Make shift mover, great for gays

My buddy at work asked me if I could help him do some furniture rearranging.  I headed over to his place after work last night.  He has a beautiful two story home in a very nice community. He has a sectional sofa both downstairs and upstairs.  He wanted to flip flop their location.

The first part of the job was to bring the upstairs unit downstairs.  The pieces of this unit weren’t heavy but one piece that incorporated a chaise lounge was very long.  We wound up putting a couple scratches in his wall which I felt bad about.

I realized that if we would have gone down the steps with the upholstered side towards the outer wall we could have avoided the collateral damage. For the subsequent pieces we used that strategy and it went much better.

My buddy who is in good overall shape was sucking wind and sweating quite a bit from the furniture moving.  He seemed somewhat surprised that I wasn’t breathing hard in the least and my t-shirt was dry.  I reminded him that I have run half marathons.

After moving the stuff we went over to South Street where he bought pizza for my efforts which wasn’t necessary but appreciated.  We hung out and talked for a bit before both heading out to our respective home bases.

So the headlines yesterday were filled with the news that Obama has officially endorsed gay marriage.  I have many thoughts on this, the most important of which is “good”.

Wow, Obama has really done an about face in the past few months in his willingness to get dirty.  Some of my harshest criticism of him was his not grabbing the horns of the mandate he was given when he first took office.  For me he was far too mindful of the kicking and screaming Republicans that were whining about his every move.  I would have much preferred if he basically said , “Listen Mother f’rs, you idiots are the reason the country is teetering on the edge of utter collapse.  I will do whatever the f I feel is best to get us out of this 8 year mess dumb ass George Jr created.”

Instead he tried to play a balancing act that resulted in a lot of compromise that contradicted the edicts he delivered during the campaign.  But let’s deal with exactly what yesterdays headline means.

Hate Obama or love Obama, unless you have nothing but air between your ears, you can’t deny this announcement took a very large set of balls.  By announcing you support gay marriage you instantly alienate the religious zealots that think they have the right to impose their beliefs about marriage onto others.  Of course Obama had little to no shot of getting these people’s votes anyway since many of them will still have you believe he is a socialist Muslim.

He is the first sitting president to ever publicly endorse gay marriage, up until this point the most previous presidents were willing to admit to is a support for civil unions, since that is a way to dip your toe into the issue without getting all wet.  His endorsement in that regard is a big deal.

However in the context of what is actually wrong with this country, for an opinion on gay marriage to be thrown about as an actual campaign issue is pretty disappointing.  I mean to me, it has always been a no brainer.  If two men or two women want to get married, great, who cares?  If being married leads to happiness in their lives why would I want to try to derail that?  It is utter lunacy.

Personally I have a feeling that years from now we will look back on the whole gay marriage debate in a similar way as we now look at allowing women to vote or segregation. Today those things seem so archaic, so ignorant, yet at that time there was a huge resistance to allowing those freedoms.  Hopefully once again history will prove more rational minds can take a hold on this issue as the years pass.

I heard certain people criticize the announcement since in the past Obama did not endorse gay marriage, calling him a dreaded, “flip flopper”.  I always lol at people that view changing your mind as a bad thing.  If the end result is a more progressive, advanced and evolved society then I don’t really care the road traveled to arrive at that decision.

It’s hard to say if this will hurt or help Obama in the big re-election picture.  It puts Mitt in perhaps a role he really would not rather play as the anti-gay candidate.

I have been feeling a bit down in the dumps this week.  To be expected of course but still not pleasant.  I have some maca root on the way.