HOW WAS THAT NRA FUNDRAISER THIS WEEKEND?

Sherman Hemsley died yesterday.

He was 74 years old and, like me, a huge Yes fan.

This is the single best discussion and explanation of the LIBOR scandal you’re likely to get.

Simply put, LIBOR — the London Interbank Offered Rate — is the rate that banks lend money to each other and it directly impacts virtually everyone in the world.

The 16 banks that set the LIBOR have been gaming a system worth literally hundreds of trillions of dollars and their fraud and criminality has cost people with home loans, business loans, student loans, credit cards . . . you name it, quite literally trillions of dollars in losses.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — this shit isn’t going to stop until some of these motherfuckers are hanging from a gibbet in the middle of the town square.

E.B.White, the author of the wonderful Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, along with the indispensable Elements of Style — co-written by William Strunk Jr. — would have been 113 year old today.

“English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgement, and education — Sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.” 

— E.B. White

If you doubt those sentiments just speak to someone who speaks English as a second language. They will frequently say that the English language has little to no logic underpinning its grammar.

So Vice President Joe Biden just endorsed gay marriage on Dancin’ Dave Gregory’s show this morning:

Biden: The good news is that, as more and more Americans come to understand what this is all about is a simple proposition: who do you love? Who do you love? And will you be loyal to the person you love? And that’s what people are finding out what all marriages at their root are about, whether they are marriages of lesbians, or gay men or heterosexuals.

Gregory: That’s what you believe?

Biden: That’s what I believe.

Gregory: And you’re comfortable with same-sex marriage now?

Biden: Look. I am Vice President of the United States. The President sets the policy. I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties, and quite frankly, I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that.

And within minutes the dumbass White House spin machine was trying to walk back Biden’s remarks, but doing so with all the schizophrenic, cowardly logic and the use of weasel-words that they’ve always brought to the discussion of gay marriage.

And the reason it’s a dumbass move is because all the walking back does is piss off the gays and the Liberals and doesn’t win a single conservative over to Obama’s side because they all think he already supports gay marriage.

There is absolutely no upside to walking back the Veep’s statement.

Look, here’s the one single thing every gay needs to know about Barack Obama — he DOES NOT have “evolving” views about gay marriage as he’s claimed before.

What Obama has is a case of the icks because he finds gay marriage icky and would just as soon the whole thing — and us — go away.

And even though polls now show that more than half of Americans support equal rights for gays and lesbians {including an ever growing number of republicans} Mr. Hope and Change is not gonna hop on the equal rights bandwagon until the percentage of Americans who support our right to marry is closer to 70, if not higher.

And he’ll never, ever, ever do it in an election year, regardless of the number of Americans who support equal rights.

This from a guy who wouldn’t even be alive today were it not for the equal rights protections afforded to his white mother and black father who were allowed to marry thanks to the federal repeal of anti-miscegenation laws in this country.

His entire fucking existence owes itself to a change in the laws of the land that granted equal rights protections to his parents that he’s only just now having “evolving” views on when they concern others.

Standing up and doing the right thing in spite of your personal feelings or prejudices, or in the face of vocal opposition from others, is the hallmark of a true leader.

Refusing to do so out of political calculation is the hallmark of a fucking coward.

And refusing to do so when there is absolutely no downside to doing it is the hallmark of a dumbass.

I’m tellin’ ya — these Obama people are not half as fucking smart as they all like to think they are.

Back in 2010 I wrote a post about Arizona’s then brand spanking new “Papers Please” law and two of the people who were the driving forces behind it.

One of those people was an omnibus sized avowed Neo-Nazi named J.T. Ready.

Apparently Mr. Ready murdered four people yesterday in Gilbert Arizona, including an 18 month old child, and then killed himself.

Burn in hell you disgusting piece of shit.

The world became a far better place the moment you blew your brains out.

Soooo a group of 3,000 student high school journalist wannabees invites Dan Savage to speak at their annual conference here in Seattle and he says things about the bible that gets some of the conservative Christian journalist wannabees so upset that they walk out during his address.

Also, too, he apparently said the word “bullshit”.

And now this is a national scandal.

WTF?!?!?!

Ummmm, lemme just posit the theory — ridiculous though it may be — that if you’re gonna be a real live grown up journalist some day you’ll probably be called upon by your editors to cover stories and people who say things that make you uncomfortable and you’ll be expected to do so without feeling the need to flee from the source of your discomfort.

If you can’t separate your personal life and beliefs from the story then maybe you’d better find another line of work.  One that doesn’t have the potential to offend your precious little fee-fees so much.

And oh, by the way?  It was Dan fucking Savage.

This is the same guy who single-handedly turned Rick Santorum’s last name into a disgusting/hilarious obscenity known and used by pretty much the entire western world.

And he’s a sex columnist fer fucks sake!

What the hell did you people expect?