Nancy Pelosi thinks you're stupid

H.L. Mencken once remarked that, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in an op/ed she "wrote" for USA Today, seems determined to test that statement with a serious of ludicrous assertions that appear designed to test America's capacity to believe unadulterated bullshit.

Consider:

In September, as we moved quickly to help rescue Wall Street and our financial system, the House also passed an economic recovery package for Main Street that would create and save jobs by building a 21st century infrastructure, providing extended unemployment assistance and preventing the loss of crucial health services.

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In the weeks since, the need for responsible action to strengthen our economy has become more urgent. I have asked the chairmen of the relevant committees in the House to review the economic impact of a larger recovery package and, because of the Congress' commitment to fiscal responsibility, the effect on the budget.

Catch that? Pelosi and her fellow Democrats acted decisively in September to "rescue Wall Street and our financial system" by granting the Bush administration the unilateral authority to seize/nationalize any assets they so desire, to the dismay of the banks that actually had competent leadership. Yet after this bold, courageous action, "the need for responsible action to strengthen our economy has become more urgent." Wait, you mean that $700 billion (and counting) taxpayer-funded bailout for Wall Street -- which the political/media elite claimed was absolutely vital to prevent another Great Depression, ridiculing anyone who dared to say otherwise -- hasn't fixed the U.S. economy? You don't say.

Remember also that after Congress -- in a rare act of commonsense -- initially rejected the bailout plan, the likes of Pelosi and Barney Frank all bemoaned their fellow lawmakers' economic ignorance, linking the rejection to the stock market's dramatic 700-plus point fall that day. And what has happened since Congress caved and passed the bailout? The stock market has fallen almost continually, including 733 points just today.

But it gets better:

Democrats have made fiscal responsibility a top priority, reinstating pay-as-you-go budget rules on the first day we took control of Congress in 2007. In keeping with these principles, each component of our recovery package will be justified in terms of creating good-paying jobs, stimulating our economy and returning revenue to the Treasury.

So the Democratic Congress that approved the very spending that, as Reuters reports, has resulted in a record-high $455 billion budget deficit this year -- and a record-high, $10 trillion-plus national debt -- is committed to "fiscal responsibility"? The same Democratic Congress that has approved hundreds of billions of dollars in "emergency" funding for a war in Iraq that they claim to oppose -- and campaigned in 2006 on ending -- is supposed to be a model in fiscal conservatism? Are we to believe that mean old George W. Bush just did this all on his own, and not with the help of a complicit and corrupt class of politicians collectively known as the Democratic Party?

It shouldn't have to come to this, but let me point out the obvious: one can't approve $700 billion in corporate welfare, hundreds of billions more for failing military occupations, another $300 billion in a "stimulus" package aimed at bribing the masses with their own money (that is, the money that isn't merely printed by the Fed or borrowed from China), and still claim to be the defender of the U.S. taxpayer. Sorry, you just can't.

Finally:

When Americans are worried about losing their jobs, their savings, their homes and their chance at the American Dream, Congress and the president must work together to lift our economy and restore hope. That is the course the New Direction Congress will continue in the days and weeks ahead.

Is the phrase, the "New Direction Congress", not the perfect embodiment of the Democratic Party's devolution into mindless sloganeering as a substitute for actual policies, or thought? The focus group-tested "New Direction" slogan is nothing more than an attempt to obfuscate the fact that the United States is headed in the same direction that it was before Democrats took over Congress -- down -- except now, perhaps, at a faster pace.

Now, if Ms. Pelosi or one of her underpaid aides is reading this, let me pose a few questions to the esteemed leader of the most unpopular Congress in recent history: 1) how does it feel living the lifestyle of jet-setting cosmopolitan as you deplete the wealth of the average American in the name of the twin gods of corporatism and imperialism?; 2) do you believe the American public will believe whatever b.s. you spout so long as you have a 'D' and not an 'R' after your name?; and 3) have you no shame?