SNL bashes Calvin Klein ad

Calvin Klein, which obviously hired Justin Beiber to hawk its shorts because of his enormous twitter following, may find out soon that social media is a double-edged sword.

GOP: Infighting not fun

The Republican National Committee will halve the number of GOP presidential debates, to 9-12 in 2016 from almost 20 in 2012 because, according to CNN, "nearly 20 debates left the candidates exhausted, and Republican elders cleaning up messes from the vicious intra-party squabbling on stage."
     Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus put lipstick on the Joni Ernst in a statement announcing the debate schedule:

"By constructing and instituting a sound debate process, it will allow candidates to bring their ideas and vision to Americans in a timely and efficient way,"

Now the French are mocking Fox News, too!

France's Daily Show clone, Le Petit Journal, sent intrepid reporters (with helmets!) to the alleged No Go zones of Paris, supposedly only open to Islamists. Elisabeth Hasselbeck quoted a poll, debunked by the Washington Post, to journalist Nolan Peterson about the supposed percentage of young French people who supported ISIS. Hasselbeck and Peterson are referred to in the piece as Ken and Barbie.


(Via The New Civil Rights Movement)

U.S. Supreme Court will hear four same-sex marriage cases from 6th District Court of Appeals

The cases are from Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.

Andrew Rannells holds up WOWT mug while telling Seth Meyers about giving hand job to another actor from Omaha

OK, AKSARBENT can shut down now because we're never going to have titillating celebrity post fodder with killer local interest as good as Andrew Rannells trolling Channel 6 (and, indirectly, the World-Herald) while describing filming a sexual act for an all-male Girls scene.
     Usually, affiliates love to tout network shout-outs, but we watched the happy-chat portions of WOWT newscasts the day after and saw NOT. ONE. WORD. about this on Channel Six's air. Funny, that.

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Andrew Rannells: It's this very nice young actor who's new to the city, gets this gig, finds out that I get to give him a hand job, so he was a little like — he was very nice... we were sort of awkwardly standing there, and he goes, "I'm from Omaha, Nebraska, too! Do you think the Omaha paper would write about this? "Local Boys Share Handjob" I was like, "I guess. We could try!"
Seth Meyers: "I'm guessing that [for] 80% of Omaha [this] is their worst nightmare.

Berkshire Hathaway chief wants Omahans to open their homes to his needy stockholders

Warren Buffett, who made more money last year than anyone in the U.S.A. ($37 million per day) wants Omahans to open their spare bedrooms to lodge his needy shareholders. (As of today, one share of Berkshire Hathaway  Class A stock costs $222,400.)
     Forty thousand shareholders are expected to swarm Omaha this spring for BH's annual meeting.
     The city only has 14,000 hotel rooms.
     Below: private jets at Eppley Airfield during 2012 Berkshire Hathaway stockholder's meeting.

NE Rep. Adrian Smith is a longtime bachelor no more!

Smith (HRC rating: zero) married Andrea McDaniel in Tennessee in November and thanked supporters for their prayers.
     If we weren't agnostic, we would pray for this marriage too.

NE State Board of Ed. member who ran racist and homophobic blog was cited for 3rd degree sexual assault on 17-year-old girl dressed as bird

Also: Blog racism bothers Dems, Gov. and World-Herald; homophobia not so much.

McPherson

     Pat McPherson, who was recently elected to a four-year term on the Nebraska State Board of Education, is in hot water for posts in his Objective Conservative blog, which referred several times to President Obama as a half-breed.
     So far, the state's just-elected Caucasian-obsessed GOP Governor (after being pushed) has called for McPherson's resignation, as has the UNL student newspaper (The Daily Nebraskan), the 28,000-member Nebraska State Education Association, the Omaha and Lincoln chapters of the NAACP and the state's Democratic Party.
     None of the above groups has objected to the blog's homophobic tenor, in which it referred to LGBTs as "queers and perverts"— only its racism.
     So far, the nation's largest and richest gay lobby group, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) also has been mute on the McPherson's blog's antigay smears, which include accusing LGBTs of achieving a "homosexualization" of the boy scouts.
     HRC has a field office in Nebraska, run by a Drew something or other. We saw nothing about this controversy or any calls by HRC for McPherson's resignation on either HRC's Nebraska web page or its Facebook page, but we did see a pink dog hoodie with an HRC logo for sale for $21.
    

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     In 2003 Pat McPherson was the Douglas County Election commissioner. After his birthday party, held in a Red Robin Gourmet Burgers restaurant in Omaha, McPherson was charged with fondling a 17-year-old girl dressed as a Turdus Migratorious.
     Tim O'Dell, the chairman of the Washington County GOP, said that charges filed against McPherson (disturbing the peace, 3rd degree sexual assault) and Chuck Sigerson, president of the Omaha City Council (disturbing the peace) were "ridiculous and outrageous" and that "we, at no time had any idea whether the mascot was a boy or a girl."
     Sigerson's disturbing-the-peace charge was for allegedly lifting the girl’s costume to expose her underwear. The Lincoln Journal-Star reported that "A mistrial was declared in his case after a jury failed to reach a verdict after deliberating for more than 10 hours over two days."
     As for McPherson, then-governor Mike Johanns asked for and received his resignation as Douglas County election commissioner.
     McPherson later beat the rap, then sued Red Robin for defamation. According to the Nebraska Democratic Party:

     McPherson admitted in a federal court lawsuit that he had made physical contact with the young female dressed as a mascot in the areas of her back, shoulder and abdomen, and tugged the mascot's tail While McPeherson was found not guilty of a crime his subsequent lawsuit against the Red Robin was thrown out of Court by a federal judge.
     The federal judge rejected McPherson's attempt to blame the young woman...
     McPherson's behavior did not meet the standards of former Governor and now U.S. Senator Mike Johanns. Parents, students and teachers should not have a Board member who does not meet the standards for an Election Commissioner. The last thing Nebraska needs is a Board member who blamed a teenager for the problems he caused for himself.

     McPherson also served as the chairman of the Douglas County Republican Party (Omaha), a post now held by Bryan Baumgart, who hasn't said anything about this hot GOP mess.
     What the current county GOP chairman IS talking about on Facebook is Omaha State Sen. Bob Krist not voting to end secret ballots for legislative leadership elections, a transgression for which Baumgart has posted a potential censure motion. The state GOP likes to keep an eye on who is actually towing the party line in Nebraska's officially "nonpartisan" Unicameral and secret ballots are the enemy of Republican control freaks transparent government.

Baumgart

    Eventually, Baumgart might also decide to censure his predecessor for holding Nebraska up to more national ridicule, as the RACIST NEBRASKA GOP BLOGGER / BOARD OF EDUCATION BIGOT story makes its rounds on the Internet, but no hurry, Bryan.
    In any case, as McPherson and Sigerson demonstrated, Republicans do have a way of posturing stiffly in public and partying affably in private.
     Take attorney and GOP stalwart John Chatelain, one of the contributors to McPherson's Objective Conservative blog. As a critic of LGBT rights laws and of current attempts by the Lincoln Public Schools to institute policies benefiting transgender kids, you'd think that Chatelaine would be a stick in the mud at parties.
     But as the video below reveals, you would be so... wrong...

Atlanta mayor stands up to attacks by Tony Perkins, Franklin Graham

The controversy is about Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed's firing of former city fire chief Kelvin Cochran for publishing a book in which he class-slandered LGBTs by calling them "vile," among other things.
     Courts have long held that employers need not continue to employ those who subvert and sabotage the mission of their employers with reckless speech or actions.
      Atlanta, like most large cities, embraces diversity and it is certainly not in the city's interest to discourage qualified gay firefighters from seeking employment there, hence the mayor's dismissal of his insubordinate fire chief.
     Evangelist Franklin Graham and Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, are busy ginning up "freedom of speech" and "religious liberty" outrage by obscuring the relevant facts in this matter, but Mayor Reed thinks Atlantans know what time it is and he isn't caving to the interference of agenda-laden outsiders or their fundraising machinations.


(Via Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters)

John Chatelain, contributor to racist blog, vs. LPS superintendent Steve Joel: who's really talking out of both sides of his mouth?

    

The Nebraska Family Alliance and Fox News have been making a huge stink recently about the Lincoln Public School System's attempts to formulate policies that accommodate transgender kids.
     Conservative website Nebraska Watchdog has published 12 articles about the topic.
     Now we learn that an anti-LGBT rights advocate is a contributor to the racist/homophobic blog of a just-elected member of the Nebraska State Board of Education.
     Today, Right Wing Watch covered the controversy over the racist, anti-LGBT blog, a tempest now raging because the blog's owner, Pat McPherson, recently was elected to a four-year term on the Nebraska State Board of Education.
    Right Wing Watch unearthed a bunch of Objective Conservative posts that McPherson thought he had deleted, but which Google still caches.
     One of the posts was by John Chatelain, a right-wing Omaha lawyer who testified against including LGBTs as a protected class in Omaha.
     In his piece, Chatelain boldly accused LPS Superintendent Steve Joel of "speaking out of both sides of his mouth" regarding the inflation of the  LPS issue into a political football.
     Given Chatelain's public disapproval and political weaponization of cross-dressing and non-conforming gender identity issues vesus his private amusement — and even celebration — of same, (see above video) we have to wonder who is really talking out of both sides of his mouth here.
     Note: AKSARBENT is not accusing Mr. Chatelain of writing any of the racist posts in Objective Conservative. As far as we know, Chatelain's activities are relegated to attempting to defeat the ability of LGBTs to have legal recourse, via statutes, when they are jerked around by heterosexual supremacists.

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Johnny Football lets fly his gay freak flag, then eats a Snickers and becomes duller, less fun, more hetero

We liked the before picture of Johnny Manziel better. Snickers, a Mars product marketed recently with snide, thinly-disguised homophobia, may have undercut its own message this time.


(Via Americablog)

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This video will not enhance your opinion of used car dealers

4Chan has decided that this video of a pizza delivery guy being screwed with was filmed at F&R Auto Sales in Westport, Massachusetts. The Internet is having the last laugh now.
     From LiveLeak's YouTube video description

A used car dealer in Massachusetts pays a pizza delivery guy $20 in one dollar bills on a $12 tab. The driver, thinking he received a decent tip, leaves only to have them call his manager and force him to return to pay them their change, sans any tip whatsoever. 

From Boston.com:

     The total bill for the pizza and drinks was just over $42, Hernandez said, and dealership workers gave Tansey $50 in two twenties and two fives. In the video, Tansey says he confirmed that they wanted to give the whole $50, and then left with what he assumed was a $7-and-change tip.

     However, the dealership then called the pizza place back and forced him to return the $7-and-change, and he was left without a tip, leading to the heated conversation on video...

     Willoughby, who was working that night, said he got a call from F&R Auto Sales saying that Tansey had “verbally berated” them. He said they took the call seriously at first and asked Tansey about the interaction. After Tansey explained what had happened, managers decided not to discipline the driver.

     “This isn’t the first time we have had problems with F&R Auto,” Willoughby said.

     “All the time, there’s always a problem, always an issue,” Hernandez said. “We’ve been going back and forth with them for a long time.”

 

Watch: a spectacular UN call for action to reduce global warming

Sadly, the GOP-controlled Congress and its paymasters can't seem to lead humanity over the precipice fast enough, enabled by venal, craven politicians like Nebraska's own Sen. Deb Fischer and Adrian Smith. ThinkProgress has produced an interactive map of the 114th Congress' Anti-Science Climate Denier Caucus.

(Via @JaneKleeb)

NE Board of Ed. member's blog racism bothers Dems, World-Herald and GOP Gov., not his antigay slurs

Also: Amazing video reveals the double standard of an
anti-LGBT rights Objective Conservative contributor.
Also: Right Wing Watch is covering this now, too. 
Also: Hate blogger Patrick McPherson was cited for 3rd degree sexual assault

The Nebraska Democratic Party is making political hay by sputtering righteous indignation about racist "half-breed" characterizations of President Obama in Objective Conservative, a local wingnut blog whose owner, it turns out, was just elected to the Nebraska Board of Education for four years.
     GOP TD Ameritrade millionaire and Caucasian-loving Gov. Pete Ricketts has condemned the blog postings and the World-Herald was suitably scandalized in its coverage Tuesday.
     The Chairman of the Nebraska Democratic Party, Vince Powers, is OUTRAGED, but rather selectively so:

     The chairman of the Nebraska Democratic Party said Tuesday that Ricketts "just flunked his first test as governor as he failed to ask for McPherson’s resignation."
     "How will Mr. Ricketts explain to schoolchildren and teachers why it’s OK with the governor for a State Board of Education member to have a racist blog," Powers said.
     Powers said McPherson either wrote the posts or is covering for the person who did.
     He described the postings as "garbage."

     A lot of people in the LGBT community would describe Objective Conservative's characterization of LGBTs as garbage too, but Powers, Ricketts and the World-Herald are silent on that.
     Patrick McPherson, the blog's owner, issued a disavowal  for not reading his contributor's posts, and also erased years of posts, in fact the entire blog before Monday's quasi-apology.
    AKSARBENT, however, has published two posts about Objective Conservative's gutter insults of LGBTs. From AKSARBENT's wayback machine:

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HRC, USA's biggest LGBT lobby, releases 2015 Corporate Equality Index; Omaha's biggest employers ranked

Left to right: Peter Kiewit Sons and Berkshire-Hathaway (both headquarters are in the same building),
Union Pacific and Mutual of Omaha (decked out for an over-the-top promotion of a 2008
U.S. Olympic swim trial that Mutual sponsored; the 2012 hype was even more outlandish.)

Berkshire Hathaway is still 0%, presumably because it again refused to return the questionnaire;  ConAgra is 100%. TD Ameritrade apparently is not on HRC's radar, as it again received no score. Details at HRC, here. The Corporate Equality Index has been roundly criticized for polishing the reputations of some of the world's nastiest enterprises, but we think that's a separate issue.
     NOT ON TABLE BELOW: Kutak Rock (legal firm) was also ranked (90%), as was Peter Kiewitt Sons (construction), at 15%. Well, at least they answered the survey.
     Helpful hint: if you're posing with Buffett for a joke picture, don't joke about homosexuality.

Below: Examples of an Allstate outreach to gay customers and below that, fellow insurance giant Berkshire Hathaway's acknowledgement of gay people with insurance needs.

Octogenarian Fox chief blasts Muslims, again incurs the wrath of twitter

Comedian Aziz Ansari, although not religious himself, has started a twitter campaign against Rupert Murdoch, with the hashtag #RupertsFault.

SD AG Marty Jackley to appeal gay marriage ruling; says state being 'forced' to treat gay couples equally

KSFY reports that South Dakota's GOP Attorney General, Marty Jackley, says he will appeal yesterday's federal court ruling that his state's gay marriage ban is unconstitutional.

"If there is going to be a change in that definition of marriage that change needs to come from a vote of the people in South Dakota, not being forced by the federal courts," Jackley said.

Downton Abbey: Lord Grantham nips bestiality in the bud

This is actual, not-made-up dialog from the show.

How to hijack extra pizza for yourself, you little dirtball

(Via Time)

SD gay marriage ban ruled unconstitutional; backward Nebraska now surrounded by marriage equality states

Above: Tiffany & Co. ad soliciting business from gay couples; Borsheim's, of Omaha, the largest single-location jewelry store in the U.S.A., appears to neither advertise to gay couples nor support marriage equality. It is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate founded by Warren Buffett, which received a zero in HRC's Corporate Index, making it the most gay-hostile of all ranked Omaha-based companies. UPDATE: Borsheim's would like you to know that it does underwrite playacting about gay marriage, which, alas, is more than any other Omaha-based jewelry store seems to do. Sigh.

Partial Wiki map of marriage equality states; SD's amber
color means gay marriage is pending

Here is the conclusion of the 28-page federal district court ruling, handed down today:

CONCLUSION
     In Loving, the Supreme Court addressed a traditionally accepted
definition of marriage that prohibited Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving
from marrying. Because Virginia’s laws deprived that couple of their fundamental right to marriage, the Court struck down those laws. Little distinguishes this case from Loving. Plain tiffs have a fundamental right
to marry. South Dakota law deprives them of that right solely because they are same-sex couples and without sufficient justification.
     Accordingly, it is ORDERED that plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment (Docket 20) is granted, and defendants’ motion for summary judgment (Docket 43) is denied.
    IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that SDCL 25-1-1, SDCL 25-1-38, Article 21,
§ 9 of the South Dakota Constitution, and any other provision of state law that precludes people from marrying, or refuses to recognize an existing marriage,solely because the individuals are of the same gender are unconstitutional because they violate the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
     IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that defendants are enjoined from enforcing
those laws or otherwise declining to issue a marriage license solely because the applicants are of the same gender.

There will be a stay in the ruling, to accommodate an appeal by South Dakota should it decide to waste taxpayer money attempting to salvage its marriage equality ban. Similar bans are also being fought in every other state in the Eighth U.S. District Court of Appeals. Such appeals have failed in every U.S. District Court to which states surrounding Nebraska belong.
     Many in Nebraska are wondering how much of their taxes just-elected GOP Attorney General Doug Peterson will spend to further his anti-choice, anti-gay agenda.

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New AG not impressed by those gay marriage states who feel so superior to Nebraska

Republican Don Peterson was just elected Attorney General of the Cornhusker State after the term-limit-outing (no homo) of Nebraska's last AG homophobe, Jon "Hollywood's Bitch" Bruning, who followed homophobic AG Don Stenberg, who Bruning once prepostrously tried to insinuate was a pedophile.
     Amazingly the quote below was not an off-the-cuff remark but one of several written responses to voterinformation.org and not even the most outrageous pronouncement.
     Peterson has wasted no time in packing the senior positions of the Nebraska Attorney General's office with like-minded anti-choice, anti-gay zealots.
 

Tweet of the Day: Margo Howard

If this doesn't make you laugh out loud, then either you, like Calvin Coolidge, were likely weaned on a pickle or you need to google "Mitt Romney Dog Incident."

CES 2015 was a dog-eat-dog drone Battle Royale, but stunning Air Dog emerges as a top gun

A set-and-forget autonomous drone that follows you around like, well, a dog. It has a stabilized gimbal for glass-smooth video from your GoPro. The company only aimed for $200,000 on Kickstarter but so far has banked $700,000. GoPro was crazy not to have offered a king's ransom for this company, which will sell a LOT of their sports POV cameras. About $1250 and worth it. Other notable CES drones are here.

#MakeAMovieSmarter wasted a lot of AKSARBENT's time last night

We find these stupid hash tag challenges irresistible, unfortunately.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: how long you'd last on each planet without a space suit

You could extend your brief lifespan on the sun if you went at night, he joked.


(H/T: Raw Story)

Justice Dept. to defend law that let government cancel Redskins' trademark, deemed disparaging

Pro-Football Inc., Redskins owner Dan Snyder's company, has challenged the constitutionality of the Lanham Act, which allows the cancellation of a registered trademark that is deemed disparaging. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled last June that "Redskins" is both disparaging and offensive, after which the PTO stripped the team of all six such registrations. From Wapo:

The Justice Department announced in a brief that was filed Friday with the U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia that it will step in to defend the constitutionality of the federal law. The department will file memorandum responding to Pro-Football Inc.’s constitutional challenge, according to the brief.

How a three-judge minority just greased the path of the Keystone XL pipeline in Nebraska

The PDF of the ruling is here, but you might want to read the executive summary below, first:

Nebraska Supreme Court refuseniks, from left: Chief Justice Michael G. Heavican, Justice Kenneth C. Stephan, Justice William B. Cassel. Attorney Dave Domina: "...the three justices who lost on standing controlled the outcome by refusing to vote on the merits." Landowner Randy Thompson: “You have seven judges and three of them decide they don’t want to score the contestant.”

THE MOST INTERESTING THING ABOUT THIS DECISION IS THAT MOST OF THE NEBRASKA SUPREME COURT ACTUALLY RULED FOR THE LANDOWNERS!

The suit was brought by landowners challenging the constitutionality of LB1161, which gave pipeline siting authority to the governor. They say that violates Nebraska's constitution, which gives the Public Service Commission such authority. Four of seven judges agreed, but declaring a law unconstitutional in Nebraska requires a supermajority of five state supreme court justices.
     Dissenting judges said landowners did not have "standing" to challenge the law and then, when outvoted, refused to rule on the merits of the case.
     Here's what Randy Thompson, one of the landowners in the suit, said about that:

“It is just a ridiculous idea that a foreign corporation can have the power of eminent domain to start with—but then the idea that our legislature would grant them [that power]…to me that’s totally outrageous. I think that anyone who owns property in the United States should be outraged by that proposition. We need to address this, not only in Nebraska, but as a nation.”

     Here's how the Omaha World Herald reported the decision:

     In the 64-page opinion, Chief Judge Mike Heavican along with Judges William Cassel and Kenneth Stephan determined the court had no jurisdiction to rule on the constitutional merits of the case.
     They argued the landowners failed to make the right technical argument to establish standing, namely that their property interests would be injured by the pipeline. Instead, the landowners made a more general argument that they had a claim as Nebraska taxpayers who would be financially hurt by an unconstitutional law.
     The dissenting judges also suggested there would be “hundreds” of other Nebraska landowners who could bring a similar constitutional challenge, a reference to those whose land would be directly crossed by the pipeline.

Entire Nebraska Supreme Court including the good, the bad and the ugly:

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Kirby Delauter still doesn't get it

Kirby Delauter, the GOP Frederick County Council member who made legal threats to a newspaper that he now appears to have known were bogus, evidently continues to imply entitlements not due him.
     Delauter, said last Saturday on a facebook post that he would sue the Frederick News-Post if it used his name without permission.
     Now he says: "

"Of course, as I am an elected official, the Frederick News-Post has the right to use my name in any article related to the running of the county – that comes with the job. So yes, my statement to the Frederick News-Post regarding the use of my name was wrong and inappropriate.

     Delaughter evidently is still leaving the door open to fraudulent intimidation, to testing what new fake threats might work. Note the way he qualified his recognition that the News-Post doesn't need his permission to print his name: "the Frederick News-Post has the right to use my name in any article related to the running of the county."
     Either Delaughter is still a jerk trying to find out what attenuation of an idle threat will work or he thinks that an artificial distinction will save face with the voters who, admittedly, were dumb enough to elect him in the first place. 

Oz transplant Rod Taylor dead of heart attack at 84; starred in 'Time Machine' and 'Birds'

Along the way he acted in TV's Falconcrest and even a couple of Doris Day movies, of which "The Glass Bottom Boat," right, was the more interesting because it was one of, if not the first Hollywood movies to ridicule the evolving national security state. Immediately below: 1956's World Without End. Below that, Taylor in an interview.

Russia, lurching toward financial meltdown, may ban gay drivers

Buzzfeed says "a decree Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed on Dec. 29 could ban transgender people from driving cars, along with others diagnosed with a long list of “disorders of sexual preference.”