Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:00:02 -0400
So the pledge would be to allow a simple majority decide legislation? What a concept!!
However, they can't get to 60 votes without Sens. Kennedy and Byrd.
The fraidy cats probably will want to kill legislation without voting "No."
Stan Davis
Lakewood, CO
Wes Clark: "We're no better than our own sense of humility."
Nineteen Dems Draw Line Against Reproductive Health Coverage, Still Mum on Public Option
By: Jane Hamsher Wednesday July 1, 2009 4:00 pm
National Journal:
Nineteen Dems Want Abortion Out Of Health BillTuesday, June 30, 2009
Nineteen House Democrats have told Speaker Pelosi they will not vote for healthcare legislation "unless it explicitly excludes abortion funding from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan."
The 19 Democrats are: Reps. Dan Boren (D-OK); Bart Stupak (D-MI); Colin Peterson (D-MN); Tim Holden (D-PA); Travis Childers (D-MS); Lincoln Davis (D-TN); Heath Shuler (D-NC) Solomon Ortiz (D-TX); Mike McIntyre (D-NC); Jerry Costello (D-IL); Gene Taylor (D-MS); James Oberstar (D-MN); Bobby Bright (D-AL); Steve Driehaus (D-OH); Marcy Kaptur (D-OH); Charlie Melancon (D-LA); John Murtha (D-PA); Paul Kanjorski (D-PA); and Kathleen Dahlkemper (D-PA).
That's great, there are 19 Dems -- many of them Rahm Emanuel's pets -- who draw a line in the sand and say they won't vote for any bill that covers reproductive health. But with minor exception, members who have floated all kinds of lofty rhetoric about their support for a public plan don't want to say they won't vote for a bill that doesn't have one. They want to "leave themselves open."
Meanwhile, President Lieberman and President Nelson and President Landrieu have absolutely no trouble whatsoever saying they won't vote for a bill that HAS a public plan. Saying what you won't vote for seems to be easy, as long as it's pro-insurance industry and regressive.
I think it's pretty clear where we're headed on this. It's "public plan" kabuki. The progressives are putting on a nice show but in the end, they're fully prepared to sell the public plan -- and women -- down the river. ....
"Misogyny,..is bullet-proof. It’s not merely tolerated, it’s openly celebrated ...Except for a puny consortium of bruised and contused blamers ...even the victims of this oppression embrace it."
Creepy, revealing quote from White House staffer
Jane Hamsher details the extremely aggressive tactics the White House and House leadership used to coerce liberal environmentalist members to vote for the cap-and-trade bill despite their belief that it helped polluters more than it did anything else (and remember their ability to do that the next time they claim that a bill they ostensibly support simply couldn't pass because it lacked the necessary votes). Jane quotes from a Politico article reporting on White House anger towards environmentalist Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, due to an impassioned floor speech he gave arguing that the bill was so industry-friendly that it would do more harm than good. That article contains this quote:
The White House is smoking mad at Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), who says he's voting against the climate bill — despite the lobbying of the entire First Family in the Oval Office last night.
.
If the bill goes down, Obama won't forget Doggett's role, Democrats say.
.
It's "stunning that he would ignore the wishes not just of his president, but of his constituents and the country,” said an administration official.This has become an emerging theme among both the White House and House leadership: that progressive members of Congress have an obligation to carry out "the wishes of the President" even when they disagree (now, apparently, it's "stunning" when they defy his dictates). That was the same subservient mentality that led House Democrats who admitted they opposed the war supplemental spending and/or the foreign bank bailout to nonetheless vote for the bill: because they President favored it. The duty of Congress is not to obey the wishes of the President.
Note, too, that the sort of bullying tactics that were used for the war supplemental bill and now for the cap-and-trade bill are only directed towards the House progressives who want legislation to be less beholden to corporate donors; those tactics are never invoked against Blue Dogs who play a vital role in impeding progressive legislation and thus supply the perfect excuse for Democratic leaders as to why such legislation does not pass. Let's see if these tactics are used against Blue Dogs who impede a public option for health care, the repeal of DOMA and Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and various issues relating to the closing of Guantanamo. Will we hear condemnations from Rahm Emanuel's underlings about how stunning and outrageous it is that conservative Democrats are "ignoring the wishes of the President?"
-- Glenn Greenwald
Once in a while you get shown the light, In the strangest of places if you look at it right.
First, I don't like Ed Schultz very much. But he's on the warpath on health care. Wednesday, he invited the Republicans and recalcitrant Democrats to spend a day with him in Toronto to see the truth about the Canadian plan. See the video here. The full segment is 14:44 in length, but in the last three minutes he gets really wound up. Earlier in the segment, he visits with Linda Douglass and Katrina Vanden Heuvel and begins with a blast at Joe Lieberman.
I wish more people than the three or four who watch him would watch his diatribes on this subject.
Stan Davis
Lakewood, CO
Wes Clark: "We're no better than our own sense of humility."
....but I am very grateful that he's on this like white on rice.
"Misogyny,..is bullet-proof. It’s not merely tolerated, it’s openly celebrated ...Except for a puny consortium of bruised and contused blamers ...even the victims of this oppression embrace it."
To Critics, New Policy on Terror Looks Old
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — Civil libertarians recently accused President Obama of acting like former President George W. Bush, citing reports about Mr. Obama’s plans to detain terrorism suspects without trials on domestic soil after he closes the Guantánamo prison.
It was only the latest instance in which critics have argued that Mr. Obama has failed to live up to his campaign pledge “to restore our Constitution and the rule of law” and raised a pointed question: Has he, on issues related to fighting terrorism, turned out to be little different from his predecessor?
The answer depends on what it means to act like Mr. Bush.
As they move toward completing a review of their options for dealing with the detainees, Obama administration officials insist that there is a fundamental difference between Mr. Bush’s approach and theirs. While Mr. Bush claimed to wield sweeping powers as commander in chief that allowed him to bypass legal constraints when fighting terrorism, they say, Mr. Obama respects checks and balances by relying on — and obeying — Congressional statutes.
“While the administration is considering a series of options, a range of options, none relies on legal theories that we have the inherent authority to detain people,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said this week in response to questions about the preventive detention report. “And this will not be pursued in that manner.”
But Mr. Obama’s critics say that whether statutory authorization exists for his counterterrorism policies is just a legalistic point. The core problem with Mr. Bush’s approach, they argue, was that it trammeled individual rights. And they say Mr. Obama’s policies have not changed that.
<snip>
Stan Davis
Lakewood, CO
Wes Clark: "We're no better than our own sense of humility."
Gloat Cat dances the "21st Century Nostalgia Rhumba"
- in loving memory of the Enlightenment, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta, Habeus Corpus, the Geneva Conventions, the Democratic Party, the Free Press, Checks and Balances, the powers of the US Congress, the budget surplus, his own G-Cat vanished IRA, meaningful financial regulation, free and fair elections, public education, the right to privacy, justice from the Justice Department, accountability in government, the once great state of California, the once booming city of Detroit, the beloved city of New Orleans, the "city upon a hill", the beacon of democracy, government transparency, American innocence, ice caps and polar bears, the Middle Class, affordable Health Care, Social Security, the manufacturing sector, the eminence of the US Dollar, employment, the environment, extinct and endangered species, 4000 fallen troops, hundreds of thousands of uncounted dead Iraqis, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness....
That was the State of the Union! :)
It would take one L A R G E chest to print all of that text on a T Shirt... ;)
Dolly?
-- every one of the 56 signers instantly became traitors, wanted for Treason and Sedition. They were aware what that meant, what they were risking. It didn't stop them.
Displaying the kind of courage in patriotism we wouldn't even recognize today.
Most of them died broke - because of the act of their having signed the Declaration. Every single one of the 56 had to flee their homes as a consequence of having signed the Declaration. 12 came home to find they had no more homes. 3 (from South Carolina) were captured by the British and brutally tortured in prison for over one year, before Washington was able to arrange for their freedom.
In the days following the signing, 9 died and 4 suffered the deaths of their children --all as a direct result of merely having signed the Declaration of Independence.
This Fourth of July weekend, we should honor and meditate upon the extraordinary sacrifices made by these courageous 56 original Americans ....
A few hundred years was not a bad run.
"It was to be a Republic, Madame... If you can keep it."
The above is not all exactly true. A friend on another message board posted the following essay, partly as a warning from what we're likely to hear on right-wing radio over the holiday. He didn't provide a source, but at least some of it comes from snopes.com, which addresses an internet e-mail that has been floating around for the past 10 years. See http://www.snopes.com/history/american/pricepaid.asp
History is supposed to be true even at the risk of being boring. Of course, no one expects Hollywood to abide by that constraint. (Mel Gibson’s Martin Luther would have a spectacular sword fight with Pope Leo X.) As the Fourth of July approaches, Talk Radio will be taking similar liberties with the American Revolution.
The firecracking patriots of the airwaves will extol the heroic deaths and noble sacrifices of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. According to the script, “Nine fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War….Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died….Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.” This recitation is dramatic and poignant, as well it should be. After all, who wants to hear banal lies and boring exaggerations?
This radio rhetoric is based upon an anonymous essay circulating on the internet. It is a remarkable effort at distortion and fabrication. For example, nine of the signers did die during the Revolutionary War. However, none died in battle. Seven died of natural causes; the 18th century physician was far more dangerous than the British soldier. As for the two deaths by unnatural cause, Button Gwinnett lost a duel to an American officer, while Thomas Lynch drowned in a shipwreck.
The script also fabricates the torture and death of imprisoned signers. Yes, five were captured and all have since died; however, only Richard Stockton suffered any mistreatment. In November 1776, he was captured by American Loyalists, alias the Tories. Stockton was fortunate that he lived to be imprisoned. (Both the Tory and the Continental militias were known to scalp captives.) The Continental Congress negotiated with the British to secure Stockton’s release after a few months of imprisonment, but the squalid conditions of his confinement ruined his health. He died four years later.
The other captives merely suffered embarrassment. George Walton surrendered with the hapless garrison of Savannah. Edward Ruttledge, Thomas Heyward and Arthur Middleton were captured when Charleston fell. Rather than torture and death, they enjoyed the benefits of British snobbery. They were esteemed as officers and gentlemen, men of stature and breeding. (Middleton was a graduate of the real Cambridge, not the pretentious upstart in Massachusetts.) While the enlisted men were herded into the holds of prison ships, the celebrity captives were kept in modest comfort waiting to be exchanged for captured British officers.
As the essay asserts, a dozen signers saw their homes ransacked or burned. However, the culprits were not always British. In several cases, the attacks were by the signers’ Tory neighbors. The Conservatives of the time vehemently opposed the Revolution. Here is another awkward fact ignored by the essay. The home of James Wilson was pillaged but by the Revolutionaries, who suspected the Pennsylvanian of being a turncoat.
The script goes on with its litany of distortions and evasions. It claims that Carter Braxton and Robert Morris sacrificed their fortunes for the Revolution “and died in rags”; in fact, they went bankrupt decades later in land speculation. The essay reports that Lyman Hall, Arthur Middleton, Thomas Heyward and George Wythe suffered the “vandalism and looting” of their plantations. Yes, the British also freed the slaves, an inconvenient fact overlooked in this paean to liberty.
What is the purpose of this travesty of history? Can we justify the American Revolution only by lying about it? There is no need for melodrama or special effects. It does not matter that George Ross died of gout in 1779 rather than British bayonets. The truth itself is fascinating and important. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were audacious visionaries.
They hoped to justify armed rebellion against the world’s greatest power and most liberal government. As British subjects, they enjoyed a degree of freedom unknown to any other people at the time. Indeed, when confronted with an unresponsive myopic bureaucracy, these Revolutionaries invoked the English right to resist injustice. The Declaration of Independence takes that principle and boldly expands upon it. Freedom was not just an English idiosyncrasy but the natural right of all mankind. That idea was the American Revolution.
Regardless of the details, ms' main point is worth remembring, that signing the Declaration of Independence was a magnificent act of courage: every one of the signers could have been hanged as a traitor and they all knew it and had every reason to believe they would. I'm afraid our current legislators would be incapable of such courage, almost to a man (or woman).
_____________________________________
1) TREAT OTHERS WITH RESPECT
2) TAKE SMALL PRACTICAL STEPS FORWARD
3) DON'T COMPROMISE YOUR PRINCIPLES
Continue here. I usually post the text of the declaration each year.
Stan Davis
Lakewood, CO
Wes Clark: "We're no better than our own sense of humility."
Richard Stockton was from New Jersey and considered a moderate in 1776. He wasn't on the original NJ delegation to Philadelphia but when the delegation took a stand against independence the people of New Jersey the people of New Jersey elected Stockton and another fellow to replace those who stood against independence.
We have Richard Stockton College of New Jersey now but it was renamed a few years ago. Originally it was Richard Stockton State College but a few years ago when the state legislator failed to provided the legally required funding for the state colleges Stockton removed "State" from their official name. They didn't waste money on new signs either, they just painted over the word "state." For a long time anyone driving past any of the campus entrances was reminded of their stand by those signs.
Barry
Our departure point is the present, our goal is the future... it is for us to determine.
I'll just say this - as a fact we can all agree on:
Fifty-six men signed the Declaration of Independence, all fully aware that the punishment for treason was death by hanging or dismemberment.
As opposed to "what we're likely to hear on right-wing radio" - what I posted was heard today on Thom Hartmann's radio show. Hardly a bastion of wingnuttery. Not from "an email or internet site".
I've learned to trust in Hartmann as a source over the years - found him to be a painstaking fact checker, informed researcher and historian, winner of four Project Censored Awards, best selling author of over 20 books- with more than a handful written about the Founders themselves; including; We the People, Unequal Protection, and What Would Jefferson Do? <-- this one was churned out after 4 years of intensive research on Jefferson and the Founders. His writings alone have garnered him invitations to private audiences with people from Pope John Paul II to the Dalai Lama. One of his books is on permanent collection to the Smithsonian. I trust Thom. But I also know that, as a Human.... he can be wrong. And he's usually the first to admit when he is.
The internet site snopes.com is a husband and wife team out here in the valley who are also humans - whose first site was called "Folklore", I believe? And they are indeed very popular myth busters but they have no formal background in history or investigative research so I think it's fair to consider all the sources out there, realizing none of them were eyewitnesses and all can be fallible. :) But I do love that we have a snopes site out there.
I know the American Legion, in the 1960s, was one of the contemporary sources who published the account of the signers fate. (The American Legion; chartered by Congress in 1919 as a war-time veterans organization)
American Heritage published their version here too:
Excerpt:
There is no doubt that the signers of the Declaration knew they were up to something far more serious than making a brave gesture when they put their signatures on the document. Indeed, for reasons of security, the Declaration with the signatures was not published until January, 1777— six months after the signing— for it was fully understood that if the Revolution failed, the signers would be rounded up, their property confiscated, and their lives forfeited.
The houses of William Ellery, Lewis Morris, and Josiah Bartlett were burned. Those of George Clymer, Lyman Hall, John Hart, William Floyd, William Hooper, Francis Hopkinson, and Arthur Middleton were destroyed or thoroughly ransacked. Altogether seventeen of the signers suffered extreme, and in some cases total, property losses. One in nine of them lost his life.
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1962/1/1962_1_36.shtml
Then this is this in depth biographical account from the 1800's (B J Lossing) that many historians cite. (wanning: some Olde English here!)
http://www.archive.org/stream/biographicalsket00lossiala/biographicalsket00lossiala_djvu.txt
I personally found this next site to be very balanced and neutral on the topic. (Graphologists can even get a good separate shot of each signer's signature) It has short bios on the fate of each one. Without characterization or commentary-- such as the email or the "snopes" versions offer.
http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/declaration-of-independence-signatures.html
I doubt anyone actually KNOWS the degree of "suffering" of those captured and imprisoned. But being prison reform itself was one of the hotly debated issues of the day, I hardly think it would have been a picnic to be imprisoned for a full year back then... but the snopester seems to think that as "celebrity captives" it was kind of entertaining and ... not so bad.
Snopes - or whoever wrote that - mockingly refers to the vandalism, destruction and looting of their houses by the Brits as -- not so bad either. Accusing other accounts of being melodramatic.
The destruction of property is detailed in the public record- you can find it in documents at the United States Department of the Interior in the registry of historic sites. By state and name of the signer.
Then they kind of snarkily concluded with this inappropriate line:
Yes, the British also freed the slaves, an inconvenient fact overlooked in this paean to liberty.
Huh? I really don't get that. The British freed their slaves in 1838 - but what does it have to do with the Revolution era ransacking of the Declaration signers homes? Does it somehow make it less true that their homes were destroyed? Or was it just a device to illustrate what hypocrites the signers were? Or those who reported on the damages done to their properties by the British <- (who of course are famous for their abhorrence of slavery);-) Kind of strange....I think I am missing something there...
EDIT: I just got it-- The British freed THEIR slaves, meaning the slaves at the signers' homes after they had destroyed the houses. Perhaps in an act of humanity? Doubtful as they were one of the biggest slaveholders of the era. Or perhaps as a unintended consequence of no house left standing? Still not sure how it impacts the credibility of the property damage story, but at least I know what they were talking about now!
...signed the Declaration of Independence, all fully aware that the punishment for treason was death by hanging or dismemberment."
I believe I said precisely that.
Look, perhaps you don't consider snopes a reliable source. I do. I consider the sources they cite at the bottom of the link to be accurate. I especially believe their account of this particular debunking to be accurate -- certainly more accurate than something published by the American Legion, which is run by a bunch of wing-nuts and has been for years. I wouldn't be surprised if the 10yo e-mail originated with the American Legion. And it's probably no accident it surfaced during the Clinton administration.
I will also admit that most historical events are recorded by varying and often conflicting accounts.
But I do know that captured officers were frequently, in fact almost always, treated very differently from enlisted prisoners of war, and did not endure particular hardship. Goes back to the time when all the families of European royalty were related and all the officers came from the nobility.
Thom Hartman is not a wing-nut, but he does occasionally get his information from bad sources. We all do. It's not an insult to be corrected.
_____________________________________
1) TREAT OTHERS WITH RESPECT
2) TAKE SMALL PRACTICAL STEPS FORWARD
3) DON'T COMPROMISE YOUR PRINCIPLES
...that the signers were willing to suffer for their actions; whether or not they actually suffered and the extent to which they actually suffered isn't really the point. They pledged "[their] lives, [their] fortunes, and [their] sacred honor" to throw off the yoke of British rule.
Stan Davis
Lakewood, CO
Wes Clark: "We're no better than our own sense of humility."
LINK
Do you think we could get the Dems up off the fainting couch long enough to do this?