Sen. Dianne Feinstein running again

I have yet to see it reported in the mainstream media, but it’s clear that “Democratic” Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California (pictured above, I’m pretty sure) is going to run for a fifth six-year term.

I voted for the center-right, mostly irrelevant Feinstein exactly once, in 2000, when I was still pretty new to California and didn’t know much about her. Over the ensuing years I learned a lot more about her, such as how her war-profiteering husband profiteered from the unelected Bush regime’s illegal, immoral, unjust and unprovoked Vietraq War that she voted for, and therefore I haven’t voted for her since.*

Feinstein, whose net worth exceeds $50 million (yeah, she’s just one of us!) and who at age 8fucking3 is the oldest (apparently still living) member of the Senate, could step aside and vacate the seat that she has held since 19fucking92, giving a younger, fresher, much more relevant face a chance to represent the great state of California, but why do the right thing?

I knew that Feinstein was running again when fairly recently I started receiving e-mails from her again. (I am on her e-mail list.) Seriously, I can tell you that this is her pattern: It’s radio silence from her for several years, and then, when the next primary election for her approaches (it will be in June 2018), you’ll hear from her.

The e-mail that I received from Feinstein’s campaign today contains this mediocre logo —

— and has small print at the bottom that reads “Paid for and authorized by Feinstein for Senate 2018.”

Sadly, as long as she still lives, Repugnican Lite Feinstein will win re-election. Californians are pretty fucking dumb where it comes to re-electing her.

Hell, they’d probably vote for her corpse, which they essentially have been doing for a while now anyway.

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*Feinstein also supported the unelected Bush regime’s unconstitutional mass spying on Americans, and still supports unconstitutional mass spying by the federal government; called for the immediate extradition and arrest of patriot Edward Snowden for having exposed the unconstitutional mass spying by the federal government that she wholeheartedly supports; supports the death penalty, since millionaires like she never have to worry about ever facing so-called justice; and actually supported the unconstitutional attempt to make the “desecration” of the U.S. flag a criminal act, although the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment protects it (duh).

Feinstein is a real over-privileged, out-of-touch, authoritarian, plutocratic piece of shit.

SEIU sells us out

SEIU President Mary Kay Henry should be selling Mary Kay instead of selling out the members of one the nation’s largest labor unions. 

I am a dues-paying member (almost $50 a month) of Service Employees International Union, better known as SEIU.

I’m very pro-labor. Pro-SEIU? Um, not so much.

On Thursday I received an e-mail from SEIU President Mary Kay Henry with the probably hyperbolic subject line “The fight of our lives.”

The e-mail reads, in part:

Dear Robert,

You’ll probably hear about it on the news very soon, but I want you to be the first to know.

Today, with great pride and a sense of purpose, the 2.1 million members of the Service Employees International Union have endorsed President Barack Obama for re-election.

President Obama is the only candidate for president who shares our vision of America as a land of opportunity for everyone. We need a leader willing to fight for the needs of the 99 percent, and stand with hard working families to say that the world’s wealthiest corporations must pay their fair share.

Please join us in returning President Obama to the White House so he can keep fighting for more jobs and less nonsense.

You’ve probably seen how hard it is to get the concerns of working people taken seriously in our political process. Here’s why:

Our economy and democracy have been taken over by the wealthiest one percent.

These bankers and CEOs have used their wealth and excessive political influence to treat our state and federal governments like their personal cash drawer – spending lavishly on elections and then pressuring legislators to give them even more instead of creating jobs. It shows in the results. …

We know what’s really important. We know that after a decade of tax breaks for the rich and out-of-control gambling on Wall Street, things have gotten much harder for working Americans. We know that if these problems aren’t taken care of now, the next generation will have it even worse. …

President Obama is working to turn things around, but he needs help from all of us to be heard over his wealthy opponents, people who seem to believe that the only thing wrong with the economy is that they have to share it.

From now until Election Day next November, we need to dedicate ourselves to this goal. We will knock on doors, we will talk to our friends and neighbors and co-workers, and we will fight shoulder-to-shoulder alongside working families across this nation to show the one percent that they aren’t the only ones willing to fight for America’s future. …

In solidarity,
Mary Kay Henry, President, Service Employees International Union

I’m a dues-paying member of SEIU, but there’s no way in hell that I’m going to help President Hopey-Changey continue to punk those of us who put him in office. I will give Obama not one red fucking cent (I gave him hundreds of dollars for his 2008 bid) and I will not give him my vote again. Nor could I, with a straight face and a good conscience, try to convince others that they should support Barack Obama’s re-election, as SEIU would have me do.

Mysteriously missing in Henry’s propagandistic e-mail is the promise that Barack Obama made to labor on the campaign trail in November 2007 (here is video of it): “And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself; I will walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States of America, because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.”

Where were Obama’s “comfortable shoes” when the state of Wisconsin this year was a battleground for labor, for the rights of the middle class and the working class against the greedy, thieving plutocrats, represented by Repugnican Tea Party Gov. Scott Walker & Co.?

Obama didn’t show his face in Wisconsin once and could be bothered to make no more than one or two weak, vague statements in support of Wisconsin. Wisconsinites have been doing it on their own.

Where is Obama speaking out against the police brutality that we are seeing against non-threatening citizens who want to voice their grievances in a meaningful way, and not in the toothless, politically ineffectual way that our treasonous and oppressive plutocratic overlords have proscribed for us (the meaningless, politically ineffectual way that Obama himself no doubt endorses)?

Mary Kay Henry’s proclamations in her propagandistic e-mail are outright lies or delusions or some combination thereof.

Indeed “We need a leader willing to fight for the needs of the 99 percent, and stand with hard working families to say that the world’s wealthiest corporations must pay their fair share.” That leader is not President Hopey-Changey, however. At best, Barack Obama is the lesser of two evils, and for millions of us, that isn’t good enough anymore — thus, the Occupy Wall Street movement.

And Henry shouldn’t even have gone here: “These bankers and CEOs have used their wealth and excessive political influence to treat our state and federal governments like their personal cash drawer – spending lavishly on elections and then pressuring legislators to give them even more instead of creating jobs. It shows in the results. …”

As Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald points out in his recent column that is critical of SEIU’s shameless and pathetic attempt to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street movement such as by using its signature phrases “1 percent” and “99 percent,” Barack Obama has done nothing but coddle the Wall Street weasels. You should read Greenwald’s entire column, but here, in my opinion, is the money shot:

… But whatever else is true, the notion — advanced by SEIU — that it’s the Democratic Party and the Obama White House working to bring about these changes and implant these values of the 99 percent is so self-evidently false as to be insulting. …

… [D]oes SEIU think that people will just ignore these key political facts? How does anyone think these protesters will be convinced that it’s exclusively the GOP — and not the Democratic Party and the Obama White House — who “protect the rich” when: Wall Street funded the Democrats far more than the GOP in the 2008 election; the Democrats’ key money man, Charles Schumer, is one of the most devoted Wall Street servants in the country; Obama empowered in key positions Wall Street servants such as Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Bill Daley, Rahm Emanuel, and an endless roster of former Goldman officials; JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon has been dubbed “Obama’s favorite banker” after Obama publicly defended his post-bailout $17 million bonus; the president named the CEO of GE to head his jobs panel; the DCCC and DSCC exist to ensure the nomination of corporatist candidates and Blue Dogs whose political worldview is servitude to the lobbyist class; the Democratic president, after vocally urging an Age of Austerity, tried very hard to usher in cuts to Social Security and an increase in the age for Medicare eligibility; and the Obama administration has not only ensured virtually no accountability for the rampant Wall Street fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis, but is actively pressuring New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and others to agree to a woefully inadequate settlement to forever shield banks from the consequences of their pervasive mortgage fraud.

That’s just a fraction of the facts one could list to document the actual factions to which the Democratic Party has devoted itself. If one wants to argue that the GOP is more opposed to progressive economic policies than Democrats, that’s certainly reasonable. If one wants to argue that, on balance, voting for Democrats is more likely to bring about marginally more of those policies than abstaining, I think that, too, is reasonable.

But to try to cast the Democratic Party and the Obama administration as the vessel for the values and objectives of the Occupy movement is just dishonest in the extreme: in fact, it’s so extreme that it’s very unlikely to work. Those who believe that further empowerment of the Democratic Party is what is most urgently needed can make their case and should pursue that goal — they should try to generate as much citizen enthusiasm as possible behind them — but they should stop trying to depict and exploit the Occupy movement as an instrument for their agenda.

Exactly. As Greenwald claims, “SEIU officials have long been among Obama’s closest and most loyal allies in Washington.”

This is why I stopped financially supporting the Human Rights Campaign: Clearly the HRC elites are much more interested in hobnobbing with Washington, D.C.’s elites than to actually fight for the rights of non-heterosexuals and non-gender-conforming individuals. It was clear to me where money that is donated to HRC goes: to its elites so that they can be socialites in D.C.

HRC gives Barack Obama a full pass on the fact that he still claims that he is “evolving” on the issue of same-sex marriage, even though in 1996, when he was running for the Illinois state Senate, he responded to a campaign questionnaire that he supports same-sex marriage. (“I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages,” he wrote. Of course, as president he has fought efforts to prohibit same-sex marriage as much as he has put on his “comfortable shoes” to fight for labor.)

But the if the HRC elites were to actually challenge Obama on the fact that he’s a fucking liar who sells his supporters out, then the HRC elites wouldn’t get to rub shoulders with the elites in D.C. anymore.

Go ahead and give money to the HRC if you want to, but know that HRC won’t use your money to actually fight for your rights.

Similarly, I can tell you that as a dues-paying member of SEIU, I never got a voice or a vote in the union’s endorsement of Barack Obama’s re-election (which I didn’t even know was coming). Apparently only the union’s elites and insiders got such a voice. The rest of us, who got no fucking voice, are too busy actually working — so that we can pay the SEIU elites’ salaries with our dues, so that they can then sell us out.

I am pro-labor, but SEIU President Mary Kay Henry should resign. She should do something that she’s actually good at — perhaps she should be selling Mary Kay instead of selling out the members of one of the nation’s largest labor unions.

P.S. I e-mailed Mary Kay Henry that she should resign. If I get a response, I’ll share it, but I doubt that I will. To the SEIU elites I’m only good for my dues, which the SEIU elites use to sell me out.

Anyone but Obama 2012

Since “Democratic” President Hopey-Changey Obama’s latest sellout — giving the plutocratic and pro-plutocratic traitors of the Repugnican Tea Party their tax breaks for the rich and the super-rich while slashing the federal budget (except for the war profiteers, of course) — chatter about a Democratic presidential primary challenge to Obama has increased.

There is this food-for-thought piece on Salon.com about Secretary of State Billary Clinton challenging Obama, but the piece is written by someone who says that he doesn’t consider himself to be a Democrat, so I’m not certain of his intent.

While it’s true that Billary’s balls are bigger than Obama’s (but so are a mouse’s balls…) — and, admittedly, knowing what I know about Obama now, if I could do it all over again I would have supported Billary over Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary race — because Obama’s “governing” style is fairly Clintonesque, I can’t see that a President Billary would be a huge improvement over the status quo. (Admittedly, U.S. poverty did decrease dramatically under Bill Clinton, however.)

Still, if it came down to Billary or Obama for 2012, I’d take Billary. I’d switch my voter registration from the Green Party to the Democratic Party in order to vote for Billary over Obama in a 2012 Democratic presidential primary. Yes, Obama is that bad.

But hopefully it won’t come down to a choice between Billary or Obama.

Hopefully an actual progressive will challenge the worthless Obama.

Reports The Daily Caller* within the past 24 hours:

Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and perennial third-party presidential candidate, announced last month that he would work to find a Democrat to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012.

Nader now says that a primary challenge is a near certainty.

“What [Obama] did this week is just going to energize that effort,” Nader promised in an interview with The Daily Caller. “I would guess that the chances of there being a challenge to Obama in the primary are almost 100 percent.”

The only question, he said, is the stature of that opponent and whether it will be either “an ex-senator or an ex-governor” or “an intellectual leader or an environmental leader.”

In approximately a week and a half there will be “another chapter of this effort,” Nader predicted.

The Public Citizen founder said he disapproved of how Obama handled recent debt ceiling negotiations, and claimed the deal’s failings prompted this week’s dramatic stock market drop.

“He made a deal that did not provide for a public works project to create jobs all over the country. All he did was he agreed to cut spending,” Nader said. “And that’s what the market is reacting to.”

President Obama “shouldn’t have even had that problem,” Nader said. “When he surrendered the continuation of tax cuts for the rich last December, the least he could have gotten was the debt ceiling increased. He didn’t even do that. So he set himself up for this hostage situation by the Republicans and it’s his own fault. And the country and the workers are paying the price.”

Asked whether the Tea Party movement was responsible for an unsavory resolution to debt ceiling negotiations, Nader responded: “It’s not really a movement. It’s the conservative non-libertarian wing of the Republican Party.”

Nader continued: “Ron Paul is a conservative libertarian. These are the conservative corporatists that have decided they like the brand name ‘Tea Party’ because the press reports on every movement of the Tea Party. So they’ve jumped on the bandwagon and hijacked it.

“There are a lot of Tea Party people, for example, who wanted more revenues. I think the polls showed that half of them wanted more revenues. And a lot of the Tea Party people want to get out of the wars. But its been hijacked by the corporatists.”

Nader said he doesn’t plan to launch another campaign for president, either as an independent candidate or as a primary challenger to President Obama.

In 2000, Nader received nearly three million votes as the Green Party’s presidential candidate. Some disillusioned Democrats blamed him for handing Florida, and with it the election, to George W. Bush.

Nader ran for president in 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008 as a left-wing alternative to the Democratic nominee, but has decided another campaign is “very unlikely.”

“I’ve done my rounds,” he said.

Part of me is disappointed that Nader doesn’t plan to run in 2012 — because I’d vote for him, very most likely — but another part of me, a larger part of me, is glad that Nader doesn’t plan to run again, since because the 2000 presidential election debacle, he has been a waaay-too-convenient scapegoat for the establishmentarian (that is, utterly spineless) Democrats.

I mean, fuck, Al Gore didn’t even win his own home state of Tennessee in 2000, yet the Dems don’t blame Gore for having been too weak a presidential candidate — nooo, they blame Nader for having exercised his right to run for president, as though he didn’t have that right.

If I could pick Obama’s 2012 challenger, it would be Howard Dean.

He has balls, like Billary does, but I think that he’s much more likely to stand up for the middle class, the working class and the poor than is Billary.

Also, of course, it was the progressive wave that Dean started in 2002 or 2003 that the lazy hack Obama just co-opted as his own and rode on into the White House.  

Dean still was not, in my estimation, the right candidate in 2004. But he’s the one for the job now. And he deserves the job. He probably would be the president that Barack Obama only promised us that he would be.

P.S. Don’t miss this column by Ted Rall. He nails it, as usual. My only addendum is that you shouldn’t vote only if there is no true progressive to vote for. Should a true progressive presidential candidate emerge, or should a stronger Democratic candidate (like Howard Dean) emerge, then you should vote for him or her.

P.P.S. Because California is the most populous blue state in the nation, I think that it’s pretty significant that the California Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus has called for a primary challenger to Obama. They want to see an actual progressive run on the Democratic ticket in 2012. I’m wholly on board with their effort.

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*The Daily Caller is an outfit by the loathesome wingnut Tucker Carlson, so I don’t necessarily take this piece for gospel, but my guess is that it’s accurate. It sure sounds like the Ralph Nader that I know and love.

Elena Kagan is a pussy

Associated Press photo

Elena Kagan testifies before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee today in her quest to become the newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Kagan, being a woman (biologically, at least, to our knowledge…) is in a prime position to subvert the patriarchy, but she refuses to do so, instead choosing to claim that she just goes along with the good ol’ boys — like a good woman should.

I’m not following the confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan much, since her confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court pretty much is a foregone conclusion.

But I am struck by what a pussy she is.

First, she and her supporters dodged the question of her sexual orientation. My money is on her being a big ol’ dyke. (We fags and dykes may use the words “fag” and “dyke”; you breeders may not.) By refusing to be out and proud, no gay man or lesbian — er, fag or dyke — is helping to advance the cause of equal human and civil rights for non-heterosexuals.

And now, Kagan is smooching militant stupid white male ass, assuring her stupid white male Repugnican inquisitors (especially uber-asshole Repugnican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alafuckingbama*) that of course she blindly, bleatingly, wholeheartedly supports the stupid white man’s military-industrial complex!

It’s a sign of how too-much power the bloated military-industrial complex has that a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court should feel the need to lick the asses of the members of the U.S. military-industrial complex and their brain-dead pseudo-patriotic cheerleaders — especially when the last justified war that the U.S. military fought was World War II and given the fact that now the U.S. military doesn’t stand for actual defense, but stands for corporate expansion (Iraq’s oil fields were nationalized before the Vietraq War but now are open to corporate exploitation, for example) and war profiteering (Halliburton, anyone?).

We civilians are supposed to be in charge of the U.S. military — not the other way around. Even though the wingnuts would rather that stupid white military men be in charge of the show, that’s not how it fucking works.

If Kagan had balls, she’d not only proudly assert her sexual orientation, but she would assert the fact that the U.S. military is to answer to civilian control and not vice-versa.

The Obama administration’s selection of the balls-less Kagan is just yet another example of how Clintonesque (that’s synonymous with milquetoast) the Obama administration is.

Elena Kagan — having been nominated by the president who promised us “hope” and “change” (only in order to get our campaign contributions, we realize now) — should make me moist.

But because she has no balls, she leaves me quite dry.

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*Here the wingnut is pictured today during Kagan’s grilling:

Associated Press photo

You can tell that some people are major fucking assholes just by looking at them. Sessions is one of them.

An open letter to Joe Solmonese

Joe Solmonese — here he is rubbing shoulders with pseudo-progressive Billary Clinton (the Clintons did little to nothing for gay men and lesbians but they sure have liked their money!):

— is the president of the Human Rights Campaign, probably the nation’s most powerful gay and lesbian rights lobbying group.

From what I can tell, Joe really likes himself.

Well, probably not, not really, not when you really examine it. I mean, how can you sell out your people for personal gain like he does and really like yourself?

But he “likes” himself like so many pretty and rich white gay men “like” themselves, I mean.

Dear Joe (may I call you Joe?):

I have given the Human Rights Campaign a considerable amount of money, probably especially after Proposition Hate passed here in California in November. Not only am I a member of the HRC — well, I think that I’m still a member in good standing, since I still get the quarterly HRC publication Equality in the mail– but I’ve purchased a lot of stuff from the HRC website’s shop, and I do believe that I’ve made at least a few one-time online contributions to the HRC as well.

But Joe, I’m concerned.

Looking at the fall 2009 issue of Equality, I see some things that I find disturbing.

I see all of these full-page ads for corporations. There is, on page 6, a full-page ad for American Airlines. Does American Airlines pay its pilots diddly squat, like Michael Moore exposed in his latest work, “Capitalism: A Love Story”?

On page 8 of Equality is a full-page ad for Chevron. Chevron. Didn’t Condoleezza “You Know She’s Lying When Her Lips Are Moving” Rice go directly from Chevron to the BushCheneyCorp?

I mean, Chevron, Joe? Because we all know that global warming is bullshit! Condi says so!

I don’t know much about Wall Street, Joe, being quite middle class (if, um, that), but on page 10 is a full-page ad for Deloitte, on page 14 is a full-page ad for Ernst & Young, and on page 15 is a full-page ad for Citigroup. Aren’t these all players on Wall Street, and wasn’t at least one of these Wall Street players featured in “Capitalism: A Love Story” as one of the recipients of the bullshit $700 billion taxpayer bailout of Wall Street? (Wasn’t it Citigroup that Moore was wrapping crime-scene tape around in “Capitalism”?)

Wait, there’s more. On page 18 is a full-page ad for Prudential.

Oh, and Chevron won’t be outdone, because on page 22 is a full-page ad for Shell Oil.

But hey, escape from all of this depressing talk about corporate responsibility and check out “the new Luxor” in Las Vegas, which has a full-page ad on page 24 (and features an apparent lesbian apparently using another apparent lesbian for her money — sweet!).  

Page 31 of the current issue of Equality advises us readers to “SUPPORT [the HRC’s] NATIONAL CORPORATE SPONSORS” and lists such corporate sponsors as American Airlines, Citigroup, Bank of America, Chevron, Harrah’s Entertainment, Nike, Shell, Chase and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Sure, there are some corporate sponsors of HRC that don’t strike me as too bad and some I haven’t even heard of, such as Google and Dell and Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams (is this a corporation or are these two rich gay men who are in love with each other and who would like the whole world to know by spelling it out that way?). But most of HRC’s corporate sponsors send shivers up my spine, Joe.

My point, Joe, is that it’s not enough for me to know that someone affectionately prefers members of his or her same sex like I do and/or that his or her corporation is willing to give the Human Rights Campaign some money. I want to know that a person or a corporation isn’t causing others harm, even if he or she or it is not overtly anti-gay.

And as a gay man, I’m sick and tired of being reduced to a target group by corporations that don’t wuv me, as they claim, but that just want my money. It’s calculated, Joe. Corporations almost never do anything that they don’t believe will help their profits. If appearing to be pro-gay-and-lesbian will bring in the profits, then the corporations will do it.

I look at the whole picture, Joe, not just my tiny place within it.

Your concerns might be very different from mine, Joe. You might make a lot of money as the president of the HRC, and thus these “corporate sponsors” might be very important for you to be able to continue to live in the way in which I’m guessing that you’ve become accustomed.

But, Joe, when I weigh your personal fortune against things like, oh, say, the future of the entire planet itself, the future which the likes of Chevron and Shell and many if not most other transnational corporations are threatening, well, um, no offense, Joe, but I’m going to have to put the well-being of the entire planet above your own personal well-being.

Joe, lots and lots of corporations give a teeny-tiny percentage of their obscene profits to groups like the Human Rights Campaign in order to make it look like they’re actually not that bad after all.   

But, Joe, they’re actually that bad after all.

Have you seen the documentary “Flag Wars,” Joe? (Please indulge me a little here…) In that documentary, gay men and lesbians (living in Ohio) are portrayed as selfish, cold-hearted money-grubbers who care only about their own personal fortunes.

There’s a rich white lesbian who, in one great scene, goes on a drunken rant about how great capitalism has been to her. (It’s funny how both the impoverished and the rich sure seem to like to get drunk a lot, but I digress…)

In another scene in “Flag Wars,” an apparently rich white gay man states that historical homes in his neighborhood have to be “saved” from the poor. These homes have to be snatched away from their impoverished long-time residents by rich gay men and lesbians, renovated, and then sold for big profits. Screw the poor and save the homes! That’s what the gay men and the lesbians in the film say, in effect, quite unabashedly: it’s profits over people.

What kind of human beings do we gay men and lesbians want to be, Joe?

I don’t know about you, but as for me, before I am a gay man, Joe, I am a human being, and you know what? I don’t want to be the kind of human being like the heartless gay men and lesbians who are portrayed in “Flag Wars,” and the Human Rights Campaign encourages gay men and lesbians to be this kind of human being by kowtowing to corporations, perhaps especially to the Wall Street players and big oil.

I don’t know that I can continue to be a member of the Human Rights Campaign, Joe. HRC’s pro-corporate values certainly don’t seem to be in alignment with my own values as a gay man who cares about others besides myself.

I think that I already know what your counter-argument will be, Joe: HRC really, really needs the money that the corporations throw its way. And that if you didn’t accept that money as HRC president, then someone else would. Yadda yadda yadda…

But you know what, Joe? I am sick and tired of being sold out by gay and lesbian “leaders.” It’s not just you — it’s almost all gay and lesbian “leaders” who, for just the right amount of money (which often isn’t really that much) and the opportunity to do such things as to be photographed with Billary Clinton, will sell their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters (and indeed, all of the rest of humankind) out.

So we see all kinds of things that are harmful to the gay and lesbian community. We see ads for alcohol and for bars in almost all of the gay and lesbian publications, and often a gay and lesbian community’s “leaders” (such as is the case here in Sacramento) are the owners of the gay and lesbian bars that encourage alcoholism and smoking and drunken hookups, which are so helpful for the gay and lesbian community!

We see the ads for the anti-HIV drugs placed by the big-pharma corporations in which healthy-looking, young, muscular models give gay men the idea that HIV is no big deal — if you catch it you can just take a pill.

(The other gay and lesbian “leaders” in Sacramento and elsewhere are the publishers of the gay and lesbian rags who personally profit from such advertising that actually harms the very same community that they claim they are helping.)

When we gay men and lesbians aren’t being encouraged by our “leaders” and their for-personal-profit businesses and publications to be drinking and smoking and sexing, we’re encouraged to buy stuff, to use materialism (including personal investments and pointless travel) as our drug of choice. (The fall 2009 issue of Equality also includes full-page ads for travel agencies, hotel chains and furniture.)  

Is there nothing more to being gay or lesbian than catering to our addictions to chemical substances, to sex and to money and things, Joe?

Can we gay men and lesbians perhaps be bold and brave leaders instead of being trembling followers, and help our fellow men and women, regardless of their sexual orientation, out of the spirit-and-soul-crushing effects of the humongous corporations that now control almost every aspect of our lives, even the groups like HRC that are supposed to be helping to make us free?

Joe, can you be part of a revolution that actually makes gay men and lesbians free, truly free, instead of keeping them enslaved to such things as materialism and alcoholism and sex addiction and other addictions?

Or are you utterly unable to part with the lifestyle that you have attained, even though your lifestyle comes at the expense of those you are supposed to be helping and freeing?

Please let me know, Joe.

But, truthfully, I’m not holding my breath for your response, because you seem to be addicted to corporate money, and it just might take an intervention, because I doubt that you can overcome your addiction on your own.

Thanks for listening.

Yours,

Robert Crook
Sacramento, California

P.S. From what I know of Harvey Milk and what he thought of Democrats who just use the members of the gay and lesbian community as ATMs — and what he thought of those members of the gay and lesbian community who support these Democrats — Milk is not just turning, but he is spinning, in his grave.

(Actually, you might know that Milk was cremated and not interred, but that fact just doesn’t lend itself to my point…)