Thursday, January 17, 2019

Sen. Sasse: LGBTs should thank Karen Pence for helping kids learn about art at school that bans gay students and parents


     Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) thinks "everybody" (which most people assume includes LGBTs) should thank Karen Pence for going to "help kids learn about art" at a school that bans gay students and parents, according to CNN WIRES. Here's what Sasse indignantly told Martha MacCallum on Fox's the story:
“I can’t understand why these people don’t have more to do. Karen Pence is a lovely woman and she is trying to help and serve kids and she is doing it at a Christian school,” Sasse responded.
     “She doesn’t need a job, she’s doing this to love her neighbor. She’s doing this to help kids learn about art. People have decided to attack her because it’s a Christian school. This is a fundamentally un-American way to think,” he continued. “I think that everybody should be saying Mrs. Pence, thank you for trying to serve people and help kids learn about art.
     Since Christian education can only go so far, Mother Pence probably won't be telling her students about Michelangelo's famous Genius of Victory sculpture, modeled on one of his boyfriends, Tommaso dei Cavelieri, a lover also referenced in Michelangelo’s homoerotic poetry as his cavalry man, according to historian Rictor Norton.
     Michelangelo famously liked to “sign” art in his later years by including his own image in his work, and Victory was an example where Michelangelo depicted himself between the model’s legs.
     Please don't tell any of this to our Sasse source, Gary Sadlemyer of right-wing KFAB, who was foaming at the mouth again this morning at "radical lefties" who dare criticize Mother Pence.
     We wouldn't call Sadlemyer "old," but he is squarely within that Fox demographic that Roger Ailes himself called "60-to-dead."
     After venting, Sadlemyer told his audience to go buy a vehicle at Woodhouse, a huge local car and truck dealership which used to support anti-gay Grace College in Omaha, before a lack of sufficient interest by those students who could afford its tuition forced it to shut down.
     AKSARBENT recommends that you get your art education from Sister Wendy, not Mother Pence.

Friday, January 11, 2019

3 bills from NE legislature's youngest atheist would: outlaw conversion "therapy," define it as abuse if inflicted on children and ban "gay panic" criminal defense

Megan Hunt, the younger of the Nebraska Unicameral's two progressive atheists, has introduced 8 bills this session, two of which relate to so-called LGBT conversion therapy. A third bans the so-called "gay panic" criminal defense. They are LB166, LB167 and LB168. You may read the introduced texts here.
     As recently as last year, a man in Austin, Texas avoided the death penalty by invoking a gay panic defense, legal in about half U.S. states. Jason Miller, who got drunk and stabbed his neighbor to death "for no good reason," according to prosecutors, was sentenced to 10 years of probation after killing his neighbor — a jury recommendation the judge was required to honor after the jurors found the defendant guilty not of murder but of criminally negligent homicide. The judge added six months of jail time (all he could).
     The New York Post:
     Miller’s lawyers argued that he acted in self defense when Spencer made a pass at him while the two were playing music and drinking.
     In a 911 call, Miller told dispatchers, “I think I killed someone,” according to police
     “We were playing back and forth and everything and I just let him know — Hey, I’m not gay,” Miller later told police, according to an affidavit. “We been playing. We’re musicians and all that kind of stuff, but I’m not a gay guy. Then it seemed like everything was alright and everything was fine. When I got ready to go — it seemed like [expletive] just started happening.”
     Prosecutors argued that the blood evidence contradicted Miller’s narrative...
Here's the text of the Hunt's gay panic bill:


Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Senator Ben Sasse visits CBS's Late Show
Colbert: So you're counting on the president to do the right thing? Sasse: I get the joke

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) was on Colbert Tuesday, to flog his book, "Them," which we presume refers to the constituents he has repeatedly betrayed with his confirmation votes for Trump's herd of misfits, incompetents, bigots and thieves.
     His makeup was terrific.
     Sasse slickly evaded Colbert's attempts to get him to criticize Ivanka Trump's email abuse as forcefully as Sasse has condemned Hillary's transgressions.
     Sasse pretended not to know the well-deserved nickname of the NE State Capitol, Penis of the Plains, bestowed by Ernest Hemingway during a lecture at UNL. The Art Deco building, which does everything but vibrate, is likely the most phallic governmental edifice in the USA: a 40-story shaft topped by a golden dome, topped by a statue of a sower flinging seed from a pouch slung from his, um, bathing suit area.
     Colbert said he has driven to Lincoln, as he once had a Nebraska girlfriend. Sasse wanted to know her name. Colbert said it was "immaterial." Sasse said: "Why did her parents hate her? That's a weird name."
     The headline of this post refers to the tension between Donald Trump and those senators who think Matthew Whittaker, Trump's acting AG appointee, should have a confirmation hearing.
     Here's the interview, which we don't expect to stay up long, as it is not from CBS.

Monday, November 5, 2018

OPPD Board: who to vote for

In December of 2015 the OPPD Board of Directors voted 6-2 to triple service fees on residential and small business customers. The 2015, $10.25-per-month fee increased to $15 in 2016, $20 in 2017, $25 in 2018 and will rise again, to $30, in 2019. This hits apartment dwellers, energy conservers and the poor hardest, according to the World-Herald:
But the restructuring plan has drawn sharp criticism because it penalizes low-use customers: apartment-dwellers; customers who generate their own power; people who conserve energy; and poor people. Six in 10 low-income customers would pay more under the new rate structure, according to OPPD estimates.
SUBDIVISION 1 (West/NW Omaha): Amanda Bogner vs. Kristine Dungan

Neither is an incumbent, so neither voted for the recent fee increase. Sierra Club Nebraska endorsed Amanda Bogner for her support of renewable energy. That's good enough for us. Vote for Bogner.

SUBDIVISION 6 (NE Omaha): Tom Barrett vs. Eric Williams

Two Democrats here. Barrett voted against the service fee increases and is not a bad choice. But of all the candidates, Eric Williams has the most bona fides in support of renewable energy. An engineer, he is the president of Nebraskans for Solar, past president of Earth Day Omaha, past chair of Dundee Community Garden, and past vice president of Green Omaha Coalition. We recommend Williams.

SUBDIVISION 7 (W. Douglas, Washington Co., and parts of 5 other counties around Omaha): Mick Mines vs. Janece Mollhoff

Mines, the incumbent, didn't bother to answer questions in the League of Women Voters, Voters Guide. He also voted to triple user fees. Here's how Janece Mollhoff answered the Voters Guide question about renewable energy:

Right now OPPD does not have a long-term strategic goal for energy production. The first step is to determine not just a short term goal (2020), but also to set a long term goal (2040 to 2050) and strategy to meet that goal. Increasing use of renewable energy has to be done in tandem with energy efficiency, peak load reduction and other measures that keep our bills low, provide reliable energy and create good-paying jobs in our communities
Vote for Mollhoff, who also is endorsed by the Sierra Club.

SUBDIVISION 8 (SW Omaha): Mike Cavanaugh vs. Linda Duckworth

Two Republicans here. Cavanaugh, the incumbent, voted to triple your service fees. His challenger, Linda Duckworth, impressed the Sierra Club with her approach to renewable energy more than did Cavanaugh and got their endorsement, so she gets ours too. Vote for Duckworth.

Sunday, June 3, 2018

LoessFest Lip Sync Lollapalooza: AKSARBENT saw Frankie Valli in CB!

Leaving Council Bluffs on the Bob Bridge
LoessFest brought Frankie Valli to Council Bluffs, IA along with whatever incarnation of the frequently-reconstituted Four Seasons is currently shaking.
     Nobody with any sense believes that Valli isn't lip synching these days. There's even a clip on YouTube of Valli's digital helper going into a loop and of him finally walking off stage—no one, apparently, could shut the thing off.
     Said Barry Lewis in New York's Hudson Valley Times Herald-Record:
      "A story in the Columbus Dispatch in 2011 also had concertgoers accusing Valli of faking it on stage. In that same story, his manager denies the charge, saying “Frankie Valli sings every note of the show.”
      Sure, but what year did he sing those notes?"
     But we don't care about alleged lip synching at a free concert. (What would we do? Sue for the cost of our tickets?)
      We came to see tweaked arrangements of our Top 40 faves and were not disappointed. Live (the backup Four Seasons replicants were live, anyway) the Four Seasons' evergreens are fresh and just as infectiousness as the first versions.
     Whoever tastefully re-arranged these hits absolutely know what s/he was doing. In fact, the original Sherry recording would be improved by the exquisite accent of the brief a Capella harmony in the opening bars of the live performance. The live version of Stay now includes a wild jazzy instrumental passage that is terrific.
     We love Four Seasons songs. So does America. BMI says Can't Take My Eyes Off You is the fifth most broadcast song of the 20th Century. (Technically it's not a Four Seasons song, but Bob Gaudio (a Season; maybe he was summer) wrote the music and the group's record producer extraordinaire, Bob Crewe, wrote the lyrics.)
The Can't Take My Eyes Off You singalong in The Deer Hunter
     Longstanding rumors say Crewe finished the lyrics while watching his boyfriend sleep. (Please don't tell that to any Joey Six Packs like those in The Deer Hunter, where blue collar etiquette dictates that if you've had too much Bud and plant one on on a bud during the "I love you baby" refrain, he is obligated to respond by calling you "faggot.")

     The New York Times asked Crewe's brother, Dan, about the sleeping boyfriend/muse rumor, in a roundabout way, and got shut down:
     Mr. Crewe was gay, and his brother, his only survivor, said he was discreet about his sexuality in many of his social circles. He noted that in “Jersey Boys” Mr. Crewe was portrayed as overtly gay, but in real life that was not the case, Mr. Newman said, particularly during the period when he was working with the Four Seasons. Promotional material for Dynovoice Records quoted a female singer fawning over Mr. Crewe’s handsomeness.
     “Whenever he met someone, he would go into what I always called his John Wayne mode, this extreme machoism,” Dan Crewe said.
     That fact that Mr. Crewe wrote so many songs about women reflected the complicated culture of his era as well as his shrewd professionalism, his brother said. Asked if some of his songs had been inspired by male romantic interests, Dan Crewe said: “It wasn’t motivated by anything, except he had an intense love affair with words. He told stories.”
Bob Crewe, right
    Crewe, reputedly, was not happy about being stereotyped in Jersey Boys by the authors of the musical's book, Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, or having director Clint Eastwood extend the caricature in the movie version, which probably needed something festive since Eastwood's cameras sucked most of the energy out of a very lively theatrical play. The last time Clint had anything to do with a musical was in 1969 when, as an actor, he made Paint Your Wagon.  
     His big number was I Talk to the Trees. Roger Ebert called it whining, not singing, but we like Eastwood's not-terrible-at-all rendition. Octogenarian Eastwood no longer talks to trees of course, just an empty chair at the occasional GOP Convention.
     As for queening up Crewe, we're not sympathetic to false characterizations by cynical writers who sell the prejudices of a patronizing audience back to them for fun and profit.
     Neither do we have a surplus of empathy for Crewe, who died, dementia-riddled, in 2014.
     He was, evidently, a political reactionary. His lyrics to Gaudio's Beggar's Parade, a crude class libel of 60s protesters, are truly revolting, even after all these years:
...Who needs the truth? Feed 'em lies.
They're all hungry for alibis.
Oh They're all the same,
Bowery bum, banker's son

...Your skin is thin, mine is too
What's so special about you?
Make excuses 'cause you just can't make the grade
Look in the mirror, yeah, it's true
Pitiful soul that's you
Oh, they're all the same

...Hungry for bread, plant a seed
Satisfy your evil greed
No, you'd rather collect that unemployment check
Why should you work, like the rest,
When it's easier to protest?
Oh, you're all the same,
      Beggars Parade never became a hit and isn't performed by Valli, so our reverse-karaoke experience was not ruined and we didn't have to throw fruit at the stage to register our political disapproval. Instead, we had a good time and TOOK PICTURES!

From The Bob Bridge
Ken Doll backup singers
More Mattel
Not everyone can do this: Walk like a man  in place while
singing falsetto.
 
Only the guy on the left looks like he could be from Jersey. You!
Hand claps! No 60's hit recording worth anything lacks them!
 

Sunday, May 13, 2018

Andrew Rannells flips out on woman taking pictures during his Lincoln Center concert

Call it the Patti Lupone Cellphone Annoyance Syndrome. In his Live From Lincoln Center concert, televised last Friday but recorded in December, Rannells waited for a break and then firmly encouraged a shutter-obsessed woman to cease and desist, here, at the 17:00 mark.
I have to say — someone's taking photos over there.
What are you making? A [god]damn flipbook?
It's like you keep takin' em and takin' em.
WE'RE MAKING IT FOR TV HON!
You can just watch it at home!
You don't need to take photos, girl.
It's ok. It's gonna be on the TEEVEE.
So let's knock it off, shall we?
Rannells's show was quite wonderful, starting with Lonely Boy and including Sondheim's No More, a song Judy Garland sang in Meet Me in St. Louis, The Boy Next Door, and even Born to Run, which substituted an accordion(!) bridge for Clarence Clemons's sax solo in the Springsteen version.
     Born to Run is Rannells's go-to audition song; it got him the lead in Book of Mormon and a role in Hairspray, but not one in South Pacific. To anyone who might think a Boss anthem to be a strange choice for a Broadway audition song, Rannells notes that since Springsteen has a show on Broadway, Born to Run is now, technically, a show tune.
"And then I die..."
     Not to be missed was an intentionally-over-the-top It Must Be Him, a song Rannells's mother liked (Vikki Carr Live at the Greek Theatre) and which little Andrew was shocked to discover was not also a favorite of other little boys in his neighborhood. (Here at 41:10 but it's pirated and probably won't last long on YouTube.)
     Also performed was arranger/accompanist Todd Almond's beautiful Moonlight over Nebraska.Though Almond is busy, Rannells had the best possible "in" in snagging him: his agent is Todd's husband. From Lincoln Center's podcast:
"Todd and I are from opposite ends of Nebraska.
I am from Omaha, where the steaks are from. Todd is from Alliance, and
Todd, would you like to tell everyone what Alliance is famous for?"
"We have an exact replica of Stonehenge, made out of cars."
"And what's it called, Todd?"
"Carhenge."

Kristie Geslain: So, let's talk about your relationship with Todd.
Andrew Rannells: Yes.
KG: Because you two have been so close throughout this whole process. How do you know each other? How did you select him for this? What was your working relationship like?
AR: I was just a fan of his. I was doing Jersey Boys with this great guy named Matt Bogart, and Matt said, he was like, "Oh my friend has a band, The Todd Almond Band, and he wrote this song called 'Moon Over Nebraska.'" And he sent it to me because I'm from Nebraska, and I completely fell in love with it, and then I got Todd's album, and then I got his second album, his solo album that he did.
     And he's just so talented. And then my friend Laura Benanti did a show at 54 Below with Todd, and it turned out real well. And Todd's just one of those people that I've always admired but never worked with. So when this opportunity came up, it just so happens, his husband is my agent, in a show business stroke of luck. So I asked my agent, I was like, "Do you think your husband would want to do this with me?" and he's like, "Well, ask him."
     So I emailed Todd and he very sweetly said yes right away.

Sunday, April 15, 2018

Bob Dylan contributes a track to gay wedding EP commissioned by MGM; a Beatles cover is also included

Benamin Gibbard
MGM Resorts, a company with an exemplary record of LGBT+ inclusion, has commis­sioned a same sex wedding album, from which it will not profit, as a thank you to the 20-30% percent of the ceremonies performed at the company’s 15 hotels in Las Vegas, said the company’s chief executive, Jim Murren to Variety.
     Included is the Beatles hit And I Love Her, which Sony (which bought the rights to most Beatle songs from Michael Jackson) allowed Ben Gibbard of (Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service) to change to And I Love Him.



Below, the Beatles' version with Ringo on bongos, from their 1964 film A Hard Day's Night (the title was something Ringo blurted out during filming after staying up all night.) The film version runs a bit slower than the version on their double-sided hit single (flip side: If I Fell).



Mr. Tambourine Man: Dylan and The Byrds' Roger McGuinn (1990)
     Bob Dylan’s contribution to the six-song EP is the 1929 song “She’s Funny That Way” changed to “He’s Funny That Way.”
      We think Dylan needn't have bothered. Though he didn't have a gay couple in mind when he wrote it, Mr. Tamborine Man would work fine as a piece in a ceremony of two guys getting yoked. Below is a cover by American duo, The Helio Sequence.


Thursday, March 1, 2018

New ad spotlights can of worms represented by anti-
gay cakemaker case before Supreme Court case now before the Supreme Court

Virtually every time a homophobic judge is nominated for confirmation, @SenatorFischer and @BenSasse haul out their well-worn rubber stamps.
     Should Neil Gorsuch's vote be a deciding green light for gay wedding cake refusniks in the case now before the supreme court, a Pandora's box of similar bias in public accommodations could escape. From Lambda Legal:
Trump’s judicial nominees with anti-LGBT records include: Neil Gorsuch, Gregory Katsas, Kyle Duncan, Don Willett, John K. Bush, Amy Coney Barrett, Allison Eid, Stephanos Bibas, Joan Larsen, Steven Grasz, David Stas, Mark Norris, Jeff Mateer, Matthew Kacsmaryk, Stephen Schwartz, and Damien Schiff.

The first video below is not a pressure group ad concoction. It is based on an actual case in Mississippi.


Throwback Thursday: Why was the Beatle's gay manager smirking at Wayne Fontana on Hullabaloo?

We can't read Brian's 1965 mind, but it probably had something to do with the lyrics of The Game of Love, a smash that reached #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 the week of April 24, 1965.
     The clever director cut to Epstein just as Wayne Fontana began to sing: "The purpose of a man is to love a woman and the purpose of a woman is to love a man."
     This was probably uncontainably amusing to Epstein. (Epstein once asked John Lennon what he thought his book (Epstein's bio, A Cellar Full of Noise) should be called. Lennon suggested "Queer Jew." Later, Lennon changed his mind and said the book should have been called A Cellarful of Boys." Note to right wing cranks: Epstein was not a pedophile and that isn't what Lennon meant.)
     Fontana (né Glyn Geoffrey Ellis) could be a handful. From Wikipedia:
In 2005, he fought off bankruptcy but was arrested after police were called by bailiffs who went to his home in Glossop, Derbyshire. He poured petrol on the bonnet of a bailiff's car and set it alight with the bailiff still inside. Fontana was remanded in custody on 25 May 2007. He later appeared at Derby Crown Court dressed as Lady Justice, complete with a sword, scales, crown, cape and dark glasses, and claiming "justice is blind". He dismissed his lawyers. On 10 November 2007 he was sentenced to 11 months for setting fire to the car but was released because he had already served the equivalent of the term, having been held under the Mental Health Act 1983. After his release he settled in Spain.
Below: the best audio you will ever hear of this song. Use headphones. The camera cuts to Brian Epstein at 1:45.


A curious gap in the twitter timeline of Parkland teen antigun activist accused of tweeting 'Fuck fags'

David Hogg is a core members of the Parkland high school teens who are now outspoken gun control activists after seeing 17 classmates murdered and their school shot up. Now he and his friends are targets of right wingers. The other day, Erik Erickson smeared Hogg in a piece in which Erickson prepostrously accussed Hogg of bullying Dana Loesch, the NRA's pitbull flack.
     On Twitter, lesser-known ammosexual apologists than Erickson are now piling on, including one who calls himself "Chief-10beers" who tweeted this to Hogg:
We don't know if the homophobic Hogg tweet Chief-10beers claims to have unearthed is real or forged, but there is a rather startling gap in @DavidHogg111's twitter timeline from November 20, 2015 to October 25, 2016, a black hole including the alleged tweet of 6/27/2016.
     Before and after that gap, Hogg tweeted often. Looks to us like somebody just made a lot of his tweets vanish, although it's possible Hogg took a twitter sabbatical.
     In any case, Chief-10beers posted an interesting tweet himself:

Teacher, teach thyself.

Four pieces you should read about the gun debate

Did you know that although the NRA controls Florida's legislature more tightly than it does in any other state, the organization's PAC has not made a single direct contribution to any current member of the Florida House or Senate in 10 years, according to the New York Times? 
     Did you know that what most defines an assault weapon isn't how fast the semiautomatic or automatics fire, but the velocity of the bullets they fire? A Parkland radiologist explained the grisly details from an Emergency Department perspective in The Atlantic.
     Did you know that Florida's NRA enforcer/lobbyist is a old, pint-sized woman who so terrifies legislators that they won't even cross her in naming a state bird? Tracer and the New Yorker investigated Marion Hammer. HuffPost had the bird anecdote.

Creighton TPUSA chapter hosts Ben Shapiro, who falsely claimed that Jews are hate crime victims as often as LGBTs

1900 people were in attendance. There were two protesters. In 2014, the Southern Poverty Law Center called Shapiro out for minimizing antiLGBT discrimination and excoriated his arithmetic competency for claiming that the number of hate crimes committed against Jews and LGBTs were equivalent.
Source
     Breitbart’s [then] editor-at-large, said that, “[t]his is not a country that discriminates against homosexuals” and that “there is a vastly minute amount of discrimination against gays in this country.” To back up his argument, Shapiro cited the fact that the FBI’s hate crime statistics “show there are about the same number of attacks on Jews in this country as there are homosexuals.”
     Oh, Ben. Ye of little math skills.
     If Shapiro had taken the time to account for the share of the population that the LGBT community makes up, he would have discovered that the community suffers violent hate crimes at rates far higher than other targeted populations. In fact, an analysis by the Southern Poverty Law Center of 15 years of FBI hate crimes data showed that the LGBT community is far more likely than any other minority group in the United States to be victimized by violent hate crime.
      Unlike Shapiro, we did the math. You can see it here.

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Nero's sunken city:
What happened in Baiae, stayed in Baiae

Surrounded by 24 volcanoes, the Roman resort was a never-ending party of debauchery. Varo, Caesar, Brutus, Cicero and Mark Anthony all had villas in Baiae. One featured a "home theater" that seated 1,400. Nero had two villas (he may have killed his aunt to get one), a barge rowed by male prostitutes, and the best banquets in town.
     From the promos for Nero's Sunken City, an episode of Secrets of the Dead:
     The mere mention of Baiae brought to mind scandal and could ruin your reputation. In one description we have by the writer Seneca, he's walking by the port of Baiae and he sees people staggering around, they're so drunk, there are parties going on at boats on the bay and the air is full of loud music. Varo, for example, says Baiae is the place where old men come to become young boys again and young boys come to become girls.



Monday, February 19, 2018

Why do you let your congressman allow the NRA to hold the entire federal budget hostage in order to gag gun death research, year after year?

(Click to enlarge)
In 1993, a CDC study reported that residents in homes with a gun faced a 2.7-fold greater risk of homicide and a 4.8-fold greater risk of suicide.
     The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine noted that people living in those homes did not gain the protection they sought.
     The National Rifle Association found the study's conclusions inconvenient, so it moved to suppress their dissemination and got its errand boys and girls in Congress to cut CDC's funding by the amount the study had cost — to intimidate the CDC and researchers.
     But the NRA didn't stop there.
     It also had its congressional representatives add language to the Omnibus spending bill for 1997, directing that “none of the funds … at the [CDC] may be used to advocate or promote gun control.
     This was called the Dickey amendment after Jay Dickey, an Arkansas GOP congressman who introduced it. It has been included in every omnibus appropriations bill since 1997.
     In 2011, Republicans added a Dickey clause to appropriations to the National Institutes of Health funding for 2012.
Click to enlarge and sharpen
     Years later, Dickey (now deceased) had second thoughts. In a joint op-ed in the Washington Post with Mark Rosenberg, who worked on the CDC study which angered the NRA, the two wrote,  “Since the legislation passed in 1996, the United States has spent about $240 million a year on traffic safety research, but there has been almost no publicly funded research on firearm injuries. As a consequence, U.S. scientists cannot answer the most basic question: What works to prevent firearm injuries?”


Oh my. Young male gay Olympians have really lit Austin Ruse's twitter torch.

Porno Pete had better watch his back because Austin Ruse is on fire on twitter! He's been watching the Olympics and is so hot and bothered about gay skaters, skiers and their boyfriends we don't see how he can also manages C-FAM,
the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, [which] is a member of the World Congress of Families, the coalition working with NOM and others to export anti-LGBT hatred to foreign counties. Back in April, the State Department appointed Ruse to its delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
     Lovely Austin's equally lovely wife, Cathy, types internet agitprop for the Family Research Council, where she is obsessed with the Girl Scouts, and not in a good way. She says they love Planned Parenthood, but in the last several years her machinations have made them pay more attention to her!

Monday, November 27, 2017

Osaka Mayor cancels sister city ties to San Francisco after it installs statue of "comfort women" forced to work in WWII Japanese brothels

Yoshimura
Sixty years ago, Japan's third-largest city, Osaka, and San Francisco became "sister cities."
     Friday, Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura vowed to end the relationship after San Francisco officially designated as city property a statue memorializing WWII "comfort women" forced to work in Japanese brothels to service the country's soldiers.
     “Our relationship of trust was completely destroyed,” Yoshimura said, according to the Asahi Shimbun. “I will dissolve the sister-city relationship.”
     ...Despite attempts to block the installation of the statue from the Japanese Consulate in San Francisco and a concerted email campaign from Japanese nationals, the statue was erected in St. Mary's Square on Sept. 23.      ...At a news conference Friday, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that the San Francisco statue and others like it were “extremely regrettable” and that Japan would “continue making every effort so that things like this won’t happen again.”
     However, the activists behind San Francisco's statue have said that the response to its installation angered them. “I think it's a shame,” Julie Tang, a retired San Francisco Superior Court judge, told the San Francisco Chronicle on Friday. “They’re turning history on its head. Yoshimura is turning this into a geopolitical issue. It’s not. It’s a human rights issue. This is a global women’s issue to fight against sexual violence and using women as sex objects as a strategy of war.”
     The Japan Times reports that some politicians in the Osaka city assembly also were concerned that Yoshimura's actions could harm the city's reputation abroad, and petitioned him to find a solution through dialogue.
     Three Nebraska communities have sister city ties to two Japanese cities: Arapahoe and Hastings with Ozu and Omaha with Shizuoka.
     Nebraska's first international office, the Nebraska Center Japan, opened in Yokohoma in 2006 and is the main point of contact for Japanese businesses looking for business opportunities in Nebraska.
     It is led by Koji Nagasaka, who serves as executive director of the office. Nagasaka-san leads a team promoting Nebraska’s products and services and connects Nebraska businesses with Japanese companies.

What North Sea oil? Tiny Eigg, 7 miles off Scotland, runs on solar, wind & hydro power, says 60 Minutes


From the show:
None of these younger people would be here without the island's tiny, but unique power grid that runs almost entirely on renewable energy. A combination of wind, hydroelectric and solar, the first time it's ever been accomplished anywhere.
     Maggie Fyffe: That is the biggest and most impressive project that we've done.
     Steve Kroft: It's changed everything, right?
     Maggie Fyffe: Oh, yeah. It's made life so much easier.
     It was designed and funded with multiple grants mostly from the European Union and engineers from all over the world have come to study it. Like everything else on Eigg, it is run and maintained by revolving committees of islanders, the only visible sign of any sort of government.

Monday, November 20, 2017

7 reasons Neb. Public Service Commissioner Crystal Rhoades voted "no" on Keystone XL today

Source: Vice News
At today's meeting of the Nebraska Public Service Commission, the three members who ok'd TransCanada's eminent domain march through Nebraska to the BP-fouled Gulf of Mexico did not articulate a single reason for their approval of Keystone XL.
     Those members were Tim Schram of Gretna, Frank Landis of Lincoln and Rod Johnson of Sutton.
     Johnson had issued a toothless written admonition: he "sternly warned" TransCanada, according to the World-Herald, about its many promises, "including that the Keystone XL would be the safest pipeline in history, and that all farmland would be restored."
     “Nebraskans are counting on that,” he wrote, presumably with an unspoken threat that he would gum TransCanada to death if it misbehaves.
     TransCanada's recently-built Keystone 1 leaked 12-14 times in its first year depending on how you define "leak." Last week it poured 210,000 gallons of carcinogenic oil and associated solvents into a field in neighboring South Dakota.
     We use the word "oil" loosely. It's actually dilbit (diluted bitumen, or tar sands slurry) which is like liquid sandpaper on pipes. It has to be heated up to 160 degrees to flow, must be thinned by carcinogenic solvents like benzene and other stuff TransCanada won't disclose and it must be pressurized up to 1600 PSI. (Sweet crude from Saudi only needs about half that much pressure.)
     Because dilbit is technically not oil, TransCanada, nice company that it is, refuses to pay 9 cents per barrel into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.
     Unlike the men, the two women on Nebraska's Public Service Commission ixnayed TransCanada's application: Mary Ridder of Callaway and Crystal Rhoades of Omaha, the personal choice of former Public Service Commissioner pitbull Anne Boyle, whom Rhodes replaced on the commission in 2014.



     Rhoades, the only PSC member to comment at today's hearing, had plenty to say before she voted no. We have transcribed her remarks below. KMTV, Omaha's CBS affiliate, put the entire Public Service Commission meeting (eight minutes!) on Youtube. Said Crystal:
I'm going to be voting no on this application for the following reasons:
     1. The route violates the due process of landowners. There are at least 40 landowners along the approved route who may not even know that their land is in this pipeline's path. Since they may not know that they are in the path of the pipeline, they may not have participated in this proceeding and may not have had an opportunity to make a case before this commission.
     2. The federal and state agencies conducted studies of the proposed route, but the route that's being approved here today is a different route, quite simply. The mainline alternative route was not the focus of that intense study.
     3. While the routes have moved off of the official map of the Sandhills, both routes, both the preferred and the mainline alternative route still run through several miles of fragile soils that have a high probability of landslide and will be difficult to restore, once they are disturbed.
     4. The mainline alternative route crosses the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska.
     5. The applicant provided insufficient evidence to substantiate any positive economic impact in Nebraska for this project. No contracts have been entered into by Keystone or TransCanada with any Nebraska Labor Union or with any contractor. There was no evidence provided that any of the jobs created by the construction of this project would be given to Nebraska residents. The short-term increases in property taxes collected will not offset the losses to the overall value of the land through which this major oil pipeline runs. Further, the limitations in the orderly development and operations of the affected land will result in a loss of land value from the limitations. The Nebraska Department of Revenue could not conclude that this project would have a positive tax impact for Nebraska.
     6. The applicant admitted that it had not spoken with the Nebraska native tribes. The applicant reported, according to DOS that they had worked with the Southern Ponca Tribe, who reside in Oklahoma, not in Nebraska.
     [7.] And finally, another utility corridor exists that could feasibly and beneficially be used for this route. The applicant did not prove that twinning or co-locating the Keystone XL pipeline with the Keystone 1 pipeline in eastern Nebraska was not feasible and beneficial. Rather, Keystone stated it was not their preference to use that corridor. The applicants did not refute the landowners' argument that using the existing Keystone 1 corridor would avoid fragile soils, reduce impacts to endangered species and avoid widespread controversy and opposition to this project.
     For those reasons, I will be voting no.

Thursday, November 2, 2017

A second Omaha antiLGBT pastor gets busted in a sex scandal

Pastor Klint
Another of the 200+ Christian signatories (#120) to an expensive 2012 Omaha World-Herald ad opposing equal protection for Omaha LGBTs has been arrested in a sex scandal, for allegedly screwing a 15-year-old female sex trafficking victim. WOWT had this to say:
     Klint Bitter turned himself in at the Sarpy County Jail Tuesday. He's charged with first-degree sexual assault of a child. The 34-year-old allegedly answered an online ad posted by a sex trafficking suspect in Bellevue.
      Bitter was a pastor of kids and student ministry at Christ Community Church near 108th and Harney. Church officials said Bitter has been fired from that position.
Pastor Brad
     Mr. Bitter is now conjoined in infamy with Pastor Brad Hoefs, who was cited in May 1995 by Officer Not-THAT-Friendly, of the Omaha Police Dept., for exposing himself and masturbating, either in front of or next to two men by a parking lot at Lake Cunningham Park.
     Sadly this caused King of Kings (a West Omaha megachurch) to cut him loose him as pastor.
     However, he was cut considerably more slack by Community of Grace Lutheran Church in Elkhorn, which hired him and which is where he "pastors" now, despite having been cited AGAIN in 2002 in the same park for the same behavior, presumably by a different OPD undercover officer.
     (Dude! Look for cop shoes; undercover flatfoots often don't change them when they go homo-hunting for either entrapment or preserving the decorum of parks so that the little kids who frequent them at 3 a.m aren't traumatized by tableaus straight out of their dad's or uncles's or brother's gay porn.)
     After Grace declined to cashier Hoefs after Park Perv Pastor: The Sequel  he became a state-certified Intentional Peer Support Specialist (?) and was appointed by former Governor Heineman to serve on the State Advisory Committee on Mental Health Services.
     Here's what Brrrrradley had to say about the incident:
After experiencing a bipolar relapse in 2002 Brad knew it was time to start attending a support group since lack of knowledge about his disorder was at the core reason for his relapse.
     "Bipolar relapse" is one way of putting it. Bisexual relapse might be another, if bisexuality were a mental illness, WHICH IT IS NOT, OK? Also, why evoke Polar Bears, who have enough trouble, what with global warming and EPA dirtbag Scott Pruitt?
     Brrrradley has been married to his "high school sweetheart," Donna for 34 years. (AKSARBENT is not even going to ask what HER deal is, we'll just remind our long-suffering readers that her sporadically-devoted husband Hoefs was signatory 19 on the anti-LGBT-rights Heritage Coalition ad.)
     Bonus: Omaha's very own Death-to-Gays Pastor, Philip Kayser, also signed the ad (#183).




Thursday, October 26, 2017

Totally unacceptable behavior by Grandma's elegant Collie

A not-so-rough Collie who isn't the subject of this anecdote
My grandmother had a beautiful female Collie who I think could have bested Lassie in any dog show run by right-thinking judges, although "Lassie" was actally a laddie named Pal, making the dog TV's first transgender star.
     (Male dogs shed less in the summer than do females and look better on camera.)
     Anyway, every visitor to my grandmother's living room wanted to pet her striking dog and would call out to her. After a suitable delay, she would usually oblige and glide over to accept her tribute.
     But 30 to 60 seconds of stroking and patting would inevitably affect her stomach, causing her to look up at her admirer of the moment with what was assumed to be a beauteous dog gaze of gratitude and affection.
     It was nothing of the sort. She was simply (spoiler) straightening her esophagus.
     This was the moment at which I would start to giggle and grandma would bite her lower lip because we knew what was about to befall the guest: the reception of a loud belch.
     Alas, this was before digicams and viral videos, or YouTube would be sending AKSARBENT regular if measly checks.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Scandal's Tony Goldwyn tells Access Hollywood about his casting couch rodeo

Tony Goldwyn in 1990 smash, Ghost
Tony Goldwyn, a current star of ABC's Scandal, and the hot bad guy in Ghost, told Access Hollywood that a dude tried to wrangle him in a casting couch rodeo during his last year of acting school.
     Goldwyn's grandfather was the legendary Hollywood mogul Sam Goldwyn, the "G" in MGM.
     Below is New York Times film critic A. Scott Berg's description of Sam Goldwyn, from the author's 1989 biography:
     Goldwyn's short-lived marriage to Blanche Lasky, which would yield a shamefully neglected child named Ruth, ended acrimoniously in 1915, and Goldwyn, who had many affairs throughout his long life, became known as a ''chaser.'' A producer with a casting couch. The model for Ivor Llewellyn in P. G. Wodehouse's ''Luck of the Bodkins'' and Tepperman in Norman Mailer's ''Deer Park'' - two cases of bruised writers who had worked for Goldwyn getting their own back.

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Desperate Cheeto:
Randy Rainbow repurposes Despacito

Despacito was the hit of the summer (4.2 BILLION views on Youtube.) Here, Randy borrows it for a wildly clever diss of Donald.



Bonus: a local Trump rip you probably haven't seen if you don't live in Omaha or Lincoln.



Like this post? Share it via social media icons below.

Friday, October 20, 2017

Will & Grace's gay conversion camp kissoff was a potshot aimed at Mike Pence; guest star: Omaha's Andrew Rannells


Like this post? Share it via social media icons below.
Thursday's Will & Grace, which slammed so-called conversion therapy camps run by right-wing Christian sects, slyly dissed homophobic VP Mike Pence and while doing so, snagged more viewers than any other scripted show of the week.
     Said Variety:
     Will & Grace was steady in its fourth week, ranking as the top-rated and most-watched scripted show of Thursday night according to Nielsen overnight data.
     Airing at 9 p.m. on NBC, “Will & Grace” averaged a 1.7 rating in adults 18-49 and 6.5 million total viewers.
     Glee coach Jane Lynch and Omaha's Andrew Rannells (who originated the role of Elder Price in Broadway's Book of Mormon) appeared as recently-married, allegedly straight counselors at Camp Straighten Arrow, where Rannell's character was challenged by interloper Will to a contest against his (nonexistent) Camp KickAMo. Both Lynch and Rannells are gay in life.



     The germ of the episode was planted by VP Mike Pence's support of discredited, ineffective and cruel conversion therapy programs which have been outlawed in several jurisdictions when minors are targeted. Via The Wrap:
     Series co-creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan told TheWrap that their decision to introduce Skip — whose father is Jack’s son Elliot (Michael Angarano) — came about following Trump’s 2016 election win and in light of Pence’s link to so-called “gay-conversion therapy.”
      “It must have come from our interest in wanting to do an episode on conversion therapy because we were already into the presidency of the game show host that’s in the White House,” Mutchnick said. “We knew it was something that was on the minds of a lot of people because the vice president was a person that believed in the barbaric practice of conversion therapy. We don’t recognize it as a form of therapy — we only recognize it as a form of torture.”

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Maybe Jane Raybould should give that blogger who trolls Russia's most homophobic grocery chain one of B&R's old signs


Like this post? Share it via social media icons below.

Attn: fruits -- a vintage B&R slur of LGBTs,
from its Lincoln store at 17th & Washington.
Democrat Jane Raybould is running against the execrable US Senate incumbent Deb Fischer (R-MitchMcConnell), who never met a homophobic Trump nominee she wouldn't rubber stamp.
     Raybould's campaign kickoff was at her family's Lincoln store that viciously mocked LGBTs with gratuitously nasty signage during Anita Bryant's Jihad against them.
     As far as we know, Raybould has never acknowledged or apologized for her family business's disgusting behavior.



Monday, October 9, 2017

Dutch mock America's 'NRAA' gun problem: Hi. I'm Mike. I haven't shot anyone in 6 years and 41 days


Like this post? Share it via social media icons below.


And here's Nebraska's very own NRA gun moll, Senator Deb Fischer:

60 minutes: How Facebook's GOP employees showed Trump campaign how to snag rural votes



Last night's Lesley Stahl 60 Minutes interview with Kansan Brad Parscale was stunning. Any Democratic operative who didn't watch this on CBS or doesn't on the internet isn't doing their job.
     Facebook had GOP employees inside the Trump campaign showing it how to microtarget voters using Facebook's excruciatingly detailed dossiers on its users, right down to what color donate buttons should be for each user.
     Parscale claims Facebook offered Hillary Clinton the same help with its Democratic employees but Clinton turned them down. CBS verified Parscale's assertion with people from the Clinton campaign, who confirmed it.
Lesley Stahl: One of the best things Facebook did for you, I heard, was penetrate the rural vote. Is that correct?
Brad Parscale: Yeah. So Facebook now lets you get to places and places possibly that you would never go with TV ads. Now, I can find, you know, 15 people in the Florida Panhandle that I would never buy a TV commercial for. And, we took opportunities that I think the other side didn't.
Lesley Stahl: Like what?
Brad Parscale: Well, we had our-- their staff embedded inside our offices.
Lesley Stahl: What?
Brad Parscale: Yeah, Facebook employees would show up for work every day in our offices.
Lesley Stahl: Whoa, wait a minute. Facebook employees showed up at the Trump headquarters—
Brad Parscale: Google employees, and Twitter employees.
Lesley Stahl: They were embedded in your campaign?
Brad Parscale: I mean, like, they were there multiple days a week, three, four days a week, two days week, five days a week—
Lesley Stahl: What were they doing inside? I mean—
Brad Parscale: Helping teach us how to use their platform... Lesley Stahl: How do you know they weren't Trojan Horses?
...Brad Parscale: They already have groups of people in their political divisions that are Republican and Democrat.
...Lesley Stahl: Did Hillary's campaign have someone embedded—
Brad Parscale: I had heard that they didn't accept any of their offers.
People in the Clinton campaign confirmed that the offer was made and turned down.

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

The NRA death cult's Nebraska gun moll


Like this post? Share it via social media icons below.

The video may take a few seconds to load. More details in AKSARBENT's previous post...


ShareThis