The full Democratic Caucus is set to vote on Joe Lieberman's Chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee next week. Write to your Senators, or call them, today!
Here's what I sent to WA Senators Murray and Cantwell today:
Dear Senator Murray: First, thank you for visiting our Canvassing Kickoff with Howard Dean and Governor Gregoire on the Saturday before the Election!
I am writing, as a constituent from West Seattle, to beg you on bended knee to vote to remove Senator Joe Lieberman (Joe Lieberman for Joe Lieberman party, CT) from his chairmanship of the Homeland Security committee when the Democratic Caucus convenes next week to vote on this issue. While I'm sure you're receiving plenty of emails, letters, and phone calls from constituents urging Sen. Lieberman's ouster from his committee Chair assignment for more partisan reasons (and his broken promise that he would support Senator McCain's candidacy, but refrain from attacking Senator Obama, is certainly a breach of faith with the Party, the Caucus, and his own word), there's something just as important to consider, if not more so:
Joe Lieberman has been incredibly ineffectual in his role as chair of the Homeland Security committee - particularly when it comes to the role he, and the committee, were supposed to play in standing up to the shameful actions of the Bush White House during these past years. Unlike its much more effective and active counterpart in the House, the Committee, under Joe Lieberman, failed to challenge the Bush Administration on its failures and offenses on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the "war on terror", torture, Hurricane Katrina, and a host of other issues the Committee was charged to oversee and investigate. It could be argued that Joe Lieberman's inaction as head of the Committee enabled and shielded a whole laundry list of failures of the Bush Administration, resulting in countless wasted tax dollars - and lives.
But there's ample reason to be suspicious, given his past behavior patterns, that an embarrassed, embittered Joe Lieberman may abuse his Chairmanship to "go after" the Obama Administration in a way he abjectly failed to do under the Bush Administration.
While Joe Lieberman's personal and political conduct during the Presidential election of 2008 (and his campaigning in support of other Republican candidates to the House and Senate in the recent past) are shameful enough, it's his dereliction of duty, lack of leadership, and failure to fulfill his role as chair of his Committee that should be the primary rationale for stripping him of his Committee assignment.
Let Joe Lieberman continue to caucus with the Democrats if he so chooses. Offer him Chairmanship of a different Committee - something that Mr. "Agreed with us on everything but the War" can be trusted with. But he's been an embarrassingly ineffective Chair of the Homeland Security Committee, and has failed at his duties in that role.
It's time to give someone else a chance to do a better job. If I dared to exhibit such lackluster performance and failure at my job, I would have been fired a long time ago.
Please vote to strip Joe Lieberman of his Committee Chair assignment.
Chris Roy
Precinct SEA 34-1545 / 34th District Democrats
---- 15th Avenue Southwest
Seattle WA 98136
206-_-__ nullemail@nullemail.com
My McCain-Clinton gas tax holiday letter hit newsstands in today's Seattle Times...
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2004393996_tuelets06.html
Gas masks
The hidden realities
The "gas-tax holiday" idea, as proposed by Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton, wouldn't likely lower gas prices — it's more likely gas prices would just go up, to make up the difference ["McCain calls for summer-long suspension of gas tax," News, April 16].
Gas prices are based on what the market will bear, and unless people react to higher gas prices by buying less gas, prices will continue to rise, in line with what people will pay.
The gas tax is a flat rate, not a percentage. Gas prices have already risen much more over the past few months than any difference a gas-tax holiday would make. It just doesn't add up.
The gas-tax holiday idea puts 300,000 road, highway, bridge, infrastructure and other related jobs at risk. If a gas-tax holiday measure were passed in Congress, but Hillary's "windfall profits" tax were held up in Congress or vetoed by the Bush administration (highly likely, given past actions), money badly needed for road maintenance, infrastructure, bridges and construction, which the gas tax is earmarked for, are at risk.
Does it really help the economy to put 300,000 such jobs at risk for a pandering, $25-a-person-over-the-course-of-the-summer, symbolic drop in the proverbial bucket?
The gas-tax holiday plays political games at a time when we have bridges collapsing and killing people. Are our memories so short-term now that we've already forgotten last year's headlines, and the survey showing how many of our bridges nationwide are at high risk for similar failures?
— Chris Roy, Seattle
Today the Florida Democratic party announced their decision not to go with a statewide re-vote, after considering options, costs, and ramifications.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1763038420080317?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=10112
As much as this remarkably extended primary contest has lent itself to Democrat-versus-Democrat infighting, bickering, and bitterness, it's important that - whether you favor Senator Clinton or Senator Obama for the Democratic nominee for President of the United States in 2008 - we keep in mind why the Florida primary date was moved up to January, why the short-circuited primary results were disqualified, why there was even a discussion of a re-vote in the first place, ultimately ending in the probably contentious decision not to conduct a 'do-over' primary in Florida.
The Obama campaign didn't "disenfranchise" Florida voters.
Neither - the blatant unfairness of her proposal to seat the Florida delegates "as is" based on the results of the disqualified Florida "beauty contest" primary, as soon as the chips were down and any delegates, fairly or unfairly won, helped her chances notwithstanding - did the Clinton campaign.
It was the state legislature of Florida that voted to move the Florida primary to a January date that was in direct violation of the rules set out by the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.
A state legislature controlled by REPUBLICAN majorities.
Florida Democrats, whether they prefer Obama or Clinton, have opportunities in several key contests to help elect FLORIDA DEMOCRATS to Florida positions currently held by Republicans - Republicans who are probably snickering through clenched teeth that the problems they've caused have resulted in months and weeks of contentious bickering, mudslinging, and cries of "disenfranchisement" creating dangerous rifts within the Democratic party.
When you're tempted to do or say something that plays into this infighting - STOP. THINK. Are you playing right in to the hands of divisive, partisan Republican bickering? We can't fight divisiveness, bitterness, misunderstanding, and the ugly partisan back-and-forth of the last two decades of American politics with more of the same. It's time to do things differently. It's time for unity. And that has to start within the Democratic party first, if we're going to convince America that there's a better way this Fall.
By remembering and taking to heart our FIFTY STATE STRATEGY to take back our municipalities, counties, states, and country - by remembering that the presidential nomination is not the only Democratic campaign we need to work, promote, and volunteer for - we can begin the 'good work' of fixing the broken systems in Florida and around the nation that have resulted in the national embarrassments of Florida's election goofs, gaffes, and scandals of 2000, 2004, and 2008.
Aren't Floridians getting tired of their great state being a running joke every four years?
It's time to "connect the dots" and sweep the Republican majority responsible for these repeatedly botched elections out of municipal, county, state, and Federal offices.
EVERY STATE MATTERS. NOT JUST THE BIG ONES. WE ARE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!
"I will not be a president who holds hands with the Saudis."
Oh, really? "I will not be a president who holds hands with the Saudis"?
Let's see that list of contributors to the Clinton presidential library.Let's see those tax returns Obama's released, but you've been "too busy" to release.Let's see the lists of earmark requests Obama's released, and Clinton hasn't. Bill was college buddies with a Saudi prince, who's now the head of the Saudi intelligence service, and who contributed tens of millions of dollars to a Middle Eastern Studies program at U of Arkansas after Bill's inauguration. President Clinton’s new $165 million library here was funded in part by gifts of $1 million or more each from the Saudi royal family and three Saudi businessmen. The governments of Dubai, Kuwait, and Qatar and the deputy prime minister of Lebanon all also appear to have donated $1 million or more for the archive and museum. The royal family of Saudi Arabia gave the Clinton facility in Little Rock about $10 million, roughly the same amount it gave toward the presidential library of George H.W. Bush....and it just keeps going. Google it sometime. The Clintons' connections with high-level Saudis go back over 20 years, and involve millions upon millions of dollars of "quid pro quo".
