Mood:
don't askNow Playing: LIBTARD "TOUGH ON TERROR" ALERT
Topic: Lib Loser Stories
Anxious Dems eye power of the purse on Iraq
By Bob Cusack
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) will chair the powerful Ways and Means Committee if Democrats win control of the House next year, but his main goal in 2007 does not fall within his panel’s jurisdiction.
“I can’t stop this war,” a frustrated Rangel said in a recent interview, reiterating his vow to retire from Congress if Democrats fall short of a majority in the House.
But when pressed on how he could stop the war even if Democrats control the House during the last years of President Bush’s second term, Rangel paused before saying, “You’ve got to be able to pay for the war, don’t you?”
Rangel’s views on funding the war are shared by many of his colleagues -- especially within the 73-member Out of Iraq Caucus.
Some Democratic legislators want to halt funding for the war immediately, while others say they would allocate money for activities such as reconstruction, setting up international security forces, and the ultimate withdrawal of U.S. troops.
“Personally, I wouldn’t spend another dime [on the war,]” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.).
Woolsey is among the Democrats in Congress who are hoping to control the power of the purse in 2007 to force an end to the war. Woolsey and some of her colleagues note that Congress helped force the end of Vietnam War by refusing to pay for it.
Democrats in the House and Senate are united in their effort to conduct more oversight of the Bush administration’s management of the Iraq war, but are not on the same page on how to fund it.
While the Senate could switch hands, political analysts say the House is more likely to flip.
Having lost the last two elections in part because of national security issues, Democratic leaders have been reluctant to spell out their exact Iraq war funding strategy.
“I don’t think the Democratic leadership should put that out at the moment,” Woolsey said.
But Democratic leaders will be under tremendous pressure from campaign donors and activists to take bold steps on Iraq should they be setting the legislative agenda in the 110th Congress.
“If we have the majority, it’ll be because of Iraq,” said Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii).
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrats have called for a reduction in troops to begin no later than the end of 2006, but as Speaker, she could have significant power over troop levels in 2007.
“[Pelosi] has consistently stated that Congress must ensure that our troops have the resources they need,” said Pelosi spokesman Drew Hamill.
Some Democratic congressional candidates have not embraced their leadership’s position of a troop withdrawal timetable in Iraq and conservative Democratic members in the House and Senate could also prove problematic in close budget and appropriations votes.
The Out of Iraq Caucus represents less than 40 percent of Democrats in the House. However, the group consists of many senior lawmakers, including a one Democratic leader, Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), eight who are in line to chair panels, the next head of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), and eight appropriators.
Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the ranking member of the Appropriations defense subcommittee and the most outspoken Democrat on withdrawing from Iraq, has said he will mount a bid for majority leader should Democrats win the House in November. His bill to redeploy forces from Iraq has 105 cosponsors.
Still, Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), who has a bill seeking to prohibit funds to deploy armed forces to Iraq, says Democrats “have various positions on the war” and is skeptical that leadership will adopt an approach similar to his legislation.
He noted that his bill does not have many cosponsors (it has 18), and said despite the influential members of the Out of Iraq Caucus, “we all have one vote.”
Republicans are quick to portray talk of withdrawal as a “cut-and-run” strategy as they seek to mock Democrats on homeland security weeks before Nov. 7.
The Bush administration has previously indicated that it presumes that Democrats may attempt to cut off funding for the war if they win control of Congress next year. But the political battle over the war may be fiercer than some White House officials anticipate.
According to a report in The Washington Post last month, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino asked, “How would they force the president to withdraw troops? Yell?”
Battling the White House on the war would be challenging, Democrats say, but they would be emboldened by the election results and Bush’s standing as a lame-duck president with low approval ratings.
Abercrombie stressed that Democrats are not going to sever funding for the troops. Cutting off funding is “easy to say and another thing to do,” according to Abercrombie.
What’s more like likely, he said, is to fund the conflict in a way that will end the war by reallocating money to new initiatives.
“We’re going to continue to give the troops everything they need,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
A House Democratic leadership aide said, “The bottom line is that should Democrats regain the House, Democrats will leave no soldier left behind in Iraq. As long as there’s soldiers in the battlefield, funding will continue.”
If Democrats control Congress, that funding likely would have strings attached. Most Senate Democrats backed a nonbinding measure earlier this year crafted by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) that called for troops to begin to withdraw from Iraq, but the amendment did not set a withdrawal deadline. Another amendment offered by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) set a redeployment of troops to be substantially completed by July 1, 2007 was soundly defeated, attracting only 13 votes. The Levin amendment fell short as well, garnering 39 votes.
Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.), a Democratic leader in line to become the House Budget Committee chairman if Democrats win control of the House, said last month that he does not favor an immediate withdrawal: “I think we should tell the Iraqis that we’re not going to pull out immediately. We’re seeking still some positive outcome. We won’t leave them in a lurch, but at the same time, we’re not going to be there indefinitely or forever…” Spratt is in a challenging race to keep his seat this fall.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), chair of the Out of Iraq Caucus, declined to comment for this article.
The Hill ~ Bob Cusack ** Anxious Dems eye power of the purse on Iraq
celebratory
Senior militant 'killed in Iraq' 
British forces have killed a senior al-Qaeda fugitive in a raid on a house in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, security sources say.
Farouq was captured in Indonesia in 2002 but escaped from a US military prison in Afghanistan last year.
Prison escape
On the Net: 
d'oh
the group," the spokesman said.
spacey
I'M REVVING MAD
But off-duty Chief Inspector Eoin Jenkins thought he was targeting Muslim Isam Maigel and his wife Hana Saad. And when Jenkins, now retired, confronted Ronnie he was told to "fuck off".
Ronnie claims he was only trying to prevent the repeat of a engine problem had had suffered earlier with the Esprit.
GREAT! now we have to worry about "Hate revving"
chatty
Lifestyles of Lear Jet liberals
Forget that Kyoto has the depth of a cowboy movie set. The storefronts look like a general store and saloon, but when actors walk through the door, there's nothing there. The overwhelming majority of industrialized nations that signed on to Kyoto amid much fanfare haven't cut their greenhouse gases. In June, the United Nations reported that only two Western European signatories -- Britain and Sweden -- are on target to meet their greenhouse-gas reduction targets, which call for a worldwide reduction of 5 percent below 1990 levels in 2012.
No wonder Lear Jet liberals love Kyoto: it allows them to look like they really, really care about the environment -- and have their contrails, too.
In California, Branson has a soul mate in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Critics hit the governator for signing global-warming bills while owning four Hummers, but his biggest green sin is dibs on a private plane.
cheeky
Fox's question was revealing: "Regardless of how you voted in the presidential election, would you say you want President Bush to succeed or not?" Democrats said "not," 51 percent to 40 percent - where the public at large wanted success by almost two to one.
In fact, the fury against to Bush has reached unprecedented levels, even compared to the animosity among Republicans to his predecessor. Not long ago, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that "strong disapproval" of Bush was 10 points higher than that recorded for Bill Clinton at any point during his presidency, including his impeachment. (That wasn't during a war, either.)
Hate is a fatal response in American politics. It leads to irrational, sectarian, and self-defeating behavior. Republicans, their base consumed by hatred for then-President Bill Clinton, showed this in 1998. Their impeachment drive pushed Clinton's polls into the stratosphere, yielding unprecedented mid-term gains for the Democrats.
to fire up the Democratic base. Reality check: the Democratic base is just two-fifths of the electorate and liberals number just one voter in five. Yet the independent and moderate voters the Democrats must win over to regain a majority are repelled by candidates who pander to rageful supporters with tunnel vision. . Of course, Bush and the Republicans may have dug themselves a deep enough hole to let Democrats retake one or both houses of Congress anyway. Discontent over Iraq, the deficit, gas and health care costs, and other issues, is very real and very deep.
Yet a vengeful, subpoena-wielding, overreaching Democratic congressional majority could be just the thing to keep the White House in the hands of the other party in 2008. Ask the Republicans. It's another lesson they learned the hard way, in 1996.
I think that old adage about angering your opponent and he will reveal himself was proven true today on Fox News Sunday. At least it is true when your opponent is weak minded. Here are some revealing tidbits that might go unnoticed about Clintax’s appearance on Fox News Sunday that reveal Clinton truths.
3) Clintax is just another Left Wing Kook, when confronted with a legitimate question he dropped into discussions of conspiracy theories and spooky Cabals. Saying that Chris Wallace is doing the "vast right wing conspiracy" bidding, he is only doing it because they will be criticized because Rupert Murdoch gave money to his Global Initiative and so forth. This is the same type of left-wing kookery that spawns the “Bush did 9-11” conspiracy. This goes to prove the long held belief that Clinton is really just not very smart and has serious psychological issues.
4) The last time Bill Clintax angrily wagged his finger he was fibbing. I believe this is a psychological trait of his. When confronted with the truth that puts him in a bad light he reacts with anger and self-righteousness as a defense mechanism, anger to cover failings. Remember this is exactly the way he acted toward all of the women who accused him of anything. You can almost hear him saying that to Hillary "I can't believe you would accuse me of fooling around!!" Angry denial of fact another Clinton truism.
special
CANTON -- Her years as a councilwoman, business owner and community activist have made Wilma Lipkins the grande dame of Stark County’s black Republicans.
Lipkins is now mentoring the next generation of local black Republicans, including Fred Moore Sr. and Mandwell Patterson.
Patterson began examining the GOP as a political science student at the University of Dayton and only recently left the administration of Republican Mayor Janet Creighton to go into private business. He said he was turned off by Democrats after being approached by a party member who suggested affirmative action got him into college.
LOCAL AND NATIONAL HISTORY
Nationally, blacks and the GOP have a long history. Ex-slave and abolitionist Douglass took part in the GOP’s organizational meeting in 1854. Until the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, black voters were staunchly Republican, due in large part to Abraham Lincoln.
“He’s had the most diverse Cabinet, ever; more than Bill Clinton. Whether or not I’ve liked some of his policies, he’s put more people of color in high positions than any other sitting president. It’s OK to ask the Democrats ‘What have you done for me lately?’”
Patterson said minorities leery of Blackwell because he is a Republican need to “do your homework and see what he has done in his career.”
Upon becoming Stark County Republican chairman in 2000, Curt Braden said he reached out to black clergy to inform them of upcoming events, a relationship spurred in part by President Bush’s faith-based initiative.
“People have said, ‘You’re crazy; you don’t what you’re doing,’ ” he said.
“I’m waiting for Republicans to wake up and realize that all politics is local, and for them to encourage African-Americans to run for commissioner, or clerk of court, or a judicial post,” she said. “What’s real to us is our states and hometowns. ... Until the Republican Party starts making local efforts, they won’t make many inroads with African-Americans.”
He parted with Reagan’s hard-line stance on affirmative action and other policies, and he criticized President George H.W. Bush for appointing Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Thomas personally benefited from affirmative action, Fisher said, then condemned it.
His advice for the national GOP?
Morris said the ideology embraced by Blackwell -- a self-described “Ronald Reagan Republican” -- has consistently lost the GOP support in the black community.
silly
This sentence confirms that:
"But at least I tried. That's the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now," Clinton said when asked whether he had failed to fully anticipate bin Laden's danger. "They had eight months to try, they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed."
The former president complained at the time the CIA and FBI refused to certify bin Laden was responsible for the USS Cole attack.
Truth is a bitch when you can't hide what you've said...
The Republican National Committee and the GOP's congressional campaign committee, who want to correct this knowledge deficit, have begun an educational offensive to do so. It began last week with the first in a series of research papers on Pelosi and other Democratic leaders.
Could such hearings lead to President Bush's impeachment, moderator Tim Russert asked her. "Well," Pelosi replied, "you never know where the facts take you ..." While President Bush is sharpening his message on terrorism and other issues that are at stake in this election -- and lifting his job-approval polls to 44 percent in the process -- the GOP is looking for ways to remind voters that, like Pelosi, the Democrats' leftist leadership is far outside the nation's political mainstream.
This ad in one variation or another is being run in a number of other districts where Republicans are at risk and, if the polls are accurate, with significant success. The ad not only plants doubts in the minds of swing Democrats and independents, it will motivate Republican turnout, too, GOP officials tell me. The RNC research papers that will be churned out for the remainder of this election cycle -- e-mailed to the GOP's vast list of 15 million activists -- will reinforce these ads and provide fodder for other ads to come.
Another target in the RNC's "educational papers" is Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings, an impeached former federal judge whom Pelosi has indicated she would put in charge of the supersecret House Intelligence Committee.
know who they'd be putting into critical positions of power if they vote to give the Democrats majority control on Nov. 7.