Yeti Menace

via Frank

Tonight I stepped out of my building and it was one of those beautiful magical moments when the light of the day was receding and the city was transforming for nightfall. Peace, y’all.

The last week has been a rollercoaster of emotion for me. It was brilliant to see Obama win the Presidency on election night, but my elation was dampened by the passing of Prop 8 here in California, when MY civil rights were voted away. So its time to GET ACTIVE!

I am proud and energized by the activism that has been ignited in my friends and community to speak out to win back our civil rights. My friends around me are awakened to a new power: joining groups, emailing friends and family, sending alert text messages and boycotting local businesses who supported Prop 8. Seeing the growing protests nearly every day since the election is amazing. Last weekend 12,500 people marched in Silverlake, 10,000 marched in San Diego, thousands in San Francisco, Long Beach, Sacramento and many other cites here in California. This is the way to bring our message to the people.

This Saturday is a coordinated national action that will take place simultaneously in over 80 cites across the country. Join the Impact and get out there to raise your voice in support of gay rights. I’ll be at city hall here in Los Angeles. Get off your ass and get out there… we must be heard!

Fight the H8!

Join the Impact National Protest for Gay Rights
November 15, 2008 @ 10:30a PT / 1:30p ET
jointheimpact.com 

Find your local rally here!

Hey Yeti Readers, at the suggestion of Yeti Hank I added the Sociable plugin to facilitate the promulgation of Yeti Wisdom across the liberal blogoshpere. In fact, as an experiment I submitted my No on 8 Rally Downtown LA post to Digg. So, in the future, if you like what you read here ”Spread the Yeti!” And let me know if you want more options because Sociable supports a gazillion methods and I only activated a few.

Yeti Jim here liveblogging from downtown LA in Pershing Square at the No on 8 Rally sponsored by Roots of Equality.

1:47p - There are about 300 people at the corners of 6th and Olive. Everyone has a sign and the cars driving by and honking sends the crowd into roaring cheers and “No on 8″ chants.

The crowd is growing as more and more people arrive. There will be speakers soon. The mood is cheerful!

3:47p - The No on 8 Rally spontaneously turned into a march to City Hall where the proponents of Prop 8 have assemled in their own rally. We marched up Broadway with police escort chanting “No on 8, Stop the Hate!”

3:58p - Now we are standing across from city hall assembled on Spring St at 1st. The Yes on 8 rally people are across 1st St in the lawn of city hall. There is a line of police filling the street separating us from them.

5:00p - I’m tired and sore and extremely fulfilled from the rally. We are on the way home and I just took a call from my documentarian friend Mike Skiff who was at the rally taking video footage, as he usually does for all the local political events. I guess we just missed it, but Sasha Baron Cohen showed up on the Yes on 8 side, pranking them and adding to the confusion. Mike started shooting the entire scene and Cohen’s production crew began to assault Mike, thowing him around and shaking him up. Mike got the entire thing on video. He was very upset and unsure what to do next. He is okay and uninjured, which I’m glad for. I’ve encouraged him to post the footage to YouTube and I’ll post it here if he does.

Wow, that was a wacky turn of events!

12:00a - Mike Skiff decided to file a police report about his “Hollywood Mugging” by Sacha Baron Cohen’s crew, saying:

The more I think about it, what really burns me is that Bruno Productions is leaching off a civil rights moment, only to make money off of it much later.

Apparently Mike was the only one there who knew who Sacha Baron Cohen was. Not the Yes on 8 crowd, not the other media and not the police. Mike exposed Bruno, yelling it out to everyone and busted up Bruno’s punking.

For those of you who are not already in the know, Yeti Menace is a homo blog. The Yeti Collective is group of fags who just happen to inhabit the blogosphere to promulgate our very own brand of The Gay Agenda, mainly because being gay is inseparable from our world view. (At least it is for Yeti Jim… I’ll let the other Yetis chime on on that thought.) I’m here to tell you: We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used To It.

In this spirit, this post is the launch of a new series I am calling Yeti Rant! One of the reasons I started blogging is because I really do have far to much to say. I have an opinion about just about everything, solicited or unsolicited. I’m a political-economics junkie and I grew up this way. I’m a ranter and I get emotional and passionate about my politics. I yell at the radio in the morning from the shower as I listen to NPR and I hear something that needs to be commented on. I’m a critic and I love to analyze things be they policy or media. I have my own policy ideas and debate them with my partner and friends all the time.

I am also accused of being too serious, which is something that I am working on… I’m trying to lighten it up a bit on the war-path and here on the page, but since I grew up as a hippie radical peacenik activist, the seriousness isn’t really something that I can separate from: it’s my productive anger. And it’s this productive anger that has finally found its outlet here on the Yeti Rant. Rawr!

Ok, whew, now that I’ve got that out of the way, let’s get down to business.

Obama for President!
November has arrived and there are only just a few days before the election. I’m feeling largely good about the national presidential and congressional races and way that Obama has run his campaign and how the Democrats have comported themselves. Obama has spoken eloquently and is constantly on-point and on the offensive, inspiring millions of Americans and raising crowds of tens of thousands in battleground states. Rhetorically, Obama is blowing McCain out of the water and the Republican campaign is losing the battle of message in the election. The McPalin campaign is desperate and it shows in how they have advanced a red-meat strategy that caters directly to their right-wing base using horrible and divisive rhetoric and ideology: blatant racism, McCarthyite attacks, the spectre and irrational fear of Socialism and Communism and questioning the patriotism of every American who disagrees with or criticizes their twisted vision of this world. The difference between these candidates is significant and I hope America will stand with me to choose Obama as the candidate that has the better vision of the world and the one who will help us build our “better history.”

Vote No on Prop 8!
While I am feeling more confident about the Presidential campaign, what really has me biting my nails is the race against Prop 8 here in California. Prop 8 is an initiative constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. It would outlaw our newly minted legal right to marry, won this year in a hard-fought legal battle that ended when the CA Supreme Court ruled the state’s marriage law unconstitutional based on a strongly worded opinion of equal protection. So far this year, both sides in this absurd debacle of a political initiative have spent together in excess of $40 million on the campaign. This is the defining moment in gay civil rights in my lifetime. Losing on Tuesday will mean 10 more years of working our asses off to change the state constitution. Winning will mean that gay marriage is here to stay and will become the accepted norm for the rest of history. I really believe that this is it.

I have many, many friends who have gotten married over the last couple weeks. I think they are doing this to be a part of history, regardless of what happens on November 4th. I completely understand what they are doing. In 2004, when Gavin Newsom allowed gay marriages to be performed in San Francisco, John and I made an appointment to get married and flew there with our Moms to be a part of it all. But four days before our appointment, the Supreme Court ruled that the mayor of San Francisco, who is also the county executive, didn’t have the power to change the force of written law and nullified all the gay marriages that had been performed. Soon after, we elected to become domestic partners, ironically, mostly because that was the only guaranteed way for us to share health benefits. The day the Supreme Court ruling was announced, John was in class and I texted him and asked him to marry me (yes, two gay tech geeks). He said YES, but we both decided that we were going to wait until after the election and this damned Prop 8 was defeated once and for all. On Tuesday, John will be electioneering all day for the No on Prop 8 campaign at a polling station at UCLA.

The polls are tracking closer and closer with the opponents of Prop 8 only slightly leading. Yesterday’s Field Poll was 49% opposed, 45% favoring… too close for comfort! One encouraging thing has happened this week, though. After virtual silence from the National Democrats on Prop 8, a new “No on Prop 8″ robo-call featuring Bill Clinton has started up here and is reaching millions of California households. A new ad is now running that features Obama, Sen. Feinstein and Gov. Schwarzenegger, reminding voters that Obama has called Prop 8 “divisive and discriminatory.” This is the kind of attention that we need to bring the people to the polls to make the right decision and vote against Prop 8.

Please cast your votes on November 4th for Barack Obama for President and No on Prop 8. I will personally thank you for stepping up and protecting this homo’s right to get married to the man he loves.

Pundit Kitchen, I <3 you!

Reuters photo via HuffPost taken after the 3rd debate, 10/15/2008. Really.

UPDATE: It seems I’m not the only one having fun with McCainzilla. via Hank.

One of the biggest ironies of life in America is the prevalence and persistence of poverty. To me, this is the most important and difficult problem facing the country, one that has only gotten worse in my lifetime. The irony stems from the fact that America is the richest, most powerful nation on Earth, providing billions in international aid to developing nations to battle poverty and disease, yet millions of our own citizens live in destitute poverty, lacking the basics: food, housing, healthcare, jobs, education.

The question I have to start with is Why is Poverty a Persistent and Growing Problem? I don’t think there is any one direct cause of poverty in America, it is a confluence of many things. But I think that there is a distinct lack of action on the issues of poverty because of the Ideology of Individualism and our societal Fear of Socialism. There is a disconnect by our political leadership to recognize and address poverty manifested as outright denial. When we have politicians who claim “The State of our Economy is Strong,” they are referring to the economies of the middle and upper classes, not to our economy as a whole, completely ignoring the millions who are persistently poor in America.

To add insult to injury, we have been engaged in the war in Iraq, spending $10 billion a month there. Yet, these kinds of expenditures aimed directly at the problems of poverty: education, healthcare, job creation, even direct assistance are off limits to be considered for domestic spending programs. The Ideology of Individualism and the Fear of Socialism reinforce each other in a causal loop of inaction.

It will take real leadership to address the issues of poverty to make a change in America. It will have to come from the top, from our President and s/he will have to stand ready to debunk the rhetoric of the Ideology of Individualism and the Fear of Socialism that will immediately be called into action against the effort. What can we do about it? We need to talk about it: with each other and with our politicians. We must construct the arguments that the elimination of poverty is making America a better place, for everyone. And that we owe it to ourselves to make war on poverty as forcefully as we would the wars we have fought in the last generation.

Wouldn’t that be the proudest moment of our history, to end poverty in America?

Prop 2 is a November ballot measure that seeks to prohibit the most abusive factory farming practices in California and ensure modest animal welfare standards for farm animals by allowing them simply to turn around and stretch their limbs.

“Thousands of Californians who care about preventing animal cruelty and promoting food safety have thrown their support behind Prop 2,” said Jennifer Fearing, YES! on Prop 2 campaign manager. “The opponents of this modest reform are just a handful of miserly corporate interests that put their profits ahead of consumers and animals. But real people understand that all animals deserve humane treatment, including animals raised for food.”

As of September 30, the YES! on Prop 2 campaign has raised approximately $6.6 million. The donations include funds from The Humane Society of the United States and nine other animal protection organizations, as well as nearly 17,000 gifts from individual donors, with an average gift of $134. Of the individuals who have donated, 63 percent are Californians.

On the other side, the No campaign has reported 172 donations from factory farming corporations, totaling $6.9 million for an average gift of $40,285. Only 36 of these donations, or 21 percent, came from California companies. The contributions come from some of the most disreputable factory farms throughout the nation that have a sordid history of abusing animals, damaging the environment, and misleading and gouging consumers.

Prop 2 is supported by The Humane Society of the United States, the California Veterinary Medical Association, the Center for Food Safety, the ASPCA, the Consumer Federation of America, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the United Farm Workers, Farm Sanctuary, the Cesar Chavez Foundation, California Council of Churches IMPACT, Republican and Democratic elected officials, hundreds of California veterinarians, family farmers, religious leaders, and many others.