Only two days after signing the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill into law, President Obama today signed an extension to the Ryan White Act which provides assistance and support to nearly half a million people suffering from HIV/AIDS.

“If we want to be a global leader in combatting HIV/AIDS, we need to act like it,” Obama said at the White House before signing a bill to extend the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program. Begun in 1990, the program provides medical care, medication and support services to about half a million people, most of them low-income.

The bill is named for an Indiana teenager who contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion at age 13. White went on to fight AIDS-related discrimination against him and others like him and help educate the country about the disease. He died in April 1990 at the age of 18.

His mother, Jeanne White-Ginder, attended the signing ceremony, as did several members of Congress and HIV/AIDS activists.

Obama also said he will be finalizing an order on Monday that will lift the HIV immigration and travel ban that has been in place for 20 years.

Video of the ceremony below…

My friends… it was a very good week. First hate crimes and now this. It gives one hope for the future. Let’s hope the vote in Maine doesn’t erase all that.

Update: Newsmax has removed the article, but an archived version is available here.

John L. Perry, a newspaper editor who served on the White House staffs of both LBJ and Carter, wrote in his column for rightwing news site Newsmax that the U.S. military may be considering a “bloodless” coup to overthrow President Obama.

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it.

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Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a “family intervention,” with some form of limited, shared responsibility?

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

Military intervention is what Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for “fundamental change” toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.

While Perry is sure to make it clear he is not “advocating” an overthrow of the government, he is trumpeting the notion to all that drink the kool-aid, I mean tea, and to them it makes no difference.

Expect this to be making the rounds in the MSM tomorrow.

In hardly shocking news, a Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll revealed that Southerners and Republicans buy into the birther nonsense more than anybody else. The poll asked a simple question “Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States or not?”

First by region. Note how Southerners are half as likely to believe Barack Obama is a citizen, while at least three times as likely to believe he is a foreigner, or they simply don’t have a clue.

Next by party affiliation. No real surprises here.

It seems that while perceived as a fringe movement from the outside, among Southerners, and by-and-large most Republicans, the birther movement is practically mainstream.

The poll did ask one other interesting question barely covered in the media reports. The question was “Do you believe that Africa and America were once a part of the same continent?” The results are shall we say, interesting…

After all the shitty news on DOMA today, we need a little disco to lift our spirits and fight another day (protest tomorrow anyone?). It is Pride month after all… Enjoy Shena Winchester’s new video “My Fantasy.”

I’m sorry Obama, but you are no longer invited to my party… I’m nolonger a fan.