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NC Virginia Foxx challenger Billy Kennedy endorsed by Blue America catch him live @ 2PM ET

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Lots of NC news today; that doesn't happen often...

Billy Kennedy has earned the endorsement from Howie Klien's Blue America -- charging up that the race is on to topple bigoted, ignorant extremist Virginia Foxx (Wingnut-NC) from her perch representing the 5th Congressional district.

You can "meet" Billy today over at C&L at 2PM ET. He's definitely a breath of fresh air, not a Blue Dog by any stretch of the imagination. His election would send a much-needed message to the tools of the DCCC, which again doesn't see the value of supporting a candidate like Kennedy. Look at this BS reasoning that craps on the constituents of the 5th:

Democrats have said that her bizarre and extremist presence in Congress does them more good than harm and that there's no reason to run any candidates against her since she is probably the single least effective member of Congress.

Do they not deseve better representation? What kind leadership is that in our party? Kennedy's message is and cognizant that wedge issues have no place in either party.This is the kind of "support" that tells you Kennedy needs and deserves netroots support if that is what Dems call "strategy." Kennedy:

Dishonest politicians try to divide us and pit us against each other in order to win an election on wedge issues. Politicians of both political parties emphasize wedge issues so they can distract us and avoid talking about the serious problems we face. It is a tactic used to confuse us in order to hide how they really vote about bread and butter issues.
More and better jobs, a commitment to Medicare and Social Security, real discussions about whether or not we should commit our young people and our nation to war, health care reform, and the failure of bailouts and subsidies to corporations are not wedge issues.
I will not run a wedge campaign. I want to focus on what all of us can do to improve our lives. I plan to listen to my constituents and hear what's important to them because I respect other people's points of view. I will not allow my opponent to play "gotcha" politics on these questions of individual liberty.
I want to make it clear. I support freedom and equal rights for all people. I will protect all individual constitutional rights, without allowing politicians to pick and choose which Amendments deserve to be taken seriously.
Even when a candidate or political party wins an election through the use of a wedge issue, once they arrive in Washington they do nothing to further its cause. That is when it becomes painfully clear that the candidate never had any real commitment to the issue itself. The candidate simply used the issue to try to fool the people and win the election at any cost.

You can join in the chat here at 2PM ET.

Billy Kennedy's web site:billykennedyforcongress.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/billy4wnc
If you feel so inclined, can donate to Billy Kennedy's campaign directly through ActBlue.

Love generated for your citizen journalist and choosing a path for discourse

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I mean really, now -- how sad must one's life have to be to make comments like these re: my coverage of the HRC Carolinas Dinner...

North Carolina is the pits. Jesse Helms, Mike Nifong, John Edwards... and Durham is the pits of the pits. Something like, third worst murder rate in the state? No more articles on North Carolina.
POSTED BY: JT | FEB 28, 2010 1:30:39 PM
Pam Spaulding is as useless and self-serving as Joe Solmonese. She is as much to blame for the sorry state of our civil rights movement as anyone at HRC. Her hypocrisy and lies aimed at anyone who questioned Obama's veracity before the primary election (you know, when it mattered) will not be forgotten.
POSTED BY: GAYLIB | FEB 28, 2010 2:58:59 PM
Believe me, Gaylib, Spaulding was only there for the buffet.
POSTED BY: JT | FEB 28, 2010 7:31:36 PM
LMAO!!!!! HA HA HA HA...
POSTED BY: TANK | FEB 28, 2010 7:34:58 PM

These were harvested from Towleroad, btw, but you can find dung like this all over. Some of Andy's readers have an ax to grind with me for some reason. I see this sort of sentiment on occasion at other gay blogs and it irks me not because I have a thin skin -- trust me, I've been called worse.

The problem for me is that I'm friendly with most of these bloggers and they are with me as well; we often collaborate on actions on behalf of the equality movement, share tips, etc. I fail to understand what motivates this hostility in the comments.

Let's just say I don't want to see that kind of crap in comments here at PHB; if you have a criticism of someone's post or perspective (even when it comes to movement leaders, btw), I have to believe that Blenders can find an intelligent, reality-based way of analyzing and communicating your sentiments than what you see above. And it has nothing to do with clamping down expression or making it impossible to hold anyone accountable for what they put out there.

For every self-satisfying toss-off, how many calls do you think these commenters (JT, GAYLIB and TANK) made to their representatives about pro-LGBT legislation? How many even know who their state rep and senator are or visited with them? Even here, I see a fair amount of griping and moaning about the past -- as if we can change it -- and less strategy on how to stop a repeat failure or to actually achieve a sorely-needed victory.

The reason I bring this topic up is that on a regular basis I receive criticism for statements I've never made, positions I've never taken and insults or name-calling that are non-existent on my part. Where does it come from? The Blend comments.

For whatever reason, people looking for an easy way to discredit an essay or post of mine (or another barista) usually burrow into the comments to find "proof" of some malevolent hoohah, even if it's not anything anyone above the fold has said. I find it a bizarre phenomenon that some readers can't distinguish between a post and comments, but it happens so often that I have to believe people just see what they want to see.

Anyway, I'm just asking to pick up the discourse a bit and help with the problem-solving since we have a lot of work to collectively do ahead, given we have an administration running down the clock, a complex, often thorny relationship between the netroots and our "gatekeeper" organizations, and a well-organized right-wing Dominionist network of barely-tethered-to-reality folks who should not be able to scare our pols, but yet they are.

I know we have a lot of smart, politically aware Blenders here and we need all the brainpower we can get. Save your fire for deserving targets (also, no matter which side they are on). By all means hold me accountable, hold leaders accountable, but try to make your case in a way that is specific, fact-based and productive.

We put ourselves out here to take barbs, threats and all sorts of crap without the cover of anonymity, and at least on my part as a labor of love and desire for equality, certainly not to make a living off of it -- or belly up to a non-existent buffet, lol. They don't feed the journalists (at least not me) at these functions.

Who to blame? Christians attack vodouists in Haiti

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

An AP story dated 2/23 reports that a group of vodouists gathered in Cite Soleil last Tuesday to conduct a ritual to “guide lost souls.” They drew veves and prepared offerings. They prayed and sang. Then they were attacked. According to the article, “...a crowd of Evangelicals started shouting. Some threw rocks while others urinated on Voodoo symbols. When police left, the crowd destroyed the altars and Voodoo offerings of food and rum.”

Who do you blame for a natural disaster that kills hundreds of thousands and leaves a million people homeless? You can’t blame God, who everyone knows would never do such a thing. Must be Satan, or those like him - like vodouists. They’re the ones Pat Robertson meant in his “pact with the devil” remarks. Right?

"Much of this has to do with the aid coming in," said Max Beauvoir, a Voodoo priest and head of a Voodoo association. "Many missionaries oppose Voodoo. I hope this does not start a war of religions because many of our practitioners are being harassed now unlike any other time that I remember."

Apparently some christianists see the earthquake as an opportunity to wipe out vodou:

"There's absolutely a heightened spiritual conflict between Christianity and Voodoo since the quake," said Pastor Frank Amedia of the Miami-based Touch Heaven Ministries who has been distributing food in Haiti and proselytizing.
"We would give food to the needy in the short-term but if they refused to give up Voodoo, I'm not sure we would continue to support them in the long term because we wouldn't want to perpetuate that practice. We equate it witchcraft, which is contrary to the Gospel."

I gather from this that withholding aid from people when they are most in need is not contrary to the gospel.

However, if centuries of oppression couldn’t eradicate African religion in the Americas, the stone-hearted christianists don’t stand a chance.

NOM Loses Yet Another Round To Maine Ethics Commission

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Link here to the temporary restraining order NOM tried unsuccessfully to get Bangor's United States District Court against Commissioner Walter McKee, as to block the Ethics Commission from obtaining info.

In news that pleases me greatly to report, the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices voted this past Thursday that National Organization of Marriage must testify before the commission.

Audio and past meetings' minutes link here- the most recent minutes are not yet available.

From Kennebec Journal:

An out-of-state organization that funded much of last year's successful campaign against same-sex marriage must testify before The Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, the commission voted Thursday.
The panel is conducting an investigation into possible violation of Maine's campaign finance disclosure laws. On Thursday, it rejected requests by the organization to drop two subpoenas the panel issued in its investigation.
National Organization for Marriage did not register as a political action committee here, and the ethics commission wants to know who donated to the organization, and for what purpose.

"If NOM received contributions totaling more than $5,000 for the purpose of influencing or promoting the referendum, it was required to register with the commission in 2009 and file campaign finance reports," ethics commission Executive Director Jonathan Wayne said.

A National Organization for Marriage attorney responded Feb. 11 by asking the commission to drop the subpoenas, calling them "overbroad, irrelevant and immaterial."
The organization, which did not send a representative to Thursday's hearing, said donor disclosure "could have a chilling effect" on its fundraising and Stand for Marriage Maine's "ability to engage in effective campaign advocacy."

The commission was not swayed by this argument one bit and rejected it soundly.

"I think that, if we're going to have a meaningful investigation, this pretty basic discovery should be allowed," said the commission Chairman Walter McKee, "especially when this material will be kept confidential."

There appears to have been either a sloppy laziness on NOM's part, or total disregard for Maine's laws- especially considering the care the organization took to follow California's laws in their 2008 Prop 8 campaign.

In 2008, National Organization for Marriage raised millions in support of the successful constitutional amendment in California known as Proposition 8, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. In that campaign, the group formed a political action committee and reported its donors as required by California law.

"For some reason, in 2009 in Maine they decided not to do that," Wayne said. "NOM told donors they would not be disclosed. ... I don't know why they made that statement."

Two subpoenas were issued to Brian Brown on January 28th for him to appear before the commission on February 18th. Now the question is: what penalties NOM/ Brian Brown are now facing for ignoring them?

* U. S. District Court in Maine DENIES NOM's Attempt To Hide Donors!!!

* Maine Newspaper Coverage of Campaign Money Disclosures

* UPDATED: Maine Ethics Committee Votes 3-2 To Investigate NOM Money Laundering Charge!

* Karen Ocamb: 'Fred Karger describes his victory in Maine'

* Federal gov't must investigate NOM's finances

* SFMM's Press Release re: NOM/ Maine Ethic Committee Vote To Investigate

* "NorthEast NOM", er, "Stand For Marriage Maine" Feeling The Heat In Maine?

* Maine Ethics Commision Sends Letter to SFMM and NOM

* Maine Attorney General Warned of Money Laundering By NOM, Dobson and Others

More Bathroom Hysteria From The Maryland Citizens For A Responsible Government

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

After awhile, reporting on the anti-transgender bathroom and locker room hysteria gets pretty old and pretty repetitious. But, it seems to not be getting old for Ruth Jacobs of Maryland Citizens for a Responsible Government. On Friday, February 26, 2010, the Maryland Citizens for a Responsible Government released another blast of hysteria filled with nothing but blatant fear mongering. Just the crazy font and color schema of their opening paragraphs should give you an idea of the email's tone:

It's back! Despite failing to get their Gender Identity/Peeping Tom legislation out of Committee in 2009, the LGBT lobby is trying yet again. They've dusted off last year's legislation, and re-introduced it as HB-1022 (House bill) and SB-583 (Senate bill). With the 2008 Montgomery Co. Gender Identity/Bathroom bill passed- despite the protests of citizens- and the recent rape of a student by a male in a female bathroom in Takoma Park, Mont. Co. MD, the dangers to women of HB1022/SB583 Gender Identity/Bathroom bills are clear.

WE NEED YOUR HELP TO PROTECT WOMEN AND CHILDREN!

STOP HB-1022 and SB583
Don't allow men in women's bathroom, lockers or shower areas.

CALL OR E-MAIL NOW

Your calls will HELP STOP IT AGAIN!

Ask legislators to vote NO

It would be too easy to laugh at this email as crazy, and boneheaded, blatantly raising false fears over bathroom and locker room safety -- but let's be honest with ourselves. This is the second year Ruth Jacobs and the Citizens For A Responsible Government have used these kind of tactics to stop a statewide bill within Maryland in the past, and last year the bill was killed -- and they're taking credit for killing the bill.

But let's point out a flaw or two in the reasoning of the email blast. One significant problem is the citing a the case of a man who raped a woman in a public bathroom. Well, the rapist wasn't crossdressed, and he didn't identify as a transsexual -- or even under the broader trans umbrella term of transgender. This is seems a case to me of an argument from spurious similarity -- where there's actually no similarity at all.

The main critique of their tactics is something I wrote about in a piece last year entitled Again With The Bathrooms:

[T]o my point about what's wrong with the fears expressed in this opposition piece about bathroom predators -- Maryland Citizens For A Responsible Government needs to be able to tell us exactly how many predators across the nation have crossdressed and entered women's restrooms to do harm to women and children. Their argument needs statistics, and this organization doesn't have 'em.
If Maryland Citizens for a Responsible Government can cite some real world examples that back why their fears should guide public policy, I'd like to see these examples. So far, all I see from the organization is arguments that seem to be based on irrational fears.

Ruth Jacobs and the Maryland Citizens For A Responsible Government are engaging in unabashed fear mongering; it's pretty clear to me that the fear mongering is based within hate for trans people. At least if Ruth and company are going to rail against the bill, they should do it with honest representation of trans people and experience, and not misrepresent what even they know is true about trans people and experience.

~~~~~
Further Reading:
* Opposing Views: Maryland Gender Identity Bill Endangers Women and Kids (By Maryland Citizens For A Responsible Government)

HRCs Solmonese this year we are going to bring down the discriminatory policy known as DADT

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

HRCs' President Joe Solmonese delivered some news at the HRC Carolinas Gala on Saturday night.

I was there reporting for the Blend as he made these emphatic statements to the members of the LGBT community and allies from North and South Carolina in attendance at the Raleigh Convention Center about what was going to be accomplished this year (quoting from my video below):

1. "We are going to eliminate the tax that you pay on domestic partner benefits. We're going to get rid of that this year at long last."
2. "We are going to extend domestic partnerships to federal employees."
3. "We are going to get people living with HIV/AIDS treatment much earlier if they are on public assistance."
4. "And finally, finally this year we are going to bring down the discriminatory policy known as 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'...once and for all."

And Solmonese acknowledged that it doing these measures is essential because of the political dynamics of the 2010 elections, something many of us in the netroots sounded the alert on last week -- the reason for the blogswarm.

I also get that there is a drumbeat coming from our community to put more pressure on, to make more demands of the President and members of Congress to get it done this year because who knows what's going to happen at the mid-term elections and frankly they are right and our time is now.

My jaw just about hit the floor. Has hell frozen over? We're right for once, and not the enemy? I appreciate the break in that ice. It shouldn't be hard to be on the same page as this closing window of opportunity harms us all.

HRC is best positioned to lead at this crucial time -- and mobilize action in the community, on the Hill and make it clear to this President not to delay and deny after the promises have been made.

The list of issues and organizations lined up at the President's door knocking on it for action is long, and without assertive, concerted action on our community's part (on all fronts), we'll be waiting not one year, but who knows how long once the 2012 election cycle gears up. Our issues will shrivel away.

He cited as his reasons for confidence in DADT repeal this year: the President's statement during the State of the Union address, the testimony of Chair of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen and Sec. Def. Gates, and the support by Colin Powell and Dick Cheney to move on DADT.

I'm not sure the significance of Solmonese's remarks, given the ups and downs of the political machinations regarding DADT in just a matter of a couple of weeks really hit many in the audience, given those I chatted with at the end of the evening.

Also:
* Coverage of the 2010 HRC Carolinas dinner - commentary and PHB video of speeches by Clay Aiken and Meredith Baxter.

Olson Boies file summary of trial evidence that Prop 8 is unconstitutional

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
- United States Supreme Court's unanimous Loving v. Virginia (1967) decision

Judge Walker: "I'm asking you to tell me how it would harm opposite-sex marriages...."
Pro-Prop. 8 Atty. Cooper: "Your Honor, my answer is: I don't know. I don't know."
- 10/14/09 pretrial hearing rejecting defendant-intervenors' request for summary judgment

At the request of Judge Vaughn Walker, attorneys from both sides of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the Proposition 8 challenge, filed briefs late Friday summarizing their evidence. Links to Olson & Boise' 294 page brief and other court documents can be found at the American Foundation for Equal Rights website.

Judge Walker is expected to schedule closing arguments soon.

FEBRUARY 27, 2010 - Papers filed last night by attorneys Theodore Olson and David Boies detail how the evidence revealed during last month's three-week federal trial of Proposition 8 overwhelmingly proves that the measure is unconstitutional. ...
At trial, Olson and Boies demonstrated the unconstitutionality of the initiative through the presentation of 17 witnesses and revealing cross-examination of the defendant-intervenors' witnesses. Put simply, the case against Prop. 8 was made by plaintiffs' witnesses and the Proponents'.
The trial proved that:
Prop. 8 does irreparable harm to Americans
Marriage has shed discriminatory restrictions over time
Gay men and lesbians are entitled to the full protection of the 14th Amendment
There is no good reason for Prop. 8's denial of fundamental civil rights

It should be a riveting read! Haven't seen a link to the other side's brief yet, but CBS news is reporting that "lawyers for the sponsors of California's gay marriage ban offered new twists on their claim that allowing gay men and lesbians to wed could undermine man-woman unions. The potential harms they cited included giving bisexuals a legal basis for pursuing group marriages and unmarried fathers an incentive to abandon their children." In other words, they're still pulling on the absurdity straw.

Olson & Boies were guests Friday on Bill Moyers Journal. I highly recommend watching the video or reading the transcript, both of which can be found here. The AFER team expertly fielded tough questions like "I mean, for example, roughly 40 states have laws banning gay marriage. In other words, you would be disenfranchising the voters of, not just California, and not just the Congress, if you go this route. And isn't it risky to ask the court to invalidate that much public opinion before the public is really ready for it?"

Coverage of the 2010 HRC Carolinas dinner

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

UPDATE: Video has been added above and below the fold.

UPDATE 2: I have some more commentary below the fold about bridging this gap between the perceived "too-activist" faction of our community and the perceived "well--heeled gala attendees." Bridging gaps in understanding can pay dividends if we roll up our offline and online virtual sleeves to get the job done instead of throwing barbs about strategy, class, and (in)effectiveness.

Not having attended any of the HRC state or the national galas, it was interesting to cover this one here in my home state of North Carolina. This is actually the combo dinner for the Palmetto State and the Tar Heel State, and it is in the 18 month old Raleigh Convention Center.

Much like other event of this kind, everyone is dressed in their finest, I saw quite a few local folks and community leaders. Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker delivered a welcoming but perfunctory opening statement about drawing groups to the area to dine and tour the city. He made no mention of LGBTs, the word "gay" never passed his lips, only a bizarre "have a good campaign."

I didn't even bother requesting press creds until yesterday since I had planned to be out of town.

The celebratory mood here was kind of interesting, since the one thing that could be focused on (other than reaching fundraising goals) is that hate crimes legislation was passed at the federal level. Alas there is so much more to be done. Joni Madison, COO of McKinney Advertising in Durham was one of the effusive HRC Carolinas co-chairs, along with Robert Dogans and Maddy Goss. Oy they speak too quickly.

Did you know that the Carolinas gala is the second-largest fundraiser for HRC nationwide. When I see the room filled with so many people who clearly feel committed to LGBT equality at this gala, it is the kind of support that state and local organizations need to see as well. Equality NC, btw, had a fantastic turnout at its annual gala as well. Our LGBTs do turn out for this kind of event.
I would have loved to see all of tonight's attendees same standing with me last year lobbying our legislators on the ENC Day of Equality; our lawmakers would be astonished at the level of talent, financial clout, and political standing in the LGBT community living here, paying taxes -- and without basic civil rights.

Several elected officials were here: Rep. David Price, Rep. Brad Miller, U.S. Senate Candidate Cal Cunningham, Debra Butler and others. Cunningham, who is vying for the Dem slot to run against the horrible U.S. Senator Richard Burr with Elaine Marshall and Kenneth Lewis. I told him it's time for him to do a liveblog on the Blend he was eager to get it set up

The Mary Elizabeth Leonard, a North Carolina teen was given the trailblazer award for standing up for her right to be educated in a safe and welcoming environment.

Rachel Maddow got a shoutout in a video compilation prior to Joe Solmonese's speech that recalled the ridiculous NOM "Storm" ad, and featured Matt Bam Bam Barber. And of course there was rousing applause for the signing of the hate crimes bill. There was a focus on the call to repeal DOMA and pass ENDA, as well as repeal DADT. We all know where we are on those right now. (Yikes. It only reminds me of how much work there needs to be done with little political time left).

"We cannot deny as a community than we have experienced more change in the last year than we have seen in a long time."

"For the first time in the history of this country, our community is included for the first time in U.S. civil rights law." He mentioned Kay Hagan's support for passing the hate crimes bill. Perhaps we should check in on her position on ENDA, for instance. She's not co-sponsored any pro-equality legislation since.

Solmonese mentioned the removal of the HIV Travel ban, as well as the federal non-discrimination policy that covers LGBTs, HUD policies, foreign service equality gains extending partner benefits.

Joe Solmonese said that this fall we will see the repeal of DADT. And he agreed that it has to be done this year because of the 2010 elections.

He said that HRC has to prove to this Congress and this President that the Pentagon's concerns can be addressed now, and remove the doubt and take on the obstacles this year.

Clay took the stage and delivered a heartfelt address with a great deal of humor about his coming out -- on a magazine cover, noting we were probably thinking "It's about damn time."

A couple of photos...ah, I finally got to meet Clay after all the email tag! I thanked him not only for coming out, but for taking on the godawful, bible-beating Wake County School Board. And we're going to get that lunch/dinner date in soon.

And I had to thank Meredith Baxter for doing what we need to affirm -- it is never too late to come out and be who we are.

The 2010 Equality Award was presented to the Guilford Green Foundation. I had some severe technical difficulties, so I missed videotaping these worthy award winners.

Back to business. Meredith Baxter was extremely witty during her address as she talked about her coming out on the Today Show to Matt Lauer. She said she wasn't sure what was going to come out of her mouth. :) "It's a very strange thing to come out to the world, isn't it?" and "I owe a major debt of gratitude to Tiger Woods. He quickly took me out of the news cycle."

She was compelling as she rattled off the injustices of gays and lesbsinas being unable to serve openly in the military, to marry or easily adopt children.

***

On a related local note about personal political activism on pressing issues, I had a chat this evening with Keith Hayes, chair of corporate sponsorships for the 2010 Gala about the ever-present disconnect between events like this and the Day of Equality, which is what would be considered "lobby day" here in NC, where LGBTs receive training and are sent off to meet and discuss civil equality issues with their state reps and senators.

It's an interesting conundrum to see so many well-heeled powerful, successful, and clearly committed people where they have used their hard-earned money to pay for tickets and also asked to donate more, but what many don't do, and it costs them nothing but a few hours of their time, is to show up to speak with their state lawmakers.

In 2009, executive director of Equality NC, Ian Palmquist, said that it was a record-breaking year for the Day of Equality -- we had 300 people show, and most of them were young people -- college age and in their 20s. Mandy Carter and I would have been considered elders, which is scary. For both of us it was our first time attending this event.

The reason I alluded to it above and expanded on it here is that the Day of Action is announced way in advance, so most folks can't say they didn't have time to clear their calendar for that day.

So if you attended tonight's gala and didn't know: the next Day of Action at the NC General Assembly is Tuesday, May 25, 2010. I'd love to see you there.

But the question that I don't have the answer to, and I think it would be an interesting discussion, simply because I'm curious and like to problem solve -- what keeps people like the gala attendees in general from doing lobbying for their civil rights? It's just an informal, and quite brief discussion with your legislators, and ENC makes it quite simple by instructing you on the interaction style, and even supplies you with information about your specific legislators.

If we could only get half of the gala attendees to show up along with past Day of Action attendees, it would probably triple the turnout, and impress the hell out of lawmakers who are used to Ian and one or two others gay folks work the halls in support of our rights. I can tell you that the fundies have no problem getting on a bus and flooding the halls of the general assembly.

Anyway, I asked Keith what he thought, and he was as perplexed as I was. Is it apathy? The thought that by writing a check, that's their way of being effective? Perhaps some level of intimidation in speaking with lawmakers? I have no clue, but while money is the base of support any organization needs, in the case of LGBT rights in NC, we have a serious disconnect -- these wingnuts in our legislature don't think they really have a significant amount of LGBT constituents because they don't see/hear them. They don't know how much financial clout is out there. They only seem to have a vague notion, like pathetic Sen. James Forrester, who had an epic bigot eruption the other day, that something is amiss.

"The (state) Senate is as liberal as I've ever seen it," Forrester said at the monthly meeting of the Iredell County Young Republicans on Tuesday night in Mooresville. "Slick city lawyers and homosexual lobbies and African American lobbies are running Raleigh," Forrester added.

As long as we are nameless and faceless "lobbies," it's easy to ignore or oppose state anti-discrimination legislation, since they are far more likely to hear from fundies than LGBT North Carolinians. We have to change that somehow.

I'm hoping that we can do some problem-solving to get more people to see how empowering just a few moments of visibility to these politicians can have a huge impact.

Tea Party activist conjures up gay bowel syndrome

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters

Recently, I posted two interviews with discredited researcher Paul Cameron conducted by Midweek Politics Radio.

The response to these posts have been, in my view, successful. Many people who weren't aware of Paul Cameron became educated on his lies about the gay community.

But then there was a segment who asked why was I giving Cameron attention. They claimed that any focus on Cameron validated him. They were under the impression that if Cameron was ignored, he would go away.

Unfortunately, this mindset also includes other lies told about the gay community by religious right groups.

But what some in our community fail to understand is that these lies aren't going away and ignoring them won't make them disappear. They will continue to be repeated and will continue to have the power to hurt the gay community. A perfect example is a recent incident during a Minnesota legislative hearing on marriage equality:

Barb Davis White, a Tea Party activist and Republican candidate for Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, prompted shocked gasps from the packed hearing room when she said, “Rosa Parks did not move to the front of the bus to support sodomy.” Her testimony involved accusations that the movement for marriage equality is hijacking the civil rights movement.

“There is no difference between a black person and a white person other than their skin color when there’s a tremendous difference between a man and a woman,” said White, who was the GOP’s endorsed candidate against Rep. Keith Ellison in 2008. “Allowing a black woman and a white man to marry does not change the definition of marriage. However, allowing two men or two women to marry would fundamentally change that definition.”

White also garnered some laughs from the audience when she said, “Studies also show that the average homosexual has hundreds of sexual partners in his lifetime… and I repeat hundreds.”
“I’m here today to tell you that homosexuality and lesbian behavior is unhealthy,” claiming that gays and lesbians have higher rates of STDs than anyone else in the world, including “gay bowel disease,” an ailment that does not exist and is often used by religious right figures to paint gay men as diseased.

We as a community cannot cast aside the lies told about us anymore than we should ignore those who speak them. There are some things you can't sweep under the rug. They always have a way of coming back against you.

I think it's time we trot these lies out in the public as examples of how deceptive religious right groups are. A lie is made powerless not by ignoring it but showering it with the truth.

Whether we realize it or not, all of the phony scare stories, the reliance on junk science, the truncating of public controversies can serve to backfire on religious right groups if we used them to pose the following question: If these groups are moral and Christian, then why do they feel the need to lie on the gay community?

AFA bigot blast Homo agenda or the Constitution take your pick because you cant have both

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

The American Family Association, run by the elderly Don Wildmon and heir to the bigotry throne Tim, has moved into 21st century gay-bashing, with its blog Focal Point. It's a poorly designed attempt to pull in some younger anti-gay sheep to fleece, but it still turns out drivel that is completely batsh*t.

Look at this column by Bryan Fischer, "Homosexual agenda or the Constitution: take your pick because you can't have both." That headline is all you need to know to watch dead ahead for a break with reality based thinking.

The homosexual agenda represents a clear and present danger to virtually every fundamental right given to us by our Creator and enshrined for us in our Constitution.
Start with freedom of religion and freedom of speech, the first two of our inalienable rights secured for us in the Bill of Rights.
As a culture, we must choose between the homosexual agenda or the Constitution because we can't have both.
Further proof comes from the abjectly pathetic decision of the chaplains' office at Andrews Air Force Base to rescind a long-standing invitation to Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council. Perkins had been invited to give a non-political talk at a prayer luncheon on the base yesterday, but was abruptly dis-invited for one simple reason: he supports the current law which makes homosexuals ineligible for service in the United States military.

Does anyone here feel like a clear and present danger as you step out to by a gallon of milk? Are people around sensing the carnage you represent to their rights? Apparently Fischer has some sort of insight on how everything is going to go to hell in a handbasket when DADT is repealed. The melodramatic presentation and imagery here are so over the top, I'd like to see this essay faxed to Sen. John McCain, who is still clinging desperately to his belief that DADT is working. Is it at all embarrassing to be on the side of extremists Elaine "flow chart" Donnelly and Fischer? Christianity in the military is under attack.

The days of Dred Scott have returned. Christians now are the ones are being confined on the plantation, and warned about being too uppity.
The only ones who will feel "included" here are those who support sexual deviancy in the military. The rest of you Neanderthals, well, that's just too bad. This is the new military, regardless of what the law says, so get used to it.
McCarthyism has now struck the U.S. military with a vengeance. The question now that the military is asking is this: "Are you now, or have you ever been, a supporter of traditional morality?" If the answer is yes, you go on our blacklist, and we deprive you of your freedom of religion, speech and military service.
The implications for national security, especially for recruitment and retention, are sobering. As gays come roaring out of the military's closet with fangs bared, they will be sending heterosexuals to the brig if they won't keep their opinions to themselves. Who wants to serve in a military like that?

NC In case you missed it Blend video of Clay Aiken Meredith Baxter Joe Solmonese at HRC Gala

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

A lot of Blenders do the healthy thing and log off the internets for the weekend and miss stories we cover, so I wanted to recap our coverage of Saturday's 2010 HRC Carolinas Gala.

Held at the Raleigh Convention Center I liveblogged and shot footage during the event. In the wee hours I uploaded hot-off-of-the press video, and it wasn't long before it was picked up by quite a few media outlets and blogs (some crediting the Blend, others not so much; it's the wild west, you know).

BTW, it's amazing how many Clay Aiken fans are out there and have posted the video and blogged about this. At last count, it has been seen viewed over 7,000 times since 1:30 AM on Sunday and weekends are usually slow.

One outlet featuring our coverage was E!Online.

According to the blog Pam's House Blend, the 31-year-old "Invisible" crooner, who came out in September 2008, argued that the HRC is fighting for equality for everyone. He also addressed why he waited to reveal his sexuality to Claymates.
"What the hell took me so long? I was waiting like so many folks are waiting... for change," Aiken said. "I realized the time for waiting has passed. The power of truth and living honestly is very liberating".

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Clay Aiken emailed me a while back, maybe a year ago, saying he was a fan of PHB. We played email tag for a while and never managed to connect to have lunch. One day I'm at work and my cell rings (I almost never answer it at work), I by chance pick it up and it's Clay Aiken on the phone. I recognized his soft polite Southern twang and he said he was calling to apologize about not connecting. That was overly thoughtful. And it workd out that we finally met on Saturday. I thanked him not only for coming out, but for taking on the godawful, bible-beating Wake County School Board. And we're going to get that lunch/dinner date in soon.

More below the fold.
When Meredith Baxter took the stage, I can safely say no one expected to laugh as hard as we did. Her witty address was picked up by The Advocate:

After joking her way through a brief recap of her coming out experience ("My big public moment was a big news item for about five minutes because... I owe a major debt of gratitude to Tiger Woods."), Baxter moved on to talk about harassment in schools, "don't ask, don't tell" and the need for strong leaders to push gay rights forward.
Speaking of a young student in upstate New York who was ignored by school officials when students harassed him for being gay, Baxter said: "Students said that he ought to die, and one of his teachers told him that he ought to be ashamed.... You have to ask, 'What kind of society creates these harassing students and these unsympathetic teachers?' Our society. And when you look at some of the laws of our society, it's not hard to see why."
Baxter went on to say that laws like "don't ask, don't tell" are the governments message to students and teachers that its OK to harass and discriminate.

While Clay Aiken and Meredith Baxter fired up the room, it was HRC's Joe Solmonese who confidently threw the gauntlet down against the President and Congress regarding repeal of DADT and other pro-LGBT actions, promising all would occur before the end of 2010.

1. "We are going to eliminate the tax that you pay on domestic partner benefits. We're going to get rid of that this year at long last."
2. "We are going to extend domestic partnerships to federal employees."
3. "We are going to get people living with HIV/AIDS treatment much earlier if they are on public assistance."
4. "And finally, finally this year we are going to bring down the discriminatory policy known as 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'...once and for all."

He did not mention any progress on ENDA or DOMA, but the crowd of HRC supporters certainly expect strong action by the organization to make DADT and the rest of that list happen this year (see "In high risk gamble, HRC promises DADT will be repealed this year, and disagrees with WH spokesman - says repeal must happen before Nov. elections").

You can capture the Blend's full coverage of the gala and related posts below:
* HRC's Solmonese: 'this year we are going to bring down the discriminatory policy known as 'DADT'
* Coverage of the 2010 HRC Carolinas dinner - commentary and PHB video of speeches by Clay Aiken and Meredith Baxter.
* NC: Raleigh native Clay Aiken to give equality speech at Saturday's HRC Carolinas Gala

Monday Morning This And That Open Thread

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

It's an open thread! Pleeeeease feel free to chat, blogwhore, and link-share in the comment thread...

Well, it's shopping day today...buying the last accoutrements for my relatively new laptop, and doing some grocery shopping. On the computer front, buying a new computer bag, a portable printer, some small travel speakers, a spare lithium battery, and some spare cordage. On the grocery shopping front, I'm going to buy ingredients for a tofu chili recipe, as well a meatless loaf recipe -- both recipes from Taste & See: American Orthodox Cooking (a collection of recipes by St. Ignatius Antiochian Orthodox Church) that my Mom bought for me a few years back.

So, this is what my cartoon sockpuppet Bookworm Bob have been looking at since our last This & That post this past Thursday. I meant to get a This & That post this weekend...enh. Sometimes we get busy.

• WWOI's San Antonio police officer charged with sexually assaulting transgender man:

A San Antonio Police officer was arrested and is accused of sexually assaulting a transgender man.
The man claims officer Craig Nash picked him just south of Downtown early Thursday morning, handcuffed him, and told him to lay down in the back seat of a patrol car. He told investigators Nash then drove to a nearby location, un-handcuffed him, and sexually assaulted him.
The alleged victim said after the assault, Nash dropped him off at a nearby school. He then took a bus to a police station to report the assault. According to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by News 4 WOAI, the alleged victim told officers Nash "wasn't going to get away with this"
Police arrested Nash after the alleged victim identified him in a photo line-up, and police linked his patrol car to the alleged scene using a GPS tracking system...

There is a video attached to this story that one can watch at the webpage for this story.

That said, this is gender and pronoun misidentification of a trans victim by a local TV station...again. It seems to never stop.

See the article below a discussion about misidentification related to this story...

• Examiner.com's Media misidentification: San Antonio sex-assault victim is trans woman:

A trans woman who was sexually assaulted on February 25 by San Antonio police officer Craig Nash was incorrectly identified as a "transgender man" by several media outlets.
The Transgender Foundation of America (TFA) of Houston reports that TFA director Cristan Williams contacted the San Antonio Police Department and discovered that the victim was, in fact, a trans woman.
TFA has a report on this at the link above, as well as contact information for several news outlets for those who want to call or e-mail to express concern about the misidentification of the victim and to remind these outlets about both the Associated Press (AP) and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) guidelines on reporting stories involving trans people.
Both AP and GLAAD media guidelines recommend the use of the name, pronouns, and gender references that reflect the correct gender identity of any trans person referred to in a news story...

Local televison news programs have a long running problem with not sticking to journalism standards when it comes to reporting on trans people. They need to do their homework better.

The bottom line though is we're talking about an alleged rape by an on-duty police officer. One would think, from some of the comments of the first story, that this was about trans people being evil. A sampling these kind of comments:

• I wish to publicly rebuke the author of this article for her portrayal of a cross dressing, transvestite homosexual pervert as "transgender". Presumably from your politically correct speech on this matter you find such behavior acceptable and worthy of being spoken of as if there is some sort of normality involved; as if it is not perverted and twisted and vulgar. Shame on you and your house! I think all these people should be put into jails and re-education camps. They are all sick and they need a good dose of plain old fashioned religion administered with a switch; a thin one from an ash tree. It is important for Christian virtue and normal behavior to be held up to the public as admirable, while wicked deviltry ought be exposed for what it is. Reject the work of the liberals who seek to destroy America and exhalt homosexuality and all sorts of perversions. Rather, seek Jesus, the Son of God. Praise God... jesus-is-lord.com
• Any guy dressed up like a girl wants to get rammed in the butt. He got what he wanted.
• I will wait until the investigation is complete. These homosexuals make up this kind of crime all the time.

By the way, this isn't the first San Antonio police officer who has been accused of this kind of sexual assault...this kind of rape. Does anyone remember Dean Gutierrez, who was sentenced to 24-years in federal prison for sexually assaulting a trans woman?

• The Los Angels Times' A stink in Central California over converting cow manure to electricity; Air-quality rules in the region leave dairy farmers facing costly changes to generators used to burn methane to produce power. Some have put their renewable-energy plans on hold:

Reporting from Stanislaus County, Calif. - Central California is home to nearly 1.6 million dairy cows and their manure -- up to 192 million pounds per day. It's a mountain of waste and a potential environmental hazard.
But for dairyman John Fiscalini, the dung on his farm is renewable gold: He's converting it into electricity.
At his farm outside Modesto, a torrent of water washes across the barn's concrete floor several times a day, flushing tons of manure away from his herd of fuzzy-faced Holsteins and into nearby tanks. There, bacteria consume the waste and release methane, which is then burned in a generator capable of producing enough power to run Fiscalini's 530-acre farm, his cheese factory and 200 additional homes.
Fiscalini's resourcefulness should be drawing accolades, considering that state mandates are requiring California industries to boost renewable energy use and slash greenhouse gas emissions sharply over the next 10 years.
But efforts to convert cow pies into power have sparked controversy. State air quality control regulators say these "dairy digester" systems can generate pollution themselves and, unless the devices are overhauled, are refusing to issue permits for them...

Ah, problems with power poops. Whaddoya'do.

• Opposition news from the Alliance Defense Fund's posting of Protect Marriage Washington's press release, entitled Protect Marriage Washington Files Supreme Court Brief to Protect Privacy of Petition Signers:

Protect Marriage Washington filed its opening brief today in the United States Supreme Court case of Doe #1 v. Reed. Protect Marriage Washington sponsored a referendum in Washington and is asking the Supreme Court to prevent the state from releasing the names, addresses, and other personal information of more than 138,000 individuals that signed the petition.
The effort to place the names of the petition signers on the internet is the latest example of the campaign to harass and intimidate anyone supporting traditional marriage by making personal information available on the internet. Their efforts have resulted in death threats, physical violence, and property damage directed at individuals supporting a traditional definition of marriage.
James Bopp, Jr., lead counsel for Protect Marriage Washington, stated that "Public disclosure laws have been used to harass and intimidate voters. The First Amendment protects citizens engaged in political speech from being forced to reveal their identity to ensure that intimidation does not makes its way into the campaign toolbox. No one should have to endure death threats in order to stand up for what they believe in."
On September 10, 2009, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington issued an order preventing the release of the names of the petition signers. On October 15, 2009, the Ninth Circuit issued a single page order allowing the release of the names. On October 20, 2009, the Supreme Court issued an emergency order preventing the release of the names until the appeal is decided.
The case is Doe #1 v. Reed. It will be argued before the United States Supreme Court on Wednesday, April 28, 2010. Protect Marriage Washington's opening brief, along with the prior orders in the case, are available on the website of the James Madison Center for Free Speech, http://www.jamesmadisoncenter.org/WA/Ref71/Index.html under the "Washington Referendum 71 Petition Suit" heading.
James Bopp, Jr. has a national federal and state election law practice. He is General Counsel for the James Madison Center for Free Speech and former Co-Chairman of the Election Law Subcommittee of the Federalist Society.

Egads! Nebulous death threats by evil homosexuals!! Of course!!

Let's go to my home state of California to see where one can go as a "conservative Christian" congressional candidate with these nebulous death threats from "homosexual society"...

• Our Wiener Story Of The Day: Rosemary Welch for Congress 2010 CA-37's Sacred Matrimony is Between One Man and One Woman:

It seems as though it doesn't take much to anger this gentle soul anymore. With the homosexual society always in our faces trying to push their agenda on us and claiming it is the opposite, I've had it. There is no reason to speak with them because they are unreasable (I know not most of them!).
I do not bother anyone for what or who they are. I never have. When you cross the line and tell me that I have to accept your behavior or else, that's where we cannot go. This is America. Matrimony has been the rule for millennia, and you are not going to change it now...
...That is, however, not the reason I bring this to your attention. They are at it again (still) in Washington, just as they are here in California. Please read below to see how 'nice' some of these homosexuals truly are.
[Autumn note: She includes this press release: Protect Marriage Washington Files Supreme Court Brief to Protect Privacy of Petition Signers]
...It is indefensible to me that someone would send a death threat for ALLOWING YOU TO LIVE YOUR LIFE, yet that's not good enough for you. I know for a fact that isn't everyone. I am angry over this. Take that whichever way you want. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Then again, you have forgotten what shame is a long time ago, eh? Yeah, I said it, I meant it, and I'm here to represent it. Now what?
Some people you just shouldn't ever make angry. Especially sweet little ladies. It isn't nice. Have a day.

Her self-description says a lot:

I am a Christian Conservative who loves our country dearly. We deserve to be represented responsibly. I believe I can do a much better job listening to us, and that is why I would be honored to represent us.

Yes, Christian Dominionism. Super-swell.

That candidate deserves the second "Egads!" of this diary ...So, Egads!

So anywho...It's an open thread! What are you thinking about today, or what books or articles have you been reading the past few days? Wanna share?

And again, please feel free to chat, blogwhore, and link-share in the comment thread because...it's an open thread! Woo-hoo!

Martin Ssempa celebrates his homophobia via a blog

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters

I have trepidations with posting this mostly because I fear how some of us would behave. But it's a item which needs to be made public.

From Truth Wins Out comes the news that Martin Ssempa is blogging.

For those unfamiliar with that name, Ssempa is one of the main supporters of that awful "kill the gays" bill in Uganda.

Recently, Ssempa has been trying to drum up support for the bill in the face of international condemnation. He has even been reduced to showing porn in churches:

A pastor seeking to bolster Uganda's anti-gay laws which already make homosexuality punishable by life imprisonment screened gay porn in a Kampala church Wednesday in a bid to drum up support.

The screening was attended by around 300 supporters crammed into an evangelical church in the Ugandan capital after plans for a "million-man march" were thwarted by police.

"We had planned to have a million-man and -woman march in Kampala but unfortunately we were told that we could not march because of security concerns," Martin Ssempa told the crowd.

"The major argument homosexuals have is that what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms is nobody's business but do you know what they do in their bedrooms?," the pastor asked.

Ssempa then displayed a slide show of gay pornographic pictures.

"This one is eating another man's anus (eds: correct)," the pastor said, before going into graphic scatological descriptions.

Via his new blog, Ssempa not only continues his ramblings but also celebrates his ignorance:

Ha ha ha..the homos are scared to death that we have hard evidence of WHAT they do. They are mortally ashamed of the public knowing the totally deviant sexual activities which include the most unnatural, unhealthy and disease prone sexual activities..fisting, anal licking, scat (fecal) games, brown and yellow showers, etc all these are the acts they want to keep secrets. See fisting (R)and the complete deviants dictionary (R) of WHAT they really do. So they now plant stories to bemoan that I am showing "gay porn" to "little children". That now my members in church are wanting to try out being homos! ha ha ha..

As I said before, Ssempa has reached the plateau where people are wondering is he fighting against gays or maybe some hidden urges in himself.

But to compound his nastiness, Ssempa wrote Truth Wins Out this note:

Thank you for your kindness in advertising my blog. But why are you indulging into racism by reading me as the Ugandan Rick Warren? Why is it every time a black man does something good..like a blog, or the anti homosexuality bill, you want to credit a white man ie Rick Warren or some White Americans who visited Uganda? Please go ahead and read my blog as I read yours..and have the kindness to leave a polite comment. Check out the new video of the demo…and the statement on the expose on what homosexuals really do…Thanks and let the truth win out.

So again with trepidation, I publicize the fact that Ssempa has a blog. But as he said, the truth needs to be known . . . about just how ugly and evil his type of homophobia is.

If you go on his blog and leave a comment, PLEASE be polite.

Related posts:

'Kill the gays' bill supporter reduced to showing gay porn in church

Martin Ssempa talks about 'poop' to demonize lgbts

NC Tell State Senator Forrester to meet with minority constituents or step aside

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

State Senator Jim Forrester (R-Gaston) has no shame. As the Blend reported yesterday, he has no intention of meeting with black or LGBT/ally constituents after his racist and homophobic bigotry spewed in the newspaper.

A recap of the bile that passed the lips of Forrester, who is running unopposed this year, and has been a consistent sponsor of a marriage amendment in NC:

"The (state) Senate is as liberal as I've ever seen it. Slick city lawyers and homosexual lobbies and African American lobbies are running Raleigh."
-- at the monthly meeting of the Iredell County Young Republicans on Tuesday night in Mooresville.
"It brought a lot of blacks out who don't normally vote."
-- blaming the progressive tilt of the 2008 election on the "Obama tsunami" of uppity North Carolinians who showed up at the polls, apparently dislodging white power.
"I doubt I will go to the meeting, but I appreciate the invitation anyhow. I don't think it would be a constructive meeting. I think it would just increase animosity toward me, and I don't want that."
-- his initial response to the invitation from the Gaston County chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, assuming he hasn't done enough on his own to increase animosity towards his prejudiced views.
A physician, Forrester claims that he has gay patients and "treats them like everyone else."

The Blend has received a follow up letter from Robert Kellogg, Vice President of PFLAG Gaston, announcing a new Facebook page and call to action, "Tell Senator Forrester to meet with minority constituents or step aside:"

I feel strongly that if the Senator cannot meet with minority constituents and explain his recent comments than he needs to step aside and give someone else the opportunity to represent the people in his district. Part of the responsibility of being an elected official is to hear the concerns and needs of ALL your constituents, even the ones you don't like, understand or agree with. Working for the people as a government employee is not a free enterprise position where you can pick and choose who you can do business with. We the people demand equal representation and access to our government, that includes the ability to meet with elected officials and seek accountability for their words and actions.
Furthermore the group, "Tell Senator Forrester to meet with minority constituents or step aside", is hosting a week long email and phone campaign to the Senator's office. For more information please join the group on Facebook.
Beginning today and ending the night of Saturday March 6th in contacting the North Carolina Senator.
Be sure and tell him the following:
1. Your name and town/city of residence.
2. That you support the rights of minorities, especially African Americans and LGBT community members to have a meeting with the Senator to discuss his recent comments regarding the two minority groups.
3. Let the Senator know that even though he views PFLAG (Parents Families And Friends of Lesbians and Gays) contrary to his personal beliefs, you believe in the rights of all people to have equal access to government and their elected officials.
4. Come back on this group site and post your results, i.e. you spoke with a representative and what they said.
Martin Luther King stated, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere". I speak for myself when I say that good people everywhere in Senator Forrester's district need to speak up and out against his bigoted comments and his refusal to meet with certain constituents. Silence on all sides of the human and political spectrum is an endorsement of his behavior. Let the African American community as well as the LGBT community know that you support them in their quest to, "Tell Senator Forrester to meet with minority constituents or step aside".

Why do Christianist bigots even try doing rap?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

O.M.F.G. Anti-gay WingNutDaily columnist Molotov Mitchell has some serious issues with Islam as well -- no surprise there. Rather than waste any time criticizing his broad spectrum of bigotry, evaluate his rap skilz.

Weigh in on the poll.

If you really feel like being punished, watch his diatribe in favor of Uganda's "execute gays" video.

H/T, Joe.My.God, who calls Mitchell "the teabagger Eminem."

links for 20100301

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

RainyMood.com

(tags: noise)
SimplyNoise.com – The best free white noise generator on the Internet.

(tags: noise)

Twitter Updates for 20100301

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

petition @Senate_GOPs & Jim Bunning: stop holding unemployed Americans hostage to your obstruction agenda http://act.ly/1qo RT to sign #p2 #

Twitter Updates for 20100301

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

petition @Senate_GOPs & Jim Bunning: stop holding unemployed Americans hostage to your obstruction agenda http://act.ly/1qo RT to sign #p2 #

Talk Like A Man

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I haven’t been following the Winter Olympics very close, except for perusing the news photos and figuring out who the hottest athletes are. (No, I don’t need to see they play to figure that out, if you know what I mean.) but I have been following the “controversy” regarding Johnny Weir.

The Associated Press reports that two broadcasters are under fire for derogatory comments made about the former world champion.

One commentator from French-language broadcaster RDS said Weir hurts figure skating’s image, while another said the skater should be made to take a gender test. The Quebec Gay and Lesbian Council has demanded a public apology from RDS, calling the remarks “outrageous” and “homophobic.”

Weir’s agent, Tara Modlin, says Weir knows about the comments, but he’s made no public response as of yet.

The Dish Rag thinks the much buzzed-about skater will most likely ignore the nasty comments and forge ahead with his plans to start his own fashion line (much to the French commentators’ dismay, we’re guessing) after the Olympics wrap up.

Well, he didn’t ignore it, and I’m glad he didn’t. Because I just became a big Johnny Weir fan.

Johnny Weir is fired up over comments by a pair of Canadian broadcasters who suggested his costumes and “body language” set a bad example for male skaters and joked he may have to take a gender test

“I’m not somebody to cry about something or to be weak about something,” Weir, 25, told a press conference in Vancouver on Wednesday. “I felt very defiant when I saw these comments.”

…”It wasn’t these two men criticizing my skating, it was them criticizing me as a person, and that was something that really, frankly, pissed me off,” Weir told reporters. “Nobody knows me. … I think masculinity is what you believe it to be.”

Needless to say, I agree with him. The world would a much better place if we placed less emphasis on being sufficiently “masculine” or “feminine” and instead focused on helping people become whole persons. Because doing otherwise sets everyone up for failure, because we all fall short of the ideal we’re expected to meet. Even worse, some of us get closer to it than others and thus begins the perpetual one upsmanship of masculinity.

Add it all up and it comes down to something very simple; something I was just reading yesterday in John Stoltenberg’s Refusing to be a Man (the title of which caused one woman on the train yesterday to lean way over out of her seat to get a closer look at the title) when he described the predominant brand of masculinity as “a category that only seems real to the extent that those outside of it are put down,” and some thing he expands upon in his essay “Why I stopped trying to be a real man.”

So I got to thinking: If everyone trying to be a “real man” thinks there’s someone else out there who has more manhood, then either some guy has more manhood than anybody–and he’s got so much manhood he never has to prove it and it’s never ever in doubt–or else manhood doesn’t exist. It’s just a sham and a delusion.

As I watched guys trying to prove their fantasy of manhood–by doing dirt to women, making fun of queers, putting down people of other religions and races–I realized they were doing something really negative to me too, because their fear and hatre d of everything “nonmanly” was killing off something in me that I valued.

Author Stephen Ducat, whose The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity I just finished, stated it outright in an Alternet interview a while back.

The problem with our current notion of masculinity is that it’s a definition of manhood based on domination. The problem with definition of manhood based on domination is that domination can never be a permanent condition. It’s a relational state – it is dependent on having somebody in the subordinate position, which means that you may be manly today, but you’re not going to be manly tomorrow, unless you’ve got somebody to push around and control. This definition goes back to the ancient Greeks, and it makes masculinity a precarious and brittle achievement – which has to be constantly asserted. It has to be proven over and over again. It is the ultimate Sisyphean pursuit.

Growing up as a boy who never had a hope of living up to the masculine idea expected of me, it would have done me a world of good to have someone like Johnny Weir or Adam Lambert as an example and an inspiration.

I guess it makes sense. Like I said before, I was not a normal boy. I remember knowing that as early as kindergarten, even if I didn’t have a name for it. And even if I hadn’t sensed it myself, it was made abundantly clear to me. The Raising Cain documentary refers to tests of masculinity, tests that I pretty much failed right from the start. Sometimes I didn’t even know I was being tested. Those memories aren’t easily forgotten, and reading Kimmel’s essay quickly brought them back to mind.

…the father is the first man who evaluates the boy’s masculine performance, the first pair of male eyes before whom he tries to prove himself. Those eyes will follow him for the rest of his life. Other men’s eyes will join them — the eyes of role models such as teachers, coaches, bosses, or media heroes; the eyes of his peers, his friends, his workmate; and the eyes of millions of other men, living and dead, from whose constant scrutiny his performance will never bee free.

I played with dolls. My sister’s dolls; both baby dolls and Barbie dolls. It wasn’t like I didn’t have toys of my own, but I just preferred the dolls. My playing with dolls was the catalyst for the first time I remember getting the message (somewhat indirectly) that I wasn’t measuring up in the masculinity department.

…When it comes to masculinity, details matter. At that age, I couldn’t even eat an apple the way a boy — or a man — was supposed to. Another time, my dad pointed it out to me. I would usually slice an apple into wedges before eating it, rather than just biting into it, as he instructed me a guy was supposed to. (I didn’t mention at the time that it hurt my teeth to do so.) If anybody saw me eating an apple like that, I was informed, they might think I was a little “funny.” Details. Details.

I have a standing bet with a friend that I can walk on to any playground in America … and by asking one question, I can provoke a fight. That question is simple: “Who’s a sissy around here?” … One of two things is likely to happen. One boy will accuse another of being a sissy, to which that boy will respond that he is not a sissy, that the first boy is. They may have to fight it out to see who’s lying. Or a whole group of boys will surround another boy and all shout “He is! He is!” That boy will either burst into tears and run home crying, disgraced, or he will have to take on several boys at once to prove he’s not a sissy. (And what will his father and brothers tell him if he chooses to run home crying?) It will be some time before he regains any sense of self respect.

Guess which boy I was.

Actually, I didn’t have much opportunity to “run home crying.” I learned early on to avoid my male peers because, for me, there was a danger in being near them. Part of that stemmed from an awakening pubescent desire that was often betrayed by the glances I stole. But it was also due to a recognition that if I ventured onto the field of their turf, chances are I wasn’t going to measure up.

So, I wouldn’t have been on the playground Kimmel writes about. Recess usually found me sitting under a tree at the far corner of the playground, reading a book. Actually, being an avid reader saved me in a sense (just as much as it branded me, because among my peers being bookish was the opposite of being boyish). It gave me a refuge when it led to my becoming a library assistant. I got to hang out in the air conditioned library with the librarian and the other library assistants (who were almost all girls), far from the playground, the boys, and their tests of masculinity.

I guess by then I’d already opted out of the club to the degree that I could. Of course, the reality was (and is) that I can’t opt out entirely. I’m still a guy, and I’m probably always going to bump up against the whole gestalt of “masculinity” that pervades the culture I’m living in. Kimmel’s article got me started thinking about it.

I did alright, but it would have been easier. I know that a lot of boys like me out there today. Maybe someone like Johnny Weir, with the courage to be himself and not shoehorn himself into someone else’s idea of masculinity, will make it easier for them to do the same.

Moments before Johnny began his final Olympic free skate that would determine whether he’d get a medal, the announcers relayed advice that his parent’s had given him: “You must always be yourself.”

In an interview Johnny once said, “Even when I was little and playing on a soccer team and running the opposite way pretending to be a zebra or an ostrich, it was OK — I’ve always been like this.”

His free stake was breathtaking. Confidence and vulnerability metastasized into a beautiful work of art — carved ice, muscle, glitter, blades and will.

Had Johnny amended his backwards ball kicking in soccer, stopped envisioning himself as an animal or decided to appease those made uncomfortable by his happiness, he might not have been able to share his skills and compete among the world’s top athletes.

Johnny Weir placed sixth in the 2010 Olympic Men’s Free Skate. He did not receive a high enough score to medal, but the points lost on the soccer field and from the judges’ scorecards transformed into a standing ovation.

If Johnny were to “Be Good” he wouldn’t be where he is today.

And there will be more little boys who grow up to be like Weir, refusing to knuckle under to someone else’s idea of masculinity.

The whole masculinity thing reminds of that other tired one-upsmanship game, “Blacker Than Thou.” What I tell people when they ask me about that is this: “There as many different ways to be black as there are black people, and not is more authentic or legitimate than the other.”

Well, there are as many ways to “be a man” as their are people running around with a y chromosome.

But Johnny Weir’s example should make anyone question the point of trying so hard to “be a man,” when being a better person — being your personal best — is a much tougher task, but with a much bigger payoff.

I Got A Name But I Don’t Want It

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

File this one under “Can’t Blame ‘Em.” One of Madoff’s daughter-in-laws says her kids shouldn’t be burdened with the Madoff name.

What’s more, her husband doesn’t disagree.

One of Bernard Madoff’s daughters-in-law says she and her children shouldn’t have to bear the burden of his name.

Stephanie Madoff filed court papers in Manhattan on Wednesday asking to change her last name to Morgan. She made the same request for her two children.

She’s married to the jailed financier’s son, Mark. She says her family has gotten threats, and she wants to drop the Madoff name to avoid “additional humiliation” and harassment. Her lawyer declined to comment.

Mark Madoff says in court papers he doesn’t object.

Like I said, I can’t blame her.

Does Flying a Plane Into a Building Make You a Hero or a Terrorist?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Here’s a question I bet you thought didn’t need to be asked in a post-9/11 America: Does flying a plane into a building make you a terrorist or a hero?

Joe Stack attacked the IRS by flying his plane into one of its buildings. Is he a hero?

Some people think so. Stack’s adult daughter, Samantha Bell, said Monday that her father’s attack was “inappropriate” but that she considered him heroic because of his antigovernment views.

“Maybe now people will listen,” she told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Stack is also becoming a hero to the radical right – specifically, white supremacists and their fellow travelers, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Supremacist web forums have been filled with comments that elevate Stack into an icon of resistance to tyranny, writes Mark Potok, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project.

Potok quotes one poster on Stormfront.org, a large supremacist web site, as saying, “The Guy is a true HERO!!!”

Let’s break this down.

Hero?

Or Terrorist?

Hero?

Or Terrorist?

Hero?

Or Terrorist?

Hero?

Or Terrorist?

Hero?

Or Terrorist?

What makes the difference?

Is it numbers? So, is that one man is a hero, but ten men are terrorists?

Are you a hero if you only have one immediate victim? (Though, in truth, there’s never just one victim — there’s family, friends, community, etc., to factor in.) Are you a terrorist if you have two immediate victims? Five? Ten? 20? 30? 100? 1,000? Are you a terrorist if you intended to have more victims?

Authorities investigating the crash have positively identified the remains of Vernon Hunter, 68, said family spokesman Larry McDonald. Hunter had been missing and presumed dead since Thursday, when software engineer Andrew Joseph Stack III slammed his plane into the building where Hunter worked as a manager for the IRS.

Hunter’s son Ken said he assumed the worst after not hearing from his father within an hour of the crash, which set fire to the black-glass building that houses offices where nearly 200 IRS employees work. Stack was the only other person to die in the crash, which also injured 13.

Stack, 53, apparently targeted the lower floors of the building, which houses offices where nearly 200 IRS employees work. He lashed out at the agency in a ranting manifesto posted on a Web site shortly before Thursday’s attack, claiming the government and the tax code robbed him of his savings and derailed his career.

Is it a question of who you are? Are you a hero if you have a name like Joe Stack? Are you a terrorist if you have a name like Abdul Muhammad?

Is it a question of religion? Are you a hero if you’re a Christian, but a terrorist if you a Muslim or anything other than Christian?

Does it depend on what you believe? Are you a terrorist if you believe that you’ll have several dozen virgins at your disposal once you get to heaven? Are you a hero if you believe that taxation is theft?

Are you a hero if you’re an angry white male? Are you a terrorist if you’re an angry non-white male or female? Is your anger more or less justified, depending on which you are?

If Stack had been an Arab or a Muslim, you can bet this story would still be getting blaring headlines and front page news coverage. As one of my Twitter friends wrote, “What, if you own your own plane you can’t be a terrorist?”

So which is it?

Heroism?

Or Terrorism?

Does it take “great bravery” to commit suicide in the course of taking other lives? Does it count as heroism if the intent is to make a political point? Is it terrorism if you commit an act of violence “in the pursuit of political aims?

Stack himself made his political aims as clear as his personal aims.

…In a government full of hypocrites from top to bottom, life is as cheap as their lies and their self-serving laws.

I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.

I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.

I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.

“Maybe now people will listen,” Stack’s daughter said, before retracting her statement. Even members of Congress have, while being careful to condemn Stack’s actions, come close to expressing the same sentiment. “Maybe now people will listen.” After quickly describing Stacks attack as “sad,’ Rep. Steve King (R, IA) followed up his obligatory condemnation by essentially justifying the act if it accomplishes his goal of abolishing the IRS, and even encouraged members of the audience at a CPAC panel discussion on immigration to “implode” other IRS offices.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told a crowd at CPAC on Saturday that he could “empathize” with the suicide bomber who last week attacked an IRS office in Austin, and encouraged his listeners to “implode” other IRS offices, according to a witness.

During his closing remarks, King veered into a complaint about high taxes, and said he could “empathize” with the man who flew a plane into an IRS building last week.

During the question and answer session, the Media Matters staffer asked King to clarify his comment, reminding him of his sworn duty to protect the American people from all sworn enemies, foreign and domestic. In response, said the staffer, King gave a long and convoluted answer about having been personally audited by the IRS, and ended by saying he intended to hold a fundraiser to help people “implode” their local IRS office.

It’s unclear whether King would prefer people make sure their local IRS offices are empty before “imploding” them, but it’s clear that stack wanted to add more bodies to the count than his own, both in his long complaint now called a “manifesto” and his choice to strike in the morning when people would be arriving for work. Showing up for work, in his eyes, would be their crime; justifying his role as judge, jury and executioner.

It’s safe to assume he’d hoped to take more than one IRS employee with him. All in the name of personal grievances and political aims. That’s terrorism, straight up. And supporting it is supporting terrorism.

Sympathy with a bomber puts the lie to the extreme right’s claim to reject violence. Someone who carries out premeditated deadly force against civilians to make a political point is by virtually any definition a terrorist, not a hero. Stack remodeled his plane so as to pack it with extra fuel, left a manifesto, took the life of an innocent man.

That’s not to sweep under the carpet the rest of Stack’s complaint.

Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.

In a reality where Wall Street bonuses were up 17% in 2009, while nearly 25% of mortgages are underwater, 80% of delinquent homeowners — nearly six million in all — will lose their homes, and some 2.7 million unemployed Americans may face years without jobs, the desperation expressed in Stack’s suicide note and his murderous and suicidal final act are very real for far, far too many Americans, and is likely to spread if nothing is done — which is what some politicians, like Sen. Tom “I Love Gridlock” Coburn, prefer.

We shouldn’t hesitate to call Stark’s actions terrorism or to label him the terrorist he became when he aimed his plane at Larry Hunter’s workplace, and began his descent past the point of no return. But terrorism, perhaps we can finally acknowledge, is not born in a vacuum. It’s born out of anger and frustration, some justified and some not. It is nourished by despair and hopelessness.

It’s born at the poorly lit intersection where personal choices and policy decisions collide, and despite plenty of witnesses, no one can determine who’s to blame, let alone entirely to blame. And while that’s getting sorted out, more and more Americans lie at that intersection, waiting for help. And waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

So, yes, Joe Stark chose not hero’s death, but that of a cowardly terrorist who justifies his actions as a means to his political goal, but lacks the courage to stick around to face or even witness the consequences of such.

But understand that more and more Americans are finding and will find themselves in similar dire straights, with an ever narrowing range of choices before them. Conservatives are apparently choosing to encourage more Joseph Starks while steadfastly refusing to do anything about the desperate circumstances that lead some Americans to sympathize with Stark and perhaps even emulate him.

The challenge for progressives is to call Starks terrorism what it is, while also fighting to change the circumstances that can only push more Americans into desperate acts.

It’s our very own “war on terror.” And we can’t afford to ignore it.

Quiet? Yes Dignity? No

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

OK. I wasn’t going to say anything else about the John Edwards mess. It’s gotten sordid past the point of rubbernecking, even. I just want to look away. But after reading this piece about the “quiet dignity of Rielle Hunter,” I do have something to say.

A small sampling of some of the things other people have said about Rielle Hunter in the two years since allegations first emerged that she was sleeping with married presidential candidate John Edwards.

John Edwards, as described by former aide Andrew Young in Young’s book The Politician: “Since she was ‘a crazy slut’ and they had an ‘open’ relationship, he thought there was only a ‘one-in-three chance’ that he could be the father of her baby.”

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of John Edwards, in her book Resilience: “I have come to understand his liaison with this woman … Those with any fame or notoriety or power attract people for good reasons and bad … They flatter and entreat, and it is engaging, even addictive. They look at our lives, which from the outside in particular are pictures of joy and plenty, and they want it for themselves.”

Andrew Young in The Politician: “Rielle was a very demanding and self-absorbed person who focused intently on her social life and fashion. If we prepared a salad for dinner and set it on the counter, she’d come in and start eating it with her hands.”

Now a sampling of the things that Rielle Hunter has said publicly in those two years, outside of prepared statements from her attorneys and court affidavits:

Nothing.

OK. I kept going back to the excerpt from Andrew Young’s book, about Hunter making herself at home in the Edwards’ home, while Elizabeth was out on a book tour.

That evening, we ate take-out ribs from a place called Nantucket Grill and sat on the senator’s back porch, a huge space covered by a sturdy roof. The group included me, the nanny, Heather, and her husband, Jed, the senator, his kids, and Rielle, who talked excitedly about everything from national politics to astrology. She said she had been a spiritual teacher and that she believed the future was foretold by the stars. Rielle took great pleasure in noting that John Edwards’s future was limitless, and every once in a while she punctuated her observations about him with a laugh and the line “It’s good to be king.”

As the wine flowed and Heather put the kids to bed, the senator and Rielle became more comfortable touching each other and dropped the pretense that they weren’t involved. At one point, they started musing about how the house seemed like a happy place with Elizabeth and her “negative energy” removed. Rielle talked about living in the mansion once Mrs. Edwards was out of the way. A new family would be formed, the senator said, after he and Rielle married on some rooftop in Manhattan with a celebration that would include music from Dave Matthews. As Rielle listened to the senator spin this fantasy, she smiled like a little kid who had gotten her way.

As the night wore on, clouds rolled in, followed by thunder and lightning and the heaviest rain I had ever seen. Protected and dry under the roof, we watched the water come down in sheets, and in a quiet moment the senator said, “This is the way it should be — no stress, no fighting.”
“It’s good to be king,” said Rielle.

…The next time I spoke to Rielle, she happily told me that she had spent that night in the Edwardses’ bed and slept in while the senator made breakfast for the kids and then drove them to school. She said that when he returned, he got into bed and they “made love.”

Not to mention making a sex tape and then not having the sense to completely destroy it.

In his new tell-all book, The Politician, Andrew Young claims to have discovered a sex tape recorded by John Edwards and his mistress, Rielle Hunter, in a box of trash. Although Hunter apparently tried to dismantle the video by pulling the tape out of the cassette, Young was able to restore it and view the footage with his wife. How do you destroy a sex tape so that it actually stays destroyed?

Burn it, crush it, or shred it. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, there are three levels of media sanitization: clearing, purging, and destroying. “Clearing” refers to any technique that protects against retrieval via simple data recovery programs—like overwriting. “Purging” guards against a laboratory attack by trained professionals with sophisticated equipment. “Degaussing” (more on that below) is an example of “purging.” Actual physical destruction of the device is the most secure approach. Options include incineration, shredding, disintegrating, and pulverizing—any tactic that reduces the data storage device to tiny, unreadable pieces. Burning is the simplest method.

Hunter documented her encounter with Edwards on a MiniDV cassette—a fairly outdated magnetic-tape technology. To remove all digital evidence of her dalliance, she should have burned it, preferably in a licensed incineration facility. If she wanted to keep it as a memento, Hunter should have wiped out all the footage with a “degausser”—an instrument that disrupts and realigns the tape’s magnetic domains, scrambling the encoded information and rendering it permanently unreadable. This method isn’t cheap, though: A government-certified degausser costs thousands of dollars, and bargain-basement versions are unreliable.

If any of that is true, any of it at all, I can’t blame Hunter for keeping quiet. Keeping her mouth shut might well be the smartest move she could make. After all, whether Edwards actually marries her or not she stands to get at least child support out of the bargain, especially if she makes no waves.

Plus, to borrow a phrase, it’s better to be silent and have people question your motives, morals, and mental state than to speak and remove all doubt.

So, Rielle Hunter has been quiet. Good for her. Possibly her smartest move yet.

Say what you will about Elizabeth Edwards. Having endured this slo-mo public humiliation, and probably having endured years of similar private humiliations in the course of her marriage — in which she’d invested 30+ years, and which had endured the loss of a child and the first cancer diagnosis — I’ll cut her some slack if she was angry, emotional, etc.

Who wouldn’t raise unholy hell under the circumstances? Who would be able to maintain a serene, saint-like composure at all times, with their dignity under public assault?

But starting an affair with a married man? Continuing the affair when his wife is diagnosed with terminal cancer? Having a baby with the same married man? Screwing him in home and bed he still shares with his dying wife?

There’s no dignity in that. None at all. And if I’d done all the above, I hope at least I’d have the sense to keep quiet about it.

So, Rielle Hunter has been quiet in the aftermath of the affair with Edwards. Good for her. If nothing else, I’m grateful she’s not adding to the steady stream of mind-numbing disclosures.

But dignity? It’s a little late for that.

CPAC Sideshow and Snake Oil

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

The Sideshow

Glenn Beck, in a sense, is right. CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, is not and could never be a “big tent.” Neither is the brand of conservatism it tries so hard to sell. The “big tent,” to borrow his circus analogy is usually reserved for acts featuring genuine talent and skill that tend to draw people into the “big tent.”

CPAC, as speaker after speaker demonstrated, is more or less a sideshow — relegated to a small tent, and populated with notions that have no basis in and would never work in reality, and that just don’t stand up to close inspection. Inside that small tent, where people who paid the admission price really want to believe their eyes, it works. But in the cold light of day, not so much.
And like the hawkers outside the sideshow tent, the purveyors of CPAC brand of conservatism likely know they’re selling a bill of goods. But they resemble more closely the snake oil salesmen of old, using entertainment to sell a poisonous “cure” that only worsens the ailment it’s claimed to treat.

The biggest, but perhaps not the first clue of CPAC’s long-distance relationship with reality was Ron Paul’s win in CPAC’s straw poll.

In a strong reflection of just how strong his standing remains within the die-hard conservative community, Texas Republican and 2008 presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul won the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll on Saturday, earning nearly one-third (31 percent) of the entire vote. The crowd, however, booed heavily when the results were announced.
Paul was far and away the most widely anticipated speaker at the three-day conference, with his base of “Paulites” streaming into the main auditorium to hear him rail against government overreach and neoconservativism on Friday afternoon. In many respects, his win in the CPAC poll seemed pre-ordained — his band of followers having a well-earned reputation for flooding polls and forums like these.

What it portends for a possible 2012 presidential run is anyone’s guess. Paul had a similar cult-like following during the 2008 election, only to garner a relatively small chunk of the actual vote.

Never mind that winning the CPAC straw poll is essentially meaningless.

It doesn’t quite have that Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome feel to it, but neither did the event — barring some notable exceptions. The annual Conservative Political Action Conference concluded yesterday in Washington, DC and 31 percent of the nearly 2,400 voters said they preferred the libertarian from Texas.

Based on sheer media exposure you wouldn’t think this would be the outcome. If time in the spotlight meant winning the contest, Sarah Palin would be the undeniable champion.

…Palin came in third place garnering just seven percent of the vote.

…So is the Ron Paul revolution “alive and well” like he told his supporters on Friday night?
Probably not. The straw poll doesn’t have a great batting average.

How did Romney celebrate his victory at CPAC last year? By promptly dropping out of the presidential race.

It’s what Paul’s win says about CPAC, especially in the Tea Party era.

Never mind that the presidential slate coming out of CPAC basically looks something like this: Rick Santorum, Sara Palin, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, and Mitt Romney? (And, if you believe the cheers of ”Cheney in 2012″ when he entered the room, you can add Dick Cheney to the list.) No wonder organizers were disappointed and some attendees said they wished they’d had better candidates to choose from. Perhaps even they realized that they’d paid admission for the smaller, sideshow tent, where the acts presented couldn’t stand up to closer inspection.

Other contradictions abounded. How could it be otherwise when the “elite” are continually savaged at a conference that’s supported by oil industry cash?

How could it be otherwise at a conference where John Boehner claimed to be shocked that the president slapped his hand on a table to emphasize his frustration with the GOP on health care reform? How could it be otherwise at a conference where Boehner claims “America has spoken” with regard to health care reform?

“I was in the White House for a meeting a few weeks back,” Boehner recalled. “We were talking about the economy and jobs and I was explaining that these Democrat policies, you know — cap and trade, national energy tax, government takeover of our health care system, card check, higher tax rates — all of this was paralyzing business owners because they had all of this uncertainty. And you know no small business owners can plan, invest or hire new workers in this kind of environment.
“But the president didn’t like it,” he added. “He looked at me and he slapped the table and said, ‘Boehner, it’s not my policies that are paralyzing these employers. It’s you Republicans who are scaring them.’

“I said, ‘Mr. President, the American people aren’t scared about what we have to say. They’re scared by the policies that are being promoted by your administration and your colleagues up on the Hill.’ I told him, ‘well here is the thing, the American people want leaders who will listen they don’t need any more lecturers coming to Washington.”

Boehner may have been too busy jumping of his skin to recall that recent polls show that Americans want comprehensive health care reform passed.

Here’s the main point:

A huge majority of Americans want a comprehensive health care bill passed. That includes 88% of Democrats, 56% of Independents, and almost a majority – 42% – of Republicans. If Congress thinks they can get away with not passing a bill, given those numbers, they’ve got another thing coming.

When you add these numbers to a few other questions in this poll, you get a picture of the electorate that really wants reform done right.

…The picture is becoming clear: America wants to see a comprehensive bill passed and they support major components of the legislation. They also don’t see the current bill in the Senate as the final bill – they want to see some changes before President Obama signs something. And there’s no doubt that a great many people have been influenced by the negative advertising the insurance industry and its allies have been flooding the airwaves with, coupled with the media’s focus on process rather than policy.

Putting it all together, America wants comprehensive reform, they want reform finished right before a bill is signed, and they think Republicans are standing in the way, which gives an implicit endorsement for Democrats to use majority rule to do what the American people want.

Mitt Romney, speaking at CPAC, suggested that “the American people” were at odds with the president’s criticism of the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” ruling.

Deriding President Obama’s position on a recent Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, freeing corporations from existing political spending restrictions, Romney said, “The President found it inexplicable that the first amendment right of free speech should be guaranteed not just to labor union corporations and media corporations, but equally to all corporations, big and small.

“When it was all over, I think most Americans felt as I did: his noisy critique and bombast did not register as clear and convincingly as Justice Alito’s silent lips forming these words: ‘Not true!’” Romney added, referring to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s moment of vocal disapproval at the President’s recent State of the Union Address.

Not true? Perhaps Romney might have realized that if he’d asked the American people, or simply taken a look a the poll showing Americans “overwhelmingly oppose” the Citizens United ruling.

Americans of both parties overwhelmingly oppose a Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations and unions to spend as much as they want on political campaigns, and most favor new limits on such spending, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Eight in 10 poll respondents say they oppose the high court’s Jan. 21 decision to allow unfettered corporate political spending, with 65 percent “strongly” opposed. Nearly as many backed congressional action to curb the ruling, with 72 percent in favor of reinstating limits.

The poll reveals relatively little difference of opinion on the issue among Democrats (85 percent opposed to the ruling), Republicans (76 percent) and independents (81 percent).

The results suggest a strong reservoir of bipartisan support on the issue for President Obama and congressional Democrats, who are in the midst of crafting legislation aimed at limiting the impact of the high court’s decision.

How’s that “we create our own reality“ thing working out for you?

Probably not so well if the conservative voice of reason has to come all the way from Hollywood.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was dismissive of the Tea Party movement in a “This Week” exclusive interview with Terry Moran. “The Tea Party is not going to go anywhere,” Schwarzenegger told Moran. “I think the Tea Party is all about just an expression of anger and dissatisfaction.”

MORAN: It’s a very aggressive Republican positioning and I want to go back to the CPAC conference. The Republicans reasserted their congressional power. Essentially the massive campaign of obstruction, filibusters more than 100 in one year, 80 percent of major legislation — and as Mike Pence, congressman from Indiana, one of the Republican conservative leaders in the House put it at CPAC, they’re proud of that record.

…MORAN: So they are the party of no.
SCHWARZENEGGER: They’re the party of no, and at the same time, I think that there are a lot of people that are disenchanted and dissatisfied and they’re angry and this is why you have the Tea Party and all of those things. The Tea Party is not going to go anywhere. I think the Tea Party is all about just an expression of anger and dissatisfaction and I see it in California when people come up to me and says, you know I’m angry that you guys don’t get along in Sacramento. I’m angry that they’re not getting along in Washington. I’m angry that nothing gets done. I’m angry that I’m unemployed. I’m angry that people are losing homes. I’m angry that businesses are losing their businesses and all of those kind of things. And the economy is down.

CPAC is indeed minority masquerading as the voice of the majority; a small tent masquerading a big tent; a flea circus masquerading as the circus; a sideshow masquerading as the main event.

But it’s only part sideshow. It’s also a medicine show, selling a snake oil pseudo-cure to Americans desperate for relief from the economic pain — taking advantage of their pain, anger, and desperation, with no real intention of providing relief.

And perhaps therein lies it’s real danger.

Coming up: Part Two — The Snake Oil

Howard Dean?s Odd Politics of Hate

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

What is it with Howard Dean and “hate.” When Republicans are in power, it’s right and good to hate them. When Democrats are in power, the party that we were once supposed to hate becomes the party of hate.

He claims he was taken out of context when he said he hated Republicans and everything they stood for and called the partisan differences in America “a struggle between good and evil and we’re the good.” Only when he didn’t say jsut how his remarks had been taken out of context nor did he apologize. He did say, “I don’t hate Republicans as individuals“, then added:

But I hate what the Republicans are doing to this country. I really do. I hate deficits, as you know. When I was governor, I really was very tough on fiscal responsibility. Deficits in the long run aren’t good for the country, and they do lower our standard of living. Every American family knows that you have to pay your bills. I hate the dishonesty, you know, the idea that you’d put a program through Congress without telling people what it costs, I think that’s wrong.

Guess he must really hate this Administration, but then, he can’t because, well, he’s a Democrat and right now, only Republicans do the hating. Yet, given what Howard Dean said back in ‘05, you’d kind of understand it, you know by his standards, if Republicans did start pushing the hate button, I mean, with those big deficits we’re getting from team Obama.

He is, however, not praising them when he alleges they have the same attitudes toward a spendthrift Administration that he once did:

He also said that the Republican Party holds “untenable positions based on emotion and anger,” and that the GOP won’t be effective until they “stop pushing the hate button.”

To show just how out of touch is this former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, he spouts some nonsense about the Tea Party’s views on social issues. Guess he has a one-size-fits-all approach to conservatives. If they oppose a Democratic Administration, then they must be like the imaginary conservative inside his head, harboring hateful views of homosexuals.

Hate to break it to you, Howard, but those Tea Party folks are pretty concerned about the things that got you hating the Republicans lo these five years ago. Guess you just hate anyone who doesn’t have a (D) after his name and support your wayward left-wing ways.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. This is the crusty old pot which once boasted about its thick coat of soot calling black the kettle just back on the stove after a long scrubbing with multiple Brillo Pads.

Joining Obama in Wishing Cheney a Speedy Recovery

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Most people know about former Vice President Cheney’s recent hospitalization, but few know that President Obama called him “to wish him a speedy recovery“. More should.

It was a classy act.

So, let me join other conservative bloggers in tipping my hat to the president for calling one of his staunchest critics to wish him well after his recent heart attack:

. . .this classy deserves some recognition. Good for Obama for swallowing his pride and doing the presidential thing. Why, even Jim Treacher was moved to tip his cap to Barry O — and he just got run over by one of Obama’s guys. Talk about goodwill.

Rush Admits Error in Telling GOP to Skip Health Care Summit

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Sonicfrog thinks the talk show host erred in “telling the Republicans not to go to the Obama Health Care Summit”:

They went anyway…. and scored some points. You can tell because there is no news of “Obama’s Spectacular Triumph” to be found in today’s papers or in the news.

And when Republicans mess up, the voice of the Beltway establishment doesn’t tell them they’ve had their best day in years.

Rush must have read Sonic’s post; he admitted that he was wrong.

Winning an election renders campaign promises null void?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

A lot of liberals, including at least one of our critics, are making much of the clip embedded below where President Obama supposedly slaps down the man he defeated in the 2008 presidential election for reminding him of a promise he made on his road to victory:

So, is the president then saying that since the campaign is over, his promises then were only intended to win votes–and not to define how he would govern once elected?

(Clip via Legal Insurrection.)

Are Democrats really deaf to popular consensus on health care?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

At the Washington Examiner, Susan Ferrechio sums up yesterday’s health care summit:

Nothing at the summit convinced Republicans to put aside their demand that Democrats scrap the current $1 trillion bill and start over. And Democrats appeared unmoved by a GOP plea to scale back the bill and incorporate ideas like tort reform favored by Republicans.

Democrats remain poised to move ahead on the Senate health care reform bill, which would mandate insurance coverage, expand Medicaid significantly, and use tax increases and Medicare cuts to pay for it.

On the same web-site, Ferrechio’s colleague David Freddoso links a Gallup poll showing significantly more people oppose the Democrats’ proposed health care overhaul than support it, with a solid majority oppose Democrats using reconciliation to advance their bill. Indeed, said Gallup poll registers higher public support for the plan (42%) than do most surveys which show it polling in the 30s, with most registering opposition at or above 50%.

And Democrats press forward with the same ol’ plan when as I noted earlier this week, “more than two-thirds of Americans believe Congress should either start all over on health care reform or do nothing.”

It’s all about appeasing the party’s base. And showing that the president can get something done, even if it’s not what the American people want.

So boring summit was just political theater after all

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Since the president didn’t get Republicans to toe the line exactly as he wants them to toe it, well, he’s going to push forward on his party’s bill to overhaul our health care system come hell or high water. According to Greg Sargent, his criticism of Republicans for not supporting exchanges (after the public option was dropped)

. . . combined with his assertion that Repubicans need to do some “soul-searching” on whether they wanted to join Dems in tackling reform as they have defined it, amount to an unmistakable vow to move foward without them.

Upon “reading news reports saying that Democrats are set on using reconciliation to ram the Senate bill through Congress,” one of Obama’s closest GOP friends in the Senate Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn wondered if yesterday’s summit was pointless”: “It’s fairly disappointing. . . . If the Dems are just going to run the bill anyway, why’d we just do it?”

The Democrats can fret and fume at how supposedly intransigent the Republicans are, but they’re the ones who haven’t budged since yesterday’s summit. It appears they’re moving forward with reconciliation as they had been plotting before the summit took place–and without incorporating any of the ideas Republicans presented at yesterday’s open forum.

It seems its entire purpose was not to consider all ideas, but intead to advance the Democrats’.

Nancy says health care overhaul is about jobs?!?!?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

My nephew found footage of former President Bill Clinton reacting to Nancy Pelosi’s contention that the Democrats’ propoed health care overhaul is about jobs:

Will Paul Ryan?s statement that government doesn?t have the answers come to define the boring health care summit?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Perhaps it was when I turned on FoxNews to watch the health care summit that I turned away from it so quickly. One of the few Democrats all but certain to keep his seat in the Senate this fall–and one our federal legislature can most do without–Charles Schumer was droning on about the common ground shared between Republicans and Democrats. He didn’t seem defensive or as aggressively partisan as he normally does.

Instead, he seemed pathetic almost, eager to be liked, desperate to the be one whom everyone holds up as a master of decorum. In short, not the hyperpartisan politician he normally plays on the Senate floor and in the presence of TV cameras.

Then, his Arizona colleague Jon Kyl chimed in. While he did do something his colleague from the Empire State did not do (bring in some facts), he was even less interesting than Mr. Schumer. And Mr Schumer was only interesting because he was not playing to type.

And maybe since I have not really had time to gather my thoughts until tonight (about 11 PM PST as I start to write), having read a number of pieces about the president’s professorial manner, I remember the brief snippets I saw of him as being professional, like an erudite instructor leading a classroom discussion, only an instructor more akin to an Amherst professor than one at Williams (at least the good ones). He was a “moderator” with a point of view. And he did not hesitate to interject it into the conversation.

I was bored. I turned it off. Now, it may be that I had better things to do, so maybe this observation doesn’t hold much weight, but it should hold at least some, given that most Americans did indeed have something to do yesterday. They had jobs to go to, or to look for, or children to raise, papers to write or people to assist. But, if a guy like me who follows politics was bored by this exercise, what does that say about the average American concerned about his health care, yet not interested in politics?

No wonder news channels quickly lost interest in the summit. The American people likely tuned out before they did. Wonks, pundits and other pontificators who watched the whole thing can call this or that person the winner and this or that politician the loser, but what really matters is whether or not it’s going to change what the American people think about the Democrats’ proposed health care overhaul–and whether it shifts popular momentum in favor of passage.

And I doubt it’s going to do that. From all the coverage I’ve read, nothing really stands out save one line from Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI): ”We don’t think all the answers lie in Washington.”* Not only is it a succinct expression of modern conservatism (though some might tweak it to read, “We don’t think most of the answers lie in Washington”), it reflects the growing consensus of the American people, increasingly upset at Washington, believing that government is doing too much.

That one line, spoken by a House Republican leader, could help tie the GOP to the ideals of the Tea Parties and to the mainstream of popular thought.

——-

*It was the only statement, the only idea, from the summit that showed up as a headline on Memeorandum.

UPDATE: Maybe if I had seen this clip when I flipped on my TV, I might have watched a bit longer:

I think I caught an amusing tongue when he said the answer is not the solution or some such. Quote to remember: “Hiding spending doesn’t reduce spending.” Seems Ryan gets in a second soundbyte to remember.

While America Slept Through HealthCare Summit Democrats Made Us Less Safe

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Andy McCarthy, over at The Corner on NRO sheds light on disturbing language snuck into an intellgence bill last night. Please read the whole thing, it will chill you. Here are a few snippits from his post:

The proposal says the conduct reached by the statute “includes but is not limited to” the itemized conduct. (My italics.) That means any interrogation tactic that a prosecutor subjectively believes is “degrading” (e.g., subjecting a Muslim detainee to interrogation by a female CIA officer) could be the basis for indicting a CIA interrogator.

Waterboarding is not all. The Democrats’ bill would prohibit — with a penalty of 15 years’ imprisonment — the following tactics, among others:

- “Exploiting the phobias of the individual”
- Stress positions and the threatened use of force to maintain stress positions
- “Depriving the individual of necessary food, water, sleep, or medical care”
- Forced nudity
- Using military working dogs (i.e., any use of them — not having them attack or menace the individual; just the mere presence of the dog if it might unnerve the detainee and, of course, “exploit his phobias”)
- Coercing the individual to blaspheme or violate his religious beliefs (I wonder if Democrats understand the breadth of seemingly innocuous matters that jihadists take to be violations of their religious beliefs)
- Exposure to “excessive” cold, heat or “cramped confinement” (excessive and cramped are not defined)
- “Prolonged isolation”
- “Placing hoods or sacks over the head of the individual”

Naturally, all of these tactics are interspersed with such acts as forcing the performance of sexual acts, beatings, electric shock, burns, inducing hypothermia or heat injury — as if all these acts were functionally equivalent.

Andy sums up with something we have known pretty much all along:

Here is the fact: Democrats are saying they would prefer to see tens of thousands of Americans die than to see a KSM subjected to sleep-deprivation or to have his “phobias exploited.” I doubt that this reflects the values of most Americans.

As I said, please read the whole thing. Then call your Congressman.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

UPDATE: Good news… The bill has been pulled.

Join Bruce Dan for Dinner with a Famous Lesbian and another Lesbian?s Famous Father

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

For the first time in over five years, Bruce and I will be together in the same location since we spent an afternoon together at the sacred shrine to freedom in California’s Simi Valley. And you can join us for our next get-together, once again in sunny Southern California.

We’re putting together a table at the Claremont Institute’s 30th anniversary dinner on March 27, 2010 in Los Angeles, featuring our favorite famous father of a lesbian, former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Should we raise $5,000 (we’re halfway there), we’ll all get to attend the VIP reception, featuring a photo opportunity with Mary’s Dad. And we’ve only filled four (of ten) seats, one of them to be occupied by the hottest gun-toting lesbian in Southern California, one-time Endora winning blogress, Tammy Bruce.

So, if you’d like to join, Bruce, Tammy and me, please drop me an e-mail and let me know how much you can contribute.

GayPatriot?s America LIVE tonight on BlogTalkRadio

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Listen in at 10pm as I interview Alexander McCobin. Alexander is the young man from Students For Liberty who stood up at CPAC last Friday and PRAISED the American Conservative Union for including GOProud as a sponsor. Alexander spoke BEFORE Ryan Sorba’s anti-gay tirade from the same podium a few minutes later.

We’ll address the CPAC controversy but also talk about Alexander’s organization and the goals that they are working to achieve in the name of liberty & freedom.

The URL Link to GayPatriot’s America is here. The call-in number is (646) 716-8574.

How transparent will Pelosi be in crafting health care legislation to be put before the House?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

The popular will be damned, Democrats are bound and determined to press on with their statist health care overhaul.

Nancy Pelosi says she’ll get the votes needed to pass it the House. Now that President Obama has made overtures to transparency by holding a health care “summit” in front of news cameras, will she follow his lead?

Will the negotiations to craft the legislation put before the House be held, as per Obama’s campaign promise, in front of C-SPAN cameras?

From the San Francisco Democrat’s rhetoric, things don’t sound too promising. She’s still lashing out at Republicans as if this were a partisan contest to show who has the best intentions rather than an effort to improve our health care system. And frankly, it doesn’t make the 12-term liberal legislator sound very confident. Republicans she says, have “had a field day going out and misrepresenting what the bill says. . . . But that’s what they do.“

But, the real question is what will she do? Will she continue her practice of closing the Republicans out and negotiating the final bill in private in tandem with the special interests allied with her party?

Don’t think those those tactics or her rhetoric will increase the likelihood of health care passage or the popularity of this big government “reform.”

That?s Not What Senator Obama Wanted on Federal Judges

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

How times change.

Senator Barack Obama supported filibustering President Bush’s judicial nominees, but President Obama wants an up-or-down vote on health care. Tell you, what, Mr. President, we’ll consider that offer, once you make sure that every single one of W’s nominees to the federal bench (who would have been confirmed had the Senate voted on his nomination at the time of the appointment) is confirmed.

Oh, and, you’ll, um, need a health care bill that can garner a majority in both houses of Congress.

What Global Warming Means for Al Gore

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

It’s for the children regulation.

“Fisking” the warmist alarmist’s op-ed in the New York Times, blogress diva Ann Althouse figures out what Gore is all about:

He wants the policies that are sold under the name “global warming” whether the prediction of global warming is right or wrong.

Read the whole thing. (H/t: Instapundit.)

Pelosi tells Wavering Dems to Sacrifice Jobs for Obamacare Because She Knows What?s Best for America

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Yeah, she’s one to talk. Representing a district where Obama beat McCain by 73 points (just up from John Kerry’s 71-point margin over W), Nancy Pelosi is now telling Democrats from districts where the margin was in the single digits–or favored the Republican–that they should “back a major overhaul of U.S. health care even if it threatens their political careers“

Lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public, Pelosi said in an interview being broadcast Sunday the ABC News program “This Week.”

“We’re not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress,” she said. “We’re here to do the job for the American people.”

It took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare, which eventually became highly popular, she said, “and many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill.”

Nancy knows her history about as well as she knows economics. It hardly took courage to pass those bills which were popular even before they passed. And today, there are concerns about the fiscal solvency of both programs.

Is Mrs. Pelosi thus suggesting that the Democrats’ proposed health care overhaul will soon also face financial problems?

Her arrogance–and that of the Democrats who continue to push this–is simply amazing. They claim they know better than the American people what’s good for them. They keep pressing forward on this–as if one more push will break the pattern of public opinion consistently moving against them since the debate began. And the tide will finally turn. Well, now she seems to have given up hope of catching a wave and is now saying that, well, public opinion doesn’t matter because we know what’s best.

Even if their knowledge comes from policies which have never worked in the real world and are similar to those which have not brought the desired results in jurisdictions which have tried them.

Not if there?s a D After Their Name

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Edwards epilogue: Does the press really vet presidential candidates?

As Dems press forward with Obamacare they strengthen resolve of conservative to reduce size and scope of government

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Of all the analysis and criticism conservative pundits and bloggers have made about the president’s decision to press ahead with his statist healthcare overhaul, perhaps the most instructive exchange has been between Andrew McCarthy and Ed Morrissey.

McCarthy believes the Democrats will press forward at all costs, including the loss of Congress, in order to fulfill their their age-hold dream of government health care, increasing federal control over one-sixth of our economy. He thinks Republicans lack the will to repeal the monstrosity should Democrats pass it. Morrissey, by contrast, doesn’t think Democrats will get away with it because not all their fellow partisans share the vision of their far-left leaders from deep “blue” enclaves of our richly diverse country.

Being an optimist, I side with Morrissey, but aware of the liberal impulse for control, I get where McCarthy’s coming from and understand why the Democrats press on even as opposition has solidified against the overhaul, with strong opposition increasing and intensifying as the president’s poll numbers take a tumble every time health care tops the news.

First, given that right now, “there is no health care bill currently under consideration“, it’s not certain Democrats can come up with something which can pass both congressional chambers and pass muster under the Senate rules of reconciliation. Second, even if Democrats do find a way to pass it, Republicans might finally find the stomach to repeal it, given that they’ll owe their majorities to popular opposition to the legislation and outrage at the way it has been (and likely will be) rammed through Congress.

In making a point similar to my second point (and so helping me frame my argument), Moe Lane offers this telling observation:

People like to talk about how government programs and agencies never die, once instituted, with the Great Society and the New Deal being the most used examples. What’s not mentioned is that both of those programs were popular. People wanted a Social Security program. They wantedMedicare. They do not notably want this monstrosity of a health care bill*.

And that’s why it may not only be the straw which breaks the statist camel’s back, but which finally turns the tides on big government, giving small government conservatives the will not just to repeal this boondoggle, but to start taking a crack at other outdated pieces of the federal leviathan.

Greece The America of the Future?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Mark Steyn has an excellent piece over at NRO today about the degredation of Greece, and it as a model of how socialist policies there (and in Europe as a whole) have driven it to the verge of disaster. Are we headed there? Directionally, Steyn says, yes. But there’s still time to recover. It starts off:

While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand-new, even-more-unsustainable entitlement at the health-care “summit,” thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen — because they’re part of the same story. It’s just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They’re at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is farther upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided instead that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter Twenty (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter Seventeen or Eighteen.

And it ends:

Think of Greece as California: Every year an irresponsible and corrupt bureaucracy awards itself higher pay and better benefits paid for by an ever-shrinking wealth-generating class. And think of Germany as one of the less profligate, still-just-about-functioning corners of America such as my own state of New Hampshire: Responsibility doesn’t pay. You’ll wind up bailing out anyway. The problem is there are never enough of “the rich” to fund the entitlement state, because in the end it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the fertility rate. In Greece, they’ve run out Greeks, so they’ll stick it to the Germans, like French farmers do. In Germany, the Germans have only been able to afford to subsidize French farming because they stick their defense tab to the Americans. And in America, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are saying we need to paddle faster to catch up with the Greeks and Germans. What could go wrong?

I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

- Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

Why Won?t Pelosi Ask Corrupt Committee Chairman to Step Down?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

After Democrats won a majority in Congress in 2006, the leader of their caucus in the House, Nancy Pelosi said, “The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history“. Well, she’s now Speaker and gets a chance to put her money where her mouth is was.

With a committee chairman admonished by a House ethics panel, she should ask him to relinquish his chairmanship forthwith since he refuses to do so on his own:

Rep. Charles Rangel said Friday he won’t step down as chairman of the powerful House tax-writing committee after being admonished by an ethics panel for accepting corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean. The public rebuke of one of the Democrats’ most outspoken leaders posed more woes for a party that had vowed to end a “culture of corruption.”

(H/t: Instapundit.) Instead of acting, Pelosi is refusing to act. She may talk the good talk on ethics, but in the three years that she’s been Speaker–and seen federal deficits soar and private sector jobs disappear–we’ve seen only lip service paid to ethics reform. ”As of early January,” one blogger reports “’the most ethical Congress ever’ hadn’t punished a single congressman for ethics violations.”

Republicans should not take this lying down and should use whatever parliamentary maneuvers at their disposal to slow down the business of the House until Rangel relinquishes his chairmanship. If this were a Republican Congress, he’d be long gone–while the media would still be in overdrive, wondering why the GOP could not police its own caucus and featuring stories on the corruption in the majority party.

But, today, we get nary a peep from the MSM.

Says Who? Mr President not the American people

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

There he goes again, bound and determined to force the American people to buy something we clearly don’t want. The President took the airwaves to tell us that that a health care “overhaul must go forward.” Gosh, these guys don’t give up.

Who says it must go forward?

Not the American people. Support for the Democrats’ proposed health care overhaul polls worse that did John McCain in October 2008 and no better than Bob Dole did twelve years earlier, and behind Michael Dukakis in 1988, but about even with Walter Mondale in 1984.

More than just being unenthusiastic about the Democrats’ statist approach to health care, we’d also rather they turn their focus to other issues: “Americans overwhelmingly say that their main concern is jobs, and that they are satisfied with their current health care arrangements.” Yet, the Democrats have devoted more legislative hours and the President has devoted more of his time to pushing health care.

Maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing. Democrats think that they only way to create jobs is to spend more government money–and not to remove regulations which would spark private sector activity.

It’s too bad the president learned nothing from the health care summit on Thursday. Had he paid any attention, he would have put forward a compromise approach and abandoned the statist overhaul crafted in Congress, starting afresh by building on the ideas expressed on both sides of the debate.

Lesbian Love Conflict/Resolution Episode 18

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

You yell, you fight — when is it healthy in a relationship and when is it a sign of too much conflict? Lacey and Jessica share their thoughts on this sometimes touchy subject.

For more on Lacey and Jessica, visit their blog, follow them on Twitter (@laceystonefit and @jessicaclark) and friend them on Facebook (Jessica Clark and Lacey Stone Fitness). You can also visit sarathefilm.com to find out about Jessica's new role in the short film. Check back on March 15 for a new episode.

Grace Park hangs ten for “Hawaii FiveO”

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Former Battlestar Galactica star Grace Park has signed on to the remake of Hawaii Five-O. Suddenly, I care about Hawaii Five-O.

The actress, who played Lt. Sharon “Boomer” Valerii on the SyFy series, has joined the pilot for the update of the popular Hawaii police drama that ran from 1968 to 1980. Former Moonlight and Three Rivers star Alex O’Loughlin will star Hawaii State Police squad leader Steve McGarrett, the role originally made famous by Jack Lord.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Grace will play Kona Kalakaua, the niece of McGarrett’s squad member Chin Ho Kelly (Lost’s Daniel Dae Kim). She is said to be “a beautiful and smart champion surfer who is about to graduate from the police academy when McGarrett recruits her to join his team.”

Let’s celebrate Streep

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

What would awards season be without Meryl Streep?

She is ever present at the awards — even in the rare years when she is not nominated, she presents and gives interviews and hangs out being radiant.

This year, Streep’s Oscar nomination for Julie & Julia was a given for anyone who saw the movie. She captured Julia Child in appearance and temperament, finding a way to exaggerate Child’s accent and manner just enough to nail the character.

The Closet Everthing Coming Out This Week Mar 1 7

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Goodbye, Olympics! Hello, Oscars! This week we trade the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat for the red carpet and Hollywood's most prestigious little gold statue. But there's plenty of lesbian/bi content before Sunday night's awards ceremony.

Monday

24 (Fox, 9:00) — President Taylor (Cherry Jones) finally has a meeting with Omar Hassan. Standard Bauer debacles ensue.

Tuesday

American Idol (Fox, 8:00) — Ellen DeGeneres and the rest of the judging panel weigh in on the top ten women performers.

Wednesday

American Idol (CBS, 8:00) — The top 10 guys perform, hopefully better than last week.

Morning Brew Monday March 1

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

It's March already? I like it. Bring on spring!

RachelWatch Hippity Hoppity Health Care Reform

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Today: Gavin Newsom, a new promise on health care reform and the dumbest conspiracy theory in months.

They’re Not Embarrassed

Rachel kicked off with news of a new promise on health care reform. Senator Tom Harkin (D – Iowa) now says that we’ll have it passed by Easter. Rachel seems skeptical, so don’t whip up that celebratory batch of jellybean-and-Peep omelets just yet.

Rachel suggested that Democrats may finally be realizing that the Republicans won’t work with them. Which everyone else realized months ago when the Republicans flat-out said they wouldn’t.

“Everyone” might be the wrong word because I don’t want to suggest that only people had that realization. Plankton had it figured out. But good for the Democrats for catching up.

Fake Gay News RoundUp Feb 22 26

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Local Girl Learns She Doesn't Actually Have Two Mommies

FALLS RIVER MA- Eye doctors at the local LensCrafters have found that a girl who goes by the name of Heather is cross-eyed and does not have two mommies, shattering a belief the girl (and general public) has held for most of her life. The tow-headed youngster appeared to take the news well, although there were a few tense moments when she was told she could not have a pair of frames like Rachel Maddow's.

Heather's one and only mother recalled receiving "Hers and Hers" Mother's Day gifts, teachers' reports about Heather's fascination with gay penguins, and being referred to as "Mama Jane" and "Mama Kate" on a rotating basis.

Expressing relief upon hearing the diagnosis, her mother said, "This also explains why she insisted she had a twin sister."

Glee gets presidential

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Never mind Mr. Smith, the Gleeks are going to Washington. President Barack Obama has extended an invitation to the cast of Glee to sing at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on April 5.

According to Entertainment Weekly, First Lady Michelle Obama and her daughters Sasha and Malia are the nation’s Gleeks in Chief and convinced the most powerful man in the world to bring in America’s favorite glee club. By comparison, in 2008 the Jonas Brothers were the big attraction at last egg roll of the previous administration.

At President Obama’s first egg role event last year, the administration made a special point to invite gay and lesbian families to participate. Tickets were given to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender organizations to attend and many families did. This year, the event gets even gayer with the inclusion of the Glee kids.

Black History Month Spotlight Shunda K and Sheryl Swoopes

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

As Black History Month comes to a close, AfterEllen.com continues to celebrate out black women in the entertainment industry beyond February. Our main goal is to promote visibility, and as a group that is often marginalized from mainstream media, out black women persist to further their careers and overcome obstacles of not only homophobia, but racism as well. We hope that you have enjoyed the weekly spotlight and continue to celebrate and highlight the out women worldwide that make our society a gay-friendlier, all-inclusive place.

Shunda K

As a former member of the Tampa hip-hop outfit Yo! Majesty, the outspoken Shunda K is now flying solo to spread her message of spirituality, social change, and — of course — having a good time. Though she left Domino Records — the indie label that released Yo! Majesty’s first EP because they didn’t “move quickly enough” for her — Shunda K presses on, having already released 42 new tracks since 2009. The tracks are divided up into Best Eva Written and Kollaborations, the latter of which features artists like Peaches and Scream Club’s Cindy Wonderful.

In a 2008 interview with AfterEllen, the quick-talking MC said, “I’m more than just an artist. I’m more than just a Black chick from the ‘hood. I have an education. The most important thing is I’m on a mission and I have a heart.”

Bilerico Nuts Bolts The Grassroots Fundraising Journal Interview

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

A couple of weeks ago, the Grassroots Fundraising Journal asked me to sit down for an interview about the nuts and bolts of owning and managing Bilerico Project. They were gathering information on a myriad of non-profit organizations' IT/communications structure around their blog and I asked if I could publish my Q&A here since it'll only end up in a snippet of the final report.

Every time we have one of our receptions, some of the most common questions are about the behind-the-scenes details of running Bilerico Project. If you want to take a short peek behind the curtain, the interview is after the jump.

Continue reading "Bilerico Nuts & Bolts: The Grassroots Fundraising Journal Interview"...

Register to comment on the Bilerico Project

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

For a variety of reasons, there are lots of new readers on the Bilerico Project this month. Welcome! Here's some information about commenting.

If you're unregistered and try to leave a comment, it will have to be approved by someone on the editorial team. You'll have to wait, and between the trips Bil and I take, as well as the irregular schedules we both keep, it could take a few hours. But if you register to comment, they'll appear automatically.

Instead of just leaving a comment, click "Sign in or create an account to comment," just above the "Name" field. Follow the steps to register, and then leave a comment. We'll approve your account after your first comment and you'll be able to participate in discussions here a lot faster.

This helps reduce the spam we get here at the Bilerico Project, which, without our filters in place, would be an awful problem (we receive several hundred spam comments a day). Our last filter is not publishing comments from unregistered users. This is just part of the reality of the internet today; no one is withholding your comment because you're too edgy, too smart, or because you're speaking truth to power.

Thanks for registering, and I'll see you in the comments.

Also, if you've had trouble registering, please leave a comment and we'll get that sorted out.

Samesex marriage throughout Europe in 10 years?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

"I never thought that Ireland would introduce legislation on this [gay marriage] for the reasons others have cited about religion, but it is happening. So I am optimistic. I think in the next 10 years we will see it across the whole of Europe."

--UK's Europe Minister Chris Bryant

The Real World Washington DC minicap Misogyny hurts

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Last week on The Real World, "The Ty and Emily Show" returns, but by the end of the episode, Ty turns into Ty-rannosaurus Rex, so "The Ty and Emily Show" becomes Ty’s demolition derby.

First, it is difficult finding the right words to describe Josh. There are simply too many. There are at least 47 synonyms for the word "fool" at thesaurus.com, including "birdbrain," "dunce," "buffoon" and "twerp." And let's not forget the internet's favorite catch-all term to define a person whose behavior is contemptible: "douchebag." In this episode, Josh is seen making out with a girl named Chelsea at a club, even after he maintains that he has remained faithful to his girlfriend Ashley back home.

Josh then takes said Chelsea home and sleeps with her. See, Josh is just being a good wingman. Andrew is interested in Chelsea's friend, so Josh occupies Chelsea so that Andrew can get laid. While Josh is in bed with Chelsea, his girlfriend Ashley calls, and he gets out of bed to talk to her. “I can’t wait to see you,” he says.

Some hasbeen doesnt want gays in the military

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

John McCain, who isn't liked by either Republicans or Democrats and will probably lose reelection either to a rightwing primary challenger or a Democrat after having lost the presidency last year, was on the Meet the Press to say that he doesn't want gays in the military.

Encountr the gay/bi guyfinder app for Android [Gay Geeks]

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Android has been shuffling along with its modest App Market library of 30K+. I like to say (and oft prove) that there's a comparable and usable app for most things that the iPhone App Store offers.

Maybe all my friends are just a little bit whorish, or maybe just mobile promiscuity is catching on, but I'm always being asked if they can get Grindr in the Market. Grindr is the premiere geo-locational guy finder app for gay/bi men, simple profiles, simple communication, but apparently effective. And alas, up until recently, Android has been left of out the "guy-finder" app category, until now. Encountr, Android's first native locale-based-boy-radar has just been released. First opinion? It can only get better...

Jump through and read the rest of the review.

Continue reading "Encountr - the gay/bi guyfinder app for Android. [Gay Geeks]"...

The Week of HIV Serial Infectors

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

First it was Tony Perkins, a straight sexual predator, now it's a gay man from Minneapolis. Daniel James Rick was recently charged with raping a man and knowingly exposing him to HIV. After seeing his picture on the news, another man recognized him, claiming Rick also gave him HIV.

"Mr. Rick has kind of a pattern of behavior in which he uses websites and local establishments in the downtown area to pick up sexual partners. He also has a habit of not informing the sexual partners of his HIV status," said Minneapolis Police Sgt. William Palmer.

Rick has been charged with one count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of third-degree assault, which includes knowingly transferring a communicable disease. He has previously also been charged with criminal sexual conduct with a minor.

If you think you might be a victim of Rick's, call Minneapolis Sex Crimes at 612-673-3081.

And guys (gender neutral), be careful out there.

Making Trouble Useful Information

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Being a maker of trouble often has its own set of requirements.

Among those requirements is a willingness to rely on factual information. That is, data that can be relied on so one can look at things with an eye on factual understandings of the world.

So while I am learning from all of you, I am also mindful of several facts. And I thought I would share some of these facts with you.

Since space is always at a premium, I'll limit it in the same way I've limited my questions: 10 basic facts.

Continue reading "Making Trouble: Useful Information"...

Straightwashing music and changing gender pronouns for easier listening

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

This past week I bought French cabaret star's Barbara's version of "Ne me quitte pas," which I found lacked the weight of the Jacques Brel and Nina Simone versions I was familiar with, but, more importantly when it comes to LGBTQ politics, changed a single line. The original Jacques Brel line:

Je ferai un domaine I'll make a land
Où l'amour sera roi Where love is king
Où l'amour sera loi Where love is the law
Où tu seras reine Where you're the queen

became:

Je ferai un domaine I'll make a land
Où l'amour sera roi Where love is king
Où l'amour sera loi Where love is the law
Où je serai reine Where I'm the queen

It was a song written and originally interpreted by a straight man, but that's the only mention of gender throughout the song. When a straight woman redid it in 1962, that single mention of gender was changed so that she wouldn't sound like a lesbian.

Is that right? Maybe in the pre-Stonewall days we could make excuses, but today?

Continue reading "Straight-washing music and changing gender pronouns for easier listening"...

Sunday Funnies InfoMania takes on Johnny Weir Homophobia in the Media

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

The brilliant and irreverent satirist Bryan Safi, from my favorite nerdy show on my favorite nerdy channel - InfoMania, is back exploring more LGBT issues and stereotypes as they are portrayed by the clueless media and pop culture.

This week's clip deals with the media's treatment of Olympian Johnny Weir:

The most controversial figure skater ever is a threat to the gayest sport ever. Because there's no crying in figure skating!

Continue reading "Sunday Funnies: InfoMania takes on Johnny Weir & Homophobia in the Media"...

Where is ENDA?

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

We have been promised a markup and vote on ENDA in March. It's the first of March today. After the markup, it has to be scheduled on the House floor for a vote. Ideally, there will be some time for interest groups to make their feelings known. So why, when I call the House Committee on Education and Labor, do I keep getting the message that there is no date set or planned for a markup? I keep hearing that everything is held up in DC until health care passes. God alone knows when that will be. I thought this Administration was elected on the premise that we can do more than one thing at a time?

I have been pondering what is really going on here. After all, if it were simply a matter of the press of other business, why the secrecy about the new language of the bill? Why not schedule the markup, even if the scheduling is a couple of weeks down the road?

There is something else going on here, and I have my guesses.

Continue reading "Where is ENDA?"...

Take Action Illinois rightwingers want to gut LGBT protections

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

In 2005, a broad coalition of labor, LGBT, and progressive activists from across the state of Illinois joined together to form "The 85% Coalition" to pressure the legislature to pass an inclusive amendment to the Illinois Human Rights Act [IHRA] to outlaw employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Illinois' law has been a model for the nation--a sweeping and successfully implemented gender and sexuality-inclusive employment non-discrimination law.

This fall, in fact, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan testified at the federal hearings on ENDA on Capitol Hill, explaining before our law-makers that the law has been a major benefit for Illinois businesses and workers.

Charges filed with IDHR [Illinois Department of Human Rights] also show that religious institutions have not been impacted by the 2006 Amendments to IHRA. Since the effective date of the 2006 Amendments, only a handful of charges based on sexual orientation have been filed against religious institutions. In FY2009 and so far in FY2010, not a single charge based upon sexual orientation was filed against a religious institution.

Most importantly, a significant number of religious institutions were in support of the 2006 Amendments to IHDA. At the time of the passage of the 2006 Amendments, approximately 87 religious institution, organizations and leaders pledged their public support for the amendments.

However, the far right in Illinois has been irked by this LGBT victory for years, and have been looking at ways to send us back to the closet. They're getting their chance with Senate Bill 3447 - a bill initially brought by anti-gay GOP gubernatorial candidate, Bill Brady; now championed by another homophobe, John Jones. This is part of a nation-wide strategy to reverse our rights.

Continue reading "Take Action: Illinois rightwingers want to gut LGBT protections"...

VH1 to bust out the beautiful trannies

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Trans girls have to be beautiful. Isn't that what most people want? That's certainly what people are going to get when they watch a new cable TV reality show set to debut on March 15 on VH1.

The eight-show series, called Transform Me, will feature a trio of trans goddesses traveling around the country giving other women makeovers, arriving on the scene via a deluxe fashion ambulance to respond to urgent calls for image assistance, according to a press release cited on the VH1 blog.

The subjects expect to be made over in typical reality show fashion, but are in for a surprise when a team of three transgender women arrive to give them an expert transformation.

Gasp!

Continue reading "VH1 to bust out the beautiful trannies"...

Cigars!

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

And sometimes a cigar just isnt a... well, you know....

Click here for a larger version.

Man hurt in Rainbow Lounge bar raid charged with assaulting a state agent

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Sorry, comments were down for a while for no reason I can find on this post. They're back up. Also, updated after the jump.

This is fairly ridiculous:

City prosecutors in Fort Worth, Texas, announced on February 24 that they would press charges against two patrons of the Rainbow Lounge Gay bar who were injured in a police raid last June.

Chad Gibson suffered a severe brain injury while in police custody that kept him hospitalized for a week. Officers said he fell and hit his head while handcuffed. He said he was injured when officers slammed him against a wall inside the bar.

Gibson is being charged with "public intoxication" and "assaulting a state agent."

When you think about it, it makes sense. You see, the police investigated themselves, and, surprisingly, found no evidence of police violence. In fact, contrary to what witnesses at the raid have been saying and to what the victim says, Chad Gibson wasn't hurt by police; he just fell down at the exact same moment the police were raiding the bar and arresting him. You know that Chad, always a klutz!

So when you acknowledge the fact that the police didn't do any wrong here (because the police said so), you have to wonder if maybe Chad, in his drunkenness, may have hurt them. Remember, the police said that the raid was justified because all the gay men at the Rainbow Lounge lost control and started groping them? Gays just can't keep their hands to themselves, and that makes police officers panic. Gays should know better.

Continue reading "Man hurt in Rainbow Lounge bar raid charged with "assaulting a state agent""...

A bra a sleepmask and thou vintage ad

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I'm feeling kind of joyous right now.

HIV/AIDS In Rural America Challenges and Promising Strategies

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

The Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention (RCAP) at Indiana University has prepared a new fact sheet detailing the challenges of HIV prevention, education and treatment in rural areas of the U.S. as well as some strategies which seem to have produced some promising results.

HIV/STD prevention, education and treatment are very different in rural settings compared to metropolitan areas. There seems to be more fear, shame and stigma here and a great deal of finesse is often required in approaching many issues - especially where it involves sexuality, teenagers and/or tight-knit (religious) communities. This document, number twenty-three in a series, provides excellent information and strategies for those of us working on HIV/STD prevention, education and treatment in rural communities.

All of the fact sheets are excellent resources and cover a variety of relevant rural topics. They are available here. Multiple print copies are available directly from RCAP by request (aids@indiana.edu).

US Ambassador David Huebner preparing for tsunami in Samoa

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Following the devastating 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile, a tsunami watch was initiated along the entire West Coast and out to Hawaii, Australia, Samoa and the territories. I emailed openly gay U.S. Ambassador David Huebner to see what was happening there and if and how we could help.

Huebner responded in three separate emails, strung together here.

Am in Samoa on my first official visit. Tsunami sirens went off at 4:00am. Govt evacuating the capital city and coastal villages. Have moved to higher ground along with everyone else. Making calls with Embassy staff to Peace Corps volunteers and other Americans in country to make sure they are aware and moving.

Continue reading "US Ambassador David Huebner preparing for tsunami in Samoa"...

Maryland Dems dont want to defend AG opinion

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

"In my opinion, it couldn't have been worse timing. You know they say in politics, timing is everything.

It'll be a campaign issue, I think. And for Blue Dog Democrats, it could be tough."

--Del. Galen R. Clagett, on the Maryland AG's opinion that out-of-state same-sex marriages should be recognized. If Democrats can't finesse this, they should lose their elections

REAL ID Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I suspect you'll be hearing about Comprehensive Immigration Reform off and on over the next few weeks.

If for no other reason than I'll be talking about it.

The good and the bad.

One of the bad parts has me worrying a great deal, as compromise is inevitably the name of the game here, and there's one compromise being floated that not only gives me reason to oppose this, but to do so because it is not in the interest of trans folks.

Continue reading "REAL ID & Comprehensive Immigration Reform"...

Miss Faux Beverly Hills Lauren Kill the Gays Ashley Interview

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Looks like someone need a little practice on the interview portion of the pageant...

Miss Faux Beverly Hills Lauren Ashley has hired publicist and is ready to talk to the media to "clarify" her statements that gays should be killed. She may want to reconsider that:

View more news videos at: http://www.nbclosangeles.com/video.

Wow. Like "opposite marriage" advocate Carrie Prejean before her, she seems unable to string together a coherent thought other than to parrot off homophobic talking points. It's hard to walk back "having sex with someone of your same gender is going to bring death upon you", isn't it Lauren?

Continue reading "Miss Faux Beverly Hills Lauren "Kill the Gays" Ashley Interview"...

Afternoon Meme The Morgan Freeman Olympics Blessed Are the Baby Elephants and Kylies Still Hot

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Kathy Griffin makes her guest appearance on Law and Order: SVU next week, and frankly, it might be enough to make me watch that old show. Here she is putting on her best beyotch, and let's face it, Kathy's worst beyotch is still pretty good.

Joe.My.God and Dan Savage point us to the tourism ad least likely to make men want to visit Israel. I'm sure it's a lovely country, but this is not the way to inspire me to go.

Morgan Freeman has had more airtime during the Olympics than the athletes and the announcers combined.

Morgan Freeman's New Olympics Commercial - watch more funny videos

I was unaware that dogs had an issue with the Law & Order theme song. Rachel Maddow attempts to get to the bottom of the weird conspiracy theories about what upsets the pups, whether it's the sound of a ball bouncing or something we can't hear (I find that unlikely, television speakers have a limited range).

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Brian Steve Tie The Knot on The Sarah Silverman Program

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Last night The Sarah Silverman Program had some fun with the issue of gay marriage. Sarah gets into local politics when she campaigns for a fake write-in candidate she calls "May Kadoody". (Think about it). Complications ensue when the write-in campaign is successful and a real "May Kadoody" shows up to take office. Among other things, this real Kadoody is vehemently anti-gay.

Against this backdrop, Sarah's friend Brian (Brian Posehn) decides to make an honest man out of his boyfriend Steve (Steve Agee). What first looks like a bashing (a brick through a window) turns out to be a marriage proposal:

The Sarah Silverman Program

Thursday, 10:30pm / 9:30c

Brian's Proposal

www.comedycentral.com

Joke of the Day

Stand-Up Comedy

Free Online Games

Once they get rid of Kadoody, the newly installed pro-gay mayor (guest star Bradley Whitford) officiates over Brian & Steve's marriage on the steps of city hall.

Afternoon Meme Adam Clay and DanRad Do Good Dancing In Ski Boots plus Mardis Gras and Bull Dogs

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

This work week seems to be starting off with word of a lot of celebrities doing good. What a change from the regular of celebrities behaving badly, though possibly not nearly as interesting.

The oldest clip has been run everywhere, but as I've said everywhere on social media, it deserves a second look. Daniel Radcliffe has recorded a Public Service Announcement (PSA) for the Trevor Project, the national GLBT suicide prevention hotline. And then he's been doing press for the PSA to raise the profile of this great organization. What impresses me most about all of this is that DanRad doesn't have a movie to promote - too often we only see celebrities doing good if they have a project. This seems to just be a genuine interest in the issue.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Pam's House Blend has provided exceptional coverage of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Gala Dinner in North Carolina, and you should head over there for the details. But where it intersects with our interests is Clay Aiken getting up on stage and speaking about coming out.

Adam Lambert has been really active with DonorsChoose.org, which allows small needs to be funded by individual gifts. His focus has been unsurprisingly on music education. He just showed up with composition books for a music class. If the kids seem nonplussed, it was because this wasn't a surprise.

For fun, I finally caught The Penguins of Madagascar: Dr. Blowhole's Revenge on Nick. I'm bringing this up because everywhere man Neil Patrick Harris voices the evil Dr. Blowhole, who is a cyborg dolphin with a taste for really cool electronics. This clip is great, but it doesn't have him saying "Pen-goo-yins" like he does several times in the cartoon, which was my favorite part. You can catch the full version on endless repeat on Nickelodeon.

I really want to pause here and note how significant that NPH shows up on kid's shows all the time, be it a voice here, or Batman: The Brave and the Bold or on Sesame Street. There was a time not so long ago that an openly gay actor - heck, he's the poster boy for openly gay actors - wouldn't have been allowed near children's programming, much less be heavily promoted and sought after for it.

Note: To keep the clip from autoplaying, clicking the image will pop up a new window with the clip.

For something a little more casual, out musician Matt Morris went back to his hometown of Denver and played some gigs now that he's officially a Big Deal. We pointed you to a page with some of his performances this morning, but the radio station that sponsored the gig put out this video of him goofing off with the crowd, having fun.

We're going to insert a special Audio Meme moment in the middle. Eric Stonestreet of Modern Family tweeted out this fan song tribute to the show, and it's got a few moments of humor. We present "(I Want A) Modern Family" by Zack Selwyn.

Best Supporting Vlog 25 Cant See All The Oscar Movies? Weve Got Mashups!

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Liz and I understand… Really. It’s coming down to the wire for the Oscars, and who possibly has time to see all 10 films nominated for Best Picture? Especially when Avatar is 7 hours long! And I don’t even know where A Serious Man is still showing.

Fear not! We can help. In this latest Best Supporting Vlog installment, Liz Dahmen and I offer some handy movie mashups. Yes, you can just combine District 9 and The Blind Side into one film and save yourself valuable time.

And about the little montage of us in hats? Well, that happened just because… Enjoy!

Queerview Television Guide Monday March 1 2010

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

How I Met Your Mother returns with new episodes this week and it's also brought back David Burtka as Scooter as well as the costumed-Barney-of-many-eras.

And later, tonight's Greek promises an unpleasant discovery for Calvin. Which of Calvin's relationships at CRU will be tested?

Tell Dennis Everything Celine

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

In this installment of Tell Dennis Everything, Dennis and his friends Danny, Jerry, Greg and Brett brave the crowds to catch the new concert movie Celine Dion: Through the Eyes of the World. (Actually, Brett bows out after brunch because he's "not a fan.") It's part Amazing Race, part Canada's Funniest Home Videos and all Celine!

Check it out after the break

Morning Meme Modern Family Disappoints Michael Bublés Butt Yeti and Puppies!

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

The Paley Center sat down with Modern Family this weekend. They covered a range of issues that upset me including the fact that Ty Burrell (Phil) got the biggest applause, showing how little taste the crowd has. The big issue: When asked if Mitchell and Cameron might ever show some affection, Eric Stonestreet (Cameron) had an answer: ‘They’re too busy raising a child, but if the show goes on for many more seasons, it’ll happen “in due time.”’ So Phil has time to try and get busy on Valentine’s Day and the first day of school, but the gays need to wait a few years? But at least they all get to go to Hawaii.

Jayma Mays, who plays Emma Pillsbury on Glee, got ambushed outside a Fox party and grilled on how hot and heavy she and Mr. Schue are going to get when the show finally returns. She was pretty cagey, but I doubt she’d put the effort in avoidance in if there wasn’t something there.

I think it’s awful that an iceberg the size of Luxembourg is trapped in the South Pacific and may bring total ecological disaster. But I also want to know when we decided that “an iceberg the size of Luxembourg” was a descriptive statement. I know I’m an American, and we’re famously oblivious to world geography, but I couldn’t tell you with any precision how big my yard is, much less how big Luxembourg is. My understanding is that it’s not huge for a country, but is it large for an ice berg?

First the good news: Southland is back with new episodes this week, which I really appreciate because I normally don’t turn the television on Tuesday nights. Even better? The New York Post has a great interview with Michael Cudlitz. What makes that more than just “better”? The interview was writer by AfterElton.com reader Eric Hegedus, who’s a real journalist.

La Cage Aux Folles on Broadway starts rehearsal today, according to hunky Cagelle Nick Adams. I’ve been following along with him and some of the other cast members getting wardrobe and makeup – it looks like a huge amount of work.

Idol Insider has a bunch of footage from out musician Matt Morris playing some gigs in his hometown of Denver – his first hometown gigs since he did Letterman, Ellen, and the Haiti telethon. It was definitely “hometown boy done good” as my grandmother would say.

Snooki and Vinny of Jersey Shore brought down the roof at a celebration of the Jewish holiday of Purim in New York City. Officially, the glass ceiling collapsed from the weight of snow, but I think it coud have been the fist pumping music. I recall being at a circuit party in Palm Springs for New Years 1999/2000when a DJ change caused pieces of chandelier to start falling on us.

Apple audited the manufacturing firms that produce its products for fair labor practices, and the results were bad enough to shock Kathy Lee Gifford. 54% exceeded the maximum 60 hour work week, 24% pay less than minimum wage, and three facilities employed underage workers. Apple is taking action against the firms while trying to not delay any big launches.

Michael Bublé loves it when gay men pinch his butt.