Tag: Democrats

Via NPR.  The audio link’s on the page.

Subtitled: Monkey Wrench or Cattle Prod? By Stephen Fleischman via Counterpunch.com.

“Here we go again,” murmured the old guard Democrats when Ralph Nader officially announced his candidacy for president in 2008, on Tim Russert’s “Meet the Press” show, Sunday, Feb.24th.

There are two spectacular articles (well, perhaps more) over at Counterpunch right now. The first I’ll look at is Ralph Nader vs. the Fundamentalist Liberals by Michael Colby:

Surprise.

Sen. Russ Feingold’s bill calling for US troop withdrawals from Iraq to begin within 120 days is being debated by the US Senate — thanks to the Republicans who want to kill the bill but think they have an advantage in talking about Iraq.

Plus, John McCain has just said that if he can’t persuade the American people that staying in Iraq is the right course, he will lose the election.

So, on a 70-24 vote, the Senate agreed to take up Feingold’s bill.  Only 26 Democrats voted to take it up.

Feingold’s bill won’t pass, of course.  No Republican has ever actually voted for it in the past.

But it will be debated, along with amendments, all day Wednesday, apparently, the Washington Post reports:

In five previous efforts during the past 20 months, Feingold has never received even 30 votes to bring his bill to the floor for debate. Not a single Republican had supported Feingold’s withdrawal bills, which have been considered the strictest offered in terms of requiring troop withdrawals from Iraq.

This Feingold bill would mandate troop redeployments out of Iraq within 120 days of being signed into law, while allowing funds to be spent for just a few reasons there: ongoing counter-terrorist operations, protecting the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, training Iraqi forces and on the actual redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq.

“Keeping our troops in Iraq will not solve Iraq’s problems,” Feingold said during the debate today. “And it won’t help us address the growing threat by al-Qaeda around the world.”

Most interesting is the list of Democrats who voted against taking up the bill.  Here they are:

Baucus (D-MT)

Bayh (D-IN)

Biden (D-DE)

Bingaman (D-NM)

Carper (D-DE)

Casey (D-PA)

Conrad (D-ND)

Dorgan (D-ND)

Johnson (D-SD)

Landrieu (D-LA)

Levin (D-MI)

Lieberman (ID-CT)

Lincoln (D-AR)

McCaskill (D-MO)

Nelson (D-FL)

Nelson (D-NE)

Pryor (D-AR)

Reed (D-RI)

Salazar (D-CO)

Tester (D-MT)

Webb (D-VA)

Dems not voting:

Byrd (D-WV)

Clinton (D-NY)

Obama (D-IL)

Hillary seems to be heading off a cliff as far as her campagin goes, so she needs some help!

To hear the press tell it, Sen. Barack Obama just completed his first term as high school class treasurer and is trying to parlay that triviality into a bid to become Leader of the Free World. Innumerable pundits, most notable for how often they are wrong, are incessantly yammering about Obama’s allegedly slender resume. Had they bothered to do a little homework themselves, they would know that he has a stellar academic history, has unselfishly toiled for non-profit, public interest groups, and has ten years of legislative experience in the Illinois and U.S. Senate.

It occurred to me that pundits, and the citizens they misinform, might benefit by having convenient access to some basic facts about the man who may be the next President of the United States of America.

So as a public service…

Two votes on bringing our troops home from Iraq are scheduled for Tuesday, and MoveOn wants me to call my U.S. Senator to urge him to vote for them.

I may do that, but both votes seem pre-destined to fail.  The one that really matters is guaranteed to lose.

Both are described as “test votes,” meaning they are intended to get a reading on whether there are 60 votes, enough to prevent a filibuster.  If not, the bills go back into the drawer in some committee.

CQ Today describes the situation this way:

Democrats are not likely to muster the 60 votes needed to call up the tougher of the two, which would bar funding for Iraq deployments 120 days after enactment, with some exceptions for anti-terrorism missions, training Iraqi security forces and protecting American forces.

Four similar measures failed last year. The most recent, a Feingold amendment to an omnibus spending measure, fell by a 24-71 vote Dec. 18.

According to a Senate Democratic aide, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., “had made a prior commitment to Sen. Feingold to bring these bills up,” and agreed to do so now so Feingold would not block Senate consideration of several other measures.

A memo circulated by a Senate Republican leadership aide said the Feingold bill would mean “U.S. troops can no longer perform most of the missions that have made the surge so successful, and allowed for the political progress Iraqis have made in recent months.”

A second test vote is scheduled on the motion to proceed to another Feingold bill that would require a report within 60 days “setting forth the global strategy of the United States to combat and defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates.”

While the GOP leadership aide called that bill a politically motivated “messaging” measure, Republicans have not publicly indicated how they will vote.  

One provision in the bill would require the report to include recommendations to ensure the global deployment of U.S. troops is aimed at defeating al Qaeda and does not undermine homeland security or require frequent redeployments or extensions of deployments.

Wanna bet how those Republicans will vote?

This brings me to a strategic question that is often asked but goes unanswered:

Instead of test votes, why not schedule bills and force the Republicans to filibuster if they want to prevent them from passing?

Let the country see who’s blocking the efforts to bring our troops home and extricate this country from the bloody mess in Iraq.

Let them tie up the Senate’s business for a week, or two weeks, or however long, telling us why we need to stay in Iraq.

The present strategy allows both parties to share the blame for inaction on Iraq, while two-thirds of the voters want action.

That’s why “Congress” gets an dismal, unfavorable rating — because it’s not doing anything.  And the Democrats, by being afraid to take a strong stand, have been complicit in allowing the war and occupation to grind on.

Harry Reid, the majority “leader,” even made Feingold agree not to hold up or filibuster some other unspecified bills in return for getting a couple of “test votes.”

Meanwhile, there are reports that House Democrats don’t plan to take any action to try to end the war this year, because it “makes them look weak” when they fail.

There’s a reason for that:  They are weak.  And they are weak in the worst possible place — their backbone.

Last night, the Senate voted on two FISA amendments, which is all well and good I suppose.  This is a battle over whether the government can spy on it’s citizens, and if there will be retroactive immunity for the telecoms which may have helped facilitate this spying.  Here are the links to the DKos MP threads for the two votes:

First Vote

Second Vote

…Or, how Democrats Eat Their Own.

Talking Points Memo has an article up describing Obama’s latest mailer attacking the Clinton Presidency:

In what may be Obama’s most direct and aggressive criticism of Bill Clinton’s presidency yet, the Obama campaign dropped a new mailer just before Super Tuesday that blasts “the Clintons” for wreaking massive losses on the Democratic party throughout the 1990s.

“8 years of the Clintons, major losses for Democrats across the nation,” reads the mailer, which goes on to list the post-1992 losses suffered by Dems among governors, Senators and members of the House of Representatives. The mailer was forwarded to us by a political operative who told us it was sent to Alaska, though it was probably sent elsewhere, too.

link: http://tpmelectioncentral.talk…