Gays and Foreign Aid

President Obama, who continues to enshrine himself as the greatest friend in the White House that gays have had since the days of James Buchanan, and Clinton (Hillary), have decided to tie certain kinds of foreign aid into certain gay rights issues.

In a memorandum issued by President Obama in Washington and in a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton here, the administration vowed to actively combat efforts by other nations that criminalize homosexual conduct, abuse gay men, lesbians, bisexuals or transgendered people, or ignore abuse against them.

“Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct,” Mrs. Clinton said at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, “but in fact they are one and the same.”

Well, this is great! I have absolutely no problem with this, aside from the faint whiff of hypocrisy that I always smell when something like this comes along. After all, until 2003, gay sex was illegal in many, many states in the USA. Gays still aren’t allowed to marry in most states, and there’s several states where gay adoption isn’t allowed.

Like with so many civil rights issues, it might take the USA a while to get on board, but once we are, we are fully. Consider that segregation was the law of the land in many places when my mom was a child. By the time I was in my teens, we were calling for sanctions against South Africa for the way blacks were treated there.

Of course, some people just can’t be happy about these things.

One Republican candidate, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, said: “President Obama has again mistaken America’s tolerance for different lifestyles with an endorsement of those lifestyles. I will not make that mistake.”

Only a moron would say that us telling other nations they can’t kill people for being gay and expect foreign aid is the same as our “endorsing” gay lifestyles. Then again, Rick Perry is a moron, as I think we’ve all come to learn over the last few months. I also laugh at this comment from him, given that I’m sure he was all in favor of our threats to cut off foreign aid for family planning if abortion was so much as mentioned.

The interesting thing is what this is going to do for some of our long-term allies, like Saudi Arabia, who certainly aren’t keen on the gays. While I think this is mostly targeted at nations like Uganda, I do look forward to seeing what other countries do in response.

Bye-Bye Biden?

We’re about a year away from the 2012 Presidential Election, and talk has come up lately about the idea of replacing Biden as vice-president, usually with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton being mentioned as the main choice for the new VP. I don’t know that this is likely to happen, as I know that Obama apparently quite likes Biden, but should it happen?

I’m inclined to say yes. I have no problem with Joe Biden; I think he’s done as good of a job as any VP can do. I think that if the unfortunate happened, he’d be a good president. But I don’t think he’s likely to run for president on his own in 2016, and if he does, I don’t know that he could win.

Hillary, on the other hand, strikes me as someone who is still interested in running in 2016. I also think she’s someone who could win, though it’s worth noting that she’d be 70 when inaugurated, the same age as Reagan.

Also, I think replacing Biden would be wise because, frankly, there hasn’t been a lot of turnover in this administration, and I think that it would help send a message of change were they to replace the vice-president. There’s ample precedent for doing so (think of FDR, who went through a different VP each term), and I think Hillary as the VP candidate would help bring out more voters, in addition to shaking things up within the Cabinet.

Of course, I don’t think this is actually going to happen, and if it doesn’t, that’s fine. Hillary has been an excellent Secretary of State, and were she to continue in that office for the foreseeable future, that would be. Plus, hey, historically that office has been a good springboard to the Presidency, so maybe in 2016, it could be a good one for her.

Clinton in the Congo

Hillary Clinton apparently lost her temper and flew into a violent rage the other day when someone dared to ask her about her husband! It was a horrible, aggressive scene leaving no survivors, rather like if Chuck Norris had a press conference!

You can find all sorts of news stories about this with titles like “Clinton Loses It”, “Clinton’s Temper Tantrum” and the like. But none of that will prepare you for the shockingness of seeing it yourself! Behold!

Oh. Hmmm. That actually seemed to me like a firm, but reasonable, reply from someone who is probably long sense fed up with people comparing her to her husband. I don’t see any rage, temper or even real anger, just her making no question about where things stand. How odd. From the way the media was reacting, one would’ve thought she murdered a man. Whatever could have lead to this kind of distortion by the media?

Oh, wait. It’s August.

Question for the Hillary Fans

So there’s a cynical bunch of people out there (not naming any names), who believe McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate partly, or entirely, due to the fact that she is, as you may have noticed, a woman. Can’t imagine why anyone would think that. This move would, in theory, help McCain to woo some of the former Hillary supporters who are disatisfied with her not being the nominee.

That in mind, I have a question for those of you who are or were Hillary supporters, especially women. The question is: does McCain picking a woman as his running mate matter to you? Will it influence your vote one way or another?

I’d love to hear some opinions! Well, read some, anyhow.

Unity At Last!

Will Rogers once said, “I belong to no organized party. I’m a Democrat.” He was pretty right about that. Getting Democrats together has occasionally been compared to hearding cats, though I think that might be somewhat easier.

Nevertheless, today we had a nice, warm moment for the party and the nation when Barack Obama and the Big Hill appeared together in the aptly-named Unity, New Hampshire.

They made all the little comments you’d expect, and generally passed out a bunch of warm fuzzies. There wasn’t a lot of substance to this particular appearance, but there was a lot of style, and a great chance to present a unified front. This is the sort of thing that, come November, will hopefully help us to get back into the White House.

The End of the Begining

Barack Obama has finally clinched the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States of America.

About damn time.

So what next? Well, obviously Obama needs to get ready for the general election in November against John McCain and whomever he picks as his VP (right now, my money’s on Bobby Jindal). In the meantime, he needs to get Hillary offically out of the way.

I’m not entirely sure why she didn’t drop out on Tuesday night. If you go to CNN’s delegate calculator and assign all the remaining super delegates to her, she still doesn’t get enough to even reach 2118 delegates, much less overtake Obama’s totals.

I’m 90% sure she’s trying to get the VP nomination, but doesn’t want to go to Obama asking for it; she wants him to ask her. I think she’d be a great VP candidate, and in my ideal world she would be his choice (a good second choice would be John Edwards or Bill Richardson, though I’d much rather see Richardson running the State Deparment. I think he would be excellent there).

Why do I think Hillary would be a good choice for the VP slot? Well, she brings lots of baggage, sure, but she also brings lots of money, a large base of support, and great campaigning ability in the form of herself and Bill Clinton. She’s said, of course, that she’ll support and campaign for whomever the nominee is, but I think it would help provide more motivation if she were on the ticket with Obama.

I guess we’ll find out soon enough. If she goes past Friday night and still is making noises about how she’s going to continue to try to be the nominee, then I’ll lose virtually all respect for her. It’s long past time for her to drop out, and now that the numbers are completely against her, she needs to do so. All she’s doing by staying in now is shooting herself in the foot and destroying any good will she still has with the party.

Math is Not Her Friend

According to this article at Slate.com, Obama is polling 17% higher than Clinton in Montana. w00t! They seem about evenly split in South Dakota. This is bad for Hillary, but really all it is is yet another nail in the coffin of her campaign.

See, here’s the thing: if we go to CNN.com’s delegate counter, give Obama 17% in Montana and split South Dakota 50/50, giving one extra delegate there to Hillay, cause I’m generous, we see that she still needs to get 94% of the remaining superdelegates to be able to clinch the nomination. If Obama gets only 14%, he clinches.

I think this a tad unlikely.

Time to drop out, Ms Clinton. Save your energy and political capital for 2016!

Puerto Rico

Good ole Puerto Rico. They’re having their primaries today, you know. Yeah, Hillary is making one last effort to try and boot her vote totals. It won’t work. It won’t make a difference. But she’s trying anyhow.

Puerto Rico fascinates me. We got the island from Spain as a result of the Spanish-American War. We also got Cuba, the Phillippines and a few other places at the same time. It was our flirtation with having an actual, real empire.

Thankfully, it failed. Now Cuba and the Phillippines are their own countries and Puerto Rico is… well, it is what it is. Neither state, nor nation. It exists in the same middle-ground occupied by Washington, DC, Guam, CNMI, American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands. DC is slightly different from the rest in that its existence is provided for by the US Constitution, but the others aren’t.

It’s time we put an end to this situation, especially as regards Puerto Rico. They’re a fairly large island with a good-sized population, yet they aren’t allowed to participate in national government on any substantive level, including not being able to vote for President (except in the primaries). This needs to change.

There’s been some efforts at changing the status of Puerto Rico, but nothing has worked so far. I think it’s high time that Puerto Rico be given one simple choice: become a state or a country. This middle-ground business serves no one. Frankly, I’d rather they became a state. I think that’d be pretty dang spiffy! But if they don’t want to do that, they need to move on and be their own country. The current arrangement is silly.

Congress has made some effort towards forcing a final choice on the Puerto Rican people. It’s good, but not great, and could stand some improvement, since it still allows wiggle-room. Still, it’s better than nothing.

Ultimately I favor statehood or independance for all our territories (except DC, of course, which should just get statehood), and I’d hope they’d all choose to be a part of the USA. 55 states would be perfectly fine with me, but since I don’t think that’s likely, I’ll just continue to hold out hope for Puerto Rico becoming our 51st state.

Another Tuesday, Another Primary!

I’m watching the election results right now. Currently we’re all waiting on the results from Lake County, Indiana, which is right near Chicago. There’s lots of commentary from CNN right now about how suspicious the delays are, given this is the last county to be reporting, and that Chicago has what we shall call a “colorful history” of elections.

Meantime, North Carolina went for Obama, which is no shock. I expect Clinton will win in Indiana, but not by much. Probably about 52% to 48%.

Either way, I’m starting to lean towards the notion that it’s time for the Big Hill to drop out. It’s almost impossible for her to get the nomination at this point, and I think it’s time she falls on her sword and end this. I’ll post more on this in great detail later.

For now, keep watching Lake County!