I’m always intrigued by the “slow down a classic song to get a new result” method of reinventing songs.
For a #ThrowbackThursday with a twist, I wanted to share this new version of a-ha’s “Take On Me.”
I’m sure most readers are very familiar with the original music video which ran constantly on MTV back in the 80s.
At the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards, the video for won six awards and was nominated for two others. It was also nominated for Favorite Pop/Rock Video at the 13th American Music Awards in 1986.
This is taken from the upcoming album/DVD “a-Ha: MTV Unplugged Summer Solstice.”
I think this brings a very pensive, melancholy sentiment to the song.
Listen to both the new version and the original below.
• For #ThrowbackThursday, I’m thinking back a few years ago to my first trip to Paris, France. In the pic above… Oh, wait – how did that pic of Chippendale Tory George get there???
• Attorney General Jeff Sessions thinks Christian bakers have a “fundamental right” to discriminate against LGBTs.
• The city of Orlando has installed a rainbow crosswalk (below) to honor the Pulse nightclub victims. The project was completed early Wednesday just in time for National Coming Out Day.
• Donald Trump will be the first president to speak at the virulently anti-LGBT Values Voter Summit. #BetterForTheGaysMyAss
• Loote drops the music video today for their latest, “Out Of My Head.” On this hearing, I’m picking up some Maroon 5 influences here. What do you think, readers?
Donald Trump got a face full of internet wrath today when he warned that federal emergency workers can’t stay “forever” in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.
He also suggested that the U.S. territory is currently facing a financial crisis “largely of their own making” and infrastructure that was a “disaster” before Hurricane Maria struck on Sept. 20.
“Puerto Rico survived the Hurricanes, now a financial crisis looms largely of their own making.” says Sharyl Attkisson. A total lack of…..
Mind you, Trump hasn’t threatened to pull the FEMA teams down in Texas, Louisiana or Florida after their recent hurricane damage.
Today, the U.S. House passed $36.5B disaster aid package for hurricane and wildfire relief by vote of 353 to 69. All “no” votes were Republicans.
CNN’s Jim Acosta tweeted that the comments were a knee-jerk reaction to the mayor of San Juan who spoke about Trump’s lackluster response to the disaster in Puerto Rico.
@POTUS your comments about Puerto Rico are unbecoming of a Commander in Chief they seem more to come from a “Hater in Chief”.
Convicted Philadelphia gay basher, Kathryn Knott, failed to convince U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg to dismiss a federal lawsuit against her, her father and members of the Bucks County District Attorney’s office that alleges the group sought to retaliate against a Montgomery County woman who took to the internet to mock Ms. Knott.
Kathleen O’Donnell filed the lawsuit after the was fired from her job. She alleges that the Knotts and company used their official positions in law enforcement to push O’Donnell’s boss to fire her for her online heckling.
Goldberg declined to dismiss the lawsuit filed last year by Kathleen O’Donnell, a Norristown resident who used the screen name “Knotty is a Tramp” to post disparaging remarks about Knott in the comment sections of online news articles. O’Donnell’s username included an unflattering picture of Knott drinking from a bottle of alcohol.
O’Donnell claims Kathryn Knott and her father, Karl, used his then-position as Chalfont police chief to retaliate against her, alleging they conspired with former Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler and two county detectives to threaten criminal charges. Heckler left office in September 2016, a year before his second term was to end.
O’Donnell was fired from her position job in Chester County after the detectives met with her employer, according to the lawsuit.
Knott, of Upper Southampton, was released from prison last year after serving five months for her role in the 2014 beating of a gay couple in Center City.
She was among three defendants charged with assaulting Zachary Hesse and Andrew Haught, who was knocked unconscious and suffered a broken jaw that needed to be wired shut for about two months.
You’ll recall the gay bashing attack in the Center City area of Philadephia where Knott and a group of about 15 friends attacked Hesse and Haught.
Knott refused to accept the plea deal her co-defendants took which required only probation and 200 of community service.
Internet sleuths found social media posts by Knott bragging about her law enforcement father’s ability to get her out of trouble. It was clear she thought he could get her out of this situation.
Donald Trump, frustrated with his inability to lead the GOP-controlled Congress to reform healthcare, today did exactly what he criticized President Obama for and signed an executive order circumventing the legislative process.
Trump’s executive order will allow the sale of cheaper, less regulated policies with fewer benefits and fewer protections for consumers than those mandated under the Affordable Care Act.
In other words, this is basically the health insurance version of buying a Yugo.
Mr. Trump’s order could eventually make it easier for small businesses to band together and buy insurance through new entities known as association health plans, which could be created by business and professional groups. A White House official said these health plans “could potentially allow American employers to form groups across state lines” — a goal championed by Mr. Trump and many other Republicans.
[snip]
Consumer groups and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, representing state officials, have opposed association health plans because they could be largely exempt from state regulation.
Association health plans can “cherry-pick healthy groups,” making it more difficult for less healthy groups to find affordable coverage, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners told Congress this year.
Some state regulators and insurers greeted the move with alarm and warned that by relaxing standards for association health plans and short-term policies, Mr. Trump would create low-cost insurance options for the healthy, driving up costs for the sick and destabilizing insurance marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act.
This will severely impact the LGBTQ community, especially those people with pre-existing conditions like HIV who won’t be able to access these junk policies intended primarily for younger, healthier people.
In offering these cheaper policies health care insurance providers will have to raise the premiums on regular insurance policies.
“Within a year, this would kill the market,” said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
.@POTUS' exec order couldn't be further from his "great health care" promise. It will up costs for seniors & ppl w/ preexisting conditions.— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) October 12, 2017
Watch: Trump's executive order on health care is an attack on the middle class and on small businesses. https://t.co/HGyy0fSmmD— igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) October 12, 2017
Major American corporations have signed on to an amicus brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court urging the high court to rule that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace.
The Trump administration has taken the opposite opinion.
The 76 businesses and organizations – including American Airlines, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Starbucks and Microsoft – filed a brief Wednesday encouraging the high court to take up the issue. They want the court to take a case out of Georgia in which a gay woman who worked as a hospital security officer says she was harassed and punished for dressing in a male uniform and wearing her hair short. Jameka Evans, who worked at Georgia Regional Hospital at Savannah from 2012 to 2013, ultimately left her job and sued.
The question in her case is whether a federal law barring workplace discrimination “because of…sex” covers discrimination against someone because of their sexual orientation. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under President Barack Obama took the view that it does. But President Donald Trump’s administration has argued that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars discrimination based on gender but doesn’t cover sexual orientation.
The businesses’ court filing says they and their employees would benefit if the court agreed to take the case and rule that Title VII covers sexual orientation discrimination.
I’ve been told I should do more video messages, and what better time to try than National Coming Out Day?
I was working with new software here, so there was a pause or two along the way – thus the change in lighting as the sun went down.
In any case, I’m wishing everyone a happy National Coming Out Day as I share my thoughts on why it’s even important to come out and what it means to the LGBTQ community.
Not a good day in Donald Trump’s world as a string of stories from multiple sources describe a White House in daily turmoil.
First, a stunning report via Vanity Fair that describes the situation so tense insiders in the Trump administration have begun wondering if Chief of Staff John Kelly and Defense Secretary James Mattis might have to “tackle” the president if he ordered a nuclear strike.
An excerpt:
At first it sounded like hyperbole, the escalation of a Twitter war. But now it’s clear that Bob Corker’s remarkable New York Timesinterview—in which the Republican senator described the White House as “adult day care” and warned Trump could start World War III—was an inflection point in the Trump presidency. It brought into the open what several people close to the president have recently told me in private: that Trump is “unstable,” “losing a step,” and “unraveling.”
In recent days, I spoke with a half dozen prominent Republicans and Trump advisers, and they all describe a White House in crisis as advisers struggle to contain a president who seems to be increasingly unfocused and consumed by dark moods. Trump’s ire is being fueled by his stalled legislative agenda and, to a surprising degree, by his decision last month to back the losing candidate Luther Strange in the Alabama Republican primary. “Alabama was a huge blow to his psyche,” a person close to Trump said. “He saw the cult of personality was broken.”
According to two sources familiar with the conversation, Trump vented to his longtime security chief, Keith Schiller, “I hate everyone in the White House! There are a few exceptions, but I hate them!” (A White House official denies this.) Two senior Republican officials said Chief of Staff John Kelly is miserable in his job and is remaining out of a sense of duty to keep Trump from making some sort of disastrous decision. Today, speculation about Kelly’s future increased after Politico reported that Kelly’s deputy Kirstjen Nielsen is likely to be named Homeland Security Secretary—the theory among some Republicans is that Kelly wanted to give her a soft landing before his departure.
One former official even speculated that Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have discussed what they would do in the event Trump ordered a nuclear first strike. “Would they tackle him?” the person said. Even Trump’s most loyal backers are sowing public doubts. This morning, The Washington Postquoted longtime Trump friend Tom Barrack saying he has been “shocked” and “stunned” by Trump’s behavior.
(John) Kelly, the retired Marine general who is Trump’s second chief of staff, has sought to tighten the flow of information and visitors to the president, to bring order to an unruly White House and to the way that Trump makes his decisions. But he is often thwarted by one man: Trump.
The president by many accounts has bristled at the restrictions and continues — usually alone on mornings, nights and weekends — to act on his own gut sense, using his own lines to contact allies outside the White House and, using Twitter, to reach those millions of supporters he calls “my people.”
After a wild weekend of attacks by Twitter and off-the-cuff comments, including against a senior Republican senator, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Trump kept it up on Tuesday. He tweeted a schoolyard taunt about Corker’s height — “Liddle’ Bob Corker — and said the senator “was made to sound like a fool” in a New York Times interview in which Corker warned that Trump could provoke World War III.
Trump challenged his own secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, to an IQ test, even as he dismissed as fake news last week’s reports that Tillerson had called him a moron. ”And I can tell you who is going to win,” Trump added, according to a Forbes interview published Tuesday.
Allies see signs that Trump is frustrated with Kelly and increasingly unwilling to be managed, even just a little. The person close to the White House said the two men had engaged in “shouting matches” in recent days.
And finally, things are definitely not going well when Fox News hosts like Neil Cavuto take to the airwaves to address Trump directly with a message like, “It’s not that some of your ideas aren’t sound, it’s that increasingly this erratic behavior is making me wonder whether you are.”
“Now I know that you say that Senator Corker started all this bad mouthing you, but last time I checked, you are the President of the United States, so tweeting out these tacky insults just seems beneath you,” Cavuto continued.
And then, “You are running out of friends faster than you are running out of time. You might not like Bob Corker, but a lot of senators do, and you need those senators, sir.”
