Author: Randy Slovacek

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Failed GOP Candidate George Santos: Fiancé Was Fired For Attending Trump NYE Soiree

George Santos and his fiancé at Mar-a-Lago

George Santos and his fiancé at Mar-a-Lago
George Santos and his fiancé at Mar-a-Lago
George Santos, a failed gay GOP congressional candidate who lost his New York state race in November, says that his fiancé, a pharmacist, lost his job after the couple attended Donald Trump’s $1,000-per-head COVID-unsafe New Year’s Eve bash at Mar-a-Lago. Santos shared pics of himself and his fiancé at the soiree on his social media accounts but somehow blames the New York Times for the firing of his fiancé because the newspaper included a link to his Instagram posts from the party. Related: George Santos Was Married To A Woman While Living With Boyfriend? The Times had written the piece in regard to the flouting of Palm Beach County health guidelines during the pandemic. In the photos, Santos and his boo can be seen in formal attire and meeting folks from Trump’s orbit like Rudy Giuliani. George Santos meeting Rudy Giuliani Social media post shared by George Santos In a Facebook post, he claimed that the couple was forced to “leave our home this evening with our 4 dogs” due to the Times having reported on the party. Santos claimed that his fiancé, “a pharmacist who worked 12h/7 days shifts for 9 months was fired!” after the Times article. He added, “The violence against us is real,” although what violence he had faced was not clear.
Facebook post
(via Facebook)
Twitter was neither impressed nor sympathetic to the failed GOP candidate in his plight. Perhaps if he hadn’t shared the photos in the first place, no one would have seen them…?  

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All 10 Living Defense Secretaries Warn Against Using Military In Election Disputes

Defense Department

Photo of U.S. military service member
(image: public domain/WhiteHouse/Flickr)
All 10 living former U.S. defense secretaries – Ashton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Mark Esper, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, Leon Panetta, William Perry, and Donald Rumsfeld – have penned an op-ed for the Washington Post saying involving the military in election disputes would cross into dangerous territory.

As former secretaries of defense, we hold a common view of the solemn obligations of the U.S. armed forces and the Defense Department. Each of us swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We did not swear it to an individual or a party.

American elections and the peaceful transfers of power that result are hallmarks of our democracy. With one singular and tragic exception that cost the lives of more Americans than all of our other wars combined, the United States has had an unbroken record of such transitions since 1789, including in times of partisan strife, war, epidemics and economic depression. This year should be no exception.

Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted. The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived.

Read the full op-ed at the Washington Post.

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Nurse Gets COVID, Raises $20K For Medical Bills, Then Heads Back To Parties?

Mike Schultz before and after COVID-19 in May 2020
(via Instagram)
You might remember Mike Schultz, a male nurse who got COVID last May after attending a circuit party, and shared photos of his drastic weight loss after weeks of battling the disease. At the time, Schultz told BuzzFeed News:

I knew what I thought going in [about the coronavirus]. I didn’t think it was as serious as it was until after things started happening. I thought I was young enough for it not to affect me, and I know a lot of people think that.

I wanted to show it can happen to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, have preexisting conditions or not. It can affect you.

A GoFundMe campaign was set up to assist with his medical recovery bills. The crowdfunding effort raised over $20,000 shattering the initial $15,000 goal. Mike Schultz scored over $20,000 in a GoFundMe campaign after contracting COVID-19 So, that might have been the end of the story – guy gets sick, fellow humans help him out – yay! Except it appears Schultz headed back to the party scene shortly after recovering. And he recently expressed his enthusiasm for the New Year’s events that were planned in Puerto Vallarta for the circuit gays. Mike Schultz was excited to head to Puerto Vallarta back in December Some on Twitter now say Schultz denies going to PV but it certainly got some folks riled up that a healthcare professional, who had gone through COVID-19 (and received $20K from folks via GoFundMe) would consider heading back to the circuit scene for seconds. In fact, the Instagram account GaysOverCovid, which has been highlighting irresponsible behavior by certain gays during the pandemic, has gotten under folks’ skin. This weekend some circuit gays were promoting a reward on the Facebook group CircuitBitch for anyone who could ‘out’ the person running GaysOverCovid. According to reports, though, the post has been removed at this time. Reward offered for outing GaysOverCovid Schultz apparently chimed in on the conversation saying he might have a lead on who GaysOverCovid might be. He also took his Instagram account private while adding, “Cyberbullying will not be tolerated.” Things that make you go ‘hmm…’ Schultz commented that he might have a lead as to who GaysOverCovid might be TheBearded_Nurse took his Instagram account private after being called out for heading back to the party circuit (h/t Instinct)

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Dr. Anthony Fauci On COVID-19: ‘The Deaths Are Real’

Dr. Anthony Fauci

Dr. Anthony Fauci
Dr. Anthony Fauci on ‘This Week’ (screen capture)
During an appearance on ABC News’s This Week, Dr. Anthony Fauci shared that he did not foresee how the COVID-19 pandemic death toll in the United States would spin out to such high levels. Fauci pointed to indoor activities and holiday travel for aiding transmission of the virus. He also repeated his call for Americans to take public health precautions seriously if we ever hope to slow the current surge. From ABC News:

“To have 300,000 cases in a given day, and between two and 3,000 deaths a day is just terrible,” the nation’s top infectious disease expert told ABC’s “This Week” Co-anchor Martha Raddatz Sunday. “There’s no running away from the numbers, Martha. It’s something that we absolutely got to grasp and get our arms around and turn that inflection down by very intensive adherence to the public health measures, uniformly, throughout the country, with no exception.”

“The deaths are real deaths,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, when asked by Raddatz for his response to the president’s tweet. “All you need to do is go out into the trenches. Go to the hospitals and see what the health care workers are dealing with. They are under very stressful situations in many areas of the country. The hospital beds are stretched, people are running out of beds, running out of trained personnel who are exhausted.”

“That’s real,” he continued. “That’s not fake. That’s real.”

Just prior to Fauci’s appearance, Donald Trump tweeted (with no evidence) that the numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of infected persons and deaths in the country are “exaggerated.” That’s in spite of nearly every state reporting increased coronavirus infections nationwide. According to Johns Hopkins University COVID tracker, the U.S. this weekend surpassed 20 million reported cases of COVID-19, and the number of deaths has now exceeded 351,000 since the pandemic began 10 months ago.

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Trump To Georgia Officials: ‘Find 11,780 Votes’

Donald Trump

Donald Trump
Donald Trump (screen capture)
In an extraordinary phone call between Donald Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Trump urged Raffensperger to “find 11,780” so the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia could be reversed. The hour-long phone call was obtained by the Washington Post. From the Washington Post:

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” he [Trump] said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

Raffensperger responded: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

At another point, Trump said: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

The rambling, at times incoherent conversation, offered a remarkable glimpse of how consumed and desperate the president remains about his loss, unwilling or unable to let the matter go and still believing he can reverse the results in enough battleground states to remain in office.

“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said, a phrase he repeated again and again on the call. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

You can listen to the excerpts below.

In addition to being harmful to our democratic process, Trump’s desperation is really very sad and pathetic. He continued his empty, baseless claims on Twitter, of course.

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Billy Porter Shares Behind-The-Scenes Info From POSE

Billy Porter as 'Pray Tell' on POSE

Billy Porter as 'Pray Tell' on POSE
Billy Porter as ‘Pray Tell’ on POSE (promo photo)
The acclaimed FX series Pose resumed shooting this fall after hitting the pause button due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Emmy Award winner Billy Porter shared some intel from behind-the-scenes when he sat down on Live With Kelly and Ryan this week. “We are shooting Season 3 right now with all of the COVID protocols in place,” Porter told the hosts. “It is not the easiest version of filming a television show that I have been a part of, but I am grateful that we are back to work. Disney is now the parent company of FX, and they have really taken this seriously. They are keeping us all very safe during this process.” What folks really want to know, though, is how are they filming those huge ball scenes created with a soundstage full of actors and extras? “We’re still trying to figure that part out,” Porter admitted. “We have not shot any of the balls yet. We have been shooting the scene work, and I believe we are waiting for the ball sequences to hopefully be shooting them in some sort of vaccine situation. So, we are pushing those scenes to next year.”

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News Round-Up: January 2, 2021

Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness with new husband Mark

Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness with new husband Mark
Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness and husband Mark Peacock (via Instagram)
Some news items you might have missed: • Deadline: Season 13 of RuPaul’s Drag Race will feature several A-list guest judges including Cynthia Erivo, Nicole Byer, Loni Love, TS Madison, and Jamal Sims. • Boy Culture: Taylor Dayne is getting dragged for pretending to be apolitical after she appeared at Donald Trump’s New Year’s Eve event at Mar-a-Lago. • Kenneth-in-the-212: Click over to KIT212’s weekly round-up of the what’s what in LGBTQ publications like Attitude Magazine naming out presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg as their ‘Person of the Year.’
Pete Buttigieg covers Attitude Magazine as their 'Person of the Year'
(image via Attitude Magazine)
• CNN: A federal judge has shitcanned Rep. Louie Gohmert’s ridiculous lawsuit to compel Vice President Mike Pence to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election. • New York Post: The “Soho Karen” who accused the 14-year-old son of jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold of swiping her iPhone in a hotel (turned out she left it in an Uber) has been identified. Apparently, she also had two brushes with the law last year — one for public intoxication and another for drunken driving, according to a report. • Men’s Variety: Breaking down the reasons why you shouldn’t be worried about the coronavirus vaccine. • NewNowNext: Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness secretly got married last summer. Congratulations to the happy couple!

 

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A post shared by Jonathan Van Ness (@jvn)

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Ted Cruz Joins The Cast Of ‘Electoral College Scrabble’

The daughter of far-right, anti-LGBTQ Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) just came out as bisexual?

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
More players sign up for political theater as 11 Republican Senators announce they will join in objecting to certifying state Electoral College results. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is apparently up for joining Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) for the reindeer games on Wednesday in an attempt to play up to Donald Trump and his followers as he’s certain to make another run for the White House in 2024. From Axios:

Cruz, who, like Hawley, is thought to be considering a 2024 presidential bid, plans to release a statement this afternoon announcing his plans. Once the Texas Republican does so, several other senators from his party are expected to follow in a coordinated effort they consider distinct from Hawley’s.

Republicans involved in these talks include Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), John Kennedy (R-La.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Mike Braun (R-Ind.), as well as Sens.-elect Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.).

Basically, the exercise on Wednesday will consist of reading the results of each state in alphabetical order. If a House member and a Senator object in writing to any state’s results the two chambers separate and are given two hours to debate whether to accept the challenge. In that the House is controlled by the Democrats, we know the House will vote the effort down. Even though the Senate is led by a bare Republican majority, Democrats will only need a handful of sane GOPers to vote down any challenge. But what this will do is slow down the confirmation of the Electoral College by a rate of two hours for each state the nutjobs challenge. IF the Senate were to agree to the challenge and the House oppose it, the Electoral College Act calls for the tie to be broken by counting the slate of electors certified by the top executive officer of a state – the governor. “The votes of the electors whose appointment shall have been certified by the executive of the State, under the seal thereof, shall be counted.” In all of the swing states Trump has tried to question – Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Nevada – the governors have certified Joe Biden electors. All that to say, as I began, that this is all political theater.

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Congress Overrides Trump Defense Bill Veto

Donald Trump

Donald Trump
Donald Trump (image via Flickr/White House)
And stay out! In a virtual backhand, the Senate voted today to override Donald Trump’s veto of the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). From the Washington Post:

The Senate on Friday voted to turn a $741 billion defense authorization bill into law over President Trump’s objections, delivering the first successful veto override of his presidency in the waning days of his administration.

The 81-to-13 vote in the Senate, just days after the House also voted in overwhelming numbers to back the legislation, was one of two rare rebukes of Trump on Friday from Republican lawmakers.

Ahead of the vote on rejecting the president’s veto, Senate Republicans blocked a Trump-endorsed effort to increase the size of stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000.

The House of Representatives voted 322-87 on Monday to overturn Trump’s veto. This is the only veto override of Trump’s presidency. The defense bill, which funds the armed forces, also includes a pay increase for the men and women in our military. Normally, this is a bill that gets widespread bipartisan support. But Trump wanted legislation to allow lawsuits against tech companies like Twitter, which the Donald longs to sue because they’ve taken to tagging his disinformation tweets with warning signs. He also opposed language in the defense bill that would rename 10 military bases currently named after Confederate leaders.