adamfoxie*blog International

How to Have a Wedding that is Not Too …...Straight..

2013-06-18T23:32:00.002-04:00

But how do I have a wedding that’s not so … straight?

Blair Late and Jeff Pederson Wedding from Bravo's Newlyweds: The First Year.

Photo by: Donna Von Bruening/Bravo

The other night on Bravo’s reality show Newlyweds: The First Year, the gay couple finally had their wedding. It was an elaborate, highly coiffed affair (what an older gay friend of mine would call “high fag”) that had been planned over the course of many episodes: Fancy cake samples had been tasted; atrocious dance-pop love songs had been specially written, recorded, and choreographed; and Savannah, Ga., venues had been chosen once deemed sufficientlyMidnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. As a fellow gay, I should have been happy to watch two of my kin do that thing for which we’re all supposed to be fighting, but instead, I experienced a familiar feeling of repulsion mixed with guilt topped off with self-righteous superiority. Confession: There are few things I find more skin-crawly than the pairing of the words “gay” and “wedding.”

I know, I know—I’m not supposed to say something like that. Sometime in the early 1990s, a committee (probably chaired by Andrew Sullivan) decided that “marriage equality” was going to be the gay rights issue of the coming decades, with military service a close second. In order to be “good gays,” all we queens were supposed to get in line, preferably with HRC logos tattooed on our foreheads. I could go on, but let’s just say that the LGBT movement’s rush to assimilate into society’s most conservative institutions at the expense of demanding civil recognition ofdifferent ways of loving and being rubs me the wrong way.

Still, as much as I resent the oppressiveness of the “good gay” ethos, I’m actually not radical enough in my personal life to reject the big gay marriage plot wholeheartedly; in fact, my beef really only extends as far as aesthetics. If we’re all going to get “married,” do we have to do it in the matching seersucker J. Crew suits that seem to be de rigueur? Can’t we gays (you know, the ones who saved Western civilization with our inventiveness) come up with something better than a bland wedding and a milquetoast reception to mark our sad, gradual sink into the mainstream?

This is not just an abstract question. My partner Cam and I have been together for over four years (decades in gay time), and we are gingerly circling the marriage question. We are as committed to one another as I imagine two people can be, and, given that we live in a society that weirdly rewards certain kinds of adult relationships more than others, the pragmatist in me can’t imagine notgetting married in the legal sense. Assuming the eventual fall of DOMA, you’d better believe we want in on all of the legal and financial swag that the state hooks you up with for saying “I do.”

What I have trouble getting into, though, is the wedding part itself. This hang-up, I should mention, has caused some amount of friction in my relationship. Though Cam is also wary of the gay-marriage compulsion and sympathetic to my reservations, he is of the opinion that a wedding is simply a big party at which your family and friends have the privilege of showering you with love and, hopefully, some cash as well. Sometimes, after I’ve had a glass of wine and watched a romantic movie, I can see the faint outlines of his point of view—a nice party isreally all it needs to be, and I do like the idea of having a table-scape budget. But then I start imagining what the event would actually look like: how we’d have to say something charming and funny, but also deeply meaningful about ourselves up in front of a bunch of people; how we’d, in the end, essentially have to perform the POWER OF OUR LOVE to outsiders, and I get goose bumps (not the good ones). That doesn’t sound like Cam and me; it sounds so—straight.

To be clear, by “straight” I don’t just mean that weddings are lame or awkward or boring. After all, on that point many straight couples agree with me, which is why we have wacky Halloween-themed productions and elopements and people who pop by City Hall on the way to work. Rather, I’m using straight as a sort of nongendered aesthetic. No matter how unique or quirky a couple is in real life and no matter how relaxed or innovative the ceremony, weddings have the tendency to cast a pall of earnestness over everything. There’s a part of me that can’t help but balk at the straightness of that imperative, a part that wants to say: “You cannot possibly hope to understand what Cam and I have. You are incredibly presumptuous to demand to have it paraded before you, and you should now leave this place—without your party favor, please.” I realize, of course, that such a response is a little petulant, but there it is. I resent you, Ms. Strawman, for wanting to come to my wedding.

A little more needs to be said about relationship aesthetics. In what has quickly become my Bible of Gayness, David Halperin’s How To Be Gay, the good professor offers an argument about gay relationships that struck me as a stretch at first, but that has grown to seem increasingly insightful over the months since I first read the book. Simply put, Halperin suggests that long-term gay male couples are most successful when they treat their relationships as campy melodramas that “combine passion with irony.” This does not mean that the couple’s love is somehow false or put-on or even unserious; rather, it merely demonstrates that gay couples, having been spared the psychological naturalization of wedded bliss for so long, cannot (or at least, should not) ignore the inherent theatricality of the institution. The entire arrangement, like the initial ceremony itself, is a massive collage of rituals, tropes, traditions, and assumptions that is really just Too. Much. to take seriously.

And, indeed, one of the reasons Cam and I work is that we intuitively lived this model before Halperin wrote it down. When I insist on buying the flowers myself and fuss over the stove while Cam pours the drinks for our guests at a dinner party, we are both on some level aware of how we are parodying the conventions of straight marriage, just as when we have quotidian arguments, we execute them in a catty, War of the Roses-like gender-bending competitive insult contest—and usually end up falling in love again over the other’s devastating verbal skill. Given that this playfulness, this campy meta-performance of conjugal life, is the truth of our relationship, how in the world could we hope to take something as “straight” as a wedding seriously? To watch a gay couple soberly deliberate over whether hors d'oeuvres will be light or heavy, to earnestly worry about having bridesmaids or groomsmen, to struggle with writing their own vows vs. using a standard liturgy is for me like watching Mickey Rooney do yellowface in Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 2013. It’s cringe-funny because the lack of self-awareness is literally incredible. I doubt we’d be able to make it through the invocation before dissolving into giggles over how some relative’s makeup evokes Goldie Hawn at the end of Death Becomes Her.

But maybe that’s just how it will have to go down. As much as I’d like to think that Cam and I will be able to come up with something as thrilling as how an Australian newspaper described a spate of secret gay weddings in 1932—“ghastly, horrifying spectacles of painted men and primping lads united in a sacrilegious blasphemy that they call the ‘bonds of matrimony’ ”—I have a resigned feeling that we will end up having the nice party that he wants and that I don’t really mind all that much, I guess. No, it will probably not accurately convey, as Augusten Burroughs put it in his recent column about his own gay wedding issues, the “slightly miraculous and always exciting” campy aesthetic of our relationship, but it will be lovely all the same.

And then we will go home, and Cam will make fun of me for crying during the banal speeches and for making such a fuss about all this to begin with, and I will be irritated but also smile because I will remember that he is the only one who, miraculously, gets it—or needs to—anyway.

Slate Magazine

What Being Gay Taught Me About My Self Respect and Confidence

2013-06-18T23:24:00.000-04:00

YourTango
I admit it: I’m a gay man. I like sex and I’ve had gay sex (quite a bit of it). I’ve even had straight sex. And, I’m here to share 5 Secrets You Can Learn From Gay Men To Knock Your Sexual Confidence Out Of The Park! Of course, you don’t have to be gay, a man or even interested in having gay sex to understand anything I’m about to share with you.

From my perspective as a gay man, we don’t have all the answers about sex just because we supposedly have so much of it. That’s a stereotype that we gay men just seem to fashionably wear (provided it matches our Gucci loafers). Seriously though, contrary to popular belief, not all gay men are having one-night stands with every gay guy that pops in to our peripheral vision.

So what about the straight, married couple Jim and Susie who live at the end of the cul de sac with Fido and their 2.5 kids? (Please explain to me how you can have “.5″ of a kid?) They’re curious, but lacking in confidence. They might want to take notes from their gay neighbors, which leads me to sharing the below secrets to boosting yoursexual confidence.

1. Exploration builds confidence. If you never learned how to ride a bike, how confident are you in riding one? If you shied away from learning new dance moves, how are you ever going to be anything but a wallflower at the party? Get the point? If you don’t explore and satisfy your sexual curiosities, then you’ll never build the confidence to express your desires: “I want to tie you up in the lounge chair by the pool in plain view of the neighbors.”

2. Size matters. Yes, there are size queens whether you’re a gay man, straight woman, lesbian or straight man. We all desire a certain size of “something” from our sexual and intimate relationships. Gay men take it one step further. We judge ourselves by the size of our belief in ourselves. Why else do we strive for the best clothes or become gym bunnies to achieve outrageously chiseled bodies? The size of our confidence is in direct proportion to the size of our belief that we are sexual goliaths in bed!

3. Masculinity and femininity are not mutually exclusive. This is the truth and if you can’t grasp it, then you need to go back to health class. Remember X and Y-chromosomes? We all have them. The difference is, we gay men let them coexist in the condos of our human forms. Even the most butch, leather-clad gay man, allows his femininity to take center stage once the lights go down, the chaps come off and he utters to his lover, “Just take me!”

The key here is to realize that there is a sexual spectrum fluid in all of us. We all float between our gender identity (what we feel in our mind) and our gender expression (how we dress, act and speak), regardless of our gender identity (what’s between our legs) and our sexual orientation (which gender we are attracted to physically and emotionally).

4. Monogamy isn’t just one shade of grey! Everyone seems to think that gay men can’t be monogamous (sigh). We can, we just do it by different standards. Here’s a run-down of the spectrum:

“Pure Monogamy”: a man shares sex and intimacy with only his boyfriend.
“Monogamy Bronze”: a man shares sex and intimacy with his boyfriend and the couple agrees to playing with another guy.
“Monogamy Silver”: a man shares sex and intimacy with his boyfriend and another guy chosen to keep peace in the house.
“Monogamy Gold”: a man shares sex and intimacy with his boyfriend and no more than two other guys (but can’t get jealous of them).
“Monogamy Platinum”: a man shares sex and intimacy with his boyfriend, and allows him to play with another guy (it doesn’t matter who he’s doing it with, as long as he’s having safe sex, doing it where the couple can watch and the other guy agrees to being watched).

5. Be confident enough in yourself to be vulnerable to someone else. For the most part, gay men know exactly what they are doing when they say “Hey” on Grindr, cuddle up to the cute guy at the bar and find ourselves thinking, “It’s just sex!” Yes, we do know all those things are just fodder for making us feel less than, not worthy and causing to break out in our own rendition of “Girl On Fire.” We’re fragile, we know it and while we may not admit it openly, we aren’t just pretty faces. Even under the stereotypical guise of sex-craved men, for the most part, we’re just men who are looking for acceptance.

So if you were to take all these secrets and change the pronouns as necessary, what you’ll find is that gay men are really just like any other sexual beings. We don’t hold the secrets to sexual confidence; we simply hold the keys to being sexually true to who we are. And, as human beings, we screw it up from time to time, which is to be expected when you realize, boys will be boys, and men will be men — gay or straight!

Rick Clemons, The Coming Out Coach
Certified Professional Coach (CPC), Energy Leader Index, Master Practioner (ELI-MP), International Coach Federation, Associate Certified Coach (ACC)

Rick Clemons is a Certified Professional Coach who’s been featured on The Ricki Lake Show, and is a highly sought after radio show guest, blogger, author, and Sex Coach U Faculty Member, who lovingly addresses the many facets of Coming Out for all who are touched by this Journey. Rick also hosted his own radio show, The Coming Out Lounge, and has been an expert guest on numerous other radio shows, and in print on national blogs. Sign-up for Ricks’ free video series, “Coming Out Without Coming Unglued!” or connect with him through his Coming Out & Life Coaching Newsletter.

Like to chat with Rick? Schedule A Complimentary Session! Sessions available via phone, Skype, and in-person.

Twitter: @ComingOutCoach
Facebook: Rick The Coming Out Coach
YouTube channel: Coming Out Coach

By Rick Clemons for YourTango.com.

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CARE2.COM

A Moving French Ad For Gay Marriage Please Watch

2013-06-18T22:46:00.003-04:00

Last month, President Francoise Hollande signed a law authorizing gay marriage and adoption by same-sex couples in France, but according to a new ad from Google, same sex couples have been using Google Hangouts to skirt the law for a few months.

The ad, which is quite the tearjerker, follows French couples who used the Google Hangout technology to get married in France by video conferencing with a Belgian mayor who seems more than happy to officiate the joyous occasions. Same-sex marriage is legal in Belgium, one of the world’s 14 nations that accepts same-sex marriage. The stars of the Google ad are Marc-Antoine and Sebastien, who met in 1976 and — thanks to Google — finally found a way to make their relationship official.

GOP Says A Male Fetus Masturbates at 20 weeks-Nothing on Females

2013-06-18T18:54:00.002-04:00

U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess. During a House Rules Committee debate yesterday on the "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act," which would ban all abortions nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy, Burgess argued for an even earlier ban.

Citing his experience as an OB-GYN, Burgess said "there is no question" that babies feel pain earlier than 20 weeks. How does he know this, you ask? Why,because they masturbate, of course!

Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful. They stroke their face. If they're a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to think that they could feel pain?

Rep. Burgess made no reference to a female fetus's ability to feel pleasure.

Adamfoxie*Blog Shares} Do You agree with the Post About Mrs.McCain Being a HERO?

2013-06-17T23:05:00.001-04:00

Do You agree that some of the NYC gay community have elcted the wife of Sen. McCain as HERO? of what it doesn’t say. I wrote a blog about this and will be so interesting in reading and leaving your thoughts at the bottom of the page VVVVVV you can sign as anonymous or give your name, No Spam is permitted.VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

adamfoxie*blog
shares

Cindy McCain is Being Honor as a Hero. "A Hero She is Not”

Just click the link it will take to the page right here on adamfoxie*

Black Eye to Republicans} Supreme Court Rules Against Proof of Citizenship on Voting

2013-06-17T22:36:00.002-04:00

The New York Times

Supreme Court Officers guarded the building on Monday morning, when the justices issued a ruling striking down an Arizona law requiring voters to prove their citizenship.

This was a dirty trick the Republicans in the bible belt, south and south-West have been using for years. On the states on which you had the oldest less educated people, many that could not even write. What they would do is require a drivers license or passport to be able to vote. Many of those people have not driven for years if ever an Let’s not not even discuss passports. Most of these people were voting democrats and they would be turn back after hours of waiting. If The few they found out were publicans those got thru. They have been stealing votes for years. Votes that could have swing elections like Gore’s and John Kerry’s. It came to the point now that they wanted it in the law. So Arizona was the first one to pass the law and it was the first one that got an appeal from the courts. Thankfully it went all the way up to the Supremes so it wont come back as an anymore. Now republicans might have to try to win election the old fashion way, by deserving it. {adam}

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a 7-to-2 decision that Arizona may not require documentary proof of citizenship from people seeking to vote in federal elections there.

By ADAM LIPTAK

The ruling was the second in as many terms to reject Arizona laws that the state’s officials justified as responses to illegal immigration. In both cases, the court insisted that the federal government has the dominant role when it comes to national issues like controlling the borders and how federal elections are conducted.

According to lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case, tens of thousands of Arizonans have been denied the ability to vote because they failed to present the required evidence when they tried to register.

“The decision really puts another barrier in front of those who would seek to suppress votes,” said Thomas A. Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

But John Kavanagh, a Republican state legislator, said the federal government had not done enough. “Arizona has a serious problem with illegal immigration, being one of the leading illegal entry states, so protecting the credibility of our election system requires that we exclude illegal aliens and any other noncitizen from voting,” he said. “Not being able to request proof makes that impossible.”

The decision, with its lopsided vote, is not an indication that the court will always be sympathetic to claims of voter suppression. Its decision on the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is expected by the end of the month, and it may limit what its supporters say is an important tool in protecting minority voters.

Nor has the Supreme Court been uniformly hostile to Arizona’s efforts to address what lawmakers there say is a crisis in illegal immigration. Last year, it upheld one part of a tough 2010 state immigration law even as it endorsed broad federal power over immigration. In 2011, it sustained a different law that imposed harsh penalties on businesses that hired illegal workers.

On Monday, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, No. 12-71, said a federal law requiring states to “accept and use” a form displaced an Arizona law requiring various kinds of proof of citizenship.

The law, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, allows voters to register using a federal form that asks, “Are you a citizen of the United States?” Prospective voters must check a box for yes or no, and they must sign the form, swearing under the penalty of perjury that they are citizens.

The state law, by contrast, required prospective voters to prove they were citizens by submitting documents like birth certificates, passports or naturalization papers. They could also provide a driver’s license number from a state that verifies citizenship.

The state law was a result of a 2004 voter initiative, Proposition 200, that said it was meant to combat voter fraud. The law has given rise to tangled proceedings ever since. Under the Voting Rights Act, Arizona was required to obtain federal approval before it changed its voting procedures. The Justice Department granted approval in 2005.

Much of Justice Scalia’s majority opinion concerned the meaning of the phrase “accept and use.” Arizona officials argued that they do accept and use the form, but also require additional information. An airline may accept and use e-tickets, they said, but also require identification.

In the decision on Monday, Justice Scalia said the phrase “accept and use,” when understood in context, meant that the federal form had to be accepted as sufficient. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined all of the majority opinion, and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joined most of it.

In a long dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said the Constitution gave states the power “to determine the qualifications of voters in federal elections, which necessarily includes the related power to determine whether those qualifications are satisfied.”

“Congressional legislation of voter qualifications was not part of the framers’ design,” Justice Thomas wrote.

In a second dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. focused on the language of the federal law, which he said was ambiguous. The majority’s interpretation of it, Justice Alito wrote, “produces truly strange results.” He said he would read the law to mean that states “accept and use” the federal form so long as it is “a meaningful part of the registration process.”

Justice Alito likened his proposed process to the common application used by many colleges and universities. Those institutions, he said, “also require that applicants submit various additional forms or documents.”

Justice Scalia wrote that Arizona had additional options if it wished to obtain documentary proof of citizenship. It may ask the Election Assistance Commission, a federal body, to make changes to the federal form.

Arizona made such a request in 2005, and the commission split 2 to 2, effectively rejecting it. The state did not challenge that action in federal court. The commission recently approved a request from Louisiana to require additional information from its voters, Justice Scalia noted. He said Arizona could ask again.

In dissent, Justice Alito said the majority was giving the state an empty promise. He pointed out that the commission “currently has no members, and there is no reason to believe that it will be restored to life in the near future.” In response, Justice Scalia suggested that the state could sue in federal court based on its inability to obtain relief from the commission.

Last year, a divided 10-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the federal and state laws “do not operate harmoniously” and “are seriously out of tune with each other in several ways.” The court blocked the state law.

The decision from that panel effectively affirmed a 2010 ruling from a three-judge panelthat included Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired from the Supreme Court in 2006 but occasionally acts as a visiting appeals court judge. She joined the majority in ruling that the state law was inconsistent with the federal one and so could not survive.

Justice O’Connor was in the Supreme Court’s courtroom on Monday to see the announcement of the decision.

Rebekah Zemansky contributed reporting from Tucson.

PEW: All TV Outlets Have Fair Supportive Coverage of Gay Marriage

2013-06-17T21:10:00.001-04:00

A new survey from Pew’s Project For Excellence in Journalism examines the coverage of gay marriage among the media. The big takeaway: almost every outlet presented more supportive statements in favor of gay marriage than opposing statements against gay marriage, including every TV news outlet.

Pew looked at every segment on gay marriage from March 18-May 12, and classified every statement made on the issue as being supportive of gay marriage, opposed to gay marriage or neutral.

As a whole, the network morning shows presented 44 statements in favor of gay marriage, none opposed, and 56 neutral. The network evening newscasts presented 46 statements in favor of gay marriage, none opposed, and 54 neutral. Each cable news channel was broken down individually. Given the three very different programming strategies of the channels, it was an interesting move, as all three presented far more supporting arguments than opposing arguments:

By Alex Weprin

8 Hr Ordeal for Gay Man Accused of Sex on Himself on Train

2013-06-17T21:00:00.001-04:00

Mr Jones, of Towncourt Crescent, Petts Wood, said: “I was the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time.

“I don’t mind answering questions but it was just the heavy-handed way of ‘you’re guilty’.

“I thought that’s not right, I have done nothing wrong.”

The BTP officers were looking for a man wearing a blue shirt who had reportedly performed a sex act on himself in a train carriage a woman was travelling in on the 6.28pm train from Petts Wood to Bromley.

Mr Jones had been on that train and was wearing a blue jacket so when officers found him on a train travelling back to his home about two hours later they arrested him.

After being questioned at Orpington he was locked in a cell at Ebury Bridge (Victoria) Transport Police station for several hours before a formal interview took place.

During this interview it emerged the suspect the police were looking for was in his late 20s, had blondish hair and was travelling in the back carriage.

Mr Jones is 49 years old and was travelling in the front carriage.

He said: “I said it could not have been me and I also added that as a gay man I would never be at all interested in masturbating in front of a woman or on a train.

“If I hadn’t had the blue jacket on then I wouldn’t have been a suspect.”

The musician added: “I do not feel safe on trains and buses now because you could find yourself wrongfully arrested.”

He was eliminated from the BTP enquiries after officers watched the CCTV from the train.

Investigating officer Detective Sergeant Jason Schweiger said: “We need to act quickly when we receive a report of this nature, a suspect could still be at the scene and we need to do our best to identify the person responsible.

“In this case, a description of a man we were looking for in connection with the incident was circulated and a man of similar description who had travelled on the train in question was arrested.”

Officers are still appealing for information about the incident which happened on board the 6.25pm Orpington to London Victoria service on June 3.

The man officers are keen to speak to is described as in his late twenties, slim, with short ginger hair.

He was wearing a pale blue shirt with a tie and blue jeans at the time of the incident.

By Robert Fisk Call the BTP on 0800 405040 if you have any information about the incident, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.

Latest While We Wait for the Supremes

2013-06-17T20:32:00.002-04:00

THis what this blog after checking the opinions of law clerks in DC

Good Ruling:

1; DOMA go back to hell with the people that gave you life. Californians are free to get married.
This will happen, No More DOMA

2: Justices Make a broad ruling that all gays deserve to gay marriage like in Ca. and USA: Wonderful
Don’t Expect it it will be a shocker. It will be limited sending back to the states,

While We Wait for DOMA's Decision You Might Approve of What Some Congressmen are Doing

2013-06-17T20:16:00.000-04:00

Cindy McCain is Being Honor as a Hero. "A Hero She is Not"

2013-06-17T19:18:00.002-04:00

Today’s headlines in the biggest internet media is that the wife of John McCain, Cindy is a “hero.”

Actually she would be the last person in the world that I would like to headline or follow as such.
She received plenty of that adulation when she was helping John McCain in his loosing campaign for president against somebody who said the LGTB community is being discriminated and it needs to stop. This is the President of the US that in his second inauguration put gay together with Selma and the Black civil rights heroes of that time..

The Trevor Project is giving a Hero award. The Trevor Project is a wonderful organization in which it helps to prevent teen suicide, some of which are cause by people like John McCain. Im sure there is going to be people that would say Adam did not read the memo. Actually I did because I know what the parties involved are, what they are doing and what they have accomplished. To be fair I will follow this thought by telling you what the Trevor people say about Mrs.McCaine. Which is a world of good. But does it makes her a hero? I don’t think so and will tell you why.

I will print it word per word of who she is and her good deeds But before that, let me go back to how surprised I was to hear that Some top leaders in the gay community were giving her a “Hero” award.
You see words have a meaning to me, that is why there is a blog called adamfoxie*. Hero to me is not a person that by choice is married to one of the worse obstacles we have had in everything from DADT, which not only did he helped sponsor it he looked like he was going to give birth when he was arguing with the Generals that wanted this unethical,immoral, injustice done with and he was stopping and when he could not stop it, he delayed, delayed.

He opposed it like he is backed DOMA and also voted for it. You might say what is she got to do with it? Hey is more than a song and dance. He is a rat and because he is a veteran and an ex-pow he can do to others in a whole community as he wants. Not in my book because we members of our community suffer similar conditions and experiences. In vietnam and in every war, because we could not say we were gay does not take from the sacrifice gays suffered. I give you likes of the code breaker of the “Enigma Machine” Which code was broken by British code breaker Alan Turing that saved so many thousands of lives and shortened the war in Germany. He was put in Jail and they ended shortening his life dying at a young 53. This Because of the inhuman treatment he received when it was discovered he was gay.

No, I don’t think john McCain is special and neither is his wife to be chosen by one of the orgs we support as a Hero. Of coarse the gay community had nothing to do with that. That decision was made in New York as a fundraiser by the people that know best because they go by the number$ I would guess.

We talk about making companies pay for their intolerance and homophobia wether is chicken sandwiches or oil. Why the same measurements is not made towards individuals? It seems that if Im connected to a hater and abuser of the community is like saying that a positive and a negative is equal a positive, that is not so in chemistry and not so in practical life.

I think that families of haters more than anyone else have a responsibility to try to mitigate the hurt that their spouse or father does. Iam not saying that the wife of McCain can control him or what he does. I don’t know that. What I know is what is public. This is a couple that ran an election with the backing of our worse enemies. Forget and forgive? Why? we are not there yet and when we are there some of us will forgive but Im sure that most of us and history will not forget when someone in public and a senator with a lot of power and seniority comes against us and our answer is to make his wife a hero? Would we do that to the wife of any despot in the world? To be fair Im going to copy what the Trevor Project says about her:

"Outside of the LGBT community, Cindy serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for the HALO Trust, a non-profit organization dedicated to landmine removal and weapons destruction in war-torn countries, Cindy has traveled to numerous countries to see firsthand the impact HALO has had by removing landmines. She served on the Board of Directors for Operation Smile, a non-profit organization whose mission is to repair cleft lips, cleft palates and other facial deformities for children around the world. Cindy has also traveled extensively on behalf of World Food Programme, visiting mother and child feeding programs in Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Cindy is a Founding Member of the Eastern Congo Initiative. She’s travelled to the region four times in the last two years and is committed to raising awareness on the travesties facing women and children in the Congo. After traveling to South Korea as an Ambassador to the 2013 Winter Games, she recently joined the board of the Special Olympics 2015 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

In addition to her humanitarian work, Cindy is the chairman of her family’s business, Hensley & Company, which is one of the largest Anheuser-Busch distributors in the nation.

Her formal education includes an undergraduate degree in Education and a Master’s in Special Education from the University of Southern California. As a student, Cindy participated in pilot programs testing Movement Therapy, which is now a widely accepted standard for working with severely disabled children. After receiving her degrees from USC, she began her teaching career at Agua Fria High School in Arizona where she continued her work with disabled children. Mrs. McCain is a member of the USC Rossier School of Education Board of Councilors, a group of civic and education leaders who provide guidance, support and advocacy for the school’s work.

Cindy lives in Phoenix with her husband, U.S. Senator John McCain. Together, they have four children: Meghan, Jack, Jimmy, and Bridget.”

Impressive? oh yeah..for me. If I did that it would be impressive because I would have to rob a few billionaires to have the means of making a large financial contribution. She is someone who is one of the richest women in the world, married to one of the most powerful homophobes out of 100 senators in the US Capital.

She should do what her consciousness dictates to her and it seems like she does have one. For her husband if she says he is a wonderful husband and father, that’s for her family to decide. What ever he is and what ever she is does not make to connect one of them or both as heroes.

It hurts when orgs that we support as a community and like, it hurts when they sell out because they need the funds and exposure. Again is not just to get there but how we get there in the fight to keep our rights as LGTB community and part of the American Community. This is the same fight we have against terrorism which is how much of our liberty and rights do we give up to feel safer?

Hero’s there are so many to mention. Straight people that against criticism have helped and given to this community. The people in the public eye that have come out to help us get power and visibility.

They are heroes. They are the ones that have lost their friends, family and livelihood for coming out: {HEROES} The Military fighting for their country gay or straight; heroes. But if any of them comes back a hero and uses that to oppress other people….Not a hero, not their spouses not their friends. This is not a new idea to see who our enemies are and never be bought out. If you need to honor the family of people that are causing suicides of young people then you tearing down the wall behind you while you construct the one in front of you.

{Adam Gonzalez}

Elmo Child Sex Guy Honored At Gala and Gets Award {Why!}

2013-06-16T21:59:00.001-04:00

Kevin Clash, the Elmo puppeteer who resigned amid allegations that he sexually abused underage boys, won three Daytime Emmy Awards for his work on "Sesame Street."

Clash won as outstanding performer in a children's series at the creative arts ceremony held Friday night. He shared trophies for outstanding pre-school children's series and directing in a children's series, giving Clash 26 Daytime Emmys for his work on the venerable PBS show.

He played Elmo for 28 years before quitting last November. Clash's lawyer has said that related lawsuits filed against the entertainer are without merit.

The main Daytime Emmys ceremony is Sunday in Beverly Hills.

LOS ANGELES, June 16 (UPI) -- Disgraced former "Sesame Street”
puppeteer and producer Kevin Clash won three Daytime Awards in
Los Angeles this weekend.

Clash lent his voice to the fuzzy, red monster Elmo for nearly three
decades, but resigned last year after several men came forward and
said they had sex with him when they were minors. Although no criminal
charges have been brought against Clash, several men are suing him for his
alleged abusive behavior.

Clash earned a trio of prizes at the Daytime Entertainment Creative Arts Emmy
Awards ceremony Friday at Westin Bonaventure. In addition to his win for
outstanding performer in a children's series, he shared trophies for outstanding
pre-school children's series and directing in a children's series for his collaboration
with the show's creative team.

More Daytime Emmy Awards were being handed out at a second ceremony
at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles Sunday night.

Michael Lucas and The Episode of Prison Rape

2013-06-16T21:25:00.000-04:00

Pictured: Milan Gamiani

Imagine that you are a trapped in a world of men who take pleasure in harming and demeaning you. Every day, they call you a lowlife and a faggot. You're kicked and punched until you bleed. You are brutally raped, by four different men. There is nowhere for you to go and nowhere you can turn for help. When you report it to the authorities, they tell you to keep quiet.

Milan Gamiani doesn’t have to imagine any of that. He lived it in 2010, he says, at a correctional center in Manhattan, where he was sent for refusing to testify against a boyfriend who was charged with financial crimes. “I was beaten many times,” he told me. “I was mocked, abused, robbed of the few possessions I had, made to do things I never wanted to.”

Now, more than two years after his release, he relives his trauma continually, in nightmares and day terrors that have nearly broken him. “I'm not over what I went through,” he says. “My mind can't handle it. I feel like disappearing.”

Milan’s experience is very far from an isolated case. Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice published a sickening report on widespread sexual violence in American prisons. And as the New York Times wrote, the highest rates of victimization were found among “inmates who were gay or lesbian, inmates who had been raped or sexually abused before incarceration, and inmates who suffered from mental illness.” The most vulnerable convicts are at greatest risk.

This is bullying on a grotesque scale, and it is a national disgrace. Yet when prison rape is discussed at all in America, it is almost always as a punch line. On sitcoms and late-night comedy shows, the idea of a man going to jail is usually followed by a one-liner about becoming his cell mate’s “girlfriend,” or dropping the soap in the shower. The humor in these jokes is not just dehumanizing but homophobic. Would anyone make a similar joke about a woman getting raped?

Abuse of adult men is something we have been taught to laugh at, not take seriously. No wonder so many victims stay silent about it. Milan Gamiani is a brave exception.

I met Milan years ago when he was working in the adult film industry. We even made a few movies together. Back then, I knew him to be friendly, good-humored and one of the most comfortably sexy performers I had ever worked with. When I met with him last month in Florida, where he lives now, it was hard to recognize him as the same person. He was nervous, fearful and deeply sad. A cocktail of medications helps him keep his terrors in check, but only barely. He struggled unsuccessfully to hold back tears while recounting his story to me; we had to end the interview early because it was too painful for him to continue.

Milan’s ordeal in prison began, he says, on the day he was admitted. It started with the guards. “They want to let you know who’s in charge, and they make that very clear,” he recalls. “They diminish you and insult you. It’s like a power trip for them. They seemed to get off on calling you a piece of trash.” (“What’s a little white boy like you doing in a big boy’s playground?” he remembers one of them taunting.)

Once Milan had been assigned a bed, he was taken to the cellblock. “They literally parade you like you are fresh meat, and all the prisoners start talking amongst themselves about who wants to have you; who wants to take you in their cell,” he says. “It was so degrading to be sitting there in a corner while all of that was taking place.”

His first cellmate, he soon discovered, was stealing and selling Milan’s few belongings. When Milan confronted him, the cellmate beat him up. The next day, Milan tried to report the attack to the prison’s social worker, who treated him coldly. “It was like he was judging you no matter what. You felt like at any time he could just smack you,” Milan says. The social worker’s advice to Milan was to forget about the incident: “He said it’s best if you don’t get into fights because it will go against you when it’s time to see the judge.”

Milan’s situation got more dangerous in the weeks to come. Everywhere he went, he was targeted for abuse. The shower room was the most dangerous, because it afforded inmates a limited privacy. “Once you got in the shower, sometimes people would go behind the curtain and just beat the shit out of you, because it was the only place where nobody could see.”

The abuse was often sexual. “They would beat you up so you would do whatever it was that they wanted—oral sex, or sometimes they would just fuck you until they came,” he recalls. Four different men, he says, raped him during his stay, without condoms or lubrication. Resisting them was impossible. “They were bigger than me, and they would restrain you because they knew about street fighting. I can fight but I don’t have those techniques. I don’t know how to block somebody like that.” Nor could he call for help: “If you screamed they would beat you a lot harder.”

In despair, Milan tried to hang himself in his cell. He failed, and the attacks continued. The men responsible raped at least three other inmates that Milan knew. Every day, he and the others would have to share breakfast, lunch and dinner with the men who abused them. To report what was happening was to risk even worse retribution from the attackers. And when he did reach out to prison supervisors, he says, he was ignored.

“I told one doctor [about the rape],” Milan recalls. “She immediately left the room, and I thought she was going to do something about it. Then another doctor came, and a social worker. But nothing ever came of it.” Milan says he also approached the guards three times about what was happening to him. Their response? “‘Stop making trouble.’ I can hear it now,” Milan says. Their indifference was colored with contempt: “‘Come on, you guys like playing with each other and now you’re going to call it rape?’”

Nothing in Milan’s life had prepared him for what he endured. “If you are somebody like me who has never been to prison before, who has never committed a crime in his life, these are people who will rip you apart without thinking twice,” he says. “The brutality doesn't come just from the prisoners. It also comes from the employees of the prison: from the guards, from the marshals, whom you cannot even look in the eye without feeling threatened or getting into some sort of trouble. There is no one there to extend advice or defend you. Even the doctors will not help.”

Milan survived his stay in prison, and is battling now to survive the aftermath. He is speaking up, and so should we. Visit the website of Just Detention International to learn more about the ongoing human-rights crisis in our prisons.

Stop laughing at jokes about rape.

Demand that your elected officials get involved. Prisoner rights are not a popular issue for politicians, who don’t want to look “soft on crime.” But prison assault and rape are crimes, and should be treated seriously as such. People who have been convicted should serve out their sentences according to the law. But those sentences do not include being physically and sexually tortured by other inmates while the law looks the other way.

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons,” wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky in his 1862 novel, The House of the Dead.In our prisons, victims of horrific abuse are beaten into silence while imprisoned, then shamed into it when they leave. How should we be judged?

MICHAEL LUCAS is the creator of Lucas Entertainment, one of the largest studios producing all-male erotica. He lives in New York City.

New Survey Tell Us Israel "Being Our Friend” Not True! The Opposite of What Their Leaders told us and We Believed

2013-06-16T21:12:00.001-04:00

For a number of years, Tel Aviv has been considered one of the most liberal cities in the world and the gay capital of the Middle East. Both the Israeli public and the media have shown increasing openness and acceptance toward the LGBT community. But data from the American Pew Research Center show another side.

According to a comprehensive survey conducted by the institute in 39 countries, only 40 percent of Israelis believe society should accept homosexuality, while 47 percent believe the opposite. This figure is lower than in any other Western, developed country surveyed, with the exception of South Africa.

Thousands attend the Gay Pride Parade in Tel Aviv on June 7. photo/ap-oded balilty

Still, Israel is the most accepting country toward gays in the Middle East.

The survey, which sampled 37,653 respondents across the globe between March 2 and May 1, proved once again that tolerance toward homosexuality is higher when religion plays a smaller role in the life of the population.

The study also shows greater tolerance toward LGBT individuals among young people globally; in a substantial number of the countries, women are more tolerant than men.

According to the study, the country most accepting of gays is Spain, where 88 percent of the respondents said society should accept homosexuals. Within the European Union, Spain was followed by Germany (87 percent), the Czech Republic (80 percent), France (77 percent) and the UK (76 percent). Even in Italy, where religion is perceived as playing a major role in life, 74 percent of those questioned responded in the affirmative.

Conservative Greece had a 53 percent affirmation rate.

Among the more tolerant countries were Canada (70 percent support) and the U.S. (60 percent) for North America; and Argentina (74 percent), Chile (68 percent), Mexico (61 percent) and Brazil (60 percent) in Latin America. The Asian Pacific countries had mostly negative responses, but outstanding among these were Australia (79 percent) and the Philippines (73 percent).

The vast majority of respondents in Islamic countries were opposed to acceptance of homosexuals: 97 percent in Jordan, 95 percent in Egypt, 94 percent in Tunisia and 93 percent in the Palestinian Authority and Indonesia. Even in Turkey, a developed country largely considered Western in its ideals, 78 percent of the population opposes homosexuality.

According to the study, tolerance among secular Jews in Israel is more than twice that of people who described themselves as traditional, religious or haredi (61 percent vs. 26 percent). Only 2 percent of Muslims in Israel said they support the acceptance of homosexuals.

In most of the countries surveyed, no significant differences were found between the responses of men and women. But Israel was different. According to the Pew Institute, there is a 17 percent gap between men’s and women’s views on the subject in the Jewish state (48 percent of women believe homosexuals should be accepted, compared with 31 percent of men).

Almost all Western countries surveyed experienced significant improvement in acceptance since the last survey. South Korea experienced a substantial rise of 21 percent, followed by the U.S. (plus 11 percent), Canada (plus 10 percent) and Italy (plus 9 percent). Interestingly, in the PA this time, there was a 5 percent decrease in tolerance toward gays and lesbians.

ynetnews.com

On this list Israel is posted but what we are contending to day is that they are not the friend they said they were even if the government have done gay friends mutual beneficiaries deeds.

At least 31 countries currently allow residents to sponsor gay and lesbian permanent partners for legal immigration, including: Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. -

Kid Selling Lemonade Makes $$ For Freedom Cause Among Insults From The Westboro Baptists

2013-06-16T20:58:00.000-04:00

A little girl decided to fight the hatred being spread by the Westboro Baptist Church by setting up a lemonade stand across the street and raising money to promote peace instead.

Jayden Sink, five, is the daughter of Jon Sink, who set up charity arts group FRESHCASSETTE. She raised around $1,000 despite the efforts of the Westboro Baptist church to shut her down by calling the police and yelling abuse.

Jayden decided to sell pink lemonade on Friday outside The Equality House which sits across the street from Westboro Baptist Church headquarters in Topeka, Kansas.

Along with the help of her dad and volunteers, Jayden sold lemonade by the bucket load all day as the local community came out in droves to support her message of peace.

One group of soldiers from nearby Fort Riley military base stopped by on their motorbikes to show their support.

The five-year-old made a plan to sell lemonade after her parents explained to her why the Equality House is so important.

The property was bought last year by Planting Peace charity founder Aaron Jackson, 31, and in March it was painted with the colors of the pride flag.

Daily Mailuk

Penis Size is Mostly Important For Other Men Not Women

2013-06-16T18:55:00.003-04:00

A new study has found size matters, but not where you'd think.

Well, we are talking about penises, but for men, it's not as much of an issue in the bedroom as it is in the locker room.

According to a new study from Victoria University in Melbourne, men are more shy around other men than they are with their own sexual partners.

Doctorate of Clinical Psychology graduate Dr Annabel Chan Feng Yi surveyed 738 men online and found insecurity about weight, body image and penis size was a common trend.

But penis size overwhelms most issues dealing with a man’s body. For instance a man might be unhappy that he has brown eyes and not blue but he wont be insecure about it. When dealing with the penis if he thinks he is too short or even too long it will change the perception of himself. You might say too long/? My personal experience tells me ( not aware of studies on too long) so. I was involved with someone who was well endowed. I was amazed how embarrassed he was at the beach with swimming trunks. He would even do the female impersonator trick (without tape) with his penis. I would tell him how crazy he was. He told me that his father used to make fun of him being big and used to call him “Dick” when he was a kid- teen years even though his name was not Richard or any name where someone might be called dick, unless they are being a dick but he assured me it was only to embarrass him. His dad probably notice that he might be gay and unlike mine that use to call me the word outright(never been femme) his would not call him a F* like mine but would call him dick which would make his brother and sister die with laughter and he would make him embarrassed to death.

"Men's pre-occupation with size was rarely to do with pleasing sexual partners or even appearing as a better sexual partner," Dr Chan said. "It was often more about competition with other men. Many felt most insecure about their size in environments where other men might see them, such as gym change rooms."

The men surveyed ranged in age from 18 to 76 years old.

The study found insecurities were centred around the need to compete.

"It was often more about competition with other men. Many felt most insecure about their size in environments where other men might see them, such as gym change rooms," Chan said.

Gay respondents also spoke of the need to bulk up and be muscular around other men.

"The research demonstrates that societal pressures on body image are certainly not unique to women and that while men share similar body image concerns they often don't have the appropriate forum to discuss them or adequate professional support to deal with them," she said.

"There is clearly a need to provide more research-based training for clinicians working in this field, and more public awareness to de-mystify and de-stigmatise the topic of male body image."

With this week being National Men's Health Week, Chan said there was a clear need for further research on male obesity issues and body image issues.

{Adam}

What Not To Ask Australia’s PM Julia Gillard (Has to do with gay!)

2013-06-16T18:13:00.001-04:00

Radio Presenter and PM
A radio presenter has been sacked in Australia for asking Prime Minister Julia Gillard in a live interview if her partner is gay.

Howard Sattler suggested to Ms Gillard that her partner of seven years, Tim Mathieson, had to be homosexual because he was a hairdresser.

Ms Gillard characterised his comments as an absurd generalisation.

The DJ was suspended and then sacked by Fairfax Radio, which apologised for the "disrespectful" questioning.

"Radio 6PR apologizes unreservedly to Miss Gillard and Mr. Mathieson for allowing these matters to be raised on the Drive program," a statement from station manager Martin Boylan said.
The interview was a hot topic of conversation on Australian radio. Other shock jocks came to her defense, who said he "thought the prime minister showed a lot of class, a lot of style. She should have leaned across the desk and slapped his [Sattler's] face.”

Speaking the following day, Gillard said, "I want young girls and women to be able to feel like they can be involved in public life and not have to face questioning like the questioning I faced yesterday."
Others called the radio station, upset by Sattler's firing, the newspaper said. I guess being gay in Australia is so bad one will get fire for asking about it. They have a few things to learn from two English speaking countries like the UK and USA. As we know in the US you have journalists asking the President if he was born in the Country to the point he had to release his birth certificate. I guess that’s an example of going all the way on the opposite direction.
Still if one thinks there is nothing wrong with being gay how can one be offended if one is asked just that? I think we know the answer.
{Adam}

Human Rights Victory For the Gay Community is Coming

2013-06-16T17:46:00.002-04:00

I might have a feeling of how things might go for the gay community with the Supreme Court but any of us can have that feeling too so I wanted to give you someone who is a ‘pea body’ award winner and many respect, he is Hank Plante and he wrote the following post on USA today:

By the end of June, we're expected to have a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on California's Proposition 8 case, which banned gay marriage, and on DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act.

While journalists should probably stick to telling you what happened yesterday, I'll go out on a limb with a couple predictions of what I expect the court to do, based on the fact that I covered the original Proposition 8 case in San Francisco and interviews with the parties since then.

Bottom line: I expect a "bronze medal" win for gays and lesbians, with the Supreme Court upholding lower-court decisions that ruled Proposition 8's ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. Similarly, I expect the portion of DOMA that's being challenged to be thrown out, giving gay and lesbian couples more than 1,000 federal benefits that straight couples now get.

But why a bronze medal win rather a gold? I don't expect the Supreme Court to issue a sweeping, 50-state ruling on gay marriage. Instead, look for the justices to confine their ruling only to California, probably finding that the proponents of Proposition 8 had no "standing" to bring the case since they were private parties, rather than the governor or the state attorney general. This one-state victory for gays is why the San Francisco City Attorney's Office characterizes it as the "bronze medal scenario."

After that, other states can continue to decide same-sex marriage on their own.

Then there will most assuredly be lawsuits filed immediately after the high court's ruling, claiming, for example, that the ruling only applies to the two couples who brought the Proposition 8 case to the courts in the first place. Those challenges will be quickly fought, and, I predict, successfully defeated.

Why am I so confident that the high court will rule in favor of gays? Judge Vaughn Walker, who presided over the original Proposition 8 case and ruled it unconstitutional, recently spoke to the Harvey Milk Diversity Breakfast in Palm Springs. He told the crowd the critical point in the Supreme Court arguments came when proponents of Propostion 8 admitted that marriage is the only benefit that they think gays should be denied. That would mean their opposition to gay marriage is based purely on discrimination.

Judge Walker pointed to this exchange between Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor and the lawyer defending Proposition 8, Charles Cooper.

Sotomayor: "Outside of the ... outside of the marriage context, can you think of any other rational basis, reason, for a state using sexual orientation as a factor in denying homosexuals benefits or imposing burdens on them? Is there any other rational decision-making that the government could make? Denying them a job, not granting them benefits of some sort, any other decision?"

Cooper's response: "Your Honor, I cannot. I do not have anything to offer you in that regard."

On DOMA, I predict the result will be much more of a gold medal win for gays and lesbians. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see a 7-to-2 ruling in favor of gays, with Justices John Roberts and even Justice Clarence Thomas joining in, based on their strong feelings about states' rights. Marriage has always been governed by the states, not the federal government.

It's also worth remembering that Chief Justice Roberts actually did pro bono work for gays on a previous Supreme Court case when Roberts was a private lawyer working in Washington.

Meanwhile, if I'm wrong on all this, rest assured that we'll have gay marriage in California anyway, because it will head back to the ballot, where it would pass. The latest affirmation of that came in this week's USC/Los Angeles Times Poll, which shows nearly six in 10 Californians now support same-sex marriage.

As for when gay and lesbian marriages could begin in California, rulings from the high court usually take about 25 days to take effect. But the celebrating will happen when the ruling comes in June, which also happens to be Gay Pride Month across the country.

Hank Plante

Hank Plante is an Emmy- and Peabody-winning journalist who spent three decades as a reporter for the CBS TV stations in San Francisco and Los Angeles. This originally appeared in The Desert Sun.

10 MYTHS About The American Food You BUY-Eat

2013-06-15T23:06:00.000-04:00

Top 10 All-American Food Myths

(Photo: Jamie Grill/Getty)

Author and journalist Tracie McMillan went undercover along the American food chain—as a picker in the garlic fields of California, a stocker in a Detroit-area Walmart, and a kitchen worker at a Brooklyn Applebee’s—to write her myth-busting book The American Way of Eating. Her astute observations about our food system got our attention well before they rankled Rush Limbaugh, who attacked her book on-air. Here she shares with us her top 10 American food myths, in her own words.

Myth 1
Only the affluent and educated care about their meals; the higher your income, the more you will know about, and care about, what you eat.

Fact
The desire to eat well is universal. In a recent survey of low-income families, 85 percent said eating healthy food was a priority. Despite achingly low wages and long work days, sometimes at two jobs, the people I lived and worked with found creative ways to supplement their diets with fruits and vegetables—traveling long distances to farmers’ markets where their food stamps were doubled on produce, or through meal-sharing, or small gardens.

MORE: 15 Salads Worse Than a Big Mac

Myth 2
In America, the land of plenty, we grow more than enough food for everyone to eat nutritiously. If we could distribute it more evenly and make it affordable, we could all eat well.

Fact
We all know Americans need to eat better, but the truth is there aren’t enough fruits and vegetables grown here to make it possible. The U.S. food supply contains less than 60 percent of the vegetables required to meet recommended daily allowances, and less than half of the fruit. To change that, the U.S. would need to more than double the acreage devoted to fruit and vegetable crops.

Myth 3

The price of produce is directly proportional to farm worker wages; lower prices mean lower wages, and vice versa.

Fact
The bulk of food costs are tied to transportation, processing, and marketing—a full 84 percent. A very small portion goes to farm labor. And the sad reality is, many farm employers routinely cook the books to underpay workers, recording fewer hours than were worked in the field to give the illusion that workers earn minimum wage. When I picked garlic in California, the highest wage I earned was $3.40 an hour. This was entirely illegal—and entirely common. If wages went up for everyone—via a minimum wage hike—the USDA estimates that food prices would increase by less than one percent. Similarly, if the wages of farm workers alone increased by 40 percent, the average American family would see this as a $16 per year increase in their grocery costs.

Myth 4
Rich people spend more on food than the poor.

Fact
Poor and working-class families spend a much larger share of their paychecks on food than the affluent. In 2010, households earning from $5,000 to $35,000 a year spent 16 to 35 percent of their income on food, whereas those earning $70,000 a year or more spent 8 percent. Imagine spending a third of your income on food! Our current food system makes eating healthy very difficult for a lot of Americans.

Myth 5
Finding nutritious food is as easy as going to the supermarket; if you can’t afford organic food, grocery stores offer abundant conventional produce options. It’s a matter of choosing good food over junk food.

Fact
All over our country, but especially in urban areas, there are communities where the primary grocery options are in liquor stores and convenience stores. Produce, if it’s offered, is often paltry and past its prime. People living in these “food deserts” spend a great deal of non-work time driving (if they have a car; and gas is not cheap) to get to a supermarket. It’s hard to believe if you live in an area where there are plenty of grocery stores that there are communities where they don’t exist. But it’s true.

Like water and electricity, real food—not processed, packaged food—is a natural resource all our communities should have ready access to.

Myth 6
Convenience foods—like Hamburger Helper—are time and money savers. Eating healthy is more expensive than eating junk food.

Fact
Food companies don’t want us to know it, but most of the convenience they’re selling us is an illusion. When I tried to make a from-scratch version of Hamburger Helper, I expected it would be faster, and it was: by one minute. In fact, a study of dual-income families’ cooking habitsfound that those who use convenience foods don’t save any time on meal prep. But what really shocked me was the price comparison. Making Hamburger Helper from scratch saved me 69 percent off the cost of the box, and 42 percent on the overall price of the meal.

Myth 7
Most of America’s produce is grown in the Heartland.

Fact
Farms in the Midwest are primarily dedicated to growing commodity crops like rice, wheat, soy, cotton, and corn. In 2008 we spent 42 percent of the nation’s farm subsidies on these crops (used primarily for sweeteners, fuel, animal feed, and grain) and just 5 percent on fruits and vegetables. Our fresh produce is grown largely in California or overseas.

Myth 8
Small farmers are the backbone of our agricultural system.

Fact
Farming has become an industrialized process, and most communities are fed by a shrinking number of very large farms, rather than a vast network of small, independent ones. Today, 6 percent of farms, at an average size of more than 2,200 acres, generate 75 percent of farm sales, making the 2010s an era of unparalleled economic concentration in agriculture. The vast scale of these farms is no accident: As supermarket chains consolidated in the 1990s, creating huge demand centered at one company, farmers had to get big, too. After all, a chain of 200 stores doesn’t need just one pick-up full of green peppers, but several semi-trucks’ worth. And those who couldn’t get big simply had to get out.

Myth 9
Walmart is the best solution to food deserts.

Fact
Walmart got to be our country’s largest grocer by leveraging massive quantities of scale, but here’s the thing: those economies require industrial food, boxed stuff that can sit around without going bad. Healthy food like produce can't be made as cheap. And though one in four American dollars spent on produce is at Walmart, it’s not necessarily the cheapest place for it. When I worked at Walmart, produce at my local supermarket was cheaper by 8 percent, and the meat cheaper by 17 percent. Walmart may draw you in with deals on the processed stuff – these are called loss leaders – but as soon as you start putting the fresh stuff in your cart, you may actually end up spending more.

Myth 10
Restaurants serve meals prepared from scratch, using raw ingredients and recipes.

Fact
Many restaurants do, of course! But just as many, from the least to the most expensive, and to varying degrees, are food assembly lines where workers simply heat, arrange, and serve food delivered to their back doors frozen or in bags. Chefs I worked with at Applebee’s lamented the time when they actually cooked food!

A Super Chart: America’s 30 Yr Project to Make the Rich Even Richer

2013-06-15T21:17:00.000-04:00

Here's a remarkable chart from EPI. Actually, no: Strike that. It's true that in a normal world it would be remarkable, but in the world we live in it's actually totally unsurprising. It illustrates the rise inincome inequality over the past three decades (top dark blue line), and as you can see, it's been rising steadily. Totally unsurprising.

But then author Andrew Fieldhouse did another calculation. The middle blue line shows rising inequality after you account for taxes and transfers. But what if we had the same tax system we did in 1979? Well, inequality still would have gone up, but it would have gone up significantly less (bottom light blue line). In other words, during an era in which the rich were getting richer anyway, we deliberately set out to reduce their tax burdens so that they could become even richer.

Like I said, totally unsurprising. You knew this already. And yet, no matter how many different ways you illustrate this, it's still pretty remarkable. Instead of trying to ameliorate the effects of a broad economic trend, we've done everything we possibly can to accelerate it. That includes tax policy, financial deregulation, trade policy, anti-labor policy, and much more. And since there's approximately zero evidence that any of this has actually increased economic growth, it means that U.S. policy for the past 30 years has been aggressively dedicated to shifting income share away from the poor and middle class and into the pockets of the already rich.

Remarkable.

durantelalleraShutterstock

This Pope is The Most Pragmatic He Knows Same Sex Marriage HAS to Come, Therefore He Speaks of it with Diplomacy

2013-06-15T20:20:00.001-04:00

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis waded diplomatically into the gay marriage debate Friday, telling the Archbishop of Canterbury he wants to work together to promote family values "based on marriage."

Francis, who vigorously opposed gay marriage in his native Argentina, and Archbishop Justin Welbychatted, prayed and had lunch together at the Vatican in their first encounter since both were installed in March.

Welby, the spiritual leader of the 77 million-strong Anglican Communion, has opposed proposed legislation in Britain that would legalize gay marriage, saying it seeks to abolish and redefine the institution and would weaken one of the cornerstones of society.

He delivered a speech last week before the House of Lords before it moved the gay marriage bill one step closer to becoming law. The legislation would enable gay couples to get married in both civil and religious ceremonies in England and Wales.

In his remarks to Welby, Francis said he hoped they could collaborate in promoting the sacredness of life "and the stability of families founded on marriage." He noted that Welby had recently spoken out on the issue, a reference to his House of Lords speech.

Significantly, though, Francis didn't specify that marriage should be based on a union between a man and woman, which is how Benedict XVI and John Paul II routinely defined it in a way that made clear their opposition to same-sex marriage.

Vatican officials said Francis' phrasing was a diplomatic attempt to make his point without making a provocative pronouncement, particularly during an inaugural meeting with Welby that was aimed at getting to know one another. Francis though has steered clear of the gay marriage debate as it has recently roiled France and Britain, and in general has refrained from making headline-grabbing public comments on hot-button current issues.

Welby said the pope's remarks, both in the public speech he delivered and their 30-minute private meeting, showed that "we were absolutely at one on the issues, and equally at one in our condemnation of homophobic behavior and our sense that the essential dignity of the human being is where you start."

As archbishop of Buenos Aires, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio didn't shy away from voicing strong opposition to gay marriage, though he was pragmatic in sensing Argentina was heading in that direction.

Realizing the church couldn't win the fight outright, Bergoglio urged his fellow Argentine bishops to lobby for gay civil unions instead, according to the then-cardinal's authorized biographer. The bishops shot down the proposal and the church lost the issue altogether when the South American nation legalized gay marriage in 2010 — the first country in the region to do so.

Bergoglio once called gay marriage an "anthropological step backward."

"If there's a private union, then third parties and society aren't affected," he wrote. "But if they're granted marriage rights and can adopt, there could be children affected. Every person needs a masculine father and a feminine mother to help them settle their identity."

Anglicans split from Rome in 1534 when English King Henry VIII was refused a marriage annulment. For decades, the two churches have held theological discussions on trying to reunite, part of the Vatican's broader, long-term ecumenical effort to unify all Christians who have separated from Rome over the centuries.

Friday's audience was very relaxed and Welby acknowledged the novelty of the experience for both of them. They were installed within days of each other in March.

"I'm getting used to this, are you getting used to this?" he told Francis as he sat down to chat in the pope's library.

After the visit the two delegations had lunch in the Vatican hotel where Francis lives. While Francis is known for his spartan style and habits, he ordered up a five-course, fish-based lunch for his guests: swordfish slices, pasta with prawns, tuna steak, ice cream, fruit and coffee.

"He was very generous to me," Welby quipped when asked how such a menu squared with Francis' own simple temperament and the generally mediocre reviews given the hotel dining room.

/news.yahoo.com

Bermuda Follows Puerto Rico in Criminalizing Gay Discrimination

2013-06-15T18:43:00.001-04:00

In Bermuda, Pressure from their colonial parents are making this caribbean Island more civilized. First in Puerto Rico which is a Territory of the united States which approved an anti discrimination bill which was quickly signed by the governor and made into law.

Now We have Bermuda following suit. Bermuda had been warned to get in step with the EU which is made tremendous strides in anti discrimination against gays. France has already installed gay marriage and England still arguing with itself and their church already for more than a year. However it is expected to follow suit. The UK was one of the first Europeans countries to have Civil Unions which means absolutely nothing, since it only gives a pad in the back to gay couples and it allows them to use the name “Civil Union” which is like letting them sit in a limousine with no engine to take wedding photos.

NJ found this out. Ordered by the state supreme court upon ruling that gays were being discriminated in marriage and other rights. They quickly put in place Civil Unions which again did not mean much. Even a review of the court established that. The governor of that state Gov.Christie trying to play a game with the gay community said he would not sign a bill which by the way was passed by the law makers for gay marriage but Christie Veto promising that he would allow a referendum from the voters on this issue. He is expected to run for president and running on his party ignorant stance that opposing gay marriage is good politics and good for the nation.

The problem with that is that the voters in NJ are becoming more gay friendly and a referendum might as well be passed which was not the case when he veto the bill.

Bermuda along with Puerto Rico have awful violent records on homophobia. Many LGTB men have lost their lives in gay bashing in both Islands.
An anti discrimination bill does not do much but at least is a right step towards equality for their citizens.
Legislators in Bermuda also prohibited age discrimination in all sectors except at work, a move that many observers criticized.
The Royal Gazette newspaper said in a story Saturday that the bill was approved after nine hours of debate.
{{Adam}}

Why The Kids of 'Moral Right' Politicians Are Homophobic,Mexican and Jew Hating?

2013-06-15T16:19:00.001-04:00

Tanner Flake Twitter: Arizona Senator Jeff Flake's Son Is a Level 10 Racist

The tittle says 'Moral right’ but in no way it is meant to mean that any of the politicians mentioned on this post are either moral nor right on the hatred, homophobia and bigotry proof by their own statements that this article gives you links to the nonbeliever or the ones that want to be ill again at reading the statements from senators and congress people of a nation that is supposed to be on the side of god, full of morality as prescribed by the bible, fair and full of god’s grace.

These representatives of the government of the United States holding the second highest elected offices and are law makers by which action people pay money, get broke, go to jail or even get deported.

This article is going to be referring to what their bigot, homophobic, jew hating among many, kids have been saying all along on social media. It is not a misspoken word like some of the homophobic sports stars, politicians or well known people use as an excuse when they forget to speak with their minds and instead speak from the heart of the way they really feel about fellow americans or human beings that have done them or anybody any wrong as a community of just people.

The mind has to wonder what it is that they ear at home because no one is born homophobic or bigot. Kids in kindergarten will play with another kid no matter how cute or ugly that kid might be on an adults bias mind.

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake’s teenage son, Tanner, went by the name “n1ggerkiller” in an online game, and posted YouTube comments using the word “nigger” and calling Mexicans “the scum of the Earth.” On his Twitter account, he made prolific use of the word faggot and called his friend a “Jew” for stealing a joke.

Several journalists wondered aloud if we should be paying any attention to the rantings of dumb, racist kids who happen to be children of major Republican politicians. After the Flake revelation,Daily Caller political reporter Alex Pappastweeted, “Why is this news?” It wasn’t just conservative journalists asking. Nick Baumann of Mother Jones said that although the behavior was unacceptable, he hated the idea of journalists monitoring a kid’s tweets. In the Slateoffice, a few staffers were equally skeptical that these tweets by a couple random punks had larger implications. “I don’t think you can read political bias into this,” one editor said.

On the same day the Flake story appeared, Stanton reported that Nevada Rep. Joe Heck’s son,Joey Heck, had posted equally stomach-turning comments to his Twitter account. In addition to his repeated use of “faggot” and “nigga,” he made anti-gay and anti-Mexican remarks, saying NFL quarterback “[Mark] Sanchez can hop the border faster than he can throw the ball” and retweeted “There are gays everywhere. Maybe that’s gods way of thinning out the population because faggots can’t have babies.” Being a politically minded young lad, he also commented that ABC’s Martha Raddatz should not have been a presidential debate moderator because she’s a woman and that Mitt Romney made Barack Obama his “slave” in a presidential debate. Heck also said that Obama’s main accomplishments as president were promoting the sports of “spear chucking and rock skipping. The sports they do in his home country…”

“For more than four years, without pause, Republicans have been campaigning and propagandizing against an imaginary Obama. At the most grotesque end of the fantasies, he is a foreign-born, anti-colonialist Muslim. In more reputable precincts, he is a power-mad socialist and a dumb affirmative-action baby, promoted all the way to the presidency by a race-crazed, condescending liberal elite.”

The dog whistles to this constituency usually involve subtler terms such as “welfare,” “handouts,” “illegals,” “food stamps,” and “Obama phones.” But very often you’ll have local, state, and sometimes national officials exposed for explicit racism. It seems like it has become a monthly occurrence that an elected Republican either forwards some horrible racist chain email about President Obama or makes some horrible racist off-the-cuff remark. (For a few examples of this from the past year, see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

To read Tanner Flake and Joey Heck’s online posts is to see the powerful strain of bigotry that exists within a certain sector of conservative politics. It’s true that children of Democrats can be just as wretched as children of Republicans and can do equally idiotic, terrible things. (See the news of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s son, Connor, being arrested on charges of drunk driving and hit-and-run driving or any one of Al Gore III’s repeated arrests for driving under the influence and reckless driving.) But when bad Democratic kids behave badly, they’re way more likely to drive 100 mph while drunk than to say the president chucks spears. Likewise, you rarely ever see Democratic officials getting in trouble for passing on horrible, racist chain emails or making horrible racist remarks. This has everything to do with the political differences between the two parties and their voters.

Again, Republicans aren’t all racist. But the party actively cultivates racists as voters. Which means that some portion of the Republican electorate, as well as Republican officials, are racists. When a kid literally lives in that political environment, he has a greater chance of being caught up in the extreme end of it. If all of your friends are Republicans and even a small subgroup of Republicans are racist, homophobic bigots, then you’re more likely to associate with racist, homophobic bigots and become one yourself than if you’re hanging out with liberal, crunchy kids.

In the case of Flake and Heck, you may be able to see a family lineage in their tweets. Although he did recently say that a Republican presidential candidate supporting gay marriage is inevitable, Jeff Flake has a long history of anti-LGBT stances. Joe Heck, meanwhile, won the support of self-appointed “birther queen” Orly Taitz for his congressional campaign in 2010. While you can’t choose who supports you, you can send him or her signals. When Heck’s campaign was initially asked whether he recognizes Obama as a legitimate president, the campaign refused to answer, instead telling the Las Vegas Sun that "the people of Southern Nevada are far more worried about keeping their jobs and their homes, and putting a stop to reckless spending in Washington." Heck’s spokeswoman eventually clarified to Politico that he had not sought the endorsement and didn’t consider himself a birther. But Taitz’s public profile is evidence of the type of racial animus within the GOP that I’m talking about, and her support of Heck is evidence that Republicans count these people among their voting base.

Adam edited a piece that appeared on Slate.com. He interjected his thoughts which covers about half of the post on this page he also tittle the piece.

New President of Iran Elected but Changes are Not In the Script

2013-06-15T13:32:00.001-04:00

You can see the excitement of Tehran young voters even when their candidate won. The picture speaks volumes about the younger voters who see the system as a joke, since no matter who wins no change is expected.

The electorate went for a cleric but strange enough a cleric that is seen as more reasonable than the outgoing President Mahmud Ahmadinejad (could not run because of term limits). Rouhani at one point was the nuclear negotiator with the UN. He quit over disagreements with Mahmud. {Adam}

Mr Rouhani was not the reformists' first, or even the second, choice of candidate. The conservatives had assumed an easy ride”

Most had pinned their hopes on former President Mohammad Khatami, but he did not put his name forward. The reformists then looked to the pragmatic veteran politician Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, who was disqualified from standing by Iran's top election body, the Guardian Council.

And when Mohammad Reza Aref, the only reformist candidate in the running, withdrew earlier this week in favour of Mr Rouhani, the reformists reached a consensus and threw their weight behind him.

His victory in the first round - when he unexpectedly gained 50.7% of the votes in a turnout of over 72% - has certainly emboldened the reform movement.

After four years of seeing their leaders placed under house arrest, many of them imprisoned and their media outlets curtailed, they sense that voters have given them a mandate for change.

This is despite the fact that Mr Rouhani is seen as more of a "moderate, centrist" figure, rather than a "true" reformer in the vein of Green movement leaders Mir Hussein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who are both under house arrest.

Hardline defeat

The downbeat mood of the "principle-ist" - or conservative ruling coalition - is Mr Rouhani's outright victory must come as somewhat of a shock to the hardliners”

Tabnak news agency, which is affiliated to defeated principle-ist candidate Mohsen Rezai, set the agenda.

An online editorial appearing a day after the poll and before the final outcome was announced, spoke of the 2013 presidential election as a "necessary defeat for the principle-ists".

"The principle-ists must understand that they must be accountable and answerable," said the editorial.

"The principle-ists... must know that the era of monopolizing the media has ended."

The hardline Javan newspaper chose to put a gloss on the affair, concentrating on the reported high turnout.

"The Iranian nation, with its epic presence at polling stations, proved it has a strong bond with the Islamic system and again disappointed and defeated the enemy. This election, irrespective of the result, should be considered as a model for correcting the current political behaviour of groups and political activists."

The conservatives had assumed an easy ride.

Rouhani supporters made their feelings known in Tehran even before the vote was counted

Apart from controlling all branches of state power, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and virtually all the mainstream media, they have the ear of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

So Mr Rouhani's outright victory must come as somewhat of a shock to the hardliners.

It demonstrates that the pro-reformists have returned to Iran's political arena and are a still force to be reckoned with.

The question now remains: Will the hardline establishment recognise the message of change that the electorate have sent them?

BBC Source and Pic

4 Sure Ways to Kill Your Mood For Straight Couples } Do You tThink They are Similar to Ours?

2013-06-14T23:37:00.001-04:00

There are as many ways to have sex as there are people in the world, which of course is incorrect, and I can back that statement up in no way whatsoever. I'd say maybe there are as many ways to have sex as there are Pokemon. That could be reasonable. So there's a lot, but not like an insane, unbelievable amount. That said, for all the ways there are to have sex, there's an equal number of ways to ruin that sex, intentionally or otherwise; blunders that just make the whole situation a wash. Rarely do you ever legitimately want to give up on sex when it starts, but sometimes you must.

I wrote not too long ago about awkward situations that make you feel like a dick, and backtracking sex was the first entry, but clearly the entire subject deserves more depth, as some people went so far as to disagree with me that it was even a thing that ever needs to happen. Let me assure you it's certainly a thing that needs to happen, and for more reasons than the hygiene and/or insanity examples I used in that article.

#4. Dirty Talk Mishap

According to a survey conducted by a sex toy manufacturer, 80 percent of people enjoy the use of dirty talk during sex. Of course, that's 80 percent of people who do surveys conducted by sex toy manufacturers, so we have to assume that, in the population at large, the number is somewhat lower. And that's where you need to be wary. If a certain percentage never use dirty talk, and then you can mark off other percentages of those who only use it sometimes, or some types, you're going to soon realize that there's probably only a niche population of people in the entire world who are OK with dirty talk that includes mention of things like colonic electro-stimulation or Adam West's torso.

Back in the day, I like to think the road to dirty talk was a lot like Frodo's journey with the Fellowship. At first there's only the far-off ominous threat of evil pursuing them and a handful of Ring Wraiths, and by the end it's Frodo climbing Mount Doom deep in the heart of Mordor while the rest of the Hobbits are facing off against a full-on Orc army. Adam West's torso is your Mordor, and you can't start your journey there. That's a place only giant eagles can rescue you from. You started in the dirty talk Shire saying classy shit like "I'm quite fond of the underside of your boobs, ma'am." And slowly, you and your purple-headed Samwise (you ladies have Pippin in a canoe) build up and up and a trust is established as your sexual rapport allows for it. So far, far down the road, when your sexual relationship has reached that point where you know how to fully and delightfully satisfy each other, you can really bust out the gems that would embarrass you in public should word of your filthy mouth ever get out.

"No one must ever know of my penchant for filling my ass with custard."

Unfortunately, in our modern world, things like porn and hilarious college comedies have really accelerated the sexual experience, at least in the minds of people who ain't so bright. Some people seem to legitimately expect that sex should be happening as soon as they feel the need for it, and it had better be a facial-infused, filthy-talk boob-bouncing jamboree, or else they'll take their frosted tips and gemstone-chip necklace and go home. These are the kind of people who jump from first kiss to "lick my balloon knot like a starving dog hunting for Snausages" within seconds.

Dirty talk always has to be gauged lest you destroy everything. Sex is like Jenga, and dirty talk can be the load-bearing block that, in this case, is bearing your load, and it'll be on your hands if you do it wrong. Start too soon and too filthy, and you put the other person off. Bust out fetishes that are illegal even in most blue states, and you alienate your partner by making them think maybe you've escaped from some kind of institute.

#3. The Shocker

If you're about 17 years old or the kind of person for whom beer is an acceptable breakfast food, you find humor in the idea of the Shocker still. And yes, that means I may once or twice laugh at a Shocker joke myself, but it has to be a pretty good one, like with the pope and Raquel Welch in a boat. The magic has tarnished a little over the years.

For those not in the know, which would be I guess my grandparents and Benedictine monks, the Shocker is a sexual maneuver whereby a person makes a hand gesture consisting of an outstretched pinky finger, a folded-under ring finger, and the middle and index fingers extended together. From this position, one is required to insert the middle and index fingers (as a pair, mind you) into your paramour's fun zone while the pinky then follows suit through the back door. This is affectionately abbreviated to "two in the pink, one in the stink" more often than not, or, in higher society, "two in the gush, one in the tush."

NA/PhotoObjects.net/Getty Images

A pinky went here once. It was never seen again.

Of greater note than the act itself is what the act and its moniker signify. The Shocker was the general of the Dirty Proverb Army that took the Internet by storm in the early 2000s. It was at the forefront, leading compatriots like the Dirty Sanchez, the Angry Dragon, and the Rusty Trombone. The Shocker, with its snappy name and easy to emulate in public imagery, became the spokessmut for a generation.

The Shocker signifies one's desire to be novel and something of a frat-level derp in a sexual encounter. There's probably a time when you can sneak it in there and it'll be totally acceptable -- everyone likes cool sleight-of-hand tricks -- but the inclusion of the actual term "shocker" and the triumphant raising of the hand in said gesture are basically admissions that maybe you shouldn't be having sex just now because you're kind of an idiot. You're the kind of person who hides a camera in their room to film sex without the other person's consent, all the while oblivious of how that worked out for William Baldwin in Flatliners. Doing so may very well ensure that your sexual adventures meet an untimely end, and really, it's for the good of us all that your bullshit be stopped. You're making the rest of us look bad.