Bobservations

Last weekend was Carlos’ birthday, and I asked him to pick a favorite restaurant for a celebratory dinner; he thought and thought, and then he said this …

“I was thinking of a few things we could do for my birthday …”

“Like what?”

“Well, we could get up early and take the recycling to the recycling center …”

Yes, he was talking garbage. Now, he had thoughts on some other ways to spend the day, but that was his first thought.

I almost put a candle on a garbage bag.

PS We never did have dinner because, for his birthday, he gave me a cold.

I know, right?

Oh, how the times have changed ... Little Mittsy Romney. It wasn’t so long ago that the two-time loser in the presidential campaign said, of _____, that he’s a "fraud" and "phony" whose words and actions are “degrading” to women, and whose policies would trigger a recession, make America less safe and foster an era of "trickle-down racism."

Now that Mittsy wants to be the next Utah Senator, he now says he supports much of what the president has done such as cutting taxes, rolling back business regulations and reducing the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah.

When an audience member asked what Romney might say about _____ today, he replied:

“I look forward. I’m not going to look backward.”

You know, cuz looking back shows what a hypocrite and a political hack Mitt Romney is.

So, Facebook … no privacy at all? Say whaaaaaaaaat? Fake news stories all over? Say whaaaaaaaaat?

Let me make this queer, if you believe you have privacy on Facebook, you’re a moron; and if you believe every story you read on Facebook, without checking it out first, then you must also believe kittens can play the guitar and newborns can recite the Gettysburg address.

Cuz that’s on Facebook, too.

Speaking of the Fat Bastard, in an interview with reporters aboard Air Force One, ______ denied knowing that his lawyer Michael Cohen made a $130,000 payment to hush porn star Stormy Daniels.

Oops. Stormy’s case is based on the idea that the confidentiality agreement is invalid because _____ was not a party to it and so by having the Fat Bastard say he was unaware of the monetary agreement, he basically confirmed that what Stormy says is true.

Seriously; let that man near a microphone and he’ll hang himself every time. I cannot wait for him to get into a room with Robert Mueller.

Rightwingnut and #FakeChristian Laura Ingraham returned to Fox News this week after her self-imposed exile to stem the tide of advertisers fleeing her show because she’s lying raging bitch, and she started off with a bang: a ten-minute diatribe called, "The Left's Plot to Silence Conservatives."

And in that unhinged rant, she once again went after student activist David Hogg—who led the boycott against her show and her advertisers—of being “Stalinist."

This is what the right does; they attack anyone and everyone who has a difference of opinion, and then play the victim. Funny, though, while she whines about her poor show losing advertisers, she still has a show and earns an income.

All David Hogg has is Freedom of Speech, from which he earns not one cent.

Last week, in this space, we talked Justin Jones, the candidate for the Arkansas House who said, “fags are disgusting” and “1000% more likely than any straight person” to contact HIV.

This week we learn that Jones has suspended his campaign.

Sorry, not sorry.

It was 150 years ago that the great[?] state of South Carolina debated seceding from the Union … a decision that led to the Civil War.

Now, the topic has come up again, amid a national debate over firearms and gun rights and so three of South Carolina’s more asshatted Republicans … because, of course … have introduced a bill that would allow lawmakers to debate seceding from the U.S. “if the federal government confiscates legally purchased firearms in this State.”

The asshats are Ashley Trantham, Mike Pitts, and Jonathon Hill; Pitts admits the bill has no chance at passage but, you know, why waste time dealing with real issues that face this state when you can just be an ass.

While suffering the head cold that Carlos gave to me for his birthday, I watched some old movies on TV, and stumbled upon Butterflies Are Free—the 1970s film about q blind aspiring singer-songwriter [Edward Albert] moving away from his overprotective mother [Eileen Heckart] and living next door to free-spirited actress [Goldie Hawn].

It was cute and fun and reminded of just how dreamy Edward Albert Jr. was back then, and how he’s still kinda hot today. That’s him down there with his father, Eddie Albert, from Green Acres fame.

Just sayin’.

Rafael Edward Cruz Again Proves He's Clueless

Texas GOP Senator Rafael Edward Cruz—I use that name for a man who often referred to Barack Obama as Barack Hussein Obama in an inflammatory manner—used the few minutes of time that he was given to question Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to ask about the social media site shuttering a "Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day" page.

Yup; even though the purpose of the joint Senate committee hearing was to discuss the Cambridge Analytica data breach affecting 87 million Americans, Cruz was more interested in trying to say that Facebook is anti-Conservative.

I get it, though, he’s up for a tough reelection bid against Beto O’Rourke, and so he’ll use every opportunity, no matter how lame, to pander to his base.

Funny thing is, that it’s not clear if Facebook did shutter the "Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day" page, but the page was created six years ago, so why bring it up now.

Oh, yeah; tough election and pandering.

Rafael Cruz, playing to the cameras, said Americans for “are increasingly concerned that Facebook and other tech companies, are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship."

He then referred to an unproven story, a fake news story, if you will, about Facebook "routinely suppressing conservative stories from trending news." Rafael also claimed Facebook had suppressed stories about CPAC, Mitt Romney, the Lois Lerner IRS "scandal," and Glenn Beck.

I smell desperation, Rafael. And since you can’t stay on topic—it’s about Russia, you tool—why not just sit out the remainder of your term quietly.

NCRM

Random Musings

Aetna is in hot water this week after several groups filed a class-action lawsuit against the health insurer saying they violated the privacy of customers by sending many of them letters through which the phrase "filling prescriptions for HIV" was visible through envelope windows.

The lead plaintiff is listed by the pseudonym Andrew Beckett—a nod to the Tom Hanks character in Philadelphia—and is described as a "52-year-old Bucks County [Pa.] man, whose sister learned from an unopened large-window envelope that arrived in their mail that he was taking HIV medications."

He was, in fact, HIV-negative but on a regimen of prophylactic medication meant to guard against getting HIV.

An Aetna spokesperson did not comment on whether the company was aware of HIV-negative individuals who are not currently taking medication and who received the letters, nor did they comment on the class-action lawsuit.

I understand their privacy being violated, and any time your personal health information is made public in any way is awful, but I cannot help but be saddened by the fact that almost forty years into this epidemic there is still this stigma over HIV, a completely manageable condition.

Still, Aetna should be ashamed of themselves for the error.

Wasn’t it great how “President” _____ could take a visit to a disaster area and turn it into some sort of political reelection rally?

“What a crowd! What a turnout!”

That’s what he said to people who stood on the streets; people who’d been rained and flooded out of their homes. And later that same day he took the time to tell people that his response would be the best response ever:

“Nobody has seen something like this. We won’t say congratulations. We don’t want to do that. We’ll congratulate each other when it’s all finished.”

And yet he never spoke to one single victim of the hurricane.

PS He was selling his USA hat through hsi personal business website for $40 because if anyone is to make money off a devastating hurricane, it should be Donald _____.

I just realized ... because I’m slooooooow ... how much I love Stevie Nicks.

See this week it hit me that every time a Nicks song comes on the radio, I turn it up and sing along loudly and, probably, badly all the way through the end, and then sing it in my head for the rest of the day.

Ah, a bit of good news coming out of the Charlottesville hate rally ... One of the alt-right thugs who viciously assaulted a black protestor was arrested in Ohio.

Yup, police arrested white supremacist Dan Borden, the white supremacist who was identified as assaulting Deandre Harris, through pictures posted to social media. Borden has been charged with “malicious wounding” and awaiting extradition to Charlottesville.

As with all alt-right thugs who feel they are in the right in their hatred, Borden began running like a little bitch after he assaulted Harris; he had his little band of thug-friends busted open Harris’ head with their wood switches, broke his wrist and chipped a tooth.

I hope he gets a nice roommate in prison.

Look here, another Hate Baker ... Tastries, a Bakersfield, California bakery, was exposed on Facebook as being a discriminatory company ...because God ... by Sam Salazar, a customer who was refused service by the bakery after he said the cake he was ordering would be for a gay wedding:

“Tastries Bakery… so we just went with some friends to do a cake tasting for a wedding cake and we were referred to another bakery. Apparently they don’t “believe” in same sex marriage, so they refused to make the cake. I’m not even sure how to react or feel right now. So just be aware if you choose to spend your money there.”

And now Tastries owner, bigot baker Cathy Miller is speaking out:

“Our family are Christians. We love everyone. God created everyone … There are certain things that violate my conscience and my conscience will not allow me to participate in things that I feel are wrong. Our business is God’s business. We work for him…Participating in a celebration of a same-sex marriage goes against my conscience. I shouldn’t be picked on because of my beliefs.”

Once again, you dumbass, you cannot say you “love everyone” and then say “God created everyone” and deny services because they’re gay; that isn’t love, that’s discrimination and hate, m’kay?

And, again, as I’ve said to you bakers and florists who won’t serve The Gays, you are not participating in the wedding; you are not invited; you are not family—well, some of you might be ... wink wink; you are a business doing a job for which you are paid.

What you are doing is hate, and if you’d ask God, you’d know She isn’t happy about that.

Speaking of Christian Love ... mega-church pastor, and multi-millionaire, Joel Osteen didn’t open his huge church to victims of Hurricane Harvey this week even though he says his ministry is dedicated to helping the needy. But then, to Osteen, wealth is the gospel he preaches about, and the dollar is his God, so, you know, helping poor people, displaced people? Ick.

But once folks on social media began taking him to task, wondering why his Lakewood Church, which has room for 50,000 congregants, with additional open spaces for beds and cots for many others, wasn’t open, Osteen, first, tried to deflect.

And by deflect I mean lie.

“We have never closed our doors. We will continue to be a distribution center to those in need. We are prepared to house people once shelters reach capacity. Lakewood will be a value to the community in the aftermath of this storm.”

Oh, so once every other facility gets filled, you’ll open your doors?

But then why, “pastor”, did you and your church staff initially say the church basement and first floor were flooded, even posting pictures of the water. Only to be called out because the “flooding” wasn’t in the church but in the parking garage? The actual “stadium” part of the church is a lot higher.

And why did it take social media, and news organizations, pointing out that Joel Osteen wasn’t doing anything other than tweeting about the flood to get an ALLEGEDLY  “Good Christian” to lend a hand?

And then church officials released a statement saying that even if they wanted to open Lakewood as a shelter, “the streets surrounding the church are already so flooded … Lakewood is inaccessible.” So inaccessible that there were a bunch of cars parked in the parking lot yesterday ...

Here’s a couple of things to note ... nearly every mosque in Houston instantly opened their doors to those affected by the storm, no matter their faith, while Joel Osteen sat in his $10 million mansion in Houston’s affluent River Oaks.

While his neighborhood was affected by flooding, Osteen’s home was unaffected and yet he didn’t offer to house any of his neighbors.

Good Christian.

Kathy Griffin cannot let anything go, because all publicity is good publicity in her mind.

After that photo shoot where she stood with the severed head of Donald _____ she was fired from several jobs, including her New Year’s Eve gig with BFF Anderson Cooper.

Cooper maintained that he and Griffin were still friends, but he thought her photo shoot was in bad taste; still, he stood behind CNN’s decision to fire the comedian.

Well, Kathy wants y’all to know she is no longer friends with Cooper because he did not reach out to her before commenting publically. Griffin went on to say the _____’s were out to destroy her and she no longer has a career and boo hoo boo hoo ...

Only now she’s saying she’s not sorry she did the photo shoot.

Look, Kathy, make up your goddamned mind. Either it was a mistake or it wasn’t; it was in bad taste or it wasn’t.

And we now know you’re the kind of friend who won’t accept criticism from anyone, even your own friends, and will cut anyone off if they cross you.

You lose, Kathy. You lose.

I need a palate cleanser now, and so ...

Andre Ziehe, a Brazilian model, who wears mostly underwear and does so brilliantly, is the Hot Man of the Week. He rocks a suit, he rocks a blanket, but mostly he rocks the underwear.

Just sayin’.

In Karma Is A Bitch news ... Ashlee Marie Preston, a trans female, took aim at Caitlyn Jenner at an LGBT event for voting for _____:

“It’s really f**ked up you continue to support somebody that tears us down. It’s really f**ked up.”

Jenner said nothing.

“Nobody wants you here … it’s really ridiculous. You’re a f**king fraud.”

And as a bystander stepped in to try and defuse the situation, Preston became more angry:

“We are complicit. Taking her money and doing all that, it makes us complicit. It goes against the mission.”

Brava, Ashlee Marie, for calling out Caitlyn for her hypocrisy.

I doubt she heard you though, unless there was a television camera around. Jenner is just like those “gays” in Deplorable Pride, who stand by and support this Bigot-In-Chief while he attacks our community.

They are f**king frauds.

Court Says Outing Students Does Not Violate Rights To Privacy

It's hard enough to be the gay kid at school, facing your peers every day, who may, or may not, bully and belittle you while you walk the halls. But throw in teachers and coaches who bully gay students and it becomes even more disgusting, and then toss is the ruling, the bullying ruling, of the US court system bullying you, and it's no wonder gays kids are trying to find a way out these days.

Barbara Wyatt sued Texas' Kilgore Independent School District and two of its coaches—Rhonda Fletcher and Cassandra Newell—saying that the two women violated her daughter’s privacy when they confronted Wyatt and her 16-year-old daughter, Skye, about a lesbian relationship the teen was having.

Skye hadn't yet told her mother she was gay.

During a 2009 confrontation, Rhonda Fletcher and Cassandra Newell allegedly took Skye into a locker room, threatened her, interrogated her and eventually kicked her off the team for her involvement with another female student; then they told her mother that her daughter was gay. See my original post HERE.

After the confrontation, Skye became anxious and depressed; her grades went down, she started missing classes and even attempted suicide. So, her mother sued the school district over what those coaches had done to her daughter. Good for her, right?

It would have been accept last month the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled coaches Fletcher and Newell didn't violate the Skye’s privacy because there is no precedent regarding a public school student's right to privacy under the Fourth Amendment when it comes to sexual orientation:

"The Fifth Circuit has never held that a person has a constitutionally-protected privacy interest in her sexual orientation, and it certainly has never suggested that such a privacy interest precludes school authorities from discussing with parents matters that relate to the interests of their children. Therefore, when the magistrate judge in this case held that there is a constitutional right that bars the unauthorized disclosure by school coaches of a student's sexual orientation to the student's mother, he proclaimed a new rule of law."

There was one judge, Judge James Graves Jr., who disagreed, saying that because the coaches themselves acknowledged the private nature of the information--remember they took her into a locker room to confront her, away from everyone else, then it should fall within the category of highly personal information protected by the law.

But Graves was in the minority, which I guess means, that if she’d been a straight girl schtupping her boyfriend, she would be entitled to privacy, but being of a different sexual orientation, Skye has a different set of rules placed upon her.

Bad enough she might get bullied at school by fellow students for being gay, but then she was attacked and belittled and, in my mind, held against her will and bullied, by Rhonda Fletcher and Cassandra Newell. Then, to top it all off, the United States judicial system decided to jump on the Bully Wagon and say that because Skye Wyatt is a lesbian, she isn’t entitled to the same privacy as her heterosexual counterparts.

In 2013. In America.

source

I ♥ Jodie

I'm an awards show whore. I love the spectacle and the clothes and the jokes and the gaffes, but I especially love those unexpected moments and last night, at the Golden Globes, we had one of those.

Jodie Foster [officially] came out.

Sure, we'll all known that Jodie was gay for years because, well, she never said she wasn't....and never said she was, for that matter. But, you know, she had those two children and never married a man, and never talked about her private life so she was gay.

Then, we read stories that Jodie and her longtime partner, and, as she called her last night "co-parent", Cydney Bernard, had split up, but still, no talking from Jodie about their relationship. But last night that all changed with a wonderful speech about being who you are, and being a celebrity and maintaining that sense of privacy.

I'm going to agree with Jodie.

And I’m going to disagree with Jodie.

First off, yes, she is entitled to privacy; we all are. We don't have to tell the world who we are and who we love; I mean, you don't hear straight people declaring their heterosexuality on a Very Special Oprah. One thing that's annoyed me is that when a celebrity announces that they are gay, then gay becomes the first word to describe them. I saw a blog post a week or so ago about a cooking show and how "Gay Olympic Skater Johnny Weir" was to be on it.

Did I miss any article about "Straight Football Player Tom Brady" doing something newsworthy?

So, I get that Jodie wanted privacy. I get that, after starting in show business at the age of three, she longed for a space and a place where she wasn't faced with fame; a place where she could love the person she loved and they could raise their children together and she wouldn't be "Gay Oscar Winner Jodie Foster."

I agree. Privacy, especially for a celebrity, is a rare thing, even though a lot of famous folk share with us their every detail. We see them on magazine covers talking about their divorces and sharing photos of their weddings and the births of their children, but when someone like Foster simply asks for privacy, we feel like she's asking for the moon.

We don't deserve the moon. We don't have the right to know what goes on, and with whom, in the Foster household. It's called a private life for a reason. That said, here’s where I disagree with Jodie.

I wonder, since she's in show business, as she said, for forty-seven years, that if she had come out, publicly, and openly, the moment she felt comfortable enough to do it, how many young gay women, and men, she might have inspired to do the same. How many LGBTQ youth might have realized that they were like Jodie, in being gay and in wanting to make movies?

I'm all for privacy, but all gay men and women come out all the time, every day, to everyone, and it's no different for Jodie Foster. Carlos and I come out to clerks at grocery stores because we shop together and answer questions together. Buying a refrigerator, we tell the delivery people where "our” house is and how to get there. Answering questions we often refer back to our partner. Coming out is a necessity; coming out needs to be done, because, when we don’t come out, whether you're a lonely high school kid in California decades ago, or an Oscar winning actress at awards show, every time one of us comes out, it makes it harder for people to put us down.

Strength in numbers; strength in pride.

I was one of those people tearing up last night when Jodie talked about opening up to friends and family, co-workers, and people she'd actually "met" and yet, Jodie needs to know that, through her career, through her films, she's met all of us, and by coming out, even while maintaining her right to privacy, she has done a great thing for the LGBT community.

And, I think, for herself.

Still, I hope she doesn't end up being called "Gay Oscar Winner Jodie Foster" because then I’ll be forced into using "Straight Oscar Winner Meryl Streep" and that's a lot of extra keystrokes.

So, let's end this by, officially, welcoming Jodie out, and offering her the Homo HQ Coming Out Toaster Oven, and a copy of the Gay Agenda, with its one-word philosophy, "Equality" and an addendum I'll call the Jodie Foster Appendix that also contains one word, "Privacy."

In case you missed it last night, this is Jodie, in all her glory......