The assault on the Obama administration’s lack of action on repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell — which the now-sitting president promised to do — continues in earnest. And we’re glad to see it. At today’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs once again got nailed on the discriminatory military policy that Obama refuses to act on. Except it also gave him a chance to clarify, or flip-flop, on where the government stands on repealing the law.
Obama, you see, says he’s working with Congress and military officials on killing the law. Except there is no legislation introduced in either the House or the Senate. And? The Pentagon isn’t even thinking about it. Gibbs tripped over himself when addressing the issues yesterday. Today, he got a chance to update everyone.
Turns out the Pentagon was not correct — it lied? — on where these conversations stood. Or, ya know, they were telling the truth and now Gibbs is saving face.
To the transcript! (Update: Video from Rachel Maddow.)
ANA MARIE COX: So you had said that the President is working with the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on “don’t ask, don’t tell,” but earlier this week the Pentagon said that the conversations were “initial” and that there is “no sense of any immediate developments in the offing on efforts to repeal ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.'” So I wanted to give you a chance to correct the Pentagon on that.
And I have two other questions. What other policies are there —
MR. GIBBS: If you ask like that you’re going to get bumped up to, like, the first row. (Laughter.)
Let me address the first question because, if I’m not mistaken, the Pentagon did correct that statement on efforts regarding the reform on “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
ANA MARIE COX: So there are active conversations happening now?
MR. GIBBS: Yes. Yes.
ANA MARIE COX: Okay. And then I wanted to know if there are any other policies that the President believes to be, as you said yesterday about “don’t ask, don’t tell,” not in our national interest but is content to let Congress take the lead on? And second, President Truman didn’t see it necessary to clear desegregation through Congress, so how is this different?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but maybe I was — maybe I used some poor language, but the President is involved in these discussions. It was the President’s commitment to overturn the policy that’s not in our national interest that is the reason for these discussions and for the effort to overturn this. So I think the notion somehow — the reason Congress is involved is the only durable and lasting way with which to overturn the policy is to do it by law. That’s the —
ANA MARIE COX: So when can we expect a durable policy on racial desegregation in the military, since that’s never gone through Congress?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I’m out of my depth as a lawyer. And I’m not exactly sure the timing of when President Truman did that, but my sense is that there were also some legal proceedings around that. Try as one may, a President can’t simply whisk away standing law of the United States of America. I think that’s maybe been the undercurrent of some of the conversations we’ve had over the past few days on Guantanamo Bay. But if you’re going to change the policy, if it is the law of the land, you have to do it through an act of Congress.
ANA MARIE COX: And so there’s pending legislation? I didn’t see any.
MR. GIBBS: I don’t know what’s been introduced in Congress.
Roy Pyatt
Obama is a lying fucking bigot.
dgz
who is this “reporter?” and why is s/he so awesome?
The Gay Numbers
@dgz: Because he asked follow up questions to test whether we were getting soundbites from a politician or not. This is something that the press core is often guilty. They ask a question. They are given an answer. The asnwer is a soundbite. They do not follow up with questions to clarify meaning or provide us with any sense of what’s going on that will not allow wiggle room later by the politician to claim that X is non-X. This is the common trap. People will listening thinking they have heard one thing (often what they want to hear) and the poliican will use that lack of precision to then wiggle out of it later. By pinning down meaning- the reporter was doing something that all of teh Washington presscore needs to do: stop sticking their noses up the politician’s butt (whoever it is) and ask good question and follow up questions. This something I’ve learned from depositions. It’s not just the first questions, but the follow up question that really give you meaning of what someone is saying. People are often smart enough to create wiggle room when the quesiton is broad enough at the start, but as you dig deeper that ability to wiggle decreases.
InExile
Hats off to this reporter!!!! Imagine a reporter having the “audacity” to ask such questions!!!!! Awesome is an under statement!
So where exactly does the President stand on these issues??????
wondermann
Where do some of you stand on common sense?
dgz
@The Gay Numbers: sorry, i was unclear. i meant “how did this reporter get to be so awesome?”
queerty, identify this true journalist! (if possible)
Roy Pyatt
@wondermann.. I stand on my word it is the only thing I have that can’t be taken away from me. That to me is common sense.
The Gay Numbers
@wondermann: Common sense to me, s ince you asked, is standing up for yourself because no one else will. Common sense to the idiot is to accept whatever is thrown at them just because they do not understand life is not about waiting for others to give it to you.
InExile
@Roy Pyatt: Agreed!
schlukitz
@Roy Pyatt:
Ditto!
Glenn I
this is just the most amazing question ever:
So when can we expect a durable policy on racial desegregation in the military, since that’s never gone through Congress?
Mike in Texas
The reporter is Ana Marie Cox.
http://rallianceblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/daily-humiliation-of-robert-gibbs.html
denguyfl
For those of you wondering who the reporter was, it was one again The Advocates Kerry Eleveld. The full video is available on C-SPAN. The question comes around the 44:30 mark.
http://tinyurl.com/q8p2m5
If I can find the segment or video to edit I will post that as well.
It is a collective shame that their biweekly format and theirs news department has been basically wiped out in favor of Out Lite. This is our ONLY national publication with a seat at the White House. If you subscribe to The Advocate please let them know what you think of this. If you do not, SUBSCRIBE and demand they make news their priority. For those cynical enough to misconstrue my motivation here – No I don’t work for Regent Media .
denguyfl
I stand corrected.
troy
What a great question comparing it desegregation in the military and how that was handled through executive order and has never gone through congress. Brilliant! Not the sort of question I am sure the HRC is asking at the Obama tea parties. With those two questions that reporter was not only able to pin the Obama’s administration on its bullshit but show that until we start playing hardball, we are not getting anything from anybody. We have been pushovers long enough boys and girls and playing nicety nice has not and is not getting us anywhere.
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed”. Dr. M.L. King Jr.
schlukitz
She nailed Gibbs, but good!
She practically had him stuttering!
kevin57
Great questioning! Obama is getting caught in the web of double-speak that so afflicts politicians. From others, it’s pretty much expected, but he promised so much more.
But I also chide Congress. Why have no bills even been introduced? The pace at which Congress deals with matters will make this issue essentially done for this legislative year. Shit. I sense, folks, that one of the problems is that while Dems hold a substantial majority in both chambers, they wrestled a lot of districts from the GOP by playing GOP-lite, so many of the representatives would not vote to repeal DADT.
That’s an explanation, but it leads me back to the cynicism. Was the Democratic campaign a chimera for change? Was it all just about power and not policy?
Bitch Republic
Ana Marie Cox is my new hero!!!!!!!!
dgz
@kevin57:
this is where i’m confused. i thought there *was* a bill, The Enhanced Military Readiness Act of 2009, which is currently stuck in Committee. well, in subcommittee. of course, virtually the same bill has been submitted every year since 2005. i don’t know what is currently delaying/defeating the bill.
i also <3 ana marie cox. so smart, so brave, so gingery.
Lee
@dgz:
Of course, there’s still a bill! And can you imagine why the official White House Press Secretary, a brilliant, detailed pro, who’s had egg run down his face day after day about this wouldn’t know…or claim not to?
Too many, still drunk on the myth that’s now as stale as New Year’s Eve beer, are blaming Gibbs himself. “He’s so incompetent.
How could the President hire him for this? Get the hook!”
Well, wake up and smell the wool over your eyes, kids! The fish rots from the top down. Few in politics know Obama as well as Gibbs. His attached at the hipster hip relationship with him goes back to when Obama was running for US Senate, continued while Obama was in the Senate, and became his communications director in the Presidential campaign after Obama went back on his oft-repeated promise to finish his six-year term before running for Prez.
Other than today offering a free cardboard cutout sundae to go with his previous cardboard cutout steak and salad offerings, he claims not to know about the bill that OBAMA MENTIONED BY NAME in his lengthy, now infamous plane to fight DADT released in November. Another dodge? Alzheimers?
Or is it just because he doesn’t CARE. Because his boss, you know who, has made it clear to him that he doesn’t have to care, BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHO NO LONGER CARES…assuming he ever did.
Lucky for the various straight and gay reporters that there’s a camera around when they’re challenging big gorilla Gibbs. During the primaries, Eric Resnick, of Ohio’s “Gay People’s Chronicle,” recounted this exchange after a question about Donnie McClurkin:
“In my 12 years as a reporter, I have never experienced anything quite like Obama’s national communication director Robert Gibbs.
I wasn’t biting on the crap he tried to feed me, and he got offended. When I stood there not writing any of it down, Gibbs said to me, ‘Let me tell you how this works. I talk and you write down what I say’.
‘I’ll write down what you say when you answer the question’, I responded, adding that ‘I’m no campaign’s stenographer’.
Gibbs actually took the pen and pad out of my hands and wrote his own answer! Would Gibbs treat a ‘New York Times’ reporter this way?”
Even Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, creator of Daily Kos, who was a rabid Obama supporter second-to-none, flamed Obama in 2007 for selecting Gibbs for that role, calling Gibbs a “smear-meister best known for his work trashing other Democrats. Obama clearly dipped into the slimiest corners of DC to pluck out Gibbs.”
And from deep in one of those slimy corners, he and his boss have coconspired to either stop infesting even minimal energy in smile fucking gays on a promise that was phony from the start OR cave into Pentagon homohaters.
Pick your poison. The result is the same either way.
dgz
@Lee:
interesting. good to know.
but did cox know about the bill? she mentioned she wasn’t aware of any “pending” legislation… does that mean it’s stuck in committee (as i mentioned earlier) or something else?
Michael W.
The desegregation analogy doesn’t fit. Truman was able to integrate the armed forces via executive order because congress hasn’t passed a law stating that the military was to be separated by race. Again, there was NO LAW STATING THE ARMED FORCES WERE TO BE SEPARATED BY RACE. It’s a flawed comparison between that and legislation that passed through congress and was signed into law by Lee’s hero Slick Willy. Gibbs should have easily shut that reporter down by schooling him on history. The fact that he stumbled all over his answer only tells me that his reputation might exceed him.
And please, let’s get over the hype of the “direly needed” gay arab linguists. The relatively few gay service members discharged under DADT are in NO WAY as vital to national security as black troops were during the Korean War when integration finally took place (which btw, happened YEARS after Truman issued the executive order!). We were in desperate need of support to replace the massive loss of life and on the verge of collapse. They saved America’s hide (at least what remained) and it only happened due to the extreme necessity of their warm blooded, able bodies. Truman’s executive order did not do the job.
Now a worthy comparison would be all of the gay service members currently in Iraq and Afghanistan suddenly rising up, coming out and creating a danger of mass discharges due to DADT. There’d be irreplaceable gaping holes throughout the military and we couldn’t risk it. THEN Obama would quickly act to hasten that maneuver and bada bing, DADT is all but dead. But that will never happen because the majority of gay men and women serving right now don’t mind living in the closet. They love the fucking closet.
A few gay service members discharged this year can in no reputable way be compared to the necessity of black troops at the time of our armed forces racial integration. The dynamics don’t match up in any way shape or form.
james james
rachel and her cox get what they vote for …
Kid A
@james james: So you think McCain would be doing better? Pshaw.
james james
@Kid A: you do you realize that is not an argument right?
the answer to that KIDA is … he would be doing exactly what Barky is doing 🙂
come on now don’t make this so easy for me …
The Lesbian Mafia
Are they flirting with each other?
My word, they ARE flirting! She looks like his type.
Fatsy Gibbs is leaning over that podium like he’s in a bar trying rub his fatsy on her leg.
Looks to us like Cox is using her womanly wiles to keep the conversation where she wants it and gave Fatsy Gibbs a chubby.
Jeez guys, get a room!
The Gay Numbers
@Michael W.: Do you read things other than this stie? There has been quite a bit of reporting on the legal analysis that says your claims from the start of your post are false.
You also factually wrong both about vitalness – or do you not watch 60 minutes where they explicitly discussed the issue? We do not have enough arabic speaking soldiers for our missions. NEvermind that it has cost the military anywhere from a quarter billion to several billion wasted US dollars to take these men out of service.
The rst of your post is delusional.
The Gay Numbers
@Kid A: I didn’t realize we elected Obama to be only slightly better than what we would get under McCain. Interesting standard.
Alec
@The Gay Numbers: There’s a huge difference between the two in terms of judges, and unlike McCain, Obama will actually sign pro-gay legislation when it hits his desk. People who ignore the differences between the two on this issue (and other issues) are being wilfully blind.
Paul
The WH is absolutely pathetic on all GLBT issues thus far. When they are not getting caught in lies, they are silent. They are getting creamed day after day in the press room with their evasive non answers. Obama needs to grow a spine.
The Gay Numbers
@Alec: Again, if you want to discuss gay issues, then no there is no huge diffrence, even in terms of judges.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-abortion16-2009may16,0,5600569.story
“Obama is determined to avoid a “culture war” over the choice, White House aides and Democratic lawyers say, and he hopes to select a candidate who will not galvanize conservative activists over wedge issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.”
Whether he acts because in his heart of heats he does not believe in our equality (McCain) or because he is to afraid to act (Obama), it hardly matters to us because the outcomes are the same. I have a good friend- he always says when someone shows you who they are believe that rather than what they say. Obama is showing us who he is. I am going to believe that over the fantasy of what I want him to be. Anything that will happen will happen as a result of the “make him do it’ theory. Not the fantasy that he’s better than McCain.
As for him signing something, your equation misses the point that he will never have to worry about signing it. It is once again- kill me by cutting off the blood at the neck or kill me by cutting it off at the heart. Either way I am dead.
I would be happy to be wrong. I will require more than rhectoric to be convinced. Finally, I am begining to think that most people project their own weaknesses online onto others- you are calling me blind, but everything you say is blindness to reality.
Michael W.
@The Gay Numbers: The legal analysis you speak of only came to the conclusion that Obama has the authority to apply a bandaid to the problem. It doesn’t say that Obama can repeal DADT with an executive order. If he followed through on their recommendations, DADT would still be a law that needs to be repealed through congress. Whether or not he should do that is another story.
The military may be short on linguists but there’s no definitive proof that DADT has made the situation worse. They’re also helping to fill the void with new technological advancements such as voice-enabled translation software for gadgets they carry like the iPod Touch.
My statement still stands that the issue, while a problem, is nowhere near as detrimental as the conditions that forced racial integration of the military starting with the Korean War. And even with the few high profile discharges, there are tens of thousands of gay men and women who serve in all fields and don’t mind the closet if they don’t find it comfortable. Gays serving, in that way, actually have it easier than blacks did.
As for the money wasted, we’re talking about the US government. Nobody cares about a few billion dollars (a figure at the far end of the spectrum). We wasted more than that on those dumb ass Marine One helicopters.
You’re exaggerating the DADT problem on a national security level. I have no problem with your moral arguments against it and likely agree with you.
The Gay Numbers
@Michael W.: I don’t speak in the retarded. Please translate how his doing nothing, even the bandaid, means I am wrong? Your point seems to be because its not a permanent solution he should do nothing? Exaclty how does that show commitment of any kind?
While we are speaking in the retarded, just so you know if you say “the military is short on Arabic speaker solders” that by definition means that if you get rid of some of said in short supply Arabic speakin soldiers- it’s going to harm missions. because- THEY ARE IN SHORT SUPPLY.
Lee
@Michael W.:
Based on your claim, “The military may be short on linguists but there’s no definitive proof that DADT has made the situation worse” you are either willfully stupid…because MULTIPLE sources have documented this…or willfully lying.
This is what it has come to, folks; this is what Obama’s greatest achievement…and greatest crime is…he has turned gays against each other, seducing them into pathologically always choosing him over their own community …somehow brainwashed them into playing shell games with the truth that would make the Antigay Industry’s religious nuts and most ruthless liars proud…JUST TO DEFEND WHATEVER HE DOES OR DOESN’T TO; WHATEVER HE SAYS OR DOESN’T SAY; WHAT HE PROMISES ONE DAY AND ABANDONS ANOTHER. That’s called a cult, boys and girls, no matter who is its focus. Can Mao’s, excuse me, Obama’s “Little Red Book” be far behind? When do we move into the Barack Davidian compound…or to Guyana?
Those squeals you hear are their putting both the grease and the pig in greased pig, squirming left and right, forward and backward, turned themselves and history and fact inside out to distract, deny, disparage, denounce. Now they’ve resorted to playing number games, marking the cards as it suits them. When did 6-700, the number likely to be discharged this year, or numbers as high as 3000 in the past, equal “a few”? Had they not been discharged, were untold but demonstrable other numbers who while never identified as gay refuse to reenlist because they can’t stand living a lie anymore, the military could reduce the number of foreigners it bribes with citizenship to enlist; get back to standards that ban volunteers with felony convictions rather than letting them in to meet quotas.
Now this is truly precious…both in terms of its claim to being able to read the minds of tens of thousands and its smearing our own people: “hey, DADT ain’t so bad…all those fags and dykes in uniform LUV the closet.” If that shit isn’t bad enough, they throw some more against the wall, setting up false constructs and comparisons with racial integration, exaggerating the differences, ignoring the similarities. Yes, there are differences, the main one being that Truman had the courage to do the right thing when America was 1000 times more racist than it is homophobic now, when everyone around him opposed him, not just a publicly racist Pentagon and Congress, but longtime friends who still referred to “niggers” and his own mother who wouldn’t sleep in the Lincoln bedroom because its namesake freed the slaves. And he sure didn’t have members of the mainstream press asking his press secretary day after day, “Why haven’t you integrated the military yet?” The majority of the public in 1948 opposed racially integrating the military; the majority now support gay integration.
Truman ignored a ton of excuses not to act; Obama has caved to the only one available to him…a few brass buttoned bigots who have now made him an honorary member.
Mr. President, what size white sheet did you say you take?
petted
Wow Gibbs is doing a horrible job responding to these questions – he should seriously consider finding a new day job cause if he’s having problems this early in when the press is relatively docile then he’s going to take on water like the Titanic when things start heating up.
mikeandrewsdantescove
Robert Gibbs is in over his heads. That answer was pathetic. If you add subtitles – nothing is being done.
Mike
http://cdbaby.com/cd/mikeandrews2
schlukitz
@Michael W.:
Michael, that you can sniffle at a heinous government policy and your apologetic stance of a military that ruins the careers and lives of people whom they deem less than human, is absolutely appalling.
But, to justify that horrible policy by blaming it on the gays and saying that they LUV living in the closet is just plain disgusting.
It’s like blaming black people for the horrible treatment they received, on the color of their skin.
Kid A
@The Gay Numbers: I’m not saying at all that we should be happy with how Obama is handling this situation. He campaigned with the promise of getting rid of DADT, and until he does that, we should hold his feet to the fire.
But james james’ comment “you get what you vote for” is absurd, because NO we’re not getting what we voted for. We were promised something that we’re not getting. The alternative (as james james is suggesting) was McCain, who of course has promised even less than Obama. I’m all for Obama-bashing on LGBT issues, given that he seems to have reversed his policy on same-sex marriage before running for POTUS, has failed to act on DADT, and has not spoken out on the states that have legalized SSM since he took office. However, if someone says “you get what you vote for” as if we made the wrong choice and McCain would have served us at ALL, I’m gonna call bullshit.