By Dave Lindorff

Laid-off American workers will be getting temporary extended
benefits as the nation sinks into recession, thanks to Congressional
Democrats, who cleverly tacked a funding provision onto a bill giving
the president all the money he asked for (and then some) to fund the
Iraq and Afghanistan wars on out through next June. Veterans of the
Iraq War will also be getting tuition benefits equal to the full cost
of in-state public college tuition plus $1000 a year for books and
supplies.

Matt Stoller has written an important post trying to figure out why Congressional Democrats lose every important fight.

The Senate will vote this week on two disastrous bills: $163B for the continued occupation of Iraq and immunity for George Bush and the telecoms who are illegally wiretapping our calls and emails.

On Tuesday, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) launched a filibuster against the "Warrantless Wiretapping Immunity Act" with an impassioned speech on the Senate floor. Dodd is supported by Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR).

Unfortunately it takes 41 votes for a successful filibuster, and we can only count on 30, based on a similar vote on 2/12/08. These Democrats voted wrong. Call them and tell them to join the Dodd Filibuster against telecom immunity.

Well, as we all know, election season is once again upon us. Our choices are, as always, a great source of controversy and strife among the American people. This is understandable as not every candidate fits our ideals of the perfect President.

However, I've noticed some very disturbing trends among voters and, most glaringly, the Democrats. Frankly, it's appalling. I can't get through a blog or a chat room without seeing Democrats at each other's throats, each bashing the views and private lives of one another's pick as the Dem candidate.

You know what, people?? Knock it off. I'm not particularly wild about Hillary nor Obama either, to be honest... but all have a common goal here. That goal is to do everything we can to keep the GOP out of the White House.

I know Mitch McConnell is expecting a fight this fall, but he is already showing several symptoms of having taken too many shots to the head. (Besides the gnarly teeth). Yes, you can tell this is an election year for him, because all the sudden he can't remember what he's done, and remembers doing just the opposite.

Case in point, while purusing his website today, I came across this laughable entry of his "accomplishments":

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Washington, D.C.—U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell offered the Republicans’ energy plan, the ‘American Energy Production Act S. 2958’ as an amendment to S. 2284 Wednesday, and made the following remarks on the Senate floor:

http://mcconnell.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=297360&start=1

A couple of paragraphs later he rants about the Democrats in the Congress:

By Dave Lindorff

Well, the toll of wasted American lives in Iraq has hit 4000. But hey, who’s counting?

Certainly not the folks in the White House and the Pentagon, and certainly not John McCain, the prospective Republican nominee for president, who thinks the war is going just dandy.

But it’s worth noting that about a year ago, around the time that Bush’s “surge” plan got implemented with the addition of some 30,000 additional troops to the Iraq theater, the number of dead was about 3000. So it’s fair to say that Bush’s “surge” policy—his “escalation of the war in order to end it” plan—has directly led to the deaths of 1000 more young American men and women.

And what has he achieved with this bonus sacrifice?

Sadly, today we lost one of the best Senators in my lifetime: Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH), who was a true Aggressive Progressive. From the Cleveland Plain-Dealer:

Metzenbaum was one of the Senate's wealthiest members, yet he prospered in politics for more than half a century as a champion of working men and women.

Metzenbaum's outlook was forged by the Depression, and his politics by Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. He remained an unreconstructed liberal Democrat to the end.

By Dave Lindorff,

President Bush has turned to the cheapest lies in an effort to protect himself from being exposed as a criminal in the ongoing campaign to have the National Security Agency spy at will on Americans.

Claiming—without a scintilla of evidence to back him up—that there are people planning a “much worse attack” than 9-11 on America, he says he must not only have free rein to unleash the NSA
spymasters on American telephone and internet communications, but also a grant of complete immunity from prosecution for such spying for the telecom industry.

By Dave Lindorff

Who’s minding the store in Washington?

While President George W. Bush was standing before the members of Congress on January 28 laying out his plans, such as they are, for the final year of his second term in the White House, he was also seriously and perhaps fatally undermining the authority of Congress with a new signing statement, attached to the latest National Defense Authorization Act, in which he declared that he would simply violate or fail to comply with four provisions.

Let me say that again. The president states in writing that he is not going to obey and will not be bound by four parts of a law duly passed by the Congress.

Just so you know that we’re not talking about the naming of a bridge or a new ship, the four provisions of the act which the president is going to ignore are:

So far 3,341 of you have joined our Democratic Donor Strike against the DSCC (Senate Democrats) and DCCC (House Democrats).

And it must be scaring the bejeezus out of Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer, because the DSCC just sent out an email from "virtual James Carville" to try to convince progressives that we should put aside our rage at Senate Democrats and give them our hard-earned money anyway.

From: James Carville info@dscc.org
Subject: More horses

Dear X,

I'm not going to sugarcoat it.  I'm as frustrated as you are that more hasn't gotten done in this Congress.  Like you, I want to see more progress on getting us out of this mess in Iraq, getting more folks health care, and kicking our oil habit.