PELOSI-- 6 FOR 6-- AND CONGRESSMAN HOWDY DOODY IS WHINING AND WIMPERING THAT SHE TOOK AWAY TAX BREAKS FOR BIG OIL

I woke up in San Francisco this morning and the first thing I saw was the CNN crawler go by with a quote from Rep. Howdy Doody (R-FL) whining that Speaker Pelosi, in passing the last of her 6 kick-off bills for the First 100 Hours Agenda-- it took less than half that amount of time-- "has squandered a historic opportunity to work with Republicans." I had to laugh. The day before Doody had been running around like a yapping dog trying to get his caucus members to vote against bill #5, the one to lower interest rates for college loans. Doody, Blunt and Boehner had tried to whip Republicans into shape to stand up to Pelosi. And they had some success; the Republican House leadership managed to come up with 71 extremist loons to vote against the interests of their constituents on an issue where virtually the entire country disagrees with the GOP position 71 isn't bad. Pelosi, on the other hand, not only had ever single Democrat voting for her bill, she also managed to get 124 Republicans to abandon the loser team of Boehner, Blunt and Doody and vote with the Democrats.

That didn't stop Doody from fulminating and trying to get the press to notice him. "It is unfortunate that at the expense of bipartisan due process, Democrats have rammed through the House a watered-down slate of so-called reforms that will never become law in their current form." Let me get this right. Pelosi had an average of 62 Republicans voting with her on every single bill but she missed an opportunity for bipartisanship? These Republicans are too much!

But they were fuming today. Because today the Democrats took the silver spoons out of their children's mouths. Today they repealed unwarranted tax breaks for Big Oil. Boehner took time away from his tanning salon to bitch to the press that these bills are "destined to the very pen" anyway. Yet even on this most crucial of Republican issues-- one that their whole system of corporate bribes is so dependent on-- they couldn't hold their coalition together. Although 4 of the most right wing, corporate ass-kissers in the Democratic caucus-- John Barrow (GA), Jim Marshall, Dan Boren (OK) and Nick Lampson (TX)-- joined them, fully 36 Republicans went along with the Democrats. (The Republican congressmen who abandoned their leaders again were a mixed bag of mainstream conservatives who don't want to be led down the garden path by the far right any longer-- like Mike Castle (DE), Jim Gerlach (PA), Mike Ferguson (NJ), and Chris Shays (CT)-- and a big batch of endangered nut case rightists scared to death-- and with good reason-- of being defeated next year, usual rubber stampers like Ginny Brown-Waite (FL), Vern Buchanan (FL), Shelley Moore Capito (WV), Charles Dent (PA), Robin Hayes (NC), Randy Kuhl (NY), and David Reichert (WA).

"House Democrats capped their '100 hours' agenda with the passage of an energy bill yesterday, the sixth piece of legislation approved in two weeks, and Democratic leaders said the package marked 'a beginning, not an end' to their legislative ambitions." And although the desperate GOP House leaders are doing their best worst to denigrate Speaker Pelosi, even conservative media is forced to admit that the American public likes what they see so far. "Americans are warming to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and they give the Democratic-led Congress high marks for its initial legislative priorities. A new Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll shows positive views of Pelosi, 66, climbed over the past month and are considerably higher than the marks Americans gave one of her highly publicized predecessors, Republican Newt Gingrich, in the first weeks of his tenure as speaker in 1995. The poll conducted Jan. 13 to 16 showed even more support for the party's early priorities, including repealing subsidies for oil companies, cutting prescription-drug costs for seniors and raising the minimum wage, which were backed by large majorities of respondents."

Don't be surprised if Boehner spends more and more time in the tanning bed and if we see a picture some day soon of Rep. Doody curled up in a fetal position sucking his thumb.