Nope, I'm not making the of this post up. That's a quote from Senator Jack Reed from July 9, 2006 and is posted on his Senate Web site under the title No political timetable for Iraq. Here's the full quote:

We do not need an artificial timetable for Iraq, especially not a political one, but we do need a plan from the White House on how and when we can succeed.

Well, Senators Reed and Carl Levin proposed an artificial timetable for Iraq today, just two weeks after the surge plan that my very own Senator Reed requested was put into place. Their deadline? April 30, 2008. Their reasoning? Iraq has not met the political timetable that Reed thought was a bad idea just one year ago.

Here's the report on The Politico about Reed's "Reduction and Transition" amendment. It appears as if combat troops will be kept in Iraq past the aforementioned date, but how many is unclear. It also has an out for Democrats who dread being called "soft" on national security. According to the article, combat troops remaining in Iraq can be used for anti-terrorist missions. As all of the combat forces now in Iraq are used for anti-terrorism missions when they aren't resting, just what does this amendment change? Are we supposed to get only the support troops out by next May? If so, then how do the combat troops get resupplied? It doesn't make any sense.

I tried to find the text of the amendment for answers but it's not up on Thomas yet -- although I did find out that yesterday the Senate named July 2007 as "National Watermelon Month." Well, thank God they're doing one thing that isn't hurting national security. Although watermelons do look like bombs...

The last televised debate between Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R) and his opponent, Sheldon Whitehouse (D), was held last night. As much as the Providence Journal attempts to drum up the drama, it was pretty boring.

It boiled down to Whitehouse saying that if you vote for Chafee you vote for Bush. And Chafee telling Whitehouse that he was an incompetent attorney general who will not be as independent of Democratic leadership as he is of Republican leadership -- which is true. Whitehouse will be a freshman lapdog for fellow Democrat Sen. Jack Reed and the Democratic establishment.

The Providence Journal article on the debate is here.

Watch a video of the debate in the multimedia section here.

Also of note today, Roll Call reports that Democrats and Republicans still view Rhode Island in play, even though recent polls show Whitehouse with a beyond the margin of error lead over Chafee:

Republican Senate losses in Pennsylvania and Ohio appear all but certain, but GOP strategists say that with a week to go, new investments of resources in the races involving embattled Sens. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) and Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) is proof that the re-election chances of neither should be written off...

...Also last week, the DSCC put $930,000 into an ad buy in Rhode Island, a sign Republicans tout as evidence that Chafee can't be counted out in his bid against former state Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse (D).

President Bush addressed the Nation once again on the war on Iraq. (Yawn!) And the Democrats responded to it as expected. (Yawn!) According to Fox News the home front watched the speech with great anticipation and I have to admit I almost missed it. (Shame on me!) Anyway I thought : "So You Think You Can Dance" is long over but in case you missed yesterday's waltz, here it is.

The President's Speech: We are progressing in Iraq. The Surge is working. Therefore we are able to bring Troops home by Christmas and won't replace them with other troops. By the Summer we will have the same amount of Troops in Iraq as we had before the surge.

The Democratic Response: Senator Jack Reed said: Nothing has changed. Our troops are caught in a civil war. Let's bring them home now. (responsible) The president only wants more time and our troops are dying. Let's focus on al-Qaida and terrorism instead.

John Edwards: He took it up on himself to deliver his own speech on MSNBC. I am not sure why. Anyway he said the only way to make the president understand that the American people don't want this war is to cut off the funding of our troops until congress and the president work together to bring our troops home.

That was it. It's the same old, same old. Meanwhile our troops in Iraq are still fighting while our politician using the War on Iraq to insult each other or better themselves. I say to both parties please address the nation AFTER you come up with solutions otherwise its quite senseless.

That is, the nightmare that was last night's Senate all-nighter. The Levin-Reed Amendment was defeated, as expected, just a few minutes ago:

The 52-47 vote fell short of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate and move toward passage. Four Republicans voted with the Democrats, but only one new backer emerged after the 24-hour Democratically orchestrated talkathon: Susan Collins of Maine who is seeking re-election next year. She joined three previously-known Republicans supporting a troop withdrawal plan: Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gordon Smith of Oregon.

In a related note, I'm glad to see that John Kerry was as on target as he ever has been. Yesterday, he claimed that the caucus demanding defeat had the 60 votes necessary to leave Iraq:

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) told The Hill Tuesday that he believes more than 60 senators would vote for a change in the Iraq strategy if they were allowed to vote their conscience on a measure to redeploy U.S. troops. At a press conference on the measure, Kerry said it is time for senators not just to tell their colleagues in private conversations that they oppose the course President Bush has chosen, but to vote that way, too.

Does a "vote their conscience" vote come before or after a quorum vote? And how are Senator prevented from taking part in that vote? Better check the Senate manual on that -- it probably involves Dick Cheney and muzzles. Kerry must be referring to those super secret conversations that he is always having with other Senators and various world leaders. That worked about as well for him in 2004, as I recall. Now, back to our regular programming...

Carl Levin will reintroduce his failed Levin-Reed Amendment as an attachment to the Defense Appropriations bill, the Senator announced last night at the National Press Club.

Levin said he would revive an amendment he sponsored with Democratic Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.) to begin drawing down forces within 120 days of enactment and curtail U.S. missions in Iraq. Levin said the Levin-Reed amendment would be "essentially" the same as the Levin-Reed amendment previously introduced to the same bill and voted on in July.

In July, the Levin-Reed Amendment lost by three votes. With the reception General Petraeus got from the Republicans in the Senate last week, it's doubtful that the amendment would even get that many votes this time around. Especially if Senators on both sides are reminded of what Petraeus said last week, when questioned about the repercussions of an announced large-scale withdrawal of forces such as those included in the Democrats' amendment.

Petraeus' testimony to Congress stated: "Rapid withdrawal would result in the further release of the strong centrifugal forces in Iraq and produce a number of dangerous results, including a high risk of disintegration of the Iraqi Security Forces; rapid deterioration of local security initiatives; Al Qaeda-Iraq regaining lost ground and freedom of maneuver, a marked increase in violence and further ethno-sectarian displacement and refugee flows; alliances of convenience by Iraqi groups with internal and external forces to gain advantages over their rivals; an exacerbation of already challenging regional dynamics, especially with respect to Iran."

The Democrats are determined to lose this war. They asked for a change in tactics, and that has been done. But the change has been successful, and that's not good for the Dems. Their own commissioned reports to Congress acknowledge that improvements are slowly being made, we are defeating al Qaida, and withdrawals would be disastrous. Even General Jones' report on the Iraqi Security Forces recommends not a draw-down, but a redistribution of forces to and from the Green Zone to get us to engage the enemy more directly.

I have written several pieces regarding the neglect and poor treatment of the veterans at the Walter Reed. By and large, the comments were very supportive. There were a few who still would follow President Bush over a cliff even it meant their life would be over. Vice President Cheney is not a lemming.

Yesterday, Congress started their investigations into the Walter Reed problems. They should be investigating themselves. Wounded veterans itemized the list of problems. Some of the stories highlighted a simple lack of respect for the veteran looking for help. John Shannon, who had been shot in the head, said it all: "I will not see young men and women who have had their lives shattered in service to their country receive anything less than dignity and respect."

Senator Lott, who is trying to prove he can defend any act of incompetence by this administration explained why thing were so bad by pointing out that the Walter Reed was on the closure list. That must have made the families feel better.

Cheney doesn't play games. He gave the simple answer: "There will be no excuses, only action. And the federal bureaucracy will not slow that action down. We're going to fix the problems at Walter Reed, period." That is the correct answer.

Contrary to the left-leaning blogosphere, that's what Bush was saying when he 'compared' Iraq to Vietnam, and he reiterated it again in Vietnam today:

President Bush acknowledged today the difficulty of the mission in Iraq but insisted, "We'll succeed unless we quit." "The (Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-) Maliki government is going to make it unless the coalition leaves before they have a chance to make it," Bush said during a news conference today in Vietnam, where he shared the podium with Australian Prime Minister John Howard. "And that's why I assured the prime minister we'll get the job done." People tend to want instant success in the world, but the task in Iraq and elsewhere in the world countering radical extremism "is going to take awhile," the president, in Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, told reporters.

Luckily, Democrats who have already declared the war lost and the military broken are getting their comeuppance, like John Murtha yesterday. And Democrats like Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the media's go-to guy on problems with the military and the Iraq War before the election, is now penning editorials like this one, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed: Four-point plan for Iraq, in which his recommendations on moving forward look very similar to what we are already doing there - you know, "stay the course". He wants us to tell the Iraqis "that our military presence is not open-ended and we will begin redeploying our forces from Iraq as quickly as possible". OK, that's already been done, and has been our strategy since Day 1.

The title to this post is a little harsh, but it's the best way to describe the new bill that is being introduced by my own Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), according to an article in this morning's Providence Journal - Reed's bill would assist homeowners facing mortgage foreclosures. Regular readers of The Stump are aware of my familiarity with and disgust at sub-prime lending, particularly the tactics of mortgage companies and brokers. These buggers more often than not resort to praying that borrowers don't default on their unaffordable loans within the first six months to a year - a default that would cause the originating lender to buy back the loan and lose quite a bit of money. But laws are in place to deal with dishonest lenders and brokers. Protecting sad case borrowers, thus indemnifying them from the obligation that our system places on them to read and understand the mortgage documents and process (or to have someone qualified explain it to them), is just wrong.

If a borrower doesn't understand it, or can't pay the monthly payments, they shouldn't go forward. If they are induced into moving forward through fraud or trickery, then the offending party should be prosecuted (and we have laws for that already on the books). If a person makes a bad decision, or just is a plain old idiot, the taxpayers shouldn't have to bail them out.

In another story about Iraq that should be on the front page of our papers, but instead is in British papers, U.S. Major General Rick Lynch has again warned against withdrawal of our forces from Iraq:

US forces under Major General Rick Lynch and backed by Iraqi allies carried out airborne raids on insurgent strongholds, with the objective of disrupting the flow of terrorists and vehicle-borne bombs into the city centre. Gen Lynch said that commanders on the ground reject calls for withdrawal, adding that he had given Iraqi civilians his word that the US military would restore order before handing over to a home-grown force able to defend them.

"What they're worried about is our leaving," he said. "And our answer is 'We're staying', because those are my orders."

So, among the items that cause Iraqis the most fear is that the Democrats and a few cowardly, poll-phobic Republicans will force our troops to abandon them before they are ready. Not an unfounded fear, because that is exactly what Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Jack Reed, Carl Levin, and the New York Times are promoting.

Major General Lynch has been warning about this for a while now. So far, I've only found one ABC News/AP online story, dated July 6, that's bothered mentioning it. Doesn't fit in today's media storybook, I guess. Seems like the opinion of the commander of U.S./Iraqi forces in the south of Baghdad should carry a bit more weight than that in media reports, shouldn't he?

I've written on the sub-prime mess before -- I'm neither surprised nor alarmed by it. But I am alarmed by the garbage that's coming out from the media and the Democrats demanding that taxpayers bail out failed borrowers. This whole problem can be traced to the very definition of sub-prime borrowers -- a group of borrowers who fail to meet conventional borrowing criteria. You are naturally going to have a higher default rate with these individuals. The looser the lending criteria, the more defaults are possible (or, as I would say, probable).

Many critics are blaming the lenders for this crisis. Not so. The move to make sub-prime loans available to people was based on the liberal theory that because these people had less than perfect credit, they were being discriminated against:

"The main thing that innovations in the mortgage market have done over the past 30 years is to let in the excluded: the young, the discriminated against, the people without a lot of money in the bank to use for a down payment." It has allowed them access to mortgages whereas lenders would have once just turned them away.

Now Democrats (and self-involved fools like CNBC's Jim Cramer) want the taxpayers to bail out these borrowers by giving them grants to avoid foreclosure. My Senator Jack Reed proposed one such program ($615 million) earlier this year. Hillary Clinton has proposed a $1 billion program. Chuck Schumer has also begged for a government bailout.

The plan to privatize the Walter Reed Hospital has been put on hold. There is nothing like publicity to make politicians think twice. The operative word is OUTSOURCING. Since President Bush became president, many government agencies have been forced to outsource. In other words, let private industry run the function. Get rid of civil servants and give the job to your friends.

The plan began in 2003. While the process was going forward, employees began to leave. The non-medical staff dropped from 300 to 50. The only private bidder for the job was IAP Worldwide Services Inc. According to the article linked above, IAP is owned by a New York hedge fund whose board is chaired by former Treasury Secretary John Snow, and it is led by former executives of Kellogg, Brown and Root, the subsidiary spun off by Texas-based Halliburton Inc. Does that name ring a bell?

Problems at the Walter Reed Hospital have brought much attention to what is going wrong in Washington. When you read the story, you will see that Donald Rumsfeld planned to outsource 320,000 non-military support jobs within the Defense Department.

We should never allow government jobs to be placed in the hands of politicians.

Just reading the Evans-Novak Political Report. Robert Novak always seems to have the inside scoop as to what the Republican hierarchy is thinking. His most recent article says that the Republican Senators and Congressman are

"furious that the Bush Administration is losing the initiative thanks to three big fumbles: firing the U.S. attorneys, the FBI excesses and the Walter Reed Army Hospital. 'Incompetence' is the word used by Republicans in describing the administration."

It seems that those who continue to support the Bush incompetence don't realize that those who will soon be in charge of their party recognize that President Bush is royally screwing things up.

While it's nice to have entertainers like Toby Keith raising troop morale through USO concerts abroad, what happens when our servicemen and servicewomen face adverse circumstances after returning home? Given what the BBC calls our "sluggish economy," and dismal care at Walter Reed, it seems that homefront morale should be of concern to the 2008 presidential candidates. Should they take a page from FDR and call for more benefits under the GI Bill? Bob and Susannah discuss in the latest episode of "Running Gags"!

It's becoming so hard to keep track of the various scandals. From the seemingly endless line of the fools, misguided, hypocrites and power-corrupted idiots who supposedly lead this country. Just sitting here I'll run off just a few names in the money/drugs/sex/mistresses/ world: Rush Limpaw, Ralph Reed, Jack Abramoff, Don Sherwood, Claude Terry, the guy at the WH budget office, the gay hypocrite Congressman in Va., that Foley clown (who at least resigned right away) Cunningham, DeLay, Ney, Bennett... Heck, makes my hands dirty just typing their names.

The latest in the line is Ted Haggard, the leader of the National Evangelical Association. This is a guy who gets to talk with President Bush every Monday morning no less. Now he's resigned because it turns out he's been paying for drugs and sex with a guy for three years. It's surreal. UPDATE: Haggard has spoken (in a letter to his church and told more:

"The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take responsibility for the entire problem. I am a deceiver and a liar. There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life," he said.

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/ousted-evangelist-confesses-to/20061102182309990027

I don't care who does what to who (unless you preach otherwise). A person's private life is just that, private. What you do on your time and dime, unless it affects your work, it's your problem. But if you're a morals warrior, if you wave the flag and attack gays but pay for it on the side, you're a hypocrite of the worse kind. If you're telling people how to vote, what to do at home, then you have an obligation to show just a little class.

Let's go to the videotape shall we? a video of the local news station report

How about this report? The following report is from the local station that broke the story.

More on the flip

I am so glad that finally others have noticed what my fellow AOL Blogger John Mullaney knew all along: Injured soldiers who are coming back from combat don't seem to receive the care they deserve. I have to admit, I also was unaware about the living conditions at Walter Reed Hospital. While I receive plenty of care in military hospitals around the nation I was stunned to hear about the lack of quality care in a hospital so close to the White House.

Every time I open the Army Times I see the names of the soldiers who have died recently. Sometimes I think it seems easier for us to count the soldiers who have died in the war then those who come home changed forever, due to injury. So we close our eyes and hope our soldiers are taken care of the way they ought to be. But we can't allow for that to happen as a society. Soldiers deserve our deepest gratitude and care.

Now the question is whether Defense chief Gates is taking the right actions? It is always easier to blame someone instead of taking actions to improve the situation. I have immense doubts that firing people in charge will help the conditions of injured soldiers. Nor do I think it will help the Walter Reed. In my experience, it's not about the people in charge. It's about the budget.

For almost 11 years now I have received medical care in military hospitals all over the U.S. Even as a civilian I can tell things have changed over the years. For routine appointments I simply have to wait now -- while it was much easier to get in years ago. The time slots are shorter and doctors seem to be good but simply overworked. 11 years ago I was treated by a doctor in uniform almost all of the time. Now I mostly see civilian doctors in military hospitals.

Naturally it should not come to a surprise that conditions in Walter Reed have changed for our soldiers. I really think our soldiers deserve the most quality care the nation has to offer. And I don't think the outside panel Gates created to review the conditions will make a difference. We already know its bad and I am sure they do too. I think a panel should review the budget for our military instead and then changes should be made from there so we can ensure that the needs are financially met.