Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Pelosi's pandering


Jeffrey Hadden briefly explains to us just what Nancy Pelosi's job description is:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems to be confused about the office she holds. She is the speaker, not the president. She is traveling in the Middle East, and intends to go to Syria with "great hope" for reviving U.S. relations with that nation, the Associated Press reports.

That is not her role. Article II, section 2 of the Constitution grants treaty making power to the president, and ratification to the Senate. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., which is still the law of the land, made it clear that:

"In this vast external realm (of foreign affairs), with its important, complicated, delicate and manifold problems, the President alone has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation. He makes treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate; but he alone negotiates. Into the field of negotiation the Senate cannot intrude; and Congress itself is powerless to invade it."

The speaker is getting ahead of herself. We only have one president at a time in this country.


This is one case in which I would not want to be a fly on the wall. It might make me sick. The headlines say Pelosi brings message of peace. I suppose that message went something like this: Go right ahead helping to kill our soldiers in Iraq. Go right ahead assasinating people in Lebanon. Do whatever you like and know that the Democrats in Washington will be more than happy to kiss your ass.

Maybe when she gets back she could start a new tradition of Hajib Day in the House. She could just require all the female members to cover themselves and refrain {for at least one day a year} from looking like infidel whores. I mean really, if Pelosi is going to make a fool of herself and her country on a world stage, why half ass it?

UPDATE: From Ed Morrisey :

The Jerusalem Post notes that the Israeli Prime Minister's office had to issue a "clarification" after Nancy Pelosi attempted to deliver a message from Ehud Olmert to Syria's Bashar Assad. The PMO's statement contradicts Pelosi and points up the problems when amateurs attempt to involve themselves in sensitive diplomacy:

The Prime Minister's Office issued a rare "clarification" Wednesday that, in gentle diplomatic terms, contradicted US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's statement in Damascus that she had brought a message from Israel about a willingness to engage in peace talks.

According to the statement, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert emphasized in his meeting with Pelosi on Sunday that "although Israel is interested in peace with Syria, that country continues to be part of the Axis of Evil and a force that encourages terror in the entire Middle East."

Olmert, the statement clarified, told Pelosi that Syria's sincerity about a genuine peace with Israel would be judged by its willingness to "cease its support of terror, cease its sponsoring of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations, refrain from providing weapons to Hizbullah and bringing about the destabilizing of Lebanon, cease its support of terror in Iraq, and relinquish the strategic ties it is building with the extremist regime in Iran."


So Nancy forgot that whole terrorism thingee, what's the big deal? Right?

Another Update --- Quote of the day:
It's one thing to be a college student, drunk on Jello shots, at the beach bar in Daytona, lifting your shirt for some dope with a video camera. It is something else to be the Speaker of the House, drunk on power, making a fool of yourself by pretending to be a diplomat and going to the Syrian desert. (Rich Galen)

7 comments:

Barry Dauphin said...

Truly amazing considering all of the posturing from Dems about Bush's illegitimacy. The speaker is literally trying to have her own forign policy (unless she is secretly working in cahoots with Bush--sorry it must be something I ate).

buddy larsen said...

On way home, Pelosi & entourage stop off for quicK visit in Afghanistan:

Unknown said...

syl:

Yeah, I hope those pissed off conservatives who refused to vote because there is just no difference in the parties are proud of themselves.

I would write Ellsworth again, but if I send him another nasty note he will probably send the state cops out to check on m.

This is not going to make life any easier for the blue dogs like Ellsworth. After all he ran on a ticket further to the right than I am.

buddy larsen said...

Blue Dogs, so far

buddy larsen said...

We have to work on both, coisty--foreign policy and domestic policy both.

But you can't really say/do everything at the same time, you have to bow to the space/time continuum, and put thoughts and actions in "sequence".

For example, this particular thread has a topic, but that doesn't mean that there are no other topics in the universe.

That's not to say we should ignore all else but the current thought or act, say as an autism sufferer must, but that a singular entity cannot, according to the laws of nature, occupy more than one space at any given point in time.

But yes, the 100,000 or so accidental and/or criminal deaths USA has suffered since the 2000 census, are every one a crying shame, and need to be, should continue to be, addressed by the citizenry in a fashion commensurate with effective and acceptable results.

buddy larsen said...

To more specifically illustrate the confusion that might arise from a careless understanding of "relatedness":

If one were to be concerned with, say, the illegal immigration problem, but found oneself momentarily ignorant of the fact that people "think" by connecting separate but related items, one might, say, find oneself posting blog comments claiming that to be a conservative requires that concern about the Speaker's trip must equal, or amount to, reverse racism in favor of "brown people" illegally entering the USA in order to have fatal head-on traffic collisions with American girls.

Such comments might in turn prompt a reader to wonder "What exactly is he conserving--the use of his brain?"

This sort of speculation (being as it were likely not what the commenter will have intended) should illuminate the purpose behind Mother Nature's habit of sorting by "like with like".

And this illumination would hopefully help the commenter understand what it is that conservatism should seek to conserve, as well as what it that conservatism should seek to avoid conserving.

Unknown said...

And you know something coisty? One of my best friends was killed in a head on with a drunk driver, and the fact that the driver was an American citizen did not make that death any easier to bear.

And by the way, conservatives do care about Syria, don't think they don't. They just underestimated Pelosi's stupidity because they were too busy overestimating their own strength.