Tag Archives: White House

Anything’s Fair in Love and Politics as Long as It’s Not Gay Love


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah

When the news broke that former Bushinista and RNC Chairman Ken “Bud” Mehlman is gay I just thought it was an interesting news tidbit. I so readily accept the fact there are gay people in all walks of life – and that many people don’t like it one bit – that I don’t always give news like this the attention it deserves.

Then, I saw this article in which blogger Mike Rogers suggested Mehlman might make amends to the gay community for the damage he’d done to gay rights by donating his, “fabulous $3 million condo … to the cause that he worked so hard against.”

Three mill seems a bit steep for a modern day Benedict Arnold. Being a hypocrite is a free perk that comes with the First Amendment. After all, the Constitution allows free speech, it doesn’t say anything about hypocritical speech.

Ken Mehlman

TURNING A NEW LEAF - Ken Mehlman is out of the closet, but the damage he did to the gay community is largely still in there.

The Pogrom of the Grand Old Paranoids
I’m not much for outing people against their will. I figure that’s no one else’s business, regardless of their sexual orientation. But then, Mehlman wasn’t your everyday closeted gay person either. He had a position of power which he exercised against himself and millions of others at the behest of the Grand Old Paranoids.

His overlords at the party knew of his orientation, but decided that a trusty attack dog was more important to the cause than being up front with their constituency. Anything’s fair in love and politics – well, maybe not in unnatural, scary gay love – but certainly in politics.

Commander Bunnypants apparently knew of the “problem” as did The Big Dick™ who is double damned for taking a hard line against gay marriage, which his own daughter might’ve otherwise enjoyed. Of course, Dick changed his tune (with caveats) after leaving the White House, which makes him double-damned and a flip-flopper.

The subterfuge isn’t particularly unusual, every few weeks there are similar stories. What is interesting, however, is how many Bushinistas used Mehlman’s reliably straight male injunctions as proof that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a sensible policy. Mehlman even said so himself and worked closely with Team Bush to craft that message.

Now that the administration’s discordant stance is a little better known, how many of the sanctimonious, anti-moral relativity crowd will react? Will they take to their soap boxes like Mr. Mission Accomplished climbed the mountain of World Trade Center rubble? Will they have megaphones in hand, ready to denounce their former leader or renounce their still shaky moral stance?

Ironically, Mehlman Can’t Join the Military Now
Here’s a case in which the Commander-in-Chief, vociferously opposed to gays in the military, didn’t follow his own logic when it came to his minions. Instead, he placed a known gay person in charge of explaining how gays were a national security danger. It’s not clear who asked or who told, but clearly the White House knew. Even though he wasn’t in the military, and ironically can’t join now, Mehlman was certainly a bigger cog in the national machine than a PFC choking on burning Afghan dust.

Suggesting one can be both for and against gays seems like a large contradiction for a policy usually defended on moral grounds. It’s a stance that tacitly says a soldier or administration policy advocate is somehow less gay if people don’t know the truth about them.

I’m confident that most of the DADT/Prop 8 crowd will stay as mute as humanly possible about Mehlman – these things are difficult to explain away. But, in the end it may not mean anything. The Bush administration will have to live with their actions, as will Mehlman. I can have some empathy for the man, but I suspect neither will lose much sleep over it. Their long-winded, anti-gay speeches notwithstanding, morality was always just a talking point for them anyway.

As I said, the First Amendment tolerates hypocritical speech, but valid claims to superior morality … not so much.

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Keeping a Flip-Flop on the Throat of BP


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah
Fish Flops

JACKBOOTS OR FLIP FLOPS? - The government's vow to "keep a boot" on BP's neck enraged the Conservosphere and turned out to be more like "a flip flop" on BPs neck anyway. Now neither side wants to talk about it.

Back when the Gulf Oil Disaster was only an oily sheen in the public’s eye, White House flak Robert Gibbs pledged the Obamites would, “keep a boot on the throat” of BP to ensure they did what they repeatedly have pledged – “do the right thing”.

At the time, the Conservasphere went ballistic at the White House employing such, “over heated rhetoric, half-truths, and down right distortions” to hold BP accountable. I experienced some of the same vitriol from free marketeers for my post, “The Gulf of Gelatinous Goo and the Tarball Etouffee” and I saw several other similar posts and comment threads too. The fact that Obama’s jackboot to the throat turned out to be more like a stomp administered by a 6-year old using her Hello Kitty flip flops doesn’t seem to have mattered much.

BP Overcome By a Huge Run of Bad Luck
The long and short of the free market cum Teabagger rhetoric revolved around the curious opinion that BP – apparently like every other corporation on the planet – was merely a good corporate citizen overcome by a huge run of bad luck, over-regulation, and the public’s unreasonable desire to dismantle the American economic system oil barrel by oil barrel. In other words, BP was getting a raw deal and if only left alone, would use a firm, earnest handshake and the power of the marketplace to correct and fully atone for what it had wrought.

So how’s that working out for you guys now?

Let’s forget for the moment that Tony “I Want My Life Back” Hayward more than rivalled Gibbs’ words  in their dumbness and sometimes faux harshness. Let’s forget that BP wouldn’t know a promise from an oily pelican. Let’s even forget that the sheer grandiosity of BP’s ineptitude makes Bush’s Iraq and Afghanistan war performances look like the 30-day cake walks that was promised.

But, BP isn’t alone in its ineptitude. Almost every day we’re treated to a story about how the administration has colluded with the British Pissants to make the hook from which they should be hung as small and painless as possible. Or even better, not even force the skeevy bastards to look at it for fear of hurting their delicate sensibilities.

America Doesn’t Torture
Remember, America doesn’t torture, especially when you’re a big campaign contributor.

There is a lesson here, as expensive, horrible, and demoralizing it may be. Never put all of your faith in the much vaunted private sector to correct anything beyond the underpayment of the CEO’s last quarterly bonus. They will rob you blind and then make you apologize for the robbery…for a fee.

There’s another lesson too. Never put all your faith in government. It’s a publicly held sausage maker using cast-off oil corporate chitlins for ingredients and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of  We the People (Very) LLP, but entirely financed by its board of private-sector directors.

Of course, there are sops to those gullible enough to believe that mere words would mean jack-shit in the scheme of things. We still get daily news briefings designed to suck the truly naive and daft into the market uber alles mentality. And yes, our iron-willed-willed Congress is looking for truth, justice, and the American way, but I’d lay a bet that the only malfeasance they’ll find is why a kangaroo “BP Squad” was empaneled to begin with.

As a nation, we’d better have some healthy mistrust for our chosen BFFs – government and private – and look at things realistically.

What better way than to lace up the truly independent jackboots and do some ass kickin’?

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