Gay Republicans Are Offended That Obama Supports Gay Marriage. Seriously.

teleological:

Allow me, if you will, to paint a picture of pure insanity. This picture will reveal the absolute hatred that Republicans have for Obama. The current wisdom is that if Obama saved a kitten from a burning house, Republicans would complain that he was stealing the job of a firefighter. The reality is not far removed.

via the Log Cabin Republicans, which is the homosexual wing of the GOP (yes, they’re real):

“That the president has chosen today, when LGBT Americans are mourning the passage of Amendment One, to finally speak up for marriage equality is offensive and callous,” said R. Clarke Cooper, Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director. “Log Cabin Republicans appreciate that President Obama has finally come in line with leaders like Vice President Dick Cheney on this issue, but LGBT Americans are right to be angry that this calculated announcement comes too late to be of any use to the people of North Carolina, or any of the other states that have addressed this issue on his watch. This administration has manipulated LGBT families for political gain, and he does not deserve any praise for this announcement.”

First of all, to use Dick Cheney as the Republican model of supporting gay marriage is gut-bustingly funny. While running for reelection in 2004, the Bush/Cheney administration made the evils of gay marriage a front and center issue to appeal to the religious bigotry of the right. And also, bear in mind that by endorsing gay marriage, Obama’s campaign will lose its appeal with one of his strongest demographics, but he went ahead and did it anyway.

Secondly, this:

“That the president has chosen today, when LGBT Americans are mourning the passage of Amendment One, to finally speak up for marriage equality is offensive and callous”

Hello? Amendment One was SUPPORTED BY REPUBLICANS.

Lastly, how has Obama manipulated LGBT families? How, exactly? By making sure that federal employees can cover their same-sex partner on their health insurance? By ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell? By making it mandatory for hospitals to allow same-sex partners to visit sick or injured loved ones?

If you need an example of Obama Derangement Syndrome distilled to its essence, gay Republicans mad at a Democratic president for supporting their right to marry is it.

I can’t believe this is real. I am at a loss for words. You’re self-oppressive. How can you not see this? It would be like me complaining if George Bush passed a law that protected national forests, increased fuel efficiency standards, and joined the Kyoto Protocol. We all know the truth there, but that’s besides the point. YOU ARE GAY and you are ANGRY that Obama believes in same-sex marriage? I am wondering if there is a psychological epidemic that has somehow only spread to Republicans? Anti-Obamaism.

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Disappointment in North Carolina

Apparently North Carolina is stuck in pre-1960s mode.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/09/politics/north-carolina-marriage/index.html?hpt=us_c2

The state passed a law to define marriage strictly as between man and woman. As I have come to find out, the only counties which voted against this law are counties where the population is greater and people are generally better educated. These are the comments I have gathered from North Carolinians.

Then I found a link to a video which explains why these people are so backwards. This is further indication of why I will never believe in religion for any reason. You people have no consistency in your views. Every religion, every church around the world preaches a different story. This story just happens to be a load of bull shit.

http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_c3#/video/us/2012/05/09/ac-mattingly-sean-harris-church.cnn

This is the TRUTH about HYDRAULIC FRACTURING

Alrighty folks… This is something I have been learning about for a few months straight. Dr. Igraffea, professor at Cornell University, is featured in this video. His research is at the epicenter of fracturing research. Cornell, along with Duke University, are two of the preeminent institutions which have similar data on the risks involved in current hydraulic fracturing practices.

Keep in mind, James Inhoffe (R) is a congressman who has repeatedly argued that climate change is the single biggest hoax in our history. He is also featured in this video, advocating in favor of hydraulic fracturing as a clean alternative energy to that of oil and coal.

The article below examines, quickly, how the industry has managed to sweep the issues under the rug. The Halliburton Loophole, which was proposed by Dick Cheney (former Chief Executive at Halliburton) exempts oil and gas drilling from ALL major environmental statutes/regulations: Safe Water Drinking Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Superfund, etc… We need to wake up. Do we really think that the few hundred jobs lost to preventing environmental and health risks inherent in these practices is worth the consequences? It is not.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/opinion/03tue3.html

A study at Duke University shows that “Methane concentrations were 17-times higher on average (19.2 mg CH4L-1) in shallow well from active drilling and extraction areas than in wells from nonactive areas,” which was “well above this hazard level” (April 14, 2011).

Stephen G. Osborna, Avner Vengoshb, Nathaniel R. Warnerb, and Robert B. Jacksona,”Methane contamination of drinking water accompanying gas-well drilling and hydraulic fracturing” Duke University: April 14, 2011.

Regular jogging shows dramatic increase in life expectancy

teleological:

Undertaking regular jogging increases the life expectancy of men by 6.2 years and women by 5.6 years, reveals the latest data from the Copenhagen City Heart study. The study’s most recent analysis shows that between one and two-and-a-half hours of jogging per week at a “slow or average” pace delivers optimum benefits for longevity.

The Copenhagen City Heart study, which started 1976, is a prospective cardiovascular population study of around 20,000 men and women aged between 20 to 93 years. Of those 20,000, 1,116 were male joggers and 762 were female joggers. Results show that in the follow-up period involving a maximum of 35 years, 10,158 deaths were registered among the non-joggers and 122 deaths among the joggers. Analysis showed that risk of death was reduced by 44% for both male and female joggers.

Since I love to run, I will repost this. AWESOME statistics! Now, go run!

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Coal!

One of the unregulated forms of pollution is coal ash. This stuff is nasty and can potential cause a lot of harm to a great number of people. Not to mention, this is an incident in which a coal burning plant is within a residential area. Yikes! I wouldn’t want to breathe that air in. Would you?

Fracking Calamity in Pennsylvania

Okay. I am an environmental advocate and believe in science. I tend to put the latter ahead of the former. I realize that it takes crazy actions anymore to advocate for any environmental cause. However, this fracking business in PA is starting to swirl out of control. Gas companies are basically allowed to do whatever they want, when they want to do it, and us greenies/scientists are trying to spread the word.

Not only can you not prevent a gas company from drilling 300 feet from your home, but you can also not prevent them from running pipelines through your municipality, prevent them from using the backflow (hundreds of carcinogenic and toxic chemicals) to be spread on the roads as de-icing fluids, or prevent them from shipping those same chemicals to Ohio where they will be permanently (hahaha tell the planet that our actions are permanent) burried under ground; only to cause minor earthquakes and possibly seep into nearby ground water. Joy!

Insurers Prepare for Climate Change…Except in U.S.

climateadaptation:

“In a survey conducted by Ceres, a Boston-based coalition of investors and environmental groups, more than 75% of insurers acknowledged the existence of perils stemming from climate change.
 
“Yet despite widespread recognition of the effects climate change will likely have on extreme events, few insurers were able to articulate a coherent plan to manage the risks and opportunities associated with climate change,” the Ceres report states.
 
The Ceres study found that out of 88 U.S. insurance companies, only 11 had formal climate change risk policies and more than 60% had no dedicated management approach to assessing climate risks.
 
Ben Schiller at Yale’s Environment 360 noted that while American insurance companies have been slow to prepare for global warming’s ramifications, their European counterparts have been getting ready for a potentially costly future.”
Via AllGov

This is a pretty interesting concept which I had not previously thought about. Insuring against climate change? If climate change eventually does lead to increased severe storms (hurricanes and tornadoes) how will insurance companies react? The problem with this conversation is that climate and weather are two different things. As a person of science, I’d like to see undeniable evidence that climate change has in fact increased the number and severity of storms. As an activist, I’d love to argue that it already has. It certainly appears, at first glance, that this may be true.

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religion(christianity) = mythology

“For most people who profess a religious belief, their “faith” is accidental — a function of time, geography, and circumstances. A Christian fundamentalist, had he or she been born three thousand years ago in Egypt, would have probably ended up worshipping the “true” deity or deities in vogue at that time. A contemporary Moslem would have worshipped an Aztec or Mayan pantheon of gods had he or she been living just a few centuries ago in Central America. There have been thousands of different religions worshipping tens of thousands (and even millions) of assorted gods. Most, if not all, have claimed to be “the one true creed.” And their disagreements have resulted in war, intolerance, oppression, and other violations of human dignity.”

- http://www.atheists.org/content/judaism-and-christianity

The Hunger Games - Quick Review

Spoilers**

Book:

It was amazing. It was very entertaining. There were real underlying social issues in the book, which I appreciated. A lot of “professional” reviews talk about a post-apocalyptic world. I don’t tend to agree with that view. (keep in mind I’ve only started the second book) I tend to believe this is completely a story about complete government overhaul and punishment for subordinates. Anyway…  There were human emotions and real relationships. The best part of this book, being that it’s a young adult book, is that the love aspect was not very intriguing. In fact, it was mostly non-existent. This book displayed the reality of love. It’s not always what we think it is, and sometimes we get played. It was gritty. Humans, in tough situations, do what is necessary for survival.

The best part of the book is the character development. You know the main characters pretty well. It’s not REAL in-depth, but enough to gain your love and admiration for Rue, Prim, Katniss, and Peeta (for the ladies).

Relatable:

This book is very relevant to our current political climate. It will be very popular this year because of the parallels that are found between Panem and our world. There is a legitimacy in the need for some sort of revolution in the way we do things here in the United States. There is also a huge amount of backlash from politicians and figures of authority (think about pepper spraying innocent college students in California). This runs parallel with the story in the book. Residents are getting anxious. They want change. You can tell that there silently is a militia building across the districts, and President Snow is well aware of it and is fighting back. You want to jump into the story to help Katniss in her pursuit of justice.

Movie:

*Spoilers* written for those who have read the book.

This is the first time I have ever read the book first and then watched the movie. This time, I absolutely loved the book. Therefore, going into the movie I knew that I would have to try hard to remain open-minded. I was very keen on all of the minute details in the book; the emotional connections between characters, the futuristic technologies employed, the backroom conversations between Katniss and Haymitch/President, the thought processes of the characters, etc.

Pros+Cons:

This movie was entertaining, riveting, and almost as accurate as possible. The movie felt like it was directed with the intention of placing you in the arena. That was both good and bad. Jennifer Lawrence did a brilliant job of playing the sullen, serious type. Rue was portrayed very well (in her short stint in the film) as an innocent clone of Prim. What I liked most about the film was the sense of revolution throughout the districts. I think I may have missed some of that in the book. The director ensured that this was not left out.

My feelings about the action? It really depends on how you look at it. It was PG-13. You can’t expect too much violence. A lot of folks complained about the violence as it is. I tend to believe that violence is a reality in the world, and we should not be sheltered from it, but be cognizant of it and and be thankful for what we have. There may come a time when we’ll have to face less-than-favorable conditions ourselves and it will be less of a shock if we realize a violent world could be our reality. Anyway, the violence wasn’t all that violent. It was typical of a YA film. The action! Fight scenes were brief, to say the least. When certain people got hurt, it really wasn’t all that shocking. I’d say it was less intense than the book. That was a downfall for me.

There were some things however, that I felt could have been better. I think it’s very difficult to capture the back-story and the emotional thought processes the characters displayed in the book. My sister saw the movie with me, but she had not read the book. She said she understood all of the emotional aspects, which I verified by asking her questions. So, I suppose it was done well enough to understand that Katniss didn’t really (or did she) love Peeta and President Snow is an evil prick. That being said, there were two things I wish the movie had spent more time on. 1: the cave scenes. I figured they would have overdone the love story, but they did the opposite. Should have been more fake love, not just one kiss. 2. Katniss’s relationship with Rue should have been highlighted more. Her death could have been so much more emotional. As it were, I choked up.

Overall, I was moved by the movie. I was tense, sad, annoyed, curious, etc. throughout. It could have been better. I will say though, that this movie is FAR better than some other YA book-to-movie adaptations. They shall remain nameless ;)

I don’t think I have any followers… However, if you are subscribed to me do me ONE favor. Watch this video and spread it to those you care about. I’ve recently been working with multiple environmental organizations to make known an issue that will not only affect our health and our childrens’ health, but will have an irreversible impact on climate change and environmental health.

Gasland (By Josh Fox) has been working very hard to put this issue at the forefront of America’s mind. The video is not an exaggeration. I have spoken with people in Dimock, PA. I have seen what fracking can do to our environment. At least do us all a favor and take the time to watch. Judge later