Stop Me Before I Vote Again

On Net Neutrality and This Next Congress
by Matt Stoller, Tue Nov 21, 2006 at 12:20:51 PM EST

When we won a Congressional majority, I immediately said that I don't expect a lot from this Congress. ... My signpost is net neutrality, a clear issue that we worked on, that we care about, and that is the bedrock for a progressive strategic advantage. Despite our work, I expect that net neutrality protections are going to have rough sledding in this Congress....

There are a lot of choices this group of leaders will make; they will either pay attention to the populist progressive wave that elected their majority, or they will move to appease the DLC constituency that worked against them in the 1990s and over the past six years. For a variety of cultural reasons, I suspect that the latter path is a bit more likely...

The netroots and the progressive movement isn't going away, and we have to make sure that our legislators write laws that are for the benefit of all of us, not simply any one sector full of campaign contributors.

Dogs and progs make it a hot time for the Dem headliners

Like the Light Brigade in Tennyson's wooden poem, will next spring find the house leadership of the Democratic majority charging ahead to nowhere, with 'cannons to the right of them and cannons to the left of them'? Will the progs and dogs be a-rippin' at 'em like hungry wolves trying madly to pull the caucus in opposite directions? Will some harried and frazzled party boss be saying "it's like nothin' seen around here in years -- hell it's like nothin' ever seen around here!"

Okay, okay -- I hear you all now: "No way, Paine, no way. At best, you're half right -- the blue dogs will come on like a pack of Cujos, okay -- but the prog fish? No way. Most caucus progs can't make water come out of a tap. They're just a bunch of violets waiting to bloom, a bunch of well-rewarded, righteous false hope mongers nestled up there on the hill in hot house comfort."

I agree -- no way have "they" got anywhere near belly fire enough to bite back at the "leadership" the way the blue dogs will. Recall the blue dogs got the votes to structure "an aisle crossin majority" (this is an obsession of Father Smiff's, of course). They can stage-manage the ancient forward motion stymie, that has roots running all the way back to the New Deal's second term. And also recall, their invisible chieftains are nicely embedded inside the right hump of the party's brokeback middle mountain -- yes of course I mean the Steny Hoyer and Rahmbo hump. Nancy's hump, the back hump, is a sure to freeze outfit, once the cross firing starts.

And the prog caboose? They'll squeeeeal like virgins at a Mayan sacrifice. Like my late pop used to say, trying to evoke the spirit of W C Fields -- "When you lope into your 50's you can expect to find a lot of deja vu waitin' for ya there."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/12/11/dems_take_middle_ground_on_drug_plan/

Dems take middle ground on drug plan
By Erica Werner, Associated Press Writer | December 11, 2006

WASHINGTON --House Democrats will take the middle ground on the Medicare drug benefit, pushing for government-negotiated prices but stopping short of creating a federal plan to compete with private insurers, a lawmaker said Monday.

Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., said a government-run plan would save money but is too ambitious for immediate action.

"That might draw a veto and then get us accused -- which I don't mind, but most of my colleagues do -- of price-setting and all that. ... There's a hesitancy to seem too radical," said Stark, a liberal in line to chair the House Ways and Means Committee's health subcommittee.

In fact, without the White House we are nothing. The unitary prez, like a Stuart king, can thwart the majority will of the people. A united Democratic nation, saddled with a divided gubmint, can be flummoxed at the whim of the executive.

Deduction: the Iraq occ will only end if "we" -- the party of the people -- get the White House. So: 1) Expect nothing for the next two years of Democratic congressional superiority, and 2) be a good soldier and vote the Lesser Evil for prez in '08.

It's the next last best hope of humanity -- or do I mean inanity?

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.

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.

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."

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/01/24/a-dirty-deed-senate-rejects-clean-minimum-wage-bill/

Fifty-four senators voted to raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour, without giving any more lucrative tax breaks to business. But because of the mostly Republican opposition to a clean minimum wage bill in the form of a filibuster, that was six votes too few for passage.

The 54–43 vote on cloture this morning (it takes 60 votes to end debate on a filibustered bill) means the Senate now will take up a minimum wage bill (S. 2) that, along with the $2.10 wage hike, will include the tax breaks and other giveaways....

Says Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), leading Senate proponent of a clean bill:

Adding a tax package to the bill creates procedural hurdles that will delay—perhaps significantly—the implementation of the increase. Minimum wage workers could wait months for a raise they so clearly deserve.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_tim_carp_070327_iraq_3a_what_now_3f.htm

Tim is of several minds on this:

The bad news is that the House bill funds Bush's troop surge and won't bring our troops home until a Sept 1, 2008 'deadline' with provisions allowing troops to stay in Iraq beyond that on vaguely-defined 'training' or 'anti-terrorism' missions....

More bad news is the disunity stirred up among antiwar progressives in Congress by the House leadership's arm-twisting and the intervention of MoveOn.org in support of the leadership's arm-twisting....

... [T]here is great news! While many antiwar Congress members shared with us their bruises and frustrations over Friday's vote, they remain more committed than ever to get a debate on fully-funded unconditional troop withdrawal from Iraq within a year.... The House supplemental has a porous 18-month deadline; Out-of-Iraqers will work toward a tighter, firmer deadline....

But there are masterpieces in this field from time to time. Note this hard-biting ewe:

fully-funded unconditional troop withdrawal....

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s1974003.htm

Former CIA chief analyses global terrorism

Intelligence analyst Michael Scheuer, a 22-year CIA veteran, has been closely watching events involving terrorism around the globe. While in the CIA he anonymously authored two books that were highly critical of how the West has fought the war on terrorism. Mr Scheuer is in Australia for a major security conference and he spoke with Ali Moore.

[....]

ALI MOORE: What happens if after a presidential election you have a Democrat and a Democrat controlled Congress?

MICHAEL SCHEUER: You know, I don't think that much will change, really. They may pull out of Iraq, but American politicians across board from left to right are interventionists. They think America needs to be involved anywhere, and the policies at issue here, support for Israel's dependence on foreign oil and support for Arab despots and tyrannies, it's a shared policy in both American parties. So I don't expect there would be a great change.

http://counterpunch.com/bacher06252007.html

42 Democrats ... voted to keep the world's foremost torture school, the School of the Americas, open during a House vote on June 21.

And they were needed, too -- it was a close call; the endsville bill missed passing by 6 votes only.

Note well: several leading house humanists among the missing in action, including Charles Rangel of New York and who else, her worship madame Speaker.

At issue are comments he made privately at a fundraiser in San Francisco last Sunday. He was trying to explain his troubles winning over some working-class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:

"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Vacuous, condescending, junk sociology comments from a Democratic candidate are not usually interesting. But the Code Orange hysteria generated by the young millionaire with a law degree from Harvard has some interesting content. He and his elite critics genuinely believe in wholesome effects of privileged, neoliberal license. Subsidized capital mobility and militarized protection for it are unalloyed goods in their world. "Bitterness" over the actual, real world effects of it are attributable to cretinous social values, bigotry, ignorance and personal inadequacies that can be compensated by owning weapons.

His crime was not saying anything that might allude to that elite point of view, however. His crime was the implicit recognition that things are not all rosy for the white working class. He broke the magic, and now he needs to be punished.

This is not his first flirtation with a public understanding that all is not well for people in the harvestable class and I think the hints he gives towards that understanding are attractive to the gentler-souled progressives. It's audaciously adorable to vouchsafe a qualm or two, with imploring eyes cast upwards towards a heaven where a kindly God (who looks remarkably like FDR) looks down in genteel dismay, and pleads with the recalcitrant inhabitants of His creation to be just a little bit nicer to each other. But not too nice, of course -- welfare was divisive.

> OBAMA CAMPAIGN announces 'Senior Working Group on National Security'
>
> --Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
> --Senator David Boren, former Chairman of the Senate Select Committee  
> on Intelligence
> --Secretary of State Warren Christopher
> --Greg Craig, former director of the State Department Office of  
> Policy Planning
> --Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig
> --Representative Lee Hamilton, former Chairman of the House Foreign  
> Affairs Committee
> --Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder
> --Dr. Tony Lake, former National Security Advisor
> --Senator Sam Nunn, former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services  
> Committee.
> --Secretary of Defense William Perry
> --Dr. Susan Rice, former Assistant Secretary of State
> --Representative Tim Roemer, 9/11 Commissioner
> --Jim Steinberg, former Deputy National Security Advisor
>
> AP's Nedra Pickler reports: 'Obama also was meeting Wednesday with  
> nearly 40 retired admirals and generals to discuss the state of the  
> military and the challenges in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.'   

Madeleine Albright?

Warren Christopher?

William Perry?

Lee Hamilton?

Oh man, change is coming fast.

I'm so excited to see something so unique happening in my lifetime.

I'm also glad Clinton didn't win, she never would have picked new fresh faces like these!