Welcome to the Lake County Stonewall Democratic Club!
The Lake County Stonewall Democratic Club is a local Democratic Club serving
the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered) community of
Lake County, California
Club Meeting Schedule For 2010
The new location for meeting is:
Clearlake Oaks Community United Methodist Church
12487 The Plaza
Clearlake Oaks, California
(Located behind the Red & White Grocery Store on Highway 20 & is next to the Senior Citizens Center in Clearlake Oaks)
The Stonewall Democratic Club will no longer meet at the Redbud Library in Clearlake!!
Pot luck at 6:30 P.M. and meeing begins at 7 P.M.
Date of meetings:
September 27, 2010 (4th Monday)
October 25, 2010 (4th Monday)
November 22, 2010 (4th Monday)
December 27, 2010 (4th Monday)
Our Stories - Our Lives
 - Listen to KPFZ 88.1 FM on Lake County Community Radio. "Our Stories - Our Lives" broading casting to the LGBT our allies and friends of the Community - news and events concerning the gay community with your Rainbow Reporter Harold Riley also with co-host Roon Searcy.
Live broadcast on Wednesdays at 1 P.M. and rebroadcast on Monday's at midnight.
Cannabis Electric Cars: Canada 1, U.S. 0
by Nikki Gloudeman, change.org  Hippies, rejoice: The world's first cannabis electric car may soon hit the roads of Canada. And guess what? The amusing auto is a truly inspiring feat of engineering.
Developed by Alberta-based Motive Industries, the car prototype—known as the Kestrel—is made from a biocomposite partly derived from local hemp. Because the material is uber-light, it reduces the car's electricity consumption. And it's cheaper, more renewable and less health-hazardous than standard fiberglass to boot. (The only possible hitch so far is the speed of the vehicle. It is projected to max out just under 60 miles an hour at maximum.) As the car's designer told Fox News (which wrote a surprisingly positive story about it), "Electric Cars need to be efficient, therefore the Kestrel design had to be simple and light weight, while still being unique and eye catching."
Read Rest
10/1
Greetings!
Glenn Beck's decision to hold an event at the same location and on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's March on Washington has elicited outrage amongst civil rights organizations who accuse him and the radical right of hijacking the legacy of the Civil Rights movement.
Read commentary on this controversial event hereSharon Kyle, Publisher
LA Progressive
9/30
Letter from Courage Campaign
 Dear Friends --
Honestly, I'm offended by Meg Whitman.
Ninety years ago this August, women won the right to vote when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was finally ratified in 1920.
I take that right seriously. Meg Whitman doesn't.
Whitman wants to be governor of California. But she has rarely voted in three decades. Shouldn't our next governor show more respect for our right to vote -- and for the struggles that earned women the right to vote?
That's why the Courage Campaign is joining the California Nurses Association to send a message to Meg Whitman about the voting rights she took for granted. On Thursday, August 26, nurses and activists from across California will travel to Sacramento for a rally celebrating women's right to vote. Many will take a train to Sacramento, honoring the suffragist movement and their success, and dressing in costumes from the suffragist era.
Even if you can't join the rally, you can still help us send a message to Meg. Click here to watch our video about how Meg Whitman has taken the 19th Amendment for granted. Then sign up to Vote-By-Mail -- the most reliable method of voting in every election. Show that you'll stand up for voting rights, even if Meg Whitman won't:Suffragists fought for decades to win the right to vote. They faced sexism, violence, and other obstacles in their effort to secure equal rights.
Ninety years later, full equality still eludes us. Many women are denied the right to marry the person they love. Others lack health care services, education, and jobs.
Meg Whitman supports Prop 8. She pledges to cut public funding for health care and education. She's already promised mass layoffs if she becomes governor, just as she did at eBay. And she can't even be bothered to exercise that most basic of rights -- the right to vote.
That's why the Courage Campaign and the California Nurses Association created this video to hold Meg Whitman accountable for her deplorable voting record. Please watch our video and then apply to Vote-By-Mail -- it's the most effective way to stand up for voting rights today:http://www.couragecampaign.org/VoteByMailThank you for showing Meg Whitman that you take women's rights seriously.
Sarah Callahan
Chief Operating Officer, Courage Campaign Courage Campaign California is a part of the Courage Campaign's multi-issue online organizing network that empowers more than 700,000 grassroots and netroots supporters to push for progressive change and full equality in California and across the country. Supported by thousands of small donations from our diverse community, Courage Campaign California holds politicians accountable to progressive values, works for fundamental reform to our state's broken government, and trains and organizes activists to change their communities.
To power this campaign today, please chip in what you can:
Pentagon conducts survey of military spouses on potential repeal of 'Don't ask, Don't tell'
By Christopher Brocklebank, Pink News/UK
 A new survey questions military spouses on their potential reactions to the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
The Pentagon has distributed a 44-question survey to 150,000 military spouses in the USA to gauge their views on potential situations that may arise should the "Don't ask, Don't tell" policy be repealed. It is hoped that the policy, which bars openly LGBT people from serving in the American military, will be repealed by Congress later this year. Taking this into account, questions in the survey include asking if a military spouse would encourage their husband or wife to leave the forces should the ban be repealed, whether it would effect their willingness to recommend a military career to family or friends and if the attendance of gay couples at social events would affect their decision to attend such gatherings.
Read rest
9/24
If Gay Marriage Wins...
Chris Weigant, Author, Political Commentator, and Blogger, Huntington Post
Last week, a federal judge handed down his decision in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which said (in no uncertain terms) that gay marriage was a civil right, and should be guaranteed to all -- no matter what voters thought about it -- in much the same way that interracial marriage is a constitutional right guaranteed to all (which happened via a similarly-contentious federal court ruling in the 1960s). While this ruling was rightfully hailed by gay rights supporters, everyone knows that there is still a long road ahead until it reaches the Supreme Court, where the matter may be fundamentally decided.While the outcome in the highest court in the land is obviously uncertain, what strikes me is that even people who support gay marriage winning in the courts may not have fully appreciated what such a victory would bring. Because it would be monumental, and change forever the status of gay rights in this country in a very fundamental way -- one which would likely be impossible to touch, from that point onwards. I don't think I'm overstating the case when I say that if the Supreme Court upholds the decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, it will become the "final battle" for gay rights. Not that America would change overnight into some sort of Utopia for gays, but that the battles for legal equality would be decided once and for all, and (other than a few minor skirmishes) gay rights activists would move on to making sure that their rights were adequately implemented and defended from that point onwards, rather than having to fight to gain legal recognition of these rights in the first place.
Read Rest
Obama may face trouble with gays after same-sex ruling
By Ed Hornick, CNN
 President Obama has said he supports civil unions for same-sex couples but opposes same-sex marriage.
Washington (CNN) -- Many gays and lesbians supported Barack Obama at the polls in 2008, and they've backed him once he took office. But one topic in particular has created a firestorm among the vocal constituency historically aligned with the Democratic Party. Gay activists and bloggers and others unleashed a wave of criticism against Obama after a federal judge on Wednesday ruled California's Proposition 8 -- which outlawed same-sex marriage -- unconstitutional. The reasoning behind the criticism, they said, is a lukewarm response from the White House on the historic ruling -- and Obama's stance against same-sex marriage.
Read rest
Propositions official - Numbered for November 2010 Ballots
http://www.calitics.com/diary/11950/secretary-of-state-gives-numbers-to-10-ballot-propositionsPropositions 18 through 27 have been officially numbered for the
November 2010 ballot by Secretary of State Debra Bowen. Get used to these numbers.
Below is my first take, and how I'm currently leaning. Calitics and the Courage Campaign (where I work as Public Policy Director) will be out with their endorsements by the beginning of October, likely sooner.
Prop 18: The $11 billion water bond. Leaning no.
Prop 19: Cannabis legalization. Oh hell yes. This is one of the 2 or 3 most important initiatives on the November ballot. It's a must-pass.
Prop 20: Expands Prop 11 redistricting commission to include
Congressional races, which could cost Democrats seats in the House. This is a definite no.
Prop 21: The state parks initiative, raising the vehicle license fee by $18, keeping all parks open at restored hours, reducing the maintenance backlog, and allowing all Californians with a registered vehicle to get into any park free of charge. Another obvious yes.
Prop 22: Bans state government raids on local government funds for good. Given what I wrote earlier today you shouldn't be surprised I lean yes on this one as well. Austerity is not good, and if we can contain it at the state level, then it's easier to force the issue for new revenues at the state level as well.
Prop 23: Repeal of AB 32, the state's landmark global warming law, an initiative funded by $2 million in campaign contributions from oil
companies. Think of it this way: Prop 23 reverses AB 32. This is one of the 3 most important initiatives on the ballot, and it absolutely must be defeated.
Prop 24: Closes corporate tax loopholes that adds at least $1.7 billion annually to the budget deficit. Another obvious must-pass, though it'll be interesting to see the big corporations argue against this one. Of course, as we saw in Oregon in January, voters are not likely to look favorably upon corporate arguments in favor of unaffordable tax breaks.
Prop 25: Restores majority rule for the state budget process. This is the 3rd of the extremely important initiatives. We cannot afford to let this one fail. We'll need an all-out effort between now and November to pass it.
Prop 26: The antithesis of Prop 25, Prop 26 would require a 2/3 majority for fees. Just as Prop 25 must pass, Prop 26 must fail.
Prop 27: The antithesis of Prop 20, but in a good way - this eliminates the Prop 11 redistricting commission entirely. I'm probably going Yes on this one, since I don't really think a bunch of affluent white men count as a representative sample of the people of California. The whole Prop 11 commission was a bad idea to begin with, a "solution" to a non-existent problem.
So there you have it. There's unfortunately no easy way to remember these recommendations, and the voter guide charts will have a lot of green check marks and red x's, but it would seem that you'll want to vote Yes on 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, and 27, and vote No on 18, 20, 23, and 26.
Some progressives might have the temptation to vote "no" on everything, as some sort of childish protest at the initiative system. Doing so at this election would be an inherently right-wing move, undermining such obvious progressive policy propositions as Props 19, 21, 24 and especially 25 and giving aid and comfort to the right-wing via Prop 23 in particular.
Whether you love the initiative process or hate it, you don't have the option of sitting these battles out. We won some big victories on the June 8 ballot, beating Props 16 and 17 - but we also lost the battles on Props 14 and 15. Given what is on the November ballot, we cannot afford to lose these fights. All hands on deck!
11/10
|
Chili Cook off by candidates running for office in Lake County.
Thanksgiving Dinner for Club member and guests.
Xmas Dinner for members and guests.
