You’re not going to get a whole lot of “go team” from me this week, and I suspect that a lot of my friends here are on the same page. I want to specifically focus this rant on our elected officials and the absolute act of betrayal that they committed today. To start, there’s Keith Olbermann’s (as-always) on-target Special Comment about the war spending bill that the Democrats allowed to pass:
That says it all, really. I can’t find much solace in the fact that Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Hillary Clinton voted against this bill. It doesn’t speak much of their leadership that the bill passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority. And this is what I’ve been saying all along: the brand of bipartisanship that exists in Washington is a load of horseshit. It generally consists of the Democrats capitulating to the will of the Republicans, and the Republicans never budging on a single issue.
Today, by overwhelming majorities, both houses of Congress gave President Bush everything he wanted, a blank check to conduct the war in Iraq. This is just sickening. The ultimate act of political cowardice by individuals who have no business being a majority party. You wonder why people don’t think Democrats stand for anything? This is why! This was the Democratic majority “showing the way,” if by “showing the way,” you mean being led around by the nose by a warmongering failure of a President.
If they are this deaf to the will of the American people, the Democrats deserve to lose in 2008.
We make this an act of capitulation by drawing such lines in the sand and not recognizing that there is a process and a strategy at work that is more important than pandering to the Democratic Party’s anti-war activists. I can’t believe how much utter and complete crap is being thrown in the Democratic Congress’s direction in complete obliviousness to the fact that THIS POST is playing directly in the Republicans’ hands.
We have had a Democratic Congress for just 5 months. They’re asking for a few more months to build pressure on Republican Congressmen to create a veto-proof majority over the summer that will force a true CHANGE OF COURSE in Iraq…..and you are completely undermining those efforts by falling into the traditional liberal trap of assuming the worst of our own leaders. We should be taking the challenge and amping up the pressure on THEM…..but, no, we’re Democrats – we’d rather attack ourselves.
Olbermann is wrong about this vote. This war will not be ended with a flip of a switch. It’s taken 5 years to get us into this mess, and I’m appalled that after 12 years in the political wilderness, we don’t seem to have learned a damn thing.
No, Kyle. No. I’m sorry, but no. This was a bullshit bill. It was absolute bullshit. It did absolutely nothing to stop the war. It gave Bush everything he wanted. I don’t need to assume the worst of my leaders when they go ahead and prove that they’re just that weak.
This was not a win. Calling it a win insults our intelligence.
They deserve every bit of this, and more, Kyle. They fucked us over. They stabbed us in the back.
I didn’t harbor any illusions that the Democratic Congress could actually end the war – the numbers aren’t there. But evidently funding the war was more important than anything. That’s wrong. They blew it. And it will not be forgotten.
They just weakened their negotiating position to absolutely nothing. Already, a defense spending bill is in the works that will fund the war for the entire 2008 fiscal year. Face it. It’s over.
There was not a single thing that was anti-war about this bill. Anyone who voted for it should be ashamed of themselves.
Kyle, I’m sorry to say that you’ve drank the DNC’s kool-aid. The Democrats CAN end the war; of course, that would have required them to actually grow a pair. They were elected for the sole purpose of ending the war. Bush has, or rather had, no bargaining power; the public is overwhelmingly against him, and had the Democrats stuck to their guns, it would only be a matter of time before Republicans in Congress would have had to either abandon the administration or face defeat in what would likely have been the biggest landslide in American history in 2008. But Olbermann is spot-on, the Dems traded their moral position for magic beans; for nothing, to not be criticized by a discredited administration over the recess. If we lose in ‘08 we completely deserve it after this disgrace. I don’t know what else to say, other than that, in addition to the Democratic party being broken, it’s clear to me that the American Republic no longer functions. How could it when the opposition party caves like this?