No Movement

To top off voting to censure MoveOn today, the Senate dealt a blow to Feingold-Reid, defeating it handily. It got 29 votes in May, 28 votes today.

Did anyone even know that this was coming up for a vote today? Was Reid's office whipping up support amongst the base? His name's on the bill, after all. This was a designed-to-fail spring job.

I love Wes Clark, but this idea that we should leave politics to our betters just angers me. It's antithetical to democracy.

Matt Stoller: Chuck Hagel called his performance "a dirty trick on the American people... It's not only a dirty trick, but it's dishonest, it's hypocritical, it's dangerous and irresponsible." Admiral Fallon was reported saying that he thinks Petreaus is 'an ass-kissing little chickenshit" for the way he sucks up to politicians.' There are a lot of rumors that David Petraeus wants to run for President. My question is, um, is their criticism a mistake as well?

Wes Clark: Well, I think for Chuck Hagel, who's a sitting Senator who wants to criticize a General, that's fine. That's his right to do so. As far as Admiral Fallon was concerned, if he's got a personal quarrel with Petraeus, you know, that's between the two of them. Petraeus works for him, obviously he feels cut out and to some extent I've known situations like that, but, um, as for Moveon.org, it was a mistake.

Matt Stoller: But why can a sitting Senator criticize a General and millions of grassroots activists not do that? That's really what Moveon is, it's not like it's an entity.

Wes Clark: Moveon's an organization, and when it does that it distracts from the dialogue that the Senator's trying to have. Frankly, I think the better course of action is to bring out all the statistics and challenge Petraeus directly to explain how he can say that in the face of all these statistics. Did we do that? Did Moveon do that? Did they lay out the statistics and say 'Petraeus says this, here's the other fact he doesn't tell you, General Petraeus come back to us and explain to us.

Matt Stoller: Absolutely they did that. That's what the ad was, was there anything in the ad that was factually inaccurate?

Wes Clark: What instead came out was the play on his name, and that's all that came out. And that was the mistake. If it was a serious ad, did it ask those serious questions, no one could have objected to it.

I agree with the end of that to an extent, but this theme of betrayal accurately describes how a lot of us feel, particularly about Democrats at this point. The part where he says us boys and girls have to run along and play outside while the menfolk Senators have their dialogue is just putrid.

And to paraphrase Allen Iverson, puns? We're talking about puns?

That kind of reckless language, especially the use of puns and so forth...

How much of a child do you have to be to be offended by a PUN?!?!?!!? I swear, sometimes I find us Americans to be the most humorless bunch that ever walked the Earth.

The DC establishment wants no part of a progressive movement. They don't care about us and never did. And they knifed us but good today. But we do hold more power come election time than we did before. Eventually, a new generation of leaders will upset this precarious establishment balance. But we're not there yet. Not at all.