The Daily Rekers Watch: here's the kind of guy USC makes a distinguished professor

Rachel Maddow asks questions about "Professor George.com" Rekers that beg other questions, like:

When did USC know Rekers was an academic whore for hire in anti-gay lawsuits?

If he retired in 2005, why is his bio still on the University's medical school faculty page?

Did the University approve of his homophobic "research", and did they know he was, in fact, a closeted homosexual?

How much taxpayer money went to funding his fraudulent "lifestyle"?

Did anyone at the University ever look into his obsession with "teensextoday.com"?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Folksy wins an all-expenses-paid trip to the fuckwits' convention

Anytime you feel the urge to consult Will Folks- he of FITS News- on anything, consider the amazingly comprehensive stupidity of this comment:

Of course this is what we’ve been saying ever since the start of this recession – that government’s excess interventionism under George W. Bush and Barack Obama was a recipe for a bigger economic collapse (not unlike how Herbert Hoover and FDR’s excess interventionism turned the first “Great Recession” into the “Great Depression”).

Herbert Hoover was excessively interventionist?


Hoover?

Guess which party Bartz belongs to?

Here's proof that the 'mophobes will fight every single thing they can get their mitts on, no matter how trivial. Now it's gay couples camping:

An Iowa state senator opposed to same-sex marriage wants to challenge a change in state parks policy that would extend family camping privileges to married gay couples.

Sen. Merlin Bartz has previously called for county recorders to defy last year’s state supreme court ruling and deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Now the Republican from Grafton wants to question a state parks proposal that would include gay families in guidelines that allow families to pitch more than one tent on a campsite. 

According to Radio Iowa, “The rates or fees for camp sites are the same, whether you’re a family or a non-family, but the state allows families to put up more than one tent on a camp site. ‘They’re changing their language even though the state legislature has not had a debate on this particular issue,’ Bartz says.

But if you go to McCollum's Facebook page you'll be scrubbed right off.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum has finally 'fessed up to hiring retired University of South Carolina medical faculty member George Rekers to testify against same-sex couples being able to adopt, and that Rekers pocketed $120,000 for his faked research:

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum Responds To Dr. George Rekers Scandal

I just got off the phone with Nadine Smith at Equality Florida who tells us that our campaign against Bill McCollum has finally forced him to acknowledge the Dr. George Rekers scandal. McCollum's press release:

As hired counsel for the Florida Department of Children and Families, our office is committed to providing our client with the best possible legal representation in this matter. Dr. Rekers, a professor emeritus from University of South Carolina and a neuropsychologist with a degree from UCLA, came to our attention by recommendation from another academic after an exhaustive search for potential expert witnesses who were willing to testify. Dr. Rekers had exceptional credentials and he had provided testimony in similar cases on two separate occasions, one of which was a Florida case in Federal Court. The contract was executed at the direction of the Department of Children and Families, and the ACLU did not object to his position as an expert at the hearing. He has completed his testimony and is no longer involved in this case.

Equality Florida has learned that amount of money paid by the state to Rekers is actually much higher than originally thought.

An online search of Florida vendors shows Rekers was paid roughly $120,000 and his co-hort Walter Schumm recieved an additional $36,000 in taxpayer money. McCollum's office also tried to downplay their relationship with Rekers, insisting that DCF paid him, ignoring the fact that the Attorney General's office prosecuted the case, defined the strategy and selected its witnesses. But was McCollum's attempt to shift focus to DCF more than a political sleight of hand? Was it simply a lie? The same records that show that Rekers was paid double what was originally reported, also show the agency responsible for the funds as "Office of Attorney General- Finance & Accounting."

Go to Equality Florida's petition demanding that McCollum apologize. Continue to rain down your outrage on McCollum'sFacebook campaign page. Call out Bill McCollum for his LIE that this is the work of Florida's Department of Children and Families. And as Nadine Smith just said to me, "How can he think it's BETTER that people think this huge amount of money was ripped from the nearly destitute agency devoted to serving Florida's children?" We WILL hang the albatross known as Dr. George Rekers around Bill McCollum's turkey wattle.

Curing gays with a confidentiality agreement

Whaddya know? Retired University of South Carolina professor George Rekers not only hires baggage handlers from Rentboy.com, he takes them on ten day tours of Europe to cure them from homosexuality, having signed them to non-disclosure agreements:

Around 1am this morning I got tipped by one of the guys at Unzipped that Jo-Vanni Roman was finally ready to speak with me. Five minutes later I had him on the phone from Fort Lauderdale, but not before I alerted Father Tony to be ready to rush over to him immediately for a video interview. Jo-Vanni declined to meet with Tony for reasons you'll learn at the bottom of this post. Right now, I'm going to cover some key points of our 90 minute, wide-ranging conversation before they slip out of my mind. It's 3:00AM!

Let's open by saying that this kid is no dim bulb. I found him frank, sharp, funny, and quite forthcoming to all my questions. And I had a lot. But I also must say Jo-Vanni is almost painfully naive about some things, as you'll see. Since this interview was completely unplanned, it wasn't recorded and I didn't have a prepared set of questions. So as our conversation bounced around timelines and often veered into unrelated tangents, I think the best way to write this post is just to bullet-point some of the key things he said me.

-Jo-Vanni came out to friends in high school at the age of 16, but went on his first date with a boy while in the 9th grade. His parents know he's gay, but they don't yet know that he escorts.

-His first contact with Dr. George Rekers was via email through Rentboy.com. They met in person one time before the trip to Europe, but "nothing happened."

-Jo-Vanni was excited to take his first trip out of the country and use his passport for the first time. He describes Rekers as a pleasant, amiable travel companion. Before leaving Miami, Rekers told Jo-Vanni that he was a child psychologist, but gave no hint of his also being a Baptist minister, much less a nationally infamous anti-gay activist.

-In Europe, much of their sightseeing involved visiting historic churches and cathedrals, where Rekers would offer various historical facts about the buildings and their place in the history of their respective religions. Jo-Vanni says that he never felt preached to or that Rekers was trying to convert him from being gay, although he says they did have at least one rather direct conversation about "all morality being from God." An ardent atheist, Jo-Vanni says he argued to Rekers that one could be a moral person and still not believe in God. "That was pretty much it as far as religion. He didn't quote Scripture at me or anything," he said. So much for Rekers' claim of Christ-like outreach to the fallen.

-Jo-Vanni says their accommodations were far from deluxe and that their hotel in London was "like a crappy Days Inn or something." It was in those budget hotel rooms where he and Rekers had their daily erotic nude massage sessions. Jo-Vanni confirmed to me the "anus long-stroking" technique reported by the Miami New Times, but says that's as far as things went. He says that Rekers never suggested taking things further, but that Rekers' cock was "rock hard" during the massages. "So it was definitely sexual for him?" I asked. "Oh, for sure!" he replied. And in that way that 20 year-olds speak, he added, "He was definitely totally gay for me." I asked, "And you didn't think it was strange that he didn't at least want to blow you?" He hesitated. "Yeah, at first, I guess. But it kinda felt like maybe he was just getting started, you know, like he was new to gay sex, maybe." (This I doubt highly, but didn't say so to Jo-Vanni.)

-As for the much mocked "lifting of the luggage," Jo-Vanni says that Rekers told him that he'd had three hernia operations. Jo-Vanni says he did indeed do most of the luggage carrying on the trip. In fact, he says that the now notorious Miami International photo was a fluke and the reason it seemed that Rekers was pushing the luggage cart is that they'd been separated moments earlier as they exited customs. Jo-Vanni had been waved through ahead of Rekers.

-Jo-Vanni swore to me that he still has no idea how theMiami New Times was tipped to their arrival in Miami. He claims he had no contact with their reporters either before or during the trip. He speculated to me that "maybe somebody hacked George's email." According to Jo-Vanni, "Some guys rushed up, took our picture and ran away. I said to George, 'Did you just see that?'" (This aspect of the story intrigues me greatly.)

-Jo-Vanni says he first got wind of the expose' by the Miami New Times when they called to advise him of the pending story and request a reaction. They also told him know exactly who he'd been vacationing with. Jo-Vanni says he immediately called Rekers, asking, "Did you tell them you went with me? You did? Why did you do that?" Jo-Vanni is angry that Rekers confirmed the trip. "If he hadn't, it would have just been their (Miami News Times') word against ours."

Since the story broke on Tuesday, we've all seen George Rekers' increasingly desperate attempts to deny the sexual aspect of their trip or that he even met Jo-Vanni on Rentboy.com in the first place. They've spoken on the phone once since then, during which Jo-Vanni angrily confronted Rekers about his anti-gay work with the Family Research Council. "I just stay in the background" was Rekers' limp defense. The call ended with Rekers begging Jo-Vanni to refuse future interview requests.

After covering every aspect of his time with Rekers that I could think of, I wanted to know if Jo-Vanni now got exactly who he is. I asked him, "You DO understand just what an incredible monster George IS, right? The horrible things he's said in court about gay people? That he's personally responsible for ripping apart gay families?" I wanted to disabuse Jo-Vanni of what seemed to be fleeting moments of odd affection for the man who'd been such an agreeable travel companion. "Oh, yes. I get it, I really do. He's like way worse than the orange grove lady." The orange grove lady. I'm afraid I went a little Professor Homo at that point and gave Jo-Vanni a three-minute primer on Anita Bryant.

But that "orange grove lady" moment sort of crystallizes who Jo-Vanni is, I think. He's clearly a sharp kid, but there's a plaintive naivete to him. We talked about his being deluged with media requests and he asked me if I'd ever heard heard of the National Enquirer and if "they are any good." Yes, I've heard of them. They're horrible. Stay away from them. "OK, thanks for telling me, They've been calling." He also, as impossible as it seems, had never heard of Ted Haggard or the Mike Jones scandal and he seemed somehow encouraged to learn from me that another gay escort had been through a similar firestorm of attention. I told him about Jones' book and Jo-Vanni responded, "I should probably buy that tomorrow, huh?"

We'd been on the phone for more than an hour at that point, having veered randomly into non-scandal related topics like how many Puerto Ricans live in NYC (lots, he was surprised to learn). I was about to wrap things up when I almost idly asked, "So what have you got planned for tomorrow, more laying low, so to speak?" He said, "Well, I do have to get up early for an interview. You know that guy, the gay reporter on TV?"

That gay reporter is Anderson Cooper, whose office has been calling Jo-Vanni. So this morning CNN's Randi Kaye will meet Jo-Vanni at a Fort Lauderdale hotel for an on-camera (but probably silhouetted) interview. And there Jo-Vanni says he will hand over the confidentiality agreement signed by himself and Dr. George Rekers. "You know, I'd love to see that contract if you wouldn't mind faxing or emailing a photo of it to me," I said innocently. Jo-Vanni laughed and declined. Like I said, naive perhaps, but not dumb.

The Chicago mouse squeaks: "Raise the drawbridge! I have an erection!"

In one of his typical spews, Sunlit Uplands hates on blogs that dare to challenge him to actually prove his racist, homophobic views. How dare anyone ask him to actually  stump up proof of the bullshit he peddles? Identity has nothing to do with it. Facts are facts, and if they are on your side, you should have no trouble producing them. Eh, Dan?

For such a tough-talking guy, Daniel J. Cassidy sure is a wuss proving his views.

Interesting that a Canadian gay rights advocate would want the release of information identifying eight anonymous posters to a conservative message board. Here in South Carolina, homosexualist, Christophobic, nihilist hate bloggers are the only ones hiding in the shadows. Why don't they "come out" and set an example for those anonymous homophobes?

The faltering suitcase defense

Retired University of South Carolina professor George Rekers took a rent boy to Europe for ten days not only to cure him of his evil sexual urges but to take advantage of them:

​The male escort hired by anti-gay activist George Alan Rekers has told Miami New Times the Baptist minister is a homosexual who paid him to provide body rubs once a day in the nude, during their ten-day vacation in Europe.

Rekers allegedly named his favorite maneuver the "long stroke" -- a complicated caress "across his penis, thigh... and his anus over the butt cheeks," as the escort puts it. "Rekers liked to be rubbed down there," he says.

In his first interview since New Times broke the story Tuesday, the 20-year-old escort, who prefers to go by the name Lucien, contradicts Rekers's contentions that he hired the escort to help carry his luggage and that he was trying to save the soul of a lost sinner.

Although Rekers does have physical ailments that make it difficult for him to haul suitcases, Lucien wasn't hired to carry luggage on their European vacation, the escort says.

"It's a situation where he's going against homosexuality when he is a homosexual," Lucien says. (When New Times called seeking comment, Rekers had turned his phone off. An email was not returned. He has termed the New Times article "slanderous" on his website.)

Lucien was interviewed late last night in the Fort Lauderdale house where he was laying low for the evening. The townhome he rents in a west Miami suburb has been inundated by uninvited guests since Unzipped revealed Lucien's identity first (link NSFW).

Rekers's trip with Lucien has grabbed worldwide headlines and been the subject of monologues by Steven Colbert and Jay Leno. 

Lucien decided to speak out after a heart-to-heart with a friend, Michael, who alerted him to the grim realities of his client's anti-gay activities. Lucien, who had originally declined to speak about the trip, now says he can do little good by protecting his erstwhile, fundamentalist client.

Aging rent boy

Strange this: Christianist hate blogger Sunlit Uplands, who colludes with BlogNetNews.com to get two ratings instead of one, wants to ally itself with corporate interest who want to restrict Internet access.

What if the big cable operators decide they want to deny access to haters? What will the elderly blogster, alleged to have lived- in an unmarried relationship- with his former employer, wingnut congressional candidate Christina Jeffrey- say then? He was happy to enable her insanities he now documents- until she dumped him. It's like an Archie Comics episode, only one where Daniel J. Cassidy turns out to be Jughead.

Comfort for Sunlit Uplands" Rekers only paid the lad $750 for a ten-day tour of Europe to help him be un-gay

Joe.My.God has the latest news of retired University of South Carolina professor George Rekers: he's deploying the the Larry Craig defense, and besides, seriously underpaid his rent boy:

Rekers To Miami Herald: I Am Not Gay!

In a letter written to the Miami Herald's LGBT issues blogger, Steve Rothaus, Dr. George Rekers isthreatening a lawsuit against theMiami New Times for calling him a homosexual. According to Rekers, rentboy Jo-Vanni Roman called him today begging to him to tell the world that he was not hired to be a prostitute. Rekers says:

If today’s news story in the Miami New Times is accurate, I have been advised to retain the services of a defamation attorney in this matter, because the fact is that I am not gay and never have been. My travel assistant called me this afternoon earnestly asking me to clarify on my website that he worked for me as a travel companion and not as a prostitute. I completely agreed with my travel assistant that it is absolutely true that I hired him and he worked for me as a travel companion and not as a prostitute. I also read to him the first sentence that has been posted on my website for several days that says, “A recent article in an alternative newspaper cleverly gave false impressions of inappropriate behavior because of its misleading innuendo, incorrectly implying that Professor George Rekers used the Rentboy website to hire a prostitute to hire a prostitute to accompany him on a recent trip.”

Rekers goes on to recount the phone call, using the expression "life my luggage" six times. SNORK. So now the ball is back in Jo-Vanni's court. Did this phone call really happen? Is Jo-Vanni now concerned about a possible arrest? Much more likely is that Rekers has completely invented this entire story.

UPDATE: In a separate Miami Herald story, Jo-Vanni supports Rekers' version of events. Note that this interview was made yesterday, before today's Miami New Times story in which Jo-Vanni made the anus long-stroking claim.

Both Rekers and Geo, who declined to give his real name, deny they had a sexual relationship during their 10-day journey to Spain and England. "In all honesty, I did go on the trip with him,'' Geo, 20, told The Miami Herald on Wednesday. "He was setting me up as a companion. In all honesty, he's a very kind, family-values man.'' Rekers, 61, said via e-mail that he hired Geo as "an assistant to lift his luggage in his travels because of an ongoing condition following surgery.''

He added: "Dr. Rekers found his recent travel assistant by interviewing acquaintances. There was nothing inappropriate with this relationship. Professor Rekers was not involved in any illegal or sexual behavior with his travel assistant.'' Geo says Rekers -- the father of three grown sons -- hired him to carry luggage, be a companion and to translate Spanish to English during their time in Spain. "Nor did he pay me enough'' for sex, Geo said. "I was getting about $75 a day,'' Geo said, adding that he and his friends usually charge $300 to $500 a day for sex. Geo said he is a Miami Dade College student who became a prostitute to pay his bills. "I was just trying to get through school,'' he said. "I think I'm going to have drop my classes.'' Geo's parents know he's gay, but not that he's an escort. "Who the hell wants to tell them I was doing this stuff?'' he said. "I come from a very conservative Spanish family.''

That'll keep 'em in the closet-

A widely respected DC school principal found dead in his home, turns out to have been murdered by straight men using a gay chat line to find men to rob. Surely Sunlit Uplands' most dystopian fantasies must be gratified by this :

Despite the break in the case, details of Betts’ conversations and interactions with the suspects have yet to be released, and it remains unclear exactly how they ended up in his house. Alex Postpischil, a longtime friend who said he was the first person Betts came out to after college, told The Daily Beast he “always thought Brian to be more careful than to engage in random or anonymous encounters” and noted that information on the case was still limited.

Chat lines have long been a source of danger for gay men in the D.C. area. Earlier this year, Antwan Holcomb, 20, allegedly lured Anthony Perkins, 29, to a solitary location after meeting him through a chat line and then shot him to death in his car. News that gay social networking services were possibly used to plan a second robbery prompted D.C. group Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence to issue a public warning on its website recommending that users meet in public first and notify friends of their whereabouts beforehand.

They can manage the state's money but they can't marry. Makes perfect sense, eh?

Will Folks' curious- and growing- obsession with homosexualists  has, as he might say, reared its ugly head again as he takes on a Christianist Republican political candidate in SC for pandering to Bible thumpers.

It's something, of course, FITS News has never undertaken, not even with its original name, "Faith in the Sound."

But it gives Folksy an op to pretend he's a progressively-thinking sort (while then reverting to good old 1950s homophobia):

Obviously, the fact that Connor is a Christian doesn’t bother us – it’s the pandering we can’t stand, as well as the implied message that the solution to record deficits and exorbitant levels of taxation is somehow to be found in the adoption of a Christian world view.

That’s simply not true.  In fact, we’d prefer a Satanic homosexual who has an ‘A-plus’ fiscal conservative over a Bible-thumper with an ‘A-minus’ any day of the week, because the devil worshiping queen would be more trustworthy when it comes to taking care of our money.

We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again – government has absolutely no role in telling anybody what they can or can’t do behind closed doors.  As long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of others (or exact an undue toll on others), anything goes in our book.

Obviously, Connor has served his country with distinction and has earned the right to say whatever he wants to say.

But this sort of overt pandering to social conservatives drives us bonkers.

If he wants our support, Connor needs to stop pandering and get back to preaching the Gospel according toour pocketbooks.

From the pics it was evident he needed an elderly Christianist to cure him. Overseas.

Queerty has a gallery of photos of the rent boy retired University of South Carolina professor George Rekers hired to accompany him on a ten-day, all-expenses paid, Christianist gay cure tour.

It's not us doing it to the world, it's the world doing it to us

Another elderly man in a dress steps up to explain how the world works:

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A Brazilian archbishop said adolescents are "spontaneously homosexual" and in need of guidance, while society at large is pedophile, according to a Wednesday report.

Archbishop Dadeus Grings a conservative priest who has made controversial statements in the past told the O Globonewspaper at a Brazilian bishops conference that society's woes are being reflected in the sex abuse scandal enveloping the Roman Catholic Church.

"Society today is pedophile, that is the problem. So, people easily fall into it. And the fact it is denounced is a good sign," Grings told O Globo.

The comments come as the church is under fire for a sex abuse scandal touching all corners of the globe and three weeks after Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the No. 2 official at the Vatican, said at a news conference in Chile that the sex scandals were linked to homosexuality and not celibacy among priests.

Cultural competence

Conservative Outpost imagines that there are "Hispanic morris dancers."

It's a sort of 1950s National Geographic view of the world: "Our happy dancing brown brothers to the South."

Only in SC

More cheering economic development news from a suburb of Charleston:

"I'm for no more growth," he said. "We'll be like Long Island in New York in a couple of years. We're just trying to hold onto the past as long as we can."

Magical thinking

Jonathan Chait explains the conservative delusion that the answer to everything- war, scurvy, bee colony collapse- is to cut taxes:

 Supply-side economics gained a foothold within the GOP in the late 1970s, and reached its glory in 1981. But moderate Reaganites realized that supply-side economics had created massive deficits and enormous tax inequities, and clawed back the effects of their policies by enacting tax hikes in 1982 and 1983 and a progressive tax reform in 1986. In 1990, George H.W. Bush clawed back the supply-side revolution a bit more by agreeing to a small tax hike as part of a major deficit reduction package. Conservatives, led by Newt Gingrich, revolted, and vowed never to permit such heresy again. The moderates were banished, and anti-tax absolutism became the sole permissable point of view. Republican candidates for office henceforth had to sign anti-tax pledges (not, however, anti-spending pledges.) In the last presidential election, every major Republican presidential contender asserted that George . Bush's tax cuts had caused revenue to rise. Every major conservative opinion outlet backed this line. (In 2007, libertarian Megan McArdle had a right-wing book reviewspiked because it asserted that the Laffer Curve did not apply to current U.S. tax rates.)

This is a long way of saying that Kevin Williamson's recent National Review article criticizing supply-side economics is a very big deal. It's not quite a full frontal attack on supply-side economics, more of a lament that the dogma has been stretched in ways that even its founders would find extreme. It resembles Kruschev's "secret speech" (subsequently made public) denouncing Stalin's cult of personality more than actual Perestroika. Still, the article makes plain the clear fact that, at the very least, supply-side economics has been a total failure from the conservative point of view:

Tax cuts aren’t really the problem. The hot action is on the spending side of the ledger, and nobody wants to touch it. The problem with magical supply-siderism is that it gives Republicans a rhetorical and intellectual framework in which to ignore spending — just keep cutting taxes, the argument goes, and somebody else will eventually have to cut spending. The results speak for themselves: Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert and Trent Lott and Bill Frist all know how to count, but, under their leadership, Republicans spent all the money the country had and then some. Deficits boomed, and Republicans’ claim to being the responsible britches-wearing adults when it comes to spending got unpantsed. Cutting taxes is easy. Cutting spending is hard. ...

So, what should conservatives do? One, abjure magical thinking about tax cuts. Two, develop a rhetoric in which “spending” and “taxes” are synonyms, so a federal budget with $1 trillion in new spending means $1 trillion in new taxes — levies on Americans today or on our children tomorrow, with interest. Three, get a load of those tea-party yokels, with their funny hats and dysgraphic signage, and keep this in mind: They are opposed to the Democrats, but what they are really looking for is an alternative to the establishment Republicans, whom they distrust, with good reason, when it comes to the bottom-line question of balancing the budget and getting our fiscal affairs in good order. And then, finally, decide which angry mob you want to face: today’s voters or tomorrow’s bondholders.

It's a simple accounting identity that the size of government is measured by the size of spending. Reducing tax revenues while leaving spending untouched does not reduce the size of government, it merely defers the payment. Yet, as Williamson suggests, the Republican Party has ignored this fact, treating taxes rather than spending as the measure of government's size.

Obviously, I don't share the conservative movement's goals. The trouble with the right's embrace of magical thinking is that it makes even negotiation over the size of government impossible. In a rational world, Democrats and Republicans should be able to define their desired level of taxes and spending and meet somewhere in the middle. But this negotiation is impossible as long as Republicans continue to be so detached from fiscal reality that they can't even advance their own interests.

Anti-tax absolutists still have a firm firm grip upon the Republican Party and the conservative movement. They have spent a good thirty years drumming magical thinking on taxes into the skull of every dittohead, Young Republican, Fox News watcher, or admirer of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. It will take a long, long time before the party is ready again to enter have a discussion of fiscal policy that merely engages with reality. But Williamson's article is a pretty remarkable first step.

Probably just a coincidence

The Daily Beast:

It was empirical evidence for a theory long popular among psychoanalysts: that those most hostile to gay people are often driven by terror and shame about their own desires.

So it’s not terribly surprising that Dr. George Rekers, a major figure in anti-gay Christian right circles, has been caught traveling with a male prostitute who advertises on Rentboy.com—becoming the latest in a long line of disgraced culture warriors.

Rekers' not the only SC figure who gets all frothy and frantic about sodomites and "homosexualists", either.

One soul at a time

"Professor George" has unveiled a new, if intensive, curative therapy for gays: hire one from RentBoy.com, take him on an all expenses paid ten day trip to Europe, and "counsel" him:

When first confronted with a photo of the two together after returning from a trip in April, Rekers said he simply didn't know what "Lucien" had really been advertising until halfway through their trip. Both men told the New Times that they didn't have sex.

But he later told another blogger that he was simply trying to save his friend by "lovingly" sharing the message of Jesus, as he had done with other "sexual sinners."

"I have spent much time as a mental health professional and as a Christian minister helping and lovingly caring for people identifying themselves as 'gay.' My hero is Jesus Christ who loves even the culturally despised people, including sexual sinners and prostitutes," Rekers wrote in a Facebook message to Joe Jervis.

Contrary to false gossip, innuendo, and slander about me, I do not in any way "hate" homosexuals, but I seek to lovingly share two types of messages to them, as I did with the young man called "Lucien" in the news story: [1] It is possible to cease homosexual practices to avoid the unacceptable health risks associated with that behavior, and [2] the most important decision one can make is to establish a relationship with God for all eternity by trusting in Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins, including homosexual sins.

-and the turkeys will call for an early Thanksgiving

Donna Brazile, who's a TV pundit, argues for the elimination of TV pundits.

As if.

What a waste of space.

In the US it's a Tom Foley or Tom Daschle moment

A Tory grandee consoles a Labour cabinet minister in anticipation of tonight's election results:

In the last two weeks my name has been in headlines for the first time in years. Will a cabinet minister suffer the humiliation of losing his seat in the full glare of national publicity, as I did in 1997? Will he (oh please, please yes!) endure "a Portillo moment"? My name is now synonymous with eating a bucketload of shit in public. I am on the brink of becoming a noun and so passing into history, alongside Captain Boycott and theHooligan family.

When I am asked whether anyone at today's election is likely to suffer the same ignominy, I say, "Balls to that", and for good reason. But strictly speaking, if the children's secretary is defeated tonight – if Ed Balls falls – it won't qualify as a Portillo moment, because a genuine Portillo moment has to come out of left field.

Jesus is coming. Look busy.

NYT is rolling toward another Pulitzer with its series on the equivocal response of Catholic leadership to its sex abuse crisis. Today they profile Cardinal William Levada, who appears to have done just enough to seem concerned without doing enough to get to the root of the problem. His reward was to succeed Pope Benedict as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which enforces orthodoxy- and, at the pace of a glacier- processes abuse claims.


Regrettably, The Vatican's imperial manners and medieval management systems make it possible for a prince of the Church to say, after two decades of experience:

In a recent interview with PBS NewsHour, Cardinal Levada said the church had been through a gradual “learning process.”

“It took us a lot of time, I think, to understand how to deal with this part, and it took a lot of time to understand how much damage is done to victims, to children, by this kind of behavior,” said Cardinal Levada, who has strongly criticized media coverage of the abuse scandal.

Vote early, vote often

It's election day in the UK. The New Yorker essays the various media result prediction devices you can fiddle with, and offers this comment:

Also, you can focus in on constituencies and discover that, in Dwyfor Meirionnydd, which includes the towns of Pwllheli, Porthmadog, and Tywyn, Plaid Cymru is the prohibitive favorite, which means that Elfyn Llwyd is going back to Parliament. 

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2010/05/britains-marginal-projections.html#ixzz0n8zL1vGw

Gotta check the archives.

Asked about co-founder George Rekers' gay escapade with a rentboy in Europe, current Family Research Council head and 24/7 homo obsessionist Tony Perkins says, "Who?"

What's that line from "Julius Caesar"?

Sucking his Frostee too fast on a hot day, Senator John Thune has a brain freeze:

Thune: Corker breaks ranks because he 'understands' issues

In either a garbled thought or one of the great, classic gaffes, John Thune suggests that his colleague Bob Corker breaks from the party line a lot because he actually thinks about policy:

"I think he’s a guy who’s willing to get down into the weeds," said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, who is No. 4 in GOP leadership. "Because he immerses himself in that and understands it so well — the positions he adopts may not always be the ones that everyone else in our conference comes to."

UPDATE: "Senator Thune was simply being complimentary to Senator Corker. To interpret this as criticism of his colleagues, as some have tried to do, is to see smoke where there is no fire and is nothing short of ridiculous," emails Thune aide Kyle Downey.

$210,000 he swindled GOP donors for Stutzman and didn't get squat. Not even close.

Changing the subject from his Ken Doll's ass-whuppin' in the Indiana Senate primary, Senator Jim DeMint says his new mancrush is on Ron Paul's boy in the Kentucky Senate primary. In the process he gives his caucus leader, Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell, a sharp poke in the eye.

If DeMint doesn't deliver the goods on his little Peter Pan treehouse of true believers, there's gonna come a point where his caucus will take him at his word that he didn't come to DC to make any friends, and- as they say on Facebook- unfriend him to some obscure subcommittee studying the links between sheep blast, glanders in horses, and masturbation among closeted gay Republicans.

What you get for your money at SCETV: monkeys running the control boards.

UPDATE: ETV radio was off the air for an hour and a half, returning in the middle of a performance at 1:45 am. No explanation.

Never bother emailing the president of SC ETV about their appallingly incompetent radio branch: he won't answer.

We learned this several weeks ago when both the TV and radio arms went down for hours. On the TV was a frozen shot of a frog; on the radio, silence.

On the website, no explanation. No apology. They'd just finished their fundraising drive and there was no need to pander to the listeners/watchers until the next one.

Since then we've experienced the oddity of hearing two promos for the late night ambient music program "Echoes" in the same half hour of "All Things Considered", each  pitching a different program for  the same coming evening. One was long past.

As we write now, ETV Radio's in another of its customer service brain freezes. At midnight, when their canned classical music service was supposed to start, instead we got a ten minute poem from some character on "This American Life." Then TAL host Ira Glass came on to extoll the virtues of contributing to public radio.

When he got to the link where the local station picks up and gives listeners the pitch-

-the radio went dead. It's been dead for coming on fifteen minutes now.

The king maker's first Mini-Me falls flatter than a souffle.

Senator Jim DeMint ends up with the cream pie all over his face in Indiana:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Nordstrom would be proud.

When you email someone at Politics Daily, you get this smart message:

You did it!

If necessary, we will get in touch with you as soon as possible. We cannot respond to every one of the requests we receive, but it doesn't mean we're not thinking about you.

Somebody there clearly understands customer service. Good on 'em.

Good news about depression, if such a thing there be

Depression is a hard thing to cope with.  People who haven't had it don't understand it, and are quick to make judgments about the failings of the sufferer.


It's an easy, thoughtless way to put someone down, and in so doing, elevate yourself in your own estimation. This is particularly so among men.


Part of what made that so is the ridiculously easily-parodied theories of Sigmund Freud, who managed to boil  everything in life down to three or four causes, usually a distant father and an overbearing mother. Tell it to Franklin Roosevelt, whose mother moved to Harvard to supervise him in college and ordered him about until her death in the middle of World War II, which FDR was busily winning.


Over the last twenty years, however, treatment of such disorders has moved markedly to a chemical based regimen. More and more research shows that depression is a function of some bad wiring in parts of the brain. It's the sort of thing "Holmes on Homes" fixes in houses.


Granted, talk therapy has its place, and can be really useful, especially when you're surrounded by people who don't want to hear anything but happy talk.


But an article at Politics Daily- of all places- highlights some new breakthroughs detailed in a Scientific American article. Encouraging stuff, and ending on an inspiring note:

I find myself once again in accord with the teachings of Scriptures, which tell us that suffering is a part of life and can even deepen human character, that we are called to run with endurance the race that is set before us, even as we are told that God Himself does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men. "Lord," a centurion said to Jesus, "my servant lies at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering." To which Jesus said, "I will go and heal him." And the servant was healed that very hour. That is the promise of my faith -- and of modern science.

At least they read something-

Asked for their fave authors on the eve of the UK election, the three party leaders tried to spin themselves some more. The Guardian wasn't that taken with Eton/Oxford educated Tory leader David Cameron's choice:

Before tomorrow, consider this: given the choice of centuries of English literature, David Cameron's Desert Island book would be The River Cottage Cookbook by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. It's an alluring image, the Tory leader thousands of miles from civilisation, trying to make brown crab linguini out of twigs and sand. Added to his Goodbye to all That /Cider with Rosie-tinted view of Britain's future, the biblio-spin becomes a little unsettling. 

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg picked Samuel Beckett, which in the US would get him calls for the death penalty from Sarah Palin.

Book deal in the works?

Professor George's rent boy clams up.

Moi?

 
SC Lt. Gov. Andre' Bauer is pursuing a novel strategy in his race for governor: attacking white voters.

Bauer said his comments are not coded attacks on black and brown people.

"It has nothing to do with race. There are more white people on welfare than black people," Bauer said.

(Nationwide, one in six Americans lives in poverty; one in four black Americans lives in poverty.)

Added Bauer, "I've got more minorities, than any other Republican, who support me. They know where my heart is."

'THIS ISN'T SOME NEW TACTIC'

Bauer says his comments are not a new strategy to get votes.

"I've been talking about this for several years. This isn't some new (campaign) tactic," he said.

Instead, now that he's running for governor, more people are taking note of his long-held stance on welfare, he said.

Bauer said his message resonates with working people of all colors.

"Government continues to discourage hard work. The average working person is fed up with it. We're running out of people to pay for these (welfare) programs," Bauer said.

"I philosophically believe that government's role is not to take care of everybody. As long as you have giveaway programs that are as good as what you get doing a job, people won't choose the jobs."

Bauer said he blames the system, not welfare recipients.

"We're not showing them any other way to live. We're not empowering anybody," he said.

'ACT TOUGH BY PICKING ON PEOPLE'

It's difficult to pin down Bauer on how he defines welfare. He said it does not include people who get Social Security, disability checks or unemployment checks.

But experts say Bauer's claims of a lazy underclass draining the state of its economic vitality largely are hokum.

The state's primary welfare program rolls are less than half the number they were before federal welfare reform in 1996, according to the state Department of Social Services, which administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as Food Stamps, and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, created to get people off federal assistance and back to work.

However, use of the temporary assistance program is up by 46 percent since 2007, and use of the food program is up by 31 percent.

State officials say those spikes reflect the severity of the Great Recession, just now starting to yield to early signs of recovery.

Read more: http://www.thestate.com/2010/05/05/1273102/bauers-focus-on-poor-makes-him.html#RSS=general_news#ixzz0n5O6EXvA