesday. “He gives Abbott [the manufacturer] point-of-care testing kits to Putin. I mean, these are precious assets to anyone in the world, in the country, and he gives it to him for his personal use.”

Since the start of the COVID pandemic, 1.2 million Americans have died from the disease.

In February of 2021, still the height of the pandemic, The Guardian reported the U.S. “could have averted 40% of Covid deaths, says panel examining Trump’s policies.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Top GOP Strategist Names Three Key Issues That Will Get Republicans to Vote for Harris

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Trump’s Upcoming Madison Square Garden MAGA Rally Sparks Comparisons to 1939 Nazi Event

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15 hours ago

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October 9, 2024

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Twenty years ago, Republicans gathered at midtown Manhattan’s iconic Madison Square Garden for their national convention. But in 1939, the precursor to the renowned New York City venue hosted a different, and infamous event. With a name similar to Donald Trump’s “America First” MAGA rallies, it was called the “Pro-American Rally”—yet the party behind it was anything but.

The German American Federation, or German American Bund, was essentially the American Nazi Party. Its leader, Fritz Julius Kuhn, reportedly “was to become seen simply as an incompetent swindler and liar who spoke poor English.” He would later be exposed as a foreign agent, and, according to the FBI, “denaturalized in 1943 due to his pro-Nazi allegiances and deported to Germany in 1945.”

Slated for October 27, just nine days before Election Day, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign rally at Madison Square Garden “will kickoff an ‘arena tour’ for the former president who plans to visit battleground states in the final push before the Nov. 5 election,” NBC News reports.

Back in April, Trump “teased” out the event.

READ MORE: Top GOP Strategist Names Three Key Issues That Will Get Republicans to Vote for Harris

“We’re going to be doing a rally at Madison Square Garden, we believe,” the ex-president said. “We think we’re signing Madison Square Garden to do. We’re going to have a big rally honoring the police, and honoring the firemen, and everybody. Honoring a lot of people, including teachers by the way.”

In 2019, NPR reported on the February 20, 1939 Nazi rally.

“The organizers had chosen the date in celebration of George Washington’s birthday and had procured a 30-foot-tall banner of America’s first president for the stage. More than 20,000 men and women streamed inside and took their seats. The view they had was stunning: Washington was hung between American flags — and swastikas.”

” In the 1930s, the Bund was one of several organizations in the United States that were openly supportive of Adolf Hitler and the rise of fascism in Europe. They had parades, bookstores and summer camps for youth. Their vision for America was a cocktail of white supremacy, fascist ideology and American patriotism.”

“Attendees wore Nazi armbands, waved American flags and held aloft posters with slogans like “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America,'” NPR reported, describing the mood inside the rally as “jubilant.”

“The speeches were explicitly anti-Semitic, and tirades against ‘job-taking Jewish refugees’ were met with thunderous applause.”

Award-winning journalist and co-founder of Spy magazine, Kurt Andersen, noted: “History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes.” Award-winning historian Michael Beschloss posted a photo from that 1939 rally.

“Historian here,” remarked Professor Manisha Sinha, President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, “not the first time that Madison Square Garden has hosted a Nazi rally. Businessmen trying to overthrow a democratically elected government? History doesn’t repeat but it sure rhymes!” she also said.

READ MORE: What We Know About FBI’s ‘Sham’ Kavanaugh Investigation and How Trump WH Blocked the Probe

“Let’s be clear,” warns Democratic New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, whose district includes Madison Square Garden. “Allowing Trump to hold an event at MSG is equivalent to the infamous Nazis rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939.”

He’s calling on the owners of The Garden to cancel the event.

“This is a disastrous decision by Madison Square Garden that will endanger the public safety of New Yorkers and has the potential to incite widespread violence. For the good of NYC and its residents, I demand @TheGarden keep our city safe by cancelling the Trump rally.”

The company that owns Madison Square Garden is owned by billionaire Trump donor Charles Dolan, who founded HBO.

Outrage online in response to the news of Trump’s planned Madison Square Garden rally has been palpable.

 

In 2020, PBS aired,” A Night at the Garden,” about the 1939 American Nazi rally.

Watch the video and see the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: Chief Justice ‘Shaken’ by Public Reaction to Him Handing Trump Near-Total Immunity

 

Image via Shutterstock

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Top GOP Strategist Names Three Key Issues That Will Get Republicans to Vote for Harris

Published

18 hours ago

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October 9, 2024

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Mike Madrid, a top Latino GOP strategist, says there are three key issues the Harris-Walz campaign must focus on to win over Republicans, these “three messages are far more important than the messengers,” and if they do so they will “win the race.”

Madrid, a Lincoln Project co-founder, is a veteran political consultant and one of the country’s authoritative experts on Latino voters. He is also the author of, “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy.”

In an interview with The Independent, Madrid warned, “the Latino vote looks like it’s going to keep getting stronger” for Trump.

“Madrid,” The Independent reports, “attributed the growing strength for Trump among Latinos to years of inept Democratic messaging that assumed immigration — ensuring a compassionate attitude towards migrants from South and Central America — was a priority for voters who had roots in that part of the world.”

READ MORE: What We Know About FBI’s ‘Sham’ Kavanaugh Investigation and How Trump WH Blocked the Probe

“We’ve never been interested in immigration. It’s just this political and media narrative that the Democrats have been driving,” he said.

And he warns the Harris campaign is in “deep, deep trouble” in both Arizona and Nevada. The current FiveThirtyEight polling average puts Harris up by one point in Nevada and Trump up by one point in Arizona. Nationally, Harris is up just 2.6 percentage points over Trump.

“Demographically, the shift of North Carolina has made it far more important than Arizona,” he says, “so that if Harris wins North Carolina and Pennsylvania, there’s virtually no roadmap for Trump.”

Madrid believes Harris must focus on suburban women and college-educated voters.

“It’s gonna be the largest gender gap in the history of the country, and it’s correlated into the diploma divide,” he says. “What’s keeping her competitive is she is increasing the margins with college-educated women, and that includes Hispanic women, white women, African American women — all women with degrees are opening up this gap.”

He also warns Democrats to stop focusing so much on Republican “turncoats,” like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Alyssa Farah Griffin, to promote their message.

Madrid says Republicans don’t need someone telling them it’s OK to vote for Harris.

READ MORE: Chief Justice ‘Shaken’ by Public Reaction to Him Handing Trump Near-Total Immunity

“You do not need a permission structure to defend your body or your country,” he says on social media. “I’m deeply honored & grateful for those Republicans who have the courage to step forward against Trump. Everything helps at this moment. But let’s be clear – we’re way past a ‘permission structure’.”

“We’re not selling toothpaste folks,” he continues. “The threat to our country and our rights is existential and that’s why 17-20% of Republicans were peeling off Trump – before Nikki Haley, before Liz Cheney, before the convention. Republican defections will win this race for Harris but…We should not put politicians, personalities or pundits in front of the issues proven to move Republican voters. That’s called stepping on your message. Lead with what has proven to work. Lead with the three things that jarred GOP voters out of their haze.”

“There are three issues proven to move Republican voters past ‘The Bannon Line’ from 2020,” Madrid writes. They are, the January 6 insurrection, Trump’s “Big Lie” about voter fraud and a “rigged” election, and the Supreme Court overturning the constitutional right to abortion:

“January 6
The Big Lie
Dobbs

Focus on these three issues and you win the race. Harris can pass the Bannon line and get a record number of Republican votes.”

READ MORE: ‘They Are Partners’: Experts Warn on Trump and Putin After Bombshell Woodward Revelations

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