The Trump Administration Just Shut Down a Gay Bar That Has Been Operating Since 1974

The Underground Niteclub, a Buffalo, New York gay bar in operation since 1974, has been forced to close by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development over a noise complaint.

Buffalo News reports:

The decision not to renew the bar’s lease followed multiple noise complaints from tenants of the Touraine Apartments at 274 Delaware Ave., a HUD official said. The bar has operated as the Underground or Buffalo Underground on the ground floor of the federally subsidized apartment building since the early 1990s.

Before that, it operated as a gay bar under the name of the Hibachi Room in the 1970s and Me and My Arrow in the early 1980s.

HUD gave a statement to Buffalo News: “While HUD recognizes the community sentiment surrounding the closure of The Underground, the Department’s primary duty is to provide safe and decent housing for low-income seniors.”

HUD cited multiple complaints from residents, like this one:

One resident, a HUD report stated, “began by stating that he has nothing against gay people and that XXX has a relative that is gay.” That resident went on to say “he believes drug dealings are going on at the bar, that Underground Niteclub patrons are rude to the residents, they sit on the steps of Touraine Apartments loitering.”

The paper adds:

The bar’s former co-owner Andy Munroe, who sold the bar to Tiede in 2013, called the decision by HUD “ridiculous.”

“The Underground has generated a lot of money for charities, done a lot of good work, including fundraisers for Children’s Hospital,” Munroe said. “A lot of good has come out of that place, and for HUD to close it down is just unthinkable.”

Read the full report HERE.

The post The Trump Administration Just Shut Down a Gay Bar That Has Been Operating Since 1974 appeared first on Towleroad.

The Trump Administration Just Shut Down a Gay Bar That Has Been Operating Since 1974

The Connection Between Strong Economies and LGBT Rights Is No Joke

Greater equality translates to economic vibrancy, and economic vibrancy leads to more equality, according to convincing new studies.

www.advocate.com/commentary/2018/4/27/connection-between-strong-economies-and-lgbt-rights-no-joke

Cybersecurity Expert’s Stumble on Hacking Claims, and More Unsavory Posts Present Challenge for Joy Reid

Late on Thursday, The Washington Free Beacon‘s Alex Griswold uncovered yet another set of blog posts by MSNBC host Joy Reid from 2006.

Reid claimed earlier posts that appeared to be from her blog were hacked and the posts fabricated. The new posts were allegedly discovered on the Wayback Machine, a project of the Internet Archive and posted to social media last week by the same Twitter user who published posts by Reid last year.

Mediaite reports:

These posts, from 2006, feature gay jokes about, among others, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and then yet-to-be-confirmed Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

“Oh, look, Orrin Hatch is putting on his Supreme Court knee pads to save Alito,” the author wrote during Alito’s Senate hearing. “‘Golly, you’re really a swell guy. Can I be on top next time…?’ Jeez…”

A half hour later, the author wrote: “Would somebody please get Orrin Hatch some mouthwash and a $20 bill…? He’s got to be exhausted.”

…Other blog posts unearthed by Griswold tout offensive stereotypes of Muslims, claim that Islam is inherently unable to coexist with Western democratic values, and link to the Gateway Pundit, a far-right conspiracy website.

The Daily Beast reported late on Thursday that claims by Reid’s cybersecurity expert are not holding up:

…that consultant, Jonathan Nichols, had trouble producing the promised evidence. And what he did produce failed to withstand scrutiny, according to a Daily Beast analysis. Blog posts that Nichols claimed do not appear on the Internet Archive are, in fact, there. The indicators of hacked posts don’t bear out.

The Daily Beast says that when asked to produce evidence of fraudulent posts and evidence of screenshot manipulation, Nichols pointed to several images:

Nichols said those six posts are nowhere to be found in the Internet Archive. But that is not true.

Further searching on the Internet Archive turned up the posts for all six of the screenshots Nichols described as fakes, including the one about Eddie Murphy. The Internet Archive’s records indicate they were retrieved and stored between 2006 and 2009. And all six are exactly as they appear in the screenshots. A random check of other screenshots attributed to the blog produced the same result: None of the images are faked or doctored.

Nichols then acknowledged issues in the methodology of his verification to TDB. Nichols was also unable to provide, when asked, evidence of forensic clues which probe that Reid did not pen the entries, and provided two small examples of inconclusive evidence regarding timestamps on the posts, arguing that Reid could not have written the posts because she was on her show at the time.

Adds TDB:

Today Nichols says Reid and her team no longer believe the archive was hacked, and the Internet Archive has denied any such manipulation could have occurred. “We found nothing to indicate tampering or hacking of the Wayback Machine versions,” an archiver for the site said in a statement.

That means the supposed hacker was posting alongside Reid for years. According to Reichmann, that even included inserting updates in Reid’s live blog of the Alito hearing in January 2006. Reichmann claimed that the hacker was responsible for two consecutive updates sandwiched between Reid’s legitimate ones. The updates report that Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch was using his questioning time to metaphorically fellate the judge. “Oh, look, Orrin Hatch is putting on his Supreme Court knee pads to save Alito,” one line read. The post’s title, which Reichmann says the hacker changed, was “Brokeback Committee Room,” another reference to the film about gay lovers. All the contested material in the post is present in the earliest archived copy, which was captured the day after the hearing.

All of this alleged hacking apparently went unnoticed at the time by Reid.

Mediaite also reported that internet archive records reveal that Nichols bragged about affiliations with neo-Nazis.

Yesterday, TDB said it had “hit pause” on Reid’s columns, and the FBI was reportedly brought in to investigate.

The post Cybersecurity Expert’s Stumble on Hacking Claims, and More Unsavory Posts Present Challenge for Joy Reid appeared first on Towleroad.

Cybersecurity Expert’s Stumble on Hacking Claims, and More Unsavory Posts Present Challenge for Joy Reid