Former President Bill Clinton was hospitalized today in New York City.
Said Clinton's Counselor Douglas Band in a statement: "Today President Bill Clinton was admitted to the Columbia Campus of New York Presbyterian Hospital after feeling discomfort in his chest. Following a visit to his cardiologist, he underwent a procedure to place two stents in one of his coronary arteries. President Clinton is in good spirits, and will continue to focus on the work of his Foundation and Haiti's relief and long-term recovery efforts. In 2004, President Clinton underwent a successful quadruple bypass operation to free four blocked arteries."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was said to be traveling to NYC from Washington this afternoon. Chelsea Clinton was at the hospital with her father, CNN reported.
Glad to hear, he is doing better!
Posted by: Travis | Feb 11, 2010 7:25:49 PM
Gee, that's just terrifying...but, he's not the president.
Posted by: TANK | Feb 11, 2010 7:38:47 PM
@Tank
"President" is one of the few titles that remain with the individual even after leaving office. This goes for publishing and addressing (though often proceeded by "former" in introductions.)
Posted by: unruly | Feb 11, 2010 8:02:32 PM
That scared the daylights out of me. I love Bill Clinton. And I only pray we have him for another twenty years.
Posted by: Wilberforce | Feb 11, 2010 8:05:51 PM
Ah, got me a technicality, huh? Well, butt plug, he's not the 44th POTUS, or the one in office now. So...meh.
bill clinton. DADT...DOMA...what else?
Posted by: TANK | Feb 11, 2010 8:11:31 PM
Fuck off Tank. Maybe someone should put a stent in your fucking brain. Asshole.
Posted by: REYnoldo | Feb 11, 2010 8:39:51 PM
That someone be you, REYNOLDO (LOL!)? It never ceases to disgust how some queens fawn all over the clintons when the record doesn't prop up their accolades/defense.
Posted by: TANK | Feb 11, 2010 9:33:32 PM
Since Clinton served during a majority house and senate of rethuglican rule, which would you rather have had...
DADT or no gays in the military?
DOMA or a constitutional ammendment banning gay marriage?
Think about it TANK.
Godspeed Mr. President.
Posted by: NYSmike | Feb 11, 2010 10:31:14 PM
Let's see. If the ban had been in place, would there be enough pressure today to reverse it without DADT? I think so. It can be argued that the compromise of DADT made it more difficult to integrate the military, far from being a first step. Given that it currently has no hope of being repealed, and likely won't be...I can't say it was the best of all compromises. See, everything's more difficult when you THINK, and don't blindly FOLLOW.
As to DOMA, this was on Clinton. He supported it to further his political ambitions, not to protect lgb americans from a constitutional amendment. You forget, DOMA had broadbased support amongst democrats and republicans alike. Biden, Lieberman, Daschle, Dodd all voted yea. But it was very much a republican law, to alay fears that a constitutional amendment would have been the inevitable alternative to a veto that Clinton, who cared about winning an election, had no intention of issuing. So when we talk of DOMA vs. a constitutional amendment, it's not the man we're defending (who was a big fan of it not because he was concerned about lgb americans and an amendment, but because he believed it was right and was against same sex marriage), but the law.
Posted by: TANK | Feb 11, 2010 11:09:44 PM
To blindly bitch, is not much better than to blindly follow. President Clinton has done a lot to help people of all races all over the world. When last have you, Tank, done something equally important? He is not without faults. But he has also done a hell of a lot more positive things than many of his detractors.
Posted by: Reggie | Feb 11, 2010 11:34:52 PM
You're right, reggie. After all, someone has to earn the right to criticize someone else (especially in america). And the only way to earn the right to criticize someone else is to achieve just as much if not more than they have. I've never been president, so I can't criticize anyone who's been president. No more bush, obama, or clinton bashing for me or anyone who ever posts again.
Posted by: TANK | Feb 11, 2010 11:40:52 PM
Fuck you to every single self-loathing queer who "loves" this racist, sexist, homophobic asshole. Bill Clinton is on the same team as George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Barack Obama and that's NOT our team. This monster is responsible for DADT, DOMA, the murder of more than 500,000 Iraqi children under sanctions, the 1994 coup in Haiti, the destruction of the social safety net of the New Deal (he did in six years what the Republicans had tried to do for 60), and the expansion of the prison-industrial complex (to the point where there are now more black men in prison today than there were on plantations at any point during slavery). This man is NOT an ally or a hero any more than his fellow Democratic Party member Fred Phelps. And it's evidence of how completely the Democratic Party has absorbed and co-opted the lgbt movement that queers in 2010 can count this man as a "hero." Shame on Clinton's lgbt apologists. You are like Nazis defending Hitler or black South Africans defending apartheid. One of the reasons oppression persists is because the oppressors convince the oppressed to oppress themselves: the career of Bill Clinton is one fine example.
Posted by: Norm D Plume | Feb 12, 2010 4:00:33 PM
And for the record, Bill Clinton has a Democratic majority for the first two years of his presidency. He did nothing and lost that majority because he moved to the right... EXACTLY AS OBAMA IS DOING NOW. We are seeing the modus operandi of the Democratic Party repeat itself: a lying Democrat lies to the American people about being different than his Republican predecessor, he says pretty words that people want to hear, and when he's elected he rushes to the right and, like good little Nazis, the Democratic voters lie to themselves and to each other about how "liberal," "progressive" or "different from the Republicans" this particular Democrat is. You can either fight for lgbt equality or you can be a propagandist for the homophobic Democratic Party. You can't do both.
Posted by: Norm D Plume | Feb 12, 2010 4:04:05 PM
To win gay marriage, we need a divorce
Sherry Wolf, author of Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics and Theory of LGBT Liberation [1], looks at a critical question for the struggle for same-sex marriage.
May 26, 2009
POP PSYCHOLOGY has long had a term for the political marriage between LGBT people and the Democrats--it is a dysfunctional relationship.
The Democrats court the votes and money of gays and lesbians, but offer few gains and a stunning share of abuse in exchange. For those LGBT activists wooed by the Democrats, ditching the more militant strategy that got Democrats swooning in the first place for a don't-rock-the-boat approach is the price to play in this torturous display of unrequited love.
While we await the decision of the California Supreme Court on whether or not to uphold the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 on May 26, it is worth taking stock of the political strategy activists have largely adhered to in recent decades. Collaboration with the Democrats, the so-called "party of the people," has impeded progress, not helped it.
Thirty-five years have passed since gay civil rights legislation was first proposed in Congress. Yet LGBT people remain an unprotected class of citizens by the U.S. Constitution. Whereas the denial of the rights of gays to work for the federal government, for example, was carried out with the stroke of President Eisenhower's pen in Executive Order 10450 in 1953, no such swift action has been taken to overturn decades of institutional discrimination.
Since the birth of the modern LGBT movement out of the Stonewall Riots in 1969, the Democrats before Obama controlled the White House for 12 years under Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. For a lot of that time, both houses of Congress were controlled by Democrats as well.
But during this time, as well as under Republican administrations, the Democrats have been opportunist at best, and hostile at worst.
Little compares to the treachery of the Clinton administration. A masterful public speaker capable of Academy Award-style performances of empathy, Clinton could famously "feel your pain," but apparently could not alleviate any of it.
Clinton came into office promising an end to draconian laws against gays in the military. He caved after four days and signed into law what is perhaps the only known order by a commander-in-chief for gays and lesbians to march back into the closet. While initially perceived as a more benign form of discrimination, his policy--known as "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue"--has allowed for a witch-hunt of tens of thousands of military personnel and the discharge of more than 12,500 LGBT people from the military.
Nearly six years into his presidency, Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 11478 providing partial relief for lesbian and gay federal employees--not including the 3 million military personnel.
But his action left intact sodomy laws (not overturned by the Supreme Court until 2003), anti-same-sex marriage legislation (which he signed) and the military's unequal status for LGBT people (which he introduced), and it didn't take up the rights of those who are transgender (who experience the highest rates of violence, unemployment and discrimination of any sexual minority). All this exposes the severe limitations of the electoral route for winning civil rights for LGBT people.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
TODAY, THERE'S something profoundly disturbing about Barack Obama, the son of a Black man and a white woman, using the racial segregationists' call for "states' rights" when it comes to same-sex marriage.
All the more so since the California court--in initially overturning the state's gay marriage ban in May 2008 and legalizing same-sex marriage until the passage of Prop 8--cited as precedent the 62-year-old decision that overturned anti-miscegenation laws and opened the door for Obama's own parents' legal union.
If Barack Obama--one of the most popular human beings on the face of the planet--were to use his bully pulpit to push legislation (or sign an executive order) that would sweep away all institutional barriers to the freedoms and civil rights of LGBT people, it could be done.
That would be that. LGBT folks would have formal equality--as do women and Blacks--and the state would no longer be able to lend its imprimatur to antigay bigotry.
But this is not going to happen without a massive mobilization of grassroots activists in the streets and sitting in--to challenge the centers of power, including the Democrats at the helm.
Journalist Matt Bai, writing in the Sunday New York Times, cites a Quinnipiac poll showing that 60 percent of Americans under the age of 34 believe it is discriminatory to deny equal marriage rights--and concludes that "the gay rights movement...can now seem obsolete."
Bai is wrong. LGBT civil rights activists cannot operate as if we are the only ones trying to shape the debate in this country. The right wing has proven time and again that it has the money, power and seemingly limitless ability to spew noxious lies in order to get its way. Thus, opinion polls last fall showed Prop 8 was headed for defeat until the right mobilizaed a public campaign in California to discredit gay marriage as a threat to children and religious autonomy.
There is something tempting about the belief that LGBT civil rights like marriage are inevitable. After all, even John McCain's campaign adviser, Republican Steve Schmidt, has come out for gay marriage, and more and more politicians--including Barack Obama--stare at their shoes as they mumble that tired line about their belief that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. Yeah, right.
But the public opinion that is gnawing away at the politicians hasn't shifted on its own. The increasingly positive poll numbers toward sexual minorities is a magnificent expression of how ordinary peoples' actions, not those of politicians, can alter popular consciousness.
Decades of silence, hostility, equivocation and near paralysis by leading Democrats regarding LGBT civil rights is proof that protest and activism--not pleading for whittled-down legislation and waiting for politicians--is the route to progress.
Even in Illinois, the first state to overturn sodomy laws in 1961, gay politicians like Greg Harris defend tepid, second-class legislation for civil unions over gay marriage as the more "realistic" strategy.
Harris' bill, called the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act, even caves to lie that LGBT people are trying to force religious institutions to solemnize same-sex unions. No church has ever been required to officiate at ceremonies it doesn't agree with, nor will one ever be. The hand-wringing language in this legislation is unnecessarily apologetic to the right.
In California, the statewide equality group, Equality California, is hemming and hawing over whether to even push for a new pro-gay marriage ballot measure in 2010 in the event that the state Supreme Court upholds Prop 8. The organization is wary of harming the Democrats' midterm election chances, rather than demand they pass civil rights legislation.
Here, it's useful to remember the words of historian Howard Zinn in a recent speech published at SocialistWorker.org:
Where progress has been made, wherever any kind of injustice has been overturned, it's been because people acted as citizens, and not as politicians. They didn't just moan. They worked, they acted, they organized, they rioted if necessary.
To win equal marriage--and pursue all other civil rights--LGBT activists and our allies need to slap the Democrats with divorce papers and organize independently. As sex advice columnist Dan Savage would put it: DTMFA--dump the motherfucker already.
Posted by: Norm D Plume | Feb 12, 2010 4:05:48 PM