Today, amid all the wonderful marriage equality news, the LGBT community lost a humble, unsung friend

AKSARBENT's favorite blogger, Joe Jervis, lost his volunteer proofreader/copy editor today, and in her passing the gay community lost a great friend and tireless advocate (as well as the wielder of a mean blue pencil; despite Jervis' prodigious daily output, his blog's grammatical and spelling missteps are rare.)
     JoeMyGod's grateful eulogy was exquisitely respectful of a faith in god he does not share. It was also a sharp reminder that minorities (and all of us belong to one minority or another) depend on our ability to evoke a sense of justice in the majority of the majority.
     But this rumination isn't about the lovely Betty Salwak of Indiana — it's about how the readers of a blog will always surprise you. Jervis' remembrance brought out the best in his many commenters, but one stood out with an eloquence and wisdom that matched the tribute of even the webmaster himself:

Marriage licenses distributed to gay couples in NC; 'This piece of paper destroyed Amendment One'

Via JMG

Gay male flight attendant trope strikes again in 'Drunk On A Plane'

Dierks Bentley Gets "Drunk on a Plane" from Dierks Bentley

Pepsi's epic, wildly exuberant 60s TV ads

Ah, the days of 60-second commercials! The campaign tag line, "Pepsi pours it on," was suggested by focus group research that revealed to the soft drink company that the more its product was chilled, the more consumers preferred it to Coke. Britney Spears starred in an anthology ad which revisted this jingle, but why not watch the original?

Gov. Butch Otter uses the Anatole France argument to rationalize Idaho's anti-gay marriage law

Unfortunately, France was being sarcastic. Gov. Otter really thinks his state's argument makes sense — or that Idaho's too-clever-by-half reasoning will persuade a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Incidentally, as a young man, Anatole France probably looked more like a butch otter than Gov. Butch Otter.

Here's more of France, from WikiQuote:

Christianity has done a great deal for love by making it a sin.

Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.

It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.

You think you are dying for your country; you die for the industrialists.

She said, they said: Joni Ernst endorser, Sarah Palin, vs. several police report witnesses of drunken brawl

Sarah Palin on Facebook:

"I love my Bristol! My straight-shooter is one of the strongest young women you'll ever meet. I have to say this as a proud mama: right up there with their work ethic and heart for those less fortunate, my kids' defense of family makes my heart soar!

Bristol Palin, heterosexual supremacist, in a just-released police report (Click to enlarge):

In Iowa, a barrage of ads rip Joni 'pig castrator' Ernst; tying her to Sarah Palin and the Koch Bros.; 3 attack her abortion stance

The Des Moines Register says the social security attack ads are starting to work, although it quotes factcheck.org's conclusion that the ads misrepresent Ernst's position on that issue.

Factcheck.org noted that The Des Moines Register's most recent Iowa poll found that 56 percent of likely voters see her position on Social Security as "a problem." Despite that, the poll, taken Sept. 21-24, shows Ernst wins with every age group, although it's just a 1-point margin with those 65 and older.

Karl Rove is attacking Ernst's opponent, Bruce Braley, for opposing the Keystone XL pipeline (which will go through Nebraska, not Iowa), so the Democrats have responded with this:





 Three ads rip Ernst head-on for her abortion stance:

Expanded marriage rights for LGBTs leaving job protections in the dust. WaPo explains why

Patrick J. Egan, Associate Professor of Politics and Public Policy at NYU takes note of the widening gap between marriage and employment rights for LGBT Americans:

     Gay people can now get legally married in more states than where they are legally protected from job discrimination.  As this map shows, there are now five states — Indiana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Virginia — where gay people can get legally married and where it is perfectly legal for an employer to fire someone for being gay.
     It’s a circumstance that’s remarkably out of line with public opinion.  Almost all Americans support employment rights for gay people.  (For example, Gallup stopped asking its regular survey question on this topic once support hit 89 percent in 2008.)  But such unanimity in attitudes — if it ever arrives — still lies in the distant future on the question of same-sex marriage, where those in favor of legalizing gay marriage currently make up about 55 percent of the American population.

Related:
     National LGBTQ Task Force Executive Director Rae Carey deplored this disparity yesterday on KMTV Omaha's broadcast of the Morning Blend. AKSARBENT blogged it; you can see Carey's remarks here.

Most popular Internet news show in the world blasts Lee Terry with both barrels

Crickets from Ricketts on marriage equality

Statutory and constitutional state bans on gay marriage have been falling like swill hound NU fans on football Saturdays lately.
     Yesterday, gay statistician and political handicapper extraordinaire Nate Silver sarcastically tweeted "Gay marriage is on pace to be legal in 73 states by next Tuesday."
     Gay uber-blogger Joe Jervis of JoeMyGod fame can barely keep up; he complained in a radio interview recently that every time he comes back from the grocery store another state has legalized gay marriage.
     But gubernatorial aspirant Pete Ricketts is as mute about the topic as the quietly fuming news managers at Fox. There's nothing at all about the subject on his website. (We haven't checked his amazingly white twitter feed lately, as we are too easily creeped out.)
     Naturally, we're not stupid enough to think Petey has suddenly started caring about the legitimate concerns of roughly 50,000 gay Cornhuskers; we just think he doesn't want to advertise his opposition to the codification of equal treatment of LGBTs during the campaign before he has the chance to quietly torpedo them from the governor's office, the way Dave Heineman has.
    In the absence of any recent statements, we had to rely on the Omaha World-Herald's reporting of Ricketts' opinions on the subject in 2013, years after his failed 2006 attempt to buy Ben Nelson's U.S. Senate seat for about $12,000,000 of his TD AmeriTrade fortune.

     For Ricketts, the fact that his sister — Laura Ricketts — is a key supporter of gay marriage hasn't changed his belief that marriage is meant for a man and a woman.
     He not only opposes same-sex marriage, but he said he also opposes a longstanding decision by the Chicago Cubs to sponsor a gay pride parade in Chicago. The Ricketts family owns the baseball team.
     The Cubs' connection to the parade raised objections from a fellow Republican candidate, who said Thursday it called into question Ricketts' gay-marriage opposition.
     Republican Beau McCoy said that Ricketts should be held responsible for the fact that the Cubs are supportive of the gay community.
     Ricketts said he had no involvement in that decision. He also said that despite some “difficult conversations” in his family, he and his sister remain family.

Video: GOP pols to try to block NC gay marriages

Author of debunked 'study' cited by NE anti-gay group now asking why broads don't charge more for sex

Back in 2013, Dave Bydalek, then with Family First of Nebraska and now with the Nebraska Family Alliance, tried to sell Unicameral Judiciary Committee Chair Brad Ashford on the merits of the antigay Regnerus Study. It was a very tough sell.

     Now Regnerus is back, fueled by a heretofore anonymous backer of the Witherspoon Institute and the National Organization for [the prevention of gay] Marriage.
     (Said backer would be New York hedge fund rich fuck and donor to reactionary causes, Sean Fieler.) Anyway, Regnerus' Austin Institute has a new video, in which Regnerus wonders why chicks prostitute themselves so cheaply!
     AKSARBENT's favorite quote from the video (which we could not finish watching because our laughter caused us to snort Maxwell House coffee into our nose) was this: Men know that sex is cheap these days — if they know where to look...
H/T: @Str8Grandmother)

Gay turf jockeying in NE; after HRC announces Nebraska field office, National LGBTQ Task Force buys time on Omaha's KMTV to raise its profile

In today's episode (watch here), of KMTV's version of The Morning Blend (motto: what we show you between commercials are more ads!) Executive Director Rae Carey explains why the former National Gay and Lesbian Task changed its name to the National LGBTQ Task Force (aka The Task Force).
     On September 19th, AKSARBENT blogged the announcement that the nation's biggest gay rights advocacy group, Human Rights Campaign (HRC) would open a Nebraska field office.
     Our post praised HRC and welcomed it but included sharp criticism of the organization from some detractors in the gay community.
     That post elicited a spirited and anonymous defense of HRC in the comments, including the following swipe at what we can only assume was the National LGBTQ Task Force:

If you want to write about a scandalously incompetent and useless national group, why don't you do a post about the so-called "Task Force" which hasn't accomplished any identifiable goal in years even as it rakes in big money and doles out lavish pay? I doubt you'll be seeing any commitment from the "Task Force" to Nebraska or Alabama or anywhere else.

     We checked GuideStar, a charity watchdog organization, to see what it had to say about the National LGBTQ Task Force; it revealed that the NLGBTQTF took in nearly $8 million (presumably in 2013) and since The Task Force did not provide an impact statement, Guidestar published one from Philanthropia, which generally approved of the organization's efforts — comments about The Task Force included these, as well as some criticism:

• They aren't as extractive as some large organizations about taking money from communities. They seem to work with local leaders in a non-exploitative or overbearing way. They are about cultivation of local leaders and tailoring their agenda to local needs. They do hold THE national queer conference. While I have critiques of it, it is absolutely necessary and can benefit a very broad and diverse set of attendees.
• They created the 50-state Equality Network, whereby we have state level LGBT justice and advocacy organizations in all states. Through their "Creating Change" conference, they train, equip, mobilize, and identify core leaders at the community and regional levels.
• NGLTF is committed to increasing the capacity of local organizations through its organizing and training team. Additionally, they have a dedicated staffer to aging issues who is singular in the field of LGBT liberation at a national level. Finally, they are the only group to convene a national movement-building conference each year.

The National LGBTQ Task Force evidently loves to hold conferences:

The Task Force also serves a vital and unique convening role in the LGBT movement, a role that reflects the respect the organization enjoys among national, state and local organizations, leaders and activists. Currently the Task Force convenes the National Religious Leadership Roundtable (a network of pro-LGBT faith based leaders and civil rights allies), the National Policy Roundtable (a semi-annual meeting of the leaders of all national LGBT policy-oriented groups), and our annual Creating Change Conference (the LGBT movement's national conference, gathering more than 2,000 people each year). The Institute for Welcoming Resources, an ecumenical group supporting the welcoming and affirming movement within seven Protestant denominations, became a Task Force program in February 2006 and will include organizing the every-few-years "Witness our Welcome" national conference, which attracts 1,200 people.

Obese body starts grease fire at crematorium; ignites roof

Apparently this happens at crematoria from time to time. One solution: a green cremation, which also saves energy.

Band of Thebes blog on haitus while blogger Stephen attends to his new son

New posts to the classiest and most edifyingly esoteric gay literary blog AKSARBENT knows about, Band of Thebes, now take a back seat to the upbringing by blogger Stephen of his new baby boy, announced thusly:

Welcome, the littlest Theban, my son (above) born via a surrogate. I'm taking the summer off. Check back after Labor Day to see if the blog will resume.

AKSARBENT hopes Band of Thebes does return, but congrats to Stephen, regardless.

As KS county clerks hand out marriage licenses to gay couples, GOP Gov. Brownback, AG Derek Schmidt drag their feet on obeying U.S. Supreme Court

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand lower court decisions striking down bans against gay marriage in five states: Virginia, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Indiana and Utah, affecting all other states within the circuit court jurisdictions of those five states including Colorado, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, Wyoming and Kansas. The ruling says  "a state may not deny the issuance of a marriage license to two persons, or refuse to recognize their marriage, based solely upon the sex of the persons in the marriage union."

Kansas GOP Attorney General Derek Schmidt, who claimed
no court has "squarely decided" whether his state's prohibition
of same-sex marriage is invalid — immediately after the U.S.
Supreme court refused to consider the 10th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals ruling (covering Kansas) that "a state may not deny
the issuance of a marriage license to two persons, or refuse to
recognize their marriage, based solely upon the sex of the
persons in the marriage union."

     After all this, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt maintained, with a straight face, that to date, no court has squarely decided whether the Kansas Constitution's prohibition of same-sex marriage is invalid and that the state will deal with any litigation as it comes.
     Schmidt also said his office is closely watching litigation in other federal appeals courts that could bring the issue before the Supreme Court again.

     The very next day, a unanimous panel of 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judges overturned same sex marriage bans in both Idaho and Nevada, also affecting Arizona, Alaska and Montana.
     And still the Kansas GOP drags its feet, inviting litigation costly to both private citizens and the state.
     Said the state's Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, pandering to conservative heterosexuals who banned gay marriage almost a decade ago:

 "The people have spoken on this," Brownback said. "I don't know how much more you can bolster it than to have a vote of the people to put in the constitution that marriage is the union of a man and a woman."

Moriarity

     In Johnson County, a southwestern Kansas City suburb and the state's most populous county, District Judge Kevin P. Moriarity, appointed by Governor Kathleen Sebelius, isn't waiting for Brownback and Schmidt; he has ordered the Johnson County Clerk to begin issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.
     Yesterday, in neighboring Wyandotte county, just north of Johnson County, and the fourth-most populous Kansas county, RJ Brown and Danen Haxton received the first marriage license application given to a same sex couple. They still have to figure out which one of them is the "bride" on the application.

“As of this morning they were denying even this application. They weren't even going to let us fill this out,” Brown said.

     The Kansas City Star reports that Doug Bonney, legal director of the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri, has reached out to lawyers to join its federal challenge seeking an immediate court order blocking the state’s same-sex marriage ban, after the precedent in the 10th Circuit. It could be filed as soon as next week, Bonney said.

Ellen: alleged Facebook VP apologizes 'to each and every drag queen we've offended, by name'

SNL accused of joke theft in Nebraska riverboat sketch

Last Saturday, SNL aired a sketch about a Tina Turner tribute trio performing on a fictitious Nebraska riverboat cruise which, apparently, was remarkably similar to a Groundlings comedy troupe sketch.
     AKSARBENT saw the unusually lame SNL sketch and frankly, if the jokes had been stolen from us, we'd keep quiet about it.
     In any case we saw few, if any, purloined jokes, but SNL sure did rip off the scenario and mise-en-scène.
     From ThinkProgress:

The allegations of theft started when [Groundlings performer Kimberly] Condict responded to the SNL sketch on Facebook. On Sunday afternoon, she posted:

If you liked the sketch SNL did last night about a Tina Turner tribute band musing and singing to "Rollin' on a River," then you'll LOVE this sketch Vanessa Bruiser Ragland and I wrote and performed for six weeks this summer at Groundlings about a Tina Turner tribute band musing and singing to "Rollin' on a River!"

Groundlings teacher Ian Gray followed up shortly after that, accusing SNL of repeated counts of joke theft:

...But, over the years I have seen MANY, MANY sketches flat out stolen from my friends by Saturday Night Live. Nearly verbatim. Word for word... And everyone in our community goes "Oh man. That sucks." and nobody says anything because I guess SNL is still some dream for some people or they don't want to get involved, or a million other reasonable things that stop people from standing up for each other when things are blatantly wrong.

Best music video of 2014: lavish, all-star BBC cover of Beach Boys' classic God Only Knows

The video is filled with symbolism, but the snarky eggheads at The Guardian have figured it all out for you, and yes there's more to it than just an imitation of a John Lewis ad:

Beneath the production wizardry and celebrity spotting, perhaps the best way to read the God Only Knows video is as a veiled premonition. It’s the ghost of BBC future. Look at those derelict, deserted surroundings: the pantheon of culture in ruins. The BBC empire has fallen, brought low by austerity cuts and broadcasting deregulation. We can but ponder its past triumphs with awe and despair. Our cherished popular entertainers have forsaken us. They’ve gone to a better place – we call it heaven, but in entertainment circles it’s commonly referred to as “Sky”. The BBC’s real subtext is: “God only knows what’ll happen if we don’t get our licence fee.”

(Via JMG)

Here's a list of the stars of the ad hoc "impossible orchestra":

1 Dave Grohl; 2 Alison Balsom; 3 Lorde; 4 Pharrell Williams; 5 Zane Lowe; 6 Sam Smith; 7 Paloma Faith; 8 Eliza Carthy; 9 Nicola Benedetti; 10 Chris Martin; 11 Jaz Dhami; 12 Martin James Bartlett; 13 Danielle de Niese; 14 Stevie Wonder; 15 Florence Welch; 16 Lauren Laverne; 17 Brian Wilson; 18 Jake Bugg; 19 Katie Derham; 20 Gareth Malone; 21 Kylie Minogue; 22 Chrissie Hyde; 23 One Direction; 24 Emeli Sande; 25 Elton John; 26 Baaba Maal; 27 Ethan Johns; 28 Jools Holland; 29 Jamie Cullum; 30 Brian May; 31 Tees Valley Youth Choir; 32 BBC Concert Orchestra

Click photo to enlarge. The BBC provided thumbnail sketches of all participants.

Kansas City's Jason Divad at the Folly Theater

Certainly this deserves more than 913 views. Divad has performed at the KC Renaissance Festival.

This is different: gay marriage bans in ID, NV were just overturned because of gender, as well as sexual orientation discrimination

Stephen Reinhardt

This is something legal analysts have been ruminating about for years: if Johnny's sister can marry a man but the state forbids him from doing so, isn't that discrimination based on gender?
     Today a panel of judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals embraced that very argument to overturn same sex marriage bans in both Idaho and Nevada, in a decision that also affects Arizona, Alaska and Montana.
     The court was unanimous and the opinion was written by Stephen Reinhardt, a Carter appointee. The other two judges were Clinton appointees — Marsha Berzon and Ronald Gould.
     Click on each excerpt below to enlarge or click the link to the opinion above and scroll down to the conclusion.

 

60s rocker Paul Revere, born in Harvard, NE, dies of cancer at 76

Revere, the zany organist who got top billing in the group he founded, is shown below performing Kicks, the first commercially successful antidrug rock song, for a very impatient Ed Sullivan on the impressario's hugely popular Sunday night variety show on CBS.
     After the Raiders finished, the musically agnostic (and rushed) Sullivan teased the next Sunday's show by announcing an appearance by bandleader Xavier Cougat, the man who unleashed his much younger wife Charo on an unsuspecting world. Charo was a lovable, idiotic sexpot; Xavier Cougat was amazing. Check out his biggest hit, Perfidia, here.



From the New York Times:

     Mr. Revere spent more than 50 years in the music business. He decided on a career in music as a teenager, and later formed a band called the Downbeats. He renamed it the Raiders in 1960.

     Mr. Lindsay joined in 1958, and five years later the band recorded “Louie Louie,” written by Richard Berry and originally recorded by Richard Berry and the Pharoahs. The Raiders’ version was overshadowed by the Kingsmen’s, which reached No. 2.

     After catching the attention of Dick Clark, the group appeared regularly on “Where the Action Is,” the ABC spinoff of “American Bandstand.” In 1966, it appeared on an episode of “Batman,” and performed the following year on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

     The band went through a number of members over the years. By 1968, Mr. Revere and Mr. Lindsay were the last original members, and Mr. Lindsay left to embark on a solo career in 1975.

     Mr. Revere’s survivors include his wife of 35 years, Sydney, and a son, Jamie. Two longtime Raiders have also died: the drummer Mike Smith in 2001, and the guitarist Drake Levin in 2009.

SNL: Whites' last hurrah

Related: SNL presented a skit last weekend of disaffected lounge performers who ended up on a riverboat in Nebraska. It was pretty lame, but still better than the "tribute" to pro-gay, anti-Palestinian Jewish comedian Joan Rivers. The Rivers tribute was embeddable but the Nebraska riverboat skit was not. You can thank SNL Czar Lorne Michaels, we suppose.

Four of the six states surrounding NE now allow gay marriage — or soon will, but AG Jon Bruning wasted your taxes on brief supporting overturned Utah ban

USA Today reports that the Supreme Court won't rule on same sex marriage bans in Virginia, Wisconsin, Utah, Oklahoma and Indiana struck down by appellate courts .
     Six other states are in jurisdictions of those appellate courts, so it would behoove attorneys-general in North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, Colorado, Kansas and Wyoming to get with the program now rather than later..

     Here in Nebraska, homophobic Attorney General Jon Bruning just finished spending an undetermined amount of your taxes preparing a brief supporting Utah's now-overruled ban on same sex marriage.
     Forget the fact that Bruning is paid by the state to attend to Nebraska's legal affairs — not Utah's — and consider this: Utah isn't even in the same federal appellate court district as Nebraska.

Iraq War veteran Jim Mowrer in 'dead heat' with Rep. Steve King in race for Iowa's 4th congressional district

From Mowrer's web site:

A poll released September 30th showed a dead heat in the race for Iowa’s 4th Congressional District, with incumbent Congressman Steve King at 46% and Iraq Veteran Jim Mowrer at 43%. The numbers show the race well within the margin of error.
      “The more Iowa voters know about Jim Mowrer’s record of service, the more they like him,” said Mowrer spokesperson Sam Spencer. “Mowrer’s numbers have a lot of potential for growth as voters continue to get to know Jim Mowrer and learn more about Steve King’s disastrous record in Congress.”
      “While King has seen his Congressional salary go up by $20,000, he has voted against raising the minimum wage, he has voted against giving women Equal Pay for Equal Work, and he has voted against bonuses for our troops. This poll shows King is having trouble defending that record.”
     The poll was released by the SMART-TD’s Iowa Legislative board. Information about SMART and poll methodology is available in their press release here:

20 Reasons to dump Iowa Rep. Steve King

King, a miserably ineffective showboat, sponsored 17 bills in the U.S. House, but, according to Open Congress, not one of them was enacted

In 2013 Steve King has been identified as one of the “ten Republicans who shut down the government” (Gawker), costing the U.S. economy $24 billion.
“Congressman

Has one of the worst congressional ratings, according to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and avoided the Vietnam draft for three years before he suddenly quit college after being assigned a high draft number which ended the threat of him being forced to shoot at anything that shoots back

The Des Moines Register can't stand him: "King seems to amuse himself by being as partisan and vitriolic as he can be. He has had 10 years in Washington to cultivate his inner-statesman, but he has failed to do so. It’s time for Iowa to make a change." (Written in 2012)

The right-wing editorial page of the Omaha, Nebraska World-Herald endorsed King 

Engaged in deceitful race baiting in the House of Representatives

Voted to expand internet surveillance of users by forcing Internet Service Providers to retain customers' temporarily-assigned IP addresses, as well as other information, for 12 months

Voted for a $250,000 congressional publicity stunt/nonbinding resolution to encourage public display of "In God We Trust" and to affirm that divisive religious bumper-sticker slogan which replaced E Pluribus Unum (Out of many, one), the US' original motto

Voted to defund your local NPR station, presumably in an attempt to get you to listen to Rush Limbaugh more

Voted to strangle Medicare

Voted to force a rushed decision to extend the toxic, leaky Keystone XL pipeline through the Ogallala aquifer

Voted for the "2004 American Jobs Creation Act" — which cut jobs

Accused Iowa marriage equality supporters of following him around and screaming "the worst profanity I've heard anywhere" — but offered not a shred of proof

Somehow concluded that the existence of babies in trashcans meant that the Obama's Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional

Was endorsed by Wall Street financiers who want to eliminate farm subsidies and were fined by the Federal Elections Commission

Played hookey from the House to whine at CPAC about Nancy Pelosi forcing him to use energy-saving lightbulbs in his office while the rest of Iowa's congressional delegation was on the job fighting to protect Iowa National Guard jobs

In a legislative passion ploy, showcased Bishop William Lori, a notorious Catholic bully, as Joan of Arc, tied to the stake by marriage equality advocates

Claimed he bulldozed throngs of intimidating, profane gays to protect Connie Mackie (but unfortunately failed to provide any evidence whatsoever of this)

Was called an embarrassment to Iowa by the state's largest newspaper, in its 2010 endorsement of opponent Matt Campbell. The Des Moines Register added that King was "provocative, not focused on getting results for Iowans... reactive, not visionary" and added that it was time for Iowa voters to replace him

 King wants U.S. Intelligence (which didn't see ISIS coming in the first place) to spy on U.S. mosques, despite the fact that virtually every single American Muslim organization has publicly disavowed both the ideology and the practices of ISIS

Gone Girl Review

The new Ben Affleck flick gets The Onion treatment. Watch your back, Tired Old Queen At The Movies.

After hurled rocks and 'faggot' insults, BBC Top Gear crew flees Argentina

In the video, repeated shouts of "Puto" (faggot) can clearly be heard. Despite a police escort, Top Gear (a popular BBC auto series) presenter Jeremy Clarkson and his co-hosts, James May and Richard Hammond were pelted by rocks and bricks by "thousands" of angry Argentinians.
     A Porsche, Lotus Esprit and Ford Mustang were abandoned by the side of a road. Argentinian media quoted a Top Gear crew member as saying,“We’re leaving them here; we don’t want any more problems. Set fire to them if you like.”
     The crew hired a local fixer, but he was beaten up.



     The ruckus started over a British license plate, "H982 FLK" on the Porsche Clark and his crew drove down the 1,350-mile Patagonian Highway. Natives claimed the plates refer to the 1982 Falklands war between the UK and Argentina, which did not end well for Team Americas, in no small part because Ronald Reagan was conspiring with Margaret Thatcher against Argentina.
     The chief of the Falklands veteran center in Rio Grande (which has declared the Top Gear crew personae non grata), Cesar Gonzalez, called the plate an “outright provocation” and "a mockery to us all.”
     Clarkson said the lettering of the plate was just a coincidence. Even Brits, especially the Daily Mirror, are not entirely convinced of this, as Clarkson has a history of provoking locals and viewers and is on final warning from the BBC.
     Clarkson told Autoblog that if he makes "one more offensive remark, anywhere, at any time," the BBC will fire him.
     Then he tweeted the following blast about the 1982 Falklands war:

     Clarkson insisted that the license plate imbroglio was "not a jolly jape that went awry", that "for once we did nothing wrong", and that "They threw us out for the political capital. Thousands chased crew to border. Someone could have been killed."
     Here is how the Buenos Aires Herald described the event:

     Officials said a crowd of about 50 people began hurling stones at members of the BBC production team Thursday night as they drove in a caravan under police escort to the Chilean border in the southernmost province of Tierra del Fuego.
     Host Jeremy Clarkson and the others were forced to abandon the cars in an area between Tolhuin and Río Grande. One minor injury was reported and images showed broken windows and other damage to the cars, which were taken into police custody.

Run Jezza, run!
— Queers4Gears (@queers4gears) October 3, 2014

     After the attack, the crew’s vehicles were abandoned on the shoulder of Route 3 within the perimeter of the Patagonian districtof Río Grande, where the team was previously labelled as persona non grata.
     Following the intervention of local authorities, the British crew finally managed to get to Chile through the seldom-used Radman border crossing. Tierra del Fuego’s Minister of Coordination Sergio Araque decided to escort them with a security detail to the neighbouring country in order to ensure their safety.

Noted The Guardian, in respect of Clarson's priors:

     One edition of the BBC2 programme shot in Burma and broadcast earlier this year was found to be in breach of Ofcom’s broadcasting code for using a racially offensive term, following a viewer complaint.
     The ruling came three months after Clarkson was forced to apologise over footage in which he appeared to use another racist term as part of an old nursery rhyme during filming.
     Top Gear has previously been criticised for unflattering depictions of Albanians, Romanians, Germans and Mexicans.

How to prank a faith healer

JoeMyGod notes that the caller is actually British comedian Robert Popper.

Tweet of the day

Electronic Frontier Foundation rips ComputerCOP risk; Omaha Police have handed out at least 5,000 copies of the 'Internet Safety' spyware

EFF: In investigating ComputerCOP, we also discovered misleading marketing material, including a letter
of endorsement purportedly from the U.S. Department of Treasury, which has now issued a fraud alert
over the document. ComputerCOP further claims an apparently nonexistent endorsement by the American
Civil Liberties Union and an expired endorsement from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Since January, 2009, the Omaha Police Department has promoted and given away at least 5,000 copies of a spyware program which sells for $40 and which purports to keep children safe from Internet predators, porn and gang outreach by allowing parents to monitor kids' Internet usage (including all those wildly popular MySpace pages!)
     OPD got the money from Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) and the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice.
     Sounds wonderful, right? (It certainly did to KPTM's Fox 42 reporter.)
     Well, it turns out that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the largest digital privacy/rights advocacy group in America, is considerably less than charmed by this product.

     As official as it looks, ComputerCOP is actually just spyware, generally bought in bulk from a New York company that appears to do nothing but market this software to local government agencies.
     The way ComputerCOP works is neither safe nor secure. It isn’t particularly effective either, except for generating positive PR for the law enforcement agencies distributing it. As security software goes, we observed a product with a keystroke-capturing function, also called a “keylogger,” that could place a family’s personal information at extreme risk by transmitting what a user types over the Internet to third-party servers without encryption. That means many versions of ComputerCOP leave children (and their parents, guests, friends, and anyone using the affected computer) exposed to the same predators, identity thieves, and bullies that police claim the software protects against.
     Furthermore, by providing a free keylogging program—especially one that operates without even the most basic security safeguards—law enforcement agencies are passing around what amounts to a spying tool that could easily be abused by people who want to snoop on spouses, roommates, or co-workers.

     Yesterday the San Diego District Attorney's office issued an alert demonstrating how to address security concerns about the product. ComputerCOP is used elsewhere in Nebraska.