Motley Moose – Archive

I think I can.

A scuffle ensued Saturday when members of the National Socialist Movement (Neo-Nazis) found themselves shut out of an anti-immigration Tea Party protest at the Phoenix capitol.

American Citizens United, who organized the Phoenix Tea Party rally, told the Neo-Nazi group that racist messages were not welcome at the demonstration. The Neo-Nazis left, but two returned, standing defiantly on the sidewalk that borders the designated protest area.

Crossposted from The Huffington Post

A few months ago, I moved to a part of the county that has several lakes. There are three lakes within a quarter-mile of the house. The whole area is beautiful. The lakes have abundant fish and waterfowl and the woods and fields are full of wildlife. It is a photographer’s paradise.

Two of the lakes, which are separated by nothing more than a two-lane road, are home to a pair of beautiful trumpeter swans. These birds are the largest flying birds in the world. The males can weigh over thirty pounds and have a wingspan of seven feet. They were nearly wiped out in the Lower Forty-eight states by the middle of the 20th Century. Seeing a wild pair in Michigan is still a thrill for someone who loves wildlife.

The beauty of this area seems to have given a boost to my creative urges. Since I’ve moved here, I have been taking more photographs, working on some drawings, and creating concepts for paintings. It was only natural that I would want to photograph these majestic birds.

Photography has been a passion of mine since before I reached puberty. I long ago passed the point of taking pictures for the sake of taking them. If the light or weather aren’t right then I don’t even bother picking up my camera. That held true for the swans, as well.

Once I decided to take a picture of the swans, I kept waiting for the perfect moment. Some days I would wait too long and the light would be gone. Other days, the wind was blowing too strong or the sky was too bland and gray. This went on for awhile until I realized how close we were to winter weather. The swans would be gone if I waited any longer, so I made a serious effort to be in the right place at the right time.

The effort was complicated by the fact that my camera tripod had gotten misplaced during our recent move. This forced me to try for a picture earlier in the day then I would have preferred. In order to get the shot I wanted it would have to be at long telephoto range and in the early evening. The days kept going by without the perfect conditions I desired. Then one day it all came together.

Some of you may have noticed that I have not been keeping up on my Daily Tubes lately. As I have felt that this was my major contribution to the Moose, and had consistently posted the tubes during the time I have had internet access, my failure to keep up on this has left me feeling rather guilty as of late. While I joke about things all of the time, the truth of the matter is that I suffer from a major mental illness. I am still ashamed to write these words as I have been a moderately successful and happy human being for the majority of my life.

However, over the past couple of years I have suffered from bipolar disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and major panic attacks. These problems have left me unable to work and at times unable to even function on the most basic of levels.

Cross-posted at River Twice Research.

In his current Asian trip, President Obama visits Japan, then addresses a forum of leaders in Singapore, and eventually ends up in Seoul to discuss nukes and North Korea. But make no mistake, the axis of this week is the time Obama will spend in China, which has catapulted to the forefront of international affairs and is on its way to joining the United States as the alpha and omega of the global economic system.

That China has emerged is secret to no one, but the consequences haven’t been fully integrated – either by the United States or by China. The level of intertwinement between the two economies has reached the point where they have effectively merged, forming what I’ve called an economic “superfusion.” But that fusion hasn’t yet altered political and cultural mindsets.

The ministers of the world still beseech the United States to “do something” about a weakening dollar, and U.S representatives on the eve of this trip announced that after the financial morass of the past 15 months, the United States “is back.” Yes, the United States remains the world’s largest economy – though technically the combined income of the European Union is greater. But size isn’t everything – just look at Japan, which is still the world’s second largest economy but whose influence and impact are substantially less. China may be poor on a per capita basis (perhaps $5000 per person relative to nearly $50,000 in the United States), but it is changing more rapidly and consuming more hungrily that any other society in the world. It is the change factor in the global system.

This week, a 10 year old boy in Arkansas, named Will Phillips began a sit-down campaign protesting the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.  He noted that the term “liberty and justice for all” excludes LGBTQI people in this country and therefore refuses to participate in stating that it exists.

(Posted at SexGenderBody)

It’s official, there is water on the moon.  National Geographic has this:

The crash, plus the subsequent impact of LCROSS itself, yielded enough water fill about a dozen 2-gallon (7.6-liter) buckets, NASA announced on November 13, 2009.

The significance of this discovery is hard to overstate.  For a manned lunar base to stand any long-term chance of viability it will require a source of water, and raising that water out of the gravity well of earth would be tremendously expensive.  Oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for fuel are also commodities that are essential for sustainable presence on the lunar surface, and both of these can be easily made if a source of water is available but would prove prohibitively expensive if they had to be lifted pound-by-pound from earth.  

To put this in perspective, the 12,000 lb Apollo Command Module that was the primary payload of the previous moon program required the nearly 7,000,000 lb Saturn V rocket to lift it into space, at a cost of about $1,000,000 per pound (in adjusted 2008 dollars).  Therefore, the water thrown up in the test crash last month would have cost around $20M to have sent there on a rocket.

The potential now for a manned base on the moon is greater than it has ever been before.  With this first step, it is becoming possible to imagine a future – that is perhaps so near that the youngest of us alive now will live to see – when a viable population of humans will live and grow outside the fragile basket which is our home planet.

That splash of frozen water could well have been the first indication of the immortality of the human species.

While the progressive movement’s anger is rightly focused on the 64 Democrats who voted for the Stupak abortion amendment, the GOP’s solid support for that amendment was accepted as par for the course. At least, it was until someone dug up a little known embarrassing fact about the Republican National Committee.

It seems the RNC provides health insurance to its employees. That insurance includes coverage for elective abortions. This was unknown to outsiders until Politico broke the story on Thursday.

Federal Election Commission Records show the RNC purchases its insurance from Cigna, and two sales agents for the company said that the RNC’s policy covers elective abortion.

As of Thursday, the RNC’s plan covers elective abortion – a procedure the party’s own platform calls “a fundamental assault on innocent human life.”

Well, golly gee. Color me surprised.

Of course, the RNC was quick to react to the embarrassing news story.

Informed of the coverage, RNC spokeswoman Gail Gitcho told POLITICO earlier Thursday that the policy pre-dates the tenure of current RNC Chairman Michael Steele.

Okay, Steele only recently became chairman of the RNC, so this could have happened last year. Just how long has the RNC been covering abortions?

“The current policy has been in effect since 1991, and we are taking steps to address the issue,” Gitcho said.

Oops, again. Kind of slow on the uptake there, guys.

So the RNC, who is staunchly anti-abortion, has been offering abortion coverage for 18 years and are just now going to do something about it, yet they are complaining because President Obama is taking a reasonable amount of time before committing more troops to Afghanistan.

Can we get a great big shoutout for the RNC? Something like, “YOU HYPOCRITES FAIL, ONCE AGAIN!!!

Sure, when marriage was conceived, there was no liberation for the gays, so it was set in stone that marriage must be a man and a woman. This is asinine. As long as there’s love, there should be unity; whether it’s gays or not.

Marriage (in my eyes) is more of a promise. A promise to understand when you come home stressed from work. A promise to take the trash out when your back is bothering you. A promise to love you forever. Now why should that be determined right or wrong by sex?

Sure, some people may be going to Canada to get married, or the next bordering state, but why should you have to basically escape where you live in order to have your vows said and rings swapped?

The truth is, I think no-one really knows. People will hate just to hate, or truly believe that marriage is sacred and shouldn’t be touched or revised to accommodate gays. I think you should be able to share your love without other people telling you that homosexuality is not natural, when it is present in animals, human history, and, in essence, it’s as natural as the air we breathe, the love we share, or the love people think they shouldn’t be able to share.

Fresh scat from the Birfer loons, via HuffPo:

In his decision dismissing a lawsuit filed by Orly Taitz late last month, U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carterr mentioned that some witnesses complained that the birther chief urged them to lie on the stand. Now, more details are out, as one of the witnesses has made his affidavit public.

Come on, is there anything more entertaining than soap opera drama, infighting, and adulterous sex among the architects of the Barry Hussien O’bama ain’t a REALZ ‘Murican sub-species?  No, there isn’t.