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Update On The Great Nationwide Kiss-In In NYC!

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Battery Park

Hello, Friends!

With just eight days left, I wanted to update you on our plans for New York City’s Great Nationwide Kiss-In!

When I thought back to the idea of the Kiss-In, I remembered that this was created to be a celebration and an affirmation of everyone’s right to share a kiss with their loved-one, and I realized that Times Square just wasn’t the best venue for us.

After doing a great deal of thinking, and after working with the New York City Department of Parks – who have been very helpful and supportive, we decided to move The Great Nationwide Kiss-In to beautiful and historic Battery Park.

If you take a look at our updated page on Facebook, you’ll see that Battery Park is perfect. First, it’s home to the seeds of freedom George Washington and other founders of America planted. Washington himself was inaugurated just blocks away from Battery Park, and our Bill of Rights was adopted in the same place.

We’ll be gathering at 1:30 PM next Saturday, August 15, in between “Hope Garden,” a memorial to AIDS victims, and “Castle Clinton,” an historic national monument that served as New York’s “Emigrant Landing Depot” before Ellis Island. I can think of no place in New York City more appropriate to take a stand for equality.

And before you say, “It’s too far,” let me assure you not only is it just a short subway or taxi ride, but it is well worth the trip. There’s so much to do in Battery Park, I encourage you to bring your friends and family and make a day of it! Think there’s not much to do in lower Manhattan? Here’s a list of 84 beautiful buildings, just for starters!

After the Kiss-In, take a trip to the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, have lunch at Battery Gardens Restaurant, or bring lunch and have a picnic in the park! You can also walk to one of my favorite parts of New York City, The South Street Seaport. You’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner!

More importantly, you’ll be doing something important: Helping support your friends and neighbors, and people all over the world who agree that sharing a kiss with your same-sex partner is important enough to stand up for.

I know this message is a bit long, but I wanted to share with you some of the amazing news about the Kiss-In. Like, our 17 year old Kiss-In organizer in Atlanta, Alex Oxford, who is putting together a Kiss-In all by himself, and competing for attention with Paul McCartney, who is holding a concert in the same park just hours after the Kiss-In. Southern Voice wrote a great piece!

Or, the fact that The Great Nationwide Kiss-In is now an international event, taking place in over 50 cities, plus Canada, and we’re planning events as far away as Saipan, a U.S. Territory north of Guam.

I’m telling you all this, as I had the good fortune to tell Michelangelo Signorile Wednesday on his show, because, honestly, I want to make sure that you realize how important this Kiss-In is, and how proud of everyone I truly am, and how successful I know it will be, if you come. If there’s one thing I think we’ve all learned in the past year, it’s if we don’t push for our rights, or if we leave the work up to others, it won’t happen.

Prop 8 is perhaps the best example of this on the downside, but, on the upside, so are the extraordinary successes we’ve had this year – for example in Maine and New Hampshire. Be a part of The Great Nationwide Kiss-In on the 15th – don’t leave it up to someone else.

If you say, as some have, that you have no one to kiss, it doesn’t matter. Bring someone and share a hug. Or, just show up by yourself. Just showing up is, according to Woody Allen, 80% of success in life!

Please, make the commitment to yourself and your fellow New Yorkers: Make sure you join us next Saturday, at 1:30 PM, and bring your friends, neighbors, family, boyfriend or girlfriend, partner, husband or wife. Everyone, gay or straight, bisexual or transgender, is welcome and encouraged to join us in Battery Park for what will be a fun and important event that will make you feel good not only on that day, but every day you decide to show your loved-one how important they are to you, with a kiss.

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OPINION

‘Is He OK?’: Trump’s Dark of Night Rage Posting Backfires

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After a weekend of speeches dehumanizing immigrants and threatening to use the U.S. military on Americans who oppose him, Donald Trump in a 1 AM dead of night post lashed out at his Democratic presidential opponent in what some are saying was projection.

“I believe it is very important that Kamala Harris pass a test on Cognitive Stamina and Agility,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform at 1:12 AM. “Her actions have led many to believe that there could be something very wrong with her. Even 60 Minutes and CBS, in order to protect Lyin’ Kamala, illegally and unscrupulously replaced an answer she had given, which was totally ‘bonkers,’ with another answer that had nothing to do with the question asked. Also, she is slow and lethargic in answering even the easiest of questions. We just went through almost four years of that, we shouldn’t have to do it again!”

Late Monday morning Trump posted the same message on the social media site X. He also recently called Vice President Harris “retarded,” according to The New York Times.

“So, let me get this straight,” noted Zeteo News media columnist Justin Baragona. “The 78-year-old GOP presidential nominee, who has been showing serious signs of age-related decline, refuses to release his medical records — but he is now demanding his much younger opponent take a cognitive test?”

READ MORE: ‘Fascist to the Core’: Trump’s Top General Slams Ex-President as ‘Most Dangerous Person’

SiriusXM host Michelangelo Signorile observed, “Trump is furious that Harris is saying Trump’s ‘staff’ won’t let him do 60 Minutes or release his medical records.”

“Claiming Harris is ‘slow and lethargic’ is a heavy lift even for this pathological liar and his MAGA mob.”

The Harris campaign mocked Trump in response.

“Trump posts at 1:12am that VP Harris must take a cognitive test,” wrote campaign spokesperson Ian Sams. “As he refuses to release his medical records, sit with 60 Minutes, or debate her again— instead retreating solely to rambling rallies where he’s increasingly making no sense.”

“Is he okay?”

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s X Engaged in a ‘Pattern of Election Interference’ to Help Trump: Reports

Republican Voters Against Trump, a project of the Republican Accountability PAC declared, “It’s always projection with Trump.”

Before Trump’s post on Saturday, MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin told viewers: “For Trump and his party, the strategy in this final stretch to the election is about one thing and one thing only: projection.”

“Everything Trump and his party accuse Democrats of doing ultimately ends up being a cynical projection of themselves, from defending democracy to free speech, reproductive rights, and free and fair elections.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign an ‘Influence Operation’ Says Former State Dept. Official — Experts Agree

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‘Violently Authoritarian’: Alarm Over Trump’s Threat to Use Military Against Americans

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Donald Trump over the weekend repeatedly said he wants to use the U.S. military against Americans who oppose him, called his critics “the enemy from within,” and declared they are more dangerous than America’s greatest foreign adversaries, including Russia, China, and North Korea.

“I always say we have the outside enemy, so you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say, Kim Jung-Un,” Trump told supporters at an Aurora, Colorado rally on Friday (video below). But, he added: “It’s the enemy from within, all the scum that we have to deal with. that hate our country. That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia,” he said as the audience cheered.

On Sunday, Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo of his desire to use armed forces against Americans on Election Day.

“I think the bigger problem are the people from within, we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military.”

READ MORE: ‘Fascist to the Core’: Trump’s Top General Slams Ex-President as ‘Most Dangerous Person’

Pointing to those remarks, constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe says, “Just think what this means for the 2028 election if Trump & Vance are in control as of January 20, 2025.”

In both events Trump had been talking about undocumented immigrants before switching his target to American citizens.

AFP called his remarks against U.S. citizens a “sinister election-related threat.” Rolling Stone called it a “a fascist plan to deploy military forces against U.S. citizens who oppose him on election day.” HuffPost described his remarks as “echoing similar language used by Nazis,” and HuffPost legal/justice reporter Brandi Buchman warned the “level of danger that people face if he is ever allowed near office again cannot be understated.” The New Republic declared Trump went “Full Dictator.”

“Trump as President and Commander in Chief would seek to wage war on the American people,” warned historian and professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on fascism and authoritarianism. She adds, “our armed forces could have a new authoritarian role: domestic repression. ‘Handling’ the Leader’s enemies=violence.”

Attorney and former federal and state prosecutor Eric Lisann responded, writing: “Trump has already requested military equipment and protection for him now, as a mere candidate. He will gut the military of its finest leaders, many of whom have identified the historic threat he poses to the country, and turn it into his personal guard.”

The popular historian and professor Heather Cox Richardson called Trump’s attack on his political opponents, “the full leap to authoritarianism.”

“Trump’s full-throated embrace of Nazi ‘race science’ and fascism is deadly dangerous,” she added, noting his “campaign seems to be deliberately pushing the comparisons to historic American fascism by announcing that Trump will hold a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on October 27, an echo of a February 1939 rally held there by American Nazis in honor of President George Washington’s birthday.”

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

And historian Steven A. Woodbridge wrote: “Pointing to the ‘enemy within’ is a classic strategy used by those with authoritarian tendencies many times in the past & it would appear nothing has changed. This man is a clear threat to democracy.”

Journalist Ahmed Baba warned, “Trump’s rhetoric is growing more violently authoritarian. His migrant fear-mongering is increasingly racist and now he’s once again saying he’ll deploy the military against people he disagrees with. Trump’s insane authoritarianism is the most important story of this election.”

Watch the videos below or at this link:

READ MORE: Trump Campaign an ‘Influence Operation’ Says Former State Dept. Official — Experts Agree

 

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‘Fascist to the Core’: Trump’s Top General Slams Ex-President as ‘Most Dangerous Person’

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General Mark Milley, one of then-President Donald Trump’s top generals who served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says the Republican presidential nominee is “fascist to the core” and there is no one in America who has ever posed more of a threat to the nation.

Milley, appointed by Trump in 2019, served as the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. Armed Forces until his retirement last year. His remarks appear in Watergate journalist Bob Woodward’s latest book, “War,” The Independent reports.

After the January 6, 2021 insurrection, Gen. Milley requested a meeting with incoming Attorney General Merrick Garland, “to urge him to investigate domestic violent extremism and far-right militia movements.”

“According to Woodward, a senior Department of Justice lawyer said at the time that Milley’s sit-down with Garland might have been the first-ever meeting between a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the country’s top civilian law enforcement official. He writes that the general asked for the meeting because he was ‘deeply convinced’ that Trump remained ‘a danger to the country’ even though he had been forced from office after Biden’s election win.

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s X Engaged in a ‘Pattern of Election Interference’ to Help Trump: Reports

Later, in March of 2023, Milley spoke directly to Woodward, telling him that “no one has ever been as dangerous to this country” as the former president.

Milley had talked to Woodward about Trump for a previous book, “Peril,” but apparently his concerns had grown stronger since then.

“Do you realize, do you see what this man is?” Milley asked the veteran journalist. “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country.”

“A fascist to the core,” the General declared.

The Guardian adds that Milley “fears being recalled to uniform and court-martialed should Trump defeat Kamala Harris next month and return to power.”

“He is a walking, talking advertisement of what he’s going to try to do,” Milley recently “warned former colleagues,” Woodward writes. “He’s saying it and it’s not just him, it’s the people around him.”

Former top Trump adviser Steve Bannon, according to Woodward, has vowed to hold Milley “accountable.”

READ MORE: Trump Campaign an ‘Influence Operation’ Says Former State Dept. Official — Experts Agree

In 2021, Woodward’s book “Peril” revealed Milley acted to ensure Trump could not misuse the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

“Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley took steps to prevent then-President Donald Trump from misusing the country’s nuclear arsenal during the last month of his presidency, according to a new book by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa obtained by NBC News,” the news organization had reported.

The book “recounted a phone conversation Milley had with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol, which Pelosi blamed on an ‘unhinged’ Trump. Pelosi said in January that she spoke to Milley about ‘preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.'”

“‘I can guarantee you, you can take it to the bank, that there’ll be, that the nuclear triggers are secure and we’re not going to do — we’re not going to allow anything crazy, illegal, immoral or unethical to happen,’ Milley told her, according to a transcript of the call obtained by the authors.”

“The president alone can order the use of nuclear weapons. But he doesn’t make the decision alone. One person can order it, several people have to launch it.”

READ MORE: ‘Dangerous’: Musk Laughing at Idea of ‘Puppet’ Kamala Harris Being Killed Sparks Fury

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