Vice President Joe Biden promised gay and lesbian Democrats that the White House will push harder on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and other LGBT issues.

Biden spoke last night at a controversial LGBT fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee. He said he understood the anger of many gays and lesbians toward the Obama administration and pledged to “put some pace on the ball.”

“I don’t blame you for your impatience,” Biden said. “I hope you don’t doubt the president’s commitment.”

Politico reported that “Outside the hotel about 50 protesters held up signs chastising participants – which included all three gay members of Congress, Reps. Tammy Baldwin, Barney Frank and Jared Polis – with sayings such as ‘Gay Uncle Toms.’”

Prominent activists, donors and organizations boycotted the dinner, including Human Rights Campaign grass-roots chief Marty Rouse, Gay and Lesbians Advocates and Defenders projects director Mary Bonauto, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund President Chuck Wolfe, the Stonewall Democratic Club, former Clinton backers David Mixner and Richard Socarides and Utah contributor Bruce Bastianbut. Howard Dean pulled out for family reasons, he said.

Despite the protest, the dinner netted about $1 million which is roughly 250,000 more than the event raised last year.

Biden mentioned that the administration appointed 60 LGBT people, including nine that require Senate confirmation. He said that gay and lesbian concerns will not be “delayed, put off or not end up on [Obama's] plate” because he is dealing with so many other issues.

He promised that the White House would take up the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the passage of the Lieberman-Baldwin bill on health benefits, a ban on workplace discrimination, adoption rights for all and an end to the HIV travel ban.

Obama campaigned to repeal DADT, but the White House has said it’s seeking congressional action on the policy, which bars openly gay men and women from serving in the military.

Biden said the White House is committed to “the unfinished business of true equality.”

“I promise you with your help we’ll get there in this administration,” he said.

The full story is at Politico. ]]> http://www.365gay.com/news/joe-biden-assures-lgbt-dems-of-obama-committment/feed/ 105 http://www.365gay.com/blog/50409-ten-random-thoughts/ http://www.365gay.com/blog/50409-ten-random-thoughts/#comments Mon, 04 May 2009 13:02:22 +0000 James Withers http://www.365gay.com/?p=7071

1. I’ve been dog sitting my neighbor’s diva the past few days. Mr. G is a stubborn little beast who hates going for walks; however, he gives the bestest dog kisses.

2. Say what you will about Vice-President Joe Biden, he is always entertaining.

3. Reason 973 why I hate the gym: I’m the only one who sweats. Profusely. Abundantly. Amply.

4. Is it smart for Mitt Romeny to be taking a swipe at Sarah Palin? The Republican base like her. Him not so much.

5. Why is Mayor Sam Adams telling tales about how many times he called Beau Breedlove? A private note to my new love interest Beau: if we had a past, I would never lie about it.

6. Poet Robert Hayden needs a good biographer.

7. Hefty books take a long time to finish.

8. Did anyone go to Jazz Fest in New Orleans? I’m going next year.

9. This is cheesy but worth listening to.

10. Has anyone ever met a bus driver who gave information minus an attitude?

Dear Mr Weaver: as you scratch your way up the media mountain, don’t forget the folk who were rooting for you.

Campaigning in NASCAR country, Biden employed car racing terminology for bumping to describe the contentious final days of the campaign. He told supporters in Charlotte that he’s worried about how the Republicans have been acting as the two campaigns have been “trading a little paint” recently.

“What worries me most is the McCain campaign seems to have gotten a little loose,” Biden said. “John’s getting a little loose. He doesn’t have much of a steady hand these days. Now’s the time we most need a steady hand.”

The Delaware senator told the crowd the nation needs to unite to address the challenges ahead. He called Republican robocalls “scurrilous” and said ads portraying Obama as an extremist hurt the American people.

“It is corrosive to American society,” Biden said. “It’s awfully hard to build anything with that kind of corrosion.”

Although warning of the dangers of political divisions, Biden took aim at McCain. Deriding McCain’s effort to dissociate himself from President Bush, Biden accused the Arizona senator of “quacking like George W. Bush.”

And after botching McCain’s name, Biden joked he no longer knew his longtime Senate colleague.

“John McClain. John McClain. Excuse me, John McCain. John McCain – I don’t recognize him anymore,” Biden said to laughter from several hundred supporters in attendance.

Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant said Biden was being loose with his rhetorical flourishes and offered a different NASCAR analogy: “If Obama wins, he will raise taxes and our economy will go from a yellow to red flag.”

Biden’s criticisms appeared to refer to a mailer distributed by North Carolina’s Republican Party last week. The ad tries to link Obama to 1960s radical William Ayers with pictures of Ayers, including his mug shot, and a description of Ayers’ violent anti-Vietnam war activities from decades ago. The mailer declares the two are friends and says Obama is “not who you think he is.”

Obama has condemned Ayers’ radical activities, which occurred when Obama was a child. He met Ayers a quarter century later when Ayers was an education professor at the University of Illinois and a Chicago neighbor. They worked on the boards of two nonprofit charitable groups from the mid-1990s to 2002, and Ayers held a meet-the-candidate event for Obama when he first ran for the Illinois senate, but the two are not close.

Biden was on a bus tour through college campuses in North Carolina’s more liberal corridors – the fast-growing urban areas that have pushed the state toward the Democrats for the first time in decades. He also planned stops in Winston-Salem and Raleigh.

McCain’s campaign announced he would return to the state Tuesday.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden calls McCain a longtime friend, but he said Thursday the Republican presidential candidate just isn’t himself at this stage of the campaign.

“He seems a little more angry than he usually is,” Biden told Jay Leno on NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” after Leno said McCain was making odd facial expressions during his debate Wednesday night with Democrat Barack Obama.

“John doesn’t seem comfortable right now,” Biden added.

“I don’t think John is comfortable with the negative stuff in the advertising” being run by his campaign, Biden said at another point.

Biden, a Delaware senator, made a brief stop on Leno’s stage in Burbank on his way to a fundraiser in Los Angeles. The two chatted about the economic crisis, the Iraq war and developments on the campaign trail as Nov. 4 closes in.

Biden has a reputation for verbal gaffes, and he assured Leno he’d be providing more fodder for late-night talk shows. Leno ribbed him about a slip-up at a rally in Ohio on Wednesday, when Biden referred to “a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S.”

“I suspect I’ll make a whole lot more,” Biden said.

He credited Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin with driving up viewership of their debate, the second most-watched political matchup ever.

“I was a bit player in that debate,” Biden concluded.

The 65-year-old Biden joked about his age, while poking at McCain, 72, who if elected would become the oldest first-term American president.

“The only guy older than me is John,” he said.

Asked about Biden’s claim that McCain seemed a bit cranky, McCain campaign spokesman Rick Gorka said, “John McCain is a fighter.

“People are hurting, they are upset and they want answers, and John McCain is the candidate that understands,” Gorka said.

Biden later attended an outdoor fundraiser in Los Angeles attended by several hundred people, where tickets cost up to $5,000 and members of the band Maroon 5 entertained the crowd.

He urged supporters not to be lulled into complacency by polls showing Obama with an edge and warned of an onslaught of negative ads from their rivals that would come in the closing days of the campaign.

“This is no time for us to get cocky,” said Biden, who was introduced by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. “We cannot take anything for granted.”

This morning I’m a little disappointed. Last night’s vice president debate was supposed to be filled with kooky moments. Like Joe Biden having a meal of shoe leather or Sarah Palin confusing the leaders of China and Iran (I do that all the time). However, both candidates can return to their camps proud.

Biden kept his answers short (for him that is) didn’t say or do anything sexist, and the moment he choked up about his kids was priceless. Palin showed why McCain picked her. She was bright, attacked with a smile, and even had some fun (didn’t she wink at the audience?).

The morning after, I’m not as joyous about Biden’s comment on same-sex couples. Hey I’m a cranky queen. Don’t get me wrong. I still think it proves a  significant political paradigm shift, but like we all know: proof comes with actions and deeds.

But the idea of a shifting landscape remains. Heck even Palin’s response to the same-sex relationship question is much more than any Republican has said in the past. Here is Palin, a darling of the base (a darling of the base), saying this:

“No one would ever propose, not in a McCain-Palin administration, to do anything to prohibit, say, visitations in a hospital or contracts being signed.”

Sure we can parse that and even find it silly, but remember: it is light years ahead of four years ago when a certain candidate for the GOP was trying to sell same-sex relationships down the river. That is worth remembering.

On a day when he abandoned the fight with rival Barack Obama in one battleground state and national polls showed him trailing overall, running mate Sarah Palin put on a debate performance that soothed the pain.

Going up against Democratic running mate Joe Biden, the Alaska governor offered reassurance to Republicans and conservatives unnerved by her lack of national experience and her faltering conduct in two recent TV network interviews.

She winked and smiled and shrugged through a litany of grievances against Obama on taxes, the war in Iraq and energy. She jotted down notes, glancing at them from behind her lectern as she checked off the points of her replies. And she made a case to the middle class, offering a populist answer to the cause of the current housing crisis.

“Darn right it was the predator lenders, who tried to talk Americans into thinking that it was smart to buy a $300,000 house if we could only afford a $100,000 house,” she said.

But even as Palin reversed some of the harm she had caused herself, Biden was meeting his own tasks as well. Time and again, the veteran Delaware senator tied McCain to unpopular President Bush and managed to connect with the audience on a personal level as much as he did on policy points.

Disciplined, he defended Obama from attacks, but refused to engage Palin in a tit-for-tat exchange.

By the end of the night, a CNN poll found that a majority of debate watchers believed Biden had won, as did a CBS poll of undecided voters.

Earlier in the day, the McCain campaign was forced to concede that it was stopping its advertising and scaling back staff in Michigan, a crucial state in the race. Palin, winner or not, simply helped by not hurting McCain any further.

“Her performance had unlimited downside potential but probably has a limited upside,” said Todd Harris, who worked on McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign and advised Fred Thompson’s presidential bid this year. “I doubt that this will change the dynamics of the race, but it certainly might help stop some of the bleeding.”

Compared to the fairly stoic, policy driven presidential debate last week, this encounter was a duel of personalities. Where Obama is cool and reserved, Biden can be emotional and bombastic. And where McCain debated firmly but dispassionately, Palin wielded her attack lines almost cheerfully.

The debate showcased two sides of Biden – the master senator invoking long gone colleagues such as Mike Mansfield and Jesse Helms and rattling off foreign policy details with ease, and the “just Joe” image he has tried to cultivate on his daily train commute between Washington and Wilmington, Del.

Biden’s voice broke as he spoke of his son and McCain’s son being deployed to war. Beau Biden, the Delaware attorney general, is scheduled to fly to Iraq with his National Guard soon. Biden plans to attend his deployment ceremony Friday in Delaware.

And both Biden and Palin sought to appeal to independent and undecided voters by speaking the language of middle America, though both have long stopped leading average middle class lives.

“I don’t think either one of them was going to conceded that the other had more middle class roots,” said Bill Carrick, a California Democratic consultant and veteran of past presidential campaigns.

Take Biden’s personal recollection: “I understand what it’s like to sit around the kitchen table with a father who says, ‘I’ve got to leave, champ, because there’s no jobs here. I got to head down to Wilmington. And when we get enough money, honey, we’ll bring you down.’”

And Palin, a self-described hockey mom, was speaking of another mom cohort when she said: “Go to a kid’s soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, ‘How are you feeling about the economy? And I’ll bet you, you’re going to hear some fear in that parent’s voice.’”

The debate format suited both candidates’ styles. Confined to 90-second responses, Biden’s tendency to overspeak was held in check. Palin also seemed to find comfort in the time limits which allowed her to make her points succinctly on less familiar ground and to use the two-minute rebuttal period to occasionally expand on a previous point.

“I would like to respond about the tax increases,” she said when the topic turned to subprime mortgages. “I want to go back to the energy plan,” she said at another point, sidestepping another discussion of taxes.

It was the first time both candidates had met. “Hey, can I call you Joe?” Palin asked as they were introduced. “Governor, it really was a pleasure getting to meet you,” Biden said as the debate wrapped up.

Given Palin’s performance, the debate begged one last question: What does Tina Fey do now?

“Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple.”

Just words of course and the proof is in the pudding, but  even the crankiest queen cannot discount  that these words signal serious paradigm shift. A vp candidate saying that 10 or 15 years ago would have sunk the campaign. Utterly and completely, Heck eeven Palin’s stammering repsonse shows how the landscape has changed.

This does not mean the struggle is over but to have folk who want to lead the nation actually talk about us minus degradation? That is a change I will admit I never thought I would see in my lifetime.