bloviators.net BloviBlog

Ok – so I promised I would be back, and what a week to get back into the bloviation game.  Nancy Pelosi.  All I can think of to say about this mess that Madam Speaker has created is ‘wow.’  It would seem that the democrats, in their blind rage of efforts to discredit everything the former Bush administration did, have opened up a Pandora’s box that now seems to include everyone – including the very people who started this mess in the first place.

Let’s think logically for a few moments.  If you know that your fingerprints are all over something, are you really going to go straight to the police to file a complaint?

Let’s think even more logically for a few moments and take a few steps back.  The word “torture” has been thrown around by a lot of people on the left…”torture memos” and “torture photos” are all over the news.  “Enhanced interrogation techniques” (or EIT) are the subject of every other news story on the 6 o’clock news each night.  If all you did was listen to the media coverage (like, I should point out, the rest of the world does) you would think we were cutting off fingers, shooting prisoners in the knees, and breaking toes one at a time until prisoners talked.  This is, contrary to what you might be hearing on MSNBC, is just not the case.

To put it as simply as possible, something your brother did to you when you were 9 years old, like throwing a beetle on you, making you eat bugs, or throwing sand in your face is just NOT TORTURE!  By and large, these are the types of EIT tactics that the government has used.  We’re talking about making someone listen to Pantera with the volume turned up (hmmm…no different than sitting at a traffic light in Jacksonville during Spring Break).  We’re talking about a prisoner who was made to sleep in a cell at Guantanamo with the air conditioning turned up so the room was cold.  Ok – come on here, Git-mo is pretty hot, I mean, it’s in Cuba, so is turning on the AC really that bad?

I could go on and on, but I digress…back to Speaker Pelosi and her constantly changing story about what she knew, didn’t know, was told, wasn’t told, forgot about, and now it seems, was lied to about.

So first she didn’t know anything about it.  Then it turns out she was at a briefing where she was told about the EIT’s we were using, but she’s so intelligent that she thought they were talking about something they would do in the future.

To pause for a minute:  First – I’m so proud that my house speaker is so smart that she can’t even understand the present, past, and future tense in an important briefing.  That makes me feel real good about the direction our congress is headed.  Second, even if she thought they “were” going to use these techniques but hadn’t yet, if she objected to them shy didn’t she speak up?

So next those pesky facts that politicians hate so much started to catch up with Pelosi.  Her story changed from not knowing that they had used EITs to now saying she wasn’t consulted, just told about it.  That didn’t make much sense, so then she threw one of her aides under the bus and claimed that he went to some briefing and told her, well, something.  That’s not very clear based on her comments.

Confused yet?  Well so was the press, even the liberal press, so they continued to press the speaker for answers.  It came to a head earlier this week when Pelosi gave a press conference that could have been a public service announcement to keep children from doing drugs.

This is the best part, at least to The Bloviator.  If you look past all of the erratic and spastic body language (the speaker looked like she was dancing the robot during the presser) the basic point she made was that the CIA must have lied to her.  This is about the stupidest thing The Bloviator has ever heard, especially since there is a stack of documentation to support what really happened during the briefing.  Apparently Pelosi is either the one lying herself, in some desperate attempt to blame the Bush administration for something she herself was aware of and condoned at the time, or she has somehow been able to convince herself that the garbage she’s spouting is the truth.

One way or another, she’s single-handedly been able to take an issue away from the left and point the gun straight at herself.  We’ll see how it plays out – The Bloviator predicts that nothing will come of it, as Pelosi is from the San Francisco district where just about everyone is drinking the Kool-Aid – but it’s a fun ride nonetheless, and at the least she has been able to make this issue so toxic that no one seems interested in it anymore, including the White House.  Press  Secretary Robert Gibbs essentially said in a briefing a few days ago that he, and by proxy Obama, weren’t touching this with a ten foot pole, and that’s fine with The Bloviator.

So, sit back and watch the fireworks.  I cannot wait to see what she says next.  Maybe she’ll claim that aliens from space (working in conjunction with the Bush administration of course) modified her memory.

 
As you no doubt are now aware, the US House of Representatives voted down the mortgage bail-out bill yesterday afternoon by a vote of 228 against, 205 in favor.  The Bloviator sees many reasons for the failure of this bill, not the least of which being the huge popular uprising against the measure.

What the heck happened?

Our congressional leadership spent the last week and a half meeting behind closed doors, supposedly negotiating the details of this package.  If you listened to the pundits yesterday after the failed vote you must have heard everyone involved blaming everyone else.  The finger-pointing was rampant.  Republican congressmen blamed Speaker Pelosi for her needlessly partisan comments just prior to the vote in which she placed the blame for this whole mess on the President’s policies.  The Democrats blamed the Republican congressional leadership for not bringing enough votes to the table from their side – although Speaker Pelosi allowed members from her side to vote against the measure, including 5 of her senior committee chairmen and 13 junior congressmen from swing-states where they might be in jeopardy of losing their seats.

Barack Obama parroted the Speaker’s comments, placing blame on the Republicans and their “failed policies” of the last 8 years.  Senator John Kerry appeared on the O’Reilly Factor last night to blame the “greed” of the Republicans, and Senator John McCain gave a speech yesterday afternoon where he placed the blame on Speaker Pelosi and Barack Obama for needlessly bringing partisan politics into the mix.  Senator McCain at least said that “Now is not the time to fix the blame; it’s time to fix the problem.”  The Bloviator agrees with this assessment – now is the time to fix the problem, however I do not believe that the bill sent to the floor yesterday afternoon was the solution.

Enough is Enough.

We are in a situation where the deaf are leading the blind, and unfortunately, no one is listening to the American people.  The Bloviator has a great respect for the congressmen and women that voted against this package yesterday knowing that we would be potentially facing the worst financial situation in this country since 1929.  It takes courage to stand up for what the people want in the face of staunch opposition; from the President on the right to Speaker Pelosi on the left.

The markets reacted yesterday, and not in a positive way.  You could say the markets also voted – and their vote was in favor of the bail-out.  There is, however, a right way and a wrong way to do everything.  The Bloviator thinks we, as a collective of American people, need to say enough is enough.  We cannot continue to solve our problems by passing the buck to our children and grandchildren.  This has been to solution to far too many of our nation’s problems over the years, and I, for one, and ready to dig in my heels and stand firm on this one.  We can work together to create a package favorable to both the markets and the American taxpayers if we check our politics at the door and actually work on the problem, not on the press releases attacking the other side of the aisle or placing blame.  

Yes – the markets will likely react negatively.  Yes – it will weaken America’s position in the world, and potentially weaken the rest of the world with us.  Yes – it will mean that the average American is going to feel a pinch, and yes – we would likely head into a recession.  But – we would have actually solved something.  

The Bloviator calls on the American people to stand together and agree to draw a line in the sand.  As Senator McCain said, we can work out all the blame later on.  Right now we need to stand togehter and work on the solution – a solution that is fair to all parties.  At some point we need to refuse to simply pass the buck to the next generation and hope for miracles.