I served in the IDF in a combat unit with a gay comrade, and knew of others.  There was minimal friction or discomfort on the part of some, but no notable disruption to the unit.  No one felt threatened in the showers.  No one questioned his commitment to the safety of his fellows or his ability to do his part.

Coming on the heels of Prop H8, this is very good news.  Historical precedent shows that racial integration of our armed forces helped prepare the way for the civil rights movement.  These commanders deserve an extra salute for taking this step.

The statement below via: http://palmcenter.org/press/dadt/release s/104Generals%2526Admirals-GayBanMustEnd .

We - the undersigned -- respectfully call for the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Those of us endorsing this letter have dedicated our lives to defending the rights of our citizens to believe whatever they wish. Scholarly data shows there are approximately one million gay and lesbian veterans in the United States today as well as 65,000 gays and lesbians currently serving in our armed forces. They have served our nation honorably. We support the recent comments of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General John Shalikashvili, who has concluded that repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy would not harm and would indeed help our armed forces. As is the case with Great Britain, Israel, and other nations that allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, our service members are professionals who are able to work together effectively despite differences in race, gender, religion, and sexuality. Such collaboration reflects the strength and the best traditions of our democracy.

Former Secretary of the Army Clifford Alexander
Admiral Charles Larson, USN (ret.)
Lieutenant General Quinn Becker, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Henry Emerson, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Robert Flowers, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Robert Gard, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Jerry Hilmes, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Donald Kerrick, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Ira Owens, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Thomas Rienzi, USA (ret.)
Vice Admiral Harold Koenig, USN (ret.)
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, USN (ret.)
Vice Admiral James Zimble, USN (ret.)
Major General Anders Aadland, USA (ret.)
Major General Floyd Baker, USA (ret.)
Major General Harry Brooks Jr., USA (ret.)
Major General Leslie Burger, USA (ret.)
Major General Alexander Burgin, USANG (ret.)
Major General Rosetta Burke, AUS (ret.)
Major General William Burke, USA (ret.)
Major General Michael Conrad, USA (ret.)
Major General Eugene Cromartie, USA (ret.)
Major General James Delk, AUS (ret.)
Major General Oliver Dillard, USA (ret.)
Major General John Faith, USA (ret.)
Major General Jack Farris, USAF (ret.)
Major General Fred Forster, USANG (ret.)
Major General Robert Gamrath, AUS (ret.)
Major General Albert Genetti Jr., USA (ret.)
Major General Luis Gonzales-Vales, AUS (ret.)
Major General David Hale, USA (ret.)
Major General Randy Jayne, USANG (ret.)
Major General Lawrence Johnson, AUS (ret.)
Major General Dennis Laich, USA (ret.)
Major General Frederick Lawson, AUS (ret.)
Major General Thomas Lynch, USA (ret.)
Major General Dennis Malcor, USA (ret.)
Major General John Roth, AUS (ret.)
Major General Henry Rasmussen, USA (ret.)
Major General Alan Salisbury, USA (ret.)
Major General Michael Scotti Jr., USA (ret.)
Major General Harry Sieben, USANG (ret.)
Major General Paul Smith, USA (ret.)
Major General Robert B. Smith, USA (ret.)
Major General Charles Starr Jr., USA (ret.)
Major General Story Stevens, USA (ret.)
Major General Joseph E. Turner, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General John C. Adams, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Clara Adams-Ender, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Hugh Aitken, USMC (ret.)
Brigadier General John "Joe" Allen, USAF (ret.)
Brigadier General Patricia Anderson, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Dale Barber, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General George Baxter, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Baxter, USAF (ret.)
Brigadier General George Blysak, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Harold Bowman, USANG (ret.)
Brigadier General Douglas Bradley, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Jack Capps, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Richard Carter, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Steve Chapplis, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General BG David Cole, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General William Colvin, USANG (ret.)
Brigadier General Joseph Cutrona, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Tom Daniels, USAF (ret.)
Brigadier General Von DeLoatch, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Dilworth, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General George Eggers Jr., USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Evelyn Foote, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Giffen, USAF (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Hardy Jr., USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Carlos Hayden, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Edwin Heffelfinger, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General James Hunt, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General John H. Johns, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General J.D Johnson, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Keith H. Kerr, CSMR (ret.)
Brigadier General Douglas Kinnard, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Dean Mann, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General James Martin, USAF (ret.)
Brigadier General William Meehan II, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Harold Miller, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Kenneth Newbold, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General I.R. Obenchain Jr., USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Phil Peay, USANG (ret.)
Brigadier General Dorothy Pocklington, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Poirot, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Philip Pushkin, USANG (ret.)
Brigadier General Virgil Richard, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General William Richter, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Kenneth Rieth, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Ernst Roberts, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Murray Sagsveen, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Norman Salisbury, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Donald Schenk, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Bettye Simmons, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Theodore Vander Els, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Daniel Wardrop, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Watling, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General John Weinzettle, USA (ret.)
Rear Admiral James Barnett, USN (ret.)
Rear Admiral Robert Krasner, USN (ret.)
Rear Admiral Charles Rauch, USN (ret.)
Rear Admiral Alan Steinman, USPHS (ret.)

AUS is the Army of the United States.
**General Scotti passed away in September, 2007. His widow asked that his name remain on this statement.

Let's stop tearing apart a successful coalition on the morning of its victory.  Nate Silver finds that:

At the end of the day, Prop 8's passage was more a generational matter than a racial one. If nobody over the age of 65 had voted, Prop 8 would have failed by a point or two. It appears that the generational splits may be larger within minority communities than among whites, although the data on this is sketchy.

For Nate's reading of the exit polls, check out "Prop 8 Myths" at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/p rop-8-myths.html.

Clearly there is more work to be done establishing solidarity within our coalition around this issue, particularly with regard to new minority voters coming from religious and traditional cultures.  Some of us may be frustrated with the cognitive dissonance we see in a community that knows oppression participating in anti-gay discrimination.  As Jon Stewart put it: "Free at last, Free at last...Hey wait, where do you think you two are going."  But to hang the passage of Prop H8 solely on them is not just a misreading of the facts that verges on scapegoating, it's politically idiotic.  

Conservative forces also see this cognitive dissonance and are intent on exploiting it in order to fracture our coalition.  It is our responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen.  There are plenty of religious progressives with traditional values who support gay rights as civil rights.  They are the model we want to promote.  Let's stop this fratricidal stupidity and foster solidarity.  We have an unprecedented opportunity right now and history is on our side.

Sources inside the McCain campaign report that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) will suspend his campaign sometime next week due to bailing out of his airplane over Waziristan and being captured by Al-Qaeda.  Video tapes to be released by the terrorist organization will reveal his heroism under torture and deprivation.  When pressured to divulge state secrets, including names of field agents with whom he has been in contact, McCain will cleverly list the starting rotation of the 1952 Philadelphia Athletics, and afterward will claim it was actually the starting lineup of the Brooklyn Dodgers, thus capturing both PA's and NY's electoral votes.  Finally, he will be decapitated before being released, having reattached his own head with duct tape.  Campaign officials argue that this will lay to rest any voter unease that losing his head in every crisis will be an impediment to his perseverance, courage, and heroic leadership.  

This string of events will demonstrate once and for all what a true maverick McCain is as a candidate, and will be as president.  The ad that the campaign plans to release in the aftermath will ask voters whether they want more politics as usual with Obama, who merely gives speeches and proposes legislation, or Maverick John McCain, who is the embodiment of American Heroism.  

When asked if they feared that voters will see this as another McCain stunt, McCain's representatives were shocked and outraged that anyone could question the heroism of the maverick candidate, the only true patriot in this race for the presidency.  They then immediately accused anyone who could even think such a thing as an extremist who hates America who is so far out of the mainstream they must be "in the tank" for Senator Obama.  "Who do you want as president," they asked, "someone who pals around with terrorist professors of education or someone who gets himself captured, tortured, and beheaded by terrorists?  We think the choice is clear and trust the American people to make the right decision."

Additional reports have leaked out that a motorcycle and a shark tank were recently delivered to the McCain "cottage" in Sedona, AZ.  More on this story as it develops.

Alright, I admit that this is a bit panicky and conspiracy-minded, but are some conservatives maneuvering to use this crisis to bury what is left of the New Deal and Great society?  Here's what I worry is happening:

1. Some conservatives are opposing the bailout by screaming "socialism" to elicit a particular democratic response.

2. That response is to use the language of investment with regard to taxpayer dollars.  In other words, democrats are saying they are open to a bailout if taxpayers are treated like investors and get to share in an 'upside' of the recovery.  Witness the steep interest rate that we get to charge AIG.

3. This creates a precedent for investing tax dollars in the market.

4. That precedent will be used down the road by conservatives who want Social Security replaced with personal savings accounts invested in the the market, and potentially health care savings accounts also invested in the market.

What I don't want to see is my retirement, and my children's access to health care in the hands of these monkeys on Wall Street.  I do not think for a second that anyone encouraged the current turmoil in order to set this in motion.  Nor do I think this is a coordinated strategy of the Republican party.  But by screaming "socialism," some are goading Democrats into creating precedents that will serve their policy goals and which will wipe out the last bits of security working Americans still possess, not to mention moving health care reform in the opposite direction from where it needs to go.

Please let me know exactly how senseless this worry is.

...like I want Joan Crawford to raise my children.  The ridiculousness and disingenuousness of McCain's latest political stunt lays bear the divide between conservative and liberal attitudes.  McCain, as we all know, is trying to distract voters from his admitted lack of acumen with regard to economic issues, and from the fact that the republican policies he has supported throughout his long legislative career are at fault.  He's trying to demonstrate the panacea imagined by conservatives everywhere for all things: personal responsibility.  But personal responsibility, in and of itself, does not compensate for lack of comprehension of economic issues.  In fact, McCain's analysis of what went wrong shows just how delusional the republican fixation with personal responsibility can be.  McCain blames it all on "greed" and "corruption."  These are personal and individual failings.  The failure here cannot be explained sufficiently as an instance where we failed to protect ourselves from a handful of bad apples.  It's the failure of a system.  

Sarah Palin is vulnerable on earmarks.  She unceasingly postures as an opponent of earmarks in ways that both radically misrepresent her record and that we should be able to debunk.  Yet should doesn't mean will.  Additionally, her record puts her at odds with John McCain, who famously railed against earmarks to fund the study of Bear DNA at a primary debate and then selected a running mate who lobbied for earmarks to fund study of Seal DNA.  Exposing Palin's obfuscations on earmarks thus undermines the credibility of both candidates.  It's the issue with which both have become most identified.  McCain musters more passion when he addresses it than anything else, including the war: "The first pork-laden earmark bill that comes across my desk; I will veto it, I will make them famous, and you will know their names!!!"  The shot is there to take.  It's a tempting one.  We should be able to make it.

But if democrats have made one mistake over and over and over, it has been getting involved in the wrong battles, even when we are in the right.  They turn out to generate pyrrhic victories, i.e. we win the battle and lose the war.  We won the argument against the Quayle selection and lost 40 states.  

Here's the problem: "earmarks account for only about 0.6 percent of government spending and 0.1 percent of GDP" (http://www.americanprogressaction.org/is sues/2008/earmark_reform.html).   And not all of them are wasteful pork.  Compared with the issues that Obama has concentrated on (reforming our tax policy, implementing an approach to the energy crisis that addresses both long-term and immediate concerns, drafting stronger trade agreements, and reforming healthcare) earmarks are a cosmetic issue, or at least a distraction from what really ails our economy.  Earmarks are a proverbial red herring.  The fact that the central issue with which the republican ticket is identified is also one on which they are eminently vulnerable, could be functioning like a matador's red cape.

The more we argue with McCain and Palin's posturing on earmarks and the more we try to use this issue to undermine their credibility, the more people associate them with that issue.  They become reform minded outsiders who are taking on Washington for wasting your money.  Even if they are not.  The fact that they are vulnerable here is the potential siren luring us toward the rocks.  Could we instead use the issue to undermine their seriousness?  Would we be better off acknowledging that earmarks need reform, but pointing out how small a problem they are in the grand scheme of things?  Making coffee at home, as opposed to hitting Starbucks every day will save you some money.  It's a smart thing to do.  But it won't cover your mortgage.  Earmarks are a distraction.  Maybe we'd be better off trying to discredit the issue with which our opponents are most identified and pivot to the issues where we are strongest.  Maybe we should drive home the greater significance of the issues on which we are concentrating.

So, if you had any doubt how stupid and cynical the McCain campaign has become, check out Tapper:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/ 2008/09/a-piggish-debat.html

Lipstickgate is an enormous opportunity for the Obama campaign.  It's an opportunity to expose how petty and manipulative our opponents are.  I expect the Obama campaign to turn it to their advantage within 12 hours.  No apologies.  We need a counter attack.  Now.

Here's what I want to see:

While Barack Obama is proposing solutions to the problems that John McCain's republican party have inflicted on real Americans, John McCain is spending all his energy cynically twisting common expressions to score political points by diminishing his opponent.  Just more of the same.  Lies.  Smears.  Distractions.  George Bush and Dick Cheney should be proud of him.  

What won't John McCain do to avoid talking about the issues?  While Barack Obama is busy trying to cut your taxes, John McCain is busy concocting personal smears in his pursuit of personal power and privilege.  While Barack Obama is proposing responsible policies to stabilize the American economy, John McCain is playing political games.  While Barack Obama is talking about healcare, education, national security, foreign policy and telling the telling the truth to the American people, John McCain is trying to distract you from the problems he helped George Bush create, the issues that affect you every single day and that threaten the future of our children. Poor John McCain. If you voted with George Bush over 90% of the time, would you want to talk about the issues?

If there is one question Americans need to ask themselves this November, it's "Haven't we had enough?"

I want every ad and utterance from this campaign from now on to end with that question.

Haven't we had enough?

Average Hokey Mom?

Hiring lobbyists to funnel $XXX,XXX,XXXs of earmarks and pork out of struggling taxpayer's pockets means you're an

AVERAGE POLITICIAN

Maverick?

Voting over 90% of the time with Bush for failed and outdated Republican policies means you're just another

AVERAGE REPUBLICAN POLITICIAN

Hillary Clinton says that expecting Republicans to fix what's wrong is like expecting an iceberg to fix the Titanic.

As Bill Clinton taught us: There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed with what's right with America.

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary leadership.

It's time for America to be extraordinary once more.

Yes.

We Can.

Dare to be extraordinary.

Barack Obama for President.