I don't intend this as a political question/partisan question -- but, lately, I admit I sometimes tire of hearing politicians apologizing for everything.
My question was inspired from the article I'll post below, about O'Rourke -- both of the things for which he apologized ( a comment about he and his wife's child raising and some of his writings as a teenager) seem incredibly innocuous to me. I realize some people have done some questionable things -- but, being one who apologizes too much, I shake my head a bit as I watch fellow humans feeling they must apologize for every little thing.
Oh, I need to apologize now -- as a youngster, I drew a huge amount of illustrations and images from the 1968 "Night of the Living Dead" movie. And vampires. They were all gruesome.
And, as a young teen, I once wrote a short story about a woman, in a large castle, slowly drawn into madness and death while hearing a constant sound of someone's constant footsteps outside her room late at night. She lost her mind and was literally scared to death. The footsteps she heard were actually the sound of a metronome someone had left on.
"Democratic presidential contender Beto O’Rourke on Friday acknowledged making mistakes as a teen and as a candidate, responding to criticism of his campaign rhetoric toward his wife as well as writings he produced online when he was young.
During a taping of the “Political Party Live” podcast in Cedar Rapids, he addressed criticism of his campaign-trail joke that his wife, Amy, has raised their three kids “sometimes with my help.” O’Rourke made the comment at multiple campaign stops during his first swing through Iowa, including earlier Friday, eliciting laughs each time, but he also drew criticism as being insensitive to the challenges faced by single parents raising children.
O’Rourke said the criticism of his “ham-handed” attempt to highlight his wife’s work in their marriage was “right on.”
“Not only will I not say that again, but I will be much more thoughtful in the ways that I talk about my marriage,” he said.
O’Rourke, 46, also said he was “mortified” when he reread the violent fiction he wrote as a teen, which received fresh attention Friday after a Reuters report outlined his involvement in a hacker group as a teen. O’Rourke wrote a handful of posts on the group’s message board under the name “Psychedelic Warlord,” including a fictional piece he penned when he was 15 about children getting run over by a car.
“I’m mortified to read it now, incredibly embarrassed, but I have to take ownership of my words,” he said. “Whatever my intention was as a teenager doesn’t matter, I have to look long and hard at my actions, at the language I have used, and I have to constantly try to do better.”
O’Rourke had said after an earlier campaign stop that it was “stuff I was part of as a teenager.”
“It’s not anything I’m proud of today, and I mean, that’s — that’s the long and short of it,” he said. “All I can do is my best, which is what I’m trying to do. I can’t control anything I’ve done in the past. I can only control what I do going forward and what I plan to do is give this my best.”
The comments came on the second day of a presidential campaign in which O’Rourke is seeking to establish himself as a unique voice in the race. He avoided what has become something of a tradition among the 2020 contenders by refusing to announce how much money he raised in the 24 hours after announcing his candidacy. He said it would be soon.
“I don’t have a definite plan,” he added. “We’re not ready to release them now.”
The former Texas congressman entered the 2020 presidential race Thursday after months of speculation. He raised an eye-popping $80 million in grassroots donations last year in his failed U.S. Senate race in Texas against Republican Ted Cruz, all while largely avoiding money from political action committees. His early fundraising numbers will be an initial signal of whether his popularity during the Senate campaign will carry over to his White House bid.
So far, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has set the pace for grassroots donations in 2020, pulling in $6 million during his first day as a candidate.
Asked if he thought he would top Sanders, O’Rourke said only, “We’ll see.”
O’Rourke’s reception during his first Iowa swing was overwhelmingly positive, even as he launched his campaign by hitting a handful of counties that had shifted from supporting Democrat Barack Obama to backing Republican Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign.
Most of the towns O’Rourke visited during his first two days in the state were small and rural, manufacturing or farming towns. He kicked off his bid in Keokuk, population 10,300, dropped by a private home in Fairfield, a town about the same size, and jumped atop a coffee shop counter to address the crowd in Mount Pleasant, population 8,500.
The strategy set O’Rourke apart from the rest of the field, many of whom have focused their early swings on the state’s population centers or on the traditionally blue counties that make up the bulk of the Democratic primary electorate.
Norm Sterzenbach, who’s advising O’Rourke in Iowa, said the strategy came out of the Texan’s desire to do more intimate events in his first swing through Iowa.
“He didn’t want to do big rallies or big events. He wanted to get into communities and really talk to Iowans, and he wanted to go to smaller towns, smaller communities, and . places that had been neglected” by politicians, he said.
It was an approach reminiscent of his Texas Senate bid, where O’Rourke hit every one of the state’s 254 counties, even the most rural areas, some of which hadn’t been visited by Democratic candidates in years. O’Rourke didn’t commit to visiting all of Iowa’s 99 counties — what’s locally known as the “Full Grassley,” after Iowa’s senior Republican senator, Chuck Grassley, who’s famous for doing the full swing — but he said he planned to visit as much of Iowa as possible.
That go-everywhere, speak-to-everyone strategy brought him within 3 points of defeating Cruz in Texas, the nation’s largest red state."
Buttigieg was born in South Bend, Indiana, to Jennifer Anne (Montgomery) and Joseph Buttigieg, both professors at the University of Notre Dame.[7] His father was an immigrant from Malta, and his mother is a multiple-generation Hoosier.[8]
Buttigieg graduated from St. Joseph High School in 2000, where he was president and valedictorian of his senior class.[9] In his senior year at high school, he was honored for an essay for the "JFK Profiles in Courage Essay Contest"; he traveled to Boston, where he met Caroline Kennedy and other members of President Kennedy's family during a May 22, 2000, ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Library. Buttigieg had written about the integrity and political courage demonstrated by U.S. Congressman Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of only two Independent members of Congress.[10] He was also selected as one of two Indiana delegates to the United States Senate Youth Program.
Buttigieg attended Harvard College, where he was president of the Harvard Institute of Politics Student Advisory Committee and worked on the Institute's annual study of youth attitudes on politics.[11][12] Buttigieg was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa.[13]
Buttigieg graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 2004, receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in history and literature. He wrote his thesis on the influence of puritanism on U.S. foreign policy, as reflected in the Graham Greene novel The Quiet American.[14] He received a first class honors degree in philosophy, politics and economics in 2007 from Pembroke College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.[15]
Before graduating from college, Buttigieg worked as an investigative intern at WMAQ-TV, Chicago's NBC news affiliate. He also worked as an intern for Jill Long Thompson's 2002 congressional campaign. He later served as an adviser to her 2008 gubernatorial campaign.[16]
From 2004 to 2005, Buttigieg worked in Washington, D.C., as conference director for former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen's international strategic consulting firm, The Cohen Group. He also spent several months working on Senator John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, where he was a policy and research specialist.[17] After graduating from Oxford, he worked as a consultant at McKinsey and Company from 2007 through 2010.[18][19]
He was the Democratic Party candidate in 2010 for State Treasurer of Indiana. Buttigieg lost to Republican incumbent Richard Mourdock, garnering 37.5% of the vote.[20]
Buttigieg was commissioned as a Naval intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve in 2009, and deployed to Afghanistan in 2014.[21] After a seven-month deployment, Buttigieg returned to South Bend.[22] He remains a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve.[23]
Buttigieg was elected Mayor of South Bend on November 8, 2011, with 74% of the vote[24] and took office on January 1, 2012, at age 29, as the youngest mayor of a U.S. city with at least 100,000 residents.[24][25]
In 2012, Buttigieg demoted the first African American police chief of South Bend, Darryl Boykins, and fired the police communications director, following the revelation of recorded telephone conversations between four white South Bend police officers and the spouse of an officer. The recordings were alleged to contain "racist content".[26] Buttigieg opted to settle suits brought by Boykins, the communications director, and the four officers out of court.[27]
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He was named mayor of the year for 2013 by GovFresh.com, tying with former three-term New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg.[28][29] In 2014, The Washington Post called Buttigieg "the most interesting mayor you've never heard of" based on his youth, education, and military background.[24] In 2016, The New York Times columnist Frank Bruni published a column praising Buttigieg's work as mayor and asking in the headline if he could eventually be elected as "the first gay president."[23]
Buttigieg has made redevelopment a top priority of his administration. One of its signature programs has been the "Vacant and Abandoned Properties Initiative" (known locally as "1,000 Properties in 1,000 Days"), a project to repair or demolish blighted properties across the city.[30][31] The goal was reached by the program's scheduled end date in November 2015.[32]
Buttigieg served for seven months in Afghanistan as a lieutenant in the Navy Reserves, returning to the United States on September 23, 2014.[33] In his absence, Deputy Mayor Mark Neal, South Bend's city controller, served in the role of executive, from February 2014 until Buttigieg returned to his role as mayor in October 2014.
In 2014, Buttigieg announced that he would seek a second term[34] and went on to win the Democratic Party primary with 78% of the vote.[35] On November 3, 2015, he was elected to his second term as mayor of South Bend with over 80% of the vote.[36]
On June 16, 2017, the Mayor's "Smart Streets" construction project concluded. The multi-year, $25 million initiative converted many downtown one-way streets to two-way use, and added pedestrian- and bike-friendly amenities.[37]
In December 2018, Buttigieg announced that he would not seek a third term as mayor of South Bend.[38]
On January 5, 2017, Buttigieg announced his candidacy for Chair of the Democratic National Committee in its 2017 chairmanship election.[39] He "built a national profile as an emerging dark horse in the race for the chairmanship with the backing of former DNC Chairman Howard Dean."[40] Buttigieg "campaigned on the idea that the aging Democratic Party needed to empower its millennial members."[40] He withdrew from the race on the day of the election.[40]
On January 23, 2019, Buttigieg launched an exploratory committee to run for President of the United States in the 2020 election.[41][42]
Buttigieg was named a 2014 Aspen Institute Rodel Fellow.[43] He was named a recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Fenn Award in 2015.[44]
On June 16, 2015, Buttigieg announced in an essay that he is gay.[45] He is the first openly gay municipal executive in Indiana.[46] On December 28, 2017, Buttigieg announced his engagement to Chasten Glezman, whom he had been dating since August 2015.[47] On June 16, 2018, they were married in a private ceremony at the Cathedral of St. James in downtown South Bend.[48] He is a member of the Episcopal Church.[23] His father Joseph died on January 27, 2019.[49]
Buttigieg is a polyglot. He taught himself how to speak Norwegian and is also conversational in Spanish, Italian, Maltese, Arabic, Dari, and French.[50][51]
WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH 