It isn’t just the Gay Folks who are getting a bit testy, as the video below indicates, but those of us Gay people who DID buy that Obama was going to do something for us (I don’t know what came over them) sure had something to say in the March on Oct. 10th (H/T to Logistics Monster for the video):

I came across this article by B. Daniel Blatt recently that addresses the frustrations of the GLBT community with Barack Obama, Gay Community Increasingly at Odds with Democrats. Considering the constant pandering, all talk, and no action, it is easy to see why we would be inreasingly discontented with Obama (those who were content with him in the first place, that is).

Mr. Blatt comes from a different political position than I do, and I appreciate his take here:

Perhaps the easiest thing about being a gay conservative is that we expect less from our elected leaders than do our left-of-center counterparts. Republican politicians don’t promise us the moon and stars in their campaigns, so we’re not disappointed when they don’t bestow such lofty gifts on our community once elected.

Huh. I hadn’t thought of it that way before. Interesting. He continues:

For gay Democrats, however, it’s a different story. They are repeatedly disappointed when their politicians do not follow through on the campaign pledges they make to our community.

In 1992, then-Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton promised to repeal the ban on gays in the military, but just a year later, he backpedaled on that promise. After he clumsily tried to act on that promise in the first few days of his administration, that Democrat realized he might suffer politically should he sign an executive order repealing the ban. At the time, the president’s signature was all that was required to allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military.

Facing a firestorm of opposition from the military and Congress, Clinton relented and signed a supposed compromise policy, the legislation which became known as Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT). Gays could now serve, provided they didn’t self-identify as gay. Now the ban on open service is codified, requiring an act of Congress to be repealed.

This would not be the last time Clinton would sign legislation upsetting gay people who so enthusiastically backed him in 1992.

In the dead of night on September 20, 1996, after receiving the endorsement of the left-leaning gay rights organization Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the Democrat signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), allowing one state to bar recognition of same-sex marriages performed in a different state while defining marriage, for the purposes of federal law, as the union of one man and one woman. Although its then-leaders denounced the action, HRC did not rescind its endorsement of the then-Democratic incumbent.

Now, you know, I love me my Bill Clinton. Not as much as his wife, mind you, but still…It’s a different day now than it was even then:

Perhaps with that bit of history in mind, the current Democratic President Barack Obama thought that by currying favor with this bastion of the gay Washington, D.C., establishment, he could silence the growing chorus of criticism from erstwhile gay supporters upset by his failure to act on his campaign promises to repeal those two bills. This past Saturday, the president addressed HRC’s annual dinner in Washington where he reiterated his campaign pledges:

We are moving ahead on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. … We should not be punishing patriotic Americans who have stepped forward to serve this country. We should be celebrating their willingness to show such courage and selflessness on behalf of their fellow citizens, especially when we’re fighting two wars. … And I’ve called on Congress to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act.

As a reminder, I severed my long-standing membership with the HRC after it endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, one a proven advocate for the GLBT community, and one who is not. Wanna guess which one is which? Yep - Hillary is, Obamais not. That doesn’t seem to have sunk in with the folks at the HRC dinner, but other people are getting it:

That may have earned him a standing ovation inside the auditorium, but it did not quiet the criticism outside. Indeed, if anything, the speech only served to increase its volume. Left-of-center lesbian blogger Pam Spaulding took umbrage at the president’s failure to offer a timeline for repeal:

The low expectations I had regarding LGBT policy were unfortunately met on that account. If you’re an activist or citizen looking for timelines, actions, use of the bully pulpit, ANYTHING that would indicate to the community that our president was serious about moving on the laundry list of LGBT issues any time soon, you would call it a fail.

Others found different reasons to call the speech “a fail.” Left-wing gay bloggers Andrew Sullivan and Dan Savage said it sounded more like a campaign speech than a presidential address, with the latter offering, “Sorry, folks, nothing new to see here. Pledges, promises, excuses. Lip service.” They were not alone. The New York Times reported that one reader of the Bilerico Project quipped in a comment to that gay blog, “I could have watched one of his old campaign speeches and heard the same thing.”

And you know how much I just LOVE Andrew Sullivan (that was major snark - he has attacked yours truly a number of times, tongue in cheek nominating me for the Michael Moore Award. I suppose I could do worse.). He was a major Obama sycophant, singing his praises left and right, downright bubbly in his support of The One. THat is al to say, I have little sympathy that he is now so disenchanted with Obama. Maybe he could have done a little more research - check that - maybe he could have done SOME research into Obama before throwing his weight behind him. Just a thought.

And he is not the only Obama supporter and GLBT community member who is now frustrated with Obama:

John Aravosis of Americablog was less restrained in his reaction to the speech:

What did President Obama say new tonight? Absolutely nothing. … It is criminal that any gay rights organization would invite an embattled president to their dinner, giving him political cover for repeated broken promises and slaps in the face to our community (like the DOMA incest brief), and then get absolutely nothing in return. HRC’s actions only feed the suspicions of critics who say that the organization is more interested in fundraisers than in advancing our rights.

All in all, the evening was a disappointment, but not unexpected. President Obama doesn’t do controversy, and we, my friends, are controversy. So, the bad blood between this administration and the gay community will remain, and continue to worsen.

By this measure, the incumbent Democrat is a lot like the last Democrat to sit in the White House: both seek to avoid controversy, particularly on gay issues. And yet, in seeking to avoid controversy in the general population, Obama has further stirred the pot in the gay community. Even some of his most zealous defenders on the gay left have refused to cut him any slack for his failure to move forward on repealing DADT and DOMA.

Well, and they shouldn’t cut him any slack. Then again, IMHO, they should have pushed harder for a real advocate - Hillary - than the guy they thought was “cool,” or whatever the hell they were thinking - if indeed they were. Blatt continues:

And these outraged voices on the gay left have a greater opportunity today to make public their views than did their counterparts in the Clinton era. Many of them blog, some for heavily trafficked sites. These bloggers have prevented the voices of the establishment gay organizations from dominating the discourse (as they had in years past). When HRC’s president Joe Solmonese made excuses for the president’ s inaction, these bloggers were quick to take him to task.

Due in large part to the integrity of these gay left bloggers, a “schism,” as Spaulding puts it, has opened up between “Gay Inc. [and] the grassroots”. The blogosphere, in short, has changed everything. Gay Inc. (to use Spaulding’s epithet for the establishment gay organizations) no longer reigns supreme as the public voice of the gay community.

It has been supplemented by voices less submissive to the dictates of the Democratic Party. Blogs have given disgruntled Democrats a larger megaphone with which to express their disappointment with a party whose leaders have long assumed that gay voters would remain in their camp even if they didn’t act on their campaign promises.

And Americans have become increasingly aware that the gay community does not speak with one voice. Nor does it march it lockstep to the tune of the Democratic Party.

Sure, Obama made a small move recently and nominated Clifford Stanley, a 33 year Marine two star general (retired), to this position:

President Barack Obama intends to nominate Dr. Clifford L. Stanley as the undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness — the position within the Defense Department that oversees the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

“He is likely to be the president’s key Pentagon player in the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ debate and will be critical for the president in getting military uniform buy-in,” said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the repeal lobby group Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

Well, that’s just peachy keen. I don’t know how long it will take to get him confirmed, but it’s just another step. Honestly - HOW much longer are we going to have to debate this horrible legislation?? Did Obama not promise to abolish DADT shortly after he took office? He has a Super Majority, for pete’s sake, and at the very least, he could employ a stay on DADT, but no (as of Oct.17, 459 service members fired under DADT).

But this is a bigger picture issue than DADT, or even DOMA, for that matter. It’s how an entire segment of the population is treated disparately that is the issue.

Along those lines, I think a number of people have started to realize that Democrats do a lot of talking, very little listening, and even less fulfilling of campaign promises made, GLBT people included. Perhaps we can learn that one has to look at more than the letter beside the name, and really look at the candidate. For instance, John McCain stood up for a friend who came out, extending his support to him. Obama, on the other hand, campaigned with, and consistently surrounded himself with, homophobes (McClurkin, Meeks, and Kmiec, to name just three). That is to say, maybe, and I include myself in this, we need to look beyond the letters beside the names, and really look at the people, their character, their words, and how they match up with their actions. Maybe then, these people who gave of their money, and their VOTE, wouldn’t be so disappointed, and frustrated, now. Just a thought.

Here is the article:

President Barack Obama will focus “at the right time” on how to overturn the “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on gays serving openly in the military, his national security adviser said Sunday.

“I don’t think it’s going to be — it’s not years, but I think it will be teed up appropriately,” James Jones said.

The Democratic-led Congress is considering repealing the 1993 law. Action isn’t expected on the issue until early next year.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., recently wrote Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked to share their views and recommendations on the contentious policy. In Sept. 24 letters, Reid also asked for a review of the cases of two U.S. officers who were discharged from the military because of their sexuality.

So far, this is absolutely nothing we have not heard before, is it? No. But wait, there’s more:

“At a time when we are fighting two wars, I do not believe we can afford to discharge any qualified individual who is willing to serve our country,” Reid wrote.

Jones said Obama “has an awful lot on his desk. I know this is an issue that he intends to take on at the appropriate time. And he has already signaled that to the Defense Department. The Defense Department is doing the things it has to do to prepare, but at the right time, I’m sure the president will take it on.”

As a candidate, Obama signaled support for repealing the law. To the disappointment of gay-rights supporters, he has yet to made a move since taking office in January. The White House has said it will not stop the military from dismissing gays and lesbians who acknowledge their http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifsexuality.

Last year, 634 members of the military were discharged for being gay, or .045 percent of the active-duty U.S. force, according to an Aug. 14 congressional report.
The largest number of gays who were ousted under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy came in 2001, when 1,227 were discharged, or .089 of the force.
The House is considering legislation to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” and allow people who have been discharged under the policy to rejoin the military.
Jones appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Wait, what did General Jones say? John “It Is Hard For Me To Feel Sorry For This Former Obama Cheerleader” Aravosis was none too happy about the pronouncement by the National Security Adviser in this post:

Apparently, General Jones would have us believe that President Obama wasn’t aware that we were fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan when he promised to lift the gay ban during the campaign in exchange for our votes. So, Jones tells us today, Obama can’t get to that particular promise right now because he’s busy fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Uh huh.

So when exactly are both of those wars going to be over? I’m guessing some time after Obama leaves office. And that of course assumes that we don’t have more wars to “distract” the president.

Jones just set us back. Again. He just gave the Republicans, and conservative Dems, the perfect talking point. Should anyone - members of Congress or the administration - move to lift the ban any time before these wars are over, our opponents will simply quote General Jones saying that to lift the ban during war time would be too distracting.

What could Jones have said? How about, there’s a new analysis from a Department of Defense-related publication that same the ban can be lifted without hurting morale and cohesion. Or how about saying that the President just wrote to Senator Reid, agreeing to work together to lift the ban?

Once again, let me just interject that those of us who were paying attention BEFORE the Election, during the Primaries, were very much aware that Obama wasn’t going to do a damn thing for us, at least not in a timely fashion. There were clues: Never marching in one Pride parade EVER, unlike Hillary Clinton; Donnie McClurkin, “Cured homosexual”; State Senator The Rev. James Meeks; Doug Kmiec; and Pastor Rick Warren, to name just a few. The information was there for those who were willing to see. I’m just sayin’. Back to Aravosis:

Nope. None of that. All we got was another reason why the president may never be able to keep his promise. The Obama administration is doing next to nothing - and perhaps nothing altogether - to move the ball forward on repealing DADT. This isn’t the kind of policy you just wake up one morning and say “ah, today is the day to lift the ban.” Bill Clinton found that out the hard way. It takes months, if not years, of preparation. Working the PR angles, the media, the grassroots, the public at large, the Pentagon. While we have no idea what if anything Obama is doing to work the Pentagon - though Jones’ repeated unhelpful remarks suggest that whatever the president is doing, it isn’t working - we certainly do know what he’s doing on the Hill. Zippo. Harry Reid had to write Obama a letter last week begging him help. And in terms of lobbying the public, we get unhelpful statements like what Jones did, again, today.

In the end, don’t think that Jones is simply freelancing. There is no way a senior administration official goes on TV and keeps screwing up like this. At first it’s a screw up. After this many times, it’s part of the plan. And the plan is to move the goal posts again and again and again until Obama can pass his gay rights promises to the next president, assuming we get a Democrat elected again this century.

No, there isn’t any way a senior administration official goes on CNN and says something like this all on his own. Seeing what the General really said is what made that AOL headline so incredibly misleading (the Yahoo link for General Jones was far more accurate). That seems to be a bit of water-carrying to me, a hope that it will deflect some of the frustration being voiced about Obama now, including on SNL this past Saturday night (10/3).

In other words, not only does it appear Obama isn’t getting to DADT in a timely fashion, he may not be getting to it at ALL. I wish I could tell you I am surprised, but unlike Mr. Aravosis, this is what I feared was going to happen under Obama.

As of Monday, October 5th, 439 service members have been discharged under “DADT” under the Obama Administration. For how long will those numbers go up? Will it indeed be until Obama is out of office?

But here’s the problem for me. I had really liked President Carter. I had a lot of respect for him, in fact. I was young and naive when he was in office, but certainly the work he had done AFTER leaving the White House was commendable. For instance, the work he and his entire family did for Habitat for Humanity has helped numerous people, including in my home town. I have experienced firsthand seeing the joy and pride the new homeowner as she looked at her house, and talked about what it meant to her. And the group of university students with whom I was working, all female, becoming more empowered, more sure of themselves, because they were helping to build someone a HOUSE, and the sense of pride and accomplishment that gave them.

The work Carter has done in Africa, helping to eradicate a horrible disease of worms that infiltrate too many areas there, doing horrible damage to the people they infest. Or his work in monitoring elections. Heck, even his recent decision to leave his church of many years because they will not ordain women.

My partner and I have visited the Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta, GA, a beautiful place in a calming and serene environment. I walked through that buildung filled with a sense of awe, seeing what he gave up, and subsequently his wife, when he left his commission as a Naval officer behind to go back to Georgia and help out the family. As I saw photographs marking historic moments, actual papers from events I had read about, or seen on tv. I was in awe as I saw his actual Nobel Peace Prize. And with pride, we have supported the Carter Peace Center for years now with monthly contributions…

(Photo by rachydachy)

But, things have been changed now. It began with some of his statements about Israel. Then President Carter inserted himself into the Primary Campaign, making some unkind remarks about my hero, “>Hillary Clinton. And now this. Being called a racist because I oppose the way by which Obama became President, but even more, because I oppose his policies. When someone calls me a racist, I gotta say (as we do down here in the South, “Them’s fightin’ words.” And so, I have written this letter to send to the Carter Center when my next payment is due:

Dear Carter Center,

Sincerely,
The Rev. Amy

What a sad day, for me personally, but also for this nation, when a former president makes such a grievous, and unfounded, charge against over half of the population. Because we have the audacity to judge the president by his CHARACTER, rather than the color of his skin, as Martin Luther King, Jr., charged us to do, we are called a heinous name. How sad, and how infuriating.

President Carter, as respectfully as I can muster after being called a racist, I would suggest it is time for you to go into retirement, and leave off sharing your political opinions. You are not doing yourself or your legacy any good, to be sure. Even more, you are not doing this nation any good. Rather, you are fanning flames that divide us, not unite us, all to provide cover for a man who, had he been properly vetted in the first place, and had the DNC followed its own rules, would never have gotten this far. Speaking for me only, I am judging Obama on the merits, not the color of his skin. I suggest you do likewise.

UPDATE: I had the story below ready to publish since I need to leave, but ran across this video from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show last night. So I’m adding this video without accompanying text because Maddow does such a great job of explaining not only Obama’s failure to live up to his campaign promises but also another instance of Obama’s thwarting of legislation to end “don’t ask don’t tell”:

Amy has found that Obama’s failure to issue an executive order (”stop loss”) or direct Congress has led to 230 service members being kicked out of the military under the policy since Obama took office. Despite Obama’s aversion to “hot button” issues, action may be taken soon. Following Congress’s August recess, the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing on “don’t ask don’t tell.” A member of the committee, Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, who was appointed to fill Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s seat, is the force behind the push for Congressional action and convinced Chair Carl Levin to hold the hearing.

“Morning Meeting” devoted a full-panel segment to getting rid of “don’t ask don’t tell” and joining all of our allies in permitting gays to serve openly in the military. During the “Meeting” segment, the most clear, “let’s cut to the chase” advocate for permitting gays to serve in the military was the reserved-looking, older Gen. Barry McCaffrey (retired), an analyst for NBC and MSNBC News. (See the MSNBC.com bio of Gen. McCaffrey. The photo is from Wikipedia’s bio.)

There’s no video of the segment so I transcribed what Gen. McCaffrey said: “Whether the military wants to do it or not is irrelevant. The question is: Is private consensual homosexual behavior legal or not? The Supreme Court seems to have said a decade ago that states couldn’t pass laws affecting private consensual homosexual behavior.”

Gen. McCaffrey stated firmly that Congress “ought to step up to it” and change the law. The rest of Morning Meeting panel also said that Obama shouldn’t bother with a “stop loss” order (a half-measure), and instead demand that Congress change the law.

Of course, as Reverend Amy has told us, Obama is ducking the issue despite his campaign promises, and has taken no action of any kind.

Why Obama is so wary of the issue is unclear (unless it’s to appease his ultra-religious, vociferously anti-gay constituencies, including his old Chicago minister pals like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, Rev. Otis Moss, and Rev. James Meeks). Obama’s reticence can’t be due to voters’ attitudes since “Morning Meeting” noted that a recent poll found that two-thirds of Americans approve of allowing gays to serve freely in the military.

Included early in the segment was Dr. Nathaniel Franken, author of “Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America” (Kindle edition). Dr. Franken pointed out that, under the current “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, over 13,000 service members have been discharged, including 1,000 “mission critical specialists,” 300 linguists and 60 Arab linguists.

“This is a national security emergency. It’s not just a gay rights issue. And President Obama does have the power to issue an executive order,” Dr. Franken continued. (Read more about Dr. Franken’s views in Amy’s June post.)

The “Morning Meeting” panelists concurred that if Obama is going to “take a hit” for issuing a stop-loss executive order, he might as well go all the way and compel Congress to enact a law to do away with discrimination against gays. But Obama hasn’t done a thing so far and shows no signs of taking actions.

In Rabble Rouser Reverend Amy’s story, “Stop Making Excuses For This Guy!!,” she takes on the gays who are still backing Obama:

Repeal the law - it cannot POSSIBLY take that long. Like I said, look how fast Obama got some other things done he wanted done. If he wanted this law repealed already, he would have. Rather, Obama chose to not even weigh in on this to the Supreme Court. LOOK AT THE FACTS, not the rhetoric!

Here’s the bottom line to the LGBT community: STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR THIS GUY. Stop humiliating yourselves hoping, crossing your fingers, and wishing that Obama is going to do right by you because he said he would, or because you think he’s “dreamy.” Had you opened your eyes and paid attention to his actions (or lack thereof) over the course of his political career, or the people with whom he chooses to surround himself, you wouldn’t have picked the guy you thought was “cool.” You would have supported the person who has stood with YOU for years. But you didn’t. And here we are, no farther along for it.

Aren’t you TIRED of begging for the crumbs to drop from the table?? Aren’t you ready to be a guest at the table, where you belong?? All the excuses in the world for Obama do nothing but let him off the hook, and diminish YOU. Seriously, you, we, deserve better. Deep down inside, you must know that is true. At least I HOPE you do…

U.S. allies openly permit gays to serve in their armed forces. Via AOL News:

Check out more of Amy’s posts:

• “Soldiers and WORMS” [WORM stands for "What Obama Really Meant."]

• “And The Hits Just Keep On Coming” (which links to even more posts)

• “Passing the Buck“

This section from “Passing the Buck,” exposes the real Obama:

Once again, Obama has found a way to NOT let the buck stop with him - he is proving to be quite adept at finding a way to not take a stand on stands he has previously taken. I know - it makes my head hurt, too, but that’s the reality of it. The title of this article really says it all: Obama Avoids Test on Gays in Military. Uh, yeah. You may recall that I wrote just recently about the Army Arabic linguist, Lt. Dan Choi, and his plea to Obama to not fire him from the Army (“Freedom’s Just Another Word…”).

Well, get this:

The Obama administration has decided to accept an appeals-court ruling that could undermine the military’s ban on service members found to be gay.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco last year ruled that the government must justify the expulsion of a decorated officer solely because she is a lesbian. The court rejected government arguments that the law banning gays in the military should have a blanket application, and that officials shouldn’t be required to argue the merits in her individual case.

The administration let pass a May 3 deadline to appeal to the Supreme Court. That means the case will be returned to the district court, and administration officials said they will continue to defend the law there.

The move comes as President Barack Obama attempts a balancing act on gay rights. He was elected with strong support from the gay community and promised action on a number of issues. But mindful of the complex politics, the White House has moved slowly.

Um, no - a glacier moves slowly. Obama hasn’t moved at all: … (Read all.)

Um, no - a glacier moves slowly. Obama hasn’t moved at all:

Amy, you crack me up even while you’re talking about a truly serious story that affects national security because the military is dismissing desperately needed Arab linguists and other “mission critical specialists.”

Since 2/3rds of the American people back the open inclusion of gays in the military, this action is not hazardous politically and should be taken care of right away. Get with the program, President Obama.

And that is why I took particular delight in Andy Borowitz’s most recent piece, “Obama Quits While Ahead; Prez Resigns After Hundred Days: “It’s All Downhill From Here.” Oh, if only:

In a move that stunned both political allies and foes alike, President Barack Obama resigned today after serving 100 days in office, telling the White House press corps, “It’s all downhill from here.”

The reporters seemed stunned by the President’s decision in light of the fawning media coverage he received during his first 100 days, but the hyperbolic nature of that reportage, ironically, may have been the prime motivator behind Mr. Obama’s shocking move.

“Let’s face it, I’m not going to get better coverage than I have to date,” he said. “The only guy with a higher approval rating is that dude who landed the plane on the Hudson - or maybe that other dude who escaped from those pirates.”

Click HERE to read the rest - it is pretty funny, especially to see who has higher poll numbers than Obama!

Sigh. I guess it is easy for him to have slightly better than half approval ratings when liberals and progressives ignore: expanded faith-based initiatives, a program we detested under Bush; keeping No Child Left Behind intact, a program we have all widely decried, especially teachers; and Obama’s EXPANSION of warrantless wire-tapping on American citizens. For added irony, here is a video from Keith Olbermann, of all people, on this very thing:

Then there is the attempt to nationalize our banks, firing the CEO of a private company, and the list goes on and on. These are just off the top of my head. I am sure there are more - feel free to add them!

The point is, someone who was inexperienced and unqualified was elected president as the result of the best marketing ploy I have ever seen. His connections to: Tony Rezko; Jeremiah Wright; Bill Ayers; Khalid Rashidi; Kwame Kilpatrick; Louis Farrakhan; and James Meeks, to mention a few, all ignored. Also ignored was his massive contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as was his his dearth of a record, both as an IL state senator and a US senator (or how he got to either one of those positions - getting the qualified people kicked off with the very thinnest of reasons). His sexist behavior, and his homophobic associates, all ignored by the MSM and his followers, people who ordinarily would never give quarter to such a person (and about which I have written extensively here. To find those posts, and other related articles by fellow No Quarter writers on those issues, and Obama’s associates, feel free to do a Search at No Quarter.).

Oh, what might have been. Below are a few very good videos on Hillary Clinton, the one who received the most votes in a Primary EVER, despite being outspent at every turn, and having the MSM expose its Clinton Derangement Syndrome at every turn. Still, STILL, she received the most votes of anyone EVER. That says something, both about her, and about the DNC’s choice to pick Obama over her, for all of their concocted reasons and unethical machinations to make it so. In recognition, then, of Obama’s 100 Days in the White House, I hope these will bring a smile to your face (though they also brought tears to my eyes):

Obama on Spot Over a Benefit to Gay Couples

Just seven weeks into office, President Obama is being forced to confront one of the most sensitive social and political issues of the day: whether the government must provide health insurance benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

In separate, strongly worded orders, two judges of the federal appeals court in California said that employees of their court were entitled to health benefits for their same-sex partners under the program that insures millions of federal workers.

But the federal Office of Personnel Management has instructed insurers not to provide the benefits ordered by the judges, citing a 1996 law, the Defense of Marriage Act.

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama said he would “fight hard” for the rights of gay couples. As a senator, he sponsored legislation that would have provided health benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

Now, Mr. Obama is in a tough spot. If he supports the personnel office on denying benefits to the San Francisco court employees, he risks agitating liberal groups that helped him win election. If he supports the judges and challenges the marriage act, he risks alienating Republicans with whom he is seeking to work on economic, health care and numerous other matters.

Already, some gay rights groups remain upset over Mr. Obama’s choice of the Rev. Rick Warren, an opponent of same-sex marriage, to give the invocation at his inauguration. Liberal groups also believe that Mr. Obama has not moved fast enough to reverse the policies of his predecessor on issues like detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects.

Here’s a question I have. WHY are these groups continuing to focus on his choice of The Rev. Rick Warren, admittedly, a HORRIBLE choice, but it was for a one time event, rather than being WICKED upset over his choice of Gov. Tim Kaine, a man who is anti-gay AND anti-choice (to name just TWO things), as the new face of the DNC? I mean, really - it just seems to be that they are missing the forest for the trees with this one. Tim Kaine as the DNC Chair is an even BIGGER slap in the face than The Rev. Rick Warren doing a prayer at his inauguration. Tim Kaine will be the “git that keeps on giving,” if you get my point.

Back to the article:

In a letter on Feb. 20 to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, an arm of the federal judiciary, Lorraine E. Dettman, assistant director of the personnel office, said, “Plans in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program may not provide coverage for domestic partners, or legally married partners of the same sex, even though recognized by state law.”

Benefits are available to the spouse of a federal employee, Ms. Dettman said, but the 1996 law stipulates that “the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.”

Federal officials said they had to follow the laws on the books. But Richard Socarides, a New York lawyer who was an adviser to President Bill Clinton on gay issues, said he believed that Mr. Obama “has broad discretionary authority to find ways to ameliorate some of the more blatant examples of discrimination.”

The orders were issued by the chief judge of the appeals court, Alex Kozinski, and another member of the court, Judge Stephen Reinhardt.

Judge Kozinski, often described as a libertarian or an independent conservative, and Judge Reinhardt, a liberal, ruled not as part of a lawsuit, but in their role as employers resolving employee grievances.

Similar issues were raised in a lawsuit filed against the federal government last week in Boston by eight same-sex couples. The administration is weighing how to respond.

Gay federal employees said they were denied equal compensation when their partners were denied health benefits.

Administration officials declined to say what they planned to do in the California cases if the judges tried to enforce their orders.

Ben LaBolt, a White House spokesman, said: “While the president opposes gay marriage, he supports legislative repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. He believes this country must realize its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect.”

Mr. Obama and his choice for director of the personnel office, M. John Berry, have endorsed the idea of providing health benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

The Office of Personnel Management estimates the cost at $670 million over 10 years.

Huh - well, that’s interesting, considering the people with whom Obama continues to surround himself (do I REALLY need to go through the litany again? Meeks, Kmiec, Kaine, Warren, McClurkin, and that is off the top of my head.).

To return to the article again:

Mr. Berry, who is gay, has been director of the National Zoological Park since 2005. As an Interior Department official in the Clinton administration, he developed procedures to deal with complaints of discrimination based on sexual orientation. They became a model for other agencies.

The pending cases involve Karen Golinski, 46, a lawyer who works for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and Brad D. Levenson, 49, a lawyer who works for the federal public defender in Los Angeles.

Ms. Golinski’s insurance plan, offered by Blue Cross and Blue Shield, rejected her effort to obtain health benefits for her spouse, Amy Cunninghis. Mr. Levenson’s insurer, a Kaiser Foundation health plan, turned down his application for his spouse, Tony Sears, based on instructions from the Office of Personnel Management.

In Ms. Golinski’s case, Judge Kozinski said that federal law authorized the Office of Personnel Management to arrange health benefits for federal employees and their family members. The law, he said, defines the “minimum requirements” for health insurance, but the government can provide more.

Judge Reinhardt confronted the question differently, and concluded that the Defense of Marriage Act, as applied to Mr. Levenson’s request, was unconstitutional because it violated the Fifth Amendment guarantee of “due process of law.”

“A bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot provide a rational basis for governmental discrimination,” Judge Reinhardt wrote.

In adopting the Defense of Marriage Act, Congress said the government had a legitimate interest in “defending and nurturing the institution of traditional heterosexual marriage.”

But Judge Reinhardt said the denial of benefits to same-sex spouses would not encourage gay men and lesbians to marry members of the opposite sex or discourage same-sex marriages.

“So the denial cannot be said to nurture or defend the institution of heterosexual marriage,” the judge wrote.

Gary L. Bauer, president of American Values, a conservative advocacy group, said that if Mr. Obama extended benefits to same-sex partners of federal workers, he would “provoke a furious grass-roots reaction, reinvigorate the conservative coalition and undermine his efforts to portray himself as a moderate on social issues.”

Ms. Golinski has asked for a new hearing, where she will urge Judge Kozinski to enforce his order granting benefits to her partner. Mr. Levenson said he would soon ask Judge Reinhardt for a similar hearing.

In addition, Congress may soon weigh in.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Representative Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, plan to introduce bills that would provide benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

Similar bills died in the past. But “the new administration will have a new view,” Ms. Baldwin said. (Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.)

So what do I think about all this? I think Obama will continue to say one thing, do another, promise one group one thing, and the exact opposite to some other group. I guess I could have said, I don’t believe a damn thing that comes out of his mouth. How can you trust what someone says when he tries to be all things to all people? It is impossible. I am sure, if the outcome is against benefits for same-sex couples, he will find a way to take no responsibility for it. It was an aide’s fault. It was the way the judges went. It was out of his hands.

DO I WANT same-sex couples to be able to get federal benefits? Hell YES! Why shouldn’t they? They have been supplementing heterosexual people’s marriage benefits for, well, ever, and there are more of them than there are same-sex couples. It is way past time for us, all of us, whether we work for the federal government or not, to be treated equally, not in the disparate, unequal manner in which we have had to live despite us paying our taxes, contributing to society, and on and on.

Here’s the bottom line about what I think about Obama’s position here: no matter WHAT Obama says, what matters is what he DOES. When he chooses someone who holds so many diametrically opposed opinions to most Democrats like Kaine does to be the head of the DNC, THAT speaks volumes. As do the people with whom he surounds himself. So, let’s not lose focus on the forest for the trees.

Thanks, CG, for asking!

But first, just in case it’s been too long, here’s a reminder about Barack’s good friend and strong political ally, Rev. James Meeks, both a powerful Chicago pastor and a state senator, who can win elections solely through his church’s 22,000 members voting for him. Larry Johnson exposed who Meeks really is in April 2008’s “What Would Tip O’Neill Do About Barack’s Pastors? [Updated]“, an excellent expose of the ministers with whom Obama has surrounded himself.

But Meeks is special. He has been Obama’s friend, ally, and spiritual adviser for years now. Here’s a little reminder of who he is:

You can read more in SusanUnPC’s late April 2008 story, “Father Pfleger & Rev. James Meeks: Who They Really Are” and at least a dozen more NoQuarter articles exposing James Meeks. Not for the faint of heart, these two men, in their language or theology, as SusanUnPC demonstrates in her fine post.

Oh, and The Rev. Meeks is also connected with The Rev. James Dobson - yes, THAT James Dobson, from “Focus on the Family.” They are working together to abolish the separation of church and state. But don’t take my word for it. Check out this little blurb about James Meeks from the Southern Poverty Law Center highlights:

The Rev. James Meeks is a key member of Chicago’s “Gatekeepers” network, an interracial group of evangelical ministers who strive to erase the division between church and state. A stalwart anti-gay activist, Meeks has used his House of Hope mega-church to launch petition drives for the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), a major state-level “family values” pressure group that lauded him last year for leading African Americans in “clearly understanding the threat of gay marriage.”

With over 22,000 members, Meeks’ congregation was large enough to buoy his successful 2002 campaign for state senator. Last year, he ran for governor as a virtual single-issue candidate, drawing national support from Christian fundamentalists by boldly vowing to fight marriage equality at every turn. Meeks eventually dropped out of the race.

Meeks and the IFI are partnered with Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defense Fund, major anti-gay organizations of the Christian Right. They also are tightly allied with Americans for Truth, an Illinois group that said in a press release last year that “fighting AIDS without talking against homosexuality is like fighting lung cancer without talking against smoking.”

Wow, right? Yeah. Funny, I sure don’t recall ANYONE in the MSM highlighting THIS little tidbit, or the connection between James Meeks and James Dobson. Such stellar journalism we have had the past 18 months. Hahahaha!

Anywho - it would seem that Meeks’ influence on Obama is coming out as this US News article, Crafting Policy Agenda, Obama Team Brings in Faith Groups, The president-elect and his staff have held about 15 meetings so far with religious groups would indicate:

In the eight weeks since Barack Obama was elected president, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism Director David Saperstein or members of his Washington, D.C.-based staff have attended roughly a dozen meetings with Obama’s transition team, on topics ranging from domestic poverty and the plight of White House faith-based initiatives to foreign policy challenges like bringing peace to the Middle East.

“This is the most extensive outreach and listening tour that I’ve ever seen a new administration take, and that is certainly true of their outreach to the faith community,” says Saperstein, who has worked with presidential transition teams going back to Jimmy Carter’s. “It’s quite remarkable.”

The effort is noteworthy not only for the number of Obama transition team meetings with religious groups—about 15 so far—but also because top Obama policy aides have joined the powwows. Melody Barnes, who will be director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and Heather Higginbottom, who will be the council’s deputy director, have participated in some of the meetings.

“There is the feeling that these are not perfunctory meetings but serious meetings with people in policymaking roles who know the process well,” says James Winkler, general secretary of the public policy arm of the United Methodist Church, who says that he or his staff have attended nearly a dozen meetings with the Obama transition team so far. “This is not something meant to bring in the faith community to keep them happy but to solicit our views and ideas.”

I don’t know about you, but it makes me wonder why religious groups opinions are being sought in policy-making. Even Bush, whom I think most people would expect to operate this way did not, at least not on every issue:

Winkler said that during George W. Bush’s tenure, “we were never contacted by the administration” after an initial meeting with the White House Office of Public Liaison, which traditionally handles outreach to religious groups and other constituencies. Though Bush is a Methodist, a group of Methodist bishops was unsuccessful in repeated attempts to meet with the president in the run-up to the Iraq war, which the United Methodist Church opposed.

Yeah, so not as much of a surprise since they didn’t agree with his position.

But I wonder if the following IS a surprise to Obama’s followers (again, not to those of us who have been paying attention):

Heading up religious outreach for Obama’s transition team is Joshua DuBois, a Pentecostal and onetime associate pastor who directed religious outreach for the Obama campaign. Mark Linton, the Obama campaign’s Catholic outreach director, is leading the effort to design an Obama administration version of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and Mara Vanderslice, an evangelical Democratic operative who has helped spearhead the party’s post-2004 religious outreach offensive, is now Obama’s outreach liaison to religious communities.

Don’t let this description of DuBois fool you. He, like Favreau, is young - in his mid-20’s. And while he may have been an associate pastor at his small Cambridge, MA evangelical/pentecostal church (gasp! Had he been anyone else - like a female VP candidate, this might have gotten some scrutiny.), he was not seminary trained. You can read more about him, if you wish, HERE. It is just amazing to me that he is the one heading up Obama’s religious outreach team. Out of all of the people available in this country to Obama for positions like this, he picks this young guy who has no real-world work experience (he went from college to a master’s program to a part-time law school program, according to the article). It is a bit mind boggling, actually.

But I digress. Back to the religious influence on policy:

Representatives from a handful of outside religious groups meeting with the Obama transition team expect these aides to stay on in the new administration.

The Obama transition team would not comment about its meetings with religious groups apart from issuing a brief statement from DuBois, the religious outreach director. “The Obama-Biden transition team is working with a range of religious and secular community groups to solicit their views on the transition process and our agenda going forward,” the statement read in part.

Interviews with 10 participants in the Obama transition team’s faith-based meetings paint a portrait of Obama aides recording priorities and concerns of representatives from religious denominations and advocacy groups, mostly of the left-leaning variety. Their policy priorities include economic relief for the poor, new protections for organized labor, a stepped-up campaign to combat global warming, improved access to healthcare, and guarantees that the United States will forgo torture in its war on terror.

Well, yeah, those sound like some pretty good issues - I think most of us would be fine with this list. But you know it doesn’t stop with helping the poor:

Some of the faith-based groups have also pressured the transition team to make a serious attempt to reduce demand for abortion by improving sex education and expanding government services for pregnant women.

There ya go. But wait - there’s even more:

Spokespeople for the social conservative advocacy group Family Research Council and for the Southern Baptist Convention—a huge, mostly conservative evangelical denomination—meanwhile, said that their organizations have not received invitations to meet with Obama’s transition team. Southern Baptist Convention public policy chief Richard Land says that DuBois called him to report that Obama had personally read a letter from Land urging the president-elect to push legislation aimed at reducing the demand for abortion. “Mr. DuBois told me that he wanted to keep the bridges of communication open and that the door was always open for us to voice concerns,” Land says. “I congratulated him on having picked Rick Warren to do the invocation at the inauguration.”

Of course he did. And there was much rejoicing throughout the land that Obama picked Rick Warren to participate in his “historic” inauguration. What? That wasn’t rejoicing? Whatever - it was Obama’s choice, ergo, it must be sanctified, according to the Obama faithful. Ahem.

And now, we get to Obama’s take on Bush’s Faith-based Initiatives, a program previously abhorred by liberals, but now that Obama is pushing it, it is a fabulous use of your tax-paying dollars:

Transition team meetings with faith groups focused on planning for a Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Obama’s version of the faith-based initiatives office that President Bush launched during his first term. The meetings have included advocates of strict church-state separation, who have traditionally criticized such programs.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Americans United for Separation of Church and State Executive Director Barry W. Lynn says of the Obama policy of having aides sit down frequently with religious groups. “It would only bother me if [Obama] starts implementing the policies of religious groups that are inconsistent with guarantees of the Constitution, and I haven’t seen that yet.”

Still, creating consensus around the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships is emerging as an early challenge in Obama’s efforts to satisfy both secular liberal and religious groups. For instance, proponents of church-state separation want Obama to peel back Bush-era exemptions on employment nondiscrimination laws for religious organizations receiving federal funds—allowing Christian groups to hire only Christians—while some religious groups say they need such hiring discretion to maintain the religious component of their programs.

For now, though, those groups are happy just to have the incoming administration’s ear. “We’re glad to have a good seat at the table and that [the Obama transition team] is listening to all sides,” says Tanya Clay House, director of public policy for People for the American Way, which has expressed concerns about the propriety of federal faith-based initiatives. “The old administration listened to just one side of the argument.”

Wow - I guess Rev. Lynn forgets that his organization, Americans United, spear-headed major opposition to Bush’s faith-based initiative in a major position paper. Want to guess who signed on to that opposition? That’s right - People for the American Way (PFAW). I guess now that it is OBAMA who wants to do it, no, EXPAND the Initiatives, it is magically and miraculously a great plan - because they have “good seats at the table,” see.

And it looks like the two Jameses might just get their way with this whole abolishing of that pesky Church and State thing when this is what the opposition looks like. Nice job at “gate-keeping” there, AU and PFAW - way to stick to the courage of your convictions! And way to protect the Constitution. I mean, hey - why bother with that pesky little document as long as Obama lets you have a good seat at the table? You’re in the “In” crowd now, and that is all that apparently counts anymore to these groups.

The hypocrisy knows no bounds. It simply knows no bounds.

Oh, wait - sorry, I am getting ahead of myself now. See, there was this article on Sunday, Anne Hathaway Against Rick Warren, But Won’t Turn Back On Him at Inauguration.

Now, in case you somehow missed it reading your issue of People or OK! or wherever it is they have this kind of info, Ms. Hathaway is a big Obama supporter.

What a SURPRISE! Not. Well, she was mighty upset at him over his choice of Pastor Rick Warren to play an important role in the Coronation. Here’s what she had to say about this offensive choice, along with the generous set-up by the author of the article:

Hathaway is also proving to be incredibly articulate, and, as the year passed, politicized in a way that puts her in the legacy of Jane Fonda and Susan Sarandon. She speaks her mind about issues she feels passionately about.

One of them is Barack Obama—whom she backed—and his choice of Rick Warren as the Obama Inauguration’s clergy of choice.

“I am against it,” Hathaway told me at the after party last night amid champagne toasts to her, to Streep, and to her “Rachel” co-star Rosemarie Dewitt. “My older brother is gay, and so its a family issue for me. My father is coming with me to the Inauguration. At first we discussed not going, and then we thought we’d just turn our backs when he [Warren] speaks. But we didn’t want to be disrespectful. So we’re going to wear ribbons protesting his appearance.”

So she’s outspoken, and polite. That’s a combination you can’t beat.

Wowie freakin’ zowie, Anne - you are practically another Norma Rae, I tell ya! Way to stand up to the man, especially in solidarity with your gay brother! Hell to the yeah, wear that ribbon! That oughta learn Obama that you are not happy with his choice of YET ANOTHER homophobe for the big occasion! Of course, it isn’t stopping you from GOING, or from supporting him in the FIRST place, this misogynistic homophobe who has surrounded himself with anti-gay, anti-choice men at EVERY turn.

I don’t know about your brother, but speaking for me only, I gotta tell you, it just does not feel like a whole lot of support. If someone consistently surrounds himself with actively anti-gay people, it should tell you something about him. And if all you do is make excuses for him, or protest by wearing a ribbon while still participating in his Coronation, well, that has about ZERO impact. But you just go ahead and tell yourself you are taking a stand while still participating in the event. Oh, yeah - that’ll sure learn ‘em, as we say down here in the South. Power to the people!

I cannot even begin to tell you how sick and tired I am of this. People who claim to care about GLBT issues and rights, who have family members who are GLBT, or even GLBT people themselves who continue to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to who Obama really is. What the HELL is it going to take to get through to you? He does not give a DAMN about the GLBT community. If he DID, he would not associate with The IL Senator Rev. James Meeks, who is rabidly anti-gay . Or Donnie “God Delivered Me From Homosexuality” McClurkin. Or Doug “Hell No, You Gay People Can’t Marry!” Kmiec. Or invite one of the big haters of Gay people - Rick Warren - a man who will not even allow us into his CHURCH - to be up front and center in his Big Event. Or who chooses Tim Kaine, another big time gay hater, to be THE CHAIR OF THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE, the very party the GLBT community has, by and large, supported.

Oh, that’s not a slap in the face or an affront at all!! Oh, and Ladies - both Warren and Kaine don’t think you should be able to choose what happens to your own body your self either! What a GREAT feminist minded guy he is! Treats women like crap in the open for eighteen months, and yet still is lauded as being a FEMINIST by Ms. Magazine! That is just obscene.

And yes, I have heard that The Right Rev. Gene Robinson has now been asked to give an invocation at a Sunday night Lincoln Memorial Inaugural event. Oh, well, that just makes EVERYTHING okay now, doesn’t it? A last minute addition to an event that is not exactly the main event will make all of us gay people all of a sudden forget that Obama chose a rabidly homophobic, misogynist to be on the Main Stage. Oh, yes, I am so thankful for this crumb dropped from the table. Maybe Obama isn’t such a hater after all, right?

Freaking spare me already. I have had it. Sorry if I am being pissy, but this is just sheer stupidity. Yes, I said it. At what point are his followers EVER going to hold him accountable?? EVER??? This is like the people who thought George Bush could do no wrong no matter WHAT he did - the refusal to join the “reality-based community” is just as strong among the Obama supporters as it was for the Bush supporters. You know, the same ones we ridiculed. Enough already. Stop with the excuses. Stop the denial. And stop pretending that wearing a little ribbon will make any difference to the issue at hand - Obama’s homophobia. Here’s a newsflash: Obama is not the Saint you created him to be.

Frankly, Warren and Kaine are not all that different from Ken Blackwell, the potential RNC Chair, who said, “Homosexuality is a compulsion that can be contained, repressed or changed.” Please tell me why that is any more unacceptable than the crap Warren spews about unrepentant gays not being allowed to attend his church, and equates us to pedophiles and incest perpetrators. Or Kaine spewing this:

Marriage between a man and a woman is the building block of the family and a keystone of our civil society. It has been so for centuries in societies around the world. I cannot agree with a court decision suddenly declaring that marriage must now be redefined to include unions between people of the same gender.

Or this:

And finally in the area of adoption. Virginia has adoption laws right now that I agree with. The adoption laws say the only couple that is allowed to adopt is a married couple.

I’m just saying - not a whole helluva lot of difference there.

Here’s the deal: no amount of ribbons are going to change who Obama really is, Anne. He is a homophobe who surrounds himself with homophobes. And don’t tell me that this is just one issue among many. This is not an “issue” - it is my LIFE. Just as being a woman is not an issue, but my LIFE. Who Obama chooses to elevate is telling, telling indeed. That is the reality.

It is WAY past time for his followers to come back to the reality-based community and take a good, hard look at the man who was given the Democratic Nomination while they covered their eyes and ears, no matter how much we tried to tell them who he really was. Because let me tell you something - Hillary Clinton would never in a bazillion years pick someone so offensive to women and GLBT people. She NEVER would have appointed an anti-gay, anti-choice man to be Chair of the DNC. So when you stood by, and allowed the RBC/DNC to engage in vote theft, when you stood by while Obama engaged in caucus fraud, when you stood by while ACORN engaged in rampant voter fraud, you gave your tacit approval to Obama’s homophobia and misogyny.

Stop turning your back on THAT, and FACE the reality of what you have done.

There have been reforms in the state, most notably a new ethics law designed to limit the impact of money in politics. It was approved only after Obama, a former state senator, called his one-time mentor, Senate President Emil Jones, and urged its passage.

His “one-time mentor”? Are you freakin’ KIDDING me??? How about the Kingmaker who put Obama’s name on legislation on which he had not worked?? Oh, wait, that’s just too close to the truth of Obama’s lack of experience/qualifications. No way can the AP get that close…

Ahem. But of course, the ONLY reason The One made the decision to begin his political career in Chicago, apparently, was to clean up Illinois politics. Hahahahaha! Yeah, and that’s why he endorsed Blagojevich - TWICE. And worked on his campaign. But why quibble over past history, right? RIGHT??

That does seem to be the MO around anything related to BO. It is really amazing to me. In my opinion, though, the only way someone can deny Obama is a Chicago-style politician is flat our ignorance, or flat our denial of reality. Take your pick. There is NO way from the stories that have come out about Obama, his relationships to Blagojevich, Rezko, Wright, Meeks, Ayers, et al, that he is above typical Chicago politics. The Rezko thing ALONE is indicative of his involvement. And there is no way that Blagojevich JUST became corrupt as of Nov. 5th when Obama, with the help of ANOTHER corrupt Chicago political institution, ACORN (there have been so many stories on ACORN, and their actions this year, it is hard to single out just one, but here’s a YouTube video, and here’s another. There are many more videos on this subject. If you want more article information, please feel free to use the”Search” function at the upper right hand corner of this page.), helped him become PEBO.

Yes, I know the MSM has been a HUGE help in both regards - ignorance and denial. But not ALL reputable sources were completely in the tank for The One. The New Yorker, for instance, had some impressive pieces, particularly this one,The Political Scene: “Making It: How Chicago shaped Obama. The article title alone is indicative of the effect of Chicago-style politics on Obama. The author, Ryan Lizza, published this article in July 21, 2008, so like I said, the information was definitely available…

Many of us have heard of Alice Palmer, one of the first people (of whom we are aware) thrown under the bus by a power-hungry Obama. There was another woman, too, Toni Preckwinkle, who had a whole lot to say about the young Mr. Obama on his ascension into Chicago politics:

One day in 1995, Barack Obama went to see his alderman, an influential politician named Toni Preckwinkle, on Chicago’s South Side, where politics had been upended by scandal. Mel Reynolds, a local congressman, was facing charges of sexual assault of a sixteen-year-old campaign volunteer. (He eventually resigned his seat.) The looming vacancy set off a fury of ambition and hustle; several politicians, including a state senator named Alice Palmer, an education expert of modest political skills, prepared to enter the congressional race. Palmer represented Hyde Park—Obama’s neighborhood, a racially integrated, liberal sanctuary—and, if she ran for Congress, she would need a replacement in Springfield, the state capital. Obama at the time was a thirty-three-year-old lawyer, university lecturer, and aspiring office-seeker, and the Palmer seat was what he had in mind when he visited Alderman Preckwinkle.

“Barack came to me and said, ‘If Alice decides she wants to run, I want to run for her State Senate seat,’ ” Preckwinkle told me. We were in her district office, above a bank on a street of check-cashing shops and vacant lots north of Hyde Park. Preckwinkle soon became an Obama loyalist, and she stuck with him in a State Senate campaign that strained or ruptured many friendships but was ultimately successful. Four years later, in 2000, she backed Obama in a doomed congressional campaign against a local icon, the former Black Panther Bobby Rush. And in 2004 Preckwinkle supported Obama during his improbable, successful run for the United States Senate. So it was startling to learn that Toni Preckwinkle had become disenchanted with Barack Obama.

Well, I’ll be damned - Obama DIDN’T win all of his races! Amazing how we have RARELY (if ever) heard about his “doomed” race. Or that some people who know him, really know him, no longer are delighting in his glow:

Preckwinkle is a tall, commanding woman with a clipped gray Afro. She has represented her slice of the South Side for seventeen years and expresses no interest in higher office. On Chicago’s City Council, she is often a dissenter against the wishes of Mayor Richard M. Daley. For anyone trying to understand Obama’s breathtakingly rapid political ascent, Preckwinkle is an indispensable witness—a close observer, friend, and confidante during a period of Obama’s life to which he rarely calls attention.

Although many of Obama’s recent supporters have been surprised by signs of political opportunism, Preckwinkle wasn’t. “I think he was very strategic in his choice of friends and mentors,” she told me. “I spent ten years of my adult life working to be alderman. I finally got elected. This is a job I love. And I’m perfectly happy with it. I’m not sure that’s the way that he approached his public life—that he was going to try for a job and stay there for one period of time. In retrospect, I think he saw the positions he held as stepping stones to other things and therefore approached his public life differently than other people might have.”

Well, again, if anyone could see the trajectory of Obama’s career as anything other thank opportunistic “stone-stepping,” it is only because they did not WANT to see that Obama was a driven POLITICIAN.

But here is my point: Chicago politics. This is a major foundation the MSM and Obama worshipers/supporters refuse to acknowledge - because it does not fit the narrative they have created:

On issue after issue, Preckwinkle presented Obama as someone who thrived in the world of Chicago politics. She suggested that Obama joined Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for political reasons. “It’s a church that would provide you with lots of social connections and prominent parishioners,” she said. “It’s a good place for a politician to be a member.” Preckwinkle was unsparing on the subject of the Chicago real-estate developer Antoin (Tony) Rezko, a friend of Obama’s and one of his top fund-raisers, who was recently convicted of fraud, bribery, and money laundering: “Who you take money from is a reflection of your knowledge at the time and your principles.” As we talked, it became increasingly clear that loyalty was the issue that drove Preckwinkle’s current view of her onetime protégé. “I don’t think you should forget who your friends are,” she said.

Others told me that Preckwinkle’s grievances against Obama included specific complaints, such as his refusal to endorse a former aide and longtime friend, Will Burns, in a State Senate primary—a contest that Burns won anyway. There was also a more general belief that, after Obama won the 2004 United States Senate primary, he ignored his South Side base. Preckwinkle said, “My view is you have to bring your constituency along with you. Granted, you have to make some tough decisions. Granted, sometimes you have to make decisions that people won’t understand or like. But it’s your obligation to explain yourself and try to do your supporters the courtesy of treating them with respect.” Ivory Mitchell, who for twenty years has been the chairman of the local ward organization in Obama’s neighborhood—considered the most important Democratic organization on the South Side—was one of Obama’s earliest backers. Today, he says, “All the work we did to help him get where he finally ended up, he didn’t seem too appreciative.” A year ago, Mitchell became a delegate for Hillary Clinton.

What?? Obama not appreciative? Yeah - no kidding. He has made it abundantly clear that he will step on whoever whenever it is politically - I said, POLITICALLY - expedient for him to do so. And still:

The same month Mitchell endorsed Clinton, the Obama campaign reached out to Preckwinkle, and eventually she signed on as an Obama delegate. I asked her if what she considered slights or betrayals were simply the necessary accommodations and maneuvering of a politician making a lightning transition from Hyde Park legislator to Presidential nominee. “Can you get where he is and maintain your personal integrity?” she said. “Is that the question?” She stared at me and grimaced. “I’m going to pass on that…”

Can’t say as I blame her. What does it say when someone who DOES actually know him has “to pass” on answering a question regarding Obama’s integrity? Or when the governor of his home state refers to him as a “mo***r f***er”?? These are the people who KNOW him, after all, not just who worship him from afar.

And then there is this (emphasis mine):

Chicago is not Obama’s home town, but it’s where he chose to forge his identity. Several weeks ago, he moved many of the Democratic National Committee’s operations from Washington to Chicago, making the city the unofficial capital of the Democratic Party; his campaign headquarters are in an office building in the Loop, Chicago’s downtown business district. But Chicago, with its reputation as a center of vicious and corrupt politics, may also be the place that Obama needs to leave behind.

Exactly. Chicago, with its long, long, LONG history of corrupt politics, is the city in which Obama decided to forge his political identity. One other interesting note on Obama and Chicago politics:

…David Axelrod, who has been Obama’s chief strategist since 2002 and is the foremost political consultant in Chicago, was a witness to all of it, first as a political reporter for the Chicago Tribune and later as the chief consultant to two mayors: Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor and a hero of the Independents, and the current Mayor Daley, whose last name still carries negative connotations in the precincts of Hyde Park…

Uh huh. David Axelrod has shown himself to be a part of Chicago-style politics in the way he has run Obama’s campaign, that’s for sure. And no doubt, he will continue to use Chicago-style politics in the White House, too. Why change horses in mid-stream, right?

Oh, wait - that’s the wrong talking point. Ahem. Yes, Obama is trying to distance himself from Chicago politics NOW. Now that so many of its players’ wrong-doings are in the headlines, but those of us who have been keeping score know the real deal. Obama is inextricably bound to Chicago politics, and Chicago STYLE politics, as we saw this year with Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and John McCain. Basically, anyone who had the “audacity to get in Obama’s way experienced Chicago politics up close and personal, and it was not pretty.

There is much, much more to the New Yorker article, and I hope you will click HERE to finish reading it (it’s long, which is why I am not reprinting it all here). In it you will read about Obama’s contentious relationship with another member of the IL Senate, Rickey Hendon; his relationship with Rezko, Ayers, and Dorhn; how his community organizing REALLY went (hint: not as well as he likes to claim NOW), and much more. I will leave you with this passage:

Part of Obama’s political success is that he has been able to exploit relationships with important yet ethically dubious figures in Illinois while still maintaining his independence. In some ways, this is an Illinois tradition. When the liberal reformer Adlai Stevenson ran for governor, in 1948, one Democratic boss reportedly noted that he would “perfume the ticket.” The earnest Lincoln scholar Paul Simon stood out in the Senate for his moral rectitude and his commitment to good government even as his state wallowed in scandal. “The political bosses knew they had to have what they used to call in business a loss leader—the showcasing,” Don Rose, the Chicago political consultant, said. “The car that you sold for under its value for advertising purposes. While you had at the top of your ticket a shining star, under that it was like turning over a rock.”

Obama has said little about the scandals in his home state. Besides the Rezko and Blagojevich cases, there have been indictments and convictions against the Daley administration concerning hiring and contracting practices. Getting close to the sullied political leadership in Illinois was probably an unavoidable cost of winning the U.S. Senate seat. Emil Jones told me that another of the lessons Obama learned after his 2000 loss was the importance of political sponsorship.

You can say that again…

Listen to the video in its entirety because Matthews describes further how VERY near he was to where that bomb went off. And Ayers (of course, this was not discussed today) is a free man solely because his attorneys managed to prove the FBI improperly conducted wiretaps. (I have MUCH MORE TO SAY about this below, and ask you to read along and then share YOUR reactions and add your own knowledge and your own impressions of what occurred, shamefully, on MSNBC.)

I can only imagine what Concerned Mother would have to say about this travesty.

It is unconscionable to me that we and the MSM constantly RAGE about O.J. Simpson, who murdered two people, but not reject Barack Obama, a presidential candidate, now president-elect, who has associated freely and over a long time with a man who could have killed dozens and dozens of people.

On his remarkable radio show a few weeks ago, Nocturnal Warrior made a brilliant point about PEBO’s selection of numerous former Clinton White House and cabinet members. Warrior said that PEBO has to select such people because he has almost no FRIENDS or LONGTIME ASSOCIATES to appoint to any serious jobs in his administration. This is a situation that has NEVER occurred in the history of the presidency of the United States. Heretofore, every U.S. president has had a rich collection of friends, associates, and allies from whom he could select many qualified for high-ranking administration positions. But not Barack Obama. You faithful readers of No Quarter know of many of Obama’s real longtime associates: Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Father Michael Pfleger, William Ayers, Allison and Cullen Davis, Penny Pritzker, Bernardine Dohrn, and on and on, only a very, very few of them suited for any respectable position at any level in an administration. (I’ve clicked several Categories to provide you with a list.) And now, this week, we learn more about other Obama longtime associates like Rod Bagojevich and his wife.

William Ayers’ Crimes, and Additional Perspective History

The SOLE reason no one died is because Ayers et al. were piss-poor bomb makers. What is the sentence range these days for an attempt to commit murder? And don’t forget all the other bombs that nearly killed many others. Including the judge, his wife, and his children — while they slept — simply because that judge was doing his job: Handling the trial of a Black Panther. I’m not generally in favor of the death penalty, but Ayers’ and the Weather Underground’s attempts, repeatedly, to kill as many people as possible in the Capitol, the Pentagon, police stations, and a judge’s home are the works of people so dangerous that those people should never be freed, and may be eligible to be charged with a capital offense.

Ayers has famously said, “Free as a bird, guilty as hell, ain’t America great.” (From Larry Johnson’s must-read article, “A Statement by a Retired FBI Agent Re William Ayers.”)

Dear readers, please understand this: All that, to Matthews, is just some history. It has some import to Matthews, given that he might have been blown up himself, but apparently not much since the conversation flows easily and reasonably amicably, and Matthews, at the end of the interview, gladly flogs Ayers’ book. THEN, after this interview, Matthews has his panel on. Matthews asks Joan Walsh, Salon’s editor, why Ayers — who appeared today to be “confessional” in his tone — didn’t do that during the campaign. Ms. Walsh LAUGHS with a SMIRK on her face, and says, “I think he wanted to stay out of it entirely, and not dignify what the McCain campaign and others were doing.”

Thank you, Ms. Walsh. We now know who the real criminals are. Shame on you, John McCain. Shame on you, Sarah Palin.

Ms. Walsh, please share your opinions with John Murtagh. Well, of course. That’s unfair. You don’t know who John Murtagh is.

Uppity Woman can tell you, in her story, “When This Man Was 9 Years Old, Ayers Bombed His Home.”

If I may, I will contrast the actions of William Ayers and the rest of the sociopathic members of the Weather Underground to the actions of a man who — unless you’re my age and you closely followed anti-war activities during the Vietnam War — you’ve probably NEVER heard of, and will not hear of in the MSM.

After all, he didn’t make bombs. He didn’t befriend a future president and excite the easily excitable rightwing. He simply did the hard work of truly changing history and he paid the price that true, albeit boring, heroes do, in anonymity.

His name is David Harris.

He was the resident counselor in the boys’ dormitory across the street from my girls’ dorm. Many of us sat at his feet as he modestly told us his stories about traveling to the South in summers past to try to help black people get the right to vote. He also shared with us the music he’d learned about in the South — the blues. He told us about Muddy Waters and more. We were entranced. With him, with his stories and the very REAL danger he was in during those summers when white racists wanted to kill him and every white college kid who dared to fight for blacks’ right to vote.

He ran for student body president and I worked on his campaign. He ran on the sole condition that, if elected, he would not serve. He won in a landslide. And did not serve.

Then his draft number came up. (My memory is vague these days, but I believe he tried all the normal routes available back then, such as conscientious objector status, and so on. All of those routes failed.)

So he went to prison. Leavenworth. About seven years ago, I did a search on him, curious what his life had been like. I discovered that he had written a book about his time in Leavenworth, along with his then-wife Joan Baez. I bought the book, and read it. It was a heart-wrenching account. I had no idea that being an inmate in Leavenworth was such a horrific, maddening, insane experience.

It is a simple story, really.

He refused to fight for a war he did not believe was right.

The U.S. government tried him and sentenced him to prison.

He served roughly three years, as I recall.

You may disagree with his decision, but he decided to take the punishment like a man.

He had a father who, as I remember it, was an attorney in Fresno, California. His father surely had some means, but not enough to prevent his son from going to prison.

Bill Ayers had a father who was Chairman of Commonwealth Edison and a mover/shaker in Chicago politics, the arts and education. His father had the means to hire a cadre of attorneys who successfully prevented his son from spending a single day in prison.

David Harris did not build bombs.

He tried to help blacks in the South get to vote, at great risk to his own life.

He helped educate and watched over younger students attending the university, which was often a tedious task, listening to those 18-year-olds’ angst and fear and uncertainty and their various problems with and anxieties about their classes.

He helped the students with the difficult reading for the required freshman class, The History of Western Civilization, because he had read all of those works, including all of Plato, Socrates, and more, and he could — and did — explain those works to those anxious students. He spoke with them patiently and kindly and always very softly.

He was a hulk of a man with broad thick shoulders and a large angular head and a blond mustache but he was, as they say, a gentle giant.

He did not teach the younger students to build bombs or burn down buildings.

He taught the students about giving black people the right to vote and about the blues and about philosophy and about literature and about political thinking and about peaceful protest and about Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

He marched and sang folk songs with his wife, who bore their son.

What a dull man.

Doubtless, Chris Matthews will never invite David Harris for a feature interview.

If only he’d built bombs and then buddied up with a future president, he’d be a sought-after guest.

At least he has an entry in Wikipedia.

:::::::::::

Via Google News results:

Matthews to Ayers: ‘I Agitate My Way, You Agitate Your Way‘ – NewsBusters

Chris Matthews invited on Bill Ayers on Wednesday night’s “Hardball,” and actually confronted him about his bombing of Capitol Hill during his days as a member of the ’60s terrorist group Weather Underground, as the former Capitol Hill police officer emotionally observed: “I was a Capitol policeman at the time, so I was one of the guys that could have been killed obviously at the time you put that, your guys put that bomb in there. So I have a little personal interest. It wasn’t just vandalism. To me it was life-threatening to the guys I worked with. And there were some pretty good guys working there.”

However Matthews, who paradoxically may not even be alive to conduct this interview today if the Weather Underground’s bombs were more devastating, devoted most of the interview tossing softballs Ayers’ way, as the two often agreed with each other on Barack Obama and Iraq policy as the “Hardball” host pointed out they only really differed on how to spread their points of view: “Well, Mr. Ayers, with all due respect, you agitate your way, I agitate my way.

Matthews, who back in October dismissed Sarah Palin’s mention of Ayers, as “the politics of distraction,” began the interview by setting up Ayers to play down any association he had with Obama: …

READ ALL: Matthews to Ayers: ‘I Agitate My Way, You Agitate Your Way‘ — NewsBusters

AND READ MORE of NoQuarter’s treasure trove of materials on the bombings conducted by William Ayers.

It didn’t take long for Barack Obama to start playing a significant role in promoting Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

About 15 minutes into Chicago’s Friday presentation of its bid plans to the general assembly of the European Olympic Committees, the president elect gave an 85-second videotaped address to an audience that included some two dozen International Olympic Committee members….

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley arrived in Istanbul Friday and introduced the Obama video….

There also were also four still pictures of Obama, all with Mayor Daley, during the 20-minute presentation, the third of five Chicago is making to annual assemblies of regional Olympic committees.

Obama filmed the video last Friday in Chicago at his transition office in the Kluczynski Federal Building….

“With Mayor Daley and president-elect Obama, this bid team now enjoys unprecedented partnership for a U.S. candidate, reaching from City Hall in Chicago to the White House in Washington, D.C.,” Ryan said.

Obama, in other words, is parlaying his status as President elect to help procure the crown jewel of Mayor Daley’s agenda: the 2016 Olympics.

This concerns me for many reasons. According to the Chicago Tribune, Chicago is the only city that made a presentation before the International Olympic Committee that did not have full governmental backing. Chicago has also failed provide a compelling argument that the current economic situation would not make it impossible for Chicago to host such an expensive event. But even worse, it seems backers of Obama were already aware of Obama’s role in Daley’s bid to procure the approval of the International Olympic Committee to host the international event before Obama was elected.

Here is a entry from No Quarter’s Site Meter I captured on 14 September 2008:

No Quarter
Who’s On?> Visit Detail
Visit 5,047,630
[<>]
Domain Name uchospitals.edu ? (Educational)
IP Address 165.68.41.131 ? (University of Chicago)
ISP University of Chicago
Location
Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
State : Illinois
City : Chicago
Lat/Long : 41.7804, -87.6027 (Map)
Distance : 679 miles
Language English (U.S.)
en-us
Operating System Microsoft Windows Server 2003
Browser Internet Explorer 6.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.2; SV1; .NET CLR
1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
Javascript version 1.3
Monitor
Resolution : 1024 x 768
Color Depth : 24 bits
Time of Visit Sep 14 2008 10:45:29 pm
Last Page View Sep 14 2008 10:45:29 pm
Visit Length 0 seconds
Page Views 1
Referring URL http://search.yahoo….e=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8
Search Engine search.yahoo.com
Search Words rev. meeks and olympics
Visit Entry Page http://noquarterusa….ory/rev-james-meeks/
Visit Exit Page http://noquarterusa….ory/rev-james-meeks/
Out Click
Time Zone UTC-6:00
Visitor’s Time Sep 14 2008 9:45:29 pm
Visit Number 5,047,630
[<>]
Visitor Path Duration (s)
Referral rev. meeks and olympics
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p…-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8 0
(1) http://noquarterusa.net/blog/category/rev-james-meeks/ 0

Someone at The University of Chicago Hospitals on 14 SEP 2008 performed a Yahoo search for “Reverend Meeks” and “Olympics,” and they were directed to No Quarter. The University of Chicago Hospitals, for those who have not been reading No Quarter the past few months, employed Michelle Obama from 2002 through 2007, when she resigned in order to campaign for her husband. When she was promoted to the position of Vice President for Community and External Affairs in 2005, her salary increased from $121,910 to $316,962. This was the same year her husband joined the US Senate, where he submitted an earmark request on behalf of Michelle’s employer. I quote the Chicago Tribune:

In among them was a request for $1 million in federal funding in 2006 for a new pavilion at the University of Chicago Hospitals, where his wife, Michelle Obama, was a vice president at the time.

One wonders why the federal government should have bankrolled a new pavilion at The University of Chicago, a private institution. One also wonders why Michelle received such a large increase after her husband had the ability to secure federal funds for the private hospital. But one also wonders why a computer of Michelle Obama’s former employer, an employer who had what appears to be a political and fiduciary relationship with Barack Obama, would perform a Yahoo search for “Rev. Meeks” and “Olympics” on 14 SEPT 2008.

Reverend James Meeks is a Chicago ally of Obama and an Illinois State Senator. He is also a homophobic minister from whom Obama regularly seeks “spiritual counsel.” Obama will not be seeking Meeks counsel on the Olympics, however, for Meeks believes Chicago business leaders should focus on rebuilding schools and the city’s infrastructure, not on the 2016 Olympics. Notice how the Chicago Sun-Times article I cite was published on 13 SEPT 2008, and notice how someone on a computer of Michelle Obama’s former employer, an employer on behalf of whom Barack Obama submitted an earmark request for a “pavilion,” performed a Yahoo search on 14 SEPT 2008 for “Rev. Meeks” and “Olympics.” Clearly someone at The University of Chicago Hospitals is concerned about Reverend and state Senator Meeks’s opposition to Daley’s latest cash cow, a cow for which Obama is now advocating.

Let us recapitulate:

• Obama has been and remains Daley’s puppet
• Daley desires to host the Olympics in Chicago in 2016
• Obama, now President elect, appears before the International Olympic Committee in a video presentation that Daley introduced in Istanbul, and the two appeared together at least four times in photographic stills
• Daley has been mobilizing the support of Chicago business leaders for this event for some time, sparking the opposition of Reverend and state Senator James Meeks, who believes Chicago’s business leaders should invest in the city’s infrastructure
• Someone at Michelle Obama’s former employer, The University of Chicago Hospitals, happened upon No Quarter one day after the Chicago Sun-Times published an article on Meeks’s opposition to Daley’s plan to mobilize support in Chicago for the Olympics. They were searching for information on “Rev. Meeks” and the “Olympics.”
• Barack Obama attempted to secure federal funds in an earmark for The University of Chicago Hospitals to build a “pavilion.”
• Michelle Obama’s salary tripled the same year her husband gained the power to submit earmark requests in the US Senate.
• The University of Chicago also recently built a pool they call “the most prominent feature” of their athletic facility. Olympics officials have already visited the pool to consider it for Olympics 2016.
• Someone at The University of Chicago Hospitals, Michelle Obama’s former employer and the intended recipient of an Obama earmark, has what seems to be a vested interest in Olympics 2016.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I believe Daley and The University of Chicago pushed Obama in order to obtain financial benefits, namely the ability to host the 2016 Olympics. Why else is an employee of Michelle Obama’s former employer, The University of Chicago, searching for information on “Rev. Meeks” and “Olympics?” Why did Michelle Obama receive such a large salary increase when her husband could secure earmark requests for her employer? Moreover, why is Daley already forcing Obama to cut videos during his transition into the White House? Furthermore, why did The University of Chicago become the beneficiary of an earmark request for a “pavilion?” How much do Michelle Obama’s friends at The University of Chicago Hospitals stand to gain from Olympics 2016? How much does Daley stand to gain? Is this the final culmination of the contracts scandals in Chicago’s City Hall? Are the contracts scandals of Chicago City Hall now to pervade the White House in the name of Olympics 2016? And why is the Obama video already on display at Chicago 2016, the website dedicated to promoting Chicago’s candidacy for the Olympics?

Olympics 2016: not only is it a fraud; it is Daley’s attempt to introduce the world to the Chicago machine and to quid pro quo politics. And Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are at the center of it all.

Turns out that Ayers was not just a guy in the neighborhood. Nor is Minister Louis Farrakhan. Obama has direct and indirect ties to Minister Farrakhan that date back over the past 20 years.

It is no surprise that Minister Farrakhan has spoken so highly of his friend Barack Obama:

First, the circle of friends and associates that Obama joined in Chicago since the early 1980s includes Minister Farrakhan. The staff on their organizations often overlap, their goals are often the same, and their techniques are as well. And, yes, they are neighbors.

Obama spent three weeks in Pakistan in the early 1980s around the same time that Minister Farrakhan and Reverend Wright were making their own trek to visit Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.

Obama likely first met Minister Farrakhan in the mid-1980s after to Chicago. It’d be hard to imagine that he didn’t, considering their shared community interests, Obama’s past with communist and black nationalist Frank Marshall Davis, and his new friend Reverend Wright. Obama doesn’t say much except that he worked with all the local religious leaders because that was the focus of his community organizing. Reverend Jesse Jackson, PUSH, and Rainbow Coalition also fit into the picture. Reverend Jackson and Minister Farrakhan, themselves, made a trip to Syria together in 1986.

Barack Obama would go on to call Reverend Wright his spiritual advisor, mentor, and friend. He married Barack and Michelle Obama in late 1992 then baptized their children. Obama sat in the pews of Reverend Wright’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ, for nearly 20 years.

In scattered comments throughout the current presidential campaign and in past years, it is clear that Barack Obama also sought out Father Michael Pfleger and Reverend James Meeks as spiritual advisors, mentors, and colleagues on numerous projects. While little is mentioned of Minister Farrakhan, former Farrakhan deputy, Dr. Vibert White, Jr., once known as Brother Vibert L.X., and later as Minister V.L. Muhammad, says they “run deep, and that for many years the two men have had ‘an open line between them’ to discuss policy and strategy, either directly or through intermediaries.” (Obama-Farrakhan Ties Are Close, Ex-Farrakhan Aide Says).

“Remember that for years, if you were a politician in Chicago, you had to have some type of relationship with Louis Farrakhan. You had to. If you didn’t, you would be ostracized out of black Chicago,” said Dr. Vibert White Jr., who spent most of his adult life as a member and ultimately top officer of the Nation of Islam.

In 1995, Reverend Wright and Barack Obama helped their mutual friend, Minister Farrakhan, organize the Nation of Islam’s Million Man March that they all then attended together. In later talking about his black nationalism, Barack explained in a Chicago Reader interview:

“These are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a ‘lock ’em up, take no prisoners’ mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress. Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn’t care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing.”

Kenneth Timmerman writes, as have others, that Obama’s involvement with the black nationalism of Minister Farrakhan and Reverend Wright, among others, is a connection to Khalid al-Mansour, who helped pay for Barack’s tuition at Harvard Law School:

“Black nationalism” is a current of thought and political action in the African-American community that has been championed by the likes of Farrakhan, Wright, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and Khalid al-Mansour. Obama discussed his attraction to black nationalism at length in his 1995 memoir “Dreams of My Father.”

In interviews, Khalid al-Mansour, lawyer and friend of the Saudi ruling family, has refused to discuss his relationship with Obama and Obama’s law school funding. As he explains to Kenneth Timmerman:

“In respect to Mr. Obama, I have told him, because so many people are running after him, and when stories get printed they usually get distorted and then he has to spend a lot of time trying to unravel them – and then after the experience of Rev. (Jeremiah) Wright whom I’ve never met, but I’ve followed the media coverage – I was determined that I was never going to be in that situation. I never discuss Barack Obama,” al-Mansour said.

The media frenzy surrounding Barack Obama is quite justified in many respects and in others is a bit intrusive.

Dr. Vibert White, Jr., observes and explains in a recent interview that Barack has learned well from Minister Farrakhan:

“If you listen to the rhetoric and you take away Obama’s political jargon, you hear a religious tenor to it that is very much Nation of Islam-like. I don’t know if anyone has ever touched on it, but Obama’s speaking style is very Malcolm-like, very Farrakhan-like.”

….

“I don’t know who was training Obama. But that style is not a ministerial style like in the Christian church. It’s a Nation of Islam style.”

….

“If the Nation of Islam can’t do anything else, it can train people how to speak. And nobody can outspeak a Muslim minister,” he said.

Even Michelle Obama plays a role in this, and very likely an even bigger one than is currently publicly known. Back in June, Larry Johnson at NoQuarterUSA, noted the “role that Louis Farrakhan and his wife, Mother Khadijah Farrakhan, have played in the POLITICAL RISE of Barack and Michelle Obama.”

One happy family: Minister Louis Farrakhan, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Father Michael Pleger, Reverend James Meeks, and, yes, Barack Obama.

Dear Amy:

Emergency Situation

No On 8 Obama

Proponents of Prop 8 sent a deceptive mailer insinuating that Barack Obama and Joe Biden support their effort. Both have denounced this tactic and reminded voters that they oppose Prop 8.

We cannot let this go unanswered.

We need to respond quickly and effectively through new flyers, paid phone banks and get out the vote efforts countering this lie.

Give Today Green No On 8

Ask you friends and family to donate.

There are times in a political campaign when you think you know what you need to do to win.

We said we needed $3 million in 3 days to win this campaign. And over 24,000 of you helped us meet that goal.

And then the other side does something so insidious you must react.

Proponents of Prop 8 sent a deceptive mailer insinuating that Barack Obama and Joe Biden support their effort to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry.

They are using this and other shameful tactics to try to mislead undecided voters throughout California.

They have forced us into an emergency situation.

We cannot let this go unanswered. We need to respond quickly and effectively through new flyers, paid phone banks and get out the vote efforts countering this lie.

We are running out of time.

Donate now so we can counter this appalling tactic.

In solidarity,

Kate Kendell
Executive Committee Member
No On Prop 8

Guess who we won’t be supporting anymore?? You got it! Just more money to send to other organizations who don’t try to manipulate their members!

Whaddya they mean they “cannot let this go unanswered”? Obama and Biden DO oppose same-sex marriage! Obama has made this clear time and time and time again, in his debates, in his statements, in his choice of associates:- McClurkin, Meeks, and ESPECIALLY Doug Kmiec, the former Reagan/Bush attorney who is an ACTIVE PROPONENT OF PROPOSITION 8. Kmiec was Obama’s choice to lead his “Faith Tour” - an attorney. He chose an attorney to lead his evangelical faith tour around the country (as if there weren’t enough problems with the whole concept from the get-go! Heck, I even worked as a paralegal when I lived up North, but I surely don’t go around billing myself as an authority on the law. Anywho - I digress again.) Now, I admit that Obama has said that they shouldn’t change the law now that it is in place, but to imply, as NCLR does, that he SUPPORTS same-sex marriage is a flat out lie. I have written about this a gazillion times already:

“Two-fer: Faith Train and Same Sex Marriage”

“So What”, with the bonus of Joe Biden saying emphatically that he and Obama are opposed to same-sex marriage.

“Going to the Chapel and We’re Gonna Get Married”, also a two-fer since it deals mainly with CT, BUT it also deal’s with Doug Kmiec, Obama’s F(aith) buddy.

“Saddle Up”

“It Was Only A Matter Of Time”

And one from my blog on Same Sex Marriage, link HERE.

I might add, my friend, Truthteller, had an outstanding post on Obama and the GLBT community, at No Quarter: “Barack Obama’s Compulsively Repeated Gay Bashing Risks the Loss of A Key Voting Bloc”. This is an EXCELLENT overview of all the ways in which Obama has screwed (ahem) the LGBT community.

All of that is to say, Obama did send a letter of support to opponents of Proposition 8, but as this article clearly points out, he opposes same-sex marriage. He and John McCain have the SAME position on this issue. Only McCain, as I have written before, does not shy away from his gay friends when they need him. He supports and embraces them, unlike Obama. This article demonstrates, in one place, how Obama panders to whichever side he thinks will get him elected, all in ONE ARTICLE! It is staggering - he opposes Same-Sex marriage everywhere else but CA, apparently. At least until the voting is done. That’s his MO, and if any GLBT people think he will truly stand on their side, they are sadly mistaken. Just ask his formerly gay buddy, Donnie McClurkin. Or his actively anti-gay BFF James Meeks. Or Doug Kmiec, hater of equal rights for GLBT people. Oh - and ask Gavin Newsome how he felt about Obama dissing him over a photo shoot just because he SUPPORTS same sex marriage. Oh, yeah - what a guy.

The information is there, people - don’t be hoodwinked or bamboozled on this issue, I ask you. Don’t let Obama get over on this - he doesn’t deserve the pass.

Obama told MTV he believes marriage is “between a man and a woman” and that he is “not in favor of gay marriage.”

At the same time, Obama reiterated his opposition to Proposition 8, the California ballot measure which would eliminate a right to same-sex marriage that the state’s Supreme Court recently recognized.

“I’ve stated my opposition to this. I think it’s unnecessary,” Obama told MTV. “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that’s not what America’s about.”

In other words, he will triangulate on the backs of gay men, lesbians, transsexuals and Others in a vain attempt to curry favor with Christian conservatives and other assorted homophobes who will never vote for him. Some will call Obama’s heteronormativizing discourse nuanced, while those of us who are LGBT will view it for what it is: unrestrained and untempered homophobia couched in subtle but nonetheless injurious terms. Besides, his personal opinion on the matter is irrelevant. Indeed, it is a constitutional problem, a Civil Rights problem, not a problem of Barack Obama.

Barack Obama has a long and elaborate history of homophobia, while Sarah Palin, the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, has a record of vetoing homophobic legislation and of defending the rights of same sex couples. I revive an article I wrote on this subject last month:

——————————–

BARACK OBAMA’s COMPULSIVELY REPEATED GAY BASHING RISKS THE LOSS OF A KEY VOTING BLOCK

Obama never had the support of the LGBT community. Indeed, 63% of LGBT Democrats supported Hillary Clinton during the California primary, while a paltry 29% cast their votes for Barack Obama. I imagine LGBT support for Clinton was equally strong in other states, for according to a poll conducted last November, this constituency favored Clinton by a staggering 41 point margin.

There are reasons the LGBT community supported Clinton over Obama: Obama refused to be photographed with Gavin Newsom in 2004, when the San Francisco Mayor was the center of a national uproar for his support of gay marriage; Obama participated in a gay bashing “Gospel Tour” in South Carolina with Donnie McClurkin, an African-American minister who views homosexuality as a disease Jesus Christ can cure; Obama cites his Christianity when he mentions his opposition to gay marriage in his text entitled The Audacity of Hope; Obama stigmatizes and minoritizes gay marriage when he refers to it as such in his political speeches and texts; Obama admits to seeking spiritual counsel from a certain Rev. James T. Meeks, a homophobic minister in inner city Chicago who was named by the Southern Poverty Law Center as one of the “10 leading black religious voices in the anti-gay movement;” Obama refuses to march in gay pride parades; and Obama will not allow himself to be interviewed by the LGBT press. Because Obama has a record of homophobic speech, actions and affiliations, the LGBT community rallied behind Hillary Clinton. And they may rally behind McCain-Palin, for Obama’s continued disrespect for this constituency will compel many LGBT voters to reconsider their support for the homophobic Democrat.

Obama, according to The Advocate, will launch a gay bashing “Faith, Values and Family” tour with homophobic Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec. I quote with added emphasis:

The Christian Broadcasting Network is reporting that the Obama campaign next week will kick off “Barack Obama: Faith, Family, and Values Tour,” designed to woo the votes of left-leaning Catholics, progressive Evangelicals, and some conservative mainline Protestants. If LGBT people find the tour eerily reminiscent of the South Carolina gospel tour the campaign arranged last year with antigay “ex-gay” gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, their instincts may not be far off.

CBN names Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec as one of the religious surrogates who will hit the road stumping for Obama. Kmiec wrote a June 13 op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle supporting California’s Proposition 8, the ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage, titled “On Same-Sex Marriage: Should California Amend Its Constitution? Say ‘No’ to the Brave New World.” Kmiec’s first two sentences in the piece read, “The California ballot initiative intended to set aside the state supreme court’s judicial invention of same-sex marriage deserves public support. Maybe it is enough to say, as many do in conversation, that it merely re-secures a millennia of tradition and common sense.”

Obama, in other words, will campaign with a legal scholar who believes “a millennia” of “tradition,” “common sense” and homophobia should be preserved. Kmiec, by the way, is the former constitutional legal counsel to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Republican jurisprudence is the change in which the LGBT community can believe, I guess.

But it gets worse, for Kmiec writes the following in his 13 JUN op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle. I quote with emphasis added again:

Separating marriage from procreation may also have other remote, but frightening, ill consequences. Society should be skeptical of wider use of asexual procreation. An earlier dark moment in U.S. history employed eugenics to forcibly sterilize the mentally disabled. The push for artificial wombs and the genetic manipulation of intelligence already peppers scientific literature - a push that would no doubt grow, accommodating even the minimal same-sex desire for simulating natural child birth - claimed to be of interest for 20-30 percent of same-sex couples. When carefully assessed, the acquisition of unnatural reproductive means often advances the interests of the very affluent through a libertarian exercise that would threaten all hope of democratic equality.

According to Kmiec, gay marriage is a harbinger for a social eugenics that manipulates the human genome in the name of maintaining social hierarchies. A threat to democracy, the LGBT community in Kmiec’s warped mind is attempting to eliminate the heterosexual population. Raising specters gleaned from science fiction novels, Kmiec stokes the fires of a fear of a queer planet.

For some reason Barack Obama finds this entirely acceptable. Indeed, Barack Obama desires to use the campaign funds he has collected from Democrats and from members of the LGBT community to give this Catholic legal scholar of the lunatic, Republican fringe a platform in Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida, New Mexico, Virginia and Wisconsin. If we witness a spike in hate crimes against the LGBT community in any of these states before votes are cast in November, we will only have Barack Obama and Douglas Kmiec to blame.

We also know who to blame if Barack Obama loses the general election. For the LGBT community does not take too kindly to gay bashing in the name of garnering votes from Evangelicals and other conservative Christians. Barack Obama never had our votes, and he certainly will not gain them if he continues to terrorize devout Christians with the specter of a queer planet.

Obama, by the way, refuses to attend LGBT Democratic events: Michelle Obama was the one who addressed the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Council of the Democratic National Committee in New York City in June, and she was the one who headlined the lunch for LGBT delegates in Denver during the August convention. Barack Obama was nowhere to be found. But then again, the man who has received spiritual guidance from homophobic ministers probably fears that the audience would try to genetically clone him into a gay man.

How odd it is that the Democratic Presidential candidate is a gay basher and the Republican Vice Presidential candidate is a woman who vetoed anti-gay legislation. While Obama is routinely criticized in the LGBT press for his homophobia, Sarah Palin receives accolades from Gay.com for joining the cause of the ACLU and nine homosexual couples employed by the state of Alaska and by the city of Anchorage. Perhaps the LGBT community is one of those constituencies Barack Obama and Donna Brazile believe they can shed as so much toxic waste from the Democratic Party’s past. If this is the case, then I guess the LGBT community should consider supporting the McCain-Palin ticket. After all, Palin supported the community while Obama was bashing it with Donnie McClurkin and Reverend James T. Meeks.

And now Obama will bash the community with the former legal counsel to the Bush and Reagan administrations in 12 states. While this may yield one or two Evangelical votes for Barack Obama, Obama’s continued and unrestrained gay bashing will also result in tens if not hundreds of thousands of LGBT votes for John McCain and Sarah Palin. For similar to the Evangelicals and conservative Christians Obama and Kmiec will court, the LGBT community votes “ALL our values.”

Also see Reverend Amy’s essay on Barack Obama’s second gay bashing tour.

—————————————–

Read Rabble Rouser Reverend Amy’s essays for more compelling reasons to reject and rebuff Barack Obama on the grounds that he is a raging homophobe who has a long record of bashing and exploiting the LGBT community.

Because Obama has a pattern of demonizing the LGBT community in a vain attempt to gain the support of Christian conservatives and others who will never support him, I ask the LGBT community to cast their votes for McCain/Palin or for a third party candidate who actually supports the community.

A vote for Obama aids and abets the gratuitous gay bashing of a representative of a Party that has traditionally defended our rights and freedoms. If we desire to ensure LGBT will have a voice in the Democratic Party, we will reject Barack Obama. It is really that simple.

Cross-posted on my blog, The Independent View.

Van Susteran’s special will cover Obama’s relationships with Bill Ayers, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, ACORN and more.

By the way, will Fox News reair Hannity’s America special two weeks ago? I’m surprised the channel hasn’t done so since it obviously required an investment in personnel and travel.

Obama has a friend or associate that is questionable.

Video or articles surface of Obama thanking them, supporting them, writing a blurb for their book, organizing events for them, campaigning for them, campaigning with them, playing poker with them, serving on boards with them, buying homes with them, dining with them, praising them, using them to prove his christian faith, or hiring them.

Obama then denies their tight relationship - brushes the association off as *a guy in the ‘hood*, claims they are someone who doesn’t advise him, minimizes the actual number of times he attended church, says he can’t vet his vetters, or flat out lies.

Obama THEN completely denies any knowledge of who they really are, denies ever knowing who they were, what they said, what they did, how corrupt they were, any fraud they were up to, and what they were preaching.

People - this isn’t a coincidence. One or two nefarious associations can be examined and written off. But there is a looooooooong list of people that Obama is close to - whether they be family members, business partners, friends or co-workers who are either radicals, criminals, racist, or anti-American.

This list, compiled by The Daily Antikos, is great, but forgot a few people/organizations (that I added at the end):

Jeremiah Wright - Obama’s Pastor for 20 years. Obama did not distance himself until it was political.

Father Pflager - Speaks at Obama’s former Church (only after embarrassment) and Obama gave him money & here they are in 2000.

Bill Ayers - Terrorist. Member of the Weather Underground. Killed Americans. Launched Obama’s Political Career.

Tony Rezko - bought land and sold it to Obama at a discount. Oh yeah, and he is a convicted felon.

Raila Odinga - Defeated in his bid for the Kenyan Presidency. Led Supporters in a Violent Uprising. Obama Campaigned for him in 2006. (at tax payer expense)

Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al-Mansour - I can’t even get started. This is Obama’s Political Grand-father, and his intentions do not seem to be too honorable.

Franklin Raines - Cooked the Books at Fannie Mae. Obama hired him as an advisor on Housing and Urban Affairs.

Frank Marshall David - Communist Obama Mentor.

Emil Jones, Jr. - Ugh… Just Read It.

Rev James Meeks - Spiritual Mentor

Rashid Khalidi - PLO Terrorist.

Here are a few more:

Larry Walsh is the Will County (IL) County Executive, good buddy, political confidante, and frequent poker player with Barack Obama. He is currently being investigated by the FBI.

Kwame Kilpatrick, former mayor of Detroit, convicted felon, has been charged with 10 felonies including perjury, obstruction of justice and assaulting a public safety officer. He will be sentenced October 28th. In June, Kwame Kilpatrick gave Barack Obama his endorsement as a Democratic Party Superdelegate.

Gov. Blagojevich, who is under investigation.

Marilyn Katz, a former member of the ’60’s anti-war group SDS, led protestors against the police outside the Democratic Convention in 1968. Protestors threw nails in the street to impede the police and clashed with police on this occasion and others. Katz has said of her activities that she wanted the U.S. to become a socialist paradise. She is a close friend of Barack Obama. Katz is a member of Obama’s national finance committee.

James Johnson, Former Fannie Mae executive who was vetting candidates for Obama for his VP but had to resign. Johnson is drawing fire over his jumbo home loans from Countrywide Financial, a major actor in the subprime mortgage mess, that may have been below market rates.

Louis Farrakhan, leader of the NOI. Obama helped to organize his Million Man March in ‘95, and he is tight with Reverend Wright and Phleger.

Fannie Mae and Freddi Mac - Obama has recieved the most donations, second only to Dodd, from these companies, and also was thanked, in part with the Congressional Black Caucus, for *being like family* with Fannie and Freddi.

ACORN - Obama is the former Director of Illinois Project Vote, and they have been raided and charged for fraudulent voter registration practices. They are also linked to some of the above associations of Obama’s.

Michelle Obama. *First time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.* Nuff said.

How does someone hang out with that many people, who are, as I said, criminals, radicals, racists or just plain anti-American, and not share some of those characteristics?

And the best excuse Obama can ever come up with is *they aren’t the person I thought I knew* or *I never heard them say those things* or *I did not know they were a domestic terrorist when I was having my first fundraiser in their living room*.

Are we to believe that he truly didn’t know, that he is that uninformed, that naive, that, dare I say, stupid? Or is he just lying?

Why would someone who associates with all those people WANT to be President? And more importantly, why would anyone WANT him to be President?

I just don’t get it.

Part 5 of 6

Part 6 of 6

Please share your comments about all six parts here.

::::::::::::

Note: Here are links to the important comments posted by our readers in open threads last night, during and after the show: first thread, second thread, and third thread. (Readers continued to comment throughout the night.)

Part 3 of 6

Part 4 of 6

Please go to the third post for the remaining parts.

::::::::::::

Note: Here are links to the important comments posted by our readers in open threads last night, during and after the show: first thread, second thread, and third thread. (Readers continued to comment throughout the night.)

There are reasons the LGBT community supported Clinton over Obama: Obama refused to be photographed with Gavin Newsom in 2004, when the San Francisco Mayor was the center of a national uproar for his support of gay marriage; Obama participated in a gay bashing “Gospel Tour” in South Carolina with Donnie McClurkin, an African-American minister who views homosexuality as a disease Jesus Christ can cure; Obama cites his Christianity when he mentions his opposition to gay marriage in his text entitled The Audacity of Hope; Obama stigmatizes and minoritizes gay marriage when he refers to it as such in his political speeches and texts; Obama admits to seeking spiritual counsel from a certain Rev. James T. Meeks, a homophobic minister in inner city Chicago who was named by the Southern Poverty Law Center as one of the “10 leading black religious voices in the anti-gay movement;” Obama refuses to march in gay pride parades; and Obama will not allow himself to be interviewed by the LGBT press. Because Obama has a record of homophobic speech, actions and affiliations, the LGBT community rallied behind Hillary Clinton. And they may rally behind McCain-Palin, for Obama’s continued disrespect for this constituency will compel many LGBT voters to reconsider their support for the homophobic Democrat.

Obama, according to The Advocate, will launch a gay bashing “Faith, Values and Family” tour with homophobic Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec. I quote with added emphasis:

The Christian Broadcasting Network is reporting that the Obama campaign next week will kick off “Barack Obama: Faith, Family, and Values Tour,” designed to woo the votes of left-leaning Catholics, progressive Evangelicals, and some conservative mainline Protestants. If LGBT people find the tour eerily reminiscent of the South Carolina gospel tour the campaign arranged last year with antigay “ex-gay” gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, their instincts may not be far off.

CBN names Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec as one of the religious surrogates who will hit the road stumping for Obama. Kmiec wrote a June 13 op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle supporting California’s Proposition 8, the ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage, titled “On Same-Sex Marriage: Should California Amend Its Constitution? Say ‘No’ to the Brave New World.” Kmiec’s first two sentences in the piece read, “The California ballot initiative intended to set aside the state supreme court’s judicial invention of same-sex marriage deserves public support. Maybe it is enough to say, as many do in conversation, that it merely re-secures a millennia of tradition and common sense.”

Obama, in other words, will campaign with a legal scholar who believes “a millennia” of “tradition,” “common sense” and homophobia should be preserved. Kmiec, by the way, is the former constitutional legal counsel to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Republican jurisprudence is the change in which the LGBT community can believe, I guess.

But it gets worse, for Kmiec writes the following in his 13 JUN op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle. I quote with emphasis added again:

Separating marriage from procreation may also have other remote, but frightening, ill consequences. Society should be skeptical of wider use of asexual procreation. An earlier dark moment in U.S. history employed eugenics to forcibly sterilize the mentally disabled. The push for artificial wombs and the genetic manipulation of intelligence already peppers scientific literature - a push that would no doubt grow, accommodating even the minimal same-sex desire for simulating natural child birth - claimed to be of interest for 20-30 percent of same-sex couples. When carefully assessed, the acquisition of unnatural reproductive means often advances the interests of the very affluent through a libertarian exercise that would threaten all hope of democratic equality.

According to Kmiec, gay marriage is a harbinger for a social eugenics that manipulates the human genome in the name of maintaining social hierarchies. A threat to democracy, the LGBT community in Kmiec’s warped mind is attempting to eliminate the heterosexual population. Raising specters gleaned from science fiction novels, Kmiec stokes the fires of a fear of a queer planet.

For some reason Barack Obama finds this entirely acceptable. Indeed, Barack Obama desires to use the campaign funds he has collected from Democrats and from members of the LGBT community to give this Catholic legal scholar of the lunatic, Republican fringe a platform in Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida, New Mexico, Virginia and Wisconsin. If we witness a spike in hate crimes against the LGBT community in any of these states before votes are cast in November, we will only have Barack Obama and Douglas Kmiec to blame.

We also know who to blame if Barack Obama loses the general election. For the LGBT community does not take too kindly to gay bashing in the name of garnering votes from Evangelicals and other conservative Christians. Barack Obama never had our votes, and he certainly will not gain them if he continues to terrorize devout Christians with the specter of a queer planet.

Obama, by the way, refuses to attend LGBT Democratic events: Michelle Obama was the one who addressed the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Council of the Democratic National Committee in New York City in June, and she was the one who headlined the lunch for LGBT delegates in Denver during the August convention. Barack Obama was nowhere to be found. But then again, the man who has received spiritual guidance from homophobic ministers probably fears that the audience would try to genetically clone him into a gay man.

How odd it is that the Democratic Presidential candidate is a gay basher and the Republican Vice Presidential candidate is a woman who vetoed anti-gay legislation. While Obama is routinely criticized in the LGBT press for his homophobia, Sarah Palin receives accolades from Gay.com for joining the cause of the ACLU and nine homosexual couples employed by the state of Alaska and by the city of Anchorage. Perhaps the LGBT community is one of those constituencies Barack Obama and Donna Brazile believe they can shed as so much toxic waste from the Democratic Party’s past. If this is the case, then I guess the LGBT community should consider supporting the McCain-Palin ticket. After all, Palin supported the community while Obama was bashing it with Donnie McClurkin and Reverend James T. Meeks.

And now Obama will bash the community with the former legal counsel to the Bush and Reagan administrations in 12 states. While this may yield one or two Evangelical votes for Barack Obama, Obama’s continued and unrestrained gay bashing will also result in tens if not hundreds of thousands of LGBT votes for John McCain and Sarah Palin. For similar to the Evangelicals and conservative Christians Obama and Kmiec will court, the LGBT community votes “ALL our values.”

Also see Reverend Amy’s essay on Barack Obama’s second gay bashing tour.