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A push to stop the war supplemental |
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Usually, I’m fairly wary of the perrenial push by progressives to stop war supplemental funding bills. It’s not that this isn’t a good cause, it’s just that we lose over and over, and we don’t end up looking good in the process.
This one might be different. I’m not certain we can stop this war supplemental altogether - Rahm as proxy for Obama is pushing hard for it, as are most “mainstream” Democrats - but we have a very real chance to rack up some victories and push a real point across.
51 Democrats voted against he original supplemental bill, which funds all kinds of things (Afghanistan, contractors), but also includes money for the IMF and an amendment to block FOIA requests of detainee photos. The bill goes back to the House as a conference report next week, and there’s a real opportunity here:
…yesterday, Republicans threatened to pull their support from the bill over the addition of the IMF funds, which left Democratic leadership scrambling for 18 votes. They were forced to postpone the vote on the conference report that had been scheduled for today.
A lot of forces are aligning on this one. 33 Democrats have expressed concern over IMF funding. Republicans are threatening to vote against this as a block. And then there’s the Out of Iraq Caucus, which, after all the promises they’ve given us and all the money we’ve raised for them, should stand firm here.
It’s a strange situation, as David Waldman notes, with Republicans joining with anti-war Democrats to vote against this bill, but it means we can defeat this conference report.
Jane at Firedoglake has put together a citizen whip count of likely Democratic votes against the supplemental, most of whom voted “no” the first time. Give them a call and ask them to do the right thing and vote this bill down. Rahm Emmanuel is working from the same list, so it’s your calls against his. Let’s make our voices heard and make sure these Representative keep their word.
Interestingly, no consideration for the rights of the unborn. If seal pups in Alaska were being aborted in a similar manner as human babies, the left would go nuts.
Interestingly, if humans were being aborted, without regards to “their choice, of whether to abort, or not, the left would go nuts, as well.”
“abortion” by definition means the termination of a pregnancy. By definition, you can’t “abort” someone who is already born.
This is really a ridiculous comment