Why I register INDEPENDENT aka DECLINE TO STATE

From Tim Grieve, Salon.com's War Room

Playing chicken

Democrats in Congress said they wanted a timeline for bringing the troops home from Iraq.

The president said he wouldn't sign a war-funding bill without one.

The deal isn't done yet, but Democrats are clearly headed toward giving George W. Bush more money for the war in Iraq with no requirement that he bring it to a close.

"We don't have a veto-proof Congress," says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "The president has made it very clear that he is not going to sign timelines," says House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. "We can't pass timelines over his veto."

That's true.

But isn't it also true that Bush can't get his war funding without timelines unless Democrats give him a bill that disconnects the two?

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I am at a loss to decide whether the appropriate descriptive term is "chickenshit" or "bullshit" or "flakey" or what.**

In short, while I endorse the Richard A. Lupoff motto: "The worst Democrat is better than the best Republican,"* and while I was raised on the Left by a supporter of the IWW, I cannot in good conscience call myself an actual member of the party that is now proving itself afraid to stop mass murder because people might blame them next year for the monstrous slaughter that is the result of George W Bush's insane "I'll show 'em" mind of a 6-year old and the calculated manipulations of those who recognized a good patsy when they saw one.

At least the Republicans are somewhat straightforward in their goal of plundering the treasury and destroying anyone in their way, whether they call it that or not.

The Democrats are afraid to admit they went along with the shithead from Texas because they were (1) terrified of the Islamic jihad, (2) terrified of the wrath of the Bush family, and (3) terrified of not being voted for by people even more scared than they were, and (4) terrified that people might call them "unpatriotic" if they came right out and said "the sonofabitch and his puppetmaster Cheney are both sociopathic liars."

They're still afraid.

My comment to all of them -- if you don't stand up for what it right, guys, you'll lost the votes of those of us who always supported you.

You're acting like a bunch of scared babies -- are you too damned scared to make it clear that BUSH will be the one who denies funding for the troops? Are you THAT weak? That craven? The stupid?

Fuck you all.

I'm voting for John Edwards and Bill Richardson. The rest of you males go kiss the asses of your contributors for work in the private sector, while you're searching for your lost balls. (Mike Gravel is fun and NECESSARY for the debates, but really, like Ron Paul on the other side, vitally essential for truth-telling, but effective more as a gadfly than an executive.

But if Barbara Lee or Barbara Boxer or Nancy Pelosi or Barbara Mikulski or Patty Murray or Olympia Snowe -- yes, a Republican, but a sane one -- Maxine Waters, either of the Sanchez sisters, Linda or Loretta, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Sheila Jackson Lee -- every one of them willing to throw down for what's right and true -- I'd back her in a flash. The men may have no balls, but the women have .. hmm, what's the equivalent -- they gotta lotta ovaries.

There are probably a lot of other women of tough mettle and high integrity, but the news, always tending toward the local, doesn't really tell us too much about House members from other states unless they're caught with their fingers in the cookie jar.

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*Always allowing for an exception in the case of Zell Miller a man who exemplifies the misuse of the word "conservative" as a polite substitute for "Right wing psychotic."


** Chickenshit, that's closest.

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