Sunday 17 May 2009

Let's buy the Republicans a calendar

Newt and Boehner and Cheney and the gang have been screeching for days that Pelosi should apologize, or resign, or be investigated, on the torture issue.

When did the torture program stop? 2004.

When did the Democrats regain control of the House and put Pelosi in the Speaker's chair? 2007.

So even setting aside the fact that no Speaker could have stopped Bush's torture program since Bush insisted on the right to ignore Congress on national security issues, and that Bush's guilt in launching the illegal torture program is not mitigated in any way by whom he claims he told about it, or the fact that both the CIA and other lawmakers have shown that the accusations against Pelosi are without substance, or the fact that the Republicans are trying to taint Pelosi with a torture scandal which they insist doesn't even exist....they don't even have the timeline right.

In 2004, if any Democratic member of Congress had challenged Bush's actions on that or any other issue, Bush wold have told him or her to go fuck themselves, and he would have been backed up by the Speaker at the time -- Dennis Hastert. Pelosi couldn't even bring an issue like that to the House floor without it being ripped apart by Hastert and the boys.

So screeching that Pelosi could have stopped the waterboarding is silly. Particularly since she didn't even know about it.

This whole Pelosi canard is a silly evasion -- an attempt to get Pelosi to back off on any investigating. But it backfired: she wants the fight. And Michael Steele walked right into her trap -- now he likes the idea of an investigation of the torture issue, which will hurt his own party far more than it could ever hurt Pelosi.

So this is going to be investigated now. A lot of Republicans are going to have their careers ruined. And the Republicans will waste an entire year harping on an issue which is bound to kill them, when they could have been campaigning on an issue they could actually win, like spending or something. Even the tea party nonsense is going to get shoved aside.

In the immortal words of Bill Cosby -- "BRAIN DAMAGE".

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