Chai with soy creamer and honey in the morning.

Straight up herbal at night.

Rock on! \m/ \m/

I just recently discovered Tazo Wild Sweet Orange tea which completely shocked me. I just found out that Tazo is owned by Starbucks which depresses me a little because I’ll be buying at least one box of this tomorrow. Damn it’s good.

Oh…on an unrelated note I completely upgraded the entire site today. I’ve installed a new version of WordPress and have the spam filter working now (or at least seemingly working better) so it should be a little easier to sort through the thousands of spam comments I get each month.

 Miraculously, my site works fine on Firefox, Safari and Opera (all versions).

Unfortuanately for me, I long ago decided that I was no longer going to do extra coding just for IE users so if you are one of them, please don’t think my site looks like crap – it just looks like crap in your shitty browser.

Thanks Microsoft…

/rant

You just said that you are from Colorado (the only other state that has a TABOR) and that it doesn’t work there. The reason that you cited is because you have “groups” that are at odds with each other and they shouldn’t be. They are being forced to compete with each other over receiving tax payer funds.

No shit. They should be.

What exactly is the opposite of that scenario that you would prefer? That every single tax payer funded organization has no shortage of funding? In this wondrous scenario of yours does money grow on trees or does it just fall out of my ass? This is the reason for TABOR – there is a scarcity of money and some of us taxpayers would like to be able to keep a little bit of it to pay our bills, put food on the table and occasionally take a vacation. You know, all the reasons why we bother to get up and go to work in the morning.

In a perfect world money would be no object. I would love to feed the worlds children and dig a fresh water well in every worldwide community that doesn’t already have one. That’s just not possible though. The fact that you’re bitching about Planned Parenthood having to compete with schools over funding just pisses me off. For the record I do support Planned Parenthood but there are more important things than free rubbers and secret abortions for 15 year old girls. Namely, the fact that YOU and every politician out there has his hand in my pocket trying to see just how much more money I can afford to pay in taxes before I throw up my hands and would find it easier to just move elsewhere or become homeless, spending my days hanging out in the public library reading (not a bad gig!).

In my humble opinion, government has a duty to decide how much of a tax burden it’s citizenry can comfortably handle and then decide how it would like to spend those funds. It should not be deciding all of the fun neat things it would like to do and then decide how much to tax me to pay for all of that. I don’t get to do that. I’d love to see the look on my bosses face if I went to him and said that he has to give me a raise because I already bought a nicer car even though I couldn’t afford it.

TABOR is about holding politicians to a standard – this far and no more. It’s a way of setting the limit of what the state or municipal government is allowed to tax it’s citizens and forcing the government to work within those restrictions. I’m all for it. Frankly, those that aren’t are either crazy or work for an organization that they know is first on the chopping block!

/sarcasm

All kidding aside, I’m growing weary of this discussion in general. It’s been a raging debate in the legislature and on the ballot in this state for years. “Protect Maine Equality”! “Stand for Marriage Maine”! Bullshit. Call it what it is, this is about the right to legally discriminate against someone else because of their lack of commonality.

I heard a commercial on the radio tonight while driving home from work that really bothered me. One of their points was that the legislature passed a law that we weren’t even allowed to vote on. The nerve of those democratically elected representatives! Why how dare they take the faith bestowed upon them by the general populace and act in our best interests by protecting a minority!

So, with my frustration and disdain for ignorant close minded ideals bubbling at the boiling point I thought it was time to vent a little. I made a visit to the Stand for Marriage Maine website and here are some quick observations.

(In no particular order and the bold formatting is their emphasis. I’ve used italics inside quotes to separate their remarks from mine.)

“Maine citizens from all walks of life and backgrounds, whether religious or not, agree that marriage is between a man and a woman.”

Some Maine citizens do I’m sure but as a member of our society’s most hated minority I can honestly say that I’ve never met a fellow non-religious person that could care in the least about protecting the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman – only religious people think this is a problem.

“Every culture in the world understands that marriage is between a man and a woman.”

In many cultures they understand that marriage is between a man and as many twelve year old girls as he can afford. We should strive to emulate as many foreign cultures as possible. How about those that state that wives can be beaten or children can be sold into slavery?

“Mainers will have to accept a radical new understanding of marriage whether we like it or not. Maine will have abandoned its commitment to promote monogamous marriage as a foundation of society and an important policy to enrich Maine families. The interests of children in ensuring healthy marriages will be eliminated.”

This is the foundation of society that I always thought enriched Maine families:

“Section 6-A. Discrimination against persons prohibited. No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor be denied the equal protection of the laws, nor be denied the enjoyment of that person’s civil rights or be discriminated against in the exercise thereof.”

That comes direct from the Maine State Constitution.

“States where gay marriage has become legal are allowing teachers to instruct children as young as kindergartners about marriage. (California Education Code §51890)

If the gay marriage law takes effect, teachers could have little choice but to teach young children there is no difference between gay marriage and traditional marriage and parents could lose control over what their kids learn in school about marriage. (Parker vs. Hurley)

We should not accept a legislative decision that results in a wholesale abandonment of Maine policy that promotes marriage for the benefit of families and children, or that will result in public school teachers teaching our kids that gay marriage is the equivalent of traditional marriage.

That is an issue for parents to discuss with their children according to their own values and beliefs.”

I believe that the public schools teach our children a variety of things that should be left as an issue for parents to discuss with their children according to their own values and beliefs. Good parents would do this anyway of course and worry less about the chance that a teacher might introduce their children to those subjects instead of Mommy while watching a rerun of Will and Grace. There are lots of things that our schools shouldn’t be teaching our children but I personally worry more about the outright lies being taught such as Columbus discovering America than I am that our children are being taught about the realities of the world that we live in. I’m a reasonable guy though. If corrupting our children is really the issue here then I’m willing to make it a law that we can’t talk about marriage in school if we can make marriage legal for all. Deal?

“If Question 1 fails and LD 1020 is allowed to take effect, marriage will be redefined to be only about any two consenting adults without regard to gender. Its focus would be only about what the adults want for themselves, and not what is best for society as a whole. The roles of husbands and wives would become irrelevant. Maine’s marriage laws will no longer promote what is best for children.”

This seems to indicate how important procreation is. What if a man and a woman that can’t have children want to get married? What if a man and a woman get married and choose not to have children?

“Examples of the legal conflicts that will be created include:

“The refusal of a religious school to offer housing to married same sex couples could be sued or forced to stop offering housing to all married couples;”

Is this truly an issue? I thought religious schools were already discriminating against gays for employment. Correct me if I’m wrong.

“A religious organization that refuses to hire or retain an employee in a same sex relationship could be sued;”

Same as above. I was under the impression that we were already discriminating against sexual orientation anyway so I don’t see how this would change anything.

“A religious individual who owns a business such as a photographer, florist or inn keeper who refuses to participate in a same sex wedding could be sued or fined;”

I know that we can still discriminate against “long haired hippy freaks” and refuse service to those without shirt or shoes so I fail to see how this would be different.

“A religious-based social service organization could lose government funding for refusing to provide same-sex couples with spousal benefits; and”

I’d like to take a moment to point out that this is already against the law in Portland. The Catholic Charities of Maine and the Red Cross gave the City of Portland a very unceremonious middle finger along with a message of where they could shove their funding. I haven’t heard of any lawsuits over that although now you know why I refuse to support the United Way (since they continue to support these organizations).

“Professionals like doctors, psychologists, counselors and others who conscientiously object to same-sex marriage can have their licenses revoked.”

As they should. Are you serious? A doctor that refuses to treat a patient because of their sexual orientation or marital affiliation should lose their license. I find it very hard to believe that anyone could honestly produce such an individual in the first place so I think this point is moot anyway.

“These examples are illustrative only. The legal scholars warn that the volume of litigation, “will be immense.”

Can you imagine how many lawyers must have been lining up to tell Lincoln about the volume of litigation? How about the glut of litigation that Woodrow Wilson was warned about before he urged Congress to pass the 19th Amendment ending womens sufferage?

“Marriage is a pillar of society and should be protected from distortion by politicians and gay marriage activists who want to redefine it to suit their objectives.”

Objectives? Freedom? Equality?

“The defeat of the People’s Veto would result in the very meaning of marriage being transformed into nothing more than a contractual relationship between adults.”

Ever been divorced? Banning divorce would do far more for removing the contractual aspect of a marriage than banning gay marriage would!

Defeat of the People’s Veto will mean that gay marriage activists will have been able to redefine marriage for all of society, even for those people who have deep objections to it.”

Yes that’s right. Your marriage will now somehow be different. You will be required to wear a dress on some evenings and your wife will be required to wear boots and shave the back of her head.

“It promotes the ideal opportunity for children to be raised by a mother and father in a family held together by the legal, communal and spiritual bonds of marriage.

And while divorce and death too frequently disrupt the ideal, as a society we should put the best interests of children first, and that is traditional marriage.”

Oh this is about the kids again? What about having children out of wedlock? How about many children out of wedlock? While on drugs? Alcohol? Smoking? Jobless? Homeless? These things are far more important to the welfare of children than Bert and Ernie’s marital status.

What this really comes down to is basic discrimination and a N.I.M.B.Y. attitude. A gay couple lives down the street from me. I occasionally see them jogging together and sometimes even holding hands. This doesn’t bother me and I hope that they live a long and happy life together. On the other hand, there’s also a family that lives near me that absolutely fills their yard with the most god-awful and massive lawn “decorations” all year long. This affects the tranquility and peace of my neighborhood, brings down property values and is simply tacky as all hell. Can we have a referendum about that?

I began thinking about how much food we burn in our gas tanks every day and then more importantly – how much food do I burn on my daily commute. So, I looked it up. It takes 26.1 pounds of corn to make a single gallon of ethanol and in Maine, we use a 10% blend of ethanol in our gasoline. So, that means roughly 2.61 pounds of corn per gallon of gasoline pumped into my car right? Well, I have a 13 gallon tank and have to fill it about every two weeks so I’m going to say that I use roughly one gallon of gas a day – burning over two and a half pounds of food each day.

How much does an ear of corn weigh? I don’t know and couldn’t find this information on the Internet but what do you think? quarter pound? half pound? Lets go with a half pound. That’s about five ears of corn I burn a day, 35 a week and 1,825 ears of corn a year. Maybe it sounds worse at 952.65 pounds of food?

That’s nearly a thousand pounds of food burned in my engine each year.

It’s hard for me to not imagine what this child would think of that.

What exactly does this do for us? Look it up, please. Find a reason why we burn food for fuel and post it in my comments section. It does not make our fuel cheaper. It is not better for the environment. It does not give me better fuel economy. Corn isn’t even the most sensible or economical thing we could use to make fuel with.

Simply, it only makes sense for corn lobbyists and an insanely over subsidized agricultural industry.

There are lots of issues that seem natural for me to roll into here, child sweatshop labor, children laboring over blood diamonds in Africa, girls sold into slavery in India but nothing seems quite so insane as the amount of food that this country could be feeding the world with but instead chooses to burn in our gas tanks (or feed to cows but that’s another post).

I’ve never felt quite so much like the fat cat banker lighting my cigar with a $100 bill in front of a beggar asking me for loose change while telling him that I don’t have any.

It’s not that I feel that it is our duty to take care of the entire world. It’s nice to think that we could build schools and hospitals in every corner of the world but I know that’s not likely. However, domestic production of ethanol has grown to over 4.5 billion gallons per year and that equates to more than 117 billion pounds of corn…per…year.

Again, it’s not our job to fix the whole world but I’d like to think that maybe it’s our responsibility to at least ensure that the world’s children have food and fresh water. The 143 million malnourished children in the world could eat an extra 818 pounds of grain per year if we simply gave up on ethanol and sent what we use to make it to the poor countries of the world. That’s an awful lot of extra food.

Think about that the next time you fill your tank, eat a hamburger, chicken nugget or drink a Coke.

Typically I would argue against the farm subsidies that produce these massive crops of corn and other grains that are largely not consumed by American appetites but now at the end of this post, I say go for it. I would happily support the continued taxation of my paycheck if only we would leave the food we grow as food and send it to those who are most desperate for that which we so easily discard.

Here’s my suggestion – I’d like to see a community organization that buys these homes up and offers them to the people who actually already live in these depressed areas. Let’s face it, there are plenty of low income families living in Flint, Michigan who can’t afford even the $500 to buy one of these homes. So, lets buy the homes and allow people to “apply” to live in them. I think it’s fair that they simply take whatever rent they are paying for their apartment and pay that to live in these houses. The hope is that they move in, fix up the house and turn these run down neighborhoods back into the small, close knit communities that they once were. After 12 months of living in the house, someone from the community organization would inspect the place and if the family has made a noticeable improvement to the house or community in some way – they can have the deed to the house and land for free.

Seriously, some of these houses are selling for less than $1,000! What better investment can we make in our communities than helping people to live a better life? I’m damn sure that the last thing we need is a developer buying them all up to bulldoze and put up yet another condo community.

But that’s just me.

Here’s a guy who makes it his personal responsibility to make the world a better place – one deed at a time.