It took a WaPo editorial, but Sullivan is finally on board:
The WaPo is right about this: the president is not responsible for not legislating something; and everything the gay rights movement wants is a legislative act right now. So aim the pressure at the appropriate people. Why does Nancy Pelosi believe the US should still be firing soldiers solely because they’re gay? Has anyone put her on the spot about that lately?
The last few days have been crazy. I was talking to a friend via email, and he said, essentially, that the squeaky wheel gets the grease- look at the NRA. To which I can only respond, I never recall Wayne LaPierre going on television, or writing a story, or screaming from a blog, that Bush was “just words” and “worse than Clinton.” He would never do that, because he recognized that Bush was on the NRA’s side on these issues. Instead, he and his establishment would lobby congress and spend money trying shape public opinion. A crazy idea, I know. There is a lesson here.
Meanwhile, it turns out that outside the chorus of the professionally angry, people who are actually in the know understood that the administration was working to end DADT and wasn’t just words:
Shortly after President Barack Obama pledged Saturday to end “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the Administration’s highest-ranking LGBT official said the White House is speaking with certain senators about strategies for repealing the policy — specifically Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“On ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ this administration is talking directly to the Hill — we are in direct discussions with Senator Lieberman,” John Berry, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, told The Advocate.
***Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the repeal lobby group Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said during a symposium two weeks ago that he believed a bill was only weeks from introduction.
Though Sarvis said he preferred a bipartisan track, he added, “A number of other Democrats are ready for bill introduction and I suspect we may soon have a Senate bill introduced.”
Now I’m sure the usual suspects will claim that the little shit fit from the last 48 hours is the driving force behind this (I’m imagining fifty self-congratulatory and misguided “SEE, THEY LISTENED” posts), but as you can see, the head of the SLDN has known for quite some time that work was underway for a repeal of DADT.
I suppose it is probably pointless to note that the people who have been most obnoxious the last 48 hours probably were also berating Obama for not knee-capping Lieberman a while back.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Of course it was! Screw the grease, toss enough shit around and everything gets slippery.
matoko_chan
then….why didn’t O announce that at the HRC….if the bill is 2 weeks away from introduction?
Jackmormon
Be fair, John: Lieberman really does deserve to be knee-capped.
John Cole
@matoko_chan: BECAUSE. HE. IS. NOT. A. LEGISLATOR.
John Cole
@Jackmormon: I believe my position was I would knee-cap him and shoot him myself, but that Obama probably knows what he is doing.
Little Dreamer
Without trying to toot my own horn here, I’m usually quite prescient and not for any certain reasons I can imagine – I just have fairly good instincts for calling things, so why is it nobody ever listens to me?
scav
OK, who opened the refrigerator? You’re letting all the cold out and I’m not ready for winter yet.
Ash
@matoko_chan: Because the president doesn’t schedule when bills get introduced? Duh?
Also because, I’m pretty sure this story has already been out for a few weeks now and lots of people have apparently missed it.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
You keep changing your name, thus no credibility because you’re a n00b. ;)
Cameron
@Jackmormon: Agree completely. Lieberman really does need to be kneecapped. His convictions last about as long as a popsicle in the sun.
Deborah
Clearly it was the national outrage at bloggers being anonymously called “pajama-clad” that forced the legislature to act.
Tattoosydney
Cole ftw.
rachel
@Little Dreamer: Nobody listens to Cassandra. It’s the people who are always wrong who get the attention. (See: Friedman, Tom; Krauthammer, Charles; Cheney, Dick…)
Little Dreamer
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
Moi? I’ve changed my named twice. I used to be Rome Again and I’m Little Dreamer, in FIVE years (sure, I’ve had one or two other short term names I’ve used for a thread or two but nothing more than that). Lots of people listen to TZ, even if they don’t agree with him, and he changes his name almost bi-monthly. I guess I’ll have to ask him for some pointers tonight at dinnertime.
Little Dreamer
@rachel:
Ah, I see. We’re doomed I tell ya, DOOMED!
WyldPiratd
C’mon, John. Lieberman is the most deserving of a knee-capping of any Dem pol.
For fucks sake, Lieberman would benefit from more than knee-capping. I can envision a daily ritual of waterboarding him with buckets of runny post dump toliet water, glass-shards in his drawers, electrodes on his testicles, etc.
Joe Lieberman is an evil motherfucker who has more allegiance to Israel than Connecticut and the US. He’s a goddamned traitor as far as I’m concerned.
beltane
Does this mean it is once again safe to go to Sully’s site? He is often infuriating, but I really enjoy his links to cool photography sites, etc.
I think Sullivan is one of those people who needs to be yelled at occasionally.
John Cole
@beltane: Yeah, well, so am I.
matoko_chan
@ John Cole
Oh….pardon.
Still…he must have known…because otherwise it would have been a good gamespace move to repeal DADT.
It will put some cracks in DOMA.
GReynoldsCT00
@Jackmormon:
all I can hope is that the electorate in this state get their heads out of their ass and kneecap him at the polls next time
IU1995
So true, John.
Prime suspects = Aravosis and the Americablog crew
I guarantee they will continue to throw hissy fits and then will be the first to pat themselves on the back and say “see they listened” when it’s all over.
Little Dreamer
@Deborah:
I didn’t have a speck of flannel on yesterday. I do now. ;)
geg6
Oh. Well, who knew it was the legislature that is supposed to…oh, I don’t know…legislate?
Tom Q
This tendency of the High Dudgeon Firedoglakers to now take credit for anything progressive happening after they scream for a few days is really getting annoying. Markos was on Countdown a week or so back and proclaimed the ONLY reason the public option was still being discussed was because he and his cohorts had shouted bloody murder — otherwise it would have been the original Baucus Bill and nothing more. The idea that Obama might have a strategy, that Congressional negotiations eventually incorporating the public option were always on the agenda, is simply dismissed out of hand.
This is not dissimilar to a technique George Steinbrenner developed in the 80s. Whenever the Yankees went into a tailspin, he’d stage a tirade for media consumption. Then, when the law of averages kicked in and the team started playing a bit better, he took credit for turning them around.
Little Dreamer
@WyldPiratd:
I guess I’m just too specific, but, when he became an Independent, I thought it was immediately time to stop calling him a “Dem pol”. He may still caucus with Dems, but I don’t consider him to be a Dem at all (and really, I think he spends his Saturday nights with his Pubbie friends).
Kryptik
I agree in spirit, John.
But I still agree with some here that Lieberman still deserves to be kneecapped, because he still seems to find ways to crap out stinker after stinker on important issues, like our current health care debate. Just because he’s been more silent about his contrarianism lately than Baucus, Bayh, and the Blue Dogs doesn’t make him less worthy of a whack. Especially when the full Senate vote comes down the pipe.
Little Dreamer
@geg6:
Anyone with at least a passing grade in English?
Morbo
@matoko_chan: That kind of sentiment is exactly the problem with Rovian politics and political reporting. That’s what “permanent campaign mode” meant in the Bush administration. All we ever get is discussion about the “gamespace” without any consideration of the actual policy. Actual discussion of legislative action on its merits is discarded in favor of speculation about how many votes it will get. The laws Congress passes and the President signs aren’t just moves in a game for votes in even numbered years. There are actual policy outcomes and actual changes on actual people’s lives. And, um, it’s probably going to make gay servicemembers’ lives easier when DADT is ended if the change comes about as a result of a change in the actual law than if it comes from the executive fiat of “black liberal president.”
Napoleon
If Sully is going to take it out on anyone in the legislature Pelosi is not the one (but he can not help himself with her) since all evidence is she would have the house pass it in a second but that worthless POS Reid.
Recall that months ago some reported asked him about repeal/change in the law and he gave a completely lame answer to the effect that Obama hadn’t asked them yet. Hey Harry, the constitution says its your branch of government that legislators, not the executive branch. A few weeks ago it was reported that Harry wrote the White House seeking their input in what to do. Again Reid is totally trying to avoid even the appearance of doing his job.
ed
Last time I checked, Obama has that Bully Pulpit Thing and makes mutherphukkin’ killer speeches ‘n’ stuff.
He had a chance to get out in front of the issue (DADT), which would have been the right thing to do as well as politically savvy (it’s called “leadership”). Could be too late, which would be too bad.
matoko_chan
but….it is all about games….it is how we are wired.
And SBH (social brain hypothesis) and cognitive neuroscience.
Homosapiens can no more stop playing games than we can stop reproducing.
;)
Napoleon
@ed: said
“. . . as well as politically savvy .. . ”
In what alternate universe? It would have been political suicide to take on the issue before he gets health care through and economic reforms. The second he touches either issue in a big way that is all that will be talked about on tv and in the papers 24/7/365 and any chance to get through on any other issue is over.
Obama is handling this perfectly.
Minionero
Now, come on John, this is unfair. You don’t have to be a legislator to announce that legislation is going to be introduced soon. “Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the repeal lobby group Servicemembers Legal Defense Network” is not a legislator and somehow he was able to muster up an estimate of when the repeal bill would be introduced. Presumably Obama has more regular contact with congressional leaders than Aubrey. Right? So why didn’t he say anything about it in the HRC speech?
Corner Stone
@Morbo: At difficult times like these I always ask myself:
What does Liz Cheney think about this?
And am comforted by her thoughtful wisdom.
ricky
I am seriously pissed at all of this. I scrubbed the cheeto stains off my pajamas in preparation for being a snarling pup private in the Hamsher howitzer brigade. Does this mean I can go back in the basement or is it just about Sullivan and not the whole anonymous pajama thingie?
Minionero
OK, I’ll answer my own question.
Why didn’t Obama say anything about impending DADT-repeal legislation in his speech to HRC? I see three possible answers:
1) He had no idea a repeal bill was in the works.
2) A repeal bill actually wasn’t in the works, but that’s all changed now thanks to increased levels of bloggy outrage. (The “SEE, THEY LISTENED” theory)
3) He actually wanted to whip the liberal blogosphere into a tizzy by making them think that he had no plan to move forward on repeal, when in fact, he knew the bill would be introduced soon. (Obama has frequently sought to use anger from the left to put him in a centrist light. See public option, FISA, etc.)
Why is it that #3 seems to be the most likely?
John Cole
@Minionero: Or maybe he thinks it is the legislature’s job to legislate? See also, HEALTH CARE REFORM.
ChrisB
@beltane:
I regularly read and generally enjoy Sullivan’s site, thought he did a great job covering the Iranian protests and coming out against torture, and have winced at some of the criticism he has received. But then he comes up with this:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/10/the-empiricism-of-david-brooks.html
and all I can do is say “Oh my God!”
liberal
@Minionero:
Agreed. It’s as if presidents don’t submit budgets to Congress. Or as if Bush had nothing to do with the “Bush tax cuts.”
It might be good electoral tactics to delay DADT repeal, and it’s reasonable to argue that there are higher priorities, but saying “the president is not a legislator” is silly.
Minionero
Um, announcing that legislators somewhere will be introducing a bill is not “legislating.”
How about this: “Congressional leaders will introduce a bill in the coming weeks that will repeal DADT.”
Ooops, I think I just legislated!
Cerberus
I am pleasantly surprised.
I can’t speak for the gay community at large, but I know most of the flak has been for one simple reason: kicked puppy syndrome. Gays got hosed a lot under Clinton, got hosed by conservadems during Bush and have been hung out to dry a lot. Thus, their first response with tepid statements during a giant shift in the debate and some early worrying signs was to assume the apocalypse, especially when lawmakers introducing legislation were told to delay.
If the good times really are set to roll, I’m pleased to be utterly wrong as would be the entire sane lgbtq community. We’ll still ride him though, because at the very least that gives him cover to be “bipartisan” in the face of DFHs that the Beltway loves so much.
And Sully, Sully, Sully, I know you are a giant sexist tool, but it’s not Pelosi who’s the weak link. The problem is as always the Senate which means the main block to actual progressive legislation is the same pack of conservadems and Harry Spineless Reid. Pelosi has had the House voting in a good strong block for awhile now and if she had control over both houses or if the Senate dems weren’t gentrified assholes, we’d already be getting hitched over the dying screams of DOMA.
liberal
@John Cole:
Might be formally true, but the president has had large amounts of input into legislation for a long, long, long time now.
If you google
president submits budget
the current second hit is at Wikipedia, and the google summary is “In its current form, federal budget legislation law (31 U.S.C. 1105(a)) specifies that the President submit a budget between the first …”
Of course, a presidential budget proposal isn’t a bill, and it often is just a wish-list, but your line of argument here is weak.
Da Bomb
@Ash: Pretty much. I read about yesterday. But like other things that this administration has done, apparently it flys under the wire.
So let’s keep throwing eggs, because they are so much fun!
liberal
@Minionero:
The president can actually say something much stronger: “Congress should pass a bill with these contents.” Has no Constitutional force, but so what? Presidents do it all the time.
Again, not saying Obama’s tack on DADT is wrong, but JC’s argument here is (uncharacteristically) weak.
On this subject, though, I don’t understand Obama’s tack on HCR, unless he plans to have his proxies in Congress take control during conference.
cat48
I hope this is done quickly enough to save Lt Col Fehrenbach. He was outed last year, and he is waiting for discharge since all steps are complete. I think someone is holding his discharge orders though because Lt Choi outed himself on TV and was discharged a few months later.
Minionero
@Cerberus: I understand the idea behind kicked puppy syndrome but the analogy is clearly inadequate here.
For decades, gays have been villainized, ostracized, mistreated by national pols. Now we have a president who pays lip service to the cause, although he hasn’t made any real progress in the first 9 months of his term.
The kicked puppy is no longer being kicked! Of course, he’s not being given any treats either (not yet at least). But it’s still a lot better than being kicked!
liberal
@Da Bomb:
Uh, pointing out that the President can take the lead on legislation without formally having a role in introducing a bill isn’t throwing eggs.
Demo Woman
@Minionero:
#4 Obama releases information according to his scheduled, not ours.
kay
@Cerberus:
I agree on Pelosi. Stop lumping her in with the loathsome and deeply strange Harry Reid. She’s doing fine, evidenced by how many Republicans attack her every single day.
Cerberus
@Minionero:
Of course it’s 3. It’s what Obama has asked the left to do and it’s critical for avoiding the tag “scary negro come to change everything” from the Beltway media who is practically gagging for an excuse to showcase him as Malcom X Reincarnated.
But then that’s what EVERY politician needs. Change is scary to entrenched interests and those who profit over inequality. Thus changing things for the better requires a pushing force, energy from the ground, anger from the left. Then those who move in those privileged circles can point to that and say, gosh darnitt my hand was forced.
I wouldn’t expect any politician to be more radical than the activists campaigning for them and I’d be worried if they were because it would mean that the activists were phoning it in. This is also why the HRC kerfuffle hasn’t disillusioned me to Obama but rather made me like him more while liking HRC less. They’ve been trying to be more moderate in their push for equality than Obama in order to “remove pressure” and have been actively shitting on the grassroots more than the administration. We in the gay rights movement are not being well represented by the largest organization that purports to support us and that is why they are being replaced violently as the face of the activists.
Indeed, much of the anger over Obama is really just bs anthropomorphizing over general anger in the gay community towards “community leaders” like HRC who have not been doing their job of being all rabble-rousery and being the push towards change that a politician needs to do something.
LD50
SEE, THEY LISTENED!
(sorry, someone had to do that)
Cerberus
@Minionero:
Yes, my point was along those lines. The puppy isn’t being kicked, but if you ever have taken care of an abused puppy you know it walks around life waiting for, braced for the inevitable kick. When that doesn’t come, it doesn’t become happy, it becomes anxious for awhile until it learns not to expect kicks.
The queer community is entering the not being kicked stage. It hasn’t fully adapted to a world without kicks yet, though it’s aware that such a world may not be far away.
cat48
If I were Obama, I would never give a timeline again if Congress is involved. They left him with egg on his face with the HCR deadline of having bills in conference before August break. They still bring this up on cable news to make him look bad. I honestly think the deadline was more about Senator Kennedy since his condition was worsening then.
Bobby Thomson
If we’ve learned nothing from this thread, it’s that both those who saw the Harwood story as a big nothing and those who thought the bus drove over their pajamas think that Lieberman should have been kneecapped.
But, since he wasn’t, there’s nothing wrong in
exploiting himmakinghim grovelthe most out of the situation a la Specter before he comes up for reelection.Cerberus
@liberal:
I agree on some levels that he is being cautious with his support (dems cheering on the gays is a new thing in a lot of ways and he probably doesn’t want to look like an activist), but I think Obama is investing a hell of a lot in something really interesting.
He’s trying to downgrade the office of presidency. Instead of Bush, I am the government, style politics, he seems to deliberately desire to take himself out of as much of the proper workings of government he can in order to reassert the balance between executive and legislative branches.
It’s frustrating as a progressive because it means the super-ultra-mega majority is being pissed away a lot and it slows down the fixing of what Bush broke, but it is still an important action to take and perhaps is the only way to fix the misguided notion that the president is the government rather than a mostly powerless figurehead TO the government.
The Operative
Sullivan’s delayed revelation about how the legislative process actually works makes his weekend long tantrum more disgraceful, not less. In finally grasping the basics of civics he still manages to embarrass himself by showing the blindly selective nature of his criticism. The blame for the ‘gay movements’ inarguable ineffectiveness doesn’t belong to Congress or Obama. It belongs to people like John Aravosis, Dan Savage, Pam Spalding, Queerty in general and Sullivan himself for wanting all of the benefits of successful activism without doing anything but whining louder in their insular Queer Bubble about how everyone else but them should do their job FOR them.
If you notice, the general source of their criticism has been almost entirely bereft of personal responsibility. When the general public remains unconvinced by poorly argued and horribly advertised campaigns for gay marriage, they blame homophobia and religion instead of their own short-sighted and inadequate efforts at persuasion. When there’s a lack of congressional drive to push through gay-favorable legislation, they don’t blame their failures to advertise on Think Progress or DailyKos (like everyone else with a political cause does), nor do they blame their nonexistent focus on congressional support; they simply chastise the Democrats for “throwing them under a bus” or “slapping them in the face” except for election years. And when the President doesn’t “move fast enough” they don’t blame their failure to popularize their issues beyond their gayblog echo chamber, or their failure to actually pressure congress into giving him legislation to sign. They blame the President himself, and make HIM out to be the evil party.
Gay progress isn’t incremental because we’re a country of homophobes, it’s incremental because their most prominent activists are reactionary, small-minded, and pitifully childish cry-babies whose rallying cry is better summed up as “NOW, NOW, NOW!!!!” instead of anything persuasive or convincing. Sullivan exacerbates the dynamic when he goes into dramatic spiels about how wronged he is by everyone else without pointing so much as a semblance of a critical eye to his actions or the actions of the movement he’s attached to.
Gay progress WILL be reached, but unfortunately, the collective ‘gay movement’ lacks the introspection to grasp that its successes will have more to do with generational biases being shed than by any well applied politicking on their part.
Da Bomb
@Minionero: Not really.
But ok…
Minionero
@Cerberus: Gotcha. I guess I didn’t understand the kicked puppy theory after all. :)
@Demo Woman: Why do you suppose Obama’s information-release schedule didn’t include telling HRC that DADT repeal legislation was about to be introduced in Congress?
Da Bomb
@liberal: Please explain to me when has a speech given to the HRC ever been about introducing legislation.
And what do you think that he hasn’t been doing anything towards giving input on it? Did you read the link in John’s post? Oh, yeah because Harry Reid the guy who voted for DADT and DOMA to begin with said so. That’s who spineless.
But yet again, it’s easier to blame the President for treating a browbeaten Congress as an co-equal branch of government.
Da Bomb
@The Operative: As I said yesterday, they have to start being proactive instead of reactive. I couldn’t agree with you more.
Cerberus
@The Operative:
Uh…
No. Just no.
See, activism is this thing, which mostly consists on getting your experiences or worldview out to the world, mobilizing the community, chronicling the problem and suggest solutions to solve it and to otherwise move the country from one where the problem exists to one where it is solved or goes away.
So, gays getting bitchy IS activism, good activism, because it reminds people this isn’t a game, this is people’s lives. And many of these activists are in their day job running chapters of Equality organizations, helping mobilize and publicize gay events, encouraging gay community people to get mobilized and to get radical in their demands in order to provide the push and to broadcast the issue to the world.
Without “the bloggers”, would you know that there is a huge gay uprising occurring right now? Would anyone in the straight world be talking about the gays demanding equal rights or would it be “oh right, they had that big rally after prop 8”?
It’s especially funny seeing Pam’s House Blend on the shitlist considering that it’s front page is currently running day-to-day information on how you can help the No on 1 campaign in Maine, recently the live sessions of debate in the legislative victories as well as mobilizing support in chambers for them, the Ref 71 fight in Washington news and ways to support as well as deconstructing the other side for arguments with friends and family, calls for coming out, calls for local action with legislators, and notices on gay and trans org meetups and the discussions that occurred there.
Yeah, totally doing nothing…uh huh.
Cerberus
@Da Bomb:
Proactive is what people are calling “bitchy”. They’re no longer reacting to incoming blows, but starting to assert human rights and demand positive change. If they were reactive, then they’d say that Obama talking to them was more than they could have asked for. Instead we are pushing for MORE action and faster, thus providing the shove that can be used as an excuse by those in positions of power.
Just as we shoved the legislatures in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
El Tiburon
uh, WTF? So now the gun-lobby = equal rights for gay people.
Wow, what a doozy.
Wayne LePierre = Man or Woman wanting EQUAL RIGHTS.
Wow, what a doozy.
So tell me how your crystal ball knows that it is not because of the increased pressure from gay-rights activists that is pushing the Obama administration on the DADT policy?
But let’s put this in fuller context in clear, simple language:
GAY PEOPLE, WILL YOU STFU ALREADY? YOU’LL GET YOURS IF YOU SIT DOWN AND BE QUIET, OKAY? NO SERIOUSLY, JUST QUIT YER BITCHING.
Or is the reasoning that if teh Gays won’t settle down they won’t get their rights out of spite?
I guess next is to put the kabash on ending the countless wars we have. “Hey, Obama said he’s going to end the wars, all of this protesting is not helping.”
This makes no sense.
scott
I’m sorry John but you were wrong earlier when you posted about this and both you and Sully are wrong now. And your mistakes are obviously rooted in a deep lack of understanding about the military and how it works and what the chain of command means — although I was under the impression that you had served at one time.
Having spent the last 20+ years and retiring recently as a Sergeant Major of Marines I can say unequivocally that the very first and militarily most appropriate step that needs to be taken with regard to DADT is not a congressional issue but a simple chain of command issue.
Congress is NOT in the chain of command of the uniformed services. The President, however, is and it is from his position at the very top of that chain that the first action should be taken — namely an executive order to the entire military ordering the immediate cessation of investigations and separations under DADT.
That is an order that is completely appropriate under the UCMJ and would also be the most appropriate and practical first step to be taken in anticipation of congress eventually repealing DADT.
Yes, you and SUlly are 100% correct that pressure needs to be applied heavily to Nancy Pelosi and all of congress on the issue of repealing DADT and it is, indeed, the job of congress to ultimately end DADT. But to say that its not the President’s job to initiate this and to imply as you have that he can’t do much other than use his bully pulpit, or that he should do anything more than that as you have in posts past, indicates a profound lack of understanding about how and why the military works the way it does and seems to ignore the fact that the President is, in fact, the statutory head of the uniformed services of this country and it is therefore his job to issue that initial order and lead the way.
Da Bomb
@Cerberus: No I am sorry, but what I an witnessing purely on the progressive blogosphere is not proactive. It’s completely reactive.
As I said yesterday, even Rep Barney Frank made the comment that pressure is placed on the wrong targets. Gay activists should be lobbying and placing pressure on the congresscritters and the senate.
Whenever I hear someone abbling about how Obama has sold them down the river or that he is Bush lite, which by the way is not constructive criticism, that is reactionary.
Persia
@cat48: Here’s a question that someone here might know the answer to: If DADT gets repealed, can we get our servicemembers like Choi back?
Gator90
So, on the one hand, the President has nothing to do with legislation and therefore it’s stupid to lobby or pressure the President with regard to desired legislation. On the other hand, it’s a major development that the White House is “speaking with certain Senators” about legislative strategy. Both of those things can’t be true.
Apparently John’s annoyance with those who crave equality is clouding his ability to reason.
John Sears
I’m torn here, because I happen to agree with both JC and the FDL crowd on this one, for different reasons.
JC is absolutely right, insofar as it’s Congress that ultimately has to pass laws to fix these problems.
On the other hand, the Senate in particular has absolutely zero independence from Obama. Reid doesn’t do much more than go to the bathroom without explicit instructions from the White House. Witness the health care debate, where the White House has all but ignored the House and focused debate solely on the Senate, where their semi-secret deals with Big Pharma and the Hospital chains were honored without question. In that respect, Obama is the man to target, and the FDL people are right to go after him.
I agree with Cerberus @50 too. Advocacy groups really should go all-out, all the time, or at least work hard to cultivate that appearance. It builds credibility. Look at the ACLU, for a handy example. All through the darkest years of the Bush regime, when you could have gotten a sizeable vote to just declare Bush dictator for life and people were psychotic with fear, the ACLU kept pushing back against Ashcroft, Gonzales and the rest of those jackasses. There’s a reason the right puts the ACLU in a special category of hate all its own.
In the absence of effective pressure from institutional groups like the HRC, pundits, writers and bloggers end up becoming the bomb-throwers, and that’s just not as effective. I’m not sure what we can expect, though. This is a very emotional issue, and it’s hard to be patient and work through the system when your very humanity is being denied.
*shrug* Eh, it’s a big mess all around. Can we all just agree to hate Lieberman and Reid on general principle?
John Cole
@scott: NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.
The last damned thing we want or need is for Obama to order the military to do anything like this. They have been slow-walking the generals on this, Powell and other retired folks have come out in support of lifting DADT, the Joint Chiefs have been receptive, Gates has talked about it.
Obama orders them to do it, you give the Rumsfeld holdovers and others a chance to pitch a fit and create all sorts of chaos. Additionally, if it is just done by executive fiat, pressure will drop for legislative action. We’ll get subjected to all sorts of campaigns like “radical Obama can’t make up his mind on troop strength in Afghanistan, but he has plenty of time to put gays in the military, etc.”
Stop being so damned hamfisted about everything. You spent twenty years in the army, and you are used to people listening to every order you say. You seem to think it works that way everywhere else.
John Cole
GFY, seriously. This is the kind of bullshit that is the reason gay rights has moved nowhere. When we point out you are making tactical errors, you come back with “You just hate people who want to be equal.”
From what I have seen, the most vocal advocates of the gay rights movement have the emotional maturity of an 8 year old.
And there is a difference between being involved behind the scenes and trying to run the legislature. Have you guys forgotten about all the egos in the House and Senate?
Cerberus
@Da Bomb:
Yes, agreed on misplaced targets, disagree on the idea that progressives aren’t being proactive especially on a state level. Hell, Pam had a stint a while ago on going to meet legislators and encouraging others to do so and how to organize a meeting with them, etc…
The Obama shit is just a little kicked puppy syndrome, a little smarting over “fierce advocate”, and a little racism (there are some racist gay men in our community and yelling at Obama on the democratic party’s overall slowness allows a nice release for that). Most of the people “whining” have whined about Obama AND lawmakers. And bloggers have been keeping the count of all the votes and debates that do occur so they can figure out exactly where the pressure should be directed rather than the diffuse pressure now. See directed pressure campaigns in New York or the successful campaigns in Maine, NH, and Vermont.
Midnight Marauder
@Cerberus:
I would say Obama’s insistence on “Do your job, Congress” is actually fixing a very large part of what Bush broke. I don’t think it’s what you call “downgrading the office of the presidency,” so much as it is re-elevating the Legislative Branch to its rightful role as the…Legislative Branch.
Cerberus
@Persia:
Unlikely unless there’s some form of amnesty statement. I suspect that it will just be repealed so no future orders can occur. Maybe there will also be an amendment changing the old discharges to honorable discharges so that they can receive their well-earned benefits.
Though, if we can light a big enough fire on the arabic-translators thing, maybe we can get some sort of “period of reinstatements” also added that’ll open the door to re-enlistment.
Persia
@John Cole: And that makes them different from the most vocal advocates of pretty much any movement how…? ;-)
LD50
@John Cole:
Another risk of this approach is that five minutes after the next Republican is in the White House, DADT gets reinstated.
Persia
@Cerberus: I still don’t understand why we are firing people who know Arabic and have skills that are desperately needed isn’t enough for some people. But of course I never thought someone of the same gender was going to attack me in the shower or whatever, so I guess I just don’t have the mindset at all….
Cerberus
@Midnight Marauder:
Sorry, yeah, that actually was what I was trying to say, but I said it poorly.
It is crucial that he restore the proper role of the branches of government and that process is long and hard as each re-learns its role.
It’s unfortunate because the systemic destruction of the Bush years will have to get fixed the proper way, above board and all that…which will take fucking forever.
It’s the trade-off Obama had to make at the beginning. Whether to take the Bush idea of presidency and sweepingly unwrite the Bush years while solidifying the idea of King President or to reassert Figurehead President and try and urge congress to do their jobs to fix the Bush legacy snafus.
Da Bomb
@Cerberus: I have read people like LawDork, Rod 2.0 and we were all introduce yesterday to another blog call Bilerico(sp?). These blogs are informative.
I know about the rascist white gay male. I have personally experienced that paradox myself.
I am sorry, but Pam is not the most level-headed person either. I have read both of her blogs, (Pam’s House Blend and Pandagon). She fell for the anonymous sources crap too and didn’t back down about it, when it was proven that John Harwood is a tool.
There was a blog that she wrote where she decided to flame the President and was pretty proud of doing it at some dinner where she gave a speech. This was like 3 to 4 months into his Presidency. Reactionary? Yes.
Da Bomb
@Cerberus: But I am glad there are some local and state activists who are working and aiming at the right targets.
scott
First of all John I spent 20 years in the MARINES not the Army but I’ll forgive you for that since you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to the military.
And as far as being ham fisted, I’d say that the fact that you seem incapable or unwilling to see this issue in any light other than simple politics indicates a definite lack of perspective on your part tinged by not a small degree of hamfistedness. Especially when you use a politcally loaded term like “fiat”.
John, in the military we call them ORDERS because that’s what they are. Not fiats.
Why do you think generals, admirals and Powell support the ending of DADT john? Because it harms the military that’s why.
And as head of the nation’s military it is the Presidents DUTY to insure that the armed services are maintained at their peak and to do otherwise is a dereliction of that duty.
Of course there’s going to be screaming and opposition — there’s screaming and opposition to EVERYTHING HE DOES — I know you haven’t missed all that John!
Harry Truman — an old artillery officer — understood the relation he had with the military. He knew that it could be years before congress undertook to integrate the armed services left to their own devices and he knew it was his job to initiate the order that would do just that. So he did it.
By your reasoning John, were you alive and blogging back in 1948, you would be urging Truman to let congress handle integration of the military because the politics of integrating the armed services was just too hard and Truman would “get subjected to all sorts of campaigns” and people would “pitch a fit and create all sorts of chaos.”
With people like you on their side John, African-Americans would have been unable to serve in anything other than segregated or rear echelon support units, or as mess servants aboard Navy ships for years to come.
Persia
@Da Bomb: Don’t forget the giant meltdown at Pam’s over the word ‘cisgender.’ I stopped reading about then.
Cerberus
@Persia:
Well in congress, it’s because the dems are still in Stockholm from the Bush era and doesn’t really believe that the country is filled with Fox News watching retards looking for an excuse to vote against the faggot-lover.
For our enemies, well, deep-seated cultural homophobia and sexism, repressed bi-to-homosexuality, churches telling people that knowing a gay person will damn them to hell, bigots pissed that openly hating blacks and women are only accepted if you use code words and issues wanting an excuse to yell an epithet over and over again in naked unbridled hatred, sexists scared that if people see equal loving relationships then their wife may realize that being a house-slave isn’t what she wants from life, general panic over the admission that 99% of people have a sexuality and thus want to engage in bodily acts like sex, and a slice of people who literally believe liberals and homosexuals are demons in human form come to dine on their precious bodily fluids and those of their children.
geg6
@Minionero:
I don’t mean to be snide or rude in any way, but are you at all aware of how to play this politics game?
It is hard enough to herd those cats in Congress without stepping on their toes by seeming to take credit or backing them into a corner before they are ready to announce pending legislation. Especially if you are a Democratic preznit with a Democratic Congress. As we’ve discussed here ad infinitum, Dems can never count on the entire caucus to back anything, so negotiating the terms of the public negotiations is a pre-requisite unless you really are trying to kill the legislation.
matoko_chan
Dr. Cole
ok..I was just curious as to why O didn’t say someting.
You made two good points, the mil reactionaries that would fight this and O attemptin’ to get the legislature to step up.
I am very willing to let Obama do his job…..i personally feel he is excellent at it.
Morbo, no what Rove did was “game the system.”
He eked out republican victories by tweaking the representative system the Founders set up. The declining WEC demographic is not going quietly into its dark night.
Gator90
@John Cole:
I don’t mind your telling me to go fuck myself, but I’d have appreciated your addressing my point that it is self-contradictory to (1) assail the futility of demanding presidential action on desired legislation; while (2) hailing the importance of conversations among White House staffers and Senators regarding the same legislation.
Quite simply, if White House involvement with desired legislation represents major progress, then pressing the President is perfectly sensible (particularly since there is one president and 500-plus congresscritters).
I didn’t say you hate anyone, and I don’t think you do. But you have repeatedly used words like “annoying” and “obnoxious,” making it obvious that this is more than a dispassionate tactical analysis from your end. You’re angry, and that anger is (I surmise) contributing to the logical contradictions found in your post.
Little Dreamer
@John Cole:
Every time this subject gets brought up they go into crying jags. It’s shameful, I’m embarrassed to be caught on the same political side with such weak characters. They need to buck up and stop acting like battered women.
How can they see the huge egos in Washington when they can’t get past the one staring them in the mirror?
Cerberus
@Da Bomb:
On Pam, kicked puppy syndrome. She’s a black gay lesbian from the South. I don’t blame her for expecting the kick more than most. I mean, I currently live in Denmark, land of gay tolerance and single-gendered bathrooms. My life will literally never be easier than it is right now.
On racist white gay male…yeah, problems of a diverse community, sometimes you have members that hate the other groups in the community and especially in comments sections, the kicked puppy syndrome over Obama allows them to let their hair down just as the false bullshit over Prop 8 being blacks fault allowed them that platform to hate. It has certainly made me avoid all gay rights group’s comments sections because almost all of them have at least one racist white gay male spewing crap everywhere.
On reactionary…well, that’s a funny dance, especially for a gay community in transformation. All of our old battles have been AGAINST campaigns started by those who hate us to try and retain the status quo. We’re just beginning to assert ourselves and actually try and make positive progress (in legislature, in personal interactions the gay community has been proactive since the invention of “coming out”) and lobby for proactive change and the need for fast proactive change.
The whinefest is part of that. Telling Obama you are pissed at slow and that it’s not a game reminds a straight man who doesn’t have to experience life in the way an lgbtq person does reminds him of the stakes and gives him encouragement to indeed keep it on the docket and not just flush it away for awhile (which IS the advice of our actual organization heads who are fucktards).
I agree on misplaced targets though. Obama is a moderate with sympathies to our issues. He’s not an activist, nor should he be. The real anger over delay belongs on congress and our “leaders” who are wasting face time with legislators telling them it’s okay to wait awhile before doing anything.
And many of these bloggers are putting the blame there, but it’s only their criticisms of Obama that are getting any airtime.
geg6
@John Sears:
This might be the most laughable thing I’ve ever seen. Sorry, but this is so wrong-headed, it makes me dizzy. The Senate is in the MUP’s pocket. Yeah.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
henqiguai
@Persia (#66):
Over the weekend I did hear a statement from the President to the effect of his having ordered various appropriate Federal agencies, as well as the Armed Services, to prepare protocols to re-accept to active duty any of the dismissed service people who express a desire to be so re-activated. Details, in the short little blurb, were not provided.
The Operative
@Cerberus: “So, gays getting bitchy IS activism, good activism, because it reminds people this isn’t a game, this is people’s lives”
Funny thing is, I didn’t say “they were doing nothing”, I said they were ineffective and counterproductive. And they are. Their unpersuasive and misappropriated whining doesn’t persuade anyone but the people that already agree with them. This isn’t “activism”. It’s puerile and reactionary venting that does little more than double as choir-preaching.
That you think the spurts of attention following the Prop 8 temper tantrums and random news appearances now qualify as “activism” shows how imperceptive and lazy the ‘gay movement’ actually is. All gay people do by performing the measly function of appearing on the news for 3-4 days before being forgotten is let THEIR passions be articulated. They give almost no pretext for anyone who doesn’t already share them to join in. News is sensational in nature, and the source of gay focus doesn’t arise from you collectively doing anything successful, it arises from your issues being simple enough to be processed in bullet-debate “us vs them” formats, and entertaining enough because of the excessive and passionate irrationality of the general “OBAMA HAS BETRAYED THE WHOLE GAY COMMUNITY!!!!” commentary.
The result isn’t that people end up agreeing with you, the result is that – like near everything else in the cable news cycle – it will be forgotten in less than a week. Is this really activism? Is this persuasion? And if it is, such marvelously low standards precisely encapsulate why stagnancy instead of progress is one of the only constants of queer struggling. Did the Tea Party protests persuade you? Are you talking about them now? No? Then why should you assume everything is suddenly different when gay people do it? (pssst, it’s not.)
And by the way, the problem with the Queer Bubble I identified earlier is that there’s almost no interaction with the broader community beyond themselves. It’s enclosed, incestuous, and it fosters absolutely nothing approaching exposure to anyone that could possibly disagree or not care about them. Me knowing about current gay issues isn’t really the metric to judge exposure. A better metric would be “Is this being talked about by someone with no attachment to the gay movement?” Barring a few exceptions, the general answer is “no”. That’s because it hasn’t been made an issue beyond the gay community, and that’s a flaw of activism, not a flaw of philosophy or demographics.
Activists successes aren’t defined by getting people who already agree with you to meet each other and cry about how victimized you are. It’s defined by becoming a relevant political body that proactively forms a coalition from people that don’t already agree with you. That’s how every other party is made, and that’s the part of the process that many homosexuals have pathologically avoided. You consistently see campaigns rallying gay people for “unity” in attempting to support already gay-friendly politicians or whatever, but how often do you see campaigns asking them to court Republicans or the religious, or straights in general, or southerners?
It’s poor activism precisely because there’s a mindset here of presumptive correctness. You think your issue is self-evidently right and that anyone who disagrees with this is worthy of dismissal and demonization (like Obama). And you refuse to see that whether it IS right is completely irrelevant to the fact that there’s a general failure to either A) convince everyone else it’s right, or to B) convince them to care. That this fosters complacency is one of the woes of assuming that the onus is on everyone else to validate gay issues. It’s just another form of absolving responsibility and lazily abdicating one of the most fundamental aspects of politics: persuasion.
Good activism isn’t personified by getting yourselves in the news. Anyone can do that. Good activism would be personified by finding a way to turn this burst of attention into something that lasts beyond the typical news cycle of “Oh, that’s interesting ~ NEXT!” Garnering attention is not the same as garnering a coalition. The sooner this is realized, the sooner we’ll finally see more substantive strides toward progress on this front.
Little Dreamer
@Cerberus:
Well, you’re mostly in good company here, we WANT you to get what you are desiring, but if I have to watch one more sniveling crying jag, I might just give up and say to hell with it. Don’t turn off those who are trying to be helpful and give you some back up. Sometimes prayers to FSM get answered, the answer may come a bit late, or it may come incrementally, or it may be that you don’t get ALL you wanted, but… it appears your prayers are starting to get addressed. Keep pushing and I’ll be happy to help you push), but stop the tear jerking, it’s getting to be quite embarrassing and I’m personally getting to the point of not acknowledging that I support the wishes of such crybabies.
Cerberus
@Little Dreamer:
There’s something very wrong with you.
Yes, let’s flamebait women and queers. That’ll be a good idea. I’ll get extra points if I diminish the very real inequalities faced by queers, be dismissive towards their efforts in general, and do so in a way that privileges the dispassion of the privileged.
Good idea, similarly, those against torture should stop being whiny little faggot bitches about the “horrible crimes against humanity” and gross negligence of international treaties and human rights.
Seriously, how can they fight against the other side when they can’t see over their giant egos?
No, I can’t keep this up, I feel way too skeezy just trying.
henqiguai
@LD50 (#75):
And let’s not forget that, in the event of such a scenario coming to pass, all those LGBT service members who had been happily, openly, serving their country are now, after the postulated recission of Mr. Obama’s Executive Order, fully identified and in violation of DADT. By their own hand and giddy shortsightedness, they’re outta there…
And yet I see no consideration of that very real possibility from all the proponents of an Excutive fiat.
matoko_chan
Chris B
Actually this is a terrific thing….it means sully and brooks at least are beginning to accept the rise of the Third Culture.
My personal thought on this is that the rise of Third Culture intellectuals is going to kill the GOP…..because the GOP cannot reconcile their base to scientific progress.
Little Dreamer
@Cerberus:
Take a lesson from the black civil rights movement, they didn’t cry and scream about their situation, they walked proudly with their heads held high and showed that they were proud of their heritage and deserved to be equal.
What I see when I hear you guys making your arguments is that it’s almost your bedtime after you have a glass of milk. I’m not the only one who sees it either.
Da Bomb
@Cerberus: As a black straight woman from the South, I could kick puppies all day long. But that doesn’t excuse the reactionary responses. I definitely understand being frustatrated.
I have said on this blog several times that my father was involved in the Civil Rights movement. He has seen relatives lynched. He has being treated and talked to like an animal. He was one of the first black forman for Houston Independent School District. He got treated like crap, and that was in the 1960s. He is for definitely for gay rights, and he noticed the same pattern. Reactionary.
The proactive groups are the ones that should get their faces shown. I know how the media likes to start up stuff, but the anonymous quote crap fiasco was insane.
LoveMonkey
@Cerberus:
Maybe it’s just me, but you seem to relish this victim thing an awful lot. Of course I haven’t followed these threads closely enough (nor will I do so) to figure out who is tongue in cheek, who is spoof, who is troll, who is what. I don’t care, and this place doesn’t lend itself well to that kind of taxonomy anway.
Here’s the thing. All of us are victims, of politics, circumstance, special interests, apathy, bigotry, ideology, stupidity, you name it.
That’s why people are shitting on the whiny ass titty baby victim routine these days, because it’s gratuitous and generally disgusting to try to leverage ones’ own particular victim status, whatever it might be, over all the other pain and misery in the world that needs fixing, just.because.you.can.
If that shoe fits anyone out there, then wear it. If it doesn’t, then good for you.
John Cole
@The Operative: Exactly. How much more productive would it have been for the gay community to take the HRC speech, rally behind it, and move forward, rather than screaming “just words.” Now, the narrative is not “President Obama is working with us to achieve equality,” it is instead the much more destructive “President Obama at odds with left fringe, charges of inaction hurled.”
@henqiguai:
How is that possible? I’ve been told there has been no movement by the White House at all on this issue. Just words, I think they said.
Cerberus
@Little Dreamer:
Ok, I see what you were trying to get to here.
I for one acknowledge our allies, even if they are imperfect or slow or in need of some great big pushes and I suspect most of the community will follow suit. Some are guaranteed to piss over themselves, see Sully, racist, sexist embarrassment to the queer community.
But it’s worth keeping in mind that the queer community is cautious about trusting people especially democratic presidents after the tongue bath they gave Clinton (disturbing mental image intended). They’re like the person who got cheated on badly by their ex so they have these bullshit investigations at the beginning as they try and figure out if you’re being sincere when you say you love them.
Right now, the gay community is in exactly that annoying phase with Obama. But with time and with proof, they will indeed trust. See the liberal community in general who have been generally antsy about the cool black box exterior of our moderate-in-chief. Personally, I’m pleased to see some motion on inclusive ENDA and DADT and I’m cautiously optimistic that the NPP will give a needed push on resolving Guantanamo and the twin wars of aggression.
I don’t think most of the whining is really about betrayal, it’s about trying to be prepared in case of betrayal. Just like you will try and avoid disappointment about some big event by telling yourself it will suck so that you’ll be pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t.
Mix that in with the proactive pressure that is the, as you admit, needed push of activism and voila the reason for WhineFest.
Midnight Marauder
@scott:
The Truman comparison came up in some of the threads over the weekend/yesterday. I suggest you do a little research into how, exactly, the integration of the armed services progressed under Truman.
Pro-tip: It didn’t all happen in 1948, or even most of it. In fact, you should focus on 1954.
Little Dreamer
You catch more flies (support for your side) with honey than you do with cheese and whine! You want acceptance? You’re ruining your chances if we have to stand behind a bunch of crying babies. Save the tears and work for what you’re seeking and I and others here will back you up.
LoveMonkey
1:03
1:14
Nothing convinces like a thoughtful, well-reasoned line of argument. Eh?
scott
@ Midnight Marauder
Thanks, but I’m pretty well versed in the history behind Executive Order 9981 that Truman signed in 1948.
Indeed you are correct that the last military units weren’t fully integrated until September of 1954 but if you know anything about the military you know that very little gets done quickly.
The fact that there was an almost 7 year period — during which we fought a major land engagement against BOTH the N. Koreans and the PRC — before the military was fully integrated should be no surprise to anyone.
John Cole
@scott: Gays in the military would be completely different, because there would be no need to integrate. There are gays and lesbians in every unit already, they are just closeted and living in fear.
Cerberus
@Little Dreamer:
Uh. Blacks in civil rights didn’t cry and scream? Exactly what did you think privileged whites said about black activists? Where do you think the dismissal “playing the victim” came from? What do you think mainstream white opinion on Malcom X’s and MLK Jr’s speeches were? What uppity was meant to convey?
@Da Bomb:
Agreed, pretty much. The gay community is evolving from reactionary to proactive, which unfortunately is leaving us with proactive members doing proactive work open and ready for reactionary responses to fallen allies and evil enemies.
I’m pretty sure the black community has been in the same boat for like forever so I’m not surprised they see what is going on.
And agreed on comment-gate being insane and I really dislike how Pam isn’t letting it go without demanding a sacrifice, that’s just stupid.
@LoveMonkey:
I tend to agitate against all oppression where I can. I think it’s pretty human to get extra-huffy when it applies directly to ourselves, cause self-preservation, taking it personally, etc… Good point in general and I don’t at all take it personally because I’m not at all believing that there should be extra cookies just for being the most hated minority or subgroup. What is there some trans child soldier amputee rape victim bleeding out from an illegal abortion in a pestilent african village who gets to be the only one worthy of sympathy? Nah.
Of course, I’m one who believes that all the oppression is in many ways linked (certainly at the point of who’s for all of it) and so fighting against all of it, in as many ways as you can and for as many things as you can will change things unexpected. There is also a difference between the personal and political which is probably driving a lot of this. People getting personally upset by the political calculations of people who’ll never have to face what they do and people reacting politically to an assumption of betrayal or delay and ignoring the important personal message to some gay or black or black gay kid in shitsville.
Nellcote
@El Tiburon:
It’s a problem when you yell at your allies the same way you yell at your enemies. Nobody’s suggesting you STFU. Nobody objects to the STRATEGY of pushing the WH, though aiming at congress might be more productive. It’s your TACTICS that are an issue.
scott
@ John Cole
You’re totally right John — but I’m not talking about integration of gays into the military, I’m simply talking about the president issuing an order ending investigations and separations under DADT until such time as the law is repealed so that gays don’t need to live in fear and so that the military is maintained at its peak level of readiness.
That’s the first logical step from a military perspective.
That’s all.
LoveMonkey
@Cerberus:
Okay, but we can lower the melodrama gain control a few decibels.
This is not really about oppression. There are not many in positions of power who are interested in oppressing anyone for any particular reason. There is mostly inertia, and general resistance to change. That’s just the way the world works.
Nobody is going to die because DADT isn’t repealed six months sooner rather than later. Gays aren’t being lynched in the military, or forced to lie in naked piles while we take pictures of them, are they?
LoveMonkey
Being black in the South was life threatening. Being gay in a DADT military is not life threatening. Stop drawing asinine comparisons.
henqiguai
@Cerberus (#105):
Aw, dude, stop it ! Is this how you’re trying to win the (Black) hearts and minds of the African-American community ? You’re “pretty sure” ? 400 hundred years, and there’s still not complete acceptance. One of the major cultural and political upheavals of the second half of the twentieth century, and you’re just “pretty sure” ?
And that on top of the fact that African-American communities tend to be considered, socially, a tad conservative, especially from a religious perspective. Which strongly colors attitudes toward homosexuality.
Today’s youth. Are they being taught anything anymore ?
Little Dreamer
Well, granted, I was a young child in that era, but what I witnessed was marches with pride and expectation that they deserved to be equal. They held themselves up as equal and it seems to me that’s when people really took notice.
As Nellcote just said above, treating your allies the same as your enemies gets you nowhere. Rome wasn’t built in a day, it’s a process and we’re here to support you if you’d stop trying to bite the hand that wants to help you.
Cerberus
@Little Dreamer:
Uh, we are. I don’t mean to be rude here (for a change), but like many humans, we have the ability to multitask, and thus a potentially ill-advised reaction to assumed betrayal (which I personally think is in error and agree with your characterization of minus the “be a real man” bullshit) isn’t indeed the only action performed and we are capable of also fostering genuine grass-roots movements, interact on a one-on-one basis with friends and family and strangers to remind them we’re human, completely recreate actual campaigns for change against the wishes of our ossified “leadership” who have no idea what they are doing, and in a little under a year cause so much mind-blowing sea change in how we view this issue that people are wondering if we are so aggressive to be whiny.
If we were regressive and just whined about how no one likes us bad old queers, you wouldn’t be talking about us right now or even thinking about us much at all since the post-prop 8 fight. Instead the debate isn’t on whether or not to strengthen DADT and expand anti-gay legislation, nor is it even on whether or not to repeal the existing anti-gay stuff, but rather when.
The collective movement and outrage and yes whining of the gay community changed that, through actions on the street, by some excellent blog work and community organizing, and by some down-home old-fashioned street work and investigation (which has allowed us to turn NOM and other big anti-gay groups from the boogeyman of last year into the Mormon jokes they have always been.
The whine is unfortunate, but foreseeable. Because shock of shocks, we are just like other humans, for better and indeed for worse.
scott
@Lovemonkey
I’m guessing you missed the murder of Barry Winchell at Ft Campbell who was subjected to months of torture and physical violence at the hands of men in his unit and then killed in 1999?
Or Greg Mitchell who was murdered by men in his unit in Afghanistan last year for being gay?
LoveMonkey
@scott:
Those are crimes of hate and bigotry. DADT is not responsible for hate and bigotry. You are describing an issue that goes to recruiting, screening, training, and fitness for service in general.
Drop the phony bloody shirt routine, it isn’t helpful.
Little Dreamer
@Cerberus:
Well, excuse me for interjecting, but, your progress over the last year wouldn’t happen if there weren’t people trying to get your issue on the ballot and through congressional legislation (yes, thank your new president for bringing up the issue). If it was only the whiny crybabies bringing this up, we’d have shut the door and soundproofed the room by now. The reactionary tactic is embarrassing and a turn off to those who genuinely do want to support you.
I got a secret for you Cerberus, when you get what you want, I also get what I want, because just a month ago I was in a hospital with a potentially deadly situation (turned out not to be, but I was scared) and I had to lie and tell the hospital nurses that TZ was my fiancee so he could be with me while I was in there. I was seriously afraid if we did such a thing we might be challenged (we don’t wear rings and we’re obviously not engaged). So, when you get what you want, I can have TZ in a hospital room with me legally. I really DO want to see you get what you want and the rights that will also fall in place for others who have challenging situations directly related to your battles.
Waynski
Isn’t Obama ordering the military to ignore the law, even a detestable one, kinda what we’re trying to get away from in the last election? I’m not familiar enough with DADT to know whether he has the flexibility within the law to decide whether or not he’ll enforce it, but if he doesn’t have that explicit authority, then it would seem a little Bushian to me.
And as john pointed out, tacticly it’s not a good idea. I’m all for getting rid of it, but an executive order might have the opposite effect of making sure it never goes away. It becomes like the executive orders on family planning assistance in third world countries, every time there’s a party change in the White House you can either talk about abortion, or not talk about abortion depending on who occupies the office. It doesn’t seem to me that having a policy reversal of this magnitude every four or eight years would be good for the military.
LoveMonkey
@Waynski:
Oh, sure, the executive order. Okay, how about an executive order that we are not allowed to say that The Wire(tm) is the greatest tv program ever? I mean, let’s do something worthwhile here.
Mister Ed was the greatest program ever. Period. Dot.End.Of.Story.
Buncha druggies, versus a horse that could talk?
Come on.
Little Dreamer
@Waynski:
In other words, you’re suggesting that travesties such as wiretapping should become permanent law because they were enacted once? When a law discriminates against a subset of people, it is unconstitutional, that law should be changed. In what way does that idea mimic any of the Bush policies which ripped up provisions in our Constitution?
John Sears
To geg6 @88: Perhaps I should have said ‘Senate Leadership’. The fact remains Obama gets what he wants from them, whenever he bothers to ask. He just doesn’t seem to want very much, very fast. Whether that’s good for long-term strategy or not, who knows.
Look at how hard it was for Obama to get the War Supplemental passed in the House, versus the Senate. Look at how he’s put his entire focus on the Baucus bill, which until recently bought a ceasefire from the big vested interests in pharma, hospitals and insurance (that seems to have fallen apart in the last couple of days though).
I don’t think this is specific to Obama. I think Reid naturally defers to any plausible authority. Obama’s the head of the party, so Reid does his bidding. The House is a lot more independent, so from them we get four bills with a public option, strong resistance on the war supplemental, Waxman off doing his own thing on cap and trade, etc.
So the best strategy for getting rid of DADT and DOMA might be the same strategy that seems to be being used on health care. Work with the House, put lots of pressure on them, and then pressure Obama to move the Senate. Centrist Dem Senators like Lincoln and Baucus probably don’t care much what the gay rights lobby thinks, but they definitely do care what Obama wants.
Ash
@scott: How would ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell stop bigots and sociopaths from continuing to be assholes?
That’s a systemic problem that has to do with recruiting from the bottom rungs of society, not because of some stupid ass policy.
scott
@ lovemonkey
“Being gay in a DADT military is not life threatening.”
Drop the routine of conveniently of ignoring your own words. Thats what isn’t helpful.
Blacks were murdered in the south because of hate and bigotry as you say. And I’d go further and say that they were NOT murdered directly because of bad public policy, or policing — although those things definitely contributed.
Mitchell and Winchell were killed because of hate and bigotry plain and simple. Poor recruiting and screening and training and supervision contributed to the environment that allowed the murders but it was hate and bigotry plain and simple and therefore, being gay in the military can, in fact, be quite life threatening.
DADT, in spite of its stated desire to allow gays to serve (silently) still promotes an atmosphere of “otherness” that feeds into poorly trained, poorly recruited and poorly supervised personnel who are generally not told by their commands that subjecting gays to abuse is not tolerated.
As the senior enlisted man in a Marine infantry regiment one of my key jobs was essentially the human resources job of insuring proper training and education when it came to issues of gender and race.
Sexual orientation was never discussed.
So don’t try to parse terms with me about training, screening, fitness for service, or hate and bigotry because I was unfortunate enough to see all of them from a front row seat for more than 20 years and I can tell you with no hesitation that it was hate and bigotry, abetted by bad command policy from the top down that allowed the murder of those two boys.
Cerberus
@LoveMonkey:
Oddly enough, you’d think that, but there’s already been one case of murder or suicide from an abusive relationship that wasn’t reported on for fear of being deported via DADT and there is a shit-ton of rape and general harrassment of female soldiers that has been upheld with threats of accusations of lesbianism which can be enough for a DADT dismissal.
In general, though, don’t really give a shit about DADT as more than some incremental step. It’s just one step in removing the support for homophobia in institutions which will remove the impetus and support for those who seek to blackmail, hate, fire, and murder people over orientation and gender identity. Personally, I’m more excited about inclusive ENDA as a big step forward and lucky me that looks to be the first one they’re doing. Again, personally, I’m cautiously optimistic in general. Older democrats seem to blame gays for 1992 and so tend to look for an excuse to run away on gay issues, but it looks like the tide of momentum is indeed doing some good in Washington albeit characteristically slowly (characteristic for Washington)
@LoveMonkey:
DADT, for the most part yes, being gay or more to the point trans in large parts of the country, sadly, tragically wrong. Not at all wanting to be dismissive or “my oppression is so bad compared to yours” especially since the white power structure is still trying to kill or incarcerate as many blacks as they can get away with, but google Trans Day of Remembrance or simply look up the Angie Zapata killing. An unfortunate number of youths are killed because they are an “it” or a “fag” and that sucks. But then, I want to work against all oppression, not say, ah ha, this should go to the top of the pile. Guantanamo is wrong, the Drug War is wrong, racial profiling is wrong, etc… It’s why I’m a progressive, it’s why I’m a leftist. Because the oppression of dead-weight systems sucks for us all.
@henqiguai:
Touche. I have chosen my words…poorly to cannibalize a famous movie quote. Didn’t want to at all dismiss the historic oppression of blacks and a hearty agreement to the rest of your points.
@Little Dreamer:
Well, we have that too, it’s called Pride. We have several every year.
More to the point, it is not my intention to bite anyone’s hand other than the snap at your earlier comment which struck me as tone-death, though your later comment I felt explained itself well. Indeed, my intention although I seem to be beginning to fail at it is to try and explain why others are biting the hand of the ally.
To keep replaying myself. They are abused puppies and well, have you petted an abused animal, if you approach wrong or they think it’s a fist, they try and bite it or they run away. Our blogger heavy-hitters are those puppies. They’re doing great work in general, but the last democratic president kicked them around a couple of times after a lot of good noise and they’re trying to learn how to trust that this president really does want to scritch their head and tell them what a good boy they are before the walk.
I AGREE that it’s counter-productive, though I disagree that reminding Obama of that history and being rough with him in general is not an important component of moving him towards the action of doing the right thing (or at least providing him the excuse needed with our MSM). It’s why I also think it’s a good thing that we are beating him up over Gitmo and the wars.
He may be moving in that direction, and if we keep up the pressure, now he also has an excuse and more importantly, even if it is revealed that all we were were gadflies. GOOD, we got the needed changes in legislature or president actions that were crucial for the movement. So we won on an earlier step, that should cheapen our victory?
In general, to apologize for this way too long response, I say to all my allies, I love you guys, and I apologize to how our community has made you feel spurned or attacked in our kicked puppy response to Obama. On behalf of them and our unfortunate racists, I apologize deeply and hope you will continue to support our general kicking of asses for change.
LoveMonkey
@scott:
You are full of crap. DADT is not responsible for any crimes. That’s just horseshit.
I stand on what I said, and totally disagree with you. It was not DADT policy that killed anyone, it was good old fashioned sociopathy, the principal driver behind most homicides. DADT doesn’t cause, nor will its repeal end, sociopathy, any more than the Civil Rights Act prevented the murder of James Byrd or the beating of Rodney King.
Cut the crap.
Your post refutes your own assertion. “Poorly trained, poorly recruited and poorly supervised” personnel are the problem, not DADT. Why not blame DADT for Timothy McVeigh, while you are at it?
Cassidy
@scott: I think asking CDR’s and Senior NCO’s to not enforce regulation(s) would be more detrimental in the long run. You don’t get to pick and choose which rules you live by and which ones you disregard.
scott
@Ash
I didn’t answer Lovemonkey as coherently as I would have liked to but what everyone seems to ignore is that this problem is not just a recruiting problem, or a problem that we let sociopaths into the military from the bottom rungs of society. But its a training and supervision problem too. Its a problem that starts at the command level.
Senior unit command has no unified coherent way of dealing with gays in their units the way they do with women and ethnic minorities. They’ll say they do but there have been no comprehensive Almar (All Marine Corp) orders from the Commandant of the Marine Corps (for instance) directing individual commands on how to deal with gays other than to follow DADT and appropriate USMJ regs.
Therefore, with no direction, unit commanders will handle the situation the way they feel they should (or want to) and generally that is concomitant with their level of personal animus, prejudice or lack thereof toward gays and lesbians.
In units where the command authority demonstrates ambivalence or even contempt toward gays, those units are the ones where you see violence directed at that group the most.
That’s why this is an important top down exercise for Obama and needs to be addressed as a chain of command issue so that the military can promulgate policies that don’t just address the issues addressed by DADT but to start implementing education procedures to train servicemen about gays and lesbians in the exact same manner that we do women and ethnic minorities.
Cerberus
@Little Dreamer:
Agreed wholeheartedly, the reason I’m such an outspoken ass in general is my fervent belief that oppression sucks for everyone, oppressee, oppressor, innocent bystanders, the social environment everyone is a part of, other struggles, etc…
To just shorter what I was trying to say:
I love all of you, my allies, and I’m sorry for the damage all of this drama has engaged. Be assured that we are working in other ways besides these whines and we do not hate our allies though that may be the successful media message of the Obama mistrust. We really truly don’t. We welcome you and love you, some of us are just working out how much we trust again after the previous democratic president ignored the safeword. It’s annoying, it’s unfortunate, but it’s not the whole of our “pressure” and we on the ground are capitalizing and engineering the shift-change in tone that has sprung up around the debate and are indeed counting on and happy for all of our supporters.
Even shorter:
We really do love you allies, we’re just working through some stuff, but we’re really thankful you are here while we are.
Cerberus
Or would have been shorter me if longer me hadn’t gotten eaten by moderation. Ah vell, my statement stands.
LB, it isn’t so much stopping sociopathy. Some people will kill others, it’s about removing tacit support for acceptable targets of sociopathy. Yeah, people will still kill people, but what we’re trying to create is a world where said sociopaths aren’t thinking, yeah it was okay to do that, because it’s not like I killed a real person or where sociopaths on TV weren’t setting up an idea that said people are less than, practically monsters, oh we couldn’t foresee this ending in bloodshed.
It’s about removing the target signs from select groups of people so that sociopaths who want to lord over their slaughter of bots can do so in shooter games like they’re supposed to.
Cassidy
@scott: He is right that there is no CO2 or EO policy designed to deal with homosexuals. At best it falls under our “be nice to people training” and sexual harassment, etc. But there is no particular training that devotes time to “don’t be an asshole to gay people”, like their is for other minority groups.
At best you have policy letters telling CDR’s how to enforce DADT, with a heavy emphasis on burden of proof to initiate an inquiry and the privacy of the Soldier.
LoveMonkey
@scott:
What is the difference between an anti-gay hate crime in the military, and an anti-gay hate crime in the civilian realm?
Answer: Nothing. There is no difference. And DADT has the same causative effect in both worlds, which is to say, none. Zero. The cause is pathological bigotry. Sociopathic disregard for the lives of others. It doesn’t matter where you plant that deadly seed, it produces a poisonous fruit.
scott
@ Lovemonkey
I agree with you! Keep your panties dry. I don’t think DADT is what directly caused those murders. It was hate and bigotry aided by poor training and supervision.
But what you said and what I take exception to is your statement that, “being gay in a DADT military is not life threatening” and you’re simply wrong about that. Winchell and Mitchel prove that beyond a doubt by having been murdered for being gay while DADT is the law of the land.
Cassidy
Disagree. There is a world of cultural difference between the military and civilian community.
Cerberus
Continued me:
In short DADT is mostly important in removing the tacit idea that it’s ok to treat X group like shit because the law and the power structure have your back. That can be the little difference needed between someone being a sociopathic dick and someone deciding just to get rid of the abomination.
Little rocks make avalanches and all that.
And repeated me, I love you allies. Your impression of the importance of things we take personally do not at all affect our belief in your general support or our love of you in general. Imperfect allies are still allies are still better than enemies and more importantly are awesome. If we seem harsh, it’s only because we are trying to radicalize you, because we’re mean like that, and because radicalizing support means more radicals rabble-rousing for shit, which is always good for positive change.
And further, because it all really is connected.
LoveMonkey
@scott:
Not sold. Revise my remark to say “being gay in the military is not, and should not be, more life threatening than being gay in the civilian world would be.” And if that is not true, it sure as hell can’t be because of DADT, or else the armed forces’ grip on their lines of command is beyond weak and dysfunctional and needs to be completely taken apart and put back together.
This is 2009, and world is what it is, and if the military can’t do better than that in this real world then isn’t a military worth having. I for one don’t believe it is that fucked up, because if it were, then gays and DADT would be the least of your worries, the whole thing would be chaos and disorder.
Now if we just want to agree that DADT is a stupid idea at this point in time, fine, we are fully in agreement on that. Can the policy, today, AFAIC. But let’s not get carried away with blaming it for everything including athlete’s foot.
scott
Cassidy and I are in total agreement here (for a change):
What is the difference between an anti-gay hate crime in the military, and an anti-gay hate crime in the civilian realm?
Answer: Nothing.
Lovemonkey you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about with regard to cultural issues within the military.
The military is a culture unto itself and although personalty disorders and individual pathologies are the same in the military as those that appear in the civilian world the culture of the military is nothing like the civilian world and that culture brings an enormous amount of pressure onto the individual — both for good and for ill.
Little Dreamer
@Cerberus:
Thank you for that. Do you think you could talk your fellow friends into sheathing the verbal daggers around those who truly do want to help? I mean, unless you want to kill your own warriors while doing battle with the other side, it really serves no purpose. We all have opinions. I’m thankful that we’re talking about this issue and that Obama is voicing the desire to change DADT, but, unfortunately, it is something that takes time and I’m just trying to be supportive but it’s hard to support those who refuse to listen to common reasoning from others who know this thing takes time. I was one who stated a few months ago that you guys needed to be patient, that Obama was going to work on it (he brought it up and voiced the desire to change it) and now we’re hearing him bringing it up again. It won’t happen overnight, but he is working on it. He seems to want to repeal DADT almost as much as you want to see it repealed. He is fighting for your side, but it takes time and some patience. If he doesn’t end up doing it by the end of his term, call me a liar and I’ll honestly apologize for asking you to believe one more time… but I’m only asking you to believe because he is asking us to believe he wants to do this.
LoveMonkey
Well, either we are talking about two different things, which would not be the first time, or else you are just dead wrong, which also would not be the first time.
Murder is murder. There is nothing “cultural” about it, it is either accepted or it is not. In our world, murder is not accepted. You military people always like to talk as if you are so goddammed special. Fuck that. This is just about murder, and murder is just murder. The whys and wherefores are for novelists and cable tv personalities to froth about. A wrong killing is just wrong, period. Killing a person for being gay is just wrong, period. The end.
LoveMonkey
@scott:
Really? There is military murder and civilian murder? A kills B because he hates him, and it’s a different crime in the Army than it is at the Post Office?
Fuck that. That’s just absurd. That’s about making excuses.
scott
@ Lovemonkey
This is just about murder, and murder is just murder. The whys and wherefores are for novelists and cable tv personalities to froth about. A wrong killing is just wrong, period. Killing a person for being gay is just wrong, period.
Couldn’t agree with you more!
Unfortunately, the culture promulgated and promoted by the military in general gets used in a way that allows individual unit commanders to decide for themselves what the unit policy toward gays should be — and that attitude trickles down to the troops, who may or may not be sociopaths or homicidal — but who take their marching orders from the example set by their commanders and senior NCOs.
And that is cultural.
Cassidy
@LoveMonkey:
Well for one we are. 70% of the American population either can’t or are too chickenshit to do what we do on a regular basis. I’d be willing to bet large sums of money that the extent of your “most stressful situation evah” was deciding which lane to drive in during morning traffic. Shit, my wife puts up with more stress and bullshit than the average citizen.
Now you can continue to be simplistic, and I wouldn’t be surprised, or you can at least try and understand the subtle, yet very strong psychological differences between the military and civilian culture. I would suggest you start with the months of indoctrination that says committing homicide is okay.
Cerberus
@Little Dreamer:
Well I think some manner of pressure is good just to remind him that it’s on his plate. Not meaning anything by that but that he does actually have a lot he’s intending to do and it’d be nice if some gay things got done in addition to the much more critical big fixes.
Personally, I’m cautiously optimistic and indeed to my community if any of you are here, I say be cautiously optimistic, learn to use Obama statements in targeted advertising, don’t stop pressuring him, but also stop coddling the out and out racist gay white men. Seriously, that more than the whining is our biggest achilles heel, knock it off.
Those trying to educate, do so, I will be right there, but remind the target that you’re harsh because you love and actually believe in their ability to understand the issues and empathize. And if they resist, it’s not because they’re an enemy, it is because they are an imperfect ally and an imperfect ally is still a good thing. We are all imperfect allies on something important, that will always be true.
Be loud, but don’t be Andrew Sullivan.
Cassidy
Yes it is. We’re tried under a different set of laws with a different judiciary process. Hell we even have our own special prisons.
SATSQ
Little Dreamer
@scott:
Sorry, but I would venture as far as to say that you can’t really know that until DADT is repealed and if murders still continue, you can then blame it on sociopathy (probably due to extremist religious upbringing through being taught that the Bible says such people should die).
I would put forth the idea that DADT isn’t so much the problem here as the existence of a black book that says we should kill others who are different from what someone believes they are a near perfect specimen of, even if the truth be nothing of the sort.
That is not to say that there isn’t some anti-gay rhetoric that goes on in the military, but the law didn’t kill anyone, it was people’s ideas which were planted by society, by religion, perhaps by family, and very well possibly even by irresponsible military supervision.
Cerberus
And now that I think I’ve at least stamped out my own fires, it’s time to make some much needed dinner. I’m thinking I might try out that paella recipe I got.
scott
@ Lovemonkey
military people always like to talk as if you are so goddammed special.
Frankly, having spent 20 years in service to this country I don’t think we’re special — I know we’re special Lovemonkey.
But I’m not about to argue that point with someone who has no fucking clue that part of being in the military is about following without question an order that not only could, but in many case will certainly result in your own death.
Special? Yeah, that’s pretty fucking special if you ask me.
Little Dreamer
@Cassidy:
That doesn’t mean it’s a different crime, that just means the accused gets different treatment. Murder is murder no matter if you’re in the military or not.
John Cole
The most dangerous thing about the military is echoed in the comments by Cassidy and Scott- this notion that they are somehow better than the rest of the country.
Pro-tip: You aren’t.
That will sink in after you have been off active duty for a while and the us/them mentality starts to break away.
Little Dreamer
@Cerberus:
and I can live with that. I would suggest one thing, hold Obama’s feet to the fire, because I want to see him do this too. Just remember you have friends out here too.
Little Dreamer
@John Cole:
I’m just a female, I’ve never been in the military (although I almost enlisted many years ago) but, John, wouldn’t you say that perhaps that’s not true for some, say those members of VFW who die believing they’ll always be part of a special group?
scott
@John
Wow! Its funny, I’ve always admired your blog and your writing but your real personality comes across in the comments when you get challenged and it ain’t pretty my friend.
First of all John — FUCK YOU. Nobody here said we were better than anyone else you clown, we simply said people who put their lives on the line for their country as soldiers, sailors and airmen do, or for their community as police and firemen do, are special.
Nellcote
Someone above asked about coming back into the military. Here’s the summary of the bill currently in the House (H.R. 1283). It has 178 sponsors btw:
Military Readiness Enhancement Act of 2009 – Repeals current Department of Defense (DOD) policy concerning homosexuality in the Armed Forces.
Prohibits the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to the Coast Guard when it is not operating as a service in the Navy, from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation against any member of the Armed Forces or any person seeking to become a member. Authorizes the re-accession into the Armed Forces of otherwise qualified individuals previously separated for homosexuality, bisexuality, or homosexual conduct.
Requires such Secretaries to ensure that regulations governing the personal conduct of members of the Armed Forces are written and enforced without regard to sexual orientation.
LoveMonkey
@scott:
Yeah, fuck you man. You know what I am talking about, and it isn’t about respect for service, a principle I have defended here many times. It’s about thinking that because you are in the military, only you can figure out things like right and wrong at the most basic level. Fuck that, and fuck you.
If the military can’t adjust to life in the real world like all the other institutions in the world are doing, and doing quite successfully as near as I can see, with the exception of maybe the Reppublican party, then it needs to grow the fuck up and stop making excuses for itself. And if it can’t do that, then it needs to stop sending people like you out to demand that the civilian authority needs to fix it for them, right? Right? Why do you need a president to fix it, if it is so goddam smart? The military should walk over to Capitol Hill and just say, get rid of that stupid DADT law, we don’t need it.
You guys think you are so fucking above everyone else? Well then act like it, and fix your own backyard.
LoveMonkey
The hell fuck you didn’t. Every time you suggest that the military is some special world with rules only you can understand, you are doing just that.
That’s bullshit. Time for the military to grow up. Which is WHY I advocate the immediate rejection of DADT, but has nothing to do with trying to tell Barack Obama how, or when, to do that. I don’t have to sign on to anyone’s timeline to be clear on that point.
scott
@ Lovemonkey
As I said, you have no fucking clue what the military is all about. And with that last rant you proved my point.
Thanks
Cassidy
@John Cole: Well, John, when the rest of this country reaches a level of service and sacrifice that is equivalent to the men and women in uniform (or firefighters, EMS, people who regularly volunteer for HFH, etc.) then I’ll agree. Until then, I look at the multitude of whining children and apathetic pansies and do consider myself better. Most American’s suck.
Little Dreamer
@scott:
Define special. Is special the idea that those in the military can be expected to lay down their life for their country? In that regard, I would say they are different.
Special because they are asked to take life of others? I’m not so sure I would call that special, but I certainly would call it different. Then again, I’m not one who believes war is honorable, only sometimes (in the most extreme cases) necessary sometimes.
Special because you have a certain code of conduct that you live by? So do the Amish, so do the Boy and Girl Scouts, so do any number of subsets and groups of organized humans… not so special, just separate from the way others conduct themselves. More honorable? That’s a judgment call.
Cassidy
Actually, the rules and nuances, etc. are quite easy to understand. It really isn’t difficult. Unfortunately, most people project their own inadequacies on a society that exists completely outside of the lives of normal Americans.
LoveMonkey
@scott:
Fuck you again. This is not about “what the military is about.” It’s about what simple lawful treatment of other people is about, period.
You can spend all day trying to turn this into something it isn’t so that you can beat your chest about your military experience. Doesn’t matter. This is about what real life in the 21st century is about. It’s about the military NOT getting to act like it is a separate country with its own rules about right and wrong. Otherwise, let’s go back to the segregated military and female-unfriendly military right now and declare those experiments over and failed, too.
I say fuck you and the horse you rode in on. You are the problem, not the solution.
scott
@ Little Dreamer
Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts don’t walk into machine gun fire in defense of the Constitution to which they swore an oath.
Neither do the Amish.
Cassidy
In all fairness to the Amish, if I remember correctly, more than a few have served as Medics, but I could be wrong.
Edit: Nope I was wrong. Thinking of somebody else.
scott
OK Lovemonkey — You’re totally 100% correct. Fuck me and my horse too. You were always right and I was 100% wrong.
Thanks for playing, you’ve been fun.
LoveMonkey
@Cassidy:
Heh. What crap. If they are so easy to understand, then what is preventing the US Military from moving on from a stupid and ill-formed policy that serves no purpose but to protect anachronism and closeted bigotry? And moving on under its own steam, taking its own responsibility for doing so, instead of waiting for the civilian authority to kick it in the junk to get it to move?
That chickenshit “you can’t handle the truth” crap is the best you got?
Good luck with that. Really.
Little Dreamer
@Cassidy:
So you offer the country the ability to take your life in service so long as you get to be someone who is better than others.
You call that honorable? I call it elitist. If you think those you would lay down your life for are so terrible, then why do it? What’s it worth? You believe in dying for a cause you identify as lost? How very telling. The fact is, Cassidy, the only reason why you went in the military is to play soldier with real toys while fantasizing about some kind of “honor” thing you desperately wanted to have bestowed upon you because you saw it in the movies and thought it was really cool.
You’re not cool, you’re just an opportunist, you “special” prick.
scott
@ Little Dreamer
“So you offer the country the ability to take your life in service so long as you get to be someone who is better than others.”
No, the reason that we offer our lives in service to our country and its people is BECAUSE we are special in the first place.
Not so that we can feel special.
LoveMonkey
@scott:
Yes, I am 100% correct. If your special and so-smart and so righteous military can’t figure out a better way to handle gays in its ranks than the useless and hideous DADT policy, then you should be fucking ashamed.
Why can’t your special miltary stand up and act grown up, like, say, the British military has?
You’re a liar. You are just making excuses for a bunch of crapheads who don’t want to live in the modern real world.
Cassidy
Because it’s the law and civilians are in charge of the military. We don’t make the rules.
SATSQ #2
Now if you’re advocating that civlian control of the military be shed, then that’s a whole ‘nother topic. But I guarantee with 100% certainty that the day that DADT is repealed and gays are allowed in the military, then the chain of Command will immediately be formulating measures for integration and protection of said individuals.
Waynski
@Litlle Dreamer — When Bush ignored the FISA law on wiretapping because he found it inconvenient, he was effectively breaking the law and then went to Congress to make it legal after the fact. My point is that any POTUS shouldn’t behave that way and Bush should have been impeached for breaking the law. There are conservatives, however misguided, who saw, and continue to see the FISA restrictions as an existential threat to national security. They loathe it as much as we loathe DADT, so they just ignored it, they paid no price for it and progressives were rightfully hopping mad. Picking and choosing the laws you will enforce or not enforce is something that monarchs and dictators do, not US Presidents.
So, I’m asking if Obama has the legal authority to issue an executive order telling the military not to enforce DADT. If he does, great. It’s something he should do if it doesn’t look like he can get the law changed. If he doesn’t, then ‘it seems to me he’s ignoring Congress’ wishes, however unfair we think they are, and is behaving like a monarch. Perhaps there’s a lawyer out there that can help with this.
scott
@ Lovemonkey
I’m sorry, and I know I had dismissed you earlier but…..but…..CRAPHEADS!!!!????
That’s just too precious!
Cassidy
@Little Dreamer: I never said anything about honor. I went into the military for college money actually. I stayed in because I love being a Medic. I have my own reason for believing in what I do and don’t see the need to try and justify them to anyone, especially you. We’ve had this conversation before and you’ve shown yourself to be small and close minded about this topic.
But other than sounding stupid and projecting your own inadequacies on me, do you have anything else to add?
So I’m an elitist. Big whoop. As if you don’t spend the bulk of your day looking down on people you’ve deemed less than you. Your condescension is only surpassed by your hypocricy. You and TZ make a good couple.
Cassidy
Once again, it’s the law. The military doesn’t make it. It enforces it. When it gets repealed, it stops enforcing it.
Cassidy
@Waynski: technically, as Commander in Chief, the Potus can order us to do anything and we’re obliged to follow it unless it is an unlawful order. Being that DADT is a law, the military is obliged to enforce it. Now, if it was a policy, that’s completely different.
Little Dreamer
@scott:
Well, Scott, what I wrote wasn’t for you, you didn’t happen to state that the Americans you are/were protecting were “whining children and apathetic pansies” who suck.
My argument is that anyone who puts themselves above others goes to the back of the line based on ego alone. That a special ‘honorable’ soldier would state that most Americans are crappy people, that is not honor, that’s some form of derangement. If you choose to lay down your life for others, that’s because you chose to, and if you do, you merit honor but don’t expect respect from others if you go around stating that the people you are protecting suck simply because they’re not you. If we all were out there fighting wars and dying for our country, there would be no country left to protect. Citizens have different roles and just because someone chose a different role (do those who can’t go into the military because of a disability suck?) doesn’t mean they are not a worthy person. If the ability to serve in a life/death capacity as a soldier is all that makes a person worthy then I would say the person holding that view has an unhealthy inflated sense of self worth and he has given up his honor with such an attitude (Cassidy is a perfect example).
If you are willing to die for your country, I respect that you were willing to do such a thing and hope you wished to do so because of an honorable reason, not some psychopathic need to be “special”. A person who says “I’m special because…” is the person who has just lost their reason for being special. He might as well say “I’m ego”.
scott
@ Cassidy
Once again, it’s the law. The military doesn’t make it. It enforces it. When it gets repealed, it stops enforcing it.
It never ceases to amaze me how few people actually understand the fact that the United States Military is under civilian control. That we don’t make its rules — the civilian National Command Authority (elected officials) do.
It sort of proves my point when I say that these people don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about who opine and discourse at great length about the military and what it needs to do but who fail to grasp that most basic tenet of American life — that the military is run by civilians.
It sort of makes everything they have to say on the subject not really worth listening to.
But hey, what do I know — I think I’m better than everyone else.
Little Dreamer
Who do I look down upon besides hypocrites and those who feel the need to place themselves above others and toot their own horn? (That’s you).
Cassidy
@Little Dreamer: Once again I said nothing about honor. Seriously, these excuses and roundabout arguments you make for your own personal failings are probably best discussed with your therapist. I’m a medical professional, sure, but my specialty is battlefield trauma.
LoveMonkey
@Cassidy:
Really? Then why isn’t the military down at the Capitol lobbying aggressively for a change in the law? Like they do for all the other things they want from Congress?
What’s the pathology here? Congress forcing an unwanted anachronistic policy on a military that only wants to move forward and ditch that policy?
Cassidy
@scott: Btw, I’m not sure if you read my last response to you, when we were having our heated debate. But I would like you too. I think in the end, the bigest difference is perspective, specifically that since the Army community is bigger, the things you spoke would seem like an exacerbated scenario in the Army.
Cassidy
@LoveMonkey: I wouldn’t count speaking before committees and sub-committees as aggressive lobbying. But I’ll bite, link please?
LoveMonkey
@scott:
Then you will have no problem with the civilian authority requiring the military to put away DADT and move forward.
And you will agree that all that “it’s the military, it’s special” talk was just a cover for a stubborn, old fashioned leadership that didn’t have the courage to stand up to its own prejudices?
Cassidy
Jesus Christ, it’s like arguing with a 5 year old! When will you get the fact that DADT is a law and the military enforces it’s law. And when the law is repealed, hopefully, then it won’t be enforced anymore. For fuck’s sake.
Regardless of personal prejudices, the Chain of Command will follow the law.
scott
@ Cassidy
I didn’t get to read it but I will. And I agree with you about perspective.
People don’t realize that the Army is completely different than the Marines — and not just because of our much smaller size.
Our culture and ethos are in many ways radically different andI think that confuses a lot of civilians because they see a single MILITARY with a single set of rules and behaviors while the reality is that are are a number of militaries and we all see things through the prism of the reality that our respective service branch creates for us.
Little Dreamer
@Cassidy:
Well, please don’t go working in any civilian hospitals, I wouldn’t want to see you killing ordinary Americans because they’re whining pansies who suck since they don’t do what you do and don’t deserve to live because you’re “SPECIAL”.
I’ll give you special, you obviously rode the short bus as a child, or else lost a few screws on the battlefield yourself.
You get respect from me when you stop saying how fucking special you are and admit that you are protecting and serving (because you chose to) Americans who deserve the be protected, not hung out to dry on your verbal assault line. As you have presented yourself today, you get no respect from me, none.
Waynski
@Cassidy — So it sounds to me like Obama couldn’t fix this with an executive order, legally. Telling the armed forces to ignore a law would seem to be an unlawful order, or am I missing something here?
scott
@ Cassidy
I’m reasonably certain that Lovemonkey has a learning disability of some sort. An impairment, if you will, that prevents him from grasping the simple concept that we in the military — even at the very highest levels of the uniformed services — are required to submit to all lawful orders we are given.
And that those order originate with the civilian leadership — or, in other words, the People of the United States of America.
We in the military don’t get to lobby — we get to follow orders and enforce the laws of this nation until those laws are changed.
LoveMonkey
@Cassidy:
What? What liar’s crap are you pulling here now?
If the liar’s slogan is, “it’s the law,” then go to Congress and ask that the law be changed.
Otherwise, we have to conclude that the military likes the law.
You don’t need a link to understand that do you?
Cassidy
@Waynski: That’s about right.
@Little Dreamer: Seriously, therapy might do you some good. I guess part of being “special” is that I’m okay with the decisions I’ve made and have no regrets. I’m not gonna make up a bunch of excuses to make my choices legitimate. So if you can’t reconcile that yourself, then seriously, get some help.
Cassidy
@LoveMonkey: So how was your trip to Congress asking that the law be changed. Or should I assume that you like the law?
Little Dreamer
@Waynski:
By your logic, Prohibition would still be in affect. Laws can be repealed, you know. Have you ever heard that word? REPEAL? Try Googling “repealing laws” and see what you learn.
Cassidy
@Little Dreamer: Executive Orders don’t repeal laws. Congress repeals laws. God, now you’re just making this easy.
Little Dreamer
@Cassidy:
Cassidy, I’m not the one who would present myself as a special military member who admittedly hates those who refuse to be soldiers. You really take the cake for irony in describing yourself as “special”.
You know, you and I used to argue about this whole soldiering thing before, but, I never thought I’d see you admit that Americans are whiny pansies who suck. Fuck you very much.
LoveMonkey
So here is the sum of the liars’ argument advanced by Cassidy and Scott:
The military is full of great heroes who dare not be challenged, but when it domes to DADT, the military is helpless because the evil Congress has forced the policy on us and we dasn’t even ask to change it. But even if we did ask to change it, the complex cultural issues can only be understood by military people so Congress couldn’t get it right anyway. Therefore, the mighty US military is just a hapless victim of foolish civilian control which forces us to discriminate against gays.
Got it. BJ is very lucky to have this clear and effective advocacy for the military online and ready to defend our men in uniform.
Halleck
Nice to see Sully finally realize Obama is not the Gayvior.
scott
@ Waynsky
Actually, and here Cassidy and I will disagree — but Obama can legally order the military to cease investigations and separations under DADT — thus effectively ending the policy until congress chooses to repeal it.
The uniformed military is not obliged follow an illegal order– in fact we are compelled to refuse to do so — but simply ordering the cessation of investigations would not, in the eyes of most scholars in the UCMJ, constitute an illegal order and would be fully within the power of the president as commander in chief.
Little Dreamer
@Cassidy:
I never said it had to be an executive order. I know Congress has to do this, and if you would read the top of this thread you’d see that the idea is to have Congress legislate the repeal. What we are trying to get around is your circular reasoning where sometimes your laws are only commanded by the executive but at other times it’s the legislature, but you have your own special society of special soldier boys and girls, although you seem to act like it’s not really so special since it serves at the behest of the president, although congress makes laws, but…
You make no fucking sense, why don’t you say what you really mean and spell it out clearly so it doesn’t look like a circle jerk?
LoveMonkey
@scott:
But wait, Obama should only do this after he gets the secret handshake and knows all that secret, complicated cultural stuff that makes doing the right thing so much harder in the military than it is out in civilian life, right?
I mean, we are talking about a culture so arcane that it even has its own definition of “murder” apparently, one that we mortals cannot even fathom (since it has not been described here, one presumes that it is beyond description.)
scott
@ Lovemonkey
Give the boy a banana! He’s finally seeing the light.
Its taken you a while Lovemonkey, and frankly, I was wondering if you’d ever get there.
But you did and I’m proud of you son.
Little Dreamer
@LoveMonkey:
Oh, special definition of murder in the military? That’s easy, Cassidy has been so traumatized on the battlefield while working in battlefield trauma that his mind has been totally destroyed. He’s lost has mind so delusionally that he thinks he’s special for serving as a soldier for ordinary Americans that suck. That’s the special military murder for you.
He’s dead to me. Poor Cassidy, that “honorable” soldier, he was so fucking special!
LoveMonkey
@scott:
Really? So this military which you so obsessively cloak yourself with is helpless and just a victim of its backward country? Able to stand up to bullets, bombs and tyrants everywhere, it cowers here in the US before the mighty Anti Gay army of rightwingers and doesn’t have the balls to send a few generals down to the Capitol to ask for repeal or modification of the stupid, useless, counterproductive, mean spirited and thuggish DADT policy? To announce to the world that our armed forces are ready to move forward into the brave new world and just need Congress to set them free to do it?
Really?
MJ
Forgive the run-on sentences below, but I have a couple questions that I’d like you all to all to consider.
Do the chicken little LGBT bloggers (i.e. Sully, Aravosis, Savage) understand that repeatedly going into Def-Con Five mode attacking Obama for “throwing gay people under the bus” re: DADT and DOMA
and HRC speech Transcript-gate, weaken Obama and his ability to deliver for the progressive movement in the long run?For example, does getting on TV and claiming that Obama sucks b/c he has offered “nothing but words” to the LGBT community, end up weakening Obama in the long run by reinforcing the stupid Republican meme that he is a weak and ineffective leader and make it more difficult for him to influence the overall debate?
LoveMonkey
High fives for Cassidy and scott! They smacked down those faggot-loving pussies!
Meanwhile the US armed forces are portrayed as a bunch of little old ladies who can’t form a policy and tell their own personnel to grow up and start treating people with simple respect, blind to sexual preference. You know, like those superhuman Brits are doing.\
Little Dreamer
@LoveMonkey:
Honey, don’t you realize that “don’t ask” is a double entendre?
Minionero
I’m not a servicemember – never have been – but I revere and honor all those brave men and women who have put their lives on the line fighting for this country. Those people truly are special.
…Except those that think, because they volunteered and others didn’t, that they are somehow morally superior to the civilian masses. Those folks are just @ssholes!
scott
@ Lovemonkey
“….and doesn’t have the balls to send a few generals down to the Capitol to ask for repeal or modification of the stupid, useless, counterproductive, mean spirited and thuggish DADT policy?”
You really are dim, aren’t you?
One more time, with gusto — WE DON’T SET NATIONAL POLICY OR MAKE LAWS AND WE DON’T LOBBY, WE FOLLOW ORDERS AND OBEY LAWS UNTIL THEY GET CHANGED.
Little Dreamer
@LoveMonkey:
Don’t forget they’re “special” little old ladies.
scott
@ LoveMonkey
“High fives for Cassidy and scott! They smacked down those faggot-loving pussies!”
Ummm, you may have missed this earlier Love but not only am I retired Marine Sergeant Major — but I’m also a big ‘ole pole smoking Fag.
Little Dreamer
@Minionero:
Oh, they aren’t just morally superior, they’re special while civilian masses are whiny pansies who suck.
Little Dreamer
@scott:
Oh that’s right, the joint chiefs of staff have NEVER set foot in Congress, neither have any generals.
LMAO!
I suppose we’re next going to hear that the military doesn’t assess how many troops they would need in a theatre of operations.
Minionero
Tell that to Gen. McChrystal….?
Cassidy
@Minionero: Hell I fully admit to being an asshole too. What’s your point?
@scott: At this point, just give up. This is kinda there thing. Between making excuses for wasted lives and projected inadequacies, all these two know how to do is twist things around and be deliberatley obtuse. They’ve been doing it for a couple of years now. Fortunately, they’ve found one another in this big ol’ world and the breeding is kept to a minimum.
I don’t think you’re wrong on the Executive order bit, but it would still be a pretty flimsy premise to not enforce DADT. It would be nice, but I’m not entirely convinced it would hold up.
I’m still waiting for TZ’s link, but I guess it’s just more fun to throw out bullshit.
John Cole
@MJ: No. They don’t. Or they don’t care. Or they are just more concerned with the turf war with HRC.
Cassidy
When called, sure. They kinda do report to them.
SATSQ #3
scott
@ Little Dreamer
Again. trying to have this discussion with people like you who have absolutely no concept of the relationship between the uniformed military and the civilian leadership is a giant waste of time.
If you can’t even understand the simple concept that the military is SUBORDINATE in every way to the civilian leadership of this country then trying to explain the military/congressional dynamic to you will just make you
go all cross eyed and steam come out of your ears.
Its not at all hard to understand and yet you seem to be struggling.
Little Dreamer
@Cassidy:
And they never ask for what they want, they just take orders from Congress. Hmmm? I’m sure they never get caught rubbing elbows either.
LoveMonkey
There you have it, folks. The military doesn’t lobby. It just sits over there in Virginia and waits patiently for the crumbs of money and materiel and policy that our nasty civilian government is good enough to send over. It is powerless to ask for or effect change and never would have dreamed up a policy that discriminates against gays, ever, ever.
A simple wiki read will show that the history of anti-gay regulation is ALL military, DOD through and through, including the current DADT law. which simply acted as a butt covering mechanism for DOD policy already in place. Read the DADT wiki and history and judge for yourself, but even the most generous reading would hold that DADT was designed to prop up and provide cover for a narrow minded and mean spiritied history in DOD of discrimination against gays. In DOD, which is where the legacy policies come from.
Cassidy
@Little Dreamer: Well sure, they ask. And sometimes they are told yes and sometimes they are told no. God imagine the nuance!
Little Dreamer
@scott:
I’m not struggling, I used to be a military wife, I have a pretty good idea how things work. I think you two are too full of yourself to think everything is absolutely as cut and dried as you seem to believe it is. As someone said above: “tell that to Gen. McChrystal”. Is he just a stray cat going out begging for what he wants or does this sort of thing happen more often? Hearing you two talk of it, it seems that requests never go up the chain of command. I happen to know requests go up the chain of command all the time. So, at some point the chain of command leaves the military playground and walked into a DC doorway, why is that so strange?
Come to think of it, in my own former marriage I’m aware of a military general making a decision on behalf of a state legislator (not even a federal employee) that was dealt with through a congressman I had to get involved. It seemed that since I was married to a state legislator’s son at the time, I was not allowed to receive my belongings when our marriage took a terrible turn while we were both in Europe. When I returned to the states I was told my belongings were to be sealed for a year and a half and I could not access them. I was told this was not common procedure but was by special order. The order came from a military general who was protecting the goods of a son of a legislator (my ex), and had to be overridden by a senator that I got involved because I couldn’t wait a year and a half for my belongings.
Congress members talk to all sorts of people involved in all sorts of crises all the time. Look at how certain members of the GOP recently went to Honduras to talk a government that most of the world (including us) doesn’t even recognize. You think they’d feel less secure talking to a military general who asked them for help with a wee little problem?
Of course, we know DADT isn’t a wee little problem. DADT is a powder keg of cultural backlash and too hot to handle in such a way (and I’m not suggesting it would be). I just think it’s funny hearing you two speaking as if you’re so sure requests for help never go up the chain of command.
Waynski
@Little Dreamer — Repealing the law is precisely what I advocated in my first post — although I may have used the word change. And it should be done ASAP, so I’m a little confused by the hostility.
With regard to the executive order, there seems to be an assumption in this thread that Obama can end the policy by executive order. What I’m wondering is if he has the authority to issue an order that tells the military not to enforce a law passed by Congress. It doesn’t seem to me that he could walk out tomorrow and issue an executive order to the military to stop prosecutinig murders. Cassidy seems to think he doesn’t have the authority in DADT, but if someone can tell me how he does have it, I’d love to hear it. There may be something in the original legisaltion that gives him enforcement flexibility, which would make it possible, but no one has told me as a legal matter how he can issue an executive order to the military to ignore the law.
It’s a terrible law and SHOULD BE repealed, but Obama doesn’t get to pick and choose what laws he enforces, even if he disagrees with them, which was the central point of my original post.
Little Dreamer
@Waynski:
Wayne, I apologize if I seemed hostile, I just thought that your constant questions of whether a law could be changed seemed elementary. If laws couldn’t be changed (repealed), we’d be stuck with prohibition and a whole lot of other nasty laws that would make no sense during this day and age (how about black men being 3/5’s a person? – changed by Amendment, but, obviously laws can be changed).
If I seemed harsh, please accept my deepest and sincerest apology, I was just snarking since I was playing with this “special” idiot who thinks he’s so much better than those Americans he has served. got carried away, tried to give you at least one route to the answer you were looking for.
Little Dreamer
@Waynski:
No, but he is a Constitutional Lawyer and can lean on the legislature to make changes if he sees necessity. Whether they follow through on his request is up to the legislature, of course. If they can’t make the desired changes, he is stuck enforcing a law he doesn’t like.
(Gee, another example where a lower level of power might be able to make influence the outcome. Whaddyaknow?)
LoveMonkey
The military cannot lobby. It can only liaise. Heh.
Managing its relationsips with Congress is rather a big deal.
DADT is a creature of DOD and serves to ossify a collection of antiquted, bigoted and dubious practices that have characterized the military’s attitudes toward homosexuality for quite a long time.
DOD, certainly the single most powerful special interest in the government, wanted cover for its failure to deal with this problem and got it by having Congress legislate DADT.
Waynski
No apology neccesssary. I think my using the words “never goes away” in my original post my have been confusing. What I meant by that is that if the Senate thinks the problem has been taken care of by executive order, they’ll never muster the political will to repeal it, not that it couldn’t or shouldn’t be repealed. I think that’s where we got our wires crossed.
Little Dreamer
@LoveMonkey:
That’s a great link sweetheart. LMAO
I wonder, would the ghost of the “oh so special” soldier formerly known as Cassidy like to explain how this could POSSIBLY happen? Gosh, you know, that sort of thing is just never done in the military, or so he said.
Hahahahahahahahaha!
Hmmm
@John Cole:
Wow John, really? You exist in a world where Presidents never talk about upcoming bills until they’re out on the floor being voted on huh? I enjoy your writing for the most part but your excuses for Obama on this subject are getting nonsensical to the point of absurdity. “Oh of course he’s just going to come out and repeat his campaign speeches almost verbatim, you wouldn’t want him tipping his hat. HES NOT A LEGISLATOR”
Yes you’re right John. He’s the person responsible for making public speeches with the intent of pushing the legislature in a specific direction. By changing his tone from “I will someday do xyz for gay people” to “I am calling on Congress to do xyz for gay people” he would’ve actually exerted some level of pressure. You can pretend that the only options are A) Obama does what he did or B) Obama personally introduces legislation that he wrote himself. Not the case. Stop being willfully obtuse.
You think you’re excusing him but you’re just pointing out how screwed up his approach to this is.
Hmmm
Er and along the same lines the “he can’t do anything via executive order or it’ll backfire!!!!!” is just another excuse for inaction. This isn’t a case of either/or, all/nothing or any other false dichotomy you want to pretend exists. Obama can issue an executive statement preventing enforcement of DADT for a specific time period. He can issue some carefully-worded statement about how the issue needs to be looked at closely and in the meantime since we’re at war we need all the boots on the ground we can get blah blah blah and then throw it over to Congress. Yeah from there the Dems might drop the ball and the GOP will freak out anyway, but I fail to see how working the bill out all behind the scenes – in a plausibly-deniable manner that allows them to act like it never existed should it fall through – makes them more likely to act than a strategy that involves some level of public disclosure.
The GOP is going to freak out about every single thing Obama does for the rest of his presidency. There are no exceptions, so there is no point arguing that if xyz happens it allows them to do so. It’s like arguing that a specific approach to repealing DADT and DOMA allows the sun to be hot and water a chance to be wet. Come on. (And yes I get the “well certain approaches lead to falsehoods that’re more easily accepted wholesale” argument, I just don’t think it holds any water. I’m of the opinion that Beck, Limbaugh etc. have successfully proven that people will believe anything as long it allows them to feed their hatred of Obama, dems etc so I don’t see the point in trying to act as though they take into consideration whether or not their claims have any basis in reality.)
Little Dreamer
@Hmmm:
Do you think it’s possible that Obama might be doing some backroom negotiating on trying to get this through before he announces to the public that a bill is coming?These things take time, ya know.
Hmmm
@Little Dreamer:
Of course I think it’s possible.
I also think we’ve been feeding ourselves a steady diet of “Don’t you think it’s possible that Obama might be doing some backroom negotiating on policy X?” for 3/4 of a year now. I think that trying to rationalize things that we can never prove either way is pointless because it allows the possibility that our leaders *might* be working in our best interests to be enough of a reason to sit down and shut up. I think we should say what we think without regard for rocking the boat and if it turns out we were wrong and Obama really is working in our best interests then it’s better than keeping quiet and finding out he really isn’t.
You bring up health care. Obama tried to sit back, hand off to Congress and negotiate backroom deals on that and look how much of that blew up in his face. Think Baucus would’ve been able to turn the whole thing into a summerlong sideshow if Obama had been a little more hands-on up front? What about Billy Tauzin and the pharma deal? Look how well that worked out.
Hmmm
@Waynski:
Wayne: Obama has already gotten in on the signing statement business to some degree so it’s problematic for him to assert that he has no discretion in interpreting or enforcing laws. Leaving the issue of signing statements themselves completely aside, it’s simply a contradictory stance to be taking.
Beyond that, 76 members of Congress have already called on Obama to suspend DADT.
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009/06/house_dems_urge.html
The Palm Center (a UCSB thinktank) thinks he has the authority to do so directly. As this article points out, another way to go about it would be to direct the military to simply stop investigating any sexuality-related issues, which sidesteps the issue of whether he has the authority to suspend the law defining the consequences.
If you want Congress to take the issue up there is no better way than for Obama to suspend DADT temporarily. If he sits back and says “Well I can’t touch it, it’s on Congress” then we’re in a business as usual situation where everyone “wants” to but there are no particularly compelling incentives to actually get to work. If Obama makes a fuss, suspends the bill and then calls on Congress to deal with the issue then the whole conversation becomes about how Congress should deal with it rather than if they should at all. Pretty much the same conversation we’re having now where we agree it’s a legislative issue, except instead of no pressure for action whatsoever there would be a ton.
Little Dreamer
@Hmmm: Well, okay, so we’re not getting a progressive’s wet dream in the legislative department (understandable considering the noise coming from the right and our own congressional Dem’s lack of backbone when confronting such – even in the majority position) but… he IS trying and he doesn’t talk about something unless he’s really starting to figure out how to push it through.
Okay, so perhaps we end up with the Baucus plan on medical legislation… maybe we end up with legislation that isn’t perfect (nobody said it would be) but he IS working on trying to get things done. He wouldn’t be bringing up DADT now if he was only going to be made into a fool. I guess you think he’s an idiot. He may not be perfect (and I never said he was, I never considered him Messiah or anything of that sort) but he is certainly better than George W. Bush. Would you rather we put that moron back in office?
If he didn’t think he could start the gears in motion, his best move would be to shut up for now and he’s NOT doing that. He’s risking his own hide doing this, give him a chance, will ya? I’d like to see YOU tackle half the shit he’s working on with the environment he has to work in, with the pressures he’s dealing with and get it done in less time. Unfortunately that’s an exercise we’ll never get to watch, is it? You think you can do better?
Cassidy
Awww…the Roma Again/ TZ circle jerk of pretentious airs is over with? Which one of you ate the biscuit? I’ve got a new suggestion for the dictionary:
Rome-Zone: the place you are when a group of pretentious half-wits feed off each other with an intellectual circle jerk, despite the fact that they are engaging in gross acts of dishonesty:
Usage: Aw damn. This thread has entered the RomeZone. Now no one will be able to get an intelligent thought in without one of these two dumbasses going out of thier way to muck it up.
And I’m still waiting for TZ to tell us why he supports DADT. Unless of course he can prove he went to Congress to demand its repeal. What is your problem with gay people you prejudiced fuck?