Category: News

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Supreme Court Justice Alito Criticizes High Court’s Marriage Equality Ruling

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito (screen capture)
While delivering the keynote speech at the Federalist Society’s convention last night, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito surprised some by going full-on anti-same-sex marriage by openly criticizing the high court’s 2015 Obergefell ruling. The Federal Society is the ulra-conservative organization that, among other things, has advised and recommended all three of Donald Trump’s Supreme Court picks. From HuffPost:

Alito condemned the landmark same-sex marriage decision Obergefell v. Hodges, saying it has led to censorship of people who believe is “a union of one man and one woman.” He suggested it meant that freedom of speech is “falling out of favor in some circles.”

“You can’t say that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. Until very recently, that’s what the vast majority of Americans thought. Now it’s considered bigotry,” Alito said.

“That this would happen after our decision in Obergefell should not have come as a surprise,” he added. “Yes, the opinion of the court included words meant to calm the fears of those who cling to traditional views of marriage. But I could see, and so did the other justices in dissent, where the decision would lead.”

First of all, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word bigotry as “obstinate or intolerant devotion to one’s own opinions and prejudices.” So, “clinging” to one’s own views without considering those of others pretty much falls under that definition. And, as HuffPost points out, “people can still freely express opposition to same-sex marriage, just as their critics can freely call them ‘bigots.'” Alito also criticized governors for issuing “sweeping restrictions” in response to the coronavirus pandemic, which is currently surging in nearly every state in the union.

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More Major News Outlets Project Biden To Win Arizona

More major news outlets have projected Joe Biden to win Arizona Thursday night as his margin in the Grand Canyon state is remains over 11,000 votes. The Associated Press and Fox News Channel called Arizona for President-elect Biden on Election Night. The only two states not officially called by news outlets are Georgia (where Biden leads by 14,149 votes) and North Carolina (where Trump leads by 73,274) per the New York Times.

(graphic via New York Times)

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InstaHunk’s Photos Used By Catfish In Romance Scams

Tom Ernsting (via Instagram)
Tom Ernsting, a professional model and event manager with over 153K followers on Instagram, says internet catfish have used his photos to swindle millions of dollars from unsuspecting women. Ernsting, who is openly gay, told the Detroit Free Press that women he’s never met or communicated with have screamed at him for “ruining their lives” and added, “The stories I’ve heard are insane.”

 

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A post shared by Tom Ernsting (@tomdeanernsting)

The woofy silver-haired daddy shared that one woman apparently gave a catfish (posing behind his stolen photos) her credit card information and charged up over $30,000 in purchases. Some women say they’ve put money on gift cards and sent them to him while others claim to have sent him hundreds of dollars so he could travel to see them. But Ernsting says he never reached out to any of the women and he doesn’t have their money. “It’s just crazy,” says Ernsting who feels that the issue seems to have been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. “It definitely took off during COVID because I think people were even more desperate and more lonely.” “It’s sad because they fall in love with me,” he adds.

 

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A post shared by Tom Ernsting (@tomdeanernsting)

After college, Ernsting went to work as a sales executive in the hotel industry but eventually moved into modeling and freelance work as an event manager. The current COVID-19 crisis put a stop to much of the event business jobs, but thanks to modeling gigs and his growing Instagram following he’s been paid as a social media influencer as well as booking commercials. The handsome 60-year-old was featured on TMZ this summer as a ‘hot dad alert.’ Ernsting has a theory that catfish use his photos because “I’m attractive enough to draw people in but I’m not threatening, so people use my image to draw people in the door.” While the problem has been going on for a while, he says he still “can’t believe my image is a business for these people.” “They’re making a living off my image,” he said. “They’re probably making more than I ever have.”

The website SocialCatfish.com estimates that “millions of dollars were stolen from fake profiles using Tom’s images since there were so many of them.” The Free Press recommends people Google a person’s name with the word “scammer” if contacted by a stranger on the internet. AARP suggests folks copy/paste the messages “into a search engine and see whether the same words show up on websites devoted to exposing romance scams.” The Federal Trade Commission reports that $201 million was lost in 2019 due to online romance schemes, up from $143 million in 2018. In response, the FTC has created a website – ReportFraud.ftc.gov – where people can report catfish schemes or other scams.

 

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News Round-Up: November 12, 2020

CNN’s Phil Mattingly (image via GregInHollywood)
Some news items you might have missed: • GregInHollywood: So, basically, everyone became pretty smitten with CNN’s Phil Mattingly (above) as he expertly handled ballot count recaps at the famed Magic Wall. Prior to joining CNN in 2105, Mattingly was at Bloomberg News where he was a national political correspondent. • Instinct Magazine: After being attacked for having a porn past during his race for New Mexico’s House of Representatives, Roger Montoya won the race for state District 40 with 56.8 percent of the vote against his Republican opponent Justin Salazar-Torrez (who received 43.2 percent). The 59-year-old Democrat addressed the accusations and confirmed he had appeared in two adult films in the 1980s when he was 22. • Out: Bi, trans, and nonbinary folks in Norway are celebrating a huge win after the country recently expanded its penal code that previously only protected lesbian and gay people from hate speech to include gender identity and all forms of “sexual orientation.” • HuffPost: The Trump campaign’s primary source of “evidence” of ‘voting irregularities’ in Detroit apparently consists of pages of affidavits and complaints from Trump supporters about social distancing measures, and some people in the polls were wearing “Black Lives Matter” face masks and shirts. A woman named ‘Karen’ was reportedly upset she parked in the wrong place. The white Republican poll watchers appear to have been ready to treat any and all actions by election workers as nefarious criminal activity. • Pink News: Hungary has announced it will move to ban adoption by same-sex couples claiming it’s ‘become necessary’ due to the coronavirus pandemic. LGBTQ Hungarians say the changes were deliberately drafted at a time when mass protests were not possible due to the coronavirus pandemic. • Reuters: News bureau fact-checks false allegations of voter fraud in a video clip showing workers picking up mail-in ballots from ballot drop boxes in Los Angeles “after Election Day.” Some users referring to the videos allege the scene is proof of “election fraud.” Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (RR/CC) told Reuters the ballots shown in these videos “are valid ballots and will be processed and counted in our Official Election Canvass. All vote by mail ballot drop boxes were closed and locked at 8 PM on Election Day. Ballots from all boxes throughout the County were picked up the following day.”

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Coronavirus Update 11/11/20

New York state is about to drop its face mask mandate as COVID-19 cases continue to drop in the Empire State.

No, Donald Trump Jr., the coronavirus has not ‘magically’ gone away now that the 2020 election has passed. With the virus surging in so many places both here and around the world, I wanted to create a way to share news related to the pandemic in an abbreviated manner. For more information on any of the stories below, please feel free to click the links. Per Johns Hopkins Hospital coronavirus tracking, the U.S.  has now reported 10,353,604 cases of COVID-19 resulting in 240,688 deaths. • CBS News: Texas became the first state to surpass 1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday. The second-most populous U.S. state, Texas now has more coronavirus cases than all of Italy, which was previously one of the major hot spots of the virus. California is close behind with over 986,000 confirmed cases, as is Florida with more than 852,000. • ABC News: Faced with more than 2,000 new daily COVID-19 cases in his state and hospitals at capacity, Utah’s Gov. Gary Herbert has declared a state of emergency and issued a mandate for all residents to wear masks in public until further notice. Herbert’s announcement implored all state residents “to do everything in your power to stop the spread of this disease.” • CNN: Following the positive news regarding the effectiveness of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN’s Jake Tapper that an average American could potentially have access to a coronavirus vaccine by April of 2021.

• Pink News: Brazil’s homophobic president Jair Bolsonaro has told his country to accept coronavirus and stop dealing with it like “a country of fags”. The far-right leader made the remarks as his country has suffered over 5.7 million infections and 163,000 deaths from coronavirus. “We have to stop being a country of fags… We have to face up to it and fight. I hate this faggot stuff.” • Nevada Current: With the coronavirus surging in Nevada and nearly every state in the nation, Gov. Steve Sisolak urged people Tuesday to “to operate in a ‘Stay at Home 2.0’ mentality to get things under control so our public health response infrastructure can catch up.” Nevada has seen more than 1,300 cases a day over the most recent seven day period and hospitalization rates not seen since August. • The Hill: A top health department official in Wisconsin says that the state is nearing a tipping point at which some patients who need lifesaving care will be unable to receive it due to overcrowding in hospitals resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak.

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News Round-Up: November 10, 2020

Screen capture of CNN White House correspondent Boris Sanchez

Screen capture of CNN White House correspondent Boris Sanchez
CNN White House correspondent Boris Sanchez (screen capture)
Some news items you might have missed: • Mainstream Media Crush: I can’t believe I’ve never noted how enjoyable CNN’s Boris Sanchez (above) makes watching the news. That is all. #EyeCandy • Pink News: Last week, I reported how openly gay Mayor Dean Trantalis of Fort Lauderdale was verbally accosted at his polling station by a group of Trump supporters calling him homophobic slurs.  Just thought I’d report he sailed to reelection with 58 percent of the vote. • Out Music: Check out the latest music video from out recording artist mxmtoon, “ok on your own,” featuring pop star Carly Rae Jepsen. The mid-tempo track explores the fallout of a breakup with the realization that sometimes it’s better to be “on your own” when a romance comes to an end. “I need some time to myself so I can comprehend/ I’m not so scared to admit I could use a friend.”

• USA Today: Nine legal experts say Trump’s lawsuit challenging election results in Pennsylvania is dead on arrival for a number of reasons: Courts are wary of invalidating legally cast ballots, and voting by mail, used in many states, is both common and constitutional. • Statista: Following Pfizer’s announcement that its vaccine candidate was found to be 90 percent effective against COVID-19 in phase 3 trials, shares of travel industry stocks like hotels and airlines went soaring across the globe. Interestingly, the news also sent some shares tumbling for such “pandemic winners” as Zoom Video Communications, Peloton, and Netflix.

(graphic via Statista)
• Gothamist: Governor Phil Murphy is requiring indoor bars and restaurants in New Jersey to close by 10 p.m., one of several restrictions that he announced today to address a spike in COVID-19 cases. “There is more than anecdotal evidence that as the night wears on, probably for reasons that are obvious, people let their hair down,” Murphy said, while also sharing that the state’s positivity rate is at 7.52%. • MSNBC: President-elect Joe Biden threw some 12th level shade Donald Trump’s way when asked about Trump refusing to concede the presidential race. “At the end of the day, you know, it’s all going to come to fruition on January 20.”

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Michael Cohen Endorses Matthew Camp’s OnlyFans Page

L-R Matthew Camp, Michael Cohen (images via Instagram/screen capture)
For those who may not know, Cameo is a website where you can pay to have a famous (or infamous) person record a personal greeting for a birthday or celebration of whatever sort complete with negotiated script. Matthew Camp, the woofy go-go boy turned adult performer turned entrepreneur, recently tweeted a video clip of Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, extolling the fabulousness of Camp’s OnlyFans account. The clip was reportedly ordered through Cameo.

“I just want to say how amazing Matthew Camp is on OnlyFans. Having a blast enjoying every minute with you guys. Good luck. Love it. Stay safe. Stay COVID-free. And again, OnlyFans, having a blast with him.”

Cohen apparently charges $100 per message on Cameo. I’m going to guess that Cohen has no idea what kind of content is on Camp’s OnlyFans page. As I’m sure my readers know, OnlyFans is a website where subscribers can pay – usually between $5 to $15 a month – to access photo and video content uploaded by models and porn stars. Back in February 2019, Camp told the New York Times that he was clearing more than $10,000 a month on his OnlyFans page which he described as “online go-go dancing.”

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News Round-Up: November 9, 2020

(image via Andrew Christian)
Some news items you might have missed: • The Advocate: Underwear company Andrew Christian recently has apologized for marketing a harness (above) emblazoned with the word “slave” using a POC to model them. “As you accurately noted in your article our ‘Master’ and ‘Slave’ harnesses and underwear only reference the ‘Master’ and ‘Slave’ terminology of the BDSM culture and has nothing to do with anything else.  We sincerely apologize if anyone finds the image of the model offensive and we will replace it immediately.” • Out Music: Colton Ford releases his first new music in years with the single, “Stronger.” The inspirational ballad features upbeat lyrics that share Ford’s own positive self speak: “We have to stay conscious of what we are telling ourselves, as that impacts and influences everything we experience in this life.” You can stream the full track here.

• NBC News: Georgia plans a recount of votes in its presidential race, but in the past 50 years, few recounts have led to changes in the winners. And in the handful of still-uncalled battleground states, there hasn’t been a flip following a recount in at least the last two decades. • Statista: As the presidential election results unfolded before the American people last week, the stock market saw the writing on the wall. The S&P 500 closed the week up 7.3 percent on Friday marking the best election week rally since 1928. The Nasdaq and Dow Jones saw similar gains.

(graphic via Statista)
• The Independent: Donald Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, has become the latest Trump administration official to test positive for Covid-19. Carson attended the election night party at the White House on Tuesday where few in attendance wore masks to prevent the spread of the virus. • Mediaite: Fox News cut away from the White House press secretary this afternoon after she alleged that the Democratic party was “welcoming fraud and you are welcoming illegal voting.” Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto cut in saying, “Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue showing this.”  

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Trump ‘Terminates’ Defense Secretary Via Tweet

L-R Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Mark Esper (images: Flickr/WhiteHouse – public domain)
Donald Trump took to Twitter this morning to announce the news that he had “terminated” Mark Esper as his Secretary of Defense. From the New York Times:

Mr. Esper’s downfall had been expected for months, after he took the rare step in June of disagreeing publicly with Mr. Trump and saying that active-duty military troops should not be sent to control the wave of protests in American cities. The president, who had threatened to use the Insurrection Act to do exactly that, was furious, officials said.

Mr. Esper, 56, a former secretary of the Army and a former Raytheon executive, became defense secretary last July after Mr. Trump withdrew the nomination of Patrick M. Shanahan, the acting defense secretary, amid an F.B.I. inquiry into allegations from Mr. Shanahan’s former wife that he punched her in the stomach. Mr. Shanahan denied the accusations.

Mr. Shanahan had been standing in for Jim Mattis, who resigned as defense secretary in 2018, citing his own differences with the president.

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News Round-Up: November 8, 2020

(image via Instagram/KarensGoingWild)
Some news items you might have missed: • Instagram: The above image is from the hysterical Karens Going Wild account. I laughed out loud at this. Follow the account here. • Boy Culture: Matt Rettenmund’s venerable LGBTQ blog turns 15! Matt reflects on how ‘blogging’ has changed over the years, what it’s like to be a trailblazer plus his 100 Favorite Posts over the years. Congrats and thanks to Boy Culture! • The Guardian: New diagnoses of HIV among gay and bisexual men in the UK have dropped to their lowest level in 20 years. A PHE report reveals that overall, across all genders and sexualities, the number of people with a new HIV diagnosis dropped by 10% from 4,580 cases in 2018 to 4,139 in 2019. • American Independent: I’ve been receiving money begs from the Trump campaign practically every hour since Joe Biden was projected to be the winner of the 2020 election. The emails say they are looking for help with Trump’s legal defense fund, but the fine print indicates that less than half of each donation will go toward the campaign’s “recount account,” while 60% will go to pay off the Trump campaign’s debt. • Washington Post: More than 107,607 new cases of the coronavirus were reported in the U.S. on Sunday. The country’s seven-day new case average was more than 100,000 and for five of the past seven days, more than 1,000 deaths were recorded. More than half of states reported a new high for their seven-day average of cases • Newsweek: Meanwhile, just a day after hearing the news that he had lost the 2020 election while on a golf course in Virginia, Donald Trump returned for what is believed to be his 300th round of golf since he was inaugurated. • The Advocate: Exit polling of over 15,000+ for the presidential election show LGBTQ support for Donald Trump doubled since 2016 from 14 percent to 28 percent of self-identified LGBTQ people. The so-called #GaysForTrump are not taking it well.