One Wisconsin man’s idea of a test drive didn’t sit well with a Madison dealer after the 47-year-old motorist took the car on a 150-mile trip around Milwaukee – and didn’t bring it back, police said on Thursday.
“The driver maintained that ‘You just don’t take it for a 15-minute test drive’,” Madison Police Officer Howard Payne said. “In my opinion, his explanation was not reasonable … because he did not bring it back.”
Madison police arrested Robert E. Clark on a charge of operating a motor vehicle with consent of owner on Dec. 30, Payne said.
…Police said Clark drove the car to Milwaukee and returned to his home and not the dealership, both in Madison. His “test” drive was about 150 miles, Payne said.
Clark told officers that he took the Nissan to Milwaukee to secure funds to actually pay for the car, and did have every intention of returning the vehicle the following day, according to the police report released Thursday.
But, police got to him first and spotted the Nissan parked outside his home.
Am I still a gay blogger? Well, I’m still a blogger. And I’m as gay as I’ve every been. But I almost hesitate to call myself a gay blogger these days. I used to blog about gay issues all the time, but the circumstances of my life have changed. Between work, family, and the limitations of being a mere mortal, I just can’t keep up.
During the day, all my blogging is work-related. So, I write about economic issues, healthcare, Medicare, Social Security, etc, and a lot of stuff that occasionally has a gay “angle” but isn’t specifically gay related. By the time I get home, have dinner with the family, do “homework time,” bedtime, pitch in on the realities of domestic life (like loading the dishwasher or folding the laundry), and do my work-related blog culling for the next morning … I’m pretty much spent.
So, there’s a lot I haven’t covered, because I just can’t. Fortunately, someone else has. Buzzfeed has a list of “40 Reasons Why 2011 Was A Great Year For Gays.” Here’s my attempt at a video compilation. (Some things I couldn’t find video for.)
I may have written about some of this stuff. Some of it I haven’t. Anyway, it all happened.
Back in the 1990s, I read a book called After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90′s. It was a pretty controversial book when it came out. Many in the gay community criticized the authors’ assertion that the segments of the LGBT community least palatable to middle America should be relegated to the “back of the bus” in the movement, for the sake of better PR. The right latched on to it as the “PR manual for the homosexual agenda.” (They still call it that.)
A new documentary looks at the black-gay civil rights divide by centering on Massachusetts Rep. Byron Rushing (D) during the commonwealth’s push to legalize same-sex marriage. The African American legislator eloquently weaves the two movements together in the 15-minute film. Following a screening of the movie last month, I moderated a panel discussion at Aaron Davis Hall in New York City that looked at the marriage equality push in New York state from a black perspective. The panel was filled with luminaries, including media and fashion mogul Russell Simmons. But the star of the event was a soft-spoken man named David Wilson.
In the film, Wilson tells the heartbreaking story about the death of his then-partner. The trauma of finding him lying in the driveway. The terror of being arrested by the police on suspicion of breaking and entering or assault and battery before neighbors convinced police otherwise. The indignity of being denied information by the hospital because he was a legal stranger to his partner. Only after his partner’s 75-year-old mother told the hospital who Wilson was did they inform him that his partner of 13 years was dead on arrival.
Wilson swore he’d never go through that again. And he would find love again. In 2003, he and Rob Compton became one of the seven same-sex couples to sue for and win the right to marry in the 2003 landmarkGoodridge vs. the Department of Health case.
It wasn’t until the panel discussion that the power of Davis’s example was fully displayed. As he said in his moving opening statement, which I run in full below, this gracious, soft-spoken man wanted “to put a black face on the Marriage Equality movement.”
Anti-gay marriage amendments and ballot initiatives like Proposition 8 only harm Black gay and lesbian famlies, many of whom are already economically disadvantaged. Cannick may think marriage equality is “secondary” to other issues, or can wait until others are addressed. But that also means that thousands of our families will continue to suffer injustice, economic and otherwise, indefinitely and without remedy.
For them, inequality is a daily burden added to the rest: making ends meet, putting food on the table, keeping a roof over their heads, and simply providing for their families.
For many of our families, equality is not a “luxury,” as Cannick calls it. It is justice.
Marriage isn’t the only solution to these problems, by any means, and it for many it may not be the right solution. It shouldn’t be our only focus or strategy, but neither should marriage be rejected out of hand for everyone.
There are many paths to justice. We each chose ours for different, often deeply personal reasons. Sometimes they weave together in places where we need help and can help one another to keep going. They part, but inevitably cross again. We will meet each other many times on our winding paths to justice. We will need each other again. Let’s not put roadblocks in front of one another.
I won’t ask Cannick to change her priorities. I wish she wouldn’t decide for my family, and other Black gay families, what our priorities are or should be.
It was noteworthy when Peggy Noonan — Our Lady of the Dolphins — stepped into the role of the GOP’s voice of reason, following the rise of Sarah Palin as its vice presidential nominee in 2008. It was a real eyebrow-raiser when David Brooks took on the task of talking sense to Republicans during the debt deal debacle, before returning to his “sinners in the hands of an angry market” theme.
You can take your pick for the moment the GOP noticably went off the rails. I have two favorites: when it fell to Peggy Noonan to be the Republicans’ voice of reason following Sarah Palin’s VP nomination, and when David Brooks warned the GOP that it “may no longer be a normal party”. Together, they’re the political equivalent of Courtney Love showing up at your intervention and Charlie Sheen offering you a ride to rehab. But this Republican party isn’t likely to heed such sane voices as Noonan and Brooks, and would just as soon throw them overboard.
At the time, I thought it couldn’t get much worse. But now, it’s fallen to Pat Robertson — yes that Pat Robertson — serve as the GOP’s latest voice of reason.
I didn’t get to be on “The Colbert Show” myself, but I was on “The David Pakman Show” this afternoon to talk about the tea party’s “Stop hiring!” message. Watch the video below.
As my early obsession with funky looking eco-cars shows, I’m sometimes drawn towards quirky things that go against the grain of the mainstream. So, of course I was intrigued by this video about the Eco-Cube — a project to “build a compact home” no bigger than 10x10x10 feet “in which one person could live a comfortable, modern existence with a minimum impact on the environment.”
Interesting, especially when you take a couple of things into consideration about housing and the current economic crisis/recession.
I know by now it’s been by everybody and his brother, but I’m posting it here for all the parents in the world who have ever thought what the title of this book says.
Go ahead, play it again. You know you were laughing too hard to hear the whole thing.
I’d love to make this a daily or weekly feature, but that depends largely upon how often I come across these things in my daily reading. That said, I’ll post ‘em when I find ‘em.
That said, this week turned out to be rich in WTF moments. And I don’t mean “Winning the Future”.
WTF
Example Sentences:
Boyfriend: I’ve decided to quit school and move to France.
Girlfriend: When?
Boyfriend: Tomorrow morning.
Girlfriend: WTF?
When our teacher told us we had a test tomorrow worth 75%, I was like “WTF“?!
WTF is going on?
Note:
WTF is often used when one is confused and angry
Thankfully, they’re all available on YouTube. The only question is: Which order should I post them in? From worst to weirdest? Or weirdest to worst?
A young girl was found caged and attempting to eat herself in a mobile home in Virginia, and cops say her parents are responsible.
The malnourished girl, believed to be either 5 or 6, was discovered in a crib that was converted into a makeshift cage after police arrived at the home in Gloucester County to investigate a burglary last week.
The girl’s parents, Brian and Shannon Gore, were arrested and charged with felony child abuse. The mother was also charged with attempted capital murder.
However, the gruesome twosome now faces first-degree murder charges after the remains of what authorities believe to be another child were found buried outside their mobile home
Towards the end of the story we hear from the husband’s ex-girlfriend.
Remember when I said the tea party has the potential to be the GOP’s psycho ex-girlfriend? Well, Dana Milbank’s latest column — about tea party activists attacking John Boehner, Paul Ryan and the GOP for not killing the hostage tying an increase in the debt ceiling to undoing health care reform, and preserving "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" — seems to bear this out. Especially the part where they blame the economic crisis on immorality, in genera, and gay people, specifically. Again.
Of course, the irony is that the meltdown and the ensuing recession have less to do with immorality than amorality run amok in the in the marketplace, and the conservatism that allowed it.
Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last 24 hours, you’ve probably heard that Osama Bin Laden is dead.
And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.
Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.
Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.
The world may well be a better place without it. It is certainly no worse off without him. But, this isn’t really the end of anything.
I heard about this, but only watched it just now. Here’s Sharon Angle, belting out Lee Greenwood’s "God Bless the USA."
I didn’t make it all the way through. I didn’t need to. I’m familiar with the song, and I’m familiar with why Angle wanted to sing it and why nobody apparently tried to convince her that it was not a good idea.
Elizabeth Taylor, the actress who dazzled generations of moviegoers with her stunning beauty and whose name was synonymous with Hollywood glamour, died Wednesday in Los Angeles. She was 79.
The cause was congestive heart failure, her publicist, Sally Morrison, told The Associated Press.
In a world of flickering images, Ms. Taylor was a constant star. First appearing onscreen at age 9, she grew up there, never passing through an awkward age. It was one quick leap from “National Velvet” to “A Place in the Sun” and from there to “Cleopatra” as she was indelibly transformed from a vulnerable child actress into a voluptuous film queen.
In a career of more than 70 years and more than 50 films, she won two Academy Awards as best actress, for her performances as a call girl in “Butterfield 8” (in 1960) and as the acid-tongued Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (in 1966). Mike Nichols, who directed her in “Virginia Woolf,” said he considered her “one of the greatest cinema actresses.”
I’m not sure what I can add to all that has been and will be said. But here goes.
Last night, Parker asked me to show him some videos of what was going on in Japan. We were sitting on the couch, and I had my laptop handy, so I showed him some of the videos and explained to him what was going on in them.
After getting some concerns off my rest re: the shooting in Tucson, I’ve been reading what everyone else is saying, and I’m kind of amazed at the conservatives attempt at the “Both sides do it,” argument. To be sure, people on both sides do go to extremes, but beyond that it’s a false equivalency. Of course, I’m not the first to point this out.
The point is that there’s room in a democracy for people who ridicule and denounce those who disagree with them; there isn’t any place for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary.
And it’s the saturation of our political discourse – and especially our airwaves – with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence.
Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.
And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.
So, rather than repeat what everyone else has said, I thought I’d do a video timeline.
OK. I plead guilty to this When I got my iPhone 4, I gave Parker my old iPhone 3G (with parental controls in place, phone service deactivated, everything restored to factory settings, history wiped clean, and internet access and the App Store on lockdown) to play games on, etc. But does that make me a “Scrooge”? Puh-leeze. An eight-year-old needs the latest iPhone?
It’s happening again. I’m getting that “I’ve got a book in me, if I can make time to write it,” feeling. Of course, that “if” is the big, and the deciding, factor.
It’s not that I don’t trust the guy, and maybe the whole Weinergate thing has me a little gun shy, but am I the only who thinks Obama tweeting for himself may not be the best idea?
Elizabeth Taylor, the actress who dazzled generations of moviegoers with her stunning beauty and whose name was synonymous with Hollywood glamour, died Wednesday in Los Angeles. She was 79.
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