The Cooch

I cannot wait to get one of these T-shirts!

Karma

Hat Tip

Separated at birth?

I crashed really early last night, and ended up listening to the president's speech and the GOP response.

I prefer listening to speeches versus watching them on TV. I don't know why.

I can't say that my way is better. When I listened to Jindal, all I could hear was this man.

People who annoy me

I still have nothing blob-worthy to write about. So instead I'll start a new series, People Who Annoy Me, and get something off my chest.

Nancy Pelosi really annoys me. For all the wooing Obama is doing with Republicans, I think his time would be better spent (and our tax dollars as well) if he'd use it to knock Pelosi down a peg or two (or ten).

The GOP can do whatever they want. They are out of power (deservedly so) and their bark has no bite. But Pelosi has the power, and she mishandles it.

If Obama wants to get Washington beyond partisanship, then he needs to start with his own party.

WTF were democrats thinking when they elevated Pelosi to Speaker? Is she really the best they could do?



I feel so much better now.

Obama Derangement Syndrome in full force

My favorite spectator sport of late is watching "real Americans" get consumed with Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Read their comments. You can't make up shit like that.

A Yankee no more

Today someone called me an "unreconstructed Southerner." Whatever that means.

Heh.

This made me LOL

I'm probably the last to hear about this....



Hat Tip

What it's like to work at home and call in gay...

I'm still in my PJs. I'm watching movies. Anything that I can find that's on and in HD. I have the remote all to myself. Right now it's Austen Powers on Starz.



Meet the new day, same as the old day.


It's mother daughter night tonight. We're doing our once-a-month dinner volunteering at the men's shelter. We're bringing the pasta.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ETA: OK, now this is getting bad. I told people who needed to know that I'd be unavailable today. Normally I don't have a lot of contact, by phone or by email, all day. My work is very solitary.

But wouldn't you know it. It's Day Without a Gay, and today of all days, every other colleague or client is either calling me or sending an email. And of course everything we do is time sensitive.

And I'm ignoring them.

How would it be if we all did this?

A Marriage Manifesto... Of Sorts

We're in

Going to C-ville today to stand up for marriage.

Pictures later.




ETA: No pictures yet (dumbass me forgot the camera) but here's the news coverage. Can you spot Court in the video?

Michelle Malkin's worst nightmare

It's been a busy weekend for the Trop family.

Court and I spent most of Saturday preparing for our Welcoming Congregation workshop. We were the workshop leaders. We pulled it off, and nicely based on the feedback. It didn't hurt that our contribution to the potluck was an ice cream cake.

Bribery works.

This morning Court and I did our once quarterly stint in the Sunday School. Court was in the nursery, and I was a special guest with the older elementary kids.

My kids were a restless bunch, but it was time well spent. We talked about the election. We learned about Olympia Brown, a suffragist who broke many gender barriers in her time. A snippet from the story:

When Olympia Brown was in college, women weren't supposed to wear pants. Women weren't supposed to wear anything except very long dresses that came all the way down to their toes. But Olympia did. She wore dresses that came down only past her knees, and under them, she dared to wear pants!

When it was my turn to talk, I asked the kids what they thought about attitudes toward girls and women back in the day. I shared that when I was in elementary school, girls were not allowed to wear pants to school. We had to wear dresses or skirts. The only exception was on really cold days (meaning below zero), when we could wear pants under a dress or skirt. Then I shared my dread on the day I forgot to wear a skirt over my pants, and how scared I was that the teacher would catch me skirtless. The kids just couldn't believe it.

We did an election, much like on Survivor, where we voted an action figure out of our class. We each selected a toy figure. We named our figures: mine was a big burly sumo wrestler that I named Diaper Dan. He got the most votes in the first round, and was kicked out of the class.

The teacher voted for the Ninja Turtle because he had a weapon "so he must be violent." This wasn't an intentional set up, but it might as well have been.

I was mostly there to talk about the consequences of majority rule, and specifically on the marriage issue. The majority may rule, but that doesn't make the majority right. I talked about how people sometimes cast their vote based on the way a person dresses, the kind of car they drive, what religion they practice, who they have associations with, where they live, how they earn a living, who they marry.

I said that I am married to a woman, and though that is far from usual, it isn't unusual either. Some people think that marriage is strictly for one man to one woman, and that because I am a woman, I should not be a allowed to marry a woman. Many of these people who oppose my marriage think that I am attacking marriage, because they think I am trying to change it. They fear that changing marriage will damage or destroy it.

Some people think that because I am a lesbian, I am a bad person, or that I do bad things, and that I should not be around children. Some people think that my family (made up of me, my wife and my child) isn't a real family.

I pointed out that the teacher voted off the Ninja Turtle because he had a weapon, and that made her think he was violent. I asked, "What if the Ninja Turtle has a weapon because he is a police officer bravely protecting our safety?" I surprised the teacher and made my point.

People can make a vote for the best of reasons. If a person is violent, I don't want them in my class either. It makes sense to vote for the violent person, to exclude him from the class. Ninja Turtle has a weapon, but is he violent? If he's a police officer, do I really want to vote him out of the class?


I am Michelle Malkin's worst nightmare: I've exposed vulnerable Sunday School children to my gay agenda.

He almost pulled it off

Election results for East Jesus, VA:





















Obama lost East Jesus by just 1,366 votes. Factor out all of Falwell's Liberty University students, and Obama carried the city by a large margin. That's amazing.

We're making plans to go to DC for the inauguration. We decided we'd go no matter the outcome, but the historical significance of this particular inauguration makes us want to be there all the more.

The moral of last night's game

The backup MUST be ready to step in at a moment's notice and PERFORM.

Way to go Byron. Well done.

Way to go Steelers!

Sign of the times

"At Liberty University, founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell in 1971, the first student Democratic club has sprung up."

SOURCE

Could East Jesus actually go blue? Seems unthinkable. We'll know after tomorrow. My bet is that it will stay solidly red. This is one of the last places on Earth where cars and trucks still sport Bush/Cheney bumper stickers. That's right, the 23% of Americans who still approve of George W. Bush all live in East Jesus, VA.

I'm just glad I don't vote in the same precinct as all the newly registered LU students. A precinct that typically accounts for 3,000 voters added 4,200 newly registered LU voters this year. LU really pushed and prodded students to register in East Jesus (as opposed to their home address), not so much to tilt Virginia toward McCain, but with their eye on local zoning issues to be decided by voters next year.

I'm just ready for the whole fucking election to be over. We''ll vote in the afternoon, and assuming it won't take all day, we plan to drive to Charlottesville for dinner at our favorite restaurant and free Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

Thank God for Joe The Plumber

Otherwise, everyone would be talking about the Palin rally at Johnstown, PA. I grew up in a mining town 20-minutes from Johnstown.

I moved away 24 years ago, and a lot has changed. On the other hand, so much hasn't. It was once, and may still be, the metropolitan area with the highest percentage of individuals who have lived in the same house since 1959. As much as one quarter of the residents. The Carter and Reagan years were it's toughest time, and it has been on life support ever since.

I didn't recognize it so much growing up, but there are pockets of the culture there that remain quite racist. I've heard it over and over. And I've heard everything about Obama (he's a Muslim, he's a terrorist, doesn't pledge to the US flag, and on and on). Attitudes toward people of color, especially African-American, are unmoving and unfavorable. These attitudes remain entrenched in some pockets, but they are dying out.

It's not typical of residents there. They're good people. They will give you the shirt off their back.

My sister went to the Palin rally, where the ugliness happened. She set off the metal detector. No, she wasn't packing [pervs]. She had a knee replacement 10 years ago.

BTW, 50% of my six-person family has lived in the same house since 1959. My parents (both 79) and my brother (51) live in the house. Both my sisters live in the same town, within walking distance of my parents house. I'm the troubled middle-child who left.

Stuck in the USA

George. W. Bush may grant pardons to members of his administration for their constitutional abuses. But that doesn't mean they'll get away with it.

What they missed

We didn't watch the debate last night. We listened to it instead.

Both candidates say they understand what regular people are going through right now. I'm not convinced.

Here's why. Neither candidate mentioned the big worry on a lot of American's minds right now: heating their homes this winter.

We are lucky in that we have above average income, and we live in a very small house in a mild climate. Nevertheless, the cost of keeping warm this winter is big on our minds. It has to be big on the minds of families who make less than we do, live in bigger houses, and who reside in colder climates.

It was pretty much a regurgitation of the candidates' stump speeches, with a heavy dollop of Joe-the-plumber for good measure. Boring.

Uh-oh! Trouble in East Jesus land

Though he actively opposes any rights for homosexuals, a film exploring homosexuality, thanks Congressman Virgil Goode in the credits. A 2003 film that has been described as a gay coming of age story at a posh Virginia college involves Goode’s press secretary Linwood Duncan and Jerry Meadors, director of a project Goode has supported with Federal dollars in the past. In the closing credits, the film thanks Goode himself.

SOURCE

I don't know how close his re-election race is, but Goode is dumber than a bag of rocks. He's an embarrassment to all Virginians. It hope this is enough of a tipping point to unseat him.

I wonder

Are the people who convey their fear of Sen. Obama by constantly invoking his middle name afraid of this guy? He must be pals with terrorists with a name like that. Right?


Who is the real Neel Kashkari?

I'm just kidding of course (and channeling my inner John McCain). My first impression is that Kashkari's a pretty impressive guy. I hope he knows what he's doing.

Quote of the day

Neither McCain nor Palin would dare mention Obama's middle name, Hussein, but they can play up Obama's past associations and let others connect the dots. Terrorist. Muslim. Dangerous. Other.

It is legitimate to question character and dubious associations -- and William Ayers is certifiably dubious. The truth is, Obama should have avoided Ayers, and his denouncement of Wright was tardy. But this is a dangerous game.

The McCain campaign knows that Obama isn't a Muslim or a terrorist, but they're willing to help a certain kind of voter think he is. Just the way certain South Carolinians in 2000 were allowed to think that McCain's adopted daughter from Bangladesh was his illegitimate black child.

But words can have more serious consequences than lost votes and we've already had a glimpse of the Palin effect.

The Post's Dana Milbank reported that media representatives in Clearwater were greeted with taunts, thunder sticks and profanity. One Palin supporter shouted an epithet at an African-American soundman and said, "Sit down, boy."

McCain may want to call off his pit bull before this war escalates.

--SOURCE