btchakir's blog

You three represent me in the Senate and the House of Representatives. I have supported each of you and was once proud to say you represented me and my neighbors in the face of the Republican mismanagement of Iraq.

Today I am ashamed of all of you.

In the last election I spent many hours of my time volunteering on telephone banks for the election of Ben Cardin and Steny Hoyer. Following scripted commentaries that your campaigns wrote I promised my neighbors that a vote for you would bring about a change in the control of Congress away from the Bush Administration's Republican rubber stamp vote. Now I feel like I lied.

I have often written to you, Senator Mikulski, and received responses that made me believe you listened to your constituents. Well, over 60% of us wanted you to only vote for the Supplemental Bill if there was an exit timetable. You sided with the Republicans. Now I can't trust you.

I keep getting requests from the DCCC and the other Democratic support groups begging for money and I no longer have a desire to respond positively to those requests. Not when there is not the support for the position of the majority of your constituents.

You were afraid that you would be blamed by Bush for not supporting the troops. What you foolishly didn't seem to realize was that he would blame you for that anyway, even though you refused to stand up to him and gave him all he asked for. I can admire the Speaker of the House and Senators like Obama, Clinton, Dodd and the others who voted NO and would have withheld funds from an administration with a 32% approval rating.

I will continue to oppose the war, with most of the citizens of this country, but I will have to think twice about supporting the three of you again.

Ever the typical bully, Bush at his press conference looks at the highly compromised Supplemental Bill that is heading to the White House and still insults Democrats as being anti-troops.

We learned in the schoolyards that if you let the bully have your lunch money one day, he will take it again every other day until you stand up to him. And what is the result of standing up? A fight? That may be, but it probably means that lunch is yours forever after.

Watching W's smart-lipped mug at his press conference, trying to put the fear of attacks on our shore by armies of Muslim extremists (I guess that's what he means by "fighting them here")into us through the reporting of folks like David Gregory (whose children did it seem he threatened?), I immediately saw the results of Harry Reid and company backing down.

Listen to Russ Feingold! Listen to Kucinich! Listen to Pelosi (who says she won't vote for it!). If Bush won't allow timetables for withdrawal, don't approve the funds! He will have to knuckle under sooner or later just to keep the troops funded. After all, you always offer more money than what is necessary... he just has to go along with the wishes of the vast majority of Americans!

This is not a time to give up! It is a time to Stand Up!

Under The LobsterScope

I'm sitting in Greenbelt's New Deal Cafe, connected by WiFi (because my friends at Verizaon have made my supposedly fast DSL connection so slow at home the past few days) and catching up on what's going on in the world.

Having listened to Monica Goodling testify for the House Judiciary Committee this morning and early afternoon and hearing her forget about as much stuff as her former boss Alberto Gonzales (what is it with these Republican Justice Officials? Are they hired with poor memory as a job requirement?), I felt the need for a decent cup of coffee and an oatmeal cookie.

A Sample of her testimony style:

Rep. Arthur Davis: Did you tell the Attorney General that you felt that part of his testimony, or part of his public statements, were not fully accurate?

Goodling: No, I didn't.

Davis: And was there a reason that you didn't share with the Attorney General that part of what he has said to the committee or the public might not be accurate?

Goodling: I just...I feel like, it...I feel like after he had the press conference, people came out fairly soon and said the statements were inaccurate.

She did manage to throw the "who made the list of attorneys to fire" back onto previous witnesses, and stuck it to McNulty once or twice.

Sitting here reflecting on testimony, I wonder how many noticed that she admitted that the RNC "caged" voting lists (ie: they sent out vast mailings to particular groups - say African Americans - with a "return if undeliverable" message, then used the return address as lists to challenge voters during the 2004 elections... a violation of Federal Law).

I don't know if this was enough to bring more charges against Gonzales... she had immunity!

Every Republican presidential candidate is trying to compare himself to Ronald Reagan in order to gain distance from George W. Bush. So they keep citing the accomplishments of Reagan and recall what a great President he was.

His major accomplishment, one that sticks with us today, is that he turned us from the world's biggest creditor nation to the world's biggest debtor nation. Bill Clinton came very close to reversing that situation, only to have us returned to indebtedness of major magnitude by Bush.

Then there was Iran-Contra and the beginning of a great Republican tradition of carrying out a phantom foreign policy while lying to Congress.

The increase in gasoline prices to a new record (3.19 per gallon) this week prompted the news shows to remark that the last time we scored a high record (3.10 a gallon) was in 1981 under Reagan.

Many of us in the arts area (I was the Director of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA when Reagan came into office), remember how Reagan cut arts funding and eliminated the CETA program, which was how many young artists got their first jobs.

When you get 20 or so years of space from the actual scene, it is much easier to make a destructive administration look great. It is only a matter of time before Republican historians try to make Bush look like a success.

Under The LobsterScope