Mar
26
2013
UPDATE – Dan B came to the rescue. Thankfully, he wrote a nice post on the topic, so this post is mute.
So, it’s March 26th, and the Supreme Court hear the arguments for the Prop 8 case concerning the legality and Constitutionality of same sex marriage. Guess which blog that has the name Gay in it has posted four items today, and not one so far deals with the going’s on at the Supreme Court. This isn’t the first time something like this has (not) happened. Now, Cyprus and the banking turmoil over there is an important topic, as it probably spells the beginning, or maybe the middle of the end of the EU, and i do recognize that the folks running that blog are free to write about what they wish. But come on! Even if you are an opponent to same sex marriage, as many of the gay commentors over there are, doesn’t an event concerning the most important and disputed gay issue of the day deserve a post of some sort?
PS. It suddenly occurred to me that, though I often post stuff that concerns music and guitaring and writing music, thus satisfying the “Sonic” part of the “SonicFrog” moniker, I almost never post anything about frogs. Therefore, by my own standard, can I not be labeled a hypocrite?????
Well… OK. Frog News! There you go! Problem solved!!!!
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Note: The guys who founded and built the Gay Patriot site, two individuals that I do feel some kinship to despite our differences (we started blogging at about the same time), are no longer much involved with the site.
Mar
25
2013
You could try this.
It’s on a site called “Funny or Die”. I hope they don’t mean that literally, or Jim Carry might be in big trouble, ’cause this ain’t comedy gold, if you catch my drift.
Mar
15
2013
Abstinence Only sex education.
But of course, as you see from this article, instead of correcting and learning from their mistakes, they want to double down, using the “Planned Parenthood” dog whistle as the clarion call….
Sigh.
It’s like hitting you hand with a hammer for fifteen years, and finally realizing it hurts. But instead of realizing “Hey, we have to stop hitting ourselves with a hammer”, they double down and decide the solution is to get an even bigger hammer.
Mar
15
2013
Not me, of course.
When people talk about bringing an extinct species back to life through our ever expanding abilities to clone DNA, a-la Jurassic Park, everyone always turns to one of the largest, and maybe most popular extinct species, the wooly mammoth. And I will fully admit, bring them back from the dead would be very cool!
But< as a bird lover, there is another critter that has long been high on my list, and I just brought it up last week when the Sonic-Mate and I were listening to the Skeptics Guide To The Universe and talking about cloning…. The passenger pigeon! There are the most populous bird on the American continent. Yet, mostly through hunting, we literally wiped them from the face of the Earth by 1914.
Well, my prayers have been answered! A group of scientists are pursuing this very project! And this will be easier to pull of than the mammoth because the DNA samples are much newer, some samples are only a hundred years old verses the mammoths 4000 years or older DAN fragments.
It will be interesting to see how this all goes.
Mar
12
2013
Can’t be made any simpler. Just read it.
And yes, I did support both invasions. The retribution against the Bin Laden ally / co-conspirators the Taliban was, I still believe to be justified. But we should have been done there after a few years. You cannot reshape a brick into something useful. Put pressure on it, and it shatters.
Mar
1
2013
Remember how George W Bush was raked through the coals (pardon the pun) because he was a Friend of Ken Lay”/ And Dick Cheney is evil because of his ties to Halliburton?
Hello California state Senator Michael Rubio, friend of the San Joaquin Refining Company.
This has all the trappings of a wonderful example of the corrupt ties that Republicans have to the wretched oil industry. The Republican got a nice bit of financial aid from an oil company exec, not only to help finance his campaign, but he also got money from the company to help him buy a $651,000 five bedroom home with four fireplaces and a swimming pool! The company exec also bought Rubio’s Bakersfield home for $185,000, which was appraised and valued under $100,000 at the time of the sale. Here are some of the details concerning the buying and selling of these homes.
Before resigning to head California governmental affairs for Chevron Corp., Democratic Sen. Michael Rubio participated in two real estate deals with a Kern County oil executive who has contributed to his campaign.
The Fair Political Practices Commission is deciding whether to open an investigation into the transactions, which involve Rubio’s current and former homes, to determine if they amounted to an improper gift to an elected official.
Rubio, contacted Wednesday night, said the dealings with an investment firm owned by Majid Mojibi, president of the San Joaquin Refining Co. Inc., were done by the book.
He said that Mojibi last year properly loaned him money to buy a $681,000 home in El Dorado Hills after a bank turned him down for a conventional mortgage. Two months later, still unable to get a conventional loan, he gave the house to Mojibi and is now renting it, he said.
DCM Assets Management, a company registered to Mojibi, also purchased the Bakersfield home Rubio had to put up for a short sale in 2011. The company paid $185,000 for the two-bedroom house, according to records.
The real estate website Zillow.com estimated that the Bakersfield house was worth less than $100,000 at the time of the sale. Rubio said the site undervalued the home based on a dispute over the updated square footage after renovations.
Rubio had to move from that home during his 2010 campaign, after it was discovered that the property was not in the 16th Senate District he was seeking to represent. Local election officials had mistakenly included the address in the wrong Senate district.
Rubio said the company purchased his former house for another Mojibi family member after the home, which he bought for $270,000 in 2004, was put on the market through a real estate agent.
“They didn’t get it for a dollar more or a dollar less,” he said. “It went through every normal process consistent with any normal real estate transaction that was approved by the lender we were doing the short sale on.”
After the short sale, Rubio was unable to get a loan for the five-bedroom home in El Dorado Hills. Rubio made $95,291 a year as a state senator and his wife, a dental hygienist, also made less than $100,000, according to a financial disclosure form filed last year.
He said he was anxious to move his wife, daughters and in-laws to the area so they could spend more time with him when he was in Sacramento for legislative work.
I’m stunned this isn’t all over the news as yet another example of the rampant corrupt ties between the oil companies and Republi….
Oh. My mistake. Michael Rubio is a Democrat. No wonder this hasn’t made national news. And I just did a search on MSNBC’s web portal. As of this moment… Nothing.
Feb
27
2013
OK. When ever people complain about today’s youth and the future of this country….. THIS! Our future is in better hands than the ones currently holding the wheel! Jon Montanez is a man, period.
Feb
27
2013
75 prominent (or somewhat prominent) Republicans today filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court rejecting Prop 8 and embracing the concept of gays being able to marry.
I sometimes have my differences with Andrew Sullivan, but today, his 24 plus years of same sex marriage advocacy makes him the go-to guy to comment on this stunning change of heart of some in the Conservative movement. Here is what he wrote on the news of the day.
Why is gay marriage so important to us? He gives but one example:
A friend recalled visiting a man dying of AIDS at the time. A former massive bodybuilder, he had shrunk to 90 pounds. ‘Do I look big?” he asked, with mordant humor. In the next bed, surrounded by curtains, my friend heard someone singing a pop song quietly to himself. My friend joked: “Well not everyone here is depressed!” Then this from his dying, now skeletal friend: “Oh, that’s not him. He died this morning. That’s his partner. That was their song, apparently. The family took the body away, threw that guy out of the apartment he shared with his partner, and barred him from the funeral. He’s stayed there all day, singing their song. I guess it’s the last place he’ll ever see where his partner actually was. His face is pressed against the pillow. The nurses don’t have the heart to tell him to leave.”
Major Kudos to those conservatives who have decided to stop basing their stance on fear, and instead support fairness.
On the quote above.
I didn’t have any experiences like that. In the 1980, when i was learning to accept the fact I am gay, I knew of people who were succumbing to the disease, but, seeing that I was still in the closet, I isolated myself from it by pretty much avoiding getting acquainted with anyone who was positive.
None-the-less, it still hit home. My ability to come to terms with the fact that I am gay was definitely delayed by the specter of AIDS, as I felt the shame that the world put onto gays – specifically, that being gay = having AIDS, something that just about made you a lepper in the eyes of the “normal” world. In the early 80’s I knew I was gay in high school, but never ever could have acted on it. Even in high school, there was talk of the “gay cancer” and there was no way I could have handled being associated with that. I was not very strong, and maybe would have offed myself if anyone found out I was a deviant. Even years later, I couldn’t even say the words “I am gay” until I was 27 or so. Even after that, on the few times I dated, if my date said they were positive, the date ended rather quickly.
In retrospect, I was kind of a dick. But it was a reaction of fear, and fear makes you do stupid things. I got better though. My Mate found out he was positive (thank you cheating ex) just when we started to get serious. Been together for 17 years. Best years of my life. And I owe that to him as much as anything else.
Feb
27
2013
Feb
26
2013
Life is busy today, so I probably won’t be able to post anything…. Which means I’ll end up writing a long thing like the last one! 🙂
Anyway, have a look around. Comment if the itch arises. I’ll respond when I can.
Mike.