Dull Dems Outfoxed Again In House

Out of the obscurity that is the House of Representatives rises this morning Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), a hero who may not have been known outside his district yesterday, but deserves a glow of national recognition today.

For it was Shadegg who yesterday gave the Dem leadership their most embarrassing moment since NanPo's screechy rise to Speaker, in a story well told by The Hill:

House Republicans on Tuesday nearly forced Democratic leaders to vote on a resolution to impeach Vice President Cheney.

Anti-war presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) introduced a privileged resolution, used to circumvent the committee process, to get his impeachment measure to the House floor.

The vote to kill Kucinch’s privileged resolution began as a largely party-line affair, but halfway through the vote, Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) persuaded Republican leaders to get rank-and-file GOP lawmakers to change their votes to force the debate.

At one point, the vote to table the motion stood at 246-165. Once Republicans began switching their votes, momentum swung the other way. When the vote stood at 205-206, some Democrats began switching their votes.

The vote to kill Kucinich’s resolution finally failed 162-251, giving Republicans the opportunity to watch Democrats debate whether to impeach Cheney — a debate in which many liberal Democrats were more than willing to engage.

House Republicans clearly enjoyed watching Democratic leaders squirm during the series of votes, which lasted more than one hour.

“The determination was made that if Democrats are going to waste time and resources with a resolution like this, then it should be thoroughly debated,” said Brian Kennedy, the spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), adding that the charges against Cheney were “ludicrous.”

NanPo, for her part, accused the GOP of "wasting time," and Steny Hoyer took the same tack, saying the little trick was “a continuation of Republicans’ gotcha games that achieve nothing more than short-term entertainment for themselves, while showing their disdain for the importance of the people’s business.”

If they were talking about the Dem's multiple failed efforts to pass various war-stopping resolutions and bills, their words could not be more spot-on.

hat-tip: memeorandum

No Cheney Stories On The Right Side Of The Blogosphere

The other day, I chastised Leftyblogs for running away from news that positioned Iran as a warmongering state that is actively involved in acts of war against U.S. and Coalition troops in Iraq.

In the interest of a degree of fairness we can never expect from the left, let's look this morning at the shoe that's suddenly on the other foot. The story is a significant one -- the Senate's issuance of subpoenas to Bush and Cheney for NSA surveillance materials (with three Republicans on board with the vote), and the refusal of the Administration to comply.

I'll use the same measuring standard I used last time, which admittedly is hardly scientific: The "Discussion" posts attached to the articles picked up by Memeorandum on the story. It's not a balanced sight:

The first story, Impeach Cheney from Slate, tacks on these Discussion blogs: The Impolitic, At-Largely, Danger Room, Democrats.com and State of the Day. A Lefty bunch.

Next comes Salon's The Imperial Vice Presidency, tagged with the blogs BartBlog, The Washington Note and Prairie Weather, another group of "Dick Cheney is the Devil" types.

That's followed by Harper's Cheney and the National Security Secrets Fraud, with just a tag from The Moderate Voice, who's opinion is, well, moderately anti-Cheney.

Finally, there's NYT's White House Drops Vice President's Dual Role Argument as Moot, with tag-alongs The Carpetbagger Report and TPMmuckraker.

Not a Power Line or Malkin or Hewitt or LGF among them. Suspicious, I checked each, and the story's not there. As usual, Memeorandum is scrupulously objective.

This is the weakness of the blogosphere: We tend to feed only in the cafeteria line that pleases us, and if we don't broaden our data gathering beyond our favorite blogs, we will be at risk of becoming like Germans limited to the one-sided outpourings of Goebbels. We're seeing this already on the left side of the blogosphere, where if you don't toe the party line, you're drubbed out in shame.

The story merits the attention of conservative blogs more familiar with the matter than C-SM. For my part, I stand by the NSA program as completely defensible despite the shots fired against it, and believe that therefore a vigorous defense is necessary. But I also feel the program is vitally important, so questions regarding its proper use need to be resolved -- hopefully without public squabbling.

I am deeply troubled by Cheney's recent behavior. I see no justification for his "dual role" argument and see it as dangerous to the principles of the Republic. I'm therefore gratified that the White House has charted a separate defense, and decided not to support Cheney's attempt to carve out a new definition of the vice presidency.

We would all be well-served to remember that Al Gore was once a vice president, and the current definition of the office served us all quite well then.

I despise the Congressional subpoena-fired witch hunts because they look backwards for blame when we should be looking forward for victory in the war on terror. While the NSA programs must be well-defined so presidents can be free to use them without fear of scandal, the course the Congress has taken is appallingly cavalier about national security.

Subpoenas and grandstanding Congressional hearings are the worst way to accomplish clarifying the use of electronic surveillance internationally and nationally in the war on terror. It would be far better to hammer out the process through the Intelligence committees, the Attorney General's office and the White House.

That will not happen, however, not because Bush is Imperial, but because the Dems have so poisoned the water with their Bush Derangement Syndrome that such solutions are impossible.

And if I were linked up to Memeorandum, that's what I'd say.

Oh! So This Is Why They Want Cheney To Die!

Every time Dick Cheney gets a hang-nail, the oh so PC and non-violent Left starts chirping loudly for his death. (Like the photo? It's a fav with the leftyblogs.)

Cheney's speech in DC today makes it pretty clear why they're so hell-bent on silencing him:

"When members of Congress pursue an anti-war strategy that's been called 'slow bleed,' they are not supporting the troops, they are undermining them," Cheney said in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

"Anyone can say they support the troops and we should take them at their word, but the proof will come when it's time to provide the money," he said.

"We expect the House and Senate to meet the needs of our military and the generals leading the troops in battle on time and in full measure," Cheney said.

"When members speak not of victory but of time limits, deadlines and other arbitrary measures, they are telling the enemy simply to watch the clock and wait us out," he said. (Source)

Ouch! Why can't he just quietly go along with America's left-led decline into, at best, an isolated former power or, at worst, one of the largest populations in the world to be under the crushing thumb of Sharia law?

Here Come The Dingbats

The Left -- you know, those people who really care about about people unlike those nasty Righties -- are spewing their vile bile the VEEP's way again, just as I knew they would:

She calls herself Blondesense, but she's really Blondenonsense:

It Would Kill Any Normal Person, But Noooooo . . . I'm sure it will take something more than this to bring the Big Dick down ppermanently. [sic]

As Liz noted in her post last week, he really is the Devil.

Bad enough for you? Well, Blondenonsense's commenters are much worse:

Maybe he should have follow up treatment at Walter Reed. What's good for the troops should be good enough for Big Dick.
D'Lo

Definitely send him to Walter Reed. Let him lie in his own urine. Then he will be supporting the troops. Satan he is.
Candy Schultz

If we're really lucky maybe the next time he growls out 'f*** yourself!' to someone the 'surge' in the creature's blood pressure will free the clot to travel straight to either it's heart or brain. Take your pick, both targets would do fine.
blackdog

I don't think it has a heart.
Candy Schultz

I'm surprised that he has any blood at all let alone any that might clot since Coultergeist sucks it all for her own perverse pleasure. [Coultergeist?! That actually is rather clever.]
Father Tyme

All this proves is that if there is a God, he has LOUSY F****** AIM.
Saborlas

Over at Hoffmania, a comment posted by someone named oldgringo shows the Left's inability to differentiate on matters of morality:

I was n [sic] my early teens when first Musolini [sic] then Hitler died with Joe Goebbels & family, and I don't recall that anyone I knew even spared a "CHRISTIAN MOMENT" to pray for their "departed souls" or shed even ONE sad tear (either in their bucket of beer or elsewhere) at the news.

It seems that the "normal human reaction" at the "passing" of such evil persons is "usually" greeted with sense of relief and an attitude of "good riddence"! [sic -- and many just plain silly quote marks]

Must be a message in "thar" someplavce [sic], don't ya think?

Yeah, I do think there's a message in there somewhere. The Left can't tell the difference between genocidal murders of millions for no purpose other than their own megalomaniac fanasies and a man who believes in using war to remove such people from power, so the subjected can become free.

hat-tip: Real Clear Politics

Disgust Alert!

You might want to steer clear of leftyblogs this evening if hate-filled, vile, insensitive language is not your cup o' tea. Here's why, as moved by The Press Association at 3:01 p.m. Pacific:

US Vice President Dick Cheney has a blood clot in his left leg, tests have revealed.

He will be treated with blood thinning medication for several months, a spokeswoman said.

Cheney visited his doctor's surgery in Washington after feeling minor discomfort in his calf, said spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride.

An ultrasound showed he was suffering the blood clot, a "deep venous thrombosis", in his left lower leg, she said.

Cheney, 66, returned to the White House after the medical exam and continued his work day.

"He'll maintain his regular schedule," McBride said.

"He feels fine."

You'll recall all the wishes he was dead that followed news of the attack on a base in Afghanistan he was visting last week. Expect more of the same today from the foul-mouthed, violent, hateful souls that speak for the American Left.

Not Available For Comment

If you didn't catch the rabidly bad taste comments on HuffPost regarding the lame but fatal Taliban assassination attempt on the VEEP, you won't find them there now.

(You can find a good representative sampling still at Amy Proctor's blog. Don't worry, Amy's purged the ****-load of mindlessly obscene leftyspeak.)

There's terrifying significance to the fact that so many Americans feel comfortable saying, and believing, comments like this:

You can never find a competent suicide bomber when you need one.

or

You can never find a competent suicide bomber when you need one.

But you know that, so let's talk instead about blog ethics. Was it right for HuffPost to do this:

Over the last few hours, the more than 400 comments appended to the Huffington Post’s news item on the attack in Afghanistan on a base being visited by Vice-President Dick Cheney have been expunged from the site. At first the comments were closed, then gradually shrunken and for a short time completely expunged from The Huffington Post as the heat on the Cheney hate fest built up over the day. (Pajamas Media)

I would certainly have deleted the obscene ones myself, and edited some others, but HuffPost did something entirely different, deleting comments like "Cheney's spokeswoman said he was fine. F***" and keeping comments like "glad the vp is ok." PajamasMedia says:

The comments now visible are evidently cherry-picked out of the original thread to give some sort of “tone” to the thread that it did not originally possess. It is really amazing what you can do to history with just a few strokes of the keyboard.

Now it is one thing to close comments, another thing to erase them, but something else altogether different to actually “edit” the thread to give a false impression.

A conscious decision was made at HuffPost to allow comments to be posted without monitoring, then another conscious decision was made to delete offending comments only after the sickest of them had spread through the blogosphere and conservative radio.

Disgusting posts were going up as early as 8:15 a.m., but the comments weren't deleted until around 2:50 p.m. -- so the posts were there for about five and a half hours, and OK with HuffPost for at least four hours, assuming it would take the Huffies 90 minutes to hash out what they'd do and do it.

Their decision was a terrible one. First, it will really, really tick off HuffPost's readers and will do longterm damage to the blog's credibility among its primary readers.

It was hypocritical. You can't blast the Bush admin day after day -- right up to the original headline of the post, “Cheney ‘Targeted’ Deadly Afghan Blast,” -- then purge the overly critical comments, creating a false impression of the blog and its readers.

And for that reason, HuffPost's decision was terribly unethical.

As the PajamaMedia writer nicely pointed out, you can't ask the 400 commenters what they think of being deleted: They're not available for comment.

What Would Tip Do?

Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi got so mad at Dick Cheney, she called the Prez to give him a piece of her mind.

I had felt nervous about my post yesterday questioning Hillary's recent action as overly female, but that nervousness was wiped away by this reassuring -- and very humorous -- news. Hillary getting her staff to melt down for her over David Geffen's honest statement about the Clintons was typically Clintonesque, typical of a political hack ... and it reflected certain womanly characteristics that men in politics pretty much don't share. (Well, maybe Dan Foley does.)

As I read of our Dem leader's impulsive and pointless phone call, I thought of Tip O'Neill, the crusty Bostonian Dem House leader from 1977-1987. Would Tip have grabbed the phone to tell Reagan a piece of his mind? Doubtful. He would have poured himself a Scotch, sworn a blue streak, and gotten on with business.

Not NanPo.

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday phoned President Bush to air her complaints over Vice President Dick Cheney's comments that the Congressional Democrats' plan for Iraq would "validate the Al Qaeda strategy."

Pelosi, who said she could not reach the president, said Cheney's comments wrongly questioned critics' patriotism and ignored Bush's call for openness on Iraq strategy.

"You cannot say as the president of the United States, 'I welcome disagreement in a time of war,' and then have the vice president of the United States go out of the country and mischaracterize a position of the speaker of the House and in a manner that says that person in that position of authority is acting against the national security of our country," the speaker said.

Pelosi, at a news conference in San Francisco, said Cheney's criticism of Democrats was "beneath the dignity of the debate we're engaged in and a disservice to our men and women in uniform, whom we all support."

"And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to call the president and tell him I disapprove of what the vice president said," Pelosi said. "It has no place in our debate." Bush had previously urged her to call him when a member of his administration stepped over the line by questioning Democrats' patriotism, she said. (Fox)

On the Geffen matter, while Hil was saying she was running a positive campaign, whe was directing her staff to be anything but. On this, NanPo criticized the Prez for not welcoming debate because of his Veep's statement -- then behaved like someone who would allow no debate whatsoever.

Cheney's statement was pointed but hardly what Pelosi characterized it to be:

"I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we will do is validate the Al Qaeda strategy. The Al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people ... try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit."

What about that is beneath debate? What about it debases the men and women in the military? What about it questions the patriotism of NanPo and her senile lapdog? And where was NanPo's answer? Non-existent! Because it's "beneath debate!" Says who? We really want to hear why the Dem plan doesn't build up al Qaeda.

Tip would have sucked Cheney's comment in with a deep draw of cigar smoke, washed it down with a barley beverage, and colorfully pointed out errors and shortfalls in Cheney's statements, character and politics. It would have been memorable and probably strategic.

What did Nancy get? Hung out to dry by the President's Chief of Staff. The First Female Speaker of the House didn't even know that you don't herald a call to the President unless you're sure he's in.

The two most powerful women in American politics are doing nothing to promote women in politics by this kind of behavior.