Showing posts with label Pelosi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pelosi. Show all posts

7/30/2009

It Takes a Villain


My absolute favorite quote machine, Speaker Pelosi (D-CA), upped the voltage on the health care debate by calling health insurers "immoral" and "villains" in a press conference today.

Now, the mind that believes in fairy tales, unicorns and cost caps with no corresponding benefit caps is not ordinarily prone to self-doubt. And if she truly is "in the fight of our lives" why should she be? Truman knew he was in the fight of his life, he didn't hesitate to go nuclear (literally and figuratively).

For all the lobbying, advertising, campaign donating and public relating these villains do, unchanged is the simple fact that Speaker Pelosi's party controls the House, the Senate and the Presidency. Lobbyists don't get a vote. If the policies of Speaker Pelosi, et. al, are so undeniably correct then why don't they use their unmitigated muscle to pass them into law? If she was genuinely courageous, genuinely "in the fight of our lives" she'd execute her views, fully confident in the political bounty sure to follow. If she's so damn right, and everyone else is so damn wrong then she should put our money where her mouth is, fearless of political repercussions.

But she won't. Because she's not courageous and power matters more than principle.

5/16/2009

Pelosi v. CIA (Update)

From Politico

CIA Director Panetta:

"Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing “the enhanced techniques that had been employed.” Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened."

Speaker Pelosi:
"We all share great respect for the dedicated men and women of the intelligence community who are deeply committed to the safety and security of the American people. My criticism of the manner in which the Bush Administration did not appropriately inform Congress is separate from my respect for those in the intelligence community who work to keep our country safe. What is important now is to be united in our commitment to ensuring the security of our country; that, and how Congress exercises its oversight responsibilities, will continue to be my focus as we move forward."
If the CIA lied then, it is lying now. Or is she substituting "Bush Administration" for CIA to deflect attention from already being on the record saying the CIA misled her in 2002? Or is lying to Congress only a problem when the accused is a Republican?

5/15/2009

Pelosi v. CIA

The battle is now joined. The CIA lied, or is lying about what Speaker Pelosi knew and when she knew it, according to Speaker Pelosi. The CIA is now led by Pelosi ally, and Obama nominee, Leon Panetta. If it's lying now, it's her ally doing the lying.

All politicians lie. Some more than others, some with greater ease than others. The CIA lies. It's in the business of lying. But now the CIA has to defend itself, on its home turf, against a Speaker from the same party as its boss. While the CIA of five or seven years ago was led by a different person and different party, the guts of an organization and culture will change little in that time.

In the coming war of attrition and selective leaks, who would you bet on?

5/14/2009

Speaker Pelosi Makes Funny Talk

See if you can follow the ever evolving positions of Speaker Pelosi, ordinarily a blackbelt level CYA artist. Trust me, it'll make your brain spin on its x-axis.



Square that with this quote from Thursday's NYT (emphasis mine):
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, acknowledged for the first time Thursday that she knew by early 2003 that the Central Intelligence Agency had subjected terror detainees to waterboarding but saw little recourse to challenge the practice except by achieving Democratic control of Congress and the White House.
Krauthammer helps clarify:



Never let 'em see you sweat.

4/14/2009

The New Piracy


Congratulations to the Navy Seals and their skilled snipers for doing what should always be done to dangerous terrorists.

We are incredibly fortunate that the strength and courage of the American military is still a force for good in the world, even at a time when the Obama Administration is hell bent on shrinking America’s global stature.

I can’t imagine the backache Barack Hussein will have after the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. By my count, there will be 33 heads of state before whom to bow later this week.

While I applaud Obama’s apparent zero-tolerance policy regarding brazen Somali Pirates, here at home we’re no less under siege. We have entered the age of The New Piracy We Can’t Believe In.

The traditional definition of piracy is an act committed by a non-state actor but the Somalis have made that obsolete, as no one believes they are true pirates, acting alone or without training. Here in the U.S., there are multitudes of state actors littering the looting and pillaging landscape:

Tax pirates on Capitol Hill and inside the White House.

Salary/bonus pirates on Congressional subcommittees.

Free-market pirates, most of them holed up in Larry Summers’ office at the White House.

Education pirates, a.k.a., lawmakers who’d rather stay cozy with teachers’ unions than open doors to educational opportunities in abysmal urban school systems.

First Amendment pirates, led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed, who still think folks don’t get the twisted irony of something called “The Fairness Doctrine” that targets Conservative talk radio.

Family pirates, judges mostly, popping up in state after state, zealously targeting the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman with bench rulings that legalize gay unions. The pirates are still nursing rum hangovers in Iowa and Vermont.

Peace pirates, empowered by the President, who apparently believes that a little love sent Iran’s way will pay big diplomatic dividends down the road. Where’s the harm in a little unabashed uranium enrichment by Iranian “technicians”?

(Iran’s a small nation, like North Korea, remember? The junior Senator from Illinois said so last year when seeking the Piracy, ah, Presidency. They’re just a bunch of happy-go-lucky Johnny Depps, charming the ladies and dabbling in petty crimes).

Finally, we learned just today about the Freedom Pirates lurking inside the Department of Homeland Security. Seems they’ve issued an “assessment” that warns “rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues.”

The report compares present trends to a climate that spawned the various anti-government military militias of the 1990s (translation: during the last reign by a liberal Democrat President). There is no mention of what if any activities these extremists were suspected of in the past decade, as if there were no hidden factions that loathed George Bush. They existed, but they would mainly fall under the heading, “leftwing extremists”, and would thus have been of little concern to the DHS and beyond the scope, as they say, of this report.

The DHS further advises that, while there are righties who are “hate-oriented” (the militia types), the feds are also keeping an eye on “those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.” Imagine that? A failure to embrace big, smothering government control of … um … well … everything.

Let us not misunderstand the underlying message of this “assessment” (which is being discussed across the land tonight) and the intent of its publication. American citizens who are not pro-Obama are members of society who pose a “threat”. The DHS knows this because of its analysis of “rightwing extremist chatter on the Internet”. (Such as the post you are reading here).

You are not a Conservative if you oppose Obama’s radical vision, his Socialist agenda, or his apologies for America when he stands on foreign soil. You are not a Patriot if you believe in the Constitution as our enduring foundation, or if you would fight to preserve the First and Second Amendments.

What are you? You are a Rightwing Extremist Threat. It says so in the DHS “assessment”. It says “the historic election of an African American president and the prospect of policy changes” are stirring the right. It says our chatter focuses on “the perceived loss of U.S. jobs” (yes, it actually says “perceived”). It says the winds of extremism are blowing because you are “antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of (social) issues.”

Oh, and this. You are on the DHS radar because your “rightwing extremist views bemoan the decline of U.S. stature.” Shall we assume that a leftwing extremist bemoans the expansion of U.S. stature?

I think we know the answer. We hear it every time the White House teleprompter rolls.

Monday is Patriots’ Day. But at the DHS, every day since Jan. 20, 2009, has been Rightwing Extremist Alert Day. Get used to it.