Lee’s success also comes as a vindication; she was the only member of Congress to vote against the AUMF.
“September 11 changed the world,” she said at the time. “Our deepest fears now haunt us. Yet I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States.” Boondocks cartoonist Aaron McGruder paraphrased Lee’s speech this way: “You people are being intensely stupid right now. Please stop.”
To date, the passage of that resolution has left more than 100,000 dead in Afghanistan, including more than 30,000 civilians and over 2,000 U.S. soldiers. Since 2001, the AUMF has been used to justify at least 37 military actions in at least 16 countries, including ongoing campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Libya, Niger and Yemen.
But the landscape has changed enormously since the House voted 420-1 to approve the AUMF. Lee’s protest of Ryan’s decision to excise her AUMF sunset language was retweeted 18,000 times. The 10-term congresswoman has enjoyed an upsurge in popularity as an outspoken voice on racial justice and war and peace. Lee, who got her political education in the Black Panther Party, channels long-suppressed, now-emergent forces in American life: a bipartisan war-weariness and a restiveness among people of color, principally Black folks, organizing and speaking out against police violence and mass incarceration. [...]
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QUOTATION
“Everyone I have spoken with about working with the Russians in space exploration believes that the United States has learned a great deal from Russia and that Russia has learned a great deal from the United States—and that the entire international space partnership is much better because of it.”
~Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles (2015)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2009—GOP health care derangement syndrome: Stop me if you’ve heard this one:
Government takeover! Destroying America! The end of the world as we know it!
Yes, we've heard it all before. But did you know how many times, and for how long?
The fact is that the Republican Party told teabaggers' grandmas (of "death panel" fame) that Social Security was going to be the end of America. And today you can't swing a euthanized cat without hitting a Republican at a microphone insisting he's Social Security's greatest champion.
Republicans likewise told teabaggers' dads that Medicare would be the end of America. And today you can't swing a... oh yeah, you've heard that one.
Today, of course, Republicans will spend the entire day telling teabaggers themselves that the health insurance reform bill will be the end of America.
Gosh, poor America! That's a lotta ends!
Not sure you remember just how sure Republicans were about all those ends? Remind yourself with this trip down Fevered Nightmare Lane.