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Showing posts from September, 2007

Errol Morris poses a Riddle

This article in the NYT is worth a perusal. It's fascinating.

Congressman John Boehner, GOP: "a small price to pay"

What a deal, eh?

We had an election in 2006. After years of Bush talking about the Iraqis standing up and us standing down. After General Casey talking about the training programs for the Iraqi military that didn't work. The American people decide they'd had enough of Bush and his rubber stamp GOP Congress. We pulled the plug. The Democrats won both Houses of Congress. The very next day Bush fired Rumsfeld and turned the command of Iraq over to General Pertraeus whose plan means, almost four years into the occupation of Iraq, that instead of having the Iraqis secure their country for themselves, that the American taxpayers will fund a "surge" and have American troops do that job. Bush asks for and receives from Congress hundreds of billions of dollars from the Democrats and tens of thousands of more troops. Where General Casey equivocated and talked about progress in training Iraqis, General Pertaeus now fudges the numbers and asks the American taxpayers to give him $200 Billion and

Steny Hoyer is no friend of Jerry McNerney

You would think that as House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer would work relentlessly to help freshman Democrats in vulnerable districts keep their promises to their constituents. Not Steny. We all know that Jerry McNerney made a pledge in no uncertain terms : I want to clearly and unequivocally express to you where I stand on the question of executing a responsible redeployment from Iraq: I am firmly in favor of withdrawing troops on a timeline that includes both a definite start date and a definite end date ("date certain") and uses clearly-defined benchmarks. I am not in favor of an "open-ended" timeline for withdrawal, as some members of Congress have proposed recently. Steny Hoyer, House Majority Leader, just threw Congressman McNerney under his version of the unstoppable bus ... From the Hill article linked above: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) came out on Wednesday in favor of holding a vote on a bipartisan Iraqi withdrawal bill. Meanwhile, the party&

Luciano

September thoughts

I have some thoughts for Democrats about where we are today. I want to say that while I believe that engagement with the Democratic Party is the only course of action that makes any sense given the work we need to do changing the laws and regulations and policies of the United States, I also want to convey something deep and sincere. Given my life experience and the results we have in hand as we start the month of September 2007, I have never been more ashamed of the leadership of the Democratic Party than today. I am ashamed of Hillary Clinton, of Barack Obama, of John Edwards of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. I am ashamed of their leadership of the party from stem to stern. I want to be clear. My disgruntlement carries over to leaders of the left of the party as well. I'm not particularly happy with Howard Dean. I'm not really a fan of Barbara Lee and Ron Dellums here in Oakland at this point in time. (And I was pretty unhappy with Jerry Brown to be quite honest.) When people t