Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

Why the "Tea Party"?

In light of the preceding post, when I saw this image it was just too good to pass up.  Enjoy!

The Right-Wing Backlash Against John Roberts

Brooks Kraft / Corbis

I've never been a fan of Chief Justice John Roberts and was not happy when he was confirmed by the Senate.  Anyone nominated by Chimperator George Bush was suspect in my eyes.  But now, I find myself feeling almost sorry for the man as the lunatics of the far right continue to be apoplectic over his action in upholding what the right derisively calls "Obamacare."  You would think that overnight Roberts had become a child molester or that he'd raped a nun on the altar of St. Peter's basilica.   The flying spittle and conniption fits seem to know few limits.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at how Roberts went from being a hero to the Kool-Aid drinkers to a object of scorn and derision.  I especially like the comment on Virginia's nasty piece of work that goes by the name Eric Cantor.  Here are highlights:

The reaction to Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion on health-care reform suggests that the GOP is morphing into the Monster Raving Loony Party—which actually exists in Britain but has never won a seat in Parliament. It also provides more evidence for the delusional conviction of today’s Republicans that they are ordained to rule—and if they don’t, it’s because of conspiracy, betrayal, and the sinister subversion of what they see as American ideals and the ideal America.

The editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, which channels a combination of its owner, Rupert Murdoch, and its ideological heroes, from Friedrich Hayek to Robert Bork, said Roberts had been “intimidated” by “the political class and legal left” and “swayed from [his] constitutional duties.” The chief justice was criticized for caring about the perceived legitimacy of the Supreme Court, which presumably is and should be one of his most important responsibilities.

The columnist Charles Krauthammer had already accused President Obama of “bully[ing]” the court after the administration had “lost” the oral arguments on the Affordable Care Act. It was a preemptive critique that ultimately proved to be remarkably unprescient.

This kind of whining was at the milder end of the loony spectrum. Right-wing radio talker Michael Savage claimed that Roberts’s epilepsy medicine had triggered “cognitive dissociation in what he is saying.” Glenn Beck called the chief justice a coward. There were calls for his impeachment.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor denounced the “black robes” for what they had just done to America. One is tempted to respond: better that than the white robes who once gathered at night in Cantor’s Virginia.

Mitt Romney, who apparently learned constitutional law at the Harvard Business School, or studied it in-between job destruction and offshoring deals, confidently proclaimed that health-care reform should have been thrown out: “I disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision.”

Hell hath no fury like a Tea Party GOP steamed that a majority of the Supreme Court refused to drink the right-wing Kool-Aid. Isn’t it conceivable that the Republicans lost the case on the merits, just as they lost fair and square in Congress on the stimulus, financial reform, and the health-care law itself? That view is essential to a functioning democracy, but alien to an opposition now loyal only to its own self-righteous dogmatism. 

The right appears ready to shred any institution and promote any myth to assure its success or explain its failures. But the conspiracy theory that the chief justice changed or “capitulated,” as The Wall Street Journal alleged, is confounded by the reality, too little noticed at the time, that he previewed the guiding principle of his decision during the oral arguments in March. 

As the right wing backlash raged, Roberts, who was preparing to leave for a meeting in Malta, joked to a conference of judges and lawyers that he was headed for “an impregnable island fortress. It seemed like a good idea.” The rest of America is left to contend with a Republican Party whose attitude seems to be “my way or it was highway robbery,” a party that sees intrigue in every issue and a plot in every Obama policy, or even in his mere presence in the White House.

But the beast must be fed; Republican politicians have to satisfy a base that instinctively, bitterly, rejects anything and everything that comes from Obama as fundamentally un-American. Many in that base just can’t abide an African-American in the White House.

The resulting backlash to this, the grievance and paranoia, have been harnessed to the self-interest of plutocrats like the Koch brothers, the supermen of the super PACs. They don’t share or care about the Snopesian reflex against diversity and equality, except as it suits their own ends. They play on it to trick people into voting against themselves, against their own economic prospects, in order to restore the era of the robber barons.

There's more on the psychotic nature of the GOP base which is worth a read.  One truly cannot be a Republican nowadays unless one is either mentally ill or consumed by greed and a desire to rob from the poor to give to the wealthy.  It's an upside down world view that is very scary.

Do Gay Celebrities Have an Obligation to Come Out?

In the wake of Anderson Cooper's decision to belatedly "come out" yesterday, the debate has been ratcheted up on whether or not gay celebrities have an obligation to come out.  One view sees celebrity and the access to the media that it provides as putting pressure on closeted individuals to come out and shatter the stereotypes and stigma.  Others view the issue of coming out as a personal choice.  I guess I fall some where in the middle - unless the closeted celebrity or politician is engaged in anti-gay activity, in which case then my view is "out the bastard."  Our former Congressman in this area Ed Schrock who I helped expose was a case in point: second most anti-gay voting record in Congress even as he solicited gay sex trysts.  The New York Times as a dialogue on the issue.  First, the view that gay celebrities need to come out:   

Not all gay people in the media feel as radical as I do about why it’s important for gay celebrities to come out of the closet. But having been a teenager in the 1980s, I remember when there were no — as in zero — out role models for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender kids to emulate. Instead, we survived on rumors of Sapphic superstar love triangles and A-list leading men who joined cults that helped keep their gay secrets. Gossip has its own power, not to mention pleasure, but let’s face it: The world is a better place when people aren’t lying. 

So much has changed since that time, and there is now a platter of options for celebrities who want to come out. There’s the People magazine route (splashy, safe, widely-circulated); there’s the recent Matt Bomer path, when he casually, yet seismically, thanked his longtime male partner during a speech (see also: Jodie Foster); and there’s a new road that I really like, which is the Zachary Quinto/Jim Parsons method, in which an actor simply identifies himself as gay as part of a bigger story in a highbrow news outlet.

Cooper has struck me in recent years as an example of a closeted famous person who didn’t mean for his secret to become such a big deal, and found himself stuck. But I think he’ll find that it’s easy to go from being a part of the toxic problem of homophobic self-hatred to a hero. And who wouldn’t want that? 

But as I said, not everyone shares this view and I know people locally who continue to live a lie in the public life while having either enduring relationships or a string of conquests.  Their very behavior suggests that being gay is still something that is shameful.  Here's a countering view from the Times:

If we suggested that gay celebrities have a moral obligation to come out, then any celebrity would have the same responsibility to acknowledge any hidden situation whose disclosure could theoretically help society. The heartbreak of psoriasis? Do a public service announcement. A victim of sexual abuse? You need to go talk about it on “The View.” Going bankrupt? Get ahead of this story and help other Americans in similar situations.

Obviously this is a ridiculous standard. We’re talking about people’s romantic lives, which are, by definition, notoriously confusing and fickle.

I’ve always said there are four kinds of gays in Hollywood. There's the openly gay; the gay and everybody knows it but nobody talks about it; the married, closeted gay who doesn't talk about it; and the screaming “I’ll sue you if you say I'm gay” person. In other words, the no closet, the glass closet, the cast iron closet and the closet you get buried in.

Of course, it’s 2012. Celebrities and the rest of us have less privacy than ever before. But you still get to choose how openly you want to live your life — or at least you can try until blogs and tabloids out you. 

That being said, surely every celebrity who has ever come out is happier and freer of fear, helps other people, furthers the cause of gay civil rights, and lives a more open and authentic life. So if someone wants to stay in the closet, they’re not being immoral — just silly.

With the suicides of gay teens far too prevalent, the more celebrities who come out and provide a glimmer of hope to LGBT youth the better.   Remaining in the closet sends a potentially dangerous message to or youth and underscores the hate and bigotry preached weekly in far too many church pulpits.  To me making a difference and making life better for those who come after us should be a top aspiration in life.  Staying in the closet doesn't accomplish that goal.

More Monday Male Beauty

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The Australian men's Olympic Swim Team

Did the Vatican Launder Money With the Mafia?

Anyone even half conscious and in touch with reality ought to recognize the sad truth that the Vatican and the Catholic Church hierarchy engaged in a global criminal conspiracy to cover up the sexual abuse of children and minors and to protect the predators in the ranks of the clergy who raped and molested their under age victims.  But it seems the same circles of falsely pious conspirators - or at least those at the Vatican itself - may have also participated in money laundering schemes with the Mafia.  Am I at all surprised?  Not in the least.  The Church hierarchy consistently views itself as above the laws - both civil and criminal laws.  Here are highlights (sorry for the length of the quotes) from Spiegel Online:

The Vatican scandal over shady bank accounts and millions in suspect transfers began shortly before sunrise on June 5 on Via Giuseppe Verdi, a picturesque street in the old part of Piacenza, a town in northeastern Italy. An elderly gentleman in a tailor-made suit had just left his house with a leather briefcase dangling from his right hand. He was on his way to his car.

It was to be an important day for Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who had recently been fired as the head of the Vatican bank -- even if it turned out differently than he'd expected. Tedeschi was planning to go to the Vatican on that morning, but he never got there. 

Instead, Gotti Tedeschi found four men waiting for him in the street -- not a hit squad as he feared at first, but investigators with the Carabinieri, Italy's national military police force.   .   .   .    For several hours, they searched through his sparsely furnished, cloister-like home office. At the same time, other officers were searching through Gotti Tedeschi's office in Milan. Among the objects they confiscated were two computers, two cabinets' full of binders, a planner and his briefcase.

The investigators were pleased  .   .   .   .   they stumbled upon something else in there search which proved to be spectacular.  The documents confiscated from Gotti Tadeschi, a former confidant of the pope,    .   .   .   .   includes references to anonymous numbered accounts and questionable transactions as well as written and electronic communications reportedly showing how Church banking officials circumvented European regulations aimed at combating money-laundering.

Gotti Tedeschi upset powerful forces within the Roman Curia, the Vatican's administrative and judicial apparatus. Several high-ranking officials within the Curia viewed the bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), as something akin to a trust company for clandestine monetary transactions that is not only used by the Church, but allegedly also by the mafia as well as corrupt politicians and companies. In one of the seized Gotti Tedeschi memos, he wrote: "I've seen things in the Vatican that scare me."

The next act in the drama is set for Wednesday. Money-laundering experts from the Council of Europe will present a preliminary report on the Vatican in Strasbourg. It currently looks as though they will indicate serious misgivings about whether the IOR has taking sufficient precautions against money-laundering.

The Vatican leadership is alarmed. Archbishops and cardinals are far from thrilled that Italian officials are now rummaging around in their secret affairs. Papal spokesman Federico Lombardi has openly threatened Italy's law-enforcement apparatus and urged it to kindly respect "the sovereign rights of the Holy See." 

For more than 40 years, the IOR, founded in 1942, has been regularly embroiled in scandals, including bribery money for political parties, mafia money-laundering and, repeatedly, anonymous accounts.   Many who have become ensnarled in illegal business dealings with the Vatican bank have been forced to pay with their lives, while others have spent years behind bars. Despite all of its sacred and solemn promises, the Vatican has succeeded in keeping the pope's bank a haven for money-launderers.

The direct beneficiary [of IOR] is the pope and his Church; 2010 earnings from the bank were €55 million. Such revenues help make up for a decline in donations from members of his global congregation.

Whereas Benedict XVI and his predecessors have preached humility and ethical financial dealings from the window overlooking St. Peter's Square, his confidants working directly beneath the papal windows have continued to pursue shady financial transactions.

Such things could include a complex system of ghost accounts and shell companies like the bank had when Archbishop Paul Casimir Marcinkus was its head in the 1980s. At the time, the bank did business involving foreign currency and weapons with the Milanese banker Robert Calvi and the mafia financier Michele Sidona -- and helped launder illegal proceeds the mafia earned from drug-trafficking as well as bribes paid to Christian-conservative Italian politicians.

In the end, Calvi was found dangling beneath London's Blackfriars Bridge and his private secretary fell to her death from the window of his Banco Ambrosiano. Four years later, in 1986, Sidona would die in prison after drinking a morning espresso laced with cyanide. 

The article continues with more details.  All of the details again raise this question: how does anyone with moral decency remain a Roman Catholic?  The criminality - - and moral bankruptcy - of the Church leadership is simply mind numbing.

Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer Each Donate $100,000 for Marriage Equality

The Bible beaters and the One Million Bitches definitely need to expand their boycott of gay friendly corporations.  The question is, whether there be anything left that they can purchase.  JC Penney, Sears, Ford, Walgreens, Starbucks and a host off other companies are supportive of gay rights and marriage equality.  Over the weekend, I even received a brochure from the Danbury Mint for gay marriage Christmas ornaments.  Now, Bill Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer have each contributed $100,00 to help defeat Referendum 74, which seeks to overturn the law allowing same-sex marriage in Washington state that was enacted earlier this year.  One has to wonder how these boycotting bigots will even be able to e-mail their threats and protests if they avoid all Microsoft products.  Here are highlights from the Seattle Times:  

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer are each donating $100,000 to support the campaign to uphold Washington state's new gay marriage law, according to The Associated Press.

That law, which was passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Chris Gregoire in February, faces a referendum vote in November.

The AP cites Zach Silk, campaign manager for Washington United for Marriage, who says the checks were cut on Friday and are being reported to the state Public Disclosure Commission Monday afternoon.

Microsoft has been supportive of gay marriage, signing on to a letter in January with other prominent local companies urging the Legislature to pass the gay-marriage bill. In November, it had joined with about 70 major companies nationwide in a friend-of-the-court brief in support of a challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

And with Apple also being supportive of marriage equality, the bigots don't even have the alternative of using their Macs to spread their hate and bigotry.   If the anti-gay forces want to inflict Bronze Age writings and myths on all of society, it is perhaps appropriate that they be forced to use Bronze Age technology.

Romney Invested in Firm That Disposed of Aborted Fetuses

Romney is doing his best to claim that he's the presidential candidate who knows how to create jobs - including jobs that involve disposing of aborted fetuses.  Or so reports Mother Jones based on government documents (the documents also indicate that Romney left Bain Capital far latter than he has claimed).  One can only wonder how this news will play out among the Kool-Aid drinking Christianist element of the GOP base.  Personally, the more I read about Romney, I suspect that he'd invest in a whore house if he thought it would make him a buck.  Yes, he might use a front entity to do so, but one need only follow the money to its source.  Likewise, Romney will fire any number of individuals regardless of the consequences to the families of those suddenly finding themselves unemployed.  I hate to say it, but the man is a money grubbing liar.  Here are highlights:

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics.  .  .  . But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal.

But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney's exit from Bain.

The Stericycle deal—the abortion connection aside—is relevant because of questions regarding the timing of Romney's departure from the private equity firm he founded. Responding to a recent Washington Post story reporting that Bain-acquired companies outsourced jobs, the Romney campaign insisted that Romney exited Bain in February 1999, a month or more before Bain took over two of the companies named in the Post's article. The SEC documents undercut that defense, indicating that Romney still played a role in Bain investments until at least the end of 1999.

The SEC filing lists assorted Bain-related entities that were part of the deal, including Bain Capital (BCI), Bain Capital Partners VI (BCP VI), Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors (a Bermuda-based Bain affiliate), and Brookside Capital Investors (a Bain offshoot). And it notes that Romney was the "sole shareholder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of BCI, BCP VI Inc., Brookside Inc. and Sankaty Ltd."

Another SEC document filed November 30, 1999, by Stericycle also names Romney as an individual who holds "voting and dispositive power" with respect to the stock owned by Bain. If Romney had fully retired from the private equity firm he founded, why would he be the only Bain executive named as the person in control of this large amount of Stericycle stock?

It was not until six years later that anti-abortion activists would target Stericycle for collecting medical waste at abortion clinics. This campaign has compared Stericycle to German firms that provided assistance to the Nazis during the Holocaust.

All of this undermines Bain's contention that Romney, though he maintained an ownership interest in the firm and its funds, had nothing to do with the firm's activities after February 1999. The Stericycle deal may raise red flags for anti-abortion activists. But it also raises questions about the true timing of Romney's departure from Bain and casts doubt on claims by the company and the Romney campaign that he had nothing to do with Bain business after February 1999.

Anderson Cooper: "The Fact Is, I'm Gay"

Today's crazy schedule at the office followed by a Hampton Roads Pride board of directors meeting did not allow me to comment until now on the official coming out of Anderson Cooper which was done via an e-mail to Andrew Sullivan that was published with Cooper's permission. Many have already said their two cents - and not all of it kind - about what many in the LGBT community considered an open secret.  But I believe Cooper deserves credit for finally taking the plunge.  In his e-mail to Andrew he explained why he had been in the closet so long and also why he finally felt he could not do t any more.  To me, here's the million dollar portion of his statement:

[W]hile as a society we are moving toward greater inclusion and equality for all people, the tide of history only advances when people make themselves fully visible. There continue to be far too many incidences of bullying of young people, as well as discrimination and violence against people of all ages, based on their sexual orientation, and I believe there is value in making clear where I stand.

The fact is, I'm gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud.

I have always been very open and honest about this part of my life with my friends, my family, and my colleagues. In a perfect world, I don't think it's anyone else's business, but I do think there is value in standing up and being counted.   .    .   .   .  I do think visibility is important, more important than preserving my reporter’s shield of privacy.

The hate consumed Christianists will never be converted by the coming out of celebrities like Cooper.  But the more individuals in the public eye like Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow, Ellen Degeneres, Niel Patrick Harris, etc., who live their lives openly, the more the anti-gay stereotypes and lies disseminated by our enemies will be rejected by the majority of society.  

It's also important to realize that each one of us - even if we lack a public platform such as the above cited individuals - can play our own part in being visible and forcing people to open their minds and ultimately their hearts to our community.  Yes, it is terrifying at times, but not hiding in fear and being open about who you are does make a difference.  Anderson Cooper got that message and took it to heart.

Yet More Evidence That Rush Limbaugh's an Idiot

I put up a post the other day about the cretins of the far right who have said that they were considering moving to Canada to escape Obamacare, etc.  Never mind that Canada has a national health insurance plan and other laws far more liberal than in the USA.  Now, Rush Limbaugh has provided evidence that he's at least as stupid as his listeners: