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LGBT Leadership Town Hall: Why Was HRC’s Joe Solmonese So Supportive Of Obama’s Performance?

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Earlier, I shared with you Michelangelo Signorile’s first question, “What Grade Would You Give Obama And Congress on LGBT issues?” and the panel’s responses from his Out-Q Sirius Radio show yesterday, “The Path Forward: An LGBT Leadership Town Hall.”

Remember, you can listen to a rebroadcast in full this weekend (schedule here.) If you’re not a Sirius subscriber, think about signing up — Mike is great! But you can get a free pass at the site if you want to try it out first.

Now, I want to share the next segment, comments made by National Gay & Lesbian Task Force executive director Rea Carey, Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese, and blogger and activist Pam Spaulding of Pam’s House Blend. After you read them, I’ll share my thoughts. The question was a bit broad ranging, but had to do with where we are right now, in relation to progress on LGBT issues, and the White House, from the moment Obama took office.

Rea Carey:

Some of these things [we’ve accomplished] are not sexy. They’re not going to make headlines. So we have to force them to make the headlines.

It’s as if during the previous eight years, someone went through the entire federal government and unplugged every lamp that had anything to do with money going to our community, attention to young people, to seniors, anything that would benefit LGBT people, and they shoved them in closets.

She went on to say that there’s been a lot of work by a coalition of twenty LGBT organizations to work their way back, and to communicate our needs and our stories to decision-makers in government.

Joe Solmonese:

This administration has appointed the highest-ranking openly gay person of any administration in history in John Berry as head of the OPM, and the greatest number of openly-LGBT people, moreso than any previous administration.

When we talk about these things, like DOMA, and ENDA, and Uniting American Families, and the big landmark legislation, that is not something that sits solely with the president. You can’t evaluate the president’s performance on the idea the we ought to have overturned DOMA at this point, without considering the fact that you’ve got to look at the fact of where we are in the House and Senate on those things.

Pam Spaulding:

I expect that the [LGBT activist] groups working at the federal level are going to see the importance of getting ENDA done, getting these things done. And when you see the behavior that has been exhibited during the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which, it seems like that repeal should have been a lot easier than it has been, I wonder when I see lots of my readers saying, ‘Why aren’t they all working together and holding a press conference?’ ‘Why can’t they do joint activities that show the level of urgency?’

While listening to the Town Hall, I gained a tremendous amount of respect for NGLTF’s Rea Carey. She has credibility and intimate knowledge of details. Pam Spaulding said the exact same thing I said a year ago in May, 2009, in my piece, “The Big Tent,” when I asked, “How do you feel our leaders are serving us?” and, when are they going to start working together? and then later, when I wrote in “LGBTQ Leadership: Going The Way Of America’s Automakers,” that our LGBT activist groups are like the American automakers,

…old, outdated, ineffective, over-lapping behemoths whose lack of achievement demand they either declare bankruptcy, then refocus on their core competencies and truly re-create themselves, or turn over the wheel to the new leaders of our community: national grassroots organizations like Join the Impact, and local ones, like Mass Equality, Equality Maine, and One Iowa.

In my previous post I mentioned how HRC’s Joe Solmonese was really the “punching bag” of the day. Do you see why?

Why is it at every turn, Solmonese makes a concerted effort to bend over backwards and applaud Obama for things like appointing “the highest-ranking openly gay person of any administration in history,” (which is nice, but doesn’t stop DADT discharges or let me marry.) Joe’s own letter to Obama a year ago June, while firm, has certainly not delivered any results.) Why is Solmonese working so hard to defend Obama’s performance?

Here’s a little fact I learned during my twenty-five years in business. Think about your own experience and you’ll recognize its truth: Poor performers stick together. Excellent performers stick together. Not all the time, but look around your workplace, or think about life in college or high school.

Those who are doing a great job surround themselves with others who do a great job. Solmonese’s adamant, uncritical, unwavering support of Obama on LGBT issue performance — which is where they both are weak — is becoming, well, let’s call it uncomfortable.

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‘I’m Not Suicidal’: Kari Lake Pushes Hillary Clinton Murder Conspiracy Theory

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April 22, 2024

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Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake is promoting a conspiracy theory suggesting Hillary Clinton wants to assassinate her. Her remarks came just one day before she lost her attempt to have the Supreme Court review what some have called her conspiracy-theory fueled lawsuit about electronic voting machines.

“Lake, who filed the lawsuit during her failed campaign for governor in 2022, challenged whether the state’s electronic voting machines assured ‘a fair and accurate vote.’ Two lower courts dismissed the suit, finding that Lake and former Republican state lawmaker Mark Finchem had not been harmed in a way that allowed them to sue,” CNN reported Monday.

Also on Monday Law&Crime reported that when she filed her lawsuit, a Dominion Voting Systems spokesperson “rejected Lake’s cybersecurity claim, telling Law&Crime it was ‘implausible and conspiratorial.'”

Democracy Docket, founded by top Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias, called it “the end of the road for a conspiratorial lawsuit,” and Lake and Fincham, “election deniers.”

READ MORE: ‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow

Lake, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has yet to concede the 2022 election, which she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs, has a history of pushing exaggerated and baseless claims.

On Sunday, as MeidasTouch Network reported, Lake promoted an old, anti-Clinton conspiracy theory but twisted it to try to make it appear she was in danger from former U.S. Secretary of State and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Lake on Newsmax listened to a clip of Secretary Clinton calling Trump’s fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin a “bromance,” and saying the ex-president is “just gaga over Putin, because Putin does what he would like to do: kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive, you know, journalists and others into exile, rule without any check or balance.”

Then Lake promoted a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory by responding, “Oh, boy. Oh, that’s really rich coming from a woman like Hillary Clinton, who’s, how many of her friends have just like, mysteriously died or committed suicide?”

“I mean, honestly, that’s rich of her. What President Trump wants is to root out the corruption and deliver our government back to We The People and she looks very nervous. She talked about her friend Mark Elias, Mark Elias has meddled in in his and his cohorts have meddled in the elections.”

She called Democratic policies, “destructive, deadly and frankly, in some ways, diabolical,”and added, “it’s almost comical that Hillary Clinton is talking about Trump wanting to kill his opponents.”

READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

“I just want to say as I’m as I’m speaking about this topic, I want everyone out there to know that my brakes on my car have recently been checked and they work. I’m not suicidal. And Hillary, I don’t mean any harm to you. Please don’t send your henchmen out to me. We understand what you’re about. ”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide

 

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‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow

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April 22, 2024

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MSNBC top host Rachel Maddow, inside Manhattan’s Criminal Courthouse on Monday declared Donald Trump appeared “old and tired and mad,” as she delivered observations about the ex-president on trial for 34 counts of falsification of business records alleged in the alleged pursuit of election interference to protect his 2016 presidential run.

Trump “seems considerably older, and he seems annoyed. Resigned, maybe, angry. he seems like a man who’s miserable to be here,” the award-winning journalist told MSNBC viewers Monday afternoon.

“I’m no body language expert,” she conceded, “and this is just my observation. He seemed old and tired and mad.”

The New York Times’ Susanne Craig, from inside the courthouse Monday morning reported: “Trump is struggling to stay awake. His eyes were closed for a short period. He was jolted awake when Todd Blanche, his lawyer, nudged him while sliding a note in front of him.”

The Biden campaign was only too happy to pick up and report Craig’s observation, adding “feeble.”

Former Obama senior advisor David Axelrod, pointing to his piece at The Atlantic, wrote of Trump: “He has charmed & conned, schemed & marauded his way through life. He was bred that way. But the weariness & vulnerability captured in courtroom images betray a growing sense in Trump that he could wind up as the thing his old man most reviled:
A loser.”

Watch Maddow’s remarks below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

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‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

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21 hours ago

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April 22, 2024

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Prosecutors for the State of New York in their opening statement drew a direct line between the October 2016  “Access Hollywood” leaked audio and Donald Trump’s alleged “hush money” payoff to two women, including the adult film actress Stormy Daniels, telling the jury it was “election fraud, pure and simple.”

Legal experts are dissecting the prosecution’s opening argument. Professor of law, MSNBC contributor and former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann summed it up, saying New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg “squarely places the NY criminal trial in the election interference/corruption bucket– exactly what the DC and GA indictments allege, just 4 years later.”

“And the NY alleged ‘cover up’ is reminiscent of the two MAL [Mar-a-Lago] alleged obstruction schemes post-presidency, to keep prosecutors from uncovering evidence of that scheme,” Weissmann added.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo late Monday morning in his 45-minute opening argument told jurors, “This case is about criminal conspiracy and a cover up,” according to MSNBC’s Joyce Vance.

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“The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” Colangelo told jurors, CNN reports. “Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”

“This was a planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures,” Colangelo, a former U.S. Department of Justice Acting Associate Attorney General, told jurors.

“Another story about sexual infidelity, especially with a porn star, on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign,” Colangelo added. “’So at Trump’s direction, Cohen negotiated the deal to buy Daniels’ story,’ and prevent it from becoming public before the election.”

“It was election fraud, pure and simple.”

Vance, an MSNBC legal analyst, professor of law and former U.S. Attorney, explains: “The scheme the prosecution is outlining is catch & kill to elect Trump-awful but lawful. Trump crossed the line into illegality when he created false business records to conceal his payments to Cohen to cover up the payments to Stormy Daniels.”

READ MORE: Fox News Host Suggests Trump ‘Force’ Court to Throw Him in Jail – by Quoting Him

“It’s always the cover up,” she adds.

Professor of law and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman adds, the prosecution told jurors “a straight election-interference story.”

Colangelo, Litman says, told jurors that Trump’s then personal attorney Micheal Cohen “then discussed the [Stormy] situation with Trump who was adamant he did not want the story to come out. Another story…on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign.”

MSNBC legal contributor Katie Phang describes Colangelo’s opening argument, saying he is “working methodically and chronologically through the conspiracy, identifying the main characters and their involvement. He speaks clearly and succintly [sic].”

Trump has been criminally indicted in four separate cases and is facing a total of 88 felony charges, including 34 in his New York criminal trial for alleged falsification of business records to hide payments of hush money to an adult film actress and one other woman, in an alleged effort to suppress their stories and protect his 2016 presidential campaign, which could be deemed election interference.

Watch an MSNBC clip below or at this link.

 

READ MORE: Gaetz: ‘Corrupt’ Republicans Could ‘Take a Bribe’ and Throw House to Dems, Blocking Trump Run

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