Vide Vitae Vocative Vaughn: Where are the DAYUM Democrats?!?!?!

Yet another opportunity is slipping through the hands of our Democratic legislators...

"Emotions are running high. People are tired," said White House counselor Dan Bartlett. "If we focused more of our attention on decisions that have already been made, rather than on those before us, there’s potential for making far greater mistakes. ... We really don’t have time to play the political game right now."

Well, all that the Democrats have is time... That's all we've had since January 20, 2001. And it's about gawdam time that we step up to the plate and keep this moronic president and his regime on the defensive until the 2006 midterm elections and on into the 2008 presidential election!!! Geezus, could we get a united voice and start making Shrub, the Republicans, and the Evangelicals explain what the hell is happening to us and to the world?!?!

Brava to Hillary Clinton who is finally making her voice heard...

"In eight years of the Clinton Administration, qualified officials ran FEMA. During the Clinton Administration, the government took the lead in handling disasters of significance. And that is as it should be, since the federal government -- and the national economy and American consumers -- would ultimately have to pay the bill for the disaster in any case."

"FEMA received very high marks during my husband's tenure. There was a lot of good work done in eight years."

"The Bush Administration's emphasis on the role of state and local governments and private charities is a recipe for disaster. There was nobody in charge at the federal government level and no one willing to take responsibility to work with state and local governments."

"Katrina exposed the weakness of planning for another terrorist attack. There is no plan, no overall strategy. We don't have a seamless, smooth-running response machine."

Additionally, Hillary and some of her colleagues in both parties said that the federal government would need to take on immense new responsibilities:

Medicaid health insurance for many, if not most, of the low-income people who had been evacuated from New Orleans and other Gulf Coast locales. "That’s going to strap a lot of states, including my own," Clinton said.
Federal reimbursement to cities and states which have taken in people from the hurricane-devastated areas.
New federal grants to build housing for low-income people, an idea mentioned by Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla.
Extra social services, mental health services and grief counseling for people displaced from the Gulf Coast.

"I don’t believe we are putting the American people first in this country. I don’t know that we can do that unless we have a more sensible policy that looks at the tax cuts for wealthy people that the administration seems determined to enshrine in permanency and the additional tax cuts and spending cuts the administration wants. We have to look at all of our spending. I don’t see how we can be expected to cut $10 billion out of Medicaid."

Hillary framed the question as "what do we need to do on behalf of the American people," putting emphasis on the word "American."

GO HILLARY!!!

Voicing a contrasting view was Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who like Clinton voted for the Iraq war and the continued funding of it.

"We’re a great nation. There’s no nation in the world that has the combination of economic strength, military strength, and values strength, as the United States of America. We can and will both protect our nation from terrorists and dictators like Saddam Hussein abroad, and protect our people from natural disasters at home."

"I continue to feel very strongly we have to bring Iraq to a point of success, of victory, of self-sustainability by the Iraqis before we think about departing. The problems associated with the federal government’s response to hurricane Katrina don’t have anything to do with our presence in Iraq."

"Remember, we’ve got 1.4 million active duty soldiers, over a million Reserve and Guard. There are 138,000 or 140,000 in Iraq. As you see now, there are plenty of non-Iraq-based military personnel going to the Gulf coast. The question is should they have come in earlier?"

Joe Lieberman just needs to get over it. He's never going to be president. I came to that realization after the 2000 election when I went home to Slowdeatha and was shocked to hear family and former friends talk about Al Gore and "that damn Jew."

Uh...huh... Racism is alive and very well in middle America, and if that doesn't show you just how rampant it is, then take a look at what went on in New Orleans last week!

So, Joe Lieberman needs to just sit down & shutup -- or he needs to find his backbone and stop kowtowing to this Republican Regime. Either way, he's never going to be president and at least if he started pushing back on the conservatives and the evangelicals, we could move toward a more united voice of opposition coming from the Democratic party.

And again, we must force an ongoing dialog about Katrina, gas prices, the economy, Iraq, Afghanistan and the myriad of other fuck-ups Shrub, the Republicans, and the Evangelicals have gotten the US into over the last five years!

The bumper stickers that are currently on my car: