Statement by Rea Carey, Executive Director National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
"President-elect Obama campaigned on a theme of inclusivity, yet the selection of Rick Warren to give the invocation is a direct affront to that very principle. This was a divisive choice, and clearly not one that will help our country come together and heal. We urge President-elect Obama to withdraw his invitation to Rick Warren and instead select a faith leader who embraces fairness, equality and the ideals the president-elect himself has called the nation to uphold."
Actually, that's the best argument I've heard to date. This is a divisive choice. It doesn't matter if Obama and his people think they're being post-partisan by picking a raging bigot to share the dais with the first black president. Warren doesn't bring us together. He tears us apart. And he already has.
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It's obviously not great news, but this is what companies do when the economy goes bad. They don't hand out bonuses and pretend as though multi-billion dollar losses didn't happen. My complaint with Wall Street - AIG and the banks alike - is that none of them should be getting bonuses, anywhere in the company. When Option 1 is bankruptcy and total failure and Option 2 is taxpayer bailout, this is a clear sign of a business in trouble that can't afford to hand out money. It's not as if there happens to be a wide variety of options for Wall Street people who think they can jump ship and find a greener pasture because they're almost all living on taxpayer money. It remains unclear to me why any taxpayer would want to fund Wall Street bonuses regardless of whether one obscure group had a profit or not.
The fact is this is a bad market and companies are going to be watching budgets closely until the dust settles. Maybe I'm just a small company type of person, but I find the attitude of entitlement on Wall Street to be offensive when it's the rest of the nation who was dragged in to this by their schemes and now paying the price, both out of pocket and in terms of their own job security. Maybe some people are glad to pay Wall Street bonuses out of their tax dollars, but I haven't met those people yet. Everyone else has to tighten their belts so why not Wall Street?
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Huffington Post just published my first foray into writing a special piece for their site, this one on the Rick Warren controversy. Have a gander.
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Throughout the campaign, there were a few times when I was irritated with the Obama campaign, but I have never been so angry with Obama and his staff. By choosing homophobe Rick Warren, who helped pass Prop 8 in California, to do the invocation at the inauguration, Barack Obama just said to LGBT Americans that we're not part of that event. Thanks.
I'm sure the brain trust around Obama thought Rick Warren would be a great idea. You know, because they're so smart that they're post-partisan. But someone on the Obama team missed the intense anger that erupted after Prop 8 won and we lost rights (or maybe they didn't care). It's visceral. Believe me. Visceral and real. And putting one of the leading supporters of that campaign on the stage at the inauguration is an affront to us.
That may not matter to Team Obama. He's got huge approval ratings, after all. Maybe we're expendable now. Obama's brain trust has decided he needs new friends. So have fun with Rick Warren. If he's there on January 20th, I won't be. And, unlike Rick Warren, I actually worked hard to get Obama elected. It's weird and disturbing. I'd expect George Bush to have a homophobe on the stage. But Obama? That's not the kind of change I expected, and it's not change I can believe in.
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5:22PM UPDATE: Warren compared abortion to the "Jewish Holocaust," and said that making abortion "rare" wasn't enough, he's for outlawing abortion, period. So that would make pro-choice people like Obama in favor of the Holocaust, according to Warren. Interesting.
“Of course I want to reduce the number of abortions,” Warren told Beliefnet Editor-in-Chief Steven Waldman when asked if he was going to work with the Obama administration to achieve an abortion reduction agenda or if he thinks that the effort is a charade.
“But to me it is kind of a charade in that people say ‘We believe abortions should be safe and rare,’” he added.
“Don’t tell me it should be rare. That’s like saying on the Holocaust, ‘Well, maybe we could save 20 percent of the Jewish people in Poland and Germany and get them out and we should be satisfied with that,’” Warren said. “I’m not satisfied with that. I want the Holocaust ended.”
5:06PM UPDATE: The Human Rights Campaign, pretty much "the" gay lobby, just blasted Obama in a letter, and called on him to remove Warren from the inauguration:
Dear President-elect Obama -
Let me get right to the point. Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans. Our loss in California over the passage of Proposition 8 which stripped loving, committed same-sex couples of their given legal right to marry is the greatest loss our community has faced in 40 years. And by inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table.
Rick Warren has not sat on the sidelines in the fight for basic equality and fairness. In fact, Rev. Warren spoke out vocally in support of Prop 8 in California saying, “there is no need to change the universal, historical definition of marriage to appease 2 percent of our population ... This is not a political issue -- it is a moral issue that God has spoken clearly about." Furthermore, he continues to misrepresent marriage equality as silencing his religious views. This was a lie during the battle over Proposition 8, and it's a lie today.
Rev. Warren cannot name a single theological issue that he and vehemently, anti-gay theologian James Dobson disagree on. Rev. Warren is not a moderate pastor who is trying to bring all sides together. Instead, Rev. Warren has often played the role of general in the cultural war waged against LGBT Americans, many of whom also share a strong tradition of religion and faith.
We have been moved by your calls to religious leaders to own up to the homophobia and racism that has stood in the way of combating HIV and AIDS in this country. And that you have publicly called on religious leaders to open their hearts to their LGBT family members, neighbors and friends.
But in this case, we feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination. Only when Rev. Warren and others support basic legislative protections for LGBT Americans can we believe their claim that they are not four-square against our rights and dignity. In that light, we urge you to reconsider this announcement.
Sincerely,
Joe Solmonese President Human Rights Campaign
UPDATE: PFAW blasts Obama's pick of Warren as inaugural preacher "a grave disappointment." Warren says he's just like James Dobson.
It is a grave disappointment to learn that pastor Rick Warren will give the invocation at the inauguration of Barack Obama.
Pastor Warren, while enjoying a reputation as a moderate based on his affable personality and his church's engagement on issues like AIDS in Africa, has said that the real difference between James Dobson and himself is one of tone rather than substance. He has recently compared marriage by loving and committed same-sex couples to incest and pedophilia. He has repeated the Religious Right's big lie that supporters of equality for gay Americans are out to silence pastors. He has called Christians who advance a social gospel Marxists. He is adamantly opposed to women having a legal right to choose an abortion.
I'm sure that Warren's supporters will portray his selection as an appeal to unity by a president who is committed to reaching across traditional divides. Others may explain it as a response to Warren inviting then-Senator Obama to speak on AIDS and candidate Obama to appear at a forum, both at his church. But the sad truth is that this decision further elevates someone who has in recent weeks actively promoted legalized discrimination and denigrated the lives and relationships of millions of Americans.
Rick Warren gets plenty of attention through his books and media appearances. He doesn't need or deserve this position of honor. There is no shortage of religious leaders who reflect the values on which President-elect Obama campaigned and who are working to advance the common good.
As you regulars know, this blog has argued that it's premature for liberals to get too agitated about Obama's cabinet picks and that we should wait to let his policies do the talking. But I'm not sure how you can defend this one, even if the two men are friends and the choice doesn't necessarily have actual policy implications.
After all, the decision really gives Warren an extraordinary platform -- not to mention yet another data point supporting the bogus notion that the radical Warren is some kind of "moderate." If the first black president doesn't mind him giving the invocation at his historic inaugural, how bad and bigoted can he really be?
But hey, Rick Warren says being gay isn't the biggest sin (gee, so just how much of a sin is it, Rick?), and he's actually eaten dinner with gays. How white of him.
Lamenting the "tyranny of activist judges," who obstruct the will of the majority, he evinces no understanding of minority rights or the judiciary's role in enforcing them. Explaining his views about homosexuality and gay rights, he notes, "I don't think that homosexuality is the worst sin," and, "By the way, my wife and I had dinner at a gay couple's home two weeks ago. So I'm not [a] homophobic guy, okay?"
Rick Warren: But the issue to me is, I’m not opposed to that as much as I’m opposed to the redefinition of a 5,000-year definition of marriage. I’m opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.
Steven Waldman: Do you think, though, that they are equivalent to having gays getting married?
Rick Warren: Oh I do. … Most people, you know… I have many gay friends, I’ve eaten dinner in gay homes, no church has probably done more for people with AIDS than Saddleback Church. Kay and I have given millions of dollars out of “A Purpose-Driven Life” helping people who got AIDS through gay relationships. So they can’t accuse me of homophobia.
What exactly is a "gay" home, Rick? One where the shingles hang kind of limp?
Rick Warren: For five thousand years, marriage has been defined by every single culture and every single religion — this is not a Christian issue. Buddhists, Muslims, the Jews, historically marriage is a man and a woman. And so I’m opposed to that. And the reason I supported Prop 8 really, was a free speech issue. Because if it had…. First, the court overid the will of the people. But second, is, there were all kinds of threats that if you… that did not pass, then any pastor could be considered doing hate speech if he shared his views that he didn’t think homosexuality was the most natural way for relationships. And that would be hate speech. To me, we should have freedom of speech. And you should be able to have freedom of speech to make your position, and I should be able to have freedom of speech to make my position. And can we do this in a civil way?
Really? You tried to revoke the marriages of 20,000 gay couples because if we let gay couples marry then preachers will be thrown in jail? What kind of bs is that?
Hey, Rick Warren actually did an ad for the Prop 8 homophobes! And he invokes Barack Obama as being on his side, in the ad. Nice.
If you watch the video, in addition to invoking Obama's name to justify homophobia, Warren talks about how (he claims) gays are only 2% of the population. And how we shouldn't let 2% of the population decide what we do on this issue. Gee, wonder how he feels about Jews, who are also 2% of the population. Watch the video, and prepare for your head to explode.
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Good thing the Democrats don't care about privacy as an issue. I mean, it doesn't really affect any of us.
Well okay, sure, it affects the entire abortion debate but that only concerns every man and woman in the country who have sex, or who buy condoms, or who care what happens if a woman gets raped. And it's not like "choice" is any kind of defining issue, or dare we say "litmus test," for Democrats.
And sure it affects the debate over gay civil rights, but that's only somewhere between ten million and sixty million Americans, a core constituency of the Democratic party.
And yeah I suppose it underlies the entire national debate over domestic spying and the larger war on terror and its implications on our civil rights at home, but it's not like the Bill of Rights is much of a winning political issue. The Constitution is so 1776.
Oh yeah, and then there's the fact that privacy is an issue that every American can rally around, Democrat and Republican, so it's basically a freebie for any politician wanting to use the issue to seem non-partisan and above the fray - but I mean, it's not like voters want change.
So, yes, I can see why Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, and even the Obama administration, haven't talked much about privacy. I mean, why focus on an issue that pops up in the news ever single week, endangers us all, helps core Democratic constituencies and values, and is a political no-brainer that will win you kudos from Democratic and Republican voters?
About 9,300 Medicare recipients are being urged to take steps to protect their credit and bank accounts after the state Department of Health and Human Services inadvertently released their Social Security numbers earlier this month.
Associate HHS Commissioner Nancy Rollins said the agency accidentally attached the information in a Dec. 1 email to 61 health providers. Recipients included nursing homes, home health care agencies and Service Link offices that help seniors choose their Medicare Part D plans each year.
And I'm the one who's a danger to the family. From AP:
The father of 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell, denied a birthday cake with the child's full name on it by one New Jersey supermarket, is asking for a little tolerance. Heath Campbell and his wife, Deborah, are upset not only with the decision made by the Greenwich ShopRite, but with an outpouring of angry Internet postings in response to a local newspaper article over the weekend on their flare-up over frosting.
"I think people need to take their heads out of the cloud they've been in and start focusing on the future and not on the past," Heath Campbell said Tuesday in an interview conducted in Easton, on the other side of the Delaware River from where the family lives in Hunterdon County, N.J.
"There's a new president and he says it's time for a change; well, then it's time for a change," the 35-year-old continued. "They need to accept a name. A name's a name. The kid isn't going to grow up and do what (Hitler) did."
Yeah, Daddy Hitler voted for the nice black man with a foreign dad from Africa. Uh huh.
Deborah Campbell, 25, said she phoned in her order last week to the ShopRite. When she told the bakery department she wanted her son's name spelled out, she was told to talk to a supervisor, who denied the request.
Need a cake commemorating a genocidal maniac? Who you can gonna call?
The Campbells ultimately got their cake decorated at a Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania, Deborah Campbell said. About 12 people attended the birthday party on Sunday, including several children who were of mixed race, according to Heath Campbell.
"If we're so racist, then why would I have them come into my home?" he asked.
I think the bigger question is what kind of idiot person of color lets their child into your home?
The Campbells' other two children also have unusual names: JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell turns 2 in a few months and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell will be 1 in April.
Reader Chris responds to my earlier post about former GOP House leader, and uber-conservative, Newt Gingrich telling the Republican party to leave Obama alone, and stop trying to link him to Illinois governor Blagojevich.
Thanks for that post about Gingrich's comments on Obama. That one threw me for a loop. We all know the guy is evil, but unfortunately he’s not stupid. If he does the right thing, it’s always because he’s up to something.
I’ve been mulling this around, and then it hit me – a couple of weeks ago, right after the election, Gingrich launched that broadside against gays and secular radicals. I thought at the time that he might be looking at the Prop 8 vote and planning to try to peel Black and Latino social conservatives away from the Democratic ticket. God knows they’ve tried it before, but I think he felt like they have solid proof this time of how to motivate black voters to vote as conservatives.
This is the second time he’s been in the news in the last couple of weeks, and on reflection, this actually fits into that.
If he’s going to make a play, especially in the Black community, the one thing that would turn them off, perhaps permanently, would be something like the Blago-linked attack on Obama. Everybody knows it’s bullshit, and likely will be proven to be.
Let’s lay a little side bet – watch for attacks on Obama, or his appointments, that highlight “liberal” social values that don’t play well in black churches. Especially anything involving us.
I’ll bet you he’s also trying to think of a way to play off the fact that Obama is the son of an African foreign student – not someone who has come out of the typical African American experience.
At the end of the day, though, I don’t think Gingrich will run for President himself – he’s positioning himself to broker who does.
Yes, the cost of covering me has gotten so expensive that BlueCross felt compelled to up my premium by a whopping 23%, according to the letter I just got from them. Funny, since I found out last week that they haven't upped my prescription benefit cap in 12 years - it's still at the 1997 level of $1500, which means they've actually cut my prescription benefits by about 25% over that period (since drug prices, and inflation, keep going up while my benefits stay the same) while nearly tripling my premiums. And now I get a whopping 23% increase in one year to my insurance premium. I'm paying $417 a month, the best self-employed plan that CareFirst offers, and these bastards cut off my prescription drugs two months ago. I had readers offering to buy me drugs in Mexico. What country do we even live in anymore? These people are thieves. So help me God, Obama and the spineless wonders we call Democrats on the Hill had better fix this.
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Was there really any competition? A year ago, very few people even thought Barack Obama could beat Hillary Clinton. (I was one of the people who thought that's what would happen -- and said it publicly, even though I was mocked by my friends for it.) Obama was the amazing story of 2008.
But, does it matter anymore who Time Magazine thinks is the "person of the year"? Earlier this week, it was announced that Time Magazine's Jay Carney was going to work for Joe Biden, which prompted a discussion about the ongoing viability of weekly magazines. Adam Nagourney from the New York Times attributed the demise of those publications to the influence of blogosphere:
That said, he leaves Time Magazine when the future of weekly news magazines is clearly in doubt, and as these organizations have been forced to make sizable cutbacks and cope with a media landscape increasingly influenced by the blogosphere and not the newsweeklies.
That's quite a plug from Mr. Nagourney -- and an acknowledgment of the changing media landscape.
So, I haven't asked John, but I think if we named a person of the year here at AMERICAblog, it would probably be Obama, too.
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Your president-elect will be doing another press conference this morning. The press corps will undoubtedly spend a good part of that event asking about the same questions about the Blago scandal. They're obsessed. Imagine, just imagine, if the White House press corps had treated the build up to the Iraq war or the leak of Valerie Plame's name with the same ferocity.
Somehow I'm not surprised that it was a Democrat who caused the first problems for Obama. I fully believe that the biggest impediment to enacting the agenda of change won't be the hapless Republicans. It will be the Democrats who are either corporate-controlled or spineless, both of which there are way too many.
Huh? Doesn't it sound as though maybe, just maybe, those so-called "free market" principles were total nonsense in the first place? Jury-rigging a system to squash competition in favor of big business and ignoring basic oversight hardly sounds like a recipe for success. Of course, Bush has trashed every business that he's ever touched including the US economy so why start thinking now? How is it even possible to repeat the delusional "free market" pitch today? Then again, how could an incoming President round up so many unrepentant free marketers to guide the economy?
US President George W. Bush said in an interview Tuesday he was forced to sacrifice free market principles to save the economy from "collapse."
"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system," Bush told CNN television, saying he had made the decision "to make sure the economy doesn't collapse."
Bush's comments reflect an extraordinary departure from his longtime advocacy for an unfettered free market, as his administration has orchestrated unprecedented government intervention in the face of a dire financial crisis.
"I am sorry we're having to do it," Bush said.
But Bush said government action was necessary to ease the effects of the crisis, offering perhaps his most dire assessment yet of the country's economy.
"I feel a sense of obligation to my successor to make sure there is not a, you know, a huge economic crisis. Look, we're in a crisis now. I mean, this is -- we're in a huge recession, but I don't want to make it even worse."
Let's have a big round of applause for the Republican doctrine of less regulation. Not only did the SEC have limited staff (because regulation is unnecessary) but the staff they have now look suspect. The lawsuit frenzy is about to start and investors will be targeting both regulators as well as the banks and investment firms who directed clients to the Madoff funds. It remains a mystery how a single person could manage the monthly statements for a $50 billion fund but we should start hearing more as the books are reviewed.
His remarks followed a day of growing demands for the agency to explain how it missed Madoff's alleged $50 billion fraud, including the apparent failure of regulators to spot numerous and massive inconsistencies during an investigation of his company that ended quietly in 2007.
Cox offered the beginnings of answers. He said the agency inappropriately discounted allegations, that staff did not relay concerns to the agency's leadership and that examiners relied on documents volunteered by Madoff rather than seeking subpoenas to obtain critical information. And Cox said the agency's inspector general would investigate whether personal relationships between Madoff's family and SEC staff played a role in the failed oversight.
"Our initial findings have been deeply troubling," Cox said. "I am gravely concerned by the apparent failures over at least a decade to thoroughly investigate these allegations or at any point to seek formal authority to pursue them."
The statement came as criticism of the SEC grew from legislators and former regulators for failing to check a number of Wall Street frauds and excesses that have been exposed by the economic slowdown.
It's always the same, with every business. When the cash is gushing out of the spigot, nobody asks questions.
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You didn't really think China would stop censorship, did you? The only fools that believed that were the IOC and the foreign "democratic" leaders who attended the Olympics and suggested the games would help open up China. Pure CYA and attempted money grab, by all of them. Let's see how much more censorship is rolled out as their economy slows to a trickle.
China said it has the right to block Web sites its says break its laws after being accused of restarting the practice it halted during the August Olympic Games as part of a promise to widen media freedom.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said Tuesday that certain Web sites had breached Chinese law by recognizing "two Chinas" — a reference to the self-ruled island Taiwan.
Liu, however, wouldn't say whether any Web sites had been censored.
"Undeniably, on some Web sites, there are some issues that go against Chinese law. For example, some Web sites are actually creating two countries — that is one China, one Taiwan. They treat Taiwan as an independent country, which is against our law of anti-secessionism," he said during a regularly scheduled press conference, without naming the organizations.
Beijing still claims sovereignty over the self-ruled island and has repeatedly warned any attempt at a permanent split could trigger a devastating conflict.
The British Broadcasting Corp. reported Tuesday that China appears to have banned a number of foreign Web sites recently, including its Chinese language news site and Voice of America in Chinese.
The sites had been unblocked after journalists attending the Beijing Olympics complained that the government was censoring sites deemed sensitive, the BBC said on its Web site.
This is a jaw dropper but it does provide a clear indication of how insane this market is today. Nothing is predictable and everything that you thought you knew yesterday is meaningless today. For a company to try and predict the future is a disaster waiting to happen. Moving away from such a strong focus (obsession, really) on quarterly numbers instead of the big picture wouldn't be such a bad idea, but I don't see that happening. It's nice to dream though.
General Electric said Tuesday that it will no longer provide specific quarterly earnings guidance, though the company affirmed its earnings target for 2008.
GE told investors that it expects profit at its industrial units to range from flat to up 5 percent with its GE Money financial services business earning $5 billion.
The U.S. conglomerate did not provide a specific 2009 earnings per share target, in a break with its prior practice.
