| With a solid majority of the country crying out for change, the Republican power elite are holding on tight to their reins of power. With each step that the Democrats take to provide meaningful oversight (see: Walt starr, "Conyers raises possibility of inherent contempt"), President Bush invents new ways to defy Congress (TPM, "Rogue Presidency")--practically begging for impeachment.
On the left we are taking baby steps towards developing an infrastructure to support independently funded voices of reason. Fox News has noticed (Matt Stoller at OpenLeft, "Why Fox News is Attacking Yearlykos"). Thankfully, we're winning this small skirmish, with JetBlue standing strong (pontificator, "JetBlue -- A YearlyKos Sponsor -- ROCKS").
Unfortunately, we're still losing the bigger battle for reality-based political coverage. In a rare moment of candor, a political report admits that, yes, the press dislikes John Edwards and is trying to knock him out of contention with a bogus story (dday, "The Media Tips Its Hand re: John Edwards UPDATED"). It's no wonder our West Virginia Press is stuck in a middle school mentality of political coverage--they're just taking cues from national coverage.
Finally, there are small--yet quite encouraging--steps towards ending our occupation of Iraq. Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid did us proud this week (Phoenix Woman, Harry Reid Cuts Off The GOP's Escape Routes"). Who knows if Reid had the interrogation technique of sleep-deprivation in mind when he scheduled an all-night debate. Late Tuesday night one Senator confessed what many of us have long suspected: we are in Iraq because that's where the oil is (mcjoan, "ID-Sen: Craig says it's all about the oil").
As the "September deadline" approaches to judge the failure of the January troop surge we find the White House is not just working the refs, but trying also trying to rewrite the rule book (BarbinMD, "White House Moves the September Report Goalposts"). Our country would be in far better shape if this Republican administration paid more attention to effective governance instead of putting their energy into political smears (mcjoan, Pentagon Attacks Sen. Clinton).
If you watched the highlight video of the overnight Senate debate you caught a question about what level of support "the troops" have for Iraq war policy. Here's one measure: do they support presidential candidates who want to continue the occupation of Iraq or presidential candidates who say its time to get out? No surprise... jfern has the answer, 70.6% of money from the troops was to anti-war candidates. |
