Grannies are Mad About 50 Shades of Grey

This is absolutely delightful!

Just in Time for Gay Pride - The Cure!

Funny video from Thaddeus Thacker.  Enjoy!

How Times Have Changed!

The Myth of the Gay Agenda - Video

I saw this on Joe.My.God and had to share it.  LZ Granderson  gives a TED talk about the "evil gay lifestyle".  Watch it!

TSA and the Growing Cream Cheese Threat

I had overlooked this little gem.  Seems TSA or at least some TSA agents now feel that cream cheese is uber-dangerous.  The story about a traveler who was bringing home bagels and cream cheese and had her cream cheese confiscated is another example of the TSA theater that is doing so much to convince us they are protecting us, without doing much to really protect the flying public.

Silly procedures like removing shoes is another example of the useless measures taken by TSA.  Adults have to remove shoes when traveling and have them screened.  Kids get a pass.  Why? 

And what about underwear?  The reason for shoe removal has been given as the thwarted "shoe-bomber" a few years ago.  We had an "underwear-bomber" too, but I don't see TSA demanding we remove undergarments before flying.  Why?  Because they know it doesn't matter.  The whole screening is a good thing, but the measures taken by TSA are not effective.  Time and time again news stories surface of people beating the security measures by doing something as simple as moving a metal object to their side instead of front pocket. 

And then there is the 3 ounce rule.  How does a zip lock plastic baggie provide any protection against some kind of chemical mischief in three containers under 3 ounces?  Mix them together and you have 9 ounces, is that a critical mass for something?  Nonsense. Why can I buy 12 ounce bottled drinks inside the airport?  Are you telling me every one of those is removed from it's container and analyzed prior to sale?

I do believe we need rational screening at airports, the bad guys have already shown us that, but the expensive machines that don't work and silly rules that are absolutely arbitrary do nothing to enhance our safety and just make the TSA and the whole program look foolish and annoying.

As I travel tomorrow, I feel pretty sure I will have to remove my belt and boots and who knows whatever before boarding the plane.  Does it make me feel safer?  Nope.  Because I know if someone with a nasty plan ends up getting all the way to the airport, they are more likely to be stopped by the passengers than TSA.  Check the records, the last few major plots were foiled by passengers not official security and that is both comforting and disturbing.

Pleasant flights!

UN Monitors Note "Smell of Burnt Dead Bodies" in Syria

While we have been busy here in the US watching the burlesque show that is our political primary season, the citizens of Syria have been suffering under the heel of a tyrant.  Bashar Hafez al-Assad, current president of Syria will most likely go down in history along side such illustrious company as Hosni Mubarak, Saddam Hussein and Adolph Hitler. 

His response to the populist uprising in Syria has brought untold suffering to the citizens, and as the conflict between rebels and the government forces continues, hundreds are dying each day.  In April, the United Nations estimated that more than 9,000 people have been killed, but activists say the number is closer to 13,000. 

The latest outrage comes as UN monitors entered a farming village of Mazraat al-Qubair this week to find almost 80 people dead and body parts strewn on the ground.  "You can smell the burnt smell of the dead bodies," said Sausan Ghosheh, spokeswoman of the U.N. observers.

This confirmation of the carnage being wrought by the Syrian government should move the world into action.  al-Assadmust be forced to step down and stop the needless killing.  Sign the petition to ask President Obama to send aid and try to intervene.

Cool Time-Lapse of Venus Transit

Very nifty NASA footage of the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun.

President Obama on LGBT Pride Month

What can I say? This is historic and wonderful!

Chasing Voter Fraud a Fraud Itself

The whole "we're purging voter roles to prevent voter fraud" is in itself a fraud.  Recently when conservative think tank "expert", Brian Darling was asked to cite specific examples of this activity, he couldn't.  The truth is voter fraud is pretty rare and the "purge the roles" initiatives especially in Florida is a political dirty trick to disenfranchise potential Democrat voters. 

The urban myth that there are hundreds of dead people still voting is BS.  Conservative "gotcha" video producer James O'Keefe supposedly exposed voter fraud in North Carolina.  He "exposes" non-citizens like Zbigniew Gorzkowski who have voted in recent elections.  The problem: Gorzkowski is an American citizen.

This and other examples are canards being used by the GOP to fire up the base and demand stronger laws against voter fraud.  The problem is, voter fraud is not widespread and is very rare.  Odds are higher being struck by lightning!

Department of Justice Stops Florida From Purging Eligible Voters

The GOP, party of illegal and very dirty tricks has been foiled in their latest dirty plot. The Secretary of State of Florida was trying to purge eligible voters form the roles.  This process is targeted at minority voters and people who would potentially be voting Democratic.  Despicable and they have been caught in the act.  The letter from the Department of Justice is here.

This could have thrown the election into question and tilt things to favor the GOP in normally Democratic districts.  They have been foiled, for now.

Is Disco Dying Out?

The light show was really hitting it’s stride and music was pounding out of the massive sound system. Dancers twirling fans had jumped atop the subwoofer boxes and were working up a sweat. My leather jacket was way too warm for dance apparel but it didn’t matter, the music and the motion of the crowd drove me to the dance floor.

Could have been last weekend, but it was 1979 and Donna Summer was singing “Bad Girls” over the speakers of the old Village Station disco. Yes, leathermen did dance back then.

Now, the voice that drove the mood of dance floors across the country is stilled. Donna Summer, the Queen of Disco died of lung cancer at age 63. That was a couple of weeks ago, then came news of Robin Gibb, one of the last two of the BeeGees had died as well. Another voice from the Disco era gone.

Some would be quick to declare Disco is now officially dead, yet with the exception of the songs, the beat of the music hasn’t changed much. The sound and lights are more sophisticated, but the dance floor is still crowded on most weekend nights and occasionally a voice from the past electrifies the crowd as Cher belts out another hit.

Disco is not dead, it just changes. The basic formula for disco is the same, great sound system, popular music, dazzling lights and the company of hundreds of sweaty dancing bodies. When that dies, the Mayans may be right.

NOM Strategy Not Working - African American Support for Same-Sex Marriage Growing

I hope Maggie Gallagher is in a tizzy.  The National Organization for Marriage - a hate group dedicated to denying LGBT people equal rights, is failing.  Their strategy, detailed in previously secret documents, was to   drive a wedge between the African American community and LGBT community.  According to the latest ABC/Washington Post poll it isn't working.  Support for same-sex marriage has risen to 59% in the African American community.

For the first time, the number of Americans who “strongly” support marriage also (39 percent) outweighs the number who “strongly” oppose it (32 percent). 

CBS News Finally Reports How Dire Climate Change Situation Really is

When CBS news, a tool of the Viacom conglomerate is reporting how dire the situation for climate change is it's time people took notice.  We are at or perhaps past a tipping point in  global warming.  State Farm wont sell insurance in coastal areas, because they know it will get worse for those living along endangered coastlines.  We just lived through the hottest 12 months on record... ever!  Wake up and smell the oven!

Nutty Former Navy Chaplin Says Gay Demons Can Infect Animals

Occasionally I have to have a chuckle at the hate mongers out there. Take this guy for example, former Navy Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, who put forth a strange argument on a progressive talk show.  His twisted logic goes this way.  Gays get that way because they have been persuaded by a "marketing scheme" and are recruited to homosexuality.

When asked why there are over 4000 other species that display homosexual traits he uses the example of Jesus casting out demons into Swine.

"It is entirely possible — we know from the Bible, for example, when Jesus cast the devil out of Legion, he went into a herd of pigs,” Klingenschmitt said. “So, it is possible for demons or the devil to inhabit or invade animals just the same way they invade humans, and that causes the sin of lust"

 Watch and please restrain yourself from throwing a brick through your screen.

Mississippi Lawmaker - Coat Hanger Abortions are OK

Mississippi proudly marches backwards in time as Mississippi State Representative Bubba Carpenter tells his audience when talking about poor women performing self-abortions with coat hangers, "We have to start somewhere."  These yokels will do anything to get the fundamentalist vote, even sacrifice the lives of pregnant women, but only if they are poor.  Appalling!

Harvard Baseball Team

Really cute video by the Harvard Baseball team.  Cute guys, too!

Christmas in New York - 2035

As I sit here on the Battery Dikes and look out over New York Harbor, I am amazed I am still alive.  At the ripe old age of 85, I am still traveling and speaking and sometimes even playing tourist with my boy, a senior himself. 

My eyesight is not as good, but I can still see the Statue of Liberty rising from the waters of the harbor, her pedestal now converted to a dock for the tour boats that visit the aging monument.  I still remember taking the J train to Coney Island for a dinner at Garguilos on West 15th.  Of course that is all gone now.  What land is left there is mostly estuary and marsh and the wind turbines that power much of Brooklyn slowly spin in choreographed motion.

My boy hugs my shoulder as I reminisce and soon we decide to head uptown for dinner.  The walled lower Manhattan area is busy during the day, but not much good for an evening meal.   “If only the people in these buildings had listened to scientists and not Fox News,” I say as I shrug my shoulders.

The boy clucks and shakes his head.  “Greed always seems to win out.”  He is still a bit of a cynic and frankly so am I.

It’s getting colder and for us desert dwellers from Dallas the chill in the air is unfamiliar.  It reminds me of my youth, when we had all four seasons in Texas and the dusty plains were lush with vegetation and grazing cattle.  Now just a distant memory.

Tomorrow, we will watch the Macy's Parade as they carry the big balloons down the street like huge beach balls past the crowds.  Most of the kids never saw them when they flew overhead filled with the rare gas we wasted so quickly.  

(Sorry to be so morose, but I have come to believe that we have passed the tipping point on climate change, so we had better adapt or we will not survive.   The truth has become not just inconvenient but entirely conceivable.)

Detroit Dungeon Party Taped on Hidden Camera by TV Station

What happens when you invite a TV reporter to a dungeon play party?  You end up on TV and in the middle of a real media circus.

In Detroit, a reporter for the NBC affiliate, WDIV got invited to a local play party as he was investigating a murder.  The suspect in the case was a participant in the BDSM community, but the murder was not BDSM related and in fact may be a murder for hire committed by a third party.  The story is still developing, but the damage to the local BDSM scene has already happened.

The report which played last night on Detroit TV had little to do with the murder or the suspect other than to lean heavily on his involvement with BDSM.  The majority of the piece was blurry video with lurid descriptions of the activities that take place at the party.  Now to those in the community, these are almost commonplace, but when sensationalized, and in this case really sensationalized it seems dangerous and scary, especially to vanilla folk.

To make things worse the report gave the address of the party, a local VFW hall.  All the footage of the event was shot with a hidden camera, so the participants did not know they were being filmed.  Luckily the TV station blurred out all the faces but to the participants it must have felt like a violation of their privacy, and it was just that.

The report added no new information to the story of the suspect murder and was designed specifically to scare people with the “debauchery” going on in the peaceful suburban neighborhood.  Never mind the fact that this party has been happening on a regular basis for a long time with no complaints, it is great stuff for ratings and TV news is all about ratings.

Now lots of people who attended that party are frightened, perhaps more than the viewers who saw the shadowy figures and blurred video on TV.  They are afraid of being “outed” as kinky.  Sadly in this country “kinky” is not a protected class and often people lose their families and jobs by being exposed. 

The fears of the BDSM community in Detroit may be unfounded, but the hubbub this incident has caused should give people a few valuable lessons.  If you are not “out” as kinky, then you need to make sure any event you attend is really a private party. That means invited folk only and/or all participants have signed some sort of release that assures they are not offended by the activities taking place and agree not to photograph or reveal names and identities of any other attendees.  These are pretty standard at most play parties, but apparently in Detroit they were not used. 

Secondly, do not invite the press to a play party!  News folk look for sensational images, specifically TV journalists and whips and crosses make for sensational images, even if the reality of a play party is far from the imagined images vanilla people might have in their minds.  Additionally, once the press splashes something like this all over peoples TV screens, some folks will complain to local authorities and next thing you know, the police are visiting any event that looks remotely out of the norm.  In most cases what we do in a dungeon might not be illegal, but police will arrest first and ask questions later.  I would not be surprised if a wave of “vice” operations followed closely on the heels of this report in Detroit.

The unintended consequences of this might be very severe for some people and that is what makes this even worse. 

Now, to be honest, most cities have some kind of BDSM activity going on, and the police and authorities are not blind to it.  I have spoken with law enforcement people about this and to a great extent their attitude is, if no one is getting hurt and there is not any prostitution going on they have bigger fish to fry.  The difference in Detroit may be the murder investigation and just how much involvement BDSM may play in the crime.  My suspicion is it is completely tangential, but that is for the police and courts to find out.

Meanwhile, kinky folk in Detroit should take a deep breath and then use some common sense next time they get an inquiry from a reporter about attending a party. 

We don’t want to scare the Muggles!

Don't Say Gay - A Plot to Make LGBT People Invisible

My family roots go back to “The Old Country” on my father’s side and the hills of Tennessee on my mother’s side, so it is no surprise that my ears perk up whenever news comes from the Volunteer State.  Lately that news has been disturbing.  The legislature of Tennessee has crafted what is being called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.  It is a measure that would eliminate any discussion of LGBT people in Tennessee classrooms of any discussion of sexual activity that is not related to “natural human reproduction science”.  The good thing is it won’t become law because it will not come to a vote.

Now the Show Me state has taken up the cause and is pushing a similar bill that would make LGBT topics illegal in public schools and prohibit teachers from addressing bullying based on sexual orientation. You can expect Texas to follow suit if these bills are signed into law.

Though they would seem just another attempt by the prudish people to impose their stiff morality on everyone else, they are actually something much more insidious. The people writing these bills, and trust me it is not the legislators themselves, are trying to erase LGBT people from history.

It’s no secret that the younger generation of American’s is much more accepting of LGBT people than their parents.  They have been raised in a world where they can see everyday examples of lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgender folk all around them.  Because more and more LGBT people choose to live openly and proud, their lives are visible examples to everyone.  That growing acceptance sticks in the craw of bigoted people, who realize that their prejudices are going to die off with their generation.  That’s what these new laws are really about, perpetuating prejudice.

They are trying to make LGBT people invisible again, just as they were in the 1950s and 60s.  They want to marginalize us in the minds of their children so that we will seem strange and frightening. 

It’s all about loosing one of the last bogeymen the right wing has left and that is vitally important to their survival.  The movement which masquerades as “conservative” today is in actually a far-right fear-based religion.  They cling to a belief that the world is one of evil and good, black and white and for that kind of system you need clearly defined roles.

Naturally, they assume that they are the good and righteous folks, therefore anyone who is remotely different or outside their norm must be evil.  It requires a scapegoat, someone to embody the bad and since it has become culturally impossible to use racial minorities like they once did, they turn to us.  To the people writing these laws, LGBT people are a threat and we must be eliminated, of not in reality at least in perception.  They have to keep us invisible to continue to affirm their righteousness. 

If you want proof, just listen to Representative Joey Hensley (R), the Tennessee bill’s sponsor.  “I have two children - in the third and fourth-grade - and don’t want them to be exposed to things I don’t agree with.” 

The key word there is “agree”.  Teaching about LGBT people means believing we are part of the fabric of our nation.  He doesn’t agree with that idea.  The problem is we are here and a constant reminder that whether he believes we exist or not, our rights are every bit as “self-evident” as any other American’s.  He wants his children to live in the same cognitive dissonance that he does.  Rep. Hensley and others like him want to make our very existence a matter of opinion.

The good news is that if this whole thing is boiled down to opinions, the more LGBT people who are visible, the harder it will be to maintain the illusion that we don’t exist.  The good news is that children are a lot smarter than these yokels think and no matter how much smoke and how many mirrors they try to throw up, we are not going away.  Kids know this and eventually they will begin asking why mommy and daddy can’t see the gay people like they can.

Pastor Who Endorsed Child Abuse Now Backtracks

Most everyone has heard the angry words of Pastor Sean Harris as he screeched against children who appeared the least bit gay.  Apparently the media spotlight is too hot for Sean and he has tried to distance himself from what he actually said.  First of all here is a transcript of the particularly fiery portion of his "sermon".

So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,” you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.
Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting to Butch you reign her in. And you say, “Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.”
You say, “Can I take charge like that as a parent?”
Yeah, you can. You are authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that."

Lets compare that with his apology in which he lies about not having said the previous statements.

For the record, I want to ensure everyone that I do NOT believe physical force is capable of fixing effeminate behavior or homosexual behavior. Parents should not punch babies or children....

I would never advocate for such discipline or actions on behalf of a father or mother. I misspoke. Hopefully, you understood that I was speaking in a forceful manner to emphasize the degree to which gender distinctions matter to God; and therefore, must matter to each of us and especially parents.

Funny, when I read these statements they directly contradict each other.  Either he meant it or not.  Seems like he is breaking one of the Ten Commandments here....wonder which one?