American Priorities to Senate: Get a Life
By Alex Wong, Getty Images
The Senate is wasting precious, precious time.
Reported by AP writer Anne Flaherty, the United States Senate has voted to condemn the MoveOn.org Petraeus/Betray Us ad:
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate voted Thursday to condemn an advertisement by the liberal anti-war group MoveOn.org that accused the top military commander in Iraq of betrayal. The 72-25 vote condemned the full-page ad that appeared in The New York Times last week as Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, testified on Capitol Hill. The ad was headlined: “General Petraeus or General Betray Us? Cooking the books for the White House.”
You read that right, the Senate felt the need to vote on their opinion on a newspaper clipping.
Aren’t there any more, say, PRESSING issues to be debated by the country’s highest deliberative body?
The Senate spent hours and hours discussing a political advertisement instead of working to end a war, repair America’s infrastructure, improve education, make health care more affordable, mitigate poverty, and any other important issue you can come up with.
The Senate needs to get their head out of political theatrics and back to working on the people’s business (actually reading the bills they pass would help too). Political theater is this website’s arena anyway, so shoo Senate shoo.
The ad became a life raft for the Republican party as the war debate kicked into high gear. With several Republicans opposed to President Bush’s war strategy, GOP members were able to put aside their differences and rally around their disapproval of the ad.
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Ros-Lehtinen on Moveon Ad
President Bush even stepped into arena at a press conference by responding to a question about the ad, saying the ad was “disgusting” and more Democrats “are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like Moveon.org than they are of irritating the United States military. That was a sorry deal.”
Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn took issue with the President, responding: “What’s disgusting is that the president has more interest in political attacks than developing an exit strategy to get our troops out of Iraq and end this awful war.”
Why would the president even respond to MoveOn?
On MSNBC’s Hardball this evening, David Schuster asked an open question on the issue of Bush vs. the MoveOn.org ad: By attacking MoveOn.org, Bush has elevated the organization to one that can go toe to toe with the President. Schuster asked, “Is that smart politics or stupidity?”
Hm. Bush has proven over the last few years that he is capable of both smart politics and stupidity, so really it’s a toss up.
The resolution condemning the ad was sponsored by conservative Republican John Cornyn of Texas. Voting against it were Democratic presidential hopefuls Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, another contender for the Democratic nomination, did not vote, although he voted minutes earlier for an alternative resolution by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. That resolution condemned the MoveOn ad as an “unwarranted personal attack”
The Senate really has to get over itself.
Senators’ time on the Senate floor should be working to make people’s lives better, not wasting time by voting on the latest ad by a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization. The Senate had their say to Gen. Patraeus in person, if anything they should be knocking each other over their long-winded monologues for and against the General’s honesty, not fussing over an advertisement.
Patraeus even responded when he could have left well enough alone:
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Patraeus responding to the MoveOn.org ad
All things considered, the Patreus report and all the hype can be distilled to the following truth about Bush’s Iraq war policy:
[flv]http://garlinggauge.com/videos/senate2.flv[/flv]
The four-star general leading U.S. forces in Iraq can’t even say if he’s keeping America safer.
Pathetic.
Keep it up MoveOn, keep it up.
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Bill Clinton calls the Republicans out
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Real Time with Bill Maher & Panel
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Patraeus media hype video summary
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See the ad here.
http://i.usatoday.net/news/_photos/2007/09/20/moveonx-large.jpg
Stumble it!
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