Tag: Pelosi

I’ve been watching these two flirting while pretending not to flirt since about 2002. The elephant would watch the donkey all the time, and the donkey would watch back, while they pretended to hate each others’ guts. The donkey would pretend not to give a shit — not speaking to him, not returning his calls, but the whole time she’d look for excuses to be around while the elephant was in the room. It got to be pretty annoying after a while — the donkey would be flirting her ass off, and the whole time saying it was nothing, just a little bipartisanship, all in a spirit of compromise.

It only got worse after 2004 — the donkey practically throwing herself at the elephant, while acting all coy, like she didn’t even care, the elephant behaving like a cold bastard toward her, while anybody with half a brain in their head knew he really wanted to fuck her brains out.

The goddamn’ donkey got even worse around 2008 or so — smarmy coy looks, suggestive touching, soppy goo-goo eyes, all the time insisting there was nothing to it. Finally, about the time of the health care vote, she was all but falling all over the elephant, and it became insufferable. It was all I could do to keep from yelling “for crissakes, why don’t you two just get a room, already?”

Hat tip to political cartoonist Mike Flugennock for posting this at Corrente as well as at his own site.

I really don’t have the time to write this up, but I wanted to draw your attention to this series on HuffPo.  In is quite an indepth, inside look and well worth the whole read.  Despite the cheerleading, there are pissed-off liberals.  We are not alone.  Enjoy.

Power Struggle: Inside The Battle For The Soul Of The Democratic Party

Doug Kahn, a big Democratic donor and heir to the Annenberg fortune, is not giving any money to candidates running for office this year even though he has donated more than $200,000 to candidates in past election cycles.

“The people who are really liberal, like me, are disgusted. And the ones I’ve talked to are just saying, forget this. They’re throwing their hands up. They’re not going to give money,” says Kahn.

In 2008, says Kahn, he asked the DCCC to list candidates who had an outside shot of beating a Republican and weren’t currently getting much party backing. He jumped in and gave the maximum contributions, donating to several of the 34 Democrats who voted against health care reform. In 2010, he says, he’ll spend his money in a different way. “Anger is a real motivator,” says Kahn.

The Florida donor plans to spend $100,000 between two districts currently held by Blue Dogs. He’ll come in during the last few weeks and spend money educating Democratic voters about the Blue Dogs’ record. “I’m convinced that if they know what the voting records of some of these people are — that is, Blue Dogs — a significant percentage, a percentage that could beat the Blue Dog, will simply not vote. I might be wrong about that, but I’m going to try it out,” says Kahn.

Kahn says he doesn’t yet know which districts he’ll attack and has no interest working to defeat a Blue Dog who is already going to lose. He wants Blue Dogs on the edge and he wants to push them off. The purpose, he says, is not to teach those particular dogs a lesson, but “to move the Blue Dogs who are in the House to have some fear of Democratic voters.”

Pelosi worked to muzzle progressives who said they could never vote for the watered-down Senate version. “I told the members, the members who said, ‘I’m never voting the Senate bill,’ I said, ‘Fine. Let me take care of that, but to the extent that you go out and say that, you are empowering the insurance industry and those who are trying to say just do a small bill,” she said. “That empowered them: ‘See, she’s never going to be able to pass the bill, so why don’t we just go for this thing, which happens to be what the insurance company is advocating.’ So we’re saying, ‘No, you have to have the courage to go for it, and what is it that we can put over the finish line that is strong and tough as possible, giving the president his opportunity to strive for bipartisanship?”

There’s a whole lot more.  

Last week, House Democrats killed two provisions that could have given us the best health care in the world: single-payer. But we've still got a chance in the U.S. Senate.

Tell your senators to support single-payer health care by co-sponsoring S. 703, the American Health Security Act.

Single-payer health care is the only kind that would both control costs and cover all Americans.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had pledged to hold a House vote on single-payer, but she broke her promise, and did not allow the vote.

Even worse, Speaker Pelosi stripped a provision from the health care bill that would have allowed states to try single-payer.

As a final insult, the House approved an anti-choice amendment that will remove abortion coverage from millions of health insurance policies.

That's just not good enough.

Americans deserve a healthcare system that will cover everyone and won't bankrupt anyone.

Let's make our voices heard for real health care reform. Sen. Bernie Sanders has introduced S. 703, a bill that would create single-payer systems in every state to cover all Americans.

Tell your senators to support true health care reform by co-sponsoring S. 703 today.

Well it seems like there is more evidence that Speaker Pelosi for all her failings is not actually complicit in the Bush era State Sponsored Torture program. Zach Roth of the Talking Points Memo Muckraker section has found a former Intel official who points out that the Orwellian euphemism of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” was only coined in 2006 when the Bush administration started to get worried (sensibly) that their war crimes would come back to haunt them. You can find the whole article here.

An amusing cone of silence has descended over the CIA and Congress. Like the comical cone of silence in the old TV spy comedy, its purpose is to preserve secrecy, but it actually prevents communication. Both Panetta and Pelosi are telling the public that there is no way to determine the truth of what occurs during a CIA briefing. Why, then, are these briefings conducted? Is it just to pretend that the CIA is not a rogue agency?

Our news media seem not to be troubled at all by the manifest absurdity of state secrets being discussed in informal and undocumented circumstances, leading to confusion and nasty allegations of deceit. We are supposed to believe that this is standard procedure for intelligence professionals and high ranking members of Congress.

This clown circus of finger pointing confirms that the CIA has been nothing more than an unaccountable political tool of the Executive branch. These are the people who do the dirty work of the USA, and their briefing “procedures” ensure that no dirt stains the fingers of our elected officials.

Barak Obama has zero credibility in making the CIA accountable. His choice of the weak and malleable Panetta to “head” the agency is as big a mistake as Bush’s choice of Porter Goss. At the CIA, the inmates are running the asylum, and their antics are growing increasingly absurd.

For those of you holding your breath, you can exhale now.  For all of us, I think we can take some cheer.  At 5:30 PDT, I got an e-message from Congressman Wexler:

Capitol Hill is buzzing today with major developments regarding our campaign for impeachment hearings for President George W. Bush and Vice Presideent Dick Cheney.  Just today, in what could be described as a perfect impeachment storm:

  • Karl Rove once again thumbed his nose at Congress and the American people by brazenly ignoring a lawful congressional subpoena to testify before the House of Representatives;

• Judiciary Chairman John Conyers indicated his willingness to use the power of inherent contempt against Rove if necessary;

• Rep. Dennis Kucinich introduced another article of impeachment on Bush’s lies regarding the Iraq war; and

• Speaker Nancy Pelosi was quoted today saying that the House Judiciary Committee should address the issues that Kucinich raises in the House Judiciary Committee.

After years of work by so many of you, the time appears ripe to finally hold Bush and Cheney accountable.

Reflecting on Wexler’s letter brought many thoughts — about blogs, the netroots, activism, but mainly about OTB’s ants and the Weapons of Blog Destruction.

We the blogging worker ants turned our powerful WBDs outward on the timid complacencies of the status quo.  It wasn’t just the blog, and it wasn’t just DD, but the collective forces of these and many others converged, through e-space and resultant phone calls to members of congress to form the perfect storm.  I say this with the humility of just one of the many, many worker ants.

Perhaps tahoebasha3 said it best in a comment on my original essay, after a couple of calls to Pelosi and much web search, tahoe found that a Pelosi spokesperson said Pelosi had never urged the Judiciary “not to pursue contempt charges against Rove”, that such a statement had just been a rumor floating around the blog.  So tahoe commented:

It’s possible she did say it, but the uproar has caused a total retraction — who the hell knows—tahoebasha3

The House Subcommittee on Commercial and Adminstrative Law of the Judiciary Committee, where Karl Rove was a no show at his subpoened appearance ruled against Rove in a 7 to 1 vote.  All 7 democratic members voted to proceed with actions denying his claim of immunity.  One of the 5 republicans voted “no”; this was the ranking member, Mr. Cannon.

The relevant information is here:

Sanchez & Conyers  

Nancy Pelosi's Table reports that the Netroots Council of Elders is asking people to submit questions for Pelosi's “open” Q&A at Netroots Nation 2008 in Austin.

Please submits some questions for Pelosi to anwer at Netroots Nation.

Ask The Speaker!
Welcome to the Netroots Nation question submission page for the Saturday morning (July 19, 9:00am) keynote session “Ask The Speaker.” The event empowers citizens to engage America's current House Speaker in substantive discussion about current issues, the legislative process, and how citizens can participate in their government. Instead of simply giving a speech at a podium, Speaker Pelosi will be taking your questions and interacting with convention attendees. The 9 a.m. keynote will be moderated by Gina Cooper, Netroots Nation's Executive Director, and Jeffrey Feldman, author and blogger. But it all begins right now, right here, when you submit your questions and vote on questions submitted by others.

 

Go there Now and submit your own question or uprate others such as “Why is Impeachment Off the Table“.

or read more about Pelosi and Netroots Nation or find out more about impeachment