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What an outrageous disappointment the Democrats have been in serving as the will of the people in ending the futile Iraq conflict. The “compromise” recently announced was no compromise at all so much as a capitulation in the face of the very difficult decisions that have to be made. Dem’s, get your f’ing act together before you get returned to the minority from whence you came if for no other reason than for lack of support from your own rank and file–like me.

Nobody says it better than Keith Olbermann, as he did last night:

SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann

A Special Comment about the Democrats’ deal with President Bush to continue financing this unspeakable war in Iraq—and to do so on his terms:

This is, in fact, a comment about… betrayal.

Few men or women elected in our history—whether executive or legislative, state or national—have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear: Get us out of Iraq.

Yet after six months of preparation and execution—half a year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:

* The Democratic leadership has surrendered to a president—if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish, in our history—who happily blackmails his own people, and uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that the Democrats “give the troops their money”;

* The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans;

* The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.

* The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised, are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq.

You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions—Stop The War—have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.

You may trot out every political cliché from the soft-soap, inside-the-beltway dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about how this is the “beginning of the end” of Mr. Bush’s “carte blanche” in Iraq, about how this is a “first step.”

Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning… is our collective hope that you and your colleagues would do what is right, what is essential, what you were each elected and re-elected to do.

Because this “first step”… is a step right off a cliff.

And this President!

How shameful it would be to watch an adult… hold his breath, and threaten to continue to do so, until he turned blue. But how horrifying it is… to watch a President hold his breath and threaten to continue to do so, until innocent and patriotic Americans in harm’s way, are bled white.

You lead this country, sir? You claim to defend it?

And yet when faced with the prospect of someone calling you on your stubbornness—your stubbornness which has cost 3,431 Americans their lives and thousands more their limbs—you, Mr. Bush, imply that if the Democrats don’t give you the money and give it to you entirely on your terms, the troops in Iraq will be stranded, or forced to serve longer, or have to throw bullets at the enemy with their bare hands.

How transcendentally, how historically, pathetic.

Any other president from any other moment in the panorama of our history would have, at the outset of this tawdry game of political chicken, declared that no matter what the other political side did, he would insure personally—first, last and always—that the troops would not suffer.

A President, Mr. Bush, uses the carte blanche he has already, not to manipulate an overlap of arriving and departing Brigades into a ‘second surge,’ but to say in unequivocal terms that if it takes every last dime of the monies already allocated, if it takes reneging on government contracts with Halliburton, he will make sure the troops are safe—even if the only safety to be found, is in getting them the hell out of there.

Well, any true President would have done that, Sir. You instead, used our troops as political pawns, then blamed the Democrats when you did so.

Not that these Democrats, who had this country’s support and sympathy up until 48 hours ago, have not since earned all the blame they can carry home.

“We seem to be very near the bleak choice between war and shame,” Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne in the days after the British signed the Munich accords with Germany in 1938. “My feeling is that we shall choose shame, and then have war thrown in, a little later…”

That’s what this is for the Democrats, isn’t it?

Their “Neville Chamberlain moment” before the Second World War. All that’s missing is the landing at the airport, with the blinkered leader waving a piece of paper which he naively thought would guarantee “peace in our time,” but which his opponent would ignore with deceit.

The Democrats have merely streamlined the process. Their piece of paper already says Mr. Bush can ignore it, with impugnity.

And where are the Democratic presidential hopefuls this evening? See they not, that to which the Senate and House leadership has blinded itself?

Judging these candidates based on how they voted on the original Iraq authorization, or waiting for apologies for those votes, is ancient history now. The Democratic nomination is likely to be decided… tomorrow.

The talk of practical politics, the buying into of the President’s dishonest construction “fund-the-troops-or-they-will-be-in-jeopardy,” the promise of tougher action in September, is falling not on deaf ears, but rather falling on Americans who already told you what to do, and now perceive your ears as closed to practical politics.

Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to—for their own political futures and, with a thousand times more solemnity and importance, for the individual futures of our troops—denounce this betrayal, vote against it, and, if need be, unseat Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue down this path of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will of a monomaniacal president.

For, ultimately, at this hour, the entire government has failed us.

* Mr. Reid, Mr. Hoyer, and the other Democrats… have failed us. They negotiated away that which they did not own, but had only been entrusted by us to protect: our collective will as the citizens of this country, that this brazen War of Lies be ended as rapidly and safely as possible.

* Mr. Bush and his government… have failed us. They have behaved venomously and without dignity—of course. That is all at which Mr. Bush is gifted. We are the ones providing any element of surprise or shock here.

With the exception of Senator Dodd and Senator Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidates have (so far at least) failed us. They must now speak, and make plain how they view what has been given away to Mr. Bush, and what is yet to be given away tomorrow, and in the thousand tomorrows to come.

Because for the next fourteen months, the Democratic nominating process—indeed the whole of our political discourse until further notice—has, with the stroke of a cursed pen, become about one thing, and one thing alone.

The electorate figured this out, six months ago. The President and the Republicans have not—doubtless will not. The Democrats will figure it out, during the Memorial Day recess, when they go home and many of those who elected them will politely suggest they stay there—and permanently.

Because, on the subject of Iraq…The people have been ahead of the media….Ahead of the government…Ahead of the politicians…for the last year, or two years, or maybe three.

Our politics… is now about the answer to one briefly-worded question.

Mr. Bush has failed. Mr. Warner has failed. Mr. Reid has failed.

So, who among us will stop this war—this War of Lies? To he or she, fall the figurative keys to the nation. To all the others—presidents and majority leaders and candidates and rank-and-file Congressmen and Senators of either party—there is only blame… for this shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal.

From the US Comptroller General’s Financial Report of the United States of America:

Despite improvement in both the fiscal year 2006 reported net operating cost and the cash-based budget deficit, the U.S. government’s total reported liabilities, net social insurance commitments, and other fiscal exposures continue to grow and now total approximately $50 trillion, representing approximately four times the Nation’s total output (GDP) in fiscal year 2006, up from about $20 trillion, or two times GDP in fiscal year 2000.

As this long-term fiscal imbalance continues to grow, the retirement of the “baby boom” generation is closer to becoming a reality with the first wave of boomers eligible for early retirement under Social Security in 2008.

Given these and other factors, it seems clear that the nation’s current fiscal path is unsustainable and that tough choices by the President and the Congress are necessary in order to address the nation’s large and growing long-term fiscal imbalance.

Unreal. Watch the economists continue trying to spin straw into gold. As for everyone else…better keep socking away the pennies for retirement, because if you don’t you can expect to live under a bridge by the time you “retire.”

Chief National Association of Realtors economist David Lereah surprised many by his announcement that he was leaving his position last week. Lereah had angered and been pilloried by many bloggers for insisting on providing the rosiest of housing forecasts in the face of evidence that housing was crashing around his ears. He worked for the Association that had the gall to put out newspaper ads saying that this was still a wonderful time to buy or sell a house (and pay a commission to a Realtor.)

Now that he’s leaving, he has made an 180 degree about-face and declared the housing market to be in the worst recession since the Great Depression. “We’re going to have negative home prices in 2007,” he says.

Oh rly? And this on the heels of announcement after announcement that housing had turned the corner?

It’s because of assholes like this that I despise economists. So many of them prostitute themselves to the highest bidder by putting out economic bullshit spin and painting rosy pictures that even people like myself who are untrained in economics but read a lot can see right through. Things like gargantuan trade deficits, huge budget deficits, staggering levels of consumer debt, the looming entitlement crises, outsourced jobs, and outrageous housing prices somehow get spun into things that are good for the economy, when the truth is as plain as the nose on one’s face that our country is digging itself ever deeper into a point of financial collapse that threatens our very standard of living. If that day comes to pass you can thank shills like Lereah and Alan “now’s a great time to get an ARM mortgage” Greenspan for it.

No I’m not talking about the recent appearance of the Ringling Brothers circus in DC. Every so often a scandal erupts in this town that becomes nothing but a three ring circus full of colorful characters, saucy defense attorneys, and heartfelt apologies-turned-resignations.

The most recent one to engulf this town is the arrest and impending trial of alleged DC “madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey. This lady is accused of running a service that she claims was solely for providing “the fantasy of sex” and not the real thing to “a Bush administration economist, the head of a conservative think tank, a prominent CEO, several lobbyists, and a handful of military officials.”

Finding her assets frozen by the government, she now calls herself “indigent” and in need of money as well as defense witnesses. So what does she do? She hands over her records to ABC’s “20/20″ after stating that she’s going to have to start dropping names of who used her agency in order to “encourage” people to start contributing to her defense. This is necessary, she says, “since the government has placed me in the untenable position whereby I do not have sufficient monies to undertake this extraordinarily expensive task on my own.” No word on how name-dropping will provide incentive for clients to help her.

The first victim of the name-dropping was Randal L. Tobias, who was called by 20/20 to ask about his presence on the Madam’s lists at his State Department office where where he worked on foreign aid promoting Bush administration policies favoring abstinence and opposing prostitution. He claimed he got only massages from Palfrey’s service, but then suddenly resigned. Palfrey felt great sympathy for him, saying that “I unfortunately know firsthand the implication such a revelation can have upon one’s life.” I’m sure Mr. Tobias felt comforted by her sympathy.

The capital is now waiting with bated breath to see who will be the next name dropped, who will be the next to have his life and career ruined.

This “madam’s” gumption is breathtaking in its pomposity and self-righteousness, as she insists she’s the victim of a witch hunt. “Put aside the titillation of the who’s-who list — at least in part — and instead investigate the disturbing genesis, the confounding evolution and the equally alarming continuation of this matter,” she says. “I believe there is something very rotten at the core of my circumstance.”

In another DC tradition in one of these scandals, her first public defender has resigned–no doubt because she insists on giving press conferences after every court appearance. No word yet on who her replacement will be.

Every so often this city needs a circus to get it to lighten up a bit–God knows we need that in the wake of the unmitigated disaster that is the current occupant of the White House. It’s too bad that these little entertainment blitzes have to come at the expense of people’s reputations, but it’s hard to feel sorry for people like Mr. Tobias–the champion of Mr. Bush’s anti-prostitution policies abroad.