Bob Geiger's blog

Feingold-Reid Bill To End War Formally Introduced

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), on behalf of cosponsor Harry Reid (D-NV) and many other Democratic supporters, went to the Senate floor yesterday and formally introduced the Feingold-Reid bill which, if George W. Bush vetoes the Iraq-withdrawal plan that will hit his desk in the coming weeks, will push the issue further by forcing a troop withdrawal by March of next year.

The bill would end funding specifically for the failed Iraq effort, forcing the president to redeploy American troops elsewhere where, according to Senator Feingold, they can actually begin to defend the country against terror threats.

The Saturday Cartoons

Please go to BobGeiger.com to see many more great cartoons from this week in politics.

The Saturday Cartoons

Please go to BobGeiger.com to see many more great cartoons from this week in politics.

Biden To Bush: "You're leading us off a cliff. Stop!"

Clearly having had enough of Republican colleagues putting their blind loyalty to George W. Bush ahead of American opinion and the lives of our troops, Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) gave a powerful speech on the Senate floor Wednesday in which he ripped the GOP for their failure to lead and fulfill their duties to our country.

Saying "our troops don’t lose wars, bad polices, bad leadership loses wars," Biden, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, let loose during comments before the vote to even open debate on the Democratic proposal to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by this time next year.

Here's Biden on the Senate's responsibility to the troops:

The Saturday Cartoons

Please go to BobGeiger.com to see many more great cartoons from this week in politics.

Democrats Push Legislation On Catching "Osama Been Forgotten"

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the entire Republican administration don’t seem to care about capturing Osama bin Laden but Democrats, led by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), continue to demand answers on the whereabouts of the man who claimed responsibility for the 2001 attacks on our country.

Dorgan has offered as an amendment to the 9/11 Commission recommendations, a simple bill that demands accountability from the Bush administration on bin Laden and mandates "a report to Congress on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the leadership of al Qaeda."

The North Dakota Senator pointed out that we just passed the 2,000-day mark since September 11, 2001 with Osama still at large, while listening to repeated assertions from the White House that they do not care about capturing the terrorist leader.

Obama Steps Up For Wounded Troops

In the wake of the scandal surrounding the conditions endured by some Veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) introduced two pieces of legislation last week to create a more suitable level of care for wounded troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama introduced, S. 713, the Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act, legislation written to "ensure dignity in care for members of the Armed Forces recovering from injuries," which has been referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee for review.

"Last week, the Nation learned of the serious problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center including decaying, cockroach-infested facilities and an overwhelmed patient-care bureaucracy," said Obama in introducing his bill last week. "As described in a series of articles in the Washington Post by Dana Priest and Anne Hull, wounded soldiers are returning home from the battle in Iraq only to face a new battle to get the care and benefits they have earned."

Lieberman's Faux Concern For Troops Truly A Republican Message

Showing that the primary qualification for delivering the Saturday Democratic radio address is obviously not that the speaker be, well, a Democrat, Senator Joe Lieberman today gave the "Democratic" address and performed with a stunning degree of hypocrisy that showed he is indeed much closer to being a Republican than anything else in the political spectrum.

Lieberman, who is George W. Bush's only non-GOP ally in the Senate when it comes to the deadly, misguided war in Iraq, gave a talk in which he discussed the country's obligation to its Veterans and his dismay with the horrible conditions our wounded troops have seen at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

The Saturday Cartoons

Please go to BobGeiger.com to see many more great cartoons from this week in politics.

Major Swift Boat Donor To Kerry: "You're A Hero"

There are some things that you just don’t want to read about or watch on a full stomach -- this is one of those.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on Tuesday to consider the nomination of Sam Fox, a wealthy St. Louis businessman, to be the new U.S. Ambassador to Belgium. While it is not unusual for big political donors to be rewarded with ambassadorships -- and Fox is a huge donor to all things Republican -- what made everyone take note of this guy is that Fox gave a whopping $50,000 to help fund the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear campaign against John Kerry in 2004.

And in being questioned by the Senate panel yesterday, Fox had to face one of the senior members of that committee in… Senator John Kerry.

What followed was riveting theater, with Kerry coldly staring down a clearly-nervous Fox and Bush's nominee withstanding a barrage of questions from Kerry that the Massachusetts Senator nicely referred to as questions of Fox's "judgment" while many of us would have just flat-out called him a scumbag.

Reid Highlights GOP's Bogus National-Security Cred

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) took to the floor of the Senate on Monday and set the stage for a week that will see the Senate considering efforts to truly bolster national security and with little patience for the Republican stonewalling of security measures proposed by Democrats (and killed) in the last Congress.

"We will take steps to protect America from the greatest threat we face -- nuclear terrorism. We will enhance the security of our transportation system and our ports," said Reid on Monday. "We will provide America's first responders with the technology they need to communicate with each other during a crisis. In the process, we will make America more secure."

Fox News Sponsoring Democratic Debate; Fur Council and PETA Merge

When I came back from my two-week vacation on Friday -- the one where I promised my wife and son I would unplug from the news entirely -- and found out that right-wing media outlet Fox News will be hosting a Democratic presidential debate later this year, I felt a bit like Dr. Emmett Brown in Back To The Future when he heard who would be president in 1985 and exclaimed "Ronald Reagan! The actor?"

And, as much as I was sure I was hearing something that was fabricated on, well, Fox News, I have since found out that it's true that the Nevada Democratic Party will indeed allow the network that loves to hate on Democrats to broadcast the state's August Democratic presidential debate.

The Saturday Cartoons

Please go to BobGeiger.com to see many more great cartoons from this week in politics.

The Saturday Cartoons

Please go to BobGeiger.com to see many more great cartoons from this week in politics.

Dumb Stuff Republicans Say On The Senate Floor

OK, folks, it's Friday, it's been a long week in the United States Senate and I've decided to bring some amusement into your lives by showing you some dumb things that Republicans said this week on the Senate floor. Nothing big… Nothing momentous…. Just enough to make you say "huh?"

DeMint Makes Theodore Roosevelt Spin In Grave

Or, one Chickenhawk uses Roosevelt's words to praise another Chickenhawk… Here's ultraconservative Jim DeMint (R-SC) getting all verklempt while giving a stirring floor speech about the "war on terror" and how George W. Bush stands alone in his heroic world vision -- and invoking Teddy Roosevelt to praise the man who brought us the Iraq quagmire: