Wednesday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

2016 Caribbean Cruise - Days 3 and 4

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Amber Cove cruise ship port

Our cruise continues to be quite enjoyable, although yesterday while at sea we experienced 41 knot winds and today our trip into the rain forest in the Dominican Republic which had as its destination one of the beautiful pools at the Damajagua Waterfalls (pictured above) was truly an experience in the rain. Luckily, the rain did not get anyone's spirits down and before boarding the coach back to the ship we savored rum punch and beer. The guides were wonderful - and some of the guys VERY cute - and overall the experience was a positive one.

Last night for Halloween, many of the passengers went all out with costumes.  The husband and I were very plain in comparison as the photo below indicates.  It was good fun and I got to do some dancing as well.

As far as our ship goes, I give the Carnival Sunshine a positive review.  The cleanliness, crew courtesy and food quality has been great.  If I have one complaint, it is the line's failure to enforce any sort of a minimum dress code in the main dining rooms.  This even, eight passengers - likely from Gloucester, Virginia, from the looks and waist size of them - were seated at the table next to our table of five, all of whom were attired in sport coats (no ties) and nice slacks.  The men at the next table were less well dressed than I would be if I were running to Lowes on a Saturday morning to pick up mulch, lumber, or something else for a home project without "cleaning up" beforehand.  Oh, and did I mention the ball caps on their heads as that sat at the table.  All definitely had the look of Trump voters.     

Shortly before leaving the Dominican Republic

  

Comey Sought to Keep Russian Hacker Efforts Undisclosed

A Trump - Putin accomplice?

I have in the past expressed my concerns about Donald trump's ties to Russia and Russian efforts to influence this year's presidential election.  Now, it seems that Russia may have another accomplice in high places: FBI Director James Comey.  Yes, it reads like something out of a James Rollins novel, but how else to explain Comey's efforts to convince President Obama not to publicly announce Russian hacking efforts, yet Comey's seemingly deliberate effort to throw the election to Donald Trump through his announcement on reopening the Clinton e-mail investigation.  The Washington Post looks at this disturbing news.  My question is why is Comey still in his position at the FBI? Here are article highlights:

FBI Director James B. Comey advised against the Obama administration publicly accusing Russia of hacking political organizations on the grounds that it would make the administration appear unduly partisan too close to the Nov. 8 election, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.

But he supported the administration’s formal denunciation last month as long as it did not have the FBI’s name on it, they said. Comey was sensitive not only to his agency appearing to influence the election but also to seeming biased while it was conducting an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

Comey’ s concern about election timing has some officials scratching their heads in light of his decision last week to notify Congress — 11 days before the election — that the FBI was planning to review newly discovered emails in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server.

“It’s really hard to square” the two, said one official, who like several others spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about internal discussions.

The news of the DNC hack broke in June, with cybersecurity experts who responded to the breach concluding it was the work of Russian government hackers. FBI investigators at the time privately said that was their conclusion, too. A series of other breaches soon came to light, including of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which the FBI privately said were carried out by the Russians.

Something does not jibe with Comey's conduct.  Again, why has he not been fired and why is he not under investigation?

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

Is the FBI Hiding Information on Trump's Possible Ties to Russia?

On Friday FBI Director James Comey took it upon himself to release a letter fanning new flames into the Republican witch hunt over Hillary Clinton's e-mails.  In doing so, Comey seemingly violated federal law as well as long standing policies and procedures.  In fact, Richard Painter, the chief White House Ethics Lawyer in the Bush Administration from 2005-2007, was so outraged that he filed a Complaint against Comey with the Office Of Special Counsel and the Office of Government Ethics. In particular, Painter explains why Comey’s inexplicable actions this week may warrant prosecution for abuse of power under the Hatch Act.  Senate Minority Leader, Harry Reid has echoed Painter's concerns.   More significantly, Reid also made clear that the FBI has been sitting on information that suggests that Donald Trump may be involved in solicitations from Vladimir Putin and the Russian Government.  The Washington Post has details on both of Reid's statements.  Adding concern to Reid's statements is an article in Mother Jones that indicated that the FBI has credible evidence on a possible Russian intelligence attempt to develop a secret relationship with Trump and/or cultivate him as an asset.  Despite the seriousness of these allegations, Comey has remained utterly silent.   Sloppy usage of e-mail warrants an announcement to the public in Comey's world view, possible covert operations by Trump and/or his advisers doesn't.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post (some from Mother Jones will follow):

In a letter to FBI Director James B. Comey on Sunday night, outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) says Comey may have broken the law.

And that's not even the most brazen claim in the letter — not by a long shot.

In the course of arguing that Comey's disclosure that the FBI is looking into new Hillary Clinton investigation emails may have violated the Hatch Act, Reid slips in an extremely bold claim about the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information.

Reid is saying that he has been told the FBI has evidence of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. And he's not just saying this information came from mysterious and unnamed national security officials; he's saying Comey himself has left him with this impression.

Yes, Reid can be a loose canon on occasion.  But this time, he may be directly on target.  Here are highlights from Mother Jones that look very damning to Trump, some of his inner circle, and, of course, Comey:

Reid's missive set off a burst of speculation on Twitter and elsewhere. What was he referring to regarding the Republican presidential nominee? At the end of August, Reid had written to Comey and demanded an investigation of the "connections between the Russian government and Donald Trump's presidential campaign," and in that letter he indirectly referred to Carter Page, an American businessman cited by Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers, who had financial ties to Russia and had recently visited Moscow. Last month, Yahoo News reported that US intelligence officials were probing the links between Page and senior Russian officials. 

On Monday, NBC News reported that the FBI has mounted a preliminary inquiry into the foreign business ties of Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chief. But Reid's recent note hinted at more than the Page or Manafort affairs. And a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jonesthat in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more information from him.

An FBI spokeswoman says, "Normally, we don't talk about whether we are investigating anything." But a senior US government official not involved in this case but familiar with the former spy tells Mother Jones that he has been a credible source with a proven record of providing reliable, sensitive, and important information to the US government.
In June, the former Western intelligence officer—who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients—was assigned the task of researching Trump's dealings in Russia and elsewhere, according to the former spy and his associates in this American firm. This was for an opposition research project originally financed by a Republican client critical of the celebrity mogul.

[W]hen he dug into Trump, he notes, he came across troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government. According to his sources, he says, "there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit."

This was, the former spy remarks, "an extraordinary situation." He regularly consults with US government agencies on Russian matters, and near the start of July on his own initiative—without the permission of the US company that hired him—he sent a report he had written for that firm to a contact at the FBI, according to the former intelligence officer and his American associates, who asked not to be identified. (He declines to identify the FBI contact.) The former spy says he concluded that the information he had collected on Trump was "sufficiently serious" to share with the FBI.

Mother Jones has reviewed that report and other memos this former spy wrote. The first memo, based on the former intelligence officer's conversations with Russian sources, noted, "Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance." It maintained that Trump "and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals." It claimed that Russian intelligence had "compromised" Trump during his visits to Moscow and could "blackmail him."

[I]n August, they say, the FBI asked him for all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify his sources. The former spy forwarded to the bureau several memos—some of which referred to members of Trump's inner circle. After that point, he continued to share information with the FBI. "It's quite clear there was or is a pretty substantial inquiry going on," he says.

"This is something of huge significance, way above party politics," the former intelligence officer comments. "I think [Trump's] own party should be aware of this stuff as well."

According to several national security experts, there is widespread concern in the US intelligence community that Russian intelligence, via hacks, is aiming to undermine the presidential election—to embarrass the United States and delegitimize its democratic elections. And the hacks appear to have been designed to benefit Trump. 

In the letter Reid sent to Comey on Sunday, he pointed out that months ago he had asked the FBI director to release information on Trump's possible Russia ties. Since then, according to a Reid spokesman, Reid has been briefed several times. The spokesman adds, "He is confident that he knows enough to be extremely alarmed."

I suspect that some of my Republican friends supporting Trump will merely scoff, but perhaps they should invest in a Rosetta Stone language course and brush up on Russian. Some of these same people scoffed when I predicted in 2003 that the Iraq War would be a disaster and unleash unanticipated consequences - consequences we are still plagued by today.  Should Trump win the White House, I predict that America will experience an unmitigated disaster. 

Caribbean Cruise - Days 1 and 2

View of the beach facing east toward Nassau

So far we have been having a great time on our cruise.  The first full day was at sea with absolutely gorgeous weather.  Three of our gay friends are on the trip with us as is a contingent from the Hampton Yacht Club, always a partying crowd.  The second full day saw us in Nassau where I was able to reconnect with a friend I met 14 years ago when I was just beginning my coming out journey and made my first trip after beginning to accept my sexuality.  My husband and I, along with a friend on the cruise with us, met my friend and his partner and enjoyed taste of Nassau off the usual tourist track.  We lunched at a great little seafood restaurant full of locals enjoying an after church meal and then drove to the west end of the island of New Providence and enjoyed the beach near the condo where my friend and his partner live when in the Bahamas (the spend the rest of the year based out of Cannes, France).  The photos give a sense of the fun.   

Lunch - I recommend the gin and coconut milk drinks

  

Enjoying fresh coconut juice with rum right from the coconut! 

The Right's Irrational Hatred of Hillary Clinton

As a former Republican, one thing I find striking - i.e., over and above the GOP's descent into insanity - is the manner in which so many in the party are nothing short of irrational when it comes to their hatred of Hillary Clinton.  True, she's no saint and has made many mistakes, but compared to Donald Trump she is the height of truth and veracity and doesn't openly exhibit signs of mental illness.   This irrational hatred is difficult for a rational person to understand, but especially so when one looks at her deranged opponent.  At lunch yesterday in the Bahamas, two friends, one from France and one from Italy, found it difficult to understand the frightening state of American politics.  But then again, they are both educated and rational in how they approach life and the objective world, something unlike the majority of Donald trump's supporters.  An op-ed column in the New York Times looked at the derangement syndrome afflicting the far right, especially white males when it comes to Hillary.  Interestingly, the vast majority of gays have no problem with strong and/or powerful women, but then again, the same white males who hate Hillary hate us as well.  Here are op-ed highlights:

One of the mysteries of 2016 is the degree to which Hillary Clinton is reviled. Not just rationally opposed but viscerally and instinctively hated. None of the stated reasons for the animus seem to satisfy. Yes, she’s careful and cagey, and her use of a private email server, which the F.B.I. flung back into the news on Friday, was a big mistake. But no, she’s not more dishonest than other politicians, and compared with her opponent, she’s George Washington. Her policies, even where bold, are hardly on the subversive fringe.

Yet she’s cast not just as a political combatant but as a demon who, in the imaginings of Republicans like Paul D. Ryan, the speaker of the House, and Representative Trent Franks, would create an America “where passion — the very stuff of life — is extinguished” (the former) and where fetuses would be destroyed “limb from limb” (the latter).

It’s important to recall that she was deranging Republicans on Day 1. Understanding her demonization requires admitting her full significance in our political history, for she is not simply a pioneering woman fighting an Ur-misogyny. Mrs. Clinton faces a two-headed Cerberus, an artificial conjoining that occurred in the early 1990s, of wounded Republican invincibility and wounded male prerogative. Our current political crisis won’t be resolved until those forces are separated and the Cerberus slain.

To the left, “Clintonism” implies accommodation and calculation. But to the right in 1992, it meant usurpation. Reaganism held almost religious significance, and its reign was supposed to be transformative and permanent. For the One True Way to be restored, Clintonism had to be delegitimized.

That delegitimization ushered in the politics of party restoration at whatever cost, governance and country be damned. This led first to an attempted legislative coup in 1998 and then to a judicial coup in 2000. And to all the more recent outrages of birtherism, government shutdowns, delayed Supreme Court confirmations and, ultimately, the rise of a would-be autocrat as a party nominee.

But political restoration was only one head of the Cerberus. The other — wounded male prerogative — was personal and sexual. . . . . Though women weren’t the source of men’s pain, the antagonist conjured up by aggrieved men I talked with in those years had a feminine face, and very often that face was Hillary’s.

A startling aspect of the rage that greeted Bill Clinton was how much of it was aimed at the women he entrusted — or tried to entrust — with power. When I was investigating one of the early skirmishes of the Clinton years, the burning of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., which right-wingers attributed to Clinton’s F.B.I., I was treated to the fervent rants of “Patriot” men, aimed not at Mr. Clinton but at what I came to think of as the Three Witches of Waco: Attorney General Janet Reno (“Reno’s master is Satan,” a Third Continental Congress militiaman told me), the gun-control advocate Sarah Brady and, most of all, Hillary Clinton.

Republican ideological absolutism, nourished by masculine insecurity, created an amalgam corrosive to pragmatic politics. For Hillary Clinton, it’s meant being demonized for traits that have little to do with her character. Not only by right-wing politicians, who found the Hillary-with-horns specter a convenient recruitment tool, but by the culture at large. Even the supposedly liberal mainstream media still seek out any bit of evidence that can be chiseled to fit that prefab 1990s narrative — and if she denies the caricature, she’s called a liar. Her famous “hiddenness” is, at heart, her refusal to cop to the crime of purloined male authority.

The G.O.P.’s gender grudge feeds on its own defeat. As the culture moves further away from the conservative ideal — as women gain freedoms, minorities assert rights, same-sex marriage proves commonplace — the monster’s howls grow louder. But the howls say nothing new.

The left needs to acknowledge what the right has long known: that it’s a fiction to think we can move on beyond the brawl of the 1990s without settling it — and settling it requires helping Mrs. Clinton triumph once and for all against the calumnies that were created to define her. It would be a mistake to think that Mrs. Clinton, the imperfect politician, is not the right standard-bearer for this fight. She was nominated to her role not last July at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, but in 1992, when her husband destroyed the myth of Republican invincibility and Hillary Clinton was anointed the feminine face of evil.

 To say that I have no pity whatsoever for these sick males and their wounded pride and feelings of inadequacies would be an understatement.  Heterosexual white male prerogative and sense of entitlement has caused so much harm to so many, including the LGBT community.  It needs to be crushed once and for all. 

Monday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

Sunday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

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James Comey Is Damaging American Democracy

Apparent Trump stooge, James Comey, and Hillary Clinton

For year now the Republicans have been damaging American democracy through efforts to disenfranchise those who do not support the Republican Party's reverse Robin Hood policies (sold to GOP supporters through appeals to racism and bigotry) and efforts to provide special religious rights to right wing Christians.  Now, through the vehicle of James Comey, they are trying to throw the presidential election to Donald Trump, a narcissistic misogynist who operates on a platform of lies and demagoguery that would have made Adolph Hitler proud. I have worked with the FBI at times over the years and acted as a legal adviser in the context of certain FBI investigations and never, ever, have I seen such actions to float damaging comments and statements about an investigation as on Friday when Comey violated long standing FBI polices  and seemingly put his own agenda first.  I cannot help but wonder what he was promised and by whom. Words do not adequately describe my disgust with the man.  He needs to immediately resign or be fired.  An op-ed in the Washington Post by two former deputy attorney generals underscore the impropriety of Comey's actions.  Here are highlights:

Decades ago, the department decided that in the 60-day period before an election, the balance should be struck against even returning indictments involving individuals running for office, as well as against the disclosure of any investigative steps. The reasoning was that, however important it might be for Justice to do its job, and however important it might be for the public to know what Justice knows, because such allegations could not be adjudicated, such actions or disclosures risked undermining the political process. A memorandum reflecting this choice has been issued every four years by multiple attorneys general for a very long time, including in 2016.

When they take their vows and assume office, senior officials in the Justice Department and the FBI become part of these traditions, with an obligation to preserve, protect and defend them. They enjoy a credibility established by generations of honorable public servants, and they owe a solemn obligation to maintain that credibility. They are not to arrogate to themselves the choices made by the Justice Department and honored over the years.

As part of that obligation, they must recognize that the department is an institution, not a person. As its temporary custodians, they must neither seek the spotlight for their own advancement nor avoid accountability for the hard decisions they inevitably face. Justice allows neither for self-aggrandizing crusaders on high horses nor for passive bureaucrats wielding rubber stamps from the shadows. It demands both humility and responsibility.

As former deputy attorneys general in the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, we are troubled by the apparent departure from these standards in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server. First, the FBI director, James B. Comey, put himself enthusiastically forward as the arbiter of not only whether to prosecute a criminal case — which is not the job of the FBI — but also best practices in the handling of email and other matters. Now, he has chosen personally to restrike the balance between transparency and fairness, departing from the department’s traditions. As former deputy attorney general George Terwilliger aptly put it, “There’s a difference between being independent and flying solo.”

Comey now finds himself wanting to update the public and Congress on each new development in the investigation, even before he and others have had a chance to assess its significance. He may well have been criticized after the fact had he not advised Congress of the investigative steps that he was taking. But it was his job — consistent with the best traditions of the Department of Justice — to make the right decision and take that criticism if it came. Department officials owe the public an explanation of how events have unfolded the way they have. There must be some recognition that it is important not to allow an investigation to become hijacked by the red-hot passions of a political contest.

[W]e now have real-time, raw-take transparency taken to its illogical limit, a kind of reality TV of federal criminal investigation. Perhaps worst of all, it is happening on the eve of a presidential election. It is antithetical to the interests of justice, putting a thumb on the scale of this election and damaging our democracy.

Fire Comey now!!