Legislation is introduced in the Senate to provide domestic partner benefits to federal employees. The bill introduced by Sens. Gordon Smith (R-OR) and Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) has 19 co-sponsors and would enable a federal employee and same-sex domestic partner "to participate in federal health benefits, the Family and Medical Leave program, long term care, insurance, and retirement benefits. More than half of Fortune 500 companies and almost 10,000 other firms provide benefits to domestic partners, along with "hundreds of state and local governments and scores of colleges and universities.
· Happy birthday Tyson Beckford! The supermodel, actor and all-around Rod 2.0 fave turns 37 this week. Tyson's new reality competition show for Bravo, Make Me a Supermodel, launches in the new year.
· Citing the Bush Administration’s "failure" to treat global warming seriously, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) plans to sue the federal government after the EPA denied a waiver for the state’s tough greenhouse gas emissions law. At least eight other states will join.
· Climate Progress deconstructs the stripped-down energy bill signed by the President earlier this week: "The headline is a 35-mpg CAFE standard for cars produced 13 years from now. Big whoop... The reality is no removal of tax breaks for Big Oil; no 15% renewable standards for utilities; no plug-in hybrid incentives. Incentives for wind and solar were stripped ..."
· The Washington Blade endorses Hillary Clinton for president: "Why Hillary? Her chief rival, Obama, has disappointed in the debates, appearing to lack confidence and talking mostly in generalities ...
[I]n the end, Hillary Rodham Clinton stands the best chance of sending the Republicans into eight years of a well-deserved political wilderness. She’s smart, tenacious, hard working and willing to cede the spotlight in the interest of bipartisan cooperation. She has marched in our Pride parades, promised unprecedented access to her administration and backed nearly all of our issues."
· In the same issue of the Blade, Gov. Bill Richardson is the subject of an exclusive, in-depth interviews. (More on Richardson's gay positions HERE and HERE.) Chris Crain describes Richardson's plea as "an eloquent case for support from gay Democrats" but "unfortunately, even heart-breakingly, it all comes too late. Richardson came close but never broke out of the second tier."
Sen Clinton is a disapointment at best to GLBT people everywhere- her hand has always been stretched out to us, but usually from behind her back so as not to seem overt, and there is a political contribution envelope in it. Inside the envelope is a promissory note that reads, "After the election, darling". I frankly am not in favor of Sen. Clinton, and few of the front runners are worthy of GLBT support.
If elected, she will be 4 or perhaps 8 years of a period in our history when 2 political families have run this country. It is time to send Sen. Clinton back to the senate where she can contimplate how she contributed to the poison atmosphere that is Washington. As much as the GOP is the prime culprit in that: her triangulation on political events is just as much to blame.
I am in the political wilderness already- as are many of my brothers and sisters. Let them come to us for a change.
Posted by: Bill | 22 December 2007 at 12:35