Outdoing the GOP

[solarbird]

From Deal Reached in Congress to Rewrite Rules on Wiretapping:

With some AT&T and other telecommunications companies now facing some 40 lawsuits over their reported participation in the wiretapping program, Republican leaders described this narrow court review on the immunity question as a mere “formality.”

“The lawsuits will be dismissed,” Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 2 Republican in the House, predicted with confidence.

The proposal — particularly the immunity provision — represents a major victory for the White House after months of dispute. “I think the White House got a better deal than they even they had hoped to get,” said Senator Christopher Bond, the Missouri Republican who led the negotiations.

The Democrats are giving Mr. Bush, the telecoms, and the authoritarians, a fucking Christmas present here even they didn't think they'd get in Mr.Cheney's Bush's masturbatory fantasies.

The phrase you're looking for here is "contemptible filth."

Comments

[westrider.livejournal.com]

No, the phrase I'm looking for contains rather more obscenity.

At least Jay Inslee opposed it, so I don't feel bad that I voted for him.

[solarbird]

Oh, did we get a late-night vote? If so, was it part of the Iraq War Supplemental Appropriations bill?

[solarbird]

Okay, no, that was only the war spending bill, not the FISA spying/immunity bill.

As for Rep. Inslee: w/e. The Dems voted for the leadership they have. I presume they meant it. They and their actions represent who they are as a party.

Fuck 'em.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

That was actually more that he was listed as opposed on the Petition website you linked to earlier. As to whether or not that actually means anything, I have no idea.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Do you even know who Inslee voted for in the leadership races for this session of Congress? Did you consider who the options were in each leadership contest, and the possibility that there wasn't actually a better option available? Is there some way Inslee should have used the future votes of those leaders as a reason for voting differently even if he did vote for them?

(For the record, Inslee voted for Hoyer over Murtha, but both latter men voted for this FISA immunity atrocity. So even if he could have predicted the future ot time traveled and known this vote, how could he have voted differently in the leadership contest? Pelosi's opponent in the speaker's race was John Boehner, and he also supported FISA immunity.)

It makes no sense to hold Inslee accountable for the votes of his party's leadership. It is enough to hold him accountable for his own votes. He voted the right way on this issue, and usually votes the right way. That's worth more than a non-committal "whatever" and a hostile "fuck 'em." If we're ever going to repeal this legislation, we're going to need the help of people like Inslee. And yeah, immunity can't be revoked after the fact, but the ship of accountability for the Bush administration and its allies sailed away from this Congress years ago.

[solarbird]

Do you even know who Inslee voted for in the leadership races for this session of Congress? ... For the record, Inslee voted for Hoyer over Murtha
...

Let me leave that aside for a second and go back for a second to something I said:
As for Rep. Inslee: w/e. The Dems voted for the leadership they have. I presume they meant it. They and their actions represent who they are as a party.

Fuck 'em.
While I assure you I am in no mood to be charitable about any Democrat, you must admit here that while I was dismissive of Inslee (who does not even bother answering my mail with form letters anymore), I was clearly speaking in the group plural here, referring to "the Dems," or, the Democratic Party. ("'em" is a contraction of "them," not "him." Had I meant "him" specifically and only, I'd have said "'im," an acceptable contraction of "him.") And in this context, clearly the Congress. And I'll freely grant that I consider the national party as a whole to be no better.

But back to the question of leadership, because I consider this illustrative.

The Democrats, as a whole, elected this leadership. They also selected the contenders for that leadership. If all contenders were of the same cloth, that does not speak better of the party; indeed, it speaks worse. And it is fully right and natural to hold them politically responsible for the results of those choices. Even leaving this individual vote aside as a hypothetical, their consistent performance over the last two years has been so disgraceful that it has left them more popular with Republicans than with the population as a whole or than with the Democrats (or, separately, independents and third party members).

These leadership candidates did not materialise from thin air; the votes were not cast by space aliens. This is what the Democratic Party had to offer, and what the Democratic Party chose. That same Democratic Party actively works to marginalise any threat to the current style and form of leadership, indicating that it has every intention of doing its best to preserve this status quo, only, hopefully, with them in more seats of power. Anything else is wishful thinking.

And this did not start with the Bush administration. You may recall my condemnations of the national Democratic leadership in the 1990s, when I was asserting that the simplest explanation for Democratic Party political cowardice was preference for preservation of current officeholders (and retention of what power they had) over alleged (or stated) principle. This current generation of Democratic leadership was formed in that era, and I do not think they have improved with age. But they aren't a fluke; they lead their party because they represent their party, and it is only right and natural for me to condemn that.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I raised warnings over the various anti-terrorism and telecom bills during the Clinton administration, which set the stage for this bill. And I did consider myself an independent pretty much from the 1991 invasion of Iraq to the beginning of the Dean presidential campaign in 2003 (and even before 1991, I was an independent-leaning Democrat upset with Democratic spinelessness over issues such as the Nicaraguan contras and the whole Iran-Contra debacle). I now consider myself a Democrat, because our current party system is here to stay and the Democrats are clearly superior on balance, and actually on almost every issue (including this one) than the Republicans.

To characterize the Democratic leadership of Congress as the party when a majority of the party voted the other way and the vast multitude of the party's rank-and-file disagree with the leadership is short-sighted. It leads to a rejection of the very people that are needed to make change. Absent those Democrats, nothing the ACLU or Ron Paul or Bob Barr or the Libertarian Party or Act Blue or Glenn Greenwald or any combination of fringe politicians and bloggers say or do collectively or individually can make a whit of difference. Even with those Democrats, it's going to take time, and money, and effort, to roll back the authoritarian agenda.

I do know what has to happen first, though. This damn war in Iraq has to end, along with the war on terrorism as a monolithic, decades-long struggle rather than a diplomatic and law enforcement problem with occasional military implications and responses. We've got to cut our addiction to oil, and stop acting like an empire. It's the war, the empire, the need to feed our cars and our consumerism, and our fear that make the calls for an authoritarian response palatable to so many in the first place. And, as cynical as his support of the FISA law is, Obama is a small step in the right direction. His announcement today is just a grim reminder that his election is only a first step, and that the day he comes to embody the federal government, he becomes the focus of our calls for greater change.

[solarbird]

To characterize the Democratic leadership of Congress as the party when a majority of the party voted the other way
They know how to work their base while doing what they actually want to do. Senate Majority Leader Reid voted against the previous Senate retroactive-immunity warrantless-spying bill after he insured its passage so that he could claim to be against it. This is called lying. The voting patterns keep happing the same way; I cannot consider this accidental.

and the vast multitude of the party's rank-and-file disagree with the leadership
And are led along by actions like the above, that they keep buying into.

It's the war, the empire, the need to feed our cars and our consumerism, and our fear that make the calls for an authoritarian response palatable to so many in the first place.
I agree with this, and, for that matter, most of the paragraph from which it comes. What I do not agree with is the idea that a party which has proven its ability to say it wants one thing and deliver something completely contrary to that over, and over, and over, and over again will suddenly change its behaviour once it has sufficient amounts of power. I think the events of the last two days are particularly illustrative in this regard. In 2006, they did not have Congress, but the FISA debacle was defeated. In 2008, rewarded with more power, they proceed to enact the very debacle they'd defeated as a minourity party.

Fundamentally, I don't understand why you keep believing them in the face of these actions.