Lincoln Councilman will introduce ordinance protecting LGBT citizens in Nebraska's capitol

City Councilman Carl Eskridge, running for
reelection in District 4, is a UNL graduate
and 30-year resident of Lincoln, where,
with his wife Janet he has raised two
daughters, Hannah and Rachel

From Nancy Hick's story in the Lincoln Journal-Star:

     ...People in Lincoln who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered face significant barriers, said Tyler Richard, a member of the Outlink community center.

     ...Outlink members took their concerns to Eskridge after he was elected to the council in May 2011.

     Morgan Watters, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln student working in support of the ordinance, lost a job in Omaha when the owner found out the student attended an event supporting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.

     "There was no recourse, no protections," Watters said. "While that didn't happen in Lincoln, I know it can."

     Eskridge said he has the support of Mayor Chris Beutler and has enough support from the seven-member City Council to get the measure adopted.

     It will appear on the council's agenda April 30, with a public hearing May 7. The council likely would vote on it May 14, Eskridge said.

 A 2011 Human Rights Campaign-commissioned poll revealed that about 73 percent of Nebraskans disapproved of discrimination against people based on sexual orientation. The coalition Make Lincoln Fair is supporting the reform of Lincoln's equal protection ordinance.

Darren and Chuck Criss cover Dylan's "New Morning" for Amnesty International Chimes of Freedom album

Source

Harmony is nice, but we don't get why Darren and Chuck manifest their individuality by showing that landing on the same word and departing from it in unison is optional. Is this a new thing?
Odd.

Rachel Maddow on GOP gay rights split; Romney's newest lie: denying he said Arizona''s anti-Latino 'papers please' law was a model for US

Kansas' Secretary of State and Romney immigration adviser
Kris Kobach wrote Arizona's 'Papers Please' law, which
initially made walking down the street without immigration
documents a misdemeanor

...This is the nondiscrimina­tion policy for Liberty University's law school. Try to make sense of this: "In its employment practices, the  School of Law does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, but does discriminate on the basis of homosexual conduct."

How do they know? They're saying they won't fire you if you are gay but they will fire you if you act gay? What if you're straight and you act gay? What if you're not sure but you're just generally fabulous?

...How do you win Latino voters [Romney is at an unsustainable 14% among that group] when you adopt as your immigration advisor the guy who wrote the Arizona 'Papers, please' law which initially proposed that the police should be able to walk up to you on the street and demand to see your immigration papers, not if you were doing anything illegal, but if you just looked like you might conceivably be illegal based on something about how you looked.

MSNBC Rachel Maddow Show video here

Video: Magic Mike trailer released; movie about male strippers features rare appearance by a shirtless Matthew McConaughey

Having conquered acting in all its nuance and variety, thespian extraordinaire Channing Tatum now brings his compelling pre-acting resume to the screen via a script based on a story concept he thunk up all by hisself. This cerebral, high-toned film, notable in its rare revelation of a shirtless Matthew McConaughey, surely will challenge the conventional narrative of those movies which languidly wallow in the moral quicksand of sexual license, until the protagonist finds the right partner who helps him or her question...zzzzzzz.

Disney's Chimpanzee: an adorable monkey 'documentary' in which not a single chimp rips off anybody's face

The promotional verbiage from Disney says it all: "DisneyNature presents a documentary directed by Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield."
     But please don't get the idea that the "directors" of the documentary threw rocks at the animals to get them to move in interesting ways like in the bad old days of Disney nature films of the 50s. During this film, the moviemakers stayed 7 meters away from their subjects at all times and wore masks to keep them from catching human diseases like the propensitiy to anthropomorphize other species to make more money at the box office.
     We at AKSARBENT don't want to appear cynical, but we couldn't help noticing the observation on  National Public Radio's Fresh Aire that the director approached Disney with a script for a nature documentary before he started observing the animals:

Alastair Fothergill, who had previously worked together on the documentary film Earth, approached Disney with a 70-page script about a group of chimpanzees living in Western Africa.

     Anyway, in the role of Bambi, is "Oscar" (!) an orphaned, but adorable chimp stunningly photographed with the latest cameras. (The new digital cameras are a big deal in nature photography. They're smaller, lighter, don't require clumsy canisters of 35mm film, and have an incredibly wide dynamic range which can easily be expanded in post-production. This is invaluable when photographing the shadow detail of dense forests penetrated by blindingly bright shafts of light — a scenario that has always been a nightmare for cinematographers in the past.)

But we digress. Back to the plot, as recounted by Chicago Sun-Times film reviewer Nell Minow:

 "The jungle itself is a living, healthy thing that does not want to be eaten,” [Tim] Allen tells us.

      Nuts are hard to open and honey is guarded by bees. As the area is cut into by development, food becomes harder to find.
     The chimps are threatened by an invasion from a nearby group of hungry chimps with “a formidable leader named Scar.”
     The choice of names and framing of the story unhesitatingly directs our loyalties. Scar “steals” but Freddy and his tribe bravely forage for food.

Jurors in trial of Paris Anding for baseball bat murder of Marcellus Andrews go home after deliberating 3 hours; 5 questions send to judge

KWWL

UPDATE: ANDING CONVICTED OF LESSER CHARGE.
The jury got the case shortly before half past noon and has sent five questions to the judge dealing with malice aforethought, inferences about bringing a weapon, heat of passion acts, consideration of instructions and jury disagreement. Between three and four hours later the jurors went home for the day without reaching a verdict. Read more at the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier here and from KCRG  here.

Funeral held today for 14-year-old Kenneth James Weishuhn Jr., who hanged himself after relentless homophobic bullying at South O’Brien Community School in Pauline IA

Four sophomore boys at the school seem to have been the prime movers in Weishuhn's abuse. 20 threatening voicemail messages were found Weishuhn's cell phone by what appeared to be a disguised mail voice. One of Weishuhn's tormentors is rumoured to be the son of  a teacher.

Kyle Munson of the Des Moines Register has been reporting this story in news articles and in his blog at the Register.

Today, he added the following:

… During a school walkout on Tuesday afternoon at South O’Brien, a small group of local parents and townsfolk held aloft signs alongside several students in support of Weishuhn. They kept reiterating that it was a pro-Weishuhn walkout and not anti-school. But at least one male student heckled marchers with a shout of “S.O.S.!” out the window – as in “South O’Brien School.”

… One student told me that she might feel safer if video cameras were installed in the high school hallways. Later, the superintendent told me that his district took bids on cameras about two years ago — primarily to combat theft. (But the district hasn’t yet installed cameras.)

… More horrendous stories of bullying have been emerging. One mother at last night’s visitation for Weishuhn told me about how she had approached school administrators in a different Iowa district a few dozen times about a bully harassing her son. The son finally was assaulted and hospitalized, the bully received a day of in-school suspension, and then she and her kids switched districts.

Rachel Maddow admirably takes down the charlatans of gay 'reparative therapy,' but forgets the one woman most important in discrediting them

Though the always-insightful Maddow did a great job the other night of documenting the importance of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in the treatment of gay "pathology," (video below) she never mentioned the person MOST RESPONSIBLE for changing the attitude of the mental health establishment at the beginning of her narrative, in 1973: Dr. Evelyn Hooker, who single-handedly backed institutionalized homophobia into a corner by forcing the medical establishment, via a brilliant study, to either admit that its most cherished mental health tests were deficient or that gay people weren't.
     Below: an excerpt from the documentary about Dr. Hooker, "Changing Our Minds," made by Academy Award-winning director Richard Schmiechen (The Times of Harvey Milk) and narrated by actor Patrick Steward.



From Wikipedia:

Although, since 1954, Hooker had collected data about her homosexual friends, she felt this was of little value because of the lack of scientific rigor attached to the gathering of this data. She applied for a grant from the NIMH, which she received.
     She gathered two groups of men: one group would be exclusively homosexual, the other exclusively heterosexual. She contacted the Mattachine Society to find homosexual men. She had greater difficulty finding heterosexual men. She also had to use her home to conduct the interview to protect people's anonymity.
     Hooker used three different psychological tests for her study: the TAT, the Make-a-Picture-Story test (MAPS test), and the Rorschach inkblot test.
     After a year of work, Hooker presented a team of 3 expert evaluators with 60 unmarked psychological profiles. She decided to leave the interpretation of her results to other people so as to avoid her own prejudice.
     First, she contacted Bruno Klopfer, an expert on Rorschach tests to see if he would be able to identify the sexual orientation of people through their results at those tests. His ability to differentiate was no better than chance.
     Then Edwin Shneidman, creator of the MAPS test, also analyzed the 60 profiles. It took him six months and he too found that both groups were highly similar in their psychological make-up.
     The third expert was Dr Mortimer Mayer who was so certain he would be able to tell the two groups apart that he went through the process twice.
     The three evaluators agreed that in terms of adjustment, there were no differences between the members of each group.
     In 1956, Hooker presented the results of her research in a paper delivered to the American Psychological Association's convention in Chicago.
     Her studies contributed to a change in the attitudes of the psychological community towards homosexuality and to the American Psychiatric Association's decision to remove homosexuality from its handbook of disorders in 1973. This in turn helped change the attitude of society at large.

Maddow's laudable MSNBC piece:

Ted Nugent: at the NRA, a Braveheart poseur; at his army induction physical, a draft-evading stinkbomb

Update: Draft-dodging, deadbeat dad Ted Nugent will be coming to the Omaha, NE Hilton to campaign for State Senator Colby Coash on May 10th.

Nugent's recent proclamation at an NRA convention that "We are Braveheart" and his not-so-veiled threats on President Obama might lead one to believe that Nugent isn't afraid to shoot at things that shoot back.
     When he had that opportunity, however, he ran the other way, using one of the techniques Bruce Springsteen and others did to avoid the draft: not bathing for a very long time.
     Unlike Nugent, Springsteen has said repeatedly that he isn't proud of what he did.
     But except for a recanted confession to High Times magazine, and an interview in the Detroit Free Press, Nugent has avoided acknowledging his draft avoidance.
     From Wikipedia (footnote numbers deleted):

Source

In 2006, an interviewer from the British newspaper The Independent questioned Nugent about a 1977 interview in High Times magazine in which Nugent allegedly detailed elaborate steps taken to avoid the Vietnam draft. In the interview Nugent says, contrary to the story in High Times, that "I had a 1Y [student deferment]. I enrolled at Oakland Community College.". However, the Selective Service classification for student deferment is actually 2-S, and medical deferment is 1-Y. A copy of Nugent's Selective Service record shows that he had at separate times both a 1-Y medical deferment and 2-S student deferment.

More from Wikipedia about Nugent:

He has had two wives and has eight children, including three out of wedlock in two liaisons almost 30 years apart. In the late 1960s, prior to his first marriage, Nugent fathered a boy, Ted (Mann) and a girl, whom he gave up for adoption in infancy. This did not become public knowledge until 2010. The siblings were adopted separately and had no contact with one another. The son learned the identity of his birth father in 2010 through the daughter's quest to make contact with him and their birth parents. According to a news report, Nugent over the years had discussed the existence of these children with his other children.
     In 2005 Nugent was involved in a legal battle for not paying enough child support for a child he had out of wedlock in 1995. It was finally resolved when Nugent was ordered to pay $3,500 in child support.
     He was married to his first wife, Sandra Jezowski, from 1970 to 1979. They had three children, son Theodore Tobias "Toby" Nugent, and daughters Sasha and Starr Nugent. Sandra died in a car crash in 1982. His second marriage was to Shemane Deziel, whom he met while a guest on Detroit's WLLZ-FM, where she was a member of the news staff. They married on January 21, 1989. Together they have two children, son Rocco Winchester Nugent, and daughter Chantal Nugent.
    In 1978, Nugent began a relationship with seventeen-year-old Hawaii native Pele Massa. Due to the age difference they could not marry so Nugent joined Massa's parents in signing documents to make himself her legal guardian, an arrangement that Spin magazine ranked in October 2000 as #63 on their list of the "100 Sleaziest Moments in Rock."

Ann Romney: 'My career choice was to be a mother...We need to respect choices that women make.' Mitt Romney: 'Even if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work.'

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Below: the real Mitt Romney

Romney With Balls - watch more funny videos

Dick Clark dead at 82; a flashback to Michael Moore's attempt to interview astute businessman Clark about one of his desperate employees

Skip ahead to 5:33 in this excerpt from Bowling for Columbine.

6 Seattle congregations revolt against Archbishop call to sign referendum to kill WA marriage equality law

Seattle Archbishop
Peter Sartain

Igor Volsky reports in ThinkProgress that at least six Catholic parishes in Washington state have ignored the Seattle Archbishop’s call to gather signatures for a referendum repealing the state’s recently-enacted marriage equality law. They are: Our Lady of the Lake, St. James Cathedral, St. Joseph Church, St. Mary’s Church, St. Patrick Church and Christ Our Hope Catholic Church.
     In several parishes, pastors have said that gathering signatures against marriage equality would, in the words of the Rev. Michael Ryan of St. James Cathedral, “prove hurtful and seriously divisive in our community.”
     Rev. Tim Clark, of Our Lady of the Lake, received a standing ovation Sunday” when he announced that the parish would not be participating in the anti-equality effort:

Opinion polls have consistently shown that Catholics reject the Church’s opposition to marriage equality, with nearly three-quarters of Catholics favoring “either allowing gay and lesbian people to marry (43%) or allowing them to form civil unions (31%). Only 22% of Catholics say there should be no legal recognition of a gay couple’s relationship.”

Popular right-wing radio host, Tom Becka, hired by KKAR, AM 1290, for 2-hour PM show starting April 30

Tom Becka, fired by KFAB last fall following a cost-analysis by Mitt Romney's firm, Bain Capital, will be back on the air with an afternoon program on KKAR, home to other right-wing personalities such as Dennis Miller and Sean Hannity.

From NRG's press release:

According to reports published immediately after Becka’s exit in the Omaha-World Herald, listeners began a social media campaign demanding the talk show host’s return to the airwaves. “This was clearly an opportunity for NRG Media,” explained [Market manager Andy] Ruback. “Public opinion matters most and clearly the listeners in Omaha wanted him back on the airwaves and I am thrilled we are able to provide compelling, local programming for our listeners.”

     “I’m looking forward to working very hard for two great companies doing what I love to do. I’m having a blast building a new FM talker for Radio Fargo-Moorhead, and now NRG Media and The Mighty 1290 are giving me a chance to continue to have a strong presence in Omaha...,” said Becka.

     ...Station Program Director Neil Nelkin said Becka’s program will air on the Mighty 1290 during weekdays from 4pm-6pm immediately following the Sean Hannity Show. Don Imus will lead off weekday morning at 5am, followed by Laura Ingraham from 8a-11a, Dennis Miller in middays, and Sean Hannity from 2pm-4pm. Nelkin said the all-new “Tom Becka Show” will round out the weekday prime lineup. 

     Becka takes to the Mighty 1290 airwaves on April 30th.

NRG Media owns six other stations in addition to 1290 KKAR-AM including: KQKQ-FM, KOOO-FM, KOPW-FM, KOZN-AM, KOIL-AM and KMMQ-AM and has 45 radio stations throughout four states in the Midwest – Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Illinois.

Anchorage election scandal just got worse: broken seals on Diebold voting machines

Deputy Municipal Clerk Jacqueline Duke answers questions
at the April 13 Anchorage Assembly work session on April 3
election irregularities. Photo and story: The Mudflats.

Today, from Mel Green at Bent Alaska (see link below.):

Anchorage Deputy Municipal Clerk Jacqueline Duke has confirmed an election worker’s report that she instructed election workers not to worry about broken security seals on the Diebold AccuVote voting machines used in the April 3 Anchorage election, according to a story published this morning on The Brad Blog.
     Duke’s instruction directly contradicts instructions in the election handbook, and creates additional questions about the integrity of the election process.
     The Brad Blog is a national blog with a focus on election integrity. Its publisher and executive editor, Brad Friedman, is an investigative journalist/blogger, political commentator, broadcaster, author, and Commonweal Institute Fellow. Friedman’s story this morning followed up on a story published on the Alaska blog The Mudflats, which, like Bent Alaska, has been closely scrutinizing the April 3 election irregularities.

Read much more of Mel Green's story here at Bent Alaska.

BP Oil Spill: seafood deformaties alarm scientists

(Via Towleroad)

Paris Anding's crack legal team has him take the stand in Marcellus Andrews murder trial: 'I didn't think I was going to hit him dead on his head'

Paris Anding shows how he hit Marcellus Andrews during his
murder trial Tuesday, April 17, 2012, in Waterloo, IA
(MATTHEW PUTNEY / Courier Photo Editor)

Prosecutor Williams pointed out that Anding omitted the fact that he hit Marcellus Andrews with a bat during his first interview with police but easily volunteered that Jeremy Lowe had kicked Andrews when Andrews fell.

Dr. Marcus Nashelsky, a forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, explained that he found a fatal injury to the back of Andrews’ head.

...Nashelsky said he discovered a 3-inch-wide oval fracture to the back of the skull. A second crack, this one straight and about 5 inches long, came off the oval and ended around his ear and temple area, he said.

     “There would be required a lot of energy and lot of energy ... to cause the extensive injuries that were in Mr. Andrews’ head,” Nashelsky said.

     He said the impact had caused the brain to swell and ultimately lead to Andrews’ death. Nashelsky said the fatal head wound was consistent with being caused by a single swing of a baseball bat.

After the defense rested, the state didn’t bother offering any rebuttal witnesses. The jury won’t report today, and closing arguments are scheduled to begin Thursday morning. Complete story by Jeff Reinitz of the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier here.

New broad spectrum antiviral drugs: three approaches

The HIV-1 virus cultivated with human lymphocytes.
C. Goldsmith, P. Feorino, E. L. Palmer, W. R. McManus/
CDC Public Health Image Library

 

From National Public Radio's Fresh Aire broadcast, Tuesday, 4/17/2012:

Scientists are now working to create a "penicillin-like" drug that will target viruses more broadly. In San Francisco, a company called Prosetta is working on a drug that doesn't affect a virus directly. Instead, it works by affecting the proteins that are naturally in cells that help viruses replicate.
     ...Prosetta created a drug that prevents the host proteins from performing their cooperative jobs and helping the viruses out. Preliminary studies have shown that targeting these host proteins — and not the virus itself — can stop Ebola, influenza, rabies and other viruses.

Paris Anding trial for murder of Marcellus Andrews: examination of evidence

Bat left in Cottage Street yard and turned in to Cedar Falls
police, who allege it was used to kill Marcellus Andrews

Jeff Reinitz of the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier is covering the trial:

On the tape, Chopard went over Anding's version of events, and Anding soon admitted he hit Andrews on the third or fourth retelling. He said he punched Andrews, Andrews went down and then Jeremy Lowe kicked Andrews in the face.
     Prosecutors allege Anding slugged Andrews in the head with a baseball bat, and two witnesses reported seeing Anding leave his home with a bat when he met others to head for Cottage Street..
     But in the interview room Aug. 23, Anding continually denied wielding a bat or even owning a bat, telling Chopard that he didn't play baseball.
     The investigator then confronted Anding with a photo that apparently showed him with a bat. On the video, Anding told Chopard it was an old picture.
     Anding continued to deny he used a bat but changed his story when Chopard interviewed him a second time on Sept. 8. In that interview, he demonstrated how he swung it with two hands during the fight.
     More...

South O'Brien Secondary School 14-year-old gay student bullied to death in Paulina, Iowa

South O'Brien Secondary School, Paulina, Iowa

Relentlessly homophobic Iowa GOP Representative Steve King has a long way to go to match Rep. Michele Bachmann in fostering the kind of homophobia that causes gay high school kids in his district to kill themselves, but the kind of bullying at South O'Brien Secondary School in Paulina. Iowa is certainly a step up in his game, as it has claimed the life of Kenneth Weishuhn, Jr.

From KTIV's Kristen Johnson:

She [Ken's mom] says they took their teases online, to websites like Facebook, creating a hate group against gays and adding Kenneth's friends as members.  However, it was only the beginning, family say he started receiving death threats from South O'Brien students on his phone.

     "When I'd question him about the phone calls, like he just blew it off, so I just thought everything was ok," said his mother.

     According to Kenneth's mother Jeannie, those South O'Brien boys were given a warning, but she was never contacted by the school.  She's unsure whether she'll press charges against the students she says drove her son to his death.

Romney endorser menaces president at gun conven­tion, says if Obama reelected, 'I'll be dead or in jail.'

Without speculating why Ann Coulter and Ted Nugent are never seen together even though they are both from Michigan, AKSARBENT directs your attention to eight questions aimed at Mitt Romney by Tommy Christopher:

1. According to The Texas Tribune (and Mr. Nugent himself), Governor Romney sought and secured Ted Nugent’s endorsement in March. Why didn’t the campaign announce this endorsement?
2. Does Governor Romney agree with Mr. Nugent that President Obama and his administration are “vile,” “evil,” and “anti-American,” and that they are “wiping their asses with the Constitution?”
3. Does Governor Romney agree with Mr. Nugent that President Obama should “suck on” his “machine gun?”
4. Does Governor Romney agree with Mr. Nugent that Hillary Clinton is a “worthless bitch” who should ride his “machine gun?”
5. Does Governor Romney agree with Mr. Nugent that Sen. Dianne Feinstein is a “worthless whore?”
6. Does Governor Romney agree that 30 year-old men should become legal guardians to their 17 year-old lovers?
7. Does Governor Romney agree that Massachusetts is “not in America?”
8. Does Governor Romney appreciate Mr. Nugent’s other artistic endeavors, such as this painting?

900 volunteers show up after tornado rips apart Thurman, IA, pop. 250

Perry Beeman, of the Des Moines Register reports that, although the emergency curfew wasn't lifted until 9:00 am, Sunday, the first of 900 volunteers started showing up in Thurman at 8:30.
     Sandra Umphreys thought the tornado had sucked up all her family's momentos, but when family members arrived to clear the rubble, they found a ribbon reading, "Husband," — from the 2-year-old funeral of her spouse, Rod, former Thurman mayor and father of the current mayor, Rod, Jr.
     Later, Copper, the family's Beagle mix dog, who liked to sleep under a shed that the tornado flattened, was found alive.
     Mayor Umphreys said Thurman should be close to normal by Wednesday.
The 900 volunteers who showed up Sunday were from Percival, Sidney and Fremont-Mill High School in Tabor, among other places.
     They were followed by at least another 270 Monday. More are expected Tuesday, from Wisconsin, Kansas City, and Montana.

Norfolk, Nebraska hailstorm: 20-minute deluge

And remember, class, natives of Norfolk usually pronounce it "Norfork." From Wikipedia:

The original name of the colony was a variant of "North Fork", but accounts differ on the exact name: "Northfork", "Nor'fork", and "Nordfork" are all suggested. The name was submitted to federal postal authorities, and at some point was transmuted to "Norfolk".

(Via Towleroad via Reddit)

Scion IQ: Dudes and Donuts

The YouTube description begins: There's no need to compensate for its small size. Introducing the Scion iQ, its tight turning radius...



Bonus: Cops and Donuts

Michele Bachmann filibusters Meet The Press to tell off-topic lies about Obama and gas prices

Michele Bachmann, now telling lies for Romney, Inc., interrupted Senator Kirsten Gillibrand at least twice during a supposed discussion about women's issues to tell off-topic lies about gas prices doubling under Barack Obama, when the truth is that in July of 2008, under President Bush, gas prices reached an average of $4.12 per gallon.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The rise of CO2 accelerates...

What level is safe? The upper safety limit for atmospheric CO2 is 350 parts per million (ppm). Atmospheric CO2 levels have stayed higher than 350 ppm since early 1988.

Thurman: Iowa hamlet can't catch a break

From WOWT video

UPDATE: The National Weather Service said that
Thurman was hit by an EF2 tornado (113-157 MPH) which followed a 10-mile path, touching down two miles north of Percival, IA, going through Thurman and lifting one mile south of Tabor. Norfolk, NE was pelted by a 20-minute deluge of hail.

Last night's storms raked the Midwest, especially Thurman, Iowa, home to about 200 weather-pummeled souls.

MSNBC reported the assessment of Randy Chapman, a deputy at the Fremont County Sheriff's Office: "I would estimate a fourth of the houses have been made unlivable."

Thurman, Iowa in 1952

Fremont County Emergency Management Director Mike Crecelius told the Des Moines Register that 75-90 percent of the town was damaged or destroyed.

Early last June, Thurman, with just over 200 people, became isolated when officials closed the entrance and exit ramps to Interstate 29 at exit 20 because of flooding along the Missouri River.

In 1952, the town was completely flooded.

GLAAD makes Commentor Accountability Project coordinator its president

Graddick

Although the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) conducted an external search, it wasn't able to find a better person for the group's top spot than Herndon Graddick, already working for GLAAD as Vice President of Programs and Communications. AKSARBENT thinks Graddick has been remarkably astute in his efforts and shrewd in his allocation of GLAAD resources. The Commentator Accountability Project (which needs to add the grandfather of anti-LGBT commentors, Dr. Paul Cameron, to its list) that he hired Jeremy Hooper to put together is one of the most effective things GLAAD has done in a long time (and if you don't think so, listen to the howls of unrighteous indignation coming from the homophobic spokesmen and women who are on the CAP list.) From GLAAD's press release:

Under his leadership, GLAAD has engaged in numerous highly visible and impactful campaigns including 'Stand Up For Ellen,' which prompted the group One Million Moms – a project of the American Family Association – to end their call for J.C. Penney to fire Ellen DeGeneres as its new spokesperson because she is gay. Herndon also oversaw GLAAD's work on the Commentator Accountability Project – an initiative launched in March to highlight the extreme rhetoric of anti-LGBT activists who currently appear in national news outlets. He is leading efforts with the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC) on the “I AM: Trans People Speak” video series as well as with film director Brett Ratner to develop a series of videos with GLAAD featuring high-profile celebrities and public figures speaking out for LGBT equality. Herndon has also put resources behind GLAAD's work to share stories of LGBT people of color and allies with African American media, sports media, and Spanish-language news outlets, among others.

Mitt Romney, hypocrite: Barack Obama spent too much time at Harvard

For the deconstruction of Romney's newest sound bite of disingenuous pandering AKSARBENT yields the floor to Michael Kinsley's new LA Times opinion piece, Candidates' war of words.

Time Spent at Harvard
Romney:    Four years   
Obama:    Three years

Harvard Degrees
Romney: two (law, economics)
Obama: one (law)

Kinsley continues:

Poor guy [Romney], everything has always gone well for him. He's had no opportunity to suffer. Or, much worse, he may have suffered but won't talk about it. This is downright un-American.
     ...Still, the fact Romney thought he could play the Harvard card again suggests that he really will say anything to get elected. Or that it's Romney, not Obama (as some Republicans have said), who gets in trouble when he departs from the teleprompter. Or possibly that he has bottomless contempt for the voters.

Appropos of nothing: Broooose in Paris, 1985

Friday: more testimony in trial of Paris Anding, accused of murdering Marcellus Andrews with baseball bat