Letters to the Editor
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vaporland.
I think you may be correct. It's good and best to value, and appreciate the natural morning dew while the moist mist lays upon the red, white, and blue...Lobelia, red rose, white lily, and the pink Spring crab apple blossom petal's...too, etc., because 'um are sure lovely transient flowers. Yes.
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To GOP Talking Points Sh**ter
Hey, Sh**ter? Why would we need to use your Karl Rove talking points to show our contempt for Reid and either pressure him out of his leadership position or pressure him to come clean, when we have real world reasons like Glenn has posted for this thread to do so? Why in the name of all that is life's blood would we take the advice of despicable you or despicable Karl Rove to conduct ourselves? Are you really still not aware of how despised you and your dishonest cut-throat tactics are in the world of people with honest convictions?
The problem with Reid follows. We don't need your fake garbage to make our case.
Reid is brazenly ignoring the demands of 14 Senators -- including all of the Democratic presidential candidates -- to have the Judiciary Committee bill be the base bill.
Worse still, Reid is completely disregarding the "hold" placed by Chris Dodd on any amnesty bill -- simply refusing to honor it, even as he respectfully honors literally scores of "holds" from GOP Senators such as Tom Coburn.--GG
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Dems
GG:
... Whenever complaints are voiced about Congressional Democrats, invariably there arises in comments and elsewhere protests that complaints should only focus on Republicans, that most everything is their fault, and that Democrats are doing the very best they can but are simply helpless due to GOP tactics and the constraints of their own caucus. I rarely answer such protests because I know that Democrats will soon provide an answer with their actions far more compelling than any I could construct with words.
Yes. That is a wonderful point, and a well made point.
The Democrats as a party will disappoint every time; just a the Republicans do. It amazes me how many die-hard Dems think that a damn "D" behind the name of a politician means anything.
It has been observed that power corrupts; and the American empire is very powerful. The math is easy to do. Will we never be rid of these power worshipers on the right and on the left?
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Numbers Please
Kindly send senator Reid a message. Phone: 202-224-3542 / Fax: 202-224-7327. I know its not much but its what we can do.
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Vapor
DC has 16 "intelligence" agencies. Who knows what they are doing? Their budgets are black and "oversight" on them a joke. We know that they engage in all manner of black ops abroad- from assassinations, to torture, to economic sabotage, to election fixing, to eavesdropping and wire tapping of foreign diplomats (el Baradei of the IAEA being the most recent), to the creation of false "intelligence" to set up other countries and justify their acts of aggression . . . these are the habits of empire- they come with the territory. And to carry out these acts - certain types of men are needed. Amoral men. Evil men. Those are the types attracted to these sorts of acts. Not good people. Not virtuous people. Bad people who have bad habits. And these "bad habits" - the evil habits of empire eventually come home to roost. When these men fly back from Craplapistan after having just toppled a government or complete a transaction with murdering fanatics who only the week before were "enemies"- there is no magic cleansing agent at the border that makes them nice people again- that will keep the habits they acquired and learned in the course of running the empire from being used here.
The habits of empire ALWAYS come home to roost. It is naive to think that our Congressmen and Senators and Beltway players are not under survelliance and engaging in intra intelligence agency wars. DC politics are not remotely transparent. They are Byzantine. We have to read our press like Kremlinologists used to read Pravda- for hidden meanings and signs and hints as to what is really going on- because the actual text of the articles were not reality.
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Jason Wolfe on Reid's constituency
Who are these Bush Enablers working for? I don't get it.
It's puzzling, isn't it? Take Harry Reid, for example. Embarrassing the GOP as minority leader, putting his foot down over Olsen, and denying Bush recess appointments are all real moves that pretty much guarantee lasting enmity from the Bush regime. Right-wingers are foaming at the mouth over anti-Reid talking points coming out of the White House. There's some serious hate going on there. And yet at the same time Reid's own constituents are, overall, unhappy with him — and the recent actions against Dodd that Glenn Greenwald documents show that he's an astonishingly poor team player.
He's a career politician with no evident desire to cash in on his influence through a move to the private sector. He doesn't appear to be enriched personally by any of this. (At least not more than most Senators with 20-whatever years under their belts.) So what's the deal? Is he making anyone happy?
Glenn Greenwald is sniffing around the right hydrant, I think, when he writes:
Until Congressional Democrats know that there are consequences from siding with the administration and attacking their actual suppoters, they will continue to do that.
Let's go back to Reid again. Interestingly, Republicans in Nevada are as close to unanimous as it gets in their contempt for Reid — a senator who could not have returned to Congress with the highest margin of his career without substantial support from the red side of the state. So in under a year he's managed to piss them off something fierce. Meanwhile Nevada Democrats appear to continue to support him by a substantial majority. So he is making someone happy after all.
I don't know much about the vagaries of Nevada political demographics but by the numbers it would appear that Reid's unpopularity at home is, counter to the overall trend documented extensively in "Unclaimed Territory," due mostly to Republican outrage and is mitigated by strong approval from Democrats.
So there's a lot of evidence that what Reid is doing is what his core constituents — Nevada Democrats — want him to. If that's true, and his situation applies more generally, it suggests the inconvenient possibility that it's not that corrupt party elites are out of touch with their rank and file, but rather that the rank and file aren't ready to embrace progressive views.
Not nearly as dramatic, unfortunately, nor as easy to shake one's fist at in impotent rage — these are regular people who share a desire to end the war, restore American stature, end corruption and so on, but need more persuasion before they're "on board" all the way.