Barack Obama owes at least part of his success to the LGBT community, who donated and voted for him en masse, and now the President is being called on to put that queer money where his mouth is.
Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin told The Washington Post that the HRC would love to see an openly gay cabinet member and an openly gay ambassador to a G-20 nation, meaning a major player in the game of global chess.
“Our government, particularly in this administration, looks like America,” Griffin said. “And it’s important to have a cabinet that looks like America.”
That administration also includes some gays that know how to snatch up some serious dollars, hunty:
How about we take this to the next level?
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A dozen members of his national finance team are gay, and we’re hearing that they collectively outraised other “affinity groups” — categories like “Latinos” or “trial lawyers” — represented on the team.
And, as the Post points out, there’s no shortage of gays to choose from, including “power couple Michael Smith, the famed decorator, and HBO exec James Costas” for ambassadorships and “John Berry, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, and Fred Hochberg, president of the Import-Export Bank,” for Cabinet positions.
FOUR MORE YEARS! FOR MORE QUEERS!
Photo: ewee
Cam
Nice that the new HRC President is not doing what the last one did.
The old President Joe Solomnase just told everybody to shut up, never ask the Dems for anything because it might upset them, then he bought new suits.
jerry_pritikin
IN THE LAST 2 DAYS, A BLACK AND HISPANIC REPORTER FOR THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES ASKED WHAT WILL OBAMA DO FOR THEIR KIND, AND NOW THIS ON THE QUEERTY WEB-SITE ARE DOING THE SAME ABOUT GAYS… YOU SHOULD JUST ALL BE HAPPY WE HAVE A PRESIDENT WHO INCLUDES US IN HIS DECISSIONS. WAKE UP… IT’S ABOUT ALL AMERICANS , THAT WAS THE DIFFERNCE BETWEEN HIM AND ROMNEY. WHEN YOU LOOKED AT THE ROMNEY CROWD… IT WAS ALMOST 99% WHITE… AND WHAT FEW GAYS,JEWS,BLACKS AND HISPANICS WHO WERE THERE… HAD ONLY ONE THING IN COMMON,THAT THEY ARE ALL RICH! THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS THE PARTY OF INCLUSION AND WE SHOULD BE HAPPY THAT WE ARE TREATED EQUAL, AND EXPECT NO MORE, OR NO LESS FROM OBAMA. OR GO JOIN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY… THE PARTY OF EXCLUSION. I’M PROUD OF MY PRESIDENT AND ONLY ASHAMED FOR THOSE WHO THINK THEY DESERVE MORE THEN OTHERS JUST BECAUSED THEY VOTED FOR HIM.
redspyder
@jerry_pritikin: I think you are being naive when you think you have a president who includes you in his decisions. A blatant example: we were promised openness when ObamaCare was being passed. It was all done behind closed doors. My Democratic representative for Congress actually REFUSED to hold town halls or discuss it in any way.Yet here I am – stuck with the decision and expected to pay even more in taxes to fund it. Yay.
And the “rich” bashing? Kind of sick of it. The top 10% pay 60% of the taxes in this country. The bottom 50% pay 4%. Yet each of them only gets one vote. Doesn’t seem particularly fair to me when you tell me that paying for 15 people isn’t enough. I put myself through university, worked up to 120 hours a week when I was starting out in my career, and have worked hard to get where I am and for what I have. I’m a little sick of all these ‘inclusive’ Democrats telling me they are entitled to more of it.
Scribe38
@redspyder: You are not stuck without with the decisions. You are lucky enough to live in a country that allows you to vote, allows you to meet in groups with like minded people to lobby for positions that you want the government to take. You are not working any harder than most Americans, so please take a breath and get over yourself 🙂 Many Americans try to improve their lot in life by working many hours or working and going to school. Please stop looking at yourself as a victim. One person- one vote! Every first grader knows the fairness of that rule. You do not get more votes that the rest of us because you belong to a different social-economic class. I work a 50-60 work week in construction, take 10 credits a week in college (nursing). I use public loans to pay for school, and the people will receive every dime back with interest and have someone providing a good for society as a whole.
Scribe38
@jerry_pritikin: I aggree with most of what you say. I gave a paycheck to Obama mostly because a Romney United States scared me a little bit. I want to be able to marry my partner of 19 years. I want my female relatives to have the right of choice if someone rapes them, not be told that the baby is God’s will. I have seen my aunt go bankrupt because of illness and the insurance company refusal to pay. I didn’t vote for Obama so he would put a gay-black man on his staff that looks likes me but because he held more of my values than the other guy.
jerry_pritikin
@redspyder: The top 1% own 40% of the wealth in this country. I’m 75 years old and I’m not naive. Gay Rights have moved in a snails pace since the 1970s. This President said he would evolved into thinking about gay marriage, and he did and I believe we owe it to him for the OUTcome on the Marriage races in 4 states. I’m glad to see the new head of the HRC get results, yet the average gay blue collar worker, gay college student and gay seniors are constantly priced out of their Black-Tie events… and a good many would not go to them if they didn’t get a tax write-off. It used to be that working Americans who worked 40 hours a week could still support their families and have money left over for labor saving appliances or a movie. In recent years both parents needed to work, and too often more then 40 hours a week each, yet the cost of healthcare left little for them to entertain their families. The rich got richer and the middle class is almost gone. No one had the balls to protest the non-declared wars that lasted 10 years. If it were not for the young Americans who protested the Vietnam war, chances are we would still be there. Ike warned America about the Military Industrial complex in 1960… and since the mid-60s we have been in constant wars that made a few Americans and Presidents rich, while the country on a whole lost out for any chance of that American Dream… that had a short life.
Where were the protest after Bush 43 stolen one election, when the Supreme Court appointed him president. Obama helped this country that was on the verge of another Great Depression. I recall a sign on a Haight-Ashbury wall… Eat the Rich, However, it’s time for them to pay more in taxes. Us little guys get our taxes deducted from our paychecks before we see them. Yet, the rich with their tax lawyers and lobbyist find ways for them not to pay taxes… and Big business ship jobs over seas and get tax incentives to do so.
They have paid lobbyist in Congress who gives them loopholes while it took them 10 years to pass a new minimum wage to $7.25! All I know is that we have friend in the White House who is not anti-gay, anti-woman and believes in a woman’s right to choose. I’m not complaining because he gives the little guy hope without promises.
jerry_pritikin
@Scribe38: Thank you. All I ever wanted was Equal Rights, no more, no less than anyone else. We still have a way to go for those equal rights, however this is the closest in my lifetime to getting them. I discovered being on the “left” is being on the right side of history!
redspyder
@Scribe38:
When pointing out Obama’s failure to deliver the openness he promised on Obamacare, I wasn’t looking for an explanation of the democratic process. I was pointing out that he doesn’t deliver on ‘inclusiveness’ – the OP’s claim.
I do work harder than most Americans. If you work 50-60 hours/wk, I believe that you do as well. Nothing to get over there. The smiley face at the end of that statement doesn’t make it less offensive, if thats what you were going for.
You proclaim “One person- one vote! Every first grader knows the fairness of that rule. You do not get more votes that the rest of us because you belong to a different social-economic class.”. Where’s the fairness in me currently paying for fifteen people and being expected to pay for more? How many people have to live off my hard work? When will enough be enough?
Lastly – good for you on your situation. Working and going to school is difficult, and I don’t begrudge one dime lent to you. What I do begrudge, however, is all the other nonsense. My nephew used his federal Pell grant money (not loan – but grant) to buy himself a used car. One roommate used his to buy a 40″ LCD TV – the third bought a playstation, xbox AND a wii. My sister – a school teacher – hears about this sort of thing from her seniors all the time. Then there’s all the ridiculousness of the welfare system – paying for cell phones, home phones, internet access etc.
At some point – enough is enough. ‘Inclusive’ democrats need to start looking at how the system DOESN’T work, and what is equitable – rather than just what’s in my pocket.
redspyder
@jerry_pritikin:
You say “I’m not complaining because he gives the little guy hope without promises”. Its my position that he promises hope without delivering. Fool me once, shame on you… fool me twice, shame on me. Obama has made alot of promises that he didn’t deliver in his first term. He ‘evolved’ only when he needed our support once more. If he delivers, I will be grateful. I am not, however, optimistic. I do not, however, credit him personally for the OUTcome on the Marriage races in 4 states.
I agree – for the most part – with alot of everything else you have said. However – I don’t buy into the class warfare that Obama espouses. I do not have my own lobbyist – no pet Sentaor or Congressman in my pocket. I have a successful business – but I will be honest in saying that – like most businesses in my town – I am not expanding and hiring more people. Why not? Because we have the most anti-business president in American history in office. That view was taken by Steve Jobs of Apple – and is echoed by most people that I know, from banking to manufacturing to professional services. Until Obama evolves on the role of the government and his views of business, conditions aren’t going to improve for the middle class – nor for America as a whole.
2eo
@redspyder: “no pet Sentaor”
If I had a pet centaur I would be incredibly happy. I’d maze the hell out of everything.
Dumdum
@2eo: I totally love you dude.@jerry_pritikin: You go girl!@redspyder: Really? 120 hours per week? Were you on meth? Are you still on meth?
viveutvivas
Redspyder, stop already with the working harder argument. As Jerry said, the top 1% own 40% of the wealth in this country. I can guarantee you the top 1% don’t work 40% of the hours in this country, since that would mean the average 1 percenter works almost 7 hours for each hour worked by the average 99 percenter, which is physically quite impossible.
jwrappaport
@redspyder: Obama and progressives aren’t talking about statist thugs seizing your business or ransacking homes: we’re talking about creating a regime that’s premised on the idea that great disparities of wealth are inherently dangerous to any free society. How that’s achieved is debatable, but don’t act like the “free” market is some neutral (or ideal) baseline: it is merely the result of shifting the power of economic coercion from democratically accountable hands (which is to say the government) to those of private citizens.
Though Anatole France spoke of law when he said this, I think the analogy to the “free” market is apt: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” I imagine Mittens and an unskilled laborer earning minimum wage have very different conceptions of what the operative word “free” means in “free” market: Is the “free” market one that gives all the equal and unfettered opportunity to meaningfully participate, or is it one that gives those in power the freedom to coerce and oppress those who aren’t? I get that government often encumbers business unjustly, but to trumpet the values of the “free” market and deny the salutary effects of regulation and redistribution wholesale is more than a little naive, I think.
You seem to buy into the robber baron era mythos that merit, honor, and discipline are necessary and sufficient conditions for great wealth. I don’t respect that, and I’m frankly tired of being browbeaten by the crocodile tears of 1%ers who lament the loss of their tax loopholes and economic “freedom” when they have worked so hard to achieve their wealth. Get over it. We’re not Bolshevists and we’re not going to send the Red Guard to seize your farm: we’re just tired of the “haves” getting away with highway robbery again and again and facing no real accountability for the havoc they wreak on our economy and our lives.
Lots of us work hard, it just happens that we have a system set up that rewards certain types of hard work vastly differently from others, and people are now starting to see how that is not a “free” market in any sense of the term.
jwrappaport
As an aside: I don’t think many gays care about being token ambassadors or cabinet members. We want gay marriage, ENDA, and equal justice under law.
jerry_pritikin
@jwrappaport: Your right… and Ambassadorships are bought. They get only 1 vote like we do… but when you donate mega bucks… it gets you something no matter what party you support.James Hormel got his that way. I’m 75 and been an activist for 40 years. I know there are heterophobics too. I just like to get my 2 cents worth when I see people who know it all, but seldom work for change.Cheers, J.P.
Mjl-428
@redspyder: correct me if I’m wrong but by the math I’m doing here, that means you only have enough time off work to sleep if you’re working nearly 120 hrs/ week
Dumdum
@Mjl-428: He doesn’t sleep. To judge by what he implies as to his income. He probably takes adderall but I think it’s meth.