A Sneak Preview Of 2009

[Editor's note: the video has been pulled at the source. Below is the money quote]

“And guess what this member* would be all about? This member would be all about socializing — er, uh. [Pauses for several moments] …. would be about … [pause] … basically … taking over, and the government running all of your companies.”

- Democrat Representative Maxine Waters, yesterday

"Companies" being the oil companies, the CEOs of which were hauled before another Donk-administered congressional star chamber yesterday to be harangued, demagogued, scapegoated, and villified for the network news cameras. Difference yesterday was at least one of the CEOs didn't sit their and take the abuse, but instead gave as good as he got.

Or, rather, better. Trust me, gentles, Maxine Waters wouldn't be the only Dem with designs on nationalizing the energy sector. She's just one of the handful stupid enough to let it slip in public.

Note how easy it was for the CEO of Shell Oil, with whom Waters was jousting, to provoke her into revealing her true colors. She challenged him to "guarantee" lower gas prices if Congress allowed domestic energy exploration - which would be much more likely in that event, but which no oil company exec could ensure (unless Waters and her friends want to give Big Oil an anti-trust exemption) - and he came right back with a guarantee that prices will continue to spiral upwards as long as Congress (and effective nine months from now, the Executive) remains snarlingly hostile to any and all energy exploration. Not only was he absolutely correct, but he did something that no Republican seems willing or able to do anymore - he stayed aggressively on message. And he won the exchange - even before Waters spilled the Marxian beans.

So that's what's coming next year after the Donks sweep to their veto-proof majorities and take back the White House. Tell me, tightie-righties: compared to nationalization of energy AND healthcare (and Frigg knows what else), is even a lot of pork really all that bad?

UPDATE: The shape of things to come at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue:

ANOTHER UPDATE: Look what they Donks are pulling already - in this case, with the already notoriously bloated farm subsidy bill:

It appears the Democrat Leadership was informed by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel and the Committee on Agriculture that the bill sent to and vetoed by the President was erroneous PRIOR to consideration of the veto override.

ØDespite this knowledge and despite requests from staff from the Republican Leader’s office, the Democrat Leadership proceeded with the veto override of a bill they knew was not the bill passed by both Houses of Congress.

ØImportantly, there were opportunities to correct the enrollment error consistent with past practice and in a constitutionally sound manner if the Democrat Leadership had not rushed ahead with the veto override. Once they moved forward, however, they foreclosed those opportunities.

ØWhen confronted on the House Floor by the Republican Leader, Whip, and Rules Ranking Member, the Majority Leader defended the Leadership’s actions and professed a constitutional theory that so long as both the House and Senate had passed the same language in didn’t matter whether or not the Speaker sent the whole bill passed by the House and Senate or simply parts of it to the President.

The Dangers of the Democrats’ New "Theory":

ØUnder the "theory" espoused by the Majority Leader, the Speaker of the House can simply pick and chose (either overtly or as a result of mistake made by an enrolling clerk) which parts of final bills to send to the President. If she is uncomfortable with a provision that was included as part of a compromise she could in theory exclude it from the bill when she sends it to the President.

ØImportantly, the Speaker’s decision to omit language if challenged by Members of the House through a question of privilege, can simply be tabled by the majority.

Who Pressured the Enrolling Clerk to Quickly Complete the Enrollment:

Ø In a memo prepared by the House Clerk on May 21, 2008, the Clerk asserts that part of the mistake was a result of a ten-year-old flawed enrolling process, yet she goes on to state that “During a review of this process, Enrolling Division staff expressed a concern in receiving direct calls from Leadership and the Committee to accelerate the enrolling process.” Who pressured the enrolling staff?

There's a term for this kind of shenanigans: shell game. Or how about bait & switch? Or truth in advertising? As slipshodly incompetent as the Donk leadership in both houses is, one can easily see them bleeping up and leaving out a large section of the farm bill's fine print from what was sent to the White House. Now the "theory" of the House Democrat poobahry is that Crazy Nancy has the unfettered power to do this deliberately? To dupe the President into signing legislation s/he might not otherwise if s/he were sent the entirety of the bill? Can't they just admit that they bleeped up and fix the mistake rather than taking a mulligan and parlaying that into yet another corrupt, tyrannical, unconstitutional power grab?

Yes, that's a rhetorical question. Something like that was attempted in the private sector a number of years back; I think the company's name was....Enron. Ken Lay and others went to jail for it. Crazy Nancy and her crew will get another fifty or sixty seats at the ballot box.

And still, yet, again this fall we'll hear the same mantra of "Republican culture of corruption," from the same pack of liars, grifters, pickpockets, and thieves even as their blithely eager mockery of the very concept of "open government" sends us stumbling drunkenly onward down the road to Third World banana republicanism.

I'll say it again: is an unfortunate Pachyderm affinity for pork really worse than this?