NDN Blog

7 Republican Senators sent a letter to the Senate leadership of both parties, demanding a real debate on their anti-surge resolution, free of the toxic back room arguments that lead to this week's 49-47 vote against debate.  The first six names were no surprise, but Steve Clemons, who broke this story, was surprised to see Voinovich's signature - another indicator that support for the President is unraveling.  The full letter is below.

February 7, 2007

The Honorable Harry Reid, Majority Leader

The Honorable Mitch McConnell, Republican Leader

The Honorable Richard Durbin, Assistant Majority Leader

The Honorable Trent Lott, Assistant Republican Leader

United States Senate -- Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Leader Reid, Leader McConnell, Senator Durbin and Senator Lott:

The war in Iraq is the most pressing issue of our time. It urgently deserves the attention of the full Senate and a full debate on the Senate floor without delay.

We respectfully advise you, our leaders, that we intend to take S. Con. Res 7 and offer it, where possible under the Standing Rules of the Senate, to bills coming before the Senate.

On January 10,2007, the President stated, with respect to his Iraq strategy, "if Members have improvements that can be made, we will make them. If circumstances change we will adjust." In a conscientious, respectful way, we offered our resolution consistent with the President's statement.

We strongly believe the Senate should be allowed to work its will on our resolution as well as the concepts brought forward by other Senators. Monday's procedural vote should not be interpreted as any lessening of our resolve to go forward advocating the concepts of S. Con. Res. 7.

We will explore all of our options under the Senate procedures and practices to ensure a full and open debate on the Senate floor. The current stalemate is unacceptable to us and to the people of this country.

Sincerely,

Olympia Snowe

John Warner

Chuck Hagel

Susan Collins

Norm Coleman

Gordon Smith

George Voinovich

Read more from the WAPO

Sidney Blumenthal has a piece in Salon today in which he reveals that Pentagon planners are already secretly planning for what they consider the eventuality of the Bush-McCain surge plan's failure.  That brings them in-line with mainstream political opinion:

The profoundly pessimistic thinking that permeates the senior military and the intelligence community, however, is forbidden in the sanitized atmosphere of mind-cure boosterism that surrounds Bush. "He's tried this two times -- it's failed twice," Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said on Jan. 24 about the "surge" tactic. "I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do you think this time it's going to work?' And he said, 'Because I told them it had to.'" She repeated his words: "'I told them that they had to.' That was the end of it. That's the way it is."

Blumenthal also ponders why Senate Republicans would tie themselves to the current Iraq policy by preventing debate and votes on measures that would rebuke the President.  He makes a convincing arguement that stifling debate in the Senate is part of a conservative penchant to cover-up that goes back to Nixon, and can be seen even more clearly in the Scooter Libby case:

...the trial of Scooter Libby continues to clarify the degree to which the administration covered up its disinformation campaign that led the country into war with another disinformation campaign to cover up the role of the vice president as the prime mover of the smear campaign against former ambassador Joseph Wilson for committing the unforgivable act of revealing the truth. For the Senate Republicans, Scooter Libby is not an object lesson. The lesson they take away, if any, is not the necessity of open government but once again the need to burn the tapes.

Libby's effort to prevent his grand jury tapes from being entered into evidence in his trial resembled nothing so much as Nixon trying to suppress his tapes. Both in the end revealed their respective coverups. Cheney learned from Nixon to burn the tapes at least figuratively; now, his chief of staff, Cheney's Cheney, has tried to protect Cheney by literally and futilely suppressing the tapes. Cheney finds himself back at the beginning. For him, life has come full circle. From the entire history of deception, from the Nixon to the Libby tapes, the Republicans have learned nothing.

Andy Stern, President of the SEIU, and Lee Scott the CEO of Wal-Mart, announced a new partnership to make sure that every American has access to affordable health insurance by 2012.  Sound unlikely?  Even Stern admitted that, calling it "a moment I never expected would have happened in my life."

Stern makes, and Wal-Mart seems to have accepted, an argument that has also been made by NDN Globalization Initiative Director Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, that health care is, in Stern's words, "not just a moral problem but a major drag on American business competitiveness and job creation."

Watch Andy Stern talk about this new coalition, below:

Over the weekend, Joe Garcia, Director of NDN’S Hispanic Strategy Center, was quoted in an important piece in the Miami Herald on the relationship between the Democratic Party and Cuban Americans. NDN is leading the charge to engage a new generation of Cuban Americans:

Joe Garcia, vice president of the New Democrat Network, said the Bush administration hobbled the Republican Party by ``selling itself out to the ultra-right.''

''What I think you are going to find from Democrats is they are going to look to engage the Cuban-American community for the solution,'' Garcia said.

Polling results also show indications of a political shift among younger Cuban-Americans:

Bendixen's poll showed that 49 percent of Cuban Americans favored the 2004 sanctions and 45 percent opposed them. Cuban exiles who arrived after 1980 opposed sanctions 55 percent to 41 percent; those who came before 1980 favored restrictions 63 percent to 29 percent.

A similar poll conducted in September for U.S. Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart found Cuban Americans in his district backed current sanctions, although younger voters were less likely to support the embargo. In that poll, 80 percent of the Cuban Americans interviewed arrived before the Mariel boatlift.

As if they weren't already invited to Dick Cheney's annual picnic at the Naval Observatory, conservative, Exxon Mobil-funded think tank AEI appears to be offering cash to anyone willing to speak out against the entire scientific community and cast doubt on global warming.  The timing is particularly strange considering last week's statement of unanimity coming from scientists on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on the dire threat climate change poses. 

A Washington-based think tank [AEI] has been soliciting critiques of the just-released international assessment of the evidence on climate change, a move that prompted some academics and environmentalists to accuse the group of seeking to distort the latest evidence for global warming.

Several environmental activists and climate scientists questioned why AEI would offer a $10,000 honorarium to scientists to critique the IPCC survey. Andrew Dessler, another Texas A&M atmospheric science professor, who has worked with both Schroeder and North, said the move represents an effort by climate skeptics to create "reasonable doubt" in the minds of policymakers who are debating whether to limit greenhouse gases.

AEI: today's example of anti-science conservatives on the wrong side of history. 

World Changing is a new project launched by a committed group of activists and experts from all around the world who believe that "the motive, means and opportunity for profound positive change are already present. That another world is not just possible, it's here. We only need to put the pieces together."  One of their first interviews is with our own Simon Rosenberg, who Jonathan Greenblatt, NDN's good friend and a World Changing contributor, describes as "one of the most thoughtful voices on the political landscape, interpreting how current trends will affect politics long into the future both in the US and more broadly on a global scale."

Read the interview here.

In an effort to set himself apart from his predecessor, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave his morning press briefing while seated behind a desk in a style reminiscent of a television news anchor. One can only hope that the differences between Gates and former Donald Rumsfeld will extend to more than just style. The NYT has more:

Mr. Gates seemed to go out of his way to do things differently. Reporters were escorted to his personal conference room on the Pentagon’s third floor, which prevented the proceedings from being televised live, though television cameras still recorded it for later broadcast. Seats around the table were reserved for some news organizations, while the rest of the roughly 30 reporters and cameramen who attended were told by press aides to stand in the corner.

Mr. Gates opened the session by explaining why he was shunning the Pentagon briefing room. “I would prefer a more informal setting than the dais and the big sign behind me and so on,” he said.

Click on the picture below to watch the video of Secretary Gates’ Press Conference:

At the DNC Winter Meeting, Senator (and Presidential candidate) Chris Dodd defined bipartisanship as "getting Republicans to adopt Democratic ideas."  The crowd ate it up, and in the wake of Republicans' thumpin' last November, we are seeing individual cases of Republicans supporting some progressive policies. 

Secretary Spellings was in North Carolina today, where she announced that the President's budget would include the biggest increases in the Pell Grant financial aid program in 30 years.  Of course, the President's budget two years ago had historic cuts in financial aid for higher education, so seeing is believing.  But as NDN's Agenda lays out, higher education is key to building a 21st century economy that works for all Americans. 

President Bush's 2008 budget will call for the largest Pell Grant increase in three decades, a boost that would exceed one passed by the House this week, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said Thursday.

Pell Grants, awarded to more than 5 million low-income college students a year, do not have to be paid back.

Spellings said Bush will propose increasing the maximum Pell Grant by $550 next year, to $4,600. The maximum grant also would climb to $5,400 over five years under the proposal.

Spellings said at an education conference in Raleigh that it would be "real money that will help more low-income kids realize the dream of a college education."

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a strongly worded warning from Paris today.  From the NYT:

In a bleak and powerful assessment of the future of the planet, the leading international network of climate change scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is "unequivocal" and that human activity is the main driver, "very likely" causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.

And Al Gore gets a little closer to winning the Nobel Peace Prize...

Crist's announcement in Florida follows this weeks vote by the Virginia legislatures call replace their touch-screen voting machines.  Maryland and New Jersey are considering similar measures and Rep. Rush Holt has introduced federal legislation to require all voting machines to produce a paper trail.

Voting experts said Florida’s move, coupled with new federal voting legislation expected to pass this year, could be the death knell for the paperless electronic touch-screen machines. If as expected the Florida Legislature approves the $32.5 million cost of the change, it would be the nation’s biggest repudiation yet of touch-screen voting, which was widely embraced after the 2000 recount as a state-of-the-art means of restoring confidence that every vote would count.