Crossposted from Left Toon Lane & My Left Wing
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Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment last night pretty much summed up my feelings on the Democrats idiotic move to continue to fund the war.
We worked our fingers to the bone to get Dems into Congress for one MAJOR thing – to bring our troops home. Immigration, the national debt, the spotted owl all took a back seat to this most pressing issue.
The Dems held all the cards, the President they are facing is the WORST IN HISTORY and wildly unpopular. Plus the Dems had the support of the people – a huge swath of We The People in fact.
So what do they do? Cave.
The capitulated.
They threw the troops under the bus. God knows, the Dems in Congress don’t want to be made to feel uncomfortable.
That was a great Special Comment by Keith. Instead of the usual adrenaline rush, though, I found myself utterly despondent. I haven’t trusted the Democrats in quite a while, but that doesn’t take away the pain in knowing that George will be able to continue the blood-letting unabated.
Hard-hitting post today, stormbear, thanks for sharing it with us.
what’s your position on the immigration bill?
I hate it enough to prevent me from writing about it.
That came out badly.
The “compromise” sucked a royal egg, imo, and now it appears to be getting worse with each new amendment being floated. The level of fear in the streets and neighborhoods has sucked out all my energy to coherently write about it.
Hi Manny…as usual The Daily Show did a nice review of some of the highlights-or lowlights of the immigration bill. As usual it sounds like just one more clusterfuck bill that helps no one except business.
Amen.
BTW, Stormbear, I really like this series you’ve been doing this week — giving voices to those who can no longer speak. Graphically simple, stark and poignant, with emphasis on the message… wish we could put a full page of these strips in every major US newspaper for the Memorial Day holiday. So appropriate…let us never forget those who have been sacrificed for Bush’s lies.
No one else can fill their boots. Not ever.
Or the shoes, sandals or sneakers of the unnumbered Iraqi casualties either….
Thanks for what you do!
Thanks JanetT!
These are my Memorial Day Tribute strips.
I almost didn’t publish them. When I started to draw them speaking it really pushed ME out of my safe zone and my safe zone is a pretty big plot of land if you read my stuff regularly.
But there was something HORRID about the boot memorials speaking that just killed me (and still does) and I am unsure what it is. The cynicism? The anger? The guilt on my part – did I do everything I could to stop the war? Is this making up for it.
Ok, now I am just babbling, thanks for the compliment.
I’m fucking depressed. This is a big WTF moment for Pelosi and Reid. I just wonder if they stuck their respective heads up their own ass, or if they stuck their heads up one another’s. Cuz these two are in the fucking dark.
Why in the hell couldn’t they bring themselves to pronounce with ever breath that the Democratic Congress is fully funding the troops, it’s the stubborn, childish, idiotic Liar-in-Chief who is willing to not fund the troops? I don’t know of one rational human being who believes anything the current occupier of the White House says, and now I don’t think I’ll be able to track down one human being who doesn’t think that Reid and Pelosi are pussies. I didn’t know one could blink with one’s head up one’s ass. But these two wusses just did.
I always expected the dems to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory but I was really really hoping against hope that they wouldn’t cave. So while I’m not disappointed I am hideously angry thinking about how many more lives will be lost and bodies and minds crippled beyond repair…for nothing thanks to the cowards in Congress. And the war profiteering goes on.
..and I’m no lawyer..
but wouldn’t stopping funding go against, or be trumped by the war powers act’s 90 day provision?
End of the war: Democrats “proved that they are as weak, as unprincipled, and as ineffective as Republicans and the media have claimed they are. They reinforced myriad negative talking points, and gave voters a new reason to distrust them.” I and most posters found Rep. Slaughter’s diary at dKos trying to justify the Dems’ capitulation nauseating.
This move on the part of the Dem leadership shows that this is still the same party that didn’t stop Bush from starting this war in the first place and allowed Samuel Alito to be confirmed to the SCOTUS. The main function of the Democratic Party is still to maintain the illusion that we have a real two party system, with a functioning opposition party. They can’t even oppose the President when they are in the majority.
This had been their plan from the start: to put on a show that they are working to stop the war, but then cave when push comes to shove. The idea was that they make the Repugs “own” the war, thus getting the Repugs decimated in the 2008 elections.
But this could backfire. As Kos noted, anything the Dems did (short of impeachment, which he did not mention), would not have made Bush end the war, since he would simply break laws and/or create a constitutional crisis to evade the will of Congress. But the Dems would have shown that they take their obligation to the American people to act in their interest seriously. Now this is the Dems’ war as much as the Rethugs’.
I hope that Edwards comes out strongly against this, since he said that Congress should just send the same bill to Bush over and over. I think this could give him an opening to pull ahead of Clinton and Obama. (Of course, if he does, the corporate media will barely give this any coverage.)
So it’s not all about winning. They better not whine; they got wht they wished for
I said he wasn’t a true progressive at the time of his response to the SOTU and got dipped in a vat of acid for it.
I based my statement at that time partly on Webb’s “no” vote against Senator Feingold’s bill on 16 May 2007. Feingold’s bill would have provided for the redeployment of troops out of Iraq by October 1, completing withdrawal and cutting funds for the war by March 21, 2008.
In other words, Webb voted against cutting off funds with a timetable. In doing so, he parroted Bush’s nonsensical rhetoric about “abandoning” the troops in the field.
Has Senator Webb redeemed himself by voting “no” on this compromise bill that strips out the much-needed timetable for withdrawal?
Senators Clinton, Obama, Biden, and Dodd all voted for Feingold’s bill on 16 May 2007 (actually on amendment), while the “Kos progressives” Senators Tester of Montana and Webb of Virginia voted NO.
This time around, 24 May 2007, Clinton, Obama, and Dodd voted NO on this bill (which was the correct thing to do, given that it was a Vichy compromise), Biden voted YES, and the great “Kos progressives” Webb and Tester voted…
Of course they voted “YES”. Both of them. What did you expect?
But the Webb worshippers will still tell you that, overall, he’s a PROGRESSIVE and you can’t judge him by this one little vote.
Pure and utter bullshit. If there’s one guy who had political cover for a “no” vote on this bullshit bill, it was Webb, former Marine, former Republican, former Reagan Defense Secretary.
I don’t want to hear his reasons. If Webb’s this walking-tall, straight-talking John Wayne hero, let him prove it.
His May 16th and May 24th votes show that the great hero has feet of clay.
Maybe Webb is a “walking-tall, straight-talking John Wayne hero”.
John Wayne didn’t have the courage to use his own name.
John Wayne supported the Hollywood Blacklist during the red scare.
John Wayne got his movie rolls because his competition was blacklisted.
John Wayne movies turn my stomach.
The time to mount primary election challenges to incumbents is when:
I think we’re there.