Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke has announced he’s joining the race for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020.
The Texan, who became a sensation during the 2018 midterm elections, made his announcement on Twitter:
I am running to serve you as the next president. The challenges we face are the greatest in living memory. No one person can meet them on their own. Only this country can do that, and only if we build a movement that includes all of us. Say you’re in: https://t.co/EKLdkVET2upic.twitter.com/lainXyvG2n
Mr. O’Rourke made his town hall forums the centerpiece of his Senate candidacy, turning the race into a national cause — the underdog liberal running in a famously red state — trailed by a documentary film crew and endorsed by celebrities from Beyoncé to Willie Nelson. He made a point of visiting each of the 254 counties in Texas, helping him bulldoze fund-raising records and come within about 200,000 votes of Mr. Cruz on Election Day.
[Where Beto O’Rourke stands on the issues]
Mr. O’Rourke also attracted many fans outside the state, drawing them into a perpetual social media live-stream capturing not only his political events but unscripted moments on the road: late-night burger stops, skateboarding in a parking lot, reminiscing with a former bandmate behind the wheel. For many politically obsessed liberals, his inevitably upbeat musings offered a welcome online antidote to Mr. Trump’s Twitter rampaging.
Admirers believe it is this ability to generate his own narrative orbit that could separate him from his peers.
With the tagline, Beto For America, the 46-year-old hopes to upend the standings that currently show former Vice President Joe Biden (who hasn’t officially announced he’s in the race yet) and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the lead.
• The Massachusetts House of Representatives has passed a bill banning the practice of so-called ‘conversion therapy’ on minors. With full passage, Mass would become the 16th state (plus the District of Columbia) to ban conversion therapy for minors.
• Utah’s House of Representatives approved a bill that would give teeth to the state’s hate crime law – but only after making not only LGBTQ people but “political expression” protected by the law.
• Los Angeles-based electro-pop musician, Devin Tait, recently debuted his new music video, “By My Side,” from his album, Art Damage.
The video is an wistful homage to late 80s-era Halloween nights, and two young men who discover that there may be more to be found in removing your mask than in hiding who you are.
Trump supporter and right-wing ‘personality,’ Jacob Wohl, may have reported fake death threats from a fictional gay Hispanic ‘diversity coordinator’ he made up on Twitter.
Of course he’d have to make the fictional character gay…
You might recall Wohl’s name from when he suffered an epic fail trying to smear Special Counsel Robert Mueller with fake accusations of sexual assault right before the 2018 midterm elections. The 21-year-old found himself suspended from Twitter for those antics, specifically creating and operating fake accounts.
The Daily Beast reports that, during a trip to Minneapolis, Wohl (a self-professed ‘political and corporate intel consultant’) went to the police and reported he’d received death threats from someone on Twitter. In the video embedded in the tweet below, Wohl specifically identifies the threat as coming from a ‘diversity coordinator.’
Here’s a video clip showing Jacob Wohl reporting threats he received to the Minneapolis Police Department, and a screenshot of one particular “threat”—but the avatar image matches a fake Twitter account NBC News and The Daily Beast reported Wohl created. pic.twitter.com/bV7EZarJk8
NBC News reporter Ben Collins pointed up the charade on Twitter:
Jacob Wohl reported a death threat to the Minneapolis Police Department. Small problem: he wrote the threat to himself from a fake account he created, posing as a gay Hispanic “diversity coordinator,” who does not really exist. https://t.co/o8sgpMWP8J
On February 26, Collins reported the Twitter account ‘drakehomes612’ was created by Wohl.
The profile featured a Hispanic man’s photo, and its user described themselves as a “Diversity Coordinator, Minneapolis Born and Raised. Hater of racists, homophones, and bigots” and punctuated with a rainbow flag.
The Daily Beast writes, “A source familiar with Wohl’s fake accounts confirmed to me that @Drakehomes612 was run by Wohl before being deleted by Twitter. That means Wohl was sending himself fake death threats, presumably in an attempt to up the drama during his Minneapolis videos.”
The Minneapolis Police released documentation today from Wohl’s filed report which included a screen capture of the ‘threat.’ The language is identical to a threat Wohl included in his recent ‘documentary’ he shot while in Minneapolis.
JUST IN: Minneapolis Police provided me a redacted copy of everything Jacob Wohl provided as supporting evidence of the threats he reported. It includes the threat from the account he is reported to have created himself. pic.twitter.com/CjVHmNGAAL
In fact, Collins tracked down the man in the photo and it turns out he’s a Minnesota real estate agent named Aaron Delgado who had no idea his image had been usurped.
I talked to Aaron Delgado, the Minnesota realtor whose photo was used for Wohl’s “Drake Holmes” creation.
Delgado’s picture was stolen from Instagram. He has no idea why he was chosen.
“One of my clients messaged me. My face was making national news for all the wrong reasons.” pic.twitter.com/mzzU0koKvN
All of the conservatives who were so horribly gleeful about Jussie Smollett are oddly silent about Jacob Wohl. https://t.co/ky5Hc9ARsj— Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers) March 13, 2019
Jacob Wohl is one dumb motherfucker.— Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) March 13, 2019
Jacob Wohl is Wile E. Coyote painting tunnels onto boulders and then immediately walking into them while the road runner beep beeps away and his body folds up like an accordion— JuanPa (@jpbrammer) March 13, 2019
Donald Trump’s former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, will now serve seven and a half years in prison after Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Federal District Court in Washington added 3.5 more years to his sentence on Wednesday.
In issuing her ruling, Judge Jackson said Manafort “spent a significant portion of his career gaming the system.”
Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Federal District Court in Washington sentenced Mr. Manafort, 69, on two conspiracy counts that encompassed a host of crimes, including money-laundering, obstruction of justice and failing to disclose lobbying work that earned him tens of millions of dollars over more than a decade.
“It is hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of fraud and the amount of money involved,” she said, reeling off Mr. Manafort’s various offenses, rapid-fire. “There is no question that this defendant knew better and he knew what he was doing.”
Each charge carried a maximum of five years. But Judge Jackson noted that one count was closely tied to the same bank and tax fraud scheme that a federal judge in Virginia had sentenced Mr. Manafort for last week. Under sentencing guidelines, she said, those punishments should largely overlap, not be piled on top of each other. Mr. Manafort was also expected to get credit for the nine months he has already spent in jail.
Per Judge Jackson’s sentence, Manafort received for Count One 60 months, of which 30 months will run concurrent with last week’s sentence.
For Count Two, he received a sentence of 13 months which will run consecutive to count 1 and the earlier sentence in Virginia.
The Timesreports that Manafort begged Judge Jackson not to add to his time in prison. “This case has taken everything from me, already,” he said as he listed the assets he’s forfeited. “Please let my wife and I be together.”
Donald Trump hasn’t said definitively if he will pardon the 69-year-old, but he’s repeatedly spoken well of Manafort calling him “a brave man.”
The new state charges against Mr. Manafort are contained in a 16-count indictment that alleges a yearlong scheme in which he falsified business records to obtain millions of dollars in loans, Mr. Vance said in a news release after the federal sentencing.
“No one is beyond the law in New York,” he said, adding that the investigation by the prosecutors in his office had “yielded serious criminal charges for which the defendant has not been held accountable.”
The indictment grew out of an investigation that began in 2017, when the Manhattan prosecutors began examining loans Mr. Manafort received from two banks.
This complicates Manafort’s life much more.
While Donald Trump may pardon Manafort for his federal crimes, and it’s appeared that Manafort is counting on that, Trump has no pardon power over state charges.
The Department of Defense has issued a memo, signed by Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist, that details new rules which will largely limit transgender people serving in the U.S. military.
The policy will go into effect on April 12.
Currently serving trans troop members, and trans recruits who have signed an enlistment contract before April 12, will be allowed to continue with hormone treatment and planned gender transition if they already have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
After April 12, the military will not accept new recruits who have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, or are taking hormones, or are planning to transition.
There are some limited exceptions to the ban.
Trans people with gender dysphoria who enter a contract to enlist before April 12, and are certified by a licensed mental health provider that they have been “stable” in their gender identity for 18 months (no significant distress or impairment in social or occupational areas of functioning), may qualify for exemption. Such exemptions would allow them to be eligible for transition-related care through the military health care system.
Also, individuals with no diagnosis of gender dysphoria and show a willingness to serve in their ‘biological sex’ may be allowed to enlist.
Service secretaries will be able to issue waivers on a case-by-case basis. Chris Johnson, of the Washington Blade, reports waivers “are granted at a discretion of defense officials ‘not infrequently,’ between 7-8% of all service members acceded with some kind of waiver.”
The new rules are a reversal of a Obama era policy (implemented June 30, 2016) that allowed transgender people to serve openly and receive medical treatment to aid transition.
Donald Trump surprised the nation and military leaders when he announced on July 26, 2017, his plan to completely ban trans service members. At the time, he said his decision was based on costs which made trans soldiers “financially burdensome.”
After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……
A 2016 RAND Corp. study estimated between 1,320 to 6,630 trans troops are currently on active duty.
The Pentagon’s annual budget for health care is $50 billion, and a report by USA Today shows that, since the ban was lifted in 2016, only $8 million has been spent on psychological and medical treatment to more than 1,500 trans troops.
Last year, all four service chiefs testified before Congress they had seen no issue with transgender troops serving openly.
The Palm Center’s Aaron Belkin estimates 10% of transgender military service members currently serving have received a gender dysphoria diagnosis and will be ‘grandfathered’ in under the new rules.
Belkin added, “The Trump administration is determined to bring back ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ a policy that forced service members to choose between serving their country and telling the truth about who they were.”
The new policy encountered several court challenges along the way resulting in four injunctions blocking implementation of the plan. The last of those injunctions was lifted last week.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi denounced the news.
“The President’s revival of his bigoted, disgusting ban on transgender service members is a stunning attack on the patriots who keep us safe and on the most fundamental ideals of our nation,” she told Reuters.
Speaking for the National Center for Transgender Equality, policy director Harper Jean Tobin called the ban “severe,” and a blow to the U.S. military.
“Throughout our nation’s history, we have seen arbitrary barriers in our military replaced with inclusion and equal standards,” Tobin told BuzzFeed News. “This is the first time in American history such a step forward has been reversed, and it is a severe blow to the military and to the nation’s values.”
• ‘Fitness obsessed’ InstaHunk Austin Wolf (above) knows how to find the dramatic gym lighting for maximum selfie impact.
• A man wrote in to an advice column after he met his girlfriend’s parents and realized he’d once hooked up with the dad.
• Donald Trump threw a Twitter rant over so-called ‘presidential harassment’ after the New York attorney general’s office issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Investors Bank for records relating to the financing of four major Trump Organization projects and a failed effort to buy the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League in 2014.
New York State and its Governor, Andrew Cuomo, are now proud members of the group of PRESIDENTIAL HARASSERS. No wonder people are fleeing the State in record numbers. The Witch Hunt continues!
• A new app will help #MAGA Trump supporters find restaurants that are safe spaces for their red hats and white nationalist views.
• Media Matters for America has released several recordings of Fox News host Tucker Carlson calling into a favorite radio show in the early 2000s using homophobic, misogynist and racist slurs. #WhoIsSurprised?
• Dido drops a beautiful acoustic version of “Mad Love” from her new album, Still On My Mind.
I find her voice to be so pure; and her music has a chill, relaxing effect on me. Hit play below.
A recent thread on Reddit, in the AskReddit section, queried “As a straight guy, what’s the gayest thing you’ve ever done?”
In two days, the thread has received over 13,000 comments.
Now, this could sound like homophobic, ‘no homo’ territory, but there was a lot of humor involved as well as some touching shares.
Many of the submissions didn’t really qualify for actual ‘gay,’ but the kind of things straight guys are supposed to find uncomfortable.
For example, one Reddit user posted, “Lost my phone, thought my friend took it because he had a bulge in his pants, grabbed said bulge, handful of d*ck.”
“I’m a professional body piercer,” shared another. “I touch other dudes’ d*cks all the time.”
Since neither of those were sexually driven, I’m not seeing anything ‘gay’ there.
This did sound like fun: “My wrestling team and I used to have group nap sessions where we would use each other as pillows.”
There were several stories of having to kiss a guy because of drinking games or acting on a dare.
One of the more typical stories shared went along these lines (check the last sentence): “Once, my friend group decided to skinny dip and play truth or dare. The girls wanted to see how far us guys would go so they kept daring us to do shit like make out, touch each other’s d*cks, etc. For me personally, I made out with another guy, and one of the guys kissed my d*ck. I’d say that’s pretty far to go for all of us. We’re all straight.”
Or the all-too-familiar ‘hyped’ up group of guys scenario: “My friends and I were all in a bathroom together, and we were really hyped up for some reason, and we showed each other our wieners. Oddly enough I think it made us better friends.”
Sometimes it was language that caused some confusion: “Once I was hanging out with my friend and he was f*cking around on online dating. I wanted to ask him to stop doing that so we could do something else together. The sentence that came out of my mouth: ‘Why are you looking for a girlfriend online when you have me?’”
There were also some reports of unexpected spooning while sleeping: “I had a sleepover at my friends house when I was 13, and we laid out some blankets and fell asleep in his living room. I woke up first to him spooning me, and I didn’t move at all because I wanted to avoid any awkward moment in our friendship by having us both know of that cuddle moment, so I laid there as still as I could for maybe 30 minutes until he woke up and quickly but carefully got off of me. I then got up 10 minutes later, and that moment now doesn’t exist in our friendship.”
A few of the posts chronicled guys just being good people in stressful situations, like this: “In college I smoked some weed with my neighbor in the dorm. I got so high that I had a panic attack and to calm me down he basically had to cuddle with me and then put on Animal Planet.”
One of the most up-voted submissions came from a U.S. Marine:
“On deployment in the Marine Corps. I was laying in the desert next to my team leader under a perfect sky. All the stars were out and the air felt like the shade on a hot day. Him and I talked calmly about our families, our dreams, and how perfect the sky looked and how small that made us. ‘Hold my hand’ he said. I could feel, without touching, that his arm was extending. Over the course of the following second I contemplated my whole existence before half consciously reaching out to him. His hand felt nice and we said nothing. This lasted for maybe 10 minutes until we fell asleep.”
The thread was an interesting read, and there were some seriously funny responses to many of the posts. Check out the full thread here.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg speaks at CNN Town Hall in Austin, TX
Openly gay Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, appears to be building some momentum in his bid to become the Democratic candidate for president in 2020.
This past weekend, Buttigieg took part in a CNN town hall at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.
Also taking solo turns on the stage were Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland.
But by many accounts, it was Mayor Pete who found the most traction.
While he isn’t out-polling former Vice President Joe Biden or Sen. Bernie Sanders, Buttigieg showed he knew how to make the most of an opportunity.
Veteran political expert and chief strategist for the Obama campaigns, David Axelrod, gave Buttigieg high marks and predicted an uptick in his standing among the other candidates.
I have rarely seen a candidate make better use of televised Town Hall than @PeteButtigieg is on @CNN tonight. Crisp, thoughtful and relatable. He’ll be a little less of a long shot tomorrow.
During his hour onstage, the 37-year-old displayed impressive poise and composure while throwing some shade on the Trump/Pence administration, including his now infamous “cheerleader for the porn star presidency” description of Vice President Mike Pence.
The former Navy intelligence officer and Afghanistan war veteran also took aim at Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, who has defended the invasion of Iraq for years.
Referencing Bolton’s suggestion that the U.S. use military force in the current conflict in Venezuela, Buttigieg replied, “I don’t understand how somebody leading us into the Iraq War is allowed near that situation.”
He also addressed some issues specific to the LGBTQ community.
The two-term mayor reaffirmed his support for the Equality Act, which would bring uniform civil rights protections to LGBTQs across the nation by adding sexual orientation and gender identity to existing civil righs laws.
He also called for an end to the “war on trans Americans.”
“For a transgender teen to get the signal from the White House that the highest officials in the land can’t tell the difference between her and a predator and make it harder for her to go to the bathroom shows you just how out of whack the climate is in our country right now. We’ve got to end the war on trans Americans and we need a federal Equality Act that would say that you cannot be fired just because of who you are or just because you love.”
Mayor Pete Buttigieg: “We’ve got to end the war on trans Americans and we need a federal equality act that would say that you cannot be fired just because of who you are or just because you love.” pic.twitter.com/85wKS9OLho
There was also a fairly innocuous but human moment that occurred when CNN’s Jake Tapper tried to clarify how to pronounce the mayor’s last name.
Noting that Buttigieg’s husband has indicated a slightly different pronunciation (“I don’t want to get in the middle of a marital squabble, but…”), Tapper asked the mayor for the definitive answer.
Buttigieg said his name quickly (which sounded like ‘Booda-judge’) but added that either option worked, and at home, he just goes by “Mayor Pete.”
The day when reporters blithely ask a presidential candidate about daily interactions with his husband has come.
This moment during the @PeteButtigieg town hall with @jaketapper made me emotional. A discussion of something silly like the spousal bickering of a same-sex couple treated normally is something I wish I had as a kid. We don’t want special rights. We want what everyone else has pic.twitter.com/swfwTsUkwi
Clearly sensing the appearance had gone well, Buttigieg was the only participant in the town hall to make a direct appeal from the stage for donations to his campaign.
According to CNN, Buttigieg had the single biggest fundraising day of his 2020 campaign after his appearance raising more than $600,000 from over 22,200 donations in the 24 hours after the event.
Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin (images via Facebook)
This looks to be the story of the day, especially with the inclusion of actresses Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives) and Lori Loughlin (Full House). According to court filings, those indicted allegedly paid millions in bribes to get their children into elite colleges as well as cheating on entrance exams. Via the New York Times:
Federal prosecutors charged dozens of people on Tuesday in a major college admission scandal that involved wealthy parents, including Hollywood celebrities and prominent business leaders, paying bribes to get their children into elite American universities. Thirty-three parents were charged in the case. Also implicated were top college coaches, who were accused of accepting millions of dollars to help admit students to Wake Forest, Yale, Stanford, the University of Southern California and other schools, regardless of their academic or sports ability, officials said. Along with the Hollywood stars Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, those charged included prominent business leaders, a fashion designer and a top lawyer, as well as exam administrators accused of manufacturing students’ achievements and private admissions counselors accused of coordinating it all, officials said. Federal authorities say dozens of individuals were involved in a nationwide bribery and fraud scheme to help students gain admission to elite colleges and universities. Racketeering charges against 12 of the defendants are detailed in this indictment, one of a number of charging documents in the case.
William Rick Singer, the founder of the college preparatory business the Edge College & Career Network (aka The Key), is apparently at the center of the scandal. Singer has already pleaded guilty to charges and is reportedly cooperating with federal prosecutors. His organization allegedly helped students cheat on standardized tests, like the SAT, and facilitated bribes to prep coaches who helped students gain access into college with fake athletic credentials. The Hollywood Reporter writes that Huffman’s daughter took the test in December 2017, and received a 1420 on the test – a 400 point improvement from a previous attempt. Related: How to take precautions to avoid back-to-school scams
The Palm Beach Post reports that during an event at the Kravis Center last night, conservative pundit Ann Coulter called Donald Trump “a shallow, narcissistic con man.”
File this under “Infighting is funny.”
Coulter turned on Trump after he moved to end the longest federal government shutdown in history without securing the funds to build his beloved U.S.-Mexico border wall.
Coulter also went after the ‘lying media’ as well at last night’s event.
“Trump may be a shallow, narcissistic con man, but that doesn’t mean the media are not the enemy of the people. Both things can be true,” said Coulter.
The conservative author later added she hopes the legacy of the Trump administration would be the “total destruction of the lying media.”
