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Supplementally the People Lose Again

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Message Rafe Pilgrim
    At 12:33 pm today (March 23) our courageous new Democratic majority House approved -- pardon -- BOUGHT the votes for a bill which (larded with financial incentives for individual congressional districts) provides for the slaughter in Iraq to continue until September, 2008.  (Note:This will NOT be the last Iraq slaughter support bill.) 
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    Before that time and afterwards, the bill involves some benchmarks for the administration to abide by and some reporting schedules, all of which are porous enough to drive a division of Sherman tanks through, or which can be obscured by the fog of war or the smog of Bush Inc lies.  And after September, 2008, there can be a "residual force" (50,000 / 60,000 / 70,000 ???) for "training" and to protect the residual force (Got that?)
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    I suppose all this needs to be endorsed by the Senate, but with Democratic senators of similar moral fiber, that should not be much of a hurdle.  Then WHOOPEE, all Dems!  We got money for the peanut farmers, spinach people, et al, we threw a little ol' bone to the peace crazies, we put Bush on the spot, we kept the war open as a campaign issue for 2008, and we showed that we believe in the Eleventh Commandment, i.e. we Support Our Troops!  Do or die, that is.
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    The next chapter in this treacherous episode of duplicity may involve Bushido Banzai himself, who may very well claim he must veto this bill because it does not Support Our Troops, or he may OK it only because he Supports Our Troops, or he may indeed sign the bill and then issue one of his famous signing statements:  "Yes, I signed the bill, I'll take the money, but I'm not gonna abide by those other mandates because they do not Support Our Troops." 
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    By the time the Democrats get this all figured out, Bush will have convinced everyone that there are weapons of mass destruction and bad guys in Iran, and that "LAST NIGHT your President again defended the Homeland by preemptively launching a missile arsenal at Iran so that we would not have to fight the Iranians here!  And by the way, I'll be needing an emergency appropriation from Congress to Support Our Troops against these bad guys, and it's a good thing we still have those troops in Iraq, so we can now use them to bring democracy to the Iranian people."
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    Now what do honest Americans do?  Sick of unjustified and slaughterous war, we voted Democratic.  We voted for an "opposition."  And we end up a bunch of duplicitous, cowardly political finaglers -- and the slaughter continues, and God knows where it will go next.
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    Whom can we now trust?  Only ourselves.  Only our own good people.  We're in the center of a sandwich, with a rotten slice of government to the right and an equally rotten slice of government to the left.  The machinery of American governance is broken.  We can now trust only ourselves to fix it.
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    How are we going to do it?  Third party?  Some other way?  Think hard, good people, think hard, and pray if you're of the persuasion.  But trust me, the problem will get worse if we do not intervene.
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    I will personally strain my capacities for a solution, and I hope you do likewise.  And I will report back to you, and I hope that you will report back to us    
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    Somehow we must find the means to rise to the challenge together.
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..........................................Rafe Pilgrim, March 23, 2007 
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Rafe Pilgrim, after "a life largely wasted on hard honest work," found himself a jungle of turkey oak, scrub pine and giant palmettos up a dirt road running east of Crystal River, Florida, which neither school busses nor the U.S. Postal Service dare (more...)
 
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