A Hillary Clinton Thought

Maybe Hillary Clinton decided to say something nice about Nancy Reagan by talking about her stance on stem cell research, and had a brain fart and said "HIV/AIDS" instead? If so, that was her second mistake. Her first was wanting to pander to the right-wing nuts in the first place.

In a situation like this, where the deceased isn't worthy of adulation but you want to be respectful, all you do is offer condolences to the family. That's it. Hillary, in trying to score points with conservatives -- who will never, ever, show her the same courtesy -- offended many of her core supporters (in November, if not necessarily during the primaries) -- people of a certain age who lived through the days of the despicable Reagan administration. In case you weren't alive then, or somehow have forgotten that bastard, here's Dan Savage's rant.

Nancy supported her husband's evil, reportedly abandoned her friend Rock Hudson when AIDS was killing him, and only started advocating for stem-cell research after Ronnie was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And her puerile "Just Say No" anti-drug effort, if anything, did more harm than good.

If Donald Trump becomes our 45th President, remember this day.

I'm Feeling The Bern

So this happened over the summer when I was at the Navy Yard taking pictures of the new development (including park space) there...

And then this happened last night on my way home from work...

A few minutes later it hit me: this is why I should vote for Bernie Sanders.

All of this paranoia and the extra "security" that doesn't really protect anyone, all of this crap that began after the 9/11 attacks, annoys me more and more with each passing day. (Well, pretty much everything annoys me more every day, but that's another story.) And, as much as I like her and much of what she's done and what she wants to do, Hillary Clinton -- previously a United States Senator and Secretary of State -- is part of the political machinery that has led to this steady erosion of our freedoms. This has to change, and I don't think Clinton will be as willing to make the needed changes as Sanders.

Make no mistake: I'll vote for whichever candidate the Democrats nominate to go up against the survivor of the RepubliScum Clown Gang Wars. But when Pennsylvania holds its primary (which is so important with the number of delegates at stake, the state schedules it for the day before the first party convention begins) I'm voting for Bernie Sanders.

All he has to do is be competitive and make my vote meaningful. In 2008 I voted for Hillary even though by the time the PA primary occurred it was a foregone conclusion that she came from way ahead to lose the nomation to Barack Obama. At the time I honestly had doubts that he could win in November. Oops. So maybe I shouldn't think this way, but I see no chance one of the GOP clowns can win in November 2016. They've painted themselves and each other into the most extremist corner. None of them (not even John Kasich, who's probably the most sane of the GOP clowns) can escape this when the general election rolls around.

So do your part, America, and make my vote count!

And look up at the sky!

Cropped version:

About Last Night...

I told you I wasn't worried. The chess match played out as I expected. But to be honest, even after reading Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog in the closing days and watching President Obama's chance of winning go from about 73 percent on October 29 to 91 percent early yesterday, I was a bit concerned. Not to a great extent, but just enough. I wasn't so worried about the polls -- I find it impossible to take them seriously on an individual basis, the polling criteria are so varied, but summarizing them and determining the trends and such, the Silver calculus works for me. (This will not change my mind about the baseball stat geeks and their Moneyball junk, however.)

My biggest concern was that the GOP would try to steal Florida or Ohio again. Well, if they did try, they failed.

But beyond the Obama victory, other events offer signs of hope. The asinine GOP extremists who opined that there's such a thing as "legitimate" rape and rape that "God intended to happen" both got their asses kicked. Beyond the win in Wisconsin by Tammy Baldwin, making her the first openly gay U.S. Senator, California sends to the House the first LGBT person of color in Congress. And Arizona -- Arizona!?! -- may  have elected a bisexual woman to Congress (the race is still too close to call).

What really stunned me, though, was the results from the four states where marriage equality was on the ballot. The last 32 or so times that voters had their say on the issue in some way, the pro-equality side lost every single time.

I saw a comment from a pundit saying (and I'm paraphrasing) that it would be helpful/important to have two victories out of the four. I guess that would constitute a trend. I was honestly hoping for just one.

#WhyImNotVotingForRomney

I saw the hashtag on Twitter and just had to use it. But since I didn't want to issue a bunch of individual tweets, I decided to put it all on here...well, maybe not everything, but as much as I can think of right now.

I'm sick and tired of the Republican party in general.

I'm sick and tired of the extremist, racist segments which have taken firm control of the Republican party -- the Tea Party and the religious right (aka the American Taliban). Even if Mitt Romney is not in fact a racist or a religious extremist, he has encouraged and emboldened the racists and religious extremists with his words and actions, making him no better.

I'm sick and tired of the wealthy and the large corporations getting more and more tax breaks that they do not need, and reduced regulation in so many areas, while the rest of us find our lives becoming more and more of a struggle every day. Mitt Romney will continue the tax cuts for the wealthy. In fact, as it was reported yesterday, it seems that Mitt Romney may not have paid a single penny in taxes for the years 1996 through 2009. NOT A SINGLE FUCKING PENNY. FOURTEEN YEARS.

I'm sick and tired of not having the same rights as everyone else because of my sexual orientation, and of having a woman's right to control her own body being restricted or completely removed, and having Planned Parenthood and other agencies that provide quality health care services threatened, all due to the influence of the American Taliban. Romney has thrown in with the American Taliban on these issues.

I'm sick and tired of the lack of affordable quality health care for everyone. I'm sick and tired of the efforts to stop health care reform, when we've finally begun to make progress after decades of failure. Not only has Romney thrown in with the Tea Party extremists, he's going against the health care reforms he pushed for while Massachusetts governor. This is not leadership -- this is hypocrisy and gutlessness.

I'm sick and tired of hearing about how jobs aren't being created because taxes aren't low enough, and how Barack Obama didn't do anything to fix the economy. Taxes for the wealthy were cut during the execrable George W. Bush presidency and somehow we ended up with many fewer jobs and the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression. Why didn't the "job creators" create jobs with the windfall profits they received then? Why does anyone think they'll do it now? And while the economy is still in bad shape, all the indicators show it's beginning to recover. And it would have begun sooner had it not been for the Tea Party extremists in Congress who have spent the last four years doing nothing but blocking any legislation supported by Obama, because their ONLY goal for the last four years has been to do everything possible to make sure Obama wasn't reelected.

I'm sick and tired of the GOP still trying to paint Barack Obama as weak on foreign policy and terrorism. If the death of Osama bin Laden isn't enough evidence to the contrary, Mitt Romney proved with his blundering excursion to London during the Olympics that he has about as much expertise in foreign affairs as Paris Hilton.

I'm sick and tired of the Tea Party extremists and American Taliban's complete repudiation of science. Whether in fighting against stem-cell research or regulations to improve the environment and lessen the effects of climate change (unthinkable, especially after the unprecedented strength and path of Hurricane Sandy) or teaching "creationism" instead of evolution in schools, there's no excuse for this utter stupidity.

And, because it just seems to need to be said, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.

It's very simple: unless you're a wealthy, white, heterosexual male, or a racist, there is simply no reason to vote for Mitt Romney. He is NOT on your side. His policies will NOT make your life better. Only a complete moron would think otherwise.

Money's Too Tight (To Mention)

If you know music of the 1980s then you know this song by Simply Red, although a couple of things seem to have slipped my memory. First, I didn't really remember the direct jabs at Ronald and Nancy Reagan near the end of the song. In addition, according to Wikipedia this was the band's first single, released in 1985, with their first big smash "Holding Back The Years" not coming out until 1986. Somehow I had them reversed in my mind.

At any rate I think some artist should cover it now, updating the lyrics to refer to Mitt Romney and some other GOP frauds instead of the Reagans.

Political Chess (Inspired by Ben Franklin and a singer!)

You should know that this post has been quite a while in the making. Well, actually, it was a couple of hours or so in the actual making and the rest of the time was spent on other things. But the inspiration for this came way back in February 2011. I procrastinated, as I often do, and then time would pass, and then something would happen to make me think of this again, and then I'd procrastinate some more, lather, rinse, repeat. I'd think that it would be good to finish this to coincide with certain events, and then I didn't. Until now.

So, back in Febuary 2011, on my Twitter feed I saw a tweet from Mike Furey, lead singer of what was a duo called Dangerous Muse (the other guy went off to do his own thing; Furey is continuing the group using other musicians as needed). I discovered them through a music video played on one of Logo's music shows a few years ago, and I've been a fan ever since.

It was a fairly simple query.

Now and then, I like to reply to the celebrities I follow, though I think most of them, even if they tweet personally and everything isn't handled by a publicist, probably don't even see my tweets. But sometimes they're kind enough to acknowledge my existence. So, that night, I replied...

A short time later, I found this in my feed:

This intrigued me.

Simpsons Already Did It (GOP Version)

Wow, Republicans, not only are you about 70 years behind the rest of us philosophically, but you're even 10 years behind South Park...

Today's Horror Show Started Here

This is on Locust Street between 8th and 9th. The building, according to Wikipedia, was eventually abandoned, the same way the GOP abandoned the principles of Lincoln and instead began sucking at the teat of the Religious Right. The building was turned into condos in order to keep it from being torn down.