I still can’t believe that after the last decade, knowing everything we know, that there are still some idiots who will take the military and government’s description of Manning’s custody and believe it.
We are all openly gay now
This would have all happened much sooner if Hillary were president:
The Senate just voted 63-33 to break the filibuster on the DADT repeal bill.
Late Update: Just so we’re clear. This is not the passage of the actual DADT repeal bill. This is the vote that allows a straight majority vote, which will likely come tomorrow. And since there are many more than 51 votes for repeal, that means that the actual bill will pass tomorrow and likely be signed by the president early next week. This vote means that DADT is history.
Joe’s Gambit
Apparently Manchin is still digging in:
Four key GOP senators who have announced their support for a “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal are prepared to join Democrats in voting to let the bill proceed, as long as Congress first deals with a measure to fund the government, aides to the four said Friday.
The aides said Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Lisa Murkowski and Scott Brown will vote Saturday to end debate on the ban on openly gay and lesbian people in the military if the Senate passes a stopgap spending bill, a continuing resolution to keep the government funded.
The four have previously said that bill must be approved first.
The Senate is currently working to craft a temporary spending bill, made necessary after Democratic leadership pulled a $1 trillion spending bill after Republicans abandoned their support of it.
The four senators’ support for the “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal would ensure the 60 votes needed to clear the way for the bill toadvance even if Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, votes against it, as is expected.
I’m of two minds on this. The first is that the Manchin team realizes how stupid and ham-handed their initial response to their no-vote on cloture last week was, and that their public statements just made Manchin look like an idiot. “I need more time to gauge the opinions of WV” and that other nonsense just made him look like a rookie, and they know it. So now they have decided to latch on to the whole “we support repeal but not while troops are in the field” nonsense (seriously- when are American troops NOT in the field?), because at the very least that sounds like a principled argument. Like many in Washington, they’ve decided it is better to look stupid than weak, so they are sticking to their guns and this bullshit excuse rather than just admitting they had no argument and voting to end cloture.
The second option is that he’s just decided that sticking it to gay people is good politics in WV.
He might be right on both accounts. I don’t know.
Via twitter, I see that Steve Clemons was chatting with Manchin, and should have a story on that conversation soon.
I’m Still Wondering How They’ll Pull Away The Football
This seems like good news:
ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe reports:
Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown today voiced his support for a stand-alone repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, bringing the bill one vote over the 60-vote threshold that it will need to reach if and when the Senate votes on the measure in the coming weeks.
“Sen. Brown accepts the Pentagon’s recommendation to repeal the policy after proper preparations have been completed. If and when a clean repeal bill comes up for a vote, he will support it,” said Brown spokesperson Gail Gitcho.
Brown’s backing means that – on paper – supporters of the repeal have 61 senators in favor of the bill. On Wednesday Republicans Olympia Snowe of Maine and Lisa Murkowski both announced their support for the stand-alone repeal. The House passed the clean repeal on Wednesday and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has vowed to bring it to a vote in the Senate before the end of the year.
That reminds me. I need to call the clowns in Manchin’s office and ask them if he has had enough time to figure out what West Virginians think about the repeal.
*** Update ***
Just got off the phone with them and “while Joe thinks it should be repealed, he doesn’t want to do it with our troops on the front line.” In other words, he is still playing games.
I basically then went into five minute spiel about how I’m pro-choice, Joe is pro-life, but I supported him anyway, that I know he is going to vote the wrong way on anything related to energy or coal because this is West Virginia, and I supported him in the election anyway, and that I know he is going to vote a lot of times in ways that upset me. But this, I told him, is a bridge to far, and that Manchin needs to stop playing games, act like an adult, and support the repeal. I then told him that it was absolutely absurd that he needed more time to hear what West Virginians think, since he has lived in West Virginia his whole life.
The guy was very nice despite my speech.
I’m Still Wondering How They’ll Pull Away The FootballPost + Comments (186)
Holbrooke
His last words are getting a lot of play:
“You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.”
I thought this part of his Times’ obit, describing periods when he was out of the State Department, was interesting:
And his voice on the outside remained influential — as an editor of Foreign Policy magazine from 1972 to 1977, as a writer of columns for The Washington Post and analytical articles for many other publications, and as the author of two books.
Apparently, there was once a time when the opinion pages of that paper were taken seriously by those who wanted to assert influence. I was listening to an interview with James Fallows the other day, and he remarked that one of the things that surprised him the most upon returning to DC after a three year trip to China was the decline of the Washington Post.
The Snow Queen’s Trap
This was supposed to be the year that the law banning gays from serving openly in the military would be repealed. President Obama and the top Pentagon brass made clear their distaste for “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Polling suggests the nation has moved past it. The Democrats who control Congress, as well as some Republicans, are ready to overturn it. And last week a final potential obstacle was removed when an exhaustive Pentagon study found little risk in undoing the law.
Yet with the lame-duck session of Congress hurtling toward a chaotic close, the effort to repeal the policy is in peril. A divided Senate panel heard stern testimony Friday from the Marine Corps commandant and the Army chief of staff, who warned against incorporating openly gay troops into combat units now serving in Afghanistan.
But the biggest barrier is the calendar. Although a repeal bill passed the House in May, and there appear to be enough votes for it in the Senate, there are only two weeks left in the lame-duck session. Other priorities, such as negotiating a compromise on extending Bush-era tax cuts, have consumed congressional leaders.
This is why Scott Brown and the Susan Collins feel comfortable pretending they would support the repeal of DADT once “taxes are addressed.” Demand amendments be allowed during the debate, run out the clock, get credit for supporting repeal without ever having to make the vote and risk getting teabagged in the next primary, fool the beltway boys and the idiot independents about how moderate you are, and then sit back and watch the left and gay rights groups blame the Obama administration.
It took Richard Cohen and Dana Milbank a decade to realize John McCain is an asshole. You think the bobbleheads will put two and two together regarding Collins and Brown?
Of course not.
But we’ll still be required to pretend that people who vote every single time with extremists are somehow “moderates.”
That’s Just Good Common Sense
Look, I’m starting to feel this way, and I’m not even Canadian:
In a confidential diplomatic cable sent back to the State Department, the American Embassy warned of increasing mistrust of the United States by its northern neighbor, with which it shares some $500 billion in annual trade, the world’s longest unsecured border and a joint military mission in Afghanistan.
“The degree of comfort with which Canadian broadcast entities, including those financed by Canadian tax dollars, twist current events to feed longstanding negative images of the U.S. — and the extent to which the Canadian public seems willing to indulge in the feast — is noteworthy as an indication of the kind of insidious negative popular stereotyping we are increasingly up against in Canada,” the cable said.
A trove of diplomatic cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of publications, disclose a perception by American diplomats that Canadians “always carry a chip on their shoulder” in part because of a feeling that their country “is condemned to always play ‘Robin’ to the U.S. ‘Batman.’ ”
But at the same time, some Canadian officials privately tried to make it clear to their American counterparts that they did not share their society’s persistent undercurrent of anti-Americanism.
Canada would be wise to not trust us. Hell, if I lived next door to a bunch of heavily armed, loud, drunken rednecks and religious nuts who’ve shown no regard for the law or other people’s property and think know-nothing yahoos like Sarah Palin have leadership potential, I’d be a touch nervous too. Canadians don’t have a chip on their shoulder. They’ve just got a degree of common sense that eludes your average American.