Pelosi pulled off a hat trick of sorts recently, with three major failures in just one week of “work” in the House of Representatives.  Count them:
• Failed to override President Bush’s principled veto of the bloated SCHIP re-authorization
• Failed to tie the President’s hands regarding use of wire taps to hunt down terrorists
• Failed to even keep her own caucus together on a non-binding resolution declaring the Ottoman Empire committed genocide against the Kurds nearly 100 years ago. 

Pelosi’s heated rhetoric aimed at Bush’s veto was overshadowed by the embarrassment the Democrats suffered over Pete Stark’s meltdown during the House floor debate in which he claimed Republicans would not fund healthcare but were happy to send our finest off to war to “get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”  The minority Republicans outmaneuvered Pelosi and forced her to pull from the floor the wiretap legislation.  And, she watched as members of her own caucus deserted her patently stupid effort to denounce a century old atrocity committed by a government that no longer exists.  That effort did manage to succeed in alienating Turkey, one of the few friends we have and desperately need in the Middle East, and to further foment tensions with the Turks and the PKK of Northern Iraq that are already at the boiling point. 

Pelosi and the Democrats’ gaffs pushed The New Republic – long an icon of liberal media - to publish a scathing criticism entitled “Clueless”.   Among other gems, there’s this:

“Forget ‘liberal’: Given a few more weeks like the ones congressional Democrats just endured, and the dreaded L-word they’ll be struggling to shake is ‘losers.’”

Approval ratings for the Democrat controlled Congress  are abysmally low, and with little wonder as the first year of the Nancy Pelosi-Harry Reid era nears an end.  Their bumbling ineptness prompted The New Republic to ask the question on the mind of all Americans, “What in God’s name is wrong with congressional Dems?”

It was Pelosi and Reid who campaigned relentlessly against the “Do Nothing Congress” of the Republican majority.   The new leadership promised to do more, and the new Speaker touted her aggressive first 100 days agenda.  The supposed vacation was declared over, and congress was going to get to work.  Yet, Pelosi and Reid have accomplished next to nothing.  By this date in many years, Congress is buttoning up their work and thinking of adjournment.  However, this Congress has yet to send even one of the twelve appropriations bills to the President to fund the government — not a one. 

What they have managed to do approaches the ridiculous.  Of the 106 bills  that have actually become law on the Pelosi-Reid watch:

• 46 bills named post offices, courthouses, or roads;
• 44 bills were non-controversial measures sponsored by Republicans or passed with overwhelming GOP support; and
• 14 bills extended pre-existing public laws or laws passed during a Republican-led Congress.
• 2 bills were enacted on the strength of GOP votes over the objections of Democratic leaders – including the war supplemental in May and the Protect America Act in August.

That’s not to say that the Dems aren’t trying to do something.  In addition to undermining the troop’s ability to succeed in Iraq, they have also tried to advance Hillary Clinton’s universal government controlled healthcare plan through the SCHIP reauthorization process.  Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), Finance Committee Chairman and a supporter of Clinton’s scheme to let the cat out of the bag when he said “Everyone realizes that the goal of this legislation (SCHIP) moves us a giant step further down the road to nationalizing health care.” And, recently the Chairman of Ways & Means, Charlie Rangel (D-NY) introduced his tax increase proposal, already dubbed the “Mother of All Tax Increases.”   The Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Jim McCrery (R-LA) says Rangel’s legislation would be the “largest individual tax increase in history.”  With an insatiable appetite for more taxes, McCrery says the “Democrats are trying to lock Congress into a system where we are guaranteed to raise taxes by $3.5 trillion over ten years”

Maybe we should all hope they just stick to naming post offices.