I think I would have been more surprised if Sen. Reid actually got the cloture vote on the Defense Authorization bill I had no expectation that any of the GOP Senators would vote in favor of this bill, perhaps even if they'd been promised the world. Nor was I surprised that the Democrats failed to get all 59 of its majority members to support the bill either; we've seen the Keystone Senators play their games for the last 18 months. I also was not surprised by the lack of substantive interest from the White House. It was, as an advocate for the repeal of DADT, said, "a political train wreck."
Right now, I am going to hold off from a full unloading of my feelings on this issue. Since Sen. Reid voted "no" today, I know that the bill can be offered up again for a cloture vote, a vote that will come after the mid-term elections (better known as the revenge of the pissed off McCain supporter elections).
I am an ant's tooth away from giving up entirely on the Obama administration with regard to anything substantive related to gay rights. Right now, it appears that Obama is comfortable enough with government sanctioned discrimination that he had his administration barely carry water to secure passage of this bill. I doubt that he will issue an Executive Order to halt the discharges until the "Study" is released. And isn't that interesting. All of these people, including Sen. Webb of Virginia and the President, are pressed to have the DADT study completed before any action toward repeal, yet no one, to my knowledge, has had a problem with gay service members being kicked out.
Clearly, their perspective does not matter in this instance. Maybe if the gay service members all worked on derivatives and hedge funds or for health insurance companies, then perhaps their concerns would have been taken more seriously. After all, isn't that how Washington works these days?
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