The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.
Moliere
Return of the Legitimate Nuance: Block of DADT Amendment: Thumbs UP!
There are polls that show public support for repeal of the military policy that allows gay servicemen to join and serve, provided they are not open about their sexual preferences. This "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy, reflecting a Solomonic policy by the Clinton Administration to steer a middle ground between no-gay-soldier policy and gay activists, was on a collision course with the future. After all, it seems to strike at the core of the First Amendment to regulate one's ability to discuss his or her private life in public. (I don't think it's prudent, but freedom includes the right to make one's own mistakes.)
The fact is that sexuality to some extent has been an issue in the military, over and beyond gays. I remember that the rest of the family and I were eagerly awaiting news for my Dad's next stateside assignment on his return from Southeast Asia. I was not happy to hear that my high school years were going to be spent in--Laredo, TX. [Yeah, that's right: I think our first year there, there was one inch of rain over 9 months, and on Christmas the grass was brown and it was 95 degrees.] Laredo has nearly perfect weather for training flyboys. Just across the Rio Grande from Laredo was Nuevo Laredo. In my high school gym class locker rooms, the other guys often spoke of Boy's Town. No, not the well-known charity my maternal grandfather helped support; think red light district.
While I was going to college in San Antonio, my dad got a new assignment to a military base in West Germany. The reason is that the base was closing. I never knew why; I figured that it was one of those periodic military base closings. (In fact, a Wikipedia page on Laredo AFB suggests as much.) I had a conversation a few years ago that suggests there is more to the story. According to my source (I have not corroborated the allegation), the Mexican prostitutes had no issue with servicing white servicemen but allegedly didn't want black servicemen as clients. This supposedly sparked racial tension in the living quarters on base, and the military moved to stop the morale issue. I graduated the year before the base closed, but I do not remember knowing about the closure in advance. [One of the reasons I went to college in San Antonio was to remain closer to my folks. (People may not understand how spread out Texas is; San Antonio is about 150 miles north of Laredo, maybe 180 miles west of Houston, 330 or so miles south of Dallas and over 600 miles east of El Paso. Austin, at 75 miles, is a mere chip shot away.)] It's possible the military expedited a planned shutdown.
So I can understand why the military wants to carefully plan the transition; a number of straight men would not be receptive to unwanted attention from gay soldiers (remember the infamous "same sex secret crush" Jenny Jones Show?) A number of gay activists point out Defense Secretary Gates supports it, but it would be fairly unusual for a Cabinet member not to pay lip service to his boss' agenda in public. [And if you thought the Westboro Baptists were going beyond the bounds of decency in picketing military funerals over gay rights, just imagine how they will be at the first openly gay soldier funeral...]
I've repeatedly discussed that my Navy colleagues and I didn't have any issue with the gay military personnel serving honorably with us, long before DADT. As a conservative/libertarian, I generally think that the government shouldn't get involved in the voluntary relationships between competent adults. Gay people have unalienable rights. I don't care if only 10% of the population supports those rights or 99%.
Given the fact I support policy change more consistent with those unalienable rights, why do I agree with the bipartisan opposition that blocked a relevant amendment to the defense bill? It has to do with PROCESS, not POLICY.
Majority Leader Reid wanted to put the GOP on the spot. He is trying to motivate his base. It was a no-lose situation: if he won the vote, the Dems would be delivering on a key promise to one of their constituent groups; if he lost the vote, he hoped it would energize the base and give moderates and independents supporting gay rights to question the GOP and Tea Party during the mid-terms.
Reid plotted a game of political extortion by linking the policy to the defense budget--a sacred cow for most conservatives. If Minority Leader John Boehner would reluctantly accept a class-warfare extension of the Bush tax cuts, wouldn't John McCain simply hold his nose and vote for the final defense budget?
The New England moderate Republicans (i.e., Snowe, Collins and Brown) have been consistently voting with their more conservative colleagues; in part, they are expressing their frustration with Reid's heavy-handed tactics leaving Republicans with few amendments.
I think once the Defense Department has given its report and the Congress has reviewed it, I suspect there will be bipartisan support for action, without Reid's game playing. When a cause is right, one doesn't have to resort to political extortion. And if Reid really was all that concerned over DADT and/or the DREAM (immigrant children) act, he should offer them cleanly, in their own independent bills.
A Democratic Comeback for early November? Don't Bet On It
Progressive pundits are trying to read much in terms of the latest Gallup poll on the generic Congressional ballot: 46-45. The fact is, of the 9 most recent polls, the Dems lead in 3 of the polls by the smallest margin possible, and overall the Republicans have a 3% lead. It's clear that one poll has the GOP with a 10% lead at the same time the Dems have a 1% lead in a different poll, we are comparing apples and oranges. I think the difference reflects likely voters this fall. I do think things have gotten marginally better for the Dems lately in the sense that the recession has been declared over, the new claims for unemployment benefits are beginning to drop, and the Christine O'Donnell primary victory has badly backfired both on the Tea Party Express and the GOP. But the fact is--if you are the incumbent party and your best showing is 46% in 9 polls, you are roadkill.
I find the latest polls on RealClearPolitics truly fascinating. Rasmussen shows that Lisa Murkowski is drawing 27% of the support--ahead of the Democratic candidate McAdams, but 15% behind Miller. The popular governor of West Virginia, widely expected to roll over token GOP opposition in succeeding Robert Byrd to his US Senate seat, is actually behind in some polls. Feingold (D-WI) seems to fading down the home stretch for holding onto his Senate seat. Probably the most astonishing to me, besides the West Virginia vote, is the fact former Congressman DioGuardi (father of former American Idol judge/songwriter Kara) has closed within 10 points in the Rasmussen polls. To me, this has the look and feel of what happened to propel Scott Brown (R-MA) to victory in January after being down by over 30%. O'Donnell has slipped to 15% behind Coons, but that's expected after taking huge hits over the past week. I've mentioned before: O'Donnell's best chance of winning is to get Mike Castle back into the race to bleed votes away from Coons. Of course, if Castle was to go independent, he could become the first write-in candidate to win a Senate seat since Strom Thurmond in 1954 when the Dems decided to pull a Scozzafava-like (NY-23) party appointment (versus special election) to replace a deceased nominee.
Political Humor
New FBI statistics say that crime in the United States fell 5 percent from last year. You know things are bad when even criminals can't find work in this country. - Jimmy Kimmel
[It's just that they find out they can make more in unemployment compensation...]
An original:
- Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is desperately trying to save her father's old Senate seat in next month's mid-term election. I know some good movers...
Lena Horne, "How Long Has This Been Going On"
