Motley Moose – Archive

Next Tuesday, April 14th, Angie Zapata’s alleged murderer goes on trial in Colorado. For the first time ever, an anti-transgender murder will be prosecuted as a hate crime in the United States.  With the Matthew Shepard Act (or formally “The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009”) introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives last week and the bill expected to be introduced in the Senate within the next couple of weeks, this trial is a timely reminder of the need for federal hate crimes legislation.

Free Flight New Media will provide daily updates for this landmark trial at FREE FLIGHT NEW MEDIA starting April 13th through the duration of this trial. Cross Posts To Motley Moose.

Background:

Angie Zapata was brutally murdered in Greeley, Colorado in July 2008. Angie was a transgender woman and she was murdered because of anti-transgender bias.

Dr. Kutner’s Suicide… America’s Gain

Watching HOUSE (still my number 1 show) last night, I was astounded, along with millions of others, when Dr. Kutner, played by actor Kal Penn, was found dead on his apartment floor, an apparent suicide victim. This was an electric episode (with the night’s medical plot featuring a dying husband and wife… with the husband played very well by…get this… Meatloaf!) and drove me to the HOUSE web site immediately after to find a Memorial Page already set up to the memory of Dr. Kutner.

Why… why did they kill off one of the most popular (and funny) characters on the show? Money? Backstage conflict?

The reason is striking: Kal Penn is going to work at the White House!

I posted at RedState under the name Han_Pritcher.  I have not been banned.  I simply gave up.  After a year as a “liberal contrarian” I have simply lost any sense of purpose to it.  I learned a lot about politics, the internet, and myself by posting and participating there for as long as I did.  I’d like to share what I’ve learned.

First, we are not magically better than they are.  We can get every bit as angry, as stupid, as blind as they do at their worst.  I’ve seen diaries at DailyKos which are phenomenally stupid and incredibly angry.  You have too.  Don’t deny it.  Oh sure, the content and themes are different, but I’ve learned that the more politically involved we get, the more partisan and frankly angry we can become.  This is a human thing, not a liberal or conservative one.

I’ve been noticing that we have elected a guy that Europeans have a hard time dismissing, even with their often lofty anti-American sentiments (hey, I’ve traveled).  Seems Barack could get elected over their own leaders, in their own countries, he’s so popular.

Yet, Europeans don’t expect miracles from him; they just like him and see him doing his best. I mean, he’s a nice person, and he’s obviously humbled by the trust of Americans; he’s not one of those politicians that live in their own special bubbles and say only what they’re ‘supposed to,’ not what they really mean (unless caught without knowing there’s a live microphone nearby.)   But, why sooo popular?

He has some cool characteristics, it’s not just that he’s not beholden to special interests, he’s not beholden to special friends (not sure about Tim though) and not beholden to special ideology.  Even though I disagree with some of what he’s proposed, I know he’s thinking and he’s thinking his policies will be workable and are our best options.  

I’m fine

About six hours ago, we here in Rome were rocked by what my 32 year old cousin and his 65 year old neighbor say is the worst earthquake Rome has seen in their lifetime.

The quake struck at 3:30 in the morning, literally knocking me out of bed. A loud moaning sound joined the violent shaking that threw me out of bed. This was no ordinary earthquake, not the rolling motions I experienced when I got caught up in the Whittier Narrows quake as a child visiting my aunt in California, a violent shaking, as if someone picked up our house and is shaking it like a bottle of Gatorade. The sounds of glass breaking join the noise of plaster cracking and my cousin screaming “TERREMOTO!”

image courtesy REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi, Aquila.

I think now is as good a time as any to remind ourselves that taking advantage of poor people is definitely a bi-partisan past time here in the United States.

Payday loans, for those of you unfamiliar with the practice, are small, very short-term loans with extremely high interest rates (sometimes in the range of 400-800%) that are effectively advances on a borrower’s next paycheck. They’re typically obtained when a borrower goes to a check-cashing outlet or an online equivalent, pays a fee, and then writes a postdated check, or signs over the title to a vehicle, that the company agrees not to cash or take a lien against until the customer’s payday.

Thank God we’ve got Congressmen willing to stand up for working Americans against these sorts of shenanigans, right?

… right?

After six years of war, 4265 dead soldiers, and more than $600 billion flushed down the toilet, you’d think that the American people would have learned that military action should be the absolute last resort.  A story from Politico would indicate that the American people still haven’t learned that lesson.  

My best friend Holly is a lesbian. She came out in a most interesting way…on the last day of senior year, she asked all of her close friends to meet her at the diner across the Long Island Expressway from our high school.

Since 2003, she has been dating (and since 2007, living with) her parter, Jennifer, whom she met while a student at NYU. They now live in a fabulous new oceanfront condo in the Rockaways in Queens, New York.

Recently, the have decided to get married…but since New York hasn’t legalize same-sex marriage (and thanks to Governor Paterson, the state recognizes those performed out of state), they were looking for places to do it; elope in Canada, have it at Holly’s aunt’s in Connecticut, etc. Jennifer wants to fly her family to wherever the wedding takes place. However, that may not be necessary after all!

(cross posted at kickin it with cg)

A gunman, reportedly an immigrant from Vietnam, took hostages and opened fire in a U.S. immigration center in New York yesterday. 13 people were killed. The man later killed himself.

After the incident, Pakistani Taliban militant leader Baituallah Mehsud claimed credit for the attack.  Reuters reports:

“Pakistani Taliban militant leader Baituallah Mehsud claimed on Saturday responsibility for an attack on a U.S. immigration center in New York state in which 13 people were killed.

“‘I accept responsibility. They were my men. I gave them orders in reaction to U.S. drone attacks,’ Mehsud told by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Reports claim the FBI have ruled out the Taliban’s responsibility in the attack and a Fox Pakistani security analyst “dismissed Mehsud’s claim as a publicity stunt.”  

What do you think?

The news that the Obama administration will be lifting some of the travel restrictions to Cuba, is welcome, but it does not cover “family” in the way that I define it.

“Family” for me is a term broader than one of consanguinity.  For me, and thousands like me in the US, who are practitioners of a branch of an ancestral African religion, popularly referred to as “Santeria” and formally known as “Lukumi” my links to Cuba are religious.  

My daily prayers honor my blood relatives.  My daily prayers also honor those enslaved persons who were brought to the New World as priests from their homeland, and against all odds preserved and protected a traditional belief system.