Going up on Dkos soon.
Nancy Pelosi admits no legislation passed in the House will end the occupation because the Republican minority in the Senate will block it. Bi-partisanship won’t work.
Nancy Pelosi admits re-deployment is the only answer, but has stopped trying to achieve it. She has stopped trying to send bills to the Presidents desk.
Nancy Pelosi admits she can defund the occupation. But she won’t.
Nancy Pelosi has given up on ending the Iraq War.
h/t Armando.
BLITZER: But you could in the House of Representatives use your power of the purse, the money, to stop funding the war if you really wanted to.
PELOSI: I wish the speaker had all the power you just describe. I certainly could do that. That doesn’t bar the minority from bringing up a funding resolution. They have their parliamentary prerogative as well.
Um….what’s so bad about letting the Republican MINORITY propose a funding bill? And then voting it down with your MAJORITY in the House?
Her lofty goals now? Holding Bush accountable and explaining that it is not her fault.
BLITZER: So, are you telling your angry base out there in the Democratic Party that wants to see this war over with, wants to see the U.S. troops home, that you, as speaker, there’s nothing you can do, you have to just throw your hands up and say…
PELOSI: No. I didn’t say that at all.
BLITZER: … given the legislative problems in the Senate and the president’s stubborn refusal to back down, that there’s nothing that you can do?
PELOSI: How could you have ever gotten that impression?
BLITZER: All right, well, tell us…
PELOSI: What I have said, for those who pay attention, is that we will hold this administration accountable time and time again for the conduct of this war in Iraq.
She does NOT say that the House Democrats under her Speakership will continue to try to end the war. She says that they will hold Bush ‘accountable.’
How will they hold him accountable? Not through Impeachment.
Impeachment is off the table, this is Bush’s War, Cheneys War, the Republican War
She says there is a choice….
So we’re talking about a greatly diminished force there and a redeployment that’s safe and responsible within the next year. The president is talking about 10 years and then after that, a Korea-like presence in perpetuity. That’s the choice.
Speaker Pelosi, by not attempting defunding you have just MADE that choice for all of America. YOU have taken OUR choice away, not because you have been forced too, but because you have CHOSEN to give up without doing all you can with the power at your disposal.
The choice is this Speaker Pelosi: You can do EVERYTHING you can to end this war and TRULY hold Bush accountable….or you can throw in the towel. You can tell Bush and America that YOU will not continue the war….by not funding it.
You can do EVERYTHING you can to hold Bush accountable for lying us into war…..by Impeaching him and Cheney.
Or you can throw in the towel.
Apparently you have made your choice.
Our only choice now is to try to shame you into doing your job.
Watch the video, read the transcript, check andgarden’s diary on Rahm.
The Dems have given up.
Opposing Bush is now off the table.
Can we Yell Loud enough to put it back on? Or should we just accept years and years of more war?
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And no end in sight to the Collaboration Congress.
New name for it: use it…The Collaboration Congress…that is what it is. That is ALL it is. And they want us to elect more of these clowns?
Shit, never thought I’d use those words as a spur for good over evil. Leaders don’t make excuses, they have an agenda and stick to it. To all out there still wasting time criticizing moveon, Pelosi is the enemy–work to get her kicked out of the Speaker’s position. Force the Dem wannabes to come out against her. Use the power of your purse. At least threaten a third party.
Coming soon: My new “Yellow Shirt” donkey logo for cowards* like Pelosi and the rest of the Do-Nothing Dem Congress.
* because clearly, they’re afraid to do what we’ve asked them to do…
“Who “owns” the Iraq War?” subtitle?
How could this goddamn war be anything but the Bush administration’s?
grrrrr…
is right.
Good post.
Four Ways to Stop the War
Five Ways to Stop the War
and for the rest of us
i call bullshit! or shenanigans! whatever i need to call to get the congress to stfu about why they CANT end the war and just end the war…
they know they SHOULD, they know they CAN…we need to convince them that they MUST…
/rant
Good move.
What a fucking joke. I have watched hours and hours of these accountability sessions with Waxman and Conyers and Leahy as the perpe-traitors (intentional typo) lie and lie and lie and don’t show up for subpoenas and lie and lie and lie and get away with spending billions in blood money and destroying the system of justice in this country.
These accountability sessions are akin to “Est” sessions from the 70’s where participants pound on pillows, get full bladders and some asshole charlitain in chief gets insanely rich on the stupidity of others.
I’m not willing to be duped by this bullshit spewing from Pelosi, Reid, Rahm and the rest of the capitulators.
I met with my congresswoman this weekend and when I asked who and how we could pressure Congress to end the war, she said, “email the republican representatives and senators”. I told her she must be joking. McCain, Kyl, Renzi, Flake? “Hahahhaha” I said to her. I said, “No, which Democrats?”, and her eyes got big and she turned away from me to have a nice photo op with a more appreciative elderly man who thought she was a cutey. FUCK!
People who have been active grassroots footsoldiers in the party in my city are leaving in droves in protest. What a huge fucking waste, what incredible shortsightedness, what a huge sickening tragedy, this travesty of pretend democracy.
Refraining from the joke calling Pelosi a pussy and need to grow a pair of balls.
occupation…if there really was a god and he/she wanted the war to end…I mean, she’s only two heartbeats away from the Oval Office, for fuck’s sake…
Can you hear me god? It’s me, Darthstar. How about rapturing a couple of your favorite soldiers’ asses up to the pearly gates a little ahead of schedule?
(Note to Homeland Security, The FBI, and other paranoid wingnuts: The above is merely snark, humor if you will, calling on god to show mercy on the planet by recalling two of his more defective products early (though there is a decent argument that ‘early’ doesn’t apply in this case, but I digress)…However, seeing as there probably isn’t a great spook in the sky who can turn on his Hoover and give the planet a big suck, removing such vermin in a single sweep, I’ll let this joke die where it is…)
(uh, secondary note to DHS,et al… Should such a benevolent spirit exist, and the above prayer be answered, I’d like to preemptively deny any influence on said diety’s actions…)
that if the the Democratic Congress gives the Pentagon the money it has requested for Iraq, the Democrats will have more than doubled, in one year, the entire amount that GOP Congresses authorized for Iraq in all of the previous years combined?
Total requested FYI 2008 :$189 billion
Total 2007 supplemental: $124 billion
Total amount spent on Iraq since invasion: $600 billion.
Not to mention the fact there are currently more US troops in Iraq now than there were before November 2006.
Forget Capitulation. Pelosi and Reid are leading the Escalation.
Baaa!
Ms. Pelosi, with a cc: to John Conyers, Jr.
Of course, there was an immediate response to that letter! heh!
While Nancy speaks of the Republican “obstructionists,” she, herself, has been and is the main “obstructionist” to achieving any meaningful goals at all, in any respect! She emboldened BushCo and the Republicans even further when she took Impeachment off the table. She is the first “stumbling block!”
If she cannot be awakened, then what?
that The Democratic Party agenda stated here doesn’t even mention the war!
There is a link on that page to what amounts to, IMHO, rather meaningless finger-pointing (Gee, Cheney supports the war! Whoulda thunk it?) and platitudes.
Nowhere (at least that I can find) is there a coherent strategy mentioned to end this damn thing.
Oh Howard Dean? Hello? Remember us?
She has become an accomplice.
Imagine you were planning a heist and one fellow wanted to embezzle the funds rather than robbing the bank.
If the dissenter finally went along with robbing the bank because the rest thought embezzlement was too slow, would you say he quit?
Just a point of order.
Nice to be nice to old ladies but no need to get carried away with chivalry.
Best, Terry
that thinks this agenda and policy is what the establishment Democrats want too. From the AUFM to now what have they done but enable and support this? I also believe the only risk their taking is losing their base, who they consider a hindrance, which is why all play to the only voters who buy this crap, the mythical constituency Rahmn was talking about, the ‘centerists’, the voting pool both sides covet. Democracy takes a backseat to empire and a corporate one which has no goals other then profit and power. So yelling at these appeasers won’t work, they consider us their opposition as much as the Right does.
The flaw in their strategy is that the grassroots, and those who are not partisan don’t buy this either. Wyden, my senator was shocked when at town hall meetings across the state people, demanded impeachment. Their perceptions of the publics stomach for this is wrong, most people care not for the slight differences that separate the two. Party loyalty and politics will not resolve a situation that both sides are creating together, with more to come. Pressure must come from more then the base. With such a broken system where do people turn, other then away.
….the passion for what needs to be accomplished?
Is there something closed door happening that I missed?
Who is she listening to? Not US!
She’s dead……her freakin eyes are dead.
Impeach & pave the road to JAIL!!
I just want to cry.
to Mrs. Pelosi:
I was going to ask that everyone here send her something similar, but I think I’d rather just take bets on whether or not it will make one lick of difference.
Or, we could bet on the date on which the first IRAN funding bill will be sent to the President’s desk.
This really ISN’T a dream, is it?
Diaries like this one, pretending to be about candidate wars, when really it is an atttempt to tell people like Buhdy to sit down and shut up and vote for Dems period.
At least have the courage to be honest about ewhat you are doing.
Typically, the are a certain group at daily kos who smeak around and try to knee cap any criticism of Democrats.
Pathetic.
Essentially they are there to respond to realpolitikal realities. They are not in their position because they are philosophers, mystics, men and women of letters, common ordinary folks–don’t expect them to “do the right thing” that’s not how the world works now at all and is not the way the world has ever worked except in a few instances when men (usually) of extraordinary abilities get together and make little miracles that change history. Our own country was founded by these extraordinary characters. The last three political leaders that had that kind of stature were John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King; true, they all had flaws but they were extraordinary human beings that would have set the groundwork for a very different society than the Bush family has created. Personally, I don’t think those assassinations were lone gunmen but that’s an argument I have no interest in getting into but they represented something about us that was, if nothing else, great.
Politics is a very dangerous game and you have to be careful who you cross and who you ally yourself with. If the “progressive”/liberal community could rid itself of the notion that there are Jefferson Smiths in Congress and begin understanding that the role of Congress is to broker power not make policy. If only this community could understand that political power is not about making an intellectual case for one policy or another and hope to convince anybody but, rather, to make common action with your fellows through organizing and pooling community resources such that the power brokers will take notice. By that I mean you have to be able to kick some ass “on the street”, i.e. make life impossible unless you get your way like AIPAC does, like the Miami Cubans do or used to do, like the bankers and big corporate interests or like labor unions once did (they literally fought in the streets) then you’d see Waxman, Pelosi, Conyers start to move. Right now they are weighing the cost-benefits and frankly the progressives don’t seem worth worrying about because they simply do not have the intestinal fortitude (despite all the endless rhetoric on these and other sites) to put their asses on the line and force (not plead, not request, but force) Congress to take action. That’s all those people are supposed to do–they respond to force, that’s their job.
Blitzer: “So, are you telling your angry base out there in the Democratic Party that wants to see this war over with…”
Angry? Well maybe we are but the label is meant to make us ignorable. And “base”? It’s a majority of the country!
(And right-wingers who froth at the mouth about “abortion doctors” and “welfare fraud” aren’t angry?)
And notice that Pelosi does not stop him and deal with his characterization.
Danby is screwing his own argument here. HE makes it seem that a duscharge petition is not bad at all, as Pelosi still would have cards to play.
Makes the opposition to it even MORE nonsensical.