$22-million-a-year Tupelo, MS antigay hate group worried that rainbow wrappers for BK Whoppers may become available in Des Moines

A Burger King in San Francisco, earlier this year, created a special "Pride" Whopper which differed from a regular Whopper only in its rainbow-colored wrapping.
     This was enough of a hook to allow American Family Association's Bryan Fischer to troll BK and exploit the notoriety by claiming, on his Focal Point show, broadcast on hundreds of AFA low power radio stations, that his very prosperous organization might issue an "action alert," because if this sort of thing isn't stopped in San Francisco, “this kind of nonsense, then it's going to be spreading across the entire fruited plain and you're going to be going to your Burger King in Des Moines, Iowa and you're going to have a rainbow color wrapper for your Whopper."
     Fischer went on to predict that the product would be disastrous for Burger King because people do not want to have to think of two men having sex when they sit down to eat a hamburger because evidently that's what Bryan Fischer personally thinks when he sees a rainbow emblem.

Russian comedian crashed pitch during World Cup final, tried to kiss Benedikt Howedes

Via Russia Today:

Vitaly Zdorovet­skiy, who has about  1.5 million fans on Facebook and 200,000 followers on Twitter, could be seen blowing kisses at the crowd and running toward the players.
      The incident happened in the second half of the game at the Maracana Stadium, when the the two teams level at 0-0. Germany eventually won the match 1-0 in extra time.
      In the stunt, Zdorovetskiy removed his red T-shirt to reveal the words “natural born prankster” written in English on his chest. He made a beeline towards defender Benedikt Howedes, whom he tried to kiss. The shocked German looked rather nonplussed.
      However, around 1 billion TV viewers across the world were left in the dark about what had happened, as the host broadcaster immediately cut away to a picture of Christ the Redeemer set against the sunset. This is common when people invade pitches in order not to give them extra publicity and encourage more people to do the same.
      Zdorovetsky’s actions impressed NBA basketball superstar Lebron James, however, who immediately uploaded photos of Zdorovetsky running on to the field of play onto his Instagram account.

     Zdorovetskiy, who now lives in America, wrote "Natural Born Prankster" on his torso before his stunt, which ended when he was tackled and carried off the field by five "stewards" and arrested. Naturally he took a selfie from jail.
     Basketball star Lebron James took video of the incident and posted it on his Instagram account.

LOOOL @Vitalyzdtv pic.twitter.com/29AvxdJVOd
— Habiba Da Silva (@HabibaDaSilva) July 13, 2014

Unrelated, but funny: Keith Olbermann on David Letterman, quoting L.A. Times in 1978:

"Soccer is the sport of the future in America and always will be."

Iowa GOP spent $15,944 to fly Mike Huckabee to Des Moines for Bob Vander Plaats event hosted by Repubs

Politico, in a story about Fox News propagandist and man-of-the-people Mike Huckabee's penchant for private plane travel, reports that the Iowa GOP spent $15,944 to fly the former Arkansas governor to a Celebrate Life event at the Point of Grace Church in Waukee in February of 2013.
     Former Iowa GOP Chairman A.J. Spiker said that “may have been the only time” the Iowa Republican Party chartered a plane to bring in a politician.
     Tickets to the event were $10 (individual), $20 (family pass), $75 (Defender of Life Reception, including appetizers!), and $1000 (Huckabee Roundtable Private Briefing, limited to 15 people giving ticketholders the opportunity to sit and talk DIRECTLY to Mike!)
     Said Politico:

     Campaigns and political committees have paid the cost of Huckabee’s travel by cutting checks to one of two private companies linked to the politician-turned-TV-commentator: Blue Diamond Travel, a business registered at Huckabee’s Florida address, or the now-defunct MDH Group, an Arkansas entity named for the former governor’s initials.
     On 14 occasions, Huckabee’s political action committee has also directly paid for private air travel expenses, reporting $30,000 in disbursements to MDH Group for charter travel to “PAC events” and a dozen additional outlays to chartered air travel companies.

PayPal screws sex workers too—it seizes their money

PayPal's suburban Omaha
operations center in LaVista

From Vice.com:

      ...Activist and writer Maggie Mayhem had one such experience with Paypal.
      Back in 2010, she had used a Paypal button on her personal blog, collecting donations to fund a flight to Haiti for post-earthquake relief community service. After a month of successful fundraising, Paypal closed her account and froze the money.
      “It was the worst customer-service call ever,” Mayhem recounted. “They were distinctly rude to me. I was ready to break down in tears. They were a breath away from calling me a slut on the phone. It was very clear: ‘We don’t care about your business or your content.’”
      On her blog, Mayhem had written about her experiences performing in porn, but her volunteer work had nothing to do with her occupation. According to Mayhem, Paypal’s terms of service led them to conclude that the fact that she had done sex work was sufficient cause to deny her the money she had raised. Neither Mayhem nor her donors have been refunded.

Obama laughs, fistbumps Austin cashier after ribald gay comment

Commenters to FreeRepublic were outraged by this at first but quickly became distracted by a cat video some genius planted in the comments.
     Daniel Rugg Webb, a 32-year-old employee of Franklin Barbecue in Austin, told the Austin Chronicle that Thursday was his lucky day to be "register girl" and recounted waiting on Obama:

     As the president approached, Webb threw his hand down and slapped the counter dramatically. "Equal rights for gay people!"
     "Are you gay?" the president asked.
     "Only when I have sex."
     "That's when he laughed and said, 'Bump me,'" Webb says.

     (Just before the fistbump, Obama had realized there was a group of children nearby, and said, "Not in front of the kids.")
    Webb told Buzzfeed Saturday Night that the Secret Service “frisked everybody, which was kind of my favorite part,” adding:

"If Rick Perry would've walked in, I would have lost my job. I would've taken that old queen to town."

Obama gets a fist pump as he pays for his lunch during a surprise visit to Franklin Barbecue in Texas #obamaaustin pic.twitter.com/sPUAMIAm2S
— Doug Mills (@dougmillsnyt) July 10, 2014

Nebraska's Dick Cavett now mocking Amazon.com on YouTube with author Malcolm Gladwell

One assumes Cavett, shown here fighting a toy Lamborghini with a toy tiger, is on the side of J.K. Rowling and other Hachette authors, whose orders are deliberately being delayed by Amazon because it is currently bullying the publisher in a business dispute.

Man who laid out barkeep of NY gay bar in front of his bodybuilder boyfriend, then hid at mom's house, will stay in NJ to face charges

Apparently the perp, Corey Pohan is a surfer thug who illegally rents bikes in Central Park and has threatened a legitimate competitor, who identified him to cops.
     However, witnesses say it was Paul Martone, and/or his boyfriend, Miguel DeContreras, who confronted and baited Pohan after he stepped over, rather than around, the bartender's chihauhau and that Martone actually dared Pohan to throw the first punch, which he did before taking off, leaving Martone to fall backward and crack his skull on the pavement.
     After being apprehended in New Jersey, Martone bolted from a cop car and tried to hide on the roof of a toll booth.

A look back at Anita Bryant's 70s jihad against gays

You should watch this if you're too young to have lived through Bryant's antigay campaign and subsequent career implosion after the Florida Citrus Commission decided to be done with her (apparently that TV exposure was the only thing getting her gigs).
     AKSARBENT was going to pass on this (it's long) but after hitting the play button, we could NOT stop watching. Dave Evans is a very smart video editor! A sample news report from the reel:

The campaign has also had its bizarre moments. One of the men who was against homosexuals received a package in the mail. He thought it was a letter bomb. After the police exploded the package, they spent two hours picking up its harmless contents: pro-homosexual literature which they had blown all over the neighborhood.

     At the time all this was going on, AKSARBENT can recall wondering why gay activists in Miami did not use the nuclear option on Anita — getting footage of the exploitation of child labor in orange groves in Florida (there was some) and throwing it in Little Miss Save Our Children's face instead of a pie.


(Via JoeMyGod)

Always lock up your guns

Buzzing the logo at the end was sheer genius.

After voting against LGBT civil rights, Omaha's Mayor is now helping to "re-educate" about civil rights

Virtually all politicians are duplicitous, but Mayor Jean Stothert's reservoir of disingenuous­ness is so large it may soon begin to affect the tides.
     Below is the shame­less statement from Omaha's mayor being used to promote a program celebrating the 50th anniversary of the civil rights act.
     Although Stothert (then on the city council) was not successful in completely blocking Omaha's LGBT rights ordinance, she did manage to help ensure that it was completely stripped of housing protections for LGBTs.

How much of Game of Thrones is drawn by computers? A lot

Creator of Anti-Obama float in Johnny Carson's hometown, a veteran, denies racism; says figure on float was himself, not Obama

The Norfolk Daily News interviewed Dale Remmich (read entire story here).
     The Oddfellows Parade Committee isn't changing any of its rules after the insulting float they approved earned Norfolk, NE nationwide notoriety.

     Also, GOP Governor candidate Pete Ricketts marched in the same parade but he seems to have removed the evidence from his Facebook page.
     Unfortunately, Team Ricketts forgot to disappear the evidence from the Facebook events page.
    Back to the Dale Remmich interview:

     “I am not a hate-monger. I am not a racist. This float was not disrespectful of the office of the presidency. [You could have fooled us — AKSARBENT] ]I am sorry if there was misunderstanding about that,” said Dale Remmich, a longtime Northeast Nebraska and military veteran.
     The float in question depicted a cartoonish figure in overalls with a walker standing outside an outhouse labeled the “Obama Presidential Library.”

Remmich's delayed protestations were entirely unconvincing to some
readers of a Facebook page demanding that the Norfolk Oddfellows
apologize. From that page, which elicited the above responses:
Yes, Dale, your story after three days of silence is perfectly under-
standable. You are a coward who attacks, but does not want
to take responsibility. You have brought a lot of shame on the
Community, and need to man up and stop lying.

      Remmich said some people mistakenly believed the mannequin to be the president. It wasn’t — it was Remmich’s representation of himself.
     “I’ve got my bibs on, my walker, I’m covering my ears and I’m turning a bit green — I intended it to look like a zombie who has had enough,” Remmich said Monday morning in an interview with the Daily News.
     Remmich said he had an uncle who was died [sic] in 1942 after Pearl Harbor, as well as a brother who died in the jungles of Vietnam. His father fought in World War II, and Remmich himself joined the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s.
     Remmich said he is greatly upset with the way veterans are being treated in some VA facilities and frustrated that President Obama hasn’t done enough to solve the problems.
     “The float was political satire and an expression of political disgust — no more, no less,” Remmich said. “There was no racism involved, no hate for anyone.”

Afraid to fly? Don't watch this

In honor of Ronald Reagan, AKSARBENT embeds the following clip:

Flying a camera-laden drone through fireworks looks like a Star Wars Battle Royale

And it's almost always illegal to do so and you can go to prison for it.

'Conservatives' in Johnny Carson's Nebraska hometown claim they don't know why people called their July 4th Obama float racist

See KMTV's report.

The float showed a dummy, a walker, and an outhouse labeled "Obama Presidential Library."
     Dan Marvin, Executive director of the NDP said, in a statement (which is NOT on the NDP website as of this writing):  "We have seen many times when Nebraskans disapprove of the president, but this clearly crosses the line."  Marvin went on to call the stunt one of the “worst shows of racism and disrespect for the office of the presidency that Nebraska has ever seen. It's beyond disappointing the city of Norfolk, it's officials and citizens would allow such a thing."
     The Omaha World-Herald reported the reaction of one Norfolk City Councilman who couldn't distance the city fast enough from the float controversy:

     Norfolk City Councilman Dick Pfeil also voiced his displeasure with the float. “The City of Norfolk doesn’t condone that,” Pfeil said.
     The councilman noted, however, that it was up to the Odd Fellows to approve the floats.
     A representative of the Odd Fellows did not return a phone message from a World-Herald reporter Saturday evening.

     Parade committee member Rick Konopasek told the Lincoln Journal-Star that the float wasn’t meant to be any more offensive than a political cartoon would be and that the only restriction for entering a float is was that it shouldn't be considered morally objectionable, which Konopasek defined as "nudity to sexually explicit messages."

     “We don’t feel its right to tell someone what they can and can’t express,” he said. “This was political satire. If we start saying no to certain floats, we might as well not have a parade at all.”
     Konopasek and parade announcer Wally Sonnenschein said the outhouse float was the most popular one in the parade, and the three judges awarded it an honorable mention.
     “It’s obvious the majority of the community liked it,” Konopasek said. “So should we deny the 95 percent of those that liked it their rights, just for the 5 percent of people who are upset?”
     This year’s parade also included a float of Pete Ricketts supporters. Had a liberal-oriented float been entered, the parade committee would have welcomed it as well, Konopasek said.
     “For the most part, this is a strong conservative community,” Sonnenschein said. “I really don’t see anything wrong with the Obama float and I’m kind of amazed anyone is complaining.”
     Sonnenschein and Konopasek said the man who built the float has been a longstanding member of the community, and people shouldn’t be quick to judge him for expressing his opinions.
     “This was a day to celebrate independence and part of that is speech and expression,” Konopasek said. “He exercised his rights.”

     If Sonnenschein and Konopasek and the Norfolk Oddfellows honestly don't think there was anything wrong with the float, AKSARBENT wonders why neither the pickup truck nor the float identified a sponsor, why the Oddfellows chapter isn't responding to media inquiries, and why Sonnenschein and Konopasek didn't identify the man who built the float to the Lincoln Journal-Star reporter.

Video: 2014 Omaha Independence Day fireworks on Independence Day eve

The Omaha World-Herald, in partnership with the brokerage firm started by the family of the current GOP candidate for governor, Peter Ricketts, shot off three tons of explosives last night for a day-early Fourth of July celebration.
     For the first and last time, we used a GoPro (Hero 3+) to record the pyrotechnics. GoPros have a decent-sized sensor but are nevertheless pretty lousy in low light.

The Ed Show: Keystone XL pipeline permit expires in SD; outrageous abuse of eminent domain in several states to grease TransCanada's path

Bold Nebraska's director, Jane Kleeb, ticks off the ways TransCanada has manipulated governors and legislatures in several states.

The Houdini of feline escape artists

Chuck Hagel replaced as Secretary of Defense on Wikipedia, whose founder called the vandalism exquisite

Drag Queen Mama Tits shuts down megaphone-wielding Christers trolling Seattle gay parade as a highly amused George Takei looks on

(Via Huffington Post)

This absolutely must stop

Madonna sowed the seeds of this in her "Open Your Heart" video and now it's clearly run amuck.

Mail order minister Joan Rivers officiates same sex marriage at a book signing

And she seemed a lot more serious about it than the couple she married.

Google's strong-arming of users to join Google+ gets ripped in YouTube video

Via JoeMyGod. Incidentally, indy rock acts are very, very mad at YouTube.

Utah man's dog shot after cop enters his fenced yard, then felt 'threatened' by pet — but cop dog executions are even worse in Omaha

The excuse proffered, said Gawker:

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, which published the video, the missing boy was found "a half-hour after the search began." Kendall met with Salt Lake police last week, and says he wants to see the officer who killed Geist fired.

At least Sean Kendall doesn't live in Omaha, where apparently a cop can blow away Fido with impunity in the course of investigating an expired car registration, after which the Nebraska Humane Society will issue multiple citations for "failing to restrain" dogs which were in a fenced yard. 

Hobby Lobby case: liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writes a very conservative dissent to majority's radically expansive interpretation of Religious Freedom Restoration Act

You can read Ginsburg's dissent at the Supreme Court's website, here.

     Until this litigation, no decision of this Court recognized a for-profit corporation’s qualification for a religious exemption from a generally applicable law, whether under the Free Exercise Clause or RFRA.
     The absence of such precedent is just what one would expect, for the exercise of religion is characteristic of natural persons, not artificial legal entities. As Chief Justice Marshall observed nearly two centuries ago, a corporation is “an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.” Corporations, Justice Stevens more recently reminded, “have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires.”
     ...Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations.
     ... The distinction between a community made up of believers in the same religion and one embracing persons of diverse beliefs, clear as it is, constantly escapes the Court’s attention. One can only wonder why the Court shuts this key difference from sight.
     Reading RFRA, as the Court does, to require extension of religion-based exemptions to for-profit corporations surely is not grounded in the pre-Smith precedent Congress sought to preserve. Had Congress intended RFRA to initiate a change so huge, a clarion statement to that effect likely would have been made in the legislation... (Congress does not “hide elephants in mouseholes”). The text of RFRA makes no such statement and the legislative history does not so much as mention for-profit corporations
     ...Citing Braunfeld v. Brown...  the Court questions why, if “a sole proprietorship that seeks to make a profit may assert a free-exercise claim, [Hobby Lobby and Conestoga] can’t ... do the same?”
     ...But even accepting, arguendo, the premise that unincorporated business enterprises may gain religious accommodations under the Free Exercise Clause, the Court’s conclusion is unsound. In a sole proprietorship, the business and its owner are one and the same. By incorporating a business, however, an individual separates herself from the entity and escapes personal responsibility for the entity’s obligations. One might ask why the separation should hold only when it serves the interest of those who control the corporation.
     In any event, Braunfeld is hardly impressive authority for the entitlement Hobby Lobby and Conestoga seek. The free exercise claim asserted there was promptly rejected on the merits....
     Any decision to use contraceptives made by a woman covered under Hobby Lobby’s or Conestoga’s plan will not be propelled by the Government, it will be the woman’s autonomous choice, informed by the physician she consults....
     That Hobby Lobby and Conestoga resist coverage for only 4 of the 20 FDA-approved contraceptives does not lessen these compelling interests. Notably, the corporations exclude intrauterine devices (IUDs), devices significantly more effective, and significantly more expensive than other contraceptive methods....
     Would the exemption the Court holds RFRA demands for employers with religiously grounded objections to the use of certain contraceptives extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations (Christian Scientists, among others)?
     According to counsel for Hobby Lobby, “each one of these cases . . . would have to be evaluated on its own . . . apply[ing] the compelling interest-least restrictive alternative test.” ... Not much help there for the lower courts bound by today’s decision.
     The Court, however, sees nothing to worry about. To day’s cases, the Court concludes, are “concerned solely with the contraceptive mandate. Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance-coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer’s religious beliefs. Other coverage requirements, such as immunizations, may be supported by different interests (for example, the need to combat the spread of infectious diseases) and may involve different arguments about the least restrictive means of providing them.”
     ...But the Court has assumed, for RFRA purposes, that the interest in women’s health and well being is compelling and has come up with no means adequate to serve that interest, the one motivating Congress to adopt the Women’s Health Amendment....
     There is an overriding interest, I believe, in keeping the courts “out of the business of evaluating the relative merits of differing religious claims,” ...or the sincerity with which an asserted religious belief is held. Indeed, approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be “perceived as favoring one religion over another,” the very “risk the Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.”
     ...The Court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield... by its immoderate reading of RFRA. I would confine religious exemptions under that Act to organizations formed “for a religious purpose,” “engage[d] primarily in carrying out that religious purpose,” and not “engaged. . . substantially in the exchange of goods or services for money beyond nominal amounts.”

Hobby Lobby decision: Majority shifted focus from religious vs. for-profit, to closely-held vs. publicly-held to rationalize today's terrible decision

Below: excerpts from Ginsburg's dissent, set to music today. The full 35-page dissent is here.



In her dissection of today's 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court allowing some huge corporations to deny medical benefits based on religious grounds, NPR's Nina Totenberg noted several points raised by Justice Ginsburg (in a rare spoken dissenting opinion from the bench): the majority opinion compromises our entire notion of who we are as a county, the decision was based on a statute, The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, not the first amendment (because of previous decisions) and that Congress never intended such a broad result when it passed the bill. Ginsberg wondered about me-too ripple effects , which opens up a huge can of worms, such as corporate owners imposing their religious beliefs regarding blood transfusions, immunizations or using medical products that have pork in them, on their employees.
     Alito's majority opinion shifted the focus from whether for-profit (not religious) corporations should enjoy such exemptions to whether or not the companies in question were "closely held," which was not persuasive to Ginsberg at all.
    In her report, Totenberg reminded her listeners that, besides Hobby Lobby, with its 16,000 employees, some of the biggest corporations in America are closely held: Cargill, Dell, Heinz, Dole, Whole Foods, Koch Industries, Ernst & Young, Amway, Toys R Us, Hilton and Bloomberg.
      The decision was also lambasted by a number of gay rights organizations, among them Lambda Legal, whose Senior Counsel and Director, Law and Policy Project, Jennifer C. Pizer, issued the following statement:

     Today’s majority ruling disregards decades of case law that drew a protective line between free religious expression and religious dominance of others. It is a radically dangerous decision that invites more misguided actions contrary to essential protections for employees, customers and the public. It is imperative that the U.S. Congress amend the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act to withdraw the blessing the Court mistakenly has given these companies to impose their beliefs on working women.
     Today’s ruling is about the ACA and women’s reproductive health and rights. But, some may mistake this narrow ruling as a wide open door for religious liberty exemptions from other statutes that protect employees and the public. Today’s opinion says doing so would be incorrect. However, recent mistreatment of LGBT people in employment and other commercial settings still makes this extremely troubling. A business owner’s religious objection to a worker’s same-sex spouse or a customer’s LGBT identity is not acceptable grounds for discrimination. It is more important than ever that states and Congress enact strong, clear nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people.

John Oliver's sobering piece on how American Christers shaped official, lethal Ugandan homophobia

Pepe Julian Onziema: I look over my shoulder every day.

The GoPro 3+'s focus problem: how one user fixed it

GoPro's very suspicious website claim. Click to enlarge

GoPro claims that its new 3+ line yields sharper images.
     Users worldwide are crying foul, saying that the lenses are no longer prefocused at infinity and are only sharper up to about five feet from the camera.
     How deceptive GoPro's advertising really is or isn't are would be up to the courts to decide in a class-action lawsuit, of course.
     We just hope that if a suit is filed, it isn't heard by a blind justice.



Chad Johnson did a comparison on Vimeo, which you can see here.

Click to enlarge

June's strangest Omaha Police Dept. tweet, so far

Stefon, who lives in Manhattan, who takes cabs, and who frequents the kinds of clubs that OPD and Omaha's blue-nosed city administration would shut down in a New York Minute, is hardly the type to waste even one of those minutes attending the kind of event described in this cop tweet. 
     Though we doubt SNL's fictional character has anything against Vets, motorcycle and car exhibitions are Club Kid repellents, unless said funseekers have suddenly become devotees of the politically reactionary American Legion magazines available for your edification in barber shops everywhere.
     AKSARBENT supposes it should be happy that someone in the OPD is a fan of Stefon, but frankly it creeps us out a little.
     Below: "How long you been carrying around that button?"

Yesterday's amazing after-storm light in Omaha

Great lighting helps older actresses and cheap cellphone cameras equally. Click to enlarge. Google Blogger seems to do a more faithful job than twitter at reproducing photos uploaded to it.