Obama Hits Back On "Gas Tax Holiday" Scheme

HRC Endorses Republican Incumbent Over Pro-Gay Democratic Challenger

The nation's largest LGBT civil rights group, Human Rights Campaign, has recently announced the first round of their 2008 election endorsements and they are already starting to get flack for one curious choice: U. S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) over Rep. Tom Allen.

According to HRC's own rating system Allen is the more pro-LGBT official, with a 100% rating compared to an average of 84% for Collins in the last three Congresses.

This is not the first time that HRC has angered local activists about their cringe-worthy electoral endorsements. For example, in 1996 HRC endorsed corrupt U.S. Senator Afonse D'Amator (R-NY) over Chuck Schumer. D'Amato was scum, who close to election would start making pro-gay noises and stop voting for anti-gay legislation while Schumer was (and is) a relatively strong supporter of teh LGBT community. Clearly, Schumer won that race (since he's now the senor Senator from New York) and Mad Professah and many other activits have never forgiven HRC for their error. I, personally, have decided I will never give HRC another red cent in donations since that decision.

Considering the brou-haha over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (that discriminates against transgender individuals) from last year one woudl think that HRC would tread carefully, but apparently not.

The only way they will learn not to make such brain-dead moves is if they feel it in their pocketbook, so I would urge people to donate to their local LGBT organization or the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund (which supports openly LGBT elected and appointed officials) instead.

Obama and Clinton Tied In Daily Tracking Poll

CA Heterosexual Supremacists Claim 1.12M Signatures For Initiative

The organization ProtectMarriage.com issued a press release on Thursday April 24 claiming that they have collected 1,122,000 signatures in order to qaulify an Initiative Constitutional Amendment to the California Constitution which would ban gay marriage but leave the statewide domestic partnership law alone. If a total of 694,354 signatures are found valid by the 58 County Registrars in California, the measure would appear on the Tuesday November 4th ballot.

Mad Professah has previously blogged about the specific text of this measure and its implications. Currently here is no word from the other heterosexual supremacist who were try to ban gay marriage AND repeal domestic partnerships. It should be noted that it is somewhat likely that by November the citizens of California will be voting to annul current gay marriages (perhaps even my marriage?) if the Califoria Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiff-appellees in the current In Re marriage Cases lawsuit. A decision is widely expected by June 4th.

NYT Article On Young Gay Marriages

Another thing people are buzzing about this Monday is the massive article in the Sunday New York Times magazine(entitled "Gay Rites") about the new phenomena of young gay men in their 20s getting married:

For nearly an hour, seven of us — five working professionals in our 20s and two college undergraduates — sat in a coffee shop and talked theoretically about what a young gay marriage might entail. In the end, most of us agreed that we would like to be married — just not yet. We still had a lot of living, and growing up, to do. While many of our heterosexual peers undoubtedly did as well, we were immune from the pressure some of them felt to marry. No one — not our friends, not our families, not the gay community — expected us to wed.

For the next few years, I didn’t give young gay marriage much thought. While thousands of gay men and lesbians in their 30s, 40s or 50s married in Massachusetts, none of us at the table that night did, even as several of us inched into our 30s. I assumed that marriage — what the gay playwright Terrence McNally recently called “the final civil right; the right to love as anyone else loves” — was a right appreciated only in gay middle age.

But then something strange happened. During a 10-day span last August and September, two friends of mine — Brandon Andrew, who was then 25, and Marc Brent, who was 24 — announced their respective engagements. Brandon called from his apartment in Boston to deliver the news. “You’re not going to believe this!” he told me, pausing for dramatic effect. “I’m engaged!”

[...]

Marc, a dental-office manager who still lived at home with his parents in a Boston suburb, didn’t call to tell me about his engagement. I learned about it instead on Facebook, when, with little fanfare, he changed the relationship status on his profile from “In a Relationship” to “Engaged.” He had been dating his fiancé, Vassili Shields, who was then 23, for a year.

“Are you actually engaged,” I called to ask Marc, “or is that just your way of saying you really like Vassili?” He replied that he was, in fact, engaged. They planned to marry in a few months.

I didn’t know what to make of these engagements — or of my subsequent discovery that more than 700 gay men 29 or younger had married in Massachusetts through last June, the latest date for which numbers are available. On the one hand, I wondered why these guys were marrying so young. What was the rush? It seemed to me that one of the few advantages of being young gay men — until gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts, at least — was that we were institutionally protected from ever appearing on “Divorce Court.”

The article is written by an openly gay man Benoit Denizet-Lewis. It's a fascinating read.

VIDEO: Prince Covers Radiohead's Creep at Coachella

Everyone is talking about Prince's cover of Radiohead's "Creep" at the Coachella Music Festival this weekend. Towleroad posted the video.

Nadal Comes Back To Beat Federer

Rafael Nadal won his 4th consecutive Monte Carlo Masters Series title (and 24th career win) with a come-from-behind 7-5 7-5 win against Roger Federer on Sunday. Nadal is now 112-3 on clay since 2005 and has won 98 of his last 99 clay-court matches (his last loss was to Federer in the 2007 Hamburg final).

Oh, and then afterwards he teamed up with hottie Tommy Robredo and won the doubles title, too.

Guillermo del Toro to direct The Hobbit

Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth") has been selected and agreed to direct two film prequels to the blockbuster Lord of the Rings trilogy directed by Peter Jackson. The book by J.R.R. Tolkien whch tells the story of events before Lord of the Rings is called The Hobbit.

Federer and Nadal To Meet in Monte Carlo AMS Final

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, the top 2 players in the world for the last 27 months will face each other for the 11th time in a final and for the third consecutive year at the Monte Carlo ATP Masters Series tournament. Nadal leads their head-to-head in finals 6-4 and 8-6 overall. On clay, Nadal has only lost once in 7 matches against Federer.

Federer has not played well for most of 2008 and only last week won his first title of the year at Estoril when World #4 Nikolay Davydenko retired. To get to the final today, World #3 Novak Djokovic retired in his semifinal against the Swiss player.

Since Federer had difficulty beating Nadal when he was playing his best tennis in 2006 and 2007 it is unlikely he will beat him tomorrow, although it will be interesting to see if his new coach Jose Higuera will convince him to bring any new tactics to bear.

Mad Professah's prediction: Nadal in 3 sets.

POLL: Clinton Narrows Obama National Lead

Gallup's daily tracking poll shows that Hillary Clinton (47) has narrowed the gap nationally with Barack Obama(48).

However, despite the now-famous $10 million dollars raised online in 24 hours after her win Tuesday, Clinton has other potential problems:

Campaign finance records released this week show that a growing number of Clinton's early supporters migrated to Obama in March, after he achieved 11 straight victories. Of those who had previously made maximum contributions to Clinton, 73 wrote their first checks to Obama in March. The reverse was not true: Of those who had made large contributions to Obama last year, none wrote checks to Clinton in March.

Additionally, Clinton's lead in super-delegates has been reduced from over 100 in November 2007 to 22 this week. She now trails in number of states won, number of pledged delegates, amount of money raised and the "popular vote." Clinton leads in super-delegates and in electoral college votes of states won.

Lost Kicks Ass, Again!

The Door behind which lies many Lost secrets

There are more than 600 comments over at the Entertainment Weekly recap of the latest Lost repisode which aired last night ("The Shape of Things To Come"). The episode was staggering, with a major character killed off, the appearance (and explanation?) of the smoke monster and the resolution of the question of whether the new characters from Season 4 who arrived on the Island were there ever intended to rescue our Season 1-3 regulars. Answer? "No." OUCH!

Karen Bass becomes Speaker on May 13

Karen Bass, the first African American woman named to head a legislative body in the United States, will become Speaker of the California Assembly on Tuesday May 13. Bass is a Democrat from Los Angeles.

REVIEW: The Lives Of Others

The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) is the 2007 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film. Although I was unable to see the movie before the Oscars, one of the perks of working on a college campus is the screening of all sorts of films on which are often hard to see in the theaters.

Recently I was able to see The Lives of Others and was blown away by this powerful film.

The movie is 138 minutes long and starts off slowly but builds to a shattering climax--and then continues for another ten minutes!

The writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is able to present an incredibly detailed and horrifyingly realistic portrayal of the claustrophobic and paranoid way of living in Eastern Germany in the 1980s.


Get it on DVD or Netflix if you can you won't regret it.

GRADE: A.

Lost Returns From Its Hiatus To Continue Brilliant Season

Lost returns tonight at 10pm on ABC (opposite ER)--I know which one I will be watching live!

Clinton Wins PA Primary (As Expected)

As expected, Hillary Clinton won the presidential primary in Pennsylvania last night, by just under 9.5 percentage points (54.7% to 45.3%) which is almost exactly half of her 19 point lead over Barack Obama the day after the last contested primary on March 4th in Ohio and Texas.

The next primaries are in two weeks in North Carolina (the 10th most populous state) where Obama has maintained a significant lead for weeks and Indiana where the the polls are within the margin of error, but Obama slightly leading in this state which neighbors his home state of Illinois.

Clinton's win Tuesday night in Pennsylvania will cut her delegate defict by about 10%, from approximately 170 to approximately 150. It is almost mathematically impossible for her to end the primary season on June 3rd (Montana and South Dakota) with more pledged delegates or having more votes cast for her but neither candidate will have won the required majority of pledged delegates that is required to become the Democratic presidential nominee.

Bush Hits All-Time High Record Disapproval

In the history of polling by the Gallup organization, George W. Bush can now claim two records: highest approval rating ever (91% in September 2001) and highest disapproval rating (69% in April 2008). According to "The USA Today" (as Stephen Colbert likes to say):

Assessments of Bush's presidency are harsh. By 69%-27%, those polled say Bush's tenure in general has been a failure, not a success.

[...]

Bush has had dismal ratings through most of his second term. His approval rating hasn't reached as high as 50% since May 2005. He has been steadily below 40% since September 2006.

Views of Bush divide sharply along party lines. Among Republicans, 66% approve and 32% disapprove. Disapproval is nearly universal — 91% — among Democrats. Of independents, 23% approve, 72% disapprove of the job he's doing

Barack Obama Rejects Clinton's Attacks Citing Jay-Z

Anti-Gay Marriage Initiative Update

As MadProfessah has been reporting for months, heterosexual supremacists are attempting to use California's initiative process to institutionalize homophobia into the state constitution. There are news reports today that the "Protect Marriage" coalition of groups has collected 1.1 million signatures to qualify a measure to ban gay marriage that would appear on the November 4 statewide ballot if they submit them before the Monday April 28th deadline and the Secretary of State agrees that at least 694,354 signatures are valid.

Although Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has already announced his opposition to the proposed initiative the political fight over a ballot measure is likely be heated and expensive.
The opponents of gay marriage were determined to get the measure approved this November because the California Supreme Court will issue a ruling about gay marriage by June 4th. There are rumors that the Court is drafting a decision that would allow same-sex couples to marry in California. If that is the case, then the November ballot measure would be voiding actual gay marriages in California.

The text of the proposed constitutional amendment is:

SECTION 1. Title
This measure shall be known and may be cited as the"California Marriage Protection Act."

SECTION 2.
Article I, Section 7.5 is added to the California Constitution, to read:
Sec. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

This is a slightly different version of the measure the heterosexual supremacists were circulating last summer when they were attempting to qualify a measure for the June ballot. The significant change is that they have removed the sentence "This provision shall not affect the rights, benefits and obligations conferred by California law on other domestic relationships" which makes it clear that the measure only impacts marriage and not California's landmark (and very popular) domestic partnerships statute. It also makes it identical to Proposition 22, an Initiative Statute which Californians passed in March 2000 by a vote of 62-38. Proposition 22 was better known as the Knight Initiative, since it was mainly the brainchild of State Senator Pete Knight, a virulently homophobic legislator who died in 2004. His widow, Gail Knight is one of the main sponsors of the proposed initiative.

Happily, the more restrictive anti-gay marriage initiative proposed by the homophobic extremists like Randy Thomasson at the "Campaign for Children and Families" which would not only ban gay marriage but domestic partnerships as well is unlikely to qualify.

Obama Flush With Cash, Clinton In the Red

The official campaign spending reports were filed on Sunday April 20th. The Obama campaign reported that they had $42 million on hand to spend for the primary with negligible debts, while the Clinton campaign had $9 million in cash on hand and $10 million in debt.

According to 365gay.com:

Financial reports filed Sunday by the Democratic presidential candidates with the Federal Election Commission show Clinton had $10.3 million in debts at the start of the month and only about $9 million cash on hand for the primaries. Obama reported having $42 million for the primary.

[...]

Clinton, who had kept pace with Obama financially throughout last year, had even less cash on hand than Republican John McCain. McCain raised $15.2 million in March and had $11.6 million in the bank at the start of April. It was his best fundraising performance of the campaign, coming after he had essentially secured his party's presidential nomination.

[...]

Obama's fundraising in March led all candidates, but was still lower than the mark he set in February, when he raised more than $55 million. The Illinois senator has raised $235 million in his campaign.

McCain Accepts Taxpayer Funding For General Election

John McCain has "exited the campaign money race" according to Politico.com by agreeing to accept taxpayer funding of his general election race.