eHarmony caves, will start gay dating service

For the life of me I have no idea why they would to be perfectly honest, here's the story from cnn

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/11/19/eharmony.same.sex.matches/index.html

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Online dating site eHarmony will create a service for same-sex matching in a settlement of a 2005 complaint that the company's failure to offer such a service was discriminatory. The new same-sex matching service from eHarmony, Compatible Partners, is set to debut by March 31. Under terms of the agreement with the New Jersey attorney general's office, eHarmony Inc. will start the service, called Compatible Partners, by March 31. "With the launch of the Compatible Partners site, our policy is to welcome all single individuals who are genuinely seeking long-term relationships," said Antone Johnson, eHarmony vice president of legal affairs.

So here's the deal, at least for me.... I think gay people absolutely deserve to have dating websites. There's no question about that, after all I do think that they are people like any others with rights just like the rest of us. That's all fine, but here's what I see.

A private organization decides to develop a product. This product is a dating website, which is tailored to cater to and promote Christian/(religious) ideals while facilitating a means for people to meet, get together and presumably fall in love and get married. With this website came a matching system oriented on matching straight couples for the best possible chance of resulting in a long lasting, committed relationship and hopefully marriage.

Now in comes the problem, in this case the gay community. Apparently they felt like a website oriented towards a religious/straight demographic was some how discriminatory. I'm sorry but here's my question, how is this even a issue of discrimination or a violation of rights in any way? You see, eHarmony isn't a public website, it's a product. Yes folks, that's right believe it or not it is actually a product, developed by a company which employs real people who make their living maintaining and selling this product. This product is a dating website, which was designed to cater to the needs of a specific demographic, being straight religious people. Perhaps religion wasn't stressed to the point where they won't let you in, but hey I've been on that site. If there's anything I've learned, religion is important there. So how is this discriminatory? Perhaps if it was a free, public website I might actually see their point, but that's not what this is. It-is-a-product. In my opinion this makes this a classic example of the tyranny of the minority. The gay community is just about literally inventing new rights to ensure the straight religious community can't have a product like this tailored to their needs. It really makes me wonder how they would feel if I were to find a random gay dating website and sue it for the exact same reasons.

The evil of religious cults...

So CNN has been running a series of articles on Jim Jones and his cult coensiding with the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown suicide. Usually I wouldn't bother blogging about something like that, but they decided to include 4 audio recordings taken from tapes of Jones in a sermon  as well as other situations such as punishing a girl for some reason with a snake.

Quite honestly, it's the single most evil thing I've ever heard in my life. It really shocks me that he managed to maintain any following what so ever. Obviously I'm no expert on cult mentality, but I think if I saw something like the snake punishment that would trigger something in me to fight this guy. Anyway, if you're curious to read up on and hear what I'm talking about click the link below. A warning, the audio recordings while censored for language content aren't very sanitized and are very disturbing.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/13/jonestown.jim.jones/index.html#cnnSTCText

Obama "Tanned" a racist comment?

So the Italian PM the other day was discussing new leadership here in the USA and over in Russia yesterday, and came out with a joke that is at least certainly causing quite a stir over there. He commented that "I told him [Medvedev] that he [Obama] has everything you need to reach an agreement. He's young, handsome and even tan".

Now lets bare in mind something here, the man telling the joke here is someone who is always tan him self, and has spent thousands on plastic surgery trying to look much younger than his 72 years of age (it worked). So the question is, was this a racist joke? Honestly I don't think so, frankly I think it was just a joke, and more over a actually a complement. More over, personally I think that particularly given the historic nature of what happened, and what it means for race relations not just here in America, but also world wide.... Perhaps we all just need to lighten up some? Stop being so sensitive? I'm not saying our all of our race relation issues were solved yesterday, but maybe if yesterday brought us a long way down the road towards totally normalized race relations, perhaps what will take us the rest of the way is us just treating each other as total equals. By not being so overly sensitive, by being willing and able to laugh at each other and our selves.

So to anyone here in this nation that might be upset, and to my fellow secondary countrymen (dual citizenship with Italy here) all I have to say is. Lighten up and smile some!

Ok, I have a confession

The fact of the matter is I have plenty of time to write the blog post I've been wanting to write now. I've been home from work for 2 hours, I spent that time checking CNN to see if NC's state officials were ready yet, with 100% of all precincts in the US accounted for to declare that Obama carried our state, they haven't yet, and chatting on the phone with my sister. Now I'm finally sitting at my keyboard with the profound realization that frankly, I don't even know where to start with this. So I think I'll cop out tonight by offering up one more embedded video, of what I believe is the most inspirational portion of what I think will be remembered as one of the greatest presidential speeches of all time. You know I'm really amazed with my self for getting caught up in all this the way I have, I usually stay stubbornly independent and skeptical on general principal.

I still don't have time to discuss my feelings...

Over all, but I think it's important to share this video with everyone. This is Republican Strategist Mark Corallo discussing why Barack Obama won, why he and not John McCain were the right candidate for the times and how the republican party should go about rebuilding after this massive defeat. His thoughts though, I think are crucially important particularly for those republicans who are very disappointed by the Obama victory. Watch below:

So, the most important point I think is this basic one:

We as Americans want something to vote for. It seems like the Republican party as a whole kind of fell into a neocon trap of not only moving far right (and pretending like that was the center), but also running on a platform of trying to give the nation something to vote against not something to vote for. Instead of hope, we all to often were given doubt. Instead of unity we were given divisiveness. This seeped even into the McCain campaign despite the principals of the man running for office.

I have a lot to say about last night...

But not enough time to say it just right now, I'm going to be working on something tomorrow evening though. Probably long, anyway for now all I can say is we live in a different country, heck different world than the one we woke up in yesterday.

Get out the early vote....? Daang!

Nope, I'm actually not calling on anyone to go out and vote early. It's actually too late for that, so there's not campaigning going on in my blog today. Though a little OT, if you haven't already early voted either with an absentee ballot or an official early voting station please do be absolutly sure to go out and support your candidate of choice or at the very least do us all the curtsy of not complaining about the other guy winning.

Anyway, back on message as our Vice Presidential candidates would say! I just can't believe how many people have early voted in here in the USA already!! I pulled this off of CNN.Com today

So far, more than 24.4 million voters have cast ballots in states where early voting is allowed, providing convenience for voters and, in theory, rescuing poll workers from an overwhelming turnout on Tuesday.

Link to CNN Source

I'm not up on what the average voter turnout is, but I know it's usually a small percentage and 24.4 million people sounds like one whole heck of a lot of people going out and voting to me. That's just astounding to me, and I think totally wonderful that many people (some for the first time) have chosen to participate in this years very important election. I think as of late last week CNN was saying that in NC alone 33% of likely voters had already voted in the early elections. If you click the link above you'll see that congress is already considering federally mandating early voting, I think that's a wonderful idea personally. It would solve so many voting headaches and very likely have a dramatic impact on the percentage of the voting population of our country.

Hooray for early voting and democracy this year. If you ask me, regardless of who wins and our personal feelings on that matter. We should all feel a little proud of our selves for stepping up like this. If you as me, all us voters should get cookies, any volunteers to bake? Anyone? Anyone? No? Darnet!!! :(