Bush cuts off funding for the troops

Don't you mean "Bush declined to cut off funds for the troops?" .

tourdeforce said:

No.

This has been another edition of TheGaffer's simple answers to simple questions.

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So the boys are coming home then?

I can only hope they are. My son is scheduled to deploy to Iraq this summer.

LOL. That's an awesome thread title, Tour. You're like that little kid in a room full of horse manure jumping for joy because with that much shit there must be a pony in there somewhere.

This is a pure political game, being played by both Bush and the Democrats. Neither are going to let the troops go unfunded. Both have now made their points, such as they are. There have already been rumblings of a variety of ways out of the impasse, and they won't be hard to achieve. Dems will now propose some sort of event-based rather than date-based "timetable". Key Republicans, like Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, are already on record as wanting to let things ride until fall, to see if anything in Iraq is changing for the better, and if it isn't, they'll be more amenable to a withdrawal timetable. Something will shake out of those sentiments, and Bush isn't about to veto any bill that would result in actual cut-off of troop funding.

Political theater, folks. Election's coming.

caw

Exactly. Everyone is jockeying for position. They want to say the other guy is responsible. Sadly, the Demos are just as culpable as Bush.

blacbird said:

Political theater, folks. Election's coming.

caw

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I'd like to think of it as a working man's right to an honest errection. We've had enough limp politicians lately. We need someone who can stand-up to the challenge we face.

I'm with Blac and Julie. I'm ready for the stupid grandstanding to stop already. How 'bout a law that running for election cannot start until the year of the election?

The way they keep starting earlier and earlier, here soon they'll start the 2012 campaign before the 2008 voting has started.

I'm actually not knocking the game being played. Just pointing out that it's to be expected, and that neither side is going to refuse funding for the troops in Iraq. I'm not even ready to call it "stupid grandstanding". It's the political process at work, for which we should be grateful that we live in a country in which such a process can take place. Democrats, newly endowed with power they haven't had in over a decade, are feeling their way forward. Bush, lacking the power he's had for the first six years of his Presidency is likewise feeling his way forward, with equal uncertainty. On both sides, there will be stupid rhetoric, much to be ignored. On balance, the process itself seems to me a good thing. It should have been happening four years ago.

Alas.

caw

blacbird said:

On balance, the process itself seems to me a good thing. It should have been happening four years ago.

Alas.

caw

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The balance of this ideology is like a baloney sandwich that is given to a poor man who hasn't eaten in a couple days. The meat is delicious. He turns the sandwich over and notices the bread is green with mold. He lifts the bread, curiously, and discovers a bug embedded in the mayo.

But he's hungry. So he continues to eat until the green, baloney sandwich is gone. He licks his fingers, content for the moment.

A few hours later he pukes his guts out. But he's still hungry and the chances of getting another meal could be tomorrow.

What does he do?

We all have the power to decide. It's just a matter or how hungry we are for a proper venue.

blacbird said:

I'm actually not knocking the game being played. Just pointing out that it's to be expected, and that neither side is going to refuse funding for the troops in Iraq. I'm not even ready to call it "stupid grandstanding".

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For kicks, I'll knock it a little, though I mostly agree with you.

But consider this: If the dems were playing this game knowingly, then why did they spend so much time adding all the extraneous pork to the bill they knew Bush would veto? Just in case?

SpookyWriter said:

The balance of this ideology is like a baloney sandwich that is given to a poor man who hasn't eaten in a couple days. The meat is delicious. He turns the sandwich over and notices the bread is green with mold. He lifts the bread, curiously, and discovers a bug embedded in the mayo.

But he's hungry. So he continues to eat until the green, baloney sandwich is gone. He licks his fingers, content for the moment.

A few hours later he pukes his guts out. But he's still hungry and the chances of getting another meal could be tomorrow.

What does he do?

We all have the power to decide. It's just a matter or how hungry we are for a proper venue.

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My stomach passed a bill earlier to stop on the way to work to grab some breakfast, but you just vetoed that bill. 0(

tourdeforce said:

Bush doesn't care about the pork.

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Correct. It's the dems that care about the pork. They care so much, they loaded up a bill bound for veto just in case. Lovely.

robeiae said:

But consider this: If the dems were playing this game knowingly, then why did they spend so much time adding all the extraneous pork to the bill they knew Bush would veto? Just in case?

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Same deal. They knew the bill would be vetoed, and they would score political points. (Hey, we tried to stop the war!) And they knew the pork would never fly, but they'd still get points with the people back home. (We voted to fund your project, but Bush vetoed it!)

Julie Worth said:

Same deal. They knew the bill would be vetoed, and they would score political points. (Hey, we tried to stop the war!) And they knew the pork would never fly, but they'd still get points with the people back home. (We voted to fund your project, but Bush vetoed it!)

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Well, I don't think they thought it through very well. The individual interests that would have benefited from the pork don't give a crap about attempts to fund pork, only the actually funding, imo. So I don't think the pork scored them any points, at all. Really, it only served as fuel for criticism. But again, it was all a "just in case" thing. Which, again, means that as much as the troop funding thing is a political game, there remains an unwillingness in Congress (on both sides, Tour) to risk their access to pork. Of course, the dems are running the show in Congress now, so they get the "credit" for these kinds of bills.

My feeling is they didn't want Bush to sign it, so there was no "just in case." If Bush signed it, our forces started leaving, and everything went to hell, who would be blamed? The Democrats, of course.

Julie Worth said:

My feeling is they didn't want Bush to sign it, so there was no "just in case." If Bush signed it, our forces started leaving, and everything went to hell, who would be blamed? The Democrats, of course.

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I don't really disagree--at least I don't want to. And like I said, I'm just knocking it a little.

But given this position, why all the wasted effort in adding the pork? In the first version, there was an extremely specific rider about minimum wages in American Samoa (essentially justifying, through law, keeping the minimum wage there well below the minimum wage everywhere else). It's a tough issue for the dems to pass openly, being the pro-labor, pro-living wage party and all, but it serves the needs of a couple of dem reps. It's something that has to be gotten through in a clandestine manner. I see no other reason why it would be included, except to allow that if there was even the tiniest possibility the bill might not get vetoed, it would be worth it to attach this rider. That's all.

In any bill there's a lot of horse trading (or pork trading). Esp. when it's close.

robeiae said:

Correct. It's the dems that care about the pork. They care so much, they loaded up a bill bound for veto just in case. Lovely.

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As opposed to the Republicans loading up pork they knew Bush would not veto.

Gimme a break, Rob. You want to bitch about pork, fine. But this bill is "pork lite" compared to some of the Omnibus spending bills that came out of the Republican Congress recently, most of those screaming for a veto that never happened.

SC Harrison said:

As opposed to the Republicans loading up pork they knew Bush would not veto.

Gimme a break, Rob. You want to bitch about pork, fine. But this bill is "pork lite" compared to some of the Omnibus spending bills that came out of the Republican Congress recently, most of those screaming for a veto that never happened.

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I haven't said otherwise, Steve.

My only point was--and is--a question: why go to the trouble of loading up a bill with pork that is designed to fail? Poor planning by the dem leadership, imo. And a refusal to pass up even the smallest opportunity. Would the repubs do the same, by and large? I guess it depends on the leadership at the time. Perhaps we can go back and look at some bills the repubs sent Clinton with the foreknowledge that they would be vetoed, then there would be an actual comparison.

Why is it such a problem for me to say this? Hell, I'm not even saying they were idiots, or morons, or the like. I'm just noting this one clear indication of what the priorities of the dem leadership really are...

I'm just wondering...

If we'd told FDR "Ok, we'll fund your war again Japan, but you absolutely have to start withdrawing troops out of the pacific by January 1946...

Wouldn't the Japanese, knowing this, have just held on until then, and declared victory?

You know... YOU KNOW that the instant the US pulls troops out of the war, every terrorist organization there is going to declare victory. It'll be the rallying cry of every militant group in the world "just wait the US out, they'll cave. They always do."

Now, you may be of the opinion that somehow this war is lost. I happen to know as a fact, from stupid things like history, that no war is ever over until one side stops fighting. That side's called the loser.

We haven't lost yet, but by God the Democrats are hell-bent on ensuring we do.