Tuesday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

Longtime Anti-LGBT Hate Merchant Phyllis Schlafly Dead at 92

Yes, I know it is poor form to speak ill of the dead, but when it comes to Phyllis Schlafly, it is difficult to say anything nice about a woman who  peddled so much hatred over the last four and a half decades.  She opposed equal rights for women and was an extreme homophobe and continued to market the lie that being gay was a choice and/or the result of poor parenting - even though she had an LGBT child of her own - to the bitter end.  Moreover, if one ever visited the Eagle Forum web page, the organization was largely a platform of out of control, self-congratulatory egomania.  It is sad, but I can only believe that the world will be a better place with her foul influence gone from the scene.  I hate too say it, but a heart, the woman was a white nationalist.  A CBS affiliate has these details:

Multiple sources are confirming to KMOX news that Phyllis Schlafly, has died.

Schlafly founded the Eagle Forum in 1972, a pro-family conservative group focusing heavily on social issues — it has about 80,000 members and, as of this week, Schlafly was still president.

“Phyllis Schlafly spent an astounding 70 years in public service of her fellow Americans,” said the Eagle Forum in a statement. “Her focus from her earliest days until her final ones was protecting the family, which she understood as the building block of life. She recognized America as the greatest political embodiment of those values.
 Schlafly’s organization has been split this presidential election — Schlafly supported Donald Trump, though many board members disagreed. She maintained her leadership of the organization.

She also fought nephew, Tom Schlafly, over the naming rights to his brewery in St. Louis. Schlafly contended her name juxtaposed with beer and libations would damage the conservative brand’s reputation. A judge disagreed.

 Schlafly was 92.

If there is a Hell, like the late Jerry Falwell, I suspect that Schlafly is now occupying her reserved seat.  While she constantly proclaimed her supposed Christian faith, there was little in her public actions that mirror Jesus' teachings in the Gospels. 

Sunday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 2

FBI, CIA and Homeland Security Investigating Russian Efforts Influence Election

Never in my lifetime, even growing up at the height of the Cold War, do I recall a time when Russian attempts to influence a U.S. presidential election was viewed as a possibility or a real fear.  Welcome to 2016 when Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, despite disingenuous denials, seems set on working to either throw the November election to fellow authoritarian, Donald Trump, or to sow distrust in the election results.  The mere fact that Putin favors Trump ought to send sane Americans running into the waiting arms of Hillary Clinton. A piece n the Washington Post looks at the investigations underway to thwart Russian efforts.  Here are excerpts:

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are probing what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said.

The aim is to understand the scope and intent of the Russian campaign, which incorporates cyber-tools to hack systems used in the political process, enhancing Russia’s ability to spread disinformation.

The effort to better understand Russia’s covert influence operations is being spearheaded by James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence. “This is something of concern for the DNI,” said Charles Allen, a former longtime CIA officer who has been briefed on some of these issues. “It is being addressed.”

A Russian influence operation in the United States “is something we’re looking very closely at,” said one senior intelligence official who, as others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. Officials are also examining potential disruptions to the election process, and the FBI has alerted state and local officials to potential cyberthreats.

The official cautioned that the intelligence community is not saying it has “definitive proof” of such tampering, or any Russian plans to do so. “But even the hint of something impacting the security of our election system would be of significant concern,” the official said. “It’s the key to our democracy, that people have confidence in the election system.”

[T]he issue has “moved up as a priority” for the intelligence agencies, which include the FBI and Department of Homeland Security as well as the CIA and the National Security Agency.

After Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) ended a secure, 30-minute phone briefing by a top intelligence official recently, he was “deeply shaken,” according to an aide who was with Reid when he left the secure room at the FBI’s Las Vegas headquarters.

The Russian government hack of the Democratic National Committee,disclosed by the DNC in June but not yet officially ascribed by the U.S. government to Russia, and the subsequent release of 20,000 hacked DNC emails by WikiLeaks, shocked officials. Cyber-analysts traced its digital markings to known Russian government hacking groups.

Members of both parties are urging the president to take the Russians to task publicly.

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) in a statement urged President Obama to publicly name Russia as responsible for the DNC hack and apparent meddling in the electoral process. “Free and legitimate elections are non-negotiable. It’s clear that Russia thinks the reward outweighs any consequences,” he wrote. “That calculation must be changed. . . . This is going to take a cross-domain response — diplomatic, political and economic — that turns the screws on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and his cronies.”

The Department of Homeland Security has offered local and state election officials help to prevent or deal with Election Day cyber-disruptions, including vulnerability scans, regular actionable information and alerts, and access to other tools for improving cybersecurity at the local level. It will also have a cyber-team ready at the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center to alert jurisdictions if attacks are detected.

Russia has been in the vanguard of a growing global movement to use propaganda on the Internet to influence people and political events, especially since the political revolt in Ukraine, the subsequent annexation of Crimea by Russia, and the imposition of sanctions on Russia by the United States and the European Union.

The Baltic states, Georgia and Ukraine have been subject to Russian cyberattacks and other hidden influence operations meant to disrupt those countries, officials said.

Trump Poses a Threat to the LGBT Community

Trump with leading anti-LGBT Christofascists

Perhaps being a member of a demographic that has been - and still is - targeted for hatred, discrimination and even potential physical violence makes one more sensitive to potential threats.  I suspect few white Trump supporters have been called a faggot and intimidated by police or had to fear for their physical safety.  Nor have they heard "men of god" call for their murder or criminalization.  Yet for many LGBT Americans, these things happen frequently, especially n rural areas of the country.  Now, we are faced with a Republican presidential candidate and his vice presidential running mate who have said they would role back marriage rights and other civil rights. Indeed, Trump's VP pick has a well documented history of being anti-LGBT.  And yet I find some friends - or at least those who seem to thing of themselves as friends - likely supporting the Trump/Pence ticket, saying it's merely a matter of a difference in political philosophies.  I'm sorry, but taking away my civil rights, opposing non-discrimination protections that would have prevented me from being forced from a law firm merely for being gay is something far, far greater than a mere difference in "political philosophies."  An op-ed at CNN looks at the threat that Trump/Pence poses to the LGBT community both here in America and overseas. Here are highlights:

Recently, ISIS pushed four men off a building in Mosul because they were suspected of being gay. Last month, the Ugandan government detained citizens attending a pride parade and ordered them beaten by other inmates. In Bangladesh, the editor of the nation's only LGBTQ magazine was recently found hacked to death.

As we consider what the 2016 election will mean for LGBTQ equality across the United States, we also can't forget what this election will mean for our global community.

Donald Trump has spent his campaign threatening to undo crucial protections for LGBTQ people in the United States, vowing to appoint judges to the Supreme Court to turn back the legalization of same-sex marriage and supporting state-sanctioned discrimination against transgender people.

He has courted extremists who foment hate both here and export it abroad. His running mate, Mike Pence, as a congressman in 2009, opposed language in federal legislation to monitor and combat human rights violations against LGBTQ people abroad, accusing Democrats of attempting to "promote a gay rights agenda around the globe."

Trump has also sought support from leading exporters of anti-LGBTQ hate, including the Alliance Defending Freedom. Well known for the work it does within US borders, ADF is also spreading hate in countries around the world, from fighting equality in Russia to recruiting and training anti-equality activists in Nepal.

Together, Donald Trump and Mike Pence seem to have little interest in -- and perhaps little understanding of -- the dire plight faced by asylum seekers, including those who seek to flee the violence of ISIS or escape the anti-LGBTQ regime in Russia. And yet, Trump says he's a friend to the LGBTQ community. But let's look at what he would actually do.

Recently, Trump proposed an ideology test on new immigrants that would require those coming into the United States to show they are, among other things, tolerant of LGBTQ people. Putting aside the fact that he and Mike Pence would apparently fail their own ideology test on several fronts, the very existence of such a vetting policy would create another obstacle for refugees —including LGBTQ people fleeing countries where they can literally be put to death simply because of who they are. 

By contrast, today -- thanks to the work of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, and others -- LGBTQ people can receive priority resettlement because they face a significant threat of violence, torture, and even death in the countries they are leaving. The policy also prioritizes other vulnerable groups such as children, widows and older refugees, as well as targeted communities like religious and ethnic minorities.

While Trump was busy cozying up to Vladimir Putin back in 2011, Clinton was declaring before the international community that "gay rights are human rights." She was creating the Global Equality Fund, which supports human rights defenders working to protect LGBTQ people in more than 80 countries.

Donald Trump and Mike Pence pose a clear threat to equality here in the United States, particularly when it comes to marriage equality, basic civil rights protections and the makeup of our Supreme Court. But let's also consider what's on the line for the gay teen living in Jamaica or the transgender woman living in Honduras or the men living in daily fear of being exposed, targeted and murdered by ISIS.  For them, our foreign policy can mean life or death.

In a Trump-Pence administration, does anyone think human rights for all will remain a pillar of our foreign policy? Or that our embassies abroad will provide the same beacon of hope to local LGBTQ communities? Or that whomever Trump selects as his secretary of state or UN ambassador will go before the international community to fight against discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity?

Would Donald Trump stand up against hateful legislation in countries like Russia and Uganda when he's endorsed the ability of US states to legalize discrimination? The answers to all of those questions are: clearly not.

This election is about many crucial issues of great importance here at home. But we can't forget that we also hold lives in our hands around the globe. Who we elect as our next president will either destroy the progress we've made or continue building toward a world where all LGBTQ people are safe from violence, discrimination and fear. 

For those would be Trump supporters who see themselves as having LGBT friends, I hope they will open their eyes and understand that a vote for Trump/Pence is a vote against those they claim to hold as friends. A history of voting Republican does not justify or excuse voting for a ticket that preaches so much hate and misogyny.  Elections often consist of selecting the lesser of evils.  When it comes to those with LGBT friends and/or family members, voting for Hillary Clinton should be the only option. 

Monday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

Sunday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 2

America's Broken Political Sysytem

With some of the latest polls showing Hillary Clinton's lead over Donald Trump narrowing, some wonder how our political system became so broken that a reality TV, carnival barker could ever have secured the Republican Party nomination, much less be running as strongly as he is when his message is one of hate, fear, and misogyny.  A piece in Salon looks at the scary situation and places the blame on two sources: (i) the Republican Party's broken nominating process, and (ii) the media and its obsession with false equivalency and hesitancy to report the truth, and willingness to allow itself to be duped by right wing pundits and others.   To these factors, I would add the GOP's deliberate courting of Christofascists and then allowing them to be admitted to and eventually hijack the party base. Here are article excerpts:

In case you hadn’t noticed, the polling gap between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is slowly narrowing, according to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com where Trump has gone from a 12 percent chance of winning to a 27 percent chance in four short weeks. 

Should Democrats and, indeed, all reasonable human beings panic now? Maybe.

And the GOP nominee hasn’t really done anything specific to warrant such a change in fortunes. In fact, he’s done almost everything wrong by a factor of thousands. This speaks volumes about the malfunctioning condition of American politics and the news media, and I’m afraid that all of the garment rending over Trump’s individual hourly trespasses is serving to avoid the big picture crisis: Trump shouldn’t even be in the race, much less nearly tied with a far more qualified opponent. He’s marched through a super-colossal loophole in the system, bobby-pins and border walls in tow, while doing everything wrong.

After watching Donald Trump yelling at the world about immigration Wednesday night, I’m more discouraged than ever about the current state of the American political process. How could this have possibly gone so far? Are we really this vulnerable to the whimsy of necrotic populism? Sadly, we are, and there are scant firewalls to prevent it from happening again and again.

In case you missed it, Trump’s whiplash posture — one minute “softening,” the next minute going full Hulk Smash! — was on unavoidable display Wednesday, beginning with his awkward meeting with Mexican President Peña Nieto and concluding with what was supposed to be a major policy address, but which ended up being one of the most horrifying presidential-level speeches ever recorded. In addition to the apocalyptic hatred and loudness of Trump’s rant, it was, of course, loaded with terrible speechwriting, joined by outright fiction.

Simply put: Trump is an embarrassment to civilization. A crackpot who exploited a broken party and a broken nominating process to threaten the world. If Trump’s brand of undisciplined pandering and screechy malevolence ever becomes the standard for American politics, I don’t want any part of it. I can’t repeat this enough: We’re on the brink of disaster, with roughly five percentage points separating us from Trump and the abyss. . . . Unless something’s done to fix it, we could permanently become a nation that elects despots and freaks similar to the Republican nominee.

Within our present system, a reality-show demagogue can parlay his tabloid popularity into a run for president. He can win the nomination by appealing to the basest, cruelest, most simplistic instincts of reactionary voters who are too ignorant and lazy to understand the wonky details of public policy and who are mostly brainwashed from within an impermeable bubble in which a limitless geyser of misinformation and propaganda, carefully designed and crafted to tap into the reptilian brains of the poorly educated and easily influenced, has successfully deceived enough voters to openly support this destructive character.

He can literally sidestep every standard by which all other candidates are expected to achieve, and the news media, along with a frustratingly large chunk of the voting public, will give him a pass anyway. Again, he can say a million things that no other candidate could possibly get away with, and never has, and because the news media has been rendered flaccid before the false accusation of liberal bias, the existential threat he poses — the urgent relating of facts that’d easily disqualify him — takes a back seat to horse-race narratives and smirky roundtables in which, inexplicably, Bill Kristol, who’s always wrong about everything, pops up on the liberal network. . . . Yet qualifications and conspicuously vast differences are irrelevant when there’s an equivalence quota to fill on cable news.

Even though the Democrats still have a superdelegate firewall, and, by the way, the electoral college was designed by the Framers in part to expressly stymie outlier candidates, the GOP nominating process is without a mechanism to prevent another Trump from getting this far despite himself. The Republican Party needs to devise a firewall now. I mean, right fucking now. If nothing else, Trump’s success underscores how the superdelegate system and the electoral college as they exist today are, obviously, crucial to the future of democracy. 

Global Warming is Already Flooding America's Coasts

Click image to enlarge

click image to enlarge

UPDATED 9-6-2016:  For more images of just how much of a reality global warming and rising sea levels are for the Hampton Roads area, check out the photos at AltDaily here.  As I said before, if you care about global warming and climate change, the ONLY option on election day is to vote a straight Democrat ticket. 

Having just dodged a bullet with Tropical Storm Hermine - the photo above shows Robinson Creek close to flooding into our back yard shown in the background - many of us in Hampton Roads know and understand that global warming's impact on sea levels is real and that it is happening now.  The second photo was taken by a friend in the Ocean View section of Norfolk from her home more than an hour before high tide.  Many other areas of Norfolk and even our neighborhood flooded and as of this morning, my sister in Virginia Beach is still without power.  What's really frightening is that Hermine was not even a major storm.  Sea levels ARE rising - at the Norfolk Naval Base, the level is a foot and a half higher than less than 100 years ago.  Yet despite this, we see Republicans ranging from Donald Trump on down saying that global warming and its impacts is a "hoax."  Here in Virginia, GOP legislators will not even allow the use of the term even as the economic powerhouse of the Virginia Port Authority and numerous military bases are threatened.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the reality that is already happening while the GOP remains in denial.  Here are highlights:

NORFOLK, Va. — Huge vertical rulers are sprouting beside low spots in the streets here, so people can judge if the tidal floods that increasingly inundate their roads are too deep to drive through.

Five hundred miles down the Atlantic Coast, the only road to Tybee Island, Ga., is disappearing beneath the sea several times a year, cutting the town off from the mainland.

And another 500 miles on, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., increased tidal flooding is forcing the city to spend millions fixing battered roads and drains — and, at times, to send out giant vacuum trucks to suck saltwater off the streets.

For decades, as the global warming created by human emissions caused land ice to melt and ocean water to expand, scientists warned that the accelerating rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline.

Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding — often called “sunny-day flooding” — along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too.

These tidal floods are often just a foot or two deep, but they can stop traffic, swamp basements, damage cars, kill lawns and forests, and poison wells with salt. Moreover, the high seas interfere with the drainage of storm water.

In coastal regions, that compounds the damage from the increasingly heavy rains plaguing the country, like those that recently caused extensive flooding in Louisiana. Scientists say these rains are also a consequence of human greenhouse emissions.

“Once impacts become noticeable, they’re going to be upon you quickly,” said William V. Sweet, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Silver Spring, Md., who is among the leaders in research on coastal inundation. “It’s not a hundred years off — it’s now.”

[L]ocal leaders say they cannot tackle this problem alone. They are pleading with state and federal governments for guidance and help, including billions to pay for flood walls, pumps and road improvements that would buy them time.

Yet Congress has largely ignored these pleas, and has even tried to block plans by the military to head off future problems at the numerous bases imperiled by a rising sea. A Republican congressman from Colorado, Ken Buck, recently called one military proposal part of a “radical climate change agenda.”

As the problem worsens, experts are warning that national security is on the line. Naval bases, in particular, are threatened; they can hardly be moved away from the ocean, yet much of their land is at risk of disappearing within this century.

Because the land is sinking as the ocean rises, Norfolk and the metropolitan region surrounding it, known as Hampton Roads, are among the worst-hit parts of the United States. That local factor means, in essence, that the region is a few decades ahead in feeling the effects of sea-level rise, and illustrates what people along the rest of the American coast can expect.

The biggest problems involve frequent flooding of homes and roads. As the sea rises, hundreds of tidal creeks and marshes that thread through the region are bringing saltwater to people’s doorsteps.

As the national response lags, experts warn that the flooding is putting the country’s defense at risk.

Several studies have concluded that Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval base, is profoundly threatened by rising seas, as are other coastal bases. The Pentagon has managed to build floodgates and other protective measures at some facilities. But attempts by the military to develop broader climate change plans have met fierce resistance in Congress.

That was the case this summer, when an effort by the Pentagon to appoint officers to take charge of climate resilience led to a House vote prohibiting taxpayer money from being spent on the plan.

Many people in Congress, almost all of them Republicans, express doubt about climate science, with some of them promulgating conspiracy theories claiming that researchers have invented the issue to justify greater governmental control over people’s lives. So far, this ideological position has been immune to the rising evidence of harm from human-induced climate change.

Scientists had long hoped that any disintegration of the ice sheets would take thousands of years, but recent research suggests the breakup of West Antarctica could occur much faster. In the worst-case scenario, this research suggests, the rate of sea-level rise could reach a foot per decade by the 22nd century, about 10 times faster than today.

In 2013, scientists reached a consensus that three feet was the highest plausible rise by the year 2100. But now some of them are starting to say that six or seven feet may be possible. A rise that large over a span of decades would be an unparalleled national catastrophe, driving millions of people from their homes and most likely requiring the abandonment of entire cities.

Along those parts of the United States coast that are sinking at a brisk clip, including southern Louisiana and the entire Chesapeake Bay region, including Norfolk, the situation will be worse than average. On the Pacific Coast, a climate pattern that had pushed billions of gallons of water toward Asia is now ending, so that in coming decades the sea is likely to rise quickly off states like Oregon and California.

Read the entire article.  What can one do?  For starters, vote ignorance embracing Republicans out of office. For local homeowners, start water proofing your homes and make them flood resistant.  Personally, our next step will probably be to build a high berm around the perimeter of the backyard and then landscape it so that it's real purpose is camouflaged.  That, of course, will take time and money that many people simply do not have.

Water coming up the storm drain in front of the house (last October, water came half way up the driveway) 

Sunday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1