Archive for the 'Nancy Pelosi' Category

• 3,114.

  Four U.S. Marines were killed in fighting in Anbar province, the military said Thursday. The Marines, who were assigned to Multi-National Force — West, died Wednesday from wounds sustained due to enemy action in two separate incidents in the insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, according to a statement. The deaths raised to at least 3,114 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

• The Pelosi smear that just won't die--look, my friends in the traditional media--California is much further from Washington than Illinois. It takes a larger plane, with more fuel capacity, to get there. And how much clearer can the Speaker make it?

  Pelosi’s office has stated repeatedly, from the beginning, that "it is up to the Air Force to decide what type and size of plane will be required," and that she "will not use the plane for political travel...." Pelosi said today she will fly commercial rather than use the aircraft offered by the Pentagon, which cannot reach her home district in California without stopping to refuel.

  Oh, and btw, Hastert used military aircraft to fly former page board chair Rep. Shimkus back to DC when the scandal broke. Was that a political purpose? Sheesh.

• Kevin Drum and Big Tent Dem write on Columbia law professor Bruce Ackerman's discussion in Foreign Policy on potential strikes against Iran. Bottom line:

  The president has to get another authorization for a war against Iran. It isn’t up to Nancy Pelosi or the House to prevent him; he doesn’t have the constitutional authority to just expand the war.

  He does not have the authority to unilaterally invade Iran.

  Authorization that the Democratic Congress willl not give him.

• We'll see if the House can do a better job managing an Iraq resolution than the Senate. The vote will be sometime next week.
• Huh. Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (CA-wingnut) is talking impeachment? Of course, it's over immigration--nothing is more important than keeping the brown people out. Crooks and Liars has the details.
• Lieberman is even too much for some Republicans to take:

  But Mr. Lieberman also went further, accusing Democrats of giving strength to the enemy and abandoning the troops, and arguing that an alternative resolution that he and many Republicans backed was "a statement of support to our troops."

  That was too much even for one Republican member, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, a sponsor of the bipartisan resolution against the president’s policy.

  "I forcefully argue that ours is in support of the troops," Mr. Warner said tersely. "And there is no suggestion that one is less patriotic than the other."

  Joe Lieberman, the skunk at everyone's picnic.

• The House Foreign Affairs Committee talked to Condi yesterday, and Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) asked about whether the State Department would hire some of the linguists fired by the Army because of their sexual orientation. The Carpetbagger highlights this exchange:

  "It seems that the Defense Department has a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ when it comes to homosexuals. You don’t have such a prohibition in your agency, do you?" Ackerman asked Rice. "No, we do not," Rice replied.

  "Well, it seems that the military has gone around and fired a whole bunch of people who speak foreign languages — Farsi and Arabic, etc.," Ackerman told her. He added, "For some reason, the military seems more afraid of gay people than they are against terrorists, but they’re very brave with the terrorists," Ackerman said. "If the terrorists ever got a hold of this information, they’d get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad."

• A Siegel blew the trumpets last night for the grand re-opening of Energize America, now with 100% more congressional interest and links to other pro-energy/environmental organizations (DT).
 

It looks like people are realizing that it's not so bad having leadership that represents a corner of the country that has brought us the personal computer, iPods, Pixar movies, Star Wars, Google, eBay, Yahoo, the mass blogging tools (like Blogger, MovableType, and TypePad), NetFlix, TiVo, WiFi, Treos, Palm, Levis, Gap, LeapFrog, Charles Schwab, Wells Fargo, Ghirardelli, sourdough bread, the best wine in the world, redwood forests, and all kinds of other goodness.

Rasmussen. Likely voters. MoE 4%

Uh oh.

Despite growing rancor over the troop build-up, the White House said Bush won agreement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for a bipartisan advisory group on Iraq. Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino said the panel's makeup would be announced shortly and it would meet next week.

If that "bipartisan advisory group" wants to recommend ways that Bush can get our troops out by early next year, than I'm all for it. But somehow, I doubt it. Watch Republicans try to use this "bipartisan" group to try and share the Iraq blame across the aisle.

I'm not sure why Democrats are determined to help Bush and Republicans get that cover. They don't need it. They can wrestle the war away from his hands and bring our troops home.

The U.S. Congress has the power to end the war in Iraq, a former Bush administration attorney and other high-powered legal experts told a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

Facing mounting opposition over his Iraq troop increase plan, President George W. Bush insisted it would be "too extreme" if lawmakers pass a resolution condemning his Iraq policy.

Four out of five experts called before the Senate Judiciary Committee said Congress could go even further and restrict or stop U.S. involvement in Iraq if it chose.

"I think the constitutional scheme does give Congress broad authority to terminate a war," said Bradford Berenson, a Washington lawyer who was a White House associate counsel under Bush from 2001 to 2003.

"It is ultimately Congress that decides the size, scope and duration of the use of military force," said Walter Dellinger, former acting solicitor general, the government's chief advocate before the Supreme Court, in 1996-97 [...]

The other experts at the hearing said that while the Constitution makes the president commander-in-chief of U.S. forces, Congress' constitutional power to declare war and fund the military gave it power to stop what it had set in motion.

Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania said: "I would respectfully suggest to the president that he is not the sole 'decider' ... The decider is a shared and joint responsibility."

And remember, this isn't really a controversial position to take. As noted yesterday, this was exactly what Republicans were arguing back in 1993.

[I]f we do not [get out of Somalia] and other Americans die, other Americans are wounded, other Americans are captured because we stay too long--longer than necessary--then I would say that the responsibilities for that lie with the Congress of the United States who did not exercise their authority under the Constitution of the United States and mandate that they be brought home quickly and safely as possible.

It's not only not controversial per past Republican arguments, but it's exactly what the American people want.

Newsweek. 1/24-25. Adults nationwide. MoE 3%. (No trend lines)

The American people overwhelmingly want Congress to take over. Follow that link above and see how poll after poll after poll is unambiguous. The American people have lost all faith in the Worst President Ever and are looking to Democrats to lead us out of the Iraq mess.

It's not a time for "bipartisan advisory groups". The time for advise is long past. Bush didn't want input from Democrats when he thought the glory would be all his. So fuck him. He lost the war. Time to do what the American people want congressional Democrats to do.

Sorry. This doesn't make me feel better.

In an interview, Pelosi also said she was puzzled by what she considered the president's minimalist explanation for his confidence in the new surge of 21,500 U.S. troops that he has presented as the crux of a new "way forward" for U.S. forces in Iraq.

"He's tried this two times — it's failed twice," the California Democrat said. "I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do you think this time it's going to work?' And he said, 'Because I told them it had to.' "

Asked if the president had elaborated, she added that he simply said, " 'I told them that they had to.' That was the end of it. That's the way it is."

Apparently, Iraq is a mess because Bush hadn't gotten around to telling the generals it "had to" work. But now that he has, all's well that ends well.

Now shut up and clap louder!

Update: Aravosis has Pelosi's response to Bush's inanity, as told by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz:

PELOSI: He's tried this two times — it's failed twice. I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do you think this time it's going to work?'

BUSH: Because I told them it had to.

PELOSI: Why didn't you tell them that the other two times?

"Conservative Values" versus "San Francisco Values":

The pollsters helpfully compare the failed Pelosi speakership with Newt Gingrich's successful kick-ass revolutionary one (approve/disapprove):

And so it went. Newt's best showing was in May and July of 1998, when he scored equal 41/44 ratings.

And if you want some real fun, how about CBS News' latest Bush poll?

Ha ha ha ha!

Greenwald digs up the ridiculous hysterical rantings of the punditocracy in the weeks before Pelosi took the Speaker's gavel. Stuff like this from Slate's silly Timothy Noah:

Let Pelosi remain speaker for now. But let her know that, before the new Congress even begins, she has placed herself on probation [...] One more strike—even a minor misstep—and House Democrats will demonstrate that they, unlike Speaker-elect Pelosi and President Bush, know how to correct their mistakes.

Idiots like Noah, and Wolf Blitzer, and the losers at the dying New Republic (head to Greenwald's place for links and quotes) all were sure that Pelosi was "damaged goods".

Except that, oops, turns out that Pelosi has been ridiculously effective out of the gate.

Sworn in just over two weeks ago as the first female speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi wasted no time showing who's boss.

The California Democrat rammed six major bills through the House at breakneck speed, stomped out smoking privileges near the House floor, partially sidelined a powerful Democratic committee chairman and decided she liked traditionally Republican office space so much she claimed it for herself.

By Democrats' timekeeping, she did it all in far under the 100 legislative hours she had allotted [...]

Pelosi is held in higher regard than the president or her colleagues in the Congress. An AP-AOL News poll taken Jan. 16-18 put her approval rating at 51 percent — much higher than that of Congress (34 percent) or Bush (36 percent).

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., a close ally, called Pelosi's performance "spectacular."

"What the Democrats in the caucus are telling me is that this is the best three weeks of their life," he crowed.

Woe is us! How much longer must we be held shackled to the Pelosi disaster and still hope to survive the 2008 elections?

Oh tell us, wise men of the punditocracy, how shall we rid ourselves of that disastrous scourge in the House?  If only George Bush could be President, Senate Majority Leader, AND Speaker of the House all at once!Then we could all breathe easier!

In all seriousness, the best thing to happen to Democrats the past year is their increased willingness to ignore the mad ramblings of the Beltway Gasbags. Remember, those are the same morons who told us that challenging Lieberman would cost us in November and lose us Jewish votes. They told us that bloggers were "pulling the party to the far left", making it unelectable. They told us that calling for withdrawal from Iraq would make Democrats look "weak on national defense". They told us that the way to win in "conservative" districts was to reject the likes of now-Reps. John Yarmuth and Jerry McNerney in Democratic primaries for more "moderate" Democrats. Heck, we weren't supposed to win the House with the prospects of a "San Francisco liberal" taking over. That was supposedly scaaaaary!

Still my favorite: they told us that electing Howard Dean as chair of the DNC would spell electoral doom. Funny how that worked out.

And now people finally seem to be realizing that those morons don't know a damn thing about what they're talking about. They are worthy of every bit of scorn due their way.