Current Events Keep On Slippin' Slippin' Slippin' Into The Future

...or maybe it's the past.  Guess it depends on how you look at it.
A politically opinionated friend posted an illustration showing a bogus comparison between our two Presidential candidates.  I really wanted to respond to the, uh... well, lack of information on the left side, Romney's side, because the news and information sources I read had a lot to say about it, while the other side, the Obama side, was an imbalance of information, which, like the other side was intended to bring us to a wrong conclusion.
    I mentioned that I wanted to say something, but I knew that it would mean going back a few weeks to find the stuff I'd been reading, so I questioned whether I wanted to get into it.  What happened instead was that the conversation drifted to the Obama side and I wound up trying to provide the balance.  It took a while, but information was pretty easy to find.  But it wasn't what I wanted to write about.
    My problem here is not that I don't know the basic information.  I know that It was not Romney's business to promote the general welfare; his business was to make money.  I know that many of the businesses that Bain got involved with closed, and many relocated some of their operations overseas.  I know that that is just a fact of business because we live in a global economy, and businesses move to where the can make the most and spend the least.  I also know that if Bain got involved with the company you worked for, it's probable that IF you got to keep your job your wages would be lower and your benefits fewer.  I know that Bain made money --billions of dollars-- whether the partnering companies stayed in business or not and whether their employees stayed employed or not.  I know that the billions of dollars went to the top, and those in the middle and bottom saw little if any of it. It also appears those billions were not properly taxed, and that much of it went into offshore accounts. Little of the billions generated benefited the US economy at all.
    So does any of this matter?  We-e-ll, here's the deal. It's only business. Mitt Romney could run, among other things, on his very successful health care program in his home state, but since that's a dicey issue in the Republican Party, it's just not possible.  So he's running on his business record.  President Obama could run against Governor Romney on his support for the Ryan budget plan.  But since few people understand that the Ryan budget plan is, according to the economists, a sure fire way to get us back into a recession, if not an actual depression, the President's campaign has also focused on Romney's business record.
    But even if I know all that, I still want to be able to say that this economist, or that journalist, or the CBO, or the Tax Policy Institute, or  somebody  who has some sort of clout in this area, made this particular point in this particular report on this particular date, even if it's only because that particular writer had a certain way of putting something that I found eloquent.  My problem is that new information, new articles, new blog posts are published every day, and the one I want to find keeps sinking into the murky past, and sometimes I just don't want to spend the hours it might take to find that one piece of information or one clever phrase.
    I just need current events to stop moving so fast.

Great Expectations

Today, Wednesday the 11th, was my 50th birthday.  I think it's a big deal, and I was hoping for some kind of big event, but it never happened.  So I'm a bit depressed.

I hoped that Gaby would have contacted our friends and my friends from work and worked with them to arrange a party or get-together of some sort.  It could have been at home.  It could have been out at the club.  Some of my friends from work had actually told me that they hoped Gaby would remember to put them on the guest list.  I wanted a big event.  But it never happened.

I hoped that when we were out at the club Monday night that Gaby would mention to Shantelle, the MC, that I was having a birthday in a couple of days, but he didn't.  It didn't matter, really.  There weren't many people in the club that night.  But still, it would have been nice.  Instead, he complained that we had eloped, which sent me into such a deep blue funk that we didn't talk for the next two hours or so.  I had strongly suspected he might not have planned anything, and what he said just seemed to confirm it.  I told him I couldn't talk about it for a couple of days, in the hopes that I might be wrong-- that he had some kind of surprize planned.  I also didn't want him to try to throw something together at the last minute just because he felt guilty.

Tuesday with family was better.  Gaby made a cake, and at my request we all drove out to a restaurant that was inconvenient and expensive.  My Dad bought me something I'd been asking for for every birthday and Christmas for the last three years or so.  But all in all the evening wasn't much different than any other family night.  It wasn't a big deal.

And I had to work tonight.  I had asked for the night off, but that request was denied, or ignored, or not even noticed, or whatever it is that my boss does when he makes the schedule.  Not that it matters.  Nothing else was happning.

So I'm feeling deeply and profoundly disappointed and depressed. I'm also trying hard not to let my feelings come to the surface because I don't want anyone to think that I don't appreciate the smaller contributions to my big day.  But it still wasn't what I hoped for, and I can't help the way I feel.

Like a Record, Baby, Right Round Round Round

There are certain subjects that I have decided are off limits in this blog, but I'm going to have to travel along the edges of one of them to tell this story.

My friend Mark and my brother are of two divergent (and frankly competing) faiths, and each is actively involved in their respective religious institutions as well, so naturally their points of view are going to show up on their Facebook posts.  Today, each of them posted the same story, but each post had a spin that reflected their own personal predjudices.  I find spin fascinating, but I rarely get to see it displayed so starkly.

Anti-Bullying Speaker Curses Christian Teens

http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/anti-bullying-speaker-curses-mocks-christian-teens.html
By Todd Starnes As many as 100 high school students walked out of a national journalism conference after an anti-bullying speaker began cursing, attacked the Bible and reportedly called those who refused to listen to his rant “pansy assed.” The speaker was Dan Savage, founder of the “It...

Christians walk out on anti-bullying talk

http://www.examiner.com/
Gay Activist and founder of the “It Gets Better” anti-bullying project, Dan Savage recently spoke at the National High School Journalist Conference in Seattle. ..

I watched the video and read the story, and my point of view didn't quite line up with either presentation.  It's probably because I've been conditioned to recognize this particular type of hypocrisy (and please understand that this is not a judgement; I believe hypocrisy is just human nature), but if I were writing the story it would have a very long headline.

Dan Savage Uses The Bible and Religion To Justify His Predjudices Against People Who Use The Bible and Religion To Justify Their Predjudices. 

But then I guess that could be considered to have it's own spin.

I, Solation

    The bar at the hotel has a few regulars who happen to be gay.  One of them, who also happens to be a reporter for a local TV station,  came in with a large group of his friends the other night.  I think they were celebrating a birthday.  Most of them were young, most were good looking, and it was obvious they all liked each other. For a while, during the slow process of leaving and saying goodnight, they stood on the front sidewalk where I was working, and I got to observe them as they engaged in affectionate banter the way real friends do, and the hugs and kisses as they left for the night.
    A couple of mornings later, one of my co-workers facetiously asked me if I enjoyed seeing all those young gay guys together in a group.  (Teasing comments are part of our normal conversation.)  He didn't know that I had actually been thinking about that group of guys a lot.  I said, "No, actually it just made me sad."  Of course I had to explain what I meant.
    Fact is, I miss having a crowd.
    I'm nearly 50 years old.  I'm nocturnal.  I'm poor.  The friends we do have either don't know each other or don't like each other, and some of them live in the land of Far Far Away.  (We live in Edmond, which, in OKC's gay scene, is like living at the North Pole.)  And everybody is busy busy busy.  So getting together with, say, half a dozen other people is difficult at best.
    I have friends at work, but even getting together with them is difficult.  We went to a party recently that was being thrown by a co-worker.  Gaby and I were first to arrive and first to leave because I had to work that night.  Most of the rest of the guests arrived after we left, including those I wanted to see most.
   Our normal Monday night routine has been to go out to The Park, but we haven't been going out much lately, mostly just because of scheduling problems  (I've been working a lot of Mondays lately, dammit).  Plus, Gaby's  been a unwilling to go even when we can, and I'm not often willing to go without him.  Most of the people we know at the clubs are people we used to see at The Park on Monday nights.  But Mondays have changed since the "show" moved from The Park across the street to The Phoenix, and when we do go out, the people we know aren't there because they just haven't made the switch.  I did make one new friend at the Phoenix -- through a co-worker, no less -- but that friendship hasn't been cultivated because we haven't been there to do it.
    I read somewhere online recently that the gay clubs, at least from the social aspect, are a lot like church.  I can definitely see that, but Gaby and I are attenders who have not gotten involved with any ministries, so our  social connections are tenuous at best.  But the weather's getting warmer now, and both The Park and the Phoenix have a patio out back, away from the thumpa-thumpa, and it's so much easier to get into a good conversation with someone when you can actually hear each other.  Conversation is my favorite thing; the challenge is finding someone interested.
    Right now I'm busy with art shows, so I have little time myself to socialize.  But what I really want to do is to find a couple of our friends who are willing and able to go with us out of town for a couple of days.  But who?  And I'm not sure Gaby's on board with this because the first time I brought it up to him, he gave me a bunch of reasons why it was unlikely to happen instead of helping me figure out how it could happen.  But I have vacation time I need to use, and this is how I want to use it.  I just got to figure out how.

Lack of Support

Hm.  I tried to open blogspot, but was informed that my "browser is no longer supported by Blogger. Some parts of Blogger will not work and you may experience problems."  Whatever that means.  In order to write this I had to download Google Chrome.  Now everything is supposed to be much easier.  And perhaps it will... eventually, when I've finally figured out where everything is, like the Favorites Bar.  That may take a year or so.

Even Jay Leno Fails Once In A While

Last Tuesday morning I noticed that my old friend MW had posted a link to a CBS story about some remarks that the President had made concerning the Supreme Court's review of the health care law. He commented, "Marbury v Madison. Perhaps we should send Professor Obama copies of the decision?" I wasn't particularly interested at the time, so I didn't read the article. If I had, I would have seen that the President had said that he was "confident" the Court would not "take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress." Of course, that's silly, since deciding that type of thing is one of the courts primary functions. (He tried to clarify later, but it didn't quite take.)
Saturday, I was getting ready for the treadmill, and decided to watch Tuesday's edition of The Daily Show while I was exercizing. In the second segment, Jon talked about this same subject, making fun of the President for saying what he said, showing a clip of FOX and Friends making fun of the President for saying it (and talking about the same case that M mentioned in his post), showing a clip of Sarah Palin saying something similar to what the President said, another clip of Sheldon Whitehouse (D)RI saying the opposite of what the President said, and a clip of Mitt Romney saying, "We Conservatives stand for causes that are to important to allow unelected judges to force their own biases on an unwilling nation." Jon then went on to talk about what the Supreme Court was doing while the Republicans and Democrats were "swapping places."
Feeling amused, and in a jocular mood, I decided to comment on M's post: "Judicial Activism. It's not just for liberals anymore." Instead of an LOL, I got corrected. Hm.
I tried again with a simple (and factually incorrect, as it turned out) redirect based on M's response. This time I got corrected by a friend of his. Well, fine. If you guys don't get the joke, I don't feel the need to explain it to you. I abandoned the conversation.
But I'm still wondering how I wound up on the other side of an argument by agreeing with the other participants.

I Wish I'd Said That

Dan Staley says:
It is especially useful to tweak those who feel compelled to use Cliiiiiiiiiimategaaaaaaaaaaaate! in an argument. That is: the day after the stolen e-mails were published, the glaciers did not advance, the seas did not retreat, the globe did not cool, the rains did not decrease in intensity, the spring did not come later, the arctic ice did not return, birds did not nest further south, pikas did not move downhill, the tundra shrubs did not cease their advance, permafrost did not re-freeze…you get the drift.

Slacktivist:
“The nefarious global conspiracy promoting the climate-change hoax continues to spread: The oceans are in on it. So are the maple trees of New England. And both Dakotas.”

koreyel says:
Well at least we know Heartland Institute is hard on it for the good guys. Those leaked emails show they hope to convince educators to “teach the controversy” with statements such as this: “whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy.” And that therefor educators need to teach both sides equally. And the real good news is that half the teachers surveyed already choose to do so because “they think there is validity to both sides”. (The 97% side and the 3% non-publishing side).