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Wayne Besen
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Obama needed someone on his ticket that had experience and could play attack dog when the McCain campaign starts with its below the belt antics. Joe Biden was a solid choice.
Too much is made of the fact he strays off message. Most of the time he is a clear communicator who tells it like it is. This will be a good contrast to the erudite (sometimes to a fault) Obama.
Human Rights Campaign Executive Director Joe Solmonese hailed Biden as a leader whose support has been "unwavering throughout his career." I am also pleased with this selection. Additionally, I'm glad it finally puts the talk of Hillary or Sam Nunn behind us.
Go Obama/Biden!!!
What are your thoughts on the selection?
42 Comments
The Washington pundits who brought us George W. Bush's presidency and the Iraq fiasco have reached a consensus that John McCain came across as "more presidential" at mega church pastor Rick Warren's faith forum. This conclusion is true if we are still defining "presidential" as a cocksure windbag who bonds with the common people by pandering to the lowest common denominator.
On cue, the media judged the candidates by how fun they'd be at a barbecue. McCain was lauded as a "commanding figure" while Obama was derided for coming across as "professorial." In today's politics, if you demonstrate your I.Q. your career may be through and a candidate can now admit having smoked marijuana, but not that he has experimented with arugula.
In 2000, the media gave Bush an easy ride because he was affable, but have learned nothing after his presidency turned out to be laughable. We watched Bush strut in his flight suit on an aircraft carrier with a gigantic banner claiming "Mission Accomplished." When it was clear that the mission had hardly begun, Bush thumped his chest and challenged the insurgents to "bring it on." Well, they obliged and now thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead.
After nearly eight years of alienating the world with cowboy diplomacy, the media portrays Obama's tendency to be humble as a political stumble. Meanwhile, McCain talks tough to the Russians as they continue to rush into Georgia. At the forum, without hesitation he said he is going to defeat evil. But how does he plan to make good on his shallow sound bite with our military tied up in Iraq and our economy on the rocks?
Vladimir Putin has shrugged off the McCain crowd, essentially saying, "You and what army is going to stop us?" McCain must be acting like a galloping stallion because he knows of secret battalions that can be called on to defends the budding democracies in the Caucasus region.
At the forum, McCain also got a big hand by vowing to continue Bush's policy of ensuring that tycoons can live nearly tax free. Such economic policies combined with Republican deregulation have sold out our country and helped fuel the rise of China -- which not only has more gold medals, but owns much of America's gold. Perhaps, McCain remains so bubbly and blissfully unaware of the housing bubble because he has several million-dollar homes. Yet, the media still builds him up as the common man ready to storm the gates, even though he has more in common with Bill Gates.
Of course, the enablers of America's decline are Evangelical Christians who eschew their economic interests in favor of their bizarre moral fetishes. This penchant for the puritanical was exemplified by Warren's voyeuristic question asking each candidate, "What would be the greatest moral failure in your life."
Predictably, this carnival of confession and moral spectacle accomplished nothing and failed to reveal any juicy new "sins" that were not already on public record. Fresh from discussing the implosion of his marriage -- a huge biblical abomination -- McCain spoke out against gay people marrying. In the backdrop of this event was a low level controversy where Jonathan Crutchley, the co-founder of the gay cruising site Man Hunt, gave a $2,300 donation to McCain. This was odd, considering McCain reconfirmed at the forum that he favored Supreme Court judges who had cast votes to outlaw sodomy - the very Man Hunt commodity that had made Crutchley rich. Horrified, the other Man Hunt co-founder, Larry Basile, pressured Crutchley to resign as chairman of the company. While Crutchly has been reined in, a new Harris Poll shows that Obama has only 68-percent of the GLBT vote.
Sadly, 2008 is looking much like the last two elections, where a compliant media joins forces with chest thumping evangelicals and closeted homosexuals to further degrade America's greatness. If McCain is inaugurated, we will all be invited to the barbecue on his million-dollar Arizona ranch, blissfully unaware that our future is the roasting pig with a rotten apple sticking out of its bloated mouth.
Of course, the further we sink into irrelevancy, the more faith forums we will see - even as the rest of the world loses faith in our ability to lead the world. While Rick Warren is an improvement over Focus on the Family's James Dobson, he must teach evangelicals there is a better way than the selfishness of modern conservatism, or it will go down as his biggest moral failure.
52 Comments
I absolutely love this new advertising campaign by the The Trevor Project, a non-profit organization that operates the only nationwide, around-the-clock crisis and suicide prevention helpline LGBT kids.
"It is significant that our first social marketing campaign will launch during National Suicide Prevention Week because suicide is one of the top three killers of all young people, and LGBTQ youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers," said Charles Robbins, executive director, The Trevor Project. "It is time for young people to rise above homophobia and work together to create inclusive, respectful environments for one another."
The "I'm Glad I Failed" print and online advertisements can be downloaded free of charge at TheTrevorProject.org/ImGladIFailed.
Hats off to the Trevor Project for launching a campaign that will save lives.
11 Comments
Mounting evidence - although far from conclusive - casts doubt on John McCain's "cross in the dirt" story in the Vietnam prison camp. Did he concoct the story or lift it from another author? I am making no judgments - at this point. However, it is worth checking out and weighing the accumulating evidence. Let's just keep an open mind and a watchful eye on this story and see how it develops.
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The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) today announced that 1,049 daily U.S. newspapers now accept wedding announcements from gay and lesbian couples -- a more than fifteen-fold increase since August 18, 2002, when The New York Times opened its Weddings/Celebrations pages to gay and lesbian couples following conversations with GLAAD leadership.
Among the 2008 Announcing Equality campaign's other measures:
An estimated 83 percent of all U.S. newspaper consumers read a paper that accepts wedding announcements from same-sex couples.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia have newspapers that print announcements for gay and lesbian couples. All but three of the nation's top 100 media markets are home to newspapers with inclusive announcement policies.
All daily newspapers in 9 states and the District of Columbia print wedding announcements for same-sex couples: Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont. California and New York come close to being 100 percent inclusive, with only one daily newspaper in each state that will not print such announcements.
In Tennessee, the state with the lowest percentage of inclusive papers, one out of every three papers accepts announcements from gay and lesbian couples. Only 339 of the 1,049 papers have actually received an announcement from a same-sex couple to print.
This is just more evidence, in my view, that the religious right is throwing money down the toilet opposing the right of GLBT people to marry. What they should be doing is helping these relationships succeed. Clearly, they have lost their culture war and it will only get worse. They seem to be in denial and can't face reality.
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