THE NEW KICK-ASS CONGRESS

"Who pays the price for your decisions? I won't. My kids are too old and my grandkids are too young. You won't. You don't have any children. Nobody in this administration has any children who are fighting in this war. What I want to know is, what is the human impact for these decisions? The cost is too high."
--Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, questioning Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice at hearings on the president's new plan for Iraq, called by Democratic Senator Joe Biden, who is the new chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"We are not going to babysit a civil war."
--Democratic Senator and potential presidential candidate, Barack Obama

"I've gone along with the president on this, and I bought into his dream. And at this stage of the game, I don't think it's going to happen."
--Republican Senator George V. Voinovich, to Secretary Rice

(interrupting Rice, who was making the argument that we are "making progress" in Iraq) "You sit there and say that, and that's just not true."
--Republican Senator and potential presidential candidate Chuck Hagel

"I have supported you and the administration on the war, and I cannot continue to support the administration's position. I have not been told the truth over and over again by administration witnesses, and the American people have not been told the truth."
--Democratic Senator Bill Nelson

"I just want the record to show and I would like to have a legal response from the State Department if they think they have authority to pursue networks or anything else across the border into Iran and Iraq that will generate a constitutional confrontation here in the Senate, I predict to you."
--Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Joe Biden

"We will not be swift-boated on this issue."
--new Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, in a conference call to ranking political bloggers following Bush's speech


It's not very often that I literally jump to my feet, pump my fist, shout "YES!" and let out a maniacal laugh while watching the evening news, as I did a couple of days ago, and let me tell you, boys and girls, it felt GREAT.

What prompted my mini-celebration was a simple statement by NBC Nightly News's political commentator, Tim Russert who, following the confrontation between Sen. Barbara Boxer and a stunned Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, were two words: "PERSONAL PRICE".

He didn't just say them, he repeated them. "The question put to the administration by the Congress today is, quite simply, WHO PAYS THE PERSONAL PRICE FOR THEIR DECISIONS? Only half a dozen congressmen have a son or daughter serving in Iraq, and no one in the administration. The question being asked is, Who makes the sacrifice the president is asking for? Who pays the personal price?" (Forgive me if I paraphrase a bit--I didn't have paper and pen in front of me and was too busy shouting and cheering to write down his comments verbatim.)

What caused my joy was the simple fact that, for six miserable years--really longer, going back to the presidential campaign of 2000, this administration has CONTROLLED THE FRAMEWORK OF MEDIA DEBATE on this war (on everything, really), and Democrats and moderate Republicans have been put ON THE DEFENSIVE. Meanwhile, whatever choice of terminology or framework Karl Rove could think up in his diabolical little mind was automatically picked up by the mainstream media and trumpeted until the hapless opposition was forced to lay back their ears, tuck their tails between their legs, and leave the room whining.

More times than I can count or care to admit to anyone who is not a trained psychotherapist, I have screamed at the television news or the computer screen where I was reading various newspapers, so filled with utter frustration and rage that I could barely function. Not on every single outrage, mind you--I'd be committed to the looney bin by now--but the kinds of outrages that directly affect the men and women who are fighting his endless horror of a war.

I must admit to you that, after these last elections, when ranking Democrats took over control of powerful committees in both houses for the first time in 12 long miserable years, I have come to a point where I have been able to forgive the Democrats and moderate Republicans who, as I crudely pointed out in the early days of the Bush administration, "laid back and spread their legs for Bush."

They just sat there and let him and the Tom Delays of the world, fueled and financed and promoted and empowered by the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters and Rupert Murdochs on the world--get away, literally, with murder.

I wanted sane minds to prevail. I wanted them to FIGHT.

But if there is one pet peeve I have--just in a general standpoint--it is revisionist history. It's real easy now, in this political climate, to wonder WHY they didn't fight harder, but you have got to remember the bilious, poisonous atmosphere brought by the right wing of the Republican party to their reign of terror in the Congress.

I mean, really, when you've got a fine, honorable, brave, and experienced man like Max Cleland, who left half his body in the bloody jungles of Vietnam, when you stand by in horror and watch him get run out of office for not being patriotic enough, just because he had the balls to question this war, then that is all you need to know about the nightmare of the last 12 years.

The reason I've come to forgive the Democrats and moderate voices for remaining silent is that I've matured politically. I've come to understand that, for experienced political hands, when they see such a poisonous political fog settle in over Washington, they know that they have two choices: (1) fight themselves right out of office or (2) wait.

Have you ever seen a cat stalk a mouse? Have you seen how patient they are, how still and silent? How they watch, wait, coil their muscles, prepare to pounce and then WHAM!

A cat knows that, quite likely, this might be its only shot at dinner. I have a big fluffy yellow and white cat I adore named Max, and he likes to try--and try--to catch birds who come up to eat the chicken scratch birdseed I sprinkle around outside our country home. I've seen him choose all sorts of hiding places, but he always pounces too soon, and they always fly away. I am absolutely convinced that some of them, like, say, the flashy cardinals, actually mock him and see if they can provoke him to attack. Then they just casually flutter off, laughing.

My daughter's cat, Annabelle, is far more patient. I've seen her bring down field rats almost as big as she is. She will sit in one prime location for hours, perfectly still, until they are fooled into venturing forth. Then she gets 'em.

I'm seeing now, how seasoned veterans who KNOW how to weild power, NOW HAVE THEIR SHOT, because they were patient, with a kind of patience I can not even begin to imagine, since the day Newt Gingrich first smirked for the cameras.

Had they stood and fought, as I naively wanted them to do for many years, they would now be out of office, and inexperienced rookies would have their jobs.

Just as some things are well worth fighting for, so are some things worth waiting for.

In the beginning, I have always said that the American people were suffering from post traumatic stress from 9-11, and this reptilian administration knew just how to prey on the nation's fears, how to make them worse, how to symbolically set themselves up as saviors, how to befuddle the issues, how to, not just annihilate any opposition, but destroy it.

Karl Rove and Tom Delay and their ilk were never satisfied with ruining someone's career. They wanted to ruin their lives.

By setting up standard opponents as enemies, they created an atmosphere of the worst repression I have ever seen in all my many years of being a political junkie. People who worked in Washington for a lifetime said they had never seen anything like it.

By iron-fisted talking-point rule, they forced robotic obedience of not just their party, but their media hacks as well, which means they controlled the information that was put before the American people, and by controlling what the American people were told, they controlled the world.

I'm not sure when the citizenry first began to see through the fog and begin to realize that the emperor had no clothes. God knows it wasn't this debacle of a war. It was, I think, the birthday-cake photo op of Bush and McCain hamming it up for the cameras in Arizona, while Katrina was busy slaughtering a great American city.

Remember Saddam's spokesman, Tarik Aziz, in the first week of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, claiming that Saddam's forces were clearly winning, when the whole world could see otherwise? Well, I think the whole "heckuva job, Brownie," was the first in-your-face proof to the American people that they had been and were being manipulated.

That they were, in fact, being lied to.

Or maybe it was that whole weapons of mass destruction thing. There not being any, I mean.

It was an accumulative effect, but once it got started, it became an avalanche.

By the time the election season of '06 rolled around, when a smug and swaggering Rove/Bush tried all their old bullshit tactics and were SO SURE those tactics would work and SO SHOCKED when they didn't--by then the public had become like a man or woman who has stayed too long with a lover who is so bad for them that all their friends and family can see it, but they seem blind, putting up with abuses and slurs and disappointments for far too long, and then some precipitating event occurs--sometimes it's small and seemingly insignificant, and sometimes it's huge--but in any event, suddenly, THEY'VE HAD ENOUGH.

After that, it's over.

Bush and his minions are claiming that by escalating the troops now, we can bring them home sooner. But people aren't buying Bush Snake Oil any more, and there's a good reason for that.


"A majority of the American people, a majority of you listening to me, are for the withdrawal of our forces…The action I have taken tonight is indispensable for the continuing success of the withdrawal program."
--President Richard M. Nixon, in a televised speech about Vietnam in 1970, after he had expanded the war into Cambodia


Bush tried all his old PR tactics after his big speech, like presenting a Medal of Honor to a grieving family in the Oval Office--which his sadistic handlers knew would bring forth tears for the cameras--and then traveling to a military base to preen for more cameras with the troops he was getting ready to send into hell for their third deployment, two months early, who had just learned they'd be staying four months longer than originally scheduled.

Only this time, not even the longsuffering soldiers bought the dog-and-pony show. For one thing, his half-hour long speech was only interrupted by a smattering of polite applause three times, and that was when he mentioned things like a former Medal of Honor winner from that unit. So there were no smiling cheering GIs to mug for the cameras with their fearless leader.

Then--and even more telling--the base general refused to let any of them speak to the press, and ushered the press out IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING the speech. Later, when the press howled about that, he offered to present them with a few "select soldiers" for a preprogrammed interview, but by then, even the media was no longer fooled.

What does that tell you?

Polls the day following Bush's Last Stand showed that seventy percent of the people polled were not impressed by the so-called "new strategy" and do not approve of Bush's policies in this war, overall.

Although Bush likes to compare himself to Harry Truman, and to think he's actually brave to "go it alone" the way he is, and that eventually, he will be vindicated by history, like dear old Harry, well, the American people aren't buying that, either.

We knew Harry Truman. Harry Truman was a friend of ours. And you, sir, are no Harry Truman.

They say the White House was stunned by the vigorous opposition presented by not just Congress, but by THEIR OWN PARTY. The fact that they are surprised at all is yet more weary proof of just how out of touch this bubble-administration really is.

Even their favorite conservative columnists are abandoning ship, much to the bubble-boys' surprise:


The enemy in Iraq is not some discrete group of killers. It's the maelstrom of violence and hatred that infects every institution, including the government and the military. Instead of facing up to this core reality, the Bush administration has papered over it with salesmanship and spin.
"The Fog Over Iraq," David Brooks, conservative columnist for the New York Times, January 11, 2007


If Bush and the bubble-boys were surprised at the political push-back from Congress and the American people…Well baby, they ain't seen nothin' yet.


"I think what occurred her today was fairly profound, in the sense that you heard 21 members, with one or two notable exceptions, expressing outright hostility, disagreement, and or overwhelming concern with the president's proposal."
--Democratic Senator Joe Biden, following Rice's appearance.

Our new Democratic Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, said that he not only had the votes to pass a resolution that amounts to, basically, a vote of no confidence on this new Bush folly, but he even had the votes to override a threatened right-wing filibuster as well. "It will mark the beginning of the end of the war," he said.

There's blood in the water, folks, and for once, it's not that of American men and women in Iraq.

It's Bush's blood. And the sharks are circling, biding their time.