s skippy the bush kangaroo: points to reuters for telling the truth

skippy the bush kangaroo



Thursday, September 20, 2007

points to reuters for telling the truth

at least reuters lays the blame for the defeat of the webb bill where it belongs: directly at the feet of the repubbblicans...

senate republicans blocked a plan on wednesday to give u.s. troops in iraq more home leave, defeating a proposal widely seen as the democrats' best near-term chance to change president george w. bush's iraq strategy.

the measure to give troops as much rest time at home as they spent on their most recent tour overseas needed 60 votes to pass in the democratic-controlled senate; it received just 56 votes, with 44 against.

it had been offered by sen. jim webb, a decorated vietnam veteran and former navy secretary. the democrat said u.s. troops are being "burned out" by repeated redeployments to iraq, with tours of up to 15 months and less than a year off in between.

the plan was strongly opposed by the bush administration -- pentagon secretary robert gates called it a backdoor attempt to pull troops off the battlefield in the unpopular iraq war, and said he would recommend bush veto it if it passed. a similar bill has passed the house.
compare this with the washpost version of the same events:

the senate today turned back a measure to require that u.s. troops be given at least as much time at home as they spend on combat tours, shelving an amendment that supporters said was aimed at easing the strain of prolonged military deployments but that opponents argued was intended to undercut the bush administration's iraq war policy.

the amendment to a defense programs bill, sponsored by sen. james webb (d-va.) and sen. chuck hagel (r-neb.), went down when it failed to receive the 60 votes needed for passage. the vote was 56 to 44. a similar measure offered by webb in july also fell four votes short of the 60-vote threshold.
according to the washpost, it was some amorphous group-think mind of "the senate" that blocked the bill. it is only in the last paragraphs of the washpost piece that we find out it was mainly repubbblicans that voted against it.

other news organizations wrote similar, non-partisan, non-finger-pointing headlines on their pieces (tho to be fair, a couple did mention the repubbbs right off).

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posted by skippy at 12:36 AM |

3 Comments:

I'm way more concerned about the outcome of the vote than I am how it was covered. Every bastard who voted against it can go straight to hell. Or straight to Iraq and pick up a gun. Let them live a year or so in the shoes of the soldiers and then I'll listen to what they have to say.
commented by Blogger pissed off patricia, 5:43 AM PDT  
Better yet: about eleven years and three weeks in, extend their tours to fifteen months. And a few months later, extend them to eighteen. Or just send them to the oblivion that is Guantanamo Bay for five years, and see what they think of habeas corpus then. Brainless bastards.

As for the "mainstream" "media": Groups like Think Progress, Media Matters, and Crooks & Liars are just wasting time -- no matter how many times they correctly call bullshit on the MSM, this style of reporting is not going to change.

Case in point: the morning after taking part in Saturday's D.C. march, I tuned in to the local news and caught one station's idea of "coverage" of the march. It's typical of what other stations showed. Three scenes: 1) Some upside-down American flags, but no upside-down flag-wavers in the shot, 2) some protesters getting arrested in front of Capitol Hill, and 3) a line of counter-protesters.

The coverage was totally skewed against the 35,000 or so who marched, as if they weren't even there. I know it; I was there. I did see around a dozen upside-down flags, a bunch of people did get arrested, and there were 500, maybe 600, counter-protesters. But no one would have guessed at any of this just by watching the local news.

The local news did, however, have a lot to say about O.J. Simpson getting arrested. And we all know that's a lot more important and relevant to our lives than impeaching Bush and Cheney and ending an unjust war...
commented by Blogger Jim Yeager, 7:13 AM PDT  
the dems also share some of the blame for the defeat of the measure--largely because it wasn't defeated, it was withdrawn.

when the dems failed to win the cloture vote yesterday all it meant was that the opposition refused to approve the end of debate on the matter.

the dems should have said: "fine, you don't want to end debate, then let's debate" and so the debate would continue, until someone tries another cloture motion. and if that failed, then the debate would continue until they tried for cloture again.

and so it would go, on and on. meanwhile all business in the senate stops--all because of the republicans resistance to the measure. also if bush wanted anything else to get done, another iraqi supplement to go through for example, well, the only way to do that would be to finish the debate on the webb bill.

in other words, what the republicans did was delay a vote on the webb bill. they didn't kill it. what killed it was the dems decision to withdraw the bill in response to the vote to delay the close of debate.

if the republicans want a filibuster, why not give them a filibuster.
commented by Blogger upyernoz, 8:00 AM PDT  

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