Showing Bush the Way

[chefmike]

Showing Bush the Way


The President was a shadow of his former self, and his limp manner induced visible drowsiness in the audience. He did not make any of those cocky sideways smiles after delivering a zinger. In fact, he did not have any zingers to deliver. George W. Bush's State of the Union address was a tired lunge backward toward the amiable, compassionate, cooperative leader he once claimed to be. Too late. Nobody believes him anymore. A stale performance does not make him more convincing.

Democrats, on the other hand, were well behaved, reflecting more maturity than Republicans displayed twelve years ago when they became the Congressional majority. The Democrats rose decorously again and again--needlessly often it seemed at times--in the ritual of standing ovations.

They did not boo when Bush offered a less bellicose plea for his war strategy in Iraq. (Instead, within twenty-four hours, the Democrats pushed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a nonbinding resolution calling Bush's plans to increase troop strength in Iraq "not in the national interest.") Nor did the Dems hoot derisively when Bush announced his new interest in solving the healthcare crisis (his plan is a nonstarter--taxing people with good health insurance to pay for those who lack any). Democrats did not cheer with mocking enthusiasm when Bush promised a balanced federal budget by 2012. Or when he referred to the 20 percent reduction in gasoline consumption he foresees in 2017.


These and other advance-dated Bush promises simply reminded listeners that, by golly, George W. Bush will be long gone by then. That was the only good news in his speech. Unfortunately, he is not gone yet. His presidency is in ruin, but Bush remains in power and still quite dangerous to the Republic.

Yet, after Bush finished, a remarkable thing occurred. Americans got a refreshing glimpse of the possible state of the union that lies ahead for the country. A newly elected senator, Jim Webb of Virginia, delivered the Democratic Party's response, and his message left the President in a tepid pool on the floor. (For another glimpse of a more promising future, read Bob Moser's "The Way Down South," on page 11, on how Democrats can start winning in Dixie.)

Webb was direct, substantive and beckoning--naming the true conditions that afflict the nation now and promising only that his party intends to confront them. The destructive inequalities embedded in our supposedly healthy economy, Webb said, remind him of the age of robber barons a century ago when a Republican President, Teddy Roosevelt, bravely challenged corporate influence and irresponsible wealth. The war in Iraq recalls the bloody stalemate of the Korean War in 1952, when another Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, had the courage to end it. Webb suggested that this President needs to find similar courage now. "If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way."

The force and clarity of Webb's thinking--including the need to restore New Orleans, a subject Bush didn't even mention--provided a devastating contrast with the President's soggy focus. Senator Webb, in fact, is more advanced than many fellow Democrats on the seminal issues of economic injustice and our deformed foreign policy. Indeed, some Democrats remain closely aligned with the very interests Webb wants to confront. But it speaks well for party leaders that the senator was given this national pulpit to speak so bluntly on behalf of Democrats.

"A star was born," PBS commentator Mark Shields remarked after Webb's performance. We agree. We hope further that a new kind of gutsy, smart, reform-minded Democratic Party is being born as well.


http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070212/editors

[White_Male_Canada]

Well,there you go again.

It just gets funnier by the minute. A non-binding Resolution is passed by the Foreign Relations Committee disagreeing with Army Lt. Gen. David H . Petraeus`s call for securing and holding Baghdad with more troops.

What happened today CM ? 8) When the ChickenChickens are called out on the Senate floor and have to vote when it counts what happens ?

"Widely regarded as one the army's brightest commanders, Petraeus, who was confirmed on a (Senate) vote of 81-0." (ABC)



Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) asked Army Lt. Gen. David H . Petraeus during his confirmation hearing yesterday if Senate resolutions condemning White House Iraq policy "would give the enemy some comfort." Petraeus agreed they would, saying, "That's correct, sir."

Leftists are so schizophrenic that in one week they say they disagree with Petraeus and then flip-flop within hours and vote in agreement,endorsing Petraeus on the Senate floor ! ! !

:P 8) :P 8) :P 8) :P 8) :P 8) :P 8) :P 8) :P 8) :P 8) :P 8) :P

81-0?

LMAO.

[chefmike]

Bush can't dodge Webb's critique
Les Payne
January 28, 2007

The president's State of the Union address was rocked Tuesday by the improvised explosive device set off by the freshman senator from Virginia. The eight-minute rebuttal by Democratic Sen. Jim Webb tracked closer to the reality of the current affairs of state than the 49-minute ramble of George W. Bush.

Having squeaked past Republican George Allen for his seat, Webb is stranger neither to conflict nor to the written word. The novelist, filmmaker, Vietnam veteran and author of books on military strategy is also a former U.S. secretary of the Navy. Not one to suffer fool politicians, Webb reportedly resigned as secretary rather than shrink the Navy.

After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi welcomed the president as the Democrats' warm smile, Webb came on as the party's clenched fist. In November, when Bush inquired about his Marine son, Webb answered, "I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President." Bush shot back, "That's not what I asked you. How's your boy?" The newly elected Webb countered, "That's between me and my boy," who'd just had a battlefield brush with death.

During his rebuttal, Webb's high regard for the "war president" worked its way into the set of his jaw as his cold eyes measured Bush's speech and found it woefully lacking in credibility.

Bush proposed a tax-cut scheme for health care, alternative fuel sources and a balanced federal budget. In announcing a five-year plan to eliminate huge deficits, Bush neglected to mention that upon taking office in 2001 he inherited a huge surplus. Still, in his imagined economy, Bush inclined all arrows upward.

Webb described a different country entirely, one that distributes benefits unfairly. "When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it's nearly 400 times," he said. "Wages and salaries for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of national wealth, even though the productivity of American workers is the highest in the world. Medical costs have skyrocketed. College tuition rates are off the charts. Our manufacturing base is being dismantled and sent overseas. Good American jobs are being sent along with them."

Recalling President Andrew Jackson, Webb urged that "the health of our society [be measured] ... not with the numbers that come out of Wall Street, but with the living conditions that exist on Main Street."

On the Iraq war, the highly decorated Marine combat veteran looked down at Bush from a high place. Already, his 2004 column in USA Today had blasted the "war president" as a shirker who avoided the Vietnam-era draft and evaded the battlefield. "Bush used his father's political influence to move past many on the Texas Guard's waiting list," Webb wrote. "He was not required to attend Officer Candidate School to earn his commission. He lost his flight status after failing to show up for a required annual physical. ...

"[As a war president] Bush arguably has committed the greatest strategic blunder in modern memory. To put it bluntly, he attacked the wrong target. While he boasts of removing Saddam Hussein from power, he did far more than that. He decapitated the government of a country that was not directly threatening the United States and, in so doing, bogged down a huge percentage of our military in a region that never has known peace. Our military is being forced to trade away its maneuverability in the wider war against terrorism while being placed on the defensive in a single country that never will fully accept its presence."

Webb opened up with the same guns Tuesday, attacking an ersatz commander for wasting lives through gross incompetence. "[Our national leaders] owed us - sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a guarantee that the threat to our country was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay in defending it. The president took us into this war recklessly."

Even at this late and tragic hour, Webb called upon Bush to start acting in the best interest of the American people. Otherwise, "we will be showing him the way." It's about time.

http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-oppay285069236jan28,0,2321412.column?coll=ny-news-columnists

[chefmike]

Red, right and blue

The Virginian-Pilot
© January 28, 2007



For days after President Bush announced his surge of troops into Baghdad, I put my instincts on hold, curious to know, "What will John Warner say?"

No one, of course, is a font of all wisdom when it comes to the chaos in Iraq. But I've come to regard Warner's voice as a kind of foghorn, not the loud, blaring variety, but one that pierces the smog now and again with a clear decibel of truth.

What Warner says about the leader of his Republican Party is sure to be respectful and modulated, sometimes more so than Bush deserves. But the message won't stray from reality as Warner sees it; nor will he spout a pretend version of facts.

On Tuesday night America met Virginia's other U.S. senator. Freshman Jim Webb offers the red-headed version of Warner's silver-haired candor. Blunt to a fault, unafraid to stand his ground, Webb sized up Bush's performance with a directness that ruled out misinterpretation.

Tapped to provide the Democratic response to the State of the Union just 19 days after taking office, Webb tossed the script handed him and penned his own nine-minute rebuke. "The president took us into this war recklessly. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable - and predicted - disarray that has followed," he began.

Agree or disagree with Webb, or with Warner's decision a day earlier to challenge the wisdom of Bush's new strategy, say this: Virginia is represented in the U.S. Senate by two men who bring admirable independence and authenticity to the table.

Warner's more genteel collegiality has survived almost three decades in the Senate; Webb has yet to prove whether his outspoken edginess can endure a fishbowl world. But in an arena where consultants and polls drive decisions and where plastic, cookie-cutter candidates abound, I appreciate that the Virginians seem genuine, uniquely themselves.

Over time Warner has been less a renegade than a solid conservative. But he sometimes breaks with party orthodoxy on such issues as gun control, abortion and stem-cell research. And on a score of pivotal occasions, he has turned the political tide in ways that served his view of the common good, not party elders.

Convinced that Iran-Contra figure Oliver North had lied to Congress, a cardinal sin in Warner's book, he drafted an independent opponent for North's 1994 Senate race, likely causing his defeat. The senator joined with GOP and Democratic centrists to head off the so-called "nuclear option," which would have jettisoned Senate tradition to force up or down votes on controversial judicial nominations.

Last year, he publicly challenged the Bush administration's use of torture in combating terrorism and on the eve of the 2006 elections, he returned from Iraq to announce that the situation was "drifting sideways." The startling assessment from the chairman of the Armed Services Committee was a sober check on the false optimism trumpeted by many, including then-Sen. George Allen.

Webb's unlikely toppling of Allen and the resulting switch of the Senate to Democratic control meant that the newcomer arrived in Washington already a national figure. The mystique grew with a testy exchange, leaked to the press, in which President Bush and Webb exchanged words over the condition of Webb's son, an infantry Marine serving in Iraq.

Now, Webb's verbal challenge to the president - "We hope to begin working with him to move our country in a new direction... If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way" - has spurred a flurry of accolades and a few catcalls.

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter set the tone by reporting that "something unprecedented" happened last Tuesday night. "For the first time ever, the response to the State of the Union message overshadowed the president's." Attributing a "muscular liberalism" to Webb, he wrote: "Webb is the perfect instrument for rescuing Democrats from the image of wimpy, weak-kneed wussies that has so hampered them in recent national elections."

Alter wasn't alone in asking, might the senator even wind up in the second slot on a 2008 presidential ticket?

Not everyone was so enthralled. Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson sniffed that Webb, an acclaimed author, ought not to have rejected help on his speech. "I am not even sure there is a literary term for a mixed metaphor that crosses two clichés," he said, after Webb said the middle class, "the backbone of the country," is "losing its place at the table."

But on PBS' "The NewsHour," both liberal columnist Mark Shields and conservative columnist David Brooks used a different cliché to sum up Webb: "A star is born."

The Iraq War and its spiraling global consequences will showcase the Virginia senators over the next year. Their hands-on training in war and high-level military matters stands in contrast to the president's more antiseptic home-front service during the Vietnam War and Vice President Dick Cheney's military deferments.

Warner volunteered for the Navy in World War II when he was still a few weeks shy of his 18th birthday. Later, he dropped law school for active duty in Korea as a Marine Corps officer.

Son of a career Air Force officer, the young Webb attended the U.S. Naval Academy and served as a Marine Corps infantry officer in Vietnam. There he was awarded a Navy Cross for heroism and other medals.

Both men wound up as secretary of the Navy for a time.

When Webb showed the Tuesday-night television audience a photograph of his father during the Berlin airlift and described how he slept with the picture as a boy, the moment combined tenderness and virility. The patriotism wasn't fake.

Americans say they long for politicians who speak from the gut. Warner and Webb have their imperfections, but shying from conviction isn't one of them.

In a time of challenge, Virginians can be proud to lend honest voices to the debate.