Sometimes I think it's me; that I just don't do a good job managing time. I look at people who are on top of a story the minute it hits, and I wonder how they do it. I know that some of the Big Boiz make a living (such as it is) from advertising, but there are plenty of us out here who work Real Jobs and have lives and marriages and some have kids and other things that we do other than blog.
But it seems sometimes that others have a much easier time keeping on top of what's going on. It's not that my life has so many demands. I don't have kids that need help with their homework and rides to soccer practice. I'm an indifferent housekeeper at best. I don't have a long commute; at most it's 25 minutes. And yet most days, if I don't get with a story in the morning, I don't cover it till the next day.
It isn't that I sit staring off into space. I get up most mornings at 5:30 AM, have coffee and spend about eight minutes with Mr. Brilliant before he heads off for work. Then I have an hour and a half in which to read what's going on in the world, decide what to write about, and try to dash off 2-3 posts before either going for a walk or doing a half-hour of yoga before getting ready for work. I'm home by 6 PM, make dinner, clean up, watch Olbermann with Mr. B. and then either collapse into an unconscious heap or grab a few minutes of blog time -- which is what I'm doing now, when I should be working on my new template.
So those of you who DO manage to cover the news comprehensively and hold down a job, how the heck do you do it?
Tonight I really can't complain about the Democrats. Yes, the Webb Amendment was defeated, despite Olympia Snowe, Chuck Hagel, and Gordon Smith daring to risk the Wrath of the Bush Junta by voting with the Democrats in an effort to do the right thing. It's sad and it's tragic for the troops -- the soldiers being worn down to nothing by a president who cares only about trying to save his own legacy. But every Democrat plus Bernie Sanders did the right thing today in voting for the measure. Holy Joe Lieberman, of course, voted to continue to break the military, but that's expected of that particular piece of human excrement that continues to occupy the junior Senator seat from the great state of Connecticut.
But the important thing is that with this vote, the Democrats made sure that at least for now, Republicans own this war. That idiot Lindsey Graham (cue Sam Seder's sound clip of a closet door) blathered "The idea of winning the war in Iraq is beginning to get a second look." Then what the fuck have we been doing over there for four years? How many times does George W. Bush get a "do-over" in this war, using the blood of other people's children? I don't know who is giving "the idea of winning the war in Iraq a second look", when according to the latest Zogby poll, Captain Codpiece is sitting with a 29% approval rating overall and a 73% disapproval rating of the way he conducts his foreign policy; and in the latest USA Today/Gallup poll has 59% of Americans favoring a timetable for withdrawal. Still -- the Democrats did what they had to do: stand up for doing right by the soldiers fighting this war and dump their exploitation right in the laps of the Republicans. Call it stagecraft if you like, call it political posturing. If the Democrats don't have the votes to end this war, they sure as hell DO have enough votes to make damn sure that the Republicans who continue to support squandering America's future in Iraq have to take responsibility for what they support.
Similarly, the Leahy/Specter amendment to restore habeas corpus failed by four votes. That Republicans who claim to stand for the rule of law voted this down is even more disheartening, especially after a day that saw a college kid busted and tasered for the crime of being a pain in the ass. Americans are beginning...slowly...to recognize what the loss of civil liberties means. Whether it's enough to forestall the kind of police state for which the Bush Administration clearly salivates at the mere prospect remains to be seen. But again: if you don't have the votes, while it still matters that you didn't win, at least you made sure that it's Republicans that defecated on the Constitution, and it's Republicans who believe that nineteen guys with box cutters are enough to overturn not just the Constitution but the Magna Carta.
In making the Republicans own, as a party in its entirety, all of the most insane and egregious of the power-mad Bush Administration's policies, at the very least, it makes clear what voters' choices are going to be next year.
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