Fluff and Puff

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Glenn Greenwald posts “The most revealing three-minute You Tube clip ever,” in which Chris Matthews and some other beltway blatherers spend nearly four minutes discussing the U.S. Attorney scandal without saying shit about it. Instead of discussing the substance of the scandal, Matthews et al. giggle about Democrats who want to smack Karl Rove.

On a related note, Bob Herbert discusses media coverage of Elizabeth Edwards’s illness:

Since presidential campaigns are covered like sporting events, the speculation immediately centered on whether Mrs. Edwards’s illness would harm her husband’s fund-raising ability, or cause him to go up or down in the polls, or in some other way hamper or enhance his ability to compete.

The pack is obsessed with the horse race, which is regrettable. It would be far more constructive and interesting if this heightened attention to Mr. Edwards’s campaign resulted in the media and the public taking a closer look at the issues he has been pushing, not just in the campaign but ever since his unsuccessful run for vice president in 2004.

If that were to happen it could be part of the silver lining that Elizabeth Edwards hopes will emerge from her family’s latest devastating crisis.

The 2008 presidential campaign has gotten an absurdly early start and has drawn staggering amounts of media coverage. The result has largely been the triumph of the trivial: Who said what nasty thing about whom? Who flipped? Who flopped?

Substance is considered boring, and thus less newsworthy.

If these same clowns had covered the election of 1860, voters would have been subjected to endless chatter about Lincoln’s a shop-a-holic wife, Mary Lincoln, whose family were slaveowners and secessionists. Her every cough would be tagged a proof she was a liability to the campaign. Lincoln himself would be portrayed as a peacenik who lost a House seat in 1848 because he spoke out against the Mexican War. Surely the pundits would decide he was just another James Buchanan, well meaning but soft. I can see Tucker Carlson asking viewers if Lincoln wasn’t a flip-flopper on slavery, because he’d spoken against it in some speeches but had promised to make no attempt to abolish slavery in slave states in other speeches. Etc., etc.

As Herbert says in his column, Edwards is running on a number of issues, such as universal health care. I’ve got issues with Edwards’s proposal on health care, but I think it’s more important for voters to understand Edwards’s views on health care than to watch Katie Couric grill John Edwards on why he is still campaigning when his wife has cancer.

As it was, voters in 1860 probably knew next to nothing about Mary Lincoln. I remember reading somewhere that many Americans had no idea what Lincoln looked like until after he was in the White House — in Mr. Lincoln’s case, that was just as well. Sure there was some imagery hype — “Abe the Rail Splitter” stuff — but mostly what voters knew about Lincoln in 1860 was where he stood on issues. That’s because most of what they knew about Lincoln they learned from reading his speeches, published in thousands of independently owned newspapers all over the country. He was able to speak to voters more directly than today’s candidates, who can only reach voters through the mediation of the likes of Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson, Katie Couric, and worse — Faux Noise.

Doing Business

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Lurita Alexis Doan, Chief Administrator of the General Services Administration, says on the GSA web site that she hopes to meet “President Bush’s challenge for all federal agencies to find new and smarter ways to do business.”

That business is, apparently, electing Republicans.

Scott Higham and Robert O’Harrow Jr. write in today’s Washington Post:

Witnesses have told congressional investigators that the chief of the General Services Administration and a deputy in Karl Rove’s political affairs office at the White House joined in a videoconference earlier this year with top GSA political appointees, who discussed ways to help Republican candidates.

With GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan and up to 40 regional administrators on hand, J. Scott Jennings, the White House’s deputy director of political affairs, gave a PowerPoint presentation on Jan. 26 of polling data about the 2006 elections.

When Jennings concluded his presentation to the GSA political appointees, Doan allegedly asked them how they could “help ‘our candidates’ in the next elections,” according to a March 6 letter to Doan from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Waxman said in the letter that one method suggested was using “targeted public events, such as the opening of federal facilities around the country.”

Doan is scheduled to testify to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday. Doan and others may have violated the Hatch Act, which forbids executive-branch employees from using their positions for partisan political purposes.

(That’s Henry Waxman’s committee, the same one that heard the testimony of Valerie Plame. I just wanted to point that out to underscore why it was so important to elect a Democratic majority to Congress in the midterms. It wasn’t because Democrats are perfect, because they aren’t, but turning control of committees over to Democrats makes investigation of the Bush Regime possible.)

The planned hearing is part of an expanding examination by Waxman’s committee of Doan’s tumultuous 10-month tenure as administrator of the GSA. The government’s leading procurement agency annually handles about $56 billion worth of federal contracts.

The committee is also expected to question Doan about her attempt to give a no-bid job to a friend and professional associate last summer. In addition, the committee plans to look at Waxman’s charge that Doan “intervened” in a troubled technology contract with Sun Microsystems that could cost taxpayers millions more than necessary.

Ah, yes. Bushies and cronyism. Together forever.

In the Senate, Doan is facing a similar line of questioning in letters from Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). Also examining Doan are the GSA’s Office of Inspector General and the independent federal Office of Special Counsel, which investigates allegations of Hatch Act violations.

In several recent statements, Doan has said she did nothing wrong. She said her troubles are the result of retaliation by the inspector general over her efforts to rein in spending and balance the GSA budget. Doan, a wealthy former government contractor who sold her company before taking over the GSA last May, has hired three law firms and two media relations companies at her own expense to handle inquiries from the federal investigators and the news media.

“Ever since I made the decision to restore fiscal discipline to all divisions within GSA, I have had to face a series of personal attacks and charges,” Doan said in a March 7 statement.

Readers of the rightie e-rag Townhall are being told that Doan has been targeted by Waxman’s Witch Hunt because she dared to cut spending — you know that liberals are pro-spending — and because Doan canceled a $20,000 contract intended to “promote diversity.” The WaPo story mentions the contract and provides some information Townhall leaves out —

On July 25, two months after Doan took office, she took the unusual step of personally signing the no-bid arrangement with Diversity Best Practices and Business Women’s Network, firms then run by Fraser, to produce a report about GSA’s use of businesses owned by minorities or women. The GSA’s general counsel at the time, Alan R. Swendiman, told Waxman’s investigators he was “alarmed” that the project was not competitively bid.

“Fraser” is Edie Fraser, a Washington public relations executive with whom Doan has had a long business relationship and who helped Doan get the plum GSA position. It appears the contract was a quid pro quo.

The GSA general counsel “immediately and repeatedly” advised Doan to terminate the contract. When Doan refused, the general counsel directed another GSA official to do the terminating. Somehow these little details escaped the attention of Townhall.

The J. Scott Jennings, the “deputy in Karl Rove’s political affairs office” mentioned above, was also instrumental in getting one of Rove’s aides, Tim Griffin, a U.S. Attorney job. Among the items discussed during the videoconference were how they could keep Nancy Pelosi from attending the opening of a new courthouse in her district.

Karl Rove and various Republican politicians apparently pushed U.S. attorneys to manufacture charges against Democrats to help Republicans win elections. And now this. What do you want to bet that similar shenanigans are going on in several other federal agencies?

Pass the popcorn.

We’re Not Angry, Dammit

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One of the more maddening conceits of the Right is that righties are temperate and reasonable while lefties are a quivering mass of inchoate rage. George Will, master of smug obliviousness, today writes that “Americans” are “infatuated with anger,” but somehow in Will World that anger is mostly on the Left.

There are the tantrums — sometimes both theatrical and perfunctory — of talking heads on television or commentators writing in vitriol (Paul Krugman’s incessant contempt, Ann Coulter’s equally constant loathing). There is road rage (and parking lot rage when the Whole Foods Market parking lot is congested with expressive individualists driving Volvos and Priuses). The blogosphere often is, as one blogger joyfully says, “an electronic primal scream.” And everywhere there is the histrionic fury of ordinary people venting in everyday conversations.

Krugman the equivalent of Coulter? Please. And I like the touch about road rage among Volvo owners in the Whole Foods parking lot. I did a news google for “road rage”; one of the first incidents that came up involved two Arizona guys driving pickup trucks.

Will continues,

Perhaps this should not be surprising, now that Americans are inclined to elect presidents who advertise their emotions — “I feel your pain.” As the late Mary McGrory wrote, Bill Clinton “is a child of his age; he believes more in the thrust-out lower lip than the stiff upper one.”

It never occurred to me before that empathy is a form of anger.

In his column Will quotes an anthropologist named Peter Wood. Wood, who also writes for such bipartisan publications as National Review and FrontPage, is the author of the recently published A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now. Here’s a review by Glenn C. Altschuler in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Unfortunately, Wood’s partisan preoccupations mar his ability to understand the origins, nature, and significance of the New Anger. His right-wing prism imprisons. He does not follow the evidence wherever it takes him. And so, A Bee in the Mouth deserves to be derided as a cri de Coors that Scaife-goats the 1960s and Bush-whacks ideological adversaries.

Wood insists that the “New Anger tends more to the political left than the political right.” He believes that once-angry conservative white males have turned their attention “to Home Depot and bass fishing.” For Americans now, “the primary image of anger” is Howard Dean, Al Gore, or a millionaire rapper. And the “leftist anger group” MoveOn.org. But not Tom DeLay, Pat Robertson or the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Those who believe that anger is caused by secularists, proponents of identity politics, and taboos against the politically incorrect “offer genuine insights.” Wood seems rather unconcerned about angry racists, homophobes, violent opponents of abortion, and civil-liberties-suppressing “super-patriots.”

In popular culture, Wood deems Bob Dylan’s protest songs “a kind of memo” to angri-culture, dividing the world into “weak good guys and powerful creeps.” But country music’s anger at a cultural elite that “proclaims its open-mindedness while simultaneously expressing contempt for traditional values” is “warranted.” Wood acknowledges, grudgingly, that right-wing anger dominates talk radio. But he focuses on Howard Stern and Don Imus, who are not conservatives, proclaims Rush Limbaugh a master of “comic tone and timing” who is not himself angry, and says nothing at all about Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly and Neal Boortz.

I’d dismiss Wood as a partisan hack, but I fear that would make me sound angry.

Update: See also Gary Boyd of North Carolina Mountain Dreams. (The photo makes me homesick, btw.)

Update update: Speaking of righties being angry …

Quaint

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The arrest of 15 British sailors by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards is a worrisome development. The immediate concern is for the safety and well-being of the sailors, of course. Let us also hope that the sailors are released before tensions escalate and push nations closer to war.

Captain Ed notes that Iran’s trying the sailors for espionage would be a violation of the Geneva Conventions. You remember the Geneva Conventions — they’re some old treaties that Alberto Gonzales thinks are “obsolete” and even “quaint.”

Over the next few days expect Britain and Iran to haggle over whether the sailors were in Iranian waters or not. The Iranians claim to have evidence the sailors deliberately entered Iranian waters. The Brits say the sailors were “miles” inside Iraqi waters. An Iraqi fisherman who claims to have seen the capture says the Brits were on the Iraqi side of the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway.

The British sailor episode bears a resemblance to the U2 Incident. For the young folks: In May 1960 the Soviet Union shot down a U.S. U2 spy plane that had entered Soviet air space. President Eisenhower at first denied the plane and the pilot were engaged in espionage; he insisted that if the plane had been in Soviet air space, perhaps the pilot was lost. But the Soviets had the pilot, Gary Powers, in custody, and they had film taken with camera equipment installed on the plane, and eventually Eisenhower was forced to admit that, yes, the plane had been on an espionage mission. The Soviets tried and convicted Powers of espionage; he was imprisoned for two years, then swapped for a Soviet spy in February 1962. The U2 Incident contributed to an escalation of tension between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. that culminated in the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.

Then we had leaders who really didn’t want to go to war. As Glenn Greenwald documents, we are not so fortunate now. And compared to current Iranian leadership, Nikita Khrushchev seems almost reasonable. Bad times.

Life in the Real World

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Many opposed the Iraq War supplemental bill passed by the House yesterday because it didn’t go far enough, and as I wrote here that is a reasonable opinion with which I respectfully disagree. Today Big Tent Democrat is objecting to some of the arguments in favor of the supplement. I think many of Big Tent’s arguments are valid, but IMO they reveal a huge blind spot; a reality not being faced. And that’s the reality of arithmetic.

Once again, here are the numbers:

Number of Democrats in the House — 233
Number of votes needed to pass a bill — 218
Number of member of the Blue Dog Coalition — 44

As they say — do the math. In my time-space continuum, the House will not pass a bill without some votes from either Blue Dogs or Republicans, or both. Perhaps Big Tent lives in a better place, where thinking pure thoughts will summon the Good Peace Fairy, and a sprinkling of progressive pixie dust will make up for the shortfall of conservative votes. But I don’t believe that’s how it works here.

Among those of us against the war, the difference between those who are pro-supplement and those who are anti-supplement is this: Those who are anti-supplement think that passing a better bill is possible. Those of us who are pro-supplement think it isn’t.

I think Big Tent misreads Markos because Big Tent assumes passing a better bill is possible, but Kos’s opinion assumes that it isn’t. I don’t interpret Kos’s post to mean, as Big Tent says, “the point is the House Dems’ proposal will never become law” or that it would be a good thing to keep the war going until 2009 to help elect Democrats in 2009. I think Kos is arguing in favor of something as opposed to passing nothing.

Yes, one argument for passing the supplement was to help Dems win the messaging battle in 2008. But IMO that doesn’t mean anyone, including Kos, prefers winning a messaging battle in 2008 to getting out of Iraq in 2007. It means that winning a messaging battle is preferable to losing a messaging battle.

Believe me, were there a reasonable hope of passing something like Barbara Lee’s bill, and getting it enacted into law, then that’s what I would have preferred. I believe most of us would prefer that. But that wasn’t the real choice we were and are facing. The real choice is between passing something (which helps us win a messaging battle) and passing nothing (which doesn’t).

Elsewhere — Farhad Manjoo writes in Salon:

MoveOn signed on to Pelosi’s supplemental funding bill, citing a poll of its members showing overwhelming support of the idea.

MoveOn’s longtime allies in the antiwar movement, however, look at the bill — and MoveOn’s support for it — and see something very different. Groups who call for immediate withdrawal argue that MoveOn’s position is a betrayal of their cause, and that Pelosi’s bill merely continues the war while allowing Democrats to say they’ve done something to oppose it. Cindy Sheehan, the “peace mom” who favors immediate withdrawal, describes MoveOn as supporting “the slow-bleed strategy of the Democratic leadership.” Gail Murphy, of the group CodePink, says, “MoveOn has taken a compromised position — in fact I think they were involved behind the scenes in creating a compromised position.” Other peace activists call MoveOn’s e-mail poll of its membership a sham. If MoveOn’s millions of members knew the full details of the bill, they would surely oppose it.

There is room for criticism of Moveon’s email to members about the supplement, but if Moveon’s endorsement helped make the passage of something, as opposed to nothing, possible, then I say good for Moveon. I also say that Sheehan and Murphy are trotting down the same self-marginalizing road the New Left walked in the 1970s. That path leads to the state of Utter Irrelevancy. There they will spend eternity discussing bureaucratic collectivism with the moldering remains of the Popular Front. Meanwhile, the United States, its government and its citizens, will ignore them, except when their names are the answers to questions in some future edition of Trivial Pursuit.

The question is, will sufficient numbers of liberals and progressives not take that road and remain effectively engaged in American politics? I hope so.

Pile It On

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Stuff is, as they say, happenin’. Matthew Mosk writes in today’s Washington Post:

The three Democrats on the Federal Election Commission revealed yesterday that they strongly believe President Bush exceeded legal spending limits during the 2004 presidential contest and that his campaign owes the government $40 million.

Their concerns spilled out during a vote to approve an audit of the Bush campaign’s finances, which is conducted to make sure the campaign adhered to spending rules after accepting $74.6 million in public money for the 2004 general election.

Republican commissioners defended the way the Bush campaign billed the cost of more than $80 million in television ads, which were the source of the dispute.

Of course they did. Let’s take a peek back into the Maha archives — from December 31, 2005 — “Federal Election Commission Stacked With Bush Cronies.” The stacking occurred after the 2004 election, but the stackees are the guys who are claiming Bush didn’t do anything wrong.

This story caused me to search The Maha Archives for this post from December 31, 2005: Federal Election Commission Stacked With Bush Cronies.

The FEC normally has six members, three Republicans and three Democrats. One of the Republican, Michael Toner, just resigned, but not before voting on this issue. Toner is a former attorney for Bush ‘s election campaign staff and the Republican National Committee. The two other Republicans who voted are David Mason, a former Heritage Foundation fellow and a Clinton appointee; and Hans von Spakovsk, who became a commissioner by recess appointment in December 2005. A New York Times editorial of December 31, 2005 said of von Spakovsky,

The most objectionable nominee is Hans von Spakovsky, a former Republican county chairman in Georgia and a political appointee at the Justice Department. He is reported to have been involved in the maneuvering to overrule the career specialists at Justice who warned that the Texas gerrymandering orchestrated by Representative Tom DeLay violated minority voting rights. Senators need the opportunity to delve into that, as well as reports of Mr. von Spakovsky’s involvement in such voting rights abuses as the purging of voter rolls in Florida in the 2000 elections.

Let’s go back to the Washington Post:

The dispute centered on the use of what the commissioners called “hybrid” ads, which were intended to promote both the president and Republican members of Congress. The Bush campaign argued that it should not bear the full cost of these ads, so it split the tab with the Republican Party.

As a result, only half of the cost would count toward spending limits imposed on the campaign when it agreed to take public funds. Weintraub said the spending limit is an essential part of the agreement candidates make to accept public financing. “Bush-Cheney 2004 took the $74 million, and then they broke the bargain,” she said.

Commissioner Hans A. von Spakovsky, a Republican, strongly disagreed. “There was no broken bargain,” he said. “There was no violation of the law.”

Of course not, Hans.

The Hissy Fit

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President Bush’s fit (staged in front of some props people in military uniforms and VFW hats) went roughly as follows:

The Dems abdicated the responsibility to support the troops, he said. Instead, the Dems, in an act of political theater, voted to substitute their judgment for that of the military commanders on the ground. The bill contains “rigid restriction” that would require “an army of lawyers” to understand.

(That would be an army of Bush-appointed lawyers. One normal lawyer could skim through it and explain it to you without much trouble.)

There’s too much pork, too many conditions, and an artificial timetable for withdrawal, he said, and I will veto this bill if it comes to my desk.

(He’d get away with it, because there’s far from a veto-proof majority in the House, and it’s a long shot passing the bill in the Senate at all.)

What the Dems did today, the President said, delays delivery of vital resources for our troops.

(To which I say, again, if he’d put more Iraq War funds in the regular budget and stop hitting Congress up for “emergency” supplemental bills — money he knew months earlier he’d have to ask for — then he wouldn’t have to worry about vital resources for our troops.)

You’ll like this: “We’re beginning to see some signs of progress.” Please.

He wants a “clean bill that I can sign without delay.” Congress is supposed to just rubber stamp his little requisitions. Well, dammit, is this a republic, or ain’t it?

Don’t answer that.

Bush didn’t take questions.

Motives

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[Update: The bill just passed — by 218 votes.]

[Update 2: More updating below]

This is a follow up to the last post, on the Iraq War supplemental bill being voted on today (noonish, CSPAN says).

Today people whose opinions I respect are arguing both for and against passage of this bill. The arguments boil down to this:

No — It allows the war to continue for nearly 18 more months. We can do better.

Yes — It’s not an ideal bill, but this bill has a chance of passage. Actually passing an antiwar bill (as opposed to voting for something better that fails to pass) will weaken Bush politically and perhaps make it politically tenable to pass something tighter and stricter in the future. But if this bill fails, passing something tighter and stricter in the future will be even more difficult than it is now.

The hurdle is 218 votes. There are 233 Democrats in the House. Although it’s not impossible that a stray Republican might cross party lines and vote for an antiwar measure, realistically Nancy Pelosi has to get 218 Democrats to agree to vote for the bill to ensure passage. If more than 15 Dems vote against the bill, it will fail. And, like it or not, 44 of those 233 Democrats are Blue Dogs — moderate to conservative Dems who mostly represent “red” districts. Roughly 50 or so more House Dems are DLC Dems. A few — not all — Blue Dogs are also in the DLC, and right now I’m not inclined to spend the morning sorting out exactly how many are or aren’t. Let’s say about half. That puts us in the neighborhood of 60 House Dems who are on record as not wanting to get caught moving too far left, possibly because they’re afraid they’ll lose their seats if they do.

Let’s look at the liberal side of the spectrum: The House Progressive Caucus has 69 members. At Democrats.com, David Swanson asks the Progressive Caucus members to vote no on the supplement bill. His arguments against the bill are valid arguments. His arguments in favor of Barbara Lee’s “fully funded withdrawal” bill are valid arguments. I’d much rather the House passed Lee’s bill than the one they’re voting on today.

I’ve never set foot inside the House of Representatives, and I don’t presume to understand what’s possible and what isn’t. But The People Who Understand These Things say there is no way enough Blue Dogs and other moderate Dems would vote for Barbara Lee’s bill to pass it. Maybe they won’t vote for it because they think it’s political suicide; maybe they won’t vote for it because they genuinely don’t like it. In the real world, in order to get those 218 votes, Nancy Pelosi has to give the House something that most of the Blue Dogs and most of the Progressive Caucus will vote for, as well as most of the other Dems.

Yesterday Rep. Jerrold Nadler — long a solidly liberal Dem — was quoted in the New York Times —

To vote “no,” in effect would be to say, “Let the war go on.” There will be other votes, but this at least starts in the right direction. It’s not as far as I wanted to go, but it’s a substantial step.

As I’ve said, there are people of good will with reasonable opinions who disagree on this issue. Unfortunately, there are some who don’t get that. All week I’ve been hearing accusations that various people or organizations — Moveon.org is one — have “sold out” because they favor passage of the supplement bill. I’ve heard people say that Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want to end the Iraq War. Late last night a commenter to my last post said,

The actual strategic hope of the people favoring this bill seems to be that the president will veto it. You can then show him to be against even an obligation to meet his own benchmarks, and this will demonstrate him to be an unreasonable man. Does that seem like the right way to understand what you are doing?

In other words, nobody actually wants this bill to pass into law. It’s just a messaging device. That seems to be Kos’s position.

‘Scuse me while I bang my head against a wall and scream.

First, Pelosi is putting forward a compromise bill that has some chance of passage, as opposed to an un-compromise bill that has no chance of passage. How does that translate into “nobody actually wants this bill to pass into law”?

Second, if Bush vetoes today’s bill, as he promises to do, what makes you think he wouldn’t also veto Barbara Lee’s bill?

Third, the Senate can’t even pull together enough of a majority to have a vote on a bleeping nonbinding resolution.

Sure I want the war to end tomorrow. I wanted it not to start. Our choices in Congress are to do something to end it, or to do nothing to end it. I’m for doing something.

If the supplement bill passes, as it’s expected to do, what should we as antiwar citizens do?

(a) Express support for congressional Dems, and do what we can to make pro-war politicians and the Bush administration feel more isolated against the tide of public opinion, thereby paving the way for more congressional action against the war, or

(b) Whine because it wasn’t the bill we wanted, and throw verbal brickbats at Nancy Pelosi and Moveon.org and everybody else who “sold out”?

You know where I stand on this.

Chris Bowers writes,

Right now, with few remaining progressives willing to vote against the supplemental bill, and with the House leadership probably having enough votes to pass it (for more on this, see here), the remaining progressive opposition is being cast as “principled,” in contrast to the “pragmatic” progressives who have decided to vote in support. This is certainly the dichotomy proposed by McJoan in her latest piece on the supplemental over at Dailykos. This is a binary opposition with which I disagree, primarily because I have always looked at ethics from an applied perspective, where the ethical value of a given action can only be judged in the context of the consequences of that action. In this circumstance, I am, not arguing that voting against the supplemental from the a progressive stance is unethical, just that it is not any more ethical than voting in favor.

In the same post, Chris pasted a statement from the Progressive Caucus that they would not block the bill. Josephine Hearn reports for The Politico (yeah, I know, it’s The Politico), “California Democrats Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey and Diane E. Watson said they did not want to stand in the way of the bill and have urged other liberal lawmakers to vote for it.”

I hope nobody accuses Barbara Lee of selling out.

Update: Here are the Dems who voted no, and it appears Lee, Waters, Woolsey and Watson were among the no’s.

Barrow
Boren
Davis, Lincoln
Kucinich
Lee
Lewis (GA)
Marshall
Matheson
McNulty
Michaud
Taylor
Waters
Watson
Woolsey

I’m not saying these Democrats are wrong. On the other hand, one more no vote would have, IMO, set back the antiwar cause enormously.

President Bush is expected to throw a public hissy fit about 1:45 EST.

Practicalities

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Tomorrow the House is going to vote on a bill that would end most military involvement in Iraq by the end of August 2008.

My understanding is that the House will be voting on one of Bush’s “emergency supplement” bills, which is how he likes to fund the war rather than through the regular budget. The bill would provide for $124 billion that will mostly go to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus “extra money tucked in for veterans’ health care, hurricane recovery and farm aid,” writes Renee Schoof of McClatchy Newspapers. But the House Dems are attaching conditions.

Briefly, the bill would

  • Add $1.2 billion more for the war in Afghanistan than Bush requested; $3.4 billion for veterans’ and military health care; $2.5 billion to prepare troops in the United States for combat; $6.4 billion for hurricane recovery; and $3.7 billion for agricultural assistance.
  • Require that the Iraqi government meet benchmarks that Bush outlined in January for quelling the violence. Redeployment would be sped up if the benchmarks weren’t met. Some American forces would remain in Iraq to train Iraqis, protect American diplomats and military forces, and fight terrorists.
  • Require that the president explain his decision if he sends any troops into combat who aren’t fully trained, rested and equipped.

    • It’s not a de-funding bill, but the way it was talked about on some of the cable news shows this afternoon made it sound as if it was. I finally figured out that the Republicans are warning that, since Bush will certainly veto the bill, this would delay funds going to the troops.

    And that would be proof that Bush doesn’t support the troops, I say. He’s the one who waits until the last minute and then hits up Congress for “emergency supplement” bills. Why wasn’t this stuff in the budget? OK, I know the answer. First, keeping much of the Iraq War costs out of the budget helps the Bushies lie about balancing the budget. Second, it’s harder to trace where off-budget monies go.

    Other Republicans whine that Congress shouldn’t “micromanage” the Commander in Chief. First, the bill is hardly “micromanagement.” And I say Bush has had four years to manage the war, and he hasn’t. It’s time for someone else to provide some direction, since he clearly can’t do it.

    Tonight there are predictions the bill will pass. The magic number is 218 votes. The magic number for a similar measure in the Senate is 60 votes, which is probably out of reach.

    David Sirota:

    Immediately after the 2006 election, pro-war Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D) told the New York Times that she hoped Democrats played a “kabuki dance” with progressives – pretending to be one thing, then doing another. It was an insulting comment – but the shrewd use of a “kabuki dance” should not be discounted as a critical political tool. And that’s exactly what’s going on with the supplemental on behalf of progressives.

    Right now, Obey’s Iraq bill is being painted in the media as something of a moderate compromise. That has led some organizations on the left to label the bill as a full-on sellout. But as progressives, we must ask ourselves: Would we rather own the public debate, or wield real power?

    Here are the facts: The Iraq supplemental bill begins redeploying troops by March 2008, and completes a full withdrawal by September 2008. You can label the bill anything you like. For all I care, you can label it the Iraq War Indefinite Continuation Act and Fox News can run slick graphics cheering on the legislation as the greatest escalation of militarism since Genghis Khan. But as long as that language is in there and the bill passes, then at the end of the day, real, binding power has been wielded to end the war.

    You might remember Rep. Obey from the YouTube video, in which he became exasperated at a hopelessly uninformed “activist” and called her a “liberal idiot.” The activist preferred another bill that would have provided money only for a withdrawal. That bill was proposed by Rep. Barbara Lee, who I understand has agreed to vote for Obey’s bill tomorrow.

    David Sirota continues,

    Congressional progressives now face the same pangs that come with evolving into a movement with majority power, rather than serving merely as contrarian voices in the minority. They are undoubtedly being pressured by a small but very vocal group of organizations that make up what’s known as the Professional Protest Industry – organizations that exist solely to see the world as they want it, not as it is (a note: not everyone working to kill the supplemental is part of the Professional Protest Industry – many folks just legitimately believe stopping the supplemental is the best way to go, and I absolutely respect that even though I think it is the wrong strategy – however, there is no denying that there is a loud, vocal Professional Protest Industry – check out International ANSWER or the LaRouchies for a few examples). As a matter of existence, this industry wants – no, needs – to prioritize the public debate over wielding real legislative power, because that is the niche that makes them relevant. That these organizations have attacked some of the most steadfastly progressive groups for not being antiwar “enough” shows exactly where their priorities are.

    But lawmakers are not professional protest organizations. They are elected to wield power – that is their job. To be sure, noise and protest and press conferences can play a key constructive role in shaping legislation. But when legislation in question ultimately comes to a vote, power is wielded with the quiet force of the law, which is why the binding redeployment language must remain, by far, the most important element of this bill to anyone who is interested in ending the war.

    Finally, if one can appreciate the difference between packaging and power, consider that it is not a reach nor spin to consider the current supplemental a version of a “fully funded withdrawal.” Though it does not include language saying that the money appropriated to the Pentagon can only go to fund withdrawal activities, it is a bill that is funding for the military with the explicit, binding order that the war end by a date certain. In accepting the orders of the bill, the military knows it is being ordered to spend the money consistent with the language that says the war ends by September 2008 at the latest.

    The bottom line, as I see it, is that if this measure passes tomorrow it will weaken and isolate Bush and the hawks. If it doesn’t, the spinners will hoot about the Dems being “divided” and that they are selling out their constituents by not working hard enough to end the war. And Bush will be seen as the “winner” who can go ahead and do as he pleases.

    There are some progressive antiwar Dems who say they will vote with the Republicans because they want a better bill. I think that would be a huge mistake. If the House falls short of 218 votes for that reason, names will be named.