Sen. Deb Fischer: now a tool of cable/telecom Internet service providers, not just foreign oil companies!

 

Yeah, and we're disappointed in Sen. Fischer's revelation that she is now carrying water for the cable industry and telecom ISPs — by her opposition to net neutrality — as well as the outrageously dishonest spin she is trying to put on President Obama's attempt to preserve it.

     We guess trying to help a foreign oil company jack up oil prices in the Midwest just isn't doing it for Sen. Fischer any longer, and she has now branched out to new ways of double-crossing the voters who thought she might represent their interests and not those of corporate buccaneers.

     As for Fischer's professed concern about, we assume, United States jobs generated by the Keystone XL pipeline project she is trying to force on rural Nebraska, perhaps she would look a little less phony and contrived if she displayed any concern at all about the fact that TransCanada, is buying huge amounts of pipe from Indian, not U.S. steel mills.

     Just saying. 

First openly gay Navy SEAL, from Alabama, is interviewed about his new book

59 senators just voted to raise Midwest gas prices by up to 40 cents per gallon: here are their names

Robin Hoods in reverse: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) both voted for the GOP-led attempt
to transfer billions of dollars from the wallets of Midwesterners
to the profits of a foreign oil company by forcing approval of
the Keystone XL pipeline.

The vote (S.2280) was another attempt to force approval of the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline from the Canadian border to Houston.
      This isn't an oil pipeline; it is diluted bitumen ("dillbit"), an abrasive pipe-destroying goo which won't flow unless thinned with carcinogenic solvents whose exact composition TransCanada refuses to disclose to the landowners it has threatened with eminent domain condemnations even though it doesn't yet have a permit to build the pipeline.
     Also, the stuff must be pressurized up to 1600 PSI (conventional crude flows at 600 PSI) and heated up to 160 degrees.
     Because unusually toxic dillbit isn't technically oil, TransCanada (and Exxon, for that matter) refuse to kick in eight cents per barrel to the Treasury Department's Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. Last week, when House Democrats tried to require the Keystone XL pipeline project to do that, House Republicans shut them down in a 224-192 vote Nov. 14th. 
     California Sen. Barbara Boxer led the charge to defeat the bill, which needed 60 votes to pass but got 59. The legislation fast-tracks the construction of the extension to TransCanada's leaky Keystone 1 pipeline (which averaged 1 spill per month in its first year) across an extremity of the largest, purest underground aquifer in North America, which, in Nebraska alone, fuels a $20 billion ag industry.
     Apologists have claimed that the pipeline will create lots of U.S. jobs.
     It won't; few of the jobs will be permanent. (TransCanada is even buying pipe from India.)
     Boosters also claim that the pipeline will create energy independence for the U.S.
     That is also nonsense; the pipeline is through the U.S., not to the U.S. The product will be refined in Houston and sold on the world oil market to the highest bidder.



     As Sen. Boxer correctly noted, Keystone XL WILL RAISE MIDWEST GAS PRICES. Consumer Watchdog says the increase will be up to 40 cents per gallon. 
     Don't believe it? Then read the TransCanada email revealing that the company thinks the pipeline could increase what U.S. Midwesterners pay for oil BY ALMOST TWO BILLION DOLLARS per year.

Here are the 59 senators who voted to increase TransCanada's profits at the expense of consumers in the Midwest:

Hari Kondabolu on Matthew McConaughey, gay rights

Here's the 2012 Advocate interview (press for Magic Mike) with McConaughey that comedian Kondabolu savaged. In the routine Kondabolu insinuated that a fellow high school student who McConaughey says came on to him might have been misunderstood because of the difference of "Indian culture" and that McConaughey might have falsely outed said former student to a future wife because, um, lots of heterosexual Indian women read the Advocate?

Benedict Cumberbatch imitates other stars promoting "The Imitation Game"

"This film's been, like, up my ass for the last five years."



Here's the U.S. trailer (better than the UK one) for the biopic of Alan Turing, the gay math genius who designed one of the world's first computers specifically to crack messages encoded by the Nazi-enhanced cryptographic machines, commonly called Enigma, which were invented at the end of World War I and used commercially in the 1920s. The Poles cracked the Enigma scheme in 1932, but later modifications overtaxed Polish resources.

ACLU Nebraska files federal lawsuit challenging state's gay marriage ban

Last week, the Omaha World-Herald, then the Lincoln Journal-Star published leaked accounts of a forwarded email disclosing that the ACLU would file a lawsuit challenging the state's constitutional ban on gay marriage (Initiative 416), one of the strictest in the nation, passed in 2000.
     This morning, in a conference room opposite the snowy courtyard of the Magnolia Hotel in downtown Omaha, the Nebraska ACLU announced that it, the American Civil Liberties Union and the law firm of Koenig | Dunne have sued Gov. Heineman over the state ban.
     Nebraska had been the only state within the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals district without a federal challenge to a law banning same sex marriage.
     Nebraska's GOP Governor-elect, TD Ameritrade scion Pete Ricketts, has already vowed to fight challenges to the state's ban. So has the state's current GOP governor, Dave Heineman, who, in respect of his unrelenting hostility to LGBTs, is quite a piece of work.
    

For a copy of the lawsuit: http://www.aclunebraska.org/images/attachments/215_Waters_v_Heineman.pdf

Attachments:

Waters_v_Heineman.pdf

From the press release:

November 17, 2014

OMAHA, Neb. – The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Nebraska and the law firm of Koenig | Dunne filed a lawsuit in federal court today on behalf of seven couples who seek state recognition of their marriages or who seek the freedom to marry in Nebraska.
     “Today is an exciting day for all Nebraskans because freedom means freedom for everyone. The couples we represent in this historic case are all tax paying citizens who are active in their communities and who are contributing positively to our economy. These families have served our country, are successful in their professions, and are parents raising children. The couples we represent seek nothing more and nothing less than the freedom to marry who they love. Nebraska has waited long enough it is time for the Cornhusker state to extend the freedom to marry to all its citizens,” said ACLU of Nebraska Executive Director Danielle Conrad.

     The plaintiffs include Susan and Sally Waters of Omaha who have been together for seventeen years.
     In January 2013, Sally was diagnosed with breast cancer which has progressed to stage four and is considered terminal.
     “We have said publicly before God, our family and our friends that we love each other and are committed to one another and our children,” said Sally Waters, “At this moment, I want to spend time loving my children and my wife while knowing that should I die, they will be cared for. By not recognizing my family, Nebraska is making a difficult situation much more difficult emotionally and financially.”
     Other plaintiffs include:

• Nick Kramer & Jason Cadek: The couple resides in Omaha with their three year old daughter Alice. They are both employed, own their home, have been in a relationship for ten years and were legally married in 2013.
• Jessica and Kathleen Källström-Schreckengost: The couple resides in Omaha with their infant Sebastin. They are respectively a lawyer and a therapist. The couple has been in a relationship for almost ten years as they began dating in college. They were legally married in 2010.
• Crystal Von Kampen & Carla Morris-Von Kampen: The couple resides in their hometown of Norfolk. Crystal is a disabled Veteran and Carla is an advocate for families that have disabled children. The couple has been together for five years and celebrated the first anniversary of their marriage in November 2014. The couple has three adult children.
• Greg Tubach & Bil Roby: The couple resides in Lincoln and have been together for twenty eight years. Both are employed and they own homes in Nebraska. The couple is not married but seeks the freedom to marry in Nebraska.
• Marj Plumb & Tracy Weitz: The couple resides in Omaha with their two dogs and has been together for over ten years. The couple was legally married in 2008.  Both are successful professionals and came to Nebraska for a job opportunity in 2014.
• Dr. Tom Maddox & Randy Clark: Tom is a native Nebraskan who graduated from the University of Nebraska and the University of Nebraska Medical Center. After graduation he pursed his medical residency in Missouri where he met Randy. Randy is a CPA. They couple has been together for over 30 years and were married in 2008. They currently reside in La Jolla California. They visit family in Nebraska regularly and own commercial property in Nebraska.

"These families simply want the security and recognition that only marriage provides," said Amy Miller, legal director of the ACLU of Nebraska. "It is wrong for the state to treat these loving and committed couples as second-class citizens. When a family has roots in Nebraska or wants to call Nebraska home, they should be able to do so without being treated as legal strangers.”
The lawsuit will be filed in the U.S. District Court. The plaintiffs allege that the state’s constitutional marriage ban unlawfully discriminates against lesbians, gay men, and their children. Due to Sally Waters’ medical condition, the attorneys will be filing a separate motion for emergency relief.
     Polls indicate that a majority of Americans support the freedom to marry for all citizens. Currently 33 jurisdictions in the United States grant or recognize the freedom to marry for same sex couples.
     For bios of the clients: http://www.aclunebraska.org/images/ne_out4freedom_bios.pdf

Are camcorders dead?

Jordan and Chris seem to think so (and they probably have the sales receipts to back their suppositions up) but we think modestly priced ($300-$450) camcorders can hold their own against comparably-priced still cameras in video mode.
     And one thing that Jordan and Chris didn't mention is that even expensive DSLRs like the Canon d5Mk3 can only take, like, 12 minutes of video before shutting themselves down due to overheating of their full-frame sensors, which are gross overkill for video — including 4k video.
     Even the recently-introduced Nikon D750, which takes better video than any previous Nikon DSLR at any price, is only good up to half an hour.
     Try recording a government hearing with that.

Legislators in polluted LA trying to force construction of extension to leaky Keystone pipeline in MT, SD, NE KS, OK and TX

Keystone 1 leaked 12-14 times in its very first year of operation. Keystone XL is even riskier: it will carry carcinogenic solvent-laden tar sands "dillbit" at extreme pressure and high temperatures for 1700 miles through six Midwestern states on its journey toward refineries in Texas and auctions on the world oil market. So much for USA "energy independence" that GOP apologists for TransCanada claim the pipeline will enable.

La. Sen. Mary Landrieu (l.) and Rep. Bill Cassidy

     In Louisiana, two opposing politicians are using Keystone XL as a political football. GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy, challenging Dem Sen. Mary Landrieu in the state's Louisiana's upcoming Senate runoff election sponsored a bill (which passed 252-161) which would bypass environmental laws and usurp the authority to OK the Keystone XL pipeline of the Department of State and White House.
     Landrieu is rounding up votes for a companion bill in the Senate.
     The House also just voted against a motion to compel TransCanada to pay eight cents per barrel into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund established in response to the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.
     The petroleum industry continues to insist that Tar Sands (diluted bitumen or "dillbit") isn't oil even though it is refined into oil and that it therefore need not contribute to the Liability Trust Fund, despite the fact that in recent years dillbit spills have polluted waterways in Michigan and Arkansas (see video below).

What Best Buy isn't telling you about its Black Friday Samsung 4K TV

One of Best Buy's Black Friday doorbusters is a 55" 4k Samsung TV for $900. A smoking hot deal, right?
     Nah. Any savvy shopper looking to pick up a 4k TV knows it should have these three features in order not to become obsolete in the next few years:

1) HDMI 2.0. Why? To support up to 60 fps (frames-per-second) content at 4k resolution, support dual video streams, 21:9 aspect ration, dynamic sync of video and audio, and other features.
2) HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding, aka H.265). Why? HEVC is the new compression scheme necessary to transmit huge 4k files in a practical manner. Netflix (and probably other streaming services) will send 4k content via HEVC and TVs that don't have it won't be able to display that content without an exterior media receiver
3) HDCP 2.2 (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection). Why? It's the HDMI copy protection encryption scheme and it will probably be used by forthcoming 4k Blu-ray discs and players.

     So does Best Buy's Samsung Black Friday bait have these features? Not one is mentioned in the company's website "specifications" tab; geek website i4u says that the TV probably doesn't have the near-future proofing specs.
     It recommends instead the Sam's Club Holiday Celebration sale $998 60-inch VIZIO P602UI-B3 LED 4K Ultra HD 240Hz Smart TV as being "off the charts," although CNET has some reservations about the VIZIO P-series.

2014 John Lewis Christmas ad features a penguin and John Lennon's Real Love, sung by Tom Odell

The same Tom Odell recently savaged by NME:

...a “poor, misguided wannabe who’s fallen into the hands of the music industry equivalent of Hungarian sex traffickers”

Update: Upon further review, AKSARBENT speculates that this might be a sneaky gay ad. They're penguins — how do you know it's not?

The reason for the season: salesmanship and Christers congratulating dead ancestors for briefly suspending their carnage to honor Jesus

We don't like it and neither did The Guardian, although for different reasons.


(Via JoeMyGod)

A video showing breakdancers cheekily comparing abs — from an unlikely source

It's a Nikon promotional video touting the (laudable!) low light performance of the new D750, which bests both the D600/D610 and the D810 and quite a beautiful video it is, although much of the credit goes to the soundtrack, which is even more evocative than the videography.
     Unfortunately, after the D600 shutter-flinging-oil-on-the-sensor fiasco made purchasers of new Nikons wary about being first to buy, we now learn that people are having issues with file corruption in the brand new D750s, although from what we've seen, the problems seem to be limited to Sandisk memory cards. We hope that is the problem and not the camera.



Oh, look there's another low light test, taken with the D810, which didn't do as well in the dark, which isn't surprising given the unit's 36 million pixels, gross overkill for even 4k video (which the camera can't do).

The nasty letter the FBI sent MLK accusing him of sex with men and urging him to off himself

Ben Mathis-Lilley, writing in Slate, reported that Yale Historian Beverly Gage found an unredacted copy of the letter in former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's files at the National Archives.  Public copies of the letter had always been heavily redacted. 

     The FBI, of course, had been illegally wiretapping King's hotel room beds.

NE Gov. Dave Heineman, a bubbling vat of hypocrisy, says he wants more adoptions, but won't reverse state's antigay policy

The lame duck GOP governor appeared today with a (hetero) couple who have adopted three children and plan to take in a fourth.
     He issued a call for more parents to adopt children in state care, according to KETV.
     What he didn't do and won't do is reverse the state's antigay-adoption policy even though Health and Human Services has 322 children who need to be adopted.

Lame duck GOP NE Gov., Dave Heineman, vows to fight next week's ACLU suit against state's gay marriage ban

Why is AKSARBENT running a picture of Gov. Dave
Heineman with that of a weasel? Go here.

KETV reports that GOP Gov. Dave Heineman, who has been relentlessly hostile to gay equal rights will "not take a pass" on the lawsuit, which the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska plans to file next week.
     News of  the suit was leaked to the Omaha World-Herald yesterday.
     The state's GOP governor-elect, TD Ameritrade scion Pete Ricketts, vowed after his election to fight marriage equality in the Cornhusker state.
     The state's lame duck Attorney General, John Bruning, who became a multi-millionaire while in office is no prize either. But at least he thinks that heteros don't have the right to get divorced either.
     Fun fact: The Nebraska State Capitol, as pictured below in a whacked painting which adorned a P.O. Pears wall in Lincoln for years, is probably the most phallic government building in the world — unless there is another edifice somewhere with a 400-foot shaft with a bulbous tip on top of which a sower depicted flinging his seed in the general direction of 'O' Street.
     Novelist Ernest Hemingway once called the building "the penis of the plains" in a lecture at UNL.
     Film critic Andrew Sarris, also struck by the blatant phallic-ness of the Nebraska's capitol (designed by Bertram Goodhue, who also designed the Cheltenham typface), told a film study class in the 80s, that if Rainer Fassbinder ever came to Lincoln, he would probably photograph the capitol from a circling helicopter.

Internet without pity: the sequel; another parody of that Woman Walking in NYC video

AKSARBENT's prequel to this post was here. Is this becoming a meme?

President Obama's plan to protect net neutrality from attacks from new GOP Congress

Leaked: Nebraska ACLU will sue next Monday to overturn state's gay marriage ban

Both the Lincoln Journal-Star and the Omaha World-Herald are reporting today that the Nebraska chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union will file suit Monday to overturn the state's constitutional ban on gay marriage (Initiative 416), one of the strictest in the nation, passed in 2000.
     Nebraska had been the only state within the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals district without a federal challenge to a law banning same sex marriage.
     Nebraska's GOP Governor-elect, TD Ameritrade scion Pete Ricketts, has already vowed to fight challenges to the state's ban.
     The World-Herald seems to have got the story first; evidently an email sent to same-sex marriage supporters working with the ACLU was forwarded to the paper. That email, written by former State Senator and current ACLU Executive Director Danielle Conrad, said the group

     "plans to request a preliminary injunction against the state because of 'the circumstances of one of the couples involved.'
     ...Conrad said the legal team working on the planned lawsuit in Nebraska includes Leslie Cooper of the national ACLU, Omaha attorneys Susan Koenig and Angela Dunne, and Amy Miller, legal director for ACLU Nebraska."

     The 8th U.S. Circuit court of Appeals covers seven states. Minnesota and Iowa already allow gay marriage and suits challenging bans on marriage equality have been filed in South and North Dakota, Missouri and Arkansas.

A brief overview of legal actions addressing gay marriage in Nebraska since Initiative 416 passed:
     From Wikipedia:

     On May 12, 2005, United States District Judge Joseph F. Bataillon ruled that Initiative Measure 416 violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and was a bill of attainder in violation of the Contract Clause of Article I. Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning appealed the decision to the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis, Missouri.
     In 2006, a federal lawsuit, Citizens for Equal Protection v. Bruning, 455 F.3d 859 (8th Cir. 2006), was filed challenging the federal constitutionality of Nebraska Initiative Measure 416, a 2000 ballot initiative that amended the Nebraska Constitution to prohibit the recognition of same-sex marriages, civil unions, and other same-sex relationships.
     On July 14, 2006, the Eighth Circuit reversed Judge Bataillon's decision. It held that Initiative Measure 416 did not violate the Equal Protection Clause, was not a bill of attainder, and did not violate the First Amendment. The Eighth Circuit held that "laws limiting the state-recognized institution of marriage to heterosexual couples ... do not violate the Constitution of the United States." The plaintiffs did not appeal to the Supreme Court.
      Bruning was the only decision of a U.S. Court of Appeals to rule that a state ban on same-sex marriage comports with the U.S. Constitution until the Sixth Circuit did so on November 6, 2014.

From Freedom to Marry (edited):

     On June 13, 2014, the Nebraska Supreme Court dismissed a petition from two women (Nichols vs. Nichols) for the dissolution of their marriage, saying that it could not address constitutional issues in the case because it did not have jurisdiction to hear the case because Nichols appealed a lower court's denial of the divorce from a conditional order rather than a final judgment. The plaintiff has said that she would continue pushing for the divorce.

HRC thumps the bible in support of MS gay rights

AKSARBENT previously criticized HRC for its press release announcing a Nebraska field office in which it simultaneously touted the religiosity of Nebraska LGBTs AND disclosed the results of a survey it paid for indicating that only 31% of the LGBTs in the state were "people of faith." (WTF HRC?)
     We also quoted critics of the nation's biggest, best-funded gay advocacy group who deplore what they consider the tendency of the organization to run roughshod over local attitudes and efforts of gay activists.
     In Mississippi, HRC has adopted local bible sentiments to make its pitch, which puts AKSARBENT in a dilemma: we can criticize the organization for pandering to Christers or for ignoring local traditions but we can't do both.
     Now we have to pick one thing or the other. Since HRC has obviously come down on the side of pragmatism, we can only grumble under our breath and hush our mouth.
     Bless HRC's little heart. There, we said it.


Via JoeMyGod

Internet without pity immediately parodies Walking As A Woman In NYC

The viral video of an highly edited 10-hour walk by a buxom woman in form-fitting jeans and T-Shirt who was subjected to various catcalls on the streets of New York City has inspired inevitable parodies:

Walking as a man in NYC:




From L.A. Walking as a Drag Queen



From gamers: 10 hours walking in Skyrim as a woman in skimpy armor

A Windows 8.1 PC on a memory stick

This is different (for Microsoft, anyway).
     The software behemoth is now taking a cue from the Linux community and its "Linux Live" disks, which have been around for years. (Such a CD/DVD boots Linux on a computer instead of the Windows on its hard drive, sets up a small Linux "hard drive" in an apportioned area of memory for scratch files, but does not read or write anything from the host PC unless you tell it to.)
     Windows on a stick adds a twist to the above scenario by storing Windows 8.1 on a USB memory stick also equipped with an embedded microprocessor!
     Here's a Microsoft description, in corporate-speak:

Shit people in Omaha say

TD Ameritrade scion and Nebraska governor-elect says he will fight to keep state's ban on gay marriage

Via KETV:

     [Peter] Ricketts said he's also looking for a fresh face to take over another troubled state agency, the Department of Health and Human Services.
     But there are a couple of things you'll see Ricketts fighting to protect, including Nebraska's ban on gay marriage.
     "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and more importantly, so do the folks of Nebraska," Ricketts said.

McCoy (left) and Peter Ricketts

     In 2008, Ricketts was the biggest contributor to state senator Beau McCoy's election to the Nebraska Unicameral. In 2012, McCoy tried to block LGBT fairness amendments in Lincoln and Omaha with a state law prohibiting such local ordinances.
     Ricketts' sister, co-owner with her brothers and father of the Chicago Cubs, is gay and serves on the National Leadership Council of Lambda Legal.
     Ricketts kept virtually mute about gay marriage before his election and included no information about his stand on the issue on his website.

John Oliver explains, in stark terms, why mid-term elections and voting are important

The U.S. Congress may be do-nothing because of Tea Party obstructionism, but state legislatures have passed 24,000 bills this session and 1 in 4 state legislators belongs to ALEC, the Koch Bros.-funded clearinghouse for "model" legislation drawn up by corporations to enlarge their rights and diminish yours.

22 states, including Nebraska, have adopted new voting restrictions since 2010

From the Brennan Center for Justice:

Nebraska:
New restriction(s) in place: Reduced early voting period.
Effective date: In effect for first time in major election in 2014.
Background: In 2013, state lawmakers reduced the early voting period from a minimum of 35 days to no more than 30 days. Nebraska’s unicameral legislature is technically nonpartisan, but it is generally controlled by Republicans. The measure was signed by a GOP governor.

#DudesGreetingDudes mocks proposition that catcalling women isn't offensive

Nina Bahadur of the Huffington Post:

Blogger and comedian Elon James White brilliantly asked over the weekend why, if catcalling is as non-sexual, unthreatening or even complimentary as some have claimed, why don't men do it to other men?

Pat Downs of WGNtv shows he was way ahead of the curve on this in a video posted to YouTube in 2009:

Gay panic in Lake Wobegone

Keillor

Before uttering the word "shit" on the air in a joke mocking atheists this weekend, Garrison Keillor delivered a Halloween gift to LGBTs — a snide paean to gay panic (at the 34:47 mark here) during one of his special joke shows:

Well Jim and John had to share a room one night in a hotel.
Jim said "I snore so bad I doubt you'll sleep that well."
And John kissed him on the cheek. He said "Sweetheart, it's alright."
Jim went and sat in a chair and he stayed awake all night.

In 2007, Keillor apologized for being "misunderstood" in a monologue containing the following:

     And now gay marriage will produce a whole new string of hyphenated relatives. In addition to the ex-stepson and ex-in-laws and your wife’s first husband’s second wife, there now will be Bruce and Kevin’s in-laws and Bruce’s ex, Mark, and Mark’s current partner, and I suppose we’ll get used to it.
     The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men—sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That’s for the kids. It’s their show.

     Keillor's Lake Wobegone is a place where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, all the children are above average and all the gays are virtually invisible, just like in a Ken Burns documentary (where gay baseball stars and gay jazz legends stay hermetically sealed for eternity in their closets.)
     In Time magazine, Keillor once described Minnestoa Gov. Jesse Ventura, a conservative who has been far friendlier in public to gay people than Keillor has ever been, as a "great big honking bullet-headed shovel-faced mutha who talks in a steroid growl."
     Maybe. But Keillor has never stepped up to the plate and gone to bat for gay people as forcefully as Jesse Ventura has. (He did publicly oppose the effort to ban gay marriage in Minnesota's constitution, but not until after Jesse Ventura and his wife of 37 years made an ad opposing the referendum.)

Lee Terry stabbed LGBTs in the back for 16 years in House votes. Want to return the favor? Vote today!

Note: If you're gay or your friends are, make sure they know how hostile Lee Terry really is toward LGBTs in the only place where his small-minded enmity counts — on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
     If you use Facebook, put a link to this post on your roof or wall or whatever Facebook uses. Use Google + too.
     Tweet the link. Do as much as possible to make sure Terry gets as few gay votes from gay Republicans as possible. Tell them Brad Ashford used to BE a Republican if you have to (after all, it's true...)

Lee Terry voted against repealing DADT.  He voted against including LGBTs in hate crime legislation. He voted against ENDA, even though it didn't even include transgenders. He voted against allowing the U.S. Attorney General to provide assistance in instances of hate crimes against LGBTs. He voted no on a concurrence vote to repeal DADT. He voted to prohibit the use of federal funds to "contravene" DOMA. Two months later he did it again. In 2006, Terry delivered an asinine speech on the House floor urging support for an equally idiotic Marriage "Protection" amendment.

And while you're at it remember how unsupportive Ben Sasse and Pete Rickets have been of anything that smacks of equitable treatment backed up by the law of LGBTs.
    Chuck Hassebrook and David Domina are much better choices.
    And if you see any of the characters below on your ballot, just say no (but first click the picture to enlarge):

Why Italy's most famous gigolo is suing the state for exploitation of prostitution

Roberto Dulce (Sweet Roy) is working on a book with a psychologist:

     I think I'm the real problem. I mean, I do this job because mentally I have some hatred for women. Maybe I should be psychoanalyzed. I make myself available, but then...
    You say that there's something wrong with you. You hate women. From a practical point of view, aren't you afraid to lose clients?
     Of course. Clearly this book is very dangerous for me.

Roy's fame has also caught the attention of the inland revenue. Prostitution is legal but the profession isn't recognized by the tax department. No tax code means he can't file a return. That hasn't stopped them chasing him for $70,000 in unpaid taxes.

     So now I have a lawsuit against the state because I've sued the state for exploitation of prostitution. Because if they take my money, which I can prove that I have earned with prostitution, you, state, become my partner so you're exploiting me, and that's illegal.
     It's a huge burden. But there's a paradox. I have to pay tax on my assets. I have to pay tax so they calculated income tax and all the other taxes. So I'll end up paying the Church tax as well. So with the "dirty money" I earn from prostitution, I'll pay a priest's wages. That's the paradox. It's absurd.

Australian gay cattlemen

(Via Towleroad)