My first point of disagreement: "That will just turn into another p*ssing match with Bush and the rethugs will be able to scream "The democrats don't support our troops" all summer and fall."
You're probably right, and this is due to two very ugly but unavoidable facts:
- Corporatization of mass media, which allowed them to opt completely out of the news and information business. They're now in the marketing and PR business, and their sole client is the extreme right wing of the republican party.
This is as much the fault of democrats as the GOP. Clinton's 1996 Telecom act was a gigantic giveaway to these media conglomerate shitheads. Democrats in general -- once they discovered that, by becoming GOP lite, they could get the huge sums of campaign bribes formerly reserved for wingers on the other side of the aisle -- turned against the people they allegedly represent in their haste to get their own corporate seals of approval.
And they're still at it; look at
opensecrets.org to see who's giving how much to whom. Then gasp in wonder as incredible patterns emerge and remarkable coincidences pop up right before your eyes. It's always a shock when votes and money find their own equilibrium and end up in near perfect alignment. Who would have guessed?
- The amazing inability of democrats to develop messages, turn them into sound bites and slogans and use them to penetrate the dense skulls of those who have been trained by the GOP that no worthwhile concept should take more than two seconds to articulate. Democrats constantly demonstrate that their "strategic advisers" are about as strategic as a buggy whip and wouldn't understand branding if it bit them in their collective fat, overpaid asses.
A recent classic was the "battle" over something called S-CHIP. More branding genius, as I've come to expect from the democratic party's deep thinkers. The GOP would have called it "The Healthy Kids Act" or something catchy like that -- not that they'd ever sponsor a bill that gives poor kids a break. Dems, however, chose to go to war over an acronym that hardly anybody knows and that sounds like a computer component. No wonder nobody besides those who were seriously screwed by the inevitable Bushie veto really gave a shit.
Moving on to the second point of contention: "Pelosi made a smart move by taking this argument off the table and helping Democratic candidates win in the fall. She has also attached a GI Bill funding increase to this bill, so if the rethugs try and screw with it, they can be called out on not supporting the troops."
I'll leave aside for the moment the fact that Pelosi has doomed several hundred more US troops, along with the usual uncounted Iraqi civilians, who will certainly die between now and next January. She should be arrested for that move alone, but that's not going to happen.
She's even given up on those "strongly worded statements," full of fightin' words like "disappointing" and "unfortunate." She might as well not bother, because even that candy assed approach always gets warped into a fresh GOP talking point because she knows less about PR than the giant rats of Sumatra know about quantum mechanics. So an incompetent leader, child-like strategist and terrible communicator. Other than that, what's not to like?
This versions of a GI bill is so lame that vets would be better off panhandling than relying on the pathetic and insulting pittance congress in its two seconds of benevolence sees fit to grant people who risked their lives and, in many cases, paid with a couple of limbs and a blown out PTSD brain.
But at least the dems aren't going to be called out for not supporting the troops. Unless they are, because the GOP will always have a better way to frame an argument than these fools and frauds, and they'll always get away with as many lies as they want because M$M will never call them on it -- and neither will the invertebrate Dems, unfortunately, mainly because they don't know how.
Despite her bullshit about her lack of an anti-war commitment the dems were, in fact, seen as the anti-war party in 2006 and that's why they managed to overcome about a 5 million vote deficit before anyone even cast a ballot, thanks to the customary GOP election tampering. Tens of millions of people voted with the expectation, naive as it happens, that these people would at least live up to that single agenda item.
Of course not: They'd rather fund two more years of goddamn US mass murder and global imperialism than piss off The Commander Guy. Plus, it wouldn't be good for their investment portfolios, venal bastards that they are. To wit:
According to financial disclosure statements required of all members of Congress, in calendar year 2006 -- the latest year for which complete and verified reports exist -- 151 members of congress, both representatives and senators, had a financial stake in one or more of the numerous DoD contractors. Those investments were worth a combined $78.7 million to $195.5 million at the time. These weren't small deals either; the list only includes DoD contractors with signed deals worth at least $5 million apiece.
These investments earned those 151 members a total of between $15.8 million and $62 million in stock profits from 2004 and 2006. This marvelous bit of news courtesy of a study released in early April 2008 by Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan research group.
From aircraft and weapons manufacturers to producers of medical supplies and soft drinks, their investment portfolios include holdings in companies paid billions of dollars each month to support the Iraq occupation, as well as US imperialism and militarism around the world. Somebody's got to feed and clothe all those troops stationed at the nearly 800 US military bases in at least 63 countries.
So it's no wonder they show up in droves whenever one of the generals running the occupation shows up to testify on capital hill. And no wonder they were quick to condemn Moveon for running that ad about "General Betrayus."
A briefing from him is essentially a privileged report from an insider divulging private information that has serious bearing on the prices and probable trends concerning stocks in their portfolios. This used to be known as insider trading; now it's not called anything at all.
They should be hauled before a war crimes tribunal at The Hague, right next to the coven of Bushie slime buckets. Of course, neither will happen because there are some people who are truly above the law in this country. We just elected several hundred of them to congress and allowed hundreds more to steal their positions in the executive branch -- twice, without putting up any resistance at all beyond a couple hundred protesters in D.C. carrying signs that quickly dissolved in the January 2000 rain.
Finally, given the performance of the 110th congress, what makes you think that a bigger democratic majority in the 111th will do any good? Neither corporate presidential candidate is talking about single-payer, universal-access health care, which is only sensible since the two of them have been getting more money from the for-profit medical industry than any other candidates -- even when there were a couple of thousand of them, or so it seemed.
Hillary's selling dark visions of war against non-existent shadow creatures fabricated by the Bushies to induce the proper level of ambient fear needed to assure lock-down social control, which enabled them to embark on their international crime spree unbothered by an inquisitive congress or an awake American public.
Obama's selling hope that he's not as corporatized as Hillary, even though he's glommed more corporate campaign bribes than anyone in the history of presidential politics.
McPain's still selling a hundred years of death and carnage because he has nothing else going for him. Unfortunately, after eight years of that shit, the public has been trained to associate the idea of America with continuous war mixed with free-floating dread of those gosh darned terra-sts.
In which case, that loony bastard might just appeal to the same defrocked charlatans who used to pretend to be studly rugged individualists before 9/11 and the Bushies' fear mongering campaign exposed them as the craven dipshits they really are. Now that their cover is blown, they'll all be looking for a some father figure to make the shakes go away. But since there aren't any father figures available this time around, they'll have to settle for McPain.
If there aren't enough of these twits around to sway the election -- always assuming there's going to be one, which is at best a 50/50 proposition imo -- the GOP can always be relied upon to steal it. The American public has already demonstrated that they're not going to do a damn thing about it, hopeless weasels and spineless jelly fish that they are. So why not just continue to mess with them. It's not like there's much risk involved.
End o' rant, at least for now.
wp
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