Don’t believe the hype. The failure of cloture in orderto repeal don’t ask, don’t tell cannot be fully laid at the feet of the Republican party. The Democrats – and not just the ones who voted bigot like Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor – have a lot of blame in this failure too.
If someone in the Senate threatens a filibuster, they need to be forced to filibuster. When southern racists opposed civil rights, they were forced to actually filibuster on the floor of the senate. If you are so bigoted that you oppose allowing a vote (that has a majority) on whether gay Americans can serve their country, by God, stand up and defend your position in the well of the U.S. Senate.
Nice job, fucksticks. Really. Good one there. You just helped the GOP make history, you gutless wonders. How does it feel?Listening to Rachel Maddow tonight, this is the first time a defense appropriations bill has failed to pass since 1961.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640
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What will you get out of this, pray tell? Reward for your brave moral stand, Blanche Lincoln, by way ofthe GOP not running a candidate against you? Maybe their candidate will refrain from making really nasty attack ads. Maybe your own constituents will love you a lot more now.Maybe you’ll be re-elected. Maybe you’ll go live the rest of your life in peace and harmony knowing you did the right thing, and be able to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning each day, because God DAMN it, people, this was one of those votes.
This was one of those votes. Like FISA, like the war, like the PATRIOT Act, where you either do the right thing or you spend the rest of your life flapping around trying to explain and justify and wiggle out of why you didn’t do the right thing. And I don’t know about you, and I don’t know about members of the U.S. Senate, but it seems in terms of simple expediency thatacting like a grown-up would have been best here, and fuck what your bigoted phone callers might have said.
Not to mention which, boy, remember all those times the Democrats refused to vote against defense appropriations as a method of getting their political point across? Remember all those times Democrats refused to vote against defense spending because they were afraid of looking like they didn’t care about the troops? Because Republicans would be mean? Because Republicans would accuse them of wanting our troops to die? Boy, that was a scary thing for Republicans to threaten Democrats with. That was a line of attack we were all really frightened of.
I wonder how many Republicans are frightened of it tonight. I wonder how many Republicans are sitting in their offices waiting for the flyers and the ads and the radio callers-in and the angry mobs of military mothers barraging them with complaints about not giving John and Jane G.I. the money they need. I wonder if Republicans are as worried as Democrats once were, about the political price to be paid for putting the screws to the party in power in the name of what they said they believed, even at the expense of not voting for something important.
No, actually, I don’t wonder at all. Fucking gutless bastards. All those times Democrats cowered in their beds, hoping if they stayed very still and quiet and didn’t go to the anti-war rallies then nobody would call them commie pussies. All those times Democrats sat back and played the odds, figuring they’d be slammed more for doing something than for doing nothing, as if it is ever the case that you lose people by doing too much. As if that is ever a thing that happens. All those times Democrats shut up and voted for the appropriations bill and didn’t filibuster anything because that would be mean, and everybody knows you’re not mean.
Not unless you’re a Republican, that is.
Fuck this noise. Congress had its chance to do the right thing and make this as permanent as it could be. Sign an executive order, Mr. President. At least then you’ll know, if it’s overturned by the next president, that you, you personally, you did all you could. Dry powder doesn’t seem to be doing us a lot of good these days anyway. Let it burn.
A.
FUCKING MAKE THEM! PIRACY.
Sign an executive order, Mr. President
Hahahahahaha, yeah *right*. As The Smiths once crooned:
Oh very nice very nice
But maybe in the next world, maybe in the next world
Obama is NOT a friend of us gays. Full stop. He’s the apex of Democrats cynically saying the right things but ultimately not doing a fucking thing for us except take our money and votes. He is NOT for full equality, never has been, never will be. He won’t put one second of effort more than he needs to in to our issues when it doesn’t involve photo-ops or fundraising.
And spare me the “But…but…he’s better than Bush/Bush I/Reagan” line. A hedgehog with brain damage is better on gay issues than they were, that’s a pitifully low bar.
I voted for Obama in the general election, but I held my nose while doing it because of bullshit like kissing the ass of that pathetic loser Donnie McClurkin early on in his campaign.
Listen! No, seriously listen! Can’t you hear the song in the background? Listen…”Kumbaya ma lord, Kumbaya…” So, Obama finally won his really truly major battle. That singing is in the halls of Congress.
In Feb. ’10 Sec. Gates announced he supported President Obama’s plan to end DADT. He commissioned a report on how best to end the practice. The report is due December 1st, 2010. That gives the current Senate a sliver of the lame duck session to pass repeal of DADT with 60 votes AFTER Dems take it in the shorts in the November election. If repeal doesn’t pass in that window it’s not passing Congress during Obama’s presidency unless A) the rules of the filibuster change or B) some weird shit happens and the country all of a sudden gets batshit crazy out of it’s system. If repeal of DADT doesn’t pass during the lame (in so many ways) duck session, Obama sure as frack better sign an executive order ending the practice.
http://www.hrc.org/sites/repealdadt/learn_more.asp
Of course the December 1st date was picked because the Senate is filled with cowardly wankers of the first order so I wouldn’t be surprised to see nothing happen at all. After all, Sen. Dodd is insulated from reelection pressure and it made him give the banking industry an even lustier tongue job than before. Who knows what Blanche Lincoln will turn into after she gets crushed in Arkansas. Maybe she turns into Sooeey Sarah Palin and becomes a vocal bigot instead of a meek chickenshit run of the mill Democrat.
Wow do I hate the Senate.
I’m not familiar with the details, but I heard that there is some sort of rule in effect in the Senate that says you don’t have to actually filibuster in order to, you know, filibuster. That’s why the Repubs have been able to get away with just whispering the word filibuster. I think it would require a change of rules to make them actually read the phone book all night. We obviously desperately need to change the filibuster rules–this is not what the framers of the Constitution intended.
A, you are absolutely correct. The Repugs screamed “America Hater” at the top of their lungs if a Democrat dared to even think about voting against a military appropriation but apparently now it’s fine because teh gays are more of a threat than terrorists.
Of course Dems will now just go off in a corner and lick their wounds. Wouldn’t want to call Rethugs any bad names, doncha know.
I have this vision of Dems saying “thank you sir, may I have another”.
republikkklans also want you to eat bad eggs.