3Thom

Capricous Poets

2011-05-14T01:08:00.001-05:00

Capricous poet's shout definitives, rubbing the moon on their lips, lying to their publics.

Rumi puts rocks in his pockets & prays for a strict instructor.

Thoreau instructs himself while skipping pebbles across Walden

Rumi & Thoreau, both knitting wools at night—

Capricous poets doing slight of word tricks are unsure—hoping to convince their readers to throw praise bearing the likeness of stone.

Boietourous poets hide, hating themselves, knowing their own face, terrorfied that masters will burn out their tongues with molten rocks.

Basho fishes pebbles out of Walden, steals stones from Rumi's pockets, leaving us rock gardens of 17 percisely chosen, Basho at midnight also darning.

Dreams & memories

2009-11-10T11:16:00.003-06:00

At 3am, I dream —
with a pillow or a pen —
language - the only
memory i have

Google in the throes of complete mental breakdown: Official Gmail Blog: Gmail leaves beta, launches "Back to Beta" Labs feature

2009-07-07T12:39:00.001-05:00

In my opinion - this has got to be one of the stupidest fucking labs ever. Google is having the dumb hardcore this summer.

Official Gmail Blog: Gmail leaves beta, launches "Back to Beta" Labs feature

Google Ruins Gmail for 200+ users at my company

2009-07-06T18:34:00.002-05:00

Official Gmail Blog: Labels: drag and drop, hiding, and more

From the AFL-CIO Now Blog: May Day: Fight for Workers’ Values

2009-05-01T16:51:00.002-05:00

I've just got to share how much I appreciate my brothers & sisters of labor past, present and future for making 8 to 12 hours of my day, 5 days a week more humanizing and more rewarding. We are blessed that folks coming before us fought with their lives for a two day weekend, an 8hr day and an end to child labor. We should fight for our brothers and sisters in other countries so that they too can work w/ dignity.

How I rolled into work fighting the Swine Flu

2009-05-01T13:02:00.001-05:00

Going Home in Pieces

2009-04-07T20:09:00.004-05:00

Climbing into my car - we'll be slouching westward down Lamar as if in the wake of some rough beast departed after being bored searching something untouched to corrupt. YES! The workers have left for home already. Home - my own house of meat & bread - X marks the spot on a map sketched of seconds & syllables lost - the parchment parched and my time's up. Even in pieces - the center's held.

To have such genius, Apple's moronic copy protection belongs in a group home.

2009-03-15T20:13:00.006-05:00

I keep my iTunes library on a NAS device, so when I blew out the XP install on my home PC and installed Windows 7, everything was going great but I figured that would change when I tried to sync my iPhone. To my surprise, all seemed good. I was able to sync fine for a week. Then I added a video. Next thing I know, iTunes was wiping my iPod of all my legally purchased music.

Kindle for iPhone: An Open Letter To Amazon.

2009-03-14T16:16:00.000-05:00

I'll save my final judgement until after reading my first impulse buy
using the Kindle iPhone app - but my initial thoughts are these:

The pages turn too slow - especially compared to the Stanza reader
which I love reading books with on my iPhone.

Additionally - the ebooks at Amazon are priced way too high -
especially for folks like me that like to collect, catalog and
organize the physical books themselves - but also love the convenience
of ebooks.

I have friends that prefer ebooks - and in a situation where the
reader doesn't care to also posses the physical item - I don't think
the prices are too high for them. For me - I have a set dollar range
that I will spend on any given work by an author.

I'd like to suggest bundle pricing so that readers like me could
purchase the physical book and for a couple of dollars more also get
the ebook downloaded. Amazon is 100 times more likely to get an extra
$3 out of me for every book purchased than the full cost of the book
times two. I think that bundling would cement Amazon as THE ebook
distributor - serving well publishing houses, authors, readers and
Amazon's bottemline.

Without a bundling option, I may be forced to do what technical folks
like myself have done for years - find a pirated digitized copy on the
web or in our circle of friends - and then - MAYBE purchase a paper
copy if the mood or moral obligation moves us.

- -
Thom
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
. . . sent from mobile device

Apple attacks customers in its typical control-freakish manner.

2009-03-06T12:08:00.005-06:00

In an article, "Unauthorized iPhone app stores emerging", at CNET News, I came across this little gem:

[Apple] filed a 27-page statement with the U.S. Copyright Office, making the case that modifying the software on the iPhone is illegal.

Apple's control-freakish assault against iPhone customers is why I'll not be purchasing anymore Apple devices nor anymore iTunes content. Fuck'em

I'll purchase content from Amazon and will adjust to using some form of Android phone or the Palm Pre once my AT&T contract is up.

And while I'm at it - fuck the cell phone carriers for their device crippling, consumer manipulating heavy-handed bullshit too.

It's bad enough that corporations seek to control many of us 8 to 10 hours a day 5 to 7 days a week on the job - what gives them the right to control us in our leisure time or to control how we communicate or control how we capture our moments or otherwise use computerized devices that we legally pay for?!?!

So - Fuck Apple. And Fuck AT&T. And fuck out-of-control corporate assholes.

Introduction: How Big Media will Kill Hulu & Urinate on Viewers

2009-02-25T10:59:00.010-06:00

1 Guy, 1 media PC
For the 3 ppl that might have actually come across my Hulu rant about how FX pulled back episodes of Always Sunny In Philadelphia, - I had thought about editing out the profanity - but I decided against it - my little blog bit captured in near real-time how my frustrations with big media companies (and how they treat customers) is growing into a well fed animosity. I actually pulled up my blog on my media center PC, and hammered out the rant while my wife got up to go play games on her PC.

FX: creating ill will and disengagement.
That night - we were going to sit down together and watch some Hulu - meaning commercials too and in doing so, help monitize FX content that I would likely never purchase on DVD due to certain personal quality criteria that has to be met before I purchase television content on DVD. Instead, I ranted about why FX is the suck and robbing itself of revenue and marketing data while my wife just opted out and found something else to do with her budgeted entertainment time.

Hulu is adrift in the treacherous icy yellow waters of Big Media Execs
Apparently - how FX decided to strangle access to their content was just the tip of the iceberg. Recent strong arm tactics by content racketeers have further weakened Hulu as the Internet TV destination.

Jason Kilar, Hulu CEO, a master of CEO-blogging (IMO), expertly explained to readers of the Hulu blog how the content owners (ABC, FOX, FX et cetera) are bullying Hulu to block Boxee viewing. Like a freaking zen-master, he said:

Later this week, Hulu's content will no longer be available through Boxee. While we never had a formal relationship with Boxee, we are under no illusions about the likely Boxee user response from this move. This has weighed heavily on the Hulu team, and we know it will weigh even more so on Boxee users.
Our content providers requested that we turn off access to our content via the Boxee product, and we are respecting their wishes. While we stubbornly believe in this brave new world of media convergence — bumps and all — we are also steadfast in our belief that the best way to achieve our ambitious, never-ending mission of making media easier for users is to work hand in hand with content owners.

He goes on to say:

Our mission to make media dramatically easier and more user-focused has not changed and will not change. We will not stop until we achieve it and we are sober in our assessment that we have such a long way to go.
The maddening part of writing this blog entry is that we realize that there is no immediate win here for users. Please know that we take very seriously our role of representing users such that we are able to provide more and more content in more and more ways over time.

I really feel like Jason is in there fighting for Hulu & Boxee users. In a couple of years, looking back, I am going to double over laughing if television executives fuck up the streaming television revolution the way the Recording Industry completely failed to turn the Napster/MP3/P2P into the gold mine it should have been.

In the next few days, I will rant further on how cable & network television content companies are

Alienating early adopters instead of embracing them and leveraging them as "raving fans" to produce tons of free marketing, eyeballs for advertising.
Poisoning a real opportunity to collect market-segmented viewing data that could line their pockets in platinum.
Pushing me (my money/time/fanfare) and others like me towards other forms of entertainment that can be enjoyed on my terms instead of the moronic control-freakish terms of TV execs.

Only 5 rotating shows of Always Sunny? Fuck Hulu!

2009-01-12T23:15:00.007-06:00

I should say, Fuck the Networks especially FX. I loved Hulu - I loved Hulu hard - but fuck all the show restrictions. I'll just get all the divx files from a friend. Hulu was a great way to make advertising money and collect TONS of OPT-IN data for the Networks but they try too goddamn hard to control everything - so screw it - I'll go back to divx files, no commercials and I'll only purchase the DVDs of shows that I totally love like the HBO and Showtime stuff, Deathnote, Battlestar et cetera.

When I buy DVDs, the networks don't get the real time opt-in data on my viewing habits and if I pay cash - they don't even know who purchased the DVDs. What a bunch of morons. Using Hulu, they can fire Neilson, get better data cheaper and STILL get ad revenue - BUT NO! They have to completely f u c k i t u p!

Network Solutions - More Evil Practices

2008-12-22T13:25:00.005-06:00

Okay - so the first week of December, I begin planning how I am going to break all of my companies domain names out of the Network Solution's domain name eternal jail. I unlocked the domains, asked for my special code that gives me permission to move these domains and I waited about 2 weeks fro the holidays when things were very slow for us so that I could have the least disruption during the transfer. After I waited hours for my "Authorization Code Request" - I went to the domain registrar my company uses to begin the process they required. They send me an email with a link good until Dec. 24 that I would use to trigger the actual transfer.

It seems that NetSol automatically locked my domains against my explicit wishes. I explicitly UNLOCKED the domains. Against my wishes, Network Solutions locked these domains back. Complicating things for my company that will ultimately lead to lost revenue.

So today I followed the my registrar's link and I am told - well - wait - just see for your self:

The annoying beauty of this is that I unlocked it around Dec 9 and that was how I was even able to begin the whole stupidly corrupt process - my registrar makes the process easy - but
Network Solutions has so abused its powers and so abused its customers with tricky "add-on" spam pages whilst one is simply trying to renew a domain name or complete any other transaction - they could give away domains and I'd not use them. They are straight up Internet vampires sucking the life force out of the Internet (in my opinion anyway.)

BBB Complaint on Earthlink TrueVoice

2008-12-14T15:31:00.001-06:00

Since 2006, I have had billing issues, product & service issues and customer service issues with Earthlink concerning their TrueVoice service.

I've been overcharged for a total phone bill of nearly $1500 for 3 yrs. of messed up, malfunctioning service that TrueVoice never gets corrected. I've wasted almost 40hrs on the phone with their customer service and tech support staff - constantly being promised things that never happen.

BILLING ISSUES:
From the start I was charged for 2 telephone lines when I only wanted 1 line. I wanted my home phone number ported - they messed that up, said they would set up another number until they ported my number and they wouldn't bill me for 2 lines. I constantly had to call to get the 2nd line taken off my acct and to be credited for the incorrect billing. Once my number ported, they would not or could not cancel the unnecessary line. And they continued to bill me. They would promise me credits and that they would fix the issue. They credited me into the future and 6 months later, I would realize that I was being charged again for a line I begged them to disconnect. They would promise me credits and a fix. To this very day, they have never fixed the issue. My bill and my phone service still isn't right.

PRODUCT & SERVICE ISSUES:
When they ported my home telephone number, they ported it as a secondary line and have told me that they can not make my home number the primary line. To this very day, this is still a problem and I overcharged nearly $20 a month (plus taxes et cetera).

Off and on over the past 2 yrs - for months at a time, the TrueVoice voice mail service would not work. Every time I call, they tell me it is a problem with my router/modem et cetera. The voicemail is supposed to work even if my house and all the equipment in it is destroyed. A fundamental appeal to me of True Voice phone service was that my voicemail would not be tied down to my physical utilities & location.

Off and on over the past 3 yrs, outbound calls would not work even though I had a verified working Internet connection. Sometimes, it would randomly start working again without a call to Earthlink. Sometimes I would call Earthlink, I'd walk through their trouble shooting steps at my house 3 or 4 times to no avail because they couldn't fix it and then a few hours later or the next day, magically it would start working again.

Off and on, with more frequency than the outbound issues, inbound callers could not get through to my home nor my TrueVoice voicemail - often dialing my telephone number just to be automatically disconnected.

CUSTOMER SERVICE ISSUES:
Upon understanding the complexity of the issue or reviewing my account history, the customer service rep or tech support person would "accidentally" hang up on me. This happened almost every time I called.

Sometimes in the same scenario as above, I'd be placed on hold for 40 to 120 minutes and then hung up on.

I've been continually promised credits and solutions. Sometimes I'd only get partial credit to my account and even then, I'd be improperly billed in months following despite the promises I was made. I've never - to this day - received a full & proper account credit nor have I received a solution to this completely annoying and costly problem.

Wish List

2008-12-10T21:08:00.000-06:00

What I'd really want is for Deadwood to not have been canceled and for a leisurely life structured around learning, technology, language arts and world travel.

In the place of that - I'd like super powers for mad hi-jinx and justice.

I'd like an exercise plan that involved surfing, walking to coffee houses and touring modern/ancient Asian cities.

I'd like to scrotum chop Allen Ginsberg for writing some of the best American poetry ever.

I'd like to be able to hardware hack my own worse nightmare.

I'd like to robo-cookie my way into a Showtime feature TV series.

I wish I could wake up fluent in Chinese carpentry, home decoration and zombie curing techniques.

I want mass transit like they have in Chicago or New York so I can read and sleep on my way to work.

I want snow for weeks and big waves in the spring/summer from my upstairs window - can you hear it?

I remember the good times I am about to live through.

There are friends that feed my dynamo - and there are friends that keep me out of jail.

I know more about 802.11 a/b/g than anyone I know except maybe SL - he learned everything a geek needs to know in the wilds of Africa hunting big game with home made spears woven together by sacred grasses.

I don't mean to be mean - I'm just trying to be median but I don't have the range.

A Consumer-Riot Poem on the Torture levied by Network Solutions

2008-12-02T21:22:00.002-06:00

After I sacrifice the appropriate offerings to the Domain Transfer gods,

After I punish myself in the flesh destroying penance-process called the Network Solutions domain management interface,

After I offer up days upon days of my professional life upon the diabolical alter of unfriendly, anti-interoperable, closed-system cesspooling exit procedures - all the while being tortured by smarmy customer-hating lies about service and ease of use,

After the truly masochistic self-defiling regimen of buerocratic extortion that borders on the Satanic -

Yay! once my domain names and my soul are free of the inhuman, life draining, skull violating chains of Network Solutions -

I will need to bath myself in paint thinner, bleach and TOR source code just to wash away the gangrenous rot -
the vile cancer on the Internet -
nay, the foul binary bacterium eating away my flesh -

That terrible abomination - Network Solutions ...

Seriously - Network Solutions is one of the most unfriendly user experiences I've ever been involved with on the Net. I had hoped that things might have improved since the mid-90s. If I have clients that have domains imprisoned at Network Solutions, I charge them an additional fee per domain just to move the domain name to a registrar that doesn't actually feast on the souls of children. I've moved a lot of domains, but transferring domains away from Network Solutions is like doing battle covered in cock roaches at the bottom of an outhouse-pit located on the equator.

The Palin's member of a secessionist party founded by Iranian sponsored anti-American Joe Vogler

2008-10-23T18:51:00.016-05:00

I really enjoy David Talbot's writing at Salon. Back in September he wrote about strong Alaskan anti-Americanism in his coverage of Lynette Clark and the Alaskan Independence Party:

"Country First!" That's the Republican battle cry this presidential season. But don't try selling that slogan to Lynette Clark, chairwoman of the Alaskan Independence Party, whose motto is "Alaska First -- Alaska Always."

In Freedom fighter not only does he spend time on Clark, he explores the ties between the AIP, Alaskans and the Palins.

In his more recent opinion piece The Palins' un-American activities - just as in his eyebrow raising article Freedom fighter (mentioned above), he digs into just how radical the AIP is, how anti-American the Palin family seems to be and questions why the Palin's are getting a free pass from the so called "liberal media." He opens the opinion piece with a quote by the AIP's founder.

"My government is my worst enemy. I'm going to fight them with any means at hand."

[...] The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Inconveniently for Palin, that's the very same secessionist party that her husband, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska governor earlier this year. ("Keep up the good work," Palin told AIP members. "And God bless you.")

Between the two pieces by Talbot, he makes a strong case for why the Palin family should be greeted with skepticism by anyone that loves America. In Freedom fighter he wrote:

The Alaskan Independence Party burst into the national spotlight when Clark released a statement reporting that Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd, were both members. After the ensuing uproar, Clark issued an apology and correction, declaring that only Todd was an actual member of the AIP. (He belonged from 1995 to 2002.) The McCain campaign put out a statement denying the vice presidential nominee had ever been a member, but it said nothing about Todd Palin. Since then, other AIP members have offered conflicting information about Sarah Palin's affiliation with the party. And earlier this year, as governor, Palin addressed the AIP convention, stating that she shared the party's "vision."

The article gives background into the AIP current leader and Sarah Palin's ties to this America-hating group. More juiciness:

Last October, at a gathering of various anti-U.S. groups in Chattanooga, Tenn., called the Secessionist Convention, Clark's husband, Dexter, expressed hope that Palin's political rise was a positive sign for their independence movement.

[...]

"[T]here's a lot of talk about her moving up. She was an AIP member, before she got the job as the mayor of a small town. That was a nonpartisan job. But to get along to go along, she eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics ... And she's pretty well sympathetic, because of her former membership."

It is amazing to me that Conservatives are letting the Palins get away with this without really coming clean. The founder of the AIP - back in 1993 had his efforts sponsored by IRAN! Yes - Iran! WTF (you might ask your self) is someone like Palin doing on a ticket that chants "Country First?" Maybe Palin is the true Manchurian Candidate. From Talbot's later piece:

Vogler's greatest moment of glory was to be his 1993 appearance before the United Nations to denounce United States "tyranny" before the entire world and to demand Alaska's freedom. The Alaska secessionist had persuaded the government of Iran to sponsor his anti-American harangue.

That's right ... Iran. The Islamic dictatorship. The taker of American hostages. The rogue nation that McCain and Palin have excoriated Obama for suggesting we diplomatically engage. That Iran.

Anyone that wants to bring up Obama's stretched ties to Bill Ayers needs to explain how this isn't more of a smoking gun of anti-Americanism: The Palin's were party for years and years to an organization that sought out and got sponsorship from the Islamic dictatorship of Iran for an opportunity to denounce the United States on the world stage - in 1993!!!!!

As far as I know, the Palin's haven't denounced the AIP or their views.

Community Website Tool Recommendations

2008-10-20T18:25:00.005-05:00

A friend of mine asked this question:

Anyone have recommendations on good tools or ones to avoid (doesn’t even have to be free but relatively inexpensive) with the following features: blog, calendar, forum, file upload/download, gallery, user management, and ideally multiple newsletter management and distribution?

And this is what I wrote:

For a very simple, no install of software on a web server type setup, the free flavor of Google Apps for Domains might do the trick.
Blog: Use Google Apps Sites and you could have the "Official" blog and also give your members their own simplified personal blogs.
Calendar(s): Public & Private calendars using Google Apps Calendar
Forums: Little tricky, but you could use Google Groups and embed the group into one of your Sites using iframes... once you find the how-to page in Google Apps group forum, it is super easy.
File upload/download: built-in feature of Google Apps Sites
Gallery: This might be easily doable with Picassa but I've never used it. I know that Google Apps Sites has built in support for adding Picassa galleries into a page via their super easy WYSIWYG page editor and easy to embed object/widget thingies
User Management: Built-in admin control panel provides super-easy user management, user email creation
Newsletters: Using Google Apps Sites & the built-in email list function, this would be fairly easy.

I closed with this:

Since Jan., I've been using Google Apps for Domains as a solution for my company:
Awesome Email (excellent IMAP, Spam annihilation, crazy storage quotas!)
Group calendaring (Outlook 2003 sucks debil balls)
Corporate Instant Messaging (Google Talk is even being used in a DIY fashion amongst some of our managers as voice solution between our main office and our branch offices.)
Multiple Intranet/Wiki type sites using Google Sites.
Collaborative, real time, access controlled, in the cloud document sharing (mostly spreadsheets)

I forgot to mention that Google Apps for Domains works pretty well with an iPhone and other smart phone devices.

Poem: Systems Administration

2008-10-16T20:25:00.003-05:00

Do you hear the parrots singing? It is the sound that bytes make when they stop getting hugs – this is the tune of post-industrial feudalism expressed as maple syrup. I know what you are thinking and we’re both wrong. A little poem for the rock stokers that are getting brailed out one rough bump at a time:

This is the Song My Hard Drive Sings

I have hard boiled

eggs in a plastic bowl.

The plastic bowl has a lid

that I typically latch tightly down.

Sometimes I like to watch water (melon sugar) molecules

break apart into two parts hydrogen one part oxygen.

Electricity is essentially electrons playing Duck Duck Goose.

Somewhere here,

despite the meanings of these words,

there is nothing

and I like it very much thank you.

Memphis, TN 2008-10-16

Night Wedding

2008-10-03T19:13:00.002-05:00

Syncing Calendars & Contacts between Thunderbird, Google Apps & iPhone 3G

2008-10-03T17:34:00.011-05:00

I use Zindus to sync my contacts from Thunderbird w/ my Google Apps for Domains email acct and it seems to work pretty good.

To deal with duplicates (since Google Contacts freaks out on certain kinds of duplicated info) - I use this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/2505

To get my Google Apps contacts into my iPhone, I love Nuevasync so far. I am also testing out myFUNAMBOL ... for syncing over 3G to "the cloud".

For those of you still burdened with Outlook 2003 or 2007 calendars, I just came across the tool that Google provides - looks promising: Google Calendar Sync

As far as duplicates - the TB de-duplicator add-on that I use goes deep looking for duplicate email addresses, full names and phone numbers - not just exact dups - AND - rather than just deleting an exact dup, they give you an interface by which to compare a dup pair, select the one you want to keep, also allowing you to cut and paste info from one contact to the other before you eliminate the dup.

If you decide to keep both contacts of the suspected dup pair, you just skip it and go to the next one. One of the smartest approaches to de-dupping contacts I've ever seen.

http://88.80.13.160 - Corrupt judges can't stop a free press on the web.

2008-02-21T00:57:00.005-06:00

http://88.80.13.160

Anti-gay Conservatives That Are Gay

2007-11-26T19:53:00.004-06:00

It amazes me how obsessed many conservative Christians are with homosexuality. The most bizarre, mind blowing thing to me is how virulent their criticism is towards any kind of sexuality not expressly sanctioned by their narrow reading of sacred texts.

The sheer weight - the actual rigor of their judgment against healthy expressive sexuality bears itself out in some incredibly dramatic displays of old fashioned, New Testament era hypocrisy. For facts and figures on the top anti-gay Republicans exposed as being, if not homosexual, at least homoflexible, see The List
(Note: I have also included the list in this blog entry as it isn't conveniently located) at Blogactive.com

Even more bizarre to me is that despite the fact that Jesus, according to Christian scripture, spent very little time speaking against "sexual sin" - these supposed followers of Christ seem more concerned about the sexuality of others than their own moral bankruptcy. Christ had almost nothing negative to say to those whom he met that operated outside the sexual norm of the time. But Jesus did rail - even condemn political and religious hypocrites. Jesus called the religious conservatives of His time "snakes and vipers."

The sad truth is, these conservative Christians obsessed with other people's sexuality have allowed their own personal hang-ups to skew and twist the Truth of the Scriptures into a dark condemnation of their own souls.

So - let me be clear - personally, I don't think it is moral nor just to expose a person not wanting to be exposed as a homosexual. But I also don't think it is moral or just to promote an agenda of intolerance and discrimination - and I definitely welcome the exposure of a politician's hypocrisy when it comes to supposed "moral values" - so, in working through the ethics of outing closeted anti-gay homosexuals - such an odd pairing of words - maybe I should say:

... So, in working through the ethics of outing closeted homosexuals that exploit homophobia, bigotry and ignorance to further their political careers, I personally welcome the exposure of these and other GOP sexual hypocrites ...

And to throw a little curve ball into the whole Republican obsession w/ sexuality - do a Google search on GOP sex crimes - Wow! No wonder these folks are so alarmist when it comes to pornography, sexuality and shielding children from such realities. It seems that they are literally besieged by sexual predators masquerading as moral paragons of righteousness.

Parents, the safest thing for your kids might be to keep them away from conservative churches, to shield them from Heritage Foundation events and keep an eagle eye on your GOP neighbors.

Anyway - now for the list of homophobic homos I copied from Blogactive.com

US Representatives
Rep. Ed Schrock (VA)
Rep. David Dreier (CA)
Rep. James McCrery (LA)
Rep. Mark Foley (FL)

US Senators
Sen Larry Craig (ID)

Senior GOP Staff
Jay Timmons, NRSC
Dan Gurley, RNC
Jay Banning, RNC
Brian Walton, NRSC, RNC

Senior Senate Staffers
Robert Traynham, Santorum
Jonathan Tolman, Inhofe
Kirk Fordham, Martinez
Dirk Smith, Lott
John Reid, Allen
Paul Unger, Allen
Linus Catignani, Frist

Senior House Staffers
Jim Conzelman, Oxley
Lee Cohen, Hart
Robert O'Conner, King
Pete Meachum, Brown-Waite

Bush Staff
Israel Hernandez
Jeff Berkowitz

NY Officials
Vincent Gentile, NYC
Helene Weinstein, NYS Assembly

The rest...
Ed Koch, NYC Mayor
Jennifer Helms-Knox, Judge
Armstrong Williams, Radio host
Matt Drudge, Headline writer
Steve Kreseski, MD Gov.
Chip DiPaula, MD Gov.
Lee LaHaye, CWA
Richard Grennell, U.N.
John Schlafley, Eagle Forum

For the record, I think sex is wonderful and that it should be shared as part of a well balanced loving relationship between any number of sentient consenting adult beings.

As a heterosexual, I am not frightened nor am I intimidated by the sexuality and/or love interests of others. If my neighbor has three husbands and two wives in some bizarre poly-sexual communal marriage/union, why is it any of my business? If they don't pay their share of their taxes, or their kids clog up the street with toys and or the adults park up the street with automobiles, then I care, but not because of their sexual/love lifestyle choices.

I celebrate gay marriage as a new, beautiful, liberating facet to an ancient social contract. And let's not deceive ourselves - despite the romantic and redeeming qualities of the social contract we know as marriage, in some places and times through out history, "marriage" had been exploited to crush the human soul. It does the heart well to know that people are finally gaining the freedom to express their love and commitment to each other through such rites and rituals we call "marriage" - an expression with such a complicated, new & yet ancient meaning.

Any concept of marriage worth defending has this as its core value: Love drives the institution of marriage - not one particular sexuality or religious faith over another. And extend that farther - Love, not birth relationships, drives the social institution of family. We are all the same species, and the evolutionary drive of genetic and memetic propagation is achieved whether we define family in a strict "so-and-so begat so-and-so" manner or we define family in a broader social grouping along identity and proximity.

Conservapedia is obsessed with Homosexuality

2007-11-26T18:20:00.000-06:00

A friend of mine sent me the following link: http://www.conservapedia.com/Special:Statistics

I went there, thinking I'd see stats on Conservative economics or conservative successes - what I saw instead were numbers on exactly how starved conservatives are for anything having to do with Homosexuality.

And as far as I can tell, no one at Conservapedia is being coerced or intimidated by black men in uniforms - alas, in the privacy of their own sanctified offices and home computers, Conservapedia readers just can't get enough of the Gay.

Why Do Some of My Loved Ones Fall for GOP liars?

2007-11-09T18:08:00.006-06:00

Once again, the supposed "religious" right spreads lies to smear a politician that they pathologically hate. How many of you got the "A picture is worth a thousand words---or more" email deriding Senator Obama for allegedly refusing to say the pledge of allegiance? It amazes me how little of the truth these right wing hate mongers (the originators of these distortions) actually seem to know.

The person that originated the lying email forwarded to me says that he or she actually went to Snopes and verified the veracity of the claim - the claim being that Time Magazine printed that Obama refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States. This is what is amazing to me. Either someone has problems in the reading comprehension department or they are lying on purpose. Snopes denies the claim flat out.

Don't believe me? Look at the picture I posted above in this article. It is a screen grab of the Snopes web page saying, and I quote, "We could not find any information substantiating the claim [...] that Senator Obama 'refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance.'" If the screen grab image is too small - try clicking on it - it should open a larger version.

And yet, the email said (all caps and everything), according to the Time article that " ... he REFUSED TO NOT ONLY PUT HIS HAND ON HIS HEART DURING THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE, BUT REFUSED TO SAY THE PLEDGE."

For a group of people that are supposedly such authorities on the truth, a large majority of folks from the religious right seem like hateful rumor mongers and liars to me. Personally, I don't know how people can seek the heart of God and still be so ready to believe hateful lies.

Once again, it seems that certain people I love are so ready to believe the worst about someone that dares to have a different perspective than their own world view.

Once again, certain people I love are so bent on believing right wing ideology without a single bit of critical thinking or expressed self reflection, that they are willing to believe lies, rumors and half-truths just so long as the lies reinforce their fragile belief systems. The Truths I know are strong enough to withstand hard questions.

What is it about right wing thinking that makes large numbers of people so vicious, mean-spirited and judgmental? And more than that, why do people that espouse right wing thinking seem to believe so strongly in their rightness, that they will behave as if anything they say or believe must be true without question since they are so righteous and true? Reminds me alot of the arrogant self righteous Pharisees of Jesus' time.

Facts are, Snopes says that there is no evidence that they found to support the lies about Senator Obama's non-recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance - here is the quote one more time:
We could not find any information substantiating the claim (made in the text accompanying some versions of the e-mailed photo) that Senator Obama "refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance." The URL for the Snopes page is http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/anthem.asp

To get technical, the email below says that the picture shows Obama not saluting during the Pledge of Allegiance, BUT, as I learned from Snopes, it actually displays Obama not saluting during the National Anthem. Snopes mentions the US Code (Flag Code) but after spending about 30 min. reading through the US Code ( http://www.access.gpo.gov/uscode/title4/chapter1_.html ), it only addresses conduct during the Pledge of Allegiance. There is actual video footage linked to from Snopes that shows the scene that the photo was taken at - and it is from the recital of the National Anthem.

From the video, it appears to me that Obama is respectful and attentive during the recitation of the National Anthem. And personally, I think it is more a failure of patriotism to spread rumors and falsehoods about Americans than Obama's failure to make some superficial symbolic show on a stage.

Honestly, whom ever sent out the email should be ashamed of themselves. What they did is very unAmerican and unChristian.