I Didn't Say It ...

Chris Murphy, Democratic Senator from Connecticut, calling for Jared Kushner to resign:

“You don’t think the Republicans would be calling for the resignation of an Obama official who allowed the president and vice president to openly lie about a major national security issue? He watched his father-in-law on TV say no one in [his] campaign talked to the Russian government.”

But Republicans don’t care about lying when they have the White House.

Silly me, Republicans don’t care about lying; it’s what they do.

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Lindsey Graham, Republican Senator from South Carolina, on President _____’s plan to form a “cyber security unit” with Vladimir Putin:

“It’s not the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, but it’s pretty close.”

Miss Lindsey is getting tired of _____’s lunacy.

Who knew she’d be one of the first?

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50 Cent, on Jay-Z’s new album 4:44:

“I thought the s—t was aight, you know what I’m sayin’? I liked the s—t. But I’ma keep it 100: The s—t was a little, the s—t was too smart. I felt like I was supposed to be wearing glasses and s—t, and tie a f—king sweater around my waist. It was like Ivy League s—t. I ain’t gon’ hold you up, Some of that s—t was like golf course music. I’mma tell you the truth: N—as hot out here. They don’t wanna hear that s—t. They just wanna have a good time. F—k that. You can’t be the best rapper at 47, because the new n—as is here.”

Gosh, without the curse words 50 Cent wouldn’t be able to string together a single sentence.

Illiterate tool.

Just sayin’.

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Sean Spicer, attacking CNN’s Jim Acosta:

“If Jim Acosta reported on Jim Acosta the way he reports on us, he’d say he hasn’t been very honest. I think he’s gone well beyond the role of reporter and steered into the role of advocate. He’s the prime example of a [reporter in a] competitive, YouTube, click-driven industry. He’s recognized that if you make a spectacle on the air then you’ll get more airtime and more clicks. . . . If I were a mainstream, veteran reporter, I’d be advocating for him to knock it off. It’s hurting the profession.”

So says a spokes-tool for a President who lives and breathes social media clicks.

Sit down, Spicey, your hypocrisy is showing.

PS Leave Hot Jim alone.

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Michelangelo Signorile, on the danger of LGBTQ rights being rolled back: 

“This is a vigorous attempt at a full-scale rollback by religious conservatives who’ve been part of _____’s and the GOP’s base, and it’s already had some success. There is no denying it. Many are woke to it. But I’m afraid far too many LGBTQ people are not, still wanting to revel in victories, pointing to polls and to progress globally. The United States, however, is right now led by an authoritarian whose party―always hostile to LGBTQ rights―has so far given him free rein to engage in destructive behavior against anyone and everyone.”

I’m with Signorile. We cannot be complacent; we may have won some impressive battles, but the war is far from over.

Any time they come for one of us, they come for all of us.

Resist.

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Shepard Smith, Fox News anchor, poking holes in the White House story that Junior was being transparent about his emails:

“His transparency came minutes before he had been made aware that The New York Times would be publishing the same e-mails this released ... Transparency is something that normally happens prior to learning that somebody else is about to document dump you. Normally that word wouldn’t be used in this circumstance.”

The only thing transparent about Junior is that whenever he’s speaks, he’s lying.

He lied about ever having the meeting; then he lied about the reason for the meeting; then he lied about what happened.

He lies ... like Daddy.

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Jake Tapper, on Junior’s emails:

“It’s a staggering turn of events, and it’s rather momentous. This can’t just be, this can’t be dismissed as people out to get Donald J. _____ Jr. or fake news. This is evidence of willingness to commit collusion. That’s what this is on its face. Now, maybe there’s an explanation for it, and if that’s true, we can talk about that, and we’ll report it.”

Maybe it wasn’t collusion, but it’s like someone asking you to buy stolen goods from the trunk of a car, and you go and look at the stolen goods and decide they aren’t exactly what you’re looking for.

You still tried to buy stolen goods.

Junior is guilty of attempted collusion with Russia if we believe his story but again ... he’s a liar.

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Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House Deputy Press Secretary, trying to deflect on the fact that many in the White House are tied, have tied, or were tied to Russia:

“Look, I think we’ve been extremely clear and I know that Don Jr. discussed it at length last night as well as the president’s counsel. If there’s any evidence of collusion it would be between the DNC and the Ukrainian government.”

Prove it, asshat, instead of just flapping your gums whilst wearing another ugly sweater.

Proof is what we need, and you have none.

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Scott Frantz, Kansas State offensive tackle, asked to divulge a personal secret during an offseason team-building exercise used the moment to come out as gay:

“I came out to my teammates, and I’ve never felt so loved and so accepted ever in my life than when I did that. And ever since then it’s been great. I’ve grown so much closer to my teammates since. So it’s been an amazing experience.”

It’s better when you’re out. Seriously, Carrying around that secret is way too much work.

Congratulations Scott and please accept, as our gift, the Official Coming Out Toaster Oven and copy of The Gay Agenda.

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Bill Snyder, Kansas State head coach, on Frantz’s coming out:

“I was quite comfortable that [the team] would be very receptive and that they would treat him as they always did as, you know, his teammate and someone that they cared about. And they did.”

It’s becoming ‘no big deal’ finally, even in sports.

It’s a good thing.

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Random Musings

Ever have one of those days? I did on Monday when I just felt like something bad was about to happen ... it didn’t.

Still, that cartoon certainly fit my mood.

Well, apparently _____ is “enraged” by RussiaGate, which may explain why we haven’t seen him since he returned home from the G20 and we found out Junior is a lying sack of shiz.

Look at it like this:

His son was there.

His son-in-law was there.

His campaign manager was there.

It was in his building.

He was in the building.

And yet he expects anyone to believe he had no knowledge of the meeting, or that he was at the meeting?

::::cough::::bullshit::::cough::::

Jordan Cataldo, a teacher at Carter G. Woodson Elementary School, is accused of calling elementary school students “rats” that could “infest the class” as a group of children attempted to re-enter her classroom; she also said, and saying “that’s why their race is either dead or in jail.”

Yup. And she was teaching children.

Duval County Public Schools said it will “take appropriate action in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement when school resumes for the 2017-2018 school year.”

Um, appropriate action would be firing Jordan Cataldo’s ass and making sure she is never allowed to “teach” again. Anywhere.

I always visit Raybeard to get the skinny on movies because his reviews are spot on to the films I’ve seen, and the films I want to see after reading his reviews.

He gave Brooklyn a good review but it only played an arthouse theater about forty minutes from Smallville so we missed it. Luckily I was able to see it on cable recently because it’s a beautiful film; it looks beautiful, the acting—by Saoirse Ronan and Emory Cohen especially—is beautiful, the story is a simple, sweet, lovely, beautiful love story of an Irish girl finding herself, and love, in America in the middle of the last century.

It doesn’t make a lot of noise, but it gives quite an impact.

So, when _____ met Putin at the G20 last week for the ... ALLEGED ... first time, reporters filmed and photographed the two men before being ordered to leave the room.

Putin was caught on camera asking _____:

"These are the ones that insulted you?"

And _____ agreed with the man who stands accused of murdering journalists.

That’s our president ... for now.

So, we’ve been having a little car trouble and last week, after the Fourth, I stopped by the mechanic to make an appointment to have it checked. The shop was closed for a week-long holiday.

I told Carlos we’d have to wait until this week to take the car in and he promptly forgot all about it. So, Monday, as we were leaving for work, I said to him:

“Don’t forget I’m stopping by the mechanic today, and if they can take the car I’m going to leave it.”

Carlos said:

“I’ll make a mental note of it.”

I replied:

“The only problem with that is you write your mental notes in invisible ink.”

Thank you! I’ll be here all week!

Out there in The Dog’s Mother country, Washington State, that is, an anti-transgender measure failed to qualify for the ballot.

The failure is a victory for equality and validation of Washington’s non-discrimination laws that ensure fair and equal treatment for LGBTQ people in housing, employment, and public accommodations.

Snap. And #Resist.

So, I told you we saw Brooklyn, and part of its charm was the male lead, and love interest, Emory Cohen. His character was so sweet and kind and funny and cute that I wanted to marry him ... if I wasn’t already married.

And then we saw a new show about William Shakespeare, starring Laurie Davidson as Will. It’s an interesting show, though it could become gratingly and cloying cute and annoying, but, for now, Laurie Davidson is Eye Candy.

And then there’s Topher Grace—from That 70’s Show ... which I never watched because ... two words ... Ashton Kutcher—in the film Truth, the story about the Dan Rather scandal when he presented a piece on Sixty Minutes about George W. Bush’s rather sketchy military service ... the man never really served, but did apparently use his daddy’s wealth and power to get out of going to Vietnam. Rather and his producer were forced out of CBS after the story. Anyway, Topher Grace is very sexy ... and yeah, I can watch a movie about news and still ogle a sexy man.

In another display of the stupidity of Fox news commentators, Harris Faulkner said that Ivanka _____ deserved to be seated at the G20 because ...

“She [was] there in a capacity of someone who has run a very successful corporation and her items are selling by the way, hot online.”

Yup, because her rip-offs and knockoffs of shoes and handbags are selling, she deserves to be a part of a summit involving world leaders.

Oh, Fox News, you really, really are stupid.

Speaking of stupid ... Arkansas women may soon be forced to notify their sexual partner or family members if they want to have an abortion, thanks to a provision passed in the state's 2017 GOP-controlled legislative session.

Bad, right? But add this in ... if the man who impregnated the woman did so during the course of a rape, she would also need to notify him.

The GOP; screwing women, and women’s rights, again.

David Bancroft went to the Sand Dollar Lounge in Las Vegas recently and, well, was such a drunken mess that he was kicked out. Before leaving, as drunken messes do, he dropped several f-bombs at the staff.

Then he went home and took to Facebook to talk about getting kicked out of the bar—a straight bar—and called it a “gay bar” and said bouncers that bounced him were “fags.”

The next morning, in the light of sobriety, he deleted the post, but interwebz stuff never goes away, and so the bar’s owner, Anthony Jamison, shared Bancroft’s post and responded like this:

“Like accusing us of being a gay bar should be an insult.”

And then Jamison announced that the Sand Dollar will hold an LGBTQ party at the club on August 6 and that the profits from the party would go to the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada.

“To use that platform to start blasting the community or blasting being gay is obscene, and for us to ignore it and let it go is wrong.”

Anthony Jamison also said they will name the party after Bancroft—who has since apologized for his rant—and will call it Davey’s LGBTQ Party.

Kudos Sand Dollar!

Architecture Wednesday: Casa Desnuda

Desnuda means bare in English ... nude; so Casa Desnuda is the Bare House, the Raw House, the Nude House. That instantly sparked my interest. Plus, it’s in Merida, Mexico, where I tell Carlos we’ll retire, and where Carlos says, “Why?’

But I digress ..

Casa Desnuda is a small house, well, at least in width; the area is just 21 feet by 90 feet long ... sorta like a New York City townhouse, or a DC row house, so not that wee. But the facade faced west, which is not most encouraging, but that problem was solved by creating a barrier with the services to the west and separating the northern limit of the house, to create what the architect called an “air chimney” to aid in ventilation of a narrow space.

The architects also used passive conditioning elements, like the pool that cools the air before entering the house, and the glass wall to the east that opens or closes the space and controls the flow and the volume of air, and the sliding glass doors into the “air chimney” that create an entrance for the natural light in the north; there is also a plant wall to the west to increase the thermal barrier.

So, while it’s narrow, it’s also quite open; and it’s designed to be cool in every sense of the word.

See, Carlos, this could be our new home?  Casa Nekkid Boys!

HomeDSGN

Chick-fil-A Is Still Chick-fil-Hate

They say a leopard can’t change its spots, and I say bigot’s can ... rarely if ever ... change their hate.

Case in point: Chick-fil-A.

It’s been five years since Chick-fil-A chairman and CEO Dan Cathy admitted that he, and his company, was “guilty as charged” of opposing same-sex marriage. And it’s been five years since that little comment brought to light all the monies that Cathy had donated to anti-LGBT causes around the country because he hates The Gays.

But, five years back, Dan Cathy, feeling the burn of a chicken boycott, vowed to keep his mouth shut and his wallet closed to these hate-filled groups and announced that Chick-fil-A would “treat every person with honor, dignity and respect-regardless of their beliefs, race, creed, sexual orientation and gender” though the company didn’t add any LGBTQ-inclusive non-discrimination policies to its stores.

And now it turns out that Cathy’s about face was just a giant Hobby-Lobby-sized lie ...

While the company’s non-profit arms scaled back support for some of the anti-LGBT groups, Chick-fil-A Foundation’s recent IRS filings show that Dan Cathy, and Chick-fil-A,  gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to anti-LGBTQ organizations in 2015.

Worst of all, perhaps, is that on Chick-fil-A’s website it claims the foundation “is focused on helping every child become all they were created to be” a great deal of its donations went to groups that do not believe this includes LGBTQ youth.

For example, in 2015 the Chick-fil-A Foundation gave more than $1 million to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a religious organization which seeks to utilize athletes and coaches to spread Christian teachings, along with anti-LGBTQ messages. Staff and volunteers with Christian Athletes must follow a strict “sexual purity” policy that prohibits “homosexual acts” even for married, same-sex couples.

Huh?

Chick-fil-A also gave $200,000 to the Paul Anderson Youth Home, a Georgia-based “transformative organization” that operates a “Christian residential home for troubled youth.” This “home” focuses on boys, and believes that the “sexual, physical, and mental abuse of children, mostly in the alleged ‘safety’ of their own homes has produced all kinds of evil throughout the culture to include the explosion of homosexuality in the last century.”

Yes, they donate to a group that believes boys are turned gay by some form of abuse.

In addition, the Chick-fil-A Foundation donated $130,000 to the Salvation Army which has a long history of anti-LGBTQ housing discrimination, opposition to same-sex marriage equality, and supporting exemptions from non-discrimination ordinances.

With its continued foundation giving to those who preach anti-LGBTQ values — at least $1.4 million in 2015 alone — it does not appear that Cathy and Chick-fil-A have kept their promise.

Good Christians, eh?

I imagine God is looking at Cathy, and rereading his lies and promises, and She is getting angry.

LGBTQ Nation

Think Progress

Hobby Lobby Buys Stolen Goods, Funds Terrorism, All For The Bible

Oops! “Good Christian” arts-and-crafts company Hobby Lobby has been caught smuggling priceless black market Iraqi artifacts into this country for its ... wait for it, like the artifacts, its priceless ... Bible museum. And now Hobby Lobby must pay $3 million in fines, and turn over the stolen goods, to settle a federal case.

In a statement, Hobby Lobby President Steve Green acknowledged "regrettable mistakes":

"We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled."

I guess they didn’t think buying these religious items from some dude in an overcoat who dragged them from the trunk of his car in Alphabet City wasn’t clue enough? I kid; Hobby Lobby went to the Middle East to steal these things.

Green says Hobby Lobby fully cooperated with the investigation ... after they were caught illegally buying these items.

In 2009, Hobby Lobby—best known for its Supreme Court victory in a 2014 religious freedom case over banning their insured employees from using their insurance for contraception—decided to amass a collection of books and artifacts "consistent with the Company’s mission and passion for the Bible" to place in a Bible museum they bankrolled to the tune of $500 million. So they illegally purchased some of their Biblical memorabilia when Green and a consultant traveled to the United Arab Emirates to inspect cuneiform tablets that were thousands of years old, along with engraved seals and the clay impressions they made; Green purchased the looted items for some $1.6 million.

And, you know, most if not all of that wound up in the hands of ISIS, who has received hundreds of millions of dollars annually in funding from selling stolen antiques like the ones acquired by Hobby Lobby on the black market.

Hobby Lobby Funds Terrorism. How’s that for the headline?

According to the civil complaint, an expert, hired by Hobby Lobby, warned Green that there was a risk the items it wanted to buy had been looted; that expert told Green to make sure the country of origin was properly labeled on customs forms. Instead, Green shipped the 5,500 artifacts without proper documentation, with labels describing them as "ceramic tiles" or "samples" from Turkey or Israel.

And Hobby Lobby never even paid the dealer who supposedly owned the items, but instead wired $1.6 million in payments to seven other individuals. So, clearly, they knew they were buying stolen goods, but hey, it’s for a Bible museum so God will not have a problem with it, right?

Green maintains that Hobby Lobby didn't know the items were from Iraq ... but, again, why lie about what they were and where they were from ... and has vowed to put safeguards in place to ensure future acquisitions are properly vetted... so they don’t get caught lying, cheating, and stealing again.

Oh, Hobby Lobby, what would Jesus do with you?

Patheos

NBC News