LGBT Postcards From Netroots Nation
(On Twitter, however, Netroots Nation, better known as #NN10, was an opportunity for the Ridiculous Right, especially, “#TCOT,” to lie and snark all weekend long. It’s truly amazing how disgusting, asinine, and juvenile our adversaries are!)
Netroots Nation this year was held at the Las Vegas Rio, which had a nice pool with nice fruity drinks…
but terrible Internet service…
Caleb and I spent an evening in Paris — the Paris Las Vegas! — where we won BIG MONEY!
Then, after Netroots Nation finished on Saturday, Caleb and I took a mini-vacation. I originally started writing this on Sunday from our room at the Bellagio, which offered an amazing view…
and amazing raspberry-stuffed french toast!
Now, it’s the wee hours of Tuesday morning. I’m on a plane (jetBlue!) sitting next to my partner, and trying to take all my thoughts and feelings about our first Netroots Nation conference and give you the “big picture” take-aways.
I confess I was surprised at the relatively small number of members of the LGBT community who attended, although I’m told it was our “best” showing ever. That concerns me.
Next year’s Netroots Nation has already been announced. It will be in June, in Minneapolis, where it’s cooler!…
… than Las Vegas’ 107 degree heat!
It was great to finally meet so many notables from our community, including The Advocate’s Kerry Eleveld, Pam Spaulding and Autumn Sandeen of Pam’s House Blend, Good As You’s Jeremy Hooper, and (yeah!) my (awesome!) Change.org editor, Michael A. Jones, as well as say hello to some amazing friends (all icons!) like Mike Rogers, Freedom to Marry’s Evan Wolfson, NGLTF’s Inga Sarda-Sorensen, Joe Jervis, aka, Joe.My. God, and GetEqual co-founder Robin McGehee.
Caleb and I attended many of the LGBT panels and caucuses. Most of our focus was on the issue of marriage, but we definitely noted some strong themes that ran throughout the entire conference.
Perhaps the most-repeated was the idea that all progressives need to work together, because we share the same ideals, and even if you don’t care about, say, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and even if I don’t care about, say, the environment (of course I do!,) we share the same adversaries/enemies, and we need to pool our resources and manpower (person-power?)
(Note: Read Caleb’s excellent takes on Netroots Nation: “Organizing Equality Under Obama, No Better Than Being Under Bush?” and “Marriage Equality Through A Netroots Nation Looking Glass.”)
As one speaker put it, the Tea Party has shown that they can easily switch from attacks on gays to attacks on blacks to attacks on Obama. We need to deploy the same flexibility and wide-reaching push-back skills.
So, after taking everything in and mulling it all over, here’s what I want you to know and to think about:
1.   Progressives, and perhaps especially LGBTs, seem beaten-down, though not, by any means, out. The LGBT leadership seemed especially focused on finding the positive in all the negatives, without changing gears or focus. It’s safe to say, from all I heard, that they are ready to continue our long slog at the same, slow pace, plodding along, offering little new tactics or strategy. This is a problem.
2.   I am, however, very pleased to finally see our leadership organizations working together. Long-time readers of this blog will know that I have respectfully chastised our leaders for not finding ways to work together. It would appear they have all now exchanged contact information!
3.   LGBT bloggers and activists need to now follow this lead and start working together. I’ve felt this way for a long time. Why don’t we share more information among ourselves, so we can be more efficient and effective in keeping our readers informed? Some of my LGBT blogging and activist friends have been very willing and ready to do this. Most recently, I’m thinking of Rod McCollum (Rod 2.0) and Scott Wooledge (DailyKos) with whom I worked on the sad, first anniversary of the murder of Seaman August Provost, and folks like Joe Jervis and David Mixner, who have been so supportive of me. (Thanks to you all!)
4.   You need to get (more) involved. Seriously. Whatever degree of involvement you have now, and I know for many readers of this blog you spend most of your waking hours “on patrol,” you need to step up the fight and get more of your friends, family, and co-workers working on our issues. There is no doubt in my mind that in just a very few short months, if Democrats don’t flood the polls, we will have given Congress — both houses — over to the GOP. That is unacceptable and cannot happen. If it does, we will have only ourselves to blame.
Again, you may remember the piece I wrote last summer over at Bilerico, “Fill The Void,” in which I warned that if we didn’t flood the media with positive news and information about LGBT issues, the right would “fill the void” with their lies and hate. That was one of the reasons we created, “The Great Nationwide Kiss-In.” It worked!
I want to challenge all my LGBT friends and allies to find ways to counteract the lies we know will be coming from the Right this August. With Congress in recess, they’ll have little to do and we can easily end up their target. Let’s take this opportunity this year to throw the first punch.
Next year, I truly want to see some things happen differently at Netroots Nation 2011. Primarily, I want more opportunities for the LGBT caucus to work together. I want our bloggers and activists and organizations locked in a room for a full day, sharing ideas and frustrations and coming up not only with ways to be more efficient and effective, but with actual strategies and focuses. There was a pre-Netroots day where 50+ bloggers got together, and Mike Rogers promises to open it up to many more next year.
I’ll leave you with one final thought: Regardless of what you call yourself, a progressive, a liberal, a Democrat, or someone with left-leaning tendencies, it is critical that we stand together now, and through November. Or surely, we will stand alone.
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Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a top potential Trump vice presidential running mate pick, revealed in a forthcoming book she “hated” her 14-month old puppy and shot it to death. Massive online outrage ensued, including accusations of “animal cruelty” and “cold-blooded murder,” but the pro-life former member of Congress is defending her actions and bragging she had the media “gasping.”
“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes in her soon-to-be released book, according to The Guardian which reports “the dog, a female, had an ‘aggressive personality’ and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.”
“By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life’.”
“Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, ‘grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another’.”
READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off
“Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like ‘a trained assassin’.”
Except Cricket wasn’t trained. Online several people with experience training dogs have said Noem did everything wrong.
“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, calling the young girl pup “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”
“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”
“It was not a pleasant job,” she added, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”
The Guardian reports Noem went on that day to slaughter a goat that “smelled ‘disgusting, musky, rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.”
She dragged both animals separately into a gravel pit and shot them one at a time. The puppy died after one shell, but the goat took two.
On social media Noem expressed no regret, no sadness, no empathy for the animals others say did not need to die, and certainly did not need to die so cruelly.
READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’
But she did use the opportunity to promote her book.
We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.
If you want more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping,… pic.twitter.com/bKhpUkchHV
— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) April 26, 2024
Attorney and legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold says Governor Noem’s actions might have violated state law.
“You slaughtered a 14-month-old puppy because it wasn’t good at the ‘job’ you chose for it?” he asked. “SD § 40-1-2.3. ‘No person owning or responsible for the care of an animal may neglect, abandon, or mistreat the animal.'”
The Democratic National Committee released a statement saying, “Kristi Noem’s extreme record goes beyond bizarre rants about killing her pets – she also previously said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry out her pregnancy, does not support exceptions for rape or incest, and has threatened to throw pharmacists in jail for providing medication abortions.”
Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View” wrote, “There are countless organizations that re-home dogs from owners who are incapable of properly training and caring for them.”
The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson blasted the South Dakota governor.
“Kristi Noem is trash,” he began. “Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent.”
“She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not because it was a bad dog,” he added. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable. We have one now who was never going in the field, but I didn’t kill her. She’s sleeping on the couch. You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit. Unsporting and deliberately cruel…but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”
Melissa Jo Peltier, a writer and producer of the “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” series, also heaped strong criticism on Noem.
“After 10+ years working with Cesar Millan & other highly specialized trainers, I believe NO dog should be put down just because they can’t or won’t do what we decide WE want them to,” Peltier said in a lengthy statement. “Dogs MUST be who they are. Sadly, that’s often who WE teach them to be. And our species is a hot mess. I would have happily taken Kristi Noem’s puppy & rehomed it. What she did is animal cruelty & cold blooded murder in my book.”
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President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person interview.
“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”
“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”
But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.
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“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”
Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.
1. The media turned Robert Hur’s amateur assessment of Biden’s memory into a political crisis.
Collectively, the @washingtonpost, @nytimes, and @WSJ have run 66 articles quoting Hur: a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”
But when the transcript of the Biden interview… pic.twitter.com/cExzjuKeYz
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 14, 2024
Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”
Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.
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“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.
Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.
Incidentally, when the NYT got a chance to interview Trump, they went belly up. https://t.co/fW5kx5868d pic.twitter.com/LbrhfYMtqf
— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) April 25, 2024
Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.
Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.
This is the equivalent of putting a bag of dog poop on the New York Times’ doorstep and setting it on fire. https://t.co/RhGbHH9pU2
— Mark Jacob (@MarkJacob16) April 26, 2024
The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.
Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.
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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.
“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.
“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.
READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’
Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.
On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”
On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”
After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:
“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.
“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”
READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’
Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’
President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off
CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial
‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’
Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’
OPINION3 days agoPresident Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off
OPINION3 days agoNoem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’
News3 days agoCNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial