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President Obama declared June 2009 is "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month." No new rights or anything like that, but we got a proclamation.

Obama wants us to know he "continue[s] to support measures to bring the full spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans." That's good. But, he's President now, not a candidate. A lot of worked very hard to elect Obama, due in part to his campaign promises of equal rights for LGBT Americans. But, now, we need action or at the least the inklings of a plan of action. So far, we've seen no indication of how Obama is going to turn his support of those measures into reality. We've seen words, nice words like the ones below, but nothing really concrete on the legislative front, besides the Hate Crimes bill, which already passed both the House and Senate back in 2007.

Here's the proclamation:

Forty years ago, patrons and supporters of the Stonewall Inn in New York City resisted police harassment that had become all too common for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Out of this resistance, the LGBT rights movement in America was born. During LGBT Pride Month, we commemorate the events of June 1969 and commit to achieving equal justice under law for LGBT Americans.

LGBT Americans have made, and continue to make, great and lasting contributions that continue to strengthen the fabric of American society. There are many well-respected LGBT leaders in all professional fields, including the arts and business communities. LGBT Americans also mobilized the Nation to respond to the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic and have played a vital role in broadening this country's response to the HIV pandemic.

Due in no small part to the determination and dedication of the LGBT rights movement, more LGBT Americans are living their lives openly today than ever before. I am proud to be the first President to appoint openly LGBT candidates to Senate-confirmed positions in the first 100 days of an Administration. These individuals embody the best qualities we seek in public servants, and across my Administration -- in both the White House and the Federal agencies -- openly LGBT employees are doing their jobs with distinction and professionalism.

The LGBT rights movement has achieved great progress, but there is more work to be done. LGBT youth should feel safe to learn without the fear of harassment, and LGBT families and seniors should be allowed to live their lives with dignity and respect.

My Administration has partnered with the LGBT community to advance a wide range of initiatives. At the international level, I have joined efforts at the United Nations to decriminalize homosexuality around the world. Here at home, I continue to support measures to bring the full spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans. These measures include enhancing hate crimes laws, supporting civil unions and Federal rights for LGBT couples, outlawing discrimination in the workplace, ensuring adoption rights, and ending the existing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in a way that strengthens our Armed Forces and our national security. We must also commit ourselves to fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic by both reducing the number of HIV infections and providing care and support services to people living with HIV/AIDS across the United States.

These issues affect not only the LGBT community, but also our entire Nation. As long as the promise of equality for all remains unfulfilled, all Americans are affected. If we can work together to advance the principles upon which our Nation was founded, every American will benefit. During LGBT Pride Month, I call upon the LGBT community, the Congress, and the American people to work together to promote equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere it exists.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

Very nice and appreciated. But, this is 2009, not 1993. We need more than words, we need real action. And, from watching how activists on other issues are making progress with Team Obama, one thing is clear: we're going to have to be pretty forceful, loud and unrelenting about what we want if we expect any movement.

Also, as I've noted before -- and will continue to note, GLAD filed a lawsuit aimed at finding Section 3 of DOMA unconstitutional. The government's answer is due by the end of June. During this LGBT Pride Month, if the Obama administration chooses to actually defend DOMA (and they do have a choice), that will speak much, much louder about his continued support for gay Americans than this proclamation. (I actually think if Obama wasn't hindered by his political advisers and consultants, he'd be much better on the issue. You know, in an off-the-record kind of way, he probably already is.)

As president of General Motors when Eisenhower tapped him to become Secretary of Defense in 1953, �SEngine Charlie⬝ Wilson voiced at his Senate confirmation hearing what was then the conventional view. When asked whether he could make a decision in the interest of the U.S. that was adverse to the interest of GM, he said he could.

Then he reassured them that such a conflict would never arise. �SI cannot conceive of one because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country.⬝

Wilson was only slightly exaggerating. At the time, the fate of GM was inextricably linked to that of the nation. In 1953, GM was the world�"s biggest manufacturer, the symbol of U.S. economic might. It generated 3 percent of U.S. gross national product. GM�"s expansion in the 1950s was credited with stalling a business slump. It was also America�"s largest employer, with over 460,000 employees. Its blue-collar workers received (in today's dollars) $60 an hour that year in wages and benefits.

Today, Wal-Mart is America�"s largest employer, the majority of whose employees receive just over $10 an hour. And General Motors is filing for bankruptcy. Wilson�"s reassuring words in 1953 now have an ironic twist. There will be little difference between what is good for America and for GM because it is soon to be owned by U.S. taxpayers who have forked out more than $60 billion to buy it.

But why would U.S. taxpayers want to own today�"s GM?

The answer, after the jump.

--Robert Reich

MORE...

Human behavior is changing at a blistering pace.

Why, someone in Starbucks held the door for me today and actually waited until I could grab the door from him, rather than letting it swing tantalizingly before I could get there.

However, a British office worker called James Coleman has pointed us towards the perils of over-committed tweeting.

According to a report in the Telegraph, Coleman, 23, was jogging when he suddenly felt the enormous uncontrollable urge to pull out his BlackBerry and Twitter.

Perhaps you have experienced a similar sensation. The buttocks tighten, the eyebrows begin to quiver and your hand reaches into the pocket of your tracksuit, desperate to clutch your most precious jewel.

You grab your BlackBerry with the intention of informing your 25 followers that you have, indeed, just reached into your pocket to grab your BlackBerry while jogging.

Should there be "Danger. No Twittering" signs?

(Credit: CC Angelin Richmond/Flickr)

Coleman, as almost everyone on the streets of Manhattan, temporarily lost sight of his own proportions.

Twitter can do that to you.

Before he could even finish his tweet, he thought he might have temporarily lost sight in an eye. Even more strangely, he was lying on the sidewalk and his head was beginning to throb.

Had a passerby, appalled at this arrogant thrust towards modernity, karate-chopped him to the ground? No, it was a tree.

More precisely, a substantial, low-hanging branch that decided to play lumberjack.

"I could only see through one eye for a couple of days afterwards, but the swelling has started to go down now," Coleman told the Telegraph.

The experience hasn't, however, dampened Coleman's enthusiasm for ensuring that his 27 followers stay close to his footsteps, as well as his missteps.

Monday morning, he tweeted: "I am somewhat disappointed that my 15 minutes of fame stem from running into a tree whilst tweeting..."

Sir, but we are not disappointed. You have taught us so much. You have made us think very carefully about the wisdom of jogging and tweeting. However, you don't seem to have been put off by your own Twittering headbanging.

As I see that your latest tweet reads: "Running home--looking out for curbs, lamp-posts, cars, trees and all things stationary and moving :)"

Oh, Coleman, I am worried for the future of British business.

by Mark Silva

There's the national security side to Dick Cheney, noted hawk, and then there's the personal side, family man.

The former vice president, whose daughter Mary is gay, said today that people "ought to be free'' to enter into the union of their choice. He does not, however, support a federal law on marriage, but believes the question is best left to the states.

At the National Press Club today, where Cheney discussed the threat of terrorism after 9/11 and defended the Bush administration's interrogations and prosecution of the war against Iraq, the vice president also was asked about gay marriage, at a time when growing numbers of states, though still few, are legalizing same-sex marriages.

""I think that freedom means freedom for everyone," Cheney replied. "As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay, and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family.

"I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish -- any kind of arrangement they wish,'' Cheney said. "The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don't support. I do believe that, historically, the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue, and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis...

"But I don't have any problem with that,'' he said of the same-sex marriages that most of the states in New England and Iowa have authorized. "People ought to get a shot at that."

LAlthough Mary Cheney, one of the former vice president's two daughters, who helped her father campaign for reelection, has been open about her life, her parents have been more guarded about it.

During the 2004 campaign, the candidates for president were asked if they believe homosexuality is a choice. Then-President George W. Bush did not mention Mary Cheney, but Democratic rival John Kerry did. The senator from Massachusetts, which since has legalized gay marriage, said: "If you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as."

But Cheney's wife Lynne made it clear in a post-debate rebuke before a crowd near Pittsburgh what she thought of Kerry's debate tactic. "The only thing I can conclude is he is not a good man. I'm speaking as a mom," she said. "What a cheap and tawdry political trick."