Observations from the Window 1.24

It has been a fun couple of days to be a progressive/liberal/gay/woman or any one of the above. On Monday we had President Obama's Inaugural speech and than yesterday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified to Congress on the tragedy in Benghazi, Libya. After seven hours of testimony nobody was talking about what she said but what an awesome job she had done and how bad some of the wingnuts looked. Clinton looked every bit one of the most popular politicians in the country that she currently is. Confident, intelligent, at times emotional, she made a woman proud.

But enough before I get too serious because this is going to be an almost comedic post. I just wanted to share some of the things I have heard coming out of cloud coo coo land because, to quote Rush Limbaugh, "it's a puke fest out there." For the first time, and in all probability the last, I have to agree with him.

In his Inaugural speech President Obama mentioned gays for the first time in an Inaugural and he also mentioned Stonewall. On Fox Pat Buchanan asked "What was he talking about? Stonewall. That's a barroom brawl in Greenwich Village in 1969, when cops were hassling gays and their bar, and the gays fought back and threw them all out. Does that belong in a presidential inaugural?" As Jon Stewart later remarked yes that was Pat Buchanan for the wrong side of history.

During the Clinton testimony wingnut Senator Rand Paul said this; "I think that ultimately, with you leaving, that you accept the culpability for the worst tragedy since 9/11. And I really mean that. Had I been president at the time and I had found that you had not read the cables from Benghazi, you had not read the cables from Ambassador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post. I think it’s inexcusable." I wont get into what dreamworld Paul lives in to think he would ever be president but I do wonder why 4 dead in Libya qualifies as the worst tragedy since 9/11 and not the deaths of over 4,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan. I should also add that in 2011 Paul proposed cutting the State Department's budget by 70%.

There are so many more of these I could post from Wisconsin wingnut Ron Johnson suggesting Clinton should have just called Benghazi on the phone to find out what was going to NRA President Wayne LaPierre quoting one of the more liberal justices in the history of the Supreme Court. In a totally unnecessary rebuttal to the President's speech LaPierre quoted Hugo Black as saying that there were absolutes in the Constitution that couldn't be debated. LaPierre didn't mention that Black had specified the second amendment as one of the exceptions to that rule.

One of the few politicians as popular as Hillary Clinton is New  Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Again I give you Senator Paul this time on the N.J. Governor and again showing why he will never be president. "I think criticizing the Second Amendment movement and the over the top ‘give me my money’ stuff, ’I want all 60 billion now or I’ll throw a tantrum,' I don’t think that’s going to play well in the Republican primary."

Why do I love politics? The thought of a Rand Paul - Chris Christie debate is all the reason I need.

update - My brother reminded me that Senator Johnson was the same Johnson who as a Senate candidate said of global warming, "I absolutely do not believe in the science of man caused climate change. It's not proven by any stretch of the imagination." In the same interview he also described believers in man made causes of climate change as crazy and "it's far more likely that it's just sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time."

Awesomeness

I'm taking a break from the usual to share some pure awesomeness. Jenna and Jess met at a lesbian bar in New York City on November 19, 2006. I'm wont bore you by saying the rest is history but it seems pretty damn, well, awesome.


Jenna + Jessica || Two for One Drink Special Film || Produced by Epic Filmmakers from Epic Filmmakers on Vimeo.

Venue - Wadsworth Mansion, Middletown CT
Cinematography - Epic Filmmakers
Photographer - Scott Perham Photography
Flowers - A Victorian Garden
Antique Car - Tim Grano
Reverend Stacey Harrell,
Ceremony music by Scott & Ashley Doty,
Makeup - Karyn Ohlson (Jess sister)
Wedding attire - Vera Wang at David's Bridal
Shoes - DiMaggio Armucci from Xklusif

"Epic Filmmakers is a boutique wedding film studio that believes in visual storytelling and preserving life's most precious moments. Our team of creative filmmakers carefully craft each of our films with the goal in mind of creating a piece of cinema that you'll love to watch over and over again. Our films tell the personal story of each of our couples, while highlighting the little moments that build into the unforgettable memories throughout the day. Every epic love story makes it to film. Let Epic Filmmakers capture yours."

Observations 1.21

This a short story about a segment of the population that didn't see the beauty of President Obama's second Inaugural Address. A segment that will forever live in the past and for which the word "Stonewall" in the President's speech has an entirely different meaning.

Somewhere in the area of one million people were in Washington to be part of President Obama's inaugural today which also happened to be Martin Luther King Day. At the same time one hundred miles to the south the Virginia State Senate was in session in Richmond, the one time capital of the Confederacy. The Virginia Senate is evenly split with twenty Republicans and twenty Democrats but on this day 79 year old Democrat Henry Marsh was absent. Marsh, a veteran of the civil rights battles of the 1960's, was in Washington to witness the second inauguration of the country's first African American president and celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King.

The Virginia GOP used Marsh's absence to push through a redistricting bill even though the districts had just be redrawn two years ago. Predictably the bill passed by a vote of 20-19 and erased a Democratic seat in western Virginia. The Republican Governor Bob McDonnell hasn't yet said whether he will sign it or not but if he does the GOP will control all of the Virginia legislature. Nationwide the Republican strategy seems to be if you can't win using the current rules simply change the rules and do it in as despicable a way as you can.

I save the best part of my story for last. Remember that today was Martin Luther King Day and President Obama's Inauguration Day. On this of all days, and taken from its official minutes, the Virginia State Senate choose to end it's day the following way:

"On motion of Senator Stosch, the Senate adjourned in memory of General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson at 4:10 p.m. to convene Tuesday, January 22, 2013."

January 21^st also happens to be the Confederate general's birthday.

Observations on the 2013 Inaugural

"We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths, that all of us are created equal, is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth."

Inaugural Address by President Barack Obama

President Obama Delivers His Second Inaugural Address
(official video)

Observations from the Window 1.21

Today is Inauguration Day, along with Martin Luther King Day, and President Obama will be sworn in yet again followed by the official celebration of the beginning of his second term. Confused because you thought he was sworn in yesterday? Under the Constitution the president automatically begins his term on Jan. 20. This year the date fell on Sunday so President Obama and Vice President Biden followed tradition by being sworn in at a private ceremony. President Reagan did the same in 1985 which was the last time the inaugural fell on a Sunday. Never let it be said that I didn't teach you something.

Yesterday The Telegraph posted a gallery of photos chronicling President Obama's first term which is totally worth looking at. This photo from the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks just jumped out at me when I saw it. I may have seen it before but I didn't remember it if I did, either way it's just a gorgeous shot. The angles, the broken light falling on the waterfall, the way the leaves frame to top of the shot, it's just one of those photos you look at and nod because you know it's exactly what you would have done in that situation or like to think you would have.

Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy
Tumblr link

Sunday Observations 1.20

The NHL returned from its extended hiatus yesterday as the Penguins defeated the Flyers 3-1 in the first game for both teams. It wasn't quite as bad as the score indicates as the Flyers didn't start their season until the second period so we shall see how the Flyers look today in Buffalo. It will be their second of seven games in eleven days.

In one of those funny quirks of sports there are times that Philadelphia is truly the capitol of North American hockey. I'm not saying that because I'm a Flyers fan or because they played in front of a sold out crowd at the Wells Fargo Center, it's always sold out. I say that because after the Flyers game Penn State played Vermont in college hockey in front of another sold out WFC crowd, Penn State won 4-2. That means in a span of six hours about 40,000 people watched ice hockey in south Philly. I don't have to remind you what big field hockey fans Pennsylvanians are.

I could write a whole post about this next item but I don't feel like writing another gun post right now and I really don't want to take seriously at all. I'm only mentioning it because I once again want to show you what total nutjobs some of these gun people are. There are some out there who honestly believe the Newtown slaughter was orchestrated by the government to make the climate better for gun control legislation. One of the things they say proves this is that the parents of the dead children weren't suitably grief stricken.

Now conspiracy theories are nothing new to America. A few of the lasting ones are that Kennedy was killed by Johnson or the CIA, that there are aliens at Area 51, or that the moon landings never happened. Lately though the conspiracy theories are bordering on the macabre. This Newtown one is right there with Israel being behind the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11 to draw the U.S. into war with Islam. Nutjobs.

So while I'm on guns I should also mention that yesterday was the first annual Gun Appreciation Day. During the celebration of this grand day five people were injured, shot, at three separate gun shows.

I've found I'm turning into my grandfather of all people. I blame my kindle because at breakfast and dinner I've started to read out loud items of profound importance just as grandfather always sat and read the paper to everybody. As usually happened with him everybody in turn just ignores me. I find it irritating when they ignore me.

Finally, I was reading a magazine when I saw a pic of a model wearing some cool striped underwear, yes underwear. When I looked to see what they were I saw Marc Jacobs briefs $525 and that is today's sign of the apocalypse.

Observations from the Window 1.17

The whole gun debate is more likely to piss me off than bring tears to my eyes but yesterday President Obama did just that when he mentioned Grace McDonnell, a victim of the Newtown massacre. I always say massacre because the word shooting doesn't quite seem enough and slaughter, though that's exactly what it was, seems too much. Whatever, every time I read these words I tear up.

"When I visited Newtown last month I spent some private time with many of the families who'd lost their children that day. And one was the family of Grace McDonnell. Grace's parents are here. Grace was seven years old when she was struck down, just a gorgeous, caring, joyful little girl. I'm told she loved pink. She loved the beach. She dreamed of becoming a painter."

Observations 1.16

Later today President Obama will announce his plans on gun control. Always ready to do its part yesterday the NRA contributed to civil debate by releasing this ad which features the President's daughters. Yes they have armed guards, they happen to be called the Secret Service, probably because from the moment their father became president they became targets for well armed nutjobs from all over the world.

Now just imagine this, everybody sitting around NRA headquarters trying to come up with a new ad. One person thinks of something, another writes it up, and than they throw it upstairs where somebody with the authority gives the idea a thumbs up. They pick photos and music and put the ad together. Finally they all sit around a big table where they watch the finished ad together before smiling and nodding approval. Yes lets bring the President's daughters into it, lets make it personal. I'm sorry this is picking on Amy Carter or Chelsea Clinton, this goes over a line. The ad is currently running on just the NRA's news channel but they haven't ruled out purchasing time on other networks.

Maybe I should just let the director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns Mark Glaze say it in a more rational way than I am, "I’m guessing Sasha and Malia would be delighted not to have security, but their dad happens to be president."

And while I'm at it why is it suddenly elitist for the President of the United States to have Secret Service protection? I don't remember ever hearing that about any other president. Think about that one too.

The whole thing just disgusts me.

link
Published on Jan 15, 2013 by NRANews.

update - Here is a link to a .pdf file listing the twenty three 'gun violence reduction executive actions' taken by President Obama today. Also here is a link to the President's complete plan including actions that need Congressional action.

If I'm going to be disgusted today I think I'm going to go for totally disgusted. When the President announced his gun control plan he was accompanied by children who had written him after the Newtown slaughter. Rush Limbaugh gives a better description,

"Now, if a bunch of kids wrote the president and said that their parents aren't giving them enough candy, do you think Obama would have them to the White House and do candy-control ceremonies? Obama uses kids as human shields. The Democrats use kids as human shields. He brings these kids who supposedly wrote letters to the White House after Newtown, brings them up there to present a picture of support among the children for the president to do something about guns. It's gonna be very difficult, very difficult to oppose it. You got these little kids there. They don't want to die."

Among other nutjob responses to the President's plan were calls for his impeachment, for insurrection against the tyrant, that President Obama should be charged with treason, and that we should all prepare for civil war. There was a time I used the term nutjob to add a bit of sarcasm to what I was writing but more and more I think some of these people are seriously flawed.

The gods help us.

Observations from the Coffee Shop 1.15

This may be bad form, or maybe it's just perfect, but I'm going to update you a little on guns on Martin Luther King's birthday. Originally I was going to post this as my Sunday observations, I had some good links to go with it, but other things came up and now the guardians of the empire seem to have lost my links.

In typical Amerikan lunacy NRA memberships and gun sales have surged since the Newtown massacre, magazine and rifle orders have a backlog of almost a year, but this time around there's a new wrinkle. There now seems to be a national ammunition shortage so bad police departments across the country are cutting back on training. In some cities the shortage has gotten so bad the police have resorted to buying ammo at local gun shops. This means there is a good chance the NRA's vaunted good guys with guns wont be able to hit the bad guys with guns should they see them. You can bet the gun industry is enjoying their rising profits once again courtesy of the NRA and the nutjobs that worship it.

A seriously funny side story to this is that some gun and ammo buyers are complaining about price gouging. Seriously. On one website a buyer whined about paying $999 for a case (1,000 rounds) of ammo listed at $399 in the site's catalog. I'm not going to get into the reasons somebody might need 1,000 rounds of .233 (bushmaster caliber) ammo but somebody left a good quote as a comment to his tirade. "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt," Abraham Lincoln.

For the record, as of today there have now been 936 gun related deaths in the U.S. since Newtown.

Observations 1.14

If you didn't see the Golden Globe awards last night Jodie Foster's acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award is worth watching. Actually you may have to watch it more than once to get it all because it's a bit rambling. Sometimes you start saying things you have had on your mind for years and when you start you just can't stop. Sometimes it's also a beautiful thing.

link

Observations 1.13

You may or may not have heard of Aaron Swartz. At the age of 14 he was an early developer of the RSS web feed technology and later he worked on the creation of Creative Commons, was one of the founders of Reddit, and in 2010 launched Demand Progress. If you want to know more about Swartz you can check Google News which now comes up with over 100,000 results. A good start is "Postscript: Aaron Swartz" from The New Yorker.

A brilliant coder, hacker, and activist he was studying at Harvard when he was charged with stealing 5 million articles from JSTOR, a searchable archive of academic journals, which he planned on publishing online. While illegal it was far from enough to warrant over a dozen felony counts or the threatened 30 years in prison and million dollar fine the federal lawyers were promising, somebody wrote that he was being persecuted not prosecuted. Friday Swartz, who also suffered from depression, hung himself in his New York apartment at the age of 26.

But this post isn't totally about Swartz's life, or hacking, or depression. Once again stories I care about seem to revolve around one another.

Quinn Norton is a journalist for among others Wired and The Guardian who I first started reading when she covered the occupy movement from one coast to the other, her "A Eulogy For Occupy" is a must read. If you read enough sooner or later you run into a writer who more often than not thinks the same way as you do. That doesn't mean you always agree with them but you do understand what they are trying to say at some deeper level and as I followed Occupy Quinn Norton was just that type of writer to me.

I didn't know until this morning that Norton and Swartz had at one time lived together in San Francisco. She wrote a touching farewell to him on her blog which she ended with W. H. Auden's "Funeral Blues."

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

update - I just saw that as a tribute to Swartz many researchers have begun to post their papers free using the twitter hashtag #pdftribute and somebody created a link scraper to collect PDFs and links with that tag. You can check it out here if you want.

I also saw that JSTOR had dropped the case saying it regretted being drawn into it in the first place. However the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, Carmen M. Ortiz, decided to go ahead with the high profile case anyway and the trial was scheduled to begin sometime this year. One has to seriously wonder about the whole affair given the, from my experience, limited value of academic articles. Why go after him like an accused terrorist or Wall Street banker? Well okay, why go after him like an accused terrorist?

1/14 update - From the official statement of Swartz's family:
"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts US Attorney's office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney's office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron and its own community's most cherished principles."

Observations from the Window 1.12

In 1972 Jeanne Manford's openly gay son Morty was beaten as he and others where beaten as they handed out fliers outside an annual dinner for politicians and reporters in New York. Two months later she marched with him in the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day march carrying her hand made sign that said simply "Parents of Gays: Unite in Support for Our Children." The Christopher Street march became the annual Gay Pride parade and Jeanne Manford became the founder of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, a group now 40 years old with 350 chapters in 11 countries (including the People's Republic of China) and over 200,000 members.

Ten years ago she explained in an interview a letter she had written to The New York Post after her son's beating, "I mentioned in my letter that my son was gay and that the police stood by and watched these young gays being beaten up and did nothing about it, and it was printed. Then Morty called me up and said, ‘You can’t believe how everybody’s talking about your letter!’ I didn't think anything of it, but I guess it was the first time a mother ever sat down and very publicly said, ‘Yes, I have a homosexual son.’"

In a 2009 speech to the Human Rights Campaign President Obama praised Manford. Her work was the "story of America, of ordinary citizens organizing, agitating and advocating for change, of hope stronger than hate, of love more powerful than any insult or injury." Than he told a story of the Stonewall Riots during which her son Morty, who died of AIDS in 1992, was arrested. After coming to her door and explaining the arrest one of the officers added "and you know, your son is a homosexual." Manford's answer was "Yes I know, why are you bothering him?"

"She was just a mom, walking with her son in a parade," said Terry DeCrescenzo, a gay and lesbian teen advocate in Los Angeles. "That was what made her so compelling. She was simply standing with her son, bearing witness to the truth of his life."

Jeanne Manford passed away Tuesday, she was 92.

The family requests that any donations be made to the Jeanne Manford Legacy Fund to support the ongoing work of PFLAG National: 1828 L Street, NW, Suite 660, Washington, D.C. 20036.

Observations 1.10

I've mentioned the petitions on the White House website plenty of times, some funny, some scary in their total ignorance, and some very serious. Here is the official response to the petition to deport Piers Morgan over his views on gun control. The video is President Obama's personal response to all the gun related petitions and at the bottom is a link to a video from "Piers Morgan Tonight" a few days ago in which wingnut radio host Alex Jones goes into full meltdown mode.

OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE TO
Deport British Citizen Piers Morgan for Attacking 2nd Amendment
When Discussing the Second Amendment, Keep the First in Mind Too
By Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary

Thank you for participating in We the People to speak out on an issue that matters to you.

Let’s not let arguments over the Constitution’s Second Amendment violate the spirit of its First. President Obama believes that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms. However, the Constitution not only guarantees an individual right to bear arms, but also enshrines the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press -- fundamental principles that are essential to our democracy. Americans may disagree on matters of public policy and express those disagreements vigorously, but no one should be punished by the government simply because he or she expressed a view on the Second Amendment -- or any other matter of public concern.

We recognize that the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, sparked an intense, and at times emotional, national conversation about the steps we can take as a country to reduce gun violence. In fact, your petition is one of many on the issue, and President Obama personally responded by sharing his views on this important issue.

link
Published on Dec 21, 2012 by WhiteHouse

"How many chimpanzees can dance on the head of a pin?" Otherwise known as 'my name is Alex Jones and I have totally lost it.' You really need to watch this, CNN.

Observations from the Window 1.9

You may or may not have noticed but I am never satisfied. It shows when I'm seriously paint because as I have said before I can lock myself away for days until I look at what I'm painting and decide it's finished. I am constantly tweaking the code of this blog in ways you will never see and probably wouldn't see if I told you what I did. I play with embed codes down to the pixel so they are centered, something that can be frustrating because I realize it is all going to look different on a comp with resolution settings that aren't the same as mine. More than once I have changed the whole design only to change it back before ever posting it.

Lately I've been seriously toying with the idea of changing over to a complete dynamic view template. Serious to the point of learning some of the code. One thing holding me back is that there are some things I can't do with a dynamic view that I can with this one. Another problem is everything in this blog is fitted to this template, some of which I wrote myself, so if I change over videos, photos, and other embeds could be totally out of whack, out of whack being a highly technical term for totally messed up. One option is posting dual blogs for a period of time and than gradually phasing out this one. That also has a downside because even with links between the two a new blog is just that, a new blog, with all the problems of a new blog.

My geek side is pretty much just mulling this over in print but you can take it as a warning if you want to. If one day everything looks weird, if it looks like my geek side has suddenly and totally lost it, I have no problem with you letting me know.

I've never had much use for Pinterest, I have enough photo sites with Flickr and Tumblr, but I like the idea of saving what I find online to look at later without making a mess of my browser. I just ran into a newer site called Clipboard that I like. With a browser attachment you can save not just photos but entire web pages or just parts of them to Clipboard. It's CEO and founder Gary Flake says Pinterest is about expressing an aspiration but Clipboard is about getting things done, one of the reasons that the site's default setting is private. As there website says "the Internet is more than two decades old, doesn't it seem strange that the typical way to save something online is to put it into an email or a document?" If you're an online pack rat like me it's a site you might want to check it out.

Did you know the TSA has a job described as a Behavior Detection Specialist? Maybe the Mayans were right after all.