This Democrat isn’t silent. It’s far past time to rely on ‘the give enough rope’ strategy. The President and his administration have now officially hung themselves. And ignoring the dead, dangling body won’t help rescue one person, or give a baby fresh diapers, or rebuild one inch of the Gulf Coast. The time to attack, and to attack forthrightly and on moral principle, is now.
If Hillary, or Biden, or Richardson, or Gore, or Feingold, or anyone else wants to be the Presidential nominee in 2008, they better not be silent now. Now is the time to stand up and REPRESENT the people that have been screwed by Reaganomics and BushCo. Now is the time to put the pressure on for dropping this nonsense about social security reform and the estate tax and making the tax cuts permanent. Fight damnit. Fight.
Get out the garlic and the silver cross, and put an end to this undead agenda. The first Democrat to show some leadership will be the Democrat with all the momentum going forward.
Used his own $$ to rent a plane to go to New Orleans yesterday to evacuate 100+ seriously ill people and bring them back to Tennessee. He’s the only “name brand” dem to do anything remotely compassionate. I don’t care that he didn’t get a photo op – he was far more useful than the fucker residing in 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. His actions represented all that is wrong with Bushco.
More info here:
http://www.thedailytimes.com/sited/story/html/216543
forget gore. the past. your post regarding the dem non-response– right on TARGET! BRILLIANT!
I will bet anyone that the silence will be deafinning!
billjpa@aol.com
Umm, the trick is to attack Bush, without it looking like it’s an attack on the recently dead Rehnquist–a social taboo that runs deep. “I come to bury Ceasar, not to praise him.” Give it a couple of days of mourning. Besides, it’s Labor Day Weekend. The fall business and political season starts next week, nobody’s listening now, The Robert’s hearing will unleash all the commentary.
Having said that you’re absolutely correct that someone needs to step up to the plate and yell about the screw job the people of the US are getting. Many Democrats are waiting on events right now, the change in perspective of the populace may tell them which way to go—assuming a change in perspective. There has to be at least one Democrat doing the yelling while the others wait to see which way to push.
Clinton and Biden voted for this war for the lessening of American security. They have a moral obligation to stand up here. They may as well switch parties if they sit back now. They will have a better chance of winning the Republican nomination. I’m sick of this shit.
these self absorbed creatures have no idea what “moral obligation” is, let alone have the capacity to act in accordance with it.
The silence of the DLC crowd is something I expected because their agenda is, in essence, a facsimile of Bush’s agenda.They have been trying to marginalize blacks and liberals like Michael Moore within our party by adopting the GOP’s worldview on all matters.I do not think you will see them lending a helping hand to black people in New Orleans because they think it will taint them in some way.
They are despicable people,so don’t expect anything decent from them.
I’m tempted to sell my vote to the first Democrat elected official that calls for bush and cheney to resign.
Any takers?
Criminal neglect deserves prosecution. Heads must roll.
Sorry for the additional post. I usually don’t post twice the same day but after discovering the wapo BIG EFFING LIE I just felt compelled to make a comment.
Obvious, The big SPIN is on and it is monumental in its scope. The saddest aspect, and it relates to the memo posting. Every single piece of evidence was available to the writers of the wapo article PRIOR to the publication of the article. Additionally, the media has now obviously been given their marching orders.
So, not to beat a dead horse, this is exactly the time for the progressive voices in this country to not just stand up, but they have to climb up on the highest mountains in this country and scream uot what the person did in the movie “Network” — ..we won’t take it anymore!”
As I am writing this, chertoff is on face the nation and he is dodging to key poinsts.LYing through his teeth!
Oh screw it! Finally, I am not a predictor of the future but unless we, the people finally stand up and take back what these thieves have taken from us, what this country is facing in the near future is beyond anyone’s ability to comprehend.
billjpa@aol.com
ps– listen to the spin — it is absolutely amazing!
screamed at Chertoff for the whole interview.
He was on him! And did you see the President of Jefferson Parish? Talk about heartbreaking and telling it like it is.
I hope this administration goes downm in the ball of flames it rightfully deserves over this.
Booman,
I agree with you 100%, except in the instance of Al Gore. Everyone else should go to hell if they can’t step up and speak out.
saying this for months, b/c this sort of disaster has been coming. We didn’t know what it would be, and now it is here.
WE DEMOCRATS HELPED MAKE THIS FAILURE HAPPEN.
Period.
Welfare “reform,” cutting educational aid, hollowing out the federal government by kissing wealthy corporate ass, bankruptcy “reform” …
It just goes on and on, and when Feingold or Dean or Conyers or Durbin or Boxer or the CBC tried at various times to STAND UP, it was THEIR OWN PARTY that attacked and repudiated them.
I have NO FAITH in the majority of them to see that standing for something, fighting for something is how you win in politics. I’m prepared to be suprised, but so far I’m not seeing many hopeful signs.
to have a whole slate of progressive candidates trained and funded by 2008. New blood is needed everywhere.
Unless the paradigm changes, it’s just more newbies learning the ropes on how to suck off the same teat that their predecessors do. It’s all just so corrupt. We need an ANTI-Gingrich Revolution of Dems who want to overturn the old system from the top down or else the country will sink even further. That is our only option but at the moment I see little to hope for on the horizon.
Look at NYC, we can’t get a decent crop of Dems to run for Mayor and may end up re-electing another Republican in a hugely Democratic town. And look who the tired Republicans are running against our own tired Hillary: Edward Cox and Jeanine Pirro, both no strangers to crooks, Cox’s father-in-law was Nixon and Jeanine’s hubby is a jail-bird. Just totally pathetic.
Either way, it’s nice to hear you sing this tune Booman, it’s music to my ears.
Progressive Patriot’s Fund – Suggest a Candidate for funding
Democracy for America – Training Acadamy
Wellstone Action – Training Programs
to have a whole slate of progressive candidates trained and funded by 2008. New blood is needed everywhere.
Indeed. We really do and by ‘we’ I mean everyone, even people who can afford to drive out of town in their SUV when a major disaster hits.
Because no one is talking about the fact that this happened. They left the poor and the elderly and the disabled to die. The local government did, the state government did, the churches did and the feds did. the feds went further and deliberately dragged their heels to make sure that more of ‘the underclass’* died.
The whole notion of a social contract is apparently dead. This has been a moral test and issue and everyone has failed it on a massive scale.
These weren’t theoretical human beings, these weren’t people without a cerebral cortex, these were the most vulnerable amongst us. The Bible says exactly nothing about fertilized eggs or gay marriage but it says a great deal about the very people who got left behind in New Orleans.
I’m tired of men and women talking to me about ‘pragmatism’ and bragging about their maturity on democratic forums. I’m tired of hearing how the ‘pro-life’ movement really cares about life. I think there are some folks who do but they’re a tiny minority. Where have all the Dems been making their reputations pandering to the religious right. Where, for that matter, have the churches been? This is a real moral issue and it’s a moral issue because unless we change we will not survive as a society.
*Robert Bork
The Bible says exactly nothing about fertilized eggs or gay marriage but it says a great deal about the very people who got left behind in New Orleans.
This should be on every billboard in the country.
WE DEMOCRATS HELPED MAKE THIS FAILURE HAPPEN.
You are right on the fucking money. The reason Democrat officialdom is silent is because they are accomplices in the rolling disaster that is the Bush Administration.
Every time it would have been the appropriate, decent, honorable thing to stand on principle against this plunderer of a president, the Democrats have looked at the polls and crawled on their bellies. Looking for Democrats willing to risk their careers to do the bare minimum and vote against GOP atrocities is like Lot looking for one good man in Sodom and Gomorrah. And generally, it is one or two at most: Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer, a handful of others from time to time.
Where are the Democrats now on any issue? What, if anything at all, are they willing to fight for? Not stolen elections. Not the PATRIOT Act. Not the Supreme Court. Not environmental protections. Not goddamn motherfucking anything.
We are kidding ourselves if we think anything is going to change in 2008 if we don’t get to the polls in unprecedented numbers and oust the current crop of do-nothing collaborationists in the primaries. If the DLC wing of the party survives the next few congressional primaries, we may as well hang it up and settle on an actual progressive third party.
Dream on BooMan, dream on.
the democrats need a fucking plan. I understand the no plan strategy on Social Security, I question the no plan strategy on Iraq, but I will be forever unforgiving if the democrats offer no plan on aid, poverty and preparedness.
They WILL be entirely part of the problem if they don’t stand up for the American people on this with vision and action.
I agree, Booman.
Here’s three thoughts:
1. Staying silent now, and then criticizing later is idiotic and bad strategy.
(ie. think Gephardt’s “miserable failure”…that was a good line, but…in the context of his votes and press ops, incredibly weak.)
2. The biggest real “risk” Dems have is not the GOP or the press but the “comfort zone” of a broad swath of Americans.
Folks need to hear criticism again and again. At first, a big part of the public resents our criticism. (this is what the Dems fear, and chicken out about.) But, over time, even the naysayers realize that we have a point, and say….”Ok, so what are we gonna DO about it, so I you can stop complaining and I can get back to football / macrame / QVC”
Only people who don’t really believe in their causes give up and stay silent. That is the message we send when we tiptoe. Which is a crime, because we are right.
And, of course, there are millions of middle Americans who will say…”It’s about time”…including some who will mutter it under their breath in GOP households.
3. Katrina is a clarion call for a renewed commitment to justice struggles.
This is not time for silence and political games. For tip toe ing. For complicity in neglecting the poor.
There needs to be an articulate movement of folks who know how to spell: justice and equality…and who clearly and forcefully take those words to the heart of our society.
The whole idea of framing aruguments is stupid.
Start cussing, start screaming, start crying like Mr. Brussard did on Tim Russert. Perfectly appropriate. He was said to have “broken down”. He didn’t break down-he showed his feeling.
Show feelings and it will have a much greater impact than all these carefully thought out words which are nothing more than bullshit anyway.
The Democratic Party does not exist. It’s a sham. Biden, Clinton and everybody except maybe this Feingold felllow are all horrific human beings without human feeling who have only ambition to guide them.
If anyone should committ suicide it should be Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Rumsfeld and you know the rest…not somebody who just lost everything and feels they have to jump off a bridge next to the convention center or the 2 New Orleans police officers that committed suicide this morning.
I think the main thing the public needs to be able to understand and acknowledge is that this Bush regime is neither reliable enough or competent enough to help and protect them in the face of tragedy.
The strongest remaining myth in Bush’s favor is that because of his superb so-called leadership skills, (hahaha!), he’s been able to protect us from attacks and tragedy. And this is the illusion, (the premise on which the “comfort zone” you mention is based), that needs to be punctured if we’re going to be able to get these ruthless bums out of office, regain control of the country and get competent people into positions of authority. The federal governments failure in responding to Katrina’s devastation explodes this myth to rational people, to those willing to acknowledge that they’d made a mistake to trust and rely on this Bush gang.
But just like so many of those parents who were so unwilling to believe that what their child ws telling them about being molested by the parish priest was true, penetrating through the armor of these people’s denial is going to require a conscious effort on the part of all of us, and especially on the part of our less than diligent MSM to help these people realize and accept the truth about the Bush gang.
Bush’s “leadership skills”
what a joke, what a crime, what a national tragedy
Thanks for writing this. I had been wondering, since I’ve been getting the majority of my info via CNN, where the Democrats were. I also questioned their silence. This simply is not acceptable.
Everyone – everyone – in government has been slow to respond to this tragedy. Why? I just don’t understand why the Dems would basically sit back. I want to see a press conference from the steps of the Capitol with all congressional Dems present to say they’re there and that they care damnit. They have also failed your country. The least they could do is to express some damn remorse. I am not impressed. Screw “strategy”. How about just being human??
There’s no direction they can go that doesn’t require a massive redirection for the party, and the U.S. economy won’t support that.
Expect a firm gee-they-should’ve-been-faster by the end of the month.
The Dems seem to see everything in terms of strategy… and that has hurt them, these last years.
Only someone like Bill Clinton, who can also appear compassionate, can get away with what they are doing. Our current Democratic leadership cannot.
The Dems need to be speaking out, and saying to hell with the consequences.
Chertoff’s repeating the meme that George has already spewed the past few days, “Somethings worked well, somethings did not”. Someone please, did I miss something in the 18 hours a day I have followed this fucking disaster? WHAT WENT WELL?
Every and I mean every f’ing Democrat needs to lead the charge just like the Pres. of the Parish and say EVERYONE AT THE TOP NEEDS TO BE FIRED>>>>NOW!!!! Starting with George,The Incompetant. Now Hillary, Now Kerry. Now REid, now Biden, now Durbin, NOW!
Yes! In many ways the failure of the prominent Democrats you named is even worse than the failure of the Repubs and the Bush regime in general. The party in power, after all, always abuses or overreaches it’s power, and it’s the job/duty/obligation of the opposition party to point this out and in doing so help keep them in check.
But the cowards running the party and doing the talking are simply putting their own ambition before the goodof the country by remaining silent, not only on this hurricane relief debacle but on virtually everything else of import.
Democracy cannot function when one party aggresses aginst the people, (the Repubs),and the other party abdicates it’s responsibility to serve the best interests of the people by opposing the transgressions of those in power.
We need to turn the whole lot of them out on the street.
They are putting their ambition before their humanity. In the end it will destroy them.
The response has to be specific and heartfelt. Rather than ranting, the Dems need to be asking the hard questions over and over and over again. They need to be calling the Bushies on every lie, every time. They need to be shining a bright light on every hypocrisy, every evasion, every spin that tries to change the subject.
The first test will come on Tuesday, when the Republican majority tries to call to a vote the permanent tax holiday for the litter of the underserving super-rich, even as people suffer and die on the United States Gulf Coast for lack of government competence and government resources. The bitter irony could not be greater. A screenwriter who created a sequence like this would be rightly dismissed as way too florid and partisan. And yet that’s what’s happening in the real GOPworld.
Dems on Tuesday need to express disbelief and shock at such a heartless, cynical ploy — a sneak play to protect the superrich from paying their fair share while all eyes are turned on the suffering of the dismissed poor and ordinary. They need to insist, endlessly, every chance they get, that this Fristian outrage reveals the deepest heart of Bush and the Republican Party. They have to make clear that every future vote for any Republican, any future support for the Bush cabal, is a vote for exactly these priorities: scramble to give more to the rich while ignoring the poor, the ordinary, and the desperate.
The Dems will always fail in the long run because they’ll never question the basic American myths and faith-based bullshit that serve the GOP so well. But now they have the chance to shine a laser light of truth on concrete specific realities. They have a chance to demand regime change based not on partisanship, not on ideology, but on simple common sense and on the values that Americans have believed, rightly or wrongly, define us.
Tuesday will mark the beginning of the end of one of America’s ruling political parties, and a difficult new beginning for the other. We, the people, must spare no effort to make sure that it is the Republican Party and the Bush regime that are flicked out of power by history’s moving finger.
We the people have one and only one obligation right now. We the people need to flood our representatives(?)switchboards and DEMAND yes demand to hear their voices. I let Boxer’s office have it here in San Diego on Thur/Fri and believe you me I did not hold back. Enough of this politically correct talking points. Enough of playing it safe. I am sick and tired and I am not going to take it anymore. NO ONE will do it for us. We MUST do it ourselves. Enough of waiting for the calvary. WE must be the calvary. There is no question in my mind that “they” will not do it for us. It is time for a Tea Party folks. Let the revolution begin. with US!
THey could be working very hard gathering evidence, before this Administration tries to conceal it, for the massive investigations that are forthcoming.