Wednesday Morning, 12:01 a.m.

Set your clocks…

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I think we all know which Maryland law firm should immediately receive a resume from every trans woman in Maryland the nation.

Religion Shouldn’t Be There At All, But…

These folks do have a point:

Now the big question: Could Allah could have made Tebow into a legitimate QB?

And Again: Cops Wonder Why Real People Hate Them

From Raw Story:

A Boston police officer has been identified as the man behind an offensive Facebook page that attacked LGBT people, Jews, women and people of different races.

A WCVB investigation determined that Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Police Officer Jason Barriteau had created the offensive Facebook page using “Al Sharpton” as an alias.

The station said that most of the scores of images posted by Barriteau were too offensive to be shown on the air, but several of the examples showed him mocking people with Down Syndrome, homosexuals, transgendered people, and he also posted an image of a man titled “The Rape Train Stops for No One.”

There were also examples of comments attacking obese people, Hispanics, and Asians. In one case, Barriteau is pictured wearing a T-shirt with the Pillsbury Doughboy sporting an Adolf Hitler mustache, and the words “White Flour.”

Countdown to some pre-Cambrian life form on Fox ‘News’ defending the thug’s free speech rights in 3…2…1….

Sham Rand

Joni Ernst: Bad Hair, Worse Liar

Crooks and Liars on the corporate shill who is looking to ride a pile of severed pig testicles into the U.S. Senate:

The thing you need to know about Iowa Senate candidate Joni Ernst is that she is one hundred percent owned and operated by the Kochs. They promoted her, they are financing her campaign, and she is grateful to them to the point where she knows she wouldn’t be where she is without them.

And that means she lies. A lot. Sunday night’s debate was no exception. When the question of the personhood amendment resolution she sponsored in 2013 came up, she lied some more.

But what’s worse than the out-and-out lying is the sub-Barney Frank doubletalk.  Of the constitutional amendment she supported – one that her Democratic opponent Rep. Bruce Braley accurately pointed out would have the effect of outlawing not just all abortions in all circumstances but also most forms of birth control – she spewed this:

The amendment that’s being referenced by the Congressman would not do any of the things that you stated it would do. That amendment is simply a statement that I support life.

Oh, but her bull gets shittier.  She then claimed that the amendment would do all of that – wait for it…

…only if legislation would be passed. This amendment was again a statement of life.

And Joni Ernst is a walking, talking, Trafficant-esque hair-sporting tool of the Koch Brothers.

What Used to be The Advocate: Still a Joke

From a splotch of non-journalism begging for a wittew bit of sympathy for The Knotthead:

If Karl Knott raises a bigot for a daughter, what are the policies he enforces in Chalfont Borough, Pa.? Karl Knott is the kind of person who makes you realize why so many minorities have no faith in the police to protect and serve fairly.

That’s a reasonable observation.

Quite reasonable, in fact.  But…

The unspoken feeling that [Kathryn] Knott has betrayed us, gay men, is evident. Her actions feel more egregious than those of her two hateful, privileged male friends, since most of us expect that, if we’re heckled or bashed, it will be by straight men (or men who pretend to be straight), not women. For the most part, women didn’t push us into lockers. They didn’t tie Matthew Shepard to a fence. Women may not always be gay men’s allies, but they’re rarely our enemies. It’s sexist to think that women are nurturing, not nihilistic, but we still do tend to believe that. Unfairly or not, she’s being held to a higher standard.

Knott’s repellent behavior stings because women are supposed to know what it’s like to be oppressed.

Yet another example of What Used to be The Advocate engaging in de facto erasure of the issue of the terroristic rhetoric of exterminationism that a group of cis women directs at trans women every day.  Clearly, the only thing that matters in the overly-privileged world of What Used to be The Advocate is Will and/or Jack having their feelings hurt if Grace turns out to actually be Maggie Gallagher.  The reality that there are still women in positions to make employment decisions who have the mentality of Janice Raymond, Bev Jo Von Dohre, Kim Mills, and a certain disreputable cis female Maryland lawyer isn’t worth What Used to be The Advocate’s time and energy.

…Leaving Donald Trump With no Challenger to the Title of ‘Worst Male Hair on the Planet’

From Marilyn Geewax at NPR:

Jim Traficant, the Ohio Democrat who spent 17 years representing my hometown in Congress. He spent seven more years in prison after being convicted in 2002 of bribery and racketeering. He was one of only four congressmen in history to be expelled from Washington.

…

Traficant died on Saturday following injuries sustained in an accident on his family farm earlier in the week. He was riding a tractor that flipped over. He lingered a few days and then died; he was 73.

Few outside of Youngstown will mourn his passing. Many will laugh at the memory of his oft-used command on the House floor: “Beam me up, Mr. Speaker.”

The bad toupee, the denim suit with the high-water pants, the bombastic style; he was like a profane cartoon character. When he was in Congress and I was a reporter on the Hill, people would laugh if I mentioned I was from Youngstown. My parents’ congressman was a punch line.

And, dead or alive, he will continue to be – just like Tom DeLay and the melted shingle on his head.

Trump, though, is safe at the top of the bad hair heap.

So?

That’s my response to this, and many similar headlines:

Internationally Renowned Human Rights Lawyer Marries Actor Who Played A Handyman On ‘Facts of Life’

I have as little use for unnecessary celebrity hype as anyone, but lets be fair.  George Clooney also played the title role in Michael Clayton, a movie that anyone even thinking about going to law school should be required to watch.

And actually pay attention to.

And sign a sworn statement attesting to having seen it and understanding that Michael Clayton is far closer to an accurate depiction of the legal profession than To Kill a Mockingbird.

Would the titterers prefer that Amal Alamuddin marry some scumbag, reverse-mortgage-pushing, part-time actor who happens to also actually be a lawyer?

How Can I Compromise Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

Absent a few stylistic edits that I’ve made, the following – which I re-present now to all of the St. Barney-defenders slithering out of the woodwork to cheer and defend his continued false claims that he was on the right side of, well…, anything in 2007 – appeared in the May 12, 2000 edition of the Texas Triangle.

I keep hearing how the exclusion of trans people from ENDA is oh so lamentable (such sentiments accented with equal sign-festooned, Caucasian, rich, straight-acting crocodile tears).

Ask yourself this, however:

If there was an attempted amendment to Barney Frank’s ENDA bill that would ‘clarify’ Title VII to ensure that it is never interpreted to protect transsexuals, would Frank and the HRC expend one ounce of political energy to kill it? Or, would it oh so lamentably be accepted as a compromise to get a homosexual-only bill passed?

How about an attempted amendment that would prohibit the federal government from recognizing gender transition (even though 20 states, D.C. and Guam explicitly do so recognize)?

Or an attempted amendment that would make it a federal crime to prescribe hormones for gender transition therapy or to perform sex reassignment surgery?

Or an attempted amendment that would make it a federal crime to send any information on transgender issues through the U.S. Mail?

Or….

Well, I’m sure that you can think of other possible compromises. Don’t think you can? Just think like Barney Frank.

How do you think like Barney Frank? Well, you just have to let your arrogance, self-importance and hypocrisy run wild. Not sure how? Try this quick-and-easy, decades-long ‘Be Like Barney’ program. You’ll get the hang of it.

(1) Hop into a closet. (2) Get elected to a state legislature. (3) Support the de-licensure of two gay bars in that state by a city licensing board which claimed that the de-licensure was “in the interest of  the public good” (as was noted in the August 13, 1975 issue of the Advocate) though allegedly solely because of a transgender sex-worker presence (as was speculated in an issue of Drag Magazine shortly  thereafter). (4) Chide a sitting Democratic President for having a “fundamental moral flaw” for not doing
anything to help the poorest and hungriest people in America, adding that “Life under the Democrats is like life under the Republicans except that [U.N. Ambassador] Andy Young’s indiscretions are morally  preferable to Pat Moynihan’s” (as Frank was quoted as saying in the July 11, 1977 issue of the Washington Post. FYI: though a Democratic Senator, Moynihan had held positions in the Nixon and Ford  Administrations). (5) Get elected to Congress and crow to the press “I think I could stay for the next 30
years and feel my life fulfilled.” (6) Five years later, rent a piece of ass from a nontrans male sex worker. (7) Come out of the closet. (8) When word of your use of a hooker bedbud gets out, blame it all on the fact that you were closeted at the time and whine things like, “Dealing with my being gay, while continuing to meet my public obligations, created tremendous internal pressures.” (9) When word gets out that said sex worker may have used your apartment to run a sex work operation, profess ignorance. (10) Count your lucky stars that your party controlled the House during the resulting ethics investigation of you. (11) Win re-election after the ethics investigation. (12) Start proposing employment anti-discrimination bills that protect homosexuals and bisexuals but not trans people. (13) Despite your own personal public life history, repeatedly claim that inclusion of trans people in such a bill, sponsored by you, is what would cause it to fail to become law.

Be honest, queer America – which picture do you really think that non-queer America is more repulsed by: Christie Lee Littleton in the ladies room? Or Barney Frank in the men’s room?

Trans people are the poorest and the hungriest contingent of the movement that started at Stonewall  in 1969. The use of the penis panic against trans people by a man who rented a piece of hustled ass while a member of Congress ultimately putting himself in the position of having to face seemingly believable (though ultimately not proven – at least not proven to the ethics committee’s satisfaction, unlike the allegations of fixing parking tickets and writing a misleading letter to his hustled piece of ass’s probation officer, both of which were) accusations that he and that rented piece of hustled ass did more with their penises in the House gymnasium’s locker room than any MTF transsexual (pre-op or post-op) has ever had any desire of doing in a ladies room or a communal shower facility to justify keeping that poorest and hungriest element out of the most fundamental of civil rights bills – and keeping us in the economic slavery of employment discrimination – is the most fundamental of moral flaws.

In fact, it’s downright obscene.

Some time back I chided Camille Paglia for referring to Barney Frank as an asexual blob. I’d now like to  apologize to Ms. Paglia in full. However, I can’t. I can only give her half of an apology – because Barney Frank is obviously not asexual.

Half an apology. That’s a compromise. ENDA minus trans people is not a compromise. It’s an atrocity.

Now ask yourself this: Might the purported need for a so-called compromise on ENDA be due to Barney Frank’s having called in too many markers during that ethics investigation a decade ago to save his political career so that he can realize that self-important dream of a thirty year career in Congress?

If so, then who is the so-called compromise designed to help? Homosexuals? Or one specific homosexual named Barney Frank?

At the time I wrote that, St. Barney had only managed 19 1/2 years of his goal of 30 years of life on the federal congressional dole. He not only made it to 30, but added two more beyond that.  But even after 32 years of St. Barney on the Potomac, there was no ENDA of any variety – ultimately proving an assertion I soon came to make: that there would never be any ENDA so long as St. Barney was in Congress.  Chad Griffin can make all of the apologies he wants – and even make all of the reparations that he organization does in fact owe to trans people (as an aside, in 2000 where were all of the trans employees he’s now touting?  On the field?  Or on the sidelines? Just curious.) – but it should be clear by now that there will never be an ENDA so long as HRC continues to exist.

Synonyms

“Murdoch” and “Poop”

If you disagree, then check out today’s actual front page of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post: