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You are here: Home / Civil Rights / LGBTQ Rights / Gay Rights are Human Rights / Sunday Morning Happy News Open Thread

Sunday Morning Happy News Open Thread

by Anne Laurie|  February 9, 20145:09 am| 54 Comments

This post is in: Gay Rights are Human Rights, Music, Open Threads

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From the macro to the (very) micro. First, from the Washington Post:

The Justice Department on Monday will instruct all of its employees across the country, for the first time, to give lawful same-sex marriages sweeping equal protection under the law in every program it administers, from courthouse proceedings to prison visits to the compensation of surviving spouses of public safety officers.

In a new policy memo, the department will spell out the rights of same-sex couples, including the right to decline to give testimony that might incriminate their spouses, even if their marriages are not recognized in the state where the couple lives…

“This means that, in every courthouse, in every proceeding and in every place where a member of the Department of Justice stands on behalf of the United States — they will strive to ensure that same-sex marriages receive the same privileges, protections, and rights as opposite-sex marriages under federal law,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a speech Saturday night at the Human Rights Campaign’s Greater New York Gala at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, where he announced the new policy…

The Justice Department will also recognize same-sex couples in a number of key benefits programs it administers, such as the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program, the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program, which provides death benefits and educational benefits to surviving spouses of public safety officers…

We know it was a good move, because the grossly misnamed National Organization for Marriage is already “decrying” it.

Second Happy Sunday news, the AOL douchecanoe whining about ‘distressed babies’ and Obamacare has crawfished:

AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong told employees in an e-mail Saturday evening that he was reversing the company’s 401(k) policy and apologized for his controversial comments last week…

Third, Taneisha Berg’s Kickstarter campaign has succeeded, so we can look forward to The Tenor from Abidjan documentary!

And, finally, Coca-Cola has bought an interest in Keurig’s new “cold beverage platform… for the production and sale of The Coca-Cola Company-branded single-serve, pod-based cold beverages“. I can’t be the only addict who dreams of a Coke fountain in my own kitchen…
************

Large or small, what’s on the agenda for the day?

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Reader Interactions

54Comments

  1. 1.

    bago

    February 9, 2014 at 5:29 am

    Going to sleep. Also, when you skin your knee, try and let the blood clot when your leg is flexed. Otherwise you’ll crack open the scab when you sit down.

  2. 2.

    Keith G

    February 9, 2014 at 5:32 am

    I can’t be the only addict who dreams of a Coke fountain in my own kitchen…

    Oh Anne, then you’ll just be shelling out more money to the Man. On the bright side, since you are a left coaster, at least you will have access to water so that pod-based cold beverage thingy can work.

  3. 3.

    BruceFromOhio

    February 9, 2014 at 5:37 am

    The Justice Department on Monday will instruct all of its employees across the country, for the first time, to give lawful same-sex marriages sweeping equal protection under the law in every program it administers, from courthouse proceedings to prison visits to the compensation of surviving spouses of public safety officers.

    Applause.

    Today’s agenda is pretty much what every Sunday has been this winter: cold, snow, and good food. Some InLawsFromOhio are joining us for dinner, whereupon we shall dine on the exquisite Indian recipes brought to life by MrsFromOhio while watching the snow continue to pile up outside.

  4. 4.

    Barney

    February 9, 2014 at 5:54 am

    When is it ever better to use the word ‘beverage’ rather than ‘drink’? And surely I’m not the only one who thinks “pod-based cold beverages” sound like the plot of the sequel to Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

  5. 5.

    MattF

    February 9, 2014 at 5:54 am

    Come the day, someday, screwing your employees won’t be regarded as something to brag about. Dreaming, I know.

  6. 6.

    Betty Cracker

    February 9, 2014 at 6:04 am

    Looking after my mom and fending off her three micro-dogs.

  7. 7.

    Hal

    February 9, 2014 at 6:10 am

    Am I the only one amazed that AOL even still exists? I have a friend who until about two years ago still used webtv and I use to joke with him that the minute he gave it up the company would shut down. AOL seems the same to me.

    Also:

    The Justice Department will also recognize same-sex couples in a number of key benefits programs it administers, such as the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program

    That caught my eye. Pretty interesting stuff on the DOJ site.

    Notably, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not covered by RECA. Additionally, the Act does not cover members of the military who occupied those cities or who may have been held in those areas as Prisoners of War. Congress determined that the atmospheric atomic detonations that occurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II are not part of RECA and limited the Act’s coverage to the atmospheric nuclear testing program conducted by the United States that followed the war. Also, the Act only provides compensation for an individual who has contracted a covered cancer following their exposure. Please note that neither skin cancer or prostate cancer are designated as compensable

    .

    http://www.justice.gov/civil/common/reca.html

  8. 8.

    OzarkHillbilly

    February 9, 2014 at 6:31 am

    @Keith G: Isn’t Anne a Right coaster? Which if she moves a little ways south she can have her choice of pollutants in her water. Than again, she probably doesn’t have to move at all.

  9. 9.

    Mustang Bobby

    February 9, 2014 at 6:31 am

    Heading for an all-British car show in Boca Raton, got the NY Times crossword puzzle printed out to take along, and remembering where I was 50 years ago tonight when I watched — along with 73 million others — the Beatles’ first appearance on Ed Sullivan. I was 11.

  10. 10.

    Anne Laurie

    February 9, 2014 at 6:43 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: Ha, yes, the local high-school football team here is called the Tanners — we’ve been polluting the groundwater for 350 years! (so our drinking water comes from the next town over, and is heavily monitored).

    When we were buying this place (20 years ago) we joked with a friend who’s a civil engineer about investing in a double Superfund site, and he told us, “All that means, in New England, is that the EPA has an actual list of the contaminants under your house, so in some senses you’re better off .” Sure enough, just as we were moving into our new place, there was a major scandal in the much-higher-priced town where we’d been renting, because it turned out the much-vaunted hundred-year-old plumbing in those carefully-renovated houses were leaking unacceptable amounts of lead…

  11. 11.

    raven

    February 9, 2014 at 6:43 am

    @Mustang Bobby: Not about a car but still:

    Says James, in my opinion, there’s nothing in this world
    Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl
    Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won’t do
    They don’t have a soul like a Vincent 52

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    February 9, 2014 at 6:48 am

    @Anne Laurie: The Tanners… The more things change, the more they stay the same. Just a different kind of hide being tanned now.

  13. 13.

    OzarkHillbilly

    February 9, 2014 at 6:53 am

    @raven: Never had a ’52 Vincent but I definitely concur with the 2nd part.

  14. 14.

    Betty Cracker

    February 9, 2014 at 6:55 am

    @Anne Laurie: Ah, you must live in the town that has a charmingly counter-intuitive pronunciation of its own name! The only time in my life I lived outside of Florida was a few post-college years in Boston and Marblehead. The cold drove me back home.

  15. 15.

    Matt McIrvin

    February 9, 2014 at 7:09 am

    @Hal: Do I detect a note of “Don’t look at us, it was Congress!” in that passage?

  16. 16.

    Anne Laurie

    February 9, 2014 at 7:09 am

    @Betty Cracker: Yup, WOObin, as the local historians are proud to point out, lots of oak trees for pig-feeding and just far enough from the Big City that the stench (of both pigs & tannic acid) wouldn’t offend the legislators.

    I’ve only been to Florida twice — once in November, once in January — and the heat & humidity still left me panting & enervated. I’m a cold-climate lady, carrying plenty of my own ‘pink insulation’ to keep the core temps up!

    Off to bed, for me. Best wishes for your mom, and be nice to the micro-dogs, they also have a voting quorum among the front-pagers (me, DPM, SG… )

  17. 17.

    Mustang Bobby

    February 9, 2014 at 7:12 am

    @raven: There will be a fair share of two and three-wheeled vehicles there, I’m sure; there always is.

  18. 18.

    Matt McIrvin

    February 9, 2014 at 7:26 am

    @Hal: …Anyway, as discussed in an earlier thread, AOL today mostly seems to be a holding company for various Internet ventures. They own the Huffington Post.

    This WaPo article initially claimed that they still had 2.5 million dialup subscribers, but it’s not actually clear that all of those people are subscribing to dialup.

    For those who do, it’s probably some combination of people who have no broadband access or can’t afford it, people who are still subscribing by accident, and people who don’t understand that they are subscribing to broadband and don’t need to dial into AOL.

  19. 19.

    Joey Maloney

    February 9, 2014 at 7:27 am

    I believe I’ll be spending a good portion of my day on Twitter, drinking those oh-so-delicious homobigot tears.

  20. 20.

    Baud

    February 9, 2014 at 7:31 am

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I was registering people at an OFA event once and was somewhat shocked at the number of people who gave me AOL email addresses.

  21. 21.

    Betty Cracker

    February 9, 2014 at 7:33 am

    @Anne Laurie: I like the micro-dogs. I just want them to stay out of my coffee and crumb-cake, which requires ninja maneuvers.

  22. 22.

    Boudica

    February 9, 2014 at 7:42 am

    Read an article somewhere that those coffee pods don’t recycle well. I don’t know that adding cola pods to the number of unrecyclables is good.

  23. 23.

    jayboat

    February 9, 2014 at 7:47 am

    @raven:
    @Mustang Bobby:

    Had that show penciled in… but have no time.
    Special place in my heart for English automobiles- drove a ’74 MGB (early version) for 16 years and hardly ever put the top up.
    TR6 is my dream car. Stay away from the Spitfires. 8-[

    Raven- I had that song in my head ALL FUCKING DAY yesterday.
    Prolly my 2nd fav RT tune after Beeswing.

  24. 24.

    Another Holocene Human

    February 9, 2014 at 7:50 am

    Wondering why in all the b*tching about Sochi nobody but journalists seems to mention that Russia’s been waging a genocidal war against Chechens for decades.

    Is it because they’re mooooslims?

    Is it because they’ve behaved badly? The Irish behaved badly yet (hm, maybe because so many US pols and journalists are Irish) you don’t see a lot of apologizing for the UK in the US over the ‘troubles’.

    You’d think that the Boston bombings and the tragic end of the Tsarnaev brothers* would have cast a stronger spotlight on what’s been going on over there for generations, but apparently, no.

    Sochi was chosen specifically to dance on the graves of the vanquished. But Americans can only get exercised about Putin putting down some friendly, photogenic stray dogs.

    *-I am definitely of the camp who is convinced the bombings wouldn’t have happened if Waltham police hadn’t utterly botched that triple murder investigation the year prior. Small world: I used to pass by that house on a daily basis. Way to go, Waltham. How’s your lowtaxes now?

  25. 25.

    Howard Beale IV

    February 9, 2014 at 7:53 am

    Something tells me that the consumables for that cold beverage platform ain’t gonna be cheap.

  26. 26.

    Emily68

    February 9, 2014 at 7:57 am

    @Barney: I was thinking that a Pod-based beverage would be derived from soy beans somehow, but “Invasion of the Body Snatchers is even better.

  27. 27.

    Another Holocene Human

    February 9, 2014 at 7:58 am

    @Matt McIrvin: I’d be interested in the answer. There are some rural areas where until those $200K lobbyists make your state like Florida there is still guaranteed landline access but your internet alternative is to put up a big satellite dish and get really, really spotty internet. I might go with the modem, even at 28.8, run stripped down Opera or one of those stripped down Firefox builds that only downloads images if you say, java-shit turned off, and I’d probably be relying on getting a lot of news in email digests which can be downloaded while I’m doing something else.

    I think the rural people I know (again, Florida, they removed the requirement to keep landlines in good working order) now pay up for VPN, so they get internet through their cell phone. It works better than AOhelL and at any rate, most of these folks have long since replaced the insecure old Windows computer than ran AOL. It got 0wned by all the viriii on the unsecured intertubes and is unusable. Xmas comes and you get a laptop with a modern OS that isn’t so insecure and you get VPN.

    Of course, not everyone can afford this; they just use contract phones or Boost or something similar with a data plan to get their internet. Hey, there’s some useful shit on there, like the entire current Florida statutes and all of the updated state regs.

    I don’t know exactly who would still have a working late 1990s rig that isn’t totally 0wned and unusable; I mean, somebody would have to be installing security updates and at that point (loving grandchild perhaps) why wouldn’t they upgrade the internet as well.

    I remember a lot of talk in the late 1990s about how to make Mozilla launch from what appeared to be an Internet Explorer icon to prevent repeated return visits to the grandparents just to remove viriiii that go in there b/c they refused to stop using Exploder. It’s one thing to visit your peeps; it’s another to spend four hours trying to fix a box that’s been invaded by a peculiarly nasty bug b/c somebody got set in their ways.

  28. 28.

    Joey Maloney

    February 9, 2014 at 8:05 am

    @jayboat: Q. Why is there no British computer industry? A. Because no one can figure out how to make a motherboard leak oil.

  29. 29.

    debbie

    February 9, 2014 at 8:10 am

    @Anne Laurie:

    I lived in Boston in the 70s and could never keep Woobin, Waban, and Woban straight. Nor could I remember to say Leminster instead of Leominister. Such a waste of vowels.

  30. 30.

    c u n d gulag

    February 9, 2014 at 8:17 am

    Making tripe stew – THAT’S what’s on the agenda for today.
    If you like tripe – YUM!!!!
    If you don’t – you don’t know what you’re missing!

  31. 31.

    OzarkHillbilly

    February 9, 2014 at 8:19 am

    This photo made me laugh.

    “Israeli soldiers flee their vehicle after teargas canisters exploded in it near Bilin in the West Bank. They were chasing village youths amid clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers.”

  32. 32.

    Another Holocene Human

    February 9, 2014 at 8:32 am

    @Anne Laurie: I found out, after moving around a bit, that drinking water ALWAYS comes from the next town over in Eastern Massachusetts. Hope springs* eternal, and Springfieldites always imagine that Shelbyville is a bucolic idyll untouched by pollution and industrialization, no matter how vile the area around the reservoir really is.

    *-get it?

  33. 33.

    Infamous Heel-Filcher

    February 9, 2014 at 8:32 am

    What’s the point of being an atheist if you have to get up on Sunday morning, you ask? Well, this month the point is that I get to perform with Morgan Spurlock.

  34. 34.

    danielx

    February 9, 2014 at 8:32 am

    Today’s agenda: snow coming down right now, couple-three inches expected, and it’s 20 degrees. After it stops snowing, temperature drop to 0 tonight, high of 12 tomorrow, -5 tomorrow night….SSDD. Even the cats want to move someplace warm.

    This is getting tiresome.

  35. 35.

    fka AWS

    February 9, 2014 at 8:35 am

    Re: AOL, you should see their ‘digital prophet.’ there are a couple of videos in the comments that are downright hilarious.

  36. 36.

    Another Holocene Human

    February 9, 2014 at 8:37 am

    The big footnote here is the creation of the Quabbin Reservoir. Flood a bunch of central Mass to provide the Big Pig on the coast with truly fresh water. Annnnnnnnd then they let people build houses right up to the waters edge and install septic tanks.

    The EPA got so grossed out by all the human pathogens in the pipes that they forced the state to build an emergency chlorine station which really made the water taste great, I can tell you. Also, now we’re all going to get cancer because apparently all that “fresh, natural” organic matter in the water makes some very interesting compounds when exposed to Chlorine.

    Because some assholes wanted a lake view.

  37. 37.

    Randy P

    February 9, 2014 at 8:47 am

    @c u n d gulag: I love it in Vietnamese pho, but am not much interested in tripes otherwise. One time I was renting from an Irish guy and invited him to go with me for pho. After explaining to him what it was, he declined. “Me mudder made me eat tripes and nobody’s gonna make me eat them now!”

  38. 38.

    gene108

    February 9, 2014 at 9:00 am

    @Baud:

    Lots of people still have AOL e-mail ID’s. Why bother changing? It’s free, unlike their Comcast, TWC, FiOS, etc. high-speed internet connections.

  39. 39.

    Cervantes

    February 9, 2014 at 9:02 am

    @Another Holocene Human:

    I found out, after moving around a bit, that drinking water ALWAYS comes from the next town over in Eastern Massachusetts.

    Droll, but perhaps not exactly the next town over. Boston, Brookline, and Newton, for example, get their potable water from large reservoirs in Central and Western Massachusetts, i.e., quite far away. Cambridge gets some of its water locally (Fresh Pond) but more comes from Hobbs Brook and Stony Brook, several towns away.

    Woburn gets most (70%) of its water locally (Horn Pond aquifer); the rest comes from those large reservoirs in Central and Western Massachusetts.

  40. 40.

    Cervantes

    February 9, 2014 at 9:08 am

    @debbie: “Leominster” has only the one “i” in it — so 50% fewer wasted vowels than you might have thought.

    Hope this helps.

  41. 41.

    Cervantes

    February 9, 2014 at 9:12 am

    @Boudica:

    Read an article somewhere that those coffee pods don’t recycle well. I don’t know that adding cola pods to the number of unrecyclables is good.

    That’s one question a body could ask before consuming Coca-Cola products. There are others.

  42. 42.

    Cervantes

    February 9, 2014 at 9:20 am

    @Infamous Heel-Filcher: Hey, that’s exciting. Enjoy!

    But as for the Sunday Assembly, here’s something published by the London Review of Books (and if you look, you’ll find comments from me there as well).

    Comments from you in return (there or, preferably, here) would be interesting. (Thanks.)

  43. 43.

    Southern Beale

    February 9, 2014 at 9:21 am

    Here’s some other happy news:

    KINGSPORT — Some pre-kindergarten students at Kennedy Elementary School learned Thursday about appreciating the differences among humans, a lesson delivered by a famously different feline.

    The pre-K students got a visit from Lazarus the cat, known as Laz, and each got to pet him.

    Born with a cleft palate and no nose or upper lip, he was found at about 10 weeks old on the streets of Johnson City, where a college student found him and gave him to a professor she knew rescued animals.

    “I’ve never seen these kids get so still in my life,” special education pre-K teacher Rachel Auel said as her class and the pre-K students of Heather Russell waited to pet Laz.

    Cindy Chambers, an associate professor of special education at ETSU, said after surgery and some loving care, Laz has become a local, regional, national and international sensation and has his own Facebook page. To go there or to request a visit from Laz to a school, library, church or other location, search for Care for Lazarus on Facebook to contact Chambers or email [email protected].

    It’s a little early in the morning for me to start crying but this story really touched me.

  44. 44.

    Ken

    February 9, 2014 at 9:27 am

    @Another Holocene Human:

    I found out, after moving around a bit, that drinking water ALWAYS comes from the next town over in Eastern Massachusetts.

    And that town gets it from the next town, and so on… Eventually if you back-trace, it all comes from just one reservoir, which fills the valley where the Nahum Gardner farm used to be, in the wild hills west of Arkham.

  45. 45.

    c u n d gulag

    February 9, 2014 at 9:43 am

    @Randy P:
    Wow, that Pho DOES sound good!
    And I love Vietnamese food – it’s one of my favorite cuisine’s. Some French, some Thai, some Chinese, some Indian – all in one!
    If I ever get a job again, I’ll be sure to go out and try some Pho with tripe.
    How did I miss that dish all of the times I’ve been in Vietnamese restaurants?

    Btw – if you like that Pho, tripe is a great substitute for beef or pork or other meat, in a hot, hot, spicy, chili!
    YUM!!!
    I don’t’ make it anymore, because I live with my Mom, and she’s not a fan of hot or spicy food.
    So, it’s tripe stew, today!

  46. 46.

    Cervantes

    February 9, 2014 at 10:04 am

    @Another Holocene Human:

    Is it because they’re mooooslims?

    At least in part, I’d guess.

    Sochi was chosen specifically to dance on the graves of the vanquished.

    Are you thinking of Abkhazia as opposed to Chechnya-Ingushetya?

    Anyway, I could be wrong but I think Sochi is their largest resort city, which may have had something to do with the selection.

  47. 47.

    GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)

    February 9, 2014 at 10:11 am

    @Cervantes:

    San Francisco gets their water from Hech Hechy in Yosemite, about two hundred miles through the desert.

  48. 48.

    Bjacques

    February 9, 2014 at 10:20 am

    @Another Holocene Human: shades of Neal Stephenson’s “Zodiac.”

  49. 49.

    PurpleGirl

    February 9, 2014 at 10:22 am

    @c u n d gulag: I had a deal with the friends in Peekskill: When D was on a business trip and not home, I’d let N cook tripe (even go to the basement freezer to get it for him) as long as I could spend a few hours at the Jefferson Valley Mall and he didn’t try to make me eat some. It smelled so bad, but he loved it. And when we went to Chinatown restaurants, he invariably asked if the kitchen had something with tripe.

  50. 50.

    Cervantes

    February 9, 2014 at 10:33 am

    @GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): Yes, our two biggest reservoirs are 60+ and 30+ miles from Boston, respectively. They are connected by an aqueduct.

  51. 51.

    Miss Bianca

    February 9, 2014 at 10:34 am

    Great news on the marriage front. And many thanks for this lovely version of Tam Lin – I always appreciate your taste in music selections, Anne Laurie.

  52. 52.

    c u n d gulag

    February 9, 2014 at 10:40 am

    @PurpleGirl:
    My father refused to eat tripe, because when he was in the Displaced Person’s Camps after WWII, they often made tripe for the people – but the tripe back then wasn’t the clean white stuff we buy, already bleached and sanitized, in our supermarkets.
    No.
    It had to be cleaned of all of the fecal and other matter in it carefully, several times, and then boiled several times in clean water and pots, before it was served.

    My mom, in different camps, ate the same things, but she came to love tripe. Maybe because, unlike my father, she never had to actually clean and cook it, like he did in his camp.

    Oh, and my father hated turnips to his dying day.
    I’d mash the turnips for Thanksgiving, because my dad would gag at the smell of them.

    Outside of those two things, he loved all foods – but especially dishes with meat and potato’s!

    Oh, and when my mom made tripe for the two of us, he’d find something else to eat.
    ANYthing, else!!! :-)

  53. 53.

    Infamous Heel-Filcher

    February 9, 2014 at 10:41 am

    @Cervantes: Comments from you in return (there or, preferably, here) would be interesting. (Thanks.)

    I’ll be the first to acknowledge that Assembly services come with a healthy slathering of cheese. But it’s a bit of a stretch to call that the worst aspect of Christianity, neh?

    Look, being irreligious is exhausting and isolating for a lot of people — in New York and London just as much as here in the Bible Belt. It is a real problem how to articulate, for example, to kids growing up without a religious community what are the norms that are peculiar to Mom and Dad and can be ethically flouted, and which are more “absolute”. Our chapter is overrun by parents of young kids looking for a way to feel less atomized. (Also, I don’t think we’ve played any clapping games in the assemblies we’ve put together ourselves.)

    And there are plenty of adults who come out and tell us how long they’ve been waiting for a group like this to spring into existence. Because things don’t just spring into existence, they require people to take the risk of being a little cheesy.

  54. 54.

    Cervantes

    February 9, 2014 at 11:20 am

    @Infamous Heel-Filcher: Thanks.

    But it’s a bit of a stretch to call that the worst aspect of Christianity, neh?

    That was Phil Edwards, probably tongue in cheek. He modified it: “the worst bits of organised religion and the worst bits of the art world.”

    I don’t agree with him. I don’t even think “cheesy” or the “clapping games” are necessarily bad! To me it sounds like fun and a relatively healthy way to commune. Glad you found it (or vice versa).

    I do wonder: Who keeps the books? Do you have any concerns in that regard?

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