What the Craig story is really about

Sarah Whitman on Hufpost says it very well:

...this is a man, who for his entire political career, has worked in fervor against any LGBT issues on the table. He claimed a higher moral ground while he was cruising for sex in bathrooms because... well, because his fundraising clearly depended on it. It's doubtful that a gay man in Idaho would get elected Senator but I might be wrong about that. Regardless, if he wanted to be in the closet, still stay married, be a Senator, well, I can understand all of that. It's not easy to be out, it means job discrimination, it means physical harassment and sometimes violence, it means not being able to have your loved one be your legal spouse or any of those benefits. It means, often, losing your family and friends. It's not an easy path. I can respect anyone who chooses to live in the closet on one condition:

They don't actively fight for laws in an elected office that allow for discrimination, hate and bigotry. If Senator Craig needs a pick me up every now and then from the men's room, I think that's pathetic, but ... to each his own and understand, you're going to get caught.

That's really the bottom line to this whole story. It's not about him being gay. Yes, he did break the law and chose to not go public with the story. And, as a senator who makes laws he should expected to follow them. But, if Craig were merely a closeted gay man and got caught that would be sad, but it wouldn't be the same story. The story here is that Craig has decided to live in the closet so that he doesn't have to deal with the difficulties of being an openly gay man while spending his professional life trying to outlaw the very thing that he wishes he could be. Just because he can't come to terms with his sexual orientation doesn't mean that those of us who have should be discriminated against. The hypocrisy of his professional actions compared to those of his personal life is the real story. Sadly the traditional media just seems hung up on the fact that he was trying to find sex with another man in a public bathroom and can't move on from there.

The end of summer, at least for me

So just another week here. I'm afraid there's not lots happening to talk about, but I guess that's a good thing really. The saying no news is good news definitely applies. We spent several hours last week getting the boat ready for winter. Since the new sail won't be ready until at least October, we're not going to get any sailing in before then. So, we took off all the extraneous lines, the mainsail cover, etc. We'll still spend weekends on the boat but that will be it until next spring. So, for me it feels like summer is over at this point. Forget that it's still 80 degrees outside (at 8:45 at night) I'm officially ready for autumn.

I ran across a few things on the web that I felt I wanted to talk about. As most people probably know, it's the second anniversary of Katrina hitting New Orleans. There's been some rebuilding of the area, but there is still so much to be done. Bravenewfilms has a short film showing how much of the area is still a disaster area. It's pathetic that the supposedly wealthiest nation on the earth can't even rebuild one of its cities in a timely manner. $116 billion was allocated by the feds for rebuilding the area, and of that only 30% has ended up being directed towards long-term rebuilding projects. Less than half of that 30% has been spent so far. Why isn't rebuilding one of our major cities more of a priority?

So speaking of Katrina, apparently when Bush arrived at the airport and met Mayor Nagin, he felt compelled to rub the mayor's head head. Who is this guy pretending to be President of the US? No world leader should be rubbing the head of, well, anyone in public. It's just creepy.

So everyone has probably already heard of the problems of Senator Larry Craig. However, this video with various talking heads discussing the issue is particularly nauseating. Tucker Carlson, who on his best day is about the equivalent of pond scum, actually admits to gay bashing when he was in high school and is proud of it (it happens at about 2:50 into it). What kind of moron would be proud of assaulting another human being? Should someone who's proud of committing a hate crime be allowed to remain on TV, and why should anyone take this clown's opinion seriously? To make matters worse, after he was called on it Carlson changed his story saying that he didn't really assault anyone, he just held the guy in place until the police arrived. What's wrong with people today that they feel they can say anything and then just deny it when it causes a problem? Do these kinds of people think that the rest of us are stupid and that we don't realize what they've said, in this case 12 hours before? Silly question on my part...of course they think we're stupid.

But back to Larry Craig, it's interesting that the GOP is abandoning him by calling for an ethics committee investigation, pushing him out of his committee appointments, and calling for him to resign. He's apparently poison to the GOP all of a sudden. However, barely 6 weeks ago Senator David Vitter admitted having hired a prostitute after his name showed up on a madam's customer list in D.C. Prostitution and soliciting a prostitute are both illegal in D.C. and Vitter admitted to committing the crime. Yet where are the GOP calls for an investigation and resignation from Vitter? Apparently if you cheat on your wife and commit a crime but are straight, it's okay. If you cheat on your wife and commit a crime but are gay, it's a bad bad thing and you can't play in the GOP sandbox anymore. 

C had a very interesting thought today about coming up with a new name for guys like Craig. They want to have sex with men but they are definitely not part of the gay community and we should NOT welcome them in. They've gone out of their way to demonize gay men and lesbians, try to take away what rights we do have, and tried to write hate and discrimination against gays into law. We definitely don't want to own these guys so we need something else to call them. After all, Craig was very adamant about not being gay, so let's not call him gay.

I've uploaded some new pics onto the blog. You can get to the various galleries from the links on the right. If you're reading this through RSS sorry, you'll have to visit the page. I'll be uploading some more as I get around to. I'm trying to get more of these pics online so they are visible to more than just me sitting at my PC.

General rambling, Friday edition

So another week has come and gone. It's felt like a busy week but I can't honestly name anything that would have made it so busy. Life at home is returning to normal, which is a good thing. If you're not sure what I mean you can see on my partner's blog what I'm talking about. I was in a pretty dark mood myself for a few days at the beginning of this week, but I just needed a little time to feel sorry for myself and I was done with it after that. I found it interesting that some people I tried to talk to about my mood didn't seem interested in it, or would just brush it off with "you'll feel better once Jayson is in a better mood." I thought that was awfully dismissive, but I can actually understand it. It's typical for people to not worry about someone who's being a caregiver to someone else. I've seen before and saw this week that people will only worry about the person who's dealing with the underlying issue (in this case my partner and his depression). Caregivers are supposed to just knuckle under and be strong and help everyone get through it. But who takes care of the caregiver? A lot of times no one. In my case, I was lucky. The people I reached out to (even just to chat about it briefly) who I expected to really be there for me were definitely there for me. Hearing that they understood what I was going through and also that they were concerned about me means a lot. It's really nice to have my faith in my friends confirmed. Thanks guys. Special hugs to C, R, B, B from up north, and JE (you know who you are!)

I've been meaning to write about last weekend all week but am just now getting to it. Young Frankenstein, the musical, on Saturday was great fun. I wasn't sure what to expect going in, but it was definitely a treat. The stage adaptation was done very well, even though some of the scenes were either deleted or abbreviated. No matter…it all worked perfectly well. Brooks left in the most memorable scenes and lines from the movie and the audience was appreciative of that fact. The "Puttin' on the Ritz" number was greatly expanded from the movie and it came off well; it was one of those showstopper moments on stage. I believe all the shows are sold out in Seattle but it's going to Broadway after it leaves here and I'm sure it will travel. If you're in a city where it's playing, do what you can to get tickets. Sunday afternoon we were at B & C's house for dinner and our sorta-monthly game night. Dinner was great, as always, and we played the DVD version of The Amazing Race. I'd never seen the TV show before so I didn't know what to expect. Jayson and I won, but only by a very very slim margin. It was a fun game so hopefully we'll break it out again.

This weekend I'm not exactly sure what we're doing. I think tomorrow we're going to hang out on the boat with a friend of ours that we've not seen all summer. I might get wild and measure for a new sail that I can order from someone else. Measuring it ourselves will save us about $1000 so I'm going that route this time. Maybe this time we'll actually end up with something to show for it (like a new sail!). Not sure what we're doing on Sunday, but I hope to sleep in and just veg a little bit.

Thought I'd end this ramble on an up note. This is a pretty funny satirical video on Exeter, an ex-gay organization. Worth watching for a small laugh. This morning I heard a song by the Carpenters on the Stephanie Miller show on the way to work and I cannot get it out of my head. I usually like the Carpenters (Karen had a beautiful voice) but this song is just weird for it's subject matter. I'd never heard it before, but now it won't go away. Enjoy it but be warned, it's catchy.

Words my mother taught me

My mother and I are both word geeks. Whenever we're together it's likely that the dictionary will come out. When my mother was here last month we had our typical fun with words and we ended up with three words we thought were good, that kept coming up in conversation. I'd almost forgotten them until last Saturday when I was working on the boat and they popped back into my head. So, before I forget them again, here they are:

Perspicacity - Mental acuity or sharpness. (I love this word)
Amanuensis - A scribe. This is one I had never heard before.
Dystopia- The opposite of a utopia.

One thing mom and I talked about was how people don't use "big" words much in conversation anymore, and often not even in writing. My mother has a large vocabulary and she used it when I was growing up. It obviously rubbed off on me, and I'm glad it did. She and I have tried to use words like these in conversation but it inevitably comes across as condescending. So, we're reduced to playing word games with each other. But why is is the art of language vanishing in American culture? Our language is being filtered down to the lowest common denominator. Read any newspaper or online article and there are few if any really descriptive words, let alone any challenging ones.

I would very much like if people began using more descriptive words on a regular basis. That being said, I'll toss out some "big" words that I particularly like, and use whenever I get the chance.  There may be more than one definition for each of these, but these are how I most use the words:

Plutocracy - A government of and by the wealthy.
Curmudgeonly - Being grouchy or bad-tempered.
Plebeian - Common or commonplace.
Trite - Stale, overused. (This isn't a truly big word but I don't hear it used very often)

I ran across a list compiled by the Worthless Word for the Day site. Most of these I'd not heard before, but some of them are great. Anyone else have any favorite 50 or 75 cent words they want to share?

At least we know what's important to him

So we have American involvement in another country's civil war, the economy about to take a major dive, millions of Americans without any health care, an infrastructure that is crumbling around us, a military that is stretched so thin it's at the point of breaking, and what is Dear Leader worried about? Fashion.

A two-bit newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman, wrote a style piece on Bush's attire while he's at his ranch. It's completely non-threatening and doesn't even come close to insulting him. (The article went up behind a registration wall in the last few minutes but maybe it will work for you all out there. The apparently offensive paragraphs are here.) However, with all the troubles in the world and at home, Bush decided that this article absolutely had to have his attention. He directed the White House deputy press secretary to call the author of the article and express his displeasure. Bush didn't pay this much attention to the August 6, 2001 memo entitled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." I guess the threat of a terrorist attack is nothing compared to his fashion sense being called into question. So this is the guy that's supposed to be keeping us safe? I thought he was supposed to be the hardened-by-war Mr. Tough Guy who can land on aircraft carriers while showing a big bulge. If so, that doesn't jibe with this kind of pettiness. 520 days and counting...

Friday night

It's been a very short week in a lot of ways, and I'm glad for that. Work was typical with moments of busy punctuated with moments of boredom (hence so many blog posts since Wednesday). I've been a little bit of a slug at home. I developed a new habit of taking a short nap each afternoon which has turned into a 2 hour nap each afternoon. Today was closer to 2.5 hours. I can't say that I'm not enjoying it and I apparently need the rest. I've also gotten into the habit of driving to work each day instead of riding the bus. I know it's not the environmentally friendly thing to do, especially with my truck not getting the best mileage (or is that yardage?) on the road. But, I get to sleep almost 1/2 hour later in the morning to get to work at the same time, plus I get home almost 30 minutes earlier too. The biggest reason is that over the last couple of months my buses have gotten busier and busier to the point that I rarely get a seat anymore. So, instead of being able to use the time to relax and read I end up hanging on and constantly stepping out of the way. Yeah, seats will open up but being the gentleman I try to be, I can't plop my butt down when there's a woman or someone older than me who needs a seat. I also like the few minutes in the morning and afternoon to myself in the truck; it's really some of the only time I get to myself during the day. I realize I'm rationalizing here but it's been very nice to hop in the truck in the morning, listen to my music or talk radio, and be at work in less than 10 minutes. The only downside is that I have to pay to park.

Wow, that was a lot about my work commute. On another note I'm hoping to spend a few hours on the boat tomorrow doing some minor projects. Sadly we're probably not going to sail the boat at all this summer. The sail I ordered 6 weeks ago never materialised. The guy from the sail loft I'd chosen has simply vanished and I can't get hold of anyone else there. I'm glad I didn't pay them anything! However, we're left with a boat with only one sail, and that wouldn't get us very far very fast. I'll just start the process again very soon and just expect to sail next spring. Our usage on the boat has gone down steadily over the last two summers and I hope it's not something that will continue into next year.

For the rest of the weekend we've got a show tomorrow night; we're going to see Young Frankenstein. I'm really looking forward to it since it's always been one of my favorite movies. The reviews I've read have been favorable so far, and I'm also anxious to see Meagan Mullally perform live. On Sunday afternoon we're heading to some friends' for dinner and game night. We're doing it earlier than usual but seeing as it's Sunday they agreed to move up the time. Our semi-regular game nights really are a lot of fun and are usually a highlight to the week, if not the entire month.

I think that's all I've got right now. It's getting late and I needs my sleep. I'll write something about the show later this weekend

The "librul media" at work again

From Waldo Jaquith 

"Black is white"; no, it’s black.

I love this:

The White House maintained Monday that the surveillance measure signed into law by President Bush over the weekend did not give the government any sweeping new powers to eavesdrop on Americans without court warrants.

[...]

The new measure, signed into law by the president on Sunday, allows intelligence officials to eavesdrop without a warrant...

I don’t know if it’s the Times or the White House, but somebody’s got a black sense of humor.

And here I thought we could trust anything that appears in the newspapers. I wish the NY Times would simply decide what we're supposed to think about this instead of trying to play both sides.

More religious fun

Nice christian love in this press release. If you do something wrong and get caught, pray to have those people die. Seems like a good use of prayer to me.

The background is that this pastor issued a press release on church letterhead endorsing a presidential candidate. He also endorsed the same candidate on his weekly church-owned radio show. According to IRS rules, churches can't do that and maintain their tax-exempt status. So, when an organization calls him on it, does the pastor admit he did wrong and apologize? No, he decides that he is being victimized and calls for God to smite his enemies in order to protect the Church with a big C...he seems to think that being called out for his illegal activities is a threat to christians everywhere. How low will these people go...?

Scary

This guy is a former "gay drunk", according to his own description. There are so many things wrong with this that it's best to let it speak for itself.



You have to watch some of his other vids as well. The abstinence one has a particularly catchy tune. But who doesn't think this guy practices abstinence only because it's been forced on him?

Is this what we're reduced to as a country?

This is a really amazing but sad story. It's amazing in that it happened in the first place. This man obviously felt he had no other options in terms of treating his wife, so he killed her. The woman really wasn't very old but had obviously been sick for a while and without insurance how could anyone afford to care for a terminally ill loved one? It's really appalling that in one of the wealthiest countries on earth, the last "superpower" in fact, health care is in such a sorry state that someone finds that his only option when a loved one gets ill is to kill her. Health care should be one of the first things that is funded by the government. Shouldn't we expect a country that will spend $200 million a day to occupy a foreign country and take part in their civil war to make a priority of keeping its population healthy? The money is obviously there to spend on huge no-bid contracts to companies like Haliburton who are doing nothing more than stealing from the government, and therefore from us. At the same time the government is being outrageously wasteful when it comes to purchasing items. How much health care could this woman have received for the $998,798 that we paid a supplier to provide two tiny washers to the government? The argument that single-payer health care would require a tax increase falls on its face when wasteful spending like this enters into the equation. Again, the money is there but our current government has different priorities for it.