Note to Congress: Grow some cojones. Here's your chance

I've been thinking some more about my post, below, about the fact that our troops are STILL being forced to buy their own body armor.

It's time for Democrats to take an obvious issue handed to them by God himself and run with it in an intelligent, strategic way.

We shouldn't be offering stupid amendments to help the soldiers get reimbursed for armor they already purchased (that's the current Democratic plan). The soldiers are STILL buying their own armor. If they can find the armor to buy, our focus shouldn't be solely on reimbursing them, it should be on buying the damn armor now - they can find a vendor, why can't we? And just as important, maybe we need to provide each combat soldier with a voucher so they can buy their armor, rather than expecting them to find the money and then we reimburse them (and oh, if they don't have the money, too bad, they don't get armor under the current reimbursement scheme).

This is the kind of issue you shut down congress for. I have a very sick feeling that the Dems will do what they always do. Come up with an amendment. Offer it in a vacuum. Don't do any grassroots, any great media, no public events, and absolutely no coordination with the blogosphere other than handing us a press release. You'll simply offer the amendment up (Hillary and her independent commission amendment come to mind), let it get voted down, then think you've won.

Please, wake up Democrats. If you don't get it on an issue this obvious, then you aren't going to get it until we basically throw you guys out of office and put some Dems with a backbone and a brain in power. How many election failures do we have to have before we finally have that little revolution we all keep talking about? These guys on the Hill miss the same opportunities over and over and over again, yet we leave them all in power, and then we wonder why we keep losing.

Please, don't just offer a stupid amendment. Run with this, shut down the building for our troops. Demand that a good amendment, whatever it is, be passed or NOTHING proceeds in Congress (other than perhaps hurricane relief).

And finally, what would the Republicans do if Clinton had short-changed our troops during war time? Do you think all they'd do is offer a stupid amendment? No, they'd have an entire campaign laid out with their far-right non-profits working the grassroots and all the media (talk radio, TV, etc.), they'd launch a filibuster against any and all legislation until Bill Clinton finally stopped killing our troops, they'd have public events with soldiers, and soldiers families, and veterans, begging the president to stop sending our kids out to die without the armor they need. Hell, they'd probably start calling for the impeachment of the commander in chief.

That's how you organize a real campaign. It's not offering one single stupid amendment and hoping the earth will move. You have to make the earth move, not wait for the earth to move for you.