FISA changed the game.

[proud2BlibKansan]

Here's the deal. The game changed last weekend. Until they voted on FISA, we had a chance. We had a chance to convince the Democrats that they need to work harder to end the war. We had a chance to convince them that a majority of Americans want this administration impeached. We had a chance and an agenda for meeting with them during their August recess while they are in their home districts.

According to what I have read here and on many other websites, Reid and Pelosi have a say over which legislation reaches the floor. That means they could have decided no vote on FISA. They could have decided that they all needed to do more research before giving the worst president ever unprecedented power to spy on Americans. They could have waited.

But they did not wait. Rather than hold off on this legislation, they held a late night Friday session in the Senate and an unusual Saturday session in the House. They didn't schedule those sessions to keep Bush from having these powers, they scheduled them to GIVE HIM those powers.

They could have waited.

Waxman admitted to a group of his constituents that he didn't know about inherent contempt. As I hear from my friends across the country, many in Congress don't know about Bush's executive order giving him the right to declare martial law. My congressman admitted to me he hadn't heard about the executive order giving Bush the right to seize assets of anyone interfering with the "peace" in Iraq.

What they don't know is emerging at startling levels. Are they just playing dumb or do they really not know? Either way it is disturbing.

Until they voted on FISA, we had a chance to educate them. We had a chance to communicate our severe displeasure with both the administration and with Congress and cross our fingers and hope for change.

But the vote on FISA changed the game. I'm not sure how we are supposed to play it now. I don't honestly know what our next move should be. I no longer know if the Democrats are even on the same team we are on.

FISA changed the game.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. I say we quit.

won't work, will it?

In that case, we make appointments with Reid and Pelosi and express our disenchantment and disgust in person in DC. As reps of the progressive netroots, DU, and many other locations.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. Of course we don't quit

This is our timeout. It's our time to plan a new strategy.

[Tatiana]

2. The way I see it, the grassroots have got to start recruiting their own candidates.

First, on the local level. I'm constantly looking at the national candidates for President or Senatorial races, and I think, "This is the best and brightest? This is the best we have to offer?" I'm sure half of the U.S. House couldn't pass a HS Constitution test. They don't understand the 4th amendment, they don't believe in the principles of governance our founding fathers established. They simply don't care.

So do we simply settle? Or do we start a Draft ____________ movement not just for Presidential races, but local ones as well. Find people who DO believe in the Constitution and in public government and the well-being of our citizens. Then throw our effort into getting those people elected. There are tons of constitutional scholars, policy wonks, etc. who would make ideal U.S. representatives and senators.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. Yes that is exactly what we need to do

[OzarkDem]

17. That's true

Even DFA hasn't completely done the job in this respect. We have to run candidates from the grassroots level of the party.

First up are Pelosi, Reid, and anyone else who voted for the FISA bill.

[partylessinOhio]

3. This was the photo of Pelosi/Reid leaving their BreakfastWithBush

where they made the deal on FISA.

Democrats signal deal on terrorism law


By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer
Wed Aug 1, 10:28 AM ET



WASHINGTON - Democratic congressional leaders said Wednesday they want to expand the government's surveillance authority over suspected terrorists and get it done before going on recess at week's end. But they remain in a stalemate with President Bush over spending, with no signs of progress.

The administration is pushing to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow surveillance without a warrant of terror suspects who are overseas. The proposal, offered late last week by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, is designed to fix what the White House says is a glaring problem: the missing of significant foreign intelligence that could protect the country against terrorist attacks.

"To the extent that more flexibility is needed, as Director McConnell has indicated, we are prepared to make those accommodations under the law," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said after congressional leaders met with Bush at the White House Wednesday. "We hope to do that this week."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he, too, thought the matter would be worked out. But he would not predict timing, as Pelosi did.

"In the Senate, I don't promise any legislation," Reid said. He said the hang-up is "what the involvement of the attorney general will be."

Democrats and some Republicans in the Senate have openly questioned the truthfulness of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whom they also accuse of helping Bush exploit executive power at the expense of civil liberties and possibly beyond the law on an array of matters.

The Senate's Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said he saw bipartisan willingness to get the legislation done before the Congress goes into recess.

The White House responded with measured optimism. ...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070801/ap_on_go_co/bush_congress_2






Bush, Democrats seek deal on more spy power bill


9:03AM Thursday August 02, 2007
By Caren Bohan


WASHINGTON - Democratic lawmakers said yesterday they were moving closer to a deal with President George W Bush to expand the government's powers to eavesdrop on telephone calls and email from abroad.

With the US Congress set to leave for an August recess this weekend, both sides said action was needed to change the Bush administration's controversial domestic spying programme. But it remained unclear if it would happen this week.

"What we committed to was to work closely with the administration to come to agreement," said House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, adding she expected the House to pass legislation in coming days.

Said White House spokesman Tony Snow: "We certainly hope and trust that the measure will be in fact concluded by the time Congress goes on recess."

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said he would try to get his chamber to act this week but "there's no guarantees." ...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10455354

These two traitors to Dems made the deal. They both need to go!

[FreeStateDemocrat]

4. Dem leadership has sold us out and there needs to be consequences for their behavior.

Fuck the ruling class.

[KoKo]

6. What did they get in return? Shouldn't they have asked and gotten something?

:shrug:

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. Yes they should have

but they are not playing a very smart game.

[EVDebs]

11. They got a now useless FISA court packed with useless judges. Go figure.

[OzarkDem]

18. Is that all?

Are they really that stupid? I can't think of another word to describe them. Stupid.

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. The day they sold us out

[struggle4progress]

25. Uh, Bush reneged on the deal:

Democrats pretty clearly got steamrolled on this. Until Thursday they were negotiating productively with Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and had reached agreement on the bill's language. Nobody was making a big deal out of it because things seemed to be going smoothly. Then, at the last second, the White House rejected the language its own DNI had accepted and suddenly all hell broke loose.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_08/011818.php
via http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/blogtalk-debating-the-fisa-bill/

It's BS to claim that Pelosi and Reid pre-planned this with BushCo. Our Congressional team simply underestimated BushCo's cynicism: they shouldn't have, and it's inexcusable that they did, but that's what happened

[Morereason]

31. Wow, their expressions and posture are revealing

Not saying I have any idea what was on their minds, but they did not look confident when they left

[KoKo]

5. That's what's bothering me, also. How is it that many Dems keep saying they "didn't know?"

They didn't know that "Iraq War Resolution" gave Bush power to invade Iraq...they say. Yet for Days Byrd and Kennedy and Feingold stood on the Senate floor speaking about what that Resoution would do. "Blank Check for War" and "Why the Rush to do this" is what Byrd kept saying.

Every single thing Bush has done has been approved of either by majority of Dems or enough of a majority that he still got his way. Yet we keep hearing that "we didn't know, we didn't read the whole bill, we didn't understand the amendment...we didn't know...we don't know."

I think the Waxman interview after the FISA vote was the last straw. Something is very wrong.

What can we do? Try to keep supporting groups that are fighting them legally. Try to keep supporting alternate media that tries to get the truth out. Keep, phoning, faxing and e-mailing. If we give up who will be left?

We know that our enemy isn't just the Repugs and the RW Evangelicals. It's Globalization/Corporate Interests who run it all. They write the legislation that Congress doesn't read and they fund the elections and re-elections of those who don't listen to us. We've got to support those who do listen to us, I guess.

It's pretty depressing...but it's almost a relief after my anger and despair to know that some we thought were heroes are just paper tigers. They aren't going to do anything for us. So, we have to find other ways to make change.

[wiggs]

15. Yep. With you on that. Same pattern of behavior gong back more than

six years.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. We need to do what other countries have done

far more recently

NATIONAL STRIKES, but don't count on any of that happening any time soon

Yep, Idol is on

[robinlynne]

12. I agree. I feel exactly the same way. FISA caught me completely off guard.

I KNOW how easily we would have won that particular battle. There is just no way to swallow this one. NO way to explain it.

[proud2BlibKansan]

13. Yes, it is very troubling.

[blues90]

16. How could they not know ?

I don't know what to say here . If they don't know then they truely live in a bubble , we knew .

If they do know and I believe or at least hope they did ,because I would rather know the truth as to where we actually stand in all of this .

So far the Dems have been a real dissappointment , not only now , this is not new , they sat on their hands for years now and confirmed every freak bush appointed and now we have hearings on Gonzo when he should not have made it past the security bars .

Now what have we got to look forward to if we have elections in 2008 , we will hold our noses again and the murder and killing will continue on and all safety nets will continue to have the bottoms cut out .

It is high time their decisions affect the politicians just as they affect us , let their tax payer health care die off , let them pay for all their extras and pay them what they are worth , let them punch a time card and deduct the pay and time off is subtracted from vacation days . If they make money on personal interests or business then subtract this from their paycheck .

What should happen is the house and senate and white house should be emptied out and flushed clean with a fire hose and start over .

Find all the profits made off this insane war and freeze the assets and pay for out safety nets with this . And remove the religious bunch sitting in our whitehouse that bush put in , they have no business there .

I am sick of this corporatism we are held captive by and sick of watching it grow larger and larger while we sit back with little but a vote and letters to hope for change .

Pelosi sould just retire , she has enough personal assets to live forever , we need people who care , not people who are players and full of shit .

[jpgray]

19. FISA is evidence of the game being exactly the same, but few on DU understanding it

[JVS]

20. explain

[jpgray]

21. Cowardly ambitious people in Congress? Passing bad legislation to avoid bad press?

I'm shocked.

[JVS]

22. I thought you were of the "They're trying, but they don't have the votes" school of thought

do you now think that the flesh is weak, and the spirit isn't to keen on it either?

[jpgray]

23. I don't see how the two views are inconsistent

Seeing impeachment as strategically impossible right now does not mean the Democratic Congress is full of snow-pure liberty defenders who are just misunderstood by their critics. As far as their actual views on the goals of investigation, whether or not they are actively scrambling to net impeachment support, etc., I'm sure I have no idea. I'd like to think the best, but again that's not very likely.

[JVS]

24. The 2 views differ on the issue of whether Democratic failure can be attributed...

to Democrats wanting to do the right thing but not being powerful enough to succeed on the one hand, or them being opposed to the very values that we peons are supposed to be defending by pulling the lever for them instead of, say Nader, in elections.

One makes them an ally, the other an enemy. How does this reconcile?

[Guaranteed]

26. You're looking at different issues, and, moreover, different Democrats.

You're trying to attribute via broadbrush. Why would the reasoning, of different Democrats, have to be the same for both issues?

Pelosi and Reid were both against giving Bush this power, I believe. Reid almost certainly- I saw quotes from him. But you can't expect them to pull the bill, from the POtuS, just because they were personally against it. Bush was calling for this thing, and it needed to be addressed. Moreover, if they personally pulled the bill and then pur country was attacked- by whomever- not only would the Democrats be "responsible" for the attack, but Pelosi or Reid would be personally responsible.

[JVS]

28. cowards

there is variance among members, but the broadbrush is important in that when push comes to shove people either do or don't trust the party leadership

[jpgray]

27. Do Democrats want to "get" Bush via investigation and impeachment if possible?

Yes. Does that mean they aren't by and large career pols worried more about their jobs and personal ambition than defending our rights and the Constitution? Nope. The Democrats are miserably far away from what an opposition party should be in this country. First, that doesn't change the fact that impeachment isn't viable at this time. Second, that doesn't change the fact that the Democratic Party is the -best- vehicle for opposition to the GOP. So what to do?

There's the Nader option. He has the idea that attacking the collaborating centrists will allow a real opposition party to emerge, even if there is right-wing supremacy in the hopefully brief resultant power vacuum. This doesn't often work historically, and can fail spectacularly--witness Thalmann and his flawed Comintern theory of "social-fascism." I'm sure his "After the Nazis, our turn!" slogan rang hollow after he died in Buchenwald. However frustrating it was for collaborators to steal away votes from true progressives, the Social Democrats were not in the end more dangerous than the fascists. Often the best you can hope for with this tactic is for the collaborator to lose, not for the opposition independent candidate to win.

The other option is to change the party from within. This takes longer, but is certainly possible. Looking at the GOP, they built up a majority government (albeit a short-lived one) based on extremely unpopular and non-populist economic stances pursuant to the Powell Manifesto. How did they do it? Decades of work, and billions poured into think tanks, lobbying groups, etc. The longer we have a majority, the more likely it is we can build the party we want through patient years of effort. The current leadership gets it spectacularly wrong on strategy all the time, but here's hoping some up and coming progressives change that.

[JVS]

29. What makes you think that they want to do that?

I think they might like the results, but I see no evidence that they are pursuing it.

BTW, stop knocking Thaelmann, within a year of his death there was a Comintern occupied section of Germany that would become the DDR, while the SPD continued selling out and moving right in the BRD. Bad Godesberg's 1959 Party platform officially renouncing Marxism as the underpinning economic philosophy of the SPD was the final display that the SPD was more interested in becoming a leftist flavor of capitalist partys. Thus in the end, he was correct. Social Democracy was a failure and did not have either the strength nor even the goal eventually of creating Socialism.

[jpgray]

30. Thalmann's belief that a Nazi majority would galvanize the left was utter lunacy

You can't -get- more wrong than that. An essentially unified right-wing plurality/near-majority versus a fractured left engaged in bitter internecine warfare is always a dangerous situation. These folks who say "better the fascists in power, it would wake people up" are not only disgustingly cavalier with the lives of others, but they have fundamental misapprehensions about consolidation of power and the inertia of a party that controls the system. It's the same bad nonsense Nader panders around concerning how helpful Reagan was to the environmental movement, etc.--that he would rather Republicans win than Democrats, again to "wake people up" to fascism rather than subject them to the "slow defeat" of social-fascism. As if those are the only two options.

The SPD was hideously reactionary, cf. Noske, etc. But they weren't fascists. And they weren't the more dangerous threat to socialism or indeed Germany/Europe.