After last week’s election on Tuesday, the Palm Bay City Council had a regular meeting on Thursday during which time Councilmen Santiago and Anderson addressed the election results on the three referendums.
As we often do, we transcribed the comments and are going to fisk their and see how they stack up.
The comments start out with those of Councilman Santiago at 2:47:00 of the meeting.
I wanted to …and again I also congratulate the Petition Committee. They worked very hard, they went out there, they gathered signatures, and I know there was a alot, there was some skepticism, as far as whether they received all the signatures. It wasn’t counted, that is a fact, and it was something that because the way our Charter is written, because of the way the petition packet that they received from us, which they then went out, because it wasn’t counted by the Supervisor of Elections,…. unfortunately things went the way that they did, we as Council decided, well, because of the way things went, because basically it could become a litigious situation, we went ahead and brought it forth on the special election here.
If it is a “fact” that the signatures were not counted, that is another in a long list of failures by the City. (more…)
It is the soldier, not the reporter, Who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, Who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the organizer, Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, Who salutes the flag, Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag, Who allows the protestor to burn the flag.
Author: Charles Michael Province, U.S. Army
Today is Veterans Day, a day in which we in America should pause and recognize the service of the men and women who protect our freedoms, defend the innocent, and act a deterrent to evil in the world.
As long as there are people and nations seeking to deny rights and basically enslave others, there will be a need for the military to stand up and say, “no. Not today. Not on my watch.”
You have to admire, appreciate and honor that stance – that devotion – that willingness to lay your life on the line so others can live in freedom.
Today, we take time to thank veterans for their service.
We know that it is difficult to compress days, weeks and even months into a 2 hour 18 minute flick. We know that it is impossible to tell the story of the hundreds of thousands of men and women who were part of the Midway story. You have to combine some things and we get that. What bothers us is when things are historically inaccurate or real life characters are turned into cartoons who do nothing but speak cliches.
The film is getting mixed reviews and we think that is to be expected. Directed by Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day,” “Day After Tomorrow”) critics seem to note that as a docu-drama, the movie fails on many levels. Patrons seem to like the movie because it is “flashy” and full of stuff that goes “boom.” Patrons like video game type movies.
In December of 2017, Doctor Michelle Cretella, M.D., the executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, with the help of the Daily Signal, posted a video called “I’m a Pediatrician. Here’s What I Did When a Little Boy Patient Said He Was a Girl.” (The transcript can be found here.)
In the video, Cretella states:
An identity is not biological, it is psychological. It has to do with thinking and feeling. Thoughts and feelings are not biologically hardwired. Our thinking and feeling may be factually right or factually wrong.
If I walk into my doctor’s office today and say, “Hi, I’m Margaret Thatcher,” my physician will say I am delusional and give me an anti-psychotic. Yet, if instead, I walked in and said, “I’m a man,” he would say, “Congratulations, you’re transgender.”
If I were to say, “Doc, I am suicidal because I’m an amputee trapped in a normal body, please cut off my leg,” I will be diagnosed with body identity integrity disorder. But if I walk into that doctor’s office and say, “I am a man, sign me up for a double mastectomy,” my physician will. See, if you want to cut off a leg or an arm you’re mentally ill, but if you want to cut off healthy breasts or a penis, you’re transgender.
The highlighted sentence above ran afoul of the YouTube censors.
This will catch us up on this series by UCLA First Amendment Professor Eugene Volokh.
Free Speech Rules: The Ten Rules of Free Speech and College Students Lots of recent free speech debates have come up at colleges.
Here are ten rules for how the freedom of speech applies to college students.
1. Students at public colleges may not be disciplined for their speech. (unless it falls into the narrow First Amendment exceptions such as true threats of criminal attack, or face-to-face personal insults that are likely to start a fight). That’s true even if the speech is seen as evil or offensive, whether racist, sexist, religiously bigoted, unpatriotic, supportive of crime, or whatever else. For instance, in Iota Xi v. George Mason University, a federal appeals court held that public university students can’t be disciplined for putting on an “ugly woman” skit at a fraternity event, in which one of the students was in blackface. (more…)
This is part of a series from noted First Amendment Professor Eugene Volkh of UCLA.
Can the government restrict people’s ability to spend money on speech?
Here are the Four Rules of Free Speech and Money.
Rule 1: Generally, your right to speak includes the right to spend money to speak. The government can’t limit, for instance, a newspaper’s budget, even if it thinks newspapers have too much influence over elections and politicians. The government can’t stop the National Rifle Association or the Sierra Club from spending money to praise the candidates they like,and it can’t limit what other Americans spend, either.
Sometimes people frame the question as “Is money speech?” But that’s not right. Here’s an analogy: The Sixth Amendment protects criminal defendants’ right to hire a lawyer. Say the government said, “You can hire any lawyer you like, but you can’t pay them more than $1000” (It would be unfair, the theory goes, for rich people to hire better lawyers than poor people can.) That restriction would violate the Sixth Amendment—but not because “money is a lawyer.” but because the right to a lawyer includes the right to spend money on a lawyer. (more…)
(Greek World War II rescuer Melpomeni Dina (C) reacts as she is reunited with Holocaust survivors Yossi Mor (R) and his sister Sarah Yanai, whom she helped escape in 1943, at the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum in Jerusalem, on November 3, 2019. (Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP) Greek World War II rescuer Melpomeni Dina (C) reacts as she is reunited with Holocaust survivors Yossi Mor (R) and his sister Sarah Yanai, whom she helped escape in 1943, at the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum in Jerusalem, on November 3, 2019. (Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP))
Clutching the hands of those she hid, fed and protected as a teenager more than 75 years ago, 92-year-old Melpomeni Dina said she could now “die quietly.”
Sunday’s emotional encounter in Jerusalem was the first time Dina had met the offspring of the Mordechai family she helped save during the Holocaust. Once a regular ritual at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, such gatherings are rapidly dwindling due to the advanced ages of both survivors and rescuers and may not happen again. The soon-to-be-extinct reunion is the latest reminder for Holocaust commemorators preparing for a post-survivor world. (more…)
Lord knows we here at Raised on Hoecakes try not to call people names just for the sake of calling them a name. We don’t think that name calling adds to conversations and the exchange of ideas.
So after reading about English “influencer” “Freddie Bentley,” while our first inclination was to simply think of him as an idiot, we didn’t think that was nice and so we looked up synonyms for the term “idiot.” Due to his nationality, we are going with “muttonhead” for this guy. (“Mutton” is much more of a staple of the English diet than the American diet.)
Appearing on “Good Morning Britain,” Bentley made the incredible statement that the history surrounding World War II should not be taught in schools because it may affect the mental health of school kids.
‘It was a hard situation, World War Two, I don’t want anyone to think I’m being disrespectful,’ he said, but added: ‘I remember learning it as a child thinking “Oh my God it’s so intense”.’
[….]
He is fearful that the bloody subject may worsen any mental health issues that children already have. (more…)
