Sunday, December 05, 2010

John McCain says "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" must continue because...the economy is down?!?

I'm not an expert in the subject of homosexuality, but I did notice some interesting behavior on the part of my healthy, wholesome dog Hoopoe in the 1970s. (The name sounds strange now, but I had just read James Michener's The Source, in which a heroic figure bears the name.)

I have struggled to figure out how my dog could have been exposed to the homosexual agenda, and I think I've got it figured out. Forty-pound Hoopoe didn't like being restricted to our backyard, so he used to jump the fence and roam about town, even after we had extended the barrier to a height of seven feet. (He'd get his front paws over the top, then he'd hang there until his back feet managed to scramble up and over.) It must have been on one of these excursions that Hoopoe was indoctrinated. Unless, of course, he simply had inborn inclinations.

But one thing is certain: he was brave and bold, and would have been a valuable asset to any canine military operation.

Dec 4, 2010
This week in crazy: John McCain
The old maverick invents the weirdest reason yet to oppose the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell"
By Alex Pareene
Salon.com

John McCain has finally, inexorably stumbled upon the weirdest and most transparently troll-ish reason yet to oppose the repeal of the military's ban on gay and lesbian service members: The economy sucks.

That's it. The Senate can't address a fundamental inequity, because the markets are down.

"I will not agree to have this bill go forward, and neither will, I believe, 41 of my colleagues, either, because our economy is in the tank," said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee and the leading opponent of an immediate repeal.

For those playing along at home, John McCain conditionally supported the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" until Barack Obama got elected and began pushing the Senate to do something about it. Once military leadership told McCain the policy should be repealed, he said, he would vote to repeal it, and now that the Republican defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs have told McCain that it should be repealed, he is vowing to fight it with everything he's got.

But, like, he had excuses before. Not great ones, but they sounded coherent on Sunday shows. Once the commanders came around, he wanted to wait for the results of the Pentagon's review of how repeal would be implemented. That review is done. Then McCain just needed more time to read it. Then he had a problem with some of the survey questions. Then he was upset that more Marines oppose repeal than other branches. Then he was upset with the survey's response rate. Transparent straw-grasping, but at least those objections had something to do with the issue at hand...

McCain's vaunted "independence" was always something closer to incoherence. He'll hold wildly different positions on issues depending on the weather, or, more specifically, depending on whom he's friendly with and whom he resents today. The boxing enthusiast who once campaigned to ban Ultimate Fighting for no reason other than he didn't like the looks of it has always been intellectually inconsistent, to say the least. But he's lost his mind on the simple question of whether or not gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve their country openly and with honor.

If he thinks the answer to that question is no, he won't just come out and say it. In his attempts to avoid endorsing bigotry while simultaneously doing everything he can to keep discrimination enshrined in the law, he's clearly completely cracking up. Even his partner in irritating independence Joe Lieberman is being reasonable this time around...

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