Christian Hartsock
Pelosi-whipped
By Christian Hartsock
"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." -Ecclesiastes 1:9 (New International Version)
Perhaps when he said, "I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can't get my wife to go swimming," Jimmy Carter could have just taken advice from one current senator from Massachusetts. Did the fact that the late Mary Jo Kopechne may not have had going for a dip in the Boston Harbor scheduled on the night of July 18, 1969 stop the senator from taking her for one? Charlie Manson is in San Quentin. Teddy Kennedy is on Capitol Hill. The difference is the location, the fact that Manson auditioned for the Monkees and was rejected while Kennedy auditioned for the Senate and was welcomed — and the fact that the latter still has a little help from his friends. To quote a line from P.T. Anderson's brilliant film Magnolia, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."
Our troops have gone for a dip, but for much the same reasons Richard Dreyfuss went for a dip in "Jaws," and for much the same reason Leo DiCaprio stayed in the water in "Titanic": They've gone for a swim to kill sharks and remained in the water to keep innocents on rafts. But these are difficult tasks to sufficiently fulfill when those deployed to fulfill them are yoked to a rather heavy anchor — known best as the 110th Congress.
The 110th Congress of today is modeled rather uncannily after the 93rd Congress of the early 1970s. The 93rd belonged to the same party as the executive powers that originally deployed U.S. troops to Vietnam in 1961, just as the 110th belongs to the same party as the executive powers that endorsed the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998, the literature of which included then-Iraqi National Congress Executive Council President Ahmed Chalabi writing, "President Clinton's action today is the most appropriate response to Saddam. Let him know that Iraqis will rise up to liberate themselves from his totalitarian dictatorship and that the US is ready to help their democratic forces with arms to do so. Only then will the trail of tragedy in Iraq end. Only then will Iraq be free of weapons of mass destruction."
The 110th granted President George W. Bush official congressional authorization to invade Iraq in 2002. What the president apparently missed were alleged penumbras in the authorization stipulating that he perpetuate his "rush to war" (quote courtesy of John Kerry — the other senator from Massachusetts with major girl problems) even longer than 18 months so as to avail extended time for the French to consider providing their indispensable military prowess (and for Saddam to export his WMDs to Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey, by the way, as confirmed by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission as of June 2004 but conveniently ignored by the The New York Times), because as we all know, even the virtually anonymous blood sacrifices of 31 other nations still constitutes "unilateral" so long as the Parisians aren't on board!
The Pelosis, the Reids, the Obamas, the Kerrys, the Kennedys and the Clintons have made it abundantly clear that they "support the troops" and "support the Iraqi people." Oh, but at the same time, our troops aren't strong enough to handle a guerilla war so let's cut their funding, publicly humiliate them and force them to surrender. Oh, and the Iraqi people are too intellectually inferior to handle democracy so let's not even give them a chance. Theocratic dictatorship seems more suited for them. They're like, used to that, right?
Let's bring the troops home, it's not fair that no one ever warned them voluntary military enlistment potentially entailed physical injury or death. (Not that undergrads are ever warned that voluntary Princeton, Berkeley or Boulder enlistment potentially entails Orwellian indoctrination, and not that live third-trimester fetuses are ever warned that even involuntary conception often literally entails Hannibal Lecter treatment.)
Perhaps if they insist upon perpetuating their incessant "We support the troops, but..." disclaimers which are often followed by internationally public declarations of American impotence both military and executive as well as rain checks on next week's allowance for our soldiers, the Democrats should consider putting their mouths where their money is. (You know, like Ms. Lewinsky. Unless her internship was pro-bono, that is.)
Now the same congressional majority party that willingly authorized the president to deploy troops to Iraq (which now apparently claims in retrospect that the authorization was merely conditional under the assumption that Bush continue to utter "yes massah" whenever House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tells him what's what — how did we miss that, by the way?) is rather hung-up about the inconvenient fact that fighting a war actually implies a commitment costlier than a Malibu beachfront down payment, longer than a Clinton fling with an intern and deeper than the pharynx thereof — the potential collateral damage of which is even graver than suspicious stains on a subpoenaed Gap dress.
Even after 407,300 U.S. military deaths in our four-year engagement in World War II — as opposed to some 3,000 in our four-year engagement in Iraq — the "Greatest Generation" never whined about why we're not there yet or when the next gas station will come as President Franklin Roosevelt — as reckless as he was in the context of U.S.-Soviet relations — calmly shepherded us towards V-E day every night by the living room fireplace, and those that did whine were rather fortunate to have narrowly dodged the Sedition Act of 1918 by a couple of decades. (And last I checked we ended up defeating the Germans. Thank God we had some non-Vichy French by our side to assist us in, well, liberating France.)
Enter CBS newsman Walter Cronkite breaking the news to us in 1968 that the Vietnam War was unwinnable — coincidentally the same year a Republican president takes office who actually planned to win the war (aw, shucks!), followed by New York Times publisher Pinch Sulzberger who between a North Vietnamese and an American soldier claimed he "would want to see the American guy get shot," followed by Dan Rather digging dirt on our wartime commander-in-chief that was so dirty I could only bear to disclose it to you in Microsoft Word form, followed by Cindy Sheehan warning the president that if he doesn't render the blood sacrifices of some 3,000 uniformed American patriots in vain as compensation for the fact that her son happened to be one of those patriots — she won't eat for another few days, followed by Michael Moore spewing the same jive about the "fictitious" terrorist threat that German Jews were fed in the 1930s, followed by Al Franken seriously eyeing a Minnesota Senate seat because "Doggonit, people like me!"
If I had to speculate, I'd say we started choking on the Kool-Aid somewhere along the lines of die-hard presidential hopeful John Edwards essentially telling us to stop funding a global war on terror that doesn't exist so he can better afford his next haircut — the same day the 2,817th U.S. death in that nonexistant war was confirmed (two days prior to Memorial Day), back to President Carter mocking mindful Americans for their "inordinate fear of communism" as the Soviets extended their sphere of influence to South America under his watch, all the way back to President Roosevelt telling a diplomat disclosing domestic Soviet infiltration to "go fu*k yourself" as paid agents of Moscow swarmed the Roosevelt administration like a honeycomb. Oh, I'm sorry — your professors never taught you this? Well then I must be making it up.
President Bush's problem is not that he so presumptuously took the Democrats up on their go-ahead with going to war with Iraq, but that he's a president with an "R" next to his name who actually wants to win it, and came pretty close a couple years ago. Too close. After the Democrats got us into Vietnam, the moment an incredibly popular opposing party leader who planned to win the war (this being four years after Barry Goldwater had already suggested the idea) came into office — funding was cut, aid was cut, his executive authorities were harnessed and "Watergate scandal" would soon become a household phrase (alongside "Sit on it, Chauchie!").
Liberals including Richard A. Clarke, Bill Clinton, Bob Graham, et cetera, warned us in the '90s of Saddam's impending threat, not to mention his WMDs and collaboration with Osama bin-Laden. (Anyone remember Clarke defending Clinton's '98 bombing of a Sudanese aspirin factory on the basis that bin-Laden had been using it to manufacture WMDs "in cooperation with the Iraqis"? This was years before he told the 9/11 Commission that Bush lied about WMDs and some link between Saddam and terrorism to invade Iraq. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?) But Bush came into office saying he was "tired of swatting flies," actually tried to do something about it and is now inarguably a greater anathema on the left than bin-Laden himself.
If President Bush's impeachable offense was invading Iraq on false pretenses, then why were President Clinton's articles of impeachment predicated on mere Easter Sunday blowjob sessions being that those pretenses were originally his idea? If it was allowing 9/11 to occur eight months into his first term, then God help Bill Clinton for only responding to a consistent string of American-aimed Muslim attacks once throughout his first eight years in the White House ("first eight" not a typo) — conveniently around the same time his favorite little Oval Office intern-with-benefits appeared before the Grand Jury. (This was regarding the only Clinton scandal liberals allow us to remember — and only after they've already brought it up as a comparison to Bush lying about WMDs, or if you will, merely upholding another apparent Clinton lie.)
The 93rd Congress had Watergate. This one has Vice President Dick Cheney allegedly dropping the name of Valerie Plame, 007. Clinton's national security advisor, Sandy Berger, physically stuffs in his boxers classified national archive documents that apparently didn't happen to make his boss look anymore like Elvis Presley during the 9/11 Commission investigation and gets fined $50,000 (almost enough for an Edwards haircut). President Dick Nixon attempts to cover up a burglary he had no prior knowledge of nor direct involvement in and is subject to resigning and living the final twenty years of his depressing incommunicado existence on golf courses. (And no accounts of paparazzi being served knuckle sandwiches like another acquitted liberal darling I know of.) Hopefully Berger got his copy of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" in the mail.
Nixon's real crime was not Watergate, it was being a popular Republican with sincere interest in cleaning up a mess the Democrats had made, and coming too close to succeeding at it to their embarrassment. To this day, any post-baby-boomer is instantaneously dismissed as yet another inbred Christian theocrat who wants to re-segregate lunch counters if they dare ask for follow-up on any historical account — ranging from Nixon's earlier work, Sen. Joe McCarthy's possible validity (actually confirmed validity but I'll be nice and say "possible"), who exactly Ronald Reagan was outside the Iran-Contra context, or precisely what sins the current administration has committed that the previous one doesn't share culpability for even on account of categorically dissimilar ulterior motives, or what our president has been trying to tell us for years without Madame Speaker finishing his sentences for him and telling us what he "really" meant.
After the president threatened to veto one of the latest surrender bills (having spent years being criticized for never vetoing anything), Speaker Pelosi told him to "calm down with the threats. There's a new Congress in town..." (Wha-chh!!!) "...We respect your constitutional role. We want you to respect ours..." (Does he have a choice?) "...This war must end. The American people have lost faith in the present conduct of this war..." (I never said that but thanks for keeping us in mind, Nancy.) "...This war is diminishing the strength of this military..." (I'm assuming now Pelosi can bench-press more than your average G.I.) "...When the president says he wants to veto this bill, he is saying, 'I am vetoing accountability...'" (Oh that's what he was saying. Must've slipped through the transcripts. Thank you.) "...I just wish the president would take a deep breath...Take a deep breath, Mr. President." (Women. Can't live with 'em. Can't fire 'em from Congress.)
Sarcasm aside, Mrs. Speaker, I regret to be the only one saying this, but I don't care what party you or he are affiliated with — as the leader of the U.S. House of Representatives publicly appearing before the national press during a time of war, how dare you talk to the President like that. If liberal deity Abe Lincoln were in office today, your habeas corpus would be suspended and you would be in prison. No exaggeration.
Russian dissidents ended up in the gulag. German dissidents ended up in Auschwitz. CBS dissidents ended up at The Wall Street Journal. Cuban dissidents are sent to prison (either by Fidel Castro or Janet Reno). Israeli Jews who question the saint status of PLO Chairman Yasir "Push the Jews into the Sea" Arafat — God, or, someone, rest his soul — end up in bodybags (assuming there are any recognizable bodies accounted for at the scene of last night's literal disco inferno). Americans who dare second-guess the Democratic agenda and place logic above emotion, solutions above problems and unflinching observation above unconditional receptivity, will get their fifteen minutes of historical recognition in a high school history textbook in the same paragraph as the Fuhrer of the Third Reich — who in contradistinction will read as more fitting for the Missionaries of Charity section.
You got what you asked for, liberals. Let's see what you decide to do with it this time. In other news, I hear cable is now airing reruns of "The Wonder Years"...
"The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them." -Ecclesiastes 9:11
© Christian Hartsock
"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." -Ecclesiastes 1:9 (New International Version)
Perhaps when he said, "I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can't get my wife to go swimming," Jimmy Carter could have just taken advice from one current senator from Massachusetts. Did the fact that the late Mary Jo Kopechne may not have had going for a dip in the Boston Harbor scheduled on the night of July 18, 1969 stop the senator from taking her for one? Charlie Manson is in San Quentin. Teddy Kennedy is on Capitol Hill. The difference is the location, the fact that Manson auditioned for the Monkees and was rejected while Kennedy auditioned for the Senate and was welcomed — and the fact that the latter still has a little help from his friends. To quote a line from P.T. Anderson's brilliant film Magnolia, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."
Our troops have gone for a dip, but for much the same reasons Richard Dreyfuss went for a dip in "Jaws," and for much the same reason Leo DiCaprio stayed in the water in "Titanic": They've gone for a swim to kill sharks and remained in the water to keep innocents on rafts. But these are difficult tasks to sufficiently fulfill when those deployed to fulfill them are yoked to a rather heavy anchor — known best as the 110th Congress.
The 110th Congress of today is modeled rather uncannily after the 93rd Congress of the early 1970s. The 93rd belonged to the same party as the executive powers that originally deployed U.S. troops to Vietnam in 1961, just as the 110th belongs to the same party as the executive powers that endorsed the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998, the literature of which included then-Iraqi National Congress Executive Council President Ahmed Chalabi writing, "President Clinton's action today is the most appropriate response to Saddam. Let him know that Iraqis will rise up to liberate themselves from his totalitarian dictatorship and that the US is ready to help their democratic forces with arms to do so. Only then will the trail of tragedy in Iraq end. Only then will Iraq be free of weapons of mass destruction."
The 110th granted President George W. Bush official congressional authorization to invade Iraq in 2002. What the president apparently missed were alleged penumbras in the authorization stipulating that he perpetuate his "rush to war" (quote courtesy of John Kerry — the other senator from Massachusetts with major girl problems) even longer than 18 months so as to avail extended time for the French to consider providing their indispensable military prowess (and for Saddam to export his WMDs to Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey, by the way, as confirmed by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission as of June 2004 but conveniently ignored by the The New York Times), because as we all know, even the virtually anonymous blood sacrifices of 31 other nations still constitutes "unilateral" so long as the Parisians aren't on board!
The Pelosis, the Reids, the Obamas, the Kerrys, the Kennedys and the Clintons have made it abundantly clear that they "support the troops" and "support the Iraqi people." Oh, but at the same time, our troops aren't strong enough to handle a guerilla war so let's cut their funding, publicly humiliate them and force them to surrender. Oh, and the Iraqi people are too intellectually inferior to handle democracy so let's not even give them a chance. Theocratic dictatorship seems more suited for them. They're like, used to that, right?
Let's bring the troops home, it's not fair that no one ever warned them voluntary military enlistment potentially entailed physical injury or death. (Not that undergrads are ever warned that voluntary Princeton, Berkeley or Boulder enlistment potentially entails Orwellian indoctrination, and not that live third-trimester fetuses are ever warned that even involuntary conception often literally entails Hannibal Lecter treatment.)
Perhaps if they insist upon perpetuating their incessant "We support the troops, but..." disclaimers which are often followed by internationally public declarations of American impotence both military and executive as well as rain checks on next week's allowance for our soldiers, the Democrats should consider putting their mouths where their money is. (You know, like Ms. Lewinsky. Unless her internship was pro-bono, that is.)
Now the same congressional majority party that willingly authorized the president to deploy troops to Iraq (which now apparently claims in retrospect that the authorization was merely conditional under the assumption that Bush continue to utter "yes massah" whenever House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tells him what's what — how did we miss that, by the way?) is rather hung-up about the inconvenient fact that fighting a war actually implies a commitment costlier than a Malibu beachfront down payment, longer than a Clinton fling with an intern and deeper than the pharynx thereof — the potential collateral damage of which is even graver than suspicious stains on a subpoenaed Gap dress.
Even after 407,300 U.S. military deaths in our four-year engagement in World War II — as opposed to some 3,000 in our four-year engagement in Iraq — the "Greatest Generation" never whined about why we're not there yet or when the next gas station will come as President Franklin Roosevelt — as reckless as he was in the context of U.S.-Soviet relations — calmly shepherded us towards V-E day every night by the living room fireplace, and those that did whine were rather fortunate to have narrowly dodged the Sedition Act of 1918 by a couple of decades. (And last I checked we ended up defeating the Germans. Thank God we had some non-Vichy French by our side to assist us in, well, liberating France.)
Enter CBS newsman Walter Cronkite breaking the news to us in 1968 that the Vietnam War was unwinnable — coincidentally the same year a Republican president takes office who actually planned to win the war (aw, shucks!), followed by New York Times publisher Pinch Sulzberger who between a North Vietnamese and an American soldier claimed he "would want to see the American guy get shot," followed by Dan Rather digging dirt on our wartime commander-in-chief that was so dirty I could only bear to disclose it to you in Microsoft Word form, followed by Cindy Sheehan warning the president that if he doesn't render the blood sacrifices of some 3,000 uniformed American patriots in vain as compensation for the fact that her son happened to be one of those patriots — she won't eat for another few days, followed by Michael Moore spewing the same jive about the "fictitious" terrorist threat that German Jews were fed in the 1930s, followed by Al Franken seriously eyeing a Minnesota Senate seat because "Doggonit, people like me!"
If I had to speculate, I'd say we started choking on the Kool-Aid somewhere along the lines of die-hard presidential hopeful John Edwards essentially telling us to stop funding a global war on terror that doesn't exist so he can better afford his next haircut — the same day the 2,817th U.S. death in that nonexistant war was confirmed (two days prior to Memorial Day), back to President Carter mocking mindful Americans for their "inordinate fear of communism" as the Soviets extended their sphere of influence to South America under his watch, all the way back to President Roosevelt telling a diplomat disclosing domestic Soviet infiltration to "go fu*k yourself" as paid agents of Moscow swarmed the Roosevelt administration like a honeycomb. Oh, I'm sorry — your professors never taught you this? Well then I must be making it up.
President Bush's problem is not that he so presumptuously took the Democrats up on their go-ahead with going to war with Iraq, but that he's a president with an "R" next to his name who actually wants to win it, and came pretty close a couple years ago. Too close. After the Democrats got us into Vietnam, the moment an incredibly popular opposing party leader who planned to win the war (this being four years after Barry Goldwater had already suggested the idea) came into office — funding was cut, aid was cut, his executive authorities were harnessed and "Watergate scandal" would soon become a household phrase (alongside "Sit on it, Chauchie!").
Liberals including Richard A. Clarke, Bill Clinton, Bob Graham, et cetera, warned us in the '90s of Saddam's impending threat, not to mention his WMDs and collaboration with Osama bin-Laden. (Anyone remember Clarke defending Clinton's '98 bombing of a Sudanese aspirin factory on the basis that bin-Laden had been using it to manufacture WMDs "in cooperation with the Iraqis"? This was years before he told the 9/11 Commission that Bush lied about WMDs and some link between Saddam and terrorism to invade Iraq. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?) But Bush came into office saying he was "tired of swatting flies," actually tried to do something about it and is now inarguably a greater anathema on the left than bin-Laden himself.
If President Bush's impeachable offense was invading Iraq on false pretenses, then why were President Clinton's articles of impeachment predicated on mere Easter Sunday blowjob sessions being that those pretenses were originally his idea? If it was allowing 9/11 to occur eight months into his first term, then God help Bill Clinton for only responding to a consistent string of American-aimed Muslim attacks once throughout his first eight years in the White House ("first eight" not a typo) — conveniently around the same time his favorite little Oval Office intern-with-benefits appeared before the Grand Jury. (This was regarding the only Clinton scandal liberals allow us to remember — and only after they've already brought it up as a comparison to Bush lying about WMDs, or if you will, merely upholding another apparent Clinton lie.)
The 93rd Congress had Watergate. This one has Vice President Dick Cheney allegedly dropping the name of Valerie Plame, 007. Clinton's national security advisor, Sandy Berger, physically stuffs in his boxers classified national archive documents that apparently didn't happen to make his boss look anymore like Elvis Presley during the 9/11 Commission investigation and gets fined $50,000 (almost enough for an Edwards haircut). President Dick Nixon attempts to cover up a burglary he had no prior knowledge of nor direct involvement in and is subject to resigning and living the final twenty years of his depressing incommunicado existence on golf courses. (And no accounts of paparazzi being served knuckle sandwiches like another acquitted liberal darling I know of.) Hopefully Berger got his copy of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" in the mail.
Nixon's real crime was not Watergate, it was being a popular Republican with sincere interest in cleaning up a mess the Democrats had made, and coming too close to succeeding at it to their embarrassment. To this day, any post-baby-boomer is instantaneously dismissed as yet another inbred Christian theocrat who wants to re-segregate lunch counters if they dare ask for follow-up on any historical account — ranging from Nixon's earlier work, Sen. Joe McCarthy's possible validity (actually confirmed validity but I'll be nice and say "possible"), who exactly Ronald Reagan was outside the Iran-Contra context, or precisely what sins the current administration has committed that the previous one doesn't share culpability for even on account of categorically dissimilar ulterior motives, or what our president has been trying to tell us for years without Madame Speaker finishing his sentences for him and telling us what he "really" meant.
After the president threatened to veto one of the latest surrender bills (having spent years being criticized for never vetoing anything), Speaker Pelosi told him to "calm down with the threats. There's a new Congress in town..." (Wha-chh!!!) "...We respect your constitutional role. We want you to respect ours..." (Does he have a choice?) "...This war must end. The American people have lost faith in the present conduct of this war..." (I never said that but thanks for keeping us in mind, Nancy.) "...This war is diminishing the strength of this military..." (I'm assuming now Pelosi can bench-press more than your average G.I.) "...When the president says he wants to veto this bill, he is saying, 'I am vetoing accountability...'" (Oh that's what he was saying. Must've slipped through the transcripts. Thank you.) "...I just wish the president would take a deep breath...Take a deep breath, Mr. President." (Women. Can't live with 'em. Can't fire 'em from Congress.)
Sarcasm aside, Mrs. Speaker, I regret to be the only one saying this, but I don't care what party you or he are affiliated with — as the leader of the U.S. House of Representatives publicly appearing before the national press during a time of war, how dare you talk to the President like that. If liberal deity Abe Lincoln were in office today, your habeas corpus would be suspended and you would be in prison. No exaggeration.
Russian dissidents ended up in the gulag. German dissidents ended up in Auschwitz. CBS dissidents ended up at The Wall Street Journal. Cuban dissidents are sent to prison (either by Fidel Castro or Janet Reno). Israeli Jews who question the saint status of PLO Chairman Yasir "Push the Jews into the Sea" Arafat — God, or, someone, rest his soul — end up in bodybags (assuming there are any recognizable bodies accounted for at the scene of last night's literal disco inferno). Americans who dare second-guess the Democratic agenda and place logic above emotion, solutions above problems and unflinching observation above unconditional receptivity, will get their fifteen minutes of historical recognition in a high school history textbook in the same paragraph as the Fuhrer of the Third Reich — who in contradistinction will read as more fitting for the Missionaries of Charity section.
You got what you asked for, liberals. Let's see what you decide to do with it this time. In other news, I hear cable is now airing reruns of "The Wonder Years"...
"The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them." -Ecclesiastes 9:11
© Christian Hartsock
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