We Made Wikipedia!

I saw this on the front page of Wikipedia.  A proud moment for Tennessee.  My two favorite parts?

Thomas J. FitzGerald, the director of the environmental group Kentucky Resources Council and an expert on coal waste, told The New York Times that the ash should have been buried in lined landfills to prevent toxins leaching into the soil and groundwater (as recommended in a 2006 EPA report), and stated that “I find it difficult to comprehend that the State of Tennessee would have approved that as a permanent disposal site.”

and

The power plant continues to operate, with waste being sent to one of the two remaining intact containment ponds.

Sometimes you’ve just got to laugh to keep from crying.

Venus During the Day

Oooooo.  I might have to go home early.

Speaking of

Holy shit!  Did you guys know about this?

Warren et al

I’ve been trying for a long time to come up with a good post on my ever-evolving thoughts on Warren and I just can’t help but still feel that what is happening right now is exactly right.  People should be pissed off.  They should be vocally pissed off.

But I’m not convinced that that means Warren’s invitation should be rescinded.

In the long term, what’s going to be best for all of America is for people like Warren to get their heads out of their butts.  And I don’t think that isolating him helps remove butts from heads.  It just reaffirms their sense of martyrdom and persecution.

What we need to have happen is that we need people to see that, even though they believe themselves to be good people, they do stuff that really hurts people.  In the past, those “good” people have been sheltered from that knowledge because gay people stayed in the closet or they fled to the cities or they were otherwise invisible to those good people.  So, deciding that opposing stuff that really hurts gay people is easier than it should be for “good” people, because they don’t have to face the repercussions of their actions.  Gay people are just not on their radar.

And now!  Now, if perchance some good person does start to get a little nervous or weirded out about how gay people are treated, well, the answer is not for you to worry about the deep and vile hypocrisy of your church or its leaders preaching love but advancing pain and suffering; it’s for the gay people to go to treatment and get “de-gayed.”

Just think about this.  Someone is causing you pain and suffering.  You do all you can to avoid them.  You don’t go to their church.  You move out of their town.  You don’t make too big a deal about yourself so as to try to escape their notice.  And yet… and yet they still do what they can to hurt you.  And their answer is “Just change and I’ll stop hurting you.”

Let me say that again–“Just change and I’ll stop hurting you.”

That’s the “Christian” message towards gay people.  Simple as that; that’s what it boils down to.  Oh, sure, they have a million excuses and justifications for why it’s okay, nay practically their duty to hurt gay people who won’t change.  But, in the end, it boils down to “You’re making me hurt you.”

And folks, it doesn’t take a genius to see that for the abusive nonsense it is.

If you hurt people who have not hurt you, you are doing wrong.

They gay community has been in a tough spot because of this “you’re making me hurt you” nonsense.  On the one hand, sometimes you can stop that kind of nonsense by swinging back a couple of times.  But sometimes fighting back will get you killed.  Sometimes it seems like leaving those kinds of jackasses behind is the safest response, but what if they come after you?

So, there’s no one right response for the gay community to have.

But it is on all people of good-will to demand an end to blaming gays for the troubles certain streaks of Christians cause them.  And part of the way to do that is to call out Warren and the Mormons and their ilk publicly.

And if they aren’t in the public eye, how do we do that?

So Many Animals…

Rusty sent me this link.  If you need a pet, think about these guys.

What GoldenI Said

Go read.

That was my opinion, too, that both candidates left me feeling like, “Oh, okay, good.  Whoever gets this position seems to understand the magnitude of the problem and has some ideas for how to solve them.”  Mack’s right that Forrester seemed a little more platitudy than Bone, but the man was on vacation and on speakerphone and so I cut him some slack.

But yeah, I do feel good about both candidates.

So, I went from an uninformed “whatever” to an informed “whichever.”

We were talking some, too, about the… genius… and I use that word reluctantly… of what the TNGOP does.  About how they made a commitment to have someone who would get out there and pound their message and keep their base informed.  I was joking yesterday about how every dumbass thing that goes on in the country seems to have some tie to some Tennessee Republican.

But then I’ve been thinking about whether it’s a certain kind of branding.  If the Republican party is going to be more and more a Southern, religious, conservative party and if someone in the TNGOP doesn’t see that trend reversing, and if that person looks out over the political landscape and sees how strong the base is here in Tennessee, why not have a Tennessee Republican attached to every dumbass thing the Republicans do?

The Republican base doesn’t think those things are dumbass, for one, so it doesn’t hurt the dumbass-thing doer with the base.  In fact, it makes him or her more popular.  And second, I’m sure hearing “Tennessee Republican…”  “The Republican from Tennessee…” over and over and over again creates a sense that there’s a core group of Republican leaders in Tennessee.

And that’s obviously good for Tennessee Republicans.

But here’s my last point.  Early on in the evening someone mentioned, “I heard about the TVA disaster on CNN, just like all of you,” and I blurted out, “But we didn’t hear about it on CNN a week after it happened.  We heard about it on the internet right away.”

And I thought and think right now that, Jesus Christ, if a disaster of that magnitude can happen in our state and our elected officials have to hear about it on CNN?

I just don’t know.

I’m naive I guess, but I assume that when there’s a major catastrophe, an unprecidented disaster that has implications for every place in the state with similar holding ponds, that there’s somebody somewhere who’s job it is to alert our state leaders that it’s happened.

Two Things that Delight Me, Okay, Three

1.  There’s a Jerry Orbach way in NYC!  Is it wrong that I hope his ghost slouches along Jerry Orbach Way making witty quips and pretending to solve crimes?

2.  I was in a bathroom last night that smelled just like the Hustler store.  I even tried to figure out what in the bathroom smelled like the Hustler store.  But I couldn’t locate the source of the smell.  I don’t think it was me.  I haven’t been to the Hustler store in ages.  But you never know.

3.  So, Christian Grantham is on the phone in the elevator all “Yes, I’m on my way home now.  No, no one stabbed me in the eye with her pencil.  Oh, I know.  I was shocked too.  I’ll just get some dinner when I get home.  Love you.” and half the elevator went “Awwwww…” and Christian was all embarrassed and it tickled me.