Heads Up - JK speaking on the Senate floor

[dwahzon]

JK will be going on the floor before 11am today. He will PROBABLY be going on the floor at the tail end of that period – around 10:45am. He'll be speaking about Iraq.

[TayTay]

1. Thanks.

Alerted my Tivo Guy. (Thanks son! Guess I will continue to pay for school and stuff. You do have your uses. LOL!)

[TayTay]

2. Iraq (then Obama speaking)

Talking about the situation and the vote for last June.

Same general argument for the necessity of a deadline. Delineated the conditions under which the PRes could leave troops in Iraq.

The other side is debating strawmen arguments. We need change and to do away with the openendedness of the current arrangement. Iraqis have to step up and take charge.

Six years. (Hmmm, that would account for the secret movement of troops away from Afghanistan way before the official start of the war in 2003, starting in Dec of 2001.)

The logic of the escalation doesn't hold up. There is no stick there to ensure the Iraqis stand up.

[TayTay]

3. Thanks Sen. Obama

Notes that he also wishes to talk about what the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts just said. Nice!

[beachmom]

4. I heard that. That was nice.

I missed the beginning (darnit), so hopefully a video on line will be made available at some point.

[TayTay]

5. Both Dem Senators are making good points

and backing up the same points. Nice combination.

[Noisy Democrat]

6. Video is available here

The video should be appearing on JK's Senate site or the PAC site later today, but for the impatient sorts, I've got my own stream capture available for download (not online playing) here: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~kvh/JK%20CSPAN2%203%2013%2007%20Mar%2013.rm I'll leave it up til JK's people get the official copy up. I only missed the first few seconds when he was talking to the chairman about how many minutes he had; the whole speech itself should be there.

[TayTay]

7. Thanks! You Rock! n/t

[beachmom]

8. I second the notion that you do so rock, Noisy!

JK sure did kick ass in that speech. "Strawman" -- love it and I notice everybody uses that now.

[TayTay]

9. I liked the two speeches in tandem

Sen. Obama said that he got his version of a deadline from the Iraq Study Group report in Dec.

So, who testified before the ISG and pushed the idea for a deadline?

[beachmom]

10. I know. Speaking of which, check this out:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1590439-1,00.html

Joe Klein:

Obama is trying to ride the war too, but he's not doing it as well as Dean did. His biggest applause lines are about Iraq. "I opposed the war from the start," he says, which often brings a standing ovation. "A war that never should have been authorized"--a reference to the votes of John Edwards and Hillary Clinton to authorize it--"or fought." And credit is due: he was right. But that was four years ago, and Obama gets into some trouble when he tries to differentiate himself from his opponents on the war now. He says he has the "most specific" plan to end the war, but it is specific only at the back end: he would have all the combat troops out of Iraq by March 31, 2008. He professes not to know where Clinton stands on how to end the war, and yet less than a year ago, they voted for exactly the same Iraq resolution, a phased withdrawal without a fixed timetable. Both he and Clinton voted against John Kerry's proposal to withdraw all troops by July 2007, for reasons that still sound good today. "What is needed is a blueprint for an expeditious yet responsible exit from Iraq," Obama said on the Senate floor last June. "A hard and fast, arbitrary deadline for withdrawal offers our commanders in the field ... insufficient flexibility to implement that strategy." Clinton remains opposed to timetables, but Obama decided to change his position and in January announced the March 2008 date. Aside from that, there isn't much practical difference between Obama and Clinton on the war: both oppose the surge, both support a phased withdrawal, neither of them would cut off funding. And when pressed, Obama concedes that his March 2008 deadline can be "adjusted," depending on events on the ground.




Okay -- hilarious in a ton of different ways:

1. Now Hillary is for the timetable -- so where does that leave you, Joe?
2. How come Joe was able to "unearth" Kerry's amendment to bash Kerry while the WP thinks the Kerry people were "attempting" to show what, well, Joe Klein just said in Time magazine back in February.
3. Joe is going to have to either side with the Republicans or change his mind about timetables out of Iraq.
4. Obama's Iraq plan IS specific as was the Kerry/Feingold amendment. It just doesn't fit Joe Klein's narrative so he has to dismiss it like that.

[TayTay]

11. Kelin believes that Kerry has flipped out on Iraq

and has taken up with the radicals on this. (Lefty fringy hippie bastids.) Sigh! Klein is still looking for the perfect solution and believes that continued moderation and splitting the political difference is what will 'solve' Iraq. It won't.

Klein began to sour on Kerry as soon as Kerry started opposing the conventional wisdom in DC in early 2005. He thinks Kerry was wrong on all sorts of things in the last Congressional cycle and believes he has wigged out. Sigh again. Klein can't understand why anyone would take a principled stand against the war and bother to oppose it so strenuously. Shows you Klein's mindset.

The choices in Iraq are not between the good and the perfect, they are between the immoral and the slightly less immoral.

[whometense]

13. Thanks so much, ND!!

Speaking as an impatient sort... :evilgrin:

[dwahzon]

12. The speech is now available

on the Senate site and on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgtrMUQQAq8


http://kerry.senate.gov/v3/press/video.html

[Noisy Democrat]

14. Cool! I'll take my little unofficial copy down now n/t