I Didn't Say It ...

Abdul El-Sayed, Democrat candidate for Senate from Michigan, schooling Fox News moron Jess Watters:

“You don’t want to talk about gas prices. You don’t want to talk about groceries … You want to bring up all this culture war. I am running for US Senate. It’s insane. I’m out here trying to take on the healthcare crisis and big pharma, and you’re asking me about who gets to play sports.”

Fox News doesn’t want to discuss the real issues because that’s what will cause the GOP to lose in the midterms, so they turn to stoking fear of trans athletes, of children being forced to transition.

Even this week the demented doddering draft dodge claimed he had personally ordered American hospitals to perform "reverse surgery" on transgender people.

That’s.A.Lie.

photo

Mark Ruffalo, actor, on being called anti-Semitic:

“The accusation that I am anti-Semitic is appalling and fundamentally dishonest. Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people.”

It’s not the Jews, it’s the leaders of Israel and others who are the problem, and we should be able to separate the faith from the country.

photo

Robert Reich, professor, author, lawyer, and political commentator, on the corrupt complicit media:

“Thomson Reuters, which owns the news agency Reuters has signed a $125 million deal giving ICE access to its databases of personal data. USA Today has partnered with Palantir to gain ‘actionable intelligence’ on its audiences. The media should be opponents of [Cankles’] police state—not collaborators!”

You cannot trust nearly any formally reputable news agency when they are aiding and  abetting the ICEstapo.

Do your research, make up your mind, open your mouths and CAST A GODDAMNED VOTE.

photo

Tom Hanks, actor, on the whitewashing of American history by the Regime:

“Should our schools now teach the truth about [the Tulsa Race Massacre]? Yes, and they should also stop the battle to whitewash curriculums to avoid discomfort for students. America’s history is messy but knowing that makes us wiser and stronger people. 1921 is the truth, a portal to our shared paradoxical history.”

History is Black and white, gay straight, male, female, Christian, atheist, Asian, indigenous, young and old, and when you erase one group, there’s no hope that you won’t erase others that don’t fit the Nationalist Christian, AKA the Nat-C, agenda.

photo

Hunter Biden, on Rudy Giuliani’s threat to sue him for defamation:

“The disgraced former mayor of New York, Rudy—I was just tucking in my shirt—Giuliani, has threatened to sue me for defamation over an interview in which I never said his name. No one even mentioned him. [So] I want to apologize to Rudy. Going forward I will be certain to say his name directly. Rudy, you worked with known Russian agents and their proxies to spread lies about me and my father. Their names are Andrii Derkach, Konstantin Kulyk, Andriy Telizhenko and Oleksandr Dubinsky and more. Kulyk handed you a dossier filled with disinformation. You flew to Kyiv in December 2019 to sit down with Derkach, then went on television with him to sell his bullshit tapes. [Cankles’] own national security adviser warned the White House that what you brought back was Russian disinformation. You kept going. Then … Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, sanctioned Derkach in September 2020 as an active Russian agent for over a decade, for spreading the same lies you are still spitting. Four months later, on his way out the door, Mnuchin sanctioned the rest of your sources. Kulyk. Telizhenko. Dubinsky. Eleven people and four media front companies in all. Not sanctioned by me. Not by my father. By [Cankles’] Treasury Department. And remember Vienna Rudy. In October 2019 you, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman had tickets to fly there to collect a hard drive, courtesy of Dmytro Firtash, an indicted oligarch who has spent a decade in Vienna fighting extradition to the United States. Lev and Igor were arrested at Dulles holding one-way tickets. You canceled yours the next morning. That was way before a computer repairman in Wilmington was ever a twinkle in your eye. So please, @RudyGiuliani. Please, please sue me. Discovery will be a joy for everyone.”

I think I can smell Rudy’s Just For Men hair dye melting down his face right now.

I always say it but think of how far Rudy has fallen after 9/11 when he was dubbed America’s mayor to now when he’s a laughingstock and a moron.

photo

John Legend, singer, songwriter, on Cankles’ racism:

“He’s made it clear throughout his life that he believes Black people are inferior … he believes that to his core, in his bones. He wouldn’t let us live in his buildings back in the day. He clearly believes in a genetic hierarchy of humanity and it’s racially determined. So he is a tried-and-true, dyed-in-the-wool racist … in the core of his being he’s a racist.”

He was sued for refusing to rent apartments to people of color; he wanted five young  men put to death even after they were exonerated for a crime none of them committed , because of skin color.

On the first day of his campaign back in 2015 he said immigrants were drug dealers, rapists and murderers.

He’s.A.Racist.

photo

Random Musings

You never know when something’s just gonna hit you, and kind of wreck you ... like The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, my sister, and me.

See, the other night I was watching RHoBH with my favorite housewife Erika Girardi AKA Erika Jayne. Erika can sometimes appear aloof and cold, but this week she was talking about her grandmother dying of Alzheimer’s and how they talked all the time on the phone, until the calls because fewer then finally stopped as the disease took her grandmother’s mind and memories.

So, how does this relate to my sister? Well, it’s like this ... I last saw my sister when we went to California in August of 2014—she passed away in February 2015. At that time she and I talked, and she’d decided she wasn’t doing any more chemo or any more radiation; she knew it was a losing battle and she wanted to be ‘there’ in every sense of the word for her family. And so she told me to not come back out and see her, that she wanted me to remember her as she was in August. Then she made me promise that if I ever called her and she didn’t seem aware and didn’t seem to know what was going on, that she didn’t want me to call again; she didn’t want me to feel uncomfortable about the calls.

But I called, and she did seem oftentimes confused; and when I called during Christmas of that year, six weeks before she passed, she didn’t seem to know who I was; we chatted and I told her that Carlos and I were thinking n of her and she said, “Carlos?” And I knew; she, my sister, was no longer there, that the cancer had spread and she was forgetting things. And I remembered what she said about calling and so I didn’t call again.

And then she was gone.

I felt guilty ever since then because I think I should have called, if not to hear her, but so she could hear me, and it wasn’t until seeing an episode of RHoBh this week that I realized, she didn’t know me, wouldn’t know me, and all the call would do is further break my heart.

So, I cried a little watching that show, but now I feel better because, once again, my big sister was doing right by me, and watching out for me.

Just sayin’.

On to other things ... Tom Hanks recently sent a gift to the White House press room: a new espresso machine and a note:

"To the White House Press Corps

Keep up the good fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

Especially for the Truth part."

I love that ... especially the ‘truth’ part because it will be the press that brings this president down and I will be thankful to them for it.

Last weekend we installed a new toilet in the master bathroom and, as we do, we do things wrong and then right them. But I tried to nip that in the bud this time and demanded that Carlos read the instructions first, and he said he did.

I should’a known ... as I unpacked the new toilet, I found this rubber seal, and I noticed it was to be set between the tank and the toilet base to prevent water from leaking out. I showed it to Carlos and told him what it was, and he replied that it was the ‘wax ring’ that goes under the toilet, attached to the flange.

Flange! Look at me all builder-y and shiz.

Anyway, I said, “It’s not a wax ring; we bought the wax ring when we bought the toilet. It’s rubber, and goes between the tank and the base.”

“No, it’s the wax ring.”

Then I showed him the illustrated instructions and the drawing of the rubber ring being placed between the toilet and the tank to prevent leakage.

Score one for me!

Then, as the toilet came together and the water was hooked up, Carlos was all excited until he realized that the seat needed to be attached to the toilet before the tank went on because you had to attach it from underneath. So, he’s on the floor, nestled between the toilet and the wall, and trying to put a rubber bolt up under the toilet to catch the screw that would hold the seat in place. I suggested that was odd, because if we ever had to replace the seat, we’d have to take the tank off the toilet to do so and that seemed dumb, but Carlos said that was how it was done.

“Did you read the instructions?”

“Yes, I know this is the way it goes.”

“Did you READ the instructions?”

“Yes!”

I get the instructions and we look at them and then Carlos says, and pardon his French, “I’m a f**king idiot.”

See, the rubber bolt is pushed through a hole in the top of the toilet base, then the seat is set in place and then the screw goes in so that, if you need to replace the seat you don’t take the toilet apart.

“I’m a f**king idiot,” he says again.

“Yes, you are,” I say, and we sat on the bathroom floor and laughed until we nearly peed ... with the toilet almost ready for us to use.

Remember when the Republicans would slam Obama when he played golf, and seem t suggest that he played more golf then acted as president? And remember that Donald _____ was one of his biggest critics about the golf?

“This guy plays more golf than people on the PGA Tour.” 

And after visiting flooded Louisiana, _____ accused Obama of playing a game rather than caring about the country even though those in charge in Louisiana asked the Obama to stay away for security reasons:

“Honestly, Obama ought to get off the golf course and get down there.” 

And then, during a 2016 campaign event in Virginia _____ promised that if he were elected he was “not going to have time to go play golf. I’m going to be working for you, I’m not going to have time to go play golf.”

Huh, then please to explain how the good folks at NBC did the math and have come up with the FACT that _____ is more apt to be on a golf course than in the Oval:

“Over the last five weekends [since he’s been in office], the president has visited his luxury resort four times – each trip costs American taxpayers about $3 million – and as of last night, Trump had spent 31% of his presidency at Mar-a-Lago.  He’s now played golf eight times since taking office six weeks ago.”

Eight rounds of golf in six weeks! And let's not forget the nearly ten million dollars it's cost We The People to let him got South every single weekend! How much will that be come impeachment day is anybody’s guess.

Years back I saw Malcolm McDowell in time After Time, the story of HG Wells and his Time Machine, and how Jack the Ripper steals the machine and travels to modern day San Francisco where his grisly murders pale in comparison to the violence of the 1970s.

Well, the movie has become a TV series with Jack the Ripper arriving in 2017 New York City and HG Wells hot on his trail ... hot being the operative word because Wells is played by British actor Freddie Stroma.

Hot and British. Yum.

Paul Burrell, Princess Diana’s former butler , has come out as gay and announced this week that he’ll be marry lawyer Graham Cooper after divorcing his wife of 32 years some six months ago.

Burrell made a name for himself after Diana’s death when he wrote a tell-all book about their personal relationship and then appeared in a string of reality TV shows like I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! 

A source says Burrell and Cooper will be having an opulent, circus-themed wedding ceremony so, naturally, we’d like to send along a Coming Out Getting Married Toaster Oven, perfect from crumpets, and a copy of The Gay Agenda.

Welcome out and congratulations!

Carlos dubs these photos as proof that Tuxedo and MaxGoldberg are homosexual cats. I think they just like to stay warm on cool mornings and Consuelo is not a snuggler.

I Didn't Say It ....

Frank Bruni, on fear-mongering in the defeat of HERO:

“I USED to be a child molester. Not in actuality. In the popular imagination. In public debate. That’s how gay men were once portrayed — not just as sexual deviants but as sexual prowlers, sexual predators, their eyes lecherously trained on the young, the vulnerable, the recruitable. Hatemongers spread this slander to argue that we mustn’t be teachers, shouldn’t be coaches, couldn’t be trusted. Their words were so common and feebly challenged in the 1960s and 1970s, when I grew up, that even in the 1980s, when I was in my 20s, I sometimes kept an extra few feet between me and boys. I refrained from the typical sort of ebullience and friendliness that an adult summons when introduced to an acquaintance’s kid for the first time. I didn’t want to arouse suspicion. I flashed back on that when residents of Houston voted last week against an anti-discrimination law that did all sorts of unimpeachable things because it supposedly did one thing that scared the bejesus out of them: enabled men in dresses to sneak into women’s restrooms. And we’ll someday cringe about this, just as most Americans now cringe about the verbal garbage that was thrown at gay people, the lies that were told, the lies that were believed.” 

It’s fear, and when the conservative Christian republicans can use fear to allow people to discriminate against others, then what have we done?

[photo]

Tom Hanks, accepting the Outfest 2015 Trailblazer Award:

“It turns out, we all know someone that is gay or lesbian or transgender and there is an excellent chance that we love them exactly as they are. It turns out, the pandemic that was — and still is — AIDS made for a horrifying passing, and the loss of so many has made the world a lesser place, and care for those still in need of care remains a burden we must share. And, it turns out, that the United States of America was not broken by the homophobia of that time nor by the attendant prejudice, ignorance and intolerance. We the people have continued on in the formation of a more perfect union. Yes, there are those who wish to codify inequality and continue to promote fear and outrage rather than recognize the strengths evident in our diversity. But the truth will have its day, that our nation is wiser and stronger because we are more open and increasingly honest about what love really is — 'a force as constant as the speed of light and surely as good as the warmth of our own sun.'”

Again, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, of fear, is for good men to do nothing. So, speak up against the fear, stand up against the fear, and vote the fear-mongers out of office.

[photo]

Hal Sparks, actor and comic, from Queer As Folk, on if the gay sex scenes uncomfortable because he’s a straight man:

“The reality is no, it had no bearing on my discomfort or comfort in doing the scene at all. The sexual aspect, who the partner was in these particular scenes, had no bearing on my comfort level…The discomfort that I felt [on Queer As Folk] ever was mainly physical to the environment … I felt so proud that we were actually shooting something worth doing, that it just never came up.”

I wonder how many people questioned Neil Patrick Harris if his portrayal of womanizer Barney on How I Met Your Mother was difficult because he’s straight, or are these just idiotic homophobic questions.

Hal Sparks was playing the role of a gay man, a sexually active gay man, and as an actor he played the part.

It’s acting.

[photo]

Adele, on why she no longer posts her own tweets:

“I’m not a drinker any more, but when Twitter first came out I was drunk tweeting and nearly put my foot in it quite a few times. So my management decided that you have to go through two people and then it has to be signed off by someone. But they’re all my tweets. No one writes my tweets. They just post them for me. So yeah, that’s very, very true.”

I think there are a lot of folks on Twitter who could use a chain of command before a Tweet goes out, drunk or not.

[photo]

Michele Bachmann, on converting the Jews because the Baby Jeebus is coming:

“This week really was about biblical prophecy in many ways. And we’re seeing as events are speeding up, events are speeding up so quickly right now, and we see how relevant the Bible is, and we’re reading our newspaper, at the same time we’re learning about these biblical events, and it’s literally day by day by day, we’re seeing the fulfillment of scripture right in front of our eyes, even while we’re on the ground. We recognize the shortness of the hour. And that’s why we as a remnant want to be faithful in these days and do what it is that the Holy Spirit is speaking to each one of us, to be faithful in the Kingdom and to help bring in as many as we can — even among the Jews — share Jesus Christ with everyone that we possibly can because, again, He’s coming soon.”

She tosses a word salad better than anyone I know, because when you take this whole rambling mess apart, she says nothing,  and reveals nothing, other than that she’s a loon.

[photo]

That's What I'm Talkin' 'Bout

"The truth is this (show) takes place in Utah, the truth is these people are some bizarre offshoot of the Mormon Church, and the truth is a lot of Mormons gave a lot of money to the church to make Prop-8 happen. There are a lot of people who feel that is un-American and I am one of them. I do not like to see any discrimination codified on any piece of paper, any of the 50 states in America, but here's what happens now. A little bit of light can be shed and people can see who's responsible and that can motivate the next go around of our self correcting constitution and hopefully we can move forward instead of backwards. So lets have faith in not only the American, but Californian constitutional process."
Tom Hanks, exec producer of HBO's Big Love
__________________________
Now, I know it's Tom Hanks, and he's a big old movie star actor guy, but this is what I mean by speaking up about issues.
Some people bought into the fear spread by the Mormon Church during the Prop H8 campaign; they bought into churches being sued if they don't perform gay marriages; homosexuality being taught in schools--NEWSFLASH: You can't 'teach' it, you either are, or you aren't, and you can't catch it either; that marriage has gone unchanged for 5,000 years.
All those old chestnuts that are, in fact, not fact.
It helps to talk about these things, to educate those who think the way the Mormon Church, not to mention the Catholic Church, among others. I remember having the discussion about gay marriage with my parents. They fell into the "Can't you call it something else?" trap.
But, as I explained to them, calling it something else makes it something else; something less than.

Here's how this works:
Are you married?
No, we're Civil Unioned.
Oh.

Another scenario:
My parents have been married ten years.
My parents were Civil Unioned ten years ago, too.
Oh.
See?
Less than.
Different.
Un-American.

Thanks Tom!

Intelligent Is As Intelligent Does

I just love Tom Hanks. He seems like such a "regular guy," whatever that means. I mean this is a guy who went from Bosom Buddies--really funny, especially watching it now--on TV to Bachelor Party--funny, slightly although I tend to think of it as a big plate of cheese--to Philadelphia--gut wrenching and beautiful--to Forest Gump, Punchline, Nothing in Common--not well-known but one of my favorites--Cast Away--I mean, c'mon, he talked to a ball for an hour and you bought it--The DaVinci Code, Charlie Wilson's War, Apollo 13, Catch Me If You Can, Saving Private Ryan--this I haven't seen because I really, seriously, don't like war movies....I guess my anti-war stance extends to cinema--Road to Perdition, The Green Mile--good book, great movie--with stops at Cars and Toy Story.

And when asked to speak, when asked a question, he gives simple honest answers; no politically correct posturing, just his opinion, which is refreshing in this day of thinking and surveying and testing the waters before you speak.

Ted Casablanca of E News asked Hanks about Prop H8::

"It's un-American," Tom Hanks, who nabbed a Globe for producing the terribly popular John Adams, told me. I asked Hanks, one of the Biz's most politically astute members, why he thought the gay-marriage-banning proposition had passed, helped largely by huge sums of media money funneled through the pro-Prop 8 Mormon church.
"You put some good commercials on the air," deadpanned (accurately) the two-time Oscar winner, "you can convince anybody of anything."
Hanks was adamant that the Prop should be overturned by the California Supreme Court and that folks should be able to marry who they wish. "Love is love," he twinkled with a knowing fire. Amen, bro.

Then Casablanca asked Laura Dern what she wished for Sarah Palin, and Dern said this:

"I wish much happiness for Sarah Palin and her family," Dern professed with a killer half smile, which she obviously perfected playing the not-so-genuine Harris. "In Alaska."