Deep Something

OK, I admit I’d not given much thought to the Democratic Primary for 11th Congressional District. I’m not overly impressed with Cathy Castor, but she’s generally socially progressive, so I expected to vote for her. I frankly didn’t even know she had an opponent. That changed tonight, and Tim Curtis has earned my vote.

Read more »

Wired.com has a story out of Kansas about a copier salesman who is Suing his former employer for wrongful termination. His claim is that his boss sent out e-mail telling employees they would be fired for voting for Obama. I’m not convinced on this one. What do you think about bringing electoral politics into the workplace?

Read more »

The Raw Story is reporting that some bloggers have been checking out the telephone and address listings for the many offices Diebold is claiming to have around the country. It turns out that most of them have phones numbers that go unanswered and the listed addresses turn out to be Wal-Mart or Sam’s club addresses.

Read more »

Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin seems to have found out why the Proposition 8 people were so hell bent in trying to prohibit the release of the names of donors to their campaign to take away the rights of Gay people in California. It seems the LDS had way more to do with this than they were claiming. (And by the Church, I mean the church corporate…not just “members.”) Burroway reports they had 190,000 reasons to prevent the disclosure. Seems the LDS provided lots of official corporate support and in-kind services.

Read more »

For those of you living under a rock, President Elect Obama has invited Rick Warren, from the Saddleback Mega-Church, to deliver the invocation at Obama’s inauguration. Gay rights and other activists groups have strenuously objected, and Obama and his aides have made any number of statements defending the choice with the tired old line of how the Obama campaign has always been about “uniting people” and showing how “we can disagree without being disagreeable.” So let me be clear in my response. In the case of claims by the Warren supporters (including you Obama), they are correct. I am being intolerant and am applying the standard applied by Warren and his supporters to love the sinner and hate the sin. I believe that the sin of hate and bigotry, most especially when used for monetary gain, should never ever be tolerated. I guess that fits the definition of intolerance, so I am guilty as charged.

Read more »

Maybe, finally gay people have decided that enough is enough when it comes to having second-class citizenship foisted upon us by krazy kristian kooks. Across the country Saturday were a series of rallies decrying the enactment of three marriage amendments on election day which enshrine discrimination in the Constitutions of Florida, Arizona and California. As angry as we may all be, we should not be surprised at the outcome. There is no leadership within the gay community, and practically no community left anyways. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has become a parody, and while I respect the work done by Equality Florida, they too have been totally ineffective. So let’s take a look at what happened, and think about what comes next.

Read more »

Last Tuesday night/Wednesday morning was certainly a bittersweet time. As I’ve said before, I’m not one of the millions of Obama-maniacs, but I was glad he won. I think America will soon be in far better hands than she is now. I was even more pleased to see a good number of hateful and bigoted Republicans kicked to curb, and their nasty campaign rhetoric repudiated. Obviously though, the passage of the three anti-marriage amendments was a great disappointment. In this post, I’ll provide my observations on where we are now relative to the election.

Read more »

Last week with work was a real bear, and I’m traveling for work this week, so expect posting to be lite. Hopefully there won’t be that much news, especially election news, to post about. I did want to make note of a few things that have been going on. We’ll talk about some experiences with early voting, voter involvement, and the eve of election day.

Read more »

Sometimes you have to find a little fun in all this mess we call an election, and this lady knows how.

Read more »

An article at the Florida Bilerico project points out the lengths to which the American Taliban will go in order to scare people. John Stemberger, lead proponent of Florida’s Amendment 2, is claiming that if Amendment 2 fails, the schools will have indoctrinate children to gay marriage. And to top it all off, despite being an attorney (or maybe because of it), Stemberger and Florida4Marriage.com are being accused of violations of campaign finance laws. Seems they may be trying to hide who their donors are, a violation of Florida Campaign laws.

Read more »

The current political climate and the divisiveness of modern campaigns is an embarrassment to this country. The politicians have found they can just lie without remorse, because there seems to be no accountability. As someone once said, in a democracy, we get the government we deserve. We let this crap work, so it’s what we get. I for one, hereby today and forthwith take a stand to say NO…NO MORE…to this kind of bull shit. U.S. Representative Robin Hayes (R, NC) made the following statement at a rally a few days ago, “Folks, there’s a real America. Liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.” Then had temerity to blatantly lie and say he never said…the recording of his comments notwithstanding.

Read more »

Today, while running an errand, I passed a sight which gave me some pause. I’m not sure why I noticed, and I’m not sure why I am drawing the assumptions I’m drawing, but I’ll tell the story anyway. Some years back, to make ends meet, I worked a part time job for a lot of years. For several of those years, I sold shoes at a Florsheim shoe store right in the main corner of the largest mall in Greensboro, NC. To pass the time when we were slow, I would often pick out someone walking by, and just based on what I could see, I’d make up the person’s current life situation. If that person came in the store, and any sort of chat developed, I was often astounded by how accurate my story had been, and so, from that perspective, I tell another story. I have no clue how accurate it is, but it illustrates a point about the recent economic downturn.

We were driving up Dale Mabry Highway, the main north-south road here in Tampa. Walking north (going south would eventually run you into the water of the bay) was two men. One of them was maybe near my age in his late 40s or early 50s. The other person was a bit younger, probably in his late 20s. (I don’t think they were related.) They both had backpacks and were carrying more bags by hand. They had the look of people moving on to somewhere else taking along just what they could carry. I didn’t get the idea from their appearance they had been homeless.

Read more »

I seem to recall that George Bush was all in favor of privatizing Social Security and having us all put all of our retirement funds in the stock market. I have a 401K at work. Unfortunately the company doesn’t contribute to it, but that’s not what this post is about. I checked yesterday, and my annual rate of return on it so far this year is -24%. (Yes, that’s a minus…negative in front of it.) So where would people be who depend solely on Social Security if their accounts had suddenly taken a 24% hit.

Read more »

If, like John McCain, I had a wife worth $100 million dollars, I guess, like him, I too would probably think the economy was just fine. I don’t have a significant other that is worth that, in fact, he like me, probably has negative net worth. Based on what I’m seeing around here with a lot of closings, the evidence is pretty strong that we’re into a major slowdown.

Read more »

I’ve been trying to see how (or if) the dust would settle around Sarah Palin prior to writing a post about my feelings on the subject. It doesn’t appear the dust is settling, as John McCain hides behind her skirt. So I’m going to offer up my two-cents on the nomination. (Did you think I’d do otherwise?) I’ve been unable to discern Palin’s motivation for her move into politics, and her acceptance of this nomination, but I’m feeling like she’s a great fit on the Republican ticket. I really do not get the sense that Palin is truly interested in public service, but in having power and taking what she can from it. She has definitely shown herself to be pushy and arrogant when holding public office.

Read more »

I agree with Obama that, generally speaking, families should be off limits. I also agree that things don’t always work out in life like you expect or hope in families. Certainly that’s been true for me and my family in any number of ways. But Sarah Palin has had some things to say about Gay people, so if she’s going to put down my family, she makes her’s a target. So I’ll write this one post about the situation with Palin’s daughter, and then it’s over.

Read more »

Apparently some of the krazy kristian kooks had been praying for, and asking others to pray for, rain in Denver during Obama’s acceptance speech. Obviously it didn’t happen, and the Democrats had a perfect evening, so clearly our Republican God was asleep at the switch. But, just when the fundies were about to lose faith, God made it up to them and sent a hurricane to save the day.

Read more »

Leading up to the Rethuglican National Convention in St. Paul, the federal government is leading local law enforcement in a disturbing number of high profile raids on homes and protesters. Most disturbing is the show of force involved in these raids, and the lack of evidence of any intent to commit any violence (other than protesting the state the Rethuglican have put the country in). Of course, trying to squelch these protests would be a violation of the Constitution. China has no Constitutional Protections, yet all the main stream media here in the U.S. was hand wringing over China’s efforts to quell protests during the Olympics…yet nary a peep from them about what’s going on in St. Paul.

Read more »

Kay Hagan is a Democrat running against Elizabeth Dole for a U.S. Senate seat from North Carolina. After trailing by as much as 14 points, Hagan has now pulled slightly ahead of Dole in a PPP Poll. This gain appears to come largely as a result of an ad being run by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. It is a great ad.

Read more »

John McCain’s military service deserves the thanks and respect of the American people, especially given his time spent as a POW in Vietnam. However, the over-use of this status for political gain becomes laughable after a while. It seems to be used to explain everything. Problem is, according to George Bush and the Military Commisions Act voted for by McCain, the techniques used on McCain while a POW are merely, “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Who wouldda thunk it?

Read more »