The next Senator from Illinois will be Roland Burriss: Update

From our friend of the blog R. Thelonious

Caveat, my political prognostication batting average is somewhere in the send him down to the coal miner minor league.

But you can take this to the bank.

The next Senator from Illinois will be Roland Burriss.

The Democratic Caucus has stated emphatically and unanimously that Blagojevich should not appoint. Blago was undeterred; apparently, he did not see Harry Reid's rippling muscles -- they must not have been visible from behind the ear-to-ear grinning Joe Lieberman still beaming from coming out unscathed after an election season where he called President-Elect Obama a Marxist, terrorist-sympathizer and campaigned actively against sitting Democratic Senators.

The legal options available to prevent the Democrats from seating Burriss are tenuous; at best they are an opportunity for procedural delay and to stir up some bad blood for when Burriss eventually gets a seat. Although the latter effect likely will not actually come to pass. Have you noticed that not a single Congressperson has chastised Burriss for accepting the appointment? Back channels are now open.

This is where the rubber meets the road. Everyone has chimed in to say the Burriss is a good guy, but they just can't seat him because Blago is tainted. I ask you -- who voluntarily gets in bed with a tainted politician? Who (other than Lieberman) willingly participates in the process when the Senate Democrats have indicated their collective will?

The Democratic Senators will make lofty pronouncements about integrity of the process, but it is all smoke and mirrors. The Black Congressional Caucus is already circling the wagons. Rush has warned us not to "hang or lynch" Burriss and points out that there are no African-Americans in the Senate now.

At the end of the day, they will proclaim that either their hands are tied, or worse when the PR machine starts to do its damage, that it is the will of the people that Burriss be accepted, and we will all once again ask ourselves is there honor in politics. We will certainly know that politicians protect one another.

The only open question is will Caroline Kennedy succeed to the throne?

Update: The Senate has not agreed to seat Roland Burris as previously reported. It seems likely it is about to happen, however.

Joe Lieberman Retains his Chairmanship

Below Lieberman the turncoat.


So, the Democrats kiss Lieberman's ass today so they can try and get to 60 votes in the Senate. Though it doesn't matter because the Democrats have no back bone and have not had one for a decade or more. Listen to this clip by Lieberman telling us the Democrats left him. So, he goes and supports McCain because the Democrats finally begin listening to the progressive wing of the party.

Is today then, a return to Clintonism? Centrism? Forgoing the people and sucking up to corporations and special interests? Is that what we can look forward to in the coming years with Obama? Lieberman here blames the dems for hyper partisanship. Are you kidding me? The democrats? Joe left the democratic party a long time ago and it is democratic activists who began pushing the democrats to act like democrats again instead of Republican-lite.

If this is what we have to look forward to, you can have it. The democratic party activists (progressives) are responsible for the 2006 landlside, Obama winning the democratic nomination (along with African-American democrats who have been equally ignored) and the 2008 landslide. If these democrats think they will go back to business as usual they have got another thing coming.

Assclowns!



From think progress:

Senate Democrats are allowing Lieberman to keep control of the Armed Services subcommittee, even though some of his most misguided and incendiary attacks on Obama were on national security. Lieberman, for example, suggested that Obama hasn’t always “put the country first,” said that President Bush was right for comparing Obama to Nazi appeasers, and worried that Obama was “naive” and lacked the “right stuff to bomb Iran.”

Chris Dodd Offers Thanks over FISA

Dodd specifically thanked the Senators who helped manage his time on the floor yesterday. By standing with him on the floor, engaging him in the issue, and providing strong and passionate speeches against amnesty, they demonstrated to Dodd, to us, and most importantly to leadership that he's not alone in the fight. Here they are so you can add your thanks.

Chris Dodd: (202) 224-2823
Barbara Boxer: (202) 224-3553
Sherrod Brown: (202) 224-2315
Russ Feingold: (202) 224-5323
Ted Kennedy: (202) 224-4543
Bill Nelson: (202) 224-5274
Ron Wyden: (202) 224-5274

The Democrats Have Lost Their Nerve

An interesting note on the failed Webb Amendment yesterday is that Democrats are having their cake and eating it too and it smells rotten! A piece at Daily Kos calls Dems on their own hypocrisy. Why are there not TV stations and newspapers talking about the fillibuster the Republicans engaged in yesterday? Because it didn't happen.

Instead, the reason the Webb amendment failed even though it got 56 votes was that Senators agreed by unanimous consent that the amendment should have to get 60 votes to pass, even without a filibuster. The Republicans are already on a record pace to break any filibuster record ever recorded.

And the question here is not just why anyone would allow it, but why everyone did. A single Senator could have put a stop to this simply by saying, "I object" when the unanimous consent request was made. Just one Senator.

Yet, as the author at Daily Kos says no one objected. Not Russ Feingold, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders. Not a one. Everyone just politely agreed that 56-44 would be a losing vote for America's sons and daughters wearing the uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they did it on national television. And America yawned, hit the snooze button, and slept in.

The author goes on in the article to explain what the Webb Amendment would do: Such a requirement, by the way (allowing troops just as much rest away from combat as in), is already a tremendous compromise. The Pentagon brass usually requires twice as much rest as deployment. But Webb's compromise required only half that much rest. Still, Republicans said no. Our troops -- including our "one weekend a month" National Guardsmen -- must be required to spend more time in combat than out. So that the rest of us can all shop, watch TV, cut taxes, or take a "wide stance" if we feel like it.

What we are not being told is the Democrats in essence said no as well. Why consent to a vote of 60 votes as a majority. A majority is 51 votes remember? The Democrats do not remember because they have no idea how to handle their power. They have forgotten, "they have lost their nerve" as Ralph Nader so eloquently stated.

The author concludes: Until recently, cloture votes were the easy way out of a filibuster. Forty-one Senators had only to make their protest last long enough to make it to the cloture vote, beat it, and then bask in their victory as the majority pulled the "defeated" legislation from the floor and slunk away. But believe it or not, Senate Democrats have found an easier way to do this, and begin slinking even earlier.

Bravo.

Democrats are just as corporate now as their Rethuglican counterparts and have forgotten how to represent the people. I will not give one cent to a Democrat until they prove they are worthy of it. Right now, none are worthy. Not even Bernie Sanders.

Read the article and go to the comments section here.

Where is Our Political Courage?

David Sirota has a great article at the Huffington Post regarding what is worse: being lied to or hearing the truth. I apologize for belaboring this point, but compromising on the war at this point is ludicrous. Sirota calls it the innocent bystander Fable. See below:

Now Democrats are beginning to again "compromise" on a bill to end this war. When war critics were told wait until September. Well, here it is September and what is happening. The spineless democrats make their play. An article at Politico says the democrats are beginning to compromise once again this is how they justify it: "The strategic shift is certain to anger some war critics, but it reflects the reality that Democrats lack the votes to force President Bush's hand. 'We are trying to manage expectations that we can't end the war today or next week or next month,' said one Democrat involved in the discussions. 'We have to make sure everyone understands that.'"

This is preposterous. Sirota says and I quote: "Anyone who has read the U.S. Constitution knows this is a fabrication. Congress has the power of the purse, meaning it has the ultimate veto over the war. Democrats control both chambers of Congress, meaning they have the ultimate veto over the war. If they chose not to schedule a vote to give Bush a blank check, the war would end." Democrats continue to claim they are powerless though they control an entire branch of government.

Democrats now have the audacity to intimate that Senator Salazar's non-binding bill a heroic bill to the end the war, though previously the majority of the democrats called the bill toothless. The Democrats lack the spine or political courage to do anything about this war. Where is Russ Feingold. I'll take him as a Presidential candidate.

Sirota, in his article then talks about the Republicans and their honesty: "Our strategy in Iraq, in the short term, causes a lot of pain, but in the long term, prevents a lot of problems for the party." What is worse knowing you can end the war by simply refusing to allow a vote in Congress or by claiming the Republican party is more important than American lives and of course Iraqi lives that are being lost by the boatload?

The Senate Votes 60-28 to Pass Bush's Illegal Wiretapping

What the F*** were they thinking? The illegal wiretapping that has occurred without a court order, without a warrant will continue why? Because G. Bush said so? No. Because the Democrats capitulated and as Glenn Greenwald said even more than that they participated in authorizing an illegal program. No more can we sit here and say thank god the democrats were elected. This is a program that Russ Feingold sought to censure Bush regarding.

Feingold has been a vocal opponent of this program and here are some past statements on the NSA wiretapping Program to remind us just how bad this is:

This program is breaking the law, and this President is breaking the law. Not only that, he is misleading the American people in his efforts to justify this program...How is that worthy of applause? Since when do we celebrate our commander in chief for violating our most basic freedoms, and misleading the American people in the process? When did we start to stand up and cheer for breaking the law? In that moment at the State of the Union, I felt ashamed.

Defeating the terrorists should be our top national priority, and we all agree that we need to wiretap them to do it. In fact, it would be irresponsible not to wiretap terrorists. But we have yet to see any reason why we have to trample the laws of the United States to do it. The President’s decision that he can break the law says far more about his attitude toward the rule of law than it does about the laws themselves...

All of us in this body took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and bear true allegiance to the same. Fulfilling that oath requires us to speak clearly and forcefully when the President violates the law. This resolution allows us to send a clear message that the President’s conduct was wrong.

And we must do that. The President’s actions demand a formal judgment from Congress.
At moments in our history like this, we are reminded why the founders balanced the powers of the different branches of government so carefully in the Constitution. At the very heart of our system of government lies the recognition that some leaders will do wrong, and that others in the government will then bear the responsibility to do right.

This President has done wrong. This body can do right by condemning his conduct and showing the people of this nation that his actions will not be allowed to stand unchallenged.
To date, members of Congress have responded in very different ways to the President’s conduct. Some are responding by defending his conduct, ceding him the power he claims, and even seeking to grant him expanded statutory authorization powers to make his conduct legal. While we know he is breaking the law, we do not know the details of what the President has authorized or whether there is any need to change the law to allow it, yet some want to give him carte blanche to continue his illegal conduct. To approve the President’s actions now, without demanding a full inquiry into this program, a detailed explanation for why the President authorized it, and accountability for his illegal actions, would be irresponsible. It would be to abandon the duty of the legislative branch under our constitutional system of separation of powers while the President recklessly grabs for power and ignores the rule of law.

Below is a list of Senators who voted for the program. No Republican voted against it. Many believe this participation in the program is because of beltway consultants advising democrats not to look weak in the upcoming election. Poppycock. Take responsibility. The House passed the provision yesterday and it is now law. If the Democrats cannot stand up to a law so illegal and so in direct contravention to our Constitution what can we really ever expect from them? End the Iraq war? I have lost all faith in them.

Evan Bayh (Indiana); Tom Carper (Delaware); Bob Casey (Pennsylvania); Kent Conrad (North Dakota); Dianne Feinstein (California); Daniel Inouye (Hawai‘i); Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota); Mary Landrieu (Louisiana); Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas); Claire McCaskill (Missouri); Barbara Mikulski (Maryland); Bill Nelson (Florida); Ben Nelson (Nebraska); Mark Pryor (Arkansas); Ken Salazar (Colorado); Jim Webb (Virginia).