Category: Uncategorized

Happy Birthday Harvey Milk! Today you would have turned 82. But your life was cut short when you were shot to death at the young age of 48, a year after being elected (as the first openly gay person) to California’s Board of Supervisors.

Harvey Milk is often considered an LBTQ rights activist, which he was. But he was an activist who saw the connections among the struggles of all disenfranchised people. In 2009, President Obama awarded Milk a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, which his openly gay nephew, Stuart Milk, accepted. That same year, Stuart and Harvey Milk campaign manager Anne Kronenberg co-founded the Harvey Milk Foundation, with the support of Desmond Tutu.  The Foundation established Harvey Milk Day, on May 22nd, Milk’s birthday.

Also in 2009,  Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the Harvey Milk Day Bill, honoring the fallen hero on his birthday, and inducted Milk in the California Hall of Fame. Part of the bill encourages schools to shape their lessons on May 22nd around “remembering the life of Harvey Milk, recognizing his accomplishments and familiarizing pupils with the contributions he made to this state.”

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What happens when you have a criminal record, fatally shoot a teenager armed with nothing more than a pack of skittles and an ice-tea and argue you were justified under Florida’s Stand Your Ground Laws? Nothing. The police believe you and it takes a national media campaign to actually get the criminal justice system to look into the case.

What happens when you have no criminal record, don’t harm anyone, but fire shots to scare off an abusive husband, who has choked and punched you, and just threatened to kill you? You get sentenced to 20 years of prison, of course. This is justice in Florida, where Marissa Alexander was sentenced to 20 years of jail time on Friday. The 31-year-old mother of three said she had no intention of hurting anyone, but feared for her life, after her husband, who admits to abusive behavior, threatened to kill her. Change.org, which has a petition for Alexander, recounts what happened to her:[…]

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Newsweek is excited about its cover this week, a “take THAT!” response to the sensationalistic breast-feeding cover which graced Time last week. The Newsweek cover features an image Barack Obama, with a rainbow halo above his head. The headline is as nuanced as the graphic and reads “The First Gay President.” Here is the article behind the cover, by Andrew Sullivan.

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An anonymous person from Virginia Beach, Virginia sold “10 Pack Trayvon Martin Targets” on the website GunBroker.com (the product has since been removed from the site). For $8, you could buy the item, whose description read as follows:

“Everyone knows the story of Zimmerman and Martin… Obviously we support Zimmerman and believe he is innocent and that he shot a thug. Each target is printed on thick, high quality poster paper with a matte finish! The dimensions are 12″x18″ ( The same as Darkotic Zombie Targets) This is a Ten Pack of Targets.”

The targets feature a faceless figure wearing a hoodie and carrying skittles, like Trayvon Martin was the night he was shot by George Zimmerman. The ten packs were so popular, they sold out within two days.

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The great thing about the scary, reactionary, time-traveling policies the Republicans are advocating, is that it provides a lot of comedic fodder. Funny or Die has another video on the subject of the GOP’s obsession with controlling vaginas. The video stars Kate Beckinsale, Judy Greer and Andrea Savage. See why these women want Republicans ”way, way deep, up there in” their vaginas.

See the video at Feminsting

Michele Bachmann appeared on Face the Nation Sunday to share totally incorrect information about women voters.

“The myth is there is a Republican war on women. There’s not a Republican war on women…. That’s coming from the Obama reelection team…. Actually, if you look at the 2010 elections, women went Republican. They didn’t go Democrat, and they will this time as well, because women are more concerned about the economy and jobs for themselves, for their husbands, for their children, and that’s not happened because obama’s broken his promises. …

And it was women who overwhelmingly went Republican and threw out a woman speaker [Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)]. I think this time again what women want, Bob, is they want competence, and, unfortunately, with all due respect to the president, he’s not competent to deal with the economy. Mitt Romney is competent in spades. That’s what women are going to be looking for.”

As Think Progress points out,

2010 was a banner year for the GOP and every voting block went more Republican it had in the previous election, but she’s still wrong. In fact, exit polls shows that Democrats and Republicans tied among women in the midterm election that year, each capturing 49 percent of the vote. It was a major improvement for Republicans among women, who lost that demographic by 13 points in the 2008 presidential race, and their best performance among women since 1982 — but hardly an “overwhelming” win.

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Vice President Joe Biden is known for his gaffs. But this time, he should stick by what he said. OnMeet The Press,  Biden expressed his full support for same-sex marriage, outdoing Obama, who supports civil unions, saying:

“I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another 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.”

Biden did include the disclaimer, “I am vice president of the United States of America. The president sets the policy.” But apparently, that wasn’t enough. The Obama campaign made sure everyone knew that Biden isn’t comfortable with marriage equality. First, a Biden aid clarified that,

“The vice president was saying what the president has said previously – that committed and loving same-sex couples deserve the same rights and protections enjoyed by all Americans, and that we oppose any effort to roll back those rights…. That’s why we stopped defending the constitutionality of Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act in legal challenges and support legislation to repeal it. Beyond that, the vice president was expressing that he too is evolving on the issue, after meeting so many committed couples and families in this country.”

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A music video homage to Newt Gingrich.

Dear Friends,

I hope you were all sitting down when Newt announced he was suspending his campaign. Hopefully, this video I made urging Newt to stay in the race will help lift your spirits.

When god closes a website, he opens a Facebook page! George Zimmerman’s defense attorney, Mark O’Mara, has established a Facebook and Twitter account for his client after Zimmerman disabled his previous website, which raised $200,000 for him.  Zimmerman just plum forgot to disclose this money when the judge was determining his bond, something his lawyer deemed an “oversight.” You know when you forget about a couple hundred thousand dollars you have lying around? Of course you do – we’ve all been there. As of 2:11 PM on April 30th, the Facebook page already has 772 likes, and the twitter account has 625 followers and 41 tweets.

Read more at Feministing