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Repeal Civil Unions Or We'll Destroy You Group Threatens

(April 6, Montpelier, VT) A group demanding the Vermont legislature revoke the state's civil unions law is threatening to destroy the careers of politicians which do not support them. 

In a letter to Sen. Julius Canns, and copied to all House and Senate members, the Rev. David Stertzbach, who leads the Vermont Defence of Marriage Committee said:  “This is an issue of no compromise for me.”

The letter was sent to Canns because he sponsored a bill last year calling for the repeal of civil unions but is now considering withdrawing it.

Stertzbach wrote, “Civil union was a moral 9/11 for both major parties. I will not go back to the ‘partisan politics as usual’ that left us unprepared for this disaster.”

Canns and other legislators said they were outraged by the threat.

In the last state election, Stertzbach targeted Sen. Barbara Snelling  for her support of civil unions. A former lieutenant governor and wife of the late Gov. Richard Snelling, she barely survived the primary but went on to win her seat in the General Election. She stepped down earlier this year for health reasons and was replaced by her daughter.

“I feel like I am being put in a vice by him,” Canns said.

Canns and other Republican senators like Sen. Gerry Morrissey, and Sen. William Corrow, have recently become targets of Stertzbach’s mailing campaigns in their districts.
Story from www.365gay.com
posted by Ernie Kerns at 8:55 AM

 
At work... waiting on the server to request another tape for the back-up- should be any minute now.

Went to diner with a friend and his wife. She was talking about Ewan McGregor (?) the actor from Star Wars. She says
" My Mom says he's Family." I look at her and say... "I didn't think he was gay. He has a wife and all." My Friend, Chad, starts laughing then.
Cultural difference. She's referring to him being in the same Scottish Clan as she is and I'm thinking something else. We all laugh then when we
realize the truth. I don't know why I thought of her as part of my culture but she used the word in the same way my friends would use to mean
he was gay and some straight people will use that word in the same way with me.

posted by Ernie Kerns at 10:36 PM

 
Welcome Slick! Good to see a new Point of view.
posted by Ernie Kerns at 2:32 PM

 
Great Post Phil. I have many of the same thoughts and questions. I don't
have the hang-over. I was too under the weather to do anything this weekend but visit some friends during the day and be sickly all
night.
Jibber!! I did one of those google searches on myself and was shocked!!! I had no idea that it would be possible to find such items on me and my Dad. I guess I should be more cautious- this page is one of the things I found.

Sweet Dreams all!

posted by Ernie Kerns at 12:42 PM

 
Source: Oregon State University (http://www.orst.edu/)

Antarctica Key To Sudden Sea Level Rise In The Past

A massive and unusually abrupt rise in sea level about 14,200 years ago was caused by the partial collapse of ice sheets in Antarctica, a new study has shown, in research that solves a mystery scientists have been heatedly debating for more than a decade.
In less than 500 years at the end of the last Ice Age, this event caused the Earth's sea level to rise about 70 feet. That's about four times faster than sea levels were rising most of the time during this period, and at least 20 times faster than the sea level is currently rising.

The findings were reported today in the journal Science by researchers from Oregon State University, the University of Toronto and the University of Durham in the United Kingdom.

The cause of this event, called the "global meltwater pulse 1A" since it was first identified in 1989, has until now been unknown. This study not only pinpoints the source of the meltwater pulse, but it also makes clear that significant climatic events can occur very rapidly and unpredictably.

This type of melting event thousands of years ago is different from the more recent events in Antarctica, researchers say, such as the breakup of a large percentage of the Larsen ice shelf earlier this month. But the dramatic melting illustrates the pressing need for a better understanding of Antarctica's huge ice sheets and their stability.

"We can't say at this point whether the recent breakup of part of an ice shelf in Antarctica has any relevance to this type of huge meltwater event that originated from Antarctica thousands of years ago," said Peter Clark, a professor of geosciences at OSU and one of the world's leading experts on glaciers. "We don't know yet how important these ice shelves are to stabilizing the larger ice sheets of the continent."

What is very clear, however, is the importance of Antarctica's huge ice sheets remaining stable. The West Antarctic ice sheet is thought to be potentially unstable, and if it collapsed sea levels around the world would rise almost 20 feet. The melting of the larger and more stable East Antarctic ice sheet would raise Earth's sea levels another 200 feet.

And during this comparatively short period thousands of years ago, it is now known that these two huge ice sheets were anything but stable. One or the other, or some combination of the two, melted at a surprisingly rapid rate and caused a 70-foot surge in sea levels in just a few hundred years.

"This event happened near the end of the last Ice Age, a period of de-glaciation that lasted from about 21,000 years ago to 12,000 years ago," Clark said. "The average sea level rise during that period was about eight millimeters per year. But during this meltwater pulse there was an extremely rapid disintegration of an ice sheet and sea levels rose much faster than average."

The amount of sea level rise that occurred during a single year of that period, Clark said, is more than the total sea level rise that has occurred in the past 100 years.

For some time, researchers had speculated that the cause might have been the partial melting of a major ice sheet in North America. But the OSU and other university scientists were able to develop a method that "fingerprinted" each of the possible melting scenarios from known ice sheets in the world at that time, and found that a source from Antarctica most closely matched data about sea level rise available from fossil shoreline deposits.

Using this approach, it became clear that the melting of the North American ice sheet could not have been the sole source for the meltwater pulse, and some combination of ice sheet melting in Antarctica was the more likely culprit for the sudden spurt in sea level rise.

This period thousands of years ago, Clark said, was also a time of increasing temperature, sea level and atmospheric carbon dioxide that is conceptually similar to the present day.

Prior to the partial collapse of the Antarctic ice sheets 14,200 years ago, carbon dioxide levels had risen about 50 parts-per-million in the atmosphere. In the past 150 years, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere have risen 85 parts-per-million.

But in comparing these two eras there were differences in Earth's overall temperature, atmosphere and location of ice sheets, so it's not possible to use the events that happened then as any certain predictor of what might happen to Earth today, Clark said. What is clear is that large ice sheets of the past were vulnerable to global warming.

This meltwater event thousands of years ago not only caused the sea level to rise, the researchers said in their report, but also may have affected the atmosphere, ocean circulation and global climate.

posted by Ernie Kerns at 9:52 AM

 
Yeah IU!

New dog got a home today too!! Yeah! He'll be an only dog which is probably the best thing possible for him. I'm glad for him though I will actually miss the little bugger.

It's a small world: I saw that guy I've been talking about on the TV last night. He high-fived another guy right when IU won the game while the camera's were doing a crowd shot in Atlanta. I couldn't believe it. I'll have to confirm it when I see him but I'm sure it was him.
posted by Ernie Kerns at 9:15 PM

 
All this talk about T/DF breaking up is much like watching your Parents divorce (This is just a guess since my Parents didn't divorce). It causes you to wonder: did I do something wrong? Is there anything I can do to fix this? Why can't we all just get along?

Ealanor Roosevelt once said (paraphrased since I can't be sure of the exact words): "No one can hurt you without your consent."
(see more about her at:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eleanor/) The link button is broken or just taken away or I'd link it for you...
I heard this once and wrote it down and have repeated it often to keep me even in heated situations. We can choose not to be hurt by
others words or deeds just as easily as we can accept to be harmed by them. I don't think it comes naturally to choose not to be hurt but it
can be learned (though you have to remind yourself often since reverting to the other behavior comes too easily at times.) I am not forcing this on anyone but you may find it useful and if you like being hurt/offended often then that's your choice.

Workout news: Item 1) My belt has moved in one notch! I still weigh the same but that doesn't matter as much as that moving belt. Yeah!
Item 2) The guy I've been distracted by and I have moved towards being friends. We had a great chat yesterday in the locker room. By the time we were finishing the whole row was chatting with us. John got tickets to the IU game today and wasn't sure if he was going to go. I told him I would go with his brother if he didn't want to go but I knew he wouldn't pass going up. I couldn't go anyway since I'd already promised my Dad that I'd spend Sunday with him. I don't like going back on my word even when it would hurt. Dad's more important than that game anyway.

I found another dog yesterday but this was an easy one. He was following some guy and his dog near the Monon trail and the guy was ignoring him. He crossed the street to get to me and two of my dogs (Palo and littleboy). A car stopped for him and waited as I let him come to us and I held my hand out to him. He sniffed it then nudged it with his muzzle and my boys really liked him. He was a young german sheppard. He had his collar on and tags!!! I hooked Palo's leash under his collar so they could share the leash. He was only 3 blocks from home so off we went. His owner (cute girl) was very grateful to see her 5 month old boy back. Happy ending.

posted by Ernie Kerns at 7:39 AM