Eat the Banks

I’m just sayin’…

Lords of Disorder: Billions for Wall Street, Sacrifice for Everyone Else

Prepare for the Upcoming Bleacher Creature Double Feature of a Lifetime!

First up: Pope Derby 2013!

Followed by TERF War!

Now, if only Jay Leno could FINALLY book both Patrick Duffy and Joey Lawrence on the same edition of the Tonight Show to make it a triple feature, all would be right with the world…

until tomorrow.

There is no Hell, But He’s Long Since Begun to Rot

I’m just sayin’….

I Guess There’s a Reason I Never Saw Tony Soprano and Al Haig in the Same Room at the Same Time

American exceptionalism: Cooperate with the U.S. or be eliminated.

Robert Parry on a newly-released document that spells out how President Ronald Reagan promoted genocide in Central America:

Soon after taking office in 1981, President Ronald Reagan’s national security team agreed to supply military aid to the brutal right-wing regime in Guatemala to pursue the goal of exterminating not only “Marxist guerrillas” but their “civilian support mechanisms,” according to a newly disclosed document from the National Archives.

…

The relaxed attitude toward the Guatemalan regime’s brutality took shape in spring 1981 as Reagan’s State Department “advised our Central American embassies that it has been studying ways to restore a closer, cooperative relationship with Guatemala,” according to a White House “Situation Room Checklist” dated April 8, 1981.

Thoughts on the Way Out of a Certain Door….

Some Broken Clocks Are Right Only Once Per Lifetime

The ones that are had better make that one bit good, eh?

Today’s Iraq is a direct consequence of our war, our invasion, our occupation. That’s our crowd in Baghdad, cozying up to Iran.

And the cost of that war to strip Iraq of weapons it did not have? Four thousand five hundred American dead, 35,000 wounded, $1 trillion and 100,000 Iraqi dead. Half a million widows and orphans. A centuries-old Christian community ravaged. And, yes, an Iraq tilting to Iran and descending into sectarian, civil and ethnic war. A disaster of epochal proportions.

But that disaster was not the doing of Barack Obama, but of people of the same semi-hysterical mindset as [Jennifer] Rubin.

Sincerely, Pat ‘homophobic, racist, sexist, terminally-constipated Holocaust denier’ Buchanan.

No Less Offensive Than the Catholic Church Absolving Itself of its Sins

Beware of people trying to get you to ignore history.  They’re trying to sell you something – and its probably not something you need or want.

As an analyst, historical data is often important because it helps answer the question, “How did we get here?” However, this eventually becomes less important than determining “where are we going, and how do we get there?” This is exactly the mindset of most LGBT millennials when it comes to civil rights and advocacy.

Unfortunately, some transgender leaders keep trying to revive old grievances, like 18-year-old articles from The New York Times. However, people like Jim Fouratt haven’t been relevant in decades. Janice Raymond and her ilk are a poorly regarded footnote in the annals of second-wave lesbian feminism. Things cited as proof that LGB leadership has it in for the transgender community may or may not have actually been said. Barney Frank has retired. So has Joe Solmonese. The historical reasons typically cited for the division between the LGB and T have become just that: history.

A sleight of hand is worth a Huff(Po) of paint in a paper bag behind the bush.

Despite the seeming doff of the hat to history, with this demand Brynn Tannehill is trying to sell you something that we don’t need: amnesia.

We already have enough of it – and we still live with policies that have been chiseled into the stone tablet of advocacy corporate-think using the mindset championed by St. Barney (retired less than two months after 32 years of maligning trans people and issues in Congress in one form or another) and Pee Wee Solmonese (retired less than a year after presiding over the Human Right Scampaign for a tenure that is to backstabbery what his non-immediate predecessor Queen Elizabeth III’s was to hardwired exclusion.)

We were told that the past was the past in 2007….

until it wasn’t.

What I find quite interesting is that in several places  that I’ve seen links to Tannehill’s HuffPo hit piece (and that’s what it is: a mafia-style whack job against any and all who dare to let millennials and those new to LGBT matters who might be a bit older than that but who actually do need in 2013 to be introduced to the inconvenient aspects of  history that those who want you to forget about history don’t want you to ever learn in the frst place – such as the fact that at least some people who have now ensconced themselves in  the world of permanent Gay, Inc. employment and who claim to be inclusive began their journey to that world of permanent Gay, Inc. employment by openly championing employment discrimination against trans women) posted on Facebook, the teaser text for it reads as such:

 When a trans man friend of mine was assaulted last weekend, the people doing it didn’t really care whether he was technically classified as a lesbian or a trans man.  Morally we all have an obligation to oppose

 and then the text cuts off. 

I didn’t see this text at HuffPo when I looked at the piece online, and even if its not part of the piece, the scenario matters.

Brynn, as long as we live with laws manufactured with the help of various strands of Gay, Inc.  and which distinguish between the covered (LGB) and the not-worthy-of-being-covered (the T) in places like Wisconsin, Maryland, Delaware, New Hampshire, New York and (because lack of public accommodations means that the law that was passed is meaningless) Massachusetts – and, lets face it Brynn, if the recently-retired bobsey twins that you don’t want us to think about any longer (yet who are probably slithering around the halls of Congress in one capacity or another whispering in people’s ears) had gotten ther way 5 1/2 years ago, we’d be including all of the United States here and we’d be still including it because the sort of amnesia that you’re demanding is the conjoined mental fistula of an inability (unwillingness?) to visualize what would have happened on the ENDA front after St. Barney and Pee Wee managed to get the HRC version of ENDA enacted in 2007, which is NOTHING – then your demand is no less offensive than the catholic church’s demands that victims of its institutionalized mass child molestation scheme forget about the past and just move on.

Joe Ratzinger d/b/a/ Pope Benedict XVI will be retired as of Friday.  I guess he’ll then begin to be worthy of getting a pass on his past as child-molester-shielder-in-chief, eh Brynn?

No?

If he makes it to summer, he’ll then be retired longer than St. Barney is now.  Will he get a pass then?

We must all hang together, or we shall assuredly hang separately

Or, in the case of that trans man, just get assaulted – and have our cases attended to by the powers that be – separately.

Decades ago, the Iowa Legislature passed a hate crimes law – one that included sexual orientation.

The definition for “sexual orientation” is identical to one preferred by one of Iowa’s neighboring states.

Hint: It ain’t Minnesota’s.

Yes, in 2007, a different bunch of Iowa legislators passed a legitimate employment anti-discrimination law but, for whatever reason, didn’t update the hate crime law.

Maybe they channeled Brynn Tannehill from the then-future and thought that, given that the hate crime law was by then almost two decades old it would be just so gauche to even think about it.  The past is the past after all, no?

No.

Mere passage of a good anti-discrimination law didn’t change the thing (and getting gay marriage from the courts damn sure didn’t change it.) 

In Iowa, if the trans man was classified as a trans man, then the assault could not be charged as a hate crime, but if he was de-gendered and classified as a lesbian then it could be.

The past isn’t just the past; its the present.

LGBT millennials

They deserve to know their history – including that which was inflicted upon the T before they were ever born.  The more that you – and whoever is pulling your strings (or spiking your stash) – con them into ignoring it, the more likely it is that LGBT millennials’ Jim Fouratts and Janice Raymonds and 2007s lie not in their past, but in their future…

and they’ll never see any of it coming.

Republicans + Corporations = (Greed + Serfdom) X Infinity

Any questions?

In Eric Cantor’s February 2013 speech, he said he wanted to propose Federal Law that would end overtime pay for hourly workers.  Currently, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, mandates that certain workers get paid “time + 1/2” for overtime work.  Eric Cantor wants to eliminate that law.  Because — ya know — workers not getting paid for overtime hours worked out so good for workers before FDR enacted that Law.

…

In 2003, when the Republicans tried to end the requirement that hourly workers get paid overtime, they tried to sell it in good-old fashioned GOP Propaganda Minster: Frank Luntz terms.  They used words like “Family Flex time” … and … “work longer hours so you can have half a day with your family, maybe”

Cantor’s goal in allowing the interview with the New Yorker Magazine, was to re-market the GOP draconian policies.

Erasing the Concerns of People – Single and Coupled – Who Live in Jurisdictions Without Employment Anti-Discrimination Protections

That’s Suze Orman!

That nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage is encouraging progress for those of us who believe that everyone deserves to have basic civil rights. But, even if every state in the country could pass a similar legislation, it would not be enough. What we need is for our federal government to step up and make this basic right a law of the land.

Beyond the social discrimination, the refusal of our federal government to legally recognize same-sex marriages imposes steep financial penalties on same-sex couples. That two of the most costly penalties are triggered upon the death of one partner just adds to the ache of the senseless discrimination.

Sorry, Suze, but the MOST costly penalty is being prevented from ever attaining employment commensurate with one’s education and ability to begin with.

But I’m certain that you and others afflicted with Marriage Derangement Syndrome either don’t know or don’t care about that.

Protecting Gay, Inc,-ers’ married money.

That’s all that now matters.

Addicted to False Equivalency

By now most folks have heard about the Onion’s sub-misogynistic tweet about 9 year-old Oscar nominee Quvenzhané Wallis last night.  Unlike so many – mostly on the right (though also a select group who claim to be liberal and/or feminist) – the Onion realizes when it screws up and, here, screwed up badly and admitted so.

On behalf of The Onion, I offer my personal apology to Quvenzhané Wallis and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the tweet that was circulated last night during the Oscars. It was crude and offensive—not to mention inconsistent with The Onion’s commitment to parody and satire, however biting.

No person should be subjected to such a senseless, humorless comment masquerading as satire.

The tweet was taken down within an hour of publication. We have instituted new and tighter Twitter procedures to ensure that this kind of mistake does not occur again.

In addition, we are taking immediate steps to discipline those individuals responsible.

Miss Wallis, you are young and talented and deserve better. All of us at The Onion are deeply sorry.

Sincerely,

Steve Hannah
CEO
The Onion

Memo to Republicans (and Bil Browning, et. al.): THAT’S a REAL apology. 

But, unsurprisingly, the Imaginary PC Police (not imaginary police that are PC mind you, but those who police imaginary instances of political correctness) are up in arms.

Here’s the problem with that: However obnoxious the comment about Wallis was – and I think we can all agree that it was – it was about an entertainer who won’t be eligible to run for either the prsidency or the vice-presidency for 26 years and has done nothing other than appear in a movie and at the Oscars (and, importantly, she’s not an adult under any moral or legal framework in the United States.)

Palin(s)?

Even though many versions of the questions about Trig Palin’s ancestry were posed obnoxiously, the questions themselves were quite legitimate given (1) the visual questions regarding images of Sarah and Bristol from the period when Sarah, according to official narrative, was pregnant with Trig, (2) Sarah’s then-status as someone claiming to be worthy of holding America’s vice-presidency, (3) Sarah’s then-status as actual chief executive of the State of Alaska, and (4) the seriousness of the matter of whether someone with the status of (2) and (3) had ever lied on any official documents (much less to the electorate) regarding who the father and the mother of Trig are.  So what if Bristol was only 17 in 2008?  That’s already actually an adult in some states and certifiably so in any state whose penal system might want to lock her up.  If the kid is actually Bristol’s (irrespective of who the father actually is), then she was then and still is a participant in an ongoing fraud.  Personally, despite making several posts about it at the original ENDABlog, I do think the visual evidence was pretty flimsy (though, as a purely legal matter, the bare questions were far more legitimate than anything that was being asked re: Obama and Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers.)  Nevertheless, as usual with the Palin Defense League: Massive Fail.