Gop Slams Pelosi: Get Back To Work

[Logan13]

GOP SLAMS PELOSI: GET BACK TO WORK
Mon Apr 09 2007 10:28:28 ET
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash6.htm

Today, GOP Leaders from both chambers urged Speaker Pelosi to call the House back into session immediately to finish its work on the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill for the troops. Speaker Pelosi neglected to appoint House conferees before the two-week break, further delaying negotiations on a final bill. The joint letter to Pelosi is attached. Text follows:

Dear Speaker Pelosi:

We are writing to urge you to call the House back into session immediately so that Congress can finish its work on the emergency legislation to fund the Global War on Terrorism. This funding request has been pending since February 5, but your leadership team chose to leave town for more than two weeks rather than completing this bill. As a result, our troops have been put at risk.

We are especially troubled by the House's failure to appoint conferees. The Senate appointed conferees on March 29, moments after passing its bill, but the House never did so despite passing the bill a week earlier. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the Senate that he hoped the House-Senate conference would begin on March 30. That hoped-for progress has been thwarted by your failure to act.

It should go without saying that our military leaders are in the best position to know the needs of our troops, and they have left no doubt that this funding is needed urgently. General Peter Schoomaker, United States Army Chief of Staff, has written that, "without approval of the supplemental funds in April, we will be forced to take increasingly draconian measures which will impact Army readiness and impose hardships on our Soldiers and their families." Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has also emphasized the dangers of delay: "This kind of disruption to key programs will have a genuinely adverse effect on the readiness of the Army and the quality of life for soldiers and their families."

Our troops need this funding, and they need it soon. The Senate is in session and ready to work. We respectfully request that you cancel the remainder of your break, call the House back into session, appoint conferees promptly, and work in good faith to pass a clean supplemental funding bill that the President can sign as soon as possible. Every day we don't fund our troops is a day their ability to fight this war is weakened.

[Tock]

Looks like Republican posturing to me . . .

[Tesla]

Looks like Republican posturing to me . . .

..looks like Democrats screw-balling around to me.

[Logan13]

Looks like Republican posturing to me . . .

They are definitely posturing, but the question is do they have a point?

[Tesla]

Yeah, they definitely have a big point. The Democrats ran on a claim that they would run the most ethical office in history. So far it's been business as usual for them.

[eliteforce]

Bush ALSO took off to his ranch for the easter break and so did the republicans, pelosi was working through the whole holiday with her ME trip.

Time is not the problem here, there isn't really 'work' to do, the question is will Bush agree to the timetable for withdrawel or not, the democrats have overwhelming public support for a timetable for withdrawel of about 1 year or so, if he goes along with that then the bill and funding go through.

[singern]

Her middle east trip is worthy of a criminal investigation. Making an alternative foreign policy toward a terrorist sponsoring state, passing unauthorized Messages to foreign powers, and the whole Israeli/Syrian thing she turned into a shit-tossed-salad.

She needs to get back to the task the people and congress voted her in for, and stop pretending to be the president.

[Tesla]

Bush ALSO took off to his ranch for the easter break and so did the republicans, pelosi was working through the whole holiday with her ME trip.

Time is not the problem here, there isn't really 'work' to do, the question is will Bush agree to the timetable for withdrawel or not, the democrats have overwhelming public support for a timetable for withdrawel of about 1 year or so, if he goes along with that then the bill and funding go through.

The President of the United States never takes a day off from work. It doesn't matter where the President is physically located, the office, staff, etc., etc., go with him.

The polls show that Americans are fairly evenly split between a time table or no time table. I wouldn't exactly call that overwhelming public support. Besides, there has never in the history of warfare been something as incredulous as a time table to complete a war been proposed.

[Tock]

Her middle east trip is worthy of a criminal investigation. Making an alternative foreign policy toward a terrorist sponsoring state, passing unauthorized Messages to foreign powers, and the whole Israeli/Syrian thing she turned into a shit-tossed-salad.

She needs to get back to the task the people and congress voted her in for, and stop pretending to be the president.

Huh . . . but where was the Republican outrage when Dennis Hastert went to see foreign leaders during the Clinton administration, and Hastert told the foreign leaders to ignore Clinton?

Seems to me that either -
1) Republicans tolerate Pelosi's meeting with foreign leaders, or else
2) Republicans go after both Pelosi and the Republican congressmen that went with her, AND Hastert for interfering with foreign policy.

Ya, it's hypocritical when they get upset at Pelosi doing what they themselves have done . . .

[singern]

Huh . . . but where was the Republican outrage when Dennis Hastert went to see foreign leaders during the Clinton administration, and Hastert told the foreign leaders to ignore Clinton?

Seems to me that either -
1) Republicans tolerate Pelosi's meeting with foreign leaders, or else
2) Republicans go after both Pelosi and the Republican congressmen that went with her, AND Hastert for interfering with foreign policy.

Ya, it's hypocritical when they get upset at Pelosi doing what they themselves have done . . .

This is not a partisan issue for me, I would have denounced anyone making such a trip, If Pelosi was a republican my post would be as is. The fact that she has the backing of the Democratic party trying to make foreign policy against the ruling of the current administration in my eyes is a criminal act and needs to be treated as such.

[Tock]

This is not a partisan issue for me, I would have denounced anyone making such a trip, If Pelosi was a republican my post would be as is. The fact that she has the backing of the Democratic party trying to make foreign policy against the ruling of the current administration in my eyes is a criminal act and needs to be treated as such.

Pelosi says she didn't contradict anything that Bush has said:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070406/...pelosi_mideast

"Our message was President Bush's message," Pelosi said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from Portugal, where she stopped briefly en route back to the United States.

"The funny thing is, I think we may have even had a more powerful impact with our message because of the attention that was called to our trip," she said. "It became clear to President Assad that even though we have our differences in the United States, there is no division between the president and the Congress and the Democrats on the message we wanted him to receive."


If Pelosi told the Syrians anything other than what the Bush Administration has been saying, nobody seems to be saying exactly what that was:

Bush this week assailed Pelosi for making the trip to Damascus, saying it sent mixed messages to the Syrian government, which his administration considers to be a state supporter of terrorism.

She was most heavily criticized for her talks with Syria and Israel. Vice President Dick Cheney called it "bad behavior" on her part to try to broker a deal between the two — a sensitive matter that would be considered the sole province of the executive branch.

Pelosi said that she told the Syrians:

After meeting Wednesday with Syria's Assad, Pelosi said she had delivered a message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Israel was ready for peace talks. Pelosi told reporters in the region that Assad had replied that "he's ready to engage in negotiations for peace with Israel."

Why did she say this?

She also said the delegation was not trying to cut deals between Syria and Israel but rather "assessing the ground truth" to inform spending decisions made by Congress.

Sounds to me that since she's the House Speaker, she's got the right and the responsibility to check out things that bear on spending issues. Republicans may not care for that, and some of the more partisan ones may want to make something out of this that it isn't, but that's just politics.

Anyway, I still don't see what Pelosi did wrong. Hastert, on the other hand, told foreign leaders to ignore Clinton. Republicans didn't object to that behaviour then (or now), but that's just more politics, I guess . . .

[Logan13]

[QUOTE=Tock]Pelosi says she didn't contradict anything that Bush has said:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070406/...pelosi_mideast



She was most heavily criticized for her talks with Syria and Israel. Vice President Dick Cheney called it "bad behavior" on her part to try to broker a deal between the two — a sensitive matter that would be considered the sole province of the executive branch.

Pelosi said that she told the Syrians:

After meeting Wednesday with Syria's Assad, Pelosi said she had delivered a message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Israel was ready for peace talks. Pelosi told reporters in the region that Assad had replied that "he's ready to engage in negotiations for peace with Israel."

Why did she say this?[QUOTE]

I don't know why she said this, the Israeli's and Olmert said that they did not tell her this at all. So it sounds like she is talking out of her ass. Regardless, Syria's leader even doubts that she has any power to shape US foreign policy.

Syria Welcomes Pelosi, But Doubts Her Impact
04/04/07
NPR
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with a small delegation of other House members, paid a much-anticipated visit to Syrian president Bashad al-Assar Wednesday.
But while Syrian officials embraced Pelosi's visit as a public signal that their current isolation may be diminishing, they do not think she wields considerable power to shape U.S. foreign policy, according to Hassan Fattah, Middle East correspondent for The New York Times.

Pelosi Delivered Wrong Message to Assad, Israel Says
04/05/07
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered the wrong message to Syrian President Bashar Assad from Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said on Wednesday evening.

Pelosi, who is heading a bi-partisan fact-finding tour of the Middle East, met with Assad on Wednesday, a move that angered the Bush administration. Earlier in the week, Pelosi -- the most senior U.S. official to visit Syria in years -- visited Israel and met with Olmert.

At a press conference following the meeting between Pelosi and Assad in Damascus, Pelosi indicated that she had delivered a message that Israel was ready to engage in peace talks.

"We were very pleased with the reassurances we received from the president [Assad] that he was ready to resume the peace process. He was ready to engage in negotiations for peace with Israel," Pelosi said.

The meeting with Assad "enabled us to communicate a message from Prime Minister Olmert that Israel was ready to engage in peace talks as well," she said.

But the prime minister's office denied that Olmert had asked her to communicate such a message in a "clarification" statement issued on Wednesday evening.

During the meeting between Pelosi and Olmert, the prime minister said that a number of members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives had visited Damascus recently and had "received the impression that despite the declarations of Bashar Assad, there is no change in the position of his country regarding a possible peace process with Israel."

Since the end of the summer war between Israel and Hizballah in Lebanon, Syria has made a number of overtures toward Israel, but Israel has rejected them, saying that Syria isn't serious about making peace. The last official peace talks between the two countries were in early 2000.

Olmert emphasized 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," the clarification statement said.

"In order to conduct serious and genuine peace negotiations, Syria must cease its support of terror, cease its sponsoring of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations, refrain from providing weapons to Hizballah 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," it said.

Whether or not Syria implements these measures will determine if Syria is sincere about making genuine peace with Israel, Olmert said.

The communication with Pelosi did not contain any change in Israeli policy, the statement said.

The Israeli daily Ha'aretz quoted unnamed sources in the prime minister's office as saying that Pelosi had taken "part of the things that were said in the meeting, and used what suited her."

Earlier in the week, Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisen, said by telephone that Olmert had told Pelosi that he didn't think Assad deserved all the attention he was getting.

Nevertheless, when Pelosi offered to deliver a message, according to Eisen, Olmert said that the message was "don't prepare for war and renounce terrorism" and maybe there can be negotiations.

Israeli government minister Ze'ev Boim said he was skeptical about Syria's intentions toward peace. Words come cheap, he said in a radio interview. Syria must back its words up with actions, he added.

Former Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was quoted by the radio as saying that he was concerned about the effects of Pelosi's visit to Syria. The trip might encourage European states to drop their isolation of Syria.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem called for dialogue between Syria and Washington.

Pelosi also drew fire from Washington for saying that the "the road to Damascus is a road to peace."

Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the Bush's national security advisor, said that that road unfortunately "is lined with the victims of Hamas and Hizballah, the victims of terrorists who cross from Syria into Iraq."

Johndroe called the trip "counterproductive."

President Bush, whose administration is trying to isolate Syria, said that meeting with Assad delivered "mixed messages" since it is a terror-sponsoring regime.

[Tock]

Pelosi Delivered Wrong Message to Assad, Israel Says
04/05/07
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered the wrong message to Syrian President Bashar Assad from Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said on Wednesday evening.

As if CNSNews.com is worth a flip -- they are owned and operated by a radical right-wing conservative group known as the Media Research Center. According to their own website, http://www.mrc.org/

The mission of the Media Research Center is to bring balance to the news media. Leaders of America's conservative movement have long believed that within the national news media a strident liberal bias existed that influenced the public's understanding of critical issues. On October 1, 1987, a group of young determined conservatives set out to not only prove — through sound scientific research — that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values, but also to neutralize its impact on the American political scene. What they launched that fall is the now acclaimed — Media Research Center (MRC).


The mission of the Culture and Media Institute is to preserve and help restore America’s culture, character, traditional values, and morals against the assault of the liberal media elite, and to promote fair portrayal of social conservatives and religious believers in the media. CMI, the cultural division of the Media Research Center, is dedicated to correcting misconceptions in the media about social conservatism and religious faith.


Ya, they are working to neutralize what they see as the liberal impact on the American political scene, mostly by publishing BS, spin, and deception.

Wanna make a tax-deductable donation to them? Click here:

https://www.mediaresearch.org/secure...ch/welcome.asp

And here's a message from their founder and ringleader -- this guy sounds more like someone who wants to re-write and spin the news to his own liking, and not much as someone who actually goes out to discover and report what's really going on:

Message from L. Brent Bozell

We are all concerned with what we can do to make the world a better place and protect our inherent freedoms as Americans. Today, the battle for the mind, heart and spirit of a free and determined people, which threatens our basic freedoms and how we think about them as a society, is nowhere more evident than in today’s liberal media.

No industry has a greater impact on the American cultural and political landscape than the national media. Conservatives have long charged that the mass media, predominantly television news, slant their reporting on current issues in favor of the liberal position. Today most Americans agree, which is a dramatic development in the political conversation.

When we started the MRC 17 years ago, our mission was clear: Expose, document and neutralize the liberal media. Wherever public policy was discussed, debated and then broadcast we were there. Whether in the hallowed halls of the U.S. Capitol, the sidewalks of mainstream America or the circular pit of the U.N. General Assembly, the MRC has set the benchmark for fair and balanced news reporting. Through our publications, media appearances, investigative journalism and this website we reach out to you -- and millions like you -- countering and blunting the national media’s liberal agenda every day of the year.

WE cannot accomplish this important mission without your help. We know that you want to make a difference and we hope that by visiting our website and learning more about our organization you will find us worthy of your ongoing support.

Click here to support the MRC today.

Sincerely,


L. Brent Bozell III



What an idiot . . .

[Logan13]

As if CNSNews.com is worth a flip -- they are owned and operated by a radical right-wing conservative group known as the Media Research Center. According to their own website, http://www.mrc.org/

The mission of the Media Research Center is to bring balance to the news media. Leaders of America's conservative movement have long believed that within the national news media a strident liberal bias existed that influenced the public's understanding of critical issues. On October 1, 1987, a group of young determined conservatives set out to not only prove — through sound scientific research — that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values, but also to neutralize its impact on the American political scene. What they launched that fall is the now acclaimed — Media Research Center (MRC).


The mission of the Culture and Media Institute is to preserve and help restore America’s culture, character, traditional values, and morals against the assault of the liberal media elite, and to promote fair portrayal of social conservatives and religious believers in the media. CMI, the cultural division of the Media Research Center, is dedicated to correcting misconceptions in the media about social conservatism and religious faith.


Ya, they are working to neutralize what they see as the liberal impact on the American political scene, mostly by publishing BS, spin, and deception.

Wanna make a tax-deductable donation to them? Click here:

https://www.mediaresearch.org/secure...ch/welcome.asp

And here's a message from their founder and ringleader -- this guy sounds more like someone who wants to re-write and spin the news to his own liking, and not much as someone who actually goes out to discover and report what's really going on:

Message from L. Brent Bozell

We are all concerned with what we can do to make the world a better place and protect our inherent freedoms as Americans. Today, the battle for the mind, heart and spirit of a free and determined people, which threatens our basic freedoms and how we think about them as a society, is nowhere more evident than in today’s liberal media.

No industry has a greater impact on the American cultural and political landscape than the national media. Conservatives have long charged that the mass media, predominantly television news, slant their reporting on current issues in favor of the liberal position. Today most Americans agree, which is a dramatic development in the political conversation.

When we started the MRC 17 years ago, our mission was clear: Expose, document and neutralize the liberal media. Wherever public policy was discussed, debated and then broadcast we were there. Whether in the hallowed halls of the U.S. Capitol, the sidewalks of mainstream America or the circular pit of the U.N. General Assembly, the MRC has set the benchmark for fair and balanced news reporting. Through our publications, media appearances, investigative journalism and this website we reach out to you -- and millions like you -- countering and blunting the national media’s liberal agenda every day of the year.

WE cannot accomplish this important mission without your help. We know that you want to make a difference and we hope that by visiting our website and learning more about our organization you will find us worthy of your ongoing support.

Click here to support the MRC today.

Sincerely,


L. Brent Bozell III



What an idiot . . .

You'd be correct, if only CNS were the only ones who reported it.....