To The GOP Presidential Hopefuls ....

After the mass shooting San Bernardino today ... mere days after the last mass shooting in this country ... that saw at least 14 people dead and many more injured, nearly every single GOP presidential candidate offered their solution to the problem: prayer.

That will not solve the gun problem in this country.

PS Marco Rubio has yet to say one word about the shooting because,. to him, these kinds of terrorist attacks are, as he says, "part of God's plan."

I'll pray .... I'll pray that none of these pandering lying hypocritical asshats is elected to the presidency because all they'll do as we lay dead and dying in the streets is to offer a prayer.

Excuse my French ... as my Mom would have said ... but the GOP can just Fuck off.

ISBL Asshat of the Week: Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers

Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers is your typical Republican who doesn’t want to help anyone, he wants them removed from sight.

At the mayor’s request, Colorado Springs city officials are working on an ordinance to ban people from sitting or lying on sidewalks, planters or anywhere else not specifically designed to be sat upon in downtown Colorado Springs and in Old Colorado City.

"I don't see this as a civil rights or human rights issue. No one ought to be able to lie on the sidewalk. We ought to make our sidewalks safe for passage so people don't feel obstructed or harassed. I just don't see that it's anti-homeless to say you can't lie or sit on sidewalks." — John Suthers

So, I’m guessing he’ll have police out in force to move people along who shouldn’t be sitting where there isn’t a chair, or lying down where there isn’t a clearly designated Please Lie Down Here sign. Of course, it might be just as easy to create places for people to sit, but sit it’s mostly homeless folks sitting there, why not just get rid of them and make the “rest of us” feel safer knowing that we don’t have to see homelessness and therefore don’t have to deal with it.

And, of course, keep in mind that may homeless are LGBTQ youth kicked out of their homes for being LGBTQ, so this is just a way to rid the streets of anyone who is heterosexual, I guess. And let’s not also forget that many homeless are vets, who returned from fighting overseas suffering from PTSD and cannot get adequate medical care — don’t get me started on that VA mess — and therefore have to live in the streets; move along, soldier.

And what makes this even mode disgusting, is that Suthers has made no effort to see about housing the homeless, finding them a place where they can sit down, or even lie down; he just wants them gone.

And there is evidence, even in Colorado, that it’s actually cheaper to house the homeless than to shoo them off the streets. The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless estimates that state taxpayers spend $43,240 per homeless individual — and 2012 estimates say there are 17,000 homeless people in the state — each year on everything from emergency health care to legal issues. But, if the state of Colorado were to provide places for the homeless to gather and sit and even sleep, the cost drops to just $16,813 per person, less than half the cost of leaving them on the streets.

But, Mayor John Suthers doesn’t care about that, possibly because homeless people don’t vote so they mean nothing to him.

Colorado Springs Mayor, and Republican, of course, John Suthers: the ISBL asshat of the Week.

Daily Kos

UPDATE: Kate Cohn and The "Marriage Is So Gay" T-Shirt

Remember Kate Cohn? I wrote about her HERE; she was the girl who wore the "Marriage is so gay" t-shirt to school and got herself in a boatload of trouble because she wouldn't take it off.

Well, now it seems that the ACLU stepped in and fired off a letter to the school, and officials have decided to rescind its decision to ban the shirt.

According to an ACLU release, the principal at Falcon High School told Kate Cohn that she couldn't wear a "Marriage is so gay" t-shirt, which she wore on election day in support of gay marriage rights. The ACLU called censorship, especially given that many students were all sorts of shirts to school with political, and social, messages emblazoned across their chests.

Rebecca T. Wallace, Staff Attorney for the ACLU: "Falcon High School administrators are censoring Kate Cohn's message of equality simply because they did not like what she has to say, but the First Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees students like Kate Cohn the right to peacefully and quietly display their political message, even when that message is unpopular."

All it took was a letter, and Falcon High School determined that Cohn "is entitled to wear [the shirt]."

All it takes, in many cases, is speaking up.

Class dismissed.

source

No Puppet Cleavage EVER!!!!!!!!

Avenue Q, the Tony-winning musical, is on tour and raising all sorts of ruckus in Colorado before it even opens. It seems that the ad for the show, featuring Lucy T. Slut, one of the shows fuzzy stars, has been banned from bus shelters in Colorado Spring because of, it's true, the dreaded “puppet cleavage.”

Jeff Moore, an account executive at Lamar Advertising that rejected the ads, told The Colorado Springs Gazette, “If I have to explain it to my four year old or my grandmother, we don’t put it up.”

So, what exactly is wrong with the ad, Jeff?

“It’s the fact that it’s cleavage,” he said.

The image was replaced with photos of other characters from the adult puppet musical, and, when contacted by Broadway.com about the ad, Lucy T. Slut said:

“When my public relations people told me that my cleavage was banned from the bus shelters of Colorado Springs, my first thought was: ‘they could fit my cleavage on a little bus shelter?!’ Then I was disappointed—I simply hoped to further beautify the community. However, given my notoriety as a profligate home-wrecker, I suppose all of the men of Colorado Springs might succumb to my generous charms. My bazooms are widely acknowledged as a threat to the traditional family structure.”

Sorry Lucy, Colorado Springs, nationally known as an ultra-conservative town, is steadfastly against puppet tits.

Their loss.