Obama Biden His Time on Gay Marriage (*Updated)

I don't usually watch the Sunday morning blatherfests. I just read the recaps, starting with Jason Linkins' hilarity and then I go on to the Bobbleheads. If any of the segments seems especially entertaining, I might catch a few clips later in the day on the Internet.


Well, it looks like the Osama retrospective is winding down at least, because as Joe Biden did the musical chairs talk show circuit and plopped down at MTP, he only mentioned one time that Bin Laden is still dead. (As far as I know, that is. I mean, he may have repeated himself for all I know, but I have not been able to bring myself to actually watch. It's not that I don't not know, or still can't believe that Osama really is kaput, y'understand.)


But Biden still managed to make front page news on the New York Times homepage. He announced that he, personally, feels "comfortable" about gay marriage. This Bidenism was no doubt initially calculated to send a signal to all the people disappointed in President Obama's "evolving" stance on the issue. Psssst.... the Prexy is down with all you LGBT rich donor people and the 80% of the country in favor of same sex marriage. But it is not yet politically expedient for him to say so during this election year. He might have to spend some of his hoarded political capital. Karl Rove and Fox and the gang might gang up on him and call him anti-family and stuff. From The Times: 

"I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties,” Mr. Biden said in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” 

(snip) 

Gay and lesbian voters, while generally supportive of Mr. Obama, have grown frustrated with his reluctance to take a clear stance for same-sex marriage. He has come under increasing pressure to do so from gay donors, one of his more lucrative fund-raising sources.

Even sending a minion out to telegraph the president's lukewarmth apparently has Team Obama second-guessing itself. Aides hastily released a statement insisting that gaffe-happy Biden's views are purely his own and that moreover, he is marching in evolutionary lockstep with The Boss:

“The Vice President was saying what the President has said previously – that committed and loving same-sex couples deserve the same rights and protections enjoyed by all Americans, and that we oppose any effort to rollback those rights. That’s why we stopped defending the constitutionality of section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act in legal challenges and support legislation to repeal it. Beyond that, the Vice President was expressing that he too is evolving on the issue, after meeting so many committed couples and families in this country.”

 Talk about threading the needle! Jeeze. Though, when you close-read what Biden actually said, he parsefully means that once same-sex couples have actually tied the knot without the blessing of the federal government, who is he to say they are not thereafter entitled to the same civil rights as everybody? I mean, barn door and spilt milk and all.


Whatever. The circular meanderings, the craven calculating caution of this slow-jammin', market-driven, evolving dissolving president know no bounds. And that is a real no-no for Brave New World Warrior Prince.

*Update, 5/9: Congratulations to the LGBT community and amazingly too, to the mainstream press corps, for hounding the president into personally coming out in favor of marriage equality. Credit due to Obama for risking battleground states early in the campaign season. It was a careful juggling act of principle, expediency, optics, and the potential loss of millions of gay donor dollars. All those old homophobes from North Carolina were so going to vote for him before the Coming Out Party, right? One evolution down, a hundred more to go. Let us now force him to evolve into ending the wars, the drone strikes, the warrantless wiretapping and cyber-spying, the war on whistleblowers, beginning to prosecute the banksters, to strengthen Social Security and the safety net, to develop nausea at the mere sound of the words "bipartisan" and "Reagan".... yeah, yeah, I'm wasting my breath. 

The White House Gay Marriage Evolution Chart...Is Now Complete!

Poison Now, Disclose Later

Another day, another cave. The Obama Administration has just verified the unbelievable rumor that it would be granting a huge concession to the oil and gas industry -- instead of being required to disclose the chemicals used to hydrofrack new wells 30 days in advance, drillers will be able to blast the earth with all the cancer-causing chemicals they want without telling a soul what they are using. Our government trusts them to report back to the victims later. On a self-serving website called FracFocus.

Of course, this new rule applies only to 700 million acres of federal lands. So if you live near federally-owned property, tribal lands, national parks, national forests, national seashores, national monuments -- and your tap water suddenly smells bad, turns color or catches fire,  or your hair and teeth start falling out, or you think you feel faint quakey rumblings under your feet.... you might have been permanently fracked. But never fear.  Maybe next month, maybe next year and maybe after you're dead, the government will act in your best interest and let you know you have been bathing in benzene. And that it's good for your complexion.

Naturally, the Department of the Interior will be accepting "public comments" before actually implementing its pollution-friendly new rules. And it actually admits what I wrote the other day: that the self-serving FracFocus site is abysmally out of date and hard to use. It does bupkis to inform you how you are being affected by that eyesore of a gas well next door. The Bureau of Land Management, however, "understands that the database is in the process of being improved and will in the near future have enhanced search capabilities and allow for easier reporting of information." (italics mine.)

Reading between the lines of 80 pages of bureaucrat-ese, it does appear that the Interior Department will follow its long tradition of allowing energy companies to police themselves. The government will take their word for what they are doing and not necessarily verify any of it. We all know how well that laissez-faire policy worked out since the Deepwater Horizon explosion two years ago. No new oversight, no new laws, no criminal prosecutions. "The BLM will rely on the operator's certification that it has complied with all the laws and regulations that pertain to its operation."

The  government report blithely assumes that frackers will voluntarily reduce the amount of their chemicals and use safer formulae, knowing they'll have to eventually own up to Uncle Sam. Transparency after the fact is so beneficial to the public, too! (see page 38 of the report.) And the better-late-than-never disclosures will help the government respond to "incidents", such as those inevitable well poisonings. Cooperation from the industry will ensure that the government can stock up on gazillions of gallons of drinking water furnished at great public cost by Coca-Cola and other for-profit beverage providers, too. It is win-win-win all around for the Great Public Private Partnerships in the great nation of Homelandia.

This sudden and sharp about-face on strict fracking rules just gives lie to the usual political canard that "change takes time" and we all just have to be patient when it comes to a progressive tax system, an improved economy and the like. When corporations want something, they can usually get it in record time. The easing of fracking rules comes mere months after industry big shots met with the Obama Administration to complain about regulations costing them too much time and money. From the New York Times:

The weakening of the rule followed a series of meetings at the White House after the original regulation was proposed in February. Lobbyists representing oil industry trade associations and individual major producers like ExxonMobil, XTO Energy, Apache, Samson Resources and Anadarko Petroleum met with officials of the Office of Management and Budget, who reworked the rule to address industry concerns about overlapping state regulations and the cost of compliance.

(snip)

President Obama has strongly endorsed the new production as a boon to the economy and energy security. And the president, facing re-election under intense criticism of his energy policies from Republicans and oil industry officials, has recently taken steps to ease government regulation of oil operations.

In its original proposal that oil companies disclose the chemicals they intended to use in drilling at least 30 days before starting a well, the Interior Department was seeking to address the concerns of landowners about potential pollution of groundwater.

Industry complained, Obama listened. Just weeks after announcing a task force to make life easier for Big Oil and Gas, his Administration has accommodated these very important constituents. Landowners and consumers of water be damned. Why, the EPA even arranged for the firing of one of its fracking inspectors who actually had the nerve to insult polluters while he was doing his job.

The gas and oil industry has declared itself well-pleased with its government puppets. You can bet it is smiling a big old corporate-person smile as it scores yet another victory in the War Against People.