The professional homophobe gravy train; Exhibit A

10th Street: even at 2:30 a.m, an ersatz girl's gotta eat!

AKSARBENT's camera has been finding a lot of jarring
juxtaposition lately...

Rowan County Jerk: official misconduct charges filed against $80,000-per-year, triple divorcee Christer Diva who refuses to issue straight or gay marriage licenses because of her deeply held principles about marriage

Another poster child for Ted Cruz's ginned up pandering on the phony issue of religious freedom for bigots who refuse public accommodations to gay customers.
     In Rowan County, Kentucky, Clerk Kim Davis' case, it's not gay customers, it's gay (and now straight) citizens and taxpayers, since she runs a public office as a personal religious fiefdom in the manner she sees fit, the U.S. Supreme Court and the State of Kentucky be damned.
     Davis doesn't approve of the Supreme Court ruling that refusal to grant marriage licenses to gay couples is a violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution and she has decided to make Rowan County taxpayers pawns of her pettiness.
     From Towleroad:

     The Rowan County Attorney’s Office has filed a charge of official misconduct against clerk Kim Davis for her repeated refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples despite a federal order.      The Morehead News reports County Attorney Cecil Watkins said the Rowan County government and his office had no other action against Davis.
     “No authority exists for her removal or suspension from the office by Rowan County government,” said Watkins. “Kentucky State Government is the only entity that can move to have Kim Davis removed as Rowan County Clerk.”
     The charge has been referred to the Attorney General’s Office. The county attorney’s office is prohibited from prosecuting Davis because they are involved in current litigation with Davis.

The Lexington, Kentucky Herald Leader is fed up with Davis's imperious antics and takes conspicuous note of the fact that Davis worked in her mother's office for 27 years before being elected to take her place and that her son now works there as well. Nepotism, anyone? The paper eviscerated Davis and her Liberty Counsel misbehavior enablers in two scorching editorials here and here.

'Faggot,' 'buttboy' and 'homo' expletives part of Pentagon culture at National Defense University

The Washington School, chartered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has raised eyebrows among some at the State Department and among lawmakers for its questionable due diligence in vetting instructors.
     One teacher, Carlos Alberto Ospina Ovalle, was linked to Colombian killings and another, Garcia Covarrubias, was accused of torture and beatings under Pinochet.
     From the Daily Beast / Center for Public Integrity:

     The NDU’s Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, where Ospina taught from 2006 to 2014 before moving to another academic center at the university’s campus in Washington, D.C., has itself been rocked by controversy in recent years. A nonpublic report in 2012 by a U.S. Army colonel, appointed by the center’s director in response to persistent staff complaints, concluded that “a hostile work environment exists”; that its staff had displayed “a lack of sensitivity towards the use of derogatory language”; and many employees felt its leaders routinely retaliated against those who questioned them.
     The report, obtained by CPI under the Freedom of Information Act, depicted a sort of frat-house atmosphere at the center. It stated that staff had exchanged “racially charged emails”—including one directed at President Obama; used offensive language such as “faggot,” “buttboy,” and “homo”; and that “women employees feel that they are treated inappropriately.” Even senior leaders used “inappropriate hand gestures,” it said, and mentioned simulations of masturbation.

America's best Christian interviews Donald Trump

Like a well-oiled machine

Former Vatican papal nuncio, Josef Wesolowski, who had been awaiting trial for various charges including hoarding more than 100,000 computer kiddie porn files inside Vatican City, who was whisked to Vatican City before Dominican Republic officials could arrest him, whose extradition was denied by the Vatican, who didn't show up at his Vatican trial on July 11  because of a sudden unnamed illness, thereby postponing said trial, has died unexpectedly in his private room in a Vatican City Palazzo. The Holy See assures everyone that its initial investigation indicates death by natural causes but the public should be satisfied to know that a thorough autopsy also will be conducted — by the Church. That is all.

Father Knows Best, 1958: Bud flirts with dad a little, then heads out to the baths

     There were lots of good-natured gay winks in the scripts of Father Knows Best; the most over-the-top was when Jim and Margaret strong-armed Bud into getting gay-married, after a fashion, at a wedding rehearsal.
     Our favorite, excerpted and edited below, was Bud's outing to the baths — to try to rectify a wrong for his sister, of course. Only Dobie Gillis and his best bud Maynard provided more unwittingly homoerotic subtext in 50s television.
     Billy Gray, the talented, versatile actor who played Bud Anderson in THE classic American family sitcom, was busted for weed (seeds and stems) in the early 60s and, branded as a dope fiend, didn't work in Hollywood for years. He, though straight, later revealed to Howard Stern that he fooled around enough with one guy to be disqualified from the 60s draft.
     During Vietnam, so many guys discovered that truthfully answering question 20 on the pre-induction medical history questionnaire (Do you have or have you ever had homosexual tendencies?) was a get-out-of-the-draft card that the Pentagon decided to remove the written question and instead had it asked verbally at induction centers, hoping to publicly intimidate inductees into lying about incidental gay episodes in their past so they could still be drafted.

Imperious Donald Trump sneeringly tells news anchor to 'Go back to Univision' before kicking him out of his press conference

Jorge Ramos eventually came back and Trump took his questions — arrogantly. No wonder Hispanics cannot stand Trump. In other news, two state GOP parties are adding anti-Trump clauses to candidate applications.

\

Game show host Bob Eubanks: 'In the butt, Bob' will probably be on my tombstone

Above: Eubanks in 1964 when he was a top DJ at KRLA in Los Angeles. That year, he
borrowed $25,000 on his house to produce the Beatles' first LA concert, at the
Hollywood Bowl. Photo: bobeubanks.com

Below, longtime Newlywed Game host Bob Eubanks debunks the urban legend about a contestant answering 'In the butt' to his query about the most unusual place she ever made whoopee — but he debunks the story by noting that what she said was actually worse.



Some things in the 60s were not deemed deserving of censorship, like this dripping-with-homophobic-contempt answer to a question about Batman and Robin:

One more reason why you should always record encounters with police

You really don't know who you're dealing with when stopped. Despite the agitprop of your local police union, they're not all Officer Friendly. Some of them are stone-cold, homophobic sociopaths. More, from CBS, here.





Evidently Officer Zagursky didn't get the memo about Philly's efforts to attract gay tourists. Or about extorting motorists for contributions to police organizations. Or about crudely insulting a man's tribute to his cancer-stricken mother.

Now that USA is completely rid of terrorists, Dept. of Homeland Security is protecting you from gay hookers

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

AR Sen. Tom Cotton throws another fit about Iran nuclear negotiations, pretends he's president, again

Wonkette jumped all over Cotton, but the best takedown was by a commenter (Click graphic to enlarge boxed section.)
     Both of Nebraska's radical right-wing GOP Senators appear to be on the same page as reckless extremist Cotton:

Donald Trump's Photoshop drag makeover still a distant second to video of his move on Rudy Giuliani, in drag

Straight Grandmother isn't buying Ted Cruz's canonization of antigay cake bigots

Margaret Sullivan's piece, A Grandmother On Wedding Cakes, in the Huffington Post's Gay Voices blog, dissects the cake wars issue, now being exploited by panderer-cum-demagogue Ted Cruz in a campaign video (see left). It is a reasoned, articulate and uncompromising analysis worth reading. An excerpt:

     Sixty-one years ago, my mother made my wedding cake -- a buttery white fruitcake with creamy icing. She assembled tiered cake pans, candied citron and pineapple, white raisins and blanched almonds, and then baked the layers over several days. Decorated with holly (Christmas wedding), the finished cake leaned like the tower of Pisa. But it was perfect, a labor of love from Mother to us. She even kept the top layer in her freezer for our first anniversary.
     Over time, she made the recipe for my sisters' and brother's weddings, and for our children's, until, in her late seventies, she forgot salt in one and decided she shouldn't make more.
     Were she still living, she would have rejoiced in the June Supreme Court ruling legalizing same sex marriages. And no doubt would have dreamed of making a wedding cake for her openly gay grandson, our son, when the right man comes along.
      The Blade's article about the Kleins' sending cakes to gay rights groups — not wedding cakes; eight inch rounds with red hearts on top saying "We really do love you!" — and their reasons for it reminded me of how special the cake my mother made us was. And how special all wedding cakes are. 
     ...As the mother of a potential gay groom who doesn't bake, the owners of Sweetcakes by Melissa would no doubt have declined my order for a wedding cake on the grounds that same sex marriage is contrary to their faith. So I fully understand how the lesbian couple reacted when the Kleins declined their request.
     ...Conditional love and second best cakes are not good enough for my son. Or anyone else's LGBT children either. That isn't equality or respect.

Sam Rader may or may not have cheated on Nia via Ashley Madison, but he sure cheats in the pool

Popular Christian vlogger Sam Rader got busted for getting an Ashley Madison account, so he did what he does, made a video about it! Below: his mea culpa (left) and a photo of him in happier times sharing a tomato with a bud, which apparently is how Christian guys fake the rainbow.

Sam and his wife Nia have made a fortune vlogging on YouTube since their distracted driving, hands-off-the wheel karaoke video got 22 million views on YouTube. They humbly titled it "Good looking parents sing Disney's Frozen" and recorded it as tractor-trailers streaked by in the next lane.

     Since then Rader, a nurse, was accused of faking a positive pregnancy test after which his wife allegedly miscarried. They never saw a doctor, but racked up a lot of YouTube views for the "surprise" announcement and again for the miscarriage announcement.
     One of their videos, now removed, involved Rader asking his five-year-old daughter about gay marriage and then steering her toward disapproval when he discovered she wasn't with the Christer Condemnation Program about same-sex civil marriage.
     Saturday, Rader was kicked out of a Seattle vlogger conference for allegedly threatening a vlogger who had apparently criticized Rader's dubious YouTube claims. When Gawker asked Rader if he had menaced the guy, Rader denied it — sort of:

When asked to clarify whether or not he threatened anyone, Sam told me, “That’s absolutely not true. If I made a threat, it was to the one person, and it was, ‘You need to watch out before he messes with my family.’”

     Sometimes exhibitionistic people inadvertently reveal a bit too much about themselves, as when Sam and Nia's swimming video showed Sam winning a friendly race by cutting off the guy in the next lane. Then he did it again in the next race.

Above, Rader, at bottom, cuts off his buddy in the middle lane (at the 5:56 mark here) to win an informal swimming race, then, in the second picture moves in from the center (7:04) to cut him off again in another race. Hey, whatever it takes, as long as you're anointed, right?

Inflation catches up to ALDI

The privately-owned German cut-rate grocer (which got into trouble in Britain for selling horsemeat-adulterated hamburger) used to be able to get customers to shag their own carts by holding a quarter per cart as ransom until said cart was rechained to an adjoining one, releasing the coinage. But lately, more patrons have been ditching the carts—and their money — in the parking lot and taking off, even on beautiful days. We assume this will only get worse in the winter.

Here's the headline the Omaha World-Herald ran atop a Catholic schools story

We don't mean to pick on the World-Herald, which is a pretty good paper when it's not endorsing nutcase Iowa Rep. Steve King or "dollar store Lex Luther," Gov. Pete Ricketts or Mean Jean Stothert or, well, you get the picture. But sometimes Nebraska's biggest paper just asks for it, know what we mean?

76-year-old woman attacked inside branch of international antigay racketeering org by members of rival gang

Bad lip reading releases its recap of the Fox GOP presidential debate

Fed up FL news anchor refuses to report Kardashian pet rabbit 'story', walks off set

(h/t: @margoandhow)

John Oliver: Praise be to the IRS—that most permissive of government agencies!

John Oliver, aka Captain Obvious, has just discovered Scamvangelism and started his own franchise to test the IRS's almost limitless indulgence of those tax dodges which invoke the name of Jesus.

After widespread ridicule, Alabama Alphi Phi sorority removes its recruitment video from YouTube

    Does the mindset of college students in Alabama ever change?
    2015's Griffin Meyer/Matt Malecki extra-cheesy cheesecake video portrays Alphi Phi as a bunch of whites-only, mostly blondes apparently auditioning for Hugh Hefner.
     A "recruitment" video it's not. While Meyer/Malecki evidently wanted to sharpen their steadicam/video editing skills making a titillating T&A come-on, the sorority itself seemed to be going for a vain, airbrushed portrait of exclusivity — the opposite of recruiting, unless you're recruiting primping white snobs rather than a diverse cross-section of academic achievement. The video is the sick result of the panting/egotistic exhibitionism cross purposes of, respectively, the video's makers and subjects. Via rawstory.com:

     “It’s all so racially and aesthetically homogeneous and forced, so hyper-feminine, so reductive and objectifying, so Stepford Wives: College Edition,” wrote magazine editor A.L. Bailey for AL.com. “It’s all so … unempowering.”
     ...“This video is not reflective of UA’s expectations for student organizations to be responsible digital citizens,” said Deborah Lane, associate vice president for university relations. “It is important for student organizations to remember what is posted on social media makes a difference, today and tomorrow, on how they are viewed and perceived.”

Dear Ann Landers: Do you think my newspaper is just sports-minded or is it latently homosexual? Signed, 'Not from New Haven'

Matt Baume's history of how treatment of gays evolved in sitcoms

I remember the oblique way that M.A.S.H. outed the gay Korean soldier...

Disable Google+ on your phone and the company might make sure you never open pictures on it of your cat again

We fail to see how taking people's photos hostage as payback for shutting down the app for Google's  intrusive Google+ social media app — which isn't going to unseat Facebook anyway — is anything other than dirty tricksterism or, at least, cynical software engineering by programmers who must have a sniggering contempt for the people who use their software.
     Here's what happened to the pictures of one hapless woman who owns an LG Tribute Android phone, and the responses to her plea for help, in the first four panels. Just for kicks, AKSARBENT disabled Google+ on its Android phone, and sure enough, the phone took photos as ransom, just as other Android users have experienced.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts' new buddy: the man who called Supreme Court Justice David Souter a 'goat fucking child molester'

Here's a photo of Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, out of the state again after his tour of Europe, in Georgia with Erick Erickson who runs the Red State blog and who apparently wants to be a kingmaker of ruthlessly ambitious politicians eager to make a name for themselves nationally among the most reactionary of the country's teabaggers.
     Below the picture, some revolting golden oldies from the quote bank of the newest pal of Nebraska's radical right wing governor:

Wonder if Governor Ricketts attended Erickson's confab on his own or the state's dime?

Nebraska ban on gay foster parents overturned by state district court judge

Here's yesterday's press release from the ACLU of Nebraska:

LINCOLN, Neb – Today a Nebraska District Court Judge ruled that Nebraska’s discriminatory treatment, policy and practice, toward gay and lesbian foster parents is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause. The ACLU of Nebraska, the ACLU LGBT Rights & HIV Project, and the New York law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell filed suit on behalf of three same-sex couples who wanted to be foster parents for children in Nebraska. The policy stems from a 1995 memo, "Memo 1-95" issued by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.

Statement from Danielle Conrad, Executive Director

Nebraska is the last state in the U.S.
to specifically ban gay foster parents.

     Nebraska's motto of 'Equality before the Law’ rings out more truly for all of us on this thrilling day. This is a special victory for thousands of children in Nebraska who now have more options to find loving and stable homes.
     The couples in our case, like thousands of other gay and lesbian Nebraskans, have demonstrated their ability to provide loving homes for children. We are grateful for the court's unequivocal, broad, and positive opinion in favor of LGBT Nebraskans constitutional rights to be full participants in our child welfare system.
     Nebraska finally joins America in ending state sponsored discrimination in policy and practice that hurt Nebraska families and that prevented children in need from accessing loving and stable foster families.

Here's what the judge wrote (entire ruling is on ACLU's page, linked above):

Help preserve cheesy, vintage gay porn!

Bob Mizer was certainly no Rip Colt (aka Jim French), but what he lacked in quality he more than made up for in quantity. The Advocate reports:

The Bob Mizer Foundation has launched a Kickstarter fundraising project that will assist in the permanent preservation of the vast collection of color transparencies produced by controversial Los Angeles photographer Bob Mizer from the late 1940s until his death in 1992. Monies raised will go directly to the purchase of polypropylene archival sleeves. For more information, please contact: info@BobMizer.org

     Seriously, we don't mean to make light of important issues of historical preservation. Maybe, in addition to kickstarter funding, the federal government could help out!
     We'd like to know how Senator Ben Sasse feels about this essential issue, but our invite to his invitation-only meeting with constituents in Blair on August 13th at Novozymes at 600 S. 1st Street at 5 p.m. must have been lost in the mail. If you're going, please be sure to ask Senator Sasse if he can get some federal funding for this vital project, won't you?

Here's a real winner, from a set called "Neptune and the Sailor"

And now a word from Kevin Bacon:

Can you marry your Lawnboy? Video tests GOP Rep. Steve King's idiot assertion

The Des Moines Register's proclamation that Rep. Steve King, (repeatedly endorsed for reelection by the Omaha World-Herald) is an "embarrassment to the State of Iowa" is still true.
     The other day Teabagger King claimed that the recent Supreme Court ruling on marriage allows you to marry your lawnmower. He shouldn't have done that.


(Video via JMG reader Blair)

 

'Dollar store Lex Luther,' NE Gov. Ricketts, puts the screws to jobless

Neb. Gov. Pete Ricketts

Nebraska's GOP Governor, Pete Ricketts, who John Oliver called a 'dollar store Lex Luther,' has engineered draconian new unemployment requirements that would cut off benefits to those jobless who don't make five employment contacts a week — the strictest requirements in the nation, despite the fact that Nebraska has the country's lowest unemployment rate, about 2.7%.
     Under the proposed rules, unemployment recipients would have to verify their job search on a state website — even, apparently, if they're among the rural poor without Internet access or transportation to whatever facilities might offer free Internet access.
     James Goddard of Nebraska Appleseed, the only person to testify at Monday's public hearing besides Ricketts administration employees, noted the following, according to Paul Hammel's excellent coverage in the Omaha World-Herald:

     Goddard, in his testimony, called the requirements “out of touch” with current Internet- based job searches. Under the proposed rule, someone who packed 10 job contacts into only one day would lose jobless benefits, while someone who made five contacts over three or four days would not, he said.
     ...Goddard said the online reporting requirements are also problematic. He cited a report by the National Employment Law Project about a similar reporting requirement in Florida that quadrupled the number of denials based on procedural problems.

Ohio State 'unofficial' songbook: 'There is no place as gay as Nebraska'

A 2014 report on the questionable Ohio State band culture has received some attention from the Wall St. Journal, summarized by Derek Draplin of the University in The College Fix.
     The author of one of the more homophobic blasts was interviewed about his questionable verse, whereupon he immediately resorted to the Sarah Palin dodge about allegedly having gay friends who were not offended by what he wrote because they allegedly knew he wasn't serious.

     Another song reviewed by the Journal about the Nebraska Cornhuskers, also in the Big Ten Conference, reveals lyrics about rape, erotic sex and homosexuality.
     “Nebraska got f—– in their cornholes” and “It’ll soften our d—- if there’s chicks in the mix,” one song reads, while another says: “There’s no place as gay as Nebraska, except maybe Michigan U. Where the girls are all hairy, and the boys are all fairies, on your chest we will poo.”
     Matt Cominski, a former Ohio State band member who wrote one of the controversial Nebraska songs, said he had “a lot of confidence that it was never going to see the light of day.”
      “I knew a lot of people in the band were gay and they knew I wasn’t being serious,” Cominski told the Journal. “If I were writing to a broader audience or anyone other than a few close friends I would be horrified by those words.”
     Jon Woods, who was band director when the songbook was updated in 2012, was unable to be reached for comment, but Waters, who was formerly his assistant and succeeded Woods, said he “understood it to be gone.”

Gays weren't the only target of the mostly-witless doggerel:

     The anti-Semitic song “Goodbye Kramer” – disclosed Thursday by The Wall Street Journal – includes lyrics to the tune of Journey’s classic hit Don’t Stop Believin’ with a line where Nazi soldiers search “for people livin’ in their neighbor’s attic” and a “small town Jew…who took the cattle train to you know where.”
     “Head to the furnace room, ‘Bout to meet your fiery doom,” another line of the song reads. “Oh the baking never ends, it goes on and on and on and on.”

Slate: Windows 10 express install is a privacy nightmare; how to protect yourself

David Auerbach has written a terrific step-by-step guide to turning off the default settings Windows 10 chooses during an express install and where to find the other "secret" settings that the company has made VERY obscure. You should read and follow his guide, which is here.

     The problems start with Microsoft’s ominous privacy policy, which is now included in the Windows 10 end-user license agreement so that it applies to everything you do on a Windows PC, not just online. (Disclosure: I worked for Microsoft in the days of Windows XP.) It uses some scary broad strokes:

Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary.

     Some have spun conspiracy theories out of that language. I’m more inclined to blame vagueness and sloppiness, not ill intent. With some public pressure, Microsoft is likely to specify how and why it will share your data. But even that won’t excuse Microsoft’s ham-fisted incursion into users’ data, nor how difficult it is restore the level of privacy back to what it was in Windows 7 and 8. Apple’s and Google’s privacy policies both have their own issues of collection and sharing, but Microsoft’s is far vaguer when it comes to what the company collects, how it will use it, and who it will share it...
     The install settings are only a subset of Windows 10’s privacy settings, which occupy more than a dozen different pages and dialogue boxes across the user interface, none of them in plain sight

Animal justice! ID ag-gag law overruled; now reporters can lie just like cops can to bust factory farm cruelty

Iowa, too, has an ag-gag law designed to stifle exposes of "animal agriculture" cruelty. Maybe someone will sue there too. Sen. Mike Gronstal, who should be ashamed of himself, helped pass Iowa's bill, as did these lawmakers.
     The Idaho law was challenged by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA),The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF),  Idaho's ACLU, The Center for Food Safety, CounterPunch and journalist Will Potter of GreenistheNewRed.com.
     It permitted the state to jail anyone who secretly records animal abuse during an undercover investigation. Six other states have ag-gag laws.
     The law was passed after lobbying by Big Ag following an undercover investigation which showed the Bettencourt Dairy was abusing and sexually molesting cows. Below is the shocking video recorded by Mercy for Animals.



In 2013, O'Neill Sen. Tyson Larson (Dist. 40), Omaha Sen. Scott Laughtenbaugh (Dist. 18) and Ogallala Sen. Ken Schilz (Dist. 47) tried to make "unauthorized" recordings of animal cruelty, like the one above, a felony if done in factory farms in Nebraska. They failed.

From Shadowproof.com:

     Judge B. Lynn Winmill, of the United States District Court for the District of Idaho, found the law violated the First Amendment and rights to equal protection [PDF].
     “The state may not agree with the message certain groups seek to convey about Idaho’s agricultural production facilities, such as releasing secretly recorded videos of animal abuse to the Internet and calling for boycotts,” Winmill wrote. But, “it cannot deny such groups equal protection of the laws in their exercise of their right to free speech.”

B. Lynn Winmill, Chief Judge of the U.S.District Court
for the District of Idaho

     The judge contended ALDF had “come forward with abundant evidence that the law was enacted with the discriminatory purpose of silencing animal rights activists who conduct undercover investigations in the agricultural industry.”
     Beyond that, Winmill argued the First Amendment protected undercover investigations, including lies told by undercover investigators to uncover corruption.
     “The lies used to facilitate undercover investigations actually advance core First Amendment values by exposing misconduct to the public eye and facilitating dialogue on issues of considerable public interest. This type of politically-salient speech is precisely the type of speech the First Amendment was designed to protect,” Winmill stated.
     ...The law “gives agricultural facility owners veto power, allowing owners to decide what can and cannot be recorded, effectively turning them into state-backed censors able to silence unfavorable speech about their facilities,” Winmill maintained. The law circumvents “long-established defamation law and whistleblowing statutes by punishing employees for publishing true and accurate recordings on matters of public concern. The expansive reach of this statute is hard to reconcile with basic speech, whistleblower, and press rights.”
     ...The state made no credible argument explaining why “counterspeech” would not be able to protect companies or facilities from “interference by wrongful conduct.”
     “If an undercover investigator “staged a video” at an agricultural production facility, as some Idaho legislators fear, not only could the facility owner sue the investigator for fraud or defamation, but the facility owner could launch its own public relations campaign to refute the video.”
     “The remedy for misleading speech, or speech we do not like, is more speech, not enforced silence,” Winmill declared.

Plaintiff Will Potter said:

“The ruling sets the stage for ag-gag laws to be challenged in other states on similar grounds. The ALDF, PETA and others are currently fighting ag-gag in Utah,” Potter added. “The recent passage of North Carolina’s sweeping ag-gag laws, which is so broad it includes those who expose abuse at daycares and nursing homes, clearly cannot withstand scrutiny, either.”

Chris Cuomo: I doubled my deadlift and added serious pounds to my squat and bench!

We'd like to make some snide insinuation about Cuomo turning into a meathead, but no one who watches his CNN show would believe such lies about one of TVs quickest, smartest and most persistent interviewers, who never abandons politeness and never loses his focus on issues to get lost in the weeds of personal attacks or guest-baiting.
     Anyway, he stretched a 90-day regimen to 180 days, but gained 10 pounds of muscle. How'd he do that? Go here, boys.

Papers please: Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse's invitation-only meeting with constituents also requires a government-issued I.D.

In response to Sen. Sasse's "humbly" requested input, AKSARBENT humbly suggests that people who didn't get an invitation park themselves outside the Blair venue with placards pointing out Sasse's litany of right-wing legislative provocations against a middle class that is already on the ropes.
     For this, neither an invitation nor a government-issued I.D. is required, or at least wasn't the last time we checked the freedom-to-assemble part of the U.S. Constitution.
     Sasse, backed by Wall St. fatcats who have vowed to put farm subsidies on a "path to elimination," kicked 50,000 gay Nebraskans to the curb with his anti-gay marriage stance and used transparently cheap GOP semantics to deny the human cause of global warming. He is a right-wing ideologue without vision.
     When running for election he tweeted a picture of Herbie Husker as a Team Sasse member, then deleted the tweet without explanation when the University of Nebraska (which likes to keep Herbie nonpartisan) got riled.
     Sasse was a signatory to hothead Sen. Tom Cotton's possibly treasonous letter attempting to sabotage White House negotiations with Iran on its development of nuclear energy.
      In the interim between being elected and taking office, Sasse was too busy to talk to KMTV about the then-just-released CIA torture report but somehow found the time to talk to an antigay radio hate group leader.

This is not how elected officials should behave. @NebraskaDems @aksarbent @janekleeb @CovingtonMika @vince_powers pic.twitter.com/AAyFZp8YMA

— Ken Riter (@OmahaNightHawk) August 4, 2015

Ken Riter advises us that Lisa Hannah wants us to know that the photo he tweeted was hers; AKSARBENT is happy to make the acknowledgement.

Heart attack claims Lynn Anderson, 67; her Rose Garden held record of biggest selling album by female country artist for 27 years

Anderson's family said she died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., on Thursday. She is survived by her partner, Mentor Williams, her father, and her children, Lisa Sutton, Melissa Hempel and Gray Stream. Her parents were country songwriters Casey and Liz Anderson. Anderson was born in Grand Forks, N.D., but raised in Sacramento. An accomplished equestrian, she was voted California Horse Show Queen in 1966. Her personal life was occasionally tumultuous.

Here is the quadraphonic release of Rose Garden:



From the YouTube annotation:

This is "Rose Garden" by Lynn Anderson taken from an original SQ Quadraphonic LP and remastered by me. If you have the standard stereo version of this song, which is the only version of this song ever released on any CD to date, then you will appreciate this one because it sounds virtually identical to the 45 rpm version that was released to radio in 1970. The SQ Quad version is also 13 seconds longer too. This is the only version that has THAT sound that made it an instant hit! Enjoy this truly rare version.

And here's Joe South, who wrote Rose Garden and who passed away in 2012, also of a heart attack: