Barack Obama released an open letter to the LGBT community this week. I am attaching the text of that letter, without additional comment, other than to note that I endorsed Obama on this site on the eve of Super Tuesday.
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I’m running for President to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all – a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters. It’s wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class citizens in this nation. And I ask for your support in this election so that together we can bring about real change for all LGBT Americans.
Equality is a moral imperative. That’s why throughout my career, I have fought to eliminate discrimination against LGBT Americans. In Illinois, I co-sponsored a fully inclusive bill that prohibited discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity, extending protection to the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation. In the U.S. Senate, I have co-sponsored bills that would equalize tax treatment for same-sex couples and provide benefits to domestic partners of federal employees. And as president, I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws. I personally believe that civil unions represent the best way to secure that equal treatment. But I also believe that the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and lesbian couples — whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union, or a civil marriage. Unlike Senator Clinton, I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) – a position I have held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate. While some say we should repeal only part of the law, I believe we should get rid of that statute altogether. Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does. I have also called for us to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and I have worked to improve the Uniting American Families Act so we can afford same-sex couples the same rights and obligations as married couples in our immigration system.
The next president must also address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. When it comes to prevention, we do not have to choose between values and science. While abstinence education should be part of any strategy, we also need to use common sense. We should have age-appropriate sex education that includes information about contraception. We should pass the JUSTICE Act to combat infection within our prison population. And we should lift the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. In addition, local governments can protect public health by distributing contraceptives.
We also need a president who’s willing to confront the stigma – too often tied to homophobia – that continues to surround HIV/AIDS. I confronted this stigma directly in a speech to evangelicals at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, and will continue to speak out as president. That is where I stand on the major issues of the day. But having the right positions on the issues is only half the battle. The other half is to win broad support for those positions. And winning broad support will require stepping outside our comfort zone. If we want to repeal DOMA, repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and implement fully inclusive laws outlawing hate crimes and discrimination in the workplace, we need to bring the message of LGBT equality to skeptical audiences as well as friendly ones – and that’s what I’ve done throughout my career. I brought this message of inclusiveness to all of America in my keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention. I talked about the need to fight homophobia when I announced my candidacy for President, and I have been talking about LGBT equality to a number of groups during this campaign – from local LGBT activists to rural farmers to parishioners at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr. Martin Luther King once preached.
Just as important, I have been listening to what all Americans have to say. I will never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans. But neither will I close my ears to the voices of those who still need to be convinced. That is the work we must do to move forward together. It is difficult. It is challenging. And it is necessary.
Americans are yearning for leadership that can empower us to reach for what we know is possible. I believe that we can achieve the goal of full equality for the millions of LGBT people in this country. To do that, we need leadership that can appeal to the best parts of the human spirit. Join with me, and I will provide that leadership. Together, we will achieve real equality for all Americans, gay and straight alike.
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By BETH FOUHY
The founder of a prestigious institute on media and politics added his voice Saturday to the chorus of complaint over perceived press bias in favor of Democrat Barack Obama.
Walter Shorenstein, a prominent San Francisco-based real estate developer, Democratic fundraiser and longtime supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, penned a memo to Democratic party "superdelegates" and other activists criticizing media coverage of the presidential campaign.
Shorenstein is the founder of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. His memo came days before Tuesday's key primaries in Ohio and Texas, which Clinton must win to save her waning candidacy.
The former first lady and her advisers have lashed out at the press in recent days, suggesting unfair coverage of the campaign has in part led to Obama's victories in the last 11 voting contests. They've encouraged supporters and voters to watch a "Saturday Night Live" skit that aired last weekend, depicting a group of journalists fawning over Obama.
Clinton appeared on this week's "SNL" to praise a similar sketch that parodied the media's treatment of her and her rival.
In his memo, Shorenstein concurred with the Clinton campaign's assessment.
"I am absolutely outraged with the media coverage of the presidential campaign," Shorenstein wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The Associated Press. "This is the most important election in my long lifetime, and to quote one of my favorite movies, 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!'"
He was quoting the 1976 movie "Network," in which a mentally disturbed television news anchor played by Peter Finch went on the air and implored viewers to rebel against gimmicks staged by network news executives.
"There is too much on the line for the media to ignore important issues while they obsess about Hillary's hairdo or Barack's baritone," Shorenstein continued. "Is it in the country's best interest that voters received far more information about Hillary's laugh than Obama's legislative record? Is it good for our nation that more attention is paid to the differences in their speaking style than their health care plans?"
Shorenstein attached several studies to the memo indicating the press had given more favorable coverage to Obama than to Clinton, and urged activists to forward the material to friends and voters and to complain to reporters.
"Our democracy depends upon the fourth estate to fulfill the uniquely critical role of informing voters about the important issues facing our nation," Shorenstein wrote. "Yet far too often, the campaign coverage has been biased, blase, or baseless."
Barack Obama argues that he deserves the Democratic nomination and Hillary Clinton doesn't because he possesses superior "judgment," as he calls it, on the key issues we face as a nation. As definitive proof he offers one speech he made in 2002 during a reelection campaign for an Illinois senate seat in the most liberal district in the state, so liberal that no other position would have been viable. When he made that speech, Obama was not privy to the briefings by, among others, Secretary of State Colin Powell, in support of the Authorization of Use of Military Force as a diplomatic tool to push the international community to impose intrusive inspections on Saddam Hussein.
Buzz up!on Yahoo!Would Obama have acted differently had he been in Washington or had he had the benefit of the arguments and the intelligence that the administration was offering to the Congress debating that resolution? During the 2002-2003 timeframe, he was a minor local official uninvolved in the national debate on the war so we can only judge from his own statements prior to the 2008 campaign. Obama repeated these points in a whole host of interviews prior to announcing his candidacy. On July 27, 2004, he told the Chicago Tribune on Iraq: "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage." In his book, The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, he wrote, "...on the merits I didn't consider the case against war to be cut-and- dried." And, in 2006, he clearly said, "I'm always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I didn't have the benefit of US intelligence. And for those who did, it might have led to a different set of choices."
I was involved in that debate in every step of the effort to prevent this senseless war and I profoundly resent Obama's distortion of George Bush's folly into Hillary Clinton's responsibility. I was in the middle of the debate in Washington. Obama wasn't there. I remember what was said and done. In fact, the administration lied in order to secure support for its war of choice, including cooking the intelligence and misleading Congress about the intent of the authorization. Senator Clinton's position, stated in her floor speech, was in favor of allowing the United Nations weapons inspectors to complete their mission and to build a broad international coalition. Bush rejected her path. It was his war of choice.
There is no credible reason to conclude that Obama would have acted any differently in voting for the authorization had he been in the Senate at that time. Indeed, he has said as much. The supposed intuitive judgment he exercised in his 2002 speech was nothing more than the pander of a local election campaign, just as his current assertions of superior judgment and scurrilous attacks on Hillary Clinton are a pander to those who now retroactively think the war was a mistake without bothering to acknowledge Senator Clinton's actual position at the time and instead fantasizing that she was nothing but a Bush clone. Obama willfully encourages and plays off this falsehood.
What should we make of Obama's other judgments in foreign affairs? Take Afghanistan, for example. It has been evident for some time that our efforts there are going badly and that cooperation and support from our NATO allies would be helpful. As chairman of the subcommittee on Senate Foreign Relations responsible for NATO and Europe, Obama could have used his lofty position actually to engage the issue and pressure the administration to take some action to improve our chance of success in that conflict against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Of course, that would have involved holding hearings, questioning administration witnesses, and taking a position and offering alternatives. That is what we expect that from senators in a democracy. It is called oversight.
But, instead, Obama, by his own admission, offers the excuse that he has been too busy running for president to do anything substantive, such as direct his staff to organize a single hearing. "Well, first of all," Obama was forced to confess in the Democratic debate in Ohio on February 26, "I became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign, at the beginning of 2007. So it is true that we haven't had oversight hearings on Afghanistan." To date, his subcommittee has held no policy hearings at all -- none. At the same time that Obama claimed he was too busy campaigning to do anything substantive, racking up one of the worst attendance records in the Senate, Senator Clinton chaired extensive hearings of the Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health and attended many others as a member of the Armed Service Committee.
As a consequence of Obama's dereliction of duty on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a feckless administration has had absolutely no oversight as it careens from disaster to disaster in Afghanistan, including the central governments loss of control over 70 percent of the country and yet another bumper crop of opium to fuel the efforts of the Taliban and their terrorist allies. Of course, if you don't hold hearings, conduct oversight, make recommendations or sponsor legislation, then you have no record to explain or defend and you are free to take whatever position is convenient when attacking those who actually did address issues. Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Obama holds forth on Afghanistan, chiding the administration and our allies as though he's a profile in courage and not someone who has abandoned his post in establishing accountability.
On Iran and the question of designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, the junior senator from Illinois was not quite so clever at avoiding taking a position. He first co-sponsored the "Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007," which contained explicit language identifying the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization. He subsequently claimed to oppose the Kyl-Lieberman sense of the Senate resolution proposing the same thing. Obama's accountability problem here is that he didn't show up for the vote on that resolution -- a vote that would have put him on record. Then he declined to sign on to a letter put forward by Senator Clinton making explicit that the resolution could not be used as authority to take military action. All we have is Obama's rhetoric juxtaposed with his co-sponsorship of a piece of legislation that proposed what he says he opposed.
Obama's gyrations on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are not the actions of one imbued with superior intuitive judgment, but rather the machinations of a political opportunist looking to avoid having his fingerprints on any issue that might be controversial, and require real judgment, while preserving his freedom to bludgeon his adversary for actually taking positions as elected office demands. It is hard to discern whether Senator Obama is a man of principle, but it is clear that he is not a man of substance. And that judgment, based on his hollow record, is inescapable.
Washington Post
By David Ignatius
Sunday, March 2, 2008; Page B07
Hillary Clinton has been trying to make a point about Barack Obama that deserves one last careful look before Tuesday's probably decisive Democratic primaries: If Obama truly intends to unite America across party lines and break the Washington logjam, then why has he shown so little interest or aptitude for the hard work of bipartisan government?
This is the real "Where's the beef?" about Obama, and it still doesn't have a good answer. He gives a great speech, and he promises that he can heal the terrible partisan divisions that have enfeebled American politics over the past decade. This is a message of hope that the country clearly wants to hear.
But can he do it? The record is mixed, but it's fair to say that Obama has not shown much willingness to take risks or make enemies to try to restore a working center in Washington. Clinton, for all her reputation as a divisive figure, has a much stronger record of bipartisan achievement. And the likely Republican nominee, John McCain, has a better record still.
Obama's argument is that he can mobilize a new coalition that will embrace his proclamation that "yes, we can" break out of the straitjacket. But for voters to feel confident that he can achieve this transformation should he become president, they would need evidence that he has fought and won similar battles. The record here, to put it mildly, is thin.
What I hear from politicians who have worked with Obama, both in Illinois state politics and here in Washington, gives me pause. They describe someone with an extraordinary ability to work across racial lines but not someone who has earned any profiles in courage for standing up to special interests or divisive party activists. Indeed, the trait people remember best about Obama, in addition to his intellect, is his ambition.
Obama worked on some bipartisan issues, such as a state version of the earned-income tax credit, after he was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996. But he also gained a reputation for skipping tough votes. The most famous example was a key gun control vote that he missed in December 1999 because he was vacationing in Hawaii. The Chicago Tribune blasted him and several other vote-skippers as "gutless." One Chicago pol says that "the myth developed that when there was a tough vote, he was gone."
Obama's brash self-confidence led him into his only big political blunder. Prodded by the Daley machine, he challenged Bobby Rush, an incumbent Democratic congressman and former Black Panther, in 2000. Rush pounded Obama by more than 2 to 1 in the primary. "He was blinded by his ambition," Rush told the New York Times last year.
Obama has been running for president almost since he arrived in the U.S. Senate in 2005, so his Senate colleagues say it's hard to evaluate his record. But what stands out in his brief Senate career is his liberal voting record, not a history of fighting across party lines to get legislation passed. He wasn't part of the 2005 Gang of 14 bipartisan coalition that sought to break the logjam on judicial nominations, but neither were Clinton or other prominent Democrats. He did support the bipartisan effort to get an immigration bill last year, winning a plaudit from McCain. But he didn't work closely with the White House, as did Sen. Edward Kennedy.
The Obama campaign sent me an eight-page summary of his "bipartisan accomplishments," and it includes some encouraging examples of working across the aisle on issues such as nuclear proliferation, energy, veterans affairs, budget earmarks and ethics reforms. So the cupboard isn't bare. It's just that, unlike McCain, Obama bears no obvious political scars for fighting bipartisan battles that were unpopular with his party's base.
"The authentic Barack Obama? We just don't know. The level of uncertainty is too high," one Democratic senator told me last week. He noted that Obama hasn't been involved in any "transformative battles" where he might anger any of the party's interest groups. "If his voting record in the past is the real Barack Obama, then there isn't going to be any bipartisanship," this senator cautioned.
Voting for a candidate is always an act of faith -- a belief that the politician will win a mandate that allows him to transcend his own past limitations and those of his party. Ronald Reagan taught the country something about the ability of a world-class communicator to create such a new political space that defies the previous categories.
No one who has watched Obama's sweep toward the nomination would say it's impossible that he can be the great uniter. I just wish we had more evidence.
Obama's statements are as hypocritical as you can get from someone who’s been in bed with christian bigots throughout the campaign. But if you think Obama’s a snake in the grass, and he is, check out the CBN interview on February 26th. It features a lengthy interview of Billery Clinton by Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network yesterday.
If you link to CBN you’ll see Billary Clinton as she really is. As outrageous as Obama was hopping into bed with bigoted vermin like Donnie McKulkin and Mary Mary , Billery Clinton goes way beyond him trawling for the votes of the senile bigots who dote on Pat Robertson, the bible fascist. She appeared on Pat Robertson’s CBN network to explain her deep commitment to ‘christian values’ like opposition to samesex marriage and to take a few cheap shots at Ralph Nader, a indisputable American hero. She bitterly explained that Nader is just a tool of the Republicans, the same slander she uses against Edwards, Obama and anyone else reckless enough to get in her way. Earlier Pat Robertson expressed his deep admiration for Billary and congratulated her for ‘tacking to the right” as hard and as fast as she could.
Hillary Clinton, a Dixiecrat in a right centrist party is bitterly opposed to same sex marriage, as is Obama. The Clintons’ passed DOMA and DADT and refuse to repeal them. Not by chance did her campaign manager Barney Frank accept the task of gutting ENDA and then tossing both it and the Matthew Sheppard Hate Crimes Bill into the toilet. They didn’t want Republicans claiming that Democrats are GLBT friendly. As if.
Hillary Clinton, like Obama is a union buster and a long time supporter of NAFTA, exporting jobs, tax cuts for the rich matched by cuts in welfare, Medicare and unemployment insurance. She lying about that now but her social and economic program was set in stone when she spent six years on the board of director of Wal-Mart whose real slogan is “Always Low Wages”. She and Obama have been in Ohio denying their support for NAFTA, welfare cuts and exporting jobs but no one believes the.
Hillary Clinton and other right wingers Joe Lieberman are eager backers of Bush’s oil piracy and supporters of the zionist apartheid state. Their cruel treatment of Palestinians has been exposed by South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the most senior anglocatholic supporter of GLBT equality. Tutu knows a thing or two about life in an apartheid state. Billery adamantly supports Bushes plan to extend the war to Iran by using nukes ‘if necessary’. Hillary and Obama plan on keeping troops there through 2013.
Voting for either of them is like getting beaten by a spouse but refusing to call the cops. It’s too heavy a dose of naiveté for tens of millions of us we’ll be voting no or boycotting both, in spite of the hysteria mongering of hacks like Leland Frances, no matter which alias he uses. The election of either Clinton or Obama, followed by the realization that they can’t or wont end the war, hold of economic crisis or punish bigots will just speed up the breakup of the of the Democrats, just as it’s now doing to the Republicans.
Is it not time for the LGBT community to stop being influenced by a good marketing campaign!
The empty suit should put up or shut up!
Obama is doing to LGBT, like he just got caught doing with NAFTA.
By SusanUnPC on February 16, 2008 at 10:59 AM in John Lewis, Jesse Jackson Jr., Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Civil Rights
I’ve been wanting to get to this story for days. Now I simply must because the reports are coming in fast and furious about just how ugly this is getting — and the race card is getting played, by blacks against blacks, in the most vicious ways. The Obama campaign? They’re pushing the racial divisions, sending a misleading NYT story on Lewis everywhere. Obama and crew WANT this ugliness to continue:
1. Obama Co-Chair Jesse Jackson Jr. is THREATENING superdelegates (”Jesse Jackson Jr. Threatens Colleagues as Pandemonium Breaks Out Over Lewis“). Rep. Jackson is threatening to harm their own reelections!
“Many of these guys have offered their support to Mrs. Clinton, but Obama has won their districts. So you wake up without the carpet under your feet. You might find some young primary challenger placing you in a difficult position” in the future, he added. … (A.P./Google News)
2. Obama is buying superdelegates with his “big money reach.” A comparison:
Obama: $694,000 (40% of his superdelegates)
Clinton: $194,000 (12% of her superdelegates)
3. Although Obama’s campaign and the MSM have pushed the story that Rep. John Lewis, the legendary Civil Rights hero, has switched from Clinton to Obama, his staff says that that is not true. But Lewis is under unbelievable pressure, and he is the victim of vicious robo-calls (and Missouri’s Rep. Cleaver is also getting nasty pressure):
[Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus] says some — such as John Lewis — have become the victims of “robo-calls.” In Lewis’ case, the calls said “very, very derogatory things about him.”
[Cleaver says] “I had a person in my district send out a newsletter, for which I know he didn’t pay, distributed primarily in the African-American community, in which he suggested that I had been paid by Sen. Clinton to support her. I don’t know if there’s anyone who [is African American] who hasn’t taken some grief for supporting Sen. Clinton.”
For more on this:http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/02/16/black-superdelegates-threatened-pressured
How bold!! What a brave man!! Our hero!!!
"But neither will I close my ears to the voices of those who still need to be convinced."
uh....what? Righteous? um...what does this mean, exactly?? nevermind, dude....