When Lunatics Run the Asylum

There are, by any real measure, no moderates in the Republican Party. Not because there aren't any center-right members, but because there are no center-right actions. There are still a few willing to put nation before party, to value facts above ideology, but the fact is that the far right extremists who have taken over their party have made them irrelevant. There are no moderates in the Republican Party because moderation has been banned.

Buzzfeed:

According to Republicans, moderate members of the House GOP conference feel that Boehner, who has struggled with an often raucous and openly defiant right wing, has forced them to go along with conservative demands but has provided them little in return.

One Republican familiar with the dynamics within the GOP argued part of the difficulty for Boehner has been the fact that conservatives -- and not moderates -- have been the "squeaky wheel" within the conference, which has forced him to focus on them for much of the 112th Congress.

Rather than work with his entire conference Boehner has had to "prove to conservatives constantly that he's advocating for them and not screwing them behind their backs," the Republican said.

Boehner remains deeply popular within his conference, and despite the frustration of moderates he faces virtually no chance of an effort oust him as Speaker.

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Budget Politics and Chicken Game Theory

Think of budget politics as a game of chicken. In chicken, the player most willing to accept the consequence of not veering off is the player who will win -- every time. In other words, the one most willing to destroy themselves is the one most certain to win. In budget politics, this has been Republicans. They've been willing to drive the nation off a cliff rather than accept compromise, while Democrats have been unwilling to let disaster happen. So dems caved to Republicans every time.

The problem for Republicans is that this strategy has burned them once. They have destroyed themselves. Crack up like they did with the debt ceiling and you start to lose your nerve. "All or nothing" doesn't seem as smart after you've learned that the alternative to all is nothing plus a busted nose. Party discipline begins to fray and those who question the wisdom of kamikaze politics begin to break ranks. Meanwhile, the other player becomes emboldened.

Washington Post:

Democrats are making increasingly explicit threats about their willingness to let nearly $600 billion worth of tax hikes and spending cuts take effect in January unless Republicans drop their opposition to higher taxes for the nation’s wealthiest households.

Emboldened by signs that GOP resistance to new taxes may be weakening, senior Democrats say they are prepared to weather a fiscal event that could plunge the nation back into recession if the new year arrives without an acceptable compromise.

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Once Again, GOP Find Themselves Way Outside the Mainstream

We are in for the political slow season, news-wise. It's hard to get substantive stories, but air time must be filled, column inches must be printed, so dumb stories are inflated to "big" stories. It is during this time that the media sucks the hardest and sensationalism rules the day. We call it the "silly season," but it would be more accurate to call it the "stupid season."

On the bright side, when there's a real story out there, it tends to be covered better than it otherwise would be.

And the real story out there remains President Obama's new policy on undocumented immigrants. There is no shortage of substantive reporting and instructive analysis. And now polling.

Bloomberg News:

President Barack Obama is winning the opening round in the battle over immigration, according to a Bloomberg poll released today, putting Republicans on the defensive with his decision to end the deportations of some illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

Sixty-four percent of likely voters surveyed after Obama’s June 15 announcement said they agreed with the policy, while 30 percent said they disagreed. Independents backed the decision by better than a two-to-one margin.

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Paul Ryan, True-Believerism, and the Coming GOP Medicare Fiasco

It's a warning I haven't written about in a while, but beware of true believers. I used it more during the Bush administration, when the neocons were ignoring the fact that the invasion of Iraq just wasn't working. The neocons had a domino theory for Iraq; Saddam Hussein falls and -- for some unexplained reason -- the middle east stabilizes, Israel becomes everyone's buddy, and Democracy breaks out all over the place. Everything was falling down around their ears, but the line from the Cheneyite wing of the White House seemed to be "It will work! It will! The theory is so beautiful and perfect, it can't possibly be flawed."

This is why you should always beware true believers. They're the fanatics, the zealots, the guys who are absolutely certain the flawless idea can't fail. They're the ones who believe that when something's not working, you need to do more of it. And they seem to be incapable of recognizing failure. They're the doctor in the bad medical drama, pounding a patient's chest and shouting, "Damn you! Don't you die on me!" Except the true believer would keep pumping away until the body was stiff. The TV doctor listens when someone tells them it's over, the true believer thinks it's impossible for it to be over.

The neocon true-believerism was bloody and disastrous. Other kinds are simply disastrous. And, luckily, the example of true-believerism offered today only harms the true believers.

Politico:

To Democrats, the release of the House GOP budget is like Christmas in March. And they’re planning a celebration of sorts.

Democrats are organizing media blitzes, House floor speeches and town halls back home to seize on the changes to Medicare that Republicans are expected to propose Tuesday. To blunt GOP talking points that only Republicans are willing to confront the debt, Democrats intend to unveil their own budget next week calling for a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes on the rich.

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Senate Dems Make Up Most of Remaining PIPA Support

The headline at Gizmodo reads, "PIPA Support Collapses, and Here’s a Full List of the Senators Who Newly Oppose It." It turns out that yesterday's internet blackout scared off eighteen Senators from supporting the senate's version of the draconian anti-piracy legislation -- it may not seem like many, but in a chamber with only one hundred seats, it represents a nearly 20% drop of support in a single day.

That's what you call a wildly successful protest.

But looking through the names, it's hard not to notice a certain fact. Only two Democrats -- Maryland's Ben Cardin (originally a co-sponsor) and Jeff Merkley of Oregon -- have changed positions. The bill originally enjoyed bipartisan support, but the rush to abandon it was not bipartisan at all.

Raw Story:

While Silicon Valley may have found their voice echos on Capitol Hill more loudly than expected, what remains after Wednesday’s protest is even more telling that what provoked it: Senate Democrats are, by and large, the core pillars of support for the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), which has not otherwise engendered a strict partisan divide among lawmakers.

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Walker's Legislative Steamroller Not Quite So Formidable Now

Tomorrow's the big day. After months of signature collection, petitions to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker must be turned in by Tuesday. The call to wrap things up actually came last week, indicating the kind of comfortable buffer petitioners have achieved. There were no urgent pleas to keep signing until the very last second, no big final push, just the message that it was time to fold up shop, to make sure all your petitions are signed and dated, and to turn that paperwork in on time.

Of course, this is the second round of recalls in Wisconsin, sparked by Republican overreach and a union-busting law. The first was toward the end of summer last year, when Democrats took two seats in the state Senate. Republicans, after launching a counter-recall, gained no seats. Democrats had come within one seat of taking the Senate majority, while Republicans had fallen from one seat to three seats from taking a quorum-proof super-majority.

Somehow, this got spun into a win for Republicans. The Democratic goal, after all, had been to take the majority in the Senate. Democrats had gained two seats and lost no ground, Republicans had lost two seats and gained no ground, therefore Republicans had won. "Tonight’s results demonstrate that responsible budgeting measures and job creating policies can prevail over mountains of liberal special interest money from those fighting to maintain the unsustainable status quo," said Chris Jankowski, president of the Republican State Leadership Committee. "This tremendous victory is a significant step toward returning government to the people and protecting the hard-working American family and businessperson. By beating back countless liberal special interest dollars and paid supporters, the strength of responsible Republican ideals is obvious and foreshadows continued Republican victories in 2011, 2012 and beyond."

Only in the bass-ackward mind of a Republican is losing two seats winning. And not just winning, a "tremendous victory." Why, it was a landslide! A few more "victories" like that and there won't be any Republicans in the Senate at all.

And now we see what their "win" has brought them.

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Pro-Labor Occupiers About to Win Big

It's not difficult to show the evolution of the "town hall mobs" of rightwingers angry healthcare reform to the Tea Party. It was basically the same people who listen to the same radio shows and fell for largely the same BS. But where the town hall rowdies were focused on one issue, the Tea Party came about when complaints broadened to other issues. "Healthcare reform sucks!" became "healthcare reform sucks -- and I like guns and Obama's a Kenyan Muslim and when government spends money on anyone other than me, that's just like Nazi Germany!"

Sure, both the town hall mobs and the Tea Party were astroturf creations, but look at why people joined. What happened was that people with other concerns were drawn to the coverage the town-hallers were getting and wanted in on the action. The movement grew and the focus broadened.

There's a clumsy parallel on the left with the Occupy movement. It may just be that I'm from ground zero, but I see an evolution from the Wisconsin union protests and the ongoing recall effort to Occupy Wall Street. People saw the occupation of the State Capitol, thought about their own issues, and wondered if that would work for them as well. The left was electrified by the Wisconsin activists and the "hit the streets and take over" method of protest spread out to other states.

One of those states would be Ohio, where Gov. John Kasich and state Republicans jammed through a union-busting bill similar to Wisconsin's. But Ohio is not Wisconsin -- the laws are quite different -- and state Democrats were able to put the question up to the voters. Where Wisconsin only has recall as an option, Ohioans are able to put repeal on a referendum. And that referendum is not going Kasich's way.

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Paul Ryan's "Messaging Problem"

The problem with Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan doesn't lie in its obvious flaws, but in the fact that the American public have become aware of its flaws. Things are so bad that Senate GOP aren't even going to address the Medicare "reform," because the whole idea is ballot box poison. The problem there is that, without those reforms, the whole thing is just a plan to increase the deficit.

So Ryan would rather tweak the advertising than fix his product.

The Hill:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Wednesday that Republicans are running into a "communications challenge" in selling their 2012 budget proposal to Americans.

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The Slow Downward Slide of the Tea Party

Yesterday, CNN delivered some bad news for teabaggers (pdf) -- turns out no one likes them.

OK, so I'm overstating the case. I apologize. It actually turns out that they aren't extremely popular. Some people like them. Some people don't. And more people dislike the Tea Party than don't. And this isn't a new trend, as this chart from Nate Silver demonstrates:



The blue line represents the percentage approving of the Tea Party, the red line shows disapproval. As you can see, the trend on disapproval is rising, while approvals have pretty much always been flatlining.

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Scott Walker's Kamikaze Run at Jobs

Things in Madison seem to be moving in the right direction. Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall reported yesterday that signs point to the Wisconsin GOP losing cohesion on the governor's "budget repair bill." Republicans could've taken the sticking point -- collective bargaining -- and passed it as a stand-alone bill. Since it wouldn't have been a fiscal bill, the rules for a twenty member quorum wouldn't have applied. But Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald says that this isn't going to happen and that they won't pass the bill until the filibustering Democrats return to Wisconsin.

Marshall writes that this means there's "no clear option for Walker absent some agreement with the Democrats." Scott Walker may be politically suicidal, but Wisconsin Republicans don't seem to share his eagerness for self-destruction.

Still, whenever Wisconsin is in danger of easing our unemployment rate, Scott Walker comes to drag us back from the brink. He's killed a high-speed rail project -- and all the jobs it would've created. He's killed a power plant in Madison, he's trying to regulate the wind power industry out of existence, he's refused stimulus funding for wiring schools for broadband. Now, he's threatening to lay off as many as 1,500 state workers. This is a man who came into office promising a quarter of a million new jobs. He's doing it wrong.

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Failure isn't an Option, It's a Reality

The Iraq war has definitely overstayed its welcome. As it goes on (and on and on...), the war becomes less and less popular. I think it might be that there are so many lies involved and, the longer it goes on, the longer critics are able to talk about those lies. So fragile an argument can't stand up to daily analysis over the course of years. The gaps in the reasoning become chasms and the lies become more and more obvious.

So it shouldn't surprise anyone that a majority of americans want out, think the war -- and Bush's escalation of it -- has failed, and it was a mistake to invade in the first place.

Associated Press:

The public sees the Iraq war as a failure and thinks the U.S. troop buildup there has not worked, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll suggesting the tough sell President Bush faces in asking Congress and voters for more time.

[...]

By 59 percent to 34 percent, more people said they believe history will judge the Iraq war a complete or partial failure than a success. Those calling it a failure included eight in 10 Democrats, three in 10 Republicans and about six in 10 independents, the poll showed -- ominous numbers for a president who hopes to use a nationally televised address later this week to keep GOP lawmakers from joining Democratic calls for a withdrawal.

Respondents saying the war will be remembered as a complete success were outnumbered 4 to 1 by those who said it was a complete failure, with only 7% seeing a brilliant final victory and 28% saying that it would be seeing total failure.

It says a lot about american opinion that so few would argue success. If you use Bush's original reasons to invade Iraq, it has been a success. There are no WMD and we've had regime change. If what Bush had said at the outset was true, then we'd have been done for a few years.

But people see what Bush really had in mind and it didn't have a damned thing to do with Saddam Hussein or WMD. It was about creating a new, USA-friendly democracy in the middle east. That doesn't seem very likely.

For their part, Congress's take on things seems to mirror the public's. Given Petreaus's and Crocker's big PR push for more war, they've reacted with skepticism -- at the very least.

In a piece titled, Congress unconvinced of 'surge' success, the Financial Times reports:

"Are we any closer to a lasting political settlement in Iraq at the national level today than we were when the surge began eight months ago?

"And if we continue to surge for another six months, is there any evidence that the Sunnis, the Shia and the Kurds will stop killing each other and start governing together?" asked Joseph Biden, Democratic chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee.

"In my judgment... the answer to both those questions is no... without a settlement, the surge is at best a stopgap that delays, but will not prevent, chaos.

"Its net effect will be to put more American lives at risk, in my view, with very little prospect for success."

What I keep saying, what Biden is saying, and what everyone who's given it any thought is saying is that without political progress, military progress -- real or cooked up by the Ministry of Propaganda -- is meaningless. If the iraqi government is unable (or unwilling) to control what happens within their borders, nothing we do will change a damned thing.

But, when Bush asks for $50 billion to continue the war, Biden will vote to authorize it. So will a majority of dems.

The most popular explanation is that they're cowed by Bush. This seems unlikely to me, since Bush has no popular mandate for the war. Opposing Bush would come without consequence. Another explanation is that they want to keep the war going until 2008, so they can run against it. I'm not a big fan of that explanation, since it would mean that DC is lousy with very evil people.

My take is that they're afraid of perceived failure. When we pull out of Iraq, bad things will happen. And it doesn't make any difference if we do it now or ten years from now. There was no reason to go to Iraq in the first place and that renders the political situation there completely artificial. The presence of US troops is a factor in the political gameplaying in Iraq. In a nation divided along deeply sectarian lines, our presence helps some and hinders others. We're just the most powerful piece on someone else's chess board. The goals we meet in Iraq are not our own, but those of people who don't give a good goddam about us otherwise.

If we pull out, those political players will be forced to find some other, less artificial, way to achieve their ends -- and that means a period of violence and war. But it makes no difference when we pull out. Everyone knows the concept of a "power vacuum." We've created the opposite, call it a "power balloon." That power balloon doesn't fill a gap, it forces other powers outward, and forces american interests to the center. It creates the artificial political environment I've been talking about. For many political and sectarian groups in Iraq, this helps them by keeping their opponents from center stage. Politics in Iraq is all about the americans, when it should be all about iraqis. And it will continue to be all about the americans until the americans leave.

But leaving will remove that central political force in Iraq and that will create problems. And those problems -- or more specifically, the blame for those problems -- are what dems are afraid of and why they suffer attacks of political paralysis when they have the opportunity to bring us closer to ending this fiasco.

Personally, I don't think they should worry as much about it as they seem to be doing. I think the average american knows that violence will flare up in Iraq after we leave. Polls show they want out anyway.

My advice to dems is to listen to the people and, when 2008 comes around, run against George W. Bush. It doesn't make any difference who the GOP candidate is, all but one (who stands no hope in hell) supports the war, wiretaps, torturing prisoners, rendition, etc. The candidate who wins the primaries would be GWB's third term. Run against that.

Violence in Iraq, whether it happens now or five years from now, is the fault of the man who put troops there in the first place -- not the fault of whoever gets them out. If Congress takes a stand and tells Bush, "Not another dime without a timetable," I doubt there would be any political fallout.

People believe the war is already lost. It's hard to see how just accepting that fact would come with much of a pricetag.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; military; poll; Whatever happens after troops leave Iraq will be Bush's fault, not Democrats'

Will Congress Declare Itself Irrelevant?

In a damning piece in Salon, Sidney Blumenthal reports that Bush was told that Iraq had no WMD before the war, but blew off the info.

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

The intelligence came from Naji Sabri, Saddam's foreign minister. According to Blumenthal, "the information was distorted in a report written to fit the preconception that Saddam did have WMD programs. That false and restructured report was passed to Richard Dearlove, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), who briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair on it as validation of the cause for war."

We know what happened then, Blair played along, despite the fact that he knew "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

One of Blumenthal's sources put it more bluntly, "Bush didn't give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up."

Doesn't this show a frightening disregard for reality? Doesn't this show a terrible contempt, not only for the people he would send off to die, but for those he would set out to kill?

Look, this is the impeachment moment. Actually, let me revise that -- this should be the impeachment moment. And it would be, if we didn't have a legislature intent on being remembered as the Congress that established that there is no such thing as an impeachable offense. Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues to insist that impeachment is "off the table." Here's an idea -- screw Nancy Pelosi.

I had a lot of hope that there would be change when the dems took over the House. The names have changed, but little else has. Congress has given Bush a free hand, while offering only token opposition. They had a chance to either force Bush to start acting like a freakin' adult or defund his own damned war -- a position that was impossible to lose -- and they caved. As I wrote at the time, "How bad does it have to get? Seriously, how stupid and hopeless and bloody does this whole mess have to get before dems use their damned majority to stop it? All along, I've been saying that it doesn't matter how often Bush vetoed funding, he'd have to sign eventually. The veto was irrelevant. He'd sign it or defund the war himself. There was no way Democrats could possibly lose this fight. And that's not a matter of opinion, those were literally the only options Bush would've had. It was as logically certain as it is that one plus one will always equal two."

Bush has to be impeached. The Constitution and the health of the republic demand it. If we let this Congress establish the principle that there is no such thing as an impeachable offense, we are seriously screwed as a nation. If Bush's "We're going to war and damn the facts" attitude isn't impeachable, if lying us by omission into war isn't impeachable, if throwing thousands of americans into a meatgrinder for no goddam good reason isn't impeachable, then nothing is.

It's often said, at least by those on the right, that government should be run like a business. If a corporation had acted this way, the company would be sued out of existence and it's CEO would be behind bars. This is gross negligence at best and manslaughter at the most realistic. There's your "High crimes and misdemeanors" right there.

Bush and that group of fools that always defend him have often said that everyone who voted to authorize the use of force had the same intelligence he did. This is a lie. Blumenthal again (emphasis mine):

In the congressional debate over the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, even those voting against it gave credence to the notion that Saddam possessed WMD. Even a leading opponent such as Sen. Bob Graham, then the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who had instigated the production of the NIE, declared in his floor speech on Oct. 12, 2002, "Saddam Hussein's regime has chemical and biological weapons and is trying to get nuclear capacity." Not a single senator contested otherwise. None of them had an inkling of the Sabri intelligence.

If this Congress does not impeach, they'll be saying to every future president, "Lie to us, please." They'll be begging to be used as chumps and to be seen as a pothole to be avoided. They'll be making a king of the president and making both houses as irrelevant as the Senate in imperial Rome.

If Congress doesn't impeach, they'll be declaring themselves useless as anything other than a training ground for future emperors and a legal pretense and justification for those emperors.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Iraq; If Congress doesn't impeach Bush for his lies, they'll be declaring itself irrelevant

Plan B? What About a Plan A?

What do you do with an unpopular war that serves no real purpose? It doesn't seem like it's all that difficult a question -- you stop it.

Some don't see it that way. See, that's too simple and obvious. The question all the big fans of the war are asking is, you pull out -- then what? White House Press Secretary Tony Snow told FOX News recently:

To walk out of Iraq right now would plant a seed that ultimately would lead to destabilization there, hundreds of thousands of deaths, loss of our influence in the region, would create instability throughout the Middle East throughout East Asia, throughout Europe.

The problem with this scary scenario is that it's a damned good description of Iraq now. The newest argument in favor of the war is that people who want withdrawal don't have any plan to deal with the violence afterward.

The most obvious answer is that we don't have any plan to deal with the violence there now. If we pull out, will the sectarian civil war in Iraq turn into a sectarian civil war in Iraq or is that a really stupid and redundant question? "I am convinced based on everything I have read it won't be a hell of a lot worse than it is now," Rep. John Murtha told a reporter for the L.A. Times.

In fact, that quote comes from a Times story titled, 'Pullout proposal lacking a Plan B' -- the subheader reads, 'Those who want troops out of Iraq acknowledge that sectarian violence will likely follow.' The problem is that the premise assumes an entirely unrealistic situation -- that Iraq is manageable now, but difficult. That's not the case. Iraq is a failed state and neither we nor the iraqi government have any control over what happens there. Pro-war people get to talk about 'Plans B' when they come up with their own 'Plan A.'

The mistake has already been made. Asking what we'll do about the violence after we leave is like asking how we plan to unmix paint. Worse, it's a way for the pro-war nuts to slough off their own responsibility for this bloodbath and the initial mistakes that brought us to this point. They started this tire fire and now they fault us for having no way to put it out. All you can do with a tire fire is let it burn itself out.

Which brings us to this letter antiwar dems in the House sent to President Bush yesterday:

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing to inform you that we will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during Fiscal Year 2008 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of all our troops out of Iraq before you leave office.

More than 3,600 of our brave soldiers have died in Iraq. More than 26,000 have been seriously wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or injured in the hostilities and more than 4 million have been displaced from their homes. Furthermore, this conflict has degenerated into a sectarian civil war and U.S. taxpayers have paid more than $500 billion, despite assurances that you and your key advisors gave our nation at the time you ordered the invasion in March, 2003 that this military intervention would cost far less and be paid from Iraqi oil revenues.

We agree with a clear and growing majority of the American people who are opposed to continued, open-ended U.S. military operations in Iraq, and believe it is unwise and unacceptable for you to continue to unilaterally impose these staggering costs and the soaring debt on Americans currently and for generations to come.

The letter is signed by way more people than I'm willing to list here -- 70 in all. Check it out to see where your congress critter stands. I can save some of you some time, though -- the only GOP member who signed was Ron Paul. Other names are predictable -- Conyers, Kucinich, Rangel, Waters among them. I was glad to see my Rep., Tammy Baldwin, listed and the woman I call my 'near Rep.', Gwen Moore from over in Milwaukee. When it comes to stuff like this, the only problem with living in Madison is that I seldom have anyone to yell at. It's a problem I can live with.

As long as we're talking about who does or doesn't have a plan, let's look at a poll taken by Military.com -- a news site for military members. According to them:

Nearly 60 percent of readers who participated in a recent Military.com poll said the United States should withdraw its troops from Iraq now or by the end of 2008. More than 40 percent of the respondents agreed the pullout should begin immediately because "we're wasting lives and resources there."

A similar number of participants, however, felt that U.S. troops should remain in Iraq, with 41 percent of respondents concluding that America should fight "until the insurgency is totally defeated."

I'm sorry, 'until the insurgency is totally defeated?' This brings two questions to mind -- what the hell does that even mean and what's your plan to get that done?

The fact is that the plan for Iraq was exactly what the Bush administration said it was. We go in, boot out Saddam, and everyone's so damned happy they throw us a big parade -- The Princess gives the Wookie a medal, the end, roll credits. That was it. That was what passed for serious military planning. They didn't have a plan when they went in and that's the problem now. They wrecked the place and now they get to criticize us for not being able to fix it? That takes balls.

The answer for Iraq is simple -- we screwed things up so badly there that we can't possibly fix it. We can stay there and be the third side of a three way civil war or we can get the hell out and make it a two way civil war.

Doesn't seem like much of a headscratcher to me.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; democrats; Tammy Baldwin; Gwen Moore; peace; congress; war; Withdrawal from Iraq is the only realistic plan

A Bad Week Ahead for Bush

Scooter Libby's commutation is working out about as well for the White House as you might expect. For a president already no more popular than a swift kick in the head, an action with such predictable negative consequences can only be seen as an act of desperation.

The war's been going south -- along with public support for it -- for years now, the Bush administration has been the subject of scandal after scandal for nearly as long, Congress has changed dramatically, and Dick Cheney seems to have finally snapped. On top of all this, it looks like the White House is coming into a real bad week.

In a story titled Democrats have daggers drawn for Bush, Agence France-Presse reports:

With daggers drawn for a weakened White House, congressional Democrats return from a short recess this week plotting to further undermine President George W. Bush's waning political sway.

Even as Bush's signature immigration reform bill was strangled in the Senate last month, Democratic leaders were mapping out new misery for a president beset by rock-bottom poll ratings, the three bloodiest months for US troops in Iraq since the war began in 2003 and a fraying Republican support base.

Nearly half a dozen Republicans Senators recently broke ranks with Bush urging him to change course in Iraq.

Bush faces a battle of subpoenas related to the big attorney purge. The White House is claiming executive privilege and Congress doesn't seem to be buying it. Who would?

On other fronts, the Senate may pull in some big guns over Libby's commutation.

Raw Story:

During an interview broadcast Saturday on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and ranking Republican panel member Sen. Arlen Specter suggested that US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald may be called to testify about his prosecution of former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

"Do you have a problem, Senator Leahy, with anything the president decided in terms of the legality of what he did?" Blitzer asked the Democratic senator regarding Bush's controversial decision to commute Libby's two-and-a-half year federal prison sentence.

Leahy responded, "The president has a constitutional right or has the constitutional power to commute sentences of anybody he wants. I wish he had shown more constitutional responsibility. Just as I was critical of some of the pardons by President Clinton, former President Bush or President Reagan, I've said they have the power to do it, but I didn't think they used good judgment."

The problem for the White House here is that Fitzgerald, as a witness, can testify to evidence he would've left out of his arguments in court. His personal conclusions as to the truthfulness of Libby's testimony and his opinions of who may be responsible for the leaking of Valerie Plame's name to the press are open game. There is no such thing as inadmissability in a Senate hearing.

I'm afraid that Agence France-Presse's estimation of the sharpness of dem's daggers may err on the honed side. We've seen dems cave in to Bush on the war funding fight -- a fight I'll say was impossible to lose until the day I die -- so we know that congressional Democrats' worst enemy is their fear of being seen as partisan. But, if the Valerie Plame case, the supreme lousiness of the Iraq war, the attorney purge, warrantless wiretapping, and Dick Cheney's assertion that he represents a previously unknown fourth branch of government are all partisan issues, then reality has a liberal bias. Democrats need to find their damned spines and fight the good fight for their country.

Everything seems to be coming to a head. It's entirely possible for all of this to run out of steam, but that will only happen if it's allowed to happen. Impeachment's in the air -- John Conyers came just short of threatening it on This Week with George Stephanopoulos yesterday. Polls show more than half would support impeaching Cheney and it's a statistical tie on Bush.

Here's my question; if nothing the President has done so far warrants impeachment, then what the hell does? How many crimes does this White House have to commit before impeachment can't be ignored? Forget misdemeanors, we've got high crimes -- and plenty of them.

As I said, though. This is going to require that Democrats evolve a backbone. The polls are good for it, but I'd argue that even if they weren't, impeachment would be long overdue. What's popular and what's just aren't always the same thing.

It's going to be a bad week for Bush, but it's been a bad handful of years for America.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Cheney; White House; scandal; crime; Senate; Democrat; If Bush isn't ripe for impeachment, then no president ever will be

Dems' Cave In to Bush Backfires

Presidential longshot Joe Biden on dems caving in to Bush on Iraq War funding:

PBS NewsHour:

We have 50 votes in the United States Senate. We have less of a majority in the House than at any time other than the last eight years.

Ladies and gentlemen, you're going to end this war when you elect a Democratic president. You need 67 votes to end this war. I love these guys who tell you they're going to stop the war.

Let me tell you straight up the truth: The truth of the matter is, the only one that's emboldened the enemy has been George Bush by his policies, not us funding the war. We're funding the safety of those troops there until we can get 67 votes.

This, of course, is not the truth. It's BS. Had Congress continued to send the President bills with timelines and restrictions, one of two things would've happened -- Bush would've signed one and accepted restrictions or Bush would veto them all and defund the war. There were no other possibilities. And 'funding the safety of those troops?' More BS. Not only was the supplimental paying for operations -- not paychecks, meals, and bullets -- but the vast majority of the funding doesn't go to the military at all. It goes to corporations and contractors.

Not surprisingly, the Democratic strategy of not doing what the hell they said they were going to do isn't working out so well. Dems take a real dip in the polls.

Thompson Financial:

Americans are increasingly disappointed with the general direction of US government policy, the war in Iraq and Congress' new Democratic majority, according to a survey out today.

Just 39 pct of those surveyed in the Washington Post-ABC News poll said they approved of Congress' work, down five points from April when the new Democratic majority had been in place for 100 days.

Support for the Congressional Democrats elected in November slid 10 points during the same period, the survey said, to 44 pct now.

The Democrats were so terrified of being labelled 'anti-troops' that they didn't even remember the public was on their side. By trying to avoid a PR disaster, they've created a PR disaster. Good work, guys. Now you have a smoking hole in both shoes.

And how's the big surge idea going? About as well as you'd expect.

ABC News, The Blotter:

Members of anti-American insurgent groups have infiltrated the ranks of Iraqi police. But even when American soldiers have reason to believe an Iraqi policeman secretly belongs to one of these groups, which drive the rising violence in Iraq, they cannot get him kicked off the force, a former U.S. military trainer told members of Congress last week.

What can you build when there's nothing to build on? Not much. What we wind up doing is training iraqis to be really good at fighting us. Brilliant.

There's no saving this at this point. The ship isn't sinking anymore, it's laying at the bottom -- gone. And pretending that Bush is going to come to his senses sometime in our lifetime isn't helpful -- the man's completely insane. But that's exactly what dems are doing.

They could've stopped this -- veto or no veto. There's no way that the war continues without them. They've signed on to this war now. It's as much theirs as it is George W. Bush's. Joe Biden can spin BS all day long, but the fact is that his vote, like too many Democrats', was a cowardly sellout. And it's working out as well as you'd expect. The war goes on, George W. Bush -- AKA President Runaway Train -- has absolutely no brakes, and dems like Biden feed us crap.

Polls show people aren't buying it. This effed up bloodbath will go fullspeed ahead until September and, if Democrats haven't grown a freakin' spine by then, straight on over the cliff with everyone on board.

If the past is any indication, hold on tight. We're going over the cliff.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; poll; disaster; war; On Iraq, Democrats and Bush are becoming flipsides of the same coin

Was it George W. Bush's Birthday or What?

Democrats caved last night and gave Bush everything he needs to continue his damned war. So we'll start this post with a handy household tip that many Democrats in the House and Senate are going to need.

HowStuffWorks:

Fresh blood stains can usually be removed by a thorough laundering in cold water. If any stain remains, soak it in a solution of 1 quart warm water, 1/2 teaspoon dishwashing or liquid laundry detergent, and 1 tablespoon ammonia for 15 minutes. Tamp (the method of bringing a brush down with light strokes on stained durable fabrics and materials) or scrape (the method of using a scraping tool to gently lift off excess solid or caked-on stains), blotting occasionally with an absorbent pad. Continue as long as any stain is being removed. Rinse well with water, making sure to remove all traces of the ammonia. Then dry or launder.

The House vote count is here, the Senate's is here -- find out how your people voted. I called mine right; Feingold and Baldwin nay, Herb Kohl yea. Once again, my decision to back the green candidate for Kohl's seat in '06 turns out to be the right one. The guy's just a seatfiller. I'll send him the handy bloodstain tip. It'll have to do until I can Google up a tip on how to grow a freakin' spine.

And what really gets me is that you don't need a spine to do the right thing it -- voting against the war is one helluva safe bet. I don't want to Wisconsin everyone to death, but Sen. Kohl's constituency is Sen. Feingold's constituency. Feingold keeps getting re-elected -- in fact, a lot of people (myself included) hoped he'd run for president. What the hell's the problem, Herb?

A CBS News/NYT Poll shows that 72% disapprove of the way Bush is handling the war -- a number that includes 40% of Republicans. Only 33% trust Republicans to make the right decisions regarding the war and 63% support a timeline.

Seriously, there's zero political risk here.

And here's a bunch of fun. "The days of blank checks and green lights for his failed policy are over," Sen. Majority leader Harry Reid said. "Senate Democrats will never give in, never, never, never, never." Oddly, he was explaining his vote for this blank check and green light. As dishonest as any neocon, he said one thing while doing something else. Joe Biden also voted for it, pretty much assuring that his presidential campaign will never get out of the low single digits.

How bad does it have to get? Seriously, how stupid and hopeless and bloody does this whole mess have to get before dems use their damned majority to stop it? All along, I've been saying that it doesn't matter how often Bush vetoed funding, he'd have to sign eventually. The veto was irrelevant. He'd sign it or defund the war himself. There was no way Democrats could possibly lose this fight. And that's not a matter of opinion, those were literally the only options Bush would've had. It was as logically certain as it is that one plus one will always equal two.

Was it that these Democrats were afraid they'd be attacked for their vote in 2008 campaigns? Newsflash Einsteins; GOPers will attack you no matter what you do. Hell, ask John Kerry -- if they don't have anything to attack you with, they'll make stuff up. Appeasing a future election opponent is a losing proposition -- you can't possibly head off all attacks.

Now to walk on the sunny side of the street. The two 2008 Democratic frontrunners who were able to vote for the measure both voted nay. "I believe that the President should begin a phased redeployment of our troops out of Iraq and abandon this escalation," Hillary Clinton said. And Barack Obama said later, "With my vote today, I am saying to the president that enough is enough." John Edwards, now retired from the Senate and unable to vote on it, is calling for Memorial Day protests.

Someone's going to call this capitulation a compromise. I've always defined compromise as an arrangement in which all parties agree to be equally unhappy. Bush is so pleased it looks like he's going to have to change his shorts.

This ain't no compromise.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Congress; propaganda; In the Iraq war funding fight, Democrats pretty much slept with Bush

Dems Declare Bush King of Iraq

Yesterday, the Democratic leadership in Congress folded holding a royal flush. In the Iraq war funding fight -- a fight that dems could not possibly lose -- they conceded pretty much everything to George W. Bush.

L.A. Times:

Scrambling to send President Bush an emergency war spending bill he will sign, Democratic leaders have decided to drop their insistence on a timeline for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq.

The move -- which comes just days after senior Democrats insisted that White House officials should support non-binding timelines -- is a significant concession to the president and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill, who steadfastly have rejected any dates for bringing U.S. troops home.

But it reflects the simple mathematics of a closely divided Congress in which Democrats cannot muster veto-proof majorities for any proposal that would compel a pullout.

About that 'simple mathematics'; they may not have been able to override a veto, but ultimately they wouldn't have had to. Bush could either sign a war funding bill or defund his own damned war. As I said earlier, dems couldn't lose -- Bush would sign.

And if he didn't, even better.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been catching some heat and seems to be moving away from the agreement. Think Progress reports, "'I'm not likely to vote for something that doesn't have a timetable or a goal,' she said, while still praising the deal as 'a recognition by the administration that a new direction was called for by the American people.'"

Frankly, I'm not sure how to take that. From what I understand, the agreement includes benchmarks for aid to the iraqi government -- if they don't reach certain goals, they don't get funding. But the agreement also allows Bush to unilaterally wave those benchmarks.

Considering Bush's determination to remain at war until the sun burns out, we can safely assume he'll wave them if they aren't met. There aren't any real benchmarks, because there aren't any unavoidable consequences. In other words, Bush concedes nothing.

Way to go, guys. Let me in on the next dem leadership poker game and I'll take you for all you're worth.

But there's still hope. Nothing is written down and, until pen hits paper, all agreements are tentative agreements. Pelosi's remark that she wouldn't sign anything without a timeline demonstrates that. This can fall through. If we pressure our congress critters, we can stop this.

I'm kind of lucky, I've got two people in office I can usually count on -- Sen. Russ Feingold and Rep. Tammy Baldwin. I'll fire off an email to both. The people you can count on still need the calls and emails and letters -- they demonstrate what their voters want. I also have Sen. Herb Kohl, who I pretty much can't count on. In any agreement like this, he's usually among the first to cave. I'll write him anyway.

The agreement puts off the funding fight until the budget deliberations in September. That's about four months from now. Here's what those four months mean:

Since the beginning of the war, 64,061 iraqi civilians have been killed. That works out to be about 1,307 per month. Since 2003, 3,698 US soldiers have died or about 75 per month. By agreeing to put off the debate until September, Democratic leaders -- speaking on your behalf -- agree to kill 5,229 iraqis and 302 US troops before we can even discuss ending the war. That's 5,531 deaths total that people have agreed are acceptable -- in your name -- before we even start to think about peace.

The Democratic Party needs to do something it very rarely does -- listen to the wiser voices in the party. "This is no time to back down. This fight to end the war isn't something that we can just put off or kick down the road..." Russ Feingold says of the agreement. "Why should this wait until September? First Americans had to put up with a Republican Congress that did nothing, and now we are faced with a Democratic Congress that is giving the President exactly what he wants -- continuing his failed policy and leaving our troops stuck in the middle of a civil war. Some strategy."

If Democrats don't listen to people like Feingold, the war will continue and it will get worse:

Hearst Newspapers:

The Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in Iraq this year, an analysis of Pentagon deployment orders showed Monday.

The little-noticed second surge, designed to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq, is being executed by sending more combat brigades and extending tours of duty for troops already there.

The actions could boost the number of combat soldiers from 52,500 in early January to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year if the Pentagon overlaps arriving and departing combat brigades.

Does that sound like someone who's committed to recognizing reality and ending the war anytime soon? It looks to me as if he's absolutely, positively guaranteed to wave the benchmarks and keep stoking his damned war. Why didn't we believe him when he said, "We're not leaving [Iraq] so long as I'm the president."?

Bush will not end this war. Ever. Period. End of story.

The only way to end this madness and stop all the killing is the law. Take the freakin' war away from him. Stick by binding timelines and make ignoring them a crime.

If Bush doesn't sign off on those, we'll have made a liar of him (not that he needs any help) -- he'll end the war himself by withholding funding for it.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; peace; disaster; military; war; law; Democratic leadership in Congress are preparing to declare Bush King of Iraq

Bush War Funding Fight as Hopeless as the War

Guess what? Bush doesn't get it:

Associated Press:

President Bush, urging Congress to craft a war spending bill quickly, offered no clues Saturday about whether he'll compromise over linking U.S. support to stability in Iraq.

Bush and Congress have been talking about how to agree on a bill to finance combat operations through September. The president demands the money without strings attached, but Democrats say Bush eventually must accept some conditions on the U.S. commitment to the unpopular war.

Here's the thing -- Bush wants the war, Democrats not so much. This puts Bush at an extreme disadvantage. He can either sign what he gets or effectively defund his own war. If there's anyone here who needs to talk about compromise, it's Bush -- clearly neither of the options are acceptable to him and they're all he's got.

So why is Bush being such a pigheaded fool about this? "If we were to leave Iraq before the government can defend itself, there would be a security vacuum in the country," AP quotes Bush as saying. "Extremists from all factions could compete to fill that vacuum, causing sectarian killing to multiply on a horrific scale."

How do we know that's what will happen? That's what happened after we removed Saddam Hussein from power. Pretty much everyone other than the neocons predicted it and, as is usually the case, almost everyone but the neocons were right. With that track record, it's a little hard to take the Bushies seriously when they talk about Iraq. We're just keeping things at a slow boil here, we aren't actually getting anywhere. If things have to get worse before they get better, that's not really anyone's fault other than the people who started this damned war.

The next war funding fight may be a Hillary Clinton/Robert Byrd bill that allows the 2002 war authorization to expire on its fifth anniversary, Oct. 11, 2007. According to Reuters, when Clinton co-sponsored the bill, "White House spokesman Tony Fratto called Clinton's action 'reckless' and 'a political stunt.'"

Here's the thing, the White House that got us into this war -- which after four freakin' years still struggles to find a reason for existing -- doesn't get to talk about recklessness. There were no WMD, no ties to terrorism, no connection to 9/11 -- they recklessly rushed a nation into a war that later would be proven to have no real reason for being. And they recklessly seek to continue a war that serves no purpose. Hypocrisy is the Bush administration's only strong suit.

Bush can veto and veto and veto. It's an action that's never going to fund the war. He can't force Congress to do anything -- constitutionally or politically. There's a reason why Congress authorizes funding; to keep a runaway executive from following an idiotic path. Politically, Bush can't win. Polls show voters back Congress, not Bush. He has no political capital to spend here. He may not like it, but his back's against the wall.

Which makes all his tough talk empty. He's got nothin'. He's lost the political fight, he's lost the moral argument, and he's lost the people of the United States. He's in no position to take a stand and say , "No compromise!"

As things stand right now, he'll compromise or he'll get nothing. For the record, that last option is my personal favorite.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Congress; Democrats; Hillary Clinton; Robert Byrd; In the debate about funding the Iraq war, Bush is learning that you can't fight if you don't have anyplace left to stand

Bush to America: "Screw off"

By now, you know that Bush vetoed the war funding bill. Not a huge surprise, really. This is a man who can be relied on to always do exactly the wrong thing. I checked the White House RSS feed to see if they had his comments. They didn't. No big deal, I can sum it up for you:

"Hey America, blow me!"

That was pretty much the message. A Gallup poll out today shows that 57% of americans support a timetable for withdrawal, while only 39% support Bush's position of staying in Iraq until the sun burns out. I had no idea that 39% of americans were insane. I'd have guessed something like 20.

What Bush is so busy doing lately is pretending that Congress doesn't have him over a barrel. And it's pretty much his own damned fault. If he'd included war funding in the budget, he wouldn't be in this fight now. But he kept Iraq out of the budget so he could fudge the numbers and claim he's cutting the deficit. Once again, Bush's dishonesty has gotten him into more trouble than that dishonesty was engineered to avoid.

So why is Bush over a barrel? If he keeps rejecting funding with restrictions, he'll defund the war himself. He's got the bully pulpit, but that only works if people are listening. And they're not. We, as americans, are so damned tired of George W. Bush. This has probably been the most unpleasant six years of my life. It's like waking up every morning and finding that you've got spiders for breakfast. It's like a prolonged experiment to see how long the american people will tolerate an idiot -- and it's a depressingly long time.

Bush has vetoed only two bills in his presidential career and both vetos have been a big 'screw off' to the american people. Both vetos have been in support of death and misery. And both vetos have been against eventuality. It's like he thinks he can stop reality. Stem cell research will go forward and the Iraq war will end. There's no way he can keep either from happening -- and there's no reason to believe he should.

It's fitting that Bush vetoed this bill on the fourth anniversary of his 'Mission Accomplished' speech. He's as wrong now as he was then. Why isn't four years of a pointless, stupid bloodbath enough? How long is the required time period for this ongoing mass human sacrifice? When will the Gods of the War on Terror be appeased?

Apparently, never. The only reason we're still fighting is so we can prove that Bush's cult of visionary neocons couldn't possibly be wrong. And, since that argument is logically flawed and we can never prove it, we'll never stop fighting.

The Democrats can't back down on this. Bush will accept their terms or he'll veto the war out of existence. Unless they balk, the war is over -- one way or another. There is no downside.

At this point, it's pretty obvious that George W. Bush isn't just incompetent, stupid, and stubborn as an ass -- it's time to admit the obvious. George W. Bush is crazier than a sack of cats. He's squirrellier than an oak tree, a brick short of a load, crazier than a cork anchor, more of a Nixon than freakin' Nixon.

We can take this war away from him or we can be the generation that tolerated the american Caligula. Those are our choices, Democrats -- don't disappoint us.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Iraq; war; Congress; Democrats; peace; Bush is a freakin' madman

Is the War Over?

A new poll was released yesterday and, among other things, the Pew Center for the People and the Press found that Bush has -- as I've been saying all along -- painted himself into a corner in the Iraq war funding debate. The findings show that a solid majority of americans back Congress on a timeline for troop withdrawal.

It gets better. Not only do a majority think that Bush is wrong, but a majority of those (54%) want no compromise on the issue. Bush is even losing Republicans over this. While 44% of GOP voters back Bush's approach to Iraq, 49% think we should 'Take a different approach.'

Here's what I see -- if dems stick to their guns and keep giving Bush funding bills with timelines, there is no downside (other than one caveat I'll get to later). If Bush keeps vetoing bills with restrictions, he's effectively defunding the Iraq war -- by his own hand. Democrats don't have to cut funding if Bush is more than willing to do it himself. In doing this, they would force those Republicans who back Bush to continue to make unpopular votes to sustain Bush's vetos. That'll cost them in '08.

If the nearly impossible happens and Bush caves, dems win the political contest and undying gratitude of a majority of americans.

There is one more possibility and it's a winner for absolutely no one. Bush keeps troops in Iraq -- unfunded -- and tries to blame it all on Democrats. A normal person would find this option unthinkable. But Bush is not a normal person. There is nothing too self-serving, too stupid, too stubborn, or too heartless for this compassionate conservative to try.

Writes Ronald Brownstein in the L.A. Times, "George W. Bush's presidency is devolving into an extended holding action. On too many fronts, his top priority now appears to be delaying the inevitable." In this case, the inevitable is that we pull out of Iraq and Bush's invasion is forever remembered as one of the biggest foreign policy disasters in history.

The commitment to an open-ended conflict for decades to come may be Bush's vision, but it is never going to happen. The next president, Democrat or Republican, is going to pull us out. You can't commit to this war and win a second term. It's just not going to happen.

And Bush isn't going to end this conflict in victory before he leaves office. For one, no one has any idea what the hell a 'victory' would be at this point. For another, he's George W. Bush -- the man who's proven that his only real skill is winning elections. He's the president who proves that the Peter Principle can take anyone to the top.

The Pew poll shows that the people are way ahead of the president here. The people want out. By continuing to veto legislation with restrictions, Bush will accomplish that by defunding the war himself.

But only if the Democrats in Congress listen to the people. No compromise, no bills without time tables, no giving Bush everything he wants. We can't keep fighting a war for Bush's historical legacy -- and, at this point, that's all we're fighting for. Even if that were worth all the dying, that legacy can't be salvaged. That cause is lost.

Bush, backed into a corner, will begin to pound on 9/11 again. But with 62,570 civilian deaths to date, Bush's war far exceeds that catastrophe. All we'd manage to do by committing to continued conflict would be to increase that number. It's not worth it.

Let Bush kill his own damned war.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; poll: If Bush makes good on his threat to veto any war funding bill with restrictions, Democrats in Congress won't have to defund the Iraq war