Know Your Enemy

Just a little reminder before I turn in about just what kind of creatures are running the Congress of the United States these days.

Let's start with Senator Pencil-Neck:

Consider...Senate Majority Leader Reid. Some politicians speak in sound bites He speaks in bumper stickers. His latest is this defeatist yawp: "This war is lost." Put that on your Volvo right next to your Kerry-Edwards sticker.

That goes right along with his calling the President a "loser" while Bush was out of the country, and calling former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan a "political hack" (pot...kettle...black), and making what, if it came out of a Republican's mouth, would have been denounced as racist comments insulting the intellect of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Take a gander at Dirty Harry's latest "anti-war" stunt:

[Yesterday] morning, the Senate voted 67-29 on a procedural motion that effectively rejected the Democrats' latest effort to cut off funding for the Iraq war. The proposal, an amendment to a water projects bill having nothing to do with Iraq, was [co-]sponsored [with] Russ Feingold. It would have cut off funding for the Iraq war by March 31, 2008. [emphasis added]

Sneaky old bastard, isn't he? This one's gotta aggravate the hard left crowd as well. They don't want to see de-funding the war skulked through the legislative tract in the dead of night; they want it marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in broad daylight, with bands and bunting and Bush and Cheney effigies (or maybe just Bush and Cheney) on parade floats impaled on White House fence spikes. Hillary! and Obama voted "yea," BTW. Bet they think they were ingratiating the Kos-hacks and DUmmies.

But for sheer entertainment value (in a "love to hate her/shark eating Quint in Jaws" way), Reid can't hold a candle to Crazy Nancy, who never tires of living up to her nickname:

Just weeks ago House Speaker Pelosi brought the full majesty of her office to the Middle East where she visited Syria's hereditary dictator, President Bashar Assad, wearing a babushka in public deference to local misogynist customs. She shopped in a Damascus bazaar and did not even dicker over prices. Then she trilled to an agape press corps, "We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace." Whereupon she claimed that she was conveying Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's message that "Israel was ready to engage in peace talks." What is more she insisted that President Assad was ready to "resume the peace process." That got her plenty of attention. Olmert scrambled to his feet and delivered a correction. Pelosi was misrepresenting him. Pelosi's visit to the Middle East was widely adjudged a bust, or in the words of a Washington Post editorial, "ludicrous."

It was blatantly illegal as well. But then she deserves to have big, thick books thrown at her for all but giving Boy Assad a lap dance while refusing to even be in the same zip code with her own president.

The Speakerette, weighed down by the growing perception that she's a wacky, incompetent old hag leading a ruling caucus that resembles the legislative equivalent of a Polish firing squad, appeared to let frustration get the best of her yesterday - and a half:

[House Democrats are] threatening to change the current House Rules regarding the Republican right to the Motion to Recommit (specifically on "paygo" provisions) or the test of germaneness on the motion to recommit. This would be the first change to the germaneness rule since 1822. That's wonk-speak for making it easier to raise taxes, without forcing their Members to take the tough votes on the record.

The House minority is generally perceived as having little or no power compared to the minority party in the Senate. But the GOP has been using the Motion to Recommit quite effectively to gum up the works in the lower chamber. Kind of like legislative Kayopectate.

What Crazy Nancy and her crooked commandos attempted was a stunning power grab. It was Dirty Harry's strategy as parliamentary procedure. Under that circumstance, the Dems could do whatever they wanted and nobody, including the Republicans, would know what the devil they were up to until it was too late. GOPers can't stop much as it is, but in that case they wouldn't even be able to slow anything down. They'd be so hopelessly neutered that there'd be virtually no point in them even bothering to show up.

Wrote Representative Eric Cantor:

Bottom line - the Democrats are preventing their Members from having to vote on the tax increases that they are trying to impose on the American People. [emphasis added]

Wow. And here we thought Donks believed in openness and transparency and accountability in government. Or at least that's the horsecrap they sold the country a year ago. Who does Pelosi think she is? Hillary!?

The entertaining part? The "San Francisco Church Lady"'s attempt to transform the House of Representatives into her own personal stealth rubber stamp machine went down in flames before that rarest of sights, a united, aroused, partisan Republican resistance. Pelosi can't even get making herself a dictatrix right.

Here's another reminder, my fellow Americans: This is self-inflicted lunacy. A majority of you who went to the polls last fall gave these yIngtaH the keys to Uncle Sam's kingdom. How much of this crapola is it going to take to get you to look up the term "buyer's remorse"?

Hey, last November's result doesn't appear to have taught the Republican remnant much. It'd be nice if SOMEBODY took some lessons from this idiotic detour, given how much it may ultimately cost us.