Why Don’t Rushpubliscums Respect Our Military Leaders?

Hasn’t the Rushpubliscum cry always been that they “listen to the commanders” whenever anything military comes up? Isn’t it supposed to be the dems that are deaf to the wishes of our military leaders?

And yet….. these Rushpubliscums, who love and respect our military leaders so much, simply dismiss them when they say something that runs counter to Ruhpubliscum dogma.

I guess that the military isn’t good for much besides photo-ops after all, at least to the Rushpubliscums. Dog knows that most of them have done everything they could think of to avoid actually SERVING. Come to think of it… maybe it isn’t hard to understand why the Rushpubliscums wouldn’t have much use for military commanders. We tend to understand things better when we’ve actually been a part of them.

John Kerry, who is a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, was belittled and vilified by these “patriotic” Rushpubliscums a long time before they started vilifying STILL SITTING military people, so Kerry knows a little bit about the Rushpubliscum mentality when it comes to servicepeople. He took the time to lay it out for us.

“Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates are both political appointees. They’re going to be biased. They’re going to say what the administration wants them to say.” – U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, Jr.

Stunning. That was my reaction when I listened to a freshman Republican Congressman rebut the principled position of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and the Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, that the policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” needed to end and that gay members of the Armed Services should be able to serve their country without fear that just being who they are would end their service.

It was especially alarming to hear the judgment of Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates dismissed so easily as ‘biased.’

Anyone who knows Admiral Mullen or Bob Gates knows damn well that neither of them say what any Administration just wants them to say.

This is, after all, Secretary Bob Gates – a lifelong Republican who was appointed to positions of high trust and leadership by President Ronald Reagan, President George Herbert Walker Bush, and President George W Bush. This is a Defense Secretary who planned to leave government and had to be talked into continuing to serve in a Democratic Administration. He is doing his duty today out of patriotism, not political ambition or partisanship.

And this is, after all, the same Admiral Mullen who was appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President George W Bush. A four star Admiral who has spent 42 years wearing the uniform of his country. He’s tough. He’s independent. He speaks his mind, and he speaks the truth. Indeed, at Tuesday’s hearing, when Republicans members of the Senate Armed Services Committee accused him of “undue command influence” and of obeying “directives” from President Obama, Admiral Mullen responded in just the way you would expect a man of his caliber. “This is not about command influence,” he said. “This is about leadership, and I take that very seriously.”

But let’s test what Congressman Hunter said. Does the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs just automatically sing from the same playbook as the Administration? Ironically, the last time a Democratic President tried to lift the ban on gays on the military, the Chairman of the JCS, who happened to be a Republican appointed by his Republican predecessor, broke with the President and opposed gays serving openly. His name was General Colin Powell. The Republicans back then didn’t think to question the impartiality of that political appointee.

Of course, today, General Powell has changed his position – read the story here -
and he stands with Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates .

This is not 1993. We have come a long way as a country, and we have come a long way as a military to arrive at this moment when I believe our men and women in uniform agree with the Commander in Chief and with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military is, as Admiral Mullen put it, “the right thing to do.”

This has been a rocky journey. In 1993, I testified in front of Senator Strom Thurmond’s Armed Services Committee in favor of lifting the ban. I said then and I believe even more fervently now that, “when it comes to defending our country, we cannot afford to waste the bravery and service of a single American. This is a time to find public servants, not public scapegoats.”

And it hasn’t always been Democrats making the case.

Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a conservative Republican icon, once argued: “You don’t have to be straight in the military, you just have to be able to shoot straight.” Not long after he retired from the Senate in 1987, he tried to warn his fellow Republicans that “eventually the ban will be lifted” and the sooner the better. Rep. Duncan Hunter may claim that he never served with anyone in the military who was openly gay, but he’d do well to read what Senator Goldwater once rightly observed, “Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar. They’ll still be serving long after we’re all dead and buried. That should not surprise anyone.”

Anyone who believes otherwise should again study Admiral Mullen’s testimony about a policy which “forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend this country.”

Senator John McCain, who replaced Barry Goldwater in the Senate, certainly understood the opposition to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. In 2006, as he was preparing for his successful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, McCain told an audience at Iowa State University that “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 because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to.”

Today, not just John McCain, but everyone in positions of public responsibility should understand that the moment is now – the leadership of our military are joining the Commander in Chief in saying, the time for change has come.

Indeed, it has.

One of the best soldiers I ever served alongside was gay. I knew gay and lesbian soldiers at almost every post I ever went to. They, for the most part, conducted themselves honorably while in uniform, and much less noisily than I did off-hours. This notion that somehow “cohesion” is going to be affected by gay people serving is known by damn near all of us who actually have served to be utter, complete bullshit.

But the Rushpubliscums, as always, have no problem throwing honorable men and women-up to and including the top brass-under a bus if they can score a few points with their hateful, racist, bigoted “base.” Classy, guys. Real fucking classy.

Crossposted at Reconstitution 2.0

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Pondering bridge building…

A bitch is recovering from my holiday feastitude and hopes y’all are too!

Let’s jump right in, shall we?

I caught the weekend political chats and something David Axelrod said on one of them made a bitch’s Afro hurt.

He was defending the choice of Rick Warren speaking at the Inauguration and said that the incoming administration looked forward to working with him and his on those things they do agree on even as they acknowledged the many things they don’t agree on.

The things they do agree on include fighting poverty in general and disease in Africa in particular.

Blink.

Now, a bitch has little patience with the way folks present the challenges facing the world as if poverty falls under one column and reproductive justice falls under another and never the two shall meet…or as if the battle over comprehensive sex education is on one side of the policy world and the fight against HIV/AIDS is on the other and those two don’t belong in the same conversation.

Lawd, have mercy.

But it occurs to me that this may be a teachable moment…for the incoming administration and for those who support bridge building with Rick Warren for the sake of bridge building with Rick Warren.

Pause…sip exceptional cup of coffee (yum!)…continue.

Here’s the thing…the Rick Warrens of the world aren’t using the same raw materials as we are.

I can just imagine this project.

We’re hammering and connecting shit.

They’re hammering and connecting shit.

But we’re using solid and proven materials like comprehensive sex education, condoms and family planning.

They’re using the structurally unstable and known to fall apart materials of abstinence-only education held together with a mixture made up of one half ‘condoms are bad’ and one half ‘family planning isn’t sanctified’.

Oh, we can build away on our bridge and eventually we’ll meet in the middle…but then what?

How far do we take this shit?

Do we walk across from our side even though we know we’re doomed to tumble once we put some weight on their structurally unstable side of things?

I’m curious as a motherfucker about what the plan is here, because you know and I know that you know and I know that bridge building dialogue for the sake of bridge building dialogue is the very definition of bullshit.

So, are we supposed to build this bridge to prove some point…to educate someone and walk them toward the bright light of reality?

Or is this project the intellectually lazy dialogue version of the bridge to nowhere?

‘Cause if it is, this bitch would just as soon take a pass and jump right to fighting poverty and disease with tools that fucking work.

Shit.

Crossposted from the wise and wonderful Angry Black Bitch.

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CA No on Prop 8 group was a mess.

I think this McClatchy article tells us a lot about the No on Prop 8 campaign:

A week after California voters approved Proposition 8 and decreed they wanted to end same-sex marriage in the state, details are emerging of an opposition campaign that was in disarray.

Key staff members – including the campaign manager – were replaced in the final weeks as polls turned dramatically against the No side. Their replacements say they found an effort that was too timid, slow to react, without a radio campaign or a strategy to reach out to African Americans, a group that ultimately supported the measure by more than 2 to 1.

Gay marriage supporters are looking to the courts to overturn the decision. But if another political campaign is waged, said Dennis Mangers, co-chairman of the No on 8 Northern California Committee, “we’ll have to do better.”

No on 8 campaign manager Steve Smith was shoved aside three weeks before Election Day, after he was slow to counter TV ads in which the measure’s supporters claimed that same-sex marriage would be promoted in schools if the measure failed.

Two Sacramento political consultants – Joe Rodota, a Republican, and Gale Kaufman, a Democrat – were brought in by the No campaign. Republican consultant Rick Claussen was asked for advice.

The campaign’s public relations firm, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, was replaced by Sacramento-based Perry Communications Group.

Like the anti-war effort, this effort was fractured..and it screwed the pooch so to speak.

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Darren Manzella is discharged..

H/Tto Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report for this update.

If your not familiar with his name or the issue, let me give you the history of this wonderful man. In December Army Sgt. Darren Manzella was interviewed on 60 Minutes by Leslie Stahl. He is a gay man and he has been openly gay throughout his military service. He is a medic in Baghdad, or was…past tense is now in order. But I digress…

Sgt. Manzella  has earned combat medals for his work under fire people.. for his service to America. He started getting threatening emails about his ‘gay-ness’. He felt he had no choice but to inform his commanding officer. From the 60-Minutes transcript:

He went for help to his commanding officer, and in the process, told him – as in don’t ask don’t tell – that he was gay. The officer in turn told Manzella he’d have to report him.

“He did report me, yes,” Manzella says. “I had to go see my battalion commander, who read me my rights.”

“So, what you did, in effect, by telling him, was trigger the investigation you feared was underway?” Stahl asks.

Amazingly nothing happened. He submitted physical evidence which included him kissing his boyfriend to the commanding officer. From the 60-Minutes transcript again:

Manzella didn’t hold anything back in the investigation, submitting photos of himself and A.J., and a video of a road trip, including passionate kissing. But when the investigation ended, Manzella says he was told to go back to work. “There was no evidence of homosexuality and go back to work,” he says.(emphasis mine)

Darren is in a critical job, the Army couldn’t afford to lose him. So they did nothing about his openly gay status until the 60-Minutes story went global. They then saw no choice but to discharge him. This travesty makes me physically ill. It makes me sick to my stomach people. Steve Benen’s take on this is my pov as well:

John McCain recently said gay people in the military represent an “intolerable risk” to unit morale, cohesion, and discipline.

I’m curious. Which poses the great risk, Manzella being deployed and serving honorably, or Manzella not being deployed? Which is better for the troops? Which does more to help those in uniform? Which leaves the military stronger, and which leaves it weaker?

McCain’s sorry ass better not get to sit in that Oval Office chair..not on my watch damn it. Darren Manzella is a good man, an asset to our military both in and out of war. He is a wonderful human being my dear reader.

Yet the bigots and the bastards can’t get past his being a gay man. A label that means nothing in the big picture of life. A label that can ruin a life and/or a career when the bigots and the bastards find out about your sexual orientation.

They all make me sick and tired of the bullshittery. This has to stop. This has to stop..this has to fucking stop!

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10 homophobic AG’s weigh in.

I call them homophobic because, well….why the hell else would they get involved in Cali’s legal system? Huh? Come on, do you have another reason to cite?

Also, these 10 homophobic assholes are in states that don’t allow gay marriage because they have implemented laws against it. So, I rest my case. From Jurist:

Ten US state attorneys general have petitioned the Supreme Court of California to postpone implementation of its May 15 decision legalizing same-sex marriages until after state elections in November. California is slated to allow all same-sex couples, regardless of state citizenship, to wed in California, but each of the 10 petitioning states bans recognition of same-sex marriages. The attorneys general – from Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah – wrote Thursday that if California starts issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples on June 17 as announced, many same-sex couples in their states would become “marriage tourists” in California and the states’ courts would then face unfair, extensive and burdensome litigation on whether to recognize the marriages. The AGs also joined conservative Christian legal advocacy group Alliance Defense Fund’s recent petition in saying that deciding the issue before California citizens vote in November on a likely proposed amendment to the California state constitution banning same-sex marriage could lead to legal havoc. Attorneys for the city and county of San Francisco have responded that a stay would mingle judicial and political processes and would deny rights based on a merely proposed state constitutional amendment. The New York Times has more. The San Francisco Chronicle has local coverage.

Recognition of California same-sex marriages is not universally opposed in other US jurisdictions. Earlier this month, one day before the California ruling, New York Governor David Paterson ordered that state agencies recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages as legal marriages in New York.

Friggin homophobes….I find this bullshit extremely unsettling. Hatred is never positive…its always negative and the rationale for this type of behavior is never ever logical.

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the girl who cried misogyny

yeah. it’s usually better that i don’t write when i am exhausted because my normally short irritation fuse gets even shorter. i don’t even know how to start because i just have so very much actual anger at americans for being so incredibly stupid- and then at my own gender for being even stupider. i can hardly stand it. i have never given it a second thought- in my entire life- that i am a white woman. it doesn’t occur to me to care- because i have never had to. that doesn’t mean that i can’t be an ally with and empathize with- women of color or simply any other person who doesn’t look like me. i have always backed the under dog and i have always stood up for what i felt was right- i get that from both parents- although i don’t really have a relationship with my father-

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A thank you and a quick lobby day follow-up…

This bitch had a fantabulous time in Boston!

Well, actually we were in Cambridge…but there was still chowdah to be had, so it was all good.

Hugs and adoration to the fantabulous WOC bloggers I finally got to meet in person and a HUGE thank you followed by a hug Kierra at Choice USA for asking me to be on her panel!

Pause…stretch out travel kinks…continue.

Shall we?

A follow-up to PROMO’s Lobby Day…
This bitch wanted to direct all y’all to the Pam’s House Blend post regarding an incident that happened whilst we were lobbying last week.

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THE BENEFITS OF GAY MARRIAGE

The Marriage Protection Amendment is one of the most asinine ideas to come down the pike in at least fifty years. In the first place it’s a misnomer. It doesn’t protect heterosexual marriage at all. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but whenever you ask the proponents of the Marriage Protections exactly how it protects heterosexual marriage, they never quite manage to muster a proper response. They go into convoluted Biblical arguments about how the primary purpose of marriage is reproduction, or how God created Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve, or how gay marriage will open the doors on incestuous relationships or bestiality, but they never directly answer the question. How is gay marriage harmful to heterosexual couples? Do the Bible-thumpers in this world really believe that a straight couple will one day encounter a gay couple and that one of the heterosexuals will turn to his partner and quip, “Jeeze dear, that looks kind of neat, I think I’d like to try that?” I wouldn’t be surprised. As for the idea that gay marriage will promote incest and bestiality, I don’t suppose it ever dawned on the Bible-thumpers that they might want to pass Constitutional Amendments against those abnormal practices and leave the GLBT community the hell alone. But when the truth is told the fact of the matter is that gay marriage will have no ill effect other than denying gay couples what heterosexual couples already enjoy.

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Somebody’s baby, somebody’s friend…

Lawrence King was 15 years old.

He was somebody’s baby and somebody’s friend.

He was loved and cared for but he was also taunted and bullied for being gay.

On Feb 12 Lawrence King was shot in the head while working in his school’s computer lab.

He was declared brain dead the next day.

A 14 year old fellow student is being charged with the murder of Lawrence King. It is alleged that Lawrence King was targeted because he was gay and prosecutors have filed murder charges against the suspect with the additional allegation of a hate crime.

Hate, fear and bigotry have turned a junior high school into a crime scene and a young man into murder victim and I can’t help but think that Lawrence King was somebody’s baby before he was a headline. He was somebody’s friend before he was the victim of a hate crime.

Now, those who knew him and loved him mourn the loss of him because Lawrence King will forever be 15 years old.

Somebody’s baby…full of the promise that is a life yet to be lived.

Somebody’s friend…with so much of the happiness and joy of it all yet to be experienced.

In St. Louis there will be a vigil and candlelight walk in remembrance of Lawrence King Wednesday, February 27th at 6:45pm at Mokabe’s. The vigil will be held indoors unless the weather allows otherwise. The candlelight walk will take place afterwards.

May God have mercy…

Crossposted from the AngryBlackBitch

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Ron Paul; America’s Bigot?

In my emails this morning I spied one from POAC, which I get daily and enjoy due to it’s diversity of subjects and issues. In it, was a link to a TNR story about Ron Paul’s old newsletters, the title of which was ” Angry White Man“. So, I clicked on the link and was utterly appalled at what I read. Pages and pages of bullshittery that squarely attacked Blacks, gays and others from all angles and levels. Let me give you just a taste of what the article contains, and which it attributes to Ron Paul or writers on his website which contained his name as the owner of the site:

Paul’s alliance with neo-Confederates helps explain the views his newsletters have long espoused on race. Take, for instance, a special issue of the Ron Paul Political Report, published in June 1992, dedicated to explaining the Los Angeles riots of that year. “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began,” read one typical passage. According to the newsletter, the looting was a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with “‘civil rights,’ quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda.”

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