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9-Year-Old To Buttigieg: ‘Would You Help Me Tell The World I Am Gay? I Want To Be Brave Like You’

L-R Secretary of State Jena Griswold, Zachary Ro, Pete Buttigieg
Addressing supporters at a rally in Aurora, Colorado, on Saturday night, Pete Buttigieg got a question from a 9-year-old boy in Aurora, Colorado, asking for advice on coming out as gay. “Thank you for being so brave,” said Zachary Ro in a question read by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. “Would you help me tell the world I am gay too? I want to be brave like you.” “Well, I don’t think you need a lot of advice from me on bravery,” said Buttigieg as the crowd roared its approval. “You seem pretty strong. It took me a long time to figure out how to tell even my best friend that I was gay let alone to go out there and tell the world. To see you willing to come to terms with who you are in a room full of a thousand people, thousands of people you’ve never met, that’s really something.” Amid the cheers for Ro, Mayor Pete did offer a couple of thoughts to young Zachary. “The first thing is that it won’t always be easy, but that’s OK because you know who you are,” shared the 38-year-old candidate. “And that’s really important because when you know who you are, you have a center of gravity that can hold you together when all kinds of chaos is happening around you.” “The second thing I want you to know is that you’ll never know who’s taking their lead from you, who’s watching you and deciding that they can be a little braver because you have been brave.” “When I was trying to figure out who I was, I was afraid that who I was might mean that I could never make a difference, and what wound up happening instead is it’s a huge part of the difference I get to make,” added Buttigieg. “I never could have seen that coming, and you’ll never know whose life you might be affecting right now just by standing here. There’s a lot of power in that.” Buttigieg closed the moment with the one thing every young LGBTQ kid needs to hear: “The last thing I want you to know is that even if I can’t promise it’s going to be easy, I’m going to promise that I’m going to be rooting for you.” The 9-year-old also gave Mayor Pete with a friendship bracelet, which the candidate proudly put on. #BravoPeteButtigieg

Zachary said he didn’t come to the event planning to ask the question. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing written down on a piece of paper and handed to volunteers collecting questions as he entered the rally Saturday night. Griswold told the Colorado Sun Zachary’s came up randomly. She was pulling questions gathered in a bowl and didn’t know whose questions she was grabbing. Afterwards, a reporter asked young Ro why he sought out Mayor Pete’s advice. “I feel inspired by seeing Pete being openly gay and running for president at the same time, and someday I want to be like him,” said young Zachary. “I feel like he gave me some really good advice.”

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Bernie Sanders Projected Winner Of Nevada Caucuses

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has been projected to win the Nevada Democratic caucuses. Sanders will now be able to boast he received the most votes in all the first three contests, he has the most delegates, and that he has widened his appeal beyond just white voters. The race now moves to South Carolina’s primary to be held Saturday, February 28, where the Real Clear Politics average of polls shows former Vice President Joe Biden leading by 3.7 percent over Sanders. UPDATE: The results are slowly coming in (not Iowa slow, but slow) but here’s where things stand at 60 percent results tabulated:

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Anderson Cooper Calls BS On Blagojevich’s ‘Political Prisoner’ Claim

This is seriously must-see TV. CNN’s Anderson Cooper spars with former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who calls himself a “political prisoner” days after being pardoned by President Trump. Normally, I try and condense the news here on The Randy Report, so I don’t post 11-minute videos very often. But this is quite something. Blagojevich’s sentence was commuted earlier this week by Trump after the Democrat (and former “Celebrity Apprentice” contestant) had served eight years of a 14-year sentence for pay-for-play crimes. You may recall the former governor was caught on tape admitting he planned to ‘sell’ President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder. At one point in last night’s interview, Blagojevich states he wants to work on reforming the criminal justice system. Cooper found that to be laughable. “It’s a little ironic, and frankly a little sad and pathetic and hypocritical, you talking about getting a commutation of a sentence, which is within the president’s right, but you ignored a whole hell of a lot of other people who were hoping you might give them clemency when you actually mattered,” said Cooper. At the end of the fiery interview, here’s Cooper’s summation:

“Look, I have no problem with you getting out. The president can commute whoever he wants. I just think you’re besmirching prosecutors who actually are no longer in government.

“But prosecutors are important in our system and you are going after the very basis of our justice system. Part of the thing is you got out – you do have an obligation to at least admit what you did wrong and you refuse to do that and you’re creating a whole new alternate universe of facts. “And that may be big in politics today, but it’s still frankly just bullshit.”

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2020 Caucus: Nevada Registers 10,000 New Democratic Voters

From the Nevada Democratic party:

The Nevada State Democratic Party announced today that more than 10,000 Nevadans registered to vote as Democrats to participate during the historic four-day early voting period. Over the course of four days of early voting, nearly 75,000 Nevadans turned out to participate in the caucus.

Thanks to same-day voter registration, the caucus has already significantly grown the Democratic voter registration advantage over Republicans in Nevada — again — ahead of the 2020 general election.

At the start of 2020, Democrats held a growing statewide registration advantage of more than 80,000, or above 5%. Independent and nonpartisan voters now outnumber registered Republicans in Clark County, relegating the GOP to third-party status in the state’s most populous county.

“With more than 10,000 Nevadans newly registering as Democrats during early voting, it’s clear that we are bringing a wave of new voters into our party and building a growing coalition who will mobilize for our nominee in November,” said Nevada State Democratic Party Chair William McCurdy II. “This is how we beat Donald Trump and elect Democrats up and down the ticket in 2020.”

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San Diego Union-Tribune Endorses Pete Buttigieg For President

(image via Instagram)
The San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board endorsed Mayor Pete Buttigieg for president this week.

It’s close, but in the view of The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board, Buttigieg is best suited to beat Trump because of his centrist policies, his military experience, his (admittedly small-scale) executive experience and the enthusiasm he’s inspired, with better fundraising and national polling, bigger campaign crowds and more news coverage than Klobuchar.

He has shown he can manage a national campaign successfully. And in a nation that only legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, his message of generational change could actually inspire change.

Of the six strong Democratic candidates left, half are 77- or 78-year-old men, two are women, one of whom is 70, and then there is Buttigieg. He may have only been mayor of the fourth-largest city in Indiana, but his fresh approach is transformational.

[sic]

The New York Times Editorial Board asked Buttigieg how he would balance his devout Episcopalian faith with his duties as commander in chief, and he showed both his wisdom and his eloquence: “I think you have to accept the reality that you are living and working in a broken world just as we are all broken human beings and try to order your steps in a way that brings greater good than harm.”

That resonated with us, for its lofty rhetoric and grounding in humanity and hope: “greater good.”

It’s time for a generational change. It’s time to make America good again.

Vote Pete Buttigieg for president of the United States.

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Ireland’s Openly Gay Prime Minister Offers His Resignation

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar (image via Instagram)
Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s openly gay prime minister, has offered his resignation after his political party, Fine Gael, failed to win a majority in the parliamentary elections held on February 8. From The Advocate:

Parliament then voted Thursday on the prime minister, with a candidate needing 80 votes to win. Varadkar received just 36, with the support of all members of his party plus one other. Micheál Martin, from the Fianna Fáil party, received 41 votes, and Mary Lou McDonald, of Sinn Fein, won the most, 45.

The other parties refuse to form a coalition government with Sinn Fein, which was once the political affiliate of the Irish Republican Army, so Martin may end up leading a coalition with Fine Gael.

When he became prime minister in 2017, he became one of the highest-ranking openly gay elected officials in the world. Varadkar visited the U.S. several times in his capacity as Ireland’s Prime Minister including attending a luncheon with virulently anti-LGBTQ Vice President Mike Pence in 2018.

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Greyson Chance Has A Moment On The Dance Floor ‘Dancing Next To Me’

Greyson Chance has a moment on the dance floor
Out singer/songwriter Greyson Chance shifts into dance-pop mode for his new track and music video, “Dancing Next To Me.” Shot in a club setting, Chance has one of those dance floor encounters where the sexual tension is undeniable. But after giving in to intimacy, Chance finds himself alone at the end of the night. Chance – who first found viral fame with his 2010 Lady Gaga cover of “Paparazzi” – candidly admits the song is based on a real-life experience. “I was growing into feeling comfortable with being vulnerable around this person and then eventually being intimate with them and thinking that there was really something truthful there and something beautiful,” Chance recently told PEOPLE. Chance thought he might have made a love connection, but ended up “having this feeling of betrayal in the morning when the sun rose and the person left.” “He wasn’t confident enough to love me,” said the 22-year-old. “I think in many ways he was afraid to take that step.” I was yours for the weekend Come sunrise, it’s time for you to dodge your feelings Call your girl to deny We know is the truth You were who you wanted to be When you were there, you were there You were dancing next to me “In many ways, whether it’s right or wrong, I hope he hears this song and hates it,” Chance says. “I hope it brings an ill feeling to him just because I felt betrayed.” The song, co-written with producer/songwriter Teddy Geiger, was the first to come out of his collaboration with Geiger because the experience was so fresh in his mind. As he shared with MTV, “I was really tired this summer of being people’s experiments.” Back in November, I covered Chance’s grungy, synth-pop bop, “Boots.” “Dancing Next To Me” is now available on all digital download sites. Check out the music video below.

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Gus Kenworthy: Gay Culture 101

Life in the Twitters. Gus Kenworthy commented on a video posted on Twitter by YouTube star Tyler Oakley where a hot guy in the subway riffed on the current “Finish the lyric…” trend. Said Kenworthy, “‘Oh damn he cute’ and then I realized that I’ve hooked up with him and if that is not gay culture I don’t know what is…” #gaylife

(h/t kenneth-in-the-212)

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Woman Threatens To Blackmail Gay Men, Dead The Next Day

(screen capture via WISH TV)
Now, this is a wild and wooly tale. After walking in on two men apparently having sex, a woman in Indianapolis attempted to blackmail them for $5,000. They didn’t pay, and a short time later she was shot and died in a car crash. Jane Waughfield told her story via Facebook Live video on Monday after she had gone to the home of one of the men. In the video, she said that she had ‘business’ with him. She also mentioned that she had hooked up with him a few years ago. Ranting on the men using vulgar homophobic slurs, she admitted she threatened to reveal the men saying she would stay quiet IF they gave her $5,000 via CashApp. “They tried to kill me. They chased me out of the house,” she said during the video. “If I die, let them people know they killed me.”

And then…wait for it…she was involved in a car crash with another vehicle on Tuesday morning. The driver of the other car involved in the crash found her unresponsive in her car AND she had a gunshot wound. Witnesses told the local CBS news affiliate they saw Waughfield’s yellow Camaro traveling at a high rate of speed before the car crash. Police refuse to comment as to whether social media played a role in the incident.