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A name of ill omen

By Owen Paine on Wednesday January 24, 2007 05:01 PM

File this link under donk House reps, fearless warstopper unit:

http://blog.pdamerica.org/?p=960

Meet Jimmy "Jumpstart" Mcgovern. This exchange with a PDA wallaby gets us to where Jimmy's at:

PDA: You had one bill last Congress and you are going to have a new one this Congress. The one that everybody's heard about, 4232, what did that bill do?

McGovern: Well, what that bill basically did is what the bill I'm going to introduce this year will do.

What didn't work last time will work this time, 'cause now it's different! The people have spoken!

So... errrm... why the same old same old? Ah, patience, folks, these war endgames are complex -- kinda like cuttting the wires on a time bomb -- do it wrong and....

Of course, there's the required brush with Nambo history -- in this case, it's a nod toward another Mcgovern's dovey congressional wing-flapping, the famed Mcgovern-Hatfield amendment (two guys hung from the verbal lampposts at least ten million and one times since by drive-time talk-radio hosts). Here's the lesson of the day, as told by this new Mcgovern:

The McGovern-Hatfield Amendment...received 39 votes. Didn't receive a majority. Received 39 votes. Thirty-nine US Senators went on record as saying, 'I want this war to end and I want to cut off funding.' That sent a powerful signal to the White House and other leaders in Congress that basically support for this war is eroding rapidly. They needed to come up with a plan to get out.
Send a signal? A signal?

Make that a smoke signal, ladies and gents, not a flare that might start a fire on a roof or something. Just send up a series of puffs, really firm puffs of dark gray smoke. Let 'em float up and disperse into the blue sky. That'll get the bad boys' knees knocking.

Imagine the Cheney gang responding to... "signals", and peppering the oposition with: "You sniveling weaselly backstabbers, you skunky betrayers of our brave trooper girls and boys, you'd have this nation abandon its own best hopes, our brightest, bravest children, leave them to hold out as best they can, till rescued like so many Beau Gestes."

We all could go on and on and on over this blood hole, like pigeons inflating and re-inflating our chests, while what needs doing, what somehow we must do, is take dire action.

We need a second front to this war, another place to be in "harm's way," here at home, right up there on Capitol Hill. We gotta find the raw means to put them all up there in harm's way: tell 'em, "Get us out, motherfuckers, or we'll get you out, and not give a shit who replaces you."

Comments (5)

Scruggs:

The guy who conducted the interview, David Swanson, was a hectoring Nader-baiter at one point. That same approach to defending the Donk against lese majeste is stilll there in the leading, flattering questions. And lookee here, JSP!

With the Democrats in the majority, you guys, you and your colleagues quite admirably have proposed that in general Congress should pay as you go.

MJS would more accurately call that "pecksniffian".

After the next electoral farce and subsequent disappointment, I think I'll start the Progressive Incrementalist Centrists for Progress-Related Program Activities and see if can't siphon off a few of their supporters.

royal paine:

"the Progressive Incrementalist Centrists for Progress-Related Program Activities "

indeed scrugman
we need a "cut out of our own"
right there on embassy row
at the very center
of the center for dead zoning

not close to ground zero
but right at
the point in the polar middle
of ground zero

ps
i like your mission meme as org name

nothin like
faking truth in labeling...... eh ??

lowly paine:

its fall 1970
the senator from south d
on the senate floor
rises
in support of his amendment:


""Every senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave."

"This chamber reeks of blood."

"Every Senator here is partly responsible for that human wreckage
at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval and all across our land
- young men without legs, or arms, or genitals, or faces or hopes."

" It does not take any courage at all for a congressman, or a senator, or a president to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam"

beautiful righteous words

got 39 votes out of 100 possibles

-------------------

but note he was no prophet :

"And if we do not end this damnable war
those young men will some day curse us
for our pitiful willingness
to let the Executive
carry the burden
that the Constitution places on us"

and then he goes
and
quotes another man's beautiful line
a man
always a master of his words
and
servant of his lords

e burke

"A contentious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood"

"cautious ...."

(sounds like an invitation
to goo goo interventionism to me ...
bosnia kossovo afghanistan and beyond)

if all we learn from iraq is caution

it will start again

just as it did
after
the nambo nadir

first
a little imperial r&r
under a new soft handed donk prez

then

step by step up and up
slowly coming back
like a rehab-ed full back

till uncle's
once again
at the top of his game
robo cop to the planet

" stop mister...stop now...
unhand those peaceful people"

and from there
to where we are here and now
is childs play

all this
just
so once again
some day
amerika can
start
dealing new hands of blood poker

Brian Miller:

Lord Paine:

Not that you care about my lazy middle class aparatchnik opinion, but: That last post was just beautiful, man.

paine:

to the contrary senior miller
it cometh
like the rain from heaven
apon a desert dry

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