A Word From David Swanson To David Sirota Regarding David Obey

[Jcrowley]

You can actually look at Obey's voting record and bill-sponsoring record on this war on the website of United for Peace and Justice. Obey has not joined the Progressive Caucus or even the Out of Iraq Caucus, a step that requires merely wanting the U.S. to get out of Iraq some day. He has not cosponsored any of the bills that would end the war, not the strongest, not the weakest, not any of those in between. He did not sign the petition last year that was aimed at forcing the Republican Congress to allow a vote on the weakest of the Democratic proposals aimed at possibly ending the war some day. He has not cosponsored bills opposing the ongoing construction of permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq. He has not cosponsored a bill aimed at allowing students to keep their personal information from being handed over by their schools to military recruiters. He has not cosponsored a bill to provide adequate VA health care. (He's adding that into a war funding bill as a means to garner votes and cover some of the odor, but he has not supported a clean bill to fund VA health care.) In 2003 Obey voted to fund the war. In 2004 he voted against funding. In 2005 he voted to fund it again. Obey, like most Democrats, voted in favor of Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey's amendment that would have asked the President to devise a plan to end the war some day. There are not many Democrats with a worse record than Obey's.

<snip>

Sirota continues:

"Now, you can argue whether his tactics right now are smart. You can have a reasoned disagreement about whether he should be pushing a supplemental appropriations bill that includes new money for veterans medical care and binding language to end the war by March of 2008. There is a very legitimate case to be made that Democrats shouldn't support any money to continue the war and that the supplemental appropriations bill that Obey is carrying does also do that."

No, David. With all due respect, it does not ALSO do that. That is the overwhelmingly enormous and central and costly thing that it does. That is THE purpose of the bill. How dare you try to imply that I oppose veterans' medical care or binding language to end the war? How dare Obey use injured veterans' need for care to package his bill to put our grandchildren into debt funding more war and more deaths and injuries? And there is nothing binding about requiring George W. Bush to stop doing something, while giving him the money to keep doing it. If you want to be binding, you'll have to use the power of the purse, something this supplemental will not do unless Congresswoman Barbara Lee's amendment is voted on and passed.

<snip>

http://www.davidswanson.org/?q=node/765

[KoKo]

1. Well...I'm glad that Swanson and Sirota at least discussed this in an email exchange.

I wish Swanson had given Sirota some credit for working for Ned Lamont against "Holy Joe" and his warmongering Neo-Con sympathies.

I hope they will work it out between them.

[walldude]

2. I posted Obey's voting record twice already

once in the initial thread and once on a subsequent thread. He's at best a moderate. The reason I posted it was because he voted yes on the Patriot Act in 2001 and he hadn't even read the bill. Which gave him little room to call people idiots for not knowing what was in his bill. At least the guy apologized. Let's hope he doesn't make the same mistake with someone more informed than him, he could come out looking like more of an ass than he did.