Donald Trump laments loss of midterm momentum after 11 people were killed
On the campaign trail last night, Donald Trump complained that the recent pipe bomb scare and the deadly shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue slowed momentum for the Republicans which he described as “incredible.”
President Trump complained, once again, on Thursday that the recent mail bomb scare and Pittsburgh synagogue mass shooting had “stopped a tremendous momentum” for Republicans ahead of next week’s midterms.
Speaking to an energized crowd in an airplane hangar decorated with American flags in Columbia, Mo., the president took time at the end of his speech to brag about the “tremendous numbers” of Republicans going to vote. Yet, he said that the weeks leading up to the “very important election” haven’t exactly gone smoothly.
“Now, we did have two maniacs stop a momentum that was incredible, because for seven days nobody talked about the elections,” Trump said. “It stopped a tremendous momentum.”
Trump on mail bomb campaign and Pittsburgh massacre: “We did have two maniacs stop a momentum that was incredible.” pic.twitter.com/ffn4C5jklW
Those two maniacs were both deranged right wingers. Just like him. The bomber coated his van in pictures of trump. Long term fan. The Pittsburgh killer was fixated on the same anti Semitic conspiracy theory and migrant caravan as the president. he’s complaining about his own side
Music and film legend Barbra Streisand joined in the ‘Carpool Karaoke’ fun with The Late Late Show’s James Corden last night as she releases her latest album, Walls.
With his own car jackbooted, he calls on the EGOT winner for a lift.
Immediately reaching for some music, La Streisand initially isn’t too hip to the idea, “I just finished making an album and I don’t usually put the radio on when I’m driving.”
Corden’s sad face saves the day, fortunately for us.
Along the ride we’re treated to “Enough Is Enough,” “Evergreen,” “Imagine,” “What A Wonderful World,” “Don’t Lie To Me” and “Don’t Rain On My Parade.”
Plus, Barbra shares how she really isn’t a great driver (she failed her driving test three times recently), that performing live still makes her uncomfortable, and how she called up Tim Cook (CEO of Apple) to get Siri’s pronunciation of her name corrected.
And she talks on the theme of her new album inspired by the current political turmoil.
You can get Walls here on iTunes and you can watch the one and only Babs below.
Robert Bowers, accused of barging into a Pittsburgh synagogue and killing 11 people last Saturday, appeared in court today to plead not guilty.
How he can be ‘not guilty’ when he was caught redhanded is hard to imagine, but….
Yesterday, a grand jury indicted Bowers on 44 counts of murder, hate crime, obstruction of religious practice, and more.
Bowers allegedly entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and opened fire. Eleven people were killed and six additional victims were injured.
According to prosecutors, the 46-year-old had several firearms, including Glock .357-caliber handguns and a Colt AR-15 rifle.
According to reports, when he was apprehended by police, he told them he “wanted all Jews to die.”
This was the deadliest attack on Jewish people in the U.S. in the history of the country.
The shooting took place during a gay couple’s bris for their newly-adopted twins.
Additionally, one of the victims was a well-known HIV physician in Pittsburgh.
In his court appearance today, Bowers requested a trial by jury which legal experts say could take 3-4 weeks.
If Bowers is found guilty, he faces a possible death sentence for 32 of the 44 indictments. Or, he could face life in prison without parole, or a sentence of up to 535 years in prison.
The project was headed up by 14 LGBTQ advocacy organizations, led by the Human Rights Campaign and Out Leadership.
The coalition included: Athlete Ally, Freedom for All Americans, GLAAD, GLSEN, Lambda Legal, National Center for Transgender Equality, National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, National LGBTQ Task Force, Out & Equal, PFLAG National, The Trevor Project, Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (TLDEF).
In the letter, the companies denounce the Trump administration’s treatment of trans people including the recently discovered plan to ‘redefine’ trans people out of existence.
We, the undersigned businesses, stand with the millions of people in America who identify as transgender, gender non-binary, or intersex, and call for all such people to be treated with the respect and dignity everyone deserves.
We oppose any administrative and legislative efforts to erase transgender protections through reinterpretation of existing laws and regulations. We also fundamentally oppose any policy or regulation that violates the privacy rights of those that identify as transgender, gender non-binary, or intersex.
In the last two decades, dozens of federal courts have affirmed the rights and identities of transgender people. Cognizant of growing medical and scientific consensus, courts have recognized that policies that force people into a binary gender definition determined by birth anatomy fail to reflect the complex realities of gender identity and human biology.
Recognizing that diversity and inclusion are good for business, and that discrimination imposes enormous productivity costs (and exerts undue burdens), hundreds of companies, including the undersigned, have continued to expand inclusion for transgender people across corporate America.
Currently more than 80 percent of the Fortune 500 have clear gender identity protections; two-thirds have transgender-inclusive healthcare coverage; hundreds have LGBTQ+ and Allies business resource groups and internal training efforts.
Transgender people are our beloved family members and friends, and our valued team members. What harms transgender people harms our companies.
We call for respect and transparency in policy-making, and for equality under the law for transgender people.
Accenture Adobe Systems Inc. Airbnb Altria Group Amalgamated Bank Amazon American Airlines Apple Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP) Bank of America Merrill Lynch Ben & Jerry’s Homemade BNY Mellon Cargill Cisco Systems Inc. Citi Clifford Chance The Coca Cola Company Corning Incorporated Corteva Agriscience [™] , the Agriculture Division of DowDuPont The Dow Chemical Company Deutsche Bank E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company Facebook Fastly, Inc. Google Hogan Lovells International LLP HSBC IBM Corporation Intel Corporation Intuit Inc. Iron Mountain JPMorgan Chase & Co. Levi Strauss & Co. LinkedIn Lush Handmade Cosmetics Lyft Marriott International MassMutual MGM Resorts International Microsoft Corp. Nike, Inc. PepsiCo Replacements, Ltd. Ropes & Gray Royal Bank of Canada S&P Global Salesforce Sheppard Mullin Sodexo Inc. Splunk State Street Corporation TiVo Corporation Trillium Asset Management Twitter Inc. Uber Warby Parker
I’ve previously shared the Bad Boy adventures of ‘Scott’ (Artie O’Daly) and quirky bad boy ‘Mack’ (Tony Harth).
Mack always has an interesting take on reality, but forever cute in his dorky way.
In this episode, upon hearing of Mack’s love for the TV series Gilmore Girls, Scott invites a neighbor in his building who happened to have been a star on the show, to drop by.
Vanessa Marano, who actually played the polarizing character of ‘April Nardini’ on the show, guest stars.
Tony Award-winner and current star of FX’s Pose and American Horror Story: Apocalypse, Billy Porter, has penned a frank and revealing personal story of childhood rape and sexual assault for OUT.com.
“Sharing my story with @outmagazine was both cathartic and empowering,” Porter wrote on Twitter. “Be warned, I held nothing back.”
As a disclaimer to the essay, Porter warns the reader that the piece contains “very explicit content,” and if that makes people uncomfortable his advice is to “move on now.”
“Because what we’re not gonna do is shame victims any longer,” he adds. “I have written this piece to continue the excavation of a healing for my soul, not the readers’ comfort level.”
And then, in unfiltered prose, Porter details how his stepfather began to sexually molest/assault him from the time he was 9-years-old.
Porter explains it began with his stepfather introducing him to soft porn and then graduating to more hardcore imagery in Hustler Magazine. His stepfather would ask which pictures he liked and Porter, in an effort to “endear” himself would say, “I like the ones with women and the men.”
A year later, things had escalated to his stepfather choking Porter while forcing him to perform oral sex.
With a reference to the recent Brett Kavanaugh hearings where Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was eventually mocked by the president for not having enough details for her memory to be considered credible, Porter writes:
Cut to a year later with my two hundred and fifty pound stepfather fucking my face with his uncut, coke-can-girthed c**k. (You were warned…)
Is that enough, y’all? Is that horrendous memory “credible” enough or is it too old to matter because I can’t remember the particulars of how I got to the bottom of a face-f*cking position, with the adult put in charge to raise me? Is the manic memory of being suffocated by my stepfather’s beer belly as he…as he…rammed…as I choked.
Am I being too graphic? Is my language to offensive so you can’t “hear” me? After 40-years of taking care of everyone else’s feeling surrounding my trauma, the only person I care about is taking care of myself! Sorry, not sorry.
‘I was born gay and he knew it,” Porter continued. “He knew I would respond favorably to the sex, because sex is pleasurable, sex feels good.”
And then, like many childhood victims of sexual assault, he questions himself. “Maybe it’s my fault,” he writes. “Maybe I asked for it.”
Porter would eventually escape by working at a summer theme park. It was there that the memory of “the affair,” as he had come to call it, would overwhelm him.
It was when his mother came to see him perform that he would tell her of the abuse.
“She believed me but she stayed with him,” writes the Pose star. “I was testing her, I guess? To see if anybody could take care of me. Would there being any consequences for the damage he had inflicted. Would there be any reckoning?”
Porter would spend the next year living in the family basement, filling his schedule with school, dance classes and performances while avoiding his stepfather.
But late one night, when Porter came home late after being at a church concert, his mother forced the two men into a confrontation. The stepfather came downstairs brandishing a leather belt.
“If you hit me… You better kill me,” Porter told his stepfather.
And then his mother demanded that the teenager “Tell him what you told me!” And the stepfather immediately went into denial.
“I didn’t do anything to that boy. I didn’t do anything… he… he didn’t already have coming to him! I told you there was something wrong with him. Something ain’t right with him in the head. I… I can’t believe this. I… That’s a lie. It’s a lie. He’s lying!”
Porter called him out, though. “Lying about what?”
Silence.
“See…? You just told on yourself.”
Soon after, Porter moved out and headed off to college at Carnegie-Mellon University. Even though the school was just minutes from home, he never went back.
The stepfather would die two years later due to a heart attack.
There would be no closure; no resolution; no healing.
Porter explains the #MeToo movement as well as the recent Brett Kavanaugh/Christine Blasey Ford showdown led him to share his story.
We’ve been forced to endure yet another public victim of these violent atrocities be shamed, mocked, laughed at, disbelieved and discredited while the monsters receive saintly status and are elevated to the highest court in the land with the power to legislate our lives as they see fit. No accountability. No consequences. Time’s up, Bitches! TIMES! UP!
In the end, it’s not a ‘woe-is-me’ story. This is a call to action.
Porter closes with a clarion call to use the one power we have in these trying times.
We have to stop in-fighting each other and band together to save our Democracy and earth’s humanity. Period! The End! Cause I know when the shit hits the fan they’re coming for my black faggoty loud mouth ass first.
So I’m gonna stand on the shoulders of all those who came before us, the folk who laid down their lives for the rights we seems to be so carelessly squandering – and keep screaming and fighting till my dying day! Who’s gonna join me? Pull it together people, it’s time to save the world!
VOTE, BITCHES!!! While we still can! It’s the only power we have!
To call the essay ‘powerful’ would be an incredible understatement.
Oprah Winfrey campaigning in Georgia for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams:
“That’s why I’m a registered Independent. Because I don’t want any kind of party, or any kind of partisan influence telling me what decisions I get to make for myself.
“So I wanted to just say to you: Nobody paid for me to come here; nobody even asked me to come here. I paid for myself and I approve this message.”
Oprah goes on to say when she personally called Abrams and introduced herself, Abrams response was, “Girl, lemme pull over to the side of the road.”
And then there was this: ” I just wanna say y’all been on my mind – Georgia you’ve been on my mind. I was just sitting in California, minding my own business, but I could not stop thinking about whats going on down here.”
Oprah Winfrey says she reached out to Democrat Stacey Abrams and asked to campaign for her because she stands for the values that matter.
Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel reunite for “A Very Wicked Halloween”
OMG – it’s still Halloween, so I can still post my favorite witches!
NBC aired the fab “A Very Wicked Halloween” TV special this week and I loved it!
I saw the original cast twice and here we are 15 years later as the fab Broadway musical, Wicked, continues to kill it at the Gershwin Theater in New York City.
I love Wicked – it’s about women discovering their true power.
It’s about marginalized people coming to grips with their true power, and majesty.
It’s about owning who we are with pride.
Original stars Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth reunited for the special, and it was terrific.
Kristin performed “Popular,” Idina gave us “Defying Gravity,” pop star Ariana Grande delivered a terrific “The Wizard & I,” Ledisi and Adam Lambert (a former Wicked cast member) sang “As Long As You’re Mine,” and Grammy Award winners Pentatonix performed “What Is This Feeling?”
The finale of the special was Idina and Kristin joined by past ‘Elphabas’ and ‘Glindas’ for my husband’s favorite song from Wicked, “For Good.”
At their wedding in upstate New York this month, Noah and PJ decided their ‘first dance’ was going to be something special.
And thanks to the mashup of totally gay dance music and a wide-ranging choreography covering just about every dance style, it looks like they accomplished their goal.
It all begins oh-so-innocently with the boys slow-dancing to the romantical “It’s a Quiet Thing.”
But then, the music cuts out.
Cue the Miami Sound Machines’ “Conga,” and the boys are off!
Soon they segue into some “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now),” before slipping in some “Vogue” by Madonna.
You can’t have a wedding dance without classic disco so next up is KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Get Down Tonight,” followed by some tap dancing “Puttin on the Ritz” via Young Frankenstein.
But you need a big finish, and the boys bring it with “The Time of My Life” from Dirty Dancing complete with high-flying lifts.
And the crowd goes wild!
In posting the video, PJ and Noah share, “We seriously did have ‘the time of our lives.’ An incredible night surrounded by incredible people!”
We can all use some uplifting moments these days, and this certainly fill the bill.
