50,000 HITS!

.

For several weeks, I anxiously looked forward to reaching 50,000 hits. Each day, I would scroll down to the bottom of this blog to see how close I was getting to reaching this goal.

I MISSED MY OWN PARTY.....

After an extensive physical and a series of blood tests and exploratory medical procedures (two days per week for three weeks), my physician informed me that I am in excellent health. Two days later, I had developed an upper respiratory and sinus infection that kept me ill for a week. by the time I checked by blog stats, I was already over the 50,000 mark!

For those of you who visit this blog regularly, THANK YOU!

A PLEASANT SURPRISE.....

While I was surfing blogs on one of the blog listing directories I belong to, I found this:

BLOG EXPRESS

Who made the buzz? find out the hottest flash from these hottest blogs!

In dondon 009 he talks about the latest book by David Pitts where the author explores the extraordinary friendship between JFK and Lem Billings.

OK now, I know it's not much but it's nice to be mentioned by a complete stranger who obviously appreciates the brilliance of this blog. (did I just write that?)

BACK TO REALITY.....

I've returned to work and once again having to work six day weeks to make up for lost time and to become current on documentation (federal and state audits coming up in mid December).

The PUGLETS enjoyed the luxury of sleeping late each day and additional pampering. Daisy continues to require 3x daily eye drops but has now made the procedure into a game where I'm required to chase her around the house until we're both exhausted before she consents to the drops.

Romance seems to have disappeared for the time being. It's almost time for a trip to New Orleans where, if not romance at least some great food, great music, lots of party and SEX!

THE FIRST FRIEND

.
John F. Kennedy's life was a fairy tale, and iconic pictures of him and his family are pervasive in American culture. Who hasn't seen the photos of Kennedy and his son in the Oval Office or Kennedy with Jackie sailing off Cape Cod?

David Pitts, a local gay author, has uncovered a trove of pictures featuring Kennedy with a less familiar face - that of Lem Billings, Kennedy's gay friend from their years at Choate School, a prep school in Connecticut, during the 1930s. In his new book, "Jack and Lem: John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings, the Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship," Pitts explores the relationship the pair shared until Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.


Pitts, who has a long standing interest in Kennedy, said that the inspiration for the project came from reading a variety of books over the years about the former president in which the name Lem Billings kept appearing, but was never fully explained. Pitts began researching the pair's relationship and uncovered how progressive Kennedy was in terms of accepting Billings' sexual orientation.


"The most surprising thing I learned was just how extremely close this friendship was," Pitts says, "Outside of his family, John F. Kennedy was closer to Lem Billings than any other person in his life."

In writing his book, Pitts interviewed members of Billings’ family (his sister and brother are both alive and in their 90s), writer Gore Vidal and Ben Bradlee, the former editor of the Washington Post, who knew both Billings and Kennedy.


"The letters that John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings exchanged, along with an oral history that Lem did before he died, were restricted until Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., made them available to me," Pitts says.

Beginning with their years at Choate, Billings often spent holidays and vacations with the Kennedys, although his family lived in Baltimore. He was also a fixture at the White House, which many found odd. Billings had a room there, and he frequently listened to the president vent about the international crises in Cuba and Berlin. Politicos wrote him off as Kennedy’s school friend who was a political lightweight, and others felt that he simply spent too much time hanging around.

Persistent rumors about Kennedy’s bisexuality are not answered in this book. Pitts uncovered no evidence that suggested a sexual relationship between the two friends.

"I tried to apply journalistic rules - and didn’t put in any gossip," Pitts says, "I only put in information that I could confirm … Something could have gone on, but I uncovered no evidence of that fact."

As for the relationship between Lem and Jackie Kennedy, Pitts writes, "All the people I interviewed about the relationship between Jackie and Lem - which I think is an interesting relationship in and of itself - agreed really on the nature of that relationship.

There was no disagreement among any of the people who knew them both. And that is, she liked him. She had more in common with him than she did with JFK in many ways. She was interested in the arts like he was, she had the same kind of sensibility. She also appreciated the role he played in her marriage during all the rough spots in the early days, essentially.

And the evidence that she liked him, the proof of it really, is that after the assassination when she could easily have cut him loose, she didn't. When the British invited her to England for the memorial for JFK at Runnymede, she asked Lem to go with her. She frequently visited him in Manhattan when she lived there in the 60s, and she also went to his funeral. So the evidence that she essentially liked him is there.

On the other hand, there is also evidence that she was frustrated at times that he was always there, so it's a mixed relationship. Probably when you think about it, it's a marriage of three people, so that attitude is understandable.

JFK golfing with Press Secretary Pierre D. Salinger and K. LeMoyne Billings in Hyannisport July 27, 1963, three months before President Kennedy was assassinated.

*Lem Billings is also listed (K. LeMoyne Billings) as one of the ushers at JFK's wedding and after Kennedy's death, became one of the directors of the John F. Kennedy Library Corporation.

I also found this interesting and somewhat amusing article in the New York Times titled:

TO CATCH A THIEF, RUN FAST!

By ALBIN KREBS AND ROBERT MCG. THOMAS
Published: January 17, 1981

The Kennedys always were fast on their feet when it came to running for office. But yesterday afternoon, one of the younger generation helped the police run down a pickpocket inside Bloomingdale's.

The helper was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 26-year-old son of the late Senator. He was on the Lexington Avenue subway with K. LeMoyne Billings, a long-time family friend and financial advisor, when someone took off with Mr. Billings's wallet and $60 in it.

Mr. Kennedy, the police said, chased the thief out of the 59th Street station, yelling for a nearby Transit Police officer, James McQueen, to help. The suspect ran into the crowded department store, but the other pursuers caught him on the second floor. The wallet and the money were recovered.

THE DARK SIDE

.
St. Petersburg, Florida Republican (remember the "family values party") City Council Chairman John Bryan committed suicide Friday after allegations of sexual abuse involving his 12 and 15 year old adopted daughters surfaced and a custody hearing determined that Bryan was ordered by the courts to have no further contact with them.

Bryant had already admitted to a sexual relationship with a former nanny who he later adopted; although he claimed the sex was consensual and that she was over 18 at the time.

Several local politicians say they had heard tales of sexual improprieties for decades.

His very good friend, Holier Than Thou St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker (the same mayor who refuses to acknowledge Gay Pride, even though millions of dollars are generated for the city of St. Petersburg each year), must have had his head buried in his bible because he stated that he "never heard of any allegations of Councilman John Bryan's sexual improprieties".

Who knew what, who did what will never be known because the coward took the easy way out!

Howard Troxler of the St. Petersburg times writes:

"It is never the future by which we destroy ourselves. It is what we do in the present, which in the next heartbeat becomes an unchangeable past. In making our choices each of us, in our own way, is inspired by the better part of our nature, but tortured by the dark."

LABOR DAY

.


INTRODUCING: RANDY ORTON

Randal "Randy" Keith Orton (born on April 1, 1980), is an American professional wrestler currently signed to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) wrestling on its RAW brand. Orton is a third-generation professional wrestler; his grandfather, Bob Orton, Sr., father, "Cowboy" Bob Orton, and uncle, Barry O, were all professional wrestlers.

Orton has the distinction of being the youngest World Heavyweight Champion in the company's history, and has achieved considerable success as an Intercontinental Champion and World Tag Team Champion. He is nicknamed the Legend Killer, largely influenced by his gimmick of intentionally attacking star and legendary wrestlers—especially outside the confines of a match.

SINKING

.
Faster than a crack whore pouncing on a twenty-dollar bill, the rats are abandoning the sinking ship; others haven't even had a chance to come aboard before they begin to sink!

George Bush's nominee for Surgeon General has drawn a lot of heat for among other things, his crack-pot anti-gay views as a leader in the United Methodist affiliate of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. But a new report may finally sink his already controversial nomination in a sea of conflicts of interest that have marked his career.

Dr. James Holsinger has also been a longtime leader of the Confessing Movement in the United Methodist Church. The Confessing Movement is a rightwing "renewal group" affiliated with the Washington, DC-based Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), whose purpose for a generation has been to divide and disrupt the historic churchs of mainline protestantism in the interests of advancing neoconservatism and the religious right.

Holsinger was elected to the highest court in the Methodist Church a time when the IRD-affiliated church "renewal" groups had launched efforts to use church judicial systems to enforce their notions of orthodoxy, particularly on matters related to homosexuality.

Now, an investigation by Rev. Andrew J. Weaver, Ph.D. and Lawrence H. McGaughey, Esq., and published at Media Transparency, shows that Holsinger used the sale of a United Methodist Church-owned hospital in Kentucky, as a cash cow for his personal ambitions. It took years of litigation by the church to find out what had happened to its money, only to learn that Holsinger had diverted millions to endow professorships at the Chandler Medical Center at the University of Kentucky where he served as Chancellor and fundraiser-in-chief.

Meanwhile, Weaver and McGaughy report Holsinger did not disclose to his fellow church justices that he he was party to significant litigation against the church in the state courts -- and thereby surface any potential conflicts of interest. The litigation cost the United Methodist Church (UMC) millions of dollars in legal fees to recover its assets.

The article also raises questions about how those assets (that were not given away) were managed while under the control of Dr. Holsinger and his associates, some of whom apparently also had conflicts of interest.

Time to say goodbye, James!

GAY MARRIAGE~A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT

.
The marriage window opened in Polk County, Iowa, for a few hours Friday, until around 11:30, when District Court Judge Robert Hanson stayed his order legalizing same-sex marriage pending an appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court. But the win is sweet nonetheless. Hanson's opinion laid out one of the strongest arguments in support of marriage equality ever articulated by an American court.

Hanson's 63-page opinion Thursday held that the denial of marriage violates the due process and equal protection rights of same-sex couples under the state constitution. Hanson initially struck the state ban on gay nuptials, and ordered the county clerks to issue marriage licenses at once. Some 20 couples reportedly applied Friday morning before Hanson put on the brakes.

Hanson wrote that marriage was a fundamental right under the state constitution's due process clause, and as such, its denial triggered the highest level of court scrutiny. He also ruled that Iowa's statutory ban on same-sex marriage violated the state's equal protection clause by discriminating on the basis of sex, a determination that also required heightened scrutiny.

Finally, Hanson ruled that the state's asserted justifications for maintaining a marriage ban did not even pass the lowest standards of court review. Assuming that a state interest in promoting "responsible procreation" was a legitimate purpose, Hanson wrote, the remedy of blocking all gay couples from matrimony bore no rational relationship to the state's alleged goals. The fact that heterosexual felons, older couples, and couples with no interest in having children were free to marry also undercut the state's argument.

Iowa may be a red state, but as Hanson pointed out, it has a history of far-sighted jurisprudence. The state was the second, after California, to toss out laws against interracial marriage, years before the U.S. Supreme Court took action in Loving v Virginia.

This year, the Iowa state legislature passed a gay rights bill into law, banning sexual orientation and gender identity bias in employment, housing and public accommodations. The law was signed by youthful Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat.

On Friday, Culver called on the legislature to stay out of the marriage wars until the case has been heard by the state supreme court. Iowa is one of 23 states that has not amended its constitution to ban same-sex marriage, although a Defense of Marriage Act was passed in 1998.

CHANGES~AGAIN

I've made some changes to this blog again..... going a bit "high-tech" by animating my blogmaster list (a new free toy at FLASH VORTEX).

Some of the people who were originally on my list have been eliminated because they are either no longer posting or haven't posted in several months. If I've made an error by eliminating someone who is currently blogging and/or visiting this site and would like to be included, please email me and I will make a correction!

Thanks.....