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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Amen to everything you say about how this makes the Democrats look weak.
I wanted to say the flip side of the coin also disgusts me: future historians will be left with an image of Bush as a decisive leader, a winning politician who masterfully bludgeons an opposing MAJORITY into doing his will. The boorish, sulking, unthoughtful, incurious tool we currently have in the White House will be momentarily obscured by the aura of this "victory," which was really about the collapse of the other side.
Bush gets to look strong simply by showing up; which, alas, people who claim to be our real leaders didn't even do.
Et tu, Obama, indeed.
Congress could get this over a lot faster by just passing a single bill. History suggests that it only has to be one page, and that an appropriate name would be "The Enabling Act".
By working to elect Democrats everywhere and to elect as many as possible instead of just calculating to win enough to get you a majority through areas you think are "winnable" you eventually get to a point where you have a supermajority and more. Once you have enough Democrats that you don't have to worry about your narrow advantage you can start to work on making the party more liberal again by engaging in serious primary battles without worrying about giving Congress back to the Republicans.
It will be much easier to get rid of the appeasers once these conditions are true.
That headline says it all: they "bowed" to the President's "pressure".
Have they no pride? Have they no spine? Have they no awareness of how they are collectively perceived?
Or are they crazed enough to think they can play "Rope a Dope" with this President?
I shudder to think what is to come next.
Telecoms give a lot of cash to the Democratic party. They are to the Democrats what the oil companies are to Republicans. No mystery on why this happened. Follow the cash.
I really just want to hurl...
Can I get another amen?
The strategy is, of course, to take away the accusation that Democrats are "weak" on terrorism by being able to point to the fact that they supported every security initiative that President Bush put forward.
Of course, the Conservative media, led by FoxNews, will STILL declare that Democrats are soft on terrorism. And, given the fact that our mainstream media takes 100% of their talking points from FoxNews, it will work.
It would serve the Democratic Party right if America wound up with a President McCain and a RepublicanCongress in 2009. Just America the country would be irrepairably damaged.
Thanks for keeping up the good fight and bringing light to issues that do not get all the attention they deserve form the "serious" pundits.
I begin to sympathize with the right-wing's fear that a president from the Democratic party will appease Iran and other international entities with which the U.S. has conflict. Why wouldn't they think that? Their whole experience of Democrats, now including Obama, is that they roll over at the drop of the hat. Why would they expect Obama or any Democrat to hang tough in a tense international showdown?
We have two cats in our house. As soon as we come near them, they flop to the floor and roll over onto their backs. We've taken to calling them Pelosi and Reid.
It's better in the original German:
Kraft dürch Kriechen!
I can see coming out of this mess is we know who needs to be defeated in the next election. We now have a list of the Senators who have enough intelligence to be qualified for the job. And the others we can work to vote them out of their job.
In today's NYT the laziest women in the world tells us that the FISA bill is just the type of compromise that is necessary to avoid the charge or being "partisan" and thus the way to win an election.
Such is the thinking of the big intellectual liberal giants at the Times.
WHS
I really have to wonder if those voting for this bill are whores to the money the Telcoms have thrown at this issue, if they really don't care about the Constitution and the rights it once bestowed on its citizens of if the spying is really working out for this criminal ad-miss-administration and Bush has been given damaging dossiers on all these clowns that allow him to continually blackmail them into submission. I really hope it's the last - can that many really not care about those they are sent to represent in that cesspool that is what our government now is?
The vote yesterday was about much more than FISA, as important as that statute is. It provided us with a window into Obama's soul, into the stuff he is made of.
Obama has said that he would have voted against the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) if he had been in the Senate at that time. Given his cowardly performance in the FISA vote, does anyone really believe that anymore? Obama half-heartedly sought cover under amendments that were destined to fail, and then he voted to eviscerate our civil liberties. That is the essence of triangulation. The FISA vote was a much easier and clearer vote than the AUMF. In 2002, Bush's approval was in the 80's%, and we did not then know about his wide-ranging criminality and law-breaking. The FISA vote was a no-brainer for a Constitutional lawyer, and Obama still did not have the back-bone to oppose this unconstitutional Bill that has no support among his real constituents and is really only designed to provide a cover up for Bush's impeachable offenses..Obama would have done the same thing in the 2002 AUMF vote. He would have triangulated, and then voted with the herd.
Obama not only cowers: it is truly embarassing to see how little it takes to make him cower, and how easy it is for him to abandon clear principles. .
This was Obama's first test as the Candidate. We now know all that we need to know about Obama. He does not have the the courage to stand up for fundamental principles. That is his essence and it will never change. That is Obama.
I will not contribute to his campaign. I will contribute to people who really DO have the back bone to stand up for our Constitution and fight: groups like the ACLU, Electronic Freedom Frontier and progressive candidates at www.ActBlue.com.
I urge you to invest your Obama dollars there, too.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
