Tag: DADT

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution is pretty simple. It says, ‘Raise an army.’ It says absolutely nothing about race, color, creed, sexual orientation.
You all joined for a reason: to serve. To protect our nation, right?
“Yes, sergeant major,” Marines replied.
How dare we, then, exclude a group of people who want to do the same thing you do right now, something that is honorable and noble?
[…]
Get over it. We’re magnificent, we’re going to continue to be. […] Let’s just move on, treat everybody with firmness, fairness, dignity, compassion and respect. Let’s be Marines.

Sgt. Maj. Micheal Barrett, the recently named adviser to Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos, who pretty clearly needs to give this same talk to the next GOP caucus in DC.
Source: The Wall Street Journal

He’s a bitter man now, who can barely tolerate the fact that he lost to Barack Obama. But he lost for an obvious reason: his campaign proved him to be puerile and feckless, a politician who panicked when the heat was on during the financial collapse, a trigger-happy gambler who chose an incompetent for his vice president. He has made quite a show ever since of demonstrating his petulance and lack of grace.

Joe Klein reflects on the fall from grace of one John McCain.
It’s both strong stuff and true, but the sad part is that he was always like this, it’s just that he was the MSM’s particular darling because he would sit there with them on Bullshit One and tickle their own bottomless fonts of self-importance for as long as they could stand it. Now that he’s through with national politics, and knows it, he (apparently) isn’t bothering anymore. And so blow-back against Saint John McCain (finally) begins. Keep on tapping, Tashtego.

PAM McCain II: Electric Boogaloo

10-2006 McCain: “The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy,’ then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it,” McCain said in October 2006 to an audience of Iowa State University students.
Early 2010 McCain: [Gates told the Armed Services Committee, “I fully support the president’s decision.”] In response, McCain declared himself “disappointed” in the testimony. “At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy,” he said bluntly, before describing it as “imperfect but effective.”
11-30-2010 McCain: In all due respect, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is not directly in charge of the troops. The Secretary of Defense is a political appointee who’s never been in the military. And the president, obviously, has had no background or experience in the military whatsoever. […] I’m paying attention to the commandant of the Marine Corps.
Lemkin: Good to know who we’re going to for military policy, this week, anyway. What happens when the commandant comes around? For all of Obama’s minor flaws, it’s good to remember that putting up with Movin’ Them Goalposts, McFlipflopper McCain would have been utterly unbearable.

Like Alcoholism and Some Other Things

David Gregory: “In a debate last month, you expressed your support for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell [and] you alluded to ‘lifestyle choices.’ Do you believe being gay [is a] choice?”
Ken Buck (R candidate for Senate, CO): “I do.”
Gregory: “Based on what?”
Ken Buck (R): “I guess you can choose who your partner is.”
Gregory: “You don’t think it’s something that’s determined at birth?”
Ken Buck (R): “I think that birth has an influence over it, like alcoholism and some other things, but I think that basically you have a choice.”

Squashed: Don’t worry about the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell vote

squashed:

Today the Republican’s defeated a Democratic effort to bring a defense authorization bill to the floor that included a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Now both sides can use it as an election issue.

This did not remove the repeal from the defense authorization bill. […]
[It] is a critical bit of legislation. It will make it to the floor before the end of the year. Somebody will introduce an amendment to get the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell out of the bill. The amendment will fail. The bill will pass. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will be repealed.

It’s not so much about whether the package will squeak through (with DADT and DREAM intact), it’s about deflating the effect of said (inevitable) passage. Now it will pass post-midterms, and nobody but nobody will even know it happened.
This was never about the policy, it was about denying The Democrat a win, no matter how incremental, that might give the base even the least bit of wind in its sails. And, once again, rather than fight or force the GOP to eat a massive shit sandwich while winning the day (see: Troops, why does John McCain want them to die?), the GOP is handed this victory entirely without cost, while the democratic base sees yet more fecklessness and one more reason not to bother come November.

It is better to be strong and wrong than weak and right. This is why they fail.

Squashed: Don’t worry about the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell vote

Why Does John McCain Want To Kill Soldiers?

Why does Susan Collins hate the military so much that she wants them to starve to death while those brave men and women are out there fighting and dying in harms way? How dare she endanger funding for even a second over procedural concerns.

These and other simple frames are things you will never hear from the mouth of The Democrat. They, after all, have the facts on their side. Why, this amendment doesn’t actually even end DADT at all, it simply creates a mechanism by which [blah de blah de blah blah blah]. Why, those little devils actually used the same mechanism to pass DADT when [blah de blah de blah blah].

Repeat after Lemkin: The Facts Do Not Matter.

John McCain hates soldiers. Period. There is no other possible explanation.
When asked to apologize, up the ante (not only does John McCain hate soldiers, I’m fairly sure he is committing an act of treason by blocking this legislation).

It’s this ceaseless inability to identify whatever policy the Democrat prefers and fight for it, whatever may come, that really poisons the electorate. As The Big Dog himself once said:

When people are insecure, they’d rather have somebody who is strong and wrong than someone who’s weak and right

“Weak and right” so perfectly sums the modern Democrat that it really should have made the exciting new website redesign and bumper-sticker that we’re all so pumped up by.
And nothing, nothing depicts the modern Tea Klan GOP’s limbic politics more perfectly than “strong and wrong.”

Haw…haw?

The GOP is using taxpayer money to get idears on a totally new platform they’re promising. It will be of interest to us all. Wonder how that’s working out for them?

They set up a website to solicit ideas, only to see liberals flood it with distinctly un-Republican suggestions. When Republicans invited the public to rank proposals online, critics lampooned the effort for small-bore notions such as ending a federal program for “historic whaling partners.”

[…]

Last week, the top five entries in the “Liberty and Freedom” category were: ban handguns, “drop the idea that we’re a ‘Christian’ country,” declare abortion “none of the government’s business,” allow gays to serve openly in the military and legalize marijuana.

Great ideas all. So, I’m sure the GOP is dutifully crafting reasoned, actionable legislative agendas for each of these exciting new priorities and running off about a million little seemingly hand-made and gramaticully inorrect signs for people to wave around? Not so much:

Brendan Buck, spokesman for “America Speaking Out,” said Republicans “are plucking out ideas” worthy of consideration and consistent with GOP principles. “It’s not a ‘top vote gets in’” deal, he said.

Ah, so you’re wasting taxpayer money so that you can just keep exactly what you had before. It’s a good thing we can count on The Democrat not to make a point of any of this. That would be shrill.