Shut Up Fool! Awards-Fourth of July Weekend Edition

It's Independence Day Weekend, and we celebrate the 234th anniversary of our Declaration of independence from Great Britain.

Thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Alex it's going to be a soggy one. It's rained for the last two days, and while that's a bummer, the good news is the temperatures here in H-town have been in the 70's for the last few days.

Speaking of celebrations, lets move on to determine who gets this week's Shut Up Fool Award.

The usual suspects were in the running, Beck, O'Reilly and Palin. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), Fox News, Matt Drudge, and Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ)

But this week's award is a group one, and it goes to the Republican Party.

They trashed Justice Thurgood Marshall, apologized to a foreign corporation (BP) whose Exxon Valdez sized oil spill has jacked up the Gulf and the livelihoods of thousands of people along the Gulf coast, cut off unemployment benefits in the middle of a recession. and fought Wall Street reform.

Yep, profits over people. It's the GOP way.

And they think the reality based American public is going to give them another chance to frack up the country in the November midterm elections?

Republican Party, shut up fools!

Happy Birthday Sylvia!

Today is the birthday of the mother of the trans rights movement as we call her, Sylvia Rae Rivera.

She was born in New York City on this date in 1951 to parents of Puerto Rican and Venezuelan extraction, and was a founding member of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance.

She also founded with her friend Marsha P. Johnson STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), a group focused on helping homeless young street transwomen.

She was a Stonewall Veteran in addition to being a loud and persistent voice railing against the attempts by the gay community to erase and exclude transpeople, people of color and low income people from the nascent TBLG movement and civil rights legislation.

I had the pleasure of meeting her in May 2000 and having a long conversation with her about some of those events.

We also agreed to disagree about Lyndon B. Johnson.

Sylvia lost her battle with cancer in February 2002, but her memory will live on through the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and the MCC's Sylvia Rivera Food Pantry named in her honor.

In 2005, the corner of Christopher and Hudson streets in New York's Greenwich Village neighborhood where she organized much of her activism was renamed "Rivera Way" in her honor.

MAGNET also had some commentary about the Mother of the Trans Rights Movement as well.

2010 Wimbledon Williams Watch-Serena In Finals

The haters aren't happy, but for the tenth time in eleven years, there will be a Williams sister in the Wimbledon Ladies' singles final on Saturday.

The Number One seed took out Petra Kvitova in straight sets 7-6(7-5), 6-2 to return to the final for the third straight year. She is seeking her fourth Wimbledon title and her 13th overall. All three of her previous Wimbledon titles were won against Venus in 2002, 2003 and 2009.

Serena will get a chance to exact revenge against Russia's Vera Zvonareva, who with Elena Vesnina upset her and Big Sis in the Ladies' doubles quarterfinals.

I hope she does. I was less than thrilled with the haters posting on the Wimbledon website following their quarterfinal doubles loss and posted my own comment.

I guess they'll be wearing their pointed hoods Saturday as they root for the latest Great Eastern European Tennis Glamazon Hope to attempt to derail a Williams sister from picking up another Venus and Serena Rosewater Dish.