Spewing Truth in the face of Lies

There’s an interesting operation and trial going on in Rhode Island right now. The operation is titled “Dollar Bill” and is being lead by the Federal Prosecutors office. Thus far they’ve gotten a conviction against Senator John Celona of North Providence and are actively investigating other politicians including the Senate President among others.

At the moment there is a trial going on against two CVS Vice Presidents who approved the payments for Celona who in turn shepherded CVS sponsored legislation through the chamber. Such legislation included opposition to pharmacy choice bills then in the chamber.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, all you need to do is go to the Lobbytracker page on the Secretary of State’s office web site and browse lobbying entities. For a good example, check out last years activity of one Bernard Healey aka Rev. Bernard Healey of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence.

Note that bill 5368, that was the Marriage Equality bill last year. Unfortunately the reports for this year haven’t been posted yet but I just know that they’ll oppose all things to do with gay marriage.

Anyhow the point I’m going after is summed up nicely in this paragraph from the Providence Journal article on the trial of the CVS employees:

Records from 2001 showed that Celona’s monthly “consultation fee” was paid from the same account as contributions to national political groups such as the Democratic Leadership Council, the House Senate Republican dinner, the House Majority Leader’s Fund (in connection with a dinner with then majority leader, U.S. Rep. Dick Armey of Texas), and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, a contribution that was made through Rhode Island U.S. Sen. Jack Reed.

In essence this tells you everything you need to know. Corporations are party blind in a sense. THey’ll give money to Democrats and Republicans alike. Their only criterion is will that politician do their bidding. You and I allegedly have no access to these people. But in a sense we do.

With just a small amount of effort we could make our elected representatives very uncomfortable about taking money from Political Action Committees, which are nothing but ways for corporations to influence the political sphere. Don’t get me wrong, there are some PAC’s that aren’t corporate puppets but they are few and far between.

I’ve once read that in European states the like Germany and France, the government is afraid of the people whereas here in the U.S. we are afraid of the government. We should turn that around, make our voice heard even if it means taking an hour a week to phone, email or write our representatives at the local, state and federal levels in order to make OUR will heard.

Of course the down side to that is something the fundamentalists have seized upon. There is power in numbers. But their numbers include those who only think about gay marriage and abortion. Some of them don’t realize that there are bigger problems facing us.

What we need is organizations of enlightened people. There is some activity on that front what with Moveon.org, ActBlue, People for the American Way, etc. They make it really easy to be politically active. But a large portion of the population has allowed their anger to be deflected and distorted. Instead they cling to sports competitions, guns, cars, etc. when the world around them is crumbling down.

There’s great news from California. Their Supreme court invalidated the Defense of Marriage law there. I should email links from the numerous articles to Rep. Brien since he’s trying to sneak a DOMA law into Rhode Island.

What encourages me about this is that we now have two jurisdictions in which the courts have acted to protect a minority from a majority. The foes in California will certainly try to get a constitutional amendment put in place but people realize those for what they are, writing discrimination into a constitution.

But since there’s now case law we’re going to see other jurisdictions go the way of California and Massachusetts. One of those could very well be Rhode Island. My cousin Tom Seymour wrote a wonderful memorandum of support that includes all the citations for the RI Consitution, U.S. Constitution and relevant case law. That was submitted to the entire Judiciary Committee during the hearing on Marriage Equality/Divorce Equality last week.

It’s now common knowledge that we have the support necessary to clear the Judiciary Committee, but Speaker William Murphy is the brick wall.

So I’ll email the memo to him too. After all his next in charge is a gay man, and I happen to know the 3rd down is too. He’s got to understand that it’s rolling along and even his brick wall won’t stop it.

1. Is there a TV show you HAVE to watch? If so, what is it?

I don’t necessarily have to watch anything as I don’t watch traditional television, be it standard definition or high definition. Net video on the other hand, I love the followings programs: Weeds, Torchwood, and Jericho.

2. What is you favorite drink if you are going to drink more than one?

Beer. I’m more a beer and wine guy than a spirits guy.

3. How long do you carry guilt around with you?

Guilt? What’s that? I’m an Italian-American who was brought up in the Catholic church yet I don’t have guilt at all. Go figure. If you don’t feel guilt there’s no need to carry it around with you.

4. Where is or would be your number one romantic get away spot?

Manhattan. Seriously, everything you could want whether you stay in or go out.

5. Have you ever seen a counselor?

Law or psych? In the case of law yes, twice in my life both for civil matters. If we’re talking about psych, there was a stretch when I was a rebellious teen. The shrink figured out most of it was due to having to suppress my sexuality at school and that splashed over into the home. Once we got that straightened out so to speak, things went much better.

Bonus (as in optional): Last summer the Archives of Sexual Behavior the 237 reasons people have sex and the Top 50 Reasons Men and Women Have Sex. What are your top 5 reasons?

All the guys are lying because the top reason is to bust a nut. Seriously. Coming up with other reasons would just be pure fiction on my part.

If you’ve been a long time reader of this blog you’ve obviously read things I’ve written about Grover Norquist, he of the “I’d like to shrink government down to a size where it’s small enough to drown in the bathtub.” fame.

Well now Jared Bernstein of the Huffington Post lays out the reasons we should NOT elect John McCain as President of the United States. The thing is while equating him with Bush is a pretty obvious step, he’d be much worse in the long run.

Here’s the Tax Party analysis of how much his cuts will cost. The things that really concern me is that they’re going after Social Security and Medicare.

We need safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare, unemployment benefits for more than six months, universal healthcare, and more. But people like old Grover think that government is evil. That may be so but it’s inevitable that we have a government. For the longest time government was supposed to help the people, now it’s only there to fuck the people or at least it will be if people like Norquist get their way.

But McCain seems to support Norquists ultimate objective, no more taxes. Taxes are a necessary evil, maybe if we weren’t spending billions on military misadventure we wouldn’t be facing the current problems.

I’ve also posted a graph that shows the federal budget deficits or surpluses under the various administrations, and interestingly the only time of surplus in the last 25 years had been the eight years that Bill Clinton was president. Mind you, he wasn’t a perfect president and he helped exacerbate the economic problems we have now, what with outsourcing, the declining dollar, etc.

But he was a damned sight better than Bush and even more so than McCain.

This is too much. I urge all we homophiles to call P&G and voice our support. Let’s drown out the religious fundamentalists. They appear to be very upset that P&G pulled the toll-free number after a week because it got so much play on gay sites that the small religious minority couldn’t be heard.

The poor babies, ut si! (As if!) They deserve no sympathy, no empathy, no respect because quite frankly they don’t respect me. Certainly they might say that it’s hate the sin, love the sinner but deep down inside they equate the concepts, they cannot separate the two.

It all boils down to something I’ve talked about before, fear. For a religion to exist there has to be a concept of the other. It’s true in Christianity, there are the saved and those that aren’t. Sinners and those who don’t, then the ultimate God and the Devil (Whose real name is Lucifer aka The Light Bringer).

In order to establish religious supremacy over the mind, there must be fear of the other and most importantly fear of the unknown.

For the most part then the religious homophobes are fearful people. We need to exploit that aspect to expose them for the ignorant bigots that they are.

Here are the various ways in which you can contact P&G. Toll rates are pretty low to non-existent for we VoIP people and it should only take a minute or two to voice your comments.
So please, call 513-983-1100. Their contact form is here, just select the ‘other’ category. And if you’re in the Cincinnati, OH area stop by. Their address is
One Procter & Gamble Plaza
Cincinnati, OH 45202

View Larger Map

So stop by and talk to a PR flunkie.

Procter & Gamble heard from the g-ys, then changed its rules

Company changed procedure after allowing g-ys time to call

May 10, 2008

Dear ,

Following its support for the h-mos-xual agenda, Procter & Gamble established a toll-free number for people to register their opinions for or against P&G’s promotion of the g-y agenda, including open mouth kissing between g-ys. It gave a toll-free number which was heavily promoted on g-y Web sites for a week to give those favoring the promotion of h-mos-xuality an opportunity to call. Monday, after AFA had put out the word that P&G wanted to hear from AFA supporters, P&G abruptly ended it.

AFA is encouraging supporters to call P&G and ask the company why it is promoting the g-y lifestyle and why it quit using the toll-free number to receive opinions only after AFA notified AFA supporters about it. We urge you to spend a few cents to register your complaint with P&G. Here is P&G’s corporate number to call: 513-983-1100 . (Please get others to call P&G at this number!)

P&G has added h-mos-xual lovers to its soap opera “As the World Turns.” The soap opera now includes scenes of h-mos-xuals with passionate open mouth kissing. The motive behind P&G’s push is to desensitize viewers, especially younger viewers, to the h-mos-xual lifestyle. The ultimate goal of h-mos-xual activists is h-mos-xual marriage.

Their inability to spell out homosexual is interesting. There seems to be a play on Christian symbols in doing so.

So I got there early to get my name fairly high up on the list to testify. They said the hearing would start at 4:30PM, it didn’t start until 6:30PM.

I did note that the parade of nitwits and the God Squad (Aka the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence) were fairly light in attendance this evening. In fact the God Squad only sent one Deacon to testify against Marriage Equality, Civil Unions, and granting of divorce to same sex couples whose marriages were performed in Massachusetts. The Deacon sat and read a statement from Bishop Tobin and of course it was the usual drivel. But I noted that it apparently didn’t appear to be a hot button issue this year since Fr. Codega and his crew weren’t there. None of the bishops in recent memory have ever attended the hearing either.

We heard from the marriage equality bill sponsor, Rep. Arthur Handy as well as from Rep. Frank Ferri the openly gay and partnered one. There are now three gay members of the House, Ferri, Fox, and Costantino. Hopefully this bodes well for us.

We also heard from Rep. Al Gemma in support too!

There were four stars in the testimony this evening. Two pro and one con.

I’ll start with the con. They put up Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage up and of course she kept on and on ad naseum about how the perfect thing for marriage throughout time was a man and a woman. NOM was founded by one Brian S. Brown. Would someone find that asshat and give him a good beating for me? It got particularly fun when Rep. Amy Rice started in on her. Rice loves provoking the religious nitwits. Rice is a very bright person too, she hold numerous degrees from some very good schools.

Then of course on the con side we had the less notable Brown University Pysch professor Lewis Lipsitt who claimed that studies show that male-female parents are better for a child than children with a single parent, or remarried parents or heave fucking forbid, a gay couple. The man should have his shingle revoked. Funny how his specialty is in developmental psych and he mentioned that the vast volume of literature on parenting and its effect on children is heterosexually based, that there are at max only about fifty studies on homosexual couples raising children and he said some pretty hateful things.

So much so that the 12 year old daughter who testified several people after Professor Dipshit was in tears and Rep. Edith Ajello tried to soothe the distraught girl.

On the pro side we had three notable testimonies this evening.

The first was Jenn Steinfeld, the director of Marriage Equality Rhode Island. At times you could tell she was getting frustrated with the questions from the reps on the committee. But she made them look like the fools they are, particularly Rep. Jon Brien. Brien has a bill that proposes putting the question to the voters of the state, in essence a DOMA bill that he swears up and down isn’t a DOMA bill. Brien kept stating over and over that the statute forming the RI Family Courts said that marriage was a union between man and woman when the statute he’s talking about does NOT contain that phrase.
Thanks for playing Rep. Brien, but for an attorney you sure are a dim fucking bulb.

Next was a gentleman whose name escapes me, but he had his partner of 20 years die in his home. The gentleman was handcuffed, denied any right to see his dead partner, make funeral arrangements, etc. Really a very touching reminder of why we need marriage equality in this state.

Finally Casandra Ormiston testified. What a grand and eloquent testimony it was. She rattled the reps sitting on the bench, let me tell you that. The name might be somewhat familiar if you’ve been following the gay divorce case going through the RI courts. She touched on EVERYTHING with a very dramatic flair, so much so that a couple of the Reps on the committee complimented her.

Others of those opposed were the wife of Steven Boyce a pastor at New Life Worship Center in Smithfield, RI (Warning! Flash Laden Site) She boasts her church has 1,000 members, blah,blah blah and urged them to reject the bills in question. She has a voice that to me is like fingernails on a chalkboard. I just wanted to blurt out “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”. And the other thing, how do we get these little mega-churches in Rhode Island?

I also heard that Christopher Young went off on a 20 minute psycho rant against marriage equality. Young is the one who tried to sue the Diocese of Providence over his claims of abuse. Let me give some background here, the priest in question was Father John Petrocelli, a parish priest at St. Ann’s in Providence, RI. Not only that, he was the scoutmaster of Troop 42 in Pawtucket, RI, a troop in which I was a member. I was also nominally a member of St. Ann’s though not an altar boy. But I’m reasonably certain that Petrocelli didn’t do what Young’s accusations say he did. Everyone who’s met Young knows he’s certifiably nuts.

Apparently these hearings have been playing out for more than a decade. I did have an idea though I didn’t get to testify. When it rolled around to 10PM and the chair was saying there were no more names on the list yet there were, I just left. But here’s the idea, link support of marriage equality to money. Seriously, the state is in dire financial straits here and one gentleman testifying made note of the fact that when his sister married her partner in Massachusetts, all the money was spent in that state. I think we should really pounce on that issue too.

I am told that greater than 2/3’s of the Judiciary committee supports bringing the marriage equality bills to the floor for a vote but the leadership in both the house and senate keep doing things to quash the bills, like scheduling committee hearings near the end of the legislative session.

House Speaker William Murphy, Senate President Joseph Montalbanowww, and Governor Donald Carcieri have all voiced their opposition to the bills. But I’m calling on them now to stop with their religious objections to the bills in question, with the exception of Brien’s DOMA bullshit. You still have time in this session to do the right thing and pass the equality bills.

In case you’re interested, I created a video and sent it to the entire Judiciary Committee and the Speaker.

It just never stops, the AFA has to be one of the prime anti-constitutional groups I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. Their leader, Donald E. Wildmon has a vision of the U.S. not in the 1950’s, but the 18th Century. Except in his vision the church wouldn’t control public behavior, he would.

ENDA: Work place is the Wrong Place for Sexual Politics

Let your U.S. senator know you oppose ENDA

May 6, 2008

Dear ,

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) has passed the U.S. House and Senator Edward Kennedy is now leading the push for a vote in the U.S. Senate. ENDA is aimed at providing heightened protections for a particular sexual behavior - homosexuality. It would grant special consideration on the basis of “sexual orientation” that would not be extended to other employees in the workplace.
ENDA violates employers’ and employees’ Constitutional freedoms of religion, speech and association. The proposed legislation would prohibit employers from taking their deeply held beliefs into account when making personnel decisions. This would pose an unprecedented intrusion by the federal government into people’s lives.

Please tell me, what workplace have you ever been in where everyone had to play nicely together despite their backgrounds? I’ve worked with all sorts of people. Some I didn’t like but in a professional environment you have to communicate, play nice, you know how it goes.

According to the AFA, your deeply held faith allows you to violate my Constitutional rights. This is particularly worrisome as we’ve already seen Muslim taxi drivers refusing to carry passengers that have alcohol with them, or pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control or the RU486 abortion pills.

And not to sound the alarm, but in the UK, the Muslims are taking it further, with their own Sharia courts, etc. How long before they break off a part of the already tiny UK for themselves, or France, or Germany.

We’ve already seen what language preference can do. Look at the Quebec struggle.

ENDA would approvingly bring private behavior considered immoral by many into the public square. By declaring that all sexual preferences are equally valid, ENDA would change national policy supporting marriage and family.

It’s obvious that the real agenda behind the innocuously named Employment Non-Discrimination Act is a push to enshrine homosexuality in national policy. This dangerous legislation would dramatically expand the government’s reach into your work place and create unnecessary work-place conflicts and lawsuits. ENDA is a sweeping employer mandate to create special new legal protections based on “sexual orientation” (or “perceptions”).

In about every place I’ve worked there’s at least one person who plasters their workspace with religious icons. In each instance I’ve never had them overtly push their religious views at me. The fact that they have those icons at their desk bothers me a bit but I can’t stand a desk covered with figurines, etc. be they religious or not.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that the hyper-religious tend to be people who were once rather lascivious or violent people in their youth (The first 30 years). Sure it’s great that they turned their life around but couldn’t it have been done without the strong dose of religion? A board certified psychiatric professional would have been a better choice.

Think about that for a moment. If you’re a religious type you got to your priest, pastor, minister, etc for counseling. But who do you think is better equipped to counsel you, a religious cleric whose studies didn’t exact touch on modern day psychology, or someone who has done years of training on the subject of human behavior and the human mind.

I just wish the AFA would shut the hell up. My guess is that Federal ENDA will pass with a big enough margin that it would override Bush’s signature. I certainly hope so.

They’ve been repainting the building. The whole front of the building is done and I guess this only presented too much of an opportunity for the taggers.

Here’s some evidence:

I’ve been trying to decipher who NSB is to no avail. But then something changed today:

This one yielded more results. I did a google search on B3ba +Providence and came up with this.

This paragraph pretty much sealed it:

Hey I’m b3ba , 21 y-old… I hav3 two b3autiful kidz nam3d Amariliz and Cristian. I also hav3 a wond3rful boyfri3nd named St3v3n, whos th3 lov3 of my lif3.. h3 also has 3 kids of his own, which mak3 th3m my st3pkids, so you can pictur3 how big th3 family is!!! LOL!! Lik3 my own th3yre good kids… I also hav3 a b3st fri3nd nam3d Michy, who lives with m3, and h3lps m3 out alot. I lov3 h3r so much, w3 3v3n fight lik3 sist3rs!! W3ll 3nough about my fam, I hop3 you guys lik3 da pag3, and w3ather you know me or not, know you can always hit me up!! W3ather I know you or not, cuz I’m also h3r3 to mak3 n3w fri3nds!! LAT3RRZZ!!

I can tell B3ba (Beba) that she isn’t going to make many friends when her name shows up as a tag. More to the point, stop L33t’izing your text. It isn’t cute and should only be done by skilled I.T. professionals. L8r Luser.

Of course I have to friend her on MySpace to email her but it’ll be worth it because someone is going to clean that up and it isn’t going to be me.

I’ve also noted that most of the tagging occurs between Thursday evening and Monday evening. So next weekend weather permitting someone is going to get a little surprise. I’ll be there with the shotgun and the nylon ties. Once I’ve tied the perp up I’ll walk to a payphone, call the police and tell them to come pick up the garbage.

In reality I’ll more than likely video them in the act. That should be enough for the police to charge them.

It’s funny, even the Rhode Island State Police are worried about the graffiti and tagging in the capitol city, yet they can’t keep a lid on it. The biggest problem is that the taggers use magic markers which are easy to conceal, and easy to explain. It’s a little harder explaining a spray can.

The police can’t be everywhere. So it’s time for a little citizen vigilantism.

I think something is messed up with the numbering system but here goes this weeks installment.

1. How many cell phones have you had? How long have you had your current cell phone number?

Lets see. Six of them. Don’t currently have one since I realized what they really are, a waste of time, an electronic leash if you will. Plus I hate the voice aspect, I just want a device that lets me do email, Instant Messaging, SMS, SSH, and web browsing. Doesn’t need voice at all.

2. Where was the last place you had sex?

At Casa Truthspew of course.

3. On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with your love life? (1 is lowest, 10 is highest)

Being as I tend to underestimate things, I’d give it an 8. We’ve been together so long that we know exactly what pushes the buttons, if you know what I mean.

4. Does Bliss sound like a fun game to you? Have you ever played it?

It’s a love making database. Who really needs that? There are certain things that belong in databases like purchasing information, the details of ones sex life do not belong in a database. Certainly not one that could possibly leak onto the net and expose the sordid details of your sex life.

Should one really need to record and archive their experiences a notebook and pen or pencil are just as effective and somewhat more secure.

5. Is there anything or anyone you would be willing to die for?

There are two things. The first of course is the one I love. I’m a very vengeful person.

I’d also die for my country but not in the same way most people say they would. I’d die to see us all free again from corporate tyranny.

Bonus (as in optional): If you were (or had) a magic genie and could only grant wishes for others and you only had three left, what would they be and who would they be for?

I’d wish that Keyron gets his ultimate career.

I’d wish that Ky meets the love of her life.

I’d wish that Doug meets the love of his life.

Oh this is interesting. Apparently P&G pulled the 800 number to call in order to register your support or disapproval of the gay story arc in As The World Turns.

Procter & Gamble heard from the g-ys, then changed its rules

Company changed procedure after allowing g-ys time to call

Dear Anthony,

Following its support for the h-mos-xual agenda, Procter & Gamble established a toll-free number for people to register their opinions for or against P&G’s promotion of the g-y agenda, including open mouth kissing between g-ys. It gave a toll-free number which was heavily promoted on g-y Web sites for a week to give those favoring the promotion of h-mos-xuality an opportunity to call. Monday, after AFA had put out the word that P&G wanted to hear from AFA supporters, P&G abruptly ended it.

AFA is encouraging supporters to call P&G and ask the company why it is promoting the g-y lifestyle and why it quit using the toll-free number to receive opinions only after AFA notified AFA supporters about it. We urge you to spend a few cents to register your complaint with P&G. Here is P&G’s corporate number to call: 513-983-1100. (Please get others to call P&G at this number!)

P&G has added h-mos-xual lovers to its soap opera “As the World Turns.” The soap opera now includes scenes of h-mos-xuals with passionate open mouth kissing. The motive behind P&G’s push is to desensitize viewers, especially younger viewers, to the h-mos-xual lifestyle. The ultimate goal of h-mos-xual activists is h-mos-xual marriage.

What’s with the dropping of the vowels? Are the phobes at the AFA so delicate that they can’t spell the whole word?

Once again, I say let’s call the number they’ve listed and register our support. Apparently that’s what the AFA is complaining about, that we radical homosexual activists flooded the P&G toll free number to support the story.

And once again lets flood the number and let the AFA know that we are a force to be reckoned with.