If you haven’t gotten your loved one a gift yet, here is some timeless advice from the Goddess of Valentine’s Day…
Whitney Houston: Rest in Peace….
She was the Voice of my Generation….
And ultimately our generation’s Judy Garland….
May she find peace, at last, while we remember the gifts she gave to us:
Whitney, at only 22, on Letterman:
And this one from when we were all so young…
From the Soundtrack of our youth:
And her amazing Christmas recording of “Do You Hear What I Hear'”:
And from her last album a couple of years ago:
Filed under Entertainment, Music, Uncategorized
Greensboro City Council Votes To Oppose North Carolina Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment
Sometimes, I really love the city I live in! Frequently, in fact….
Tonight the Greensboro City Council voted 8-1 to oppose the proposed Constitutional Amendment to the NC State Constitution to ban Gay marriage and pretty much any recognition of any Gay relationship.
I’m so proud of Mayor Robbie Perkins and Councilman Zack Matheny, both Republicans by the way, for leading this effort to support Greensboro’s Gay Families.
The loan dissenter was Councilperson Trudy Wade- a local vet who will never touch our pets!
Thank you to the 8 decent people on the City Council who stood up for Equality!
From DigTriad.com:
The proposed amendment, which will appear on the May primary ballot, would state that “marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized” in the state of North Carolina.
Greensboro Mayor Robbie Perkins and councilman Zack Matheny are bringing the resolution in opposition to the council.
The resolution cites the city’s policy of hiring without discrimination and the policy to offer benefits to domestic partners as reasons to oppose the amendment.
“Whereas, This amendment, if approved by voters, would be inconsistent with the City of Greensboro’s goals, commitments, and policies, negatively impacting, among other things, the City’s ability to offer domestic partner benefits and compete as an employer.”
City Councilwoman Trudy Wade intends to vote against the resolution. She issued her own statement regarding the vote.
“The City Council resolution claims to be a reaffirmation of Greensboro’s commitment to be nondiscriminatory. In reality, however, it is a frontal assault against the institution of marriage.”
via Greensboro City Council To Vote To Oppose North Carolina Marriage Amendment | digtriad.com.
Filed under Gay, North Carolina, Uncategorized
A Great Mystery Solved: Contents of Queen Elizabeth’s Handbag Revealed
People have wondered for years and years what Queen Elizabeth II carries in that handbag she always carries….
Now, we know!
From royal Biographer Sally Beddell Smith via the London Daily Telegraph:
But a royal biographer has disclosed that buried alongside everyday items such as a mirror and lipstick, is always a crisply folded £5 note to donate to the church collection on Sundays.
Sally Bedell Smith, author of Elizabeth the Queen: The Woman Behind The Throne, claims that among the bag’s other secrets are a portable hook, which is used to hang it discreetly under tables.
The 85-year-old monarch’s church donation sometimes increases to £10 but apparently that is as generous a donation as she chooses to make.
Bedell Smith suggests that there is “no more familiar symbol” of the Queen than the classic Launer handbag that dangles from her left arm on public occasions from informal walkabouts to state dinners.
Her inside knowledge has been pieced together from anecdotes of those who claim to have snuck a peek inside the royal bag and ladies in waiting.
Bedell Smith, writing in The Lady magazine, disclosed that the handbag usually contains reading glasses, mint lozenges and a fountain pen, although rarely cash, except for the “precisely folded” £5 or £10 note on Sundays.
A dinner guest at the Berkshire home of Jean Wills, the Queen’s cousin, is said to have been surprised to see the Queen spitting into a plastic suction cup before attaching the hook under the table.
“I watched the Queen open her handbag and remove a white suction cup and discreetly spit into it,” the guest is quoted as saying.
“The Queen then attached the cup to the underside of the table. The cup had a hook on it, and she attached her handbag to it.”
Bedell Smith alleges that the most important items in the Queen’s bag are a small mirror and lipstick which she has been known to apply whilst still sitting at the table.
“At the end of a luncheon or a dinner, even a banquet set with silver gilt and antique porcelain, she has the somewhat outré habit of opening her bag, pulling out a compact and reapplying her lipstick,” she writes.
“When First Lady Laura Bush made a similar cosmetic fix during a Washington ladies’ luncheon, she cheerily commented, ‘The Queen told me it was all right to do it.’”
The biographer claims that ladies-in-waiting are responsible for carrying necessities such as extra pairs of gloves, needles, thread and safety pins for emergency repairs
via Contents of Queen’s handbag revealed: including £5 for church collection – Telegraph.
Filed under Entertainment, History, Uncategorized
Koch Brothers, Allies Pledge $100 Million At Private Meeting To Beat Obama
This really is shaping up as a pivotal election in the social and political history of the US….
And the 1% know it….
They will do anything– and spend anything– to stop President Obama’s re-election or the 99% from gaining any ground in through House and Senate elections.
They will try to take over the airways with propaganda and lies trying to drive down turnout and stomp down Democratic turnout and motivation….
And thanks to the Roberts Supreme Court and the “Citizens United” decision there is nothing we can do about it….
We are about to see if an election can truly be bought in the USA….
From the Huffington Post:
At a private three-day retreat in California last weekend, conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch and about 250 to 300 other individuals pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections.
A source who was in the room when the pledges were made told The Huffington Post that, specifically, Charles Koch pledged $40 million and David pledged $20 million.
via Koch Brothers, Allies Pledge $100 Million At Private Meeting To Beat Obama.
Filed under Politics, Uncategorized
STOCK Act Opponent NC Senator Richard Burr Stands To Gain From Natural Gas Investments
It’s a real shame we couldn’t get rid of Burr when he was up for re-election a couple of years ago, but I’m afraid Elaine Marshall just wasn’t the right candidate with the right resources to run against him.
And the Democratic Senatorial Committee and Democratic National Committee weren’t much help either…
He is such a corporatist non-entity, he should have been easy pickings if we had had the right candidate with sufficient resources at the right time.
But that was also the height of the Tea Party insanity….
Burr taking positions like this and having this obvious conflicts of interest should make it much easier to retire him next time. It truly takes guts- and stupidity- to vote AGAINST insider trading laws for Senators!
From the Huffington Post:
Sen. Richard Burr’s vocal opposition to the STOCK Act raised some eyebrows in Washington this week, and with good reason.
Burr, a North Carolina Republican who was one of just three senators to vote against the ban on congressional insider trading Thursday, owns investments in the natural gas industry that would benefit from legislation he co-sponsored offering tax credits for natural gas-fueled vehicles.
Burr has investments in the gas industry valued from $133,298 to $219,337, according to his 2010 filings. His portfolio includes $36,000 worth of stock in Chesapeake Energy Corp., the second-largest U.S. producer of natural gas. He also holds more than $25,000 in shares of Loews Corp., a holding company with subsidiaries engaged in the exploration, production, marketing and transmission of natural gas.
He was on the losing side of Thursday’s 96-3 passage of the STOCK Act, that would tighten rules for lawmakers and their aides using inside information for personal investments. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said he’ll bring the STOCK Act to the House floor next week.
Burr’s investments pose “a very clear conflict of interest,” said Craig Holman of the advocacy group Public Citizen. He said the STOCK Act “will make members of Congress much more cautious in any particular sector, including natural gas.” While the STOCK Act wouldn’t prohibit such investments, “members of Congress will have to think twice about any kind of trading activity they do,” Holman said.
via STOCK Act Opponent Richard Burr Stands To Gain From Natural Gas Investments.
Filed under North Carolina, Politics
Chapter 61: Bosom Buddies | My Southern Gothic Life
I posted a new post on my other blog a day or two ago…
Here is a brief excerpt and a link to the full blog entry….
My Best Friend had Heart Surgery this week…
I don’t like to think of us as old enough to have to face these issues, but I guess we are…
And “Best Friend” is a very inclusive, non-exclusive term for me…I have several.
First and foremost is Steve, my partner and soulmate. He’s in a class by himself. I have another friend who is a “Best Friend”, who goes back more years than I care to count, but she’s like my “female” “Best Friend”.
This guy is, I guess the best way to put it, my male “Best Friend”. He’s the Brother I never had…
Filed under Scott's Commentary, The South
How the GOP Is Resegregating the South
Folks may or may not remember Nixon introduced the Southern Strategy that the Republicans have used ever since to win the presidency.
President Obama’s victories in North Carolina and Virginia threatened the continued validity of that strategy. Until the GOP took control of the North Carolina State House and expanded their control in the rest of the South.
Their goal is to leverage Redistricting to isolate Black Voters into as few districts as possible to increase the odds of the GOP winning the others.
Now they are digging in and trying to leverage Race to make the Southern Strategy work for at least another generation…
It’s really reprehensible and very obvious. Especially here in North Carolina….
Here is an excerpt from a great article in The Nation by Ari Berman that explains this exceedingly well. I encourage you to click the link at the bottom and read the entire article.
(Hat tip to Daily Kos where I first saw this….)
“What’s uniform across the South is that Republicans are using race as a central basis in drawing districts for partisan advantage,” says Anita Earls, a prominent civil rights lawyer and executive director of the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “The bigger picture is to ultimately make the Democratic Party in the South be represented only by people of color.” The GOP’s long-term goal is to enshrine a system of racially polarized voting that will make it harder for Democrats to win races on local, state, federal and presidential levels. Four years after the election of Barack Obama, which offered the promise of a new day of postracial politics in states like North Carolina, Republicans are once again employing a Southern Strategy that would make Richard Nixon and Lee Atwater proud.
The consequences of redistricting in North Carolina—one of the most important swing states in the country—could determine who controls Congress and the presidency in 2012. Democrats hold seven of the state’s thirteen Congressional seats, but after redistricting they could control only three—the largest shift for Republicans at the Congressional level in any state this year. Though Obama won eight of the thirteen districts, under the new maps his vote would be contained in only three heavily Democratic districts—all of which would have voted 68 percent or higher for the president in 2008—while the rest of the districts would have favored John McCain by 55 percent or more. “GOP candidates could win just over half of the statewide vote for Congress and end up with 62 percent to 77 percent of the seats,” found John Hood, president of the conservative John Locke Foundation.
Mitt Romney Relying Heavily on Small Group of Super-rich Donors
Well, if it wasn’t clear before, this certainly makes it clearer….
Mitt Romney is the Chosen One of the 1%….
I just hope the 99% of the rest of us turn out to vote against this out-of-touch, elitist schmuck…
From the Washington-Post:
One of Mitt Romney’s strongest assets as the GOP presidential front-runner is also a potentially serious liability in the race: his heavy reliance on a small group of millionaires and billionaires for financial support.
A quarter of the money amassed by Romney’s campaign and an allied super PAC has come from just 41 people, each of whom has given more than $100,000, according to a Washington Post analysis of disclosure data. Nearly a dozen of the donors have contributed $1 million or more.
The preponderance of mega-rich supporters poses a political challenge for Romney, who has struggled for weeks over questions about his vast wealth, his history as a private equity manager and a series of gaffes that seemed to highlight his privileged station. He stumbled again on Wednesday when he told a CNN interviewer that he was “not concerned about the very poor, because they have a safety net.”
via Mitt Romney relying heavily on small group of super-rich donors – The Washington Post.
Filed under Politics
Lost in the 21st Century 
The Novel Has Begun….
New post up on my other blog…
I’ve been playing with writing a novel and here is a very rough draft of part of the first chapter….
Click the link if you want to read more:
More: The Novel Has Begun…. | My Southern Gothic Life.
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Filed under Scott's Commentary, The South, Uncategorized
Tagged as RIchmond, Sweet Briar, the south, Virginia, Washington and Lee