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The Gay Agenda video blog: Hang it up, Hillary
Jay Vanasco and John Polly, your Gay Agenda vlog hosts, hopped on camera to issue an imporant message to Senator Clinton: Stop. It’s time. Even die-hard Hill-o-phile Jay has come to a decison: It’s time to bow out. Watch and discuss, please. And while you’re watching you can hear about the McGreevey divorce (which seems to have settled?), the Michigan domestic-partnership benefits train wreck, and the happy forthcoming wedding plans of supergay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson. He’s been getting death threats (where do you register for those, I wonder?), but he’s undaunted. Jay’s got some good insight on the esteemed pastor because she just interviewed him. Nice! All this wedding talk gets the two thinking about their own marriage options. Hmmmmm… See it all after the break! Submitted by on Mon, 2008-05-12 08:24. |
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And may the better MAN win
afhickman
"It takes a village (to make Village People)"
Yes, I agree it's time for Hillary to get out. At least she'll be taking her bow while she still has an ounce of dignity. That's more than I can say for the other guy.
Hillary is my Candidate
At the risk of getting into a political firestorm...
Senator Clinton is the most qualified and most intelligent candidate of the three currently running for president. I believe Senator Clinton really was a major force during her husband's presidency and that those eight years gave her very valuable experience and leadership skills.
If worst comes to worst, I believe Senator Clinton should run as an independent candidate against Senator McCain and Senator Obama. McCain does not have the support of the traditional conservative base he needs to win a general election and therefore he's vying for the same votes that usually go to candidates like Clinton. If given a choice between McCain and Clinton those voters will go to Clinton. During the Democrat Candidate race Obama failed to win big states like California, New York and Florida(Yes, I know, but Clinton would have won any way).
I strongly URGE people NOT to vote for McCain. A McCain presidency would be disasterous for America. It would be like a 3rd Bush term.
My problem with Obama is his inexperience and his 20 Year association with Reverend Wright. I do not believe that the position of "Community Organizer" qualifies ANY ONE for President and the miniscule amount of time he spent in the Senate is simply not enough. Remember when we rightfully complained about George W. Bush's blatant inexperience when he was running for the 2000 election? We were tragically right. We need someone with experience in the White House and with the right policies. Senator Clinton's and Senator Obama's proposed policies are very similar. Senator Clinton has the experience to see them through. As to Reverend Wright, yes, he has done things to help his community, I don't dispute that, however, if you listen to his sermons they are pathologically anti-american and I can't support a candidate who listened to that for 20 years and who exposed his children to that.
If Clinton does withdraw, I will not be voting in this election for the reasons I have stated above.
"We need someone with
"We need someone with experience in the White House and with the right policies."
So you're saying the only people with the experience to be President are former Vice Presidents and First Ladies? Or you have to have served in a White House as a cabinet member? Sounds very dynastic to me. This seems like a very arbitary definition of the experience needed and there's really no evidence to back it up. We've had great presidents with tons of political experience and great presidents with very little poltical experience. If this is your major reason to not vote for Obama, its a pretty weak argument.
Say I randomly decided the candidate with more elected experience is the more qualified. That's Obama. There is really no basis for thinking that more years of elected experience would be better, its just where I randomly decided to draw a line. It's the same with claiming a president must have "White House experience".
Community Organizer = President?!
And, what, you're saying is that a "Community Organizer" is completely prepared to be President.
As I already said, President Bush had no experience and look where it got us.
I don't know about you but the Clinton Years were pretty good economically. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton are policy wonks. Think of what good they can do with a Democrat majority in the House and Senate.
I never said community
I never said community organizer=President. I was just saying that making "White House experience" a mandatory is very limiting.
I personally think the combination of Obama's experience, community organizer, constitutuitional law professor, state and US Senator is interesting and could work out very well. Or it could not, we have no guarantees in politics. I think a person with absolutely no political experience could be an amazing President (like a Bill Gates type or something) who knows?
Maybe Hillary would have been a great president, maybe not. But the point is, she lost the primary. It's over. She had everything going for her, but she did not run the right campaign and made numerous strategic mistakes. So as far as judging her experience as an executive leader we can look at two things, her health care attempt in the 90s and her 2007/8 campaign. Both were mismanaged failures.
Obama ran a successful campaign against all the odds, so that speaks to his leadership and management abilities and is fully relevant Presidential experience in my opinion.
Bush had LOTS of experience
Experience Is Overrated
This whole "experience" thing is generally overrated (by politicians, journalists, pundits and the general public) when it comes to elective office, even the presidency. Perhaps ESPECIALLY the presidency. There are many ways to look at it:
1. Some of our best presidents (Lincoln and Kennedy come to mind) had little experience. Some of our worst presidents (Nixon, George Bush Sr.) had extensive experience.
2. Experience in the political realm generally teaches one how to manipulate things, deal with lobbyists, lie with a straight face, "play" politics rather than work for the people, etc. It also tends to make one cynical and accept the status quo of not getting anything done.
3. Experience in this context really only means that you've sat on committees, campaigned for reelection, made speeches, raised money, and talked about issues. It doesn't give you understanding of the issues, and it obviously doesn't mean you're knowledgeable about the issues. To me, intelligence, a quick mind, ability to learn and study, WILLINGNESS to learn and study (the current Bush fails miserably here), proper instincts, etc., are far more important than whether you've gone through the speechifying, money raising, debating process multiple times.
4. Presidents obviously don't act alone in anything. They have numerous advisors, cabinet secretaries, etc. with whom they consult. Give me a president with native intelligence and good instincts, who knows how to synthesize data and opinions from multiple sources, and who can make a rational decision from that data, and I don't care how much or how little experience he/she has.
I supported Clinton initially, but converted to Obama when Hillary began destroying her own campaign with "politics as usual", baseless political attacks, dissembling, etc. Based on my observations above, Obama is clearly qualified to be president. He has better instincts and raw intelligence than other candidates, he's a fast learner, and he sees politics as a means to get things done rather than as a source of personal power. He will pick and listen to the best advisers, and in the end make informed decisions to benefit the country. What more can you ask?
You and Brent are right
Experience is irrelevant therefore, I nominate Britney Spears for President. She's Hot. She takes great care of her kids (They're still alive, at least). She loves change (check out her bald phase). And if ANYONE critizes her the media (and that includes you, Brent) will respond "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! LEAVE HER ALONE! You don't know what it's like!!!"
So yes, Leave Obama Alone!!!
lmao...
"she loves change (check out her bald phase)
^ this cracked my ass up. ah, good stuff. :-P
Chris Crocker
Very good! Though I want to see your Chris Crocker version.
Seriously, here in Minnesota we have totally "inexperienced" Al Franken running for Senate against Norm "Slippery" Coleman, who has TONS of experience as a mayor, a senator and other things. "Slippery" has always been anti-gay, says whatever he thinks he needs to to get elected, sways with the wind, and supported the war. Of course, he runs a mean senate hearing, gives good speeches and can golf with lobbyists with the best of them. For some reason I find myself supporting the inexperienced guy....
Until the Michigan and
Until the Michigan and Florida primary debacles are resolved, there should be no bowing out by anyone. It baffles me that after the 2000 disaster...the silencing of millions of voices by the republicans and their cronies...that the Democratic party is trying to do exactly the same thing to us once again. Until those delegates are given a voice, I don't think that we can declare a winner in good conscience.
Gore got out-lawyered. If Clinton gives in, there's no telling what liberties will be taken in the future. This fight won't be resolved until the convention. By that time, maybe the party will come to its senses and broker an Al-Gore/Edwards ticket.
I'm curious...
Until the Michigan and Florida primary debacles are resolved, there should be no bowing out by anyone. It baffles me that after the 2000 disaster...the silencing of millions of voices by the republicans and their cronies...that the Democratic party is trying to do exactly the same thing to us once again.
First off, I want to emphasize that I'm asking out of curiosity and am not bringing this up as an argument... but as I recall, at the time of the Michigan and Florida primaries the national media presented those states being stripped of their delegates as a matter of them being told that if they weren't allowed to hold their primaries before a certain date and if they broke that rule their delegates would be stripped as punishment -- a version that puts the blame on the states' officials. "They were told what would happen and they did it anyway." so to speak. (I even recall listening to an interview with Michigan's governor who talked about how she felt that bringing up her state's issues early was worth losing their delegates.)
However, you're not the only one I've seen phrased this as something that's entirely the fault of the Democratic party leadership, accusing them of disenfranchising voters, so I'm curious if there's a difference in how the local media has covered this issue, as opposed to the national storyline that could be summarized as "They (MI and FL officials) knew the rules and knew the penalty and broke the rule anyway." Are there elements of that story that the national media missed? (I've certainly seen the national coverage of a story that's local to me be very different from what's going down down the street from me.)
Your version is correct.
Your version is correct. The national party told the state officials what would happen if they violated the national party's wishes. And the states completely ignored the national party and went ahead anyway. They probably figured it wouldn't hurt much since Hillary would have things wrapped up by the first Super Tuesday. And so getting the national attention would be worth losing delegates that would in the end be superflous.
You can genuinely say that people are being disenfranchised since they voted and their votes won't count. However, you can only blame the state parties. The national party runs the national nominating process, and they clearly laid out the groundrules ahead of time. I'm all for trying to work something out to fix the problem after the fact, but the problem was not caused by the national Democratic party.
The media gets all that, but they focus on the fact of two important and vital states not being represented. And on the literally millions of people who voted whose votes won't count. Since those are important things, especially since those states are needed by the Democrats in November, it's journalistically important to focus on it, especially since the candidates themselves have talked about ways to seat the delegations.
How can you blame the Florida Democractic Party?
The primary date was set by the state legislature which is controled almost 2 to 1 by Republicans. The Democratic Leaders in both the Florida House and Senate introduced admendments to hold the primary on Feb. 5th (the earliest date the DNC would allow without special exemption). These amendments were defeated by the Republican controlled legislature. The legislation that set the Jan. 29th primary date was rolled into a larger bill. This larger bill included a requirement for a paper trail in Florida elections. Gettig a paper trail was vitally important to the Florida Democratic Party and the Florida Democractic House and Senate members had to vote for the entire legislation.
Since all the candidates were on the ballot in Florida and they all played by the same rules (no advertising or campaigning - except the cable ads that Obama ran). I think the Florida delegation should be selected based on the primary vote and they must be seated at the Democratic Convention.
That's a Different Story
That's why...
I referred to state officials, since I had the impression that it was different groups that made the decision in each state. My general impression of Florida was that it was state Republicans setting the date and sabotaging attempts to have a "do over", which had me wondering why Floridians would say that the National Democratic Party was disenfranchising them in a situation that looked from a distance (again, which is why I asked if there were details the national media were missing) like state Republicans were deliberately setting up a situation to stir up ill will towards the Democratic party in their state.
However, I hadn't heard that it got wrapped up into a bill that would require a paper trail, a very important thing to gain. That certainly makes the situation more complicated... though my gut still thinks that anger over the issue would be better directed at the Republicans in the Florida state legislature.
This is the version I heard also...
About the Florida and Michigan discussion
Yes, in the case of Florida it was the Republicans that forced the issue and voted to move it up for both parties...however the Democrats, although outnumbered, did not object. The thing to keep in mind is that those two states were hoping to cash in on the primary money. Early states get the lions share of the candidates money for advertising, campaign staff, 10 million donuts and cups of coffee, local printing, take out pizza...it's a $$$ windfall. The later the date the less your state mattered...at least that was until this current race.
What really amazes me is that both those states didn't say a month ago..Hell yes we'll pay for another election. Imagine the amount of money that bring in to their states in such a tight election. They'd make the money back in staffer meals and the news media flooding the states to cover it.
The staggered voting and the open primary system vs. caucusing is a holy mess anyway...it's no wonder our politcal parties are so messy....both of them. Sens. Clinton, Obama and McCain don't have to travel the countryside by horse and buggy...they aren't making whistle stops in towns along the train tracks...they aren't giving quotes to the newspaper hoping they reach the voters in a months time. This is 2008 for god's sake...this entire process has been too long and too expensive. It's shameful that it takes this much to get elected in our country.
If experience has taught me anything
afhickman
"It takes a village (to make Village People)"
...it's to be suspicious of cultism.
I'm not worried so much about Obama's lack of experience. If he chooses his advisors wisely, Obama should do well enough when he assumes office. But I still have some hard questions for his campaign. Where does he stand on health care? What are his priorities regarding the environment? How long will it take him to get us out of Iraq? What about gay rights? He's been dancing around these and other issues for six months now. His supporters appear to be willing to give him a pass just because he's Barack Obama. I want to hold his feet to the fire. Above all, I want answers; and once he's in office, I want results. He has said that he's against "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Let that be the first test. With the stroke of a pen he can bring the US into the community of nations that already allow homosexuals to serve openly in the military. Will he do it? We know where he went to church, but where is he on DOMA? (He's waffled in his public statements on this one, being against it at one point and "conflicted" at another).
If he's the Democratic nominee in November, I plan to vote for him, but I also plan to be a tireless critic of his administration. And I will continue to be wary of the cultists, who seem to think he can do no wrong. If the first casualty of an Obama administration is going to be free speech, we will have lost a great deal more than we can possibly gain from his presidency.
Stroke of a pen sounds too simple
I don't think it's going to be as simple as a stroke of a pen. If I'm not mistaken the POTUS cannot lift the ban on gays in the military via executive order...thats one of the little things we can thank the Republican controlled Congress for a few years back. The gays in the military issue is way beyond the President...we need Congress to get that ban lifted. I've said it here before...in the next few years we'll see at least two things...1) Congress with the help of bipartisan support will get the ban on gays in the military lifted...it's time has come. There is already strong support for the ban to be lifted. Now is the time to strike on this issue, if the war ends and recruiting needs are lower the need for the opposition to compromise will diminish. 2) There will be a fight over having portions of DOMA changed. DOMA as a whole will not be removed.
We'll have at least a two year breather on any marriage amendment threat.
As far as a President Obama goes...he'll be a friend to the community, however we'll also be one of the first things he'll sacrifice to reach across the aisle and also keep his own religious community happy.
Nothing is ever simple
afhickman
"It takes a village (to make Village People)"
But...I believe the prez can still sign an executive order. I don't think these have ever been popular, but they usually have the force of law, unless challenged. I looked it up, and according to an article on Wikipedia, only two such orders have been overturned by the courts, most recently in the Clinton administration (natch). As you suggest, the Republicans probably won't want to go to war with an Obama presidency on this matter, which is surely a no-brainer in a time of diminishing recruitment. And, yes, the religious think worries me too.
Actually, his lack of
Actually, his lack of experience is what scares me most. And I have a feeling that most of the bigwig Democrats are pushing for him because they know that they can lead him around by his balls. We've already endured 8 years of decision making by advisors and a vice president and Colin Powell...everyone but the president. Even if we have a democrat(Obama) in the house in January, I surely don't want a puppet to be leading this country once again.
Obama is charismatic and I truly believe that he'd like to do all that he says that he will do once elected. I just don't believe that he actually can do it. The man speaks in platitudes and fairy tales and we are a people desperately need of a happy ending, so we're buying into it, some without a second thought. He attacks Hillary via ad hominems consistently. Each time I've watched a debate, I've thought to myself...did he actually say anything? For me, there's little substance there.
While I don't love Hillary, I believe her.