President Jimmy Carter is excited to see Beyoncé Knowles-Carter at the inauguration!
Jeanne Manford, the founder of PFLAG, died today in her home in California. She was 92. From The Advocate: “One of Manford’s sons, the late Morty Manford, was gay. He was beaten during a Gay Activists Alliance demonstration in April 1972, and police failed to intervene. She wrote a letter to the New York Post, published April 29, 1972, in which she stated, ‘I have a homosexual son, and I love him.’ Her letter sparked a groundswell of response, and less than two months later, she joined her son at the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade. Her participation and the affirmations she received from others eventually led to the beginning of PFLAG.”
May she rest peacefully. We will never forget this kind, beautiful soul for all she did.
Freshman Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy is sworn in by Vice President Joe Biden.
Chris Murphy’s one-year-old son is also apparently sworn in as a Senator, prompting Murphy to Tweet about the “crisis” of the adorable but unconstitional 101st Senator.
His older son’s face is kiiiilling me. Kids are the best.
Say hello to Nancy Pelosi and the 60 other Democratic women who are part of the 113th Congress.
For the first time ever, white men are no longer a majority in the Democratic House caucus, which instead has a mix of men and women of all colors and orientations”
Al Sharpton
via UniteWomen.org
Rest In Peace Senator Daniel Inouye (September 7, 1924 – December 17, 2012)
Senator Inouye should be fondly remembered for many things:
- At the age of 17 he enlisted in the U.S. Army shortly after Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He served with ‘E’ company of the 442 Regimental Combat Team, a group consisting entirely of Americans of Japanese ancestry. Senator Inouye lost his arm charging a series of machine gun nests on a hill in San Terenzo, Italy on April 21, 1945. His military service earned him the Medal of Honor, the Bronze Star Medal, the Purple Heart with oak leaf cluster, the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, the Chief Commander of the Philippine Legion of Honor, the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun, the Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur, and the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Paulownia Flowers,
- After leaving the service, he graduated from the University of Hawaii and George Washington University School of Law. Later he worked as a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for the City and County of Honolulu.
- In 1959, he became the first Japanese-American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1962, the first in the U.S. Senate
- A fierce anti-corruption advocate, he sat on committees investigating both Watergate and Iran-Contra.
- He represented Hawaii in Congress since it achieved statehood until his death (2012). He was the second longest serving Senator and served as the Senate’s President Pro Tempore since June, 2010.
Now I’m not saying that his military service is the most important part of his impressive career, but it is decidedly the most badass. In order to convey just the faintest suggestive hint of his full badassery, I’ve copied the following excerpt concerning that fateful day in Europe from Badass Of The Week; which I assure you in a real internet publication.
Inouye went back to Italy, where he performed what is now his most famous act of totally badass shit. Inouye’s platoon had been ordered to capture a German strong point along the Colle Musatello Ridge, so naturally this guy decided to go in guns blazing. He led his team through intense fire to capture an observation post, a mortar team, and an artillery position (no bigs), and then moved his troops within 40 yards of a heavily-fortified defensive line, where they immediately came under heavy suppressing fire from three different heavy machine gun positions. Inouye didn’t give a fuck. He started chucking grenades like a madman, trying to blast the bunkers apart. This was fun for a while, but as he stood up to lob yet another explosive he was suddenly shot through the abdomen by a German MG bullet that passed all the way through his torso and came mere inches from severing his spine.
Naturally, this only pissed him off.
So, with the rest of his men pinned down by heavy weapons, the wounded Lieutenant grabbed a backpack of frags and started army-crawling up the ridge towards the enemy guns. As soon as he was close enough, he assaulted the first machine gun nest on his own, taking it out with a grenade from just five yards away and then clearing the rest of it out Al Capone-style with a spray of .45-caliber ammunition from his badass Tommy gun. When that one was taken care of, Inouye sprinted to a second position, dual-chucking two grenades that redecorated the walls of the bunker with Fascist parts.
Unfortunately, the time Inouye was headed for the third position, the Germans were ready for him – the dudes in this nest had just watched this insane-as-fuck little Japanese dude flying around bombing the shit out of their buddies, and these motherfuckers weren’t about to sit back and let Inouye just hand-deliver a fragmentation explosive into their rectums without a fight. So when Inouye was sprinting across open ground a mere 10 yards the machine gun nest, suddenly he saw a German dude pop up from behind a sandbag, aim a rifle-mounted grenade at him, and blast him at point-blank range with the WWII version of an RPG.
The blast covered Inouye with shrapnel and shredded his right arm to the point where it was barely still attached. This, however, failed to stop him. Inouye simply looked down at his useless arm (which was still clutching a hand grenade), pried the grenade out of it with his left hand, and lobbed it underhand right into the dumbfounded German’s face from about 15 feet away. The results weren’t pretty.
From this point on in the battle, Lieutenant Daniel Inouye of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team went into Total Fucking Berserker Meltdown Mode. He doesn’t even remember what happened next – but his awestruck platoon members sure as fuck do.
While still bleeding profusely from the mangled stump that used to be his right arm, Daniel Inouye ditched the grenades, unslung the Tommy Gun, and started firing it one-handed while running all over the goddamned battlefield like a fucking maniac, blasting the holy living shit out of anything with a gray helmet. He cleared out the third machine gun position with the Tommy Gun, changed the magazine, and then started running towards the main body of the enemy position, by himself, shooting the machine gun with his off-hand, wasting Nazis left and right in a hail of gigantic bullets. Finally, after rampaging like a madman, Inouye was shot in the leg, lost his footing, and fell down a hill. Unable to move, but unwilling to back down, Inouye propped himself up against the nearest tree, kept firing, and refused to be evauated until his Sergeants had moved the unit into position and prepared defenses for the inevitable German counterattack. All told, he had killed 25 Germans and wounded 8 more, and he’d literally done it all single-handedly. When the men in his unit came to the hospital and recounted the events to Inouye, his exact words were, “No, that can’t be… you’d have to be insane to do all that.”
Ah, man, I liked him so much.
As with guns, some auto deaths are caused by people who break laws or behave irresponsibly. But we don’t shrug and say, “Cars don’t kill people, drunks do.” Instead, we have required seat belts, air bags, child seats and crash safety standards. We have introduced limited licenses for young drivers and tried to curb the use of mobile phones while driving. All this has reduced America’s traffic fatality rate per mile driven by nearly 90 percent since the 1950s. Some of you are alive today because of those auto safety regulations. And if we don’t treat guns in the same serious way, some of you and some of your children will die because of our failure.
Nicholas Kristof (via azspot)
Femininity is depicted as weakness, the sapping of strength, yet masculinity is so fragile that apparently even the slightest brush with the feminine destroys it.
Gwen Sharp in Policing Mascuility in Slim Jim’s “Spice Loss” Ads (via joydivisions)
Hey tumblr I like you and all but I’m not reblogging pictures of grieving children to “show my support.” GTFO with that shit. Damn.
Uncle Joe keeps looking at the camera like it’s an episode of The Office.
he is from scranton
I’m gonna say this once
The right to free speech (if you live in a country that allows you that) means the government won’t put you in jail for what you’re saying. It doesn’t protect you from other people telling you to shut the fuck up.
Today’s Most Awesome Tumblr: ‘Arrested Development’ Meets Mitt Romney
The amazing Tumblr Lucille and Mitt has been around for some time, but it’s only now coming to our attention. The idea is simple: Superimpose actual quotes from Mitt Romney, the teetotaling Republican candidate often accused of being out of touch with ordinary people, over pictures of Lucille Bluth, the vodka-swilling, laughably out-of-touch Arrested Development character. The results are surprisingly convincing.
[Images: Lucille and Mitt]
this is truly beautiful
The Ann one just made me snort out loud.
The views expressed were offensive. Rape is rape. … What I think these comments do underscore is why we shouldn’t have a bunch of politicians—a majority of whom are men—making health care decisions on behalf of women.
President Obama today on Rep. Todd Akin (via barackobama)
antique-romantic
