It’s hard to keep up with the idiocy coming out of this administration, its DOJ and the Pentagon. Look at this development; a memo has been issued as a fig leaf for the uproar created by reinstituting the ban on DADT via the stay of the injunction. (The Wonk Room):

At a briefing this afternoon, officials hinted that they may be pursing a softer approach towards the ban, telling reporters that discharges will now require the approval of the “service branch secretary.” In other words, only four people in the entire Department of Defense will be able to discharge a gay soldier under the policy.

A senior defense department lawyer briefed reporters on Thursday afternoon about the memos, saying, “These two memos are primarily in reaction to … the temporary stay last night. We are clearly in a legally uncertain territory.”

And this:

CNN is reporting that even though the Pentagon still wants the ban repealed through Congress, “they are now looking at other possible ways at which it might be repealed.

Perhaps that is the response to the reality check that DADT repeal via the Def Auth bill in the lame duck session is a non-starter. How the Pentagon can do any kind of about face when the geezers who are worried about the soap dropping and want to wait for the Dec. 1 bogus, freeped study to come out is anyone’s guess. Are gays and lesbians a threat to national security, troop readiness and morale or not? Just earlier today we saw an AP article that made an inference that today’s military, populated mostly from the conservative South and West are therefore bigots and require everyone else to accommodate their homophobia. That in itself is rank regional bias to begin with, but it makes “following orders” some sort of magical trait that is hard to find in service members. The whole matter is so childish. It’s embarrassing.

If there are “other possible ways” of non-legislative, non-executive order ways of doing away with DADT, surely they would have copped to them before now, no?

Look, the bottom line is that this is a PR disaster for this White House. The Dan Choi/Valerie Jarrett CNN appearances made it crystal clear who is an honest broker and who has made a deal with the devil. Gates has had Obama by the short ones for some time now, and it’s completely blowing back on all of them.

When Valerie Jarrett had to sit and watch Dan Choi rip her boss’s DADT reasoning to shreds on international television and tell her not to lecture him, it definitely looked like a game changing moment — the emperor had no clothes, they were set ablaze. Dan Choi said “You’ve Lost My Trust, I Won’t Be Voting for Obama,” that was the political gauntlet thrown down. Jarrett has no response to that; how can this administration restore any trust when it has shown that the LGBT community is merely an ATM to it. We’re strung along and told that the threat of President Palin or Majority Boehner is enough to go back to the rear of the bus and pay up some more, thank you very much.

No equality=no money, no vote in 2012 for Obama says Dan Choi. Now the WH has to wonder how many others have seen the betrayal and will do the same. Now the President and his boss Gates are stuck, and have to gamble whether these half-cocked measures are going to repair the damage.

Nope. No. Sale. Not until the discharges stop and gay and lesbian service members have full equality. This policy should have been done away with in the first two years of this administration and yet we’re still talking about showers, bunks and soap dropping. It’s preposterous. The pressure will continue; we’ve had enough of the lies about what can be done, the motives for the actions that have occurred and the unending drive for cash and scare tactics. No, we will vote — but support only those who support us with actions, not promises – the ones who stick their necks out there, like Rep. Patrick Murphy.