Friday, July 02, 2010
Majority of Congressional Democratic caucus voted to require withdrawal timetable
by Larry Geller
It’s hard to unscramble the meaning of votes on a complicated bill. Thank Google for the ability to search vast amounts of text in just a few minutes.
The other three votes were test votes on the level of opposition to the Afghan war. An amendment pushed by Blue Dogs to embarrass the antiwar crowd by calling for an elimination of military funding got 25 votes. But Barbara Lee’s amendment calling for money to only go toward a withdrawal garnered 100 votes. And the McGovern amendment, which would have required a timetable for withdrawal, received a whopping 162 votes, including the majority of the Democratic caucus and 9 Republicans. This shows a real crumbling of the Afghanistan policy. [Firedoglake, The War Supplemental: A Rundown, 7/2/2010]
Don’t expect great analysis from a daily newspaper, but it’s there on the web if you look for it. The above article walks though the bill and the vote in an accessible fashion, and I recommend it. Be the first on your block to understand this bill. In fact, you’ll probably be the only one on your block with a clue about it.
If the appearance of the term “cat food commission” throws you, check out Conrad Pushes “Cat Food Commission” On White House; White House Tries To Defuse (Firedoglake 11/25/2009). That will explain it to you, and also possibly produce some distaste for how our government supposedly “works” as our representatives.
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