Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Merkel, Sarkozy infuriate Berlusconi — and Italians

Although Berlusconi's approval ratings are at record lows, the way that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy smirked knowingly at each other regarding Italy's Prime Minister at Sunday's Euro Crisis talks in Brussels piqued even Italians who loath their Prime Minister. Berlusconi had it coming. Click on the cc icon for subtitles to the clip below.

Iowa college reporter presses Ron Paul about gay rights

Photo: Kelsey Kremer/Iowa State Daily
Barry Snell of Iowa State Daily got Ron Paul all to himself for a half-hour on the ride to the airport, so he asked Paul (among other things) about gay rights.
Since Iowa State has a thriving homosexual community, I asked how gays fit into Paul's philosophy of freedom. The congressman cringed at the question and shook his head in frustration.

"You know I just, I don't think of people in little groups like that. I don't think of people as ‘gay' here and ‘black people' there, or ‘women' over here...Everybody is an individual person and everybody has the same rights as anyone else. The government has no business in your private life, you know, so if one person is allowed to do something so should everyone else. The whole gay marriage issue is a private affair and the federal government has no say."

With the recent death of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," I suggested to Congressman Paul that the issue isn't likely to go away any time soon, and asked how he would address gays in the military as president.

"Well, like I said, everybody has the same rights as everybody else, so homosexuals in the military isn't a problem. It's only if they're doing things they shouldn't be, if they're disruptive. But there's ... men and women getting into trouble with each other too. And there's a lot more heterosexuals in the military, so logically they're causing more trouble than gays. So yes, you just have the same rules for everybody and treat them all the same." Paul voted for the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Obama Justice Dept. proposes FOIA revision to let Feds lie about existence of government documents

Pro Publica reports that under current Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) practice, the government may withhold information and issue what’s known as a Glomar denial that says it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records.
The new proposal – part of a lengthy rule revision by the Department of Justice – would direct government agencies to “respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist."
"We don’t believe the statute allows the government to lie to FOIA requesters,” said Mike German, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the provision.

The ACLU, along with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and OpenTheGovernment.org said the move would “dramatically undermine government integrity by allowing a law designed to provide public access to government to be twisted.

The Glomar denial arose in the mid-1970s when a Los Angeles Times reporter requested information about the CIA’s Glomar Explorer, built to recover a sunken Soviet submarine and the CIA’s attempt to suppress stories about it.

NE Gov. Heineman calls special legislative pipeline session; TransCanada's most shameless puppets

TransCanada Senator Mike Flood of North Platte
The Lincoln Journal Star reports on an increasingly nervous TransCanada here. The Los Angeles Times' story is here. The Omaha-World Herald's article is here. Reactions to the governor's call (from Nebraska Radio Network) are here. Oil&Gas Journal here.

In an incisive "Know The Foe" blog post, Kyle Michaelis at the New Nebraska Network lists TransCanada's most dangerous minions in the Nebraska legislature and explains why, five days after TransCanada pet Mike Flood tried to convince everyone that pipeline legislation wouldn't stand up to legal challenges and that there was therefore no reason for a special session, Gov. Heineman called one anyway and left him holding the bag.

BTW, here's Jane Kleeb's statement via BoldNebraska:
At an afternoon press conference today, Governor Heineman announced tht he is calling the Nebraska legislature into a special session to debate oil pipeline regulations. This reversal from the Governor is welcome news to citizens and groups fighting the pipeline.

Jane Kleeb, the Executive Director of Bold Nebraska, said, "I will take the Governor at his word that he is calling a special session to deal with the route of the pipeline. Bold Nebraska will continue to stand with landowners like Randy and citizens from across our state to ensure regulations get passed in this special session that have real meaning. Now that Governor Heineman has called a special session, we look forward to seeing his bill to protect our land and water that specifically gets the pipeline out of the Sandhills and out of the heart of the Ogallala Aquifer."

Kleeb continued, "Nebraska has the authority to route oil pipelines. We have the authority to require bond for road repairs. We have the authority to make sure landowners are not liable for oil spills. The list is long on what our state can do to ensure our land and water are safe. Because right now, in our state, my hair dresser has more regulations to follow than oil pipelines."

What's good for General Motors is good for... China?



First, myth-busting: The famous quote referenced in the headline wasn't exactly true, according to Wikipedia:

In 1953, during the confirmation hearings for President Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense nominee, GM’s CEO Charles “Engine Charlie” Wilson, he was asked if,
...as secretary of defense he could make a decision adverse to the interests of General Motors. Wilson answered affirmatively but added that he could not conceive of such a situation “because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa.”
Despite the fact that GM only sells Chevys, Buicks and Cadillacs in China, it sells more vehicles in that country than here. Five million more, every year. In fact, with 13% of the market, GM is the #1 car maker in communism's Middle Kingdom.

The average Buick buyer in China is 30. In the US, s/he is 60.

Your Man Reminder:
Beefcake breast exam app baits, then switches



Busted by the no-nonsense scrutiny of of NPR!
The app's YouTube promotion features gorgeous men bouncing around in their underwear. It's implied they'll be on the app itself, donating their backsides to a noble cause.
     But no! The app features six completely different models, and even worse, they've all got their clothes on. One guy is shirtless in one photo, but otherwise, there are jeans and t-shirts everywhere. For women seduced by the commercial, this could seem like deception.

Solitary confinement for the E*Trade baby

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The evidence Rick Perry can't bury: The Beyler Report debunking Cameron Todd Willingham's 'arson'

Above Frontline's examination of the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, approved by
then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry, despite compelling evidence that neither he, nor anyone else,
set the fatal fire of which he was accused.
During a Gov. Rick Perry reelection campaign in the 90s, The Texas Forensic Science Commission, acting on a reexamination by the foremost arson scientist in America, Gerald Hurst, produced the so-called Beyler report, which said that the arson findings that led to the conviction and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham were based on "folklore."

Logo by Patricia Turner for the Texas Moratorium Network
Candidate Perry found this to be an inconvenient truth, so, just before the Beyler report was to be presented, he fired the commission's Chairman, Sam Bassett. In all Perry fired three members of the commission, then installed a political ally, prosecutor John Bradley as the new chairman.

John Lentini, Arson Expert:
The Beyler report is point for point a confirmation of the original Hurst report that all 20 of the indicators were wrong. The State of Texas executed a man for a crime that they couldn't prove was really a crime and the evidence said "This is an accidental fire."  And if it was an accidental fire, it doesn't matter how many posters of Iron Maiden Cameron Rodd Willingham had on his wall or Led Zepplin or whether he liked to play darts or drink beer or whether he smacked his wife around. It only matters that the fire was not really a set fire.
Sam Bassett, former chairman, Texas Forensic Science Commission, fired by Gov. Rick Perry:
"If we make a mistake, are we going to learn from it or are we going to sweep it under the rug and act like nothing happened?"

Michele Bachmann only litigated two cases in the four years she worked as IRS tax attorney

NPR reports that Bachmann claimed, at a GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire earlier this month, that she's spent her "whole life in the private sector."

Then NPR reminded its audience that the truth is for nearly her entire professional life, Michele Bachmann has been on the public payroll.

In Columbia, S.C., in August, Bachmann claimed that she "went to work in that system because the first rule of war is know your enemy. So I went to the inside to learn how they work, because I want to defeat them."

But Minnesota tax attorney Genelle Forsberg, who worked with her at the St. Paul IRS legal office for more than four years, says she doesn't think Bachmann worked at the IRS to infiltrate it. "I think she came there for a job."
"She had indicated to some of us that she really wasn't interested in taxes — this was a job that she got, and I think, you know, she was learning as she went," says Forsberg. "But I didn't see any indication that she was ambitious in making tax law her career."
    ... Forsberg says that while she herself generally took about half a dozen cases to tax court each year, records indicate that Bachmann litigated only two court cases the entire time she worked for the IRS.
     "She and myself, we both had two maternity leaves during that period of time that she was there, so you obviously wouldn't have a case during that period of time. But I would say, on average, most people would have more cases for litigation than that," she says.

Cindy Golding for Iowa Senate mailer organization caught sending faked mailers in New Hampshire

The organization, the National Organization for Marriage, an anti-gay group, has been sending thousands of mailers supporting Cindy Golding, who has pledged to advance a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships in Iowa. (But she won't tell you about that on her web site.)
Update: For a Republican, AKSARBENT likes Cindy Golding, who is definitely not a yes-woman to her party's Neanderthal establishment. But in September, she told iowapolitics.com,
...that Iowans deserve to have a vote on the issue, but declined to shed light on her personal beliefs about same-sex marriage.
     "I have friends who are in gay relationships, and friends who abhor gay relationships,” Golding said, proposing that Iowans should make their own “cultural” decisions.
AKSARBENT takes that as a yes to supporting the advancement of the constitutional amendment that would make all Iowa gay couples strangers to the law; therefore we would encourage every gay Iowan to vote for Cindy Golding's opponent, Liz Mathis, and to work hard for Golding's defeat.

NOM, which is teaming up to elect Golding with Bob Vander Plaats, head of the Iowa Family Leader, has lost campaign disclosure court fights to hide the identities of its supporters in Rhode Island, Maine, Washington State. and now says it will defy the law in Minnesota, too.

Fake NOM photo showing nonexistant crowd...
Recently, NOM was caught sending fake anti-gay mailers in New Hampshire. The mailers show thousands of supporters at a NOM rally — but the "supporters" were PhotoShopped from an Obama rally in Ohio.

...digitally stolen from an Obama rally in Ohio
NOM, an astroturf organization organized by Mormon church officials and now heavily funded by Catholic organizations like the Knights of Columbus, draws pathetically small groups of people to its bus tour whistle stops, like the one pictured below last summer.

Even when NOM (you can see its interlocking rings logo painted on the bus) joins with two other organizations, as it did on this Iowa tour, it still can't attract more than a handful of followers — in the real, non-PhotoShopped world.



Here is Maggie Gallagher, former head of NOM, being ridiculed for her mean-spiritedness.

Two and a half men fakes the rainbow — again

Walden and Alan pretend to be gay in order to lure a girl couple back to the beach house. The first time Two and a half Men mined faking fey was with Charlie Sheen (on youtube here.) Compare and contrast with last night's episode if you like. Sorry for the ads in the below clips. Spoiler: Jon Cryer gets fisted three times.



Genius! Someone starts a website devoted to cute boys with cats!

Via Queerty. The site is here.
How many facets of smart is this! All the webmaster/mistress has to do is let the pictures roll in and select them. It's sort of like being freakin' Hugh Hefner! And if some girl gets mad because her squeeze didn't make the cut, she can be told it was because the cat, not her boyfriend, was a dog. Genius, AKSARBENT tells you! Don't even ask us how jealous we are of this. This site makes us wonder why anyone would bother to get an MBA. Purina, Friskies and Science Diet are probably in a bidding war over Google ads to this site even as we write this. Now please excuse us while we retreat to the closet, weep and pummel ourselves with wire hangers in a frenzied delirium of envy, self-loathing and regret. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

Steven Russell, immortalized in 'I love you Phillip Morris,' interviewed in Texas Prison via USPS

Steven Russell (top) and Phillip Morris
(Photo: George Hixson)

Laurence Watts, of Britain's Pink News, interviewed Steven Russell, now serving a 144-year sentence in Texas, by exchanging letters. Russell, portrayed by Jim Carey in I love you, Phillip Morris, first escaped to take care of his then boyfriend, Jim Kemple, who had AIDS, lived for 26 more months and died weeks after Russell was tracked down in Philadelphia and sent back to prison. After Russell was paroled, he got a job as the CFO of a health management organization from which he stole $800k in four months. He said he did so as revenge for how HMOs treated Kemple and because he watched his company "badger network physicians to get patients out of the hospital as soon as possible because otherwise it would affect their bonus."

Watts asked Russell about sex in prison:
I mention Britain’s Kray twins, both of who spent more than 25 years in prison for racketeering. While Ronnie Kray was openly bisexual before his imprisonment, his twin Reggie reportedly started having relationships with men only after many years in prison. Can prison change someone’s sexuality?

“No,” answers Russell. “I happen to believe that if a man has sex with another man in prison then he is either gay or bisexual. Coming to prison did nothing to change his sexual proclivity.”

Occupy Wall St.: Sean Lennon and Rufus Wainwright serenade crowd with 'Material Girl'


(Via Dallas Voice)

Watch: Michigan House Rep. Thomas McMillin, sponsor of 2 antigay bills, HB5040 and HB 5039, stonewalls questions about his ALEC-Koch Bros. connections

From AmericaBlog comes news of two toxic pieces of legislation pending in Michigan.

House Bill No. 5040, (introduced by Reps. Haveman, Rogers, Kowall, Daley, Pscholka, Heise,Shirkey, Hooker, Kurtz, Bumstead, Jenkins, Shaughnessy, Poleski, O'Brien, Knollenberg, MacMaster, Gilbert, Genetski, Franz, McMillin, Walsh, MacGregor, Huuki, Rendon, Lyons, Price, Johnson, Damrow, Foster, Olumba, Roy Schmidt, Yonker, Opsommer and Olson) would prohibit public and private colleges from disciplining “a student in a counseling, social work, or psychology program because the student refuses to counsel or serve a client as to goals that conflict with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of the student.”

(Here in Nebraska, social workers are fighting to insist that the Department of Health and Human Services require counselors who refuse to help gay clients at least refer them to professionals who will. The Nebraska Catholic Conference is resisting.)

House Bill No. 5039, introduced by homophobe extraordinaire Rep. Thomas McMillin (R-Rochester), would prohibit state agencies and units of local government – such as cities, townships, counties, school districts, and public and community colleges – from adopting any ordinance or policy that protects gay citizens, as they aren't included in Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act of 1976.

"Is this like McCarthyism?" AKSARBENT found this video showing McMillin repeatedly refusing to tell constituents whether he belongs to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate lobbying effort to craft "model" legislation to be enacted on the state and federal level. ALEC gets money from the Koch Brothers, of course.

Popular gay Scot barkeeper Stuart Walker, 28, beaten, set afire



His friends have created a memorial facebook page here.

Update: homophobes mocking Walker's death on twitter.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Sean Hayes tells Ellen how he used to scare
trick-or-treaters

Red state listeners want 'Wingy,' their gay morning DJ, back on the air

Dave Wingert (facebook photo)
AKSARBENT's post about Clear Channel station KGOR's abrupt dismissal of the host of Omaha's second-most popular AM drive-time DJ has generated a LOT of hits, and now there are at least two petitions to get him back, one (in English) here and one (for Spanish speakers) here.

Matt Baume: Marriage News Watch, 10/24/11


"Hello from our new headquarters! It's been a crazy week, with secret anti-gay activists unmasked and then re-masked in Washington state. A Maryland football player is our new best friend, DOMA continues to crumble but not before costing taxpayers $520 per hour. And why Australia's Prime Minister resisting a marriage equality measure that would increase public support for her party?"

Nebraska: Social Workers want referrals for gay patients from counselors who refuse to treat them

Jim Cunningham
Canadian Business reports via AP that Jim Cunningham, executive director of the Nebraska Catholic Conference, has said psychologists, therapists and other licensed counselors should be able to refuse to treat clients because of religious or moral convictions and not have to refer them to another therapist.

In Lincoln on Monday a coalition of social workers, psychologists and family therapists filed a petition insisting that the Department of Health and Human Services advance rules requiring certain mental health professionals to offer referrals to gay patients if they refuse to treat them because of religious beliefs.

Terry Werner, who heads the Nebraska chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, said such referrals are already required in the code of ethics that governs each profession in the group. But he said the proposed regulations have sat untouched by the Division of Public Health since mid-2010.

"We believe that a therapist has the right to refuse service based upon religious or moral convictions," Werner said. "However, they absolutely must provide a thorough and comprehensive referral. Anything less than that, in our minds, is in violation of our code of ethics and is not in the best interest of the client."

Good luck getting Nebraska's homophobic governor, who has a history of arrogantly rebuffing attempts at diversity and inclusion in the Nebraska HHS, to sign off on that. His 2009 appointee as head of Nebraska Dept. of HHS, Kerry Winterer, is an attorney, not a social worker, who, after practicing law and working in the banking and software industries, co-founded The Benefit Group, Inc., which administers health care and other employee benefit plans for small employers. In 2007 he left The Benefit Group and started his own consulting and legal practice.

Bill Maher on Mitt Romney and Mormon religion

"Here's the difference between Mitt Romney and a member of a cult: A mem­ber of a cult actually believes something... Jim Jones: full of hate. Mitt Romney: full of shit."
More Maher on Mormonism:

'My name is Pamela McCreary and I'm an Ex-Mormon.'



From 1978:

Colin Farrell gives Robert Downey Jr. Hero Award at 2011 Sceam awards; text of man crush ode he recited


(MMAOO via towleroad)

Colin Farrell: When I think of a hero, I think of one name. He’s brave, he’s bold, he’s bad, and I find him kind of attractive. In fact I wrote a poem about him, it’s a very emotional poem:
If I like boys in that way,
I'd celebrate him every day.
Alas I don't, it's plain to see.
And yet, he's still my cup of tea.
He's got big balls, the bravest kind,
Within that iron suit you'll find.
A man quite born to save the day
or solve the crime the thoughtful way.
A wicked wit, the keenest mind.
And if you're trapped you might just find
He'll blast the door or pick the lock;
And prove himself no shit Sherlock.

Australia hunts protected, endangered Great White Sharks after Texan George Thomas Wainwright becomes 3rd recent victim near Perth

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

ABC (the US TV network, not the Australian one) reports that Wainwright was an engineer who had had been part of the team that capped the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Chris Meyers, mayor of Medford, NJ: Another Republican politician caught with another hustler


Another week, another Republican anti-gay politico caught with another rentboy and another denial involving another PhotoShop excuse, blah blah blah. The story is here.

This is stuff is so tired, so trite, so jejeune, so predictable that it cries out for automation, and, as it turns out, there is an app for that. Two in fact. Name your poison: iPhone or Android.

Each is called iScandal and each alerts you every time an antigay GOP politician gets caught with his pants on the down low. Really. 99 cents.

We were here, acclaimed early San Francisco AIDS retrospective, now showing in Lincoln at Mary Riepma Ross Theater

David Weissman's widely-praised retrospective of the beginning of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco opened Friday in Lincoln and will run through 10/27 at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center in Lincoln. Stephen Holden of the New York Times said:
“Of all the cinematic explorations of the AIDS crisis, not one is more heartbreaking and inspiring than WE WERE HERE…  The humility, wisdom and cumulative sorrow expressed lend the film a glow of spirituality and infuse it with grace.”


Weissman, interviewed by Queerty, recalled: “One of the recollections that came up that I’d completely forgotten about, was you would go to the symphony or the Castro Theater or the opera and all during the performances you would hear around the room ‘beep beep, beep beep.’ People would have pill timers, because people were taking 20-30 pills a day that had to be taken at regular intervals. It just became so much a part of the audio track of regular life: 30, 40, 50 people in a room with their pill timers going off. I had completely forgotten that but you would just hear it all the time.

Mary Reipma Ross Media Arts Center
313 North 13th Street
Lincoln, NE 68508
(402) 472-9100

SHOWTIMES
10/21 Fri 5:00, 7:00, 9:00 p.m.
10/22 Sat 1:00, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00 p.m.
10/23 Sun 1:00, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00 p.m.
10/24 Mon 5:00, 7:00 p.m.
10/25 Tue 5:00, 7:00 p.m.
10/26 Wed 5:00 p.m.
10/27 Thu 5:00, 7:00, 9:00 p.m.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Westboro Baptist Church calls Charlie Daniels a fat pervert; AKSARBENT covers its mouth and laughs

The Iowa Independent is reporting that Shirley Phelps-Roper of the Westboro "God Hates Fags" Baptist Church just got the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to strike down a Nebraska law aimed at keeping demonstrators away from funeral or memorial services.
Today’s ruling reverses an earlier one by U.S. District Court Judge Laurie Smith Camp, who ruled the Nebraska law struck a compromise that both protected family and friends attending services and allowed free speech for the Westboro picketers.

The suit and appeal were filed by Shirley Phelps-Roper, a daughter of Fred Phelps. The Westboro organization has several military funeral service pickets planned as well as a protest against the Joplin High School football team (to remind them God sent the tornado) and “fat pervert” country music singer Charlie Daniels for his support of fallen soldiers and America.
8th Circuit Court of Appeals: Phelps-Roper v. Troutman, et al


Obviously, unlike AKSARBENT, WBC dislikes septuagenarian country star Charlie Daniels because he isn't homophobic enough but we liked what it said about his fans:
"We will warn his hell-bound fans (who consist primarily of violent, delusional bikers, veterans, and “Christians”) at his Missouri concert."
AKSARBENT wonders if Shirley Phelps-Roper wrote the the following description on one of WBC's web pages herself. (We omitted WBC's obligatory fag-bashing but you can see it here.)
[Charlie]Daniels lives in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, but around the pagan holidays he goes to his home in Durango, Colorado, to play in the snow. While in Colorado, in January 2010 God gave him a stroke. He recovered, and ran his big mouth about “the fingerprints of God” being all over that event, because there was a drug available and a life flight helicopter to address the medical crisis...
     Daniels worships the military. He has a "soapbox" page on the Charlie Daniels Band Website, where he holds forth his flag-worshiping religion... He jumps on politicians who don’t kiss enough military ass, like in 2004 criticizing Bush for statements about John Kerry’s service record. He criticized Obama for changing from "war on terror" to "overseas contingency operation."
How nice for Charlie Daniels that WBC exists. Otherwise the GEICO advertising mascot's own mass media queer baiting* might be in sharper relief...
_______________________________

*About gay-unfriendly GEICO: In its advertising, GEICO has recently featured Charlie Daniels, whose 1973 smash "Uneasy Rider" inundated top 10 airwaves with the epithet "fags" (skip to 3:17 here.) Daniels' sequel, "Uneasy Rider '88" featured lyrics like the following:
But this funny looking feller kept coming on
And he was making me mad with some of the things he said
Then he put his hand on my knee
I said if you don't get your paw off me
I'm gonna locate your nose around
The other side of your head
In April [of 2010], GEICO fired gay Voice-over actor Lance Baxter, aka D.C. Douglas, best known for his "save up to 15%" tags on GEICO commercials, after a voicemail he left for Dick Armey's  FreedomWorks was widely circulated in the right-wing blogosphere. (Rule #1: If your voice is on commercials heard by millions of people, use email, not voicemail, when you're pissed off.) Baxter was incensed by what he considered to be rampant racism and homophobia among Tea Party members. Baxter's home phone number was posted on Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website.

Romney defends Marco Rubio's fairy tale: his parents were exiled from Castro's Cuba during Batista's regime

On Friday, the Washington Post busted the heroic, up-from-communism saga that Florida Senator Marco Rubio has for years peddled publicly about his family.

In fact, they arrived in the U.S. more than two and a half years before Castro seized power in Cuba.

The senator has pushed back hard to diminish his falsehood insisting that the "essential facts" of his heritage (meaning, one supposes, those he didn't lie about) are "indisputable."
If The Washington Post wants to criticize me for getting a few dates wrong, I accept that...My understanding of my parents’ journey has always been based on what they told me about events that took place more than 50 years ago — more than a decade before I was born.

That is an outrageous allegation that is not only incorrect, but an insult to the sacrifices my parents made to provide a better life for their children
And exactly what allegation was "outrageous"? Senator Rubio would evidently like his constituents to think it was the date disparity. In fact, Rubio cleverly redefines the "allegation" in his own terms:
To suggest my family’s story is embellished for political gain is outrageous... My parents are from Cuba... They were exiled from the home country they tried to return to because they did not want to live under communism. That is an undisputed fact and to suggest otherwise is outrageous.
Oddly, Senator Rubio was able to confirm to the Washington Post, rather quickly (on Thursday, the day the Washington Post went to press with the revelation) that the newspaper was "correct" about when his parents really came to the U.S. — 1956, not 1959 — even though he continues to claim that his "understanding" for the last several decades was different.

The oily Florida senator has now quietly altered his web site:
Old Marco Rubio: "In 1971 Marco was born in Miami to Cuban-born parents who came to America following Fidel Castro's takeover."
New Marco Rubio: "Marco was born in Miami in 1971 to Cuban exiles who first arrived in the United States in 1956."
Following the dust-up, Mitt Romney, from New Hampshire, proclaimed that the Washington Post's investigation of Rubio's phony claim was was an attempt to "smear" Rubio.
"I think the world of Marco Rubio, support him entirely and think that the effort to try to smear him was unfortunate and bogus."
Two peas in a pod, AKSARBENT thinks.

One more thing:

Rubio may be nervous and defensive about his origins due to his widespread support from teabagging birthers whose ancestry standards might be too stringent for Rubio to pass. Politico notes:
Rubio has told the harrowing story of his parents’ plight numerous times throughout his political career, and his Senate website states that his parents “came to America following Fidel Castro’s takeover,” the Post noted.

Rubio’s parents petitioned for naturalization in 1975, four years after Rubio was born in Miami, according to the Post. Rubio critics have raised questions about whether he is constitutionally eligible to serve as vice president or president, a controversy reminiscent of the “birther” controversy surrounding President Barack Obama’s birthplace — which Obama tried to put to rest earlier this year by releasing a copy of his long-form birth certificate from Hawaii.

Occupy Omaha videos!

AKSARBENT's Occupy Omaha video, as of this writing, has the most views, but here are two which are:
  1. Better (click on the photo caption in this post) and
  2. Much better (video below, despite the inescapable presence of Ron Paul Kill The Fed drones.)
To see the best Zucotti Park Occupy Wall St. videos, go here. Fantastic!
Memo to AKSARBENT:  For your next video of a demonstration, why not get a non-misanthrope — you know, somebody pleasant and gregarious — to persuade articulate protesters to talk about why they're there!  Oh, and beg, borrow or steal a tripod, you lazy, vicissitudinous shaky fucks.
See? AKSARBENT sometimes even flagellates itself with snark, if there are no other targets to be had. We can't help it. We were born that way.

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