You don't have to go through all that 6-degrees-with-Kevin rigamarole with this game—it's easy!
The photo on the right is of Augusto Pinochet, pal to Henry Kissinger but not so much to the mothers of the thousands of Chileans he "disappeared" and the tens of thousands he had sadistically tortured.
What does any of this have to do with Don Bacon, youse of little faith may well ask! Well, piglets... Don and Augusto have/had the same sugar daddy—BAE Systems!
The British merchants of death secretly paid Pinochet (and Pinochet-linked groups) more than $1,000,000 through a front company in the British Virgin Islands as recently as 2014—even though Pinochet was arrested (in London!) in 1998 and died in 2006
Bacon hasn't yet collected $1,000,000 from BAE's U.S. tentacle, but he is on the take for $8,000 so far—enough to pay for about 8 attack ads on KETV during its evening newscast. Every penny helps!
On the left, you have homophobe lite James Patterson, who sort of testified — in a disjointed, unfocused ditzy way (watch AKSARBENT's video) against Ben Gray's proposed modification of Omaha's anti-bias ordinance in 2012 to protect LGBTs from job discrimination, presumably because of Jesus's many pronouncements on the subject.
Cavanaugh
Above, on the right, you have homophobe extraordinaire, Hal Daub, whose priors go back to at least 1978, when he ran an infamous "typewriter" ad against Rep. John Cavanaugh, accusing him of capitulating to or surrendering to or advancing (we forget which) the "homosexual agenda."
Cavanaugh had voted against a GOP amendment to stop the Legal Services Corporation from representing poor LGBTs who had been screwed over by government agencies or landlords or employers or whatever. Voters weren't fooled by Daub's attack ad. They reelected Cavanaugh.
Note:
the twitter video below contains edited (for time and emphasis) audio from KFAB. To hear the unedited, broadcast version go to KFAB's web site podcasts, at the link provided in this post's last paragraph
Today Omaha Mayor
Jean Stothert meets with the police chief, city prosecutor &
owner of a racist greasy spoon that protestors put a fork in last week,
to see if any of them can be charged with felonies. KFAB aired
accusations of a $500,000 extortion attempt by the organizer. pic.twitter.com/f5zvMugi62
—
ＡＫＳＡＲＢＥＮＴ (@aksarbent) June
23, 2020
Until this month, the 11th-Worth Cafe, a greasy spoon at 24th and Leavenworth
had, for 44 years, served food to blue collar denizens of one of Omaha's poorest
neighborhoods.
That some of that food was named after Confederate General Robert
E. Lee (a decades-long "fuck you" to black people) never seemed to bother owner
Tony Caniglia Jr., until black (and white) Omahans appeared on his sidewalk last
weekend, fit to be tied, and not only about Tony's menu-naming preferences.
Tony 2's son, Tony 3, recently drew rather unsavory attention when he apparently
reacted to news about scattered vandalism during police brutality protests by
urging, on Facebook, that cops' rubber bullets be replaced by real ones. "It's
time to go lethal," he alleged wrote, adding that target practice be practiced. Daddy, Tony 2, (who isn't very good at
do-it-yourself damage control) tried to social-media-distance himself from any
racism in his restaurant or his child-rearing by protesting that
protesters were "trying to link Tony Caniglia, owner of the 11-Worth Cafe to a
negative post on face book that was not made by him."
This didn't impress many black Omahans, but KFAB's Gary Saddlemyer seemed to buy what Tony Caniglia was selling..
Saddlemyer is Omaha's rightwing version of
Radio North Korea; on Monday he made it his AM drivetime mission to nail the
11-Worth Cafe to KFAB's Konservative Kross and canonize the Caniglias, with
the help of always-available (to KFAB) Mayor Jean Stothert.
Without telling
KFAB's gullible listeners why the Caniglias provoked so much revulsion that
people took to the streets, Saddlemyer laid on the victimization narrative with a
trowel.
(For a much more honest look at what happened, look to KMTV, the OmahaWorld-Herald or virtually any mainstream local news source.) Saddlemyer went so far as to repeat an accusation, on air, that David Mitchell, a protest organizer,
tried to extort $500,000 from the Caniglias.
Mitchell has denied this, saying that another activist suggested that the Caniglias make a donation, and not to any individuals, but to the Malcolm X Foundation, which has emphatically denied any role in any of this. (Anyone who didn't know better could be forgiven for concluding from Saddlemyer's toxic insinuations that Mitchell was involved in a personal stick-up.)
As an aside, we think Gary Saddlemyer should read the only part of Nebraska's Theft by Extortion statute
that could possible apply in his fictional scenario:
(1)(e), Bring about or continue a
strike, boycott, or other collective unofficial action, if the property is not
demanded or received for the benefit of the group in whose interest the actor
purports to act;
The above applies only, one assumes, if whoever allegedly asked the Caniglias for a donation actually posed as an
rep of the foundation, which is about as likely as Gary Saddlemyer apologizing for habitually broadcasting half-truths and/or rumors and then vowing to leave the state.
The Omaha Police Department, for its part, aren't taking the Saddlemyer/KFAB trash talk seriously, much to the likely dismay of Mayor Stothert who seemed very excited about the prospect of charging Mitchell with extortion on Monday's KFAB morning program.
As for Stothert, she
expertly shone as the Mistress of Innuendo, to wit, this translation of her between-the-lines dog whistling: If some — not ALL, of course, but
some! — of the black protestors have stabbed, burned and buried any of the
Caniglias in their North Omaha back yards, I certainly would want to get to the
bottom of it!
But seriously, Stothert vowed to "confer" with the police
chief, Tony Caniglia, and the city prosecutor to see if they could gin up any
felony charges against people who are sick and tired of people like the
Caniglias and are willing to say so on the sidewalk.
Anyone who doesn't already know how brazenly disingenuous Mayor Jean Stothert is should consider this: during Gary Saddlemyer's puffball interview, she recounted how abused she was when she met angry protesters on City Hall Plaza (who were demanding that she have club owner Jake Gardner charged for killing protester James Scurlock.) Video of Stothert shows her explaining that she as mayor cannot charge anyone with a crime; only prosecutors can do that.
That was then. Now, her hands don't seem to be as tied. Tuesday Stothert met with Tony Caniglia, Jr., the police chief, and the city prosecutor to see if any 11-Worth protesters can be charged with felonies.
At the top of this post is exclusive, but boring, video of the scary(!) protests Mayor Stothert and KFAB are so concernstipated about.
It is a highly edited (condensed for Twitter) version of some of the most disturbing parts of KFAB's 10-minute Monday broadcast. To hear the entire thing, go
here, but don't listen while you're eating.
Note: This post has been substantially written, for clarity. The information in the earlier version is correct, but difficult to absorb. We tried it. It's runny and it stinks— but only for a few seconds; after which the odor completely disappears and your hands feel fine: smooth, not too dried out from alcohol and no hand lotion stickiness. Aloe rocks, but some of the gel tends to sink in the alcohol so shake before each use!
You can make this stuff and you may have to if you live in Omaha, where hand sanitizer is almost impossible to find as of this writing, weeks into the American coronavirus epidemic.
We found some isopropyl alcohol at Walmart Neighborhood Market and snagged the last two bottles of a very nice Walgreens-branded "After Sun" aloe gel (on sale if you buy two!)
Omaha is the home of Marianna, a world-wide supplier of hair
products, which has 145,000 square feet of FDA approved production space
in Omaha but isn't making any hand sanitizer, even though other
cosmetic companies (like L'OrealUSA) here and in Europe have stepped up
to the plate. GOP Mayor Stothert praised an Omaha brewery making hand
sanitizer (for first responders) but apparently hasn't bothered to ask
Marianna, which could really crank out the stuff, to do something for
the wider local community. Neither evidently, has GOP Gov.
Pete Ricketts.
Pencils ready, class? How to make hand sanitizer with 91% isopropyl alcohol
The ratio is simple: Mix aloe gel with 100% alcohol, which must constitute no less than 60%of the total mixture. (Most commercial hand sanitizers are 70% alcohol.)
That's straightforward: 60-40 alcohol/aloe or 3 parts alcohol and two of aloe. But most drug store alcohol (DSA) is 91%, not 100%, so what's the correct ratio, to get to say 70%?
Here's the math, set off with rules, which you can skip, if you wish:
____________________________________________________
My 8 oz. bottle of hand sanitizer was nearly empty, so I emptied it into the 3 oz. travel bottle in the truck. Then I washed it out to be refilled.
I needed to make 6 oz. of mixed hand sanitizer in the 8 oz. bottle (room to shake).
70% of 6 oz. occupied by 100% alcohol is 4.2 oz, but you bought Drug Store Alcohol (DSA), which was only 91% alcohol.
So how much more DSA do you need to get to 4.2 oz of pure alcohol?
The answer is about 1/2 an ounce more, or 4.6 oz.
Here's the equation (involving some very simple algebra.) .91 x DSA = 4.2 oz. (4.2 oz. is the 70% of 6 oz. that must be 100% alcohol.)
You solve the equation for DSA, the volume of Drug Store Alcohol you need, by dividing both sides of the equation by .91
.91 x DSA 4.2
---------- = ------------
.91 .91
which simplifies to:
DSA = 4.6 oz, the same amount of alcohol as 4.2 oz. of 100% alcohol
4.5 is close enough, since you're aiming for 70%, more than you need.
Now all you need do is:
Pour exactly 4.5 ounces of water into the empty 8 oz. bottle, and mark it.
Then pour exactly 1.5 more oz. of water, to make 6 oz., and mark it again.
Pour out the water.
Pour in the 91% DSA up to the first mark.
Add aloe gel up to the second mark (no higher!)
Close the bottle, and shake.
You're done and you're welcome.
____________________________________________________
No-algebra cheat for using 91% Isopropyl alcohol to make hand sanitizer:
3 parts 91% isopropyl alcohol 1 part aloe gel
Three-to-one (75/25) makes hand sanitizer with an alcohol content of 68.25%, comfortably above what you need and close to the 70% in commercial preparations. BUT YOU MUST MEASURE PRECISELY!
...And don't drink isopropyl alcohol (yuck, have you smelled the stuff?) or leave it unsecured around desperate alcoholics or senseless teenagers who will do anything on a dare.
Rolling Stone magazine just published a shocking expose,America's Radioactive Secret, about hitherto-ignored amounts of radioactivity in oil/gas industry waste brine. Some excerpts:
Many industry representatives like to say the radioactivity in brine
is so insignificant as to be on par with what would be found in a
banana or a granite countertop, so when Peter demanded his supervisor
tell him what he was being exposed to, his concerns were brushed off;
the liquid in his truck was no more radioactive than “any room of your
home,” he was told. But Peter wasn’t so sure.
“A lot of guys are coming up with cancer, or sores and skin lesions
that take months to heal,” he says. Peter experiences regular headaches
and nausea, numbness in his fingertips and face, and “joint pain like
fire.” ...Radium, typically the most abundant radionuclide in brine, is often
measured in picocuries per liter of substance and is so dangerous it’s
subject to tight restrictions even at hazardous-waste sites. The most
common isotopes are radium-226 and radium-228, and the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission requires industrial discharges to remain below 60
for each. Four of Peter’s samples registered combined radium levels
above 3,500, and one was more than 8,500. ...Tanks, filters, pumps, pipes, hoses, and trucks that brine touches can
all become contaminated, with the radium building up into hardened
“scale,” concentrating to as high as 400,000 picocuries per gram. With fracking
— which involves sending pressurized fluid deep underground to break up
layers of shale — there is dirt and shattered rock, called drill
cuttings, that can also be radioactive. But brine can be radioactive
whether it comes from a fracked or conventional well; the levels vary
depending on the geological formation, not drilling method.
Class
II wells are associated with oil and gas production, and are regulated
by the Nebraska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. NDEQ has authority
over and manages Class I, III and V wells.
And what does the Nebraska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission think about radioactivity in the Class II injection wells containing waste brine from Gas/Oil operations? Below is what it told the Unicameral, reiterated here, on page 11.
Extraction of oil and gas usually produces large amounts of brine. Often
saltier than seawater, this brine can contain toxic metals and
radioactive substances. Brines can damage the environment and public
health if discharged to water or land...
In that year, 2015 there were already 115 such injection wells in Nebraska when Terex proposed a facility accepting "upwards" of 80 trucks/day of waste brine from Wyoming.
You really should read NetNebraska's excellent story about panhandle opposition to the project, linked in the paragraph before this one.
Yesterday,
Tucker Carlson briefly recapped his Tuesday Fox News show about how hedge fund (Elliott) manager (Paul Singer) wrecked Cabela's and its home, Sidney, NE with typically rapacious, predatory business practices, destroying 2,000 Cabela's jobs there. Carlson suggested that NE GOP Sen. Ben Sasse's stubborn silence on the Sydney economic apocalypse (1/3 of the town lost its jobs) might have something to do with the fact that Paul Singer gave him the maximum allowable contribution for his senate race. Though Sasse ignored Carlson's attempts to speak to him before the episode was shown, he released 77 words of pandering, evasive drivel a statement after the fact:
Melissa and I know the families in Sydney and I've constantly told companies, including Cabella’s and Bass Pro Shops, that nobody outworks or outhustles Nebraskans. Sydney hasn't given up and neither have we. There's a real problem with American communities coming apart, and it's going to require creative policymaking. But this problem isn't going to be solved by the easy overpromising big government advocates on either the left or the right.
Back to Carlson:
Creative policymaking is what Senator Sasse says we need. And of course, we agree with him. Here are three creative policies the U.S. Senate ought to consider in response to what happened in Sydney and Nebraska. First, call it what it is. This wasn't creative destruction. Nothing was created. It was just destruction. Destruction for the enrichment of a tiny number of people at the expense of many others. You don't have to make this illegal to call it disgusting, because that's exactly what it is. So, our first creative policy ought to be to tell the truth. Second, return the money. We're not saying Ben Sasse, or any other senator is doing Singer's bidding purely for the cash, but why not remove all doubt about it? If one of your biggest donors turned out to be a pornographer or a mass distributor of OxyContin, you'd send back the donation. You wouldn't want to be associated with someone like that. You'd want to be clear about your own values. Senator Sasse should be clear about his. Third, and finally, Republican senators ought to resolve to speak to the rest of us like adults. No more baby talk. Stop with the bumper sticker phrases from 1986. It's a different country now... Wake up. We're almost out of time. If we don't rein in the excesses of our system, and soon, we could very easily lose it.
Elliott Management, which refused to respond to Carlson, posted a response on Medium, denying responsibility for the Cabela's sale. The company was exploring a sale before Elliot bought a stake, Elliott said, adding that it did not exert "direct influence on the Cabella's board to pressure them into that decision." Carlson then noted that SEC findings contradict Elliott Management's claim:
Capella's did consider selling itself before Paul Singer arrived, but in August 2015, they rejected that path. Suddenly, after Singer's purchase, they reversed course."
It's sold by a Swiss firm which calls the line Bronx Colors... and who would be more Bronx streetwise than Zurich Huenenberg chemists, we ask you.
The president's makeup is not listed among the products "For Men" on the manufacturer's web site, but the Trump administration has no policy so far penalizing the transgender application of concealer.
Shady Trump's shade is Orange BHC06 Boosting Hydrating Concealer and it isn't removed from his shirt collars easily. Just ask the minion Trump yells at for failing to do so. Or Melania, whose clothes go into a separate washing machine.
Unlike Trump, Bronx Colors are a cruelty-free cosmetic.
A nearly 1-ton IBM 5-megabyte hard drive
being fork-lifted into a plane in 1956. It would
take 1,048,576 of these to equal a $90
5-terabyte Black Friday external hard drive
that a toddler could hold in his hand.
So Best Buy is selling a Black Friday Western Digital 5-terabyte portable hard drive for 90 bucks. Such a device holds the equivalent of almost 46 billion IBM punched cards (120 bytes each), which would have set you back (in 1996) $800 million dollars (at $42.085 for a box of 2000) and some change (that being $3,349,771.78) Forty-six billion punched cards would have taken IBM's 1930s Endicott factory more than 12 years to make (10 million per day, 7 days a week). In 1956, IBM introduced a 5-megabyte hard drive weighing nearly a ton; it had to be fork-lifted onto a truck or plane. Best Buy's portable hard drive, which fits a jacket pocket, stores as much data as a mere million of those.
Bits in an 80-column 12 row IBM punched card: 960 Bytes: 120 Bytes in a Terabyte: 1,099,511,627,776 Bytes in a 5-terabyte hard drive: 5,497,558,138,880 Number of IBM punch cards required to hold 5 terabytes: 45,812,984,490 2/3 Size of IBM punch card: 7 3⁄8 by 3 1⁄4 inches (187.325 mm × 82.55 mm) Height if stacked: 5,056 MILES (143 per inch)
WD Easystore 5TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive: Width: 3.2" Height: .8", Weight 8.1 oz.
Length if laid end-to-end: 5,332,556 miles Cost of IBM punch cards (UC Davis 1996 Central Stores Online Catalog): $42.085 per box of 2,000 Cost per byte of above: 1.75354166666667 Cost to store 5,497,558,138,880 bytes on punch cards: $803,349,771.78
John Barrymore, the villainous Mr. Potter in 1946's It's a Wonderful Life, didn't believe that Donna Reed (25 when she costarred in Frank Capra's most enduring and endearing film) was really the country girl she made herself out to be
One day, when a cow was on the set, Barrymore saw his chance to bust Reed, so he offered her $50 if she could milk it. After doing so easily, Reed, who grew up in small town Dennison, IA, said it was the easiest 50 bucks she ever made.
P.S. The basketball court that slid apart to reveal a swimming pool in It's a Wonderful Life was not a studio set. It was Beverly Hills High's "Swim Gym" and is still in use. The cinematic Bedford Falls, 75 buildings in four acres in RKO's Encino Ranch was demolished in 1954.
Also, and this is VERY IMPORTANT: the bird in the office of the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan was Jimmy the Raven, who appeared in every Frank Capra film after 1938.
On Sunday, the World-Herald devoted a full page to an AP story on how Big Money has invaded mobile home parks, the last refuge of heretofore affordable housing in America.
(We suggest you skip the Herald's edited version, and go directly to the source.)
One of the cuts was the highlighted part below:
Rolfe’s training academy has been widely criticized — including on “Last Week Tonight” with John Oliver — for teaching people how they can reap profits from homeowners whom Rolfe has referred to as held “hostage.” In defense, Rolfe said local owners have kept rent “unsustainably low” and that many are “held together with chicken wire and duct tape.”
Maybe that deletion was for reasons of space — or maybe it was removed because the referenced video didn't exactly flatter the Herald's owner, Berkshire Hathaway or its founding tycoon, Warren Buffett.
Besides the Omaha World-Herald, Berkshire owns America's biggest builder of manufactured homes: Clayton, which finances its houses with chattel loans of up to 15%.
The Herald did not disclose that, but we suppose it wasn't ethically obligated to, unless Berkshire owns mobile home parks too.
Oliver's video (below) vividly documented that Clayton Homes collection agents are not above suggesting that buyers donate blood to make make things right with Warren Buffett's Berkshire subsidiary, if they are unfortunate enough to have fallen behind in their payments of principal and hefty interest.
(Pssst. Don't tell anyone at World-Herald Square, but Al-Jazeera and The Guardian have also made videos about the scurrilous business practices of the biggest mobile home park operator in eastern Nebraska. Maybe if Fox News blows a gasket, someone who assigns stories at the Herald will notice.)
Frank Rolfe, mentioned above, became the biggest player in Omaha-area mobile home court acquisitions via his various companies, such as RV Horizons, Impact, Strive, Mobile Home University and various other partnerships of him or his partner devoted to separating from as much of their money as possible those tenants trapped by the immobility (structural or financial) of their trailers.
Rolfe once memorably and stupidly told a Bloomberg reporter that owning a mobile home park is like owning a waffle house in which all the customers are chained to the booths. The segment on Rolfe, a capitalist piece of work for the ages, begins at 9:10.
Rolfe's web of companies and business partners (mostly domiciled in Cedaredge, CO) now manage or own or partly own the following mobile home parks in Omaha, Carter Lake, Bellevue, Lincoln and Plattsmouth: Peaceful Valley, Garden Valley, Lakeside, Contempo and Hi Vue.
The Herald's Sunday headline was "Investors buy up mobile home parks, imperiling key source of low cost housing" and was based on extensive research into the mobile home landscape in Colorado by several newspapers there.
Had the Herald wanted to live up to its claim of comprehensive local coverage, it needn't have ventured very far to find cranked-up trailer park exploitation in its own back yard.
For example, the story the Herald reprinted included a quote from Rolfe claiming he had no "hillbilly" parks or gravel roads. Since two Rolfe parks are 10 minutes or less from the Herald's downtown Omaha offices, that fiction would have been easy to bust, even on a short lunch break.
Had someone from the Herald cruised up 16th Street, s/he would have found Garden Valley, the north part of which has dirt roads and rutted concrete to make Jean Stothert die for; it's the most delapidated of Rolfe's local properties. There, the Herald could have asked an elderly couple who have lived in the court for 61 years about the park's demand that their home be repainted and about the new 37-page lease they must sign (but were afraid to read), which demands a $1,000 deposit if they want to move their home elsewhere.
Had the Herald looked at evictions within the last two years, it would have found dozens by RV Horizons, Strive, and Impact. And rent increases of 50%. And water and sewage fees never levied before. What do residents of Rolfe communities say? Go here.
Had the Herald checked other court records, it might have found out why Omaha sought an injunction against the 2017 sale of Garden Valley — and about OSHA citations of the contractor engaged to lay new water pipes and city fines of same for exceeding the scope of a permit.
The Herald could have talked to a man on disability who was told (shortly after moving into it) that he needed to buy his ramshackle trailer (and assume responsibility for repairs) or face eviction, a common Rolfe trick.
It could have talked to a woman in Peaceful Valley who, outraged by Rolfe's new management, made an inquiry at a different park about moving her home there, without realizing that it, too, was part of the Rolfe corporate octopus.
It could have talked to Spanish-speaking tenants in Lakeside about their understanding of their new landlord's policies.
Or the woman slapped with a $50 late fee because she was hospitalized for a few days beyond the grace period.
Maybe The Reader will investigate. Or a TV station (unlikely, absent a shooting).
Or perhaps nothing will happen at all.
Sen. Chambers (r) wasn't buying much of what the Alliance
Defense Fund's Matt Sharp was selling last week
NE Unicameral twitter hash tag: #NeLeg
Last week saw the hearing for LB167, Senator Megan Hunt's bill to ban commercial conversion therapy in Nebraska. It lasted longer than 3 1/2 hours and included disturbing testimony from several survivors of so-called conversion or reparative therapy, including Adam Witte (40:33 in the hearing video below), who described the practice as "damaging-to-barbaric, as well as ineffectual" and recounted his experiences, in Nebraska in 1998-9, at a "treatment facility" which waived parental authorization and subjected him, over 15 months, to shock treatments so severe that at one point he passed out and discovered, upon regaining consciousness, that part of his tongue was missing.
Above: the film "Boy Erased" loosely recreated a mock funeral staged by the Memphis, Tennessee group "Love in Action" as punishment for Aaron Aupperle, of Lincoln, who recounted his time in conversion therapy at the 48:15 mark in the hearing video below
Matt Sharp, of the virulently antiLGBT Alliance Defending Freedom swooped into Lincoln last Thursday to testify against LB167, Senator Megan Hunt's bill to ban commercial conversion therapy in Nebraska. (ADF is a very well-heeled organization. It has raked in over a million bucks in Arizona alone from specialty license plates.)
Sharp got three minutes to make his case, like everyone else, but senators then peppered him with nearly half an hour of questions ranging from skeptical to outright mocking.
AKSARBENT published a short wishlist of questions it wished the Judiciary Committee had asked Sharp about his organization, but nobody listens to us. Sharp's testimony, (at 2:27:25 in the video below) centered largely on a recent Florida case, argued that LB167 infringed the (commercial) free speech of counselors. It also engendered a lot of tilted-head skepticism. Senator Ernie Chambers: First of all, Florida law is not binding on Nebraska. An injunction is not a decision by the court on the merits of a case. Have you ever heard of the term "false advertising"?...Well is that protected by the first amendment, to allow you to say anything you want to about any product that you're selling? [An obvious reference to the debunked practice of conversion "therapy" to alter sexual orientation or gender identity.] ...This is based on the exchange of money for a service. I'm sure you know enough about federal requirements when it comes to regulation of medicines, as opposed to these quack items that they sell in these stores called "supplements." They're not subject to regulation by the FDA because they don't profess to be medicine. They cannot make any medical claims. It would seem from what you're saying that that violates their right to free speech because they should be free to say anything about their product they choose and if the public accepts it they should be allowed to do it but that's not the law. So when you read this law, you see that it's talking about a deceptive practice. Is that what you read in the law that we're talking about? Matt Sharp: I do understand that... this is putting these conversations under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act. That's correct... Senator Patty Pansing Brooks: So you keep mentioning this Florida case, but the Supreme Court, right?, has twice decided not to rule on gay conversion therapy and one was in 2014 and ... the most recent one was less than a year ago, so you're conveniently not talking about that fact, so would you like to respond to that? Sharp then cited a Supreme Court case ruling that California unconstitutionally burdened an unlicensed pregnancy crisis center's free speech. (You can read the court's decision — and the dissent of four justices — here: https://casetext.com/case/natl-inst-advocates-v-becerra-1) ...Senator Chambers: Counselor, I'm concerned about children. I'm concerned about people with power torturing weak people. Have you ever had electrical shock applied to your testicles? Matt Sharp: No I have not. Chambers: How do you think you'd like that? Sharp: I think anyone would be very opposed to that.
Testimony time marks for people mentioned in this post: Witte: 40:33; Skinner 1:41:10; Sharp/Chambers: 2:27:25; Aupperle: 48:15
Chambers: Are you aware that that is considered torture? Sharp: I'm not familiar with the international laws but I believe that is abusive. Chambers: I don't just mean international law — in America. If somebody was found to have put a person in a position to electrically shock his or her, well, his, testicles, that would be considered torture. Sharp: And that's what the court in Florida said. When you're looking at that, if that's what you want to address, do a targeted law towards that. You do not do a broad proscription on all constitutionally protected speech. Chambers: I'm not talking what you said the Florida court ruled. I'm talking about conduct that is embraced in what these people want to do to children — unless you think those testifiers were lying. Do you think they were telling the truth when they talked about what they experienced? Sharp: I do. Chambers: When one said that he was shocked with such a large jolt that he was unconscious and when he woke up, a large chunk of his tongue was missing. You approve of that being done to children, don't you? Sharp: No. Chambers: Do you have children? Sharp: Yes I do. Chambers: Would you agree to let some people in a church tell you they should be allowed to apply electrical shock to your child's testicles? Sharp: I love my children and would protect them with my life.
Ernie Chambers in the 1966 Oscar-nominated documentary,
A Time For Burning. Except for a 4-year term-limit time-out,
Chambers has been a state senator since 1970, the longest-serving
lawmaker in the history of Nebraska's legislature.
Chambers: And if somebody did that to my child, they wouldn't be here talking now. I'd be on trial someplace and I don't think a jury would convict me. Here's what I'm getting to. All of these side issues mean nothing to me. They can be handled in court. But when I know there are children right now with parents so foolish, preachers so lacking in concern, that these children will be tortured for the sexual gratification of adults, then I'll do all I can to stop it. And see, I'm not going to be around to push and play. The schools that were in black communities used corporal punishment against our children, so I got it outlawed in all the public schools in the state of Nebraska. I got a law that made it — even before the U.S. Supreme Court said it could be done — that if somebody was under the age of 18 when they committed a murder, they could not be executed. I didn't wait for the U.S. Supreme Court. I care about young children and I know how adults abuse children. Sex trafficking goes after children because they're vulnerable and a lot of these things happen in churches... Do know what the letters — to get in your territory — do you know what the letters "FCC" stand for?
Sharp: I believe Federal Communications Commission. Chambers: Bingo. Now what is communication? Does that involve speech? Sharp: Yes it does. Chambers: And the FCC regulates that, doesn't it? Sharp: And the Supreme Court has also recently called into question some of those regulations, on the idea that commercial speech is entitled to less constitutional protection. Chambers: Counselor, if you don't mind answering the question, you don't have to obfuscate me. I understand the law. I don't dress like a lawyer but my brain operates like one. Just so — in the interest of disclosure — I have a law degree. Now, are you aware of why these big pharmaceutical firms who advertise their medications on television tell you all the side effects, some of which are fatal? Do you think they do that voluntarily? They were told by the FCC that they cannot advertise products unless they tell all of the side effects. The entire hearing was recorded and uploaded to YouTube (above video) by John Skinner, who also testified before the committee (1:41:10 in the video) in a sharply-worded, factual excoriation of the Nebraska Family Alliance (formerly, the Nebraska Family Council), a virulently antiLGBT organization about which which AKSARBENT has written here, here,here, here, here, and here.
Dear Sen. Steve Lathrop, Sen. Tom Brandt, Sen. Ernie Chambers, Sen. Wendy DeBoer, Sen. Adam Morfeld, Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks, Sen. Julie Slama, Sen. Justin Wayne:
Here's what we at AKSARBENT wish all of you on the Unicameral's Judiciary Committee had asked Matt Sharp of the Alliance Defending Freedom yesterday during his testimony opposing LB167 which would prohibit professionals from practicing debunked sexual orientation conversion therapy:
1. Your organization is now called Alliance Defending Freedom, but it used to be called Alliance Defense Fund. Did you change your name before or after one of your attorneys, Lisa Biron, was sentenced to 40 years in prison as a convicted child molester and child pornographer after being indicted on federal charges related to the sexual exploitation of her 14-year-old daughter, including taking her to Canada to have sex with a man there? 2. Did your organization pay for false Internet ads accusing the ACLU of calling for porn filters to be disabled in classrooms when actually the ACLU was mounting a Don't Filter Me campaign warning schools not to selectively censor gay-themed NON-SEXUALLY EXPLICIT sites like The Trevor Project, PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network)?
3. Did your organization tell the IRS that you didn't engage in lobbying in 2013 when you opposed LGBT legislation at least twice that year?
4. Bonus Question! Is it really true that you got on the Arizona Department of Transportation specialty license plate gravy train and raked in over a million sweet bucks from that state's government?
KETV and KMTV are reporting that Senator Megan Hunt withdrew a bill (LB168) defining conversion therapy as child abuse, which it certainly is. From KMTV:
Today, Nebraska Senator Megan Hunt filed to
withdraw a bill that would classify conversion therapy as child abuse.
Hunt said she chose to withdraw the bill with support of LGBTQ+
advocates. Though she has withdrawn one bill, another is still up
for discussion which would prevent licensed medical providers from
administering conversion therapy.
Here's the statement from Senator Hunt:
Lincoln, NE— 2.7.19 — Today, with the support of LGBTQ+ advocates,
Senator Megan Hunt filed a motion to withdraw LB 168, her bill to
classify the provision of conversion therapy as child abuse. “With the
support of many LGBTQ+ advocates, I have made the decision to withdraw
LB168, my bill to classify conversion therapy as child abuse,” Hunt
said. “Conversion therapy, of course, is child abuse, and I believe in
protecting children by holding the institutions and providers of this
abuse accountable. “From survivors of conversion therapy and their
advocates, I learned that parents are often tricked, lied to, and misled
into placing their children into faith-based counseling without the
knowledge that they are subjecting their children to conversion therapy.
I share the position of LGBTQ advocate organizations like The Trevor
Project and Born Perfect that our focus should be on those who
administer these treatments, not on parents. “I believe in educating
parents about the effects of conversion therapy, the predatory nature of
many faith-based counseling centers, and helping parents realize that
being LGBTQ+ is not a choice and that their children should be loved as
they are and do not need to be cured. For that reason, I am withdrawing
LB168. I ask supporters to focus on LB167, my bill to prohibit licensed
medical providers from administering conversion therapy.” LB 167 is
scheduled in the Judiciary Committee today at 1:30pm in the Warner
Chamber at the Capitol.
The well-financed ADF, which used to be known as the Alliance Defense Fund and is now known as Alliance Defending Freedom, swooped into Lincoln in the person of Matt Sharp to oppose any restrictions on conversion "therapy." The ADF has been to Nebraska before; in 2012 it failed to kill LB912 (banning municipalities from passing gay rights laws unless such legislation exists in Nebraska statutes (which would make local laws unnecessary)) and it failed later that year to kill an amendment to the Omaha Charter protecting LGBTs from arbitrary bias.
Sharp said this to KETV: "What this does is kick the client out of the driver's seat and tells them what goals are permissible and which are not, which conversations you can have, and which you cannot."
Megan Hunt said her bill doesn't tell counselors what they can promise unhappy gays, it just doesn't allow them to charge for "therapy" that has been widely debunked by the professional organizations of both psychologists and psychiatrists.
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.
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...
