Arthur Delaney: arthur@huffingtonpost.com | Reporter, First Posted: 10-28-10 04:10 PM, Updated: 10-28-10 05:15 PM

OBAMA: MORE AGGRESSIVE ANTI-FORECLOSURE EFFORTS WOULD HELP PEOPLE WHO DON’T DESERVE IT.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama defended his administration’s beleaguered foreclosure-prevention initiatives on Wednesday by arguing that more aggressive steps to assist homeowners might help people who don’t deserve to be helped.

DAVID: Excuse me? Are you the guy I voted for, the guy I donated money to, the guy I told my Hillary supporting friends to consider?

HUFF PO: Asked if his administration had done enough to stem the foreclosure crisis, Obama opted not to address the foreclosure fraud scandal that has forced banks to temporarily halt home repossessions across the country. Instead, he claimed that the government’s efforts had stabilized the housing market, and argued that the “biggest challenge” was to make sure speculators and deadbeats didn’t take advantage of the government’s help.

DAVID: So, Mr. President, the banks that were bailed out, the CEO’s you saved and who received huge bonuses, there were no “speculators” among them?

Wait, there’s more.

HUFF PO: “The biggest challenge is how do you make sure that you are helping those who really deserve help and if they get some temporary help can get back on their feet, make their payments and move forward and stay in their home versus either people who are speculators, own second homes that they really couldn’t afford because they’d gotten a subprime loan, and people who through no fault of their own just can’t afford their house anymore because of the change in housing values or their incomes don’t support it,” Obama said during a roundtable discussion with a handful of progressive bloggers at the White House.

“And we’re always trying to find that sweet spot to use as much of the money that we have available to us to help those who can be helped, without wasting that money on folks who don’t deserve help,” he continued. “And that’s a tough balance to strike.”

DAVID: Mr. President, I don’t remember you asking the CEOs and COOs and CFOs and all the other Os if they “deserved help” when you bailed out the banks. The bonuses that the Os received, the ones your administration said it couldn’t stop must be the “sweet spot” you were looking for.

You are crushing the middle class between your fingers like a bug, Mr. President. I don’t understand why politicians like you think that’s a good idea. But mostly I wonder why it doesn’t bother you.

I just discovered that LELA MAE, a story I wrote, is online, along with the rest of the anthology, BOYHOOD, GROWING UP MALE, edited by Franklin Abbott.  The stories and essays in the anthology are, if anything, more relevant today than they were when the book was first published.  I’m speaking of the recent suicides of young gay men:  Raymond Chase, Billy Lucas, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh and Tyler Clementi. I imagine I feel what parents felt after the Columbine shootings, I can’t shake it.

This website of mine that I love is an antique, it was written with code from the mid-nineties that is no longer used today, so it doesn’t always do auto links.  Either click the highlighted link below or copy and paste it. 

Either way you’ll get to BOYHOOD, GROWING UP MALE, an anthology of men remembering and pondering their boyhoods.

Every man has been a boy.

It Gets Better. 

http://books.google.com/books?id=iOjwhEi6py0C&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=David+Harringt
on+Campbell&source=bl&ots=-ir__mmuJW=e08oYpBBbhLSeuC4rD6xamIfs7c&hl=en&ei=16
WuTOTQH4uasAPm6PnNDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CCwQ6AEwBw#v=on
epage&q=David%20Harrington%20Campbell&f=false

I am so fucking sick and tired of this madness. I hold all the politicians, all the “religious” panderers and preachers out there who pontificate about their hate for gay people and ride on their hate of them so they can get news coverage and raise money - I hold them responsible for the deaths, by suicide, of the young boys mentioned above. I hold all the people who say let’s wait on gay rights, it’s not the right time, the economy sucks, yes you Obama, I hold you responsible for the deaths, by suicide. If you put a topic out there, as you did during the campaign, and then leave it hanging because you’re too chicken shit to have a fight with the Republicans, let me tell you this - as long as adults act on their prejudices, how can we expect their children to do any differently?

And you, Mr. 50 Fucking Cents, rapper asshole, you are responsible for these deaths. One question, 50 Cents, was it your dream to be an artist or was it your dream to make money and use that money and fame to spread your juvenile hate? I’ll debate you anywhere, asshole. Call me out.

I wish to God I could have talked to these boys. I wish I could have told them that once they got away from their hellish childhoods they could create a life that is worth living, that it is possible to find the freedom to love whomever you want to love, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, as long as you don’t want to get married.

DOMA DOMA DOMA.

Did the two rabid Rutgers University students have nothing better to do than secretly videotape Tyler Clementi kissing another man during their first few weeks in college? What is wrong with them? Why did they do it? Why weren’t they out dancing, making love, eating dinner, or heaven forbid, Studying??? I hope you both go to jail. But I doubt you will. You will whine and moan like the cowards you are.

WHINE MOAN

Let’s move on to Bishop Eddie Long, millionaire preacher from a Mega Church in Atlanta who lured boys to his lair. (What exactly is a Mega Church and why do they exist?) He should be held accountable for his hypocrisy. Why why why is it that men of the cloth wreak havoc on gay men? (The Pope should have been arrested when he left Vatican City last month.)

And you, Assistant Attorney General in the state of Michigan, Mr. Andrew Shirvell, I hold you accountable for these suicides. WHY haven’t you been fired? You wage an internet campaign against the gay man who is student body president at the University of Michigan? You are a wimp, why don’t you go and talk with him, oh, I forgot, you are waging an internet and media campaign. How safe for you, little shit-eating earthworm.

No wonder these boys did not see another way out. No wonder! Because the hate mongers and bullies have so much support in the media, in politics, in churches for God’s sake.

HATE
SHAME
HATE

I am sick and tired of this madness. I wish I had known you all - Raymond Chase, Billy Lucas, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh and Tyler Clementi. Maybe I could have done more justice to your memories if I had. As it is, I’m angry because my heart is broken. I’m angry because I don’t know what to do.

I wrote the following post a few minutes ago on Huffington Post under the article/video of Arianna Huffington’s appearance on the Rachel Maddow show.  I reprint my post here for BLOG enjoyment.   

DHC Comment on Huffington Post:

I’m disappointed in you, Arianna.  You are selling a book so I know you have your talking points and they vary depending on what network you are on.  We are weeks away from a crucial election and the obvious question to ask you since you have nothing but negative things to say about Obama is if you would support a primary challenger for Obama in 2012?  You can’t run but someone you support through Huffington Post could. 

Just askin’. 

Today, September 21, is World Alzheimer’s Day. My mother has Alzheimer’s, I have written about her before on this blog. In a matter of just a few years I have lost one of my best friends to this disease. I used to talk with Mom all the time about my life, about her life, about our lives. She, along with Luke, has been one of the major supporters of my writing career and my dreams. She, along with my sister and brother, flew out to LA for the book launch of Dancing on the Cellar Door in 2003. And what a trip it was. My big old antique Lincoln Town Car blew up on the way back from LA to San Diego! But we all survived it, with laughter and love. Was she a perfect mom? No, who could be a perfect mom? I am not a perfect son. But she was as close as you can come. I miss her so much. I visited her in the spring and she knew me. That is no longer true, just six months later. I think she recognizes my voice on the phone but she can’t get her mind to form the words “David.” And she’s young, that’s the thing - she turned 76 this past July. Looking back, though, there were little things I didn’t think much of at the time but that now I recognize as being the beginnings of Alzheimer’s. She knew it was happening to her, too. In a way she made plans for what she knew was coming, she remarried her 2nd and 3rd husband for the 3rd time and he is now her caregiver. I read today in a column that Maria Shriver wrote on Huffington Post that most Alzheimer’s caregivers are women. This is not true in Mom’s case. She has had a hell of a stunning life - from eloping to marry my father when she was 20, he was 45, to raising 2 then 3 kids on her own. She rarely complained about her “life” although she did complain about her husbands - 4 in all !!! She crammed a lot of living into her life. I know if she could have one more non-Alzheimer’s day, she would celebrate her children and I would tell her to celebrate the advantages she seized - from a girl born in the middle 1930s in the mountains of Virginia to the businesswoman and mother and wives she became. She was fearless. She still is.

I love you, Mom.

copyright, 2010

“Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress.”

– Isocrates, 436-338 BCE, Greek orator and rhetorician.

All I have to say so far about the spectacle unfolding before my eyes in the run up to the November elections is to agree with Hunter S. Thompson when he said: 

“If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.”

Thank you for negotiating the release of Aijalon Gomes from North Korea. 

I attended the Democratic National Convention in Madision Square Garden in 1976.  I met both you and your wife.  I knew then and I’ve known since then that you are an honorable man, stubborn as a bulldog with southern charm.  You achieve your goals.  I am sick and tired of hearing variations on: “the failed Carter Presidency,” from newscasters and pundits alike.  You were not then and are not now a failure.  (I could go into the secret Bush/Reagan deal with the Iranian hostages but I won’t tonight.)

Peace be with you, Sir.  Honorable men are in short supply in the United States right now.  Thanks for reminding the people what one acts like. 

To:  Ken Mehlman, former Republican National Committee Chairman 

and all the other gay men who come out of the closet after supporting anti-gay issues for years:

I have to say I don’t get it.  There is not a bone in my body, there is not a sprig of my hair, there is no part of my brain that understands people like you, Mehlman, who spew your hatred toward yourself, toward your own self-interest, toward all the other gay people in this country so you can win elections and now, you happily trot your self-hating ass out and what?  Expect me to cheer?  Expect me to overlook your past?  Sorry, bud.  There are certain things that aren’t negotiable, there is certain behavior that is inexcusable.  There are some issues that don’t have two sides, there is right and wrong.  You were wrong.  You are still wrong.    

This afternoon Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state of California, was overturned by 9th Circuit District Court Judge Vaughn Walker. The bigots who lost will appeal, most likely up to the Supreme Court, but for today let’s celebrate. . . and thanks to Boies and Olson, the attorneys who argued that Prop. 8 was unconstitutional.