Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

Donald Trump Will Reportedly End DACA Program

Donald Trump has reportedly made the decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program enacted by former President Obama in 2012.

There are an estimated 75,000 LGBT ‘Dreamers.’

From the New York Times:

To be eligible, an applicant must have arrived in the US before age 16 and lived there since June 15, 2007. They cannot have been older than 30 when the Department of Homeland Security enacted the policy in 2012.

As of March 31, 2017, 787,580 people have been approved for the program since it began, according to government figures.

Mexico is by far the biggest country of origin, followed by El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

If their applications are approved by US immigration officials, DACA recipients can come out of the shadows and obtain valid driver’s licenses, enroll in college and legally secure jobs.

In an April interview with The Associated Press, Mr. Trump said that those protected under the program should “rest easy” about their status. He insisted that his administration was “not after the Dreamers, we are after the criminals.” He added, “That is our policy.”

According to Politico, the White House hopes to delay the implementation of Trump’s decision by six months in order to allow Congress to act.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a statement to Politico said a decision on whether to end DACA “is not finalized.” She said the administration “will make an announcement” on Tuesday.

A recent NBC News poll showed 64% of American support the DACA program.

It’s not clear what would happen to the ‘Dreamers,’ as they have been called. Most were brought to the U.S. at the age of 6 by their parents and have no real ties or family in the country of their origin.

So imagine you’re a 19-year-old  ‘Dreamer,’ holding a job, going to school, with no police record. One day, the immigration police pick you up and deport you back to, say, Mexico. They drop you off at the border and you are now in a strange country you know nothing about and your life as a law-abiding person in the United States is over.

That sound “American” to you?

Posted on

Trump Takes A Swipe At Media During Houston Stop

After dropping into the Houston area for the day, Donald Trump took a cheap shot at the media who have been facing horrible conditions for over a week covering the impact of Hurricane Harvey.

Among the many things I despise about the man, crap like this – taking the low road for no reason – make me embarrassed he’s the leader of this country.

Later, he told reporters that “As tough as this was, it’s been a wonderful thing, I think, even for the country to watch.”

No, Donald, it’s been heartbreaking, awful and sad to watch people lose everything. Watch below.

Posted on

Instagram Round-Up: Labor Day Weekend

A round-up of what my much-cooler-than-I friends are up to on Instagram this weekend:

Pop/rock star Richard Marx closed out his successful 3 week residency at the Flamingo Las Vegas:

A post shared by Richard Marx (@therichardmarx) on Sep 3, 2017 at 1:30pm PDT

Tony Award winner Betty Buckley performed at 54 Below in NYC with Michael Feinstein:

Out singer/songwriters Matt Zarley and Jeb Havens announced a multi-week run in Puerto Vallarta titled, “Works of Heart:”

Tyson Beckford prepares for his final (for now) performances with the world-famous Chippendales in Las Vegas:

Nashville super-gays Joe Wooley and Jim Schmidt have been sharing awesome pics of Amsterdam:

A post shared by Joe Woolley (@woolleyjoe) on Sep 3, 2017 at 1:05pm PDT

Ruby Lewis, star of Las Vegas’ “Baz” takes an extra bow as she looks to her day off:

Posted on

Trump Takes A Swipe At Media During Houston Stop

After dropping into the Houston area for the day, Donald Trump took a cheap shot at the media who have been facing horrible conditions for over a week covering the impact of Hurricane Harvey.

Among the many things I despise about the man, crap like this – taking the low road for no reason – make me embarrassed he’s the leader of this country.

Later, he told reporters that “As tough as this was, it’s been a wonderful thing, I think, even for the country to watch.”

No, Donald, it’s been heartbreaking, awful and sad to watch people lose everything. Watch below.

Posted on

Florida: KKK Threatens Gay Politician

James Schneider, an openly gay man currently running for city council in Cape Coral, recently received a threatening note that appears to be from a local division of the Ku Klux Klan.

The note was apparently left on the front door of Schneider’s home last weekend.

The text of the note reads, “We know where you live, faggot… We are going to win… Quit now. When you girls least expect it, we will be here for a nice visit.”

Schneider admits the threat scared him, but he has no intention of quitting the race.

“I was spooked by it immediately. It really shakes you to the core,” said Schneider.

Posting the image to his Facebook page, he wrote, “They got their opportunity to scare us, but not quitting this election. I am the qualified candidate, not the popular one.”

Schneider told his Facebook followers he “almost quit” after the threats but will now “stay in the campaign.”

“We are shaken but not beaten,” the post reads. “Thank you so much for those who have huddled around us at this time. We live in a messed up country.”

Posted on

North Korea Tests Nuclear Device 7x The Size Of Hiroshima Bomb

From the Washington Post:

North Korea sharply raised the stakes Sunday in its standoff with the rest of the world, detonating a powerful nuclear device that it claimed was a hydrogen bomb that could be attached to a missile capable of reaching the mainland United States.

Even if Kim Jong Un’s regime is exaggerating its feats, scientific evidence showed that North Korea had crossed an important threshold and had detonated a nuclear device that was vastly more powerful than its last — and almost seven times the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

The nuclear test took place at exactly noon local time at North Korea’s Punggye-ri testing site and was recorded as a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was followed eight minutes later by a 4.1-magnitude earthquake that appeared to be a tunnel collapsing at the site.

South Korean officials and independent nuclear scientists estimated the yield — the amount of energy released by the weapon — to be 100 kilotons. That would make it almost seven times as strong as the U.S. atomic bomb that destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.

After North Korea’s testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile in July, Trump said in a statement that the country would face “fire and fury” if North Korea continued testing its weapons. He later added via Twitter that the U.S. military was “locked and loaded.’

In response to this recent testing, Trump took a swipe at our ally, South Korea, for its “appeasement” of North Korea and also at China saying the situation has become a “great embarrassment” to the country.

Posted on

FBI & Dept Of Justice: No Evidence Of Surveillance Of Trump Tower

The Department of Justice and the FBI have confirmed that neither has found any evidence that Trump Tower was ever “wiretapped” under orders of the Obama administration.

Via The Hill:

The motion confirms that neither the FBI nor the Justice Department’s National Security Division have records documenting wiretaps as alleged by President Trump in a series of tweets earlier this year.

The Friday filing marked the Justice Department’s first official denial of the substance of Trump’s wiretapping tweets earlier this year.

In March, Trump wrote on Twitter that he had discovered that former President Barack Obama had Trump Tower wiretapped during the run-up to the November election, which he called “McCarthyism.”

But the Trump administration did not provide evidence that such surveillance took place, and a spokesman for Obama rejected that the administration wiretapped the real estate mogul’s building.

Likewise, former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in May, denied that the Obama administration surveilled the Trump campaign.

Basically, this was just another episode of a Trump tantrum with no sense of responsibility for the language he was using.

Posted on

Podcast: Marriage Equality In Chile & Australia; National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month; “Where The Bears Are” Premieres 6th Season

In this week’s episode of The Randy Report podcast:

• Progress for marriage equality in Australia and Chile

• Gay and bisexual men are escaping persecution in Chechnya

• Acclaimed web series, “Where The Bears Are,” debuts its 6th season

• Facts, figures and more about National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline – 1-800-273-8255
The Trevor Project’s 24-hour crisis hotline for youth – 1-866-488-7386
The Trans Lifeline – 1-877-565-8860

All that and more on this episode of The Randy Report

Posted on

Alabama: HIV Prevention Video Features “World Wrestling” Style Approach To Ending Stigma, Promoting PrEP

Is this the first southern “World Wrestling-inspired” HIV prevention public service announcement?

The good folks at Thrive Alabama admit not every approach to talking about HIV is for every community. Instead of a “sexy” PrEP video, Thrive Alabama took a more home-grown tone to setting folks straight about HIV, stigma, and prevention.

The video pits bad guys HIV and Stigma against do-gooders Prevention and PrEP.

It’s interesting to note that the video doesn’t feature any stereotypical “gay” men in the video. Mark Moore, director of development and marketing, said that was a conscious choice. “We have a lot of people here who are ‘men who have sex with men’ but who do not identify as gay or just don’t do labels,” Mark told Queerty.

Watch the lighthearted but still informative PSA below.