Gay Twins Discuss Being Bullied as Kids

I always wondered what it would be like to have a twin - but until now, it never occurred to me that you would both get bullied, though of course that's only to be expected if you're gay.  The goodlooking Lane twins - age and hometown not given - share their experience in this clip:

Waitin' for the Weekend

Sorry guys, the best I could find for this week's feature is a bunch of half-naked homosexual perverts in leather britches, running around flaunting their lifestyle in public, as usual.  Guess you can watch it if you want to, and don't mind having that sort of thing, um, shoved down your throat.  As they say.




You want to order their perverted, soul-corrupting, family-destroying calendar, visit their website. Though I can't think why anyone would.

Obama Rips Republicans for Attitude Problem

"I don't get no respect!"

Republicans are playing the Rodney Dangerfield card, and acting just like a bunch of whiny, sullen teenagers while holding the nation hostage to their demented anti-everybody agenda. Here's the quote that the President refers to, and here's the video of Obama speaking in Maryland yesterday:




And here's House Speaker John Boehner, getting a mite testy over a quote in the Wall Street Journal:



So which one seems like the grown-up in the room?  I ask you.

And as Rachel reminds us vividly (isn't videotape wonderful?), this is not the first time that Boehner and others of his tribe have tried to subvert the government and ruin millions of people's lives in a goddamned cry-baby tantrum fit.

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Why Marriage Matters: Jordan and Devon

Your Head Trucker is not a fan - can we talk? - of homemade wedding vows; the tender sentiments of two people in love are best kept sacred and unseen, like the marriage bed, in my view. Nevertheless, I know that millions of couples, straight and gay, are all into that kind of thing nowadays, and since this video is so beautifully edited and professionally produced, I thought you fellas might enjoy it. It happened in Los Angeles, earlier this year.

The important thing here is not so much the sentiment on display, but the visible creation of a union, drawing together not merely two individuals, but two families, and all generations. That is what knits us firmly into the the greater society around us as nothing else can, linking us to many more people than just one. It makes us part of the family - and beyond all the laws and all the courts and legislatures of the world, that is the greatest guarantee of our right to exist, to live and love freely, as the gay people we really are.




Honk to Towleroad.

Couple Married 22 Years Come Out Together

In 2009, David Kaufman, M.D., and his wife Cathy both realized they were gay about the same time. About six months later, David realized he was not only gay, but trans, and he is now Danielle. The couple have since written a book about their experience, entitled Untying the Knot. CBS Sacramento reports:




Well, your Head Trucker wishes them all the luck in the world. Still, it's hard to understand how someone can not realize they are gay until middle age - it certainly was very clear to me when I was 14. Some folks are just late bloomers, I guess, or came from very rigid, mind-controlling families perhaps. I don't know.

The Rape of America

Your Head Trucker will make no comments here, leaving it up to you fellas to draw your own conclusions from these six items.

I. "Remember This Date," from the Senate Democrats Twitter account:

II.  Andrew Sullivan, "The Nullification Party," via David Mixner:

I’ve been trying to think of something original to say about the absurdity now transpiring in Washington, DC. I’ve said roughly what I think in short; and I defer to Fallows for an important dose of reality against the predictably moronic coverage of the Washington Post.

But there is something more here. How does one party that has lost two presidential elections and a Supreme Court case – as well as two Senate elections - think it has the right to shut down the entire government and destroy the full faith and credit of the United States Treasury to get its way on universal healthcare now? I see no quid pro quo even. Just pure blackmail, resting on understandable and predictable public concern whenever a major reform is enacted. But what has to be resisted is any idea that this is government or politics as usual. It is an attack on the governance and the constitutional order of the United States.

When ideologies become as calcified, as cocooned and as extremist as those galvanizing the GOP, the American system of government cannot work. But I fear this nullification of the last two elections is a deliberate attempt to ensure that the American system of government as we have known it cannot work. It cannot, must not work, in the mindset of these radicals, because they simply do not accept the legitimacy of a President and Congress of the opposing party. The GOP does not regard the president as merely wrong – but as illegitimate. Not misguided – illegitimate. This is not about ending Obamacare as such (although that is a preliminary scalp); it is about nullifying this presidency, the way the GOP attempted to nullify the last Democratic presidency by impeachment.

Except this time, of course, we cannot deny that race too is an added factor to the fathomless sense of entitlement felt among the GOP far right. You saw it in birtherism; in the Southern GOP’s constant outrageous claims of Obama’s alleged treason and alliance with Islamist enemies; in providing zero votes for a stimulus that was the only thing that prevented a global depression of far worse proportions; in the endless race-baiting from Fox News and the talk radio right. And in this racially-charged atmosphere, providing access to private healthcare insurance to the working poor is obviously the point of no return.

Even though the law is almost identical to that of their last presidential nominee’s in Massachusetts, the GOP is prepared to destroy both the American government and the global economy to stop it. They see it, it seems to me, as both some kind of profound attack on the Constitution (something even Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts viewed as a step too far) and, in some inchoate way, as a racial hand-out, however preposterous that is. And that is at the core of the recklessness behind this attack on the US – or at least my best attempt to understand something that has long since gone beyond reason. This is the point of no return – a black president doing something for black citizens (even though the vast majority of beneficiaries of Obamacare will be non-black).

I regard this development as one of the more insidious and anti-constitutional acts of racist vandalism against the American republic in my adult lifetime. Those who keep talking as if there are two sides to this, when there are not, are as much a part of the vandalism as Ted Cruz. Obama has played punctiliously by the constitutional rules – two elections, one court case – while the GOP has decided that the rules are for dummies and suckers, and throws over the board game as soon as it looks as if it is going to lose by the rules as they have always applied.

The president must therefore hold absolutely firm. This time, there can be no compromise because the GOP isn’t offering any. They’re offering the kind of constitutional surrender that would effectively end any routine operation of the American government. If we cave to their madness, we may unravel our system of government, something one might have thought conservatives would have opposed. Except these people are not conservatives. They’re vandals.

This time, the elephant must go down. And if possible, it must be so wounded it does not get up for a long time to come.

III. David Weigel, Slate, "Why Republicans Have No Problem Taking Us to the Brink":

The gerrymanders of 2011 added to their natural geographic advantage over urban/suburban Democrats and gave them a House they simply don’t think they can lose. In 2012 they proved it, winning 1.36 million fewer votes than Democratic candidates but keeping a 33-seat majority. According to the Cook Political Report, 205 of 435 House districts are solidly Republican, basically impossible to lose without an unexpected bribery or sexting scandal. Only 163 districts are solidly Democratic. If Democrats swept the table and won all the districts currently rated as tossups or “leaning” Republican, they’d win 213 seats, five short of a majority.

That was always the long-term Republican plan. In 2010, when voter anger was already guaranteeing a fantastic party comeback, groups like the Redistricting Majority Project (nicknamed REDMAP) told donors that “the party controlling that effort controls the drawing of the maps—shaping the political landscape for the next 10 years.”

IV. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.) blasts Republicans "who cannot cope with the reality of our democracy":



V.  Robinson Jeffers, "Shine, Perishing Republic," circa 1935:

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,

And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens,  

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.

Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.    

You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly

A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.    

But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption

Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left the mountains.    

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master.

There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught—they say—God, when he walked on earth.

VI.  Rachel Maddow: "GOP Came to Power Seeking Government Shutdown."

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Millions Flee Obamacare

As everyone knows, Obamacare starts open enrollment today, and House Assholes Republicans were unable to force its postponement in last-minute voting overnight. Consequently, the Interstates are jammed all across America today as tearful, angry, bewildered Tea Partiers desperately seek an escape route. Staff humorist Andy Borowitz reports on the wild scenes playing out across the country in the New Yorker - a must read:

Millions Flee Obamacare

Meanwhile, all you liberal sheeple, as we are so graciously known by the demented lemmings on the Right, can go enroll in a low-cost health care plan at HealthCare.gov right now - no matter where you live in the country. Even if your state has officially rejected Obamacare and all that goes with it, you can still get coverage. Even if, like me, you live in Bumfuck, Texas.

Horrifying, isn't it?

Related news: In his inimitable way, Jon Stuart skewers and roasts the intransigent Republicans who have now forced the federal government to shut down, with about a million employees out of work immediately, with no pay, and at a cost to the economy of billions of dollars in suspended government services.

I can't get the episode to embed properly, but go watch it here.

I say kudos to the President and the Democratic leadership for having the balls to stand up to the sorry bastards. We saw in the debt-ceiling crisis of 2011 that playing Mr. Nice Guy just doesn't work with these thugs. The one-year Obamacare delay is just a ruse - they will keep postponing every year from now till Kingdom Come if they get away with it this time.

Oh but don't worry - all your Congresspeeps continue to get paid their $174,000 annual salaries right on schedule, of course. And enjoy full coverage of their platinum-plated government-sponsored health care plans - totally free of charge.

What's wrong with this fucking picture?

Why Marriage Matters: Tim and Tony, Mary and Carol

Not content to rest on their laurels after the Supreme Court win in June, Olson and Boies are challenging Virginia's sweeping laws against all same-sex unions, not just marriage. The Advocate reports:

Ted Olson and David Boies, the bipartisan legal team who successfully argued Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Prop. 8 case, at the Supreme Court, have signed on to a pending federal case that aims to strike down Virginia's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, the American Foundation for Equal Rights announced today.

The Virginia case, Bostic v. Rainey, was filed in the U.S. District Court for Virginia's Eastern District on behalf of two couples who contend that the Virginia Marriage Amendment, which prohibits gay and lesbian couples in Virginia from marrying, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. One of the couples, Timothy Bostic and Tony London, were denied a marriage license in July, while the secondary plaintiffs, Carol Schall and Mary Townley, married in California in 2008, have a 15-year-old daughter, and are asking Virginia to legally recognize their relationship.

The couples speak for themselves in these clips from AFER:






And Matt Baume reports on AFER's involvement in the case:

The Perfect Part

Oh, the spoiled, helpless children of this modern age.  They can't even part their damn hair without a gizmo to do it for them:



An operation which is already perfectly simple and easy with a straight comb - something your Head Trucker learned how to do merely from watching the barber do it, a hundred years ago when I was 15.

Straight Dude Learns the Real Meaning of Defriended

After attending his gay brother's wedding:




BTW, Your Head Trucker still finds it hard to believe that millions of straight guys are actually on our side now. But I guess it must be true. Hard to get my around that after all these many years, though. I remember all the abuse, and the scars still hurt.

Can the leopard change his spots? Really?

Sunday Drive: Time

I still like the young, unsophisticated Cher best - whom I had a totally-not-sexual crush on for years - my imaginary girlfriend in a time when I still thought I was supposed to have a real one.    Her songs from that era, and her voice, always spoke to my heart.  Still do.