Category Archives: Congress

Black Holes

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Spencer S. Hsu writes for The New York Times,

The Bush administration unconstitutionally denied aid to tens of thousands of Gulf Coast residents displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita and must resume payments immediately, a federal judge ordered yesterday.

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon said the Federal Emergency Management Agency created a “Kafkaesque” process that began cutting off rental aid in February to victims of the 2005 storms, did not provide clear reasons for the denials, and hindered applicants’ due-process rights to fix errors or appeal government mistakes.

“It is unfortunate, if not incredible, that FEMA and its counsel could not devise a sufficient notice system to spare these beleaguered evacuees the added burden of federal litigation to vindicate their constitutional rights,” Leon, a D.C. federal judge, wrote in a 19-page opinion.

“Free these evacuees from the ‘Kafkaesque’ application process they have had to endure,” he wrote.

With FEMA, it’s hard to know how much of this nonsense is incompetence and how much of it is a deliberate strategy to avoid paying money. Possibly both.

As of June, Congress had allocated more than $107 billion “to provide emergency support and assist in longer-term recovery in the Gulf Coast,” according to the Brookings Institution. If you google for information on what has happened to that money, the words waste, fraud, and Byzantine pop up abundantly. In June, Eric Lipton wrote in the New York Times that

Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion. …

… The estimate of up to $2 billion in fraud and waste represents nearly 11 percent of the $19 billion spent by FEMA on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as of mid-June, or about 6 percent of total money that has been obligated.

Awhile back the Justice Department established a Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force. Browsing through their news releases gives the impression that the task force is focused exclusively on fraudulent claims for assistance, and certainly there’s plenty of that to keep them busy. Fraud on the part of government contractors, however massive, seems not to be a concern. And the Republican-controlled Congress seems to have done little more than go through the motions of providing oversight.

Let’s hope that’s about to change.

Meanwhile, via The Talking Dog, we find that Homeland Security misdirector Michael Chertoff has admitted that maybe Homeland Security funds are not being allocated sensibly.

Remember how this summer, the Department of Homeland Security reduced the amount of anti-terror funding NYC would get? Sure, NYC was still getting most of the funding, but funds were being increased in less risky areas with, well, influential politicians. And then the press had a field day with how Homeland Security didn’t think there were any national monuments or major buildings at risk? And then Homeland Security claimed that NY State and NYC didn’t file their request properly?

That’s pretty much what FEMA said about the people who’d had their rent aid cut off.

Well, now Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has come out and tacitly stated – though not outright admitting – that the DHS was wrong. The Post reports that at a grand-writing [grant-writing?] conference, Chertoff offered a mea culpa:

    “We’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps there was a little too much bean counting and a little less standing back and applying common sense to look at the total picture,” Chertoff told a grant-writing conference.

    “And I’ve heard the complaints about it, looking like we’re playing kind of a pop-quiz type of game with local communities,” he said.

    “They have to try to guess what we’re looking for – and if they guess wrong, they don’t get the money that they think they’re entitled to, and that they may be entitled to.”

The DHS was quick to say that Chertoff isn’t admitting the funding allocation was a mistake, but that “He’s pretty much just saying that this year we will apply some common sense [and] look at the risk in the city.” … Remember, he’s the same man who said that a terrorist attack on a subway is less catastrophic than a terrorist attack on an airplane, because it’s not like subways are connected to large stations or terminals or anything.

From here, it’s hard to know how much tax money given to the DHS (including FEMA) is actually being applied to homeland security, and how much is being sucked into a black hole. It’s also hard to know how much of the bureaucratic “bungling” is really a cover for payoffs, kickbacks, and other less-than-savory uses of taxpayers’ monies.

But I do get a strong impression that a whole lot of that $107 billion meant for Katrina relief and recovery got lost somewhere between Washington DC and the Gulf Coast.

The way the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress budgets and allocates money makes it damn hard to follow that money. The over-use of “emergency” supplemental appropriations has made the official budget something of a joke. Veronique de Rugy writes for Reason Online:

Supplemental spending, “emergency” spending in particular, has become Washington’s tool of choice for evading annual budget limits and increasing spending across the board. Funding predictable, nonemergency needs through supplementals hides skyrocketing military costs and allows Congress to boost regular appropriations for both defense and nondefense programs, thereby enabling the spending explosion of the last five years. …

… The Bush administration has used supplementals to hide the true cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Three years in, the Iraq war can hardly be called an emergency or an unpredictable event. This is especially true since one of the largest expenditures goes to the salaries and benefits of Army National Guard personnel and reservists called to active duty. Yet each year President Bush leaves out all war costs when he presents his budget to Congress, knowing that he will be able to secure the funding later through the supplemental process. This year Congress will appropriate nearly 20 percent of total military spending via supplementals.

“Emergency” supplemental spending bills have included monies for hurricane relief and recovery. Congress critters hate to vote against hurricane relief and recovery. But we have no way to know how much of that money, if any, is actually being spent on hurricane relief and recovery.

Etiquette and Jim Webb

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Y’all will love this. Michael D. Shear writes in today’s Washington Post:

At a recent White House reception for freshman members of Congress, Virginia’s newest senator tried to avoid President Bush. Democrat James Webb declined to stand in a presidential receiving line or to have his picture taken with the man he had often criticized on the stump this fall. But it wasn’t long before Bush found him.

“How’s your boy?” Bush asked, referring to Webb’s son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

“That’s not what I asked you,” Bush said. “How’s your boy?”

“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

Be still, my heart.

At The Moderate Voice, Michael van der Galien sniffs that Webb should have been more civil. To which I say, bleep that. I can only imagine the grinding, prolonged anguish a parent feels when a child is off fighting in a war. When in fact that child is in danger only because of the corruption and incompetence of politicians, is that parent supposed to bow and scrape to the politician-in-chief like some bleeping courtier?

Bleep that, I say.

Webb didn’t seek the President out to start a fight, note. He spoke up only after Bush was rude to him. Emily Heil writes for The Hill:

At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.

Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.

“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.

Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t. It’s safe to say, however, that Bush and Webb won’t be taking any overseas trips together anytime soon.

Not getting slugged is more respect than The Creature deserves. As Glenn Greenwald says,

It is difficult to fathom the hubris and self-indulgence required for someone to ask a parent of a soldier in Iraq how their son is doing only to then snidely tell the parent that the answer isn’t what he wanted to hear.

Of course, the righties can’t see that Bush was out of line, and are already foaming at the mouth about the “Bush hater.” Like they’re so into civil discourse.

Update: Tristero:

I want to focus entirely on the unspeakable callousness Bush displayed here.

Folks, political enemy or friend, that is no way – ever– for anyone to talk to the father of a kid who’s in a combat zone.

This is the same man who reminisced about his hell-raisin’ during a speech at the worst natural disaster in American history. This is the same man who, when, asked to name his greatest achievement while president, “joked” that it was when he caught a large fish in his fake pond on his Crawford estate – sorry, ranch. This is the same man who, when informed that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center in less than 10 minutes, sat reading “My Pet Goat” in a children’s classroom. This is the same man who, in front of a supporter who he assumed wouldn’t report it, mockingly imitated a woman about to be executed in his state.

Sickening.

Tristero mentions “stunted social skills.” I still think we’re looking at some degree of sociopathy here.

Update update: I knew Taylor Marsh would enjoy this.

Sen. Chuck Hagel

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Yesterday I wrote that Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel would make a palatable presidential candidate in the 2008 election. He has an op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Post that illustrates what I’m talking about.

There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. These terms do not reflect the reality of what is going to happen there. The future of Iraq was always going to be determined by the Iraqis — not the Americans.

Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost. It is part of the ongoing global struggle against instability, brutality, intolerance, extremism and terrorism. There will be no military victory or military solution for Iraq. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger made this point last weekend.

The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation — regardless of our noble purpose.

We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam. Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. They will decide their fate and form of government.

You can quibble about the “honorable intentions” part, but otherwise — he’s got it.

Sen. Hagel goes on to call for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq. He ends this way:

It is not too late. The United States can still extricate itself honorably from an impending disaster in Iraq. The Baker-Hamilton commission gives the president a new opportunity to form a bipartisan consensus to get out of Iraq. If the president fails to build a bipartisan foundation for an exit strategy, America will pay a high price for this blunder — one that we will have difficulty recovering from in the years ahead.

To squander this moment would be to squander future possibilities for the Middle East and the world. That is what is at stake over the next few months.

For the past several days Chris Matthews and his surrogates have complained that the Dems plan to “hide behind” the Baker commission. He is of course ignoring the fact that (a) the Dems can’t actually do anything about Iraq until January, and (b) even then they won’t have a veto-proof majority. It really would be better for everybody if there can be some bipartisan consensus in Congress on how to leave Iraq, and it makes sense to see if the Baker Commission comes up with something that a majority of both parties can get behind.

That said, I very much doubt the Baker Commission will deliver. As I wrote here, it appears the White House already may have co-opted the Iraq Study Group to force them to crank out more “strategy for victory” crapola. I do not believe for one minute that President Bush will accept any recommendations that involve withdrawal from Iraq before his term is up. And Bush can no more “build a bipartisan consensus” than he can fly. So the fight will be on, no matter what.

But it would be to everyone’s advantage if at least some Republicans in Congress join the fight on our side, and Senator Hagel’s op ed gives me some hope that can happen.

Jealousy

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You know the VRWC is off the sexism chart when even Ann Althouse notices. But apparently the Right’s brilliant plan to “get Hillary” is to “get Nancy Pelosi.” Because, you know, one Democratic woman is just like another.

Hans Nichols and Philip Sherwell write in The Telegraph:

The Republican strategy is not only to undermine Mrs Pelosi’s control of the House but also to associate her in voters’ minds with Senator Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the 2008 Democrat presidential nomination.

“Two years of Pelosi gives a good idea of what four years of Hillary will be like,” said Tom DeLay, the Republican powerbroker who ran his party in the House before he was caught up in a lobbyist corruption scandal. “They are both committed liberals and we will make that clear to the American people.”…

…A senior Republican operative who planned the damaging advertisements against Sen John Kerry, the Democrats’ presidential candidate in 2004, predicted that it would not be easy to turn Mrs Pelosi into a surrogate target for Mrs Clinton.

“If Hillary has been able to separate herself from criticisms of her own husband, she’ll try to do the same with Pelosi,” he said. “She and her people are very smart and they will try to highlight the difference between the two women. You will see Hillary move more to the centre.”

But a former strategist for a Republican House leader said: “If Pelosi comes across as not ready for prime time, that’s going to hamstring Hillary. Fair or not, people can’t help but make that comparison… Even Hillary’s people are recognising that their fates are linked.”

Oh, jebus, where to start …

First off, Republicans are acting like a loser ex-boyfriend who turns homicidal; the guy who thinks “If I can’t have her, no one will.” Apparently this isn’t just the stuff of TV serial drama. It’s a syndrome, called “male sexual proprietariness.”

It is manifested in the dogged inclination of men to control the activities of women, and in the male perspective according to which sexual access and woman’s reproductive capacity are commodities that mean can “own” and exchange. This proprietary point of view is furthermore inextricably bound up with the use of threat of violence in order to maintain sexual exclusivity and control. [page 259]

Substitute “government” for “women,” and I think you’ll see the point. Republicans are jealously stalking the Dems, shrieking “If we can’t govern, no one will!” After four years of complete control of Congress and the White House — four years of utter incompetence, please note — voters rejected them, and they can’t deal with it. They’ll foul up any attempts by Democrats to govern rather than accept the will of the voters. We should call this “wingnut governmental proprietariness.”

They were the same way after Bill Clinton won the 1992 presidential election. If you read David Brock’s Blinded by the Right, you’ll remember his descriptions of wingnut hysteria that Clinton was not “legitimate,” in spite of the fact that he had just won the bleeping election. Clearly, there are some aspects of republican government that wingnuts don’t grasp. The street sweepers were still cleaning up after the inauguration when the VRWC “punditocracy” were all over news media declaring that the Clinton Administration had already failed. Nothing the President did was too trivial for the wingnuts to blow up into a scandal. And as documented by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons in The Hunting of the President, U.S. news media willingly allowed themselves to be tools for the VRWC cause.

The ever-alert Digby has documented symptoms of wingnut governmental proprietariness in news media for the past several days, albeit framed as the female equivalent of male sexual proprietariness — Queen Bee syndrome; see “Shrinking the Kewl Kids” and “Toxins.” Queen Bees are “mean girls” who control their friends and enhance their social power by social intimidation; see also Sara Robinson, “Kewl Kidz and Queen Bees.” As Digby says,

This kind of derisive babble is not simply a bunch of overgrown frat boys ‘n sorority girls disrespectfully talking about these women’s looks. It’s designed very specifically to trivialize them. It’s right out of the Spring 2000 Earth Tones catalogue.

And the Kewl Kidz, anxious as ever to prove their sophomoric Spite Girl bona-fides, are more than happy to “pass it on” …

The “pundits” already are picking Pelosi apart with comments about botox and designer suits. Her failure to get Jack Murtha elected Majority Whip is being blown up into “proof” that Pelosi will fail as a Speaker, in spite of the fact that she was elected unanimously. You know if something like this had gone on with Republicans ca. 1992, no one would have noticed. [Update: Michael Stickings reminds us that the same thing did happen when Newt G. was elected Speaker in 1994; see also Specious Reasoning.] Just as there has been little mention in media of the discontent over the election of John Boehner and Roy Blunt as House Minority Leader and Whip, a development that could prove to be more significant in the long run.

Back to the sexism angle — other than Althouse, rightie bloggers so far haven’t noticed their own biases in this matter. My favorite comment is at Macsmind:

Both Pelosi and Hillary have one distinct problem. Call it an identity crisis. That is that they – like most democrats – will not run for office on who they are – liberals. They are constantly trying to remake themselves appear “conservative” or if you will – republican. The problem with that is that they can do either because liberals cannot lead – except haphazardly, and they haven’t a clue about what conservatism is – therefore, they can screw up quite nicely on their own.

It’s all there, folks. Implicit sexism and explicit ideologism (liberals try to act like conservatives; think feminist women try to act like men). The dig about “liberals cannot lead,” which is a five-alarm hoot after the abject failure of movement conservatives (who had all the power) to lead. “They haven’t a clue about what conservatism is” — like this guy would recognize real liberalism if it bit his butt. Actually I doubt he knows what conservatism is, either, or at least what it used to be. The people running around calling themselves conservatives these days are mostly of the pseudo variety.

The wingnut definition of liberalism is, of course, is “whatever we want to diss.” The actual philosophical foundation of liberalism is irrelevant.

Likewise “women.” I think women are individual human beings, but when wingnuts think of women, they are thinking of something else entirely.

Under the Radar

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Last week, as the mighty national MSM wagged its finger at Nancy Pelosi over the Murtha-Hoyer flap, another House leadership fight was being ignored. This was the fight between the Right Blogosphere and the Washington Republican establishment.

Oh, it wasn’t much of a fight. Rightie bloggers and other conservative activists put up their fists, and the establishment Republicans ignored them. But it reveals something about where the Right (and the Left) might be going.

Last week House Republicans kept John Boehner (Ohio) and Roy Blunt (Missouri) as their respective Leader and Whip, albeit changing from Majority to Minority in January. This was a rebuff of the bloggers, who championed Mike Pence (Indiana) and John Shadegg (Arizona). (For an explanation of the blogger position, see this article written before the House vote by Dick “The Other Dick” Morris.)

McQ at Q and O wrote,

The Arizona Republic pretty well expressed my feelings with their endorsement of Shadegg (who is, of course, a favorite son):

    We’re going to learn very quickly, likely this week, whether a lick of sense has been pounded into the craniums of congressional Republicans following their midterm disaster last Tuesday….

    …If House Republicans leave either of those gentlemen – Boehner or Blunt – in charge when they vote for new leaders later this week, they will be declaring themselves even more blithering than voters thought. And voters thought Republicans were pretty blithering this election cycle, if you hadn’t noticed.

A lot of times when you hear the coach of a losing team explain how he plans to get his team back on track, he says “we have to get back to basics”. Well that’s precisely what Republicans have to do. And that requires leadership which is actively committed to those basics and steering its members that way.

The results were even more lopsided than in the Hoyer-Burth contest. Boehner bettered Pence 168 to 27, and Blunt beat Shadegg 137 to 57. The Washington Post editorialized,

The results marked a setback for conservative activists who tried to wrest control of the party by arguing that it had lost its ideological moorings and that voters had signaled they wanted Republicans to renew the energetic, activist style that swept them to power in 1994. …

… Rather than retooling political concepts, GOP strategists say, they will focus on strategies that will promote their agenda of making tax cuts permanent, appointing conservatives to the federal bench, and making select spending cuts, while trying to foil many of the Democrats’ domestic proposals, to the extent that the Republicans’ new status allows.

Remember the GOP motto: It’s not what you do, but what you say, that counts.

While researching this development I found this intriguing FAQ by Dean Barnett at Townhall. It begins:

1) How could this have happened? The entire weight and heft of the right-wing blogosphere stood behind a campaign to change the House leadership and nothing happened. Kos holds a putz-fest in Vegas and virtually the complete Democratic establishment comes to kiss his ring. Is the right wing blogosphere only capable of getting congressional types to give us a few minutes of their time on conference calls?

The FAQ answer is “The right wing blogosphere has to deal with the facts. The politicians just aren’t that into us.” But this perception from the Right turns old leftie conventional wisdom on its head — we think they’re marching in lockstep with the GOP while we’re outsiders, crashing the gates of the Dem establishment. So which is it?

I think you can find part of the story in posts by Chris Bowers at MyDD. In fact, the titles of the posts in chronological order tell the story:

September 12, 2004: “Top-Down Right-Wing Blogosphere Growing Powerful.”

January 20, 2005: “Partisan Left-Wing Blogs Growing Far More Influential Than ‘Independent’ Right-Wing Blogs.”

June 12, 2005: “Aristocratic Right Wing Blogosphere Stagnating.”

March 21, 2006: “There Is No Right-Wing Blogosphere Anymore.”

Although the title of that last post may seem a tad premature, the point he makes is about the different natures of the Right and Left Blogosphere and the fact that the two halves of the blogosphere brain are not mirror images of each other.

In a nutshell — in the first post, Chris looked at traffic patterns on both sides of the blogosphere and explained why the Right was better at pushing that “one big story” and getting that story into the headlines than the Left. Back in the glory days of Rathergate, for example, we saw a story travel from an anonymous comment on Free Republic to national media in 12 hours. “The right-wing blogosphere has become integrated into the Mighty Wurlitzer,’ wrote Chris, “while we remain a loose confederation of outrage, analysis and action.”

In the second post, Chris noted that the righties were still better at getting and keeping the attention of news media than we were. But, under the radar, the Left Blogosphere was busy with other matters:

We raised well over a million dollars for Democratic candidates in the 2004 cycle whereas they did not even come close to 100K. We crushed Roemer’s candidacy for DNC chair and are on the verge of basically selecting the new DNC chair, whereas they said nothing about the RNC chair. We changed a law in Virginia, but I have never heard of them contacting lawmakers. We organized a challenge to the electoral vote certification, but I can’t remember the last time a Republican Senator did something on the urging of the right-wing netroots. We have significantly whipped our own party into line on Social Security, and there is nothing comparable on their side.

In the third post, Chris wrote about the growth of community on the Left Blogosphere and the lack thereof on the Right. On the Left, it’s much easier for new voices to join our discourse and introduce ideas that will be noticed throughout our side of the ‘sphere. The Right Blogosphere, however, is far more hierarchical, with a relatively small pool of über-bloggers dominating rightie web conversation.

And in the fourth and last post, Chris noted that those über-bloggers had mostly been absorbed into the conservative establishment.

Most major right-wing bloggers have now been incorporated into the established news media apparatus. Glenn Reynolds is a columnist for MSNBC. Andrew Sullivan is a columnist for Time. Michelle Malkin is a frequently published columnist in a number of offline outlets. And now, RedState co-founder Ben Ben Domenech has a regular column in the Washington Post.

We all remember that Ben Domenech didn’t last long in the WaPo position, for which he was colossally unsuited. Still, the fact that a 24-year-old pedestrian writer and college dropout was given such a position at all is wonderfully illustrative of how the Right is becoming a tad inbred; for more on this see DHinMI at Kos.

The many ties between conservative institutions (including media, think tanks, and the Republican Party) and the Right Blogosphere were documented by Garance Franke-Ruta in The American Prospect; see “Blogged Down” from the April 2005 issue. Please do take a look at this, because I don’t want to repeat it all here but it makes an important point about how the conservative establishment has been using the Right Blogosphere all along. There is little parallel with the Left Blogosphere. While some of us have received occasional media attention and gigs with campaigns after we got into blogging, only a handful of people on my blogroll had media exposure or establishment connections before blogging. Of course, what little progressive/liberal media-think tank infrastructure exists is no match for the Right’s.

And then go read (or re-read) Peter Daou’s original “Triangle” essay from September 2005. “[B]log power on both the right and left is a function of the relationship of the netroots to the media and the political establishment,” Peter wrote. Bloggers become effective at pushing a story or addressing an issue when blogs, media, and the political establishment form a power triangle and work together to promote that story or address that issue. And, until recently, the Right was a whole lot better at that than we were. Even before the political blogosphere took off, the establishment Right was incorporating the web into the triangle; think Drudge and the blue dress.

Chris continues,

The right wing tends not to build independent online communities, using their existing offline communities to generate web sites that reinforce their politics and their ideology.

Their web presence is nurtured by institutions and is part of the conservative, right-wing media machine. The Drudge Report, for instance, is one of the largest conservative sites and frequently receives its information from Republican operatives.

Most right-wing blogs reiterate talking points that are generated from inside formal conservative institutions; conversations center on feeling victimized for being right-wing, attacking and hating progressives, and attacking and hating the media….

… I feel it has developed to such a degree that the right-wing blogosphere itself has been all but annihilated … there is almost nothing in the way of an independent right-wing blogosphere operating outside of existing, established news media outlets. The days of the rise of Free Republic have long passed.

By “annihilated” Chris isn’t saying there is no Right Blogosphere, he’s saying there is no community of activist rightie bloggers independent from the conservative establishment that can effectively challenge the establishment. And that takes us back to Dean Barnett’s FAQ.

2) But how come the Democrats are so into the blogosphere and the Republicans aren’t? How come we don’t generate fear and respect like the Kosfather?

Because all we do is opine, and often in an annoyingly independent way. While all of us root for the Republican Party, we’re also pretty expressive when members of the party let us down. We might carry a little water, but as a group, I bet the Republican establishment thought of us as more as a pain in the neck than an asset during the last campaign season. I know I won’t be on George Allen’s Christmas card list.

3) And Kos is different?

Yes. Although he rips Democrats when he’s of a mind to do so, he also brings something else to the party. He brings volunteers and money and buzz. Although my modem might well explode as I type these words, Jon Tester would not be a senator starting in January if it weren’t for the Daily Kos. Same for Jim Webb. He never would have made it out of the primary.

It’s true that, all along, plenty of rightie bloggers have bucked Washington establishment opinion. Most of them hate President Bush’s immigration plans. Many have complained about Congress’s out-of-control spending. But they’ve done very little [*] counter-organizing or activism. They complain, and the establishment ignores them.

[*] One of the few independent rightie blog initiatives that has generated some heat is the Porkbuster project founded by NZ Bear and Glenn Reynolds.

Leftie bloggers on the other hand, began as outsiders, and we have been fighting our way in. A couple of years ago few in the Democratic Party gave us the time of day. Now we’re a force, although how much of a force is a matter of opinion. But the realization that it’s not wise to ignore the bloggers is slowly dawning in some inside-the-beltway Democratic heads.

Dean Barnett wrote of rightie blogs, “I bet the Republican establishment thought of us as more as a pain in the neck than an asset during the last campaign season.” Possibly less of a pain in the neck than dead weight. The Right Blogosphere did plenty of water-carrying for the GOP in the 2004 campaign. They were practically the right arm of the Swift Boaters, for example. Last month they worked mightily to inflate John Kerry’s flubbed joke into a substantial issue, and certainly they helped make it a bigger deal than it deserved to be. (Too bad for them that John Kerry wasn’t running; he would have lost again.) But they couldn’t sustain a power triangle strong enough to hold back the blue wave. This is not the fault of rightie bloggers alone, of course, but rather is symptomatic of a systemic weakening of the entire Right versus a rising tide of discontent across the land.

On the other hand, until recently most of the Democratic establishment did think we leftie bloggers were a pain in the neck, and some of it still does, and we leftie bloggers regard much of the Democratic establishment in the same light. This is an alliance born more of pragmatism than loyalty, although perhaps we’ll get chummier as we get to know each other.

The Right Blogosphere from the beginning was seamlessly integrated into the establishment Right’s message machine, whether the bloggers realized it or not. As long as rightie bloggers can be counted on to support the message or swift-boat attack du jour, the establishment can tolerate (and ignore) their grumblings about Roy Blunt as majority whip. It’s not their independence from the GOP but their lack thereof that makes them ignorable.

On the other hand, the Left Blogosphere did not sit around and wait for direction from the Dems, but worked independently from the Dems to become activists and organizers and influencers in our own right. The point of this is not to be tools of the Democratic Party, which overall has displeased us mightily in recent years. The point is to make the party a better tool for effecting a progressive agenda. And this is just part of a larger effort to heal America’s sick political culture. This effort has only just begun, and we’ve got a long way to go. But we’ve made a good beginning.

The challenge for us going forward is to work more effectively with the Dems without being absorbed into the existing Democratic Party establishment. The Right Blogosphere faces a different challenge, but that’s something they’ll have to figure out for themselves.

Why We Vote

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Roxana Tiron of The Hill reports that Senate Dems plan to revise the Military Commissions Act in the next term.

Sen. Chris Dodd introduced a bill today that

… seeks to give habeas corpus protections to military detainees; bar information that was gained through coercion from being used in trials and empower military judges to exclude hearsay evidence they deem to be unreliable.

Dodd’s bill also narrows the definition of “unlawful enemy combatant” to individuals who directly participate in hostilities against the United States who are not lawful combatants. The legislation would also authorize the U.S. Court of Appeals for the armed forces to review decisions made by the military commissions.

In the next term Dodd will be the second ranking Democrat on the International Relations Committee. Sen. Patrick Leahy, the incoming Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, is also drafting changes to the Act that would reinstate habeas corpus. Incoming Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin and incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, say they plan to look into “extraordinary rendition.”

“I’m not comfortable with the system,” Levin said earlier this week. “I think that there’s been some significant abuses which have not made us more secure, but have made us less secure and have also perhaps cost us some real allies, as well as not producing particularly useful information. So I think the system needs a thorough review, and as the military would say, a thorough scrubbing.”

I’d like to point out that these guys are the Big Guns, so to speak. We don’t have a veto-proof majority, but thanks to the midterms we’re in better shape to put up a fight.

See also: “GTMO Report: Only 10 out of 440 Charged“; “Guantanamo prisoners routinely denied witnesses, evidence“; “Judge: Detainee Can’t Speak to Attorney“; “Presbyterians to witness against torture“; “The Road to Guantanamo.”

The Other “I” Word

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Following up on this morning’s post, “Twenty Thousand Troops” … as a member of the Citizen’s Impeachment Commission I’ve been getting many earnest emails calling for a stepup in pro-impeachment activism. For example, AfterDowningStreet.org is promoting December 10 as “Human Rights and Impeachment Day.”

You probably heard that, before the midterms, Nancy Pelosi said that impeachment was “off the table.”

Pelosi called impeachment “a waste of time,” and suggested Republicans — who have controlled the House for 12 years — would make political hay out of it if Democrats tried to impeach Bush.

“Wouldn’t they just love it if we came in and our record as Democrats coming forth after 12 years is to talk about George Bush and Dick Cheney? This election is about them. This is a referendum on them. Making them lame ducks is good enough for me.”

I’m about to explain why I support impeachment, and why I think it’s a mistake to push for it right this minute.

I believe strongly that Bush and Cheney should not be allowed to serve to the ends of their terms if they continue to operate outside the Constitution and ignore the laws of Congress. Congress must not allow extra-constitutional precedents to be set, which is what they will be doing if they simply wait out Bush. For the sake of the Constitution, history, and future generations, proper separation of powers must be re-established in the next two years.

However, I’ve been around the block enough times to know that unless impeachment has widespread popular support, and support among a substantial number of prominent Republicans, there will be a nasty backlash that could put the wingnuts back in power. And as unpopular as Bush is, I don’t think the public or many Republicans are ready to get on board the impeachment bandwagon. Yet.

Here’s my plan:

Before we chant the “I” word, everyone interested in reining in Bush — whether you call yourself a liberal, progressive, leftie, Democrat, libertarian, neomugwump, whatever — should be chanting the other “I” word — Iraq, Iraq, Iraq.

Congress must confront Bush on Iraq. Congress must use all of its Constitutional authority under Article I, Section 8, paragraphs 11 -14, and insist that U.S. policy will be a withdrawal. No delays, no excuses, no signing statements. Bush should be given a deadline for the withdrawal to be completed, and that deadline should have a firm 2007 date.

Would Congress do this? I think that enough politicians in both parties want Iraq: The Issue to be defused before the 2008 campaign heats up. And the midterms proved that being perceived as an enabler of George W. Bush is political death. I think many Republicans who have supported the war up til now will be persuaded to grandstand against it if that will save their political butts in 2008.

So, Congress should make a bipartisan demand that Bush order a withdrawal from Iraq. And if he refuses — and I am certain he will — then impeach the bastard. Then American people will understand why it has to be done, and they will support it. And if the effort is seen as bipartisan — as was Nixon’s almost-impeachment back in the day — there won’t be much of a backlash. Instead of being viewed as just more tiresome partisan bickering, the effort will be remembered as one of America’s finest hours.

I guess you could say that we not only have to be on the high ground on this — I believe we are already — but before we can act, there has to be a broad, bipartisan recognition that we are on the high ground.

And if the ongoing investigations by Waxman, Conyers, et al. turn up half as many White House scandals as I think they will, Republicans will want to throw Bush under the bus. And a mighty chorus will break forth on Capitol Hill — impeach, impeach, impeach.

Twenty Thousand Troops

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Alarmed that Daddy and the Democrats were going to take away his war, Junior threw a tantrum. Simon Tisdall reports for The Guardian,

President George Bush has told senior advisers that the US and its allies must make “a last big push” to win the war in Iraq and that instead of beginning a troop withdrawal next year, he may increase US forces by up to 20,000 soldiers, according to sources familiar with the administration’s internal deliberations.

Mr Bush’s refusal to give ground, coming in the teeth of growing calls in the US and Britain for a radical rethink or a swift exit, is having a decisive impact on the policy review being conducted by the Iraq Study Group chaired by Bush family loyalist James Baker, the sources said.

Although the panel’s work is not complete, its recommendations are expected to be built around a four-point “victory strategy” developed by Pentagon officials advising the group. The strategy, along with other related proposals, is being circulated in draft form and has been discussed in separate closed sessions with Mr Baker and the vice-president Dick Cheney, an Iraq war hawk.

Point One calls for increasing U.S. troops levels in Iraq by as many as 20,000 soldiers. Point Two is about regional cooperation and asking for help from U.S.-friendly Middle Eastern nations like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Point Three calls for reconciliation among Sunni, Shia, etc. And finally —

Lastly, the sources said the study group recommendations will include a call for increased resources to be allocated by Congress to support additional troop deployments and fund the training and equipment of expanded Iraqi army and police forces. It will also stress the need to counter corruption, improve local government and curtail the power of religious courts.

Haven’t we all been talking about all these “points” since 2003? Is there anything new here? Or isn’t this the same old non-plan, just kicked up a notch?

Are not points three and four goals instead of plans? I can just see Junior slapping his knee and saying, “I know! We’ll get the Sunni and Shia to reconcile!” No problemo. Put it on the to-do list, and it’s as good as done.

Tisdall continues,

“You’ve got to remember, whatever the Democrats say, it’s Bush still calling the shots. He believes it’s a matter of political will. That’s what [Henry] Kissinger told him. And he’s going to stick with it,” a former senior administration official said. “He [Bush] is in a state of denial about Iraq. Nobody else is any more. But he is. But he knows he’s got less than a year, maybe six months, to make it work. If it fails, I expect the withdrawal process to begin next fall.”

The “last push” strategy is also intended to give Mr Bush and the Republicans “political time and space” to recover from their election drubbing and prepare for the 2008 presidential campaign, the official said. “The Iraq Study Group buys time for the president to have one last go. If the Democrats are smart, they’ll play along, and I think they will. But forget about bipartisanship. It’s all about who’s going to be in best shape to win the White House.

The official added: “Bush has said ‘no’ to withdrawal, so what else do you have? The Baker report will be a set of ideas, more realistic than in the past, that can be used as political tools. What they’re going to say is: lower the goals, forget about the democracy crap, put more resources in, do it.”

A month ago, we were being told that James Baker’s Iraq Study Group would recommend narrowing U.S. goals to stabilizing Baghdad and reaching a political accommodation with the insurgents so that troops levels could be reduced. But a funny thing happened on the way to the accommodation.

Monday, President Bush met with the Iraq Study Group. On Tuesday, Bush launched an “internal policy review” separate from the ISG. And today we’re hearing that the ISG is considering a plan more to Bush’s liking.

I mostly agree with rightie blogger Rick Moran (yes, hell did freeze over) on what’s going on here.

In effect, Bush has co-opted the ISG and forced them to concentrate on “a strategy for victory” rather than “phased withdrawals” and timetables.” …

… Bush has altered the Commission’s deliberations and changed its dynamic by engaging the bureaucracy in a long delayed (too long?) review of Iraq policy from which these recommendations have sprung. Baker’s group had little choice but to incorporate them into their report or risk being shunted to the sidelines in the policy debate.

Of course, it’s also probable Baker (or somebody) was “leaking” shit prior to the midterm elections to make people think Bush was about to change his policy. We have no way to know what options the ISG really was considering.

The ISG’s apparent shift, assuming it is a shift, happened so quickly that Sidney Blumenthal’s most recent column is already outdated. He wrote that the neocons were moving to “confound” Baker and the ISG so that troops would not be withdrawn from Iraq. It appears they won already.

By some non-coincidence, yesterday Gen. John P. Abizaid told the Senate that the phased troop withdrawals being proposed by Democratic lawmakers would be bad. However, staying doesn’t seem to be an option, either —

General Abizaid did not rule out a larger troop increase, but he said the American military was stretched too thin to make such a step possible over the long term. And he said such an expansion might dissuade the Iraqis from making more of an effort to provide for their own security.

“We can put in 20,000 more Americans tomorrow and achieve a temporary effect,” he said. “But when you look at the overall American force pool that’s available out there, the ability to sustain that commitment is simply not something that we have right now with the size of the Army and the Marine Corps.”

Hmm, had Gen. Abizaid given that 20,000 figure to Bush or to whoever is doing the “internal review”? Did Bush decided that if he could get a “temporary effect” by sending another 20,000 troops he’d take it just to buy time? Because he is not going to withdraw from Iraq, no matter what. Not now, not in six months, not in two years. His ego is on the line, people.

You might recall that Senator John McCain has been making noises about sending more troops to Iraq. Today the editorial board of the Seattle Post-Ingelligencer published an open letter to the Senator (emphasis added):

Dear senator:

Sending in another 20,000 U.S. troops is the solution in Iraq? This is 2006, not 1966. The U.S. has had its seminal experience with what was euphemistically dubbed “escalation” in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam Memorial is notable for its chronological growth, with the names of American dead etched in walls that grow in height with each passing year of that conflict.

Perhaps your choice of arguing for an approach in Iraq supported by a mere 16 percent of the voters is your way of trying to regain your maverick status. Well, there’s maverick and there’s just plain loco.

See also Think Progress, “General Abizaid Smacks Down McCain’s Plan To Send More U.S. Troops To Iraq.”

I want to go back to what the unnamed official told Simon Tisdall — “If the Democrats are smart, they’ll play along, and I think they will. But forget about bipartisanship. It’s all about who’s going to be in best shape to win the White House.” That the posturing of politicians in Washington requires flushing away lives, and that “smart” people should think this is OK, is beyond obscene. And if Democrats do “play along,” this will mean they didn’t get the memo the voters just sent them. The BooMan writes,

You know, there is a certain breed of American that simply can’t get over the fact the American people gave up on the great experiment in Vietnam and that Congress pulled the plug on the project. They happen to be in charge of our foreign policy at the moment, which is a bit of a disappointment for patriotic Americans that kind of care about the direction, financial well-being, and international reputation of our country.

The midterm elections were kind of unambiguous when it comes to what the American people think about and hope for our great experiment in Iraq. And, you know, you go to war with the electorate that you have, not the electorate that you might wish that you have. And anyone that refuses to acknowledge that the electorate doesn’t buy into the idea that we need to continue to roll wheelbarrows of cash and promising lives into the quicksand pits of Iraq in order to fight them over there instead of in the trailer parks off our interstate exits here…well…they are just fighting Vietnam all over again.

I don’t care how great the ratings are for Fox News, the American people will eventually smell a bill of goods when it is held under the nose until the putrefaction is unmistakable.

I think the enormous majority of Americans will perceive the “20,000 troops” gambit as foot dragging, and any politician fool enough to support it is in for another thumpin’ in 2008.

We didn’t lose Vietnam because the populace lost interest. The populace lost interest because they realized they were being lied to and that the reasons we were there were different from the reasons we had been told. They lost interest because the strategy was fatally flawed and that there was no prospect that escalation would ultimately change the losing dynamics. It was a tragedy of epic proportions. So is Iraq.

Yes, as Steve Gilliard explains.

So, boys and girls, what have we learned today? We learned that the ISG is not going to produce some elegant solution to Iraq that everyone in Washington can sign off on while they hold hands and sing “Kum-by-yah.” We learned that if Daddy and his friends were trying to take Junior into hand and make him mind — they failed. We learned that some politicians in Washington have no more regard for the lives of U.S. troops and Iraqis than chopped spinach.

Next, we’re going to find out if the new Democratic majority in Congress has any more spine than the old soft-shelled minority. And we’ll learn if Congress will exert its constitutional authority and put an end to Junior’s warmongering.

Update: “Family Feud: Little Bush Hits Back at Daddy”