Hey "Lakeland First," let's primary the Forced-Birth 2 with a Sam Killebrew Republican
Hey "Lakeland First," let's primary the Forced-Birth 2 with a Sam Killebrew Republican
Sen. Colleen Burton and Rep. Jennifer Canady made Lakeland the political, public, and business face of Florida's brutal forced birth law. Lakelanders should punish them for it. Capital should help.
My dear Lakeland First/Lakeland Leads capital-owning bros:
Powerful Florida landowner and GOP donor Thomas Peterffy is who you all want to be. And he’s pulling the plug on Ron DeSantis because of forced birth and book-banning.
A top Republican donor said he had paused plans to fund Ron DeSantis’s expected presidential run because of the Florida governor’s “stance on abortion and book banning”.
Thomas Peterffy, founder of Interactive Brokers, a digital trading platform, told the Financial Times: “I have put myself on hold. Because of his stance on abortion and book banning … myself, and a bunch of friends, are holding our powder dry.”
Like TrumpSantis, Rep. Jennifer Canady, R-Lakeland and Sen. Colleen Burton, R-Lakeland are pudding fingers deep in both “stance on abortion” and “book-banning” — and voucher scams, too. (Canady is also big into Ralph Arza for-profit charter school real estate scams. See this hilarious hearing. She’s just a cartoon villain at this point.)
You all should help me pull the plug on them, too.
They made Lakeland — and you — the face of forced birth against our will
If the people of Lakeland wanted to become the political face of forced birth, Canady and Burton would have mobilized that civic desire in their political campaigns. Instead, they lied and hid.
If the people of Lakeland wanted Jennifer Canady to sponsor the 6-week forced-birth bill, she would not have felt the need to lie to Lakeland repeatedly when asked about it on the campaign trail.
If the people of Lakeland wanted to beg Sheriff Grady Judd for a pregnancy termination permission slip after a rape, Colleen Burton would have run openly on it.
None of those things happened.
And yet, as you can see, here are the Forced Birth 2 standing within two feet of TrumpSantis during his dead of night bill-signing of Canady’s murderous six-week abortion ban without any functional exceptions.
Canady’s circled on the left, Burton on the right. Together, they made Lakeland account for 25 percent of the eight people closest to TrumpSantis when he took possession of your Florida loved one’s body. That was too much for even Thomas Peterffy; when will it be too much for you, Philpots, Harrells, Becks, Scruggses, Barnetts, Petcoffs, Fancellis, Chamberlains, Publix, etc.?
After all, you, more than anybody else put Colleen and Canady in our loved ones’ uteri and pregnancies. You own them.
And Publix, LEDC, Lakeland Chamber, etc. if you’re not moved by the state violence and death and intimate intrusion this imposes on real women, ask yourselves if it just got easier or harder to recruit talented business people to run your Florida and Lakeland businesses.
Do you think brutal 6-week, no workable exceptions forced birth enhances or diminishes the value of your capital assets, which depend largely on population growth and real estate, over the near and long-term?
Thomas Peterffy and his friends know their answer; and they’re a lot richer than most of you.
Should we change the city’s symbol to honor the Forced Birth 2?
Again, no other city’s representatives threw themselves at TrumpSantis and forced birth with such apparent gusto. I mean, look at the joy Colleen and Canady projected on camera over the blood and pain they’re inflicting on real women, in Lakeland’s name and yours.
So maybe we should just replace the swan with the speculum as the emblem of our city. I mean, it kinda looks like a stylized swan, doesn’t it?
I’m sure we can pay an image consultant or graphic designer to punch up the colored feathers on the metallic gray of the instrument.
Find a couple of Lakeland Sam Killebrews; there are plenty
Or maybe you Thomas Peterffy types here in Lakeland and Polk could use your GOP power to punish Colleen and Canady with a Sam Killebrew-type Republican.
Sam is the Winter Haven-area state Republican representative who voted against the forced birth bill, one of only six Florida GOPers to do so. I’ve tried to get him to say why; but he hasn’t answered my text.
Anyway, I’ve known Sam a long time. He’s the classic “country club”/business Republican that once dominated the power structure of the GOP before they all bent the knee so abjectly to MAGA and Florida’s shameless government of grifters.
Polk has a ton of Killebrew GOPers. They are one crucial reason we kept most of the MAGA freaks off our School Board — and completely emasculated the one T.I.T.S. Nolte who got through.
Sam has taken many bad, leadership-directed party line votes to hurt vulnerable people and damage the public good over the years. But he’s the only Polk legislator who seems to have an actual conscience about that fact, which has led to some small personal rebellions.
And forced birth, requiring rape/incest victim begging, is a fertile ground for personal rebellion.
I have yet to talk with any GOPer, whether religious conservative or money conservative or MAGA, who doesn’t think a six-week ban is bloody madness. Yes, that includes MAGAs. DeSantis badly misread them. Believe me, Jordan Peterson-loving MAGA bros want the women and girls they impregnate to get abortions so they can avoid child support and responsibility. That’s the most MAGA thing ever.
Marilyn Paul and Charles Canady and a couple of fake Christian dictator wannabes at Lakeland Christian School are the only popular constituency for the open brutality of this ban.
Canady lied because Lakeland and its suburbs don’t want radical forced birth imposed on its women and girls
Lakeland is a diversifying city, rapidly urbanizing and moving to “the left,” if that term has any meaning. We recently got rid of our Confederate monument in the middle of downtown.
We destroyed a MAGA TrumpSantis candidate in our last mayor’s election in favor of an inclusive serious Christian Republican mayor. Burton and Canady both also represent unincorporated suburbs that are more generically “Republican” than Lakeland as a city, which is why they get elected. But they do not get elected to swan dive into suburban vaginas with brutal state power.
Women, one of whom is my wife, lead or co-lead Lakeland’s massive hospital, its state college, its signature liberal arts college, and its key economic and downtown development groups. The Forced Birth 2 just made all of them second class citizens, who would have to beg Grady Judd to allow them not to give birth to a rapist’s baby. The Forced Birth 2 made all of their pregnancies subject to some sort of state registration so their outcome can be tracked punitively.
This radical and brutal law is far outside the Lakeland mainstream — for city and suburb dwellers alike. That’s why Canady had to lie to Lakeland about it. The only “Lakeland” the Forced-Birth 2 speak for in forced-birth advocacy is Lakeland Christian School, or at least its fetid leadership group.
So I bet, Lakeland First/Lakeland Leads types, if you put out a call for Republican candidates willing to roll back the forced birth law to 15 weeks, you will find takers for a primary.
And honestly, Colleen just does what she’s told by whomever she thinks wields the most power to keep her in the club. It’s always been that way. Colleen Burton does not actually exist as a sentient being with a will of her own.
I suspect that’s why her joy in the individual signing picture above — after TrumpSantis commanded everybody to cheer — looks fake and Canady’s looks far more luminous. Go back to the wide shot here and check out Colleen’s face as she stares at the camera. It might be fun to give her a thought bubble.
If you guys, Lakeland First/Lakeland Leads/LEDC, just call Colleen and instruct her to become a sane Sam Killebrew Republican, she’ll obey you, too, and roll back her own vote to 15-weeks.
You won’t even need to primary her.
Reports of your demise
I know the limits of my power.
I can create some public discomfort, mock some public reputations, and make local politicians duck legitimate questions and hide from the public — while creating an ugly written record for their family posterity. I can force them, to some degree, to account uncomfortably for their legislative behavior and cruelty and incompetence. I can do that repeatedly and viscerally over an extended period of time — even after they leave office. (Looking at you, Kelli. We’re going to talk about your six-figure Florida Poly work product and official calendar very soon.)
But, generic voting patterns being what they are, I doubt I have the power to actually remove Lakeland’s Forced Birth 2 from office if you all — the Philpots, Harrells, Becks, Petcoffs, Scruggses, Barnetts, Fancellis, Chamberlains, Publix, etc. — don’t help.
Now, it is true I declared you “gone” last article as a political and civic force.
We win the long war against forced birth the same way we won the short one against the CCDF book banners — who have now changed their name and logo because we beat them so badly. (Seriously, they have. I’ll follow up some other time.) We will rid ourselves of this barbarism the same way rid ourselves of the Munn Park Confederate Monument and Lakeland First as unhealthy community influences. We’re still here; they’re all gone.
I stand by that. But I want you to show me that my reports of your civic demise are exaggerated, as was my assessment of your value to the community as a civic force. Prove me wrong.
I’ve heard quite encouraging things about the supportive tone and collaborative spirit of your big public education event Tuesday night — if one puts aside the absurdity of celebrating Jeb Bush’s endless failure and gangsterism as an education “leader.” (Apparently, even Jeb was mildly pleasant, if not terribly quotable.) It all sounds like a far cry from the tone and spirit of the recent past. That’s good to hear. Any serious activist hopes his “enemies” adopt his point-of-view, or realize they’re not “enemies” at all. That’s how we move forward as a community.
How will this play at education job fairs?
But do you think this makes it easier or harder to recruit smart, dedicated teachers to Lakeland or Florida?
If you don’t like the answer, you should recruit and support a 15-week GOP primary opponent for Canady/Burton.
If you do that, I pledge to switch my voter registration from NPA to GOP and work and vote for your Killebrew. I pledge all the rhetorical firepower and mobilization of my spheres of influence that I can muster to collaborate with you in that effort.
Some of you kinda, sorta teamed up with Team Normal/Decency to stop Saga Stevin’s mayoral campaign in 2021, at the peak of MAGA power around here. Our Team Normal/Decency crushed her with 67 percent of the vote. I think we could also do that to Lakeland’s lying Forced Birth 2. They’re just Saga in fancier clothes.
So if you actually care about being seen as powerful and constructive civic “leaders” — if you disagree with brutal forced birth with no functional exceptions — here’s a good chance to demonstrate actual power and discipline the politicians you allow to “serve” us.
Punish Canady for her lying extremism. Punish Colleen for her servitude. If you can’t do that, where does your power even lie? Electing a Lakeland City Commission rendered moot by the fake Christian state dictatorship and the LCS board’s oath? Getting a few people to cough up a few bucks to take selfies with has-been Jeb Bush as he celebrates himself for the 10000th time?
The Forced Birth 2 offer you a chance to do something real and meaningful with your politics. If you’re interested, call me.