 |
| Fortunately, AKSARBENT is Atheist, or it would burn in hell for running this photo of Steve Young alongside this story. We apologize to Steve and his lovely wife. We're really not very grown up at all. |
Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young and his wife, Barb, will be keynote speakers at the 2013 Affirmation Conference for LGBT Mormons. The conference, titled New Frontiers, will take place in Salt Lake City, Sept. 13-15.
Louganis pointed to U.S. figure skater Johnny Weir and New Zealand speed skater Blake Skjellerup as being openly gay athletes and activists. But in the eyes of Russia, he said they are “walking propaganda.” He asked, “Where is the IOC going to stand up and stand up for them?”
 |
| Panasonic Lumix: a poor value |
 |
| Lackluster, low-contrast Lumix rendering of brilliant landscape taken at sunset |
 |
| Digital enhancement to bring out vivid colors missing
in lousy, original Lumix image. Such tweaking wouldn't have been necessary with a better still-image camera like a Nikon, Canon or Fuji. |
"Boy with the virginal face," he wrote, "I pursue you but you heed me not. You do not know you are the charioteer of my heart."Anacreon was the last Greek to be included in the canonical list of nine lyric poets. According to Pausanias, Anacreon's statue on the Acropolis of Athens depicts him as drunk.
From his erotic verse there survive striking images of beloved young men: the peaceful character of Megistes, the eyes of Cleobulus, the blond locks of the Thracian Smerdies.AKSARBENT thinks this association could provide the basis for an exquisitely subversive statement during the games. Any gay rights supporter and adversary of Russian gay "propaganda" legislation could simply look up during the playing of
 |
| Photo: New York Times |
Anthony Nicodemo is the varsity basketball coach at Saunders High School in Yonkers, N.Y. Earlier this summer, he called a meeting with his players and their parents and told them he was gay. Nicodemo tells guest host Sean Cole he’d been keeping his personal life to himself for 17 years because he was afraid of disclosing anything that might keep him from coaching. So far, parents, players, administrators and alumni have rallied around him.
"We must make clear when in contact with Russian politicians that this collapse in fundamental democratic values is not acceptable, and that Russia is moving towards becoming a flawless dictatorship," Development Minister Dirk Niebel told broadcaster N24 on Monday.
"The best thing we can do is to come to Russia and to support our friends, to show that we are not afraid of the new laws," Jonny Weir said. "Russians love figure skating, I have a lot of fans here, and all of them know that I am gay. My marriage to a Russian-American partner was widely covered by the Russian media. Of course, there were a lot of jokes, but still most of the journalists were on my side. I am an openly-gay sportsman, and I openly love Russia, and I think that my visit to Russia will be an important statement, even if I do not participate in competitions in Sochi," Weir said.
"I am always on the Russian side," Weir added, speaking about the US calls to boycott the Games.
"I want to convince people in America not to boycott Russia, because the boycott will harm the people."
 |
| The waiter tortured in this picure is already dead.
From the Spectrum Human Rights Alliance, which advocates for LGBT rights in Eastern Europe, has issued a horrifying report. In the official correspondence from the local District Attorney office andA Google translation of a post at the website of Dr. Valentin Degtyarev, MD, who documents Russian neoNazi violence and reported the victim’s death stated: "…they beat [the victim with] the bat a few hours, cut with a knife and stained with paint, tore his anus and filled his mount back the foam core is said by the bandits, apparently died after torture. He probably screamed and called for help, but since he did not know the Russian language is really no it did not help. A housemates apparently helped gangsters torturing him completely." |
In our initial breakdown, we had it broken up into eight equally-sized squares; you know, what’s going to happen where in these final eight episodes. And in our first version we thought that Walt wouldn’t know that Hank was on to him until about the halfway point.
But as we talked about it, the more we realized: nope, it needs to be in the first one. Because we've got a shitload of story left to tell. And we’ve only got seven more episodes after this one in which to tell it. So we’d better make hay while the sun is shining.
That's why these final eight episodes move faster than any stretch of eight episodes that we’ve ever had in the history of the show. Once this thing gets going, and it gets going very quickly, as you’ve seen, it just rolls along like gangbusters. It has to because we’ve got so little time left.
September 23, 2012: The National Organization for Marriage was a part of the No Wiggins bus tour which began on September 24. NOM did not report its involvement in the Iowa bus tour until September 26. http://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2012/09/santorum-jindal-join-iowans-for-freedom-on-no-wiggins-bus-tour/Below: Bob Vander Plaats and Tamara Scott viciously attack Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins in Council Bluffs in 2012 after accusing Wiggins supporters of turning their defense against the Iowa Family Leader's abuse of the Judicial Retention Vote procedure "personal." The attack failed; Iowa voters retained Wiggins, in part due to an unprecedented campaign by the Iowa Bar Association, which sent a truck across Iowa, stopping everywhere NOM/Vander Plaats did, countering their agenda point by point.
- When did Brian Brown and other NOM staff members actually arrive in Iowa?
- When did Brian Brown and other NOM staff members actually purchase tickets to Iowa?
- When did NOM pay for its involvement in the No Wiggins bus tour?
September 13, 2010 $ 235,037.00
October 19, 2010 $ 200,000.00
October 24, 2010 $ 60,000.00
October 24, 2010 $ 20,000.00
October 24, 2010 $ 3,071.00
October 28, 2010 $ 90,000.00
October 28, 2010 $ 6,613.02
October 29, 2010 $ 15,691.39
October 29, 2010 $ 5,215.54
Total $ 635,627.95
”In Iowa, we’ve helped launch the “No Wiggins Bus”, as the Sioux City Journal recently noted. Our special thanks go out to Sen. Rick Santorum and Gov. Bobby Jindal for joining the effort to oust Judge Wiggins, one of the Iowa judges who voted to impose gay marriage on the people of Iowa without their consent!
… “The judiciary’s usurpation of authority in recent years is completely unacceptable,” Santorum said in a statement. “It is obviously clear the people’s Constitution gives the judicial branch the least power, and yet these appointed judges continuously legislate from the bench whether it is gay marriage in Iowa, collective bargaining in Wisconsin, or resulting in the death of millions of lives caused by the opinion of Roe v. Wade.”
The “No Wiggins” bus tour—sponsored by CitizenLink, Patriot Voices, the Family Leader, the National Organization for Marriage and CatholicVote.org—seeks to mobilize opposition among Iowa voters to oust Wiggins.
You will remember that in 2010 the first three judges who invented a right to gay marriage in the Iowa Constitution came up for election—and for the first time in history, Iowa voters turned out all three! It will be a tougher battle this time, as pro-gay marriage money will swarm the state. But with God’s help, and yours, we will stay in this fight, too—and win!”
...The Senate resolution, which Leno said will be passed in the coming weeks, could be the precursor to actual legislation barring investments in Russia.Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch is documenting intimidation of critical journalists by local Russian authorities in Sochi, site of the next Winter Olympics. Make no mistake; warmed-over KGB thug Vladimir Putin's orchestrated attacks on LGBTs is only part of his crackdown on all dissenters:
The resolution notes that homophobic laws have already led to violence against LGBT people in Russia and says the new law allows “police officers to arrest tourists and foreign nationals.”
...“We hope this resolution will bring greater attention to what (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is doing in Russia and encourage other states to follow our lead.This is classic scapegoating, a despotic ruler trying to solidify his power,” Leno said. “We’ve seen this throughout history, and it can potentially lead to genocide.”
Leno pointed toward direct investments such as the California Public Employees’ Retirement System’s recently announced stake in a Moscow shopping mall as the types of deals that should be avoided in the future.
“We are talking billions of dollars, potentially,” he said. “The resolution is not urging for divestment — it is prospective. Clearly investment decisions have been made up to this point, prior to the enactment of these laws, but now, with our knowledge of what is occurring in Russia, it seems appropriate the California investment funds should in the future no longer invest in Russia until these laws are repealed.”
 | ||
| Rick Santorum will join clown car of GOP-friendly homophobes at Iowa Family Leader summit this weekend. Yeah, yeah, we know it's "needs." |
Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who recently claimed that most young undocumented immigrants are drug mules with “calves the size of cantaloupes.”
Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller, the far-right 2010 GOP Senate nominee who has tiestomilitia groups.
Talk show host Steve Deace, who has fantasized about assaulting openly gay NBA player Jason Collins and suggested that the public school system was responsible for the Newtown massacre.
Talk show host Kevin McCullough, who believes that gay people are out to kill him and hate God (but also don’t exist).
Talk show host Jan Mickelson, who has said that AIDS is divine punishment for homosexuality and hailed former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s opposition to gay rights.
Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage, who has likened his campaign against marriage equality to fights against slavery and Jim Crow.
David Bossie of Citizens United, the Clinton-era witch hunter who predicted that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell would cripple the military and bring back the draft.
Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America, who argued that the Violence Against Women Act represented a “war on women” and accused Planned Parenthood of supporting domestic abuse.
Actor/Reality Show contestant Stephen Baldwin, who called President Obama a “cultural terrorist.”
Dr. Del Tackett of Truth In Action Ministries, who blamed homosexuality on lazy parenting.
Doug Napier of Alliance Defending Freedom, who pledged to represent county officials in Iowa who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Dr. David Noebel of Summit Ministries, who has warned that “Obama and his radical homosexual mafia plan to sodomize the world and make such perversion seem as wholesome as apple pie and vanilla ice cream.”
DEA agents are specifically instructed never to reveal nor discuss the existence and utilization of SOD provided data and to further “omit the SOD’s involvement from investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom testimony. Agents are instructed to then use ‘normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by SOD.’”
...In law enforcement parlance, it is called “parallel construction.” Accordingly to a former federal agent, the SOD ‘tip’ system works as follows:
“You’d be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.’ And so we’d alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it.”
When the SOD tip leads to an arrest, the agents then pretend that the drug bust was the surprise result of pulling the vehicle over as a routine traffic stop.
So secretive is the program, SOD requires that agents lie to the judges, prosecuting attorneys and defense attorneys involved in a trial of a defendant busted as a result of SOD surveillance—a complete and clear violation of every American’s right to due process, even when that American is a low-life drug dealer.
Every criminal defendant is entitled to the legitimate data and facts surrounding their arrest so that their counsel can examine the propriety of the arrest and attack procedures that may be improper and illegal under the law in defense of their client. When sensitive, classified data is involved in such a case (data possibly collected in surveillance of a foreign national that reveals incriminating evidence involving an American), it is the prerogative of the judge to decide what should and should not be admitted into evidence.
As for the prosecutors, not everyone is enamored with the idea of such deceit, even if it produces convictions. Reports Reuters:
One current federal prosecutor learned how agents were using SOD tips after a drug agent misled him, the prosecutor told Reuters. In a Florida drug case he was handling, the prosecutor said, a DEA agent told him the investigation of a U.S. citizen began with a tip from an informant. When the prosecutor pressed for more information, he said, a DEA supervisor intervened and revealed that the tip had actually come through the SOD and from an NSA intercept....The disclosure of the SOD program is upsetting a great many legal and constitutional experts throughout the nation. Speaking to Reuters, Harvard Law Professor, Nancy Gertner—who also spent seventeen years on the bench as a federal judge—said,
“I was pissed,” the prosecutor said. “Lying about where the information came from is a bad start if you’re trying to comply with the law because it can lead to all kinds of problems with discovery and candor to the court.” The prosecutor never filed charges in the case because he lost confidence in the investigation, he said.
“I have never heard of anything like this at all. It is one thing to create special rules for national security. Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations.”
Other constitutional and legal experts point out that the program is more disturbing than the recent NSA disclosures involving the collection of phone metadata as the NSA effort is geared towards catching terrorists while the DEA program is targeting common criminals who, as Americans, are entitled to their constitutional protections no matter what their alleged crimes.
 |
| The gay Russian waiter tortured in this picure may already be dead. Authorities are harassing a 72-year-old mother and her physician son, Dr. Valentin Degtyarev, MD, who closely monitors the infamous neoNazi group “Occupy Pedofilyaj.” No arrests have been made. |
 |
| Graham Spanier, left, with Jerry Sandusky (Reuters) |
"Spanier spent five years trying to block the release ... by The Patriot-News of Harrisburg [of] the salaries of Penn State’s highest-paid officials, including [Joe] Paterno, from the state retirement system. ... The university lost before the pension board, the Commonwealth Court and, in 2007, the State Supreme Court."Tuesday, Spanier and two former top school administrators were ordered to stand trial on charges accusing them of a cover-up in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal...
The men engaged in a "conspiracy of silence," the lead state prosecutor, Bruce Beemer, said during his closing argument. They covered up their failure to tell police about a 2001 allegation that Sandusky was molesting a boy in a university locker room shower, despite knowing that police investigated complaints about Sandusky showering with boys in 1998, Beemer said.
"When they were finally asked about (the 1998 investigation), it was 2011 and what happened in the interim?" Beemer said.
...Spanier's lawyer, Elizabeth Ainslie, told Wenner that the case against him "amounts to innuendo and far-fetched inference." Meanwhile, Curley's lawyer, Caroline Roberto, took aim at McQueary, saying his testimony included "embellishment" and that every time he testifies he says "something more or different." On Monday, McQueary also testified that Paterno criticized Penn State's handling of the Sandusky allegation and Paterno warned him that school officials would try to make him a scapegoat.
Penn State and the Paterno family declined to comment.
Former President Jimmy Carter announced support for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden this week, saying that his uncovering of the agency’s massive surveillance programs had proven “beneficial.”
Speaking at a closed-door event in Atlanta covered by German newspaper Der Spiegel, Carter also criticized the NSA’s domestic spying as damaging to the core of the nation’s principles. “America does not have a functioning democracy at this point in time,” Carter said, according to a translation by Inquisitr.
