Boo

Boo! It's Halloween. Will the Castro be a scary mess? Streets will NOT be closed off, and bars will be extra-packed. Who wants to wait in line for fun? Not me.

The shootings from 2 years ago still haunt us. I hope things are safe, but it may rain, too, which weeds out potential do-badders.

I won't find out until later; neighbors are having our third block party, barring a downpour.

And No on Prop 8 is neck and neck in polls with the paranoid heterosaximals. Hey, wanna preserve traditional marriage? Pickle it.




For Halloween party fun, check my weekly listings.

What the World Needs Now

The Economist's website poll shows who people around the world would vote for in the U.S. presidential election, if they could.

Blackhearted

Who are the biggest donors to Yes on Proposition 8?

Out of state mormons and militia men.

On the yes side, the Knights of Columbus, based in New Haven, Conn., is the measure's largest single contributor so far, having given $1.4 million. Other top contributors to the Yes on 8 campaign were Irvine banking heir Howard Ahmanson Jr.'s Fieldstead and Co. foundation ($1.1 million); John Templeton Jr., son of the late Bryn Mawr, Pa., investor John Templeton ($900,000); the Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Association ($500,000), and Elsa Prince, ($450,000), mother of Blackwater founder Erik Prince.

Miles Higher

Denver Welcomes Obama

Back in the city where he claimed history, Barack Obama presided Sunday over a Colorado rally so enormous and energetic that even he seemed surprised at his following.

"Goodness gracious," Obama said as he took the stage and peered at the human mass in Denver's Civic Center Park. Smelling victory, Obama supporters were everywhere, packing even the steps of the state Capitol way off in the distance.

In a campaign of huge Obama rallies across the United States, the Denver gathering topped them all. Local police put the crowd estimate at "well over" 100,000 people.

The setting, on a sparkling day in this battleground state, said perhaps more than Obama did in his actual speech. It rippled with the kind of enthusiasm found at victory rallies.

Later, in Fort Collins, there was more symbolism in the eyes of Obama backers. Obama spoke to tens of thousands of people on a Colorado State University lawn known as "The Oval."

Obama's campaign is capitalizing on the scope of such rallies to get people to cast votes early, permitted in Colorado and more than two dozen other states.

"How many people have early voted?" Obama said, eliciting cheers from people bundled up in fleece. "That's what I'm talking about. No point in waiting in lines if you don't have to. You know who you're going to vote for."

Mac is PC

Apple has joined Google in publicly opposing a California ballot initiative that would deny marriage rights to same-sex couples.

The company announced Friday that it would donate $100,000 to the No on Prop 8 campaign, which opposes a measure to ban gay marriage that California voters will consider a week from Tuesday. Google has also spoken out against the ballot measure.

"Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees' same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person's fundamental rights--including the right to marry--should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8," the company said in a statement posted to the Hot News section of its Web site.

Slice, Dice, Lie Twice

Police: McCain volunteer made up robbery story

A McCain campaign volunteer made up a story of being robbed, pinned to the ground and having the letter "B" scratched on her face in a politically inspired attack, police said Friday.

Ashley Todd, 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas, admitted Friday that the story was false and was being charged with making a false report to police, said Maurita Bryant, the assistant chief of the police department's investigations division. Police doubted her story from the start, Bryant said.

Todd, who is white, told police she was attacked by a 6-foot-4 black man Wednesday night. She now can't explain why she invented the story, Bryant said.

Todd also told police she believes she cut the backward "B" onto her own cheek, but she didn't explain how or why, Bryant said.

Jon's On; Palin's 'Pretty Woman' Makeover

The scoop that the GOP spent $150,000 on a Palin makeover have hit the shan, as they say. You can dress up a pig, but it's still...

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My former cater-waiter co-worker Jon Stewart hit another one out of the park in Boston at a speech/show where he blasted Caribou Barbie:

"She said that small towns, that's the part of the country she really likes going to because that's the pro-America part of the country. You know, I just want to say to her, just very quickly: [expletive] you," Stewart said to raucous applause.

Palin addressed a North Carolina fund-raiser Thursday night saying, "We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe...that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation."

The comment was quickly picked up by media outlets and the Obama campaign, whose spokesman Bill Burton asked in an e-mail to reporters, "What part of the country isn’t pro-America?"

Stewart didn't let his own harsh language stop him from criticizing John McCain and Palin for divisiveness.

"I can't take it anymore...After eight years of this divisiveness, we're back to this idea that only small-town America is the real America," he said.

The Manhattan native accused the Republicans of "writing off whole swaths of the country," saying "cities are just a lot of towns piled on top of each other in one place. "

During the same routine, however, he seemed to write off Palin's rural swath of the country, referring to the governor's home not as Alaska, Wasilla, or Juneau, but as "the woods."

"McCain made an interesting vice presidential choice," he said. "I like the woods...I just don't know if I would pull my vice president out of the woods randomly."

Oh, Canada

St. Louis Slugger

While crazed rightwingers shout for attacks against Barack Obama, and nutbags call him a "Muslim, a terrorist" and worse, thanks to the divisive bilious screeds of Palin, journalists get pummeled to the ground at Palin rallies.

Meanwhile, Obama rallies, like this one in St. Louis, bring out 100,000 peace-loving enthusiastic supporters.

And yet, the polls continue to prop up McCain as if he is a contender. No McCain rally has ever had this big a crowd. In fact, they've been lying about their numbers since the beginning.


Meanwhile, as CNN shows, in my former hometown of Ashland, Ohio, the economy is tanked, the Archway cookie factory has closed, and my former neighbors are finally getting a clue that the Chimpoleon regime hasn't done them any good. In fact, the rightwing policies of that town have sucked it dry of industry and success.

"The town of Ashland is a dying town," was Terry Mowery's sad take. "All the manufacturing is leaving."

Politics is for the most part predictable in a conservative place like this. At the local Republican headquarters, the signs in the window are simple: "PRO LIFE" reads one. "PRO GUNS," is another.

That's yet another reason I'm happy that I'll never go back there.

Even with the inevitable ballot fraud commited by GOPers, and the Supreme Court having told Ohio GOPers to flake off with their attempt to surpess new voters, the Rethugs are still screaming about ACORN and attacking people who work for it, while they were only too happy with the obvious frauds committed in Ohio by Kenneth Blackwell in 2004, McCain is still far behind in electoral votes, which, sadly, are all that matters. No, sorry, I don't see individual votes being counted accurately, ever again.

Hayden Love, Hatin' Hate

See more Hayden Panettiere videos at Funny or Die

So, of course, I love Heroes, even when it gets strage, like this season. And Hayden "Claire" Panettiere is so cute! She saves whales and loves "the gays." seriously! Enjoy this clip, where she takes sarcasm and "Villians" to a new logic.

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Compare that wit to the "ladies" of a Southern California Republican Ladies Club, who put this racist depiction in their newsletter:



The latest newsletter by an Inland Republican women's group depicts Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama surrounded by a watermelon, ribs and a bucket of fried chicken, prompting outrage in political circles.

The October newsletter by the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated says if Obama is elected his image will appear on food stamps -- instead of dollar bills like other presidents. The statement is followed by an illustration of "Obama Bucks" -- a phony $10 bill featuring Obama's face on a donkey's body, labeled "United States Food Stamps."

The GOP newsletter, which was sent to about 200 members and associates of the group by e-mail and regular mail last week, is drawing harsh criticism from members of the political group, elected leaders, party officials and others as racist.

The group's president, Diane Fedele, said she plans to send an apology letter to her members and to apologize at the club's meeting next week. She said she simply wanted to deride a comment Obama made over the summer about how as an African-American he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

"It was strictly an attempt to point out the outrageousness of his statement. I really don't want to go into it any further," Fedele said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "I absolutely apologize to anyone who was offended. That clearly wasn't my attempt."

Fedele said she got the illustration in a number of chain e-mails and decided to reprint it for her members in the Trumpeter newsletter because she was offended that Obama would draw attention to his own race. She declined to say who sent her the e-mails with the illustration.
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Rightwingers fail, especially with humor. That's because they're corrupt racist jerks.

Drop a line to Diane Fedele of the Chaffey Community Republican Women Federated newsletter if you like:

diane1354@mindspring.com
Phone: (909) 981-0493

No on 8

"Because no one has the right to deny another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn't harm another and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8."

- Actor Brad Pitt in a Sept. 17 statement announcing a $100,000 contribution to the campaign to defeat the Nov. 4 voter initiative to amend the California Constitution to undo the state's legalization of same-sex marriage.

Contribute to No on 8.

Now.

Redneck Heck

The pig bigot rightwingers are letting their fangs show, and Satan Palin's leading the way. At rallies and carefully staged events to make the mustachioed Caribou Barbie look good (and the Methusalan McCain look non-dead), audiences at the events have become more vocally racist, hateful, shouting violent epithets and acting like... well, terrorists.

Here's the incredulous video from Strongsville, Ohio. This is just one example.

Towleroad put a bunch of hideous McAint-SatanPalin event facts together. These creeps are acting like a lynch mob; a desperate hateful LOSING mob.

But not all rednecks are the dumb phucks McAint's crowd is proving to be. Rednecks for Obama attempts to bridge that divide. Good luck to them.

Papers, please.

So, last Pride I bumped into Tommi Avicolli Mecca, activist and writer of note, and he mentioned an anthology. so I popped off what I thought a rather appropros piece I'd written years ago.

The thing about submitting to anthologies is, they're like dropping a baby off at a church. You don't hear back for a long time, and by then, it doesn't even seem like it's yours. I forget I even submitted to them.

But this one's been popped out pretty quickly; only a few months. And it's pretty good; Avanti Popolo: Italian-American Writers Sail Beyond Columbus, a poetry and short essay anthology put out by Manic D Press. It's edited by James Tracy.

I'll be reading a short short story, "Papers," about an imagined exodus due to political extremes. I wrote it at the time of the impending Bush regime, but it still holds some relevance, should the dark forces of vitriol from the GOP do any damage this season.

Anyway, it should be a fun event with half a dozen writers and a good crowd. Enjoy North Beach.

Monday, October 13, 2008, 7 pm
City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus, San Francisco, CA
Phone: (415) 362-8193

Evita Palin

The Battle Plan II:
Sarah "Evita" Palin,
the Muse of the Coming Police State

by Naomi Wolf

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah "Evita" Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order to understand "Palin Power." A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable, weak figurehead at the fore. Then they will hold elections -- but they will make sure that the election will be corrupted and that the next affable, weak figurehead is entirely in their control. Remember, Russia has Presidents; Russia holds elections. Dictators and gangs of thugs all over the world hold elections. It means nothing. When a cabal has seized power you can have elections and even presidents, but you have freedom.

I realized early on with horror what I was seeing in Governor Palin: the continuation of the Rove-Cheney cabal, but this time without restraints. I heard her echo Bush 2000 soundbites ("the heart of America is on display") and realized Bush's speechwriters were writing her -- not McCain's -- speeches. I heard her tell George Bush's lies -- not McCain's -- to the American people, linking 9/11 to Iraq. I heard her make fun of Barack Obama for wanting to prevent the torture of prisoners -- this is Rove-Cheney's enthusiastic S and M, not McCain's, who, though he shamefully colluded in the 2006 Military Tribunals Act, is also a former prisoner of war and wrote an eloquent Newsweek piece in 2005 opposing torture. I saw that she was even styled by the same skillful stylist (neutral lipstick, matte makeup, dark colors) who turned Katharine Harris from a mall rat into a stateswoman and who styles all the women in the Bush orbit --but who does not bother to style Cindy McCain.

Then I saw and heard more. Palin is embracing lawlessness in defying Alaskan Legislature subpoenas --this is what Rove-Cheney, and not McCain, believe in doing. She uses mafia tactics against critics, like the police commissioner who was railroaded for opposing handguns in Alaskan battered women's shelters -- Rove's style, not McCain's. I realized what I was seeing.

Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal. The strategy became clear. Time magazine reported that Rove is "dialed in" to the McCain campaign. Rove's protégé Steve Schmidt is now campaign manager. And Politico reported that Rove was heavily involved in McCain's vice presidential selection. Finally a new report shows that there are dozens of Bush and Rove operatives surrounding Sarah Palin and orchestrating her every move.

What's the plan? It is this. McCain doesn't matter. Reputable dermatologists are discussing the fact that in simply actuarial terms, John McCain has a virulent and life-threatening form of skin cancer. It is the elephant in the room, but we must discuss the health of the candidates: doctors put survival rates for someone his age at two to four years. I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election. She will be working for Halliburton, KBR, Rove and Cheney into the foreseeable future -- for a decade perhaps -- a puppet "president" for the same people who have plundered our treasure, are now holding the US economy hostage and who murdered four thousand brave young men and women in a way of choice and lies.

How, you may ask, can I assert this? How can I argue, as I now do, that there is actually a war being ramped up against US citizens and our democracy and that Sarah Palin is the figurehead and muse for that war?

Look at the RNC. This is supposed to be McCain's America. But you see the unmistakable theatre of Rove's S and M imagery -- and you see stages eight, nine and ten of the steps to a dictatorship as I outlined them in The End of America. Preemptive arrest? Abusive arrest? "Newly released footage, which was buried to avoid confiscation, shows riot cops arresting and abusing a giant group of people for nothing."

Journalists were arrested -- for reporting. Amy Goodman and ABC producers were arrested. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake and others were forced to lie face down as armed agents tied their hands behind their backs. The riot police wore the black S&M gear of the Rovian fantasy life and carried the four foot batons cops carry in North Korea. All this is not John McCain's imagery or strategy: it is Karl Rove's.

In McCain-Palin's America, citizens who are protesting are being charged as terrorists. This means that a violent war had been declared on American citizens. A well known reporter leaked to me on background that St Paul police had dressed as protesters and, dressed in Black -- shades of the Blackshirts of 1920 -- infiltrated protest groups. There were also phalanxes of men in black wearing balaclavas, linking arms and behaving menacingly -- alleged "anarchists." Let me tell you, I have been on the left for thirty years and you can't get three lefties to wear the same t-shirt to a rally, let alone link arms and wear identical face masks: these are not our guys. Agent Provocateurs framing protesters and calling protest "terrorism" constitutes step ten of a police state:

"In what appears to be the first use of criminal charges under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County Prosecutors have formally charged 8 alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism... [they] 7 1/2 years in prison under the terrorism enhancement charge which allows for a 50% increase in the maximum penalty."


"Paid, confidential informants... infiltrated the RNCWC on behalf of law enforcement. They allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotage airports in St. Paul. Evidence released to date does not corroborate these allegations with physical evidence or provide any other evidence for these allegations than the claims of the informants. Based on past abuses of such informants by law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild is concerned that such police informants have incentives to lie and exaggerate threats of violence and to also act as provocateurs in raising and urging support for acts of violence."

Under the Palin-Rove police state, you will see escalating infringements on your access to a free internet:

"Sarah Palin was baptized at Wasilla Assembly of God...Last Sunday our research team released a video, a ten-minute mini-documentary, focusing on the Wasilla Assemblies of God and the video seemed on the verge of a massive "viral" breakthrough when YouTube pulled it down, citing 'inappropriate content'. At the point the video was censored by YouTube it had been viewed by almost 160,000 people. The short of it is that YouTube has censored a video documentary that appeared to be close to having an effect on a hard fought and contentious American presidential election..."

Under the coming Palin-Rove police state, you will witness the plans now underway to bring Iraqi troops to patrol the streets of our nation. This is not McCain's fantasy: it is Rove's and Cheney's.

Under the Palin-Rove police state, there will be no further true elections. Mark Crispin Miller has done sensational and under-reported investigating t o establish that -- as I warned -- indeed the GOP staffers on the US Senate Judiciary Committee have been .

The evidence is also buried on the Website of the Majority House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

WASHINGTON -- Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe. >From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications witho ut a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics.


-- "Senate panel's GOP staff spied on Democrats" By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | January 22, 2004

Do you think that spying like this will ever end under a Palin-Rove regime? Dream on. If she and McCain are elected, then every single strategy memo and speech and debate prep note from every opposition candidate from now and on into forever will be read by the regime in power while it is still in the computers of the challengers.

Under the Palin-Rove police state, citizens will be targeted with state cyberterrorism. Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda, a former Reagan official, warned me three years ago that the Bush team went after a Republican who had crossed them through cyberstalking: they messed with his email, messed with his phones and I believe messed with his bank account -- he became a cyber-pariah, unemployable and haunted. With modern technology, there really is less place to hide from the state than there was in East Germany in the Cold War era. I remember feeling a chill: of course. That is the wave of the future once we breach the protections around citizens of FISA and the fourth amendment. That way lies the abyss for us all.

Am I trying to scare you? I am. I am trying to scare you to death and ask you to scare your Republican and independent friends most of all. How do you know when it is war on citizens? When there are mass arrests, journalists are jailed, the opposition is infiltrated, rights are stripped and leaders start to ignore the rule of law.

Almost everyone I work with on projects related to this campaign for liberty has been experiencing computer harassment: emails are stripped, messages disappear. That's not all: people's bank accounts are being tampered with: wire transfers to banks vanish in midair. I personally keep opening bank accounts that are quickly corrupted by fraud. Money vanishes. Coworkers of mine have to keep opening new email accounts as old ones become infected. And most disturbingly to me personally is the mail tampering I have both heard of and experienced firsthand. My tax returns vanished from my mailbox. All my larger envelopes arrive ripped straight open apparently by hand. When I show the postman, he says "That's impossible." Horrifyingly to me is the impact on my family. My childrens' report cards are returned again and again though perfectly addressed; their invitations are turned back; and my daughters many letters from camp? Vanished. All of them. Not one arrived. Try explaining that to a smart thirteen year old. Try explaining it in a way that still makes her feel secure and comfortable.

I am not telling you this because it's about my life. I am telling you this because it is about your life -- whoever you are, Conservative or Liberal, independent or evangelical. Your politics will not protect you in a police state. History shows that nothing portects you in a police state. This is not about my fear and anxiety: it is about what awaits you and everyone you love unless you see this for what it is:

Scharansky divided nations into "fear societies" and "free societies." Make no mistake: Sarah "Evita" Palin is Rove and Cheney's cosmetic rebranding of their fascist push: she will help to establish a true and irreversible "fear society" in this once free once proud nation. For God's sake, do not let her; do not let them.

Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth and The End of America, will be at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club Oct. 14.

Clively

Enough that winking Repub she-devil and this bogus bail-out bullshit.
On to other demons, ones made up by gay artists!

You may not be able to get to Richmond to see a new production of his play, The History of the Devil. But you should read what Clive Barker has to say about other things in my interview with Clive in The Bay Area Reporter.

Gay Alaskans discuss Sarah Palin

"She's worse than Dick Cheney, and a better shot."



A Human Rights Campaign staffer made that video. While I've had questions about HRC in the past, they are certainly stepping up the election activism.


Human Rights Campaign honcho Joe Solmonese does not buy John McCain's doublespeak interview with the Washington Blade, which basically amounts to, "I have gay friends, but voted against every single piece of pro-gay legislation that came my way."

John McCain’s answers to those well written questions do nothing but insult the intelligence of the LGBT community. Senator McCain’s double speak fools no one. At the end of the day, his policies haven’t changed at all.

It’s interesting that John McCain thinks that being civil is going to win us over, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that he is against every single policy that would protect and promote equality for the LGBT community.

It’s 2008, ‘some of my best friends are gay’ doesn’t work anymore. Sorry, we’ve already had one ‘compassionate conservative’ in the White House for eight years, we aren’t interested in another.

Good job, Joe. Now stop giving money to Republican candidates altogether, mm-kay?