The professional homophobe gravy train; Exhibit A

10th Street: even at 2:30 a.m, an ersatz girl's gotta eat!

AKSARBENT's camera has been finding a lot of jarring
juxtaposition lately...

Rowan County Jerk: official misconduct charges filed against $80,000-per-year, triple divorcee Christer Diva who refuses to issue straight or gay marriage licenses because of her deeply held principles about marriage

Another poster child for Ted Cruz's ginned up pandering on the phony issue of religious freedom for bigots who refuse public accommodations to gay customers.
     In Rowan County, Kentucky, Clerk Kim Davis' case, it's not gay customers, it's gay (and now straight) citizens and taxpayers, since she runs a public office as a personal religious fiefdom in the manner she sees fit, the U.S. Supreme Court and the State of Kentucky be damned.
     Davis doesn't approve of the Supreme Court ruling that refusal to grant marriage licenses to gay couples is a violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution and she has decided to make Rowan County taxpayers pawns of her pettiness.
     From Towleroad:

     The Rowan County Attorney’s Office has filed a charge of official misconduct against clerk Kim Davis for her repeated refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples despite a federal order.      The Morehead News reports County Attorney Cecil Watkins said the Rowan County government and his office had no other action against Davis.
     “No authority exists for her removal or suspension from the office by Rowan County government,” said Watkins. “Kentucky State Government is the only entity that can move to have Kim Davis removed as Rowan County Clerk.”
     The charge has been referred to the Attorney General’s Office. The county attorney’s office is prohibited from prosecuting Davis because they are involved in current litigation with Davis.

The Lexington, Kentucky Herald Leader is fed up with Davis's imperious antics and takes conspicuous note of the fact that Davis worked in her mother's office for 27 years before being elected to take her place and that her son now works there as well. Nepotism, anyone? The paper eviscerated Davis and her Liberty Counsel misbehavior enablers in two scorching editorials here and here.

'Faggot,' 'buttboy' and 'homo' expletives part of Pentagon culture at National Defense University

The Washington School, chartered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has raised eyebrows among some at the State Department and among lawmakers for its questionable due diligence in vetting instructors.
     One teacher, Carlos Alberto Ospina Ovalle, was linked to Colombian killings and another, Garcia Covarrubias, was accused of torture and beatings under Pinochet.
     From the Daily Beast / Center for Public Integrity:

     The NDU’s Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, where Ospina taught from 2006 to 2014 before moving to another academic center at the university’s campus in Washington, D.C., has itself been rocked by controversy in recent years. A nonpublic report in 2012 by a U.S. Army colonel, appointed by the center’s director in response to persistent staff complaints, concluded that “a hostile work environment exists”; that its staff had displayed “a lack of sensitivity towards the use of derogatory language”; and many employees felt its leaders routinely retaliated against those who questioned them.
     The report, obtained by CPI under the Freedom of Information Act, depicted a sort of frat-house atmosphere at the center. It stated that staff had exchanged “racially charged emails”—including one directed at President Obama; used offensive language such as “faggot,” “buttboy,” and “homo”; and that “women employees feel that they are treated inappropriately.” Even senior leaders used “inappropriate hand gestures,” it said, and mentioned simulations of masturbation.

America's best Christian interviews Donald Trump

Like a well-oiled machine

Former Vatican papal nuncio, Josef Wesolowski, who had been awaiting trial for various charges including hoarding more than 100,000 computer kiddie porn files inside Vatican City, who was whisked to Vatican City before Dominican Republic officials could arrest him, whose extradition was denied by the Vatican, who didn't show up at his Vatican trial on July 11  because of a sudden unnamed illness, thereby postponing said trial, has died unexpectedly in his private room in a Vatican City Palazzo. The Holy See assures everyone that its initial investigation indicates death by natural causes but the public should be satisfied to know that a thorough autopsy also will be conducted — by the Church. That is all.

Father Knows Best, 1958: Bud flirts with dad a little, then heads out to the baths

     There were lots of good-natured gay winks in the scripts of Father Knows Best; the most over-the-top was when Jim and Margaret strong-armed Bud into getting gay-married, after a fashion, at a wedding rehearsal.
     Our favorite, excerpted and edited below, was Bud's outing to the baths — to try to rectify a wrong for his sister, of course. Only Dobie Gillis and his best bud Maynard provided more unwittingly homoerotic subtext in 50s television.
     Billy Gray, the talented, versatile actor who played Bud Anderson in THE classic American family sitcom, was busted for weed (seeds and stems) in the early 60s and, branded as a dope fiend, didn't work in Hollywood for years. He, though straight, later revealed to Howard Stern that he fooled around enough with one guy to be disqualified from the 60s draft.
     During Vietnam, so many guys discovered that truthfully answering question 20 on the pre-induction medical history questionnaire (Do you have or have you ever had homosexual tendencies?) was a get-out-of-the-draft card that the Pentagon decided to remove the written question and instead had it asked verbally at induction centers, hoping to publicly intimidate inductees into lying about incidental gay episodes in their past so they could still be drafted.

Imperious Donald Trump sneeringly tells news anchor to 'Go back to Univision' before kicking him out of his press conference

Jorge Ramos eventually came back and Trump took his questions — arrogantly. No wonder Hispanics cannot stand Trump. In other news, two state GOP parties are adding anti-Trump clauses to candidate applications.

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Game show host Bob Eubanks: 'In the butt, Bob' will probably be on my tombstone

Above: Eubanks in 1964 when he was a top DJ at KRLA in Los Angeles. That year, he
borrowed $25,000 on his house to produce the Beatles' first LA concert, at the
Hollywood Bowl. Photo: bobeubanks.com

Below, longtime Newlywed Game host Bob Eubanks debunks the urban legend about a contestant answering 'In the butt' to his query about the most unusual place she ever made whoopee — but he debunks the story by noting that what she said was actually worse.



Some things in the 60s were not deemed deserving of censorship, like this dripping-with-homophobic-contempt answer to a question about Batman and Robin:

One more reason why you should always record encounters with police

You really don't know who you're dealing with when stopped. Despite the agitprop of your local police union, they're not all Officer Friendly. Some of them are stone-cold, homophobic sociopaths. More, from CBS, here.





Evidently Officer Zagursky didn't get the memo about Philly's efforts to attract gay tourists. Or about extorting motorists for contributions to police organizations. Or about crudely insulting a man's tribute to his cancer-stricken mother.

Now that USA is completely rid of terrorists, Dept. of Homeland Security is protecting you from gay hookers

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

AR Sen. Tom Cotton throws another fit about Iran nuclear negotiations, pretends he's president, again

Wonkette jumped all over Cotton, but the best takedown was by a commenter (Click graphic to enlarge boxed section.)
     Both of Nebraska's radical right-wing GOP Senators appear to be on the same page as reckless extremist Cotton:

Donald Trump's Photoshop drag makeover still a distant second to video of his move on Rudy Giuliani, in drag

Straight Grandmother isn't buying Ted Cruz's canonization of antigay cake bigots

Margaret Sullivan's piece, A Grandmother On Wedding Cakes, in the Huffington Post's Gay Voices blog, dissects the cake wars issue, now being exploited by panderer-cum-demagogue Ted Cruz in a campaign video (see left). It is a reasoned, articulate and uncompromising analysis worth reading. An excerpt:

     Sixty-one years ago, my mother made my wedding cake -- a buttery white fruitcake with creamy icing. She assembled tiered cake pans, candied citron and pineapple, white raisins and blanched almonds, and then baked the layers over several days. Decorated with holly (Christmas wedding), the finished cake leaned like the tower of Pisa. But it was perfect, a labor of love from Mother to us. She even kept the top layer in her freezer for our first anniversary.
     Over time, she made the recipe for my sisters' and brother's weddings, and for our children's, until, in her late seventies, she forgot salt in one and decided she shouldn't make more.
     Were she still living, she would have rejoiced in the June Supreme Court ruling legalizing same sex marriages. And no doubt would have dreamed of making a wedding cake for her openly gay grandson, our son, when the right man comes along.
      The Blade's article about the Kleins' sending cakes to gay rights groups — not wedding cakes; eight inch rounds with red hearts on top saying "We really do love you!" — and their reasons for it reminded me of how special the cake my mother made us was. And how special all wedding cakes are. 
     ...As the mother of a potential gay groom who doesn't bake, the owners of Sweetcakes by Melissa would no doubt have declined my order for a wedding cake on the grounds that same sex marriage is contrary to their faith. So I fully understand how the lesbian couple reacted when the Kleins declined their request.
     ...Conditional love and second best cakes are not good enough for my son. Or anyone else's LGBT children either. That isn't equality or respect.

Sam Rader may or may not have cheated on Nia via Ashley Madison, but he sure cheats in the pool

Popular Christian vlogger Sam Rader got busted for getting an Ashley Madison account, so he did what he does, made a video about it! Below: his mea culpa (left) and a photo of him in happier times sharing a tomato with a bud, which apparently is how Christian guys fake the rainbow.

Sam and his wife Nia have made a fortune vlogging on YouTube since their distracted driving, hands-off-the wheel karaoke video got 22 million views on YouTube. They humbly titled it "Good looking parents sing Disney's Frozen" and recorded it as tractor-trailers streaked by in the next lane.

     Since then Rader, a nurse, was accused of faking a positive pregnancy test after which his wife allegedly miscarried. They never saw a doctor, but racked up a lot of YouTube views for the "surprise" announcement and again for the miscarriage announcement.
     One of their videos, now removed, involved Rader asking his five-year-old daughter about gay marriage and then steering her toward disapproval when he discovered she wasn't with the Christer Condemnation Program about same-sex civil marriage.
     Saturday, Rader was kicked out of a Seattle vlogger conference for allegedly threatening a vlogger who had apparently criticized Rader's dubious YouTube claims. When Gawker asked Rader if he had menaced the guy, Rader denied it — sort of:

When asked to clarify whether or not he threatened anyone, Sam told me, “That’s absolutely not true. If I made a threat, it was to the one person, and it was, ‘You need to watch out before he messes with my family.’”

     Sometimes exhibitionistic people inadvertently reveal a bit too much about themselves, as when Sam and Nia's swimming video showed Sam winning a friendly race by cutting off the guy in the next lane. Then he did it again in the next race.

Above, Rader, at bottom, cuts off his buddy in the middle lane (at the 5:56 mark here) to win an informal swimming race, then, in the second picture moves in from the center (7:04) to cut him off again in another race. Hey, whatever it takes, as long as you're anointed, right?

Inflation catches up to ALDI

The privately-owned German cut-rate grocer (which got into trouble in Britain for selling horsemeat-adulterated hamburger) used to be able to get customers to shag their own carts by holding a quarter per cart as ransom until said cart was rechained to an adjoining one, releasing the coinage. But lately, more patrons have been ditching the carts—and their money — in the parking lot and taking off, even on beautiful days. We assume this will only get worse in the winter.

Here's the headline the Omaha World-Herald ran atop a Catholic schools story

We don't mean to pick on the World-Herald, which is a pretty good paper when it's not endorsing nutcase Iowa Rep. Steve King or "dollar store Lex Luther," Gov. Pete Ricketts or Mean Jean Stothert or, well, you get the picture. But sometimes Nebraska's biggest paper just asks for it, know what we mean?

76-year-old woman attacked inside branch of international antigay racketeering org by members of rival gang

Bad lip reading releases its recap of the Fox GOP presidential debate

Fed up FL news anchor refuses to report Kardashian pet rabbit 'story', walks off set

(h/t: @margoandhow)

John Oliver: Praise be to the IRS—that most permissive of government agencies!

John Oliver, aka Captain Obvious, has just discovered Scamvangelism and started his own franchise to test the IRS's almost limitless indulgence of those tax dodges which invoke the name of Jesus.

After widespread ridicule, Alabama Alphi Phi sorority removes its recruitment video from YouTube

    Does the mindset of college students in Alabama ever change?
    2015's Griffin Meyer/Matt Malecki extra-cheesy cheesecake video portrays Alphi Phi as a bunch of whites-only, mostly blondes apparently auditioning for Hugh Hefner.
     A "recruitment" video it's not. While Meyer/Malecki evidently wanted to sharpen their steadicam/video editing skills making a titillating T&A come-on, the sorority itself seemed to be going for a vain, airbrushed portrait of exclusivity — the opposite of recruiting, unless you're recruiting primping white snobs rather than a diverse cross-section of academic achievement. The video is the sick result of the panting/egotistic exhibitionism cross purposes of, respectively, the video's makers and subjects. Via rawstory.com:

     “It’s all so racially and aesthetically homogeneous and forced, so hyper-feminine, so reductive and objectifying, so Stepford Wives: College Edition,” wrote magazine editor A.L. Bailey for AL.com. “It’s all so … unempowering.”
     ...“This video is not reflective of UA’s expectations for student organizations to be responsible digital citizens,” said Deborah Lane, associate vice president for university relations. “It is important for student organizations to remember what is posted on social media makes a difference, today and tomorrow, on how they are viewed and perceived.”

Dear Ann Landers: Do you think my newspaper is just sports-minded or is it latently homosexual? Signed, 'Not from New Haven'

Matt Baume's history of how treatment of gays evolved in sitcoms

I remember the oblique way that M.A.S.H. outed the gay Korean soldier...

Disable Google+ on your phone and the company might make sure you never open pictures on it of your cat again

We fail to see how taking people's photos hostage as payback for shutting down the app for Google's  intrusive Google+ social media app — which isn't going to unseat Facebook anyway — is anything other than dirty tricksterism or, at least, cynical software engineering by programmers who must have a sniggering contempt for the people who use their software.
     Here's what happened to the pictures of one hapless woman who owns an LG Tribute Android phone, and the responses to her plea for help, in the first four panels. Just for kicks, AKSARBENT disabled Google+ on its Android phone, and sure enough, the phone took photos as ransom, just as other Android users have experienced.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts' new buddy: the man who called Supreme Court Justice David Souter a 'goat fucking child molester'

Here's a photo of Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, out of the state again after his tour of Europe, in Georgia with Erick Erickson who runs the Red State blog and who apparently wants to be a kingmaker of ruthlessly ambitious politicians eager to make a name for themselves nationally among the most reactionary of the country's teabaggers.
     Below the picture, some revolting golden oldies from the quote bank of the newest pal of Nebraska's radical right wing governor:

Wonder if Governor Ricketts attended Erickson's confab on his own or the state's dime?

Nebraska ban on gay foster parents overturned by state district court judge

Here's yesterday's press release from the ACLU of Nebraska:

LINCOLN, Neb – Today a Nebraska District Court Judge ruled that Nebraska’s discriminatory treatment, policy and practice, toward gay and lesbian foster parents is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause. The ACLU of Nebraska, the ACLU LGBT Rights & HIV Project, and the New York law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell filed suit on behalf of three same-sex couples who wanted to be foster parents for children in Nebraska. The policy stems from a 1995 memo, "Memo 1-95" issued by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.

Statement from Danielle Conrad, Executive Director

Nebraska is the last state in the U.S.
to specifically ban gay foster parents.

     Nebraska's motto of 'Equality before the Law’ rings out more truly for all of us on this thrilling day. This is a special victory for thousands of children in Nebraska who now have more options to find loving and stable homes.
     The couples in our case, like thousands of other gay and lesbian Nebraskans, have demonstrated their ability to provide loving homes for children. We are grateful for the court's unequivocal, broad, and positive opinion in favor of LGBT Nebraskans constitutional rights to be full participants in our child welfare system.
     Nebraska finally joins America in ending state sponsored discrimination in policy and practice that hurt Nebraska families and that prevented children in need from accessing loving and stable foster families.

Here's what the judge wrote (entire ruling is on ACLU's page, linked above):

Help preserve cheesy, vintage gay porn!

Bob Mizer was certainly no Rip Colt (aka Jim French), but what he lacked in quality he more than made up for in quantity. The Advocate reports:

The Bob Mizer Foundation has launched a Kickstarter fundraising project that will assist in the permanent preservation of the vast collection of color transparencies produced by controversial Los Angeles photographer Bob Mizer from the late 1940s until his death in 1992. Monies raised will go directly to the purchase of polypropylene archival sleeves. For more information, please contact: info@BobMizer.org

     Seriously, we don't mean to make light of important issues of historical preservation. Maybe, in addition to kickstarter funding, the federal government could help out!
     We'd like to know how Senator Ben Sasse feels about this essential issue, but our invite to his invitation-only meeting with constituents in Blair on August 13th at Novozymes at 600 S. 1st Street at 5 p.m. must have been lost in the mail. If you're going, please be sure to ask Senator Sasse if he can get some federal funding for this vital project, won't you?

Here's a real winner, from a set called "Neptune and the Sailor"

And now a word from Kevin Bacon:

Can you marry your Lawnboy? Video tests GOP Rep. Steve King's idiot assertion

The Des Moines Register's proclamation that Rep. Steve King, (repeatedly endorsed for reelection by the Omaha World-Herald) is an "embarrassment to the State of Iowa" is still true.
     The other day Teabagger King claimed that the recent Supreme Court ruling on marriage allows you to marry your lawnmower. He shouldn't have done that.


(Video via JMG reader Blair)

 

'Dollar store Lex Luther,' NE Gov. Ricketts, puts the screws to jobless

Neb. Gov. Pete Ricketts

Nebraska's GOP Governor, Pete Ricketts, who John Oliver called a 'dollar store Lex Luther,' has engineered draconian new unemployment requirements that would cut off benefits to those jobless who don't make five employment contacts a week — the strictest requirements in the nation, despite the fact that Nebraska has the country's lowest unemployment rate, about 2.7%.
     Under the proposed rules, unemployment recipients would have to verify their job search on a state website — even, apparently, if they're among the rural poor without Internet access or transportation to whatever facilities might offer free Internet access.
     James Goddard of Nebraska Appleseed, the only person to testify at Monday's public hearing besides Ricketts administration employees, noted the following, according to Paul Hammel's excellent coverage in the Omaha World-Herald:

     Goddard, in his testimony, called the requirements “out of touch” with current Internet- based job searches. Under the proposed rule, someone who packed 10 job contacts into only one day would lose jobless benefits, while someone who made five contacts over three or four days would not, he said.
     ...Goddard said the online reporting requirements are also problematic. He cited a report by the National Employment Law Project about a similar reporting requirement in Florida that quadrupled the number of denials based on procedural problems.