There is NO way on God's green earth that the AUMF and this latest bill would be so close, no way. Not with all the lies and screwups and the horrible mess in Iraq. They are gaming us, or some of them know something is up.
Posted by Julie at September 26, 2007 05:49 PMJulie - agree. Can't really put all the pieces together on this one yet, but it's beginning to seem even more bizarre than I suggested in the piece.
Posted by Marie at September 26, 2007 05:58 PMSo, uh, is there a point here? Two votes, 5 years apart, means it's us against the government? Bizarre is right.
Unless you're trying to elevate this "senselessness of the senate" to the level of the AUMF; kinda like Bush did with Saddam/Osama juxtaposition. Which would be silly, right?
Sorry, just not getting it.
Posted by iamcoyote at September 26, 2007 06:28 PMI suppose what bothers me is the obvious: the US government (Executive and Congress) are repeating all the steps in a run-up to a new war. The incremental flakiness of each rationalization is the same as before. Only the party in the majority has changed and, lo and bejold, they still act the same.
Posted by Gtash at September 26, 2007 07:17 PMGtash - remember that in 2002 Democrats controlled the Senate. My point is that in the aggregate they act the same which is odd considering that we are six years out from 9/11, GWB's approval rating are in the toilet and Iraq is a debacle. The change in those facts alone would predict that Sen DEMs wouldn't roll over as easily. But they did. More bizarre are those that switched from opposing the AUMF to approving this one.
Durbin said that the amendment doesn't mean anything. Not sure how anyone can conclude that from reading it. It cherry picked from Petraeus' and Crocker's testimonies and the latest NIE. A vote for this said that Petraeus et. al told the truth and based on that the Senate was officially defining Iran as a terrorist threat. That gives GWB full authority to deal with Iran per the AUMF. The statement in the amendment that the US will pursue a diplomatic coures with Iran is as meaningless as the requirement to seek UN authorization for Iraq was.
Posted by Marie at September 26, 2007 07:51 PMFact: We're ruled by a military junta that does whatever it pleases.
You think they'd give a fuck one way or the other, or it would affect their actions in the least, however this latest meaningless congressional bullshit went?
The political system has been deliberately broken and 100% corrupted. It's up to we the people to face this fact and create something new from the total wreckage we're about to face.
Legislative branch....completely broken. Along with the rest of it.
They have stolen everything in the house, burned it down, tied us up and ass-raped us and killed the dog for good measure, and we're still hoping we can best them in a game of scrabble or monopoly.
Enough of this. I want somebody to start getting serious about how the people of this country save themselves. The U.S. Congress could not be farther from any solution or relevance.
Posted by Sharkbabe at September 26, 2007 08:03 PMWhen can we start a real progressive party?
I am done with the Democrats--sorry Dad, but this ain't the New Deal anymore.
Well, Marie,
You'll might as well join the rather growing number of us who are done voting for Democratic candidates. The evidence of the past decade and a half is overwhelming that the Democratic Party is no longer progressive in any sense.
F'rinstance, in time of illegal and aggressive war the party nominated a candidate for President who upon being nominated announced himself "reporting for duty." As you yourself said in this post, WTF?
They're corporate supporters of imperial overstretch. Vote Peace and Freedom, vote Green. But you waste your vote by putting in the Democrats (as you yourself showed with mathematical precision).
Posted by mmeo at September 26, 2007 09:29 PMmmeo and dexdah - 2000 was the last time I voted the straight DEM Party ticket. I'll vote for a good enough candidate and if none is on the ballot, I'll withhold my vote. Not going to vote for Nader or any other unqualified or weird candidate just to make a statement that nobody hears. Can only hope that more candidates like Bernie Sanders appear as an independent.
I personally like the idea of political parties that have articulated a set of governing principles that their members will use to guide them in making specific legislative decisions. But that seems to be almost impossible in American politics. Probably because our parties have always been more about manipulating and fooling voters than informing them. All just a game among different monied sets.
I'm all for a third and fourth party. Unfortunately whenever anyone is started, it's usually just a personality cult like it was for Perot (yuck). So the two parties limp along, pretending that their bit tents when they are nothing more than collections of strange bedfellows with little to nothing in common.
Posted by Marie at September 26, 2007 10:00 PMVote Peace and Freedom, vote Green. But you waste your vote by putting in the Democrats (as you yourself showed with mathematical precision).
I'm a serious, reality based liberal, not a radical leftist.
This is the same fucking argument in 2000... might as well squash all hopes of a third party having a chance, a decent domestic agenda and progress, if you allow a republican to get elected!
Quit trying to hold the moral high ground, let's take a small victory in "08" and finally cut the neo-cons loose. One tiny victory at a time, please.
If not, you are the same assholes that put bu$h into power in 2000 by voting for Nader. Go ahead, do it again.
I'd love to say Gore is running but so far he isn't. But I'll plead to your sense of reason, "Vote Democratic".
If you don't, you will again be responsible for putting another (kind of) bu$h into power.
Let me point out bu$h won his agenda to attack Iran on the legislation passed earlier. Why would this current "Sense of the Senate" Amendment make a difference and be such a surprise:
Amendment Number: S.Amdt. 2073 to S.Amdt. 2011 to H.R. 1585 (National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 ) Statement of Purpose: To require a report on support provided by the Government of Iran for attacks against coalition forces in Iraq.Vote Counts: YEAs 97
NAYs 0
Not Voting 3
Notice to radical left, I thought everyone realized it is the republi-cons that cannot win this election cycle, period.
Hell, we even have a majority of Independent voters. Don't screw it up!
Yes, the GOP-lite are bad, and it will take time to get rid of them. Just as it will take time to pick off these 'dinos'. And time to make this great new third "Progressive Party" appear!
But if you never want change, vote third party and watch another repuke take the pResidency, and fuck, "We the People" further! They will end up taking my wife's Union job, her retirement pension, ultimately risk my child's life through a health crisis or war, and running what's left of this shattered country into the ground.
These repuke pigs running for Prez are like buzzrds circling for the remaining pieces of this once great nation.
I will blame you as much as the neo-con 28%.
seven - THIS is how it has been like since 1972. The mix of good and not so good Democrats seems not to have changed in the past 35 years. However the "not so good Democrats" seem to have gotten worse and worse with each election cycle. They cross the aisle more frequently and for the past twelve years have been perfectly willing to reverse almost every good policy and legislation that Democrats worked and fought for from 1933 through the late 1970s.
It was as if the failure of the states to ratify the ERA was the beginning of the clock moving backward. Unions deteriorated during the same period. It's not the "left" that destroyed the DEM party and it's high time we stopped laying the blame there. It was the Reagan Democrats and the DLC that has done the damage. That will continue to damage this country and the people because they are in control of the Demcratic Party and have no intention of giving up that power.
Agree with you that GWB didn't need today's vote to attack Iran. It's just a "nice to have" so that when it doesn't work out, the GOP has can claim that Demcrats supported it too; just as they've managed to use the vote on the AUMF.
Posted by Marie at September 26, 2007 11:35 PMSorry, just not getting it.
Princess, do you ever get anything? How much more obvious does this need to be? Could it have something to do with the fact your parents are related?
Posted by Christopher at September 27, 2007 03:15 AMSoS, nice comments, and you're exactly right. The toughest thing about a being in a party that doesn't walk in lockstep is that it's a party that doesn't walk in lockstep. You want lockstep, join the Republicans.
As for that ioz link, Marie, can't really trust someone who disses digby. Besides, the little circle's missing some steps; namely the part where disillusioned radicals, pissed that people won't listen to them even though they're teh most smartest people in the world, decide to vote for a third party, then throw the election to a republican who trashes the place for 8 years. Another step might be the 8 years of Dems trying to fix the shit the reps have trashed. Other than that, yeah, that circle's pretty accurate.
So, Christopher, you've decided to go the scout route, eh? Gee, that worked out so well for him, too.
Posted by iamcoyote at September 27, 2007 05:40 AMThe congressional Democrats suffer from Vietnam syndrome. What I mean by this is that the idea that Vietnam was 'lost' by the watergate era Democratic congress has been internalized by a quarter century of Republican lying. Vietnam was never America's to lose, but the lie serves its purpose well, it prevents most congressional Democrats from voting against the wishes of the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower warned about this undue influence, but it took Vietnam and especially the way its aftermath was sold to get us to this point.
Posted by herbal tee at September 27, 2007 06:12 AMThe toughest thing about a being in a party that doesn't walk in lockstep is that it's a party that doesn't walk in lockstep. You want lockstep, join the Republicans.
The only part I want lockstep, is the Vote. A Vote that will crush the neo-cons into oblivion!
After that, everyone can go their separate ways and work on their own agendas.
herbal tee - Ike didn't walk the talk. His "Cheneys, Wolfies, etc" set the stage for the Vietnam War, the US-Iran conflict and Central American adventures. He was from a different generation, before the Pentagon, so he was well positioned to see that post WWII US defense was wacky but he did nothing to change that.
Agree about the Vietnam syndrome. They overlearned the wrong lessons.
coyote - you're right that Bush/Cheney has trashed the place but wrong about everything else. Those who say that Ike was a good POTUS are like those who say the same about Clinton. Both betray an ignorance of what was actually done to this country during those two administrations. Although, IMHO Ike was worse in the foreign policy arena and better on domestic policy than Clinton, the latter because he (Ike) didn't trash the New Deal as Clinton did. However, on FP, Clinton's policies were probably directly responsible for the deaths of more children.
Odd how conservative DEMs continue to whine about the 2000 Nader voters. As if those votes belonged to Gore. Do the GOP whine about the Perot votes in 1992 and 1996? Both substantially more than Nader got in 2000. And if those Perot voters had voted for the GOP, GHB would have gotten a second term and Dole would have been elected. The GOP didn't spend years whining about that but got to work on wooing those voters back to the GOP. DEMs instead trash the Nader voters and try to bully them back to voting DEM. If I'd been a Nader voter in 2000, the subsequent trashing and bullying sure wouldn't make me inclined to vote DEM; plus the DEM continues to do the very things that gave rise to Nader's critique in the first place.
Posted by Marie at September 27, 2007 08:06 AMThe last decent POTUS, although he certainly had flaws, was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The last decent candidate was Robert Francis Kennedy. And before anyone disagrees, I have a really bad cold, so fuck off beforehand. Sorry.
Posted by tempus at September 27, 2007 09:50 AMThanks Seven, I am so close to just throwing in the towel on the Dems, but they keep dragging me back with some primary challenger to a worthles POS bush licking Dem like Al Wynn, Donna Edwards being the challenger.
So that's who I support, while I hope that something happens that gets us going on an aniti corporation purge of the Democratic Party, which would include lots of folks like Hillary, who I will vote for if she is the nominee.
Do I sound conflicted? My fucking gut tells me to cut these clown loose, like Dear Harry, but my brain says not yet, not until a Democrat is in the White House, even one as corrupted by the corporate till as Hillary.
Posted by Duckman GR at September 27, 2007 09:56 AMBill Clinton certainly had flaws and corporate ties, but here's the thing.
Since 1994, this country has gone from an acceptable level of corporate control of our lives, we could live with it, I'd say that overall we did less bad than good in the world although people will disagree, at least the failures were of omission, inaction, incoherance (do you think a gop dominated Congress would have let Bill Clinton send American Troops to Rwanda, when they fought deployment to Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and so on?) to one where the corporations are completley out of control.
And that is the legacy of George W Bush. The corporations are out of control, over the line, they kill, steal, ignore, manipulate, steal, reap, kill, steal, and we get what? To work harder?
To watch Wall Street acquire everything of value?
To get the leaded leavings from China? (When they announced that first toy recall a couple weeks ago, the beautiful woman Erin Burnett noted in one little segment that lead shipments to China was up, as a positive economic indicator, but what are they using the lead for she never thought to ask)
To watch our retirement futures become even more dependent on the whims of Wall Street and Corporate Control?
Bill Clinton may have fostered corporate profits, but at least he had enough intelligence to moderate some of their excesses. Now we have this whore in the White House who's sole purpose has been from day one to not only not moderate their excesses, but encourage and enable those excesses at all costs.
Somehow we need to start to swing the pendulum back. How? Fuck if I know, but it won't happen with more gop enemies, and it won't if the Dems don't start getting the pressure even to just pretend to give a shit.
Every time they send ne money requests in the mail I send them back with a note written all over it saying nothing until you start opposing Bush, undo the FISA cave-in, dump the Patriot Act, and so on, and I make them pay for the postage.
Posted by Duckman GR at September 27, 2007 10:22 AMyou're right that Bush/Cheney has trashed the place but wrong about everything else
Really? I didn't say anything about Ike, so I don't know what you're talking about. Didn't talk about Nader, either, and I don't recall anyone trying to bully anyone who voted for him into voting Dem, though I do believe voting for an alternate left candidate is likely to pull votes from the left side, not the right. Wrong about the guy at your link dissing digby? I guess you didn't read the comments. Wrong about some progressives whining because the Dems won't do everything they say? You do read the blogs, don't you? But you go on ahead and throw your vote to Nader if you like. I hear he's thinking about trying one more time. If the result is another Republican win, you can tell the guards at the liberal concentration camps that you were voting your conscience, and see where that gets ya.
Posted by iamcoyote at September 27, 2007 10:25 AMDuckman, I hate the GOP-lite corporatist just as much but I personally feel at this time we don't have much of a choice. Hell, even Gore is somewhat of a corporatist. Anything but a reich-wing nut job.
This really is the most important election ever!
BTW, Marie that is exactly what the republi-con agenda has always been. They don't want us to vote!
I listened to a little Thom Hartmann this morning and he mentions this neo-con freak, Paul Weyrich.
"I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
So keep using that intellect Marie, and not vote. But please, use some plain common sense, and "Vote Democratic" this election. Your decision will effect this country's direction.
Posted by Seven of Six at September 27, 2007 10:58 AMseven - I thought 1994 was billed as the "most important election, ever?" I merely pointing out that the Democratic Party has been using this since 1984. Vote Democrat to stick your finger in the dike of the GOP tsunami coming our way. But even when Demcrats win they don't fix the damn dike. The Democratic Party turned its back on G. McGovern (Duckman, he was a good candidate) and the Democratic Congress didn't work well with Carter.
The major hits to the New Deal legislation were enacted when Clinton was in the WH. Bush/Cheney's assault on the nation would have been much more obvious and difficult if not for the work Clinton did for them.
For the record once again, I've never voted for Nader or any third party candidate, will never vote for Nader, but will vote for a third party candidate like Sanders. If I lived in SF, I would vote for Cindy Sheehan over Nancy Pelosi.
This country would be in much better shape if we could unwind everything done in DC from 1981 on. And demobilized our military. Trillions spent on that for almost six decades and it was useless when the country was attacked on 9/11. The US empire is killing us. The only difference between DEMs and GOP on this seems, at this point, to be how fast the empire will crumble. Might be slower under the DEMs. Then again since the leading DEM candidates have no intention of ending the Iraq occupation before 2013, maybe not.
Posted by Marie at September 27, 2007 11:21 AMThis country would be in much better shape if we could unwind everything done in DC from 1981 on.
I do agree with you there.
The US empire is killing us. The only difference between DEMs and GOP on this seems, at this point, to be how fast the empire will crumble. Might be slower under the DEMs.
It does seem that the Dems make sure the commons have what they need, even if they like their grandiose military.
The hardest thing to do is change a whole culture's mind.
Gee, kind of like what is happening in Iraq, heh?
seven - agree.
Posted by Marie at September 27, 2007 11:59 AMSeven, you know what my thoughts on the GOP and the military are. Hope all is well in AZ, you sound a little pissed off!
Posted by tempus at September 27, 2007 12:14 PMWe'll attack Iran and the Dems will cheer on. They have enabled Bush every step of the way. Gee, get a clue already.
Posted by Gay Veteran at September 27, 2007 12:21 PM