Gay Nebraska TV weatherman gets fed up with a Facebook troll

KETV, the Omaha ABC affiliate with the highest rated newscasts, has its heavy weather lifting done by Chief Meteorologist Bill Randby, the subject of a minor personality cult led by @MeanStreetsOMA, which mostly tweets transcripts of police scanner calls, but sends out special tweets every time Bill Ramby rolls up his sleeves on air (meaning the weather is getting complicated.)
     Mean Streets has 113,000+ followers(!) (There's a big local audience for online gawking, folks.)
     But it wasn't Ramby who was getting the attention in the aftermath of yesterday's hailstorm, it was Meteorologist Matt Serwe, who has had it with a particular Facebook detractor and who tweeted out a screencap of said critic's FB mini-rants (at right.) That tweet got a lot of sympathetic replies.
     It turns out that the aggressively dissatisfied Mr. Kraci, of Schuyler, is not currently employed at Central Valley Ag.

     Schuyler, the seat of Colfax County, is about 67 miles from Omaha, has about 6,211 people, and is named after an amiable, but hapless former Vice President, Schuyler Colfax. As it happens, Serwe's boyfriend has family there, and has assured his other half that the natives are generally friendly.

NE's GOP gov. fires State Patrol Supe 2 years after appointing him; 6 troopers placed on leave

In 2015, Gov. Pete Ricketts had this to say about Brad Rice, his pick to head Nebraska's State Patrol:

“Bradley’s prior service in a variety of ranks within the Nebraska State Patrol’s chain of command will guide his leadership as Superintendent,” said Governor Ricketts. “I know his integrity will direct his decisions as he works with patrol members across the state to protect public safety.”

     During Rice's confirmation hearing, accusations of sexism and proselytizing were raised.

     As for the prayers, Hanlin said because the agency lacked space for meetings with all troop area staff members, the meetings often were held in a school gymnasium on the campus of a Norfolk church. Rice frequently began such meetings with a prayer, Hanlin added.

     Hanlin said he was aware a complaint had been filed by another trooper over the prayers. After the complaint, the troop area meetings were no longer held at the church property.

     Former Patrol Col. Tom Nesbitt, commander of the patrol from 1999 to 2005, said he recalled that a complaint had been filed against Rice. Based on his recollection, however, the complaint involved Rice putting religious information in the office mailboxes of patrol employees.

     Nesbitt said he assigned a major to investigate the issue, although he could not recall the outcome.

  Gov. Ricketts relieved Rice of his duties Friday:

     The initial findings of an internal review of State Patrol policies, procedures and leadership conduct suggested "interference in internal investigations at the highest level," the governor said.

     ...Ricketts said he met with Rice early Friday morning and "relieved him of his duties."

Six State Patrol officers were placed on administrative leave pending an ongoing investigation by State Human Resources Director Jason Jackson.

     ...Initial findings of the continuing investigation have been turned over to the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office for further investigation, the governor said.

     The governor's investigation was probably prompted by the latest Nebraska State Patrol controversy, following the death of a convicted felon who tried to outrun a state trooper near Gordon.
     Shortly after the crash, trooper Tim Flick said thrice that he performed a TVI ("tactical vehicle intervention"), also known as bumping or ramming a suspect's vehicle.
     Then Flick's commander got involved:

     In an email and a memo, the trooper’s commander, Capt. Jamey Balthazor, who heads the Panhandle troop of the patrol, said Flick had told him in a roadside meeting a couple of hours after the crash that LaDeaux had caused it by steering into his cruiser.
     When Flick was asked by grand jurors why his story had changed, the trooper said he didn’t realize until later that he had not used a TVI.

Facebook CEO and his new, heavily tattooed friend Joe, wish world a Happy LGBTQ Pride from Nebraska

Zuckerberg with the awesomely tatted Joe Desanti

     Continuing his I'm-not-planning-to-run-for-office-I-just-like-to-hang-out-in-truckstops-in-rural-America tour, Mark Zuckerberg wished the world a happy Pride from Nebraska. The Facebook founder and CEO turned up in Stinson park in Aksarben Village. (Aksarben is Nebraska spelled backwards, and now you now why this quasi-gay Omaha blog is called AKSARBENT.)
     Facebook is building a huge data center, its ninth, in Papillion, an Omaha suburb. Yahoo is expanding its data center in LaVista, another Omaha suburb, and Google's $2.5 billion data center in neighboring Council Bluffs, Iowa is its largest in the world.
     We hope they're all tornado-proof, because last week a tornado hopscotched across Offutt AFB in Bellevue, another Omaha suburb, taking out two of the four "doomsday" converted 747 command planes that supposedly would direct America's response to a nuclear attack. But we digress...
     On Saturday, Zuckerberg posted this on his Facebook page:

     Happy Pride from Omaha, Nebraska to everyone celebrating this weekend across the world!
     I'm at the Heartland Pride Festival. Until recently, the Nebraska constitution banned gay marriage. Omaha is more welcoming, but we still have a long way to go.

     Zuckerberg spent 10 minutes amiably chatting with Mayor Jean Stothert, who twice opposed Omaha's ordinance banning workplace discrimination against LGBTs while she was on the city council (see video below).
     Stothert also excluded legally married spouses of gay city employees from city benefits long after virtually every other jurisdiction in the metro area had stopped doing so, and in her recent reelection campaign she blatantly lied about housing discrimination against LGBTs, telling a television audience that adding housing to the city's LGBT antibias ordinance provisions was unnecessary because LGBTs are covered under federal law, when they aren't.

    

Andy from Arkansas — People are saying: NO RUSSIAN COLLUSION!

From WhiteHouse.org (not Whitehouse.gov, obviously) via @BettyBowers, America's Best Christian.

NE Sen. Sasse retweets N. Korea charge that Iowans sacrifice kids to "barbaric corn gods"

Early this morning, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse trolled Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley (and Twitter) by retweeting a bizarre North Korea tweet about Iowa alcoholism, sexual frustration and child sacrifice to barbaric corn gods. (Yeah, that looks like something from The Onion, but what agitprop from Asia's biggest open-air prison camp doesn't?)

To read tweet, enlarge graphic by clicking on it.

     Though this was doubtless a publicity stunt joke, Sasse does have issues with Iowa's GOP, as well as Nebraska's. Earlier this week, Iowa's GOP chair, Jeff Kaufman, blasted Sasse twice, first in a warm-up for Donald Trump's appearance Wednesday in eastern Iowa and later in a follow-up inerview.

     “We had Sen. Ben Sasse from Nebraska, he crosses the Missouri River, and in that sanctimonious tone talks about what he doesn’t like about Donald Trump,” Kaufmann said. “You know what, Sen. Sasse? I really don’t care what you like. We love Donald Trump. And if you don’t love him, I suggest you stay on your side of the Missouri River.”
     ...“He’s an arrogant academic,” Kaufmann said of Sasse, a former college president. “He’s sanctimonious. His statements are geared toward what can help him. He’s arrogant. And he’s not a team player, when in reality the only reason he’s got any clout at all in the Senate is because the Republican Party has the majority.”

     Sasse (yes, there's a youtube video ridiculing his name) has reputedly hired a social media consultant to raise his profile, although Bill Maher probably did that better during their recent exchange on HBO's Real Time, when Maher made his infamous "house nigga" crack. Sasse claims he winced. If he did, it wasn't visible in the recording.

   Sasse is also hawking his new book of Captain Obvious advice about parenting, replete with some alarming observations, like the upside of having polio:

"No one should regard the eradication of polio as anything but a glorious blessing, but we should also be able to recall that many older folks we know grew their character by fighting through their polio."

     (Yeah, the way Mitch McConnell grew his character by overcoming polio and then becoming the Darth Vader of the Senate and defunder of Medicaid.)

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, in shorts, trolling twitter, reputedly with the
help of a media consultant.

     Sasse votes with Donald Trump about 97% of the time and has fallen in line to rubber stamp all his abysmal Cabinet nominees, but he poses as a rebellious independent, critical of Trump.
     Those of us who have lived in Nebraska awhile can see through his efforts to become the reverse image of former Nebraska Democratic Senator and Governor, Teflon Bob Kerrey.
     Unlike Sasse, Kerrey, who lost a limb in Vietnam, was as close to the real deal as you will find in politics. (Kerrey was reputed to have studied the rise of California Gov. Jerry Brown, Jr., who supposedly studied Robert Redford's character in The Candidate.)
    Kerrey is a lot funnier than Sasse. When reporters asked the then-governor what sparked his romance with actress Debra Winger when she was filming Terms of Endearment in Lincoln, he deadpanned: "She swept me off my foot."
    What does AKSARBENT think about Sasse's tweet? This, friends:

P.S. The fake Twitter account started by a Nebraska expat football fan (now a Chicago lawyer) back when Bo Pelini coached Nebraska, weighed in too, and again proved why @FauxPelini has over half a million twitter followers:

Tough but fair https://t.co/9RbbNgMIez

— Fake Bo Pelini (@FauxPelini) June 24, 2017

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH2 film modes compared

Left to right, top to bottom:

VIBRANT      DYNAMIC
STANDARD   NATURAL
SMOOTH      NOSTALGIC

Click to enlarge

Frantic Oklahoma mom warned Omaha police that her son, kicked off bus, was mentally ill. So they tasered him to death

Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine has "serious concerns" about whether excessive force was used on Zachary Bearheels, who was pronounced dead on arrival at the Nebraska Medical Center after being tasered by officers of the Omaha Police Department. His desperate mother had warned Omaha police and begged them to take him to the bus station or a crisis center: Kleine wants to know how many tasers were used on Bearheels at once at Bucky's, where he was surrounded by up to 20(!) cop cars.



From the Omaha World-Herald:

     Henry Barstow, 36, was among those at the Bucky’s at 60th and Center Streets.

     The hour that elapsed between officers first encountering Bearheels and when he was stunned left “plenty of time” for the police to call a mental health professional to the gas station for guidance, Barstow said.

     Bearheels’ mother, Renita Chalepah of Oklahoma, has raised questions about how police handled her son, whom she said suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He was in Omaha after being kicked off a bus. He was traveling from his father’s home in South Dakota to his mother’s in Oklahoma. Chalepah said she had been in contact with Omaha police and her son during the day Sunday and had asked police to take him to the bus station or a crisis center. She said police told her they couldn’t place him under emergency care because he wasn’t a threat to himself or others.

Later, on that very day, OPD shocked him to death because he was "acting erratically." 

Who voted to gut Dodd-Frank?

Nebraska's entire House delegation (all Republicans) voted to gut Dodd-Frank financial protections,
enacted after the 2008 financial meltdown, and to eviscerate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Below is the name of every Representative who voted to drastically weaken the Dodd-Frank Act provisions enacted after the financial crisis of 2008. The vote was almost completely along party lines; only one Republican voted "Nay" and only one Democrat voted "Yea." The bill is said to have almost no chance of Senate passage. From MSNBC:

     Among the most significant provisions are measures that allow banks to escape heightened regulatory requirements and cut stress tests back from their current annual schedule, while the bill also eviscerates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
     In all, the measure takes aim at the Dodd-Frank reforms, which sought less risk and higher capital levels from an industry linked to the crisis and the accompanying Great Recession. Lenders got in trouble after mass defaults of risky mortgages, then required a government bailout when they didn't have the capital to cover their losses.

Note: an earlier version of this post showed the June 7th vote on agreeing to the resolution, not the June 8 vote on passage.

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 299
(Republicans in roman; Democrats in italic; Independents underlined)
      H R 10      YEA-AND-NAY      8-Jun-2017      4:38 PM
      QUESTION:  On Passage
      BILL TITLE: Financial CHOICE Act of 2017

	Yeas	Nays	PRES	NV
Republican	233	1		3
Democratic		185		8
Independent
TOTALS	233	186		11

---- YEAS    233 ---

Abraham Aderholt Allen Amash Amodei Arrington Babin Bacon Banks (IN) Barletta Barr Barton Bergman Biggs Bilirakis Bishop (MI) Bishop (UT) Black Blackburn Blum Bost Brady (TX) Brat Bridenstine Brooks (AL) Brooks (IN) Buchanan Buck Bucshon Budd Burgess Byrne Calvert Carter (GA) Carter (TX) Chabot Chaffetz Cheney Coffman Cole Collins (GA) Collins (NY) Comer Comstock Conaway Cook Costello (PA) Cramer Crawford Culberson Curbelo (FL) Davidson Davis, Rodney Denham Dent DeSantis DesJarlais Diaz-Balart Donovan Duffy Duncan (SC) Duncan (TN) Dunn Emmer Estes (KS) Farenthold Faso Ferguson Fitzpatrick Fleischmann Flores Fortenberry Foxx Franks (AZ) Frelinghuysen Gaetz Gallagher Garrett

Gibbs Gohmert Goodlatte Gosar Gowdy Granger Graves (GA) Graves (LA) Graves (MO) Griffith Grothman Guthrie Harper Harris Hartzler Hensarling Herrera Beutler Hice, Jody B. Higgins (LA) Hill Holding Hollingsworth Hudson Huizenga Hultgren Hunter Hurd Issa Jenkins (KS) Jenkins (WV) Johnson (LA) Johnson (OH) Jordan Joyce (OH) Katko Kelly (MS) Kelly (PA) King (IA) King (NY) Kinzinger Knight Kustoff (TN) Labrador LaHood LaMalfa Lamborn Lance Latta Lewis (MN) LoBiondo Long Loudermilk Love Lucas Luetkemeyer MacArthur Marchant Marshall Massie Mast McCarthy McCaul McClintock McHenry McKinley McMorris Rodgers McSally Meadows Meehan Messer Mitchell Moolenaar Mooney (WV) Mullin Murphy (PA) Newhouse Noem Nunes

Olson Palazzo Palmer Paulsen Pearce Perry Pittenger Poe (TX) Poliquin Posey Ratcliffe Reed Renacci Rice (SC) Roby Roe (TN) Rogers (AL) Rogers (KY) Rohrabacher Rokita Rooney, Francis Rooney, Thomas J. Ros-Lehtinen Roskam Ross Rothfus Rouzer Royce (CA) Russell Rutherford Sanford Scalise Schweikert Scott, Austin Sensenbrenner Sessions Shimkus Shuster Simpson Smith (MO) Smith (NE) Smith (NJ) Smith (TX) Smucker Stefanik Stewart Stivers Taylor Tenney Thompson (PA) Thornberry Tiberi Tipton Trott Turner Upton Valadao Wagner Walberg Walden Walker Walorski Walters, Mimi Weber (TX) Webster (FL) Wenstrup Westerman Williams Wilson (SC) Wittman Womack Woodall Yoder Yoho Young (AK) Young (IA) Zeldin

---- NAYS    186 ---

Adams Barragán Bass Beatty Bera Beyer Bishop (GA) Blumenauer Blunt Rochester Bonamici Boyle, Brendan F. Brady (PA) Brown (MD) Brownley (CA) Bustos Butterfield Capuano Carbajal Cárdenas Carson (IN) Cartwright Castor (FL) Castro (TX) Chu, Judy Cicilline Clark (MA) Clarke (NY) Clay Cleaver Cohen Connolly Conyers Cooper Correa Courtney Crist Crowley Cuellar Davis (CA) Davis, Danny DeGette Delaney DeLauro DelBene Demings DeSaulnier Deutch Dingell Doggett Doyle, Michael F. Ellison Eshoo Espaillat Esty (CT) Evans Foster Frankel (FL) Fudge Gabbard Gallego Garamendi Gonzalez (TX)

Gottheimer Green, Al Green, Gene Grijalva Gutiérrez Hanabusa Hastings Heck Higgins (NY) Himes Hoyer Huffman Jackson Lee Jayapal Jeffries Johnson (GA) Johnson, E. B. Jones Kaptur Keating Kelly (IL) Kennedy Khanna Kihuen Kildee Kilmer Kind Krishnamoorthi Kuster (NH) Langevin Larsen (WA) Larson (CT) Lawrence Lawson (FL) Lee Levin Lewis (GA) Lieu, Ted Lipinski Loebsack Lofgren Lowenthal Lowey Lujan Grisham, M. Luján, Ben Ray Lynch Maloney, Sean Matsui McCollum McEachin McGovern McNerney Meeks Meng Moore Moulton Murphy (FL) Nadler Neal Nolan Norcross O'Halleran

O'Rourke Pallone Panetta Pascrell Payne Pelosi Perlmutter Peters Peterson Pingree Pocan Polis Price (NC) Quigley Raskin Rice (NY) Richmond Rosen Roybal-Allard Ruiz Ruppersberger Rush Ryan (OH) Sánchez Sarbanes Schakowsky Schiff Schneider Schrader Scott (VA) Scott, David Serrano Sewell (AL) Shea-Porter Sherman Sinema Sires Slaughter Smith (WA) Soto Speier Suozzi Swalwell (CA) Takano Thompson (CA) Thompson (MS) Titus Tonko Torres Tsongas Vargas Veasey Vela Velázquez Visclosky Walz Wasserman Schultz Waters, Maxine Watson Coleman Welch Wilson (FL) Yarmuth

---- NOT VOTING    11 ---

Aguilar Clyburn Costa Cummings

DeFazio Engel Johnson, Sam Maloney, Carolyn B.

Marino Napolitano Reichert

Nebraska's entire house delegation votes to imprison sexting teens for 15 years

  Forget climate change! Jeff Fortenberry, Adrian Smith and Don Bacon, creatures all of the Nebraska GOP, voted for the House version of Sharia Law (H R 1761) to wreck the lives of stupid teenagers with even greater finality than their peers ever could. The ACLU is appalled.

House Overwhelmingly Supports Bill Subjecting Teen Sexters to 15-Years in Federal Prison https://t.co/sMSTvU3MFC

— reason (@reason) May 31, 2017

Bill Gates vs. Nebraska's Platte Institute

Above: Nebraska Democratic Party "liked" this tweet by
Michael Knebel,self-described Libertarian nerd
seeming to agree with the Platte Institute on cutting taxes
on "tangible property used for the production of income,"
which certainly describes job-killing robots to a tee.

Strong Roots Nebraska is an initiative by the Platte Institute, a right-wing Nebraska tax policy think tank financed by undisclosed donors to at least two dark money slush funds.
     The Platte Institute doesn't like taxes on tangible property used for the production of income.
     The Institute says tangible property "typically includes machinery, equipment, pivots, irrigation systems, and motors."
     Conspicuously omitted: robots, expected to kill 6 million jobs in the next 10 years in retailing alone. (This doesn't count truck and taxi drivers about to lose their jobs to self-driving vehicles or the robotic AI arms that may soon be flying planes. (These are not autopilots; they're robots that can land a passenger jet on the same simulator human pilots train on, though they can't yet take off, which for some reason is harder for a robot than landing.)

Quick question, Platte Institute: when was the last time factory robots
grew wages for their human coworkers instead of taking their jobs?

     One of the Platte Insitute's statements really jumped off the page for us:*

Taxing machinery and equipment decreases the value of labor

     SERIOUSLY? This is the most idiotic policy pronouncement we're seen so far this year. Exactly how would taxing human-replacing machines decrease the value of labor?
     No matter. The whole idea of replacing tax-paying humans with robots who don't any taxes, and THEN getting rid of property taxes on the robots to boot, is pretty whacked, even for the Platte Institute.
     Bill Gates, who knows more about software, robots and artificial intelligence than anyone at the Platte Institute, has thought about this in, shall we say, a less superficial and less partisan way:



*From the12/9/15 Platte Chat piece by Jessica Herrmann, a former legislative aide to Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho)

Click to enlarge

New boxed set 50th anniversary Sgt. Pepper stereo mix isn't just a way to get more of your money: it's stunning

When the Beatles recorded Sgt. Pepper in 1967 on four-track machines at EMI in London, they were working in a technological slum compared to the equipment the Beach Boys had at their disposal. But George Martin's technical savvy, inventiveness, musical knowledge and impeccable taste put the Beatles' genius front and center (and left and right) in one of the best pop albums ever made.
     Martin's son, Giles, remixed the original four-track mono tapes (some of which had never been played) and the result — from the 50th anniversary boxed set, which includes original mono, 1967 stereo and 2017 stereo versions, isn't just a marketing money grab, it really is stunning. Here Giles Martin is, interviewed by Terri Gross.


Want more? Here's Martin, interviewed by Bob Boilen, on All Songs Considered: