The Democrats Declare A National Day Of Mourning

 

Well, blow me down with a feather! The Democrats' Watergate meltdown dream just collapsed.

Senate Republicans on Tuesday agreed to expand oversight of President George W. Bush’s domestic spying program but rejected Democratic pressure for a broad inquiry into eavesdropping on U.S. citizens.

Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, Republican chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the committee voted to create a new seven-member subcommittee that would scrutinize the eavesdropping under a plan approved by the White House.
[...]
Four Senate Republicans, all critics of the program, proposed a plan that would authorize the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a warrant for 45 days but require the White House to justify every decision to continue beyond that time frame.

The legislative proposal, titled the Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006, also would force the eavesdropping program to cease after five years unless renewed by Congress.

Surely no one is surprised. They have almost all of their eggs in one basket now - that of Arlen Specter and his Judiciary Committee, virtually the only obstacle remaining to a complete collapse of official opposition. There will be a lot of depressed liberal bloggers out there today. Will they find something else to write about? I am sure they'll manage:

None of what happened yesterday should be a surprise. That we live under one-party rule is not a revelation. It is one of the principal reasons why our Government has become such a cesspool of unchecked corruption.

And the checks which are meant to exist on Presidential abuses -- checks and balances from the other branches as well as watchdog functions from an adversarial media-- are largely broken. The only real check left is the power of public opinion which, throughout our country's history, has been the most potent of all of those forces when it is activated.

Finding a way to activate it -- to make the public aware of how radical this Administration has become and to persuade them why they ought to care about that, not just with regard to NSA eavesdropping but generally with regard to the Administration's belief that it has the power to engage in any conduct, including violations of the law -- has been and remains the central challenge. Yesterday's vote is but a blip in that mission.

"Today the tide completed its turn away from the media lies and spin and towards common sense. The NSA story started off as a media-made fantasy where supposedly Bush ordered the NSA to defy the FISA act and go witch hunting. In the end it was learned that the only thing the NSA did was pass their leads to the FISA Court (FISC) which determined unilaterally NSA leads meant nothing and rejected the idea of surveillling people in the US in obvious contact with terrorists. How do I know this is an accurate assessment? The Senate Intelligence committee just folded when the administration called their bluff"

What with the confirmation of the renewal of The Patriot Act, spirits are very low @ Markos' Daily Kos, but there is a glimmer of hope:

This is not the end of the road. Attorney General Gonzales is likely to be recalled to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Several lawsuits are well underway.  And when the truth is exposed, Senator Snowe, Senator Hagel, and every Republican member of Congress who has assisted in this cover-up will be exposed as aiders and abetters to one of the most fundamental betrayals of the American people.

Yes quite.

And speaking of Sen. John D. Rockerfeller IV, Senate Democrats grumbled from the back of the bus:

Emerging from a closed-door session in which Democrats lost two party-line votes, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the vice chairman of the committee, said the outcome pushed the panel "further into irrelevancy" and reflected the influence of the Bush administration

I find this absolutely outrageous, anyone would think the Republicans are in office. They must be, because the Democrats are complaining about their own turncoats who have made a deal with the Administration.

From a bright new Democratic blogger Michael Galien, my new find with intelligent observations, who in this instance needs to be more disappointed with his own inadequate Senators who were not able to stay the course, rather than the nasty 'law breaking' Republicans. There surely must be some Democrats somewhere in the Senate with a voice:

Talking about 'cover-up'... This is getting ridiculously obvious. The Republicans in this Committee do not want a full investigation, they want to get 'oversight'. They do not want to investigate its lawfulness (because, of course, it is illegal), no they settle for 'oversight'. Oversight on how the White House is breaking the law. Doing anything about it? No, we just want to know how you are breaking the law, that is all. This simply means the Republicans in this Committee agree with the lawbreaking of the Bush administration.

My liberal friend The Heretik has a fab. photo as usual, and a good sense of humor: "The jaded will say all presidents break the law, now show me how it affects me."

The Fly has the real NSA story buried by the left.

We eagerly await for Glenn Greenwald to bring his lawsuit against the Government, live-blog it ad nauseam during its course, and then....loose. Maybe it was a good thing to have kept Harriet Miers at the White House. The hype is certainly building:

I’ve alluded several times to what I hope and believe will be a meaningful and significant project I have started working on relating generally to the radical theories of power seized by the Bush Administration and the profound threats it poses to the core principles on which our country is based. I’m sorry to be so cryptic and Dick Cheney-ish about it, but I still can’t announce the project (as much as I want to) until everything is ready.

From The Daily Kos, and TPM Cafe:

The fact that the Republicans, like All Things Beautiful, have gotten to the point where they get hysterical at the slightest sign of dissent shows how desperate they have become. The fact that Tony Blair claims that he has a hotline to God shows how desperate and insecure he and the rest of the Bush apologists have become as the failure of the War in Iraq is becoming more and more obvious to all.

Guys you say the nicest things....

Mary Katherine Ham, the funky blogger @ Hugh Hewitt points us to a good giggle:

The Democratic leaders in Congress -- Pelosi and Sen. Harry M. Reid (Nev.) -- are the party's chief strategists and architects of the agenda, which they view as a way to market party ideas on energy, health care, education and other issues. They have held countless meetings to construct the right list, consulting with governors, mayors and just about every Democratic adviser in town.

"By the time the election rolls around, people are going to know where Democrats stand," Reid said.

But many in the party have their doubts. On Feb. 27, Reid and Pelosi appeared before the Democratic Governors Association. At one point in the conversation, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, noting that the two leaders had talked about a variety of themes and ideas, asked for help. Could they reduce the message to just two or three core ideas that governors could echo in the states?

According to multiple accounts from those in the room, Reid said they had narrowed the list to six and proceeded to talk about them. Pelosi then offered her six -- not all the same as Reid's. Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski said later: "One of the other governors said 'What do you think?' and I said 'You know what I think? I don't think we have a message."

Related on ATB:
D Stands For Denial
God Will Be My Judge
The New York Times Sues The Government
America's Useful Idiots Part I
America's Useful Idiots Part II
To Have And Have Not
In The Line Of Fire
It's About The election Stupid
Daily Kos Is A Mouthpiece For Kerry's Campaign

Comments

[DaveP.]

"Michael Moores et al do not represent the Democrats' voter profile in any meaningful way."

Which explains why he had a seat in the President's Box at the last Democtaric National Convention and why the majority of the Democratic Congessional power base walked OUT of Congress in session to attend a premiere of his movie- and gave him a standing ovation afterward.

Michael "Al Quaeda Propagandist" Moore does very much represent the core of the Democratic Party: mendacious, prone to rewriting history, without self-control or self-criticism, hateful, and very solidly on anyone's side except America's.

[Darrell]

Ah, those fake polls! That's right, go with those. The American people are too stupid to figure that one out! Hint: Equal weighting to "Independents" who never voted anything other than Democrat.

More and more I like this man Bush...

[North by Northwest]

Quite right antimedia - and that leader most importantly needs to tell the Americans, that the Michael Moores et al do not represent the Democrats' voter profile in any meaningful way. As long as people like a certain commenter who calls himself 'TruthMachine' over at Glenn Greenwald's are continued to be allowed to 'hijack' the D-party with their utterly irrational, yet, for some intimidating, behavior (see here and here), the vast majority of Americans are increasingly repulsed and effectively 'pushed' to vote for R-candidates, or to hand R the victory by staying away altogether.

[antimedia]

This cracks me up.

I don't know why Democrats would be unhappy, or if they were I think it would be over the South Dakota abortion thing. Bush's popularity is in the toilet. A slim majority of Americans want him impeached I think. They don't like him, trust him or think he is competent, not even on defence. They think he's a liar and a crook. This is what I am hearing from the polls people talk about.

I've been hearing and reading this for several years now. Yet Bush got re-elected, the Republicans retained control of both houses of Congress and Bush's agenda keeps going forward.

You would think, at some point, reality would set in......

The single biggest problem the Democrats have is believing that "the people" are still reading, watching and believing the media. They obviously are not, or elections would have been quite different than they've been. Were it not for the fact that the Republicans, especially in the Senate, are so weak and inept, the devastation to the left would be incrementally larger than it already is. As it is, the ineptitude of the Republicans has kept fantasy alive within the Democratic party and led them to believe that they could follow a course that, under other circumstances, they would never have considered following.

The commenters are correct that the Democrats need a leader. They need someone who will tell the Michael Moores and George Soroses and Jimmy Carters to go to hell. They need someone who will stand up for America, without backing down, tell the anti-war crowd, the moral equivalency crowd and the internationalists to take a hike and propose legislation that is good for America.

Can you name one Democrat who would even consider that, much less actually do it?

That is why the keep losing, why they will continue to lose and why rational Americans are shunning the party in droves.

[David]

The sad thing to me is that these delusional faux liberals have no idea how disconnected from reality they are. "Reality-based" in their world means reality-based fantasy. Their dependence on feelings rather than facts to construct their fantasy is evident in nearly every pronouncement.

Their "personal truth" (divorced from facts) fantasies owe much to a post-modern deconstructionalism that is as much a mystic cultic construct as any voodoo.

*sigh*

With so many infected with completely irrational views of the world around them, how can a democratic republic survive?

But despair is a deadly sin...

Perhaps our best hope for survival as a democratic republic (supposing we can weather the—nearly—"perfect storm" of delusional Loony Left Moonbats, disingenuous Mass Media Podpeople and wacko Academia Nuts) would be a massive shutdown of mass media followed by a closing of college campuses.

Well, a guy can dream, can't he?

At least I'm not deluding myself into thinking that's reality.

[Alexandra]

Michael,

A strong leader would also help the dems. to unite behind a decision to investigate if that is what they wish. As it is, if there is no strong leader your troops can easily get persuaded one by one (you know how corrupt Capitol Hill is for goodness sake) to turn against the decision perhaps even for the sake of unity of the country in fighting terrorism, and not appearing a dismembered and disorganized bunch of reps and dems running around like headless chickens fighting each other the whole time.

Uniting on certain issues is paramount if we are going to stand strong against Ahmadinejad. We did support a lot of Clinton's issues at the time and that gave a lot of confidence to the outside world as to our strength and more importantly intent. This I believe was paramount in yesterday's decision, and that is also why I believe that it came down to deciding what was the best way forward for the country as a whole right here and now, with the dangers facing us.

In the final analysis you will find that it is best for the country to unite, and fight the elections with a solid new democratic leader, rather than disrupt now with a (despite Glenn's view to the contrary) unsure result. Believe me, if the result was going to be a sure thing, hell or high water would not have prevented the senate to push this investigation through.

But this is not a sure thing guys, it simply is not. And losing this one is not an option for the dems right now, and would be a very ill advised decision, made by someone who has nothing to lose like Howard Dean. You'll see he will shout the loudest in favor of pushing ahead regardless. For him, if he looses, what the hell, and if he wins he will be the biggest hero.

You will see, the person who pushes this through, if that happens at all, will be the one who has nothing to loose.

[North by Northwest]

I read the WaPo article--didn't we all...(evil chuckle) It seems to me, that the D-party is beset by turf wars. The reason is obvious: there is no clear leader out there and therefore everyone with any ambition is smelling blood for self-promotion. As long as that goes on (Pelosi, Schumer, Reid et al) the Administration and the Republicans as a whole can somewhat sit back and only need to concentrate on avoiding more Dubai Ports blunders, which means, communicating to the people in a clear and transparent manner. If they achieve that, their chances are best. Nothing is more off-putting then witnessing politicians belonging to the same party publicly jostling for power.

[Michael Galien]

Yes but thát would be, of course, very accurate. Just ask my girlfriend. Ahhhhh yes that would be a problem: I am overwhelmed with fanmail as it is ;)

As for the dems, I think it would be wiser to concentrate on gaining strength, having a plan of action, having a strong message, rather than concentrating on the opponent. They have taken too many knocks recently to be able to afford yet another one
Exactly: The Washington Post had an article about just this yesterday I believe. I wrote about it; the Democrats' problem is simply that they are not united. The strength of the Republicans on the other hand, is that they are (or should I say were?) extremely united.
You are also right about the 'message'. From that Post article:
But many in the party have their doubts. On Feb. 27, Reid and Pelosi appeared before the Democratic Governors Association. At one point in the conversation, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, noting that the two leaders had talked about a variety of themes and ideas, asked for help. Could they reduce the message to just two or three core ideas that governors could echo in the states?
According to multiple accounts from those in the room, Reid said they had narrowed the list to six and proceeded to talk about them. Pelosi then offered her six -- not all the same as Reid's. Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski said later: "One of the other governors said 'What do you think?' and I said 'You know what I think? I don't think we have a message.' ""

This is a real problem. They need a strong leader to stand up and give one voice to the Democratic Party.

[Alexandra]

I know Michael you are marked FAMOUS now.

Last time I featured a liberal blogger like that in the main posts, I was getting all this fan email for him, due to his comments here, as everyone was too shy to write to him directly! Hahaha

I may have used the word hunky liberal blogger as well, but never mind I'll have to remember to do that next time, that should sabotage you immediately. Sigh, but then I'll have to deal with the fan mail.

[Alexandra]

David,

Lovely to see you, welcome.

Speaking of the South Dakota abortion, try the other thread where Michael Galien is on now, I would be very interested in what your thoughts are on the embryo issue, which they are all in a heated debate about.

As for the dems, I think it would be wiser to concentrate on gaining strength, having a plan of action, having a strong message, rather than concentrating on the opponent. They have taken too many knocks recently to be able to afford yet another one. Their own senators have cut deals now, and anything thereafter to labor the NSA tapping will prove to be counterproductive in re-establishing that lost strength.

As for the Presidents' popularity, it would be wiser to concentrate on acquiring a strong and charismatic leader, without whom it will be very difficult to win, no matter what the polls say about Bush's popularity.

Personally, I think leadership is paramount, and right now in my opinion the Democratic party does not have it.

[Saunders]

Bush's popularity is in the toilet.

Not quite. I believe his mean job approval ratings are in the low- to mid-forties. This is far from the "toilet," and sure to improve. All presidents go through patches like this. Aside from his job approval problems, however, he is well-regarded on a personal level by a majority of the public. People like the guy.

In addition, there is nowhere near a "slim majority" calling for his impeachment. I'd be amazed if even 10% of the population wants him impeached. This is a group so insulated from reality and so obsessed with their pathological hatred of the president that they confuse their fantasies with reality, imagining that others share their hatred of the president. They are wrong. You are wrong. Americans do not believe the president is a "liar and a crook." They do not hate him.

If Bush were as "toxic" as you say he is, politicians would be running from him as fast as they could. They are not. He maintains strong legislative support among Republicans. No Republican elected official has called for his impeachment, and most remain devoted to his agenda.

In short, your analysis is a transparent attempt to make a silk purse of a sow's ear, i.e., to assuage your wounded pride at suffering yet another in an endless string of defeats at the hand of the president. Perhaps you'll finally learn that he as an amazing and formidable politician, one you should respect for his skills and talents, and someone who you (and the left in general) consistently underestimates time and time again.

A wag once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result each time. I think by that definition the hate-Bush left is quite insane, and I do not see a cure coming anytime soon.

[Michael Galien]

Haha, thanks Alexandra for that snear to me there ;)

David wrote:
don't know why Democrats would be unhappy, or if they were I think it would be over the South Dakota abortion thing. Bush's popularity is in the toilet. A slim majority of Americans want him impeached I think. They don't like him, trust him or think he is competent, not even on defence. They think he's a liar and a crook. This is what I am hearing from the polls people talk about.

So if Bush is toxic and is a lame duck the question for Democrats is surely, "How can we get this unpopular president as close to the Republican party as possible?" Well how about by getting the Republican Senate to visibly go into cover-up mode over an issue where most Americans have already decided Bush broke the law?

Now there is an idea I like. Whether it is true or not, I like it. Brings something positive back to the debate ;)

I do not have a lot to say about this, since I already wrote about this fervently.

The important thing for democrats is to not give up. Bush is very much under attack and that will probably continue and continue. They just need to take advantage of it.

[DavidByron]

I don't know why Democrats would be unhappy, or if they were I think it would be over the South Dakota abortion thing. Bush's popularity is in the toilet. A slim majority of Americans want him impeached I think. They don't like him, trust him or think he is competent, not even on defence. They think he's a liar and a crook. This is what I am hearing from the polls people talk about.

So if Bush is toxic and is a lame duck the question for Democrats is surely, "How can we get this unpopular president as close to the Republican party as possible?" Well how about by getting the Republican Senate to visibly go into cover-up mode over an issue where most Americans have already decided Bush broke the law?

[Saunders]

Alexandra...

It looks like Gedaliya was right. There is no NSA "scandal." The controversy was instead a political dispute that was ultimately worked out via a compromise. The pipe-dream of a Watergate-type meltdown of the Bush administration over this issue was simply a fantasy of pathetic propotions never to be realized.

For stating this apostasy in Glenn's blog Gedaliya was (effectively) banned.

I wonder if Glenn will give credit where credit is due?