Poll Results

Moron of the Week

This week the honor goes to Sherry Johnston, mother of Levi Johnston who is the boyfriend of Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol. Really this needs to be shared by Palin and the Republican party in general.

Johnston was arrested on Thursday and charged with six felony counts of misconduct involving a controlled substance.

Honestly there isn't anything I can say that shows how thus whole situation qualifies for Moron of the Week better than what was already said on the Keith Olbermann Show

Moron of the Week

It looks like I need to start a weekly post called "Moron of the Week". There seem to be plenty of candidates. The Governor of Illinois I have decided to bestow the first award to singer Pat Boone. Now I know what you are thinking how can the person famous for songs like "Tutti Frutti" possibly make this list. Or maybe your thinking, "Tutti Frutti" really explains it all. Just watch and let Keith Olbermann explain it too you.





Here is the response from the Human Rights Campaign. Hope you will consider sending a message to Pat!

"...there is a real, unbroken line between the jihadist savagery in Mumbai and the hedonistic, irresponsible, blindly selfish goals and tactics of our homegrown sexual jihadists."
- Pat Boone, December 6, 2008

Dear HRC members,

Country singer and right-wing pundit Pat Boone has written a column equating the movement against Prop. 8 to the terrorists who tortured and murdered hundreds in Mumbai.

I am not kidding. This is a new low in anti-gay rhetoric.

Boone and his buddies continue to stir up fear, even if they have to lie. It's exactly how they passed the California marriage ban.

We need your help to stop the radical right from painting a movement about love and dignity as violent and radical. We need your support to stay strong, smart, and nimble, to combat these growing attacks with the simple truth: all we want is equality.

Make a donation to HRC on behalf of Pat Boone. Your gift helps HRC combat these lies – and sends the message that our call for equality cannot be silenced.

We'll even send Mr. Boone a note with your first name and gift amount to let him know you've donated in his name.

It's time to say enough to the deception and false ads that defeated marriage equality in three states and banned gay couples from adopting in Arkansas; enough to the attempts to equate peaceful protest with "jihadist savagery"; enough to the lies used to block federal hate crimes laws and workplace protections.

In the face of lies like this, there's only one thing to do: Demand the Truth – and that's exactly what we will be doing in the coming year. HRC will:

• Respond quickly and forcefully to the lies and intimidation with media outreach and grassroots mobilization, as part of an ongoing "Demand the Truth" campaign;
• Organize hundreds of thousands of activists to pass the Matthew Shepard Act and combat the inevitable misleading campaign that will be waged against us;
• Work with religious leaders to encourage LGBT people to come out in their faith communities and create venues for the voices of tolerance and love;
• Continue the march for marriage equality and relationship recognition, especially in key states where new doors are opening right now, including New York, Vermont, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Iowa; and
• Work with the Obama administration to undo years of White House anti-LGBT hostility.

To really go toe to toe with the mouthpieces of bigotry like Pat Boone, we're going to need your support.

If, every time they tell another lie, run another deceptive ad or use more fear-mongering to try and win votes and recruit new members, we respond by strengthening our movement for equality, eventually they'll realize they're hurting themselves more than they're hurting us.

But it only works if we all stand up.

Join us in demanding the truth, by making a gift in Pat Boone's name today!

What's perhaps most disturbing about Boone's rhetoric – painting LGBT people as a threat to society – is that it leads to the very real hate violence directed against LGBT people every day.

We can't stop the Pat Boones of our world from speaking their ugly lies, but together we can make sure that there's a political cost associated with this kind of hateful speech.

Warmly,

Joe Solmonese
President

To see the full article by Pat Boone, click here.

On a side note, I hope I never have to put myself on the "Moron of the Week" list.

Special Comment on Gay Marriage ~ Keith Olbermann

I had been meaning to put this amazing message from Keith Olbermann up for a while now. Thanks to one of my readers for making mention of it in my comments so that I would remember to get it done.

The following is the transcript from the MSNBC site.

Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.

Some parameters, as preface. This isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics, and this isn't really just about Prop-8. And I don't have a personal investment in this: I'm not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.
And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics. This is about the human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want—a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

Only now you are saying to them—no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights—even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?

I keep hearing this term ‘re-defining’ marriage. If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal in 1967. 1967.

The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn't marry black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not ‘Until Death, Do You Part,’ but ‘Until Death or Distance, Do You Part.’ Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.

You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are gay.
And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing, centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children, all because we said a man couldn't marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage.

How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity" of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?

What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don't you, as human beings, have to embrace... that love? The world is barren enough.
It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.

And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?

With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate... this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness—this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness—share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’

You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate.

You don't have to help it, you don't have it applaud it, you don't have to fight for it. Just don't put it out. Just don't extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don't know and you don't understand and maybe you don't even want to know. It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow person just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too.

This is the second time in ten days I find myself concluding by turning to, of all things, the closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.

But what he said, fits what is really at the heart of this: ‘I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar-Khayyam," he told the judge. It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all: So I be written in the Book of Love; I do not care about that Book above. Erase my name, or write it as you will, So I be written in the Book of Love.’"

And, because he did not say it that night. Thank you, and good night.

Would Honest Abe Approve of His Party?

I am amazed daily at the amount of lies put out by the Republicans during this campaign. I actually have to remind myself that some of our greatest Presidents were Republicans like Abraham Lincoln. I wonder if some of these people would even recognize their party today.

Even though it has taken a while for mainstream media to call the Republicans out on their lies it is amazing what has happened on the web to try and drive the attention so mainstream media would need to react. One of my favorites is Count the Lies at McCainpedia.org. I don't believe any other candidate for President or Vice President has even been allowed by the media to outright lie over and over again. It has gotten so out of hand that MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has started to donate $100 to charity every time Governor Palin lies in public. He wrote a check for $3,700 and I'm sure this will get very expensive for him. I only wish he gave it to the Democratic Party.