Pelosi fucks over the ‘lesser people’

What would a despicable coward do?

Jane Hamsher of Fire Dog Lake tells us what Polosi wanted to do and explains how she did it:

FDL has learned that in a last minute move, Nancy Pelosi sneaked language into the rule that the House is voting on tonight regarding war funding.

Embedded in the rule is the requirement that the House will vote on the deficit commission's recommendations in the lame duck session if they pass the Senate.

The commission, co-chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, is packed with members who favor the raising the retirement age to 70, means testing, and private accounts. Many also support investing 20% of the Social Security trust fund in the stock market.

It's ironic that yesterday Pelosi sent out press releases criticizing John Boehner for expressing the very same positions on cutting Social Security benefits that Jim Clyburn, Joe Biden and Steny Hoyer have. She's putting this language into the rule in order to deflect responsibility from herself when it comes to the floor for a vote during a lame duck session, since without her approval that could never happen.

Pelosi knows full well what the committee wants to do. The fix is in.

The Democratic Party opts for war

Jeremy Scahill reports:

In a vote that should go down in recent histories as a day of shame for the Democrats, on Tuesday the House voted to approve another $106 billion dollars for the bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and increasingly Pakistan). To put a fine point on the interconnection of the iron fist of U.S. militarism and the hidden hand of free market neoliberal economics, the bill included a massive initiative to give the International Monetary Fund billions more in U.S. taxpayer funds.

What once Democrats could argue was "Bush's war," they now officially own. In fact, only five Republicans voted for the supplemental (though overwhelmingly not on the issue of the war funding). Ron Paul, who made clear he was voting against the war, was a notable exception.

This vote has revealed a sobering statistic for the anti-war movement in this country and brought to the surface a broader issue that should give die-hard partisan Democrats who purport to be anti-war reason for serious pause about the actual state of their party. Only 30 Democrats voted against the war funding when it mattered. And these 30 did so in the face of significant threats to their political future from the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That means that only 30 out of 256 Democrats are willing to stand up to the war and the current president presiding over it.

Where can the Democrats go now that there is no place left to hide?

Some crisis links (11.9.2008)

Writing for the Washington Post (via Naked Capitalism), Joseph Stiglitz warns the President-elect to expect a long, deep and career-defining recession. "The first task facing President-elect Obama, after eight years of misguided economic policies, will be to begin the recovery — or at least forestall a further decline. It won't be easy," Stiglitz counsels. Stiglitz's reforms are radical given the ideological tenor and institutional decay of the past 40 years. Together they amount to a new economic model. This

…model will require changes in the ways and places where we live and work. There will be some losers (including the oil industry, which has done jarringly well in recent years), but there will be even more winners.

In so many ways, the United States has reached a low point. Picking ourselves up off the ground is itself no mean achievement. But I hope that our new president will do even more for us than that.

What is a crisis? It is a moment of dusk and dawn, of death and birth.

China, in response to its slowing growth rate, announced a $586B stimulus plan, according to the New York Times.

Congressional Democrats have also caught the spirit of reform. They want to divert a part of Paulson's gift to Wall Street by giving it to America's faltering auto industry (see this and this). Following the President-elect's lead, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wants Congress to pass a stimulus package before January, according to the Journal.

Democrats prove their irrelevance once again

Nancy Pelosi appears willing, according to The Hill, to support the wicked bailout Plan but only if Congressional Republicans do the same!

…Pelosi (D-Calif.) has effectively sent the message that if she is going to jump off a cliff to rescue Wall Street, she wants House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and George W. Bush holding her hands when she leaps.

Pelosi made this scenario clear at a lengthy closed-door meeting of House Democrats on Tuesday. Many of those present said they took Pelosi's message to mean that a "majority of the minority" needs to support the bill before she will bring it to the floor.

It does not matter if the Plan is a constitutional mistake, irrational and immoral to boot. What matters to Pelosi and her party is that they avoid taking the blame for passing this appalling bill.

Disgraceful.