Crashing the pajama party

I am pretty sure Andrew Malcolm nails it here.

Saturday night before he was asked about “don’t ask-don’t tell” Obama told the banqueting but impatient Human Rights Campaign crowd (full text right here) all the Democratically-correct things it wanted to hear before the big march for LGBT equality the next day.

So it was very surprising — even jarring — when on Sunday CNBC’s John Harwood, long a respected political journalist, reported a conversation with an anonymous White….

… House “adviser” about the growing grumbling coming not from the predictable party of No but from, oh my, Obama’s own political left, described as the “Internet left fringe.”

Here, just hours after Obama’s warm remarks to his applauding gay constituency, is how Harwood described the conversation on-air:

For a sign of how seriously the White House does or doesn’t take this opposition, one adviser told me today those bloggers need to take off their pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely-divided country is complicated and difficult.

As it turns out, the “adviser” was talking about the entire internet-left, but gay bloggers went off.

AmericaBlog’s thoughtful John Aravosis wrote:

So the gay community, and its concerns about President Obama’s inaction, and backtracking, on DADT and DOMA, are now, according to President Obama’s White House, part of a larger “fringe” that acts like small children who play in their pajamas and need to grow up. (And a note to our readers: The White House just included all of you in that loony “left fringe.”)

I wonder how the Human Rights Campaign is going to explain how the White House just knifed our community less than 24 hours after he went to their dinner and claimed he was our friend.

Malcolm sees a method to the madness of giving first and then taking away:

Also, Obama enjoys overwhelming support generally among the nation’s Democrats. So what if his popularity there plummets to 80%?

Now, who’s the president gonna need to support healthcare reform and bandage this Afghan mess heading into the 2010 midterm election year when history says he’ll likely lose seats on the Hill? Bingo, those same conservative/centrist House pals of Emanuel’s whose incumbencies are a main shield against any Republican resurgence.

Oh, and about those crucial independents who elected Obama last November and then started falling away all summer as Obama’s liberal spending, reforms and deficits metastisized? What better way to let those swayable folks come back home than by asking the helpful question, how can Obama possibly be an ultra-liberal if he’s being so publicly vilified by angry ultra-liberals?

So it was no accident whatsoever when that wily White House “adviser” explained, “governing a closely-divided country is complicated and difficult.”

Or, as that wily, briar-patch denizen Br’er Rabbit pleaded of his ursine captor in the old Uncle Remus tales, “Please, please don’t throw me in that briar-patch over there!”

What he said. Conservatives can’t crash this party alone. If moderates and conservative Dems view Obama as a moderate, then we’ll have the pajama party for the duration.

Gays groups benefit from failed mortgage company donations

Picking an unpopular target, PFOX this morning points out that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae donated thousands of dollars over the last several years to PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), HRC (Human Rights Campaign) and GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation).
The news release published on Market Watch, alleges that Freddie and Fannie donated to fundraising events for the organizations. The release quotes a spokesperson for Freddie Mac:

Shawn Flaherty, a spokeswoman for Freddie Mac, said she was not sure PFOX would meet the grant guidelines, adding the foundation focuses on three priorities — stable homes, foster care and adoption, and youth development.
The grants have not focused on the gay community, she said. “It’s a piece of it.”

Only the farthest right would be upset over helping needy gay people get homes. In the years leading up to the collapse, the mortgage giants were encouraged to help anyone who couldn’t get loans otherwise. Hindsight tells us that this was shortsighted, and sexual orientation has nothing to do with that.
What raises eyebrows is that these groups were donating money to charities for non-housing related purposes (fundraising galas?). We know these two groups donated money to politicians who regulated them over the years. Apparently, these groups wanted to curry favor with ideologically based groups as well. While I speculate that left-of-center groups were the main beneficiaries, I would have to review their records to know for sure.
It would be interesting to follow this money to find out if any of these donations were suggested by politicians regulating Fannie and Freddie.
The PFOX release says all grants are “under review.” Under review by whom? While I would like to know, I am not going to bother asking since they do not answer queries from me. My suggestion would be for them to make this more clear and to provide links to the documents from which they derived this information.
PFOX says it wants the same money. Not going to happen. I hope this is a rhetorical device and not a policy objective. I would oppose this request as I would requests from any non-housing related group. A few thousand here, a few thousand there and pretty soon, it gets to be millions and then billions. It isn’t a matter of the government related agencies funding my favorite charity; it is why are they funding anybody’s favorite charity?