The Zong

By my calculation, the Democrats have held a majority in both houses of congress for about 8 months now. Why is it then that, even now, only Republicans can get anything fucking done in said houses? After a ceremonial round of dissent about the war in Iraq, the democrat-controlled congress caved into President Bush and his demands for more war money like a bunch of frightened little bitches. Remember that? Well now, without even an open debate in congress occurring yet, it seems that the White House may be finally discussing the possibility that George W. Bush fucked everything up and maybe they should figure out what to do next.

Of course, they might have had this discussion on May 1st if the Democrats had simply told him to sign the funding bill with benchmarks or there would be no funding bill, but what difference do another 255 dead American soldiers make (since that date) when you’re talking about good, old-fashioned fucking politics?

As it turns out, these discussions are occurring because of Republican dissent, and people who shouldn’t be talking are talking to the New York Times:

White House officials fear that the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for President Bush’s Iraq strategy are collapsing around them, according to several administration officials and outsiders they are consulting. They say that inside the administration, debate is intensifying over whether Mr. Bush should try to prevent more defections by announcing his intention to begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops from the high-casualty neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities.

Four more Republican senators have recently declared that they can no longer support Mr. Bush’s strategy, including senior lawmakers who until now had expressed their doubts only privately. As a result, some aides are now telling Mr. Bush that if he wants to forestall more defections, it would be wiser to announce plans for a far more narrowly defined mission for American troops that would allow for a staged pullback, a strategy that he rejected in December as a prescription for defeat when it was proposed by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

“When you count up the votes that we’ve lost and the votes we’re likely to lose over the next few weeks, it looks pretty grim,” said one senior official, who, like others involved in the discussions, would not speak on the record about internal White House deliberations.

It would be easy for me to point out that the four Republican Senators now voicing dissent should have done so a long time ago, and to point my finger at them and call them assholes and stuff like that, but in their flip-flopping they have at least shown that they have the juice to do something, even in the minority, to change things. Between the recklessness of the president and the fecklessness of the Democrats, I guess we’re left with a government where the only men of action don’t actually believe in evolution.

Irony, thy name is Uncle Sam.

- M.G.