North Carolina Boasts Over Voter Suppression.

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An early voting location in Greensboro, NC. CREDIT: AP Photo/Skip Foreman.

North Carolina, almost making nDakota look good. The NC GOP has been working hard on voter suppression, and they are getting a result, an unfortunate one.

After Republican leaders mounted a concerted and illegal effort to make it harder for African Americans to vote in North Carolina, the party apparatus celebrated on Monday that fewer African Americans have voted in North Carolina this year.

In July, a federal appeals court struck down an “omnibus” election law, passed by the GOP-controlled state legislature and signed by Gov. Pat McCrory (R), writing that it was “hard not to come away with the conclusion that North Carolina’s lawmakers wanted to get caught engaging in unlawfully racial discrimination.” The court found that the GOP legislature had “requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices,” and then “enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans.” In an unsuccessfulappeal, the state actually claimed that its efforts would instead increase minority turnout.

After that failed, North Carolina Republicans used their two-to-one edge on electoral boards to slash early voting options and force long lines at the few early voting locations in urban centers like Charlotte, Raleigh, Fayetteville, and Winston-Salem. Unsurprisingly, almost 9 percent fewer African Americans took advantage of early voting than had in 2012.

Full story here.

In other bad shenanigans news, a Colorado amendment would take power away from voters:

A state constitutional amendment on Tuesday’s ballot will give Coloradans an opportunity to make it much harder for voters to change their laws.

Amendment 71 — known as “Raise the Bar” — would mean that in order to get an amendment on future ballots, 2 percent of voters in each of the state’s 35 senate districts would have to sign a petition. In addition, it would increase the threshold for passing a constitutional amendment from 50 percent to 55 percent.

The amendment is being backed primarily by business interests, including a massive cash infusion from the oil and gas industry.

Opponents say that passing Raise the Bar will make it nearly impossible for citizen-led initiatives to get on the ballot. Colorado is characterized by widely divergent districts. A policy popular in deeply red Colorado Springs would have trouble gaining 2 percent of voters’ signatures in liberal Boulder, for instance, and vice-versa.

“One part of the state could hold veto power over the rest of the state,” said Jessica Goad, communications director for Conservation Colorado. “There are so many issues where this could really stymie changes.”

One of those issues is oil and gas regulation.

A pair of proposed amendments that would have restricted oil and gas development in the state narrowly missed garnering enough signatures to appear on the ballot this year. Under the rules proposed by Amendment 71, they would be virtually impossible to mount.

We have all been bought and sold, tossed about as disposable pawns in corporate gaming. Oh yay. Full story here.

Mario Patiño.

Olvido amor, modelo. Mario Patino, fotografìa. Arte Gay, queer art. Mexico-3

Olvido amor, modelo. Mario Patino, fotografìa. Arte Gay, queer art. Mexico-3

Mario Patiño is a multidisciplinary artist born and living in Mexico. In order to create awareness of LGBTQ diversity, his photographic work focuses on gender transgression. Patiño pushes back against what he sees as the world of prejudice and oppression from the male chauvinist, heteronormative Mexican society toward this community.

“I began working with LGBT performance artists, as their body language is intense, mannered, and uniquely different from heterosexuals. They are also accustomed to dealing with nudity and transgression with an open mind.”

“How to speak of the periphery? Peripheral is all that gets out of control, that corrupts a system, that lives on the edge, that adheres to the margins, that puts in doubt, that causes questioning, that rebels, that revolutionizes, that rises, that organizes insurrections, it’s everything that doesn’t fit, that resists, that refuses to play the game by the rules, it’s the possibility of change, of something new.”

Absolutely amazing work, this. Exquisite, thought provoking, and poignant. You can see more at The Advocate, and at Contemporary Multidisciplinar Performance Art. More photos below the fold – there’s nothing graphic, but you might want to have a caution if you’re at work.

[Read more…]

Oh Yuengling.

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Gay bars in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., are boycotting Yuengling after the beer company’s owner, Richard “Dick” Yuengling Jr., came out in support of Donald Trump. Last week the fifth-generation businessman gave the Republican nominee’s son Eric a tour of a Yuengling brewery located in Pottsville, Pa.

“My father’s going to make it a lot easier for business to function,” the younger Trump claimed during a news conference. “We’re going to do it right here in the U.S.”

“Our guys are behind your father,” Yuengling responded. “We need him in there.”

Following the owner’s endorsement, Rep. Brian Sims, Pennsylvania’s first openly gay state legislator, called on gay-owned businesses in the Keystone State to stop serving the company’s products. Forbes described Yuengling as boasting a “cult-like status” in the 19 states — primarily in the East Coast and Southwest — where the beer is distributed. Even President Obama is a fan.

But the buck has to stop somewhere, as Sims wrote on Facebook.

“One of the most prevalent brands in the gayborhood and in LGBT bars across the Commonwealth, is using our own dollars to back a person and an ideology that says that our lives … matter less,” he said. “More to the point, those dollars are being used right now to give power to his bigoted messages attacking our black and brown neighbors and all of the women in our lives.”

“Our communities know a thing or two about voting with our dollars,” Sims added, “and I won’t be using my hard-earned dollars to give power to any company or person who hates me. What about you?”

Following Sims’s call to arms, several gay bars swiftly dropped the brand.

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Many of Yuengling’s most loyal drinkers have joined the call to #DumpYuengling. Todd Bird, who lives in Louisville, Ky., regularly drives 90 miles to Ohio for a drink of his favorite beer, but he said those days are over.

“Supporting racist, misogynist nut-job Trump is the end of the line for me,” he wrote on Twitter.

The money power of the queer community is not something to be scorned, as many companies have found before, and have had to make a decision to not be such bigoted asswipes, when they’ve seen what has happened to their bottom line. Yuengling has quite the following, and to have people dump it cold is going to hurt, even if Dick Yuengling hasn’t quite figured that one out yet. He will, eventually.

Full story at The Advocate.

A thumbs-up, a grin, and a corpse.

Leaked photo of Omar Rahman's body and a North County Police Co-Operative officer (Screen capture).

Leaked photo of Omar Rahman’s body and a North County Police Co-Operative officer (Screen capture).

Just in case anyone was getting warm and fuzzy feelings about cops here in uStates. This photo was leaked, not much information about that right now, out of St. Louis, Missouri, of a cop giving a happy thumbs up over the corpse of Omar Rahman, who was shot and killed in August this year. I don’t really care what anyone did, or how any given cop might feel about any given person, this is unconscionable, no matter how you slice it. The St. Louis cop shop isn’t saying much about this, claiming their crime scene camera is missing, along with any hard copies. I find that interesting, given how cop shops everywhere are always plaintively crying about restrictive budgets and never having enough money. Cameras are expensive, I know, I have one, and it’s not even close to one of the high ends, just a Nikon D90. It was expensive enough, and lenses, well, anyone with a camera can bend your ear about lens lust and the costs which leave most of us in a state of drooling dreams. A camera used for forensics can’t be a cheap one, there has to be an initial lay out for a good camera body, and a number of lenses would be required. Not the most expensive ones, I’m sure, but at least two good workhorse lenses, and one macro lens, I’d think. Rather odd for something like that to go missing. I’ll be generous and assume they have more than one, they must have been using something since August. The old saying goes, one picture is worth a thousand words. I think that applies here.

Full story here.

Standing Rock Needs You.

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We’re at the Red Line. If you can come to Standing Rock, now is the time. Please, if you can make it, please, please come. If you can come, please pledge. We need you.

Pledge to Resist the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Sunday Facepalm: Rick-rolling Westboro.

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Photo: Playbill.

This was a wonderful response to Westboro’s standard hate. The facepalm here is reserved just for little Westboro, who seems to be out of steam, and out of ideas. Julliard? Really? I’m thinking someone just wanted an excuse to hit NY for some fabulous shopping.

“This [Julliard] is the heart and soul of the arts community,” Phelps-Roper reportedly yelled over the music. She added that Juilliard staff “have taught this nation proud sin” and “have filled the nation with proud sodomites.”

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They were quickly surrounded by a group of 100 students who “rick-rolled” the hate mongers with a classical version of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

Via NewNowNext.

Standing Rock Camp: Day’s End.

Our last day. In the 8th photo, you can see the construction equipment, and the lights which are shone down on the camp every night now. The last four shots, going through cop land on the way home. It’s unnerving. Click for full size.

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© C. Ford, all rights reserved.

Over 100 Cops, Part 4.

Yeah, I know, everyone is tired of cops. So are we, but they aren’t going away. Towards the end, some people drove up with a truck full of wood, and people were busy grabbing pieces and throwing it into the river, if not to build another bridge that day, to block the cops. The last shots are facing towards camp, as a lot of us were returning to rest and recoup. Click for full size.

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© C. Ford, all rights reserved.

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35 Degrees South: Lake shore dinosaurs.

From Lofty: Today I went for a bike ride along the shore of Lake Alexandria, the terminal lake for Australia’s longest river, the Murray River. The road was smooth so I took the Pentax for a change.  1. A tree full of cormorants, 2. and 3. a ruined house and a 4. pool of pelicans including a small unidentified diving bird. Click for full size.

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© Lofty, all rights reserved.