A second Nebraska county extends health benefits to gay spouses despite 'no' votes of Commissioners Don Kelly and Jim Warren

Sarpy County commissioners Don Kelly (left) and Jim Warren,
respectively, of Districts 1 and 5

Emily Nohr of the Omaha World-Herald reported that Sarpy County voted 3-2 Tuesday, Jan. 29th to extend health insurance benefits to spouses of gay employees who live in Nebraska but were legally married in another state.
     Although Sarpy County HR Director Karen Buche estimated that 10 or fewer employees of 450 covered county emplyees would use the benefits, board members Don Kelly and Jim Warren nevertheless voted against extending the benefits.
     Warren said they were being asked to approved a contract issue with "no concept" of what the budget impact was.
     Kelly piled on, saying responsible people don't make decisions without knowing the cost.
     Both questioned the constitutionality of the extension, even though board member Tom Richards had already asked Deputy County Attorney Bonnie Moore if the measure was unconstitutional, to which Moore replied  no, adding that the Nebraska's constitution isn't so far reaching as to invalidate a contract between Sarpy County and Blue Cross Blue Shield.
     The move follows the actions last December 3rd of Nebraska's most populous county, Douglas, to extend insurance benefits to gay spouses on a 7-1 vote with Clare Duda the only board member to resist the change.

Ft. Myers, FL HS kicks out student for 10 days after he stopped a homophobe from beating up gay student

NBC-2.com WBBH News for Fort Myers, Cape Coral

Rosie O'Donnell defends Dylan Farrow on The View as Barbara Walters runs interference for her friend and alleged pedophile, Woody Allen

Although the New York Times gave space to Woody Allen's refutation of Dylan Farrow's Feb. 1  open letter on Feb. 1 claiming sexual abuse at the hands of Allen, the open letter was deemed unfit for publication on the Times' website and was instead published on New York Times blogger Nicholas Kristof’s On the Ground blog.
     Vanity Fair's Maureen Orth promptly responded to Allen's letter, posting "10 Undeniable Facts About The Woody Allen Sexual-Abuse Allegation" to the magazine's website and Dylan Farrow herself authored within hours a refutation of Allen's version published in The Hollywood Reporter. 
     On The View, Rosie O'Donnell came down squarely on the side of Mia and Dylan Farrow (below) while Babara Walters ran interference for her friend, Woody Allen on the same show.

Chevy bought two gay-inclusive modern family-style ads aired during NBC Olympics broadcast

The ads look very much like Google and Facebook promotions for their products...



In the video below, a shout-out to gay whiz kid Jack Andraka, who invented ultra-cheap hypersensitive tests for three types of cancer and won a top Intel science prize.

Farm Kings: As ratings for homophobic Duck Dynasty patriarch's show plunge, a reality show about a PA farm family with nine sons holds its own

Elizabeth and her nine brothers, Joe, Tim, Pete, Dan, Luke, Sam, John, Paul and Ben, run a very profitable farm with matriarch Lisa, who can make 30 pies in a hour. Their reality show is on GACTV Thursdays this February.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak: we have surveillance video of hotel showers; an aside to LGBT visitors to Sochi Olympics: 'Don't touch the kids'

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak
(Photo: Russian Federation via Wikipedia)

 

Before being quickly hustled away from reporters, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak responded to questions about hotel water shortages in Sochi by inadvertently admitting:

     “We have surveillance video from the hotels that shows people turn on the shower, direct the nozzle at the wall and then leave the room for the whole day.”

Earlier in the presser, Kozak, according to the New York Daily News, politely asked LGBT visitors to Russia to try to restrain themselves from molesting Russian children:

     Moments before, he gave the impression he believes gays may have pedophilic leanings, going a step further even than Russian President Vladimir Putin.
     “We are all grownups and any adult has the right to understand their sexual act,” Kozak said. “Please don’t touch the kids, that’s the only thing.”

How to tell if Russians have installed a camera in your Sochi hotel bathroom

How is FSB watching you in your hotel bathroom? Shut door & run shower hot for 10 mins. Clear spot on mirror is the cam. #Sochi #CI #protip
— John Schindler (@20committee) February 6, 2014

Never, ever run up to photobomb the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore during his standup

Bob Dylan knows Chrysler is now an Italian company, right?

Here are the words of Chrysler's new pitchman:

So let Germany brew your beer
Let Switzerland make your watch
Let Asia assemble your phone
WE will build your car!

Philip Seymour Hoffman, brilliant 'Capote' actor to whom Heath Ledger lost Best Actor Oscar, also meets untimely death due to drug overdose

Ledger was thought to have accidently OD'd on prescription meds while fighting off the flu. Hoffmann reportedly was found in his apartment bathroom with a heroin syringe still stuck in his arm.





Here's the real Capote, on Dick Cavett in 1971, responding to a tongue-in-cheek engagement proposal by Groucho Marx, hedged by his disclaimer (at about the 8:25 mark) that he couldn't give Capote "what you're entitled to," to which Capote responded: "The best years of your life!"

Josh Finkelman sues NFL for offering only 1% of Super Bowl tickets directly to public when NJ law says 95% must be sold that way

Finkelman as portrayed in the New York Times

The New York Times explained the apparent disparity between the NFL's business practices and the law of New Jersey, site of the 2014 Super Bowl:

Section 56:8-35.1 of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act reads:

     “It shall be an unlawful practice for a person, who has access to tickets to an event prior to the tickets’ release for sale to the general public, to withhold those tickets from sale to the general public in an amount exceeding 5 percent of all available seating for the event.”

     While certainly a mouthful, to Mr. Finkelman and Mr. Nagel this passage from the law explicitly forbids the N.F.L.’s practice of providing only 1 percent of Super Bowl tickets for sale to the public. In fact, it would seem to dictate that 95 percent of the seats must be sold that way.

     ...Brian McCarthy, an N.F.L. spokesman, ...in an email: “We can never fulfill all the requests for tickets. The N.F.L.’s Super Bowl ticket distribution process has been in existence for years and is well documented. We are confident it is in compliance with all applicable laws.”

     When Mr. McCarthy was pressed to explain how that process complied with the New Jersey law, he wrote a second email, saying, “We strongly disagree with the plaintiff’s interpretation of the NJ Consumer Fraud Act and his claims.” After one more request to clarify the nature of the league’s disagreement, he wrote, “We will be formally responding to the complaint next month. We do not have any further comment.”

Seth Meyers gets a tearful SNL sendoff after reading his last joke

Libyan Musab Mohamed Masmari, is arrested en route to airport; is suspected in attempted arson at packed gay Seattle club

40 human rights groups critizcise Sochi Olympic sponsors Atos, Coca Cola, Dow Chemical, General Electric, McDonald’s, Omega, Panasonic, Procter & Gamble, Samsung, and Visa for not defending LGBTs

Here, via JoeMyGod, is the beginning of the joint letter to the top ten corporate sponsors of the Olympics:

Perhaps the most coldly dismissive statement so far in respect of LGBT concerns was issued by Panasonic:

  ...the company “has no involvement in, and is not in a position to comment on political and social matters related to the Olympic Games or specific governments in any country or region.”

None of the above, Jesse Pinkman

I'm at Kings of Leon in NYC and Bill Murray is standing behind me. What should I do? Kiss him? Tackle him? Confess my love? #billmurray
— Aaron Paul (@aaronpaul_8) January 31, 2014

Violence Policy Center: Nebraska the most dangerous state for black Americans

Omaha's mostly black-on-black gang violence vaulted Nebraska, with only about 1.8 million people, into a first-in-the-USA Black homicide victimization rate of 34.43 per 100,000.

     One explanation could be that the city has staggering poverty affecting specific pockets of the population. Omaha has the unenviable position of ranking 1st among U.S. cities for the total number of African Americans who qualify as low-income.
     John Crank, a criminal justice professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, points to a clustering of the killings in the city’s most socially deprived areas, mainly in the north.
     “Most Omaha neighborhoods had no homicides,” says Crank. “The majority of violent crime and killings are isolated to specific areas.”
     “A lot is gang-related, a fair amount of retaliation. Then you have crime committed by gang members that are not acting on behalf of their gangs.”
     In reality, the homicide rates for Omaha are dwarfed in comparison to murder data from the tough streets of Chicago or Detroit, since Nebraska has a small population.

Below: aftermath of Omaha's newest black homicide and its effect on an investigating officer:

Human Rights Watch: Kyrgyzstan police have extorted, threatened, arbitrarily detained, beaten and sexually abused gay and bisexual men

(Via Towleroad)

Fatal stabbing of Belize cross-dresser renews attention to hostile climate fostered by foreign activities of anti-LGBT U.S. ministries

The Washington Blade reports Belize accounts of the murder of a cross-dresser whose brother believes was deliberately targeted.

     The Reporter, a Belizean newspaper, reported two men fatally stabbed Joseph Sanchez, 18, in the chest early on Jan. 12 while walking on a street in Belize City, the country’s largest city.
The publication said authorities found Sanchez wearing a blouse, a short skirt and women’s underwear.
     Channel 5 Belize reported police have concluded Sanchez was the victim of what the television station described as “an armed robbery turned violent.”
     Sanchez’s brother, Abner Sanchez, told the Reporter he feels the two men deliberately targeted Sanchez — reports have emerged that Sanchez had previously received death threats from a man with whom the 18-year-old had been previously involved.
“It was a setup because they called him out of his bed,” Abner Sanchez told the Reporter. “He doesn’t normally walk those hours. He was always picked up.”
     ...Caleb Orozco, co-founder of the United Belize Advocacy Movement (UNIBAM), an HIV/AIDS advocacy group, expressed concern over the Belizean government’s response to Sanchez’s murder.
     “It is my hope they don’t contaminate evidence in this case,” Orozco told the Washington Blade last week, citing a 2009 murder in which a court released the suspected perpetrator after alleging authorities forced him to confess to killing his partner.
     ...Anti-LGBT violence and discrimination remain a serious problem in Belize in spite of the government’s recent efforts to combat it.
     A Southern Poverty Law Center report highlights U.S. religious groups that have backed Belize Action, a group that opposes efforts to overturn the Central American country’s anti-sodomy law. The organization said these efforts have inflamed existing homophobic attitudes in Belize

Mob attacks Ivory Coast home of three LGBT activists; cops told men to leave neighborhood

Photo: Alternative Cote d’Ivoire

On Jan. 20th, the home of three members of Alternative Cote d'Ivoire in an upscale neighborhood of Abidjan, Ivory Coast were set upon by dozens of assailants who shouted death threats and hurled rocks and garbage.

     Soon after returning home from work shortly before 7 p.m., Touré said, the three Alternative CI staff members noticed that a crowd of about 60 people had assembled outside, whistling and banging on pots and pans. They threatened the occupants of the “faggot house,” shouting, “We will kill them,” “We don’t want fags in our city,” “We don’t want people with AIDS in our neighborhood,” “We’ll kill you all,” “We don’t want people working with AIDS and queers here,” “Damn you! We’ll burn your ass.”  Alternatives Cote d’Ivoire reported further:
     The mob kept up the racket as it tried to break down the doors of the house  with rocks and metal bars.  They threw garbage and human excrement, then prepared Molotov cocktails to burn the building and the people inside. The police arrived just in time to intervene...
     On the day after the Jan. 20 attack, the LGBT activists and police met again at the police station and immediately began arguing.
     The argument began after the chief asked a colleague whether he had “handled the case of the queers who disturbed public order.”
     The chief then turned to the Alternatives CI staff and said, “You’re the ones who are  pimping and running a brothel, huh?”
     Touré denied it and added, “You should listen to us first.”
     “But you admitted that yesterday in the presence of the duty officer,” the chief said.
     Touré denied that also.
     The chief responded, “So you mean that the officer lied? In any case, I don’t want to hear about homosexuality in my town.”
     Agence de Presse Africaine (APA) ... [adopted] the neighbors’ anti-gay position in an article that Abidjan.net titled, “Eviction of a group of homosexuals in a posh neighborhood of Abidjan.”
     The article begins, “A group of homosexuals, posing a threat to the education of children in a district of Abidjan, was driven off Tuesday evening by local residents.”

Sean Hannity sarcastically begged by gays, Tim Gunn, Nathan Lane, blacks, immigrant cab drivers and cast of Jersey Boys not to leave New York

Hannity had threatened to leave after his state's governor, Andrew Cuomo,  suggested that far-right politicos running for office are not welcome in New York. At 3:26 a hardhat even promises Hannity that the Keystone XL pipeline will be routed through Central Park if he only agrees not to abandon New York.

The Daily Show
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Broadway mocks Russia's war on LGBTs in a wickedly funny YouTube video

Tiptoe through the Tulips: the progression of a twentieth century standard

Baby boomers are most familiar with the version popularized by eccentric musicologist and ukelele star Tiny Tim, whose rendition of the song charted at #17 in 1968, the year in which he performed the standard on the Tonight Show, (below) and a year before he gave Johnny Carson his highest-ever rating by marrying 17-year-old "Miss Vicki" on the host's NBC late night talk show, attended by a studio audience of 268 family members and friends and watched later that night via tape-delay by 45 million Americans.



America was introduced to Tiptoe Through The Tulips in the now-lost 1929 two-strip technicolor talkie, Gold Diggers of Broadway (later remade in black and white as Gold Diggers of 1933) by Nick Lucus. Below is Lucas singing the song 15 years later.



AKSARBENT really likes Robbie Banfitch's cover of Tim's version used in the 2011 horror film Insidious.

Chinese-owned AMC Theatres sics Homeland Security on man seen watching movie with turned-off Google Glass; agents searched his personal photos, phone

AMC Theatre photo: Camknows, Flickr

The Guardian reports that a Columbus, Ohio man was rousted from his seat by cops and Homeland Security while he was watching Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit at an AMC multiplex. The man's Glass was switched off during the movie; he was wearing it for its prescription lens. Nevertheless:

     "A guy comes near my seat, shoves a badge that had some sort of a shield on it, yanks the Google Glass off my face and says 'Follow me outside immediately'," said the man, who was taken into a room for interrogation... After a long time somebody came with a laptop and an USB cable at which point he told me it was my last chance to come clean. I repeated for the hundredth time there is nothing to come clean about and this is a big misunderstanding so the [ICE officer] finally connected my Glass to the computer, downloaded all my personal photos and started going though them one by one … Then they went through my phone, and five minutes later they concluded I had done nothing wrong." He wasn't apologised to, but was offered four free movie passes, which "infuriated" him.
     The ICE's Khaalid Walls confirmed the incident took place, and AMC responded with a statement: "Movie theft is something we take very seriously, and our theatre managers contact the Motion Picture Association of America any time it's suspected that someone may be illegally recording content on screen. While we're huge fans of technology and innovation, wearing a device that has the capability to record video is not appropriate at the movie theatre."

Here's what AMC evidently does consider appropriate behavior at its theatres by its employees:

• Making false and defamatory statements about the behavior of a customer to government agents who subsequently rifled through the private photos of said customer
• Not bothering to assess whether a device with a recording "capability" actually was turned on before accusing someone of pirating a film by rephotographing it
• Thinking it could buy off someone with four free movie passes after humiliating him, detaining him and invading his privacy

     AMC Theatres' 5000+ screens were purchased in 2012 by billionaire Wang Jianlan of China, which only allows about 34 foreign movies to be exhibited in its country per year.
     AMC, the headquarters of which is in Kansas City, MO, was previously owned by several private equity owners (including Mitt Romney's Bain Capital) which, according to a senior AMC executive, allowed the chain's venues to deteriorate physically relative to competitors, even forgoing changing bulbs frequently enough to ensure that exhibited features did not appear dim to audiences.

Here's the hypnotic anthem for the #FuckYouPutin online action

The Swedish organizers want you to photograph yourself flipping a bird to Vlad. The website is here.

Robert De Niro's gay, abstract expressionist painter/father subject of family documentary to be shown by HBO in June

Intentional goofiness of Norway's curling team uniforms trumps bizarre Ralph Lauren U.S. Olympic Team attire

Preposterously pretentious Ralph Lauren (born Ralph Lifshitz and now worth about $6.5 billion) is currently famous for his unrelenting Downton Abbey commercials on PBS, and must either hate jocks or has entered into a secret pact with Queer Nation to punish athletes who aren't boycotting Sochi, if his Team USA opening ceremonies outfits are any indication.
     Norwegian curlers, unlike "Lauren," obviously don't take themselves seriously or expect anyone who sees their getup to do anything but grin, which, if you think about it, is a pretty good strategy to win over spectators.

Jon Stewart: Team USA lagging in quest for homophobia gold

Vladimir Putin: Russian must 'cleanse' itself of homosexuality to improve heterosexual birth rate

In an interview last Sunday with Russian and foreign television, Putin:

...noted with pride that Russia saw more births than deaths last year for the first time in two decades. Population growth is vital for Russia's development and "anything that gets in the way of that we should clean up," he said, using a word usually reserved for military operations.

Sochi Olympic 'Security' clad in Coca-Cola logos jumps Russian holding small rainbow flag in his hometown as Olympic flame passed

John Aravosis did the requisite Google searches and connected all the dots in his blog. Coca-Cola, of course, has a long Olympic history, some of which you will never, ever see at the company's museum in Atlanta. From America
Blog:
     Pavel Lebedev was jumped by officials in official Olympic gear, later identified by the Associated Press as “Olympic security officials.”
     What was not known at that time was that the standard uniform of the Olympic security officials who assaulted the civil rights advocate appears to sport the Coca-Cola logo.  Keep in mind that no one sports the Coca-Cola logo, or any other logo of an Olympic sponsor, without Coke’s explicit permission.

Two shockingly effective ads: one disgusting, the other heartbreaking

Both of these examples come from Copyranter. If the ad below, one of a string of stellar efforts made for the New Zealand Transport Agency, can't get leadfoots to slow down, then there is nothing mere advertising can do for them.



The second ad, for a publisher of men's magazines, actually ran in 2007, although where was tactfully not mentioned.