“I double dare you Bill to say one more thing about me!”

Is the Clinton camp getting nervous? Are they getting scared of that skinny kid with the big ears and funny sounding name? Sure looks like it, especially when the biggest, and baddest, dog in your pound goes out and in a back-handed way implies Barack Obama lacks the experience to be Commander-in-Chief.

On “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” a Bloomberg television gabfest, William Jefferson Clinton was going down memory lane and said in 1988, when he thought about running for the best house in the country, he and Obama were close in terms of experience. Clinton did not run that year and do you want to know why?

“I really didn’t think I knew enough, and had served enough and done enough to run,” the former president said.

Here is why Bill Clinton is the Yoda of politics. If pressed he can say he was only talking about himself but he knows his words carry weight among Democrats and the “Experience Question” is Obama’s weakest link.

Obama’s experience is fair game (heck even he admits that) but it’s instructive that even Bill is putting it out there. Maybe he saw the crowd in Washington Square Park on Thursday?

von Spakovsky wants to watch over federal elections. Isn’t there someone else?

This post has been simmering for a few days. The first draft had to be thrown out because of the curse words. Listen I got nothing against Republicans. Yeah we disagree on everything under the sun but I’m not in the “if you live in a red state you are evil” camp. That type of logic gets us nowhere and diminishes what evil really is. With that disclaimer out of the way, Hans A. von Spakovsky does not need to be near anything related to elections.

In January ’06 von Spakovsky was given a recess appointment to the Federal Elections Committee. Before that he served in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department (the place where politics trumped the law) and when it comes to voting rights there are accusations von Spakovsky is a partisan who doesn’t mind voting as long as the ballot goes Republican.

He, and three others, have been nominated to serve on the FEC , but the Senate’s Rule Committee passed their names to the Senate without offering any type of recommendation. The scuttlebutt is the Committee did this because the Dems have concerns with von Spakovsky.

Now von Spakovsky has his supporters, but from where I stand he does not need to be involved in making sure elections are fair.

Congressman Barney Frank

The Washington Blade reported yesterday that the leadership of the House of Representatives was about to strip gender identity and expression from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would leave transgendered and gender-variant people without protection from discrimination under federal law when ENDA is enacted.

The Blade report of the House leadership’s intentions sparked alarm and outrage from many LGBT activists across the country. Nine national LGBT organizations announced that they would oppose any effort to strip transgender-specific language from the bill. Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the National Stonewall Democrats, the National Coalition for LGBT Health, Pride At Work (AFL-CIO), the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects, Mautner Project and the National Center for Transgender Equality.

“Our collective position remains clear and consistent regarding the status of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act,” the groups said in a joint statement. “Our organizations oppose the removal of protections for transgender people from ENDA. We would also oppose any employment nondiscrimination bill that did not protect transgender people,” the joint statement declared. “While we don’t doubt the sincerity of congressional leadership’s intent to take action and be helpful to the LGBT community, we cannot disagree more with this strategy. We will continue to work with LGBT-supportive members of Congress to urge their colleagues to immediately drop this strategy.”

Read more…

Here’s a report from Jason Bellini and the CBS News on Logo squad. This week, they glance back at John Edwards‘ new strategy to combat HIV/AIDS here in the U.S., as well as globally.

Then, Jason chats up Elton John and hubby David Furnish at their big black-tie AIDS fundraiser in NYC. And Jason gets smoochy with model Petra Nemcova. Scandal!

Come on! You know you want an Obama t-shirt!

“I know you love me New York “

Okay I get it now. People are interested in this Obama fellow. Sure I’ve read all the reports about “rock star” Barack but come on! Does anyone really believe the press?

Obama rocked Washington Square last night. While there are no police estimates on how many people were there, the Barack team say 24,000. Personally I can’t vouch that number, but the park was filled to over-flowing because when I got there getting close to the stage was impossible. I did have an expired press pass and thought about flashing it, but thought better of it. Unlike a certain individual I have this thing about being tased by the police so I can be famous on youtube.

Read more…

What’s missing in this photo?

Last night several of the Republican Presidential hopefuls showed up for a debate at the historically African-American Morgan State University in Maryland. The event was hosted by Tavis Smiley. The big story? The front-runners and big names who brazenly blew it off: Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson.

Of course, we knew it was going to happen, as it had already been reported. But for real? Those four actually skipped out on a chance to speak directly to African-Americans at a forum which would have allowed them to make their case to a huge votership, and show that they, as Kanye West simply put it, “care about black people.” Yes, they did. They had fund-raisers to attend.

Jon Robin Baitz, the openly gay playwright and creator/exec producer of TV’s Brothers and Sisters, has something to say about it all. Here’s a bit from his essay on The Huffington Post:

“The no-shows, off to their fund-raisers, etc, are betraying a spiritual compact which democracy relies on. Because every white politician in this country running for national office has a huge and terrible compact inherent in the job, an awesome and final responsibility to insist that minority children be thrust into a safe and shining future, an equal one — a more than equal one.”

And he’s just getting started… Read the entire post.

Agree much?