Obama drops in on 'don't ask' strategy meeting

[Tx4obama]

President Barack Obama made a brief appearance at the White House's strategy meeting Tuesday afternoon with advocates for "don't ask, don't tell" repeal, according to two White House officials.

"The President stopped by to directly convey to the participants his personal commitment on this issue," said one aide, who asked not to be named.

As of now, participants in the meeting are being fairly tight-lipped about what transpired, but I'm told the session lasted more than a hour.

At his briefing Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the White House was focused on pushing a repeal measure through during the lame-duck session of Congress, though he didn't rule out some executive action if that fails.

Rest of article here: http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/1010/Obama_drops_in_on_dont_ask_strategy_meeting.html

[jaxx]

1. K & R

[davidinalameda]

2. has he stopped in at the meetings being held at the DOJ

to map their strategy to appeal Judge Phillips' verdict in the DADT case

[Tx4obama]

5. Apparently NO. Because HE WANTS DADT REPEALED.

I refuse to let anyone spoil the good news ;)

[davidinalameda]

7. so I guess he's just going to let his DOJ appeal this decision

because we all know that they HAVE to appeal every decision like this

[Tx4obama]

10. If you don't like how fast Obam is doing things, you can go run for prez yourself ;)

I am tired of folks griping every time President Obama does something GOOD.

[davidinalameda]

15. you're under the assumption that these things make up for the bad

which they don't

but we're just supposed to sit down and shut up and take the crumbs that are thrown our way

[Number23]

3. Somebody will talk soon.

As of now, participants in the meeting are being fairly tight-lipped about what transpired, but I'm told the session lasted more than a hour.

Someone always does. :)

[Radical Activist]

4. Very cool.

[bluestateguy]

6. I do believe he will get this done

I just can't say that I know how he will get this done.

[HughMoran]

8. K&R

Good to hear.

[Radical Activist]

9. Given what actually happened, Aravosis should apologize.

More to his readers than to Obama. Comparing Obama to Bull Connor crossed a very ugly, shameful line. If Aravosis can't tell the difference between a supportive President who meets with LGBT allies, and the man who turned dogs and hoses on protesters, then he has no business being given a platform nor should he be taken seriously.

[alarimer]

11. If he was so supportive he would order his DOJ to stop the appeals on this issue

I think (like most things he has done) Obama is lying about his support on this issue.

[Tx4obama]

12. Obama is not lying. He wants DADT repealed in the most PERMANENT way.

I really think that everyone should go get their law degrees and go teach constitutional law for 10 years - like Obama did - and then come back here to DU and give their 'professional' analysis on what Obama should do, shouldn't do, and why ;)

[davidinalameda]

18. he shouldn't have appealed either the DOMA or DADT verdicts

that's pretty damn simple

[Radical Activist]

13. Has Obama turned dogs and hoses on LGBT protesters?

No. The comparison is beyond reason. It's the kind of rhetoric I would expect from teabaggers.

If you believe that Obama has been lying non-stop for the last four years about his support for repealing DADT then I doubt any evidence or logic will convince you otherwise.

For everyone else, his consistent support for repeal, which he has restated many, many times is obvious. As Obama has said, it's only a matter of when and how it's repealed, not if.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/1010/Obama_drops_in_on_dont_ask_strategy_meeting.html

Gibbs: "Our desire and our hope and the President’s commitment is that he will work to see this pass. This is -- look, we are -- we’re approaching the beginning of December, which is when the Pentagon’s study of implementation and of the attitudes of the military will be complete. And the President believes, continues to believe, that this is a law that -- the end of this law -- that time for the ending of this law has come.

The courts are signaling that. And certainly it’s been his political belief going back -- when I met him in 2004, that was his position."

[davidinalameda]

16. so you're comparing gays to teabaggers?

wow

[Radical Activist]

20. Is Aravosis all gay people?

Wow. Now that's spin. I compared a specific line used by one person to what I would expect from teabaggers. It had nothing to do with gay people in general unless you think Aravosis is the one spokesperson for the entire gay community.

[Sweet Charming Dem]

26. Are you part of the GLBT community?

[EFerrari]

14. What on earth makes you think that Obama "dropping in" ameliorates

how those people were treated in any way or that John is the only one who objected to it? You might want to read around a little if this is something that interests you.

[Radical Activist]

21. Please explain how you think the treatment is equivalent.

You think asking someone to not speak about a pending court case for legal reasons is the same as turning fire hoses on protesters? Are you fucking kidding me? The accusation is hateful and delusional.

[davidinalameda]

27. hate it when you're right!

:rofl:

:toast:

[davidinalameda]

17. so you're okay with Obama's DOJ comparing same sex marriage

to incest and pedophilia

http://www.americablog.com/2009/06/obama-justice-department-defends-doma.html

I'd say that's the rhetorical equivalent of turning the hoses and dogs on us

We just got the brief from reader Lavi Soloway. It's pretty despicable, and gratuitously homophobic. It reads as if it were written by one of George Bush's top political appointees. I cannot state strongly enough how damaging this brief is to us. Obama didn't just argue a technicality about the case, he argued that DOMA is reasonable. That DOMA is constitutional. That DOMA wasn't motivated by any anti-gay animus. He argued why our Supreme Court victories in Roemer and Lawrence shouldn't be interpreted to give us rights in any other area (which hurts us in countless other cases and battles). He argued that DOMA doesn't discriminate against us because it also discriminates about straight unmarried couples (ignoring the fact that they can get married and we can't).

He actually argued that the courts shouldn't consider Loving v. Virginia, the miscegenation case in which the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to ban interracial marriages, when looking at gay civil rights cases. He told the court, in essence, that blacks deserve more civil rights than gays, that our civil rights are not on the same level.

[Radical Activist]

23. I can state my disagreements with Obama without engaging in hateful, ridiculous rhetoric.

Why can't Aravosis?

[davidinalameda]

25. obviously he's not as big of a person as you are

or maybe he's like thousands of others who are sick of Obama breaking his promises

[Radical Activist]

28. Obama promised to end DADT this year.

There have been comments referring to the lame duck session of Congress for months. Now he's talking strategy with LGBT leaders about making that happen. It doesn't look as though that promise is being broken.

My perception is that Obama is coddling military leaders by giving them time to implement the repeal through their own process. He does need their help on a few other things, after all. You can fairly criticize him for taking too long, but he has never given any indication of backing down or changing his position.

[davidinalameda]

29. he's still enforcing it

he's had chances to end it but he refuses; he could have refused to defend it in the recent lawsuit; he could have refused to appeal the decision overturning it; he could have issued a stop-loss or whatever it's called to stop the discharges but he hasn't done any of those

and if the Democrats lose either one of the houses of Congress, there goes any chance to overturn it legislatively

[paulflorez]

33. It comes down to the fact that he promised to repeal DADT this year

and this year is not over yet.

Still, I think the Democrats missed an opportunity to energize the base a bit. Instead of getting a repeal of DADT passed, giving us a victory, they stuck it with the Dream Act knowing that Republicans (Collins) could not vote for that (plus limiting amendments) and hoping to be able to point to that as a reason for Hispanics (such as myself) to get off their asses and vote against Republicans.

I don't think the Republican obstructionism of the Dream Act has energized Latino Americans any more than they were before. Anyways, we already know Republicans are throwing us under the bus, given their blind support for SB1070 (red meat for Anti-Latino Xenophobic Americans) and Angle's lovely ads robbing Latinos of their identity while at the same time painting them with a thuggish image. We didn't need their opposition of the Dream Act to make that clearer to us.

I think passing a DADT would have given Democratic voters something to get excited about, and it is something that is overwhelmingly popular with all Americans and would be hard for Republicans to fight. The only downside I can think of is it could energize the extreme social conservatives, but it could also dampen their spirits by showing them that they are losing.

Anyways, Obama's promise to repeal DADT this year is a BFD to me. If he fails to repeal it this year, but repeals it before 2012, then in 2012 I will vote for a different Democrat in the primary but still vote for him if he does win the nomination. If it fails to be repealed before 2012 though, I will vote for the candidate with the most evidence of supporting repealing DADT, ENDA, repealing DOMA, whether or not they are a Democrat.

If he does pass it before the end of this year as he promised, a significant amount of my faith in him will be restored and I will be much more willing to contribute in 2011 - 2012. I just think it's a shame that a softball issue like repealing DADT couldn't be passed before the midterms because I think it would have excited a lot of Democrats and potentially made Republicans look unappealing to Indepedents. It'd be a reminder that when it comes to the culture wars that the Republicans are more and more on the wrong side, and if they win then the "wrong side" is what we will get.

// Edit: The post I replied to gave me the idea for this post, but I really mean this to be a general reply to the OP. Just some sharing of my experience/opinion.

[BzaDem]

34. It had nothing to do with the Dream Act, and it had nothing to do with amendments.

The Dream Act was not in the bill when it was brought to the floor. It was a free-standing amendment that would have had its own, separate, 60-vote threshold. If Collins didn't support the Dream Act, but she supported the rest of the bill, she would have voted to proceed on the rest of the bill and then voted against the Dream Act amendment that came up later.

The "limiting amendments" issue was a ruse. Republicans would not have allowed the bill to pass. They made unreasonable requests that they knew Reid had to turn down to make Reid look bad, but make no mistake -- they would have killed it regardless. They wanted months to "debate" (i.e. stall), and Reid wouldn't grant that. Reid offered them a reasonable number of amendments, per traditional Senate practice, and the Republicans told him to stuff it. If he did give them the months they wanted to offer amendments, they would have asked for a year. It had nothing to do with amendments -- it had everything to do with killing the bill while making naive people (and people not following the issue) think it was Obama's fault.

You are blaming Obama for something that the Republicans caused. Make no mistake -- one of Republicans' goal is to try to manipulate liberals into thinking this is somehow Obama's fault. You are falling right into the Republicans trap. It has been McConnell's position from day 1 to block as much as possible, and then blame Obama for it being blocked (hoping voters don't notice). Obama did a tremendous amount of work getting it through the House and the Senate Armed Services committee, and getting the military more or less on board (which was absolutely required or it would never have passed the House or the Senate Armed Services committee). It only failed because we couldn't reach 60 votes.

Voting against Obama gives the Republicans more than they could ever dream of. It would tell them that they could kill policies like DADT, and then get rewarded by you by having you use your vote to enable a Republican to become President. Is that really productive?

[readmoreoften]

32. Because you don't state your disagreements with Obama. You apologize for everything he does.

I can't imagine the atrocities you'd accept in the name of Obama.

[BzaDem]

35. Perhaps that's because so much of the "criticisms" of Obama here are based on falsehoods?

I mean, if Obama's perpetual critics were to start having a rational, fact-full as opposed to fact-free discussion about Obama, I think you would find people who generally support Obama would love to join in.

[Radical Activist]

36. True.

[Spazito]

19. Totally agree....

well said!

[Number23]

22. He won't apologize. These types of inane comparisons are nothing new for this man.

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Radical Activist]

31. Speaking of hateful...

[Number23]

24. weird hiccup!