Openly Gay Federal Judge Appointed by Trump

The Genius of The Donald

Only Trump could force the Left to oppose a Gay Filipino minority for a Federal Judgeship.

In a counter-intuitive development, the U.S. Senate approved on Tuesday an openly gay federal prosecutor named by President Trump for a seat on the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, making him the highest-ranking openly gay federal judge in the country.

The Republican-majority chamber approved Patrick Bumatay, who previously worked as a U.S. attorney in Southern California, to a lifetime seat on the federal appeals court. The vote was 53-40.

With Republicans voting in his favor and Democrats voting against him, the traditionally party roles on LGBTQ rights were shifted on the confirmation vote.

Democrats cited Bumatay’s lack of appellate experience as a reason to vote against him. Trump chose Bumatay for the seat after ignoring the recommendations of Sens. Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein of California for the seat on the Ninth Circuit.

Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), the only out lesbian in the Senate, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), the only open bisexual, were among the Democrats voting against Bumatay. Also voting against was Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the chief sponsor of the Equality Act in the Senate.

No senator — either for or against Bumatay — took to the floor to speak out on the nominee days before his confirmation or the cloture vote to end the filibuster to end his nomination.

Now that he’s confirmed, Bumatay, who’s both gay and Filipino, is not only the highest-ranking openly gay person on the federal bench, but also the highest-ranking Filipino.

Previously, the only other openly gay federal appeals judge is U.S. Circuit Judge Todd Hughes of the Federal Circuit, whom the Senate confirmed in 2013 after he was nominated by President Obama. But the Federal Circuit isn’t considered as prestigious or high-ranking as the Ninth Circuit.

It’s the second openly gay person Trump has confirmed to the federal bench. The first one was Mary Rowland, who was approved in August and is now a federal judge in Illinois.

Bumatay was confirmed to the seat despite opposition from his two home state senators — Harris and Feinstein — civil rights organizations and one anti-LGBT group. Log Cabin Republicans were among Bumatay’s supporters.

“Log Cabin Republicans is heartened by the long-awaited confirmation of Patrick Bumatay as a judge on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, making him the highest-ranking LGBT jurist in the nation,” said Charles Moran, managing director of the Log Cabin Republicans in a statement. “He is an accomplished prosecutor with solid experience, and we’re thankful to President Trump for pushing forward with Patrick’s nomination and the Senate confirming him, knowing he would never get a fair shake from his home-state senators. I know all Americans will welcome Patrick’s arrival on the Ninth Circuit, bringing some sanity back to the circuit most known for being out of the mainstream.

Washington Blade.com

Beautiful women cause rape says President

“A question that sometimes drives me crazy:

am I or are the others crazy?” 
― Albert Einstein

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte caught some backlash after appearing to blame rape on the attractiveness of female victims during a speech on Thursday.

Responding to concerns about rising numbers of rape cases in the city of Davao, Duterte replied, “As long as there are many beautiful women, there will be more rape cases.”

Philippines women’s rights group Gabriela released a statement following Duterte’s comments, criticizing him for trivializing assault and setting progress backward.

“Yet again, President Duterte sends a very dangerous and distorted message in his latest rape remark that a woman’s beauty is a cause of rape. He toys with Davao pride and misogyny to gloss over a very important detail that women in his hometown of Davao City suffered the most number of rape cases in the country. This latest theatric only confirms one thing: President Duterte is proud to have rolled back whatever gains and legal mechanisms that have been instituted for women’s rights in Davao City,”

Harry Roque, Duterte’s spokesman, told The New York Times that the former mayor of Davao was joking and that people should not take him too seriously. “They’re not okay with rape jokes, but let’s just say that perhaps the standard of what is offensive and what is not offensive is more liberal in the south,” he explained.

Duterte has been criticized for similar comments before, once famously calling his own daughter a “drama queen” when she revealed that she was a victim of sexual assault. He then explained, “She can’t be raped — she carries a gun.” His daughter claimed at the time that she was not offended by his remarks.

Read More . . . .

Saturday Sultress - Christine Mendoza

Born: August 7, 1983 (age 34 years), Bulacan, Philippines

Saturday Sultress - Arianny Celeste, Part II

Arianny Celeste (born Penelope López Márquez on November 12, 1985) is an American ring girl and model. She is best known for being a ring girl for the UFC.

Celeste was born on November 12, 1985, in Las Vegas, Nevada. She is of Filipino and Mexican descent.

Celeste has modeled for magazines such as Maxim, FHM, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, and Fighter's Only Magazine.   (More)

Kenda Perez, Arianny Celeste and Brittney Palmer

Read More:
End of Summer Bikini Model - Arianny Celeste

Jihad in the Philippines: Muslims bomb Christian city, 14 dead, 50 wounded

It is not paranoia

If they really are out to get you

(Pamela Geller)  -  The majority Catholic nation has been under siege by Muslims waging jihad. Bloody terror.

The Philippines has made extraordinary concessions to the violent Muslim uprising. But as we know, that only leads to more violence and more demands for an even bigger Islamic state. Islamic terror rages on in the Philippines. 

Worse, these supremacist savages are rewarded. The modern-day manifestation of the caliphate, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), had “observer status” in the “talks” between the Philippine government and the jihadist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Muslim terrorists slaughter and the OIC “mediates.”

It would be comical if it weren’t so deadly. The Philippines (a former American protectorate and 95% Catholic country) has had to give up territory and “share wealth” with these jihadi rebels.

PHILIPPINES: BLASTS KILL 14

Daily Mail, May 23, 2017:

Two explosions rocked a largely Christian city in the southern Philippines today, killing 14 people and wounding about 50, in what police said could be attacks by Muslim extremists.

The bombings in General Santos city – some 215 miles from where US forces were holding counter terrorism exercises with their Filipino counterparts – were the bloodiest in the mainly Christian country since suspected Muslim extremists killed 14 and wounded over 100 in a wave of bombings in the capital Manila in December 2000.

“We have leads and suspects. Within a few hours or days we will get them,” regional police chief Colonel Bartolome Baluyot told Reuters by phone. He refused to name the suspects but said they were from the same group blamed for two bomb attacks in General Santos last year, which killed four people.

Police had blamed last year’s attacks on Muslim guerrillas fighting for an Islamic state in the south of the country.

In Sunday’s attacks, a home-made bomb left in a parked pedicab exploded as shoppers waited for rides home outside a shopping mall.

Ten minutes later, another bomb thrown by unidentified attackers exploded near a residential compound.

Police said they suspected the bomb-throwers had also planted the first bomb.

The victims were shoppers, public transport drivers and street hawkers gathered outside the mall, as well as children.

“I think there may be more dead because many of the injured are in serious condition,” Baluyot said. More than half of the injured were in serious condition in hospitals, he added.

After the explosions, a man who said he represented the Muslim Abu Sayyaf guerrilla group, which operates in the country’s south and is linked by the United States to Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, called local RMN radio and claimed responsibility for the blasts.

Read More . . . .

Mark Twain, Imperialism, Christmas and Other Random Thoughts

Killing For Power and Profit

"Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death."

Cornelius

Planet of the Apes (1968)

By Gary;

The great Rod Serling was never more dead on than when he wrote those words for Planet of the Apes.

Christmas is the season of peace. Jesus, Apes and other random thoughts merged with my reading of Mark Twain's views on the Imperialism of his time.

Back then we went out of our way to murder tens out thousands of people in the Philippines in the name of "freedom" and building an empire.

Nothing changes. Nothing ever will.

The Persians invaded Greece, Rome invaded Gaul . . . . spring forward to see Japan invade China or Iraq invade Iran or Obama bomb Syria and Yemen. It never ends.

Every generation tells themselves lies about the latest "just war". . . . a war that will rapidly be forgotten but will leave a trail of corpses, triple amputees and cities leveled to the ground.

The endless slaughter in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen are only the latest examples of man's insanity.  We send in the CIA to arm monsters and then scream "We must go to war" to stop the monsters we and our allies created.

Can The Donald break this cycle?

No way in Hell. Trump's instinct is to hold back and not be the policeman of the world. But Trump is just one 70 year old man who will soon be replaced on the world's stage by the usual warmongers.

I look forward to Christmas, family and this season of peace. At the same time I know that come December 26th the corpses will start to pile up yet again.


Mark Twain
(New York Herald - 10/15/1900)

I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific. It seemed tiresome and tame for it to content itself with the Rockies. Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself? And I thought it would be a real good thing to do.

I said to myself, here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves.

But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.

We have also pledged the power of this country to maintain and protect the abominable system established in the Philippines by the Friars.

It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.

 Battle of Manila (1899)
Killed by invading American troops. Filipino soldiers dead in
a trench defending their homeland. 
.
The people of the Philippines were under the impression they were the
allies of Americans who were there to liberate them from Spain. 
They were wrong.
.
In a war lasting over three years some 50,000 Filipino soldiers
and civilians were killed by Americans.
Battle of Manila (1899)

Killing Filipinos for Wanting Freedom
The battle before Caloocan, February 10, 1899 - View from the Chinese church. Maj. Gen. Arthur MacArthur on inner wall, to right of church, battery of Utah Artillery in the middle foreground, the 10th Pennsylvania Volunteers, of MacArthur's division, behind the wall.
.  

(Harper's Pictorial History of the War with Spain, Vol. II, published by Harper and Brothers in 1899.)

.

Battle of Caloocan

Mark Twain
(New York World - London, 10/6/1900)


You ask me about what is called imperialism. Well, I have formed views about that question. I am at the disadvantage of not knowing whether our people are for or against spreading themselves over the face of the globe. I should be sorry if they are, for I don't think that it is wise or a necessary development. 

As to China, I quite approve of our Government's action in getting free of that complication. They are withdrawing, I understand, having done what they wanted. That is quite right. We have no more business in China than in any other country that is not ours. 

There is the case of the Philippines. I have tried hard, and yet I cannot for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess. Perhaps we could not have avoided it -- perhaps it was inevitable that we should come to be fighting the natives of those islands -- but I cannot understand it, and have never been able to get at the bottom of the origin of our antagonism to the natives. I thought we should act as their protector -- not try to get them under our heel. 

We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. 

That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now -- why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation.

Read More . . . .

1st Nebraska Volunteer Infantry
The First Nebraska Volunteer Infantry was mustered into service on May 9 and 10, 1898 at Lincoln, Nebraska. At the time of muster-in, the unit consisted of fifty-one officers and 983 enlisted men.
.
On May 16, the regiment left Lincoln for San Francisco, where it arrived three days later. The 1st Nebraska was assigned to the Third Independent Brigade or the Philippine Expeditionary Force.

51st Iowa Volunteers at breakfast in San Fernando, Philippines.
PHOTO was taken in 1899.

The Filipino soldiers in dark uniforms were former members of the Spanish Army who had defected to the Philippine Republican Army.
Filipino American War.com

Filipino army officers under General Juan Cailles

Fallen Filipinos in a trench on the north bank of the Bagbag River
Filipino American War.com

20th Kansas Volunteers lining up for dinner at San Fernando, Philippines.
PHOTO was taken in May 1899.
Filipino American War.com

Filipino troops battle ISIS

The jihadist flag flying over the town hall
of Butig, Lanao del Sur. (Source: ABS-CBN News)

ISIS in Asia

(Long War Journal)  -  Elite Filipino troops have been deployed to the restive southern Philippines province of Lanao del Sur to wrestle back control of a town that recently fell to Islamic State-loyal forces. The group, dubbed the “Maute Group” in local media, is also called the Islamic State in Lanao.

The jihadist group captured the town of Butig on Nov. 24 after raising its flag over the town hall. The Filipino military has stated that around 300 fighters are occupying the town. Over the weekend, up to 35 members of the jihadist group and several troops were purportedly killed in clashes near the town.

According to local reports, troops from the Philippines’ elite Joint Special Operations Group have been deployed near Butig to assist regular army troops in battling the jihadist forces for control over the town. An army spokesman said that “Yes, [we started the offensive] at dawn today. The mission is to flush out the group and neutralize the enemies and to bring back normalcy to the area. Before we can achieve that, there will be a series of operations.”

Read More:
ISIS training camp in the Philippines

Earlier today, a convoy containing Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte was struck by an improvised explosive device in Marawi, the capital of Lanao del Sur. 11 people, including nine within Duterte’s security team, were wounded in the attack. Filipino authorities have stated that this attack was likely a diversionary tactic by the so-called “Maute Group.”

The Islamic State in Lanao formed earlier this year after announcing its presence on social media. It has released several videos showing clashes with Filipino troops, as well as photos showing the beheadings of captured soldiers. Many of these conflicts have occurred near Butig, which has been a highly contested area. In one photo release, members of the group were seen manning a checkpoint somewhere in Lanao del Sur, but likely near Butig.

In a video release earlier this year, it identified its leader as “Abu Hassan”, while in another video a senior leader is identified as “Abu Hafs al Mashriqi.” Mashriqi usually indicates someone from the Levantine region of the Middle East. At least one training camp has been showcased by the group, as well.

Videos and reports of Filipino groups pledging bayah (allegiance) to the Islamic State have emerged since 2014, shortly after Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, claimed the creation of a “caliphate”. 

These groups include several battalions from the Abu Sayyaf Group, including the overall leader Isnilon Hapilon, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), Ansar Khilafah in the Philippines, Islamic State in Lanao,  Jamaat al Tawhid wal Jihad (a group formerly loyal to al Qaeda), and parts of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) based in Lanao del Sur. These groups operate in several other provinces of the Philippines, including the southern areas of Basilan, South Cotabato, Sulu, Sarangani, and the northern province of Isabela.

Hapilon has been appointed the overall leader of Islamic State forces in the Philippines, according to the jihadist group’s weekly magazine Al Naba and later confirmed in a video released from Raqqah, Syria. Official Islamic State media has produced content both from and about the Philippines, including a statistical report from the Amaq News Agency.

Read More . . . .

Elite soldiers of the Philippine Army