At least four years of emails sent by White House adviser Karl Rove have gone missing, a lawyer for the Republican National Committee informed congressional staff members Thursday, a front page article in today’s Washington Post reports.
"GOP officials took issue with Rep. Henry Waxman’s account of the briefing and said they still hope to find the e-mail as they conduct forensic work on their computer equipment," Michael Abramowitz reports for the Post. "But they acknowledged that they took action to prevent Rove — and Rove alone among the two dozen or so White House officials with RNC accounts — from deleting his e-mails from the RNC server. Waxman (D-Calif.) said he was told the RNC made that move in 2005."
Some stuff I was meaning to post about this weekend but didn’t have the time…
Wanna See Something Really Scary…?
Jesus Plus Nothing: The Political Right at Bible Study, is an article that was originally published in Harper’s Magazine in 2003. But it’s still worth a read, if you don’t mind getting a peek into the hidden world and machinations of the secretive group of believers who refer to themselves as "the Family"…the folks who have been running the "National Prayer Breakfast" since 1953.
Ivanwald, which sits at the end of Twenty-fourth Street North in Arlington, Virginia, is known only to its residents and to the members and friends of the organization that sponsors it, a group of believers who refer to themselves as “the Family.” The Family is, in its own words, an “invisible” association, though its membership has always consisted mostly of public men. Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) are referred to as “members,” as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). Regular prayer groups have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense, and the Family has traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries. The Family maintains a closely guarded database of its associates, but it issues no cards, collects no official dues. Members are asked not to speak about the group or its activities.
The organization has operated under many guises, some active, some defunct: National Committee for Christian Leadership, International Christian Leadership, the National Leadership Council, Fellowship House, the Fellowship Foundation, the National Fellowship Council, the International Foundation. These groups are intended to draw attention away from the Family, and to prevent it from becoming, in the words of one of the Family’s leaders, “a target for misunderstanding.” [1] The Family’s only publicized gathering is the National Prayer Breakfast, which it established in 1953 and which, with congressional sponsorship, it continues to organize every February in Washington, D.C. Each year 3,000 dignitaries, representing scores of nations, pay $425 each to attend. Steadfastly ecumenical, too bland most years to merit much press, the breakfast is regarded by the Family as merely a tool in a larger purpose: to recruit the powerful attendees into smaller, more frequent prayer meetings, where they can “meet Jesus man to man.”
In the process of introducing powerful men to Jesus, the Family has managed to effect a number of behind-the-scenes acts of diplomacy. In 1978 it secretly helped the Carter Administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, and more recently, in 2001, it brought together the warring leaders of Congo and Rwanda for a clandestine meeting, leading to the two sides’ eventual peace accord last July. Such benign acts appear to be the exception to the rule. During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa’s postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand “Communists” killed marks him as one of the century’s most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise. “We work with power where we can,” the Family’s leader, Doug Coe, says, “build new power where we can’t.”
At the 1990 National Prayer Breakfast, George H.W. Bush praised Doug Coe for what he described as “quiet diplomacy, I wouldn’t say secret diplomacy,” as an “ambassador of faith.” Coe has visited nearly every world capital, often with congressmen at his side, “making friends” and inviting them back to the Family’s unofficial headquarters, a mansion (just down the road from Ivanwald) that the Family bought in 1978 with $1.5 million donated by, among others, Tom Phillips, then the C.E.O. of arms manufacturer Raytheon, and Ken Olsen, the founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation. A waterfall has been carved into the mansion’s broad lawn, from which a bronze bald eagle watches over the Potomac River. The mansion is white and pillared and surrounded by magnolias, and by red trees that do not so much tower above it as whisper. The mansion is named for these trees; it is called The Cedars, and Family members speak of it as a person. “The Cedars has a heart for the poor,” they like to say. By “poor” they mean not the thousands of literal poor living barely a mile away but rather the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom: the senators, generals, and prime ministers who coast to the end of Twenty-fourth Street in Arlington in black limousines and town cars and hulking S.U.V.’s to meet one another, to meet Jesus, to pay homage to the god of The Cedars.
There they forge “relationships” beyond the din of vox populi (the Family’s leaders consider democracy a manifestation of ungodly pride) and “throw away religion” in favor of the truths of the Family. Declaring God’s covenant with the Jews broken, the group’s core members call themselves “the new chosen.”
The Family’s leaders consider democracy a manifestation of ungodly pride… Somebody might want to start asking all the politicians that hang around them and big business leaders who give them money why they’re supporting an anti-democratic cult.
Mr. Sheldon, your nose is growing… Good As You catches Mr. Family Values, Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, in a great big fib. Once again we see a righteous man of God counting on the fact that the pews are unlikely to fact check him.
For the past two decades political correctness has been derided as a surrender to thin-skinned, humorless, uptight oversensitive sissies. Well, you anti-politically correct people have won the battle, and we’re all now feasting on the spoils of your victory. During the last few months alone we’ve had a few comedians spout racism, a basketball coach put forth anti-Semitism and several high-profile spoutings of anti-gay epithets.
And you thought e pluribus unum was this country’s motto…
Finally…a little comic relief from, where else, The Daily Show. You have to figure it can’t be easy for Nancy Grace these days, seeing a fellow out of control prosecutor going down hard like that…
Some mornings, by the time I’ve finished breakfast and read the first news reports of the day, I feel exhaustion for no other reason than the fact that I’m a gay American. I wonder if my fellow citizens who spend their days campaigning and crusading to limit my civil rights – the civil rights that they themselves take for granted – ever consider the inhumanity and irrationality of what they do? And I wonder if the millions of Americans who stand by apathetically and allow this travesty to play out with each passing day ever consider the emotional anguish they are deliberately or carelessly causing to millions of children, teenagers and adults?
This weekend KETV Omaha has provided live coverage of the "Love Won Out," Focus on the Family conference intended to "curb homosexuality" and promote "the truth that change is possible for those who experience same-sex attractions," At the same time, Don Imus is fired for making a horribly tasteless and grossly inappropriate joke about a group of black women. Oh well, who cares about a bunch of fags? Obviously not any of our prominent civil rights crusaders.
No kidding. Or about the welfare and safety of gay kids either…
In what is clearly an orchestrated strategy, students and parents across the nation are suing public school systems to force them to allow professional bigots to advocate gay bashing and self-loathing on school premises.
Yup…
I wonder how many straight Americans wonder what it’s like to live with the fear and reality that in most parts of this nation you can be legally fired from your job, denied housing, refused a room in a hotel or barred from public facilities simply because of your sexual orientation. I wonder if they wonder how a gay child feels when he or she is called an abomination, prevented from attending a prom with his or her high school sweetheart, or beaten up in the schoolyard while homophobic teachers look on with contempt.
If one assumes – and I do – that given the right information most people will do the right thing, it is very difficult to understand the degree of homophobia and outright hatred that manifests itself in this great nation. Why are we, as Americans, so out of synch with other Western democracies? Why are civil rights more widely protected and honored in the EU, in South African and in Canada then in the land of Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln?
I think it has something to do with that old joke about how Australia got all of England’s criminals and America got all of England’s religious fanatics and between the two countries America got the worst of the bargain. Seriously…I don’t think the rest of the civilized world really appreciates how dangerously nuts religion here in America has become. And in these times, gay people have become to the religious right, as the Jews once were to the Nazis. If you think that is hyperbole, you are not paying attention.
Time was they could demonize Jews as Christ killers. But after the Holocaust, antisemitism stopped being a winning proposition. Just ask Mel Gibson. Then Antia Bryant showed them what playing the gay card can do for the bottom line and suddenly they had a scapegoat they could demonize all they wanted and and they didn’t even have to call us Christ killers to do it. But, per the androgynous and almost certainly gay Satan in Passion Of The Christ, which almost nobody outside the gay community remarked on during the din of offense over Gibson’s waving around the blood liable, you can see the day coming when the passion plays will have replaced The Eternal Jew with The Eternal Faggot as the villain responsible for nailing Our Savior to the cross. Maybe they’ll start playing Judas as a homosexual too. Then every Christmas break can be followed by a rash of January school yard gay bashings, followed by James Dobson’s annual washing of his hands before the advocates for abused children, at Focus On The Family HQ…
So I hit "Shuffle Songs" on my iPod… And today’s winning lottery numbers are…
Uriah Is Dead – Alfred Newman, David and Bathsheba
Carefully Taught – Rogers and Hammerstein, South Pacific
On & On – Gil, The Album +4
Sail Along Silv’ry Moon – Billy Vaughn, Instrumental Gold
All Along The Watchtower – The Jimi Hendrex Experience
Last Night, I Didn’t Get To Sleep – The 5th Dimension
Sugar Baby Love – The Rubettes
Belong (Sasha’s Involver Remix) – Spooky
Luke’s Nocturnal Visitor – John Williams, The Empire Strikes Back
Symphony #9, 4th Movement, Andante tranquillo – Ralph Vaughan-Williams
So who else do you know who can hit "shuffle songs" and get Jimi Hendrix playing a Bob Dylan tune right after Billy Vaughn playing something you probably heard the last time you rode an elevator, followed somewhere down the list by a track from Empire Strikes Back? A Broadway show tune, a techno club mix, a couple of film soundtrack cues and a really really cute long haired rocker child. And to finish, an ethereal movement from Vaughan-Williams’ most other-worldly symphony, composed when he was in his middle eighties. Eh? Eh? Gay Geek! Gay Geek! Gay Geek!
And proud of it. You should see my video collection.
And while I’m on the subject of music… I came across this post in The Stranger Blog…and it was one of those random web surfing moments that really make up for all the time you otherwise waste hopping from this link to that, because it clued me in to a really really good album I would never have otherwise heard off, were it not for the web…
I don’t think a day went by during my sophmore year of highschool (1987) that me and my friend, another big drama-queen, didn’t obsess over the self-titled album by The Lover Speaks.
This desperately romantic new wave gem was the brainchild of David Freeman, a casual songwriter and erotic poet of the time.
Go read the whole thing. But beware, this album has been out of print for ages now, and it’s fetching prices of upwards of 150 bucks on the second hand CD market, depending on condition. You will not find it on iTunes. But if you follow the links you’ll be led to a place where you can listen to a few cuts from the album. I’ve been grooving on Every Lover’s Sign for the past several days now. Aghhh! It’s such a damn shame we don’t have more from this group then this one, infuriatingly hard to find album. So I have another reason to be pissed off at the music industry. Given the technology available, there is no earthly reason anymore to let an album become unavailable for sale to people who want to buy it. It’s not like they have to keep physically printing them anymore on hot vinyl, or even hot polycarbonate (that’s what they make CDs out of…I’m a geek…I know these things…). If they don’t want people stealing music, then I have a suggestion. Fucking sell it to us then! K?
I caught a reference to a 2005 article in the Boston Globe about the propaganda machines of the religious right. It was one I’d read before, but I don’t think I’d managed to blog about it then. It’s a good one…well worth reading still. These are religious right front organizations that take on the trappings of legitimate science and then inject themselves into the news stream as opposing viewpoints to well established institutions. They’re completely fake, but the mainstream news media, and in particular the TV networks, all give them a platform to spread their lies under a bogus effort at "balance", and because it suits the money at the top of the media corporations to keep republicans in power…
President Bush had a ready answer when asked in January for his view of adoption by same-sex couples: ”Studies have shown that the ideal is where a child is raised in a married family with a man and a woman," the president said.
Bush’s assertion raised eyebrows among specialists. The American Academy of Pediatrics, composed of leaders in the field, had found no meaningful difference between children raised by same-sex and heterosexual couples, based on a 2002 report written largely by a Boston pediatrician, Dr. Ellen C. Perrin.
But Bush’s statement was celebrated at a tiny think tank called the Family Research Institute, where the founder, Dr. Paul Cameron, believes Bush was referring to studies he has published in academic journals that are critical of gays and lesbians as parents. Cameron has published numerous studies with titles such as ”Gay Foster Parents More Apt to Molest" — a conclusion disputed by many other researchers.
The president’s statement was also welcomed at a small organization with an august-sounding name, the American College of Pediatricians. The college, which has a small membership, says on its website that it would be ”dangerously irresponsible" to allow same-sex couples to adopt children. The college was formed just three years ago, after the 75-year-old American Academy of Pediatrics issued its paper.
That pediatric study asserted a ”considerable body of professional evidence" that there is no difference between children of same-sex and heterosexual parents.
The Family Research Institute and the American College of Pediatrics are part of a rapidly growing trend in which small think tanks, researchers, and publicists who are open about their personal beliefs are providing what they portray as medical information on some of the most controversial issues of the day.
Created as counterpoints to large, well-established medical organizations whose work is subject to rigorous review and who assert no political agenda, the tiny think tanks with names often mimicking those of established medical authorities have sought to dispute the notion of a medical consensus on social issues such as gay rights, the right to die, abortion, and birth control.
For example, Cameron’s Family Research Institute, with an annual budget of less than $200,000, tries to counter the views of the 150,000-member American Psychological Association, which has an annual budget of $98 million. The tiny American College of Pediatricians has a single employee, yet it has been quoted as a counterpoint to the 60,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics.
(emphasis mine) The quickest way to deflate the propaganda of these religious right front groups is to shine a light on them. More often then not you find their bogus studies and stats getting injected into the political conversation without acknowledgment of where it came from. That’s because these outfits are well understood to be propaganda mills and not real scientific institutions, whatever their names make them sound like. So whenever politicians like president Nice Job Brownie start quoting their numbers, reporters need to ask where those numbers came from.
Senior Bush aides, asked for the basis of the comment about adoption, now say they are unaware of any studies comparing heterosexual and same-sex adoptions — by Cameron or by any pediatric association. The president, they say, was probably referring to studies that show children are better off living with both biological parents — though those studies have nothing to do with adoption by same-sex couples.
Duck and weave, duck and weave. You may remember the time Mr. Book Of Virtue Bill Bennett got caught on ABC’s This Weekquoting Paul Cameron’s bogus figure for the average lifespan of homosexuals. He first denied he got it from Cameron, then he said there were other researchers who got the same figures. And so there were. The other researcher Bennett pointed to, Jeffrey Satinover, had in fact, gotten his figures from Cameron too. When that was pointed out to him, Bennett retracted the claim, only to make it again some years later.
In June, the Rev. Bill Banuchi, executive director of the New York chapter of the Christian Coalition, said in a speech protesting Gay Pride Day that gays should be legally required to wear warning labels, not unlike Jewish stars under the Nazis.
"We put warning labels on cigarette packs because we know that smoking takes one or two years off the average life span, yet we celebrate a lifestyle that we know spreads every kind of sexually transmitted disease and takes at least 20 years off the average life span, according to the 2005 issue of the revered [sic] scientific journal Psychological Reports."
One month later, Dr. John Whiffen, chairman of the board of the National Physicians Center for Family Resources, a faith-basped advocacy group that was contracted by Bush Administration federal health officials to develop an abstinence education curriculum, said that, "There are obvious effects for male homosexuals from a health standpoint. Parents should discuss those with their child." Then he added: "It’s fairly well-accepted that smoking is not a good idea. It takes seven years off your life. It appears that male homosexuality takes more than that off your life. Naturally you should warn them about that."
You notice that none of these people said anything about where they got their information about homosexuality. That’s because they know full well that it comes from a completely untrustworthy source. And yet even knowing that, they continue to cite it, and all those other bogus groups with names that mimick actual institutions of science. All the while posturing as defenders of virtue and morality and godliness…that pesky ninth commandment exempted.
The Hey I Got A Remote Control For My Camera Glam Sessions
A few shots I took of myself with my new remote for the EOS 30D. That’s the cable dangling down from my hand in all these shots. What’s good about the remote is that it sets focus and exposure correctly, while I’m sitting in front of the camera, unlike the timer, which sets both as soon as you press the shutter release instead of waiting until just before it takes the shot.
These were taken in an ad hoc test of the remote while I was sitting on the steps leading down to my art room.
Pissing On The Grave Of Edward R. Murrow…(continued)
Via Talking Points Memo … Today’s Washington Post is not the Washington Post that once brought down a crooked president. Today’s Washington posts runs propaganda pieces on behalf of one…
Okay, this is pretty interesting. I think I’ve found something which reasonably suggests that Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt may have broken his own stated Op-ed policies by publishing a piece yesterday by Liz Cheney attacking Nancy Pelosi without identifying Ms. Cheney as Veep Cheney’s daughter.
When I asked Hiatt about this yesterday, he justified it with an email to me (again, I appreciate his willingness to answer) saying that she’d been selected to write the piece based on her professional qualifications alone and that there was thus no need to disclose her relationship with dad.
Knowing that they were reading a hit piece written by the Vice President’s daughter would only have confused their readers.
So…Andrew Sullivan would like us to know that Don Imus isn’t really all that bad…inexcusable though his bigotry is…
The Imus Ranch
It does amazing things for some very sick and needy children. It does not excuse Imus’ bigotry, but it’s worth noting nonetheless. It’s more than I’ve ever done for sick kids. And probably more than you have either.
That’s really swell Andrew. Yes…let’s think of the children. How many gay kids you suppose have had their faces slammed into their lockers after one of their peers spent the morning bellylaughing at the fag jokes on Imus In The Morning?
When Imus appeared on Sharpton’s radio show, he talked about how he helps “restore the self-esteem and dignity” of children with cancer and other medical conditions through a boot-camp-style program at his ranch in New Mexico. But that’s not what Nobile heard about the ranch when he tuned into a March 1999 show:
VOICE IMITATING GENERAL GEORGE PATTON: … and what is the stated Imus ranch mission? You in the back. PRIVATE: To give sick kids hands-on experiences of the great American cowboy from the rough and rugged all West. VOICE IMITATING GENERAL GEORGE PATTON: And that is defined as? PRIVATE: Sir, that’s defined as where men were men and sheep were sheep and Billy the Kid knew with whom to sleep. VOICE IMITATING GENERAL GEORGE PATTON: Precisely, and that sleeping, boys, was not accomplished with the help of a damn down-filled, double-stitched, quilted, puffed-up, panty-waist, tofu-sucking sleeping bag you’d find rolled up in the back of Martha Stewart’s Land Rover tucked in beside the damned Nordstrom picnic basket. Boys, when we go out to that ranch we will give the troop that cowboy experience. Whether Corporal Imus knows it or not, even though we’ll be bivouacked in the vicinity of Santa Fe, we will not be conducting experiments in the lifestyles of the gay caballero. Gear we employ will not originate at L.L. Bean. It will be obtained from the quartermaster of our beloved United States Army. OD in color, standard regulation issue. Do I make myself clear? PRIVATE: Sir, yes sir, sir. No Judy Garland gear, sir. VOICE IMITATING GENERAL GEORGE PATTON: I can’t hear you. PRIVATE: [louder] Sir, no Judy Garland gear, sir. VOICE IMITATING GENERAL GEORGE PATTON: Sound off like you had a pair, maggot. PRIVATE: [shouting] Sir, all steers, no queers, sir.
Right. Self-esteem and dignity. Bought the usual way those things are bought among Don Imus’ kind…by stripping the self-esteem and dignity away from someone else. I’m sure many gay kids have had a simply wonderful time in the closets at the Imus Ranch. You know how it is…play along to get along? Self-esteem. Dignity. Kids. Needy Kids.
What Digby said… See…what you need to paying attention to in the story about Imus…isn’t what Imus did…
As the media elite and various political insiders continue to behave as if they’ve just been hit over the head with a cudgel on this Imus matter, perhaps they should wake up and recognize that there have been people out there noticing the raw hypocrisy among this Imus Elite for years. And this does not just come from the more recent bloviating by scruffy bloggers in their deplorable "efficiency" apartments…
Hey man…don’t fuck with Vinny…
There have always been a handful of columnists and journalists who got it. And no one got it better than the late Lars Erik Nelson:
. . .
Washington Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) came to the Senate floor with a look of sad concern on his face. He was deeply troubled, he said, at the vulgar, morally repugnant content of the new TV season. "We are lowering the standards of what is acceptable in our society and we are sending a message to our children," he said. He denounced an "acceptance of rude language, foul imagery and gross behavior in the entertainment mainstream."
Then, warning parents who might be watching on C-SPAN to move their little children away from the TV sets, Lieberman cited a few of the outrages: On ABC’s "Wilde Again," a character asks to be called "Daddy’s little whore." Another ABC program showed an upraised middle finger. CBS’ "Bless This House" used the phrase "little hooters" in reference to a girl’s breasts. "Profoundly disturbing," Lieberman intoned. "Sophomoric."
Funny thing: The previous morning, Lieberman had been a guest, as is his regular custom, on the Don Imus radio show on WFAN…
And as it turns out, there were a lot of other self righteous congressional scolds stopping by the Imus show back then. Democrats and republicans, chasing the vote in Imus’ young white male demographic. And did our mainstream news media ever bother to point out the hypocrisy of politicians bellyaching about the decay of television entertainment while appearing regularly on one of talk radio’s biggest cesspools? Oh grow up.
There’s a phrase you hear now and then in political campaigning…Dog Whistle Politics. It’s the art of using certain words and catch phrases that a specifically targeted audience will hear and respond to, while going over the heads of most of the rest of the audience as a whole. The republicans, and in particular the Bush team, are masters of the dog whistle. A good example of it was when Bush said that the Iraq war would "look just like a comma" to future historians. It raised a lot of hackles that Bush would trivialize a war that had killed so many, wounded so many and was still killing and wounding. But as Ian Welsh pointed out in The Agonist, it was a dog whistle to his hard core religious right base, recalling the proverb "Never put a period where God has put a comma."
It may be hard to think of Imus as a kind of dog whistle, but bear with me. The audience that Lieberman and all the others were trying to appeal to when they went on their crusade for TV decency wouldn’t be caught dead tuning into Don Imus cesspool, even out of curiosity. That kind of thing just disgusts the hell out of them. So all the voters who would have been nodding their heads approvingly while Lieberman and other politicians were puffing themselves up condemning all the tits and ass on prime time TV, wouldn’t be regular listeners to Imus anyway. The only people who would have known the extent of their hypocrisy, because they’d seen it with their own two eyes, were the news media talking heads who were also Imus regulars…and they kept their mouths shut too because they had books to sell on his show. So the politicians get to troll Imus for votes among that hard to reach resentful young white male demographic at the same time they’re trolling for votes among the shocked middle class soccer mom demographic.
And now the lot of them are all looking like they’ve just been caught in a police raid on a whorehouse.
By all means, Lieberman, Bradley, Dole and the rest should go on Imus. But if they do, spare us the sanctimonious sermons about the vulgarity of modern broadcasting.
They never stopped. in fact three years later Lieberman took to the floor of the Senate and "helped" Bill Clinton by saying to the whole world that he was immoral. All of these moral scolds, but most especially Lieberman, are rank hypocrites.
I do not want to hear another word from these people about civility, rudeness and the decline of the discourse. And I certainly don’t want to hear any more BS about blogging ethics and good manners on the internet from any of them. For more than a decade we had to endure lectures from many of these people about "values" and more recently we’ve had to listen to them call for the smelling salts over the degradation of the public square from the barbaric polloi. Yet throughout they loved to hang around with that overgrown adolescent and let him sell their books for him when he wasn’t cruelly disparaging everything in his sights, including them. If those are the decent values Joe Lieberman has been braying about incessantly for the last decade, he certainly got what what he was looking for.
A 15-year-old gay Centennial High School student was taunted and attacked by six classmates last week because of his sexual orientation.
The victim was undergoing surgery for a broken nose and facial injuries today, according to the Gay, Lesbian and Gay Alliance.
The incident happened last Thursday afternoon, when Anthony Hergesheimer was walking home from Centennial High School along Denver Boulevard, the organization said. Six male students, ages 15 and 16, in a vehicle apparently passed by Hergesheimer several times before they stopped and hurled anti-gay insults at him.
One of the students also got out of the vehicle and threw a can of Lysol at Hergesheimer, who suffered a broken nose and severe facial injuries.
Lysol. Like they were cleansing the street of some kind of human garbage…
The six male Centennial students, who were not identified, were suspended Monday until a decision is made about possible expulsion. The district usually has 25 days to make a recommendation on whether to expel a student.
Pueblo police is also investigating the attack and possible criminal charges may be filed against the youths.
But it’s not the teenagers who attacked the gay kid who need to be ashamed of themselves, according to The Alliance Defense Fund…
God has condemned them. They should live in shame. What was I saying the other day? You can’t paint a bulls-eye on a group of kids, tell their peers that those kids are condemned by god, and not expect that every now and then one of them will get the shit beaten out of them. But…that’s the intent isn’t it? A fearful homosexual is a good homosexual. You have to beat the pride out of them young. Christianity has come to this in the Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave: Accepting Jesus Christ as your lord and savior means you can set kids loose on other kids, and still look at yourself in a mirror. Who would Jesus throw the first can of Lysol at?
Two weeks ago, the University of Florida voted to deny Jeb Bush an honorary degree. By a 38-28 vote, the faculty Senate rejected the former governor’s nomination, citing concerns about some of Bush’s education initiatives, including his dismantling of affirmative action programs in the state:
In higher education circles, Bush’s greatest criticism came over his “One Florida” plan, which ended race-based admissions in state universities. Black enrollment dropped at UF and statewide after the change took effect, as critics predicted.
Bush’s policies of “rewarding and punishing schools according to students’ standardized test results and using vouchers to send certain students to private schools at public expense” also contributed to the rejection of his nomination.
Upset by this lack of Jeb Bush adoration, the conservative-controlled House Schools & Learning Council voted yesterday to force the university to rename its education school the “Jeb Bush College of Education.”
Over the faculty’s opposition, the school will now have “to erect ‘suitable markers‘ noting the college’s new name and include the revised name in all university documents, including catalogues and brochures.” The lawmakers acknowledge they “came up with the idea as an answer” to the faculty’s denial of Bush’s honorary degree.
I’m surprised they didn’t make them give Jeb a few more college degrees while they were at it…maybe a PhD in Advanced Physics or Computer Science or something. This may all seem like the same old, same old and yes it is, but look at it: a group of conservative lawmakers decided to force an institute of higher education to give someone recognition in the field of education that they had not earned from that institution. Yes, yes…often that only amounts to giving them piles of money…but at least the giving of money to a college or university makes it possible for that institution to continue to do its job. Jeb acted to deny minority students an education and drain the public schools of money they desperately need to educate kids, our nation’s future…voted to in other words, make the world poorer then it was before he took office, and he and his Conservative cronies expected that institution to give him accolades anyway. And when they didn’t, they forced them to. Next time you hear a conservative yap, yap, yapping about how people have to earn their place in this world, and that liberals are always giving people stuff they haven’t earned and don’t deserve…laugh in their face.
You’re going to be up against people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe. All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I’m up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn’t left the efficiency apartment in two years
–Brian Williams, anchor of the NBC Nightly News, speaking before New York University journalism students.
Xerox has filed a patent covering a technique to recover demographic information like your age, sex and perhaps even your income by analysing the pattern of web pages you browse. They want to license the technique to online advertisers and shops. Read the full patent here.
Damn. Damn. I will need that trailer in the middle of the desert to retire to. Except by then there probably won’t be any escape even in the middle of the fucking desert. None at all. I’ll be getting junk mail targeted precisely to grouchy old hermits living in trailers in the middle of the desert. No… To grouchy old Gay Long-Haired hermits living in my specific make of trailer in the middle of the desert. They’ll know exactly what’s in my refrigerator and my medicine cabinet and I’ll be getting helpful reminders like, Dear Valued Customer…according to our records you are running out of cranky pills…did you know that your local middle-of-the-desert WalMart Superstore is having a sale on your favorite brand of cranky pills…and did you know that most of our customers who buy cranky pills also bought these other fine products…
I don’t know when this aired, and I’ve never seen it on any list of Imus’s racist bits, but it’s pretty awful.
You can listen to it at the link here, and also here and here.
Transcript:
IMUS: Some of you may know, who listen to the Imus in the Morning program on a regular basis, there is a new group being formed called the Black Beatles.
BLACK BEATLES MEMBER (in a stereotypical black accent): That’s right, Don. My name is Tyrone McCartney…
IMUS: Uh-huh.
TYRONE McCARTNEY: … bass player for the fabulous Black Beatles, and me and my friends Leroy Lennon, George Jellybean Darnell Rashad Mustafa Muhammad Harrison, and Bingo Starr, we have a new album out of our very famous #1 hits called Beat the Meatles.
IMUS: What’s that?
TYRONE McCARTNEY: Beat the Meatles. We wanted y’all to get it ’cause it’s got some of our famous #1 hits, like this one: (singing) "When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary come to me and speak those woids of wisdom, ‘What it be.’"
And how ’bout this one? (singing) "I shoulda known better with a bitch like you." "Jo Jo was a man who only had three inches, but he knew it wouldn’t last, Jo Jo never had much luck with all the bitches, but I said, ‘Hey, Jo, get black. Get black, get black, get black and watch your johnson grow.’" "Lucy in the sky with a lot of jewelry on." "Strawberry-flavored malt liquor." "Here come my son, he play football. Here come my son, and I say, ‘He bad.’" "I’m back on the old FDR." "Yesterday, my parole came through just yesterday." "Hey dude, lend me a dollar." "I can play center, I can play forward, I be six foot four."
And, of course, my personal favorite: (singing) "We all live in a yellow Coupe de Ville, a yellow Coupe de Ville, a yellow Coupe de Ville. And my friends is all aboard, many more of them is in the trunk, vinyl tires with wire wheels, in my yellow Coupe de Ville."
Swell. Just swell.
IMUS: A lot of friends of mine called, but I didn’t want to put up — put anybody on this morning who wasn’t scheduled, because I can make my own case, and it is what it is.
OLIPHANT: But to me, that only means that those of us who, through an accident, were scheduled, who know better, have a moral obligation to stand up and say to you, "Solidarity forever, pal."
Right Tom. "We all live in a yellow Coupe de Ville, a yellow Coupe de Ville, a yellow Coupe de Ville.
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