Fact-Checking Site Blames New York Mag for Outing Trump Appointee's Brother
Snopes says it’s “unproven” that K.T. McFarland outed her gay brother, as she has been accused of doing.
www.advocate.com/politics/2016/11/30/snopes-claims-it-was-ny-mag-who-outed-mcfarlands-brother
Pat McCrory, Lady Gaga, Sarah Palin, Nancy Pelosi, Burly Bakers, Moon Truthers: HOT LINKS
NORTH CAROLINA. Governor Pat McCrory’s days could be numbered: “The margin between Governor Pat McCrory and his Democratic opponent, Roy Cooper, just broke the 10,000 vote mark, leaving McCrory with no current right to demand a recount.”
HOT AIR. Don’t believe everything you read about Donald Trump and Carrier Air Conditioning: “Be wary of this news and how it’s being reported…We don’t know what the deal is or how it was struck. We don’t even know if it’s actually a good or wise deal. Also worth noting that Pence is still Indiana governor for the moment. The tax break may be state, not federal. And Pence the one orchestrating this whole thing.”
NEW ARRIVALS. Bradley Cooper is going to be a daddy–as in, he’s having a baby (with model Irina Shayk).
LET YOUR WHOLE BODY TALK. Lady Gaga works the runway at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.
CABINET OF DEPLORABLES. Sarah Palin might be Donald Trump’s Secretary of the VA: “The Palin aide said that Palin recently told Trump transition officials, “I feel as though the megaphone I have been provided can be used in a productive and positive way to help those desperately in need.” The Department of Veterans Affairs is the largest government agency, with over 300,000 federal employees and a budget of $182 billion for 2017.”
Nothing would say “supporting veterans” like appointing a lazy dilettante to oversee their health care. t.co/eZxi8yeohB
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) November 30, 2016
DEMS. Nancy Pelosi re-elected as House Minority Leader after challenge from Rep. Tim Ryan (Ohio): “But Pelosi’s margin of victory, 134 votes to 63 for Ryan, signaled a large degree of discontent with her continued leadership after 14 years atop the caucus and, more broadly, with the Democratic policy agenda that many lawmakers feel has grown stale. While she cleared her self-declared margin of victory, a two-thirds majority, many Democrats were stunned that almost a third of the caucus was willing to vote for a back-bench lawmaker with no major policy or political experience.”
ON DRESSING MELANIA. Tom Ford says no thanks: “I was asked dress her years ago, and I declined.”
SWEET TOOTH. The Burly Bakers 2017 calendar is actually a thing you might need.
CONSPIRACY THEORIES. Finally, moon-truthing will come to an end: “A German Lunar X-Prize team has announced its intentions to send two mobile probes to the Moon to inspect the lunar rover left behind by the Apollo 17 mission…The group, known as PT Scientists, is one of 16 teams currently vying for the $30 million Google Lunar X-Prize, a competition requiring a private group to land an autonomous vehicle on the Moon, travel more than 500 meters (1,640 feet), and transmit high-definition photographs back to Earth.”
RIGGED. Trump campaign worker found guilty of voter fraud he committed back in 2012: “It took less than an hour Wednesday for a jury to convict political activist Brandon Michael Hall on 10 counts of election law fraud, following a day-and-a-half trial in Ottawa County Circuit Court. The 27-year-old Grand Haven resident, author of the West Michigan Politics blog and self-admitted political junkie, said the verdict wasn’t a surprise. Hall said that he had resigned himself to that possibility after the Michigan Supreme Court, during this past summer, determined his case should be tried as a felony.”
HUMP DAY HOTTIE. brandonwickens.
The post Pat McCrory, Lady Gaga, Sarah Palin, Nancy Pelosi, Burly Bakers, Moon Truthers: HOT LINKS appeared first on Towleroad.
Pat McCrory, Lady Gaga, Sarah Palin, Nancy Pelosi, Burly Bakers, Moon Truthers: HOT LINKS
Trump’s Possible Homeland Security Pick Called Orlando Massacre a ‘Distraction’, Transgender People ‘Freakish’ – VIDEOS
And the deplorables continue to multiply.
Sheriff David Clarke, one of Donald Trump’s short list contenders for Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, called the Pulse nightclub massacre a distraction that Democrats used so they could focus on gun control and away from personal attacks on Hillary Clinton.
The Sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin made those remarks on his radio show earlier this year.
As Pink News notes, Clarke said,
“Folks, we took the cheese. It refers to a mouse trap, with a nice big chunk of cheese on it. You know what’s going to happen if that mouse touches the cheese.
“That’s precisely what we did following the Orlando terror massacre. We allowed the left to use gun control as a shiny object to distract us from Mrs Bill Clinton’s flaws.
“We were hammering her over Benghazi, and what the left do is exploit these distractions, something came up, a shiny object… they know they can bury us in this thing that isn’t going to change anything.
“Don’t take the cheese! We spent a whole week taking about what they wanted us to talk about… it got us off of the momentum about the Clinton e-mail scandal.”
Clarke added: “We could have talked about a lot of things around Orlando, the failure of Barack Obama… we missed that opportunity. When the Democrats throw a shiny object out there, we need to take that and turn it into tying it around the neck of Mrs Bill Clinton.”
Clarke has also called transgender people “freakish.”
On the June 25th episode of his podcast, “The People’s Sheriff,” Clarke claimed that transgender Americans have mental disorders and painted them as one of several groups who live a “freakish lifestyle.”
The sheriff cited Walt Heyer, a former transgender author who has called for parents of transgender Americans to be jailed.
“Folks, more evidence that transgender persons suffer from mental disorders more than physiological disorders,” Clarke said, introducing a segment on his show dedicated to Heyer’s columns.
Clarke added,
“Too often in this assault on the First Amendment, and this very totalitarian attitude from the left that any freakish lifestyle, any marginal lifestyle, is now considered part of the norm, and they’re shoving it down our throats. So if you’re not careful when you engage in this conversation, they’ll look for the trap, and they’ll catch you saying something that’s clumsy or not well articulated, and then they’ll just attack you — they’ll attack you with it. ‘Transgender phobic’ and all this other nonsense.”
Watch Lawrence O’Donnell and Roland Martin discuss the potential of Clarke becoming the next head of Homeland Security, below.
You can also watch Clarke’s speech from the RNC this year, below.
The post Trump’s Possible Homeland Security Pick Called Orlando Massacre a ‘Distraction’, Transgender People ‘Freakish’ – VIDEOS appeared first on Towleroad.
German Spy Outed As Gay-For-Pay Adult Film Star And Secret Islamist
Get ready for some legit 007 realness.
A German spy was just busted for allegedly trying to help Islamic militants plan a terrorist attack on the country’s intelligence agency. But not just that, the guy used to be a gay adult film actor who secretly converted to Islam about two years ago. And not just that, but he’s also married to a woman and has four kids.
Related: High-Ranking British Spy Outed By Wife For Having Sexual Affairs With Men
The Washington Post was the first to break the news about the secret life of this 51-year-old gay-for-pay-turned-spy-turned-terrorist. According to the Post, the man, whose name has not been released, was first spotted by German intelligence officials in a chat room for extremists about two weeks ago.
Apparently he’s not a great spy because he volunteered a lot of identifying information about himself, including that he was a German spy of Spanish descent. It didn’t take long for agents to figure out who he was and arrest him a day later on suspicion of preparing to commit a violent act and for violating secrecy laws.
Now, about his past life as a gay adult film star… Apparently the dude performed in man-on-man skin flicks up until 2011, and he used the same stage name in his films as he did in the extremist chat room.
Related: Wife Enacts Ultimate Act Of Revenge On Husband Who Slept With The Male Gardener
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic spy agency, is now facing a lot of criticism for letting this guy slip through the cracks, but officials there say they had no way of knowing.
“How should anyone have known this?” an anonymous senior official told the Post. “He had acted under different names and identities online. Not his real name. One has to say that we were able to find out about all this very quickly and also actions were taken fast.”
The official added that the man was thoroughly vetted prior to be hired last April. Still, many are now calling on the agency to conduct a comprehensive review of its vetting procedures.
The agency assures that, while the situation is definitely alarming and, yes, a little bit weird, it does not believe a serious threat was ever actually posed.
“There is no evidence to date that there is a concrete danger to the security of the BfV or its employees,” a spokesman said. “The man is accused of making Islamist statements on the internet using a false name and of revealing internal agency material in internet chat rooms.”
Related: This Sex Toy Manufacturer Is Being Sued For Spying
Queensland, Australia to Expunge Convictions for Homosexuality, Cancel ‘Gay Panic’ Defense
Lawmakers in Queensland, Australia have outlined plans for expunging historical convictions for homosexuality.
Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath (right) said that following the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1991, there have been consistent calls “for complementary law reform to ensure members of our community are not burdened by the stigma caused by such criminal convictions and charges.”
D’Ath has also introduced measures to amend a section of the Criminal Code to exclude the “gay panic” defense.
Today I have introduced a new bill to stop unwanted sexual advance being used as a partial defence for murder t.co/TrB7njV2sS
— Yvette D’Ath (@YvetteDAth) November 30, 2016
She added that a report commissioned (Expunging criminal convictions for historical gay sex offences) recommends the creation of a legislative framework to allow applications under an administrative scheme for expungement on a case-by-case basis:
“This is a chance for some closure for Queenslanders who continue to be hurt by the legacy of decades-old discrimination, wrongs inflicted by a past regime, from a very different Queensland from the modern state we enjoy today.
“As a parliament, we should apologise to those Queenslanders for these historic wrongs and for the hurt that followed them in the decades since.”
The Brisbane Times reports that all applications would be decided by the director-general based on available records and certain criteria. Convictions would not be expunged if the conduct would be criminal under the current law.
Welcoming the move, James Farrell, director of Community Legal Centres Queensland, said “although decriminalization removed the threat of prosecution for men who had sex with men, it did not address the impacts of criminal records relating to historical offences.”
The legislation is expected to be introduced to parliament in the first half of 2017.
(Image via Twitter)
The post Queensland, Australia to Expunge Convictions for Homosexuality, Cancel ‘Gay Panic’ Defense appeared first on Towleroad.
Queensland, Australia to Expunge Convictions for Homosexuality, Cancel ‘Gay Panic’ Defense
Ellen's Oscar Selfie Named to Time's List of 100 Most Influential Photos
And she just got the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
www.advocate.com/comedy/2016/11/30/ellens-oscar-selfie-named-times-list-100-most-influential-photos
Donald’s Transition Team Is Utterly Dedicated To Antigay Pseudoscience
More good news from the country’s incoming clown car: Donald’s transition team has almost no relationship with science, and leans heavily on crazy fake studies to justify their anti-gay bigotry. So, this should be a fun four years.
For example, they’ve got Ken Blackwell advising the transition team on domestic policy — he’s a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, an organization notorious for making up facts and publishing junk science. There’s also Key Cole James, who is in charge of the team’s budget — they’re a former vice president of the FRC. Betsy DeVos (education) and Ken Klukowski (constitutional rights) have also been tied up with the FRC.
Various other figures have spoken at FRC events, including Reince Preibus and Mike Pompeo. And let’s not forget Mike Pence, who used his power in congress to encourage the jailing and execution of queers in other countries.
And what’s so bad about the FRC, you might ask? Well, for years now, they’ve been manipulating phony studies and fabricating results to make it look like gays die young and molest kids. Among their tactics is citing groups like The American College of Pediatricians, which sounds legitimate but is actually just a little club started by a couple of friends so that they could spout artificial data while sounding like actual researchers.
So now these people are going to be crawling all over the White House, inserting their phony facts into actual government policy.
Deep breaths, everyone; deep breaths.
Log Cabin Republicans Was a Question on ‘Jeopardy!’, and It Left One Contestant Baffled – WATCH
On Tuesday night, a contestant on Jeopardy! came up short when called upon to name a gay GOP group that supports same-sex marriage.
After picking from the category “Leaning Conservative” contestant Dan hit a Daily Double that featured a video from Republican political pundit S.E. Cupp.
The answer which Dan had to guess the question to was, “Although I’m politically conservative, I support same-sex marriage as part of a group of Republicans dating back from 1977 and named for this structure.”
Dan’s reaction (above) said it all.
As for his guess? “The Big House Republicans?”
Watch, below.
WATCH: Log Cabin Republicans was a clue on @Jeopardy tonight from our longtime ally @secupp — thank you to all our fans! pic.twitter.com/KN4DIK5tXY
— LogCabinRepublicans (@LogCabinGOP) November 30, 2016
Cupp said appearing in the video was a “proud moment” for her.
Proud moment! t.co/ey9peIGvlL
— S.E. Cupp (@secupp) November 30, 2016
[h/t LGBTQ Nation]
The post Log Cabin Republicans Was a Question on ‘Jeopardy!’, and It Left One Contestant Baffled – WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.
Log Cabin Republicans Was a Question on ‘Jeopardy!’, and It Left One Contestant Baffled – WATCH
The Smiths To Release New 7″ Single With Two Unreleased Songs
“Reissue, repackage, repackage!” Morrissey famously crooned on 1987’s “Paint A Vulgar Picture,” and those words have become entirely prescient as the last two decades have seen The Smiths’ catalog endlessly repurposed for a variety of singles compilations and greatest hits packages.
But here’s something rabid Smiths fans can truly, truly get excited about: Warner Music U.K. will be issuing an as-yet-unheard “demo mix” of “The Boy With The Thorn in His Side” from 1985’s essential The Queen Is Dead.
Related: Morrissey Says The World Doesn’t Want To Look At Trump’s Face, He Can’t Represent America
As Billboard reports, the B-side is an “unissued cut” of “Rubber Ring,” in which Morrissey intones that “the most impassionate song to a lonely soul is so easily outgrown.”
Let’s hope sales prove this sentiment wrong.
Morrissey handpicked the new cover art, which features Albert Finney. A release date has yet to be set.
So is there any possibility of a Smiths reunion in this or any other alien dimension? Perhaps.
Related: Morrissey Denies That He’s Gay, Claims He’s A “Humasexual”
As Johnny Marr writes in his new memoir Set The Boys Free, the band almost decided to get back together in the recent past.
“For four days re-forming the Smiths was a very real prospect,” he writes.
Amendment Gutting Obama’s LGBT Executive Order Removed from Defense Bill
Lawmakers in Congress have removed an amendment attached to a defense spending authorization bill that would have gutted an executive order issued by President Obama to protect LGBT workers.
That amendment, known as the Russell Amendment, would have enabled enabled religious “corporations” that contract with the federal government to discriminate against employees on the basis of sexual orientation/gender identity.
It also would have directly contradicted President Obama’s 2014 executive order barring federal contractors from engaging in anti-LGBT discrimination in the workplace.
The White House blasted the anti-LGBT amendment as “ridiculous” back in October.
During a background briefing with reporters on Tuesday, an aide said the final version of the fiscal year 2017 defense authorization bill hammered out by House and Senate lawmakers in conference committee lacks the language Rep. Steve Russell (R-Okla.) inserted in the House version of the bill.
“The Russell amendment was in response to the executive orders,” the aide said. “The NDAA was always an imperfect remedy for that problem. Subsequent to the election, new paths have opened up to address those issues. It’s still a very important issue for members and they intend to pursue those other paths.”
The post Amendment Gutting Obama’s LGBT Executive Order Removed from Defense Bill appeared first on Towleroad.
Amendment Gutting Obama’s LGBT Executive Order Removed from Defense Bill
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