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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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‘Close’: Trump Claims World War III Could Erupt if He Does Not Become President Again

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July 26, 2024

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Meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, Donald Trump declared World War III is “close,” and issuing a warning suggesting if he does not win re-election in November it could erupt.

Video of his full remarks was published by Florida’s WPTV. A shorter clip is below.

Trump’s meeting, criticized by some as a violation of the Logan Act, comes at a critical time for the U.S. and Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu, a Trump-supporter who is considered by some to be refusing to end the Gaza War, addressed Congress on Wednesday at the invitation of House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with Netanyahu on Thursday.

In May, The International Criminal Court (ICC) filed to obtain arrest warrants for Netanyahu, alleging war crimes.

READ MORE: JD Vance Suggested America Should ‘Punish’ People for Not Having Children

Trump quickly launched into an attack on Vice President Kamala Harris, who is his likely 2024 presidential opponent, telling reporters she is, “a radical left person, San Francisco, destroyed San Francisco. She’s really a destroyer. She isn’t a builder.”

“I actually don’t know how a person who’s Jewish can vote for her. But that’s up to them,” Trump added.

“Now she’s taken over and she’s worse than him. She’s actually worse than him. So we’ll see how it goes. But if it all works out. If we win, it’ll be very simple. It’s all gonna work out and very quickly.”

“If we don’t we’re going to end up with major wars in the Middle East and maybe a Third World War. You are closer to a Third World War right now than at any time since the Second World War. We’ve never been so close because we have incompetent people running our country,” Trump claimed.

Watch video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Said Some Disabled People – Including His Young Relative – Should Just ‘Die’: Nephew

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JD Vance Suggested America Should ‘Punish’ People for Not Having Children

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10 hours ago

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July 26, 2024

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Trump vice presidential running mate JD Vance, under fire for his 2021 remarks calling Democrats “childless cat ladies” and saying parents should be given more voting rights than those without children, is now being criticized after video resurfaced of him suggesting people who don’t have children should be punished, because not having kids is “bad.”

Vance, closely tied to the “broligarch” class of right-wing tech billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, is a venture capitalist whose memoir catapulted him to national attention, which he parlayed into a successful U.S. Senate run with the backing of his uber-wealthy mentors.

Before announcing his 2022 Senate run, Vance made numerous public appearances, including sharing his extremist views with powerful talk show host, far-right wing activist, and Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk.

“So JD,” Kirk, a member of the highly-secretive Council on National Policy asked, according to ABC News, “what are you going to do to change this conversation? Everything we have to do should be about moving ideas from unthinkable, to sensible, to popular, to policy.”

READ MORE: Trump Said Some Disabled People – Including His Young Relative – Should Just ‘Die’: Nephew

“In response,” ABC News reports, “Vance, who at the time had not yet officially launched his 2022 Senate campaign, suggested that the country needed to ‘reward the things that we think are good’ and ‘punish the things that we think are bad’ — before suggesting that individuals without children should be taxed at a higher rate than those with children.”

The full quote, contained in video (below) posted Friday by the liberal super PAC and opposition research firm American Bridge, which comports with ABC News’ reporting, is, “we need to reward the things that we think are good and punish the things that we think are bad. So you talk about tax policy, let’s tax the things that are bad and not tax the things that are good. If you’re making $100,000, $400,000 a year and you’ve got three kids, you should pay a different, lower rate than if you are making the same amount of money and you don’t have any kids. It’s that simple.”

In that same year, 2021, Vance called universal child care, “a massive subsidy to the lifestyle preferences of the affluent over the preferences of the middle and working class.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump’s Sudden Debate Withdrawal Linked to Looming Criminal Sentencing: Legal Experts

 

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‘Extraordinary Weakness’: Trump ‘Pulling Out’ of Debate Shows ‘He’s Afraid’ Buttigieg Says

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13 hours ago

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July 26, 2024

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Pete Buttigieg says Donald Trump’s decision to “pull out” of a previously agreed presidential debate is an “extraordinary show of weakness,” especially for a candidate whose “calling card” is being a tough guy. The Transportation Secretary also observed the Trump campaign has been unable to adapt to President Joe Biden withdrawing from the race and endorsing his Vice President for the top of the ticket.

“Former President Donald Trump’s campaign on Thursday said it will not commit to a debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, at least until the Democratic Party makes a formal decision on its nominee,” Forbes reports.

Trump earlier this week had said he was uncomfortable with the debate being hosted by ABC News, despite having agreed to it back in May. But late Thursday night the Trump campaign served up a different reason when announcing the ex-president’s decision: “it would be inappropriate to schedule things with Harris because Democrats very well could still change their minds.”

MSNBC’s Sam Stein Thursday night described it as “backing out.”

“It’s extraordinary,” Buttigieg said on MSNBC Friday (video below), “tough talk is this guy’s calling card and now there’s this extraordinary show of weakness. He agreed to, you know, he said, ‘anytime, anyplace.’ But more than that, he agreed to this specific debate on this specific network on this specific date. And now he’s pulling out, and of course it shows that he’s afraid, it shows that he knows if the two of them are on a stage together, it’s not going to end well for him.”

RELATED: Buttigieg Top Choice for Harris VP Among Available Candidates: Poll

Buttigieg, one of about a dozen candidates being vetted to be Kamala Harris’s vice presidential running mate, added that Trump’s campaign “really has struggled to be about anything but Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and I think that’s the bigger pattern that you’re seeing here and part of why the Trump campaign is having such a hard time adapting.”

“Think about it: just in a matter of two or three days her campaign adapted to literally the biggest possible change, which is a change in the top of the ticket and yet, you know, within a couple of days that support consolidated and that message was clear.”

By comparison, Buttigieg said, the Trump campaign has “been flailing in a way that shows they’re unable to adapt. And to me, it’s not just that their entire strategic apparatus was built around tearing down Joe Biden. I think there’s something deeper, which is Donald Trump cannot conceive of a campaign that isn’t about the candidates.”

Earlier this week, Buttigieg targeted Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, U.S. Senator JD Vance, for his widely-criticized “childless cat ladies” comments from 2021. Vance, in part, had also claimed that the “entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

READ MORE: ‘Super Creepy’: Vance and Masters’ Belief Politicians Have to Have Kids Called ‘Repugnant’

Buttigieg had responded, saying, “it’s not about his kids, or my kids, or the vice president’s family. It’s about your family, people’s families, whose well-being will depend on whether we go into a future led by somebody like Kamala Harris, who is focused on expanding the prosperity, the freedom, the well-being of our families.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

RELATED: Trump’s Sudden Debate Withdrawal Linked to Looming Criminal Sentencing: Legal Experts

 

 

 

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