The People vs Pelosi
Posted December 31st, 2007 by Da King
Here's House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi's summation of the performance of the Democrat led Congress in 2007, according to The Washington Post:
"the Democratic-led House is listening to the American people and providing the New Direction the people voted for in November. The House has passed a wide range of measures to make America safer, restore the American dream and restore accountability. We are proud of the progress made this session and recognize that more needs to be done."
In addition, Pelosi claims:
"the House has had a remarkable level of achievement over the first year, passing 130 key measures — with nearly 70 percent passing with significant bipartisan support."
As David Broder notes in his WaPo article, Pelosi counts as "bipartisan" any vote that had 50 or more Republicans vote for it. There are 202 Republicans currently in the House. If 152 vote against Democratic legislation and 50 vote for it, that's bipartisan support to San Fran Nan. No wonder she's a politician. Such dishonesty doesn't work in most other professions. For instance, I doubt Exxon would launch a huge ad campaign touting $3.00 per gallon gasoline as costing only $1.00 per gallon. People would see through that rather easily.
They see through Pelosi as well. RealClearPolitics has a poll that averages the results of all recent polling. The current Congress gets an approval rating of 25%, and a disapproval rating of 63.5%. By contrast, President Bush gets a 35.4% approval rating.
This Hot Air video, called Pelosi's Promises, could explain some of the gap between Pelosi's rosy assessment and the people's perception of reality. Did the new Democratic Congress accomplish Pelosi's election night 2006 promises ? Did they 1) Restore civility and bipartisanship ? Were they 2) The most ethical Congress in history ? Did they 3) Work with the president on Iraq ? Have you stopped laughing yet ? I don't think I'm being partisan when I say they didn't even come close (not that they ever intended to).
To me, it feels like the Dems spent the whole year investigating Republicans for anything and everything, while ignoring or promoting obvious corruption within their own ranks (Jefferson, Hastings, Murtha, etc). I do have to take issue with the Hot Air video on one thing though. Creating a new cafeteria menu was not the biggest accomplishment of Congress. That's probably only in fourth or fifth place in the annus horribilis of Democratic accomplishment. This Congress also raised the minimum wage by a buck (good news for teenagers who need a couple extra bucks on saturday night), mandated increased car mileage standards (this one I like), and put through a one-year fix for the Alternative Minimum Tax (violating their own PAYGO promise in the process). Looking at the accomplishments of this Congress, I think the people would have been better served if our illustrious representatives had all taken 11-month vacations and just went along with the Bush budget (with no pay, of course. That would have been a case of Congress actually saving us some dough). Then, at least we wouldn't have had a situation like the one with the last minute december Omnibus bill, where the minority party had less than 24 hours to read massive spending legislation that contained 12,000 pork items that passed with no oversight and no discussion. The alternative was to defund the troops in the field. Yeah, great. What was that you said about bipartisanship and ethics, Mrs. Pelosi ? Now we know what Pelosi meant when she said the Dems were going to "… make America safer, restore the American dream, and restore accountability". That translates to lose the war, raise taxes and spending, and be more corrupt than ever. Pretty much what I thought from the beginning.
And then there was Nan's trip to Syria.
Great. Just great. Anybody got any Advil ?
December 31st, 2007 at 2:32 pm
The Dims made a big mistake in electing such a polarizing figure as Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.
If they selected a normal person — like that guy from Maryland — the Dims would have been able to advance their liberal agenda much, much further. Looking at it that way one can say Pelosi is a blessing in disguise — sort of.
December 31st, 2007 at 5:32 pm
King, I could forget Pelosi's promises of last fall if the House had accomplished anything, at all, that amounted to something. However, I keep seeing all the earmarks that have been thrown in at the last hour of any bill that would surely pass. She had talked so long about transparency with earmarks and all of a sudden it turns out that most people never get a chance to read even some of them before the final vote. Transparency must not mean the same to Dems that it does to me and Webster's dictionary. When you mentioned the 12,000 of them that were piled onto the budget bill you reminded me that she just doesn't know the meaning of so many words.
I love that picture of her that you have at the beginning of this article. It is too bad that she can't keep her cosmetician around all the time to make all her pictures look like that one. By the end of any kind of normal day she is looking her age and a bit beyond but in that one she looks about 20 years or more younger than she is. The other day I saw the one of her with Dirty Harry standing just behind and to her left. It must have been taken at the end of a particularly trying day since she looked like she hadn't seen her cosmetician for some time.
Maybe if she would quit all the lying, God may allow her to look better for a longer period of time on all days.
January 1st, 2008 at 11:49 am
Roy,
You hit on the right analogy for describing the Dims — cosmetic.
Look at Comrade Hillary. She tries to disguise herself as a moderate while her record dating from college on is that of a hard core lefty. And now she's claiming all sorts of executive experience merely because she was first Lady — a First Lady without security clearence or one who received security briefings. There is a reason why the Clintons refuse to all the papers & records in the Clinton library — it's because the papers would expose Hillary as a cheap fraud.
Then there's Sen. John Kerry. Remember how he tried to posture as a honorable military man until the Swift Boat Vets exposed him. (By the way, does anyone know that Kerry did not get an honorable discharge from the Navy until Jimmy Carter granted a blanket amnesty to draft dogers and other dissents and that Kerry STILL has not released his full military record as he promised to do years ago?)
"But, come Ghost, we need balance," some would say. "The Dims need cosmetics and lies for if they ever told the American people what their true agenda was, they'd never win an election." How true.
January 1st, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Roy,
Don't forget about San Fran Nan's big change of moving the women's restroom closer to the Congressional Hall. I believe that was her very first act.
Who thought it would all go downhill from there, lol ?
I'm still waiting for our illustrious MSM to make note of all the campaign promises the Democratic Congress shredded. I only mentioned a few of them. There are many more.
Vince,
I couldn't agree with you more. If the Dems told the truth about their plans for this country, they couldn't get elected to be dog catcher. Instead, they lie, spread disinformation, and push the country little by little toward their socialist utopia, and they hope nobody notices. They are carrying out Kruschev's plan.
January 2nd, 2008 at 6:03 pm
62 GOP filibusters and a flurry of late presidential vetoes later, people like King, Roy and Ghost get to join in with the establishment-right media folks….all pointing their fingers at Democrats for not getting anything done. Like choking a patient in the hospital and blaming the nurse who was trying to stop you.
I know that you guys don't like Pelosi….I guess it's the San Francisco connection that threatens your masculinity or something…..but Pelosi has certainly been a breath of fresh air….actually resembling an American…..when compared to Hastert or Tom DeLay or Bill Frist.