Bobservations

I was posting this edition of Bobservations and I had no funny story about Carlos this week, so I thought I’d share a short video of him playing his trumpet to open the South Carolina World Aids Day event in Columbia earlier this month:

That’s my husband, but …

I told him I was posting the video and he’d forgotten I posted  it to Facebook weeks ago, so today he decides to search Facebook and asks me what my page is called:

“What my page is called?”

“Yes. Because I keep getting your dad’s page.”

“My page is my name.”

“It keeps taken me to your dad’s page.”

“Robert?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not my name.”

“Well, what name is your Facebook page under?”

Yes, my husband asked me my name.

He.Asked.My.Name. Oy.

This Tuxedo Memory is from May 2013

"Notes From Smallville ... From Fun to Frivolous to Factual

I have said before that Tuxedo is the Most Handsome Cat ever, and, well, to brag some more he is also incredibly smart. And understands English.

See, when it’s dinner time, no matter where he is in the house, I can shout, ‘Tucky, are you hungry?’ And he races into the kitchen for his meal.

Sure, you say, but he’s a cat and he’s hungry.

But then, explain this: when I am ready to go to bed, I say, ‘Tucky, are you ready for sleeps?’ and her runs down the hallway to the bedroom.

I know.

And then this: our cats do not go outside. We have no way to contain them in our yard because we have an on-the-short-side split rail fence that they can jump. Plus, there are all kinds of other animals and diseases that they could catch being outside. So, inside they stay. But, Tuxedo, being the King Cat of the house, is allowed to go outside with supervision, meaning I carry him around the yard and he sniffs the trees and the flowers and bird watches.

So, Sunday afternoon, after working in the yard, I came inside, and yelled, ‘Tucky? Wanna go outside?’ and he came meowing down the hallway and ran right to the sliding doors of the sunroom, ready to tour the yard."

Smartest Cat ever; and, of course, the most handsome, too.

Fox and Friends host Griff Jenkins ripped President Biden a new one for going to St. Croix for vacation though he clearly had zero issue with Inmate # P01135809 golfing every weekend while millions of Americans died of COVID.

PS Griff Jenkins was substituting for regular Fox & Friends hosts … who were on vacation.

I went to the grocery store today and the cashier said my total was $208.47. I wanted a second opinion so I went to self-checkout and my new total was $43.20.

This Congress began its term with a bitter 15-round spectacle to elect a House speaker, a Republican who vowed to “never quit,” and then did just that. Then GOP House lawmakers punished one of their own colleagues with censures and expulsion, launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden and were barely able to keep federal offices from shuttering. And with just 27 bills and resolutions signed into law this is the most do-nothing session of Congress in recent times.

On the flip side, when Democrats are in Control things get done. CAST A GODDAMNED BLUE VOTE!

I could be wrong, but I saw somewhere that this will be Santa’s new outfit from now on. Now, that’s a lap I could sit on.

The Francis Howell School Board, a conservative-led Missouri school board, has voted to drop elective courses on Black history and literature, five months after the same board rescinded an anti-discrimination policy adopted in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd.

Black Lives Matter. Black History Matters.

In Ohio, a grand jury is set to decide whether Brittany Watts, who miscarried a nonviable fetus should face criminal charges.

Yes, criminal charges for a miscarriage. Watts was reportedly turned into the police after her miscarriage and has been charged with the fifth-degree felony of “abuse of a corpse.”

Wake up, people, this is the GOP at work, jailing women for miscarriages.

Jarryd Nurden is a singer, actor, dancer, model, life coach, equestrian and fitness model, and this week’s entrant in the Would You Hit It club.

You Can’t Fix Stupid ... A Post in Three Parts

Mondays are the worst and when you throw in special does of Stupid from around the world, it makes it all the harder to crawl out of bed in the morning. But here we go …

Part 1: Fox News host Dagen McDowell “wouldn’t bang” Beto O’Rourke—and I imagine this pleases him no end—the Democrat running for governor of Texas but she can explain the popularity of Pete Davidson, saying he’s funny.

Yes, a political pundit whittles down a candidate’s likability to whether or not she would have sex with him; and that makes me wonder how McDowell would feel about a man saying a female politician isn’t “bangable” in his eyes.

And if this doesn’t make McDowell seem like one of the dumbest people on the planet, she also swears that Fox News isn’t “playing down” the Capitol riot and says all Americans “have healthcare."

She dumb.

Part 2: Across the pond, over there to the England, Nick Fletcher, a Conservative MP, opened an International Men’s Day debate by suggesting that replacing traditionally male characters with women drives men to commit crimes.

Oh, but he did. Fletcher said that society needs to find a way to celebrate masculinity rather than “continually vilify” it:

“One only needs to look at the discussions around who will play the next James Bond. And it’s not just James Bond. In recent years we have seen Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, Luke Skywalker, the Equalizer, all replaced by women. Is it any wonder we are seeing so many young men committing crimes?”

Yes, he blames Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Johnson, and Doctor Who star Jodie Whittaker   for men becoming criminals.

Part 3: According to Fox & Friends, South Africa, the World Health Organization [WHO], the Democratic Party, and the Biden administration are all part of a massive conspiracy to keep Democrats in power by routinely introducing new variants of the Coronavirus.

Rachel Campos-Duffy, who never met an idiotic thought she didn’t want to share, says:

“[Biden] has said we can’t fix the supply chain problem until the pandemic is over, until Covid is over.”

Her co-host, Will Cain, never one to be out-dumbed, mumbled:

“Always a new variant.”

And then Pete Hegseth, not wanting to be left out of The Crazy, added:

“You can count on a variant about every October, every two years.”

Yes, these Three Stooges think the Democrats, in cahoots with an entire country and WHO will “invent” new variants before elections to gain an advantage.

But they forget the Democrats weren’t in power last year, that there has only been one October since the pandemic started, and that their own network tried to make COVID a political point for Thing 45, except he killed 500,000 Americans with his incompetence, which is why Biden won the White House.

But yes, by all means play this card.

Random Musings

Last week I had a wisdom tooth removed. I am one of those Freaks of Nature that has, er, had, all of my wisdom teeth. They didn’t come in crooked or not come in at all, and they didn’t bother the neighboring molars so why take ‘em out?

But this one tooth was snuggled a little too tightly between bone and molar and had cracked so it needed to come out.

It took all of five minutes — after the topical anesthetic and Novocain shot took hold — and afterwards the doctor told me I had a high pain threshold and I said:

“Actually, what I have is an over-active imagination and I assumed the pain would be so bad that I would die in the chair. When that didn’t happen, well, it didn’t hurt at all.”

The next morning, as Carlos was leaving for work, he asked if I was planning on doing some laundry — I do the fluff-and-fold … see what I did there … at Casa Bob y Carlos — and I replied:

“LAUNDRY!!!!!! I had a piece of my head removed yesterday and you think I should be doing laundry??”

I’m still not sure how long I can play the Wisdom Tooth Pain Card ….

More visibility leads to more acceptance, dontcha know … A new study finds there are twice as many transgender adults in the US than previously thought.

Right now there are 1.4 million adults who publicly identify as transgender which is double the previous estimate of about 700,000.

♫ ♪ Come out, come out, wherever you are … ♪ ♫

Bernie Sanders was booed by House Democrats in a closed-door session Wednesday after he deflected questions about when he would formally back Hillary Clinton for president.

As I said on Viktor’s blog, Bernie needs to put on his Grown Man Pants and realize he lost and support, and work with, Clinton, to keep The Rump from The Oval.

In case he didn’t know, when Hillary lost to Obama in 2008, she came out and supported him, and campaigned for him, almost immediately.

Work with the party, Bernie, not against it.

Last week we watched Woman In Gold, about Maria Altman whose family’s art collection was stolen by the Nazis in WWII and then held by a Museum in Austria.

Altman — played by the delicious Helen Mirren — sued to get her art back and just one painting of many, the Woman In Gold, was donated to a gallery in New York for $135 million. The film co-starred Max Irons, top, son of Jeremy, in flashbacks as Maria’s husband. Lord, he is one dreamy lad.

Speaking of politics … we’re watching Braindead … about Washington politicos. Braindead. Perfection; though it’s about bugs from outer space that invade the brain causing all sorts of shenanigans. And it has two hotties: Aaron Tveit, bottom left, as Gareth Ritter a GOP lapdog — I won’t hold that against him ‘cuz he’s kinda cute — and Charlie Semine as hot FBI agent Anthony Onofrio, bottom right, … so sultry.

That’s all.

In spite of threats of boycotts, North Carolina’s lawmakers are going home after offering one wee fix to their Hate Bill.

The fix was to a provision of HB2 that prohibited anyone in North Carolina from suing for discrimination under state law. Lawmakers restored the right to sue for discrimination in but they made it harder than before, shortening the statute of limitations from three years to just one.

Sadly, that “fix” may not appease the NBA who may opt out of holding the 2017 NBA All-Star Game in Charlotte next year.

Money talks … and it talks a lot in Raleigh, North Carolina, which stands to lose as much as $40 million in convention business from the state’s Bathroom Bill.

Some 16 trade associations or corporate groups have canceled gatherings in Raleigh because of HB 2, and Raleigh is no longer in the running for another 13 conventions, worth an estimated $2 million combined.

Bad for the people and economy of Raleigh, but maybe, just maybe, when the people realize their bigoted lawmakers are costing them money, they’ll vote them out and put rational thinkers in place.

Now, for a mini-rant:

This law, while even I call it a Bathroom Bill, is not just an anti-trans law. It took away all local LGBT protections in eight North Carolina cities.

It’s not just anti-trans, it’s anti-LGBT and it’s Hate. Remember that.

Marco Rubio will not attend the GOP convention.

Was he asked? He says he needs to stay in Florida and focus on his re-election campaign for the job he said he no longer wanted to do when he thought he had a snowball’s chance in hell of being President.

Hypocrite. And what’s sickening is that he’s leading in the polls meaning the people of Flori-duh don’t care that, while running for president, he stopped doing his job and said he didn’t even want to do it anymore, but changed his mind the minute he realized he’d be out.

Seriously, Flori-duh!

Over on Idiot TV … Fox & Friends recently reported that the Statue of Liberty might be a man. Uh huh.

A new Discovery Family program titled, “Secrets of America’s Favorite Places” suggests that French sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi used his brother as a model for the famous statue and not his mother as previously thought.

This is all they got? That the French played a joke on the US by giving us a man as the Statue of Liberty?

Oh Fox … sit down.

Lastly … we know The Rump has a man-crush on Vladimir Putin, but did you know he also admires Saddam Hussein?

Yup, while he does admit Saddam was “a real bad man” The Rump wishes that, like Hussein, we could kill terrorists and the families of terrorists:

“[Saddam Hussein] was a really bad guy. But you know what he did well? Kill terrorists. He did that so good. They didn’t read them the rights. They didn’t talk. They were a terrorist. It was over.”

And there are actual Americans who think The Rump should be President.

ISBL Asshat of the Week: It's A Tie!! Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Elisabeth Hasselbeck

So, a few months back, when it was announced that her arch nemesis Rosie O’Donnell would be returning to The View, Fox News Talking Air Head, Elisabeth Hasselbeck took time from her vacation to phone in to her pals on Fox & Friends to bemoan Rosie’s return, whine about the comeback, and complain about the new job. It reeked of petty jealousy.

And so how does an insecure wannabe handle it when her new job, which is basically just a retread of every single other Fox News job for the blond set, is set to collide with her old enemy’s return to a more popular TV show?

Well, she decides to go full out crazy in the hopes that people will talk about her, and her little show, and not about Rosie and The View. I mean, how else do we explain that just yesterday on her little TV show Elisabeth Hasselbeck said she would require people take a “citizenship test” before they would be allowed to vote; she says it would make voting “more meaningful.”

It apparently all started when two Republican … naturally … Utah legislators announced a bill that would require students to pass a citizenship test before graduating. And so Hasselbeck decided to up the ante and require a citizenship test to vote:

“Should you have to answer, I mean, the majority of these questions? If not by graduation of high school, but by the time you vote? … It’s a more meaningful measure when you vote perhaps too.”

Hasselbeck should heed her own advice and look back into American history when, as recently as the 1960s, these so-called “literacy” tests were used to disenfranchise black voters during segregation. 

Failing that, I think Hasselbeck should take a test to prove she has at least two active brain cells to rub together before she accepts her ISBL Asshat of the Week Award.

Along with her co-winner … Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

Shortly before announcing her campaign for citizenship tests, Elisabeth Hasselbeck used her perch on Twitter to … wait for it … remember she’s a Republican … wait for it … remember she works for Fox News … wait for it … tie the NFL’s domestic abuse scandals to the Obama administration's handling of the 2012 Benghazi attack on the American Consulate in Libya.

Oh, but she did, Tweeting this:

“Imagine if everyone that asked for transparency in the #nfl @nfl Demanded that same #transparency in our #government #Benghazi #IRS”

#STFU.

But is it really such a stretch to compare the bombing of an American Embassy with a man who punched his girlfriend in the face on an elevator, or the man who took a switch and beat his son across the testicles?

Not such a stretch since the people who sign her paycheck, and possibly pay to keep her blond and stupid, Fox News, has devoted hundreds upon hundreds of hours and “journalists — it’s hard to type that without laughing … Fox News journalist — to the alleged cover-up by the White House. And not such a stretch since her husband made quite the lovely living in the NFL.

The only thing that is truly transparent is Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s desperate need for attention, to make herself feel relevant, or even intelligent, because it’s not working.

And that is why she gets the Second ISBL Asshat of the Week Award for the week!

Elisabeth Hasselbeck Voter's Test

Elisabeth Hasselbeck NFL-Benghazi

Fox News: To Avoid Getting Beaten In An Elevator, "Take The Stairs"

I’m going to shock you … I.Don’t.Watch.Fox.News. … There; I said it. Whoosh. Now, y’all can calm down for a minute; no need to gather the pitchforks and the angry townspeople and come after me. It’s just that, well, we all know that Fox News wouldn’t know the truth if it was tattooed on Megyn Kelly’s breasts or painted onto the Mama Grizzly Bore’s™ five-head, but this week, even Fox News has gone too far.

The hosts of Fox & Friends — Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade and Anna Kooiman — aired the video of fired professional football player Ray Rice beating his then-girlfriend, now wife, Janay Palmer, into unconsciousness in an elevator and, well, they appeared to find it all quite amusing.

In the video, which I’m sure most people have seen once, because seeing it more than once is sickening, Rice punches Janay, and her head hits the elevator wall before she falls to the floor unconscious. Rice then stands over her, seemingly admiring his handiwork, and then casually drags her body off the elevator. This is funny, y’all, to Fox News; and not a big deal, at all.

One host, Steve Doocy acted as though the whole episode is nothing to get worked up about because, after the beating, Janay Palmer became Janay Rice, marrying the man who beat her unconscious, so let’s not make a big deal about it. If a woman gets beaten that severely and then marries her abuser, well, it must be fine so let’s move along to more important issues. 

Say? Is that Obama playing golf?

But, fellow host Brian Kilmeade had to throw in his two-cents — proving he is highly overpaid because his commentary isn’t worth a penny— adding that the same thing happened after Chris Brown beat the crap out of Rihanna. Again, it must be okay, because Chris Brown did it, so, yeah, Ray Rice should be able to do it, too.

Neither one of these men apparently has a sister, mother, wife, girlfriend, because if they did, if they weren’t a couple of goose-stepping asshatted, batshit crazy, FoxNews wingnuts, maybe they’d take a moment and realize that they are making light of the physical beating or a woman by her professional athlete boyfriend.

Kilmeade then says, the lesson to be learned is to “take the stairs” while Doocy adds that the “message is, when you’re in an elevator, there’s a camera.”

Avoid the beat down. Take the stairs; and if you’re gonna beat your wife or girlfriend in an elevator, remember there’s a camera; learn to take the beating into your private room because then no one would see it and it would be okay. The actual message here, that that Doocy and Kilmeade, and fellow host Anna Kooiman — and I’ll get to that moron in a moment — fail to acknowledge is that domestic violence is wrong; always. And with their lighthearted reporting of the beating, they missed the opportunity to help other women who are in abusive, or potentially abusive, relationships, by turning this into some kind of a joke.

I cannot fathom how these so-called news people — and, yes, I know it’s Fox News so they’re not real new people — think that domestic violence, physical abuse, of any kind, is something to make light of; take the stairs? Really? Think about the camera filming you before you throw that first punch. Really?

When men — and I use the term loosely when referring to Doocy and Kilmeade — make light of domestic abuse, they’re basically siding with the abusers; they’re saying it’s not such a big deal. And when Doocy and Kilmeade, representing Fox News, and therefore representing the GOP and the conservative movement in this country, it’s not much of a stretch to say that others of their ilk feel the same way about abuse. Especially when you hear so little from the GOP and its kin demanding an apology from Doocy, Kilmeade and Kooiman

Take the stairs, honey.

And now let’s talk about co-host Anna Kooiman, who basically sat there while these men made light of the beating, and then had the nerve to say that this incident is “unfortunate for football [and] gives a black eye} to the sport. Where’s her compassion for the black eye and bruises given to Janay [Palmer] Rice? Better yet, where’s her compassion period?

After this little bit of ridiculousness went live and viral, a sliver of what they call compassion was shown by the powers that be at Fox News when they gave a thirteen-second disclaimer about how they don’t condone physical violence. Thirteen seconds; that’s all it’s worth.

Proving its okay to laugh at physical violence and keep your job at Fox News.

Random Musings

Well, it looks like I'll have to stop calling you Flori-duh; and maybe Carlos and I can get married in Key West????

So Carlos and I are hooked on TNTs Murder in the First because … Taye Diggs. Of Course, it’s also a pretty good show, but still … Taye Diggs. Anyway, we were watching it Monday night and I look over at Carlos and he’s asleep.

‘Go to bed,’ I say.

‘I was just resting my eyes,’ he says.

I give him my Wendy Williams’ Mmm hmmm and a few minutes later and he’s asleep again.

‘Go to bed,’ I say.

‘I was just resting my eyes,’ he says.

‘If you’re tired …’

‘I’m not.’

I give him my Wendy Williams’ Mmm hmmm and he’s out again.

I watch for another five minutes or so, looking over at him, head down, eyes shut, a snore on the horizon, and I kindly set the DVR to record the show, and then lean in very closely, and very sweetly, with all the love I can manage, shout into his ear:

‘GO TO BED!’

Oy. It’s hard out here for me and my sleepy man.

Christian Minard is a lesbian who was studying at Southwestern Christian University, a school affiliated with the International Pentecostal Holiness Church so you know what that means. But, one semester shy of her sports management degree, Minard married her girlfriend Kadyn Parks, and when the school learned of her same-sex marriage she was expelled.

I was aghast and angry, but then I thought again. Christian school? Pentecostal Church? And the fact that as part of her admission requirements, Minard signed a lifestyle covenant that prohibits “homosexual behavior like same-sex marriage.

Sure, it’s backwards; sure it’s wrong. But Minard signed it because this was the only school that had the degree program she wanted. And she never once challenged the requirement during her entire stay there, so my question is, wouldn’t it have been better to wait until after graduation to marry and thus avoid being expelled and having to start over at a different school? Or, if she got married to try and test the school’s rules, why not do it earlier and avoid this mess?

I’m all for fighting for our rights, but she didn’t fight for them at all until they personally affected her.

Apparently one of Fox & Friends hosts, Heather Nauert, was all confused and stuff by Illinois State University's "all-gender" bathrooms that avoid any kind of confusion for transgender and cisgender students. In fact, she was so confused, she became an eight-year-old girl again as she and her ‘friends’ snickered about it on-air.

So, they had Fox News’ Steve Doocy take to the streets with a copy of the new bathroom sign and showed it to a collection of Fox News fans to get their feedback and expected the same sort of childish nonsense the news folks displayed.

"Maybe a family restroom?"

"Restrooms for both genders."

"Transgender, that's right."

Responding to the viewer's lack of dismay, confusion, or moral outrage, host Brian Kilmeade said, Well, they're better people than us."

No kidding.

That Jesse Palmer, the college football analyst from ESPN. I might have to rethink my sports watching. That’s all. Carry on.

Well, color me shocked, but who knew that a red Speedo was a ticket to homophobic harassment and being kicked out of a water park — a place where one might expect to see a Speedo?

It seems that Jesse Colter wore his red Speedo to the Kentucky Kingdom and was told his swim attire was suitable, suitable, by one of the park's public safety officers.

But then an officer from the Louisville Metro Police ALLEGEDLY approached Colter, called him "queer" and threatened to arrest him for the crime of Speedo wearing; Jesse says the officer told him that several Public Safety Officers from the park had warned him against the Wearing of the Speedo — which seems to be untrue — but Jesse still left the park to avoid being charge with wearing a bathing suit at a water park.

Let me get this queer, though, because I imagine that police officer would have no problem with a woman wearing the tiniest of bikinis in the park, and would probably be hiding in the shrubbery rubbing one off, but a guy in a Speedo is a crime?

Only in Kentucky, though sadly, that’s probably not true either.

Look, here’s the deal: you can disagree with me on every single issue, social or political, all you want, day and night, week in, week out, but please, for the love of the Baby Jeebus, if you’re gonna carry a sign, or spray paint your message on a building, learn to effing spell!

I mean, if the "English-only" crowd is going to demand President Obama deport millions of immigrants, shouldn't they first be required to learn to spell?

Thomas Ravenel, a former Republican state treasurer in South Carolina who was convicted of drug trafficking and starred in a reality television series —  Bravo's "Southern Charm" — has filed a petition to run as an independent candidate for U.S. Senate.

Sit down, asshat.

Outgoing, though not fast enough for me, Minnesota Congressnut Michele Bachmann actually blamed those migrant children on the borders for the deaths of innocent children in Minnesota and the rape of women in her home state.

Oh, yes she did.

“Foreign nationals that have come into the United States are between 300- to 500,000 [and] my heart is broken for a female college student in Minnesota who was raped, murdered and mutilated by a foreign national who came into our country. We had a school bus full of kids in Minnesota — four children were killed on that school bus because an illegal alien driving a van went into that school bus.”

Yes, she believes that these migrant children are crossing the borders to grow up, get jobs driving buses so they can kill good American children. Or, maybe these migrant children, the boys I assume, are coming here so they can grow up and rape our womenfolk!

Gosh, I want this dingbat to run for president in 2016 because we’ll need a good long laugh while we wait for Hillary to win.

I caught a little of Lifetime’s The Witches of East End, but found it nothing at all like the fabulous American Horror Story: Coven.

But it did come with man candy, so it was fun to watch for that reason alone, though I doubt I’ll watch again.

Still, from the top: Christian Cooke, Daniel Di Tomasso, and Eric Winter. Yum.