Furibundum

Despite the whole of his spiel or whatever the purpose, regardless of anything else he might have had to say, Osama bin Laden's latest audio installment was really pretty much spot on in many respects at the start. In it he talks about the dangers of global climate change , and how the preponderance of responsibility for the mess lies squarely at the feet of the United States and the Western industrialized nations. Al-Quaeda à la Al-Gore, you might say. But the similarities between the two of them shouldn't in fact surprise anyone, actually, seeing how that bin Laden is so much a Democrat at heart. Leave it to Rush Limbaugh to point out this inconvenient truth , check, check, checking off bin Laden's parroting so many of the Democratic party's talking points. To bin Laden criticizing George W. Bush for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol for benefiting giant corporations, Limbaugh asks, "Does this not sound like an average Democrat? Okay, blame the U.S. and greedy, evil c...

Like most other gay folks, I was gratified the other night to hear President Obama announce at the State of the Union address his intention to put repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell on the agenda for 2010. Of course we were all hyped when we heard it the first time, too. Back when he was pandering the rainbow coalition for votes during his campaign, pledging to be a "fierce advocate" for LGBT rights. To start working toward getting rid of DADT during his first year as president was part of that promise. Not that he has totally snubbed us, I guess, but tagging him a "fierce advocate" is probably a stretch . It's really little wonder that much of the queer community reacted approvingly, but also with a fair amount of skepticism, the other night after hearing him vow again to do what he vowed once before with nothing gotten done so far. This DADT thing, I wouldn't think, should be such a big ordeal to get over and done with in short order. Even military p...

To be honest, I never really knew what was the big deal about food waste being tossed out into the landfills. I mean, I've heard about it and all, how that it's a bad thing for the environment, I just did not get why. Nor cared enough to bother taking five minutes to Google about it to find out the reason, until now. (Is Google as a verb supposed to be lower case? Haven't troubled myself to figure that one out yet, either.) So yeah. I kind of just took for granted what was being said by the greener people than I am, that our uneaten scraps of food were, like so much other stuff, contributing to the detriment of the environment. I could not reconcile in my own head, however (what little time I did spend thinking on it) why tossing leftovers into our own compost bins is an eco-friendly thing to do, but having it hauled away by others to rot elsewhere was an entirely different and bad thing. Well, consider me educatated now via EcoWatch.org : "Rotting food in the landfil...

I had to give it an overnight rest to let pass the euphoria that I get whenever Obama talks to me. Had to let it wear off before I could process objectively about his State of the Union address last night. I already admitted that I knew it would happen, no matter my disappointment lately , once he did that thing he does so well when he opens up his mouth to speak. I had expected to get all giddy again, and I did. Frankly, I suppose I can't help but be biased still, but not only was the speech delivered with his regular panache, I think it did good tagging all the stuff that should have been tagged. Despite some thinking it was too much of a mashup of affairs ("they had decided to serve up a buffet of all of it" so thinks Politico "), I would suppose that if it had not, he would have been beaten up for being too à la carte. Really, he had no choice but to bring it all up, though. I mean, a year ago he did come to the table with an already full plate of less-than-savo...

Chris Matthews after covering President Obama's State of the Union address said : “I forgot he was black tonight for an hour." And there was that other time he said about then Senator Obama: "The fact that he's good at basketball doesn't surprise anybody." I don't think Chris Matthews is racist, but seriously... for making his career out of dissecting what everyone else might say and why did they say it, you'd think he might stay a bit more alert to what comes out of his own loud mouth.

I probably ought to mention that I haven't always been such a wackadoo about living so cheaply, nor was I one to spend an awful lot of time thinking very much about the environment. It has only gradually progressed to how funny I am about it all now over the last few years, and then only due to a most desperate downward shift in my own personal economy back then. Going from riches to rags can have its advantages in terms of evolving a new and better outlook on things, though. I don't intend to nor would I want to change that, however rich I might end up some day. But it's still relatively new for me, so I do admit that I am in no position to offer up any ground-breaking tips on frugality, as I mention over in the sidebar there; nothing new here. This blog is truly only to document what it is that I am doing now, and as I've mentioned before, to keep track of whatever new things that I will hopefully learn as I go along. It's still an ongoing adventure for me, a gra...

Since Scott Brown beat out Martha Coakley for the Massachusetts Senate seat (mostly because she ran a sucky campaign; the loss of it squarely on her shoulders, in my opinion and others' ), the Democrats are all discombobulated now. What with the passage of Obama's aim to overhaul health care shot down in that one fell conservative swoop and Teddy rolling over in his grave, the party has been acting rather awkwardly ever since; it's kind of embarrassing. Losing the seat to a Republican and with no hope bringing off health care reform as intended, the Democrats have started whistling a different tune. Just last year, getting the bill done was of such high import that Obama was setting deadlines to ramrod making legislation ready by the end of summer the year . As President Obama put it often, "Health reform is not a luxury that can be postponed, but a necessity that cannot wait" . Now it seems maybe not so much. Despite at first wanting to have something signed int...