Pelosi Sabotages Her Own Big Day

On a popular street in Charleston, where all the tourists go in horse drawn carriages, there is a stinking spot that was never cleaned because someone took the Horse Urine Marker as a souvenir. The Democrats have their own stinking ethics issues that were never cleaned when they were in power because they covered them up. Now they're back, and already stinking up the place. Time to throw out the marker!

With the election just a bit over a week behind us, Nancy Pelosi already has shown remarkable ability to muck things up.

In the San Francisco Chronicle (Editorial, Pelosi’s choice, November 15, 2006), the day before Nancy and Jack Murtha lost her first big test as House Speaker before she even became House Speaker, the Chronicle tried to put a positive spin on her debacle by saying it sent “two strong signals about the leadership style of the incoming speaker. One, she values and rewards loyalty. Two, she is willing to take risks on behalf of people and ideals she believes in.”

So Nancy “values and rewards loyalty.” Doesn’t that mean the same as Nancy supports the cronyism that Democrats criticized so heavily in Republicans?

And Nancy “is willing to take risks on behalf of people and ideals she believes in.” That sounds a lot like a description of President Bush, who Democrats accused of being blind to his peoples' failures and faults.

It's remarkable how vice becomes virtue when the party label changes.

The Chronicle noted that: “Pelosi's support for U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., suggested the Democrat-controlled House will take a forceful role in trying to reshape Iraq policy.” I wonder if the Chronicle will now note that the 149 to 86 vote against Jack Murtha was a resounding defeat by Democrats of the position of immediate withdrawal from Iraq that Pelosi and Murtha support?

Personally, I must thank Nancy for making big news out of the Murtha Massacre. I wasn’t looking forward to the cacophony of triumphal trumpeting I expected as the Main Stream Media fell all over itself announcing the First! Female! Speaker! of the House! TA DA!

By setting the stage for “Nancy and Jack’s Utter Defeat” on the day of her anointing, the lead headlines far and wide mirrored Drudge’s, “The Lady Denied,” a testament to the Democrats’ ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. (Now even the New York Times has piled on. If you're a Democrat, you know you have really messed up when that happens. The Los Angeles Times chimes in too, not only about the Murtha mess, but on Nancy's anticipated support for impeached former judge Alcee Hastings over Jane Harman. Nancy's "most ethical" House of all times is headed for a still-born birth.)

This Cox & Forkum cartoon shows all's well that ends well - I suppose.

The Chronicle editorial makes mention of Murtha’s current ethical cloud:

Pelosi's pledge to Murtha was a risk not only because of potential strains with Hoyer loyalists, but because it turned the spotlight to concerns involving Murtha's relationships with lobbyists whose companies received a combined $100 million federal earmarks that Murtha helped secure. A Washington Post story on Tuesday detailed how the largest featured recipient of earmarks, the PMA group, had contributed more than $200,000 to Murtha's campaign in each of the last three election cycles. Also, Murtha's brother was a senior partner in a consulting firm that received a $4.2 million earmark -- allegedly with Murtha's assistance -- in 2004.

The word "earmark" -- once limited to the jargon of Capitol Hill -- became a Campaign 2006 buzzword as Democrats deplored the way the public's business was routinely traded in a "culture of corruption" under Republican rule. While the war in Iraq was one catalyst for the voter disgust with Washington that produced the Democratic takeover, so was the culture of corruption.

The Chronicle doesn’t mention the conversation Murtha had with Pelosi about ethics following his statement to other Democrat congressmen that ethical reform was a bunch of “crap.”

“My Dear,” said Murtha condescendingly, “when we said we wanted to clean up corruption in Washington, everyone knew we meant Republican corruption. Republicans were hogging all the good stuff. Now it’s our turn.”

The above conversation and quotes were made up by me, in the spirit of the type of CBS reporting championed by Dan Rather. While false, they illuminate a greater truth.

From omissions in the Chronicle editorial, I sense the editors and reporters of the Chronicle are among the tiny group of Americans, most of whom are brain dead or in solitary confinement, who haven’t seen the now famous “You Tube” video clip of Murtha dancing around a $50,000 ABSCAM bribe in 1980.

Murtha - Abscam

For Murtha and other unethical Democrats, "Happy days are here again!"
- Democrat theme song under FDR, and any time they are first at the public trough.

(For the American Spectator.org 53-minute uncut Murtha-ABSCAM video, go here)

They may have watched Murtha interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC “Hardball,” where Matthews lobbed Murtha softball questions and at the same time suggested answers that fit Murtha’s alibi, that he was just trying to bring investment to his district “for the people.”

I heard one Democrat already say, “You Republicans are desperate. That was like, you know, twenty-six years ago.”

Right. I think it was the same guy who said the forged Texas National Guard letters that were from, like, you know, over thirty years ago proved that George W. Bush was unfit to be president.

Murtha, like the idiots in both parties trying to pass themselves off as leaders, was also critical of the legal search of Congressman (D-La) William Jefferson’s congressional office after he accepted a bribe and stashed $90,000 of it in his home freezer. According to Murtha, many Democrats, and Republican “leaders” I am too embarrassed to mention, it is an abuse of Separation of Powers for the Administration to enforce the laws of the land it is sworn to uphold if it involves intrusion into the sacred caverns of congress, where privilege and arrogance reign supreme.

Fifty years ago last night, a musical inspired by Al Capp’s “Li’l Abner” opened on Broadway, and it was later made into a very entertaining movie. The songs featured some of the cleverest lyrics I have had the pleasure of hearing, and the lyrics of one were dedicated to the memory of the South’s most inglorious general.

As I review my thoughts of congressional leadership, I am reminded of the words that described the leadership of General Jubilation T. Cornpone, “First in war, first in peace, first to holler ‘I quit!’”

Obviously, a Democrat.

“With our ammunition gone
And faced with utter defeat
Who was it that burned the crops
And left us nothing to eat?”

With leadership in Congress like the Republicans before the election, and the Democrats after, all we can pray is our enemies laugh themselves to death.

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