York News-Times: Real reason TransCanada won't move Keystone XL pipeline away from Ogallala Aquifer

Photo: screencap from this Occupy Omaha video

TransCanada is now claiming that it is "impossible" for it to move its proposed Keystone XL pipeline away from the Sandhills, and has now escalated its threat strategy from merely menacing landowners to an attempt by its lobbyist, Joe Kahout, to intimidate Nebraska by raising the possibility of a TransCanada lawsuit if pipeline legislation is passed during a special legislative session.

Against this backdrop, a new post by Jane Kleeb at Bold Nebraska drew our attention to a pugnacious and revealing editorial by Greg Awtry, publisher of the York News-Times, who has actually read the Environmental Impact Statement and its supplement. Read his editorial in its entirety here.

     ...If you think, by the nature of this headline, this editorial is more about TransCanada and their blind quest to put profits over prosperity, then you would be right.
     If one digs deep enough into TransCanada’s very own (EIS) Environmental Impact Study, (I prefer to call it EIS, “Eventually It Spills”) you would uncover the real reasons TransCanada wants to put the pipeline in a straight line directly though the fragile Sandhills and over the Ogallala Aquifer...
     Could it be that $1.6 billion in extra capital expense? Of course it is. TransCanada wants to build this high pressure, overheated pipeline as cheaply as possible, to give their investors as much return on their investment as possible.
     I wonder if you know that in 2008 TransCanada went out and signed contacts with oil companies to transport their tar-sand oil to the gulf coast, through Nebraska.
     TransCanada told them if they built the pipe on a straight line it would cost the oil companies 25 percent less to transport their oil, so the oil companies signed on based on the shorter route through the Sandhills and over the aquifer saying the longer route would be unacceptable to them.
     It’s on page 49 of the EIS Alternatives section...

     “The Keystone XL project that the shippers supported was the project as presented in the Presidential Permit application. A material departure from this proposal and the associated higher cost would have made the project commercially infeasible... Contract shippers on Keystone XL pay a fixed and a variable toll to transport crude oil to market. Both the fixed and spot tolls would have increased by approximately 25 percent from adoption of the Keystone Corridor Alternative at the initial routing stage as a result of the increase in capital costs. Transportation rates at this level would not have been acceptable and commercial support for the project would not have been received.”

     There you have it. TransCanada was asked to come up with alternative routes to avoid the Sandhills and Ogallala Aquifer, but the oil companies didn’t like that route because it would cost them more, so profits over prosperity took over and TransCanada submitted the straight-line proposal to the State department for approval.
     Now TransCanada not only wants to bury a pipeline in Nebraska, they may find themselves buried in a mountain of worthless contracts if they are forced to reroute it into the Keystone 1 corridor. Here’s the truth. Nebraska is in TransCanada’s way.
     The people of Nebraska don’t want this to cross the Sandhills or the Ogallala Aquifer. TransCanada doesn’t give a hoot about Nebraska, the Sandhills or the aquifer. It does give a hoot about building the pipeline via the cheapest route.

Steve Jobs on his gay replacement as head of Apple: '...He's probably better than me [as a negotiator] because he's a cool customer.'

The Huffington Post has laid its hands on a copy of the soon-to-be-released "authorized" biography of Steve Jobs (see 60 Minutes preview above about Jobs' delay of conventional medical treatment) and says that he was ready to go to the mat to destroy Android in the courts. From Bianca Bosker:

"I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this," he told Isaacson of the patent lawsuit Apple filed against [Android] cell phone manufacturer HTC.

     In Isaacson's "Steve Jobs," ...the author recalls that Jobs, who was known for his fierce temper, "became angrier than I had ever seen him" during a conversation about Apple's patent lawsuit...

     "Our lawsuit is saying, 'Google you f***ing ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off,'" Jobs said, according to Isaacson. "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to... destroy Android, because it's a stolen product."

     ...[In respect of iPhone apps] "Jobs at first quashed the discussion, partly because he felt his team did not have the bandwidth to figure out all the complexities that would be involved in policing third-party app developers."

     ...the book... also offers insight into the man to whom Jobs entrusted the future of Apple: Tim Cook...

     Jobs did not ask Cook if he would take on the role of COO. He informed him, telling Cook on a flight to Japan, "I've decided to make you COO."

     "I'm a good negotiator," Jobs said of Cook. "But he's probably better than me because he's a cool customer."

US Dominionist enablers of Kill the Gays supporters in Uganda have the ear of Vallejo, CA mayor

(Source)

Marc Garman's eyebrow-raising video is here.

Toxic dominionists Ed Silivoso, Cindy Jacobs, International Transformation Network and Harvest Evangelism appear to be calling a lot of shots in Vallejo, CA through their pet, Mayor Osby Davis.

New Louisiana law makes legal tender illegal

Rep. Hardy defends law he and fellow legislators sneaked
through the legislature "far under the radar." Video here.

This ridiculous and likely unconstitutional state attempt to negate the viability of US currency for the purchase of second hand goods passed Louisiana's Senate 34-1 and its house 89-0.

Digital center of world's Occupy movement is here...

Geographic center of
continental US (Wikipedia)

They don't call it the heartland for nothing.

Although the center of the conterminous United States is in a park near Lebanon, Kansas, the digital hub of the world's Occupy movement is a little north, in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Unemployed, 25-year-old Ella (no last name, please) failed to get a ride to Zucotti park, so she stayed home and created what has become the online hub of the global Occupy movement.

In a great scoop by the Omaha World-Herald, Matthew Hansen and Chris Dorwart chronicle the birth of the wildly popular occupytogether.org, to which, by Oct. 3, one of every 2000 Internet users IN THE WORLD had surfed. As of then the website got ten times as many hits as Huskers.com, ground zero for internet users in this football-mad state.

The site now lists protests or meetings in thousands of cities and towns in every continent except Antarctica.

They say they brainstormed the idea and began designing the site about 8 p.m. one night, Ella said. They finished about 3 a.m.

     Occupy Together went live Sept. 23. Almost immediately, its server started to strain under the weight of tens of thousands of hits an hour.

     It crashed, and then crashed again and again, until a donor who wants to remain anonymous gave them $1,000 to buy more server space...
     Ella said they have declined every donation (except to buy server space) and have declined to raise money.

RELATED: Although many websites have published incendiary (but necessary) Occupy Wall St. videos of cops abusing protesters, nothing AKSARBENT has seen captures the Zen of the movement as well as these two, short fantastically artful films that we discovered on — you guessed it — occupytogether.org.

Jon Stewart to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, et. al.: What the f*ck is wrong with you?

Barry C. Lynn, Holland Lecture Series speaker, Senior Fellow, New America Foundation

Barry C. Lynn, senior fellow at the New America Foundation thinks power in the US is more concentrated now than it was a century ago. He criticized Occupy Wall Street protesters who just target corporations and capital. Those are merely tools, he said. But he said international corporations have been allowed to grow too large and too powerful.

The First Unitarian Church of Omaha sponsors the Holland Lecture Series, with support from Omaha philanthropist Dick Holland.

RELATED: Two of the best Occupy Wall Street videos yet made:

Nobody can predict the moment of revolution



We the people have found our voice (sequel to above video)

Matt Baume, Marriage News Watch, October 17th

Say what you will about Bank of America, but they gave their LGBT employees a pretty remarkable gift this week. A phony anti-gay survey backfires in Washington when voters refuse to fall for discriminatory talking points. Turmoil at Equality California with a surprise resignation, and it's all hands on deck right now in Maryland.

Do you live in Maryland? Do you know anyone who does? Your voice is needed right now. Elected officials are returning to Annapolis for a special three-day session starting October 17th, and they need to hear from you. Visit MDElect.net to find their phone numbers, then call and tell them that you support marriage equality and you want them to do the same. That's all. It's easy, it's quick, and it works. Pause this video and do it now.

Marriage News Watch text ontinued here.

Prof. said to have bullied gay student Christina Santiago at Eberly College is identified; Prof. Maali Ashmalla accused before; other students rate her

Maali H. Ashamalla

The Eberly College of Business and Information Technology professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania who allegedly abused gay student Christina Santiago in class has been identified.

She is Maali Ashamalla, a member of the university's MBA management program.

Towleroad.com, in a post several days ago, reported

During a discussion that turned to homosexuality, her business professor, who has not been identified, called it "disgusting, unnatural, and abnormal" and when Santiago identified herself as a lesbian he told her that the words applied to her. The teacher continued, telling her that "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Adam.

Since then, another student has come forward with similar accusations. He said he complained to IUP at the time and is frustrated that he's hearing about similar comments.

Joey Nolfi, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Christina "Nina" Santiago, 23, a graduate student in the MBA program, spoke out Wednesday at a campus forum filled with students and faculty in IUP's Sutton Hall hosted by the chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, John Cavanaugh.

     Nearly 600 students have pledged support for Ms. Santiago on a Facebook event page, and roughly 100 students and faculty members protested on campus Oct. 12 with placards saying "Everyone is Welcome at IUP" and "Don't Hate My Humanity."

     Ms. Santiago's girlfriend, Gina Szepesi, 21, of Indiana, was arrested by university police on Oct. 3 after she staged a silent, one-woman sit-in outside Ms. Ashamalla's classroom where she held a sign which read "Hate is disgusting. Hate is unnatural."

     Ms. Fryling, IUP's spokeswoman, said all charges against Ms. Szepesi have been dropped and, according to Ms. Szepesi, a verbal apology was issued on behalf of the officers involved. IUP Police declined to comment.

     Ms. Santiago has also taken her concerns to the American Civil Liberties Union, which told her it would monitor the situation. An ACLU representative did not return calls for comment.

Ratemyprofessors.com has quite a few comments about Professor Ashamalla; the consensus seems to be that she is quite knowledgable about her subject, thorough, a fair grader, and that her class is not especially difficult.

The students who dislike her REALLY dislike her and seem to echo the sentiments of Ms. Santiago about her lack of respect for some students, her political soapbox and her insulting, rude behavior in the classroom.

These are the more critical student comments:

10/11/11

I am taking this prof right now. She is a horrific person, forces you to read out of the book in class out loud like a third-grader. She speaks slow and conveys her messages ineffectively. Constantly changing her assignments and you never know what she wants from you. I wish this box would let me write a lot more. DO NOT TAKE THIS PROF!!

10/6/11

Bad prof, constantly asks people questions only to interrupt their answer with an obnoxious "HELLO?!?!". Focuses way too much on minute, unimportant details. Every class is 100% lecture with no visual aid.

6/26/10

I took this class in the pre session of this Summer. Dr. Ashamalla is a great professor. She asks many questions to see if you understood, and she also uses repetition which helps you retain the materials. You can learn a lot from her if you pay attention. One more thing, some of her comments might sound insulting to you.

3/20/09

Her thought process and speech is slow and labored. Yells "hello!?!" to elicit responses from class. Occasionally uses improper grammar when speaking (I'm not sure why that is acceptable from a professor). Tests largely follow the text. Bland and dry, but not an especially difficult professor. Political commentary could be highly offensive.

1/8/08

she's definitely a trip. spends majority of her time horribly embarassing students and ranting and raving about things that are no way related to the class. however, she does give you a study guide for each test and the class consists of only 3 tests and a project. not bad if you can tolerate her insults.

10/11/06

She is terrible, all she does is complain about the class and society and how our generation will ruin it and i have not learned anything and were half way through the semester, i would not recommend this professor to anybody, she is the worst i have every had!!!!!

10/26/06

I don't know why people complain so much about her...

4/12/06

Tangential subjects became highly offensive to many minority groups.

12/16/05

everyone says she's terrible but you just can't argue with her. I would NEVER recommend her but her tests are fair. She gives you exact questions that will be on the test and she picks a few from the list that are essay format. Presentations in her class are hard because she rips you apart!!! She can be very nice if you get on her good side.

9/25/05

WORST teacher ever in the history of all teachers. She hates everyone, including you, even though you have'nt met her yet.

4/20/05

I think that I could have ate a huge pile of donkey**** and had a better experience than I had in her class. If you feel like being treated like a little child and can bite your tounge very well, then this class is for you.

3/1/05

Beware of the fire that shoots from the devil's mouth. Avoid her at all costs. A rather unpleasant creature at best.

1/7/05

She is the worst professor I have ever had. She was very inconsiderate to all of her students. She actually told one of my classmates she hated her and wished she would not come back after spring break. VERY UNPROFESSIONAL! Told us we were "Dumb Americans."

11/24/04

Spawn of the Devil! She is here "to help students" but she doesn't check her email and isn't at her office hours. Poses a question, gives you two seconds to think then starts yelling...."HELLO!!!!??? Use your Jello!!" Take your Jello and shove it!

Sex Columnist Dan Savage's rude letter to the surprisingly pro-choice Herman Cain

Savage's complete post is here. And AKSARBENT wrote a "head" line with absolutely no puns, like "Hey Herman, Dan wants a pizza you."

Dear Herman,

If being gay is a choice, show us the proof. Choose it. Choose to be gay yourself. Show America how that's done, Herman, show us how a man can choose to be gay. Suck my dick, Herman. Name the time and the place and I'll bring my dick and a camera crew and you can suck me off and win the argument.

Very sincerely yours,

Dan Savage

One Iowa working against NOM's district 18 propaganda barrage

UPDATE: If you live in District 18 and are receiving robocalls from the National Organization for Marriage please leave a comment below with the number displayed on your caller ID. And let AKSARBENT know if NOM or the Iowa Family Leader is calling your cell phone.

One Iowa has created a phone bank to keep District 18 representation and the Iowa Senate Democratic and to safeguard marriage equality.

Well (and anonymously) funded organizations like the National organization for Marriage are flooding district 18 with mailers with toxic disinformation like this.

Well-heeled Iowa organizations have produced attack-gay-marriage videos like this one, made by Nick Ryan's Des Moines Concordia Group, LLC for Cynthia Golding.

If you can help, do so here.

Jon Stewart can't get quite enough of Calvin Trillin

Trillin, on the show again to promote his new book, defended his high falutin', Yale-informed snark.

Some other people said, "Aren't you ashamed of yourself, making a living by making fun of respectable public servants?" and my only defense is, it's not much of a living.

...My stuff, in a way, is too silly to reply to, for instance in the last campaign, I had a poem about Mitt Romney, which was:

Yes Mitt's so slick of speech and slick of garb, he
reminds us all of Ken of Ken and Barbie.
So quick to shed his moderate regalia,
he may, like Ken, be lacking genetalia.

...His press guy's not going to write me and say "The governor does have genetalia." It's no use arguing with someone like me.

...Al Gore comes across. He's still wearing his earth tone stuff from the campaign, and gives a very wooden speech about why I referred to him as a "man-like object."

Then here comes Senator D'Amato... He's very angry and I said "Well, it's a matter of rhyming.." D'Amato doesn't really rhyme with, it rhymes with toMAHto, but I'm from Kansas City; I can't really say toMAHto. It DOES rhyme with sleazeball obligato.

Rachel Maddow bored with same old hate mail; wants different, fresher abuse

(Ellen via ThinkProgress)

Des Moines Concordia Group disables YouTube comments after angry reaction to its Cindy Golding antigay attack video

Nick T. Ryan

AKSARBENT's first post about the video was here and was picked up by Towleroad, Joe.My.God and ThinkProgress (which goes a long way toward explaining all the angry YouTube comments that the Concordia Group is now hiding from public view.)

Wonder how KCCI and Molly Nelson feel about having out-of-context video from their newscast included in a right-wing political attack ad?

The photo at right of Nick T. Ryan, founder of Concordia Group, LLC and of the American Future Fund, is from his website. The picture was uncredited by Mr. Ryan (as of this writing) but was actually taken by Steve Pope of the Associated Press.

GE's gaywall: Paging facebook from the 1950s!

Another gem via Joe.My.God. from Copyranter where you'll have to go if you want to know what the color codes mean because such an explanation would disturb the decorum of this very decent and morally upright blog. Well, ok, we'll give you a sample hint: green=hustler. Happy?

Gay marriage attack video touts Cynthia Golding; Rick Santorum's Concordia Group advisors behind bid to upset Iowa Senate Democratic majority

UPDATE: Concordia group attempts to stifle evidence of angry reaction to its video by shutting off YouTube comments.

The Condordia Group, Des Moines political consultants, have released the following video on YouTube supporting Republican Cynthia Golding in her special election Iowa Senate race against Liz Mathis.

Jill Latham

The founder of The Concordia Group, Nick T. Ryan and an associate, Jill Latham (daughter of Iowa GOP Congressman Tom Latham) are consultants to Rick Santorum's presidential campaign.

The Concordia Group's video targets gay marriage despite the fact that Golding recently said "I have not had a single person ask me about gay marriage." Golding also has said she would support referring a gay marriage ban to voters; Mathis opposes such a move.

Nick T. Ryan, Santorum advisor,
founder of Concordia Group and
American Future Fund

Nick T. Ryan, founder of the Concordia Group, also founded the shadowy, right-wing American Future Fund, which has worked to remove restrictions on robocalls. From Factcheck.org:

American Future Fund is registered as a 501(c)(4), which means it can receive unlimited donations and does not have to disclose its donors...

It expects to spend between $20 million to $25 million on political ads this fall [2010]. Federal Election Commission data show American Future Fund has spent $6 million in 16 states in independent expenditures as of Oct. 12.

Bruce Rastetter

Although the group has not publicly disclosed its donors, Hawkeye Energy Holding CEO Bruce Rastetter acknowledged to the New York Times that he donated an undisclosed amount in 2007 to help get the group started. In an Oct. 11 story, the Times described Hawkeye as "one of the nation's larger ethanol companies," and noted that most of the incumbent congressmen targeted for defeat by American Future Fund "have seats on a handful of legislative committees with a direct say in the ethanol industry." Ryan sits on the board of the Rastetter Foundation and was chairman of a state political action committee "financed largely" by Rastetter. Daniel Stockdale, Rastetter's attorney, told the Times that his client has no "decision-making authority" at American Future Fund.

Iowa's special election is to replace Sen. Swati Dandekar (District 18) whom GOP Gov. Terry Brantstad appointed to an $85,000 per year job at the Iowa Utilities Board.

By appointing Sen. Swati Dandekar to the Iowa Utilities Board, Gov. Terry Branstad ensured Republicans would have a shot at sharing control of the state Senate, a chamber where Democrats have used their narrow 26- to 24-seat majority to block a number of GOP efforts, most notably a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn Iowa's gay marriage law...

     Branstad has denied that his selection of Dandekar last month was related to his desire to remove a Democratic roadblock to his agenda, which besides [attacking] gay marriage includes extending abortion restrictions and reducing business taxes.

     Although Dandekar wasn't among the 17 who applied for the $85,000-a-year job, Branstad spokesman Tim Albrecht said the governor "recruited her for this position because of her immense knowledge and talent."

     Dandekar has no experience specifically related to utility regulation but she and Branstad have noted she has a chemistry degree...

     Democrats have laughed off the governor's denials that he was using a government appointment to achieve his political goals.

     "Of course he is. It would be silly to say otherwise," said Ron Parker, a top staffer for Senate Democrats.

     The GOP has a narrow edge in the district, with 16,008 Republicans and 15,745 Democrats, but both parties are outnumbered by the 19,960 voters who registered without declaring a party preference.

Robert Reich video: GOP's 7 biggest economic lies

EXTRA: ThinkProgress calls Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan what it is: a very regressive national consumption tax and a dodge for most high income people.

Here's the chart:

Gay YouTube airman, Randy Phillips, gets mocked

Someone is exploiting for web hits someone else who was exploiting coming out for web hits. AKSARBENT is highly amused.


(Via Towleroad)

The late Dan Wheldon's conversation with Lauren Bohlander

A candid interview with #10 Target Chip Ganassi driver Dan Wheldon, made last spring.

The charming and well-liked driver, newly married, died last weekend at the IndyCar championships in Las Vegas in a fiery 15-car collision.

Yesterday, USA Today reported the reaction to Jimmie Johnson's pleas to stop IndyCar oval racing.

A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti condemned five-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson and others for calling on IndyCar stop racing on ovals because it was too easy for cars to get airborne.

     "I don't think Jimmie Johnson knows what he's talking about," said Foyt, a four-time Indianapolis 500 winner whose name adorns the trophy given to IndyCar's best oval driver. "He's never drove one, and he's pretty stupid to make a statement like that. You could say the same about stock cars. I've driven both, and I've been hurt real bad in both."

AIDS origins (and how it jumped from Africa to US)

Barnes & Noble

Randy Shilts' book, And the Band Played On, which retraced the appearance of AIDS in the US, told a compellingly creepy tale about ultra-promiscuous Gaetan Dugas, a gay Canadian flight attendant, who was dubbed Patient Zero by the CDC, died in 1984, and supposedly infected dozens of the thousands of men he slept with, even after having been told by his doctors to knock it off.

In fact, the first confirmed HIV/AIDS victim in North America was "Robert R."  who died at 16 in May of 1969 after having experienced symptoms for three years.

A new book, The Origins of AIDS, by infectious disease specialist Dr. Jacques Pépin, of the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, thinks it happened via a plasma center and gay sex tourism, both in Haiti.

Donald G. McNeil of the New York Times summarized as follows:

     ...Now Dr. Pépin’s calculations get slightly more speculative.

     Group M of H.I.V.-1 is, in turn, broken into subgroups A through K.

     Haiti’s epidemic, like that of North America and Western Europe, is nearly all subgroup B. But subgroup B is so rare in central Africa that it causes less than 1 percent of cases.

     That suggests AIDS crossed the Atlantic in just one Haitian. Molecular clock dating indicates it reached Haiti roughly in 1966.

     Once again, Dr. Pépin argues that rapid expansion through sex alone is mathematically impossible and that there must have been an amplifier. He believes the culprit was a Port-au-Prince plasma center called Hemo-Caribbean that operated only from 1971 to 1972 and was known to have low hygiene standards.

     Plasma centers take blood, spin it and return the red cells. If new tubing isn’t used for each patient, infections spread. Sloppy plasma operations caused later H.I.V. outbreaks in Mexico, Spain and India and, most famously, in rural China, where 250,000 sellers were infected.

     Hemo-Caribbean’s co-owner was Luckner Cambronne, leader of the feared Tontons Macoutes secret police. Nicknamed the “Vampire of the Caribbean,” Mr. Cambronne, who died in 2006, bled 6,000 sellers who were paid as little as $3 a day and exported 1,600 gallons of plasma to the United States each month, according to an article in The New York Times.

     Haiti was also a prime destination for gay American sex tourists; the Spartacus travel guides described how much young men expected to be paid. By the early 1980s, subgroup B was killing both American homosexuals and hemophiliacs, suggesting it arrived via both routes. The modern history of AIDS had begun.

Dave Wingert, popular gay Omaha drive-time DJ, fired by Clear Channel after caller says "bullshit" on air

Dave Wingert, facebook photo

UPDATE: Were Dave Wingert and Tom Becka axed by Mitt Romney's cutthroat private equity firm? 

Wingert, KGOR 99.9 FM's ex-morning radio personality, is from Brooklyn / Bensonhurst and is in the Nebraska Radio Personalities Hall of Fame, having worked, before leaving Omaha in 1989, at WOW, KQKQ, KEFM, KGOR and KEDS. He has also broadcast from WHO in Des Moines and KLSY in Seattle, where he hosted a nationally-syndicated show, "Dave 'Till Dawn," on 98 stations.

Wingert's former station, KGOR, is part of the right-wing Clear Channel behemoth. His show was the second most popular FM drive-time radio program in the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area.

Today's Omaha World-Herald claims Wingert "said an expletive on the air and was suspended, then subsequently fired."

Blogger Leo Adam Biga tells a different story:

Apparently the dust-up had to do with an FCC violation – a listener calling-in unloosed a forbidden expletive on air that seems pretty tame to me and my ears, “bullshit,” and Wingy let it through and tried covering his ass just as you or I might do — and after serving a suspension he got canned for his trouble... He tells me he was fired without severance, only a goodby and good luck. He wants to stay put and continue doing his radio gigging in Omaha. He and his agent are busily testing the waters. I hope he gets his wish and perhaps a measure of revenge against the station that dismissed him by killing them in the ratings.

In 2010, Biga profiled Wingert for The Reader, an Omaha weekly alternative newspaper.

He’s courageous enough to be an openly gay announcer in Omaha. Not in a flaming, militant way but with a breezy, emotive patter and Jewish motherly demeanor. By addressing, on-air, overtly heterosexual newsman Rich Dennison with, “Oh, honey!,” or female callers with, “Dahling.” He doesn’t use the show as a coming out platform but rather as context for being true to who he is.

     “I have come out — if you listen for it. But it comes out in conversation. I haven’t made it a banner,” he said.

Below: 2009 interview with Wingert:



Wingert's radio show was considerably tamer than that of Todd 'N Tyler, the titillation jocks over at Z-92, who, while observing the letter of FCC regulations, are nevertheless obsessively and spectacularly vulgar (and frequently funnier) than Wingert, who annoys not by raunch but by relentless salesmanship, even between commercials.

Here's a sample of Todd 'N Tyler's Z-92 Gay Football Picks from four days ago (partial transcript below is of the above-linked podcast starting at 2:24):

Apparently Mike was in the process of holding up a roof truss and couldn't come to the phone right now... Do you have his pick? I do have his pick...

Intro: He learned about football by spending a lot of time in the back yard, if you know what I mean. With two wins and two losses, and one push, it's Wichita's fruitiest framer... Here's Mike!

Let's clarify this: He is a framer in Wichita and he could probably kick all our asses and Todd's giving him all this gay crap there, that's funny... Mike is going to go with Steph as well and pick the Patriots.

Alright!

Well he likes Tom Brady, obviously.

Can you blame him?

Next up, with a record of three wins and two losses, our most versatile prognosticator, the dual threat, the switch hitter, here's Ricky!

Ricky likes it from both sides.

Yeah he does.

Do you have a woman or a guy this week? Or both?

Caller: Sorry?

Who are you with this week?

Caller: Uh, both.

Busy week! Guy gets laid a lot... Who do you like buddy?

Caller: I'm gonna go with the Bears.

Of course you are!

Caller: The gummy bears [reference to current high school fad of sucking on vodka-soaked gummy bears during class]...

They don't have a very good offensive line... Ricky likes to hear that because he's going to see Jay Cutler on his back a lot...

That'll wrap up this week's installment of the LGB NFL picks. Brought to you by the Value Voters Summit of 2011, the Hank Williams Jr. fan club and Glenn Beck TV and a special message to my good friend, Jay Medicine Hat: What happened in Yankton will stay in Yankton. Please call me. I'm announcer boy. See you queens at the Liberace movie and talk to you next week. Moi!

Vaguely cute Spock actor Zachary Quinto comes out; ABC news anchor thinks he has a shot at dating him

(Via Towleroad)
Oh, OK. We get it. Dan was just engaging in a little harmless flirtation, using a huge American television network with hundreds of affiliates as his bullhorn. We need to lighten up. Blah, blah, blah.

Larry Ellison at Steve Jobs' memorial

The New York Times reported on Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's remarks last Sunday night at Stanford University's invitation-only memorial in that campus' Memorial Church for the late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs.

[The] longtime friend of Mr. Jobs, said their relationship consisted of walks in the foothills of Silicon Valley near their homes, the person at the service said. Mr. Ellison also offered a moment of levity when describing his Hawaiian vacations with Mr. Jobs. He said the trips always included four people: Mr. Jobs, his wife, Lauren Powell Jobs, Mr. Ellison and whichever woman Mr. Ellison — who has been married and divorced several times — was dating at the time.

In addition to Jobs' wife and children, Jonathan Ive, Apple’s senior vice president for industrial design, attended, as well as former Apple executives Jonathan Rubinstein, Avie Tevanian, Tony Faddell and Andy Hertzfeld. Tim Cook, Scott Forstall and Bud Tribble were among the current Apple executives present. Venture capitalists John Doerr and Marc Andreessen, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Salesforce.com’s chief executive, Marc Benioff also were among the several hundred invited guests.

Also in attendance were Bill Clinton, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Michael Del, Bono, Joan Baez, Jobs' Pixar colleague John Lasseter and Stephen Fry, who said via twitter: "I don’t know that there was ever a more beautiful memorial service. Everyone who spoke did so with such passion and love and simplicity.”

1991: Herman Cain sings "Imagine There's No Pizza" at Omaha Press Club

Andrew Sullivan via towleroad

We'd mock Herman Cain, the egotistical pawn of the Koch Bros., who has never held office and wants to start at the top, for trivializing one of John Lennon's best songs, but instead AKSARBENT will just provide some links to Cain's know-nothing foreign policy, his shameless toadying to his shifty billionaire benefactors, his idiotic "999" voodoo economics plan, his irrational assertion that being gay is a choice, and his ridiculous demand to see scientific evidence that it isn't a choice when he could simply just talk to some of his gay friends. Oh wait... 

Craig Ferguson asks Liza Minelli: Are you a C.I.A. operative? Later, Happy Ending's Adam Pally mocks gay fans

Wow, this is a question [at 6:55 here] that never would have occurred to AKSARBENT. Faked ditzyness would be a great cover! Suspiciously, we noticed that Ms. Minelli evaded the question, responding coyly, "Wouldn't that be fabulous?"
     Hmm, if the OSS recruited Julia Child, why couldn't its successor enlist Liza?
     Later, Minelli sang a few stanzas from her new CD, Confessions. Sample:

I always go to bed at ten.
Now isn't that a bore?
I always go to bed at ten.
Then I go home at four.

Ferguson's next guest on the same show (last Friday) was Adam Pally, the actor who plays gay character Max on ABC's Happy Endings.

[At 8:05 here] Pally: This has gotta be like, one of the gayest shows you've ever had, to have me and Liza Minelli
Ferguson:  Not even close. Hey Geoff...
Geoff: Trust me, it gets a lot gayer.
Ferguson: This is like the LEAST gayest show we're ever done...

Pally: [On the difference between Friends and Happy Endings] ...There's also an openly gay character on our show that I play... and all the characters on Friends were in the closet still.
Ferguson: Do you get a lot of gay men hitting on you because they think you're gay because your character is gay or are you in fact gay?
Pally:  Uh, I am not in fact gay but I do get a lot of gay men, uh, approaching me and they always think they are the character that I play, like, I play a character who's like the opposite of what you would think would be on television. I'm not very effeminate, I'm a slob, I'm into sports, and so a lot of fans that watch the show, they come up to me and they're like [affecting effeminate speech], "I am so Max... I'm a slob, I love sports, I'm the antithesis of what you would think a gay man would be." And I'm like, "Okay, Darrin."

Occupy Omaha World-Herald coverage: What would the Tea Party say?

Rick Ruggles, the reporter assigned by the World-Herald to cover Saturday's Occupy Omaha festivities, chose to frame his article with reactions from the 20 or so Tea Party crashers who smirked from the sidelines at the 900-1000 Occupy Omaha participants.
     Ruggles completely ignored the fact that, unlike the spontaneously-combusted Occupy Wall Street movement, the Tea Party movement was mostly organized by "Astro Turf" front groups working with or under Richard Armey and David Koch and fueled by Fox News cheerleading.
     The World-Herald's coverage included a three-column photograph of an obese Tea Partier beside a snarky and irrelevant sign reading: "Capitalism works if you do!!!"
     The World-Herald either deliberately or incompetently missed the righteous indignation which caused 1,000 people in Omaha to hit the bricks.
     Compare that to KOLN-KGIN's intelligent, to-the-point, no-spin coverage of Occupy Lincoln:

Occupy Omaha march and rally, 10-15-11

Because AKSARBENT's lazy amateur videographer customarily doesn't get out of bed before noon, he missed the City/County Building and Federal Reserve parts of yesterday's Occupy Omaha Rally even though he arose "early."

However, by ignoring posted speed limits, he did manage to catch up with the marchers at Cubby's in the Old Market and followed them to Eugene Leahy Mall  With editing, he managed to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear of footage he got and to make the proceedings seem a bit more lively than they actually were. (OPD was said to have estimated the crowd at 900-1000 at its peak, which would have surprised AKSARBENT.)

Back at the ranch, AKSARBENT caught its camcorder jockey (after a few drinks) going frame-by-frame through the video, cherry-picking misleading pictures of cute boys seemingly being cruised by other dudes. Even when feeling no pain, he is astonishingly good at finding pictures-that-lie and then sealing the deal with misleading cropping.

(Dishonest he may be, but he certainly knows AKSARBENT's audience, we'll give him that much.)

Interestingly, his modus operandi in respect of video production seems to turn the write-when-drunk, edit-when-sober dictum on its head.

Girls on Drums: Pazz and Jop

"Pazz & Jop" refers to a critics' poll run by The Village Voice newspaper. To AKSARBENT's knowledge, neither of the following performances were ever nominated by any music critic for anything, though our money would be on Stella Stevens in the below clip from the movie version of The Courtship of Eddie's Father. From wikipedia:

The poll was jokingly given the spoonerism name "Pazz & Jop" rather than the more obvious "Jazz & Pop" because, inevitably, some detractor will claim that a nominated work is ineligible or undeserving on the grounds that it is not "really" jazz or pop. Since there are no formal definitions for the made-up terms "pazz" and "jop", voters will concentrate on the actual merits of a work rather than arguing over whether it fits into this or that genre.

Occupy Omaha Saturday schedule

via beautifulstruggleproductions.tumblr.com

For complete details, visit Occupy Omaha's facebook page here.

Occupy Omaha Event Schedule for Saturday, October 15, 2011:

CITY HALL: 1819 Farnam St.
9:00AM-10:00AM Gather at City Hall

• 9:15 Public Announcement of crowd rules during demonstrations as well as route for the march to the Old Market
• 9:50 Head to Federal Reserve Bank

FEDERAL RESERVE BANK BRANCH: 2201 Farnam St
10:00am-11:00am

• Demonstrate at Federal Reserve
• 11am March to the Old Market

MARCH TO OLD MARKET/GENE LEAHY MALL

• Event will conclude on the west end of the Gene Leahy Mall on 14th and Farnam St
• Will announce plans for next General Assembly Meeting to be held Sunday 3pm October 16th at Memorial Park (South side near Dodge St.)

Related:  How trustworthy is the trust department of Nebraska's biggest bank? The 2004 "American Jobs Creation Act" hoax that Rep. Lee Terry (Neb.) and Rep. Steve King (Iowa) helped enact, which subsequently killed American jobs.

Keystone XL tar sands pipeline: Bill McKibben tells Keith Olbermann that we need to leave Canadian carbon in the ground or it's game over

Bill McKibben, a leading environmentalist, went on Keith Olbermann's program and said it's "gut check time" for President Obama, who can decide this issue on his own.