80% support for raising the minimum wage., 69% support for easier access to prescription drugs, 56% for stem cell research.
I actually asked about supporting for withdrawing immediately, because that’s what you’ve been talking about this whole time. If you’re okay with the troops not leaving for two years, which is okay with 71% of the country, what’s the rush to defund the war?
Just realized I linked to NewsMax, so here’s the same story in the New York Times.
My worst fear is that Ms. Pelosi and the Democrats are putting off defunding/redeploying our soldiers in Iraq until next year for political advantage prior to the 2008 elections. Hearings, investigations and funding the current level in Iraq insures that our troops won’t be coming home for at least a year. This could cost maybe another 1,000 +/- US soldier lives. That is why I think it is imperative that we demand that Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid do what they called on the President to do in August 2006, begin redeploying our troops now.
I believe if you read that letter, it has to do with the “surge” and it does not address redeploying the US soldiers in Iraq now. In fact, Ms. Pelosi said on Sunday that the Congress would not cut funding for the current level of soldiers in Iraq.
Not at this time, no. She’s insistent that the funding bill for Bush’s escalation be separated from the rest of the war, obviously so it can be voted on, or down, on its merits. Once it’s defeated, then the far-more-difficult work of applying adult supervision to the Bush administration and ending his war can begin.
Its a political strategery, and it ain’t pretty, 'cause it never is. The Dems have the edge now, but not the dominance needed to wrest control from the Bushiviks. To do that, you need the political equivalent to hordes of angry peasants marching on the White House armed with torches and pitchforks. Ugly? Hugh Betcha! Necessary? Your call.
They plan to do this by exposing every rotten nuance that lead us into this turd-infested fever swamp. Drag the truth into the sunlight, under oath. The lies leading into it, the wholesale recruitment of Romper Room Republicans to reconstruct, all of it, dragged out into view. The half-truths we’ve been hearing is already pretty bad, but you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The hearings will loosen the last shreds of support. And that is necessary because simply being right, simply having the majority of Americans behind us isn’t enough, it has to be utterly overwhelming. Its not enough to point out that the Emperor is nekkid, we have to tie a bow on his shriveled winky.
The hearings will only produce a ratification, anyway. A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday-Sunday shows that Americans by nearly 2-to-1 want congressional Democrats, not President Bush, to have more influence over the direction the nation takes during the next year.
If the Republican party is concerned about the political impact of prolonging the deployment they have a simple remedy: Put pressure on the President to pull out now. But instead the Republican strategy seems to be to dig in their heels, run out the clock, and dump the mess in the lap of the next President.
If you’re going to be pissed at someone, why not the Congressional Republicans? They’ve been letting this fester for years!
Especially in the Senate, where on a strictly party-line vote, we’d have a 50-49 edge, since Sen. Tim Johnson won’t be up and voting for awhile.
And in anything having to do with the war, we know Lieberman’s a lost cause, so the Dems need GOP help to get a majority on anything war-related.
So the Dems have to work within their strengths. They’ve got the bully pulpit, and they can and are about to hold hearings. And Bush needs to get another ‘emergency’ funding bill through Congress to pay for his war, which he will need Democratic votes to do.
Hey, I’ve been ready for that for months now!
Your worst fear is that we’ll still have troops in Iraq in 2008? You don’t have much of an imagination.
Haven’t Senate rules routinely permitted proxy voting for quite a few years now?
I was peeved at the Pub Congress, like many Americans, and that is why they were voted out of control. We were suppose to get a new direction in the Iraq war, Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Reid called for redeployment in 2006, and now it appears the Democrats are taking the same “stay the course” strategy the President did, i.e. saying they will not cut funding for the current level of soldiers in Iraq. We have been sold out and many, many more American soldiers will die.
This is ridiculous. Bush is about to announce his surge plan and they’re already coming out against it. This isn’t staying the course, they’re just not doing something that only you believe would work.
One has to be able to speak or write to give another one’s proxy.
Johnson was just upgraded to “fair” - he might be able to do just that.
They are NOT cutting funding for the current level of soldiers in Iraq, it is staying the course. They are only fighting the “surge.”
You know you just repeated exactly what I said, right? I said they were opposing the surge. Characterizing that as “staying the course” is ridiculous, because like I said the first time, nobody except you believes that funding cuts would work or be a good idea. Neither Pelosi nor Reid promised the troops would come home immediately (because it’s impossible). It is impossible for them to sell you out on something they didn’t promise.
For harveyc: your very own Pit thread. Just because.
Political suicide? 
What do you think the voters hired the Democrats to do last November, if not to force a end to the madness?
If you have something that indicates what the voters intent was in November I invite you to post it our post your thoughts on what you THINK the voters intent was…because to me its about as clear as mud, especially wrt the Iraqi war. The only thing I can gleen out of the intent of my fellow citizens seems to be ‘The Iraq war is bad’ and ‘We need to do something™ about it’…other than those vague generalities, I’m not seeing a lot of intent in the general population. Just a lot of flailage, as usual.
-XT