Lets hope they are big and hairy. Tinpot dictators [even elected] tend to attend the cowards church. Is poodle Blair a born again?

Probably the best the Democrats can do is hold lots of investigations. But they won’t be able to stop the escalation. Franks said the 2007 Pentagon budget had already been approved. Bush may not even ask for Congressional approval, and a lot of the war is being funded through supplementals. What are the Democrats going to do: deny the troops supplies and equipment?

You will be glad to see that, at the latter part of my new piece today, I included a lot about what the Senate Democrats will be doing. Couldn’t include it all, but I did cover some of what Armed Services and Select Intelligence committees are planning.

Of note re this post: I heard last night that Bush will speak on Tuesday and that Carl Levin, the new chair of the Armed Services committee, will have Robert Gates appear before the commitee on Thursday… and that Levin is planning to go after Bush’s whatever-it-is-just-save-my-ego proposals.

Of course, as I heard on Olbermann last night, Bush can order his surge, his sacrifice, etc. for Iraq, and there isn’t a hell of a lot the Dems can do to stop him. It was Rep. Barney Frank who said that.

And Franks explained WHY the Dems really can’t even withhold monies from Bush because Bush can find the money he needs:

TRANSCRIPT:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16469531/

And Leslie added a comment with lots of fascinating news.

WHY CAN’T THEY SAY WHAT COUNTRY THIS “WESTERN DIPLOMAT” (who presumes to speak for “the Americans”) IS FROM????

I want to know!!!

Though I guess it is important to perpetually expose the incompetence of Bush’s “grand vision”, I for one would love to hear on how the new Democratic guard have affected things, however minor.

There is not debate who is the winner in the pissing contest. Not a bit of cheers with the NY I think will perk everyone up.

I got a suggestion for the Democrats in how they can handle this:

“Dear Mr. Bush,
This is a courtesy letter to let you know we will be unable to attend your speech due to our incredibly busy schedule of ripping you and your Administration a new one.
Yours truly,
Congress.

PS: Also, with this letter consider yourself served. You and Shotgun are going to need lawyers.”

+ + + Btw, Keith tonight, via his newsletter:

Bush urging bipartisanship in a WSJ op-ed.

But the 20,000 troop surge proposal, likely imminent, will obviously be the definitive issue about which the President and the new congress will square off.
How should the Democrats handle this?

Analysis and reaction from Howard Fineman and John Dean.

Maybe I’m just too negative, yet as much as I’d love to see justice served, I simply cannot get excited about it. I sure hope HW et al. tear ‘em up. I’m just not convinced there really has been the sea change in Congress that the numbers show from the last election. Too many still are beholden I fear to those that butter their K Street bread, rather than those that voted them into office.

My cynicism tells me that we will witness a couple of months of sound and fury, but in the end it will be significant of nothing. Though this was how Shakespeare described life, it also applies to the pageantry of governance, as it too is mostly a tale told by an idiot.

We will have various commissions, hearings, etc., unearthing mountains of fetid offenses, but failing to ever reach critical mass in the public eye. Although the blogosphere will be alive with all this, if history is prophet, it will just fail at the MSM level, where unfortunately most Americans still look for the last word on things. While this is changing, from my experience MOST people are not reading the blogs (thank God for Olbermann, as he distills the essence so superbly, and delivers in a manner that stirs all walks of humanity) (and thank God also for Stewart and Colbert).

TomDispatch has a good read yesterday that sums up my sentiments. http://tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=152999 The gist being that the path we are taking has already been chosen for us, and largely unbeknownst to us.

Is all hopeless? I don’t believe so. And the last elections clearly show a hunger for change from the general public. But it is by no means a done deal. The electorate must hold these elected officials to the coals. If they dare to Specter-ize us (i.e., his reprehensible playing one way to the crowd, but capitulating in his vote, where it mattered), the public must have this brought into focus daily and resolutely. Thus it is a team effort from the least significant voices in comments sections, to the more prominent bloggers and alt news sites, to those that can exploit the non-written media at the “mainstream” level.

At the end of the day, these individuals that have so much power maintain it by a carefully constructed frame of enablers and opportunists, each with their own reasons for playing along, willing or coerced, carroted or sticked. But the frame is still ultimately a house of cards. When truth is shone unwaveringly and fully, consciences may still be pricked with anyone able to do a John Dean, and it doesn’t take many cards removed to bring the whole thing down.

So thank you, Susan, for your efforts to this end, and I hope Waxman, Reid, Pelosi and the rest prove me wrong.

korea? so we are giving SK to the North?
japan? are they ready to do it all?

perhaps there is a map of deployments that would give us an idea of where we are going to get them?

the report yesterday said private police now outnumber the regular ones, over 2:1. military gone out country, martial law, private military and police

does this warranty the national debate, or debacle?

You know, back in the day when I was subject to the draft for an unpopular war, one of the arguments in favor of an all-volunteer army was that it would tend to discourage the government from engaging in stupid wars. If we ever again got involved in a hopeless, stupid quagmire like Vietnam, the argument went, the government would find it difficult to get enough people to volunteer to fight the war.

William Lind (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Lind) has suggested there will be a mutiny in the US military in 2007 (sorry, can’t find a link to the quote). That sounds distinctly possible to me, especially if the surge comes from short-circuiting rotations.

If they weren’t testicularly challenged lapdogs of the oligarchy, you’d have a point.

Henry Waxman is readying himself. He’ll be dynamite.

Keith injected so much into his commentary, including that $125 million courthouse at Guantanamo complete with restaurants. WTF? He nailed it — that this is all to enrich W’s corporate buddies.

FOR ANY WHO MAY HAVE MISSED IT, here’s the link to the TEXT + video:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16442767/