Devil-Man Speak With Forked Tongue

It would seem that yet another Republican hypocrite has been "outed." Oh, I don't mean "outed" as in discovering he's gay, I mean "outed" as in having said one thing to garner support from a specific voter base, and then done another.

In 1994, while opposing Senator Kennedy in Massachusetts for a seat in the Senate, now-outgoing Mass. governor Mitt Romney apparently showed quite another side where same-sex couples, and the GLBT community is concerned.

You may (or may not) remember that just after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ordered same-sex marriages to begin in Mass., Romney dusted off and invoked an old 1913 law that had not been used in almost 100 years to prevent same-sex couples from outside the state from getting married. He has consistently, at every turn, fought against any positive strides the GBLT community has made toward equality. Most recently, he has asked the state's highest court to order the legislature back into session to vote on an anti-gay-marriage measure that, if passed, would be put to the voters in 2008. It seems Mr. Romney was pissed off that they adjourned without addressing the issue, even though they're technically still in session until the first of January.

Now, it has come out that in a 1994 interview with a Boston gay publication, Bay Window, Mr. Romney said,

"People of integrity don't force their beliefs on others, they make sure that others can live by different beliefs they may have," Romney told Bay Windows a dozen years ago when the paper interviewed him on LGBT civil rights."

In more remarks in that interview:

He told Bay Windows that he opposed "extremists" who were trying to impose their positions on the Republican Party and that he believed marriage was a state issue.

He tied his willingness to advocate for the rights of gay people, Bay Windows reports, to the Mormon concept of “free agency”.

When I speak of free agency, I don’t just mean that each person can do what they want to do, I mean that our society should allow people to make their own choices and live by their own beliefs,” he told the paper.

In the 1994 interview he said that supported then President Bill Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy but said that “I believe that there will be change over time as the military establishment and the rank and file become more comfortable with the realities of sexual orientation in the military.”

Romney went on to say “I will support progress being made in that area as time progresses and the military and society becomes more accepting.”

Of course, now that he's making a Presidential run and trying to gain favor with the ultra conservative Republican base, he presents a different front with regards to same-sex marriage and GLBT rights.

Last year, as he was beginning to seek support for a presidential bid he delivered a speech to a GOP audience in South Carolina that not only opposed gay marriage but also civil unions "from day one.''

"Today, same-sex couples are marrying under the law in Massachusetts,'' Romney told the crowd. "Some are actually having children born to them,'' he continued.

"It's not right on paper. It's not right in fact. Every child has the right to have a mother and a father.''

Once this interview had been republished by Bay Window, the Log Cabin Republicans released a letter written to them by Mr. Romney in his campaign for Senate in 1994.

The 1994 letter was written to the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts, a gay Republican group, when Romney was courting gay voters during his unsuccessful campaign against Kennedy.

Citing Kennedy's record of advocacy for gays and lesbians, Romney wrote, ''For some voters, it might be enough to simply match my opponent's record in this area. But I believe we can and must do better. If we are to achieve the goals we share, we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern.''

I think these revelations beg the question of which Mitt Romney people would be voting for, f they were inclined to do so -- the one that says what they want to hear, or the one who makes a name for himself by what he does? While there is no way in Hell I would have thought (then OR now) that Al Gore would have made an effective President, it galls me that conservatives such as Romney used the terms "flip-flop, waffle," an other terms to describe what appeared to be Gore's inability to stand firm on an issue.

One conservative, from the Free Congress Foundation points out:

"Unless he comes out with an abject repudiation of this, I think it makes him out to be a hypocrite,” Weyrich said. "And if he totally repudiates this, you have to ask, on what grounds?”

Indeed. And I think that is a question that absolutely MUST be answered.

In an op-ed piece in the Salt Lake Tribune, Romney is exposed as a right wing panderer, willing to sell his soul to the devil in order to win the ultimate prize.

It's like turning a ballerina into a right-leaning elephant.

Romney, who is a staunch opponent of illegal immigration, claims he was unaware that several of the workers employed by Community Lawn Service with a Heart to take care of the grounds at his suburban home were illegal immigrants. While I can certainly understand being caught off guard under NORMAL circumstances in this type of situation, it would seem that someone so staunchly against illegal immigration would insure, beyond any doubts, that a company with predominantly Hispanic workers, would be on the up-and-up as far as immigration law. If you're going to go public against something, as a public figure, you mke sure that little details like this are checked out.

Let's hope that the Republican party can see through this guy (and if they can't, they're in some real trouble) and show him the door before too many tax dollars are spent in a fruitless campaign for this putz.

Wrapping up the week

An interesting piece of news coming out of the notoriously anti-gay state, Virginia, indicates that polls show that, even though the majority of voters support a ban on same-sex marriages, it is not by a wide margin at all, as previously thought. Only 52 percent of voters surveyed said they support the amendment. While that may prove to have little comfort value for the GLBT community living in Virginia if the amendment passes, I think it clearly shows them that they're not completely alone in that state.

Of course, if the ballot measure had been written to exclude same-sex marriage ONLY, I suspect it would pass by a landslide. However, the framers of the measure were short-sighted enough to believe that a measure that would ban partnerships of any kind between non-married people, regardless of gender mixes, would pass.

I have long said that ballot measure votes should not be passed by a simple majority because in many areas of the country, the majority is often defined by people who belong to a specific group, whether it be race, religion, or something else.

For example, let's say that 51% of the people that live in Utah are Mormon and the remaining 49% are not. (I'm just using random numbers here, so don't get all cranked about it, okay?). They're given a ballot measure to make Mormonism the state religion and, in so doing, all government will be run according to Mormon beliefs.

If all of the Mormons vote for the measure, based on their religious beliefs, then the minority has no chance at all even though they may have all voted against the measure.

Ballot measures should pass only by a 2/3 majority or a margin percentage or some other measuring stick, not unlike the way the Senate votes. The democratic process is flawed in the simple "majority rules" concept. It's not democratic, it's the majority oppressing the minority in some instances. This is why it's important to have larger gaps dictate the passage or failure of these sorts of ballot measures.

If this sort of system was in place, I would wager that Virginia would see this measure defeated and some of the states that have already passed amendments to their constitution would not have been able to do so.


In our sue-happy or I-can-get-some-big-money-out-of-this society, I can only shake my head as I read this article about a woman who went to a Kansas City Royals game and was struck by a foul ball and now wants the team to pay her medical bills. To me, this is the same mentality as that which was displayed by the two men a few years back who decided to use a lawn mower to trim shrubs. They rigged the safety mechanism so the mower wouldn't stop when they let go of it and they both picked the running lawnmower up by the deck, and lost their fingertips. They sued the manufacturer of the lawnmower, alleging that nothing in the equipment's instructions told them not to pick it up that way. When you go to a baseball game, and sit up front near the third base line, you have to expect foul balls and exercise a certain amount of awareness of your surroundings. I might be silly but I honestly think that personal safety is an individual responsibility first. I'm not saying that she didn't protect herself, not at all. But I am saying that, by buying the ticket and sitting in the seat, you assume a certain level of risk and, as long as the team isn't negligent, it just sucks to be you if you're hit by a stray ball.


I could make MYSELF gag with this! LOL!

You Are Not Scary

Everyone loves you. Isn't that sweet?

How Scary Are You?

Have a great weekend!

Just Another Manic Monday

The drive into work today was beautiful, what with all the trees turning colors, along with the brush and wildflowers. The sumac along the highways is absolutely breathtaking with its deep red colors. This coming weekend is the Fall Foliage Festival and, according to the early reports, it's supposed to be sunny and about 68 degrees. The drive down in the sun, with the foliage nearly at its peak, promises to be gorgeous.

Our first contract job started over the weekend. It's my foster-sister and her husband, who gave us a laundry list of things that need to be done in their 1800's vintage farm house. They recently gutted their kitchen and completely re-did it, from the floor supports all the way to the ceiling. And, when I say they gutted it, I mean they gutted it -- you could see DIRT where the floor used to be.

I cleaned and reinstalled two hard-wired smoke detectors, and installed two dimmer switches. Lisa replaced a handle on the garage door and then we both set in to doing some of the larger items. There are old-fashioned grates in the floor (from a very old and now non-existent heating system) and you could look right through and see the earth floor in the basement. Needless to say, there's cold air that comes up through there during the winter, so those needed to be covered.

We went down into the basement and looked at the flooring underneath to see where the support beams/joists were, and to evaluate just how we were going to attack this job. Amazing -- the floor is comprised of rough hewn trees. You can see the chop marks where they created the flat side to put up against the floor supports. Elswhere there are steel beams that assist the rough hewn trees in supporting the house.

Anyway, we had to cut larger holes so that we could enlarge them enough to secure new boards into the opening and attach them to the support beams. Even the wood floor is old, and made of real tongue-and-groove wood that ranges in thickness from 3/4" to 1" (we suspect that was intended to level the floor better). We got two of the four openings completed. They sure look funny with new wood inserted into the old, but apparently the plan is to carpet the floor when the work is all done anyway.

While it doesn't sound to us like we got much done, we know we did because we worked all day (actually, from about 10:00 until 5:00). We won't go back next weekend because we have recreational things planned for ourselves, but we'll go back the following weekend and every Saturday after that, for the most part, until we work through the list. We gave them an "estimate" of roughly $730 before taxes for the whole job. Some of the items on the list include removal of a tree, installation of gutters on the garage, removing old flooring and leveling a floor so that new flooring can be installed, installation of door casings and floor mouldings throughout, installation of doors and repair of windows with either broken/cracked glass or frames that don't work. There's a lot of work to be done and her husband just doesn't have time to do everything because he's a dairy farmer and, two years ago, his father died so he now has his father's farming to oversee as well.

She tells me that their neighbor is already starting on their own list.

We've decided that we're only going to work on Saturdays, for the time being. We need at least one down day each week so that we're not worked to death and feeling like we never have five minutes to sit and catch our breath. Football season is the perfect time to do it, and football gives us the perfect excuse.

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Speaking of football...

I got all the early games correct in my picks for the pool, and only got one wrong for the late(r) game. I also got the Sunday night game wrong -- who would have thought that Seattle would have allowed Chicago to run all over them that way?

I was about mid-way down the list as far as overall score, but this good week I had this week has brought me into a three-way tie for first place overall...a position shared with Lisa and another player.

We expected the Cincinnati/New England game to be more competitive than it turned out to be, but that was the only real disappointment of the day, as far as expectations. The San Diego/Baltimore game was one that kept the heart racing, as well as the Washington/Jacksonville game. Two fiercely competitive games that had all the drama.

Speaking of drama, did you see what happened in the game between Dallas and Tennessee? Dallas had just scored another touchdown and their center, Andre Gurode somehow lost his helmet. Albert Haynesworth, a tackle for Tennessee STOMPED on Gurode's face with his steel spiked cleats, causing Gurode to require more than 35 stitches in his face. Haynesworth drew a penalty but was not ejected from the game until he took off his helmet and threw it on the ground in protest over the first penalty -- it was at that point that he was ejected.

As Chris Collinsworth and his fellow commentators said, there needs to be criminal charges filed for Haynesworth's actions yesterday.

And apparently Jeff Fisher thinks so, too. He vowed to Bill Parcells that, if the league didn't punish Haynesworth to HIS satisfaction (Fisher's), the team would take their own action against him as well. Jeff Fisher is a class-act -- NO coach should accept that sort of behavior from their players, regardless of who they are.

I think criminal charges should be filed since, if he'd done that anywhere else besides a football field, he'd have been arrested.

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Joe got a phone call on Saturday morning (while he was at work at the garden center) from the new restaurant down the road that opened a month or so ago. He had put in an application there to tend bar (he's gone to bartender's school) and they were calling him asking him if he'd come in Saturday night. He agreed, called to let me know he'd not be home when we got home, and off he went.

They just shook his hand, showed him the bar, pointed out the cash register, and that was it. Joe said that the servers had been making their own drinks up to that point and, apparently, Saturday night was the bar's "grand opening." He said the cash register was a touch-screen type that he couldn't figure out how to use, and none of the servers knew where any of the drink-making supplies were. He was pretty disgusted with the whole setup, but agreed to work again next weekend. He figures it can't get worse, only better as he learns more. I tend to agree.

He made just under $100 total for the night, and really liked that part of it, too. Apparently the hourly pay is $4.25/hour and he gets to keep all the tips. He's been looking for something outside of the garden center, as he's afraid that schlepping 200 lb. trees for a living will make him old before his time. I tend to agree with that, too.

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I'm falling behind on the little guy's afghan. Not by a lot, but enough to stress me a bit. I'm only two rows behind right now but, add that to the four I should get done tonight, and that adds a bit of anxiety. No, normally six rows aren't all that much, but these rows are just under 300 stitches per row. It takes me about 25 minutes to complete a row, which means I'd have to knit for nearly 3 hours straight to get caught up. I can do that, I think, as long as Idgie doesn't climb up on my lap, look at me with those beautiful little adoring eyes, and stretch out with her little paws on my arm, daring me not to pet and stroke her. Yes, this is why I'm behind...

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I've been forgetting my meds a lot lately -- both the morning meds (Prozac) and the night-time ones (Neurontin). Probably explains the headaches I've had lately. I can't figure out why, all of a sudden, I'm forgetting them. I have a routine both in the morning and at night and I just seem to be skipping over that step. Freudian?

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I've decided to shut down my Marriage Equality blog -- trying to maintain so many web sites (four blogs, a web store, and a web page) just adds to the manic feelings. And, since things have slowed down so much on our case, I just decided to incorporate that stuff into my daily blog.

Holy Matrimony, Batman!

Massachusetts Judge Allows Out-Of-State Lesbians to Marry!

BOSTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) -- A Rhode Island lesbian couple won approval from a judge to marry in Massachusetts, paving the way for the first legal wedding of a same-sex couple from outside the only U.S. state were gay marriage is allowed.

Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice Thomas E. Connolly ruled that the wedding of Wendy Becker and Mary Norton, of Providence, Rhode Island, could go forward because their home state has no laws specifically banning same-sex marriages.

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a 2008 Republican presidential hopeful, has sought to prevent out-of-state same-sex couples from marrying in Massachusetts.

Conservative Christian groups have expressed concern that such marriages would turn the liberal New England state into America's gay-marriage capital, a Las Vegas for same-sex weddings.

But gay-rights advocates have campaigned to allow the practice since Massachusetts' highest court ruled in 2003 that it was unconstitutional to ban gay marriage. That ruling cleared the way for America's first same-sex marriages in May the following year.

Since then, more than 8,000 gay couples have wed.

Friday's case was focused on a law passed in 1913 that bars out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts if their own states fail to recognize the union.

"After a very long engagement, we are thrilled to be able to marry and provide our family with the legal protection and social recognition we deserve," said Becker, who has been with Norton for 19 years. They have two children.

Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly, whose office had opposed Becker and Norton's bid to marry, said the state would not appeal the judge's ruling, leaving it to Rhode Island to clarify its stance on gay marriage.

"This has always been about respecting the laws of other states," Reilly said in a statement. "Rhode Island is now free to address the Superior Court's decision as it sees fit."

A spokesman for Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri had no immediate comment.

Romney has been an outspoken critic of gay marriage, which is a hot-button issue with conservative voters in the United States.

Massachusetts lawmakers are due to vote in November -- after the state and national elections -- on whether to amend the constitution to ban gay marriage.

Methinks this is gonna open a whole new can-o-worms as far as the religious right is concerned. Right about now, they've gotta be poopin' their drawers!

No snappy title here

Wouldn't it just figure?

I picked New England over Denver for last night's game and Denver handed New England a sound beating, shutting them out completely until the fourth quarter.

Amazingly enough, Jake Plummer finished the game with a passer rating over 100, bringing his overall rating up into the 60's now, moving UP 5 more notches overall, and SEVEN above Big Ben Roethlisberger, who is still sitting in the anemic (and benchable) 30s. He's just seemed terribly tentative since his surgery.

The Manning brothers enjoy mid 90s ratings and are together at the top of the list. However, most amazingly, David Carr leads the pack with a 113. I tell you, Gary Kubiak is a good coach and a GREAT offensive man and a PHENOMENAL QB coach. Maybe in the next year or two he can build himself a really talented team and show the world that the Houston Texans need not be laughed at any more.

Chris Simms' spleenectomy following the game yesterday was a real shocker, too. Makes you wonder how long he played with that ruptured spleen.

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Into knitting or crafts? Here's a 50% off code/coupon for Joann Fabrics, good for the next week.

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I read a news article this morning that indicates that the Rochester City Council sent a letter to the New York Legislature "...calling for an end to discrimination against same-sex couples" and urging them to pass legislation to legalize same-sex marriages.

This area of New York tends to lean more toward the conservative yet the entire City Council signed the letter without batting an eye. It is felt that, because this area tends to be very conservative, this letter might have more weight at the legislative level.

Democrat Elliot Spitzer, the current state AG (who issued an opinion in 2004 saying that marriages that originate outside the jurisdiction of NY should be recognized) is the overwhelming favorite for governor this year at election time and strongly supports same-sex marriages as well. While we could lost the battle in court, we could end up winning it through the legislature. We'll see...

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My ex, the putz, filed for bankruptcy a while back when he stopped paying child support. He listed me as a "debt" and forgot to tell the bankruptcy attorney that the "debt" was child support arrears. The money stopped coming in sometime around March and his arrears got up to $3500. When I got the paperwork from the bankruptcy attorney, I forwarded it to the Child Support Enforcement Unit that is handling my case. Guess what? I've gotten a check for $200 each of the past two weeks. I guess the bankruptcy attorney had to restructure the structured payments to include child support, rather than dismissing the "debt."

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I spent a quiet day yesterday watching football and knitting. I got quite a bit done, and am now just about a third of the way through the project (the "flag" blanket for my oldest grandson). Of course, Idgie was a tremendous help, helping feed the yarn to me, making sure the ends of my knitting needles were moving in a continuous motion, and test driving the "layability" of the blanket. It's so good to have help.

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I made a pot of KILLER chowdah yesterday. This time of year my crockpot comes out of the closet (literally) and stays out. I love crockpot cooking -- not only is the food fantastic coming out of it, but it's great to not have to come home and cook.

Yesterday I made a ham chowder, with mixed vegetables and pearl onions. Tonight I'm going to put together the fixings for a wonderful chicken stroganoff that I found in a great recipe book called Grandma's Casseroles. Believe me when I say that the recipes in this book are fantastic and very down-to-earth. One thing I hate about cook books is that most of the foods are too "exotic" for everyday down-to-earth, shoestring-budget types of folks like us. Grandma's is old-fashioned recipes with old-fashioned ingredients and down-home goodness.

And I wonder why I'm overweight...

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Well, it's Monday. Another day. Another dollar. Before taxes.