More Anti-LGBTQ Bills Are Coming; the ‘Scrabble’ COVID Variants Are Here–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Oct. 20, 2022

Indy Digest: Oct. 20, 2022

The march toward fascism continues.

From The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) via Editor and Publisher, written by Chris Quinn, The Plain Dealer’s editor:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely presidential candidate in 2024, scheduled a trip to Ohio Friday to stump for Senate candidate J.D. Vance, and our reporters were not there because of ridiculous restrictions that DeSantis and Vance placed on anyone covering the event.

The worst of the rules was one prohibiting reporters from interviewing attendees not first approved by the organizers of the event for DeSantis and Vance. When we cover events, we talk to anyone we wish. It’s America, after all, the land of free speech. At least that’s America as it exists today. Maybe not the America that would exist under DeSantis and Vance.

Think about what they were doing here. They were staging an event to rally people to vote for Vance while instituting the kinds of policies you’d see in a fascist regime. A wannabe U.S. Senator, and maybe a wannabe president.

Another over-the-top rule was one reserving the right to receive copies of any video shot of the event for promotional use. That’s never okay. News agencies are independent of the political process. We do not provide our work product to anyone for promotional use. To do so would put us in league with people we cover, destroying our credibility.

Yet another of the rules reserved the right to know in what manner any footage of the event would be used. We are news people. We use footage on news platforms. But this rule set up a situation in which reporters could be grilled on their intentions.

From the Idaho Capital Sun:

A bill that would ban drag performances in all public venues will be introduced in the first days of the next session of the Idaho Legislature in January, Idaho Family Policy Center President Blaine Conzatti told the Idaho Capital Sun.

Conzatti and other conservative activists around Idaho and across the country have protested against events in public spaces that feature drag queens, including drag queen story hour events at public libraries. In September, Idaho Republican Party Chairwoman Dorothy Moon called for people to pressure corporate sponsors of Boise Pride to pull their names from sponsorship at the event over a scheduled “Drag Kids” performance for ages 11 to 18, which was ultimately postponed over safety concerns.

Conzatti said the draft bill is ready to be introduced as soon as the session gets underway but declined to share the text of the bill with the Sun and wouldn’t name the legislators who worked on it with him.

“No child should ever be exposed to sexual exhibitions like drag shows in public places, whether that’s at a public library or a public park,” he said.

From NBC News:

Congressional Republicans introduced what some are calling a national version of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill — or what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana and 32 other Republican members of Congress on Tuesday introduced the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act of 2022, which would prohibit the use of federal funds “to develop, implement, facilitate, or fund any sexually-oriented program, event, or literature for children under the age of 10, and for other purposes.”

The bill defines “sexually-oriented material” as “any depiction, description, or simulation of sexual activity, any lewd or lascivious depiction or description of human genitals, or any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related subjects.” 

Folks, you’ve got to get out and vote, protest, speak out and fight these attacks on freedom. In the not-too-distant future, your life may depend on it.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Over the last several weeks, I’ve mentioned our Best of Coachella Valley readers’ poll several times, imploring you to get thee to vote.cvindependent.com before the deadline. Well, this is the last time I’ll be mentioning it—because the deadline to vote in the Best of Coachella Valley is this Sunday, Oct. 23. If you have voted already, thanks; we only want each person to vote once per round, so we can get the best winners’ slate as possible. If you haven’t, make yourself heard at vote.cvindependent.com!

• The city of Palm Springs has a reputation as a difficult place to open a business, and the Palm Springs Post just published a piece illustrating why that’s the case: “Claire Rogers should be serving coffee and cuddling kittens at the Coachella Valley’s first-ever cat café, Frisky Business. Instead, she’s watching a plumber install a 100-gallon grease trap in the floor of the space she’s leasing in Rimrock Plaza, around the corner from Von’s grocery. She’s nicknamed the contraption ‘Grease Witherspoon.’ But the cost to install it —$26,000 —is no laughing matter. The installation could not have come at a worse time, as she’s already $200,000 into the project with no opening date announced. At issue is a requirement from the city of Palm Springs that businesses preparing food and some beverages have a grease trap in place to prevent FOG (Fats, Oils, and Greases) from reaching the city sewer. That’s where the confusion came in for Rogers, who has been lobbying unsuccessfully for a waiver on the rule since June. All food served on-site at the café will come pre-packaged from other local businesses, and it could be decades before milk used while making drinks in her single espresso machine generates enough FOG to require emptying the trap. But wait: The fact (that) many existing restaurants and coffee shops in the city are not required to have the grease traps because they opened before stricter regulations went into place in 2020 is adding to the frustration.” Oh, come on. Do better, Palm Springs!

• People who want to get a COVID-19 booster shot after their original series of jabs now have another option. CNBC says: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday recommended Novavax’s COVID boosters for adults in the U.S., including for people who received Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson’s shots as their primary series. The Food and Drug Administration, in a factsheet for healthcare providers, said adults ages 18 and older can receive Novavax as their third dose six months after completion of the primary series of a U.S. authorized COVID vaccine. … The FDA’s decision to allow people who received two doses of Pfizer or Moderna to receive Novavax as their third shot means millions of more people can get the Maryland biotech company’s vaccine.”

• Related: CNN has an update on the various new COVID-19 variants making their way around the country and the world: “In the United States, these are BQ.1, BQ.1.1, BF.7, BA.4.6, BA.2.75 and BA.2.75.2. In other countries, the recombinant variant XBB has been rising quickly and appears to be fueling a new wave of cases in Singapore. Cases are also rising in Europe and the UK, where these variants have taken hold. Dr. Peter Hotez, who co-directs the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, says he thinks of them collectively as the Scrabble variants because they use letters that get high scores in the board game like Q, X and B. … Lumped together, the variants accounted for almost 1 in 3 new COVID-19 infections nationwide last week, according to the latest estimates from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

• Even though most prominent Democrats have called on him to resign following the leak of that infamous racist recording, Los Angeles City Councilmember Kevin de León has said he won’t resign …. but he sure is sorry. The Los Angeles Times’ Gustavo Arellano is not impressed by the former state Senate majority leader’s actions. “De León wrote that resigning would be ‘only a solution that benefits me—not the people who elected me to represent them.’ To KCBS, he said he wanted to ‘help heal the wounds that have existed for so many years, if not decades.’ Meanwhile, he told (Univision anchor León) Krauze that resigning wouldn’t help anyone in his working-class district ‘because there’s still a lot of work ahead’ with ‘COVID, unemployment, the threat of evictions and the humanitarian crisis of homelessness.’ His stance was classic Kevin: self-serving, messianic and calculating. He’s leaning on his reputation as a Latino political giant—longtime immigrant rights and labor activist, former assemblymember and head of the California Senate—in betting that some will cool their ire because they need someone who knows how to get things done for Latinos. He’s banking that his overwhelmingly Latino constituents are far enough removed from City Hall to not care much about the controversy. And he thinks that if he casts stones at (the other city councilmembers on the tape), the public will overlook his sins.”

• You’ve likely received your ballot in the mail. And there’s a good chance you’re confused by some of the choices—especially the ballot questions. Well, CalMatters’ election guide is here to help. It’s an amazing resource, and it’s something I’ll be using to make my choices.

• And finally, if you have ready-to-bake Nestlé Toll House Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough with Fudge Filling in your fridge, we have some bad news. CNN reports: “Nestlé is issuing a voluntary recall … because of the ‘potential presence of white plastic pieces.’ The products in question were made between June and September 2022 and were sold in the continental United States as well as Puerto Rico. No other Nestlé Toll House products are affected by this recall, according to an announcement from the Food and Drug Administration. It’s unclear how many packages were sold in recent months. The UPC code on the back of the affected packages is 050000429912.”

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