Changing the Rules

The last eight years, we were treated to constant claims of the Bush administration “shredding the Constitution”, trying to install a dictatorship, and generally lying about everything under the sun.  What, then, are we to make of the current administration’s elastic relationship with the truth and lack of respect for the very same Constitution the left claims are in tatters?  Let’s look at Speaker of the House Pelosi:

Someone important appears not to be telling the truth about her knowledge of the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs). That someone is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The political persecution of Bush administration officials she has been pushing may now ensnare her.

Here’s what we know. On Sept. 4, 2002, less than a year after 9/11, the CIA briefed Rep. Porter Goss, then House Intelligence Committee chairman, and Mrs. Pelosi, then the committee’s ranking Democrat, on EITs including waterboarding. They were the first members of Congress to be informed.

In December 2007, Mrs. Pelosi admitted that she attended the briefing, but she wouldn’t comment for the record about precisely what she was told. At the time the Washington Post spoke with a “congressional source familiar with Pelosi’s position on the matter” and summarized that person’s comments this way: “The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage — they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice — and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.”

In fact, as you’ll read in the article, Pelosi didn’t seem to think that waterboarding was harsh enough.  But now that torture has been redefined, and the country has apparently gotten its integrity back (thanks to a new president installed into office by the American Butthash Media and supported by domestic terrorists and virulent racists), waterboarding is a crime, and those who helped establish it as a viable interrogation tool may find themselves subject to indictment.  When it was just the Bush administration that was likely to find itself in hot water, it was okay that they changed the rules.  Now that Pelosi (and who else in the Democrat party) has not only shown that she approved waterboarding, but subsequently lied about knowing it, those indictments may not go anywhere.  I’m fully in favor of the scrutiny and public outcry, though: let’s be post-partisan about punishing everyone under the Code of the New Ethics.

George Will says of Barack “I won” Obama’s casual steamrolling of individual rights in favor of more redistributive economic policy:

Anyway, the Obama administration, judging by its cavalier disregard of contracts between Chrysler and some of the lenders it sought money from, thinks contracts are written on water. The administration proposes that Chrysler’s secured creditors get 28 cents per dollar on the $7 billion owed to them but that the United Auto Workers union get 43 cents per dollar on its $11 billion in claims — and 55 percent of the company. This, even though the secured creditors’ contracts supposedly guaranteed them better standing than the union.

Among Chrysler’s lenders, some servile banks that are now dependent on the administration for capital infusions tugged their forelocks and agreed. Some hedge funds among Chrysler’s lenders that are not dependent were vilified by the president because they dared to resist his demand that they violate their fiduciary duties to their investors, who include individuals and institutional pension funds.

The Economist says the administration has “ridden roughshod over [creditors'] legitimate claims over the [automobile companies'] assets. . . . Bankruptcies involve dividing a shrunken pie. But not all claims are equal: some lenders provide cheaper funds to firms in return for a more secure claim over the assets should things go wrong. They rank above other stakeholders, including shareholders and employees. This principle is now being trashed.” Tom Lauria, a lawyer representing hedge fund people trashed by the president as the cause of Chrysler’s bankruptcy, asked that his clients’ names not be published for fear of violence threatened in e-mails to them.

President Obamessiah is changing the rules to suit a more “fair” vision, and whether you like it or not, you’re going to have to get comfy with the idea of spreading the wealth around.  Never mind the fact that this spread involves numbers that the American people really just can’t wrap their heads around: it’s a radical reinvention of our economic system developed by people who have little but contempt for the free-enterprise system that has made the U.S. the most powerful and prosperous nation on the planet.  And if this reinvention (this “change,” if I may use the term) is so great, why is VP Biden lying about it?

BIDEN SAID: First-time homebuyers are “driving increased activity in the home sales market,” while mortgage and title companies are hiring more workers because of the first-time homebuyer tax credit included in the stimulus bill.

THE FACTS: The report cites anecdotes from a New Orleans business journal to back up the claim. It’s true, buyers are taking advantage of the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credits. The IRS said more than 567,000 tax returns claimed the credit in just the first weeks of the program. But that hasn’t provided an immediate turnaround in the market.

Since February, sales of existing homes have fallen 3 percent and new home sales are down .6 percent.

And the number of jobs in the real estate industry has declined by about 20,500, according to the Department of Labor.

There are signs that the housing market is improving. But the numbers suggest that if the market bottomed out, it did so in January, before the stimulus was passed.

When the AP catches someone in the Obama administration making up stories, you just know that the stories are pretty fabulous.  Cheer up, Obama fans: the American Butthash Media is still writing masturbatory odes to Michelle Obama’s arms, so we’re all still too distracted to keep a close eye on this administration’s rules-changing.  Eventually, though, the love affair with biceps and wishes for Rush Limbaugh to get kidney failure is going to end, and 2012 is coming sooner than you think.