Trump's Critical Role in Leading America to a Pandemic Catastrophe

Covid-19 is out of control in a number of states - included GOP led states that rushed to reopen at the demand of Donald Trump - and now Trump is trying to block more funds for testing and contact tracing and refuses to back a nationwide mandate that masks be worn in public settings.  Trump's reasons for blocking the funding is that in his mind more testing will show the magnitude of the pandemic and further highlight his regime's failure to properly lead in fighting the pandemic in the manner successfully used in other advanced nations. The resistance to masks seems to be part of Trump - and his knuckle dragging base's rejection of science and expertise in general.  Sadly, Trump's current conduct is more of what has played a critical role in what might have been a successfully contained pandemic to one that is now gripping much of the country and forcing a number of states to reconsider shutting down their economies.  A very long piece in the New York Times looks at Trump's role in leading much of the country to disaster.  Here are article highlights:

Each morning at 8 as the coronavirus crisis was raging in April, Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, convened a small group of aides to steer the administration through what had become a public health, economic and political disaster.

Seated around Mr. Meadows’s conference table and on a couch in his office down the hall from the Oval Office, they saw their immediate role as practical problem solvers. Produce more ventilators. Find more personal protective equipment. Provide more testing.

But their ultimate goal was to shift responsibility for leading the fight against the pandemic from the White House to the states.  . . . an attempt to escape blame for a crisis that had engulfed the country — perhaps one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership in generations.

Over a critical period beginning in mid-April, President Trump and his team convinced themselves that the outbreak was fading, that they had given state governments all the resources they needed to contain its remaining “embers” and that it was time to ease up on the lockdown.

In doing so, he was ignoring warnings that the numbers would continue to drop only if social distancing was kept in place, rushing instead to restart the economy and tend to his battered re-election hopes.

A sharp pivot soon followed, with consequences that continue to plague the country today as the virus surges anew.

Even as a chorus of state officials and health experts warned that the pandemic was far from under control, Mr. Trump went, in a matter of days, from proclaiming that he alone had the authority to decide when the economy would reopen to pushing that responsibility onto the states. The government issued detailed reopening guidelines, but almost immediately, Mr. Trump began criticizing Democratic governors who did not “liberate” their states.

Mr. Trump’s bet that the crisis would fade away proved wrong. But an examination of the shift in April and its aftermath shows that the approach he embraced was not just a misjudgment. Instead, it was a deliberate strategy that he would stick doggedly to as evidence mounted that, in the absence of strong leadership from the White House, the virus would continue to infect and kill large numbers of Americans.

He and his top aides would openly disdain the scientific research into the disease and the advice of experts on how to contain it, seek to muzzle more authoritative voices like Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and continue to distort reality even as it became clear that his hopes for a rapid rebound in the economy and his electoral prospects were not materializing.

Now, interviews with more than two dozen officials inside the administration and in the states, and a review of emails and documents, reveal previously unreported details about how the White House put the nation on its current course during a fateful period this spring.

·         Key elements of the administration’s strategy were formulated out of sight in Mr. Meadows’s daily meetings, by aides who for the most part had no experience with public health emergencies and were taking their cues from [Trump] the president.

·         Dr. Birx . . . failed to account for a vital variable: how Mr. Trump’s rush to urge a return to normal would help undercut the social distancing and other measures that were holding down the numbers.

·        [Trump] The president quickly came to feel trapped by his own reopening guidelines. States needed declining cases to reopen, or at least a declining rate of positive tests. But more testing meant overall cases were destined to go up, undercutting [Trump's] the president’s push to crank up the economy. The result was to intensify Mr. Trump’s remarkable public campaign against testing, a vivid example of how he often waged war with science and his own administration’s experts and stated policies.

·         Mr. Trump’s bizarre public statements, his refusal to wear a mask and his pressure on states to get their economies going again left governors and other state officials scrambling to deal with a leadership vacuum.

·         Not until early June did White House officials even begin to recognize that their assumptions about the course of the pandemic had proved wrong.

It was the end of March and his initial, 15-day effort to slow the spread of the virus by essentially shutting down the country was expiring in days. Sitting in front of the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office were Drs. Fauci and Birx, along with other top officials. Days earlier, Mr. Trump had said he envisioned the country being “opened up and raring to go” by Easter, but now he was on the verge of announcing that he would keep the country shut down for another 30 days.

“Do you really think we need to do this?” the president asked Dr. Fauci. “Yeah, we really do need to do it,” Dr. Fauci replied, explaining again the federal government’s role in making sure the virus did not explode across the country.

But even as [Trump] the president was acknowledging the need for tough decisions, he and his aides would soon be looking to do the opposite — build a public case that the federal government had completed its job and unshackle the president from ownership of the response.

By mid-April, Mr. Trump had grown publicly impatient with the stay-at-home recommendations he had reluctantly endorsed. Weekly unemployment claims made clear the economy was cratering and polling was showing his campaign bleeding support. Republican governors were agitating to lift the lockdown and the conservative political machinery was mobilizing to oppose what it saw as constraints on individual freedom.

The wind down of the federal government’s response would play out over the next several weeks. The daily briefings with Mr. Trump ended on April 24. The Meadows team started barring Dr. Fauci from making most television appearances, lest he go off message and suggest continued high risk from the virus.

By June the president was regularly making nonsensical statements like, “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.”

Later, it was clear that states that rushed to reopen before meeting the criteria in the guidelines — like Arizona, Texas and Alabama — would have among the worst surges in new cases.

Dr. Birx’s belief that the United States would mirror Italy turned out to be disastrously wrong. The Italians had been almost entirely compliant with stay-at-home orders and social distancing, squelching new infections to negligible levels before the country slowly reopened. Americans, by contrast, began backing away by late April from what social distancing efforts they had been making, egged on by Mr. Trump.
The real-world consequences of Mr. Trump’s abdication of responsibility rippled across the country.

Other nations had moved aggressively to employ an array of techniques that Mr. Trump never mobilized on a federal level, including national testing strategies and contact tracing to track down and isolate people who had interacted with newly diagnosed patients.

“These things were done in Germany, in Italy, in Greece, Vietnam, in Singapore, in New Zealand and in China,” said Andy Slavitt, a former federal health care official who had been advising the White House.

“They were not secret,” he said. “Not mysterious. And these were not all wealthy countries. They just took accountability for getting it done. But we did not do that here. There was zero chance here that we would ever have been in a situation where we would be dealing with ‘embers.’ ”

By early June, it was clear that the White House had gotten it wrong. . . . . Digging into new data from Dr. Birx, they concluded the virus was in fact spreading with invisible ferocity during the weeks in May when states were opening up with Mr. Trump’s encouragement and many were all but declaring victory.

The number of new cases has now surged far higher than the previous peak of more than 36,000 a day in mid-April. On Thursday, there were more than 75,000 confirmed new cases, a record.

Mr. Trump’s disdain for testing continues to affect the country.

“When we were trying to get people to wear masks, they would point to the president and say, well, not something that we need to do,” he said.

Mr. Suarez expressed similar frustrations with Mr. Trump’s dismissive approach to mask wearing. “People follow leaders,” he said, before rephrasing his remarks. “People follow the people who are supposed to be leaders.”

Trump has thousands of avoidable deaths on his hands.

Jobless Claims May Hit 5 Million This Week

Mitch McConnell has told Nancy Pelosi to forget about drafting a second stimulus bill demonstrating either how out of touch he is with reality or how little he cares about average Americans finding themselves suddenly unemployed (either one you pick is an indictment) with state unemployment offices unable to keep up with new claims being filed. Today, the past weeks new unemployment number swill be released and it looks like it will be horrific. One can hope it will force McConnell to get his head out of his ass, but don't hold your breath.  This is a man who thinks giving huge tax breaks to the very wealthy is fine, but who begrudges increasing meager unemployment payments.  A piece in the New York Times looks at projections of what today's numbers may look like.  Here are excerpts:

The Department of Labor reported last week that more than three million people filed for unemployment from March 15 to March 21, the largest single-week increase in American history.

But this Thursday’s number, which reflects claims filed last week, could rise to 5.6 million, according to an analysis of Google search data by the economists Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham of Yale and Aaron Sojourner of the University of Minnesota.

Morgan Stanley estimates that claims will rise to 4.5 million in tomorrow’s report; Goldman Sachs’s estimate is 5.5 million.

If these forecasts are accurate, there will be as many claims in two weeks as in the first six months of the Great Recession.

A few weeks ago, state agencies were releasing their own counts of jobless claims ahead of the federal government, but as those numbers reached record levels, the Trump administration asked them to withhold their counts before the official national release. (Some states, like Pennsylvania, are ignoring that request.) State resources have been severely strained with astronomical levels of interest from recently laid-off workers, leading to long wait times, nonworking websites and jammed phone lines. This suggests the true numbers are higher than what the Department of Labor will report Thursday. Mr. Goldsmith-Pinkham and Mr. Sojourner expect the previous numbers to be revised upward with the release of the new numbers Thursday. In normal times and even during typical recessions, so many people are being hired and fired daily that it’s hard to predict how many people will end up filing for unemployment.

The difference this time is that there is very little hiring to replace the losses, and the researchers thought their forecasts could be more accurate. So far, Mr. Goldsmith-Pinkham and Mr. Sojourner have found the relationship between searches and claims to be relatively stable.

Republicans Were Warned About Coronavirus Yet Failed to Act

Donald Trump is trying mightily to (i) make the public forget his previous lies about the coronavirus and his regime's failure to act when it should have, and (ii) change the subject such as co-opting today's press conference with a drug trafficking announcement.  But, it is important to remember that Trump was aided and abetted in his failure to properly respond by Republicans, especially those in the U.S. Senate who ignored the pandemic threat and did what they always do: kiss Trump's ass and attack Democrats sounding the alarm. Among the worse offenders is Mitch McConnell who is in a race with Trump for the title of who most damaged constitutional government. A column in the Washington Post looks at McConnell's recent disingenuous remarks and his own malfeasance in failing to protect the nation while preoccupied protecting Trump (and lining his own and his wife's pockets),  Here are column excerpts:

Mitch McConnell got an early jump on April Fools’ Day this year, blaming Democrats for the Trump administration’s failure to prepare for the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“It came up while we were, you know, tied down in the impeachment trial,” the Senate majority leader said Tuesday. “And I think it diverted the attention of the government.”

In addition to implicitly acknowledging that President Trump wasn’t paying attention to the growing danger, it was a curious entry into the blame game for the Kentucky Republican, who recently said this isn’t “a time for partisan bickering.”

If anybody was diverted, it was McConnell, who, along with most of his GOP colleagues, again put lockstep defense of the president ahead of the national interest. During the three weeks of the impeachment trial, public health experts gave stark warnings about the growing biological threat. In that same time, several Senate Democrats (and a few Republicans) urged a more robust mobilization.

You know who said nothing? McConnell. . . . the first time he spoke about the coronavirus in public was Feb. 25, nearly three weeks after the impeachment trial ended, when he was asked at a news conference whether administration officials are “on the same page when it comes to combating coronavirus.”

In his first substantive remarks on the virus, two days later, he praised the Trump administration’s response to the virus and condemned Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s “partisan political attacks,” “posturing” and “performative outrage” because Schumer called Trump’s coronavirus funding request inadequate.

After the impeachment trial ended and as the coronavirus menace grew, McConnell had the Senate take up two campaign-year abortion bills that had no chance of passage.

It was an echo of the impeachment trial itself. During impeachment, public servants and Democrats warned that Trump was putting his political interests (an announced probe of his opponent) over national security (by withholding military aid to an ally in distress) — and Republicans stood by him. Likewise, as the virus spread, experts and many Democrats pleaded for more urgency. But Trump put his political interests (stock market gains) ahead of public health (by playing down the virus danger). And Republicans averted their gaze.

In the middle of the impeachment trial, on Jan. 26, Schumer demanded that the administration declare a public health emergency so that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could access more funds. . . . Senate Democrats point to 32 other warnings, requests and statements they made seeking action against the virus — all while the Senate impeachment trial was underway.

More general warnings long pre-dated impeachment and came from a few Republicans, too. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) warned in 2017 about Trump’s attempts to cut funding for pandemic preparedness. In 2018, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) repeatedly warned the White House that we are “unprepared for pandemic outbreaks.”

Senate Republicans knew the coronavirus danger. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (N.C.), while saying publicly that we were “better prepared than ever,” seems to have been spooked enough about the coming pandemic to sell off stock worth as much as $1.7 million in mid-February and is now under Justice Department investigation. Around the same time, Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.), the Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, complained that administration officials refused to participate in a hearing where he received alarming forecasts about the virus.

And so a bad situation turned into a catastrophe because of a familiar pathology: a president who repeatedly puts self-interest above the national interest — and political allies in Congress who let him.

The RNC: A Bunch of Suckers and Sellouts

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker is off the GOP reservation again, this time writing a column that places the blame for Donald Trump's rise and the metastasizing cancer within the Republican Party at the feet of the Republican National Committee ("RNC") which sold out to Trump or allowed themselves to be suckered and played for fools.  The indictment, while certainly true, also applies far down the GOP's party structure and began years ago when those who should never have been elected to local party committees or allowed to win nominations were welcomed instead of being firmly rejected if not openly condemned.  Trump is merely the logical extension of a failure of leadership that applies up and down the party hierarchy.  Short turn opportunism and a refusal to reject extremists of all stripes - and a refusal to face objective reality - are what set the GOP on its march to insanity.  Here are column highlights:

Perhaps the strongest indicator that Trump will lose is his own premature distribution of blame. As far as he is concerned, defeat couldn’t be his fault.

The obvious truth is that Trump never should have been the Republican nominee, as even Trump probably would admit. When he descended the escalator to announce his candidacy, he was at just 1 percent — a barely perceptible speck on the continuum of Republican candidates.

He was ignored — or at least not taken seriously — by nearly everyone for good reason. And when he started spouting hot rhetoric, few in the GOP leadership worried much since he’d surely be moving along any day. This was not to be, in part because, as Trump commented laughing to a friend, who told me: “I had no idea it would be so easy.”

Translation: Once he realized he was dealing with a bunch of suckers, he continued to play them. What fun — and, voila.

The suckers of whom he was speaking are the party leadership, specifically: Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and RNC communications director Sean Spicer. If these names don’t ring a bell, congratulations, you don’t watch TV. Because Priebus, when not jetting around with Trump on his gold-plated private plane, and Spicer are on one talk show or another nearly every time you look at a cable news screen. They’ve worn more makeup the past year than most women do in a lifetime.

They’re the elephants in the green room, in other words. Everyone sees them clearly but manages to avoid speaking openly of the obvious — that Priebus has presided over the ruin of the Republican Party. Why isn’t he being held accountable? Why isn’t he being called to the mat for allowing Trump’s rise, which might not have been possible had the party chair done his job?

Why was everyone willing to stand by and watch this reality-TV character take charge?

“Because [Priebus] is their boy,” a disgruntled top Republican told me. “He’s given them what they wanted. He’s kept the money flowing.”

The RNC gang sold out. When Trump launched his campaign by ranting about undocumented Mexicans as murderers and rapists, the party leadership should have shouted him down. Priebus should have summoned Trump to Washington and explained how things were going to go. He might have handed Trump the GOP’s autopsy report from the 2012 election and referred him to the “Hispanics” section of the chapter on cultivating “Demographic Partners,” saying: This is what you’re going to do from now on.

Would Trump have agreed? Probably not. But then Priebus should have said: Well, then, I’ll have to break you down during the primaries. At every opportunity, Priebus should have made the case that Trump, who eventually alienated not just Hispanics but also African Americans and women, doesn’t represent the Republican Party. Instead, Priebus and others feared a base that hadn’t formed around Trump yet and, by their inaction, contributed to Trump’s success.

By letting Trump rise to the top, as oil slicks tend to, Priebus has left the party in such a gelatinous mess Republicans will need a hazmat team to clean it up. And for this, he’d like to serve a third term?

Chief Justice John Roberts, an Abysmal Failure

Chief Justice John Roberts once stated that he wanted to restore the image of the United States Supreme Court with the American public.  Instead, he has led the Court to historic lows in public approval and seems hell bent on crafting majority opinions that history will view as horrifically wrong.  While Roberts Court's rulings may sit well with big business and theocrats, they ought to send shivers down the backs of most Americans.  A piece in Salon looks at the sinking image of the Supreme Court and the ways in which Roberts will be remembered, absent huge changes, as an abysmal failure by history.  Here are article highlights:

It wasn’t quite March 6, 1857, or Dec. 12, 2000, but make no mistake: June 30, 2014, was not a good day for the U.S. Supreme Court. Not simply because it saw the court once again unveil two major decisions decided by a slim majority along partisan lines, but because the argument offered by the majority in the more controversial and closely followed of the two decisions was so conspicuously unprincipled that it will almost surely further erode public confidence in the nation’s highest court. As a Gallup poll also released Monday morning showed, it was already low; I bet it’s about to sink even lower.

In order to understand why Monday was such an important — and unfortunate — day for one of the United States’ most hallowed institutions, it’s necessary to revisit something Chief Justice John Roberts said in an interview way back in 2006. After crediting John Marshall’s legendary diplomatic skills for maintaining the unity and establishing the credibility of the court during its crucial early years, Roberts argued that, after 30-odd years of discord and squabbling, the Supreme Court was “ripe for a similar refocus on functioning as an institution” rather than as a collection of individuals with their separate politics, prejudices and philosophies. If the court failed to come together under his leadership, Roberts warned, it would “lose its credibility and legitimacy as an institution.”

Remember now, this was in 2006, when 5-4 splits on major, hot-button decisions was not yet the norm. 

[I]t’s hard to conclude that John Roberts is, by the standards he established in 2006, anything more than an abysmal failure. More than at any time since perhaps the Lochner Era, the court is not only seen as a political actor, but is considered a particularly ideological and combative one at that. . . . . In 2005, Gallup asked Americans how much confidence they had in the Supreme Court: 41 percent said “a great deal” or “quite a lot.” That number today? A paltry 30 percent. 

 It’s in this context that Monday’s two big rulings — Harris v. Quinn and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. — are most properly understood.

So when Justice Alito, who was the chief author of both of this term’s blockbuster decisions, relies on arguments as transparently political as those he wielded to decide Harris and Hobby Lobby, it makes Roberts’ work toward improving the court’s image that much harder. 

In Roberts’ court, it’s not abstract ideas of justice and law and republican government that win the day — it’s corporations, religious conservatives, employers and anyone who worries first and foremost about the interests of the powerful and the elite. Unless John Roberts’ goals were other than those he outlined in 2006, Monday’s decisions can only be interpreted as yet another saddening defeat.

 When the vast majority of the public loses confidence in the Supreme Court, it does not bode well for the rule of law.  

Barack Obama's "Learned Heplessness"

A column in yesterday's Washington Post looks at an issue that drives me to distraction: Barack Obama's failure to exhibit bold leadership and willingness to allow himself to be played by Republicans time and time again. Given the economic situation gripping the nation, bold measures and leadership are needed. Instead, we get timidity and a capitulation to GOP demands often even before serious discussions begin. This lack of leadership is what would make me consider voting for someone else in 2012 were the Republicans able to nominate a viable opponent - something that's admittedly a long shot given the manner in which the GOP leadership has come to be controlled by the twin Frankenstein monsters that control the GOP base: the Tea Party and the Christian Taliban. Here are some column highlights:
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Is Barack Obama a president or a pawn? And is there any difference nowadays? Seeing how narrow the boundaries of debate have become on the biggest issues facing the country makes the question unavoidable.
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On the central near-term economic issue – jobs – Paul Krugman has trenchantly described the “learned helplessness” gripping the White House. As a result we hear only timid ideas that can’t make a real dent. Ditto on the long-term debt, . . .
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But the phenomenon goes far beyond jobs and debt. On the issues of bank capital and Afghanistan, both of which will be the targets of momentous decisions in the weeks ahead, the options being debated seem just as inexplicably narrow and out of touch.
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Take bank capital first – specifically, the amount of capital large banks are required to hold as a buffer against loss. Inadequate capital at “systemically important” financial institutions was the main reason the housing meltdown led to epic taxpayer bailouts. Yet higher capital rules are being fought by big bankers, because such rules threaten their ability to pay themselves outrageous bonuses . . . . Why would we listen (again) to the self-interested pleas of the same folks that helped tank the economy even as they got rich, escaped prosecution, and passed the bill to the rest of us?
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Or take Afghanistan, where 100,000 U.S. troops will run through upward of $150 billion this year chasing what the CIA guesses are 30 to 100 members of al-Qaeda. No one supporting this decade-old war can define what “success” really means. Yet the troop withdrawal options the president will review starting this week range from 3,000 on the low side to perhaps 20,000 on the high. How can the “boldest” withdrawal option leave us with more troops in Afghanistan than Obama inherited?
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When the voices at the table are so deeply invested in the institutions and habits of mind that brought the economy low, or that have made Afghanistan a quagmire, how likely is it that the options they present to a president will really change things?
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A president’s power to shape events are more limited than we generally think. But a president’s power to shape the boundaries of debate are limited only by his imagination and by his appetite for political risk. From the looks of it, Barack Obama has plenty of imagination. So if he chooses not to challenge these boundaries, he’s a prisoner not only of entrenched forces arrayed behind the status quo; he’s a pawn, ultimately, of his own ambition.
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Frankly, but for the likelihood that the GOP nominate a nut case or someone out of the mainstream, Obama does not deserve re-election at this point. Millions of us voted for a leader but instead we got a timid follower.

Fears of American Decline Are Fueling the Tea Party

One of the forces motivating the hysteria of the Tea Party - other than the latent racism and hatred of anyone and everyone who the Tea Party set deems as "other" - is the fixation that America is in decline. The truth, of course, is that the nation IS in decline. The irony, however, is that it Republican policies more so than Democrat policies that have helped fuel the decline: e.g., needless wars that have blown up the deficit, lax financial markets regulation that helped set the stage for the financial market meltdown - the list goes on and on. Yet the Tea Party loons flock to support the Republicans who have overseen the last decade of accelerating decline. E. J. Dionne has a column in the Washington Post looks at the phenomenon and questions whether or not the Liar-in-Chief can turn the downward slide around. Personally, my vote is a resounding no, since leadership would be required on Obama's part and we've seen that he not only isn't a leader but also lacks any kind of spine whatsoever. Here are highlights from Dionne's column:
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The current declinist sentiment arises from a widespread sense that in the first decade of the new millennium, our country squandered its international advantages, degraded its power with a long and unnecessary engagement in Iraq, wrecked the federal government's finances - and then saw its economy devastated by the worst financial crisis in 80 years. All this happened as China especially but also India began to challenge American preeminence. Americans feel something is badly wrong, and they are fully justified in their alarm.
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[T]he rise of right-wing nationalist movements - the Tea Party is as much about an assertive nationalism as it is about liberty - speaks to the country's longing for reassurance that it can maintain its leading position in the world. So does the insistent talk of his potential Republican rivals about America as an exceptional nation.
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Obama sprinkles his rhetoric with talk about competing and winning in the 21st century, and he often suggests that China is taking initiatives (in energy, mass transit and education, for example) that we are not. What's lacking is a coherent call for reform and restoration that is unapologetically patriotic and challenging.
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Obama should be even more insistent on using the contest with China as a prod, much as John F. Kennedy used competition with the Soviet Union to get the country moving again domestically as well as overseas. There are more important priorities than preserving low tax rates for rich people, larger strategic concerns than Iraq or even Afghanistan, and more compelling political purposes than rote attacks on government or a fear of new immigrants, or Islam, or our diversity as a nation. And we will all be in this effort together only if all of our citizens know they will have an opportunity to share in a resurgent America's success. For Obama, political renewal requires a bold and persistent campaign for national renewal.

The "Good People" Who Enable Anti-Gay Bigotry

There's a saying that bad things happen when good people do nothing to stop them. It's surely a true analysis in the context of anti-gay prejudice and bigotry. All too often our allies accept us but are totally unwilling to speak out and loudly condemn those who demonize us and even threaten us with physical violence. Being a gay accepting Christian or church denomination is a good thing. But something better would be a gay accepting Christian or entire denomination that is willing to go to the media and repeatedly call out the hate merchants and Christianists who wrap themselves in religion while providing justification for bigotry and the dehumanization of others. Too often our religious allies remain quiet out of apparent fear of offending some of the bigots that remain within their own flocks. But this sin of omission isn't limited to churches and their members, It extends across the public and most particularly to our elected officials starting at the very top in the White House. Weak kneed statements of support are in no wise equal to active condemnation of prejudice or real actions on pro-equality legislation. David Mixner has a good post on this issue. Here are some highlights:
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This holiday I was walking on West 47th Street just off Times Square when two guys came walking toward me. My guess is that they were in their late 20's but maybe a little older. They were well-dressed and seemed clean-cut and, frankly, harmless. As they approached me, they spat at me and said, "This is for you 'the King of the Faggots'." Whoa, I was totally taken back in time and I came to a halt at the force of the words.
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These guys felt they had permission to express their disgust and hate openly. That permission not only comes from the heated debate over the struggle for our freedom. Clearly there are those organized hate groups that actually encourage these actions. But we also can look to religious leaders who remain silent, the Pope who is on a LGBT witch hunt and yes, even our President who constantly says marriage is between a man and a woman implying that any other definition is just not normal and maybe even disgusting.
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The derogatory term had power. It hurt. It was degrading. The hate was scary. For a quick second, I felt dirty and very vulnerable. Don't get me wrong, it did not weaken my resolve to be a free man. In fact it is serving as a fuel so we can end such blatant hate in America. So to all those, gay or straight, who think it is cute to use the word "faggot" or "fag' either in joking or even self proclaimed empowerment......stop it.
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Every time a politician makes excuses for inaction or, like John McSenile, seeks to block equality, they are empowering hate and bigotry. The same holds true for every religious leader that allows hate groups like Family Research Council or corrupt hypocrites like Pope Benedict XVI to be the face of Christianity.

What Do Barack Obama and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams Have in Common?

Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams (pictured at right), has brought a shit storm upon himself with the decision to block the appointment of Dr Jeffrey John, the dean of St Albans and a gay cleric, as bishop of Southwark. Throughout the ongoing civil war within the Church of England over gays and gay clergy, Williams - like Barack Obama - has shown himself to be devoid of leadership and instead a follower who keeps hoping that somehow the rest of the Church will solve the issues that he fails to take leadership over. Also, like when Obama assumed the presidency, there were great hopes when Williams assumed the position as Archbishop of Canterbury - hopes that have been dashed just as Obama has failed to fulfil his campaign promises. Both men demonstrate that a refusal to lead when in a leadership position can have disastrous consequences and, indeed, often creates a larger mess than would have been the case if strong leadership had been exercise. Well reasoned and well delivered speeches do not make up for lack of action and an unwillingness to do the right thing. The Guardian has coverage on the latest furor Williams has brought about by not being a strong leader. Here are highlights:
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Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, is embroiled in a new crisis within the Church of England over the decision to block the appointment of a gay cleric as bishop of Southwark.
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Liberals and mainstream Anglicans are furious that the archbishop has once more failed to exert any leadership over mutinous forces threatening to split the church over the sensitive issue of homosexuality.
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Dr Jeffrey John, the dean of St Albans, was in the running for the senior position at Southwark until his name was leaked, enabling conservative clerics to stop the appointment. An embattled Williams has now launched an inquiry at Lambeth Palace to find out who divulged the name .
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The revival of the row over the place of gays in the clergy comes as Williams confronts the Church of England's next great divisive row at the start of this weekend's general synod in York: over whether female clergy can become bishops – a dispute that threatens to split the church in another direction and which he is desperately trying to head off with delaying tactics.
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John's supporters called for David Cameron to demonstrate his gay-friendly credentials by overruling the Crown Nominations Commission and insisting that John's name be considered further. They accused the archbishop of betraying his old friend a second time.
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One senior cleric said: "The time of reckoning has come for Rowan.
. . . Many are dismayed by his constant capitulation to the fringe noisemakers. "He could recover some credibility if he went mitre in hand to the PM and asked him to intervene and use his constitutional prerogative to consider the second name, whoever that is, and then to reject both if he so chooses."
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Chris Bryant, the Labour MP and former Anglican cleric, who is also gay, said: "I have long supported the election of bishops. If the clergy and people of a diocese want a gay bishop they should be able to vote for one, in which case Jeffrey John would have been archbishop of Canterbury by now. There are not many men who combine his spiritual depth and insight. The way things are conducted now does not do the church any favours." Downing Street sources suggested, however, that the prime minister was unlikely to intervene.

When Will Obama Start Acting Like a Leader?

At dinner tonight here in Key West the topic came around to the issue of the BP oil spill and the frustration that more and more are feeling over President Obama's continued failure to be a LEADER rather than a follower waiting for Congress to act or allowing matters to spill out of control as he fails to act in any meaningful manner. The topic got started by a sign hanging on a balcony on a building on Duval Street that called for a boycott of BP and action to address the continuing environmental catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. BP continues to dither while Obama acts like Nero fiddling as Rome burns. Add to that Obama's inability to control members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of the Army who are actively working to undermine the DADT repeal compromise and it's enough to make one want to start screaming. Sitting not even a mile from Truman's Little White House and the lack of leadership by the current president could not be more stark. Now Robert Reich is arguing that Obama needs to place BP under temporary receivership in order to deal with the fiasco. Personally, I believe Reich is right on target. Here are some highlights:
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It’s time for the federal government to put BP under temporary receivership, which gives the government authority to take over BP’s operations in the Gulf of Mexico until the gusher is stopped. This is the only way the public know what’s going on, be confident enough resources are being put to stopping the gusher, ensure BP’s strategy is correct, know the government has enough clout to force BP to use a different one if necessary, and be sure the President is ultimately in charge.
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If the government can take over giant global insurer AIG and the auto giant General Motors and replace their CEOs, in order to keep them financially solvent, it should be able to put BP’s north American operations into temporary receivership in order to stop one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.
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The Obama administration keeps saying BP is in charge because BP has the equipment and expertise necessary to do what’s necessary. But under temporary receivership, BP would continue to have the equipment and expertise. The only difference: the firm would unambiguously be working in the public’s interest. As it is now, BP continues to be responsible primarily to its shareholders, not to the American public.
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Five reasons for taking such action:
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1. We are not getting the truth from BP. BP has continuously and dramatically understated size of gusher.
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2. We have no way to be sure BP is devoting enough resources to stopping the gusher. BP is now saying it has no immediate way to stop up the well until August, when a new “relief” well will reach the gushing well bore, enabling its engineers to install cement plugs. August? If government were in direct control of BP’s north American assets, it would be able to devote whatever of those assets are necessary to stopping up the well right away.
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3. BP’s new strategy for stopping the gusher is highly risky. It wants to sever the leaking pipe cleanly from atop the failed blowout preventer, and then install a new cap so the escaping oil can be pumped up to a ship on the surface. But scientists say that could result in an even bigger volume of oil . . . .
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4. Right now, the U.S. government has no authority to force BP to adopt a different strategy. Saturday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and his team of scientists essentially halted BP’s attempt to cap the spewing well with a process known as “top kill,” which injected drilling mud and other materials to try to counter the upward pressure of the oil. Apparently the Administration team was worried that the technique would worsen the leak. But under what authority did the Administration act? It has none.
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5. The President is not legally in charge. As long as BP is not under the direct control of the government he has no direct line of authority, and responsibility is totally confused.
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The President should temporarily take over BP’s Gulf operations. We have a national emergency on our hands. No president would allow a nuclear reactor owned by a private for-profit company to melt down in the United States while remaining under the direct control of that company. The meltdown in the Gulf is the environmental equivalent.
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Americans voted for what they thought would be a strong leader. It's increasingly clear that we got the exact opposite. All the GOP needs to do in 2012 is not nominate a nutcase and Obama could well be a one term president and deservedly so.

Time for President Obama to Show Some Leadership

I and many others have vented frequently about President Obama's ongoing failure to provide leadership and make use of his bloody pulpit as President to push for the change that he promised during his campaign. His ill conceived efforts at bipartisanship with those who hate him and only seek to have him fail drives me to distraction. And don't even get me started on his broken campaign promises to LGBT Americans. Trying to build consensus and play nice make work in the Senate, but it clearly is not working for Obama as president. How many times does he need to be kicked in the teeth before he figures it out? Steven Pearlstein has a column in today's Washington Post that looks at the leadership vacuum that currently exists with Obama. Here are some highlights:
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While we're passing out the blame, however, let's not forget a heaping helping for the public. I can genuflect with the best of them before "the basic decency and wisdom of the American people," but the truth is that on many issues these days, the American people are badly confused. They want Wall Street to be reined in, but they're dead set against more regulation. They want everyone to have access to affordable health insurance, but they're wary of expanding the role of government.
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Viewed in that context, the current political disarray need not be an insurmountable problem for President Obama, but rather could represent a golden opportunity to demonstrate the leadership the country needs and craves. He will not demonstrate that leadership by running around to carefully staged events in which he tells ordinary voters what he thinks they want to hear. Nor will he demonstrate it by redoubling efforts of his PR war room to respond to every attack or piece of Republican disinformation with overwhelming rhetorical force. Rather, the real challenge is whether the president can strengthen the bond of trust between himself and the American people by having the courage to tell the hard truths and make the hard decisions, irrespective of short-term political consequences and the tut-tutting of the commentariat.
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Over the past year, Obama's singular mistake was to think he could rely on the Democratic leadership and a Democratic majority in Congress to deliver on his electoral mandate. Caught in crossfire between the House and Senate, liberals and centrists, Democratic special interests and independent voters, he wound up raising too much doubt about his most fundamental promise -- to change the way business is done in Washington. Worse still, he wound up convincing members of Congress that he needed them more than they needed him.
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It should be obvious now that the president cannot leave it to Congress to sort things out. They can't and they won't, as evidenced most recently by the Senate fiasco involving the so-called jobs bill. For the next several months, he needs to create a sense of urgency and expectation, consulting widely and privately with Republicans and Democrats and interested parties who care more about getting things done than winning the next election. . . . And then he needs to park himself in the President's Room at the Capitol, along with top aides and Cabinet members, and refuse to leave until he has put together working majorities for each proposal -- with the help of legislative leaders if possible, but without them if necessary.
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By July 4, it will be over. He will have either a legislative record that ensures continuation of a working majority in Congress or a legitimate grievance that he can take to the voters in November in search of one. Either way, he'll be in a better place politically than he is now.
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This Presidents' Day week, we celebrate the leadership of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who confronted far worse division and dissent in their times. The reason we remember them as great presidents is that they threw off the yoke of party loyalty, defied popular opinion and used the full weight of their office to do what had to be done. They understood, or came to understand, an important truth: that only after they had demonstrated that they were willing to lead, and lead boldly, were the people willing to follow and drag Congress along with them.
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Obama, are you listening???

Why President Obama Hurts His Own Cause By Not Addressing Homophobia in the Black Community

I had book marked Pam Spaulding's post at Pam's House Blend (one of my must read blogs) on this topic for a follow up post only to find that it has now appeared on Huffington Post. Pam as always makes many good and balanced points even though there are many in the black community that don't want to hear the message - perhaps because it hits too close to home. Let me be clear, there are many gay affirming blacks and gay-affirming black churches. However, there seem to be far more that are not. As I have shared with Pam - who I met at the Blogger Summit last December - here in Norfolk, the problem of black homophobia spills over into the courts where the treatment gays receive from the courts depends in significant part on whether or not one has the misfortune of having their case assigned to one of the black judges. Should one have their case heard by one of the black circuit court judges (as has been my unfortunate fate), in my opinion, one can plan on being utterly crucified whereas the white judges seem to see one's sexual orientation as irrelevant to the issues before the court - which is how it should be and what is required under the Canons of Judicial Conduct which seem to never be enforced. From talking with other gays in cases before these judges, my treatment is not unique. Here are some highlights from Pam's article which I urge you to read in full since she is on the mark on Obama's failings (in reading Pam's post, remember that she is a black women herself):

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Over the last few days we have seen the White House struggle to answer questions about the failed discriminatory policy known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell, as well as respond intelligently to the recent positive domino effect of marriage equality occurring in states -- moves that affirm those governments realize separate is not equal.

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Candidate Obama decided to regress his political position from supporting full marriage equality to a "God is in the mix" conflation of religious and civil marriage when he ran for president. What was seen as a political necessity/reality at the time has wreaked havoc on the PR front of late, but it has also allowed the anti-gay establishment to cite his opposition to marriage equality over and over again. The old unintended consequences -- at our expense. . . . . Yeah, that's his political escape hatch -- that he will have some "moment of clarity" sometime in the future, a political revelation (guided by polls, of course), that separate is not equal.

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In other words, Obama . . . and [Marion] Barry don't want to challenge religious voters (or rather anti-gay religious voters, since there are those of faith who support equality, but they are always rendered invisible in these discussions) on their ignorance about the difference between religious and civil marriage.

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But I want to return to the subject of black homophobia, and the impact of President Obama's decision to purposefully confuse the issue, despite being a Constitutional scholar. . . . . he has now left LGBTs, particularly black LGBTs, twisting in the wind to battle the ignorance he affirms. (It should be noted that LGBT POC are also frequently left twisting in the wind by the larger -- read: white-dominated -- LGBT community and leadership, that is loathe to address the racial discord that inhibits progress.)

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For me, civil rights is civil rights is civil rights. Equal protection under the law is equal protection under the law. In employment. In housing. In public accommodations. In adoption. In civil marriage. Either we all have it or we don't.

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This seems so simple to understand, so rational, right? You should see some of the comments that erupted in the thread at JJP. It shows you how difficult it is to penetrate 1) homophobia based on religious convictions and very selective readings of the Bible tossed casually out there as moral certainty while ignoring passages that condemn their own behavior; and 2) the odd zero-sum game that civil rights for LGBTs somehow diminishes rights granted to blacks as a result of the struggle of that civil rights movement. The fact that the two movements aren't wholly equivalent yet both have merit and seems to escape some commentators.

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There's no leadership coming from the White House to counter the issue of black homophobia that he called out so clearly in the past. From his speech delivered at the house of worship where Dr. Martin Luther King preached, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta in January 2008: And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King's vision of a beloved community. We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them.

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The sad reality is that if black equality of the 1960's was decided by the opinions of everyday God fearing, church going Americans, we'd still be eating at segregated lunch counters and riding on the back of the bus. Please stop using religion to cover your bigotry as I can assure you that since the advent of the slave trade, people have used those same arguments to defend the systematic racism, rape, and genocide of black people.

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Where does that leave us -- the black community, the LGBT community, the black LGBT community -- in dealing with a President reticent to do much of anything about LGBT issues or homophobia in the black community unless there's overwhelming support to give him cover? Obviously I don't have the answers, but I do know we have to to discuss these outside of the respective echo chambers in order to succeed.

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We need to have our acts together and working in concert for equality in order to make this administration hear us -- and hold Obama to his promises to embark on meaningful change, as well as challenge those who uphold bigotry in the name of religion who should know better.

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When I heard Obama's remarks at Ebenezer Baptist Church it brought tears to my eyes. Apparently, Obama meant none of it and it was political grand standing to garner LGBT money and campaign effort support. I look forward to the day when religion isn't allowed to be a smoke screen for hate and bigotry and when we have a president who believes in full civil equality for everyone. We are obviously not there yet. One should not find themself considering suicide because they cannot find justice in the courts due to the color of the judge's skin.