The Conservative "Evangelical" Merchants of Death...

And here I was feeling pretty good this week....

President Obama came out for LGBT inclusive Immigration Reform, and the Boy Scouts of America began the process of ending it's blanket ban on Gay and Lesbian membership. Then I read about the tragic death of young Jadin Bell in Oregon.

Late yesterday, local media in  Oregon reported that  Jadin's family in consultations with doctors, made the decision to take Jadin off life support...

There comes a point where you run out of adjectives  to verbalize just how  horrific  this is.  Words like  "senseless" and "preventable"  just ring hollow and I find myself just starring at the keyboard fighting the urge to pound my fists  into it, in rage for the fact that  I know full well there are people in America who will actually take  delight and satisfaction  in the death of this young man and others like him.

Meet the most evil,  hateful,  ungodly, un-American cheerleaders of  death you will ever meet:

James Dobson
 Focus on the Family

Brian Brown
 National Organization for Marriage

Tony Perkins -
American Family  Association

Bryan Fischer
American Family Association

All of these self-proclaimed "Christians" have fought tooth and nail to stop any effort to educate students and teachers on the dangers of anti-LGBT bullying . These perverse hate mongers know full well that Anti-bullying efforts in public schools are a direct threat to their ability to fund-raise by dehumanizing Gays and Lesbians. This in spite of the clear evidence that bullying based on sexual orientation was the direct cause of a number of tragic teen suicides across the the United States last year. With Jadin being only the most recent.

These people are insane bigots, They are so filled with hatred for people who don't share their sad twisted anti-American, anti-Constitutional world view, they would seek to stop efforts that could help save kids lives. Jadin Bell is the latest in a far too long list of young people who have been bullied to death with the full encouragement and approval of these sub-human death-profiteers.

They are the American Taliban and Jadin Bell's blood is only the latest stain on their blood-soaked hands.   

Right Wing Nuts Freak Out over Obama Inaugural ...

Lawrence O'Donnell  breaks it down for us...

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Pop! Pop! Pop Pop! Pop!

That delightful popping noise you hear is the sound of Teabagger/Republican  Heads exploding  across America today...

Hello From Hong Kong..

Hi there folks,  in Hong Kong this week for work.

View from the Hotel Room

Funny Odd Film Review - Les Miserables

The Summer of my  13th birthday,  National Public Radio aired an adaptation of  Victor Hugo's  classic (and massive) novel  Les Miserables.   It aired  in the early evenings, just as  our family was getting ready for dinner so  we would have  it on in the Kitchen.  I remember  being not that  interested after hearing the  first  couple of episodes, but  eventually found myself getting drawn into the story.

The next year,  I  was sitting in my school library with friends and someone wondered aloud what book  had not been checked out in the longest  period of time.   So I went up to the  information desk and asked the librarian.   She handed me a dewy decimal number on a slip if paper  and  pointed to a dimly lit section of the stacks.    Turns out it was a dusty hard cover penguin classics copy of ... Les Miserables.   It had last been read in  1971.   So I checked it out, and  set to reading it.  All nearly  2,000 pages of it.

 It is an incredibly  powerful story.   The two main characters each embody a different view of  God.   The  former convict, Jean Valjean, representing  the  New Testament view of a forgiving  loving God , while the  police inspector Javert, being the Old Testament's fire and brimstone God who shall wreak wrath and vengeance  upon the sinner.

Little did I realize at the time  just  how dangerous an age  fourteen years old is to read  something like Les Miserables.   As a young man struggling to come to terms with my own  complex relationship with faith,  I found things in both characters I related to.   I ended up keeping the book  for most the rest of that year.

Three years later, while a student in Germany  I would make a special trip to London  for one reason, and one reason only.  I was desperate to see the new Musical  version of the story, that had recently opened in the West End at the Palace Theater.

I remember standing outside the Theatre as I snapped this picture,  wondering if a stage adaptation could possibly live up  my expectations.  Would the actors portray Hugo's characters the way  I had heard them so clearly in my head when I read the book?      I remember stumbling out of the theatre later that night, on an emotional high,  convinced that the original  Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) cast  had somehow read my mind and brought my own images of the characters to life before my eyes.  

It would be the start of  a more than twenty five year  love affair with this show.   I would go on to see it on stage again  nearly 20 times.  Seeing it in Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee,  San Francisco,  New York,  Munich, Amsterdam, Seoul South Korea, and multiple times again here in London.   So  when the show's  producer  Cameron Macintosh announced there was finally going to be a film adaptation of the show,  I was both excited and  worried,  very  worried.

The transition from  stage to screen  historically  has been problematic for many successful  shows.   For every, brilliant adaptation like "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Funny Girl",  there is the sheer awfulness of a  "Jesus Christ Superstar" and (ugh!) abominations like the film version of  "Camelot".  So I deliberately  did not  read reviews of the film before  going to see it  this evening.

As the lights  dimmed at the movie theater I actually  held my breath...

Film is a very different  medium obviously so  first of  all lets be clear,  this is not an adaptation of the stage show.  It is an entirely new version of the Musical.   The well publicized move to have the actors sing live on the set instead of to a pre-recorded track does give it a  theater - feel though and adds a wonderful realism to the movie.  Likewise, the overall look  of  the movie  is  darker,  grittier and  more  realistic  than the stage version.  The mud, rain, grime and poverty of  19th century Paris  is not left  the imagination.  It also feels  much more intimate  thanks to the use  close up shots.  So as odd it sounds the  stage show  actually feels  "bigger"  in scale than the film does.

Yet  when all is said and done, the film works.   But for very different reasons than the stage show.

Hugh Jackman and Colm Wilkinson

One reason is the cast.   Hugh Jackman  delivers an emotional  and powerful  performance as  Jean Valjean.  As Javert,  Russel Crowe , bless him,  really can't sing. (Insert, your favorite Pierce Brosnan "Mama Mia" reference here...)   But  he carries it off.   His performance is not  the strongest in the film, but  he sings on key and  doesn't  do any damage.  No, he isn't a singer, but  when it counts  his acting hits the right notes. So  good on him.

Sasha Baron-Cohen and  Helena Bonham Carter  get the job done as the Thenadiers, delivering the needed comic moments.  Eddie Redmayne, Amanda Seyfried  and Samantha Barks  all deliver solid performances as the lovers  Marius and Cossette,  and the tragic Eponine .   There is also the inspired casting choice of  Colm Wilkinson, the original  stage Jean Valjean in the role of the saintly Bishop who sets Valjean on the road to redemption.

The hands down, clear  surprise in this cast in Anne Hathaway  as  Fantine.    Her Oscar-nominated performance as the tragic mother of Cosette  is  quite simply stunning.   It is little wonder they  used snipits  for the  film's teaser trailer.



So my verdict?  If you are going expecting an experience exactly like that of seeing the show on stage you will be disappointed.  Film is not Theatre  but  the music  of the show clearly  transfers mediums  with the same powerful emotional punch  it packs live  on Broadway or the West end.    I  thoroughly  enjoyed the  film version and   left the cinema with the same emotions  I did when seeing the show live on stage.

 Is it everything I hoped it would be?  No.  But it certainly  came close enough to have me want to go back and see it again,  both on stage and on screen.

One of the coolest things I have ever seen....

After exploding onto the performance scene by grabbing the Youth Speaks Grand Slam Champion prize, watch as 15-year-old Noah St. John electrifies the Snap Judgment Stage with a stunning performance - winning this year's "NPR Snap Judgment Performance of the Year."

The surprising life of a true American Hero...

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

For me , Charles Durning will always be best little Governor Texas ever had...

The Last Word on Christmas....

On this Christmas Eve,  the last word on the holiday goes as always....  to  Linus.

Lights please....



Merry Christmas,  Everyone....

James Dobson - The Blasphemy of A Bigot....

According to James Dobson,  founder of  the self -proclaimed "evangelical" group "Focus on the Family";  God allows children to be shot because  he is pissed off  about  Gays getting married..

I have written a length  about  Dobson's group  and  the truly awful, bigoted anti-Christian hate they regularly vomit out onto the airwaves and the internet. So I will spare you the repost.   If you want to find out just how vile and evil these people are, you can do so  HERE.

The latest bucket of bile to spew out of Dobson's hate hole,  is to link the tragic shooting in  Newton Connecticut  to (of course...)  Gays and women's reproductive rights.
(Hat Tip to the Huffington Post)

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson said Monday that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary resulted from America turning its back on God, joining other conservative Christian leaders in assigning blame for Friday's Connecticut shootings.Speaking to listeners of his "Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk" program, Dobson said God "has allowed judgment to fall upon us."  

Dobson said:"I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn't exist, or he’s irrelevant to me, and we have killed fifty-four million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition. Believe me, that is going to have consequences too.  And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us. I think that’s what’s going on."

So just to be clear, according to this self-proclaimed "Christian Leader",    God "allowed"  20 children to be gunned down because he is upset about Gay Marriage and Abortion.  So in James Dobson's  sick twisted theology  God registers  displeasure with  mankind by slaughtering  innocent   children and plunging  their  families and  their community  into horrific  grief.

Wow.

I can't help but wonder when decent honest people of  faith are going to  stand up  and take back  Christianity  from  evil nutjob opportunists like James Dobson.  A man  who  claims to speak for God and speaks nothing hatred and lies.    When will the  "Christian Left"  finally stand up  and call  right wing lunatics  like Dobson  what they are;  The American Taliban.

Seattle based writer and activist  Dan Savage  often wonders the same thing....

I don't know what to say....

Sitting here  in  London  watching the news coverage of the  horrific  shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown,  Connecticut.  A shooting that  claimed the lives (so far) of  26 people  20 of them children.   I truly do not know what to write, or say....

But I do know what I don't want to read, or hear...

I don't want to read comments on how this tragedy would have been averted if the teachers had been carrying guns, so don't write them,  I won't post them.  I don't want to read mindless pap  that says  "guns don't kill,  people do",  because only an idiot can't  see  how having the gun in the first place helps make horrors like this possible.  So don't bother writing it,  I won't post it

I don't want to hear perverse misinterpretations of the 2nd Amendment . Spare me the  Fox News BS that stricter controls on guns wouldn't have helped prevent this.  When in 2011 the UK death toll from homicide by  handgun was 8,  and in the US  was over 10,000,  regurgitated  NRA propaganda  just makes whoever is spewing it look heartless and stupid.  So spare yourselves  the embarrassment , and  turn your computer off  and  for now,  just be quiet.   

Because on this day,  when 20 children are dead partly because of  the American FETISH with firearms, on this day, you have nothing to say. So just don't...

May the grace and peace of  almighty God, be with the people of Connecticut , and may we all be granted the wisdom to do what needs to be done to ensure horrors like this never happen again.

Marriage Equality Heads to the Final Hurdle...

(via Huffington Post) 

The United States Supreme Court will review the decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that struck down Proposition 8, a 2008 law which banned gay marriage in California.

The appeals court's ruling was issued in February and found the law unconstitutional.  The court will also hear a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act.  According to  SCOTUS Blog, the court is expected to hear arguments in late March and make a decision in late June.

So interestingly enough, that would put the decision on Marriage Equality for all Americans sometime around....uh... Pride Weekend!?!  Well,  that should make things interesting.    So  what  does this all mean for couples like Us and the thousands of other bi-national same sex couples?   Well,  that depends on how the court rules, obviously.  There are two cases  that will be taken up by the Court.  The first  is  the case against  California's  Proposition 8  which limited marriages in the State of California  to  only between  a man and a woman.   The plaintiff in the Prop 8 case is the  American Foundation for  Equal Rights  (AFER)  

The second case is  Windsor v. United States.  The Windsor case deals with the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  In 2007, Edith "Edie" Windsor and Thea Spyer, residents of New York, married in Toronto, Ontario, after 40 years of romantic partnership.    Spyer died in 2009, at which time New York legally recognized same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.   After Spyer's death, Windsor was required to pay more than $363,000 in federal estate taxes on her inheritance. If federal law accorded their marriage the same status as different-sex marriages recognized by their state, she would have paid no taxes.

The United States General Accounting Office determined that there are 1,049 federal laws classified in the United States Code in which marital status is a factor.  One of the many areas included in these laws in Immigration.  But not only.  Other Federal  rights and privileges of Marriage include Social Security benefits, housing, food stamps, veterans benefits, taxation, civilian benefits, military benefits, employment benefits, financial disclosure and conflict of interest, family rights, loans, guarantees and payments, and a whole bunch of other issues that most of us never encounter in our daily lives    Yet DOMA is denying the right of valid, legally married households  (like ours), to participate as full-fledged citizens of the United States.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, there were 646,464 same-sex couples who self-identified as such, and 131,729 of them had valid legal marriages. This means there are more than 500,000 unmarried same-sex partner households in the United States that could benefit from the federal recognition of same-sex marriage that would come with overturning DOMA.    Those numbers don't even include couples like us.   Bi-National Same Sex couples legally married and living outside the United States in  "DOMA Exile".  Where in order to simply be with the person I am married to, I had to move to a different country.

So what could the court do?  Well they could  (in theory) kill Prop 8 and  save  DOMA, if that  happens then same sex marriage  will be legal (again)  in the State of California  but  still un-recognized under US Federal Law.  Which for couples like us, would mean pretty much nothing.

But if the  Court upholds the lower court rulings that say DOMA is unconstitutional  then the Prop 8 question is moot, and all marriage discrimination laws at the state level get tossed out with DOMA.   Which means Eric and I get to head  down the US Embassy and  petition for  his "green card", which would give us the option to live back in the United States.  An option we do not presently have.  

But more than all of that,   a ruling by the United States Supreme Court will finally  settle the question  of whether or not the United States will finally join the majority of the civilized world in truly live up the words in the US Constitution and treat all Americans, Gay or Straight  equally under the law.

Teaching Pigs to Juggle....

The "aftermath" of the  2012 Presidential race has been interesting to watch.   Many on the right end of the political spectrum are doing some understandable soul-searching  in the wake of Republican defeats.

The reactions  tend to be falling into one of two distinct camps.  The first is that the Republican Party needs to seriously rethink it's current course and strategy.  Rethink it's obsession with social issues and come to grips with its greatest  PR problems.  The biggest being, it is seen by a large sector of the American electorate as the party of  the 1% and only the one percent.   The next being,  it is seen as a party that is overwhelmingly male, white and old.  Consequently  the  GOP needs to break out of  the box it has crammed itself into.

My old friend and fellow University of Wisconsin alum, conservative columnist and blogger  James Wigderson ,  recently penned a  very thoughtful column  for a Milwaukee area newspaper,  on how the conservative movement is not doing itself any favors  when it embraces the  crackpot elements now firmly ensconced  in the GOP base.

Now politically James and I agree on very little,   but in this case I find far more to agree with than not.   Some of the commentors on his blog beg to differ,   and when I voiced my agreement with the piece, I  was quickly branded a communist follower of  "Chairman Axelrod".   ,,, Sigh.

Which brings us to the second camp of Post Election thought.  Which is a lot more fun to watch.  There folks are convinced  the reason they lost is because America is  full of lazy welfare queens and gay  illegal aliens all who voted for Barack Obama because they "want free stuff", and anyone who doesn't  see that  is a brainwashed socialist.  Here the the prevailing thought is the GOP wasn't crazy enough.   Romney was too soft on gays,  to soft on the Brown menace to the South,  too soft on Abortion and Birth Control and wayyyyy too soft on the need to CUT TAXES and eliminate all government spending except defence.

When I was a young boy, we would often go visit my Great-Uncle's hog farm near Waterloo Iowa.  My Uncle Dale is my Grandmother's youngest brother and could best be described as the sort of person Meredith Wilson was talking about when he wrote "Iowa Stubborn" in "The Music Man"



On only one occasion did I ever try to discuss politics with him.  We were watching the PBS Newshour on television and two pundits were arguing over taxes.  He looked away from the screen and said ; "trying to argue with someone like that is like trying to teach pigs to juggle,  all you're gonna  do is frustrate yourself, and annoy the pigs!"

Now, many years later I truly understand  my Uncle Dale's point.   Trying to have any sort of reasoned debate with people who truly feel  the reason Mitt Romney lost, was because he was  too far to the political Left, truly is trying teach pigs to juggle.

The Republican Party needs to come to grips with reality, It needs to free itself from the grip of people who truly think the greatest threat to America is our own democratically elected  Government.  Only then can it legitimately make a case for its core principles   None of which Romney or Ryan was ever able to clearly articulate without phrasing the debate as how the wealthiest of the wealthy in America are somehow victims of  all the "takers" (47% of all Americans, according to Mitt Romney) who just want the Government to give them everything.

The Republican message to Americans in the 2012 campaign was nothing but a series of cheap shots that never stuck. It made the GOP look bitter and small. Until the Republican Party, and with it the broader conservative movement come to grips with the fact that this 2012 not 1912, their electoral fortunes will continue to decline. Eventually the GOP itself will lose any relevance on the Federal level, and be reduced to a party of angry, fearful conspiracy obsessives sitting in local school board meetings yelling at how the world is really only 6,000 years old and to teach otherwise will make God angry.

The only GOP 2012 candidate who had even a remote chance  at beating President Obama was John Huntsman. Yet the sad truth is, there was absolutely no way a man who stated publicly in a GOP primary debate that Science is a good thing, was ever going to get the Republican Party’s Nomination.

Accepting reality means, the GOP needs accept that basic premise that you cannot use the Old Testament as the basis for environmental policy.  Accepting reality means to accept that being Pro-life is more than just being against Birth Control, and creating barriers to Women having access to Health Care.  Being Pro-Family is not about simply hating families that are different from yours. Being Pro-Israel is not about beating a war drum to “bomb bomb bomb… bomb bomb Iran…” Promoting American Exceptional-ism is not about building a fence on the Southern border to keep Brown People out.   

I honestly  do feel for the comment posters on conservative blogs,  for these people "wanting their country back" is less about politics are more about culture.   The era where white male conservative evangelicals are the defining voice in American politics is over, and some people find that scary.  So scary, that their natural response is to scream SOCIALISM! or  COMMUNIST!  When faced  with even the most basic of facts which contradict their established talking points.

Since 1992 the Republican Party's relationship with facts has been at best, "complicated".  The only way the GOP can climb out of the hole it is so enthusiastically digging for itself, is to quit its addiction to Crazy, and quit it cold turkey.  I am not going to argue with any of these people,  I wont post their comments or even respond any more to their shrill cries of whatever  "ism"  Fox News has told them to throw around like child with a water balloon.    

I have tried  but now,  I am frustrated and the pigs are clearly annoyed.   So it's time to move forward,  and if the Pigs want to stay in the mud of their own delusions,  that's their choice.

As the Holiday Season Begins....

We kick things off with one of the greatest moments from one of the best Christmas television specials ever....



Thanks Guys....

The Last Word on Campaign 2012....

Goes to the always brilliant-schmoyoho

Post Election Musings.....

Ok...   Here we go...  Post election blogging is always such a self-indulgent affair…

 People on the winning side struggle to sound gracious and not overly smug, and people on the losing side struggle not to sound like a bunch of sad and bitter malcontents desperate to spin defeat into some sort of “longer term victory”. Pundits now bereft of a horse race to talk about, will go on and on for the next month about demographics, who should have done what and when. Was the VP pick a factor? Did Hurricane Sandy actually vote? Etc…etc.. ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

I could with considerable glee, post the various and assorted head exploding freak outs that are currently happening in the right wing nut-o-sphere, but to be honest, I don’t’ care. I didn’t care what these lunatics thought before the election , and political schadenfreude aside, I still don’t care what they think. If you are really curious , or are just looking for a good chuckle, you can find most of that sort of thing – HERE

Obviously I am very happy with the results of last night. The decisive re-election of President Obama and the resounding defeat of a number of right wing/tea party buffoons, combined with impressive wins for Marriage Equality across the United States made for a very upbeat evening for people on my side of the political spectrum.

Yet I have been in the rather lonely chair that many of my more conservative friends now find themselves sitting in. On this day in 2004 many people felt much as the GOP feels today. The re-election of George W. Bush seemed like some sort of bad dream that we all wanted to wake up from as soon as we could. I imagine many Republicans are feeling something along those lines today. So I can empathize…. But I cannot sympathize.

 The republican Party ( and I use the lower case “r” deliberately here, ) has lost more than just a Presidential election. It has lost the Country.

The GOP has cast itself as the party of angry irrelevance. The Karl Rove play-book as seen its last election. Gone forever is the idea that you can win 50% plus 1 of the electorate if you just get enough middle aged underemployed white people angry enough about issues that have nothing to do with their lives.  

So at the risk of joining the chorus of Monday Morning quarterbacks that are currently sifting through the debris of the gop, I will offer a view words of advice as to how the republican Party might, just climb out of the very deep, very dark, and very dank hole it has so enthusiastically dug for itself.

First the Economy - Trickle down economics does not work. It has never worked, and it will never work. Your bizarre insistence that it does, just makes you look either really stupid or  really greedy, and like  you hope the American Public isn't  really paying attention.  Let it go. Asking the top one percent  to pay the same tax rates they did under Bill Clinton, (which by the way are still less than they were under Ronald Reagan) is not “class warfare”, it’s asking the those who have benefited the most from American Freedoms to give back in a fair measure.

That is called Patriotism.

Health Care - The United States of America is going to have some form of National Health Coverage for our Citizens. Every other western industrialised nation has one, it is not socialism it is not Nazism or Communism or any other number of -isms the Glen Becks and Michelle Bachmann’s of the world can spew without understanding what they mean. It is, common sense. It’s happening,  and it is a good thing. It saves money, it improves health care, and it is the right and moral thing to do. Get over it.

Your mindless opposition to Universal Health Coverage just makes you look , (again) stupid and mean. You have staked your claim as the party of Economic Darwinism, - Survival of the Richest. This isn’t the late 19th Century and we are not living in a Dickens novel. The idea that Government is there to help poor people is not evil. But blind opposition to the idea, makes you look it.

Women’s Reproductive Rights - First of all , understand this;  Nobody is “pro-Abortion”. Abortions are a dangerous painful and horribly invasive procedure that everyone hopes would never be needed. But sometimes they are. So they need to be safe, and they need to be legal. Your shrill cries that all abortions are just done as a convenient after-the-fact form of birth control is just plain idiotic.

The issue is about CHOICE. You claim to be for small government, but want  the government to force a woman to have a child. You decry “Government getting between you and your Doctor” but DEMAND the government get between a woman and her OBGYN. You want to stop abortions? Great! Then support REAL sex education that tells young women and young men how to prevent unplanned or unwanted pregnancies

This actually leads us to a larger isuse.   The gop's  unnatural obsession with other people’s sex lives.   . "|Abstenence Only" education  doesnt work,  the facts (remember those..?)  prove it.    It's time you accept fact that  Birth Control is never going to be illegal, so stop your sad bitter attempts to make it so. Again, this is 2012 not 1912 , catch up.

Speaking of your Party’s obsession with sex; lets talk for a moment about LGBT rights. First, my marriage does not affect, threaten or attack yours or anyone else’s in any way,  and your shrill cries that it does just make you look creepy and jealous. Like you are really mad that Gay and Lesbian couples have marriages that seem to be happier than yours. (Hello Maggie Gahallager.... ).

It’s here I will mention demographics. The overwhelming majority of people who will be voting in future elections DON’T CARE if “the Gays” get married.

You are truly standing on the rubbish heap of history on this one. You are sitting on the same stinking pile of hatred and ignorance as the racists and segregationists of the last century. It’s time to climb down from that ash heap and accept the fact that CIVIL Marriage is a civil right. For all Americans Gay or Straight.

Finally , Immigration. We are a nation of immigrants. Unless your family is 100% Native American, you are the product of immigration. Yes we need border enforcement, EVERYONE agrees on that. But we also need to accept the REALITY that we cannot round up and deport everyone who is here who didn’t come across the border with visa.

There as to be a path to legitimacy for these hundreds of thousands of people living here, working here, and paying taxes here. Your mindless opposition to the Dream Act just makes you look petty and racist. Get over it.

The time when the republican Party could win the White House by defining as "American" only those people who conform to a particular limited , fearful view of the world is over.

The time has come to abandon this failed legacy of "fifty percent plus one." Gone is the time when the key to victory was to divide people as much as you can, then prevent any who oppose you from having equal access to the political process. (Be they people of color, people who don't speak English, or people who are not Conservative Evangelical Heterosexuals.  That time is over,  last night proved it.

It’s time to join the rest of America on the road Forward. Or be forever left behind.   It is time for the republican Party to  leave the  bubble of delusion and denial they have been living in and join the rest of us in the real world....

Think about it, won’t you ?

In the meantime,  the last word on the 2012 Election goes  to  Rachel....

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As America Heads to the Polls...

We pause for brief look back at the road that got us here...

Bill Maher Spells it Out for us....

How to Annoy a Republican...

Just present facts.....  they reeeaaaaalllyyy  hate  that.

Dan Savage to Tony Perkins - Bring it On!

Via the Stranger - I am Reposting Dan Savage's  brilliant  response to  Hate Group  Leader Tony Perkins'  latest outrage over being  called out for the hateful death-mongering  bigot that he is.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is Tony Perkins Threatening to Sue Me?

posted by DAN SAVAGE on WED, OCT 3, 2012 at 3:46 PM

• Happier times.

The robustly heterosexual head of the Family Research Council went on Mike Huckabee's radio show today to respond to my recent comments. Huckabee said I was rude and vile and unhappy—please, Rev. Girlfriend, I listen toGypsy when I'm at the gym (unhappy gay men listen to Passion at the gym)—and then it wasTony Perkins' turn:

As my teenagers would say, he has some issues. He is a man with some real deep-seated issues ... and Dan Savage is nowhere near, he's a hundred and eighty degrees from the positions that we have taken. It's wrong and I will tell you this,we are pursuing everything possible to deal with him because he is out of control.... This is the bottom line, Mike: is that if you don't embrace and celebrate homosexuality and everything associated with it, then you are intolerant. And the truth of the matter is, let's just be very, very truthful, and that's what we deal in is the truth, that even is society embraced homosexuality, there would never be that sense of self-fulfillment because it's outside the way God created man and woman. And that's the bottom line. They cannot erase that, even if they get every law on the books changed, it will never change that.

Yes, Tony, I have issues.

I have issues with people who would deny me and other LGBT people our full civil equality for no legitimate reason. I have particular issues with high-profile haters who encourage parents to reject their LGBT kids, doubling their already quadrupled risk for suicide. I have issues with people who say that LGBT people are "pawns of the devil." I have issues with people who compare LGBT people to terrorists. I have issues with people who falsely link homosexuality and pedophilia. I have issues with people who suggest that a law calling for the execution of gay people merely "upholds moral conduct."

But having issues with you, Tony, isn't quite the same thing as "having issues." Please make a note of it.

And during your chat today with Huckabee you didn't address the issue I raised. You and Mike called me names—because you were angry that I called you names?—but you didn't address my issue. So here it is again:

LGBT kids are four times greater risk of suicide. Tony Perkinsadvises the parents of LGBT kids to reject their children. LGBT kids who are rejected by their parents are at eight times greater risk of suicide. Perkins is aware of these studies and yet heactively encourages the parents of LGBT kids to do what Perkins knows will push those kids closer to suicide.

Sue me, Tony. I'd love to see you talk about my "issues" on a witness stand.

I realize that this isn't how you think the world is supposed to work, Tony. You believe—and you're old enough to remember a time when—people like you were free to say vile and disgusting things about people like me without anyone objecting. Certainly people like me weren't allowed to call people like you out. You still believe you should be free to lie about me and other LGBT people with absolutely impunity—we're all pedophiles and terrorists and Satanists—and that we should have to shut up and take it because... well, I'm not sure why you think we're not allowed to respond when you lie about us.

Maybe that's something we could get to the bottom of during the depositions.
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I truly hope that Tony Perkins is deluded enough to actually try taking Dan Savage to court. As usual, Savage hits the nail on the head. Tony Perkins is really angry, because he cannot grasp that LGBT Americans are not going to just sit by and allow him and those like him to spew their hatred and lies with impunity.

Poor Tony, is used to being the bully whose victims are never supposed to fight back. So it is hardly a surprise to see that the reality of having his lies challenged has really ticked little Tony off.

 Welcome to the 21rst Century Tony. Let me explain how things work here. You don't get to spew your bigotry without having to face the consequences. 

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