Random Musings

So, Miley Cyrus at the VMAs. I missed it, but caught the endless run of videos posted online. Was it The Worst Thing Ever? Nope, it was just Plain Awful. The dancing; the flat-assed twerking; the inability to carry a tune; the tongue.

But Miley perseveres and says she rocked more Tweets than the Superbowl, though she fails to realize most of the Tweets regarding her “performance” were of the WTF variety.

My fave Tweet? Kelly Clarkson, who didn’t mention Cyrus by name, but hashtagged her Tweets with #pitchystrippers.

Thanks Kelly!

Ted Cruz was born of one American parent and one Canadian parent, and this raised the questions about his dual citizenship, and Is he American enough to be President — and don't get me started on the question of is he qualified, because he isn't — which had all of Teabagistan a'twitterin' and all the Twitterstan a'teabaggin' last week.

Then Cruz, heckled for his dual citizenship, announced he would renounce his Canadian citizenship and the whole of Canada breathed a sigh of relief, and muttered, He's all yours now, eh?

I’ve often marveled at the ignorance of people on the Right; and don’t get all pissy, I know some folks on the left are playing hockey with a warped puck … have splinters in the windmills of their minds … but it always seems that the Right has the market cornered on stupidity.

Birthers. ‘Nuff said.

But now there’s this: a recent poll by Public Policy Polling found that 29% of respondents in Louisiana blamed President Obama for the poor response following Hurricane Katrina. And just 28% blamed President Bush.

That’s right; more Louisianans think Obama was to blame for what happened after Katrina, apparently failing to realize the hurricane hit a full three years before Obama took office.

And possibly just as stupid: 44% said they weren’t sure who to blame.

Louisiana, you need to sit down.

Taos County, New Mexico began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples this week, making it the sixth county in the state to do so following Doña Ana, Santa Fe, Bernalillo, San Miguel, and Valencia.

That means that more than half of New Mexicans — 56.2% to be exact — now live in marriage equality counties.

The march goes on ….

So, before we left on vacation Carlos and I watched What’s Your Number with Ana Faris on the DVR. Funny, kinda raunchy; we liked it. 

Of course, we also loved that Chris Evans appears either nude, in his underwear, or without a shirt quite a bit in the film. But he wasn’t the only Man Candy.

Anthony Mackie and Oliver Jackson-Cohen were also in the film, raising the heat Index a couple of notches.

Just sayin’.

Former Illinois Republican Party Chair Pat Brady, who resigned last May after being targeted by his own party for supporting marriage equality, has a new gig.

He’s been hired by the ACLU of Illinois to lobby state lawmakers — "Republicans and other like-minded folks, but primarily Republicans" —to back the bill.

Brady, who said this earlier this year, "Giving gay and lesbian couples the freedom to get married honors the best conservative principles. It strengthens families and reinforces a key Republican value - that the law should treat all citizens equally," admits it’s an uphill fight because some republicans face reelection next year.

Yeah, more concerned about their own reelection than about equality.

Way to go GOP.

And, speaking of the GOP and Marriage Equality — nice segue, eh? — there is a proposed amendment to the bylaws of the Alabama Republican Party would remove from the Party’s steering committee any member who publicly supports a position contrary to the most recent GOP platform, which was adopted during the 2012 Republican National Convention.

Yes, in Alabama, if you disagree with the party platform, you’re out.

Party insiders say the proposed amendment was written as a direct result of comments made by current Alabama College Republicans Chairwoman Stephanie Petelos around the time the Supreme Court ruled the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. Petelos posted this to her Facebook page, “We just [love] freedom and fun. That’s all. Don’t hate.” And then encouraged her friends to “Like” a page for a pro-same-sex marriage group called “Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry.”

Petelos joined the group because she believes “all people deserve to be treated equally under the law.”

And now the Alabama GOP wants her out.

That darn GOP! So inclusive!

Ben Affleck as Batman? Oh hell-to-the-No.

Christian Bale is Batman; Affleck will take away the darker, brooding Batman, and make him more the comic cut-up Batman of the Keaton-Kilmer-Clooney years.

Seriously? Ben Affleck?

Y’all remember Daniel Hernandez Jr.? The former intern to Gabby Giffords who is credited with helping save her life when she was shot in 2011?

Now, Hernandez, an elected member of a Tucson-area school board, is facing a nasty recall election in which anonymous opponents are attacking him because he’s gay and because he works on behalf of gun violence prevention. But the tactics being used against Hernandez are sick and stupid, even for Arizona.

Apparently there are two flyers that Hernandez’s opponents are, ahem, ALLEGEDLY handing out to parents when they’re dropping their children off at schools in the district. The first attacks Hernandez for being openly gay, imploring, “Put a REAL Man on the Sunnyside Board...Daniel Hernandez is LGBT...We need someone who will support Sports and cares about our kids. We don’t need someone who hates our values.”

Yes. He’s gay so he’s not a real man; he’s gay so he knows nothing of sports.

Grow the eff up Arizona.

This one makes me giggle.

Fundamentalist Preacher Doug Seahorne wrote a book about child-rearing called Bible Principles of Child Discipline (from the book of Proverbs). In the pre-publication stage of his book, he looked for an image of that so-called wholesome American family to grace the cover and he Googled his search, finding what he deemed the perfect picture to embody the Biblical principles of disciplining one's child: a picture of a loving husband and wife with their two beautiful daughters and one adorable son.

Trouble is that Seahorne chose Modern Family's dysfunctional Dunphy family, who in addition to being the intellectual property of Disney, are probably not the Bible-thumping, praise Jesus, discipline your kids a la God family he intended.

And, when Seahorne learned of his error, he took to Facebook say he didn’t know the picture was from a “wicked TV show involving a gay couple!"

Wicked funny, Rev, wicked funny.

Then he excused himself because he hasn’t watched TV in 35 years and because he assumed results on Google Image Search were not copyrighted.

Perhaps the Pastor should join the rest of us in the 21st century?

Note to readers:

If you try to take that little piece of stonework on a plane with you, the TSA will stop you and search your bags.

Don’t believe me? Ask the still-trembling-as-his-bag-was-searched Carlos.

This past Tuesday on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s 700 Club bigot, homophobe, idiot and dumbass Pat Robertson said that gay men in cities like San Francisco attempt to spread HIV/AIDS to others by cutting them with a special ring when shaking hands.

It all started with a question from a woman who wondered if her church should inform her that a man she was driving to worship services is “dying of AIDS.” 

Robertson, who apparently hasn’t read anything on the topic in some 30 years, admitted that he “used to think it was transmitted by saliva and other things, now they say it may be sexual contact.” Then he added, and rightly so, “unless there’s a cut or some bodily fluid transmission, I think you’re not going to catch it.”

But he didn’t stop there: “There are laws now, I think the homosexual community has put these draconian laws on the books that prohibit people from discussing this particular affliction, you can tell somebody you had a heart attack, you can tell them they’ve got high blood pressure, but you can’t tell anybody you’ve got AIDS.”

His co-host Terry Meeuwsen tried to steer the conversation away from Robertson’s anti-gay paranoia, but then Pat Robertson began talking about the “special rings” that gay people use to spread HIV: “You know what they do in San Francisco, some in the gay community there they want to get people so if they got the stuff they’ll have a ring, you shake hands, and the ring’s got a little thing where you cut your finger. Really. It’s that kind of vicious stuff, which would be the equivalent of murder.”

Yes, Christian Broadcasting Network employee Pat “Conspiracy theory” Robertson said that, and then CBN got to work, not reprimanding their paid Lunatic In Chief, but in removing any sign of the video from YouTube.

Robertson issued a non-apology, saying he “regret(s) that my remarks had been misunderstood, but this often happens because people do not listen to the context of remarks which are being said.” But, um, yeah, here is exactly what he said:

“I was asked by a viewer whether she had a right to leave her church because she had been asked to transport an elderly man who had AIDS and about whose condition she had not been informed. My advice was that the risk of contagion in those circumstances was quite low and that she should continue to attend the church and not worry about the incident.

In my own experience, our organization sponsored a meeting years ago in San Francisco where trained security officers warned me about shaking hands because, in those days, certain AIDS-infected activists were deliberately trying to infect people like me by virtue of rings which would cut fingers and transfer blood.”

Right in context.