Waitin' for the Weekend

Happy birthday, M. P.!

Adam Wolf

Obama to Eastwood

Honk to Joe.My.God. for title and pic.

Country Time: Mockingbird

Written by sister-brother duo Inez and Charlie Foxx from Greensboro, North Carolina, it was a Top Ten hit for them back in 1963:




In 1974, it was a #5 hit for James Taylor and then-wife Carly Simon, seen here at a No Nukes concert in New York City in 1979:




And in 2004, Toby Keith and daughter Krystal took it to the country charts, where it reached #27:

Lubbock Prepares for Invasion by United Nations

Well boys, the state of the world, and of this great country in particular, is mighty grim, yes it is. But there's one bright spot amid the gloom: the great metropolis of Lubbock, Texas, will not be caught napping in the event that all the forces of evil are unleashed by Obama's re-election this fall. I know you all are as worried about that as I am.

County Judge Tom Head, who presides over the county commissioners' meetings, is asking residents to approve his proposed increase in property taxes to hire more deputies to defend the county on the day when those blue-bonneted U.N. storm troopers come rolling across the plains. Here he is, speaking on the local Fox News channel:



Judge Head says he was quoted out of context, but danged if he didn't make the same remarks earlier in the week in a discussion with local talk-radio host Jeff Klotzman. Here's a transcript in English, for those of you who don't comprende the Texan:

Judge Head: "As County Judge I am the emergency management coordinator. As emergency management coordinator I have to think about the very worst thing that can happen and prepare for that and hope and pray for the best, OK? And in this political climate and financial climate, what is the very worst thing that can happen right now? Obama gets back in the White House. No. God forbid."

Jeff Klotzman: "That's the political aspect of this."

Judge Head: "OK. What's going to happen. Now I'm going to tell you my opinion, OK. Obama has put executive orders and whatever other documents his minions have filed. And regardless of whether the Republicans take over the Senate, which I hope they do, he is going to make the United States Congress and he's going to make the Constitution irrelevant. He's got his czars in place that don't answer to anybody. He's got his documents in place. They're going to be irrelevant.

"He is going to do what he wants to do. Now what do you think he is going to try to do in this next term? One of the things, my opinion. One of the things is he's going to try to give the sovereignty of the United States away to the United Nations. What do you think the public is going to do when that happens? We are talking civil unrest, civil disobedience, possibly, possibly civil war, OK? Now what happens? What happens? Now I'm not talking just talking riots here and there. I'm talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms, get rid of the dictator. OK, what do you think he is going to do when that happens? He is going to call in the UN troops, personnel carriers, tanks and weapons."

Jeff Klotzman: "I hope you don't have like a crystal ball you're looking into."

Judge Head: "Hey I've got to look at the worst case scenario, OK. I don't want UN coming into Lubbock County, so I'm going to be standing in front of their personnel carriers and say, 'You're not coming in here.' And I've asked the Sheriff. I said, 'Are you going to back me on this?' And he said, 'Yeah, I'm going to back you.' Well, I don't want a bunch of rookies back there who have no training and little equipment. I want seasoned veteran people who are trained that have got equipment. And even then, you know we may have two or three hundred deputies facing maybe a thousand UN troops. We may have to call out the militia.

But not to be outdone, them slick-talking Noo Yawk reporters ran over and got a-holt of the head honcho of the Yoonited Nashuns and asst him what time the invashun was a-going down. Well, not the head man, eggzackly, but one-a his gang members. An' he said:

"It's absolutely ridiculous," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman, Martin Nesirky, when asked if the United Nations had any plans to invade Texas.

He later added: "No one, not even the United Nations, would ever mess with Texas."

Hmmm.   Them names sounds mighty suspishus to me, don't they to you?  And oh wow, think about this - a Russian guy speaking for a Chinese dude.  Dadblamed if that don't sound like somethin' straight out of Revelations!  It all fits perfect, don't it?  The Great Beast and the Image of the Beast.  Whoa! 

Of course you fellas are probly thinkin' whut I'm thinkin' - he would say that, wouldn't he? Iffen they really wuz plannin' on a invashun. Whooee boys, hang on to your hats! No tellin' whut's a-gonna happen next.

Goddamn, I'm just proud as I can be that we got one good man in Lubbock a-lookin' out for Texas! Yessiree bob. You got to get up purty damn early in the mornin' to fool a Texan. I tell you what.

Voices of Sanity from around the World

The Right Reverend Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham, on marriage equality, which the Cameron government has promised to bring to the United Kingdom, and which most of the hierarchy of the Church of England opposes:




From May 2010, an exchange between Michael D. Higgins (who was elected President of Ireland in 2011) and Tea Party-loving radio guy Michael Graham on an Irish radio station:




And from Down Under, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has some thoughts on the birther movement in this country:

Sunday Drive: Bach, Adagio

In remembrance of Neil Armstrong, 1930-2012, first man on the Moon.

Whose Life Is It, Anyway?

Tony Nicklinson, before a stroke left him paralyzed and speechless

Do take a few minutes to read up on the case of Tony Nicklinson, a 58 year-old-Briton who was paralyzed from the neck down after suffering a stroke in 2005, although his mind was unaffected.  He could communicate only by blinking his eyes and grunting.  Doctors said that with proper care, he could expect to live another 20 or 30 years in this condition. 

Antother pre-stoke photo of Tony and his wife, Jane

Last week, a British court refused his plea to be allowed to escape from a "dull, miserable, demeaning, undignified and intolerable" life - which in your Head Trucker's view is a fate much, much worse than death.  Nicklinson rejected all arguments based on religious principles, because he was an atheist. 

After the crushing verdict, Tony refused food and mercifully died of pneumonia just six days later.

Don't think it can't happen to you, or to someone you dearly love.  I can't bear to go into the story of my mother's death, but suffice it to say that the doctors and nurses allowed her final agony to go on for more than three days of screaming in unbearable pain.  And they didn't turn a hair.  Because they like their very lucrative jobs much more than they care about human suffering; and because behind them are boards and committees and commissions and all sorts of layers of nameless, faceless people who make rules to regulate everybody's else's life and death.

And somewhere at the end of that long, untraceable chain is some fat, self-satisfied churchy person, purring with righteousness, who keeps saying oh-so-sweetly, "Well I just don't think it's right."

Well, you fellas will understand more about all that when you have to face it, as you very well may one day.  And don't think you, or the person you love best in all the world, will escape all the tortures that medical science can devise, just because you say pretty please. Fow now, though, please have a look at Tony's story:



A talk with Tony and his wife filmed by a BBC reporter last year:






Twitter interview with Tony, who answers both supporters and opponents:
Tony Nicklinson: 'I have a fear of living like this when I am old and frail'

Editorial in The Guardian:
Tony Nicklinson: What a Tragic Story Tells Us

By Peter Stanford, former editor of the Catholic Herald:
How an extraordinary day spent with Tony Nicklinson changed my views on right-to-die

Share a Little Sunshine

Gay park ranger Mark Foley, who was featured in a story on Joe.My.God. a couple of years ago as shown above, encourages you to put Florida state parks on your vacation destination list.  Who wants to go with me?




BTW - Ranger Foley is no relation to the disgraced Florida Congressman of the same name.

Waitin' for the Weekend

Why Marriage Matters

An update on the Edie Windsor case, which I've blogged about on the Blue Truck before - and which is now headed for the Supreme Court, along with a bunch of other DOMA cases, this fall.




And meet the Hendersons - an Air Force married couple in Iowa who talk about the distress and difficulties DOMA causes for them:

Not the Real World

Via Towleroad, on the Dan Savage-Brian Brown dinner that was moderated by a reporter from the New York Times at Dan's house - emphasis mine:

After the dinner was over and the wine had worn off, Oppenheimer asked the participants, including Savage's spouse Terry Miller, about their shared experience. It seems no one truly enjoyed themselves, and Savage wishes he had held the event on neutral ground.

Mr. Miller pronounced the entire night a waste of time. “Brian’s heartless readings of the Bible, then his turns to ‘natural law’ when the Bible fails, don’t hide his bigotry and cruelty,” Mr. Miller wrote in an e-mail. “In the end, that’s what he is. Cruel.”

I spoke with Mr. Brown by phone, and he seemed to agree that the setting had made little difference. “There’s this myth that folks like me, we don’t know any gay people, and if we just met them, we would change our views,” he said. “But the notion that if you have us into your house, that all that faith and reason that we have on our side, we will chuck it out and change our views — that’s not the real world.”

As for Mr. Savage, he felt that being on his home turf had actually worked against him. “Playing host put me in this position of treating Brian Brown like a guest,” he said. “It was better in theory than in practice — it put me at a disadvantage during the debate, as the undertow of playing host resulted in my being more solicitous and considerate than I should’ve been. If I had it to do over again, I think I’d go with a hall.”

Brown is exactly right on the one point: the die-hard bigots, and they are legion, will never, ever change their minds about the gay. Not even if they live next door, not even if they are blood kin to you. That's not the real world - and I know, because I have lived it, and I've told you my stories here on the Blue Truck before.

Here's the complete video of the dinner debate. I can't stand to watch the whole thing, had to stop after a couple minutes of Brown's filthy, hateful talk. You might as well expect a confirmed Nazi to embrace the idea that Jews are human beings.  But if you can stomach the evil, here you go.



PS - You damn well better get your ass to the polls this November and vote Democratic. The fascists will certainly be casting their ballots en masse. Don't think what's happening in Russia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe can't happen here - you'd be surprised how very, very quickly your gay ass can be eliminated.