“Peace Pretty Soon!”
This is nauseating.
Democrats call it quits on a troop withdrawal plan
WASHINGTON - In grudging concessions to President Bush, congressional Democrats intend to draft an Iraq war-funding bill without a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops -- and shorn of billions of dollars in pork-barrel spending on extraneous domestic programs, officials said Monday.
By David Espo, Associated Press
Last update: May 21, 2007 – 9:37 PM
WASHINGTON - In grudging concessions to President Bush, congressional Democrats intend to draft an Iraq war-funding bill without a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops -- and shorn of billions of dollars in pork-barrel spending on extraneous domestic programs, officials said Monday.
However, the legislation would include the first federal minimum wage increase in more than a decade, a top priority for the Democrats who took control of Congress in January, the officials added.
While details remain sketchy, the measure is designed to close the books by Friday on a bruising veto fight between the president and the Democratic-controlled Congress over the war. It would provide funds for military operations in Iraq through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
…
Stranding our men and women on the Iraqi killing floor with no exit in sight to provide rear guard cover for the Dear Leader’s bloated ego is inexcusable: I take comfort only in the fact that this latest blank check handed over to the reckless idiot running the country will run out in four months.
And as anyone who is familiar with the Summer of 1974 knows, four months equals ten-thousand years in a slow-roasting purgatory for a White House that is drowning in scandal and failure and rot and to whom the opposition -- that'd be you and me -- lobs anvils.
Day
after day
after day.
8 comments:
I felt sick reading this. Someone once said that our entire government has not the strength of a single man if one man can bend it to his will.
The Democrats have not forgotten that the last time they went out on a limb to do the right thing, it got sawed off behind them. I refer to the ending of formal segregation in the 1960s. The backlash among Stupid White Folks who didn't want to associate with those icky colored folks handed the GOP their current hegemony. [I'm white, in case any new readers have dropped in.]
The Democrats know that a majority AT THIS TIME wants to end the war, but they fear that if they do so, the fickle, dull-witted, ADHD-addled Stupid White Folks of the good ol' USA will forget that THEY wanted the war ended, and once the GOP starts its "stabbed-in-the-back" propaganda blitzkrieg--which you KNOW they will do once we, inevitably, lose this war--the Stupid White Folks will turn on the Dems for doing the very thing the SWFs wanted them to do earlier.
As I keep saying, don't curse the Dems for being timid. Curse the Stupid White Folks for MAKING them timid. Quoth Mencken: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and hard."
Selah.
From the Arkanshire, IBW
I am so freaking tired of this godawful excuse for a government.
/whining
When I read headlines like these I wonder why I vote for democrats at all. Then democrats point to things like the minimum wage increase. Is that the sum total of the difference (in Congress) of the two parties?
All democrats have to do is NOT pass a funding bill. That's it. They don't have to convince the president or a single republican of anything. Instead they've ceded to the president the point that they have to pass something, and so are now in process of passing yet another blank check after a few apparently token months of resistance. They have also ceded the powers ofa king to a president who apparently has the right to start any war, anywhere, based on lies (and face no repercussions) and then continue the war indefinitely once troops are in harm's way because he's holding the military hostage and we "can't cut off funding to troops in the field." So I guess presidents now have unlimited warmaking powers for 4 year terms.
We also don't have the power the stop rampant lawlessness in the Executive Branch either, as only a Supreme Court ruling can even begin to stop that, and issues like the NSA issue have already taken 2 years to get on the appellate court docket, and they will take a couple of more years to reach the Supreme Court, while in the meantime the government is given a stay in the ruling of the lower court to continue the illegal program. This is not even arguing the point that we have to sue the government to get it to stop breaking the law, instead of just having the lawbreakers arrested, nor is it aruging the point that 90% of these types of ceases get thrown out anyway when the government cries "national security."
As I said earlier, don't curse the Dems for being timid. Curse the Stupid White Folks of the USA for MAKING them timid. Selah.
"I take comfort only in the fact that this latest blank check handed over to the reckless idiot running the country will run out in four months."
I like the way you can see the silver lining in this putrid cloud
IBW,
Thanks for contributing the piece of the puzzle I was missing. The why of it eluded me but now I have it in a perspective I can process.
Personally though, I think our Democratic congresscritters could learn a lesson from the Taiwanese and let their passions loose in camera, once in a while. It'd sure make C-Span a lot more interesting to watch.
I had such high hopes; all the tough talk about "no more blank checks," and here we are again. W with check in one hand and the middle finger of his other hand pointed at the rest of us.
The only good that could come of this would be for our fellow citizens to get angry enough to take to the streets.
Not bloody f***ing likely.
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