The keeper of this corner – giving thanks to C-Span, as usual – watched the entire proceeding on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives 15 September concerning HR #744, otherwise known as the infamous resolution to stab South Carolina’s Joe Wilson for calling out the president during the grand extravaganza in the House on 09 September, known as the joint session designed for the prexy to tell Congress off “good and proper” for not legislating his government takeover of health-care. It was the best entertainment of the day in Washington as the Congressmen gave it about an hour, not counting the 15-minute vote (240-179 against Wilson), during which only two democrats spoke, while a number of republicans suggested, among other things, that the exercise was, as Minority Leader Boehner put it, a “partisan stunt.” It was the penultimate example of a dog-and-pony show, beneath contempt.
Well...of course, it was. The nation is in free-fall financially; the unemployment rate is inching toward 10%; the fat cats on Wall Street are grinning again at having outsmarted the president; so the House naturally turned to important things like officially castigating a member for saying something at an inappropriate time (calling the prexy a liar during that earth-shaking nothing-speech on the ninth that included no details), notwithstanding that his apology to the president had already been made publicly and accepted publicly.
Majority Leader Hoyer lamely introduced HR #744, made a few unimpassioned remarks and left the distinct impression that he’d just as soon forget the whole thing. Speaker Pelosi didn’t seem to be anywhere near the action and for probably good reason. Earlier this year in a public setting (press conference), she called the entire CIA a liar, prompting CIA Director Panetta to publicly disagree. Pelosi was caught on the horns of her own dilemma since she certainly had been briefed by the CIA on the matters at hand but couldn’t bring herself to face the fact that she at least indirectly had approved of the “enhanced torture techniques” back when everyone, including her, wondered about the what, when and where concerning another 9/11-WTC/Pentagon-type terrorist attack.
Hoyer was also caught on the horns of a dilemma, manufactured by California Representative Pete Stark on 18 October 2007, when in a speech in the House he twice accused President Bush of lying. At the end of his diatribe he was admonished by the lady acting as Speaker Pro Tem concerning his perfidy, but has never apologized. Naturally, no republican or democrat introduced a “disapproval resolution.” It was just business as usual. So...what was okay in 2007 was not okay in 2009. The difference: Stark is a democrat and Wilson is a republican. Stark is still in the House and voted in favor of the resolution to backstab Wilson. That’s about as profound as hypocrisy ever gets to be.
And then there was the State of the Union Speech in 2005 during which the democrats collectively more than once managed to show the profoundness of their intelligence by booing President Bush...right there in the hallowed House Chamber! He didn’t seem too upset with the democrats of the demonstrative dissing delights and went right on. Okay...cut the democrats some slack on that one since they had just experienced the deep-sixing of the candidacy of Senator Kerry a couple or so months before and deserved to vent their spleens. The subject matter of the speech didn’t...well...matter.
BUT...now everyone knows the REAL DEAL concerning the Wilson affair. Saint Jimmy Carter implied to NBC’s Brian Williams that Wilson and other white folk are racists and that this awful affliction causes white folk to distrust black folk like Obama and Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice to run the guvmint. Shades of the 1960s...Carter’s still there, while all those white folk picked a black man over a white woman last year, but that was just an “aw shucks moment”...didn’t mean a thing...sheer accident! Of course, it doesn’t help that Obama a while back condemned a white police officer for just doing his duty but...hey...can’t we all just get along?
So...HR #744 is history, and Joe Wilson has been properly disapproved. Now, maybe the world can start turning again, or at least until somebody else exercises First Amendment rights in the august body called the House and another resolution is in order. Actually, it could be that Obama is a “reverse racist,” since he publicly disagreed with Saint Jimmy. Oh horrors...just when things were looking up!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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