Washblog

Thanks for posting this. I was wondering how our elected representatives were doing. Making me proud, yet again, I see.

Post election theft 2000, I wrote to both Murray and Cantwell many times, simply asking where my opposition party is.

And today I'm still asking.

Actually, scratch that. We're not the opposition any more. We, the citizens of the United States of America, have spoken and we want the troops home. We are the majority.

Interestingly, both Clinton and Obama voted against. Principled position, right? Of course, their fellow Democrats ensured this vote wouldn't come back and bite them in the ass.

by zappini on Fri May 25, 2007 at 06:37:19 AM PST

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"Compromise on Iraq so we can do other things" is not a rational strategy when Iraq is the issue that got you into the majority. It is an insane view of the world based on insularity and the repeated stress of being incompetent.

The advantage the Dems had was this:

"Mr. President, are we to understand that you have no plan which would allow the United States to make significant troop withdrawals by 2008?"

And you ask that question again and again and again and again until he comes up with an answer other than "no". And you dial up the rhetoric against the President - not on silly things or in silly ways - repeatedly suggesting that he is continuing to fight this war so he does not have to admit that it has failed. Because that's the truth and everyone knows it.

The idea that if the Dems do not agree to funding without a plan FROM THE WHITE HOUSE to make significant troop withdrawals that they will then "own the war" is ludicrous. Of course Hannity and Colmes are going to say it. They are saying it now. It's a stupid argument that sounds stupid when simply ask "what is the President's plan?".

The Bush administration is fighting the war for political reasons, against the interests of national security, and the leading candidates for President are eager to expand the war to Iran - for political reasons and against the interests of national security.

Clearly knowledge that this capitulation was coming has emboldened the Republicans on all fronts. They understand that if the Dems can't challenge them on Iran, they can't challenge them on anything.

Congressman Inslee has a strategy. Maria Cantwell is a frightened, self-centered, little girl. Ditto the rest of the Dem leadership.

by dlaw on Fri May 25, 2007 at 09:10:40 AM PST

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I was very confused by Senator Murray's vote as well. But, I remembered an undercurrent in the national politics of Washington: Representatives and Senators from Washington rarely vote against military spending. There are 18 military installations in Washington with over 30,000 active duty members. That's almost 1.5 times as many military installations and 10,000 more active duty members than New York state. I think there is a belief, among the political insiders, that if someone votes against even one military spending bill vast swaths of the Washington electorate will rise up and demand their head on a pike.

I heard Senator Murray speak April 2nd in Pullman, and I could tell she was very much against the Occupation of Iraq. I think she could have voted against this bill and not get slimed with the "doesn't support the troops" garbage. She helped to keep the Veterans Administration in Walla Walla for crying out loud. None of the sorry excuse for Representatives that are our Republican delegation can claim as much (no matter how hard they try). And by demanding an end to this disastrous policy in Iraq that is breaking our military any Senator or Representative can show that they have the long term interests of the military at heart.

My last comment is that Senator Murray is in the leadership of the Senate now, she is the number 4 Democrat. This means that she is in close contact with the other Democratic leadership. I would guess that her contact with them had some effect, but it's hard to say.

by Nathan Horter on Fri May 25, 2007 at 09:22:25 AM PST

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This wasn't about fear, or lacking a spine or any other number of excuses. The Democratic sellouts KNEW they were turning their back on their own electorate when they made their votes.

That's why Dems tried to go the Dick Cheney Energy Task Force route and keep the votes hidden.  Fortunately for Americans, the days of media monopoly are over - for now - and the internet exposed their duplicity.  You see, if they didn't KNOW they were selling us out, they wouldn't have wanted to hide it.

We're all just supposed to be totally psyched that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) says she is unhappy that this is all happening, even though Pelosi is simultaneously using her power to schedule this vote, and set it up in a way so as to hide it from the public. She would have us believe that September will be "really the moment of truth for this war," as Congressional Quarterly quotes her saying - as if it's no big deal that more troops will die because she and her colleagues are willing to drag their feet from the comfortable guarded confines of the U.S. Capitol. We're all just supposed to wildly applaud when Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) goes on national television to say that the bill they are pushing is "the beginning of the end of the president's policy in Iraq" - we're not supposed to know that he and his colleagues stripped out the timelines for withdrawal and even stripped out waivable troop readiness standards.

Now the spin is, "Well, the candidates (always refering here to Obama and Clinton, the CORPORATE candidates) voted Nay."

Yes, they did, because again, everyone KNEW what this vote meant.  Everyone KNEW the vast majority of the public is against continuing this occupation/plunder of Iraq.  Every candidate KNEW if they voted YEA on this that it would cost them plenty.  So they waited until the vote was lost and they had cover and then they went ahead and voted Nay.  Because they KNEW.

They weren't timid.  They weren't jellyfish.  They weren't playing political gamesmanship.  

They KNEW.

This happened because our government is not OUR government.  It's the global corporate oligarchy's government.  My question is, when did Patty Murray sell out and for how much?  Maria Cantsellusoutfastenough is NO surprise, but Patty?  Trade in those tennis shoes for something better?  Been shopping with Condi lately?

by Pen on Fri May 25, 2007 at 01:02:25 PM PST

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Real disappointment.

If he had had some guts it would have been an enormous help.

by dlaw on Fri May 25, 2007 at 02:05:52 PM PST

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Impeachment, OR

something STRONG against these bastards

they'd go to any negotiation ...

ha ha ha ha ha ha - i corrected my spelling of 'negotiation' 4 times!

... ha ha ha. nevermind. 'negotiation' for our DC Dem sell out piece of crap "leaders" =

80 to 14 for halliburton and bechtel to steal through september = SUPPORTING THE TROOPS ?!

WTF!

negotiation ... yeah, right.

good thing people break their butts, spend their time, spend their money

to elect a sell out cuz

IF we don't have a sell out,
we'll have a fascist!

yeah, I much prefer to be betrayed by people I hire to protect me from fascists, rather than be lied to by fascists who are ... fascists!

Work Down Ticket - To hell with the Federal Dems.

Even the ones 'on our side' have given away 9/10's of the loaf, so that by the time we go to the negotiation

ha ha ha

table, we're 'negotiating' for 1/2 of 1/10

and we still walk away less than 1/2 of the tenth.

ugh.

http://www.liemail.com/BambooGrassroots.html

by rmdSeaBos on Sat May 26, 2007 at 08:12:31 AM PST

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(please correct me if I'm wrong), the Iraq appropriations bill will come up again in 4 months. If so, that will be the real showdown.

The Bush administration is already preparing for that showdown by saying that media-savvy insurgents will increase the level of violence to influence the September appropriations vote. The administration knows that the terms of the debate will have shifted slightly to a question of whether the surge has worked.

Republicans will argue that the surge has worked(they'll invent evidence if they can't find it) and should be given more time. Democrats will, once again, feel themselves on the defensive.

At our recent 36th legislative debrief, Alice Woldt asked Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson an interesting question. She suggested that state Democrats lacked legislative vision and had adopted instead an incremental approach. Isn't this approach setting the Party up for failure?

Rep. Dickerson argued that state Democrats had, in fact, been "bold" in their approach. This is certainly arguable, and I would have loved to have heard Rep. Sommers' answer (she was in Japan instead of condescending to meet with her constituents), but I wonder if the same charge could be made against Congressional Democrats.

As a general rule, people who take an incremental approach do not feel a sense of urgency. If our representatives don't feel a sense of urgency when we feel it, we naturally wonder what's the matter with them. Something very strange seems to happen to people when they go to DC, and I don't understand what it is. It's like DC is some sort of vortex where people suffer mass delusions.

For example, Iraq has been lacking a central government outside the Green Zone for a very long time. The government is essentially irrelevant in most of the country. Yet, the DC crowd and their media megaphones speak as if the government actually existed. It's like a giant game of "let's pretend."

In a situation like this one, we have to be the ones to instill a sense of urgency in our representatives. If the next vote is in four months, we have four months to prepare. Now would be a good time to start figuring out how to apply new pressure on our senators. That means we have to put emotion aside, and think in calculating and strategic ways.

by DWE on Sat May 26, 2007 at 09:10:01 AM PST

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and prejudice and go strictly on who is saying what, the best presidential candidates I've seen are Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

Of those two, I'm most impressed with Paul.

The idea that that they'll never make it because of money and big donor support is better than any bull shit detector I can think of to convince us that all the biggie candidates of both parties are greater or lesser versions of both-sides-of-the-issue Romney.

Vote for any of them and you won't get the decider, you'll get the decider's PR quacks. And that kind of duck work is really why we're betrayed by the congressionals of both parties.

If that idea is the truth, then the lack of clarity, directness and consistent conviction disqualifies all the other candidates.

The Demo cave-in is further proof that as a party their wet finger is not in the wind sensing the strength of voting America's opinion. No their fingers are somewhere else in a more timidly defined, safer and albeit darker place.

Arthur
You sure you ain't staking too much on yer theories? Not enough common sense?

by Arthur Ruger on Sat May 26, 2007 at 11:19:21 AM PST

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Boner Boehner.

BTW, if you watched Maher last night, did you hear Affleck's one-liner that defined GOP bawler Boehner's crocodile tears?

Arthur
You sure you ain't staking too much on yer theories? Not enough common sense?

by Arthur Ruger on Sat May 26, 2007 at 11:21:16 AM PST

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   We achieved an unassailable majority?

Dave Gibney Pullman

by gibney on Sun May 27, 2007 at 07:22:34 PM PST

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leave it all, to proud RonK.

political calculus.. I must not be liberal anymore

no replies?

trepidations

let's play...

Not complex...

slings and arrows

by m3047 on Mon May 28, 2007 at 01:56:23 AM PST

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