March 15th, 2007
Via Crooks and Liars, after the Democratic Party take over of Congress after the 2006 elections it looks like Bush’s White House may finally be held in check:
“What you have here is a White House that has become an accountability free zone that is now facing the reality of checks and balances from Congress. For six years President Bush got pretty much whatever he wanted from a Republican-controlled rubber stamp Congress that refused to exercise any oversight of the Executive branch of government. Well, mercifully, that party appears to be over.”
March 2nd, 2007
And this is where we, Progressives, stand… establishment Democrats counting their few gold coins, while Roman soldiers point their lances in our direction…
With the announcement that Lieberman is going to give the Democratic radio response to Bush on Walter Reed, it’s pretty well confirmed that progressives are shut out of the Congressional halls of power. First it was Feingold’s defunding proposal being poleaxed, then Hoyer winning the Majority Leader contest, then it was Murtha’s plan sandbagged by Blue Dogs, then it was Reid allowing Fox News as the anchor for the Nevada Presidential debate, then it was Joe Biden and Carl Levin failing to do anything substantive on Iraq, and now it’s a full-throated embrace of Lieberman. And yes, this was Harry Reid’s choice.
From what I understand from talking to a few progressives on the Hill, the freshmen in Congress are being extensively ‘trained’ by Rahm Emanuel’s DLC band of consultants and pollsters, which is one reason they’ve been silent.
February 27th, 2007
A tough message from a prominent anti-war leader to elected Democrats:
A leading figure of the antiwar movement is warning that Congressional Dems are at risk of badly botching the public relations battle over Iraq and is urging Congressional Dems to move more aggressively to confront the Republicans in the political showdown over ending the war.
The antiwar leader, Tom Andrews, the head of Win Without War, made the comments in an interview with Election Central. His comments reflected what he said is a growing anxiety among antiwar leaders that Congressional Dems are so consumed with uniting their caucus that they’re neglecting to articulate a forceful enough antiwar message and thus risk fumbling the current PR war.
“Democrats have to fight,” Andrews tells us. “Where are the voices in Congress reflecting the majority view of the American people?”
Andrew says that Dems are being far too timid in the face of a fierce GOP propaganda assault that has for days targeted Jack Murtha in an effort to define his plan for attaching conditions to war funds as micromanaging the war and defunding the troops.
February 17th, 2007
Just another example in a long list of mainstream media bias against opposition to Bush’s Iraq war:
A Divided House Denounces Plan for More Troops
That’s the NY Times headline covering the recent Democratic Party resolution rebuking Bush’s Iraq war escalation. Here’s the bias, as others have commented:
That would be the New York Times editorializing in its news story about yesterday’s House vote on the Iraq escalation. It gets even more ridiculous in the lede:
A sharply divided House of Representatives passed a resolution on Friday formally repudiating President Bush’s decision to send more than 20,000 new combat troops to Iraq.
Never mind that there were 17 Republicans voting against their own President and with the Democrats. On any other vote that would have been called "bipartisan."
February 17th, 2007
Man, where to begin on this conversation!?
It seems like we, liberals and the Democratic Party (and the country, for that matter), have been engaged in this conversation since the Civil Rights movement — and even before then, I’m sure. Frankly, everything that needs to be said has been said, the points are now old and stale and, to many, seem to lack relevancy. Please, don’t get me wrong: I’m a firm believer that conservation is always good, and that if family members (as we all belong to the American family) have grievances that they need to get off their chest, then a family meeting must be called and held till what needs to be said has been said. Of course, a resolution may not be arrived at at that time, and if more meetings are necessary then, shit, hold more family meetings. What for me is missing from the conversation that European-Americans and African-Americans have been having with each other over the past 50+ years is that there are a lot more settings at the table nowadays; consequently, these two parties must recognize that the dynamic of the conversation has changed.
Sure, the odious history of slavery in America binds European-Americans and African-Americans more closely to each other, perhaps, than how they’re bound to other hyphanated-Americans. However, while these two aggrieved family members continue their two-way conversation at one end of the table, Latinos have become the second largest group at the family gathering; Arab- and Muslim-Americans have garnered some unwanted attention of recent, and their contributions to the dialogue may be more important than ever to the global discourse; and, just as importantly, globalization is affecting everyone at the table from the bottom up.
And this is what gets me about the two-way conversation that some continue to advocate. Of course, my description above doesn’t even begin to capture the complexity of the conversation that we ought to be having; but one thing is for sure, two way conversations — specially in an age of economic and cultural globalization — are simply insufficient.
