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Somehow I don't think I was the only one who got this today:

REPUBLICANS FOR IGNATIEFF PRAISES MICHAEL IGNATIEFF FOR DEFENDING GEORGE W. BUSH IN RECENTLY-DISCOVERED AUDIO CLIP

• Liberal leader said human rights and the promotion of democracy was a central feature of the Bush Administration
• Names Bush alongside human rights leaders Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter

JULY 9, 2009 -- Republicans for Ignatieff, an international online community for Republican supporters of Michael Ignatieff, the new Leader of Canada's Liberal Party, today released a recently-discovered audio clip of Michael Ignatieff publicly defending former President George W. Bush and naming him alongside other great human rights leaders.
Speaking to an audience at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland in January 2005, Ignatieff admitted he was courting controversy when he said:
"Don't forget that the speech by a U.S. President that most directly committed the United States to the promotion of human rights and democracy in the Arab world was given by George W. Bush."
Ignatieff's naming of Bush immediately followed his references to human rights leaders Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter.
Ignatieff also told his audience that "human rights and the promotion of democracy" was a "central feature" of the Bush Administration.
Listen to the unedited, in-context two minute and twelve second clip by clicking on the following link:

Click Here To Listen

The speech was delivered just several months before Ignatieff returned to Canada and was nominated as the Liberal Party's candidate in the electoral district of Etobicoke-Lakeshore.
At a time when the rest of the world, particularly the nations and people of Europe, were turning their backs on President Bush, Michael Ignatieff took a stand in publicly acknowledging the human rights actions of the former President. We salute his intellectual honesty and courage. Despite the fact that he sometimes criticized the domestic and foreign policies of Republican leaders, his words, overall, re-affirm our belief that he is the right choice for America, the right choice for Canada and the right choice for Republicans.
Read more about Ignatieff's support for Republican ideas and causes by visiting www.republicansforignatieff.com

About Republicans for Ignatieff

Republicans for Ignatieff is a new international online community for Republican supporters of Michael Ignatieff. We are grassroots individuals, both registered Republicans and Republican supporters, who back Michael Ignatieff's quest to become Prime Minister of Canada. As grassroots individuals, Republicans for Ignatieff is not affiliated in any way with the Republican National Committee or any state Republican Party.

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For more information, please contact Republicans for Ignatieff by using the online contact form located here.

Yeah, dream on, big fat hairy deal, like no one has ever heard of it before. Stephen Taylor really needs to change his meds.

Shy Bladder?

So maybe Steve likes to pee before a photo-op so he doesn't appear more bloated than he usually is, and it's hard to do with all those Secret Service officers standing there watching you and you know from your paranoid background some of them might be gay and checking out your little Steve. I can identify with the bloated part, as a man in his fifties I know all too well that sucking in the tummy even after peeing doesn't work like it used to, but it's still what you are. That 28-inch waist I had is gone forever.

Or maybe he just has a deep-seated desire to keep the most influential people on earth waiting as some kind of unconscious, barely recognizable, internal control issue. Kind of like the way he does with us lowly Canucks who somehow don't share his vision with our left-leaning activist Liberal media. We fail his idea of democracy because we will never come to understand the wisdom of Steve and his one-man vision for all of us, which I assume would include more stalls in men's rooms.

This is all speculation of course.

Steve, Call PZ Myers!

He wants to hear from you. He has lots of experience with communion wafers.

Well, This Queen is NOT Amused

The temerity of that Stalinesque bitter little boy Steven Harper who could only find refuge for his deep seated fears in deepest, darkest Alberta, has to indulge his megalomania and dismiss protocol in order to accept the Honour Guard?

Apparently all the favours the Governor General afforded that pathetic little weasel amounted to nothing when he decided to steal the show and declare himself Supreme Leader of what even he called a banana nation. This is how dictators are born.

People like Mugabe could only hope to aspire so far as to declare themselves Supreme Leader of what he considers the wealthiest and most influential banana republic* on Earth.

Steve, sweetie darling, as a gay Canadian I would never dare to ask how you justify your own sense of self worth, but I will always be a bigger queen than you honey, and nobody ever has to salute me for it, so you better find a more appropriate way to deal with it sunshine.

By your dismissal of protocol, you cheapen the Honour of this nation and especially the ones who care to serve this nation best.

I am ashamed.


*Steve's concept, not mine.

Playing with the Template & Mr. Deity is Back!

I'm pissing around with the layout template here, partly to accommodate wide screen video formats for your viewing pleasure and just to change things up a bit. It'll be kind of an ongoing process while I play with different ideas and see what I like, what works and what doesn't.

So this would be a good time to play a wide screen video, and what better to play than the first episode of season three of Mr. Deity. For those of you have been following me for a while and wondered why there was no season two, the videos aren't embeddable so I never posted them, but if you want to catch up, they’re on the Mr. Deity site. Let me know how they are because I've never been able to get them to play either.

If you need a refresher on season one, you can start here. And yeah, Jesus is still hot, I can think of ways he could make me a believer.

Stonewall déjà vu

It seems that police in Ft. Worth, Texas decided to celebrate Stonewall in their own special way and stage a little re-enactment 40 years to the day later.

From The Dallas Voice's blog Instant Tea:

According to [former Ft. Worth Star-Telegram critic Todd] Camp, the newly-opened Rainbow Lounge is “the only cool gay bar in town,” but the police raided it, arresting numerous patrons for no reason.

I got another perspective in my in-box this morning:

The not awesome thing was the paddy wagon of homophobic police that showed up … looking for trouble. My group and I were sitting on the back patio at a picnic table. Nobody was being wild out there. [The police] came through with flashlights, being loud asking what was going on out here, then asked why everyone was all the sudden being quiet. When one group started up their conversations again, they took one guy away. I left shortly after and as I walked through the front bar there were numerous cops with plastic handcuffs all ready to go. I [left] the bar and they [had] a big van in the parking lot and numerous cars on the street. And just so you know, it wasn’t fire hazard crowded or seedy wild in there. … The worst part is [friends later told me] that [the police] had numerous people face down on the ground outside. I just moved to Fort Worth from Dallas, so this is such a shock to me. I know Dallas would not put up with this. … I am still so shocked it is 2009 and this just happened.

According to the reports I've read, this sounds very much like a case of the police putting out a message that they won't tolerate teh Gays in their town. The police are saying that patrons were drunk and making sexually explicit movements toward them, something I seriously doubt, people aren't that stupid and none of it fits with eyewitness accounts.

40 years after Stonewall it seems people in some places still have a lot to learn, and I'm talking about the Ft. Worth police.

Stonewall at 40

Back in the wee hours of June 28, 1969 I was 11 years old and living in Northern BC, so the Stonewall Riots never registered on my radar at the time, I don't even think it was on the news. Back then my own sexuality was only starting to establish itself in any fashion and I wasn't thinking in terms of gay or straight. Gay people, whom I hardly had any awareness of, were strange, apparently immoral, almost mythological beings that may or may not have occupied a hitherto unknown periphery of existence, I figured I couldn't possibly be one of those, so I didn't give it much thought.

Of course I also remember watching Jim Morrison on TV and thinking he was one of the hottest men that ever lived, a view I still hold to this day. But because I didn't see myself as one of those mythological beings, I wasn't gay.



I also remember all the guys in the small town I lived in wearing their jeans and workboots and being just as butch as any man could hope to be and that worked pretty good too. Yes, Brucie goes for the blue-collar types, I like my men a little scruffy (so much for marrying for money). But because I didn't see myself as one of those mythological beings, I wasn't gay.

Eventually, from such uninformed confusion came the inevitable bullying in early high school, no doubt I spent way too much time checking out all the hot boys. I didn't know any more about homosexuality than anyone else there but a lot of people seemed to think it was a really bad thing that was worthy of the most extreme hate. But because I didn't see myself as one of those mythological beings, I wasn't gay.

I've often been more thankful for what my parents didn't teach me than for what they did. They didn't teach me religion, I ended up doing that on my own, and they certainly didn't teach me to hate. They had to deal with their own demons of hate after living through WWII. For instance, I never went to Kindergarten because it was a relatively new concept with a 'German' name, and Mom was always home anyway. In spite of that, they knew the power of hate and what it could drive people to do and they didn't want any part of it.

Stonewall for me was meaningless in my early years, after all I didn't see myself as one of those mythological beings, so I wasn't gay. I stayed that way until I was 28, in spite of all the people around me coming out. I was supposed to be whatever passes for normal, wear my boots, get a nice girl, have kiddies, a mortgage, a barbeque and all that shit. I never even indulged in my sexual desires and cheated, except for a hell of a lot of jacking off to visions of men, because I was sure I was straight. I also never achieved that suburban ideal I just talked about; apparently something was holding me back, but I still have the boots and the barbeque.

The big thing the Stonewall Riots did was start to bring all those strange, almost mythological beings out of the periphery of existence (which turned out to be the bars), and bring them into the harsh light of the larger society, it's the official day the meek little faggots stopped being meek.

I remember the first time I saw the Stonewall, the building. I was walking down Christopher Street, which isn't exactly lined with architectural marvels, and recognized it from photographs. I looked at it and thought: oh, there it is. There is absolutely nothing impressive or inspirational about it, especially in New York, but it looks very much the same as it did in 1969, minus the Stonewall sign. I dare anyone to find anything that looks less like a shrine than the Stonewall. That's when you see that it isn't the place, but the people who had enough of oppression and stepped outside of it and demanded their rights. From one of the most mundane environments came the opportunity for some of the most gifted, creative and caring people, who dared to see themselves as people, fight to give others the freedom to flourish in the face of oppression.



I walked across the street and looked at it again; trying to imagine a news event I don't even remember and only heard about later in life. There will always be a kind of disconnect with what they did then, but not with what happened since. As I stood there, I started to cry a little and worried a bit about being over emotional (on Christopher Street of all places) in New York (of all places), because I knew the event that took place there took that boy of 11 in northern BC with visions of strange mythological beings to the Proud Gay, very non-mythological man in Toronto he is today.

If only the people who live in the country where this all began could enjoy the same rights and freedoms that I do in Canada now. Mr. Obama, you promised hope and a lot of people took it to heart and their hearts are being broken right now. It may look difficult, but at this point in history, legal recognition of the last group who face open hostility and discrimination on a daily, even constitutional basis will put you down as one of the greatest Presidents in history. It's time. It's our time, and it's your time too.

A Little Music For the Soul

Seeing as I'm not into blogging too much these days, even with all the excitement going on over the Obama administration's terrible missteps on gay rights issues. Wow, they really must have thought they had more time to deal with that.

They didn't, and they don't, too many people who have waited lifetimes have pinned their hopes on Obama and he really fumbled the ball. I see signs of improvement, but I don't think any proper advocate of gay rights will ever be so complacent over the promise of hope ever again.

It's the fortieth anniversary of Stonewall, it's a tremendously meaningful year for everyone, if somebody doesn't through us a bone with some meat on it this time, we're going to show everyone just what a meaningful, important and valid part of life us little homos really are.

One of the things I miss about the period before we entered into "the troubles" was the international influence in music, how natural and seamless it was. That wonderful Persian influence that got hijacked by the needs of ruthless and undeservedly powerful souls for the good of no one.

There's no actual video, so you'll have to pretend (you can still do that) that you're old as me and you can use your imagination. A kick-ass sound system or good headphones would help a lot too.