The New Congress

[Art Sandusky 0]

It was well-known since congressional members were sworn in last week that the session wouldn't start until Tuesday anyway.

 

The 100 hours begin when they actually begin the session.

[Guest RayCo]

You do live in the most controlled, policed, suppresed country on Earth, I feel sorry for you all, mind you, were not too far behind over here, either. But thats how the world works, they do something in one country and around the same time they do exactly the same in another.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

You do live in the most controlled, policed, suppresed country on Earth, I feel sorry for you all, mind you, were not too far behind over here, either. But thats how the world works, they do something in one country and around the same time they do exactly the same in another.

 

Oh, I'm sorry...I forgot I was in Pyongyang now. I'll wave to the secret police outside my shack, while I dine on rabbit and listen to the two state controlled radio stations I can get in! Thank you, Dear Leader! Long live the worldwide workers' revolution!

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

WASHINGTON — It's only the first week of the 110th Congress, but Democrats have already called a time-out so lawmakers can enjoy a very important event — the BCS championship football game between University of Florida and the Ohio State University.

 

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Friday handed out this week's schedule. It noted that House legislative actions would not begin on Monday, but would be postponed until Tuesday.

 

Though the schedule does not offer an explanation for the delay, Hoyer, D-Md., said on the House floor that he wanted to let lawmakers from the big states of Ohio and Florida off, presumably so they could attend the game or participate in game-related activities at home.

 

"There is a very important event happening Monday night, particularly for those who live

in Ohio and Florida. In the spirit of comity, and I know if Maryland were playing, I would want to be accommodated and I want to accommodate my friend, Mr. Boehner," Hoyer said in reference to new House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

 

While the decision benefits both Democratic and Republican football fans, it signals a step back from the reform-minded pledge Democrats took after they won control of Congress to work a five-day week in Washington, up from three-day weeks during the Republican Congress.

Those wacky legislators.

 

The football game wasn't the real reason for the day off, btw:

 

Regardless of the abbreviated excerpts of Blunt's and Hoyer's old-geezer bloviating on the floor last Thursday about a football game, and the smattering of media reports that portrayed the dem's promise of a 5 day work week as DOA, here's what was going on with the House schedule - Friday was taken up by the mandatory attendance by all freshman congress members at a seminar on House procedure. Monday was given to members specifically to read all the legislation that will be debated and voted on this week.

 

Imagine that, Congressmen actually reading what they're voting on!

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John Ashcroft doesnt approve.

[SuperJerk 0]

Remember how last week the press was filled with pundits talking about how the Democrats weren't really doing anything to oppose the president?

 

Now we get THIS:

The Washington War Game

The fight over Iraq is a clash of governmental branches not seen since Vietnam.

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Fuckin' SPs.

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Sounds like the Dems wanted to make a bit of a bigger wave with their State/Union rebuttal than they did waddling Durbin out last week. Jim Webb gets the ball. Should be fun.

[SuperJerk 0]

Sounds like the Dems wanted to make a bit of a bigger wave with their State/Union rebuttal than they did waddling Durbin out last week. Jim Webb gets the ball. Should be fun.

I've heard he's not the best speaker, but the press will make up for this by mentioning his Iraq-veteran son about 2,354,377 times or so.

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Republicans are now complaining about the Democratic majority being too heavy-handed. You can't write comedy as good as this.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Oh gosh...the hypocrisy is just unbelievable.

 

Wouldn't really be so bad for a few of these fuckers to get knocked off.

[SuperJerk 0]

House GOP shut out despite promises By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer

Sat Jan 27, 12:36 PM ET

 

 

 

It was 2004 and Democrats were into their 10th year as the minority party in the House when they proposed a bill of rights to ensure their participation in the democratic process.

 

The GOP ignored them.

 

Now Republicans, newly demoted to the minority, say they are the ones suffering abuse despite repeated Democratic promises that theirs would be a more open, democratic and inclusive rule.

 

"It seems," said Republican leader John Boehner (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, "over the last three weeks that the more we reach out and offer our hand of bipartisanship, (the more) it is slapped away."

 

Democrats deny they are seeking retribution for 12 years of perceived slights. They also say they are not reneging on the assertion, in their bill of rights, that bills should go through a process of open hearings and full debate where the minority party can offer amendments.

 

Democrats say that with completion of their first "100 hours" agenda, business will return to "regular order." In that opening rush to the new Congress, Democrats rushed through priorities such as raising the minimum wage, imposing new ethics and lobbying rules and cutting prescription drug and student loan costs.

 

Yet "regular order" has not returned, at least so far.

 

During the past week, Democrats pushed through, with limited GOP input, two major bills: One would take away the pensions of lawmakers who commit crimes and the second would give partial voting rights to delegates from U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.

 

Earlier hopes of a new era of civility quickly dissipated with the pensions bill. Republicans claimed that, without their knowledge, Democrats made last-minute changes that were written on a napkin.

 

"Members of the current minority sat here for two weeks grinding their teeth while they watched things come to the floor without having gone to committee, without prior debate and discussion," said the former chairman of the House Administration Committee, Rep. Vernon Ehlers (news, bio, voting record), R-Mich. "And this is the crowning insult."

 

"It is tough to be in the minority, isn't it? I feel your pain," Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (news, bio, voting record), D-Md.,

 

He said that with a smile to Republicans while pointing out that the late changes came as a request from Boehner, the House GOP leader.

 

Asked at a news conference about the napkin, Hoyer said, "It was on some piece of paper, the consistency of which I do not know."

 

Tempers grew even shorter on the delegate bill.

 

Democrats were sensitive to the fact that not a single Republican amendment had been allowed over the first three weeks of the session. So they ruled a GOP amendment OK to debate — even after the sponsoring lawmaker decided to withdraw it.

 

Boehner then introduced a resolution criticizing Democrats for trying to force the amendment. That effort failed by a party-line vote.

 

The House long has earned a reputation for being far more partisan than the Senate. In the Senate, the minority's power to stall legislation requires the majority to reach out if it wants to pass bills.

 

In the House, Democrats lorded it over Republicans for 40 years before Newt Gingrich led the GOP to victory in the 1994 elections.

 

Republicans pledged not to treat Democrats as they had been treated. But former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, adopted a strategy of pushing ahead on legislation by demanding loyalty from Republicans and shutting out Democrats.

 

Democrats complained that they were frequently denied the right to offer amendments, were excluded from House-Senate negotiations over final legislation and were forced to vote on bills for which they were not given time to read.

 

Democrats howled when GOP leaders, during tight roll call votes, kept open the balloting for hours while they browbeat members to change their votes.

 

"Both sides carry a pretty heavy load of past sins," said Brooks Jackson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. The jury is out on whether Democrats will do any better this time, he said, but "memories are long and slights are not forgotten. It's tough to get over that."

 

It appears that Republicans will have to wait a bit longer before they see how sincere Democrats are about giving them a voice.

 

The House this week plans to take up legislation to fund most federal programs through Sept. 30, the end of the current budget year. This task was foisted on the Democrats because the last Congress, with GOP in control, failed to pass all but a few spending bills.

 

With the House trying to work out a deal with the Senate on that spending plan and Congress about to begin work on the 2008 budget, there is no time to open up the bill to proposed changes, Hoyer said.

 

"I want to tell you candidly," he told the No. 2 House Republican, Missouri Rep. Roy Blunt (news, bio, voting record), "that I believe there will not be a full opportunity" to offer amendments.

credit: Yahoo News

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

Oh well. Fair enough, I guess. That pension law is a pretty good one, though, I will say. How on Earth are the Democrats championing any modicum of fiscal responsibility? Topsy-turvy.

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Opposing the Iraq War, the biggest source of massive govt spending in recent times, is also fiscally responsible. Spending money on programs to actually help people (though I tend to disagree with most all of them) is alot different then spending even more money on something like nation building. Now with this pension bill being pushed through, among many other things, we are seeing further turning of the big/small govt political compass.

 

At this point the people who consider themselves small govt conservatives (such as myself) will either have to completely distance themselves from the GOP (aligning themselves with indies/libertarians or certain Dems; I like a Jim Webb type Dem or those with strong anti-Iraq views that can overshadow other big govt aspects of their philosophy like Feingold) or be left as utter toadies to a mere political party with little to no backbone of thought.

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

Will it ever completely turn? With labor, teachers, minorities, youth, and agriculture all firmly entrenched in the The Party, there's no way they can truly represent small government. I think this is a temporary diversion.

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Obviously only time can tell whether this will be a full turn of the political philosophies. The last full turn took place at the beginning of the last century, over a span of about three decades, and even that time period wasn't enough to fully envelop the switch. What we are seeing now, and over the past five years, is one of the sharpest turns ever seen in America's history. How far around this turn will go, and how long it will last, can't be grasped right now.

 

I do wonder how much of the Democratic move towards small govt is due to changing philosophy of its leaders/members or whether much of it is them being forced to move that way in the intertia of the GOP's (led by this Administartion's policy of the biggest govt possibly ever seen in American history) massive shift.

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

It's just Big Government against Really Fucking Big Government. Nobody's changing their philosophies on the Democratic side, I don't think. You still have Kennedy, Biden, Hillary, so on, so forth.

[Special K 0]

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

Don't do anything: *snort* boy that Dem congress is sure ineffectual.

 

Say something: WAAAH they're already attacking the president!

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Teddy probably won't be alive in 10 years. Biden's getting up there too, and '08 is definitly his last stab at national office.

 

The new breed is guys like Webb & Tester.

 

There are still small govt people on the Republican side, and the toadies may or may not have learned a lesson via DeWine last November, but the overall picture, of both Parties, is beginning to shift. If it is a permanent shift, it will take several more election cycles with old-guard dropping out and new people coming in for it to really take full form.

 

And, if there is a Really Fucking Big Govt, it is the current Administration. People can use the dirty word 'liberal' all they want but the Clinton Admin didn't spend or expand nearly as much as Bush Jr. Not even close.

[Special K 0]

I hope that's what Czech meant. Bush's government is as bloated as a haggis.

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

And, if there is a Really Fucking Big Govt, it is the current Administration.

I must have done a poor job implying that. I was just piggybacking off what you said before me, that the Republicans now represent RFBG, so the Democrats are just plain big by comparison.

 

As for liberal being a dirty word, I wish it wouldn't be, because I really hate "progressive" being used as the new liberal because liberal is a dirty word. I just find it pretentious. I always thought conservative was a dirty word too.

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When I hear 'conservative' it doesn't bother me...I think 'Barry Goldwater' and small govt and low taxes and personal freedoms. I dont hold weirdo shit like homophobia and big fences against 'conservatism'. Unfortunately, to hardcore Dem Party folks it is a dirty word.

 

When I hear 'liberal' it doesnt bother me...to me it implies a large govt with its function being to help the people that need it. Not really my thing in most cases, but not something evil either. Unfortunately, for Republican Party toadies it is a 'dirty' term.

 

And when I hear 'progressive' I think Bob La Follette and moving forward to make a better country, world, culture, society. But then we have to have mindless twits like O Reilly using it as a derogatory term, and his retarded following swallow it like sugared medicine.

 

No matter what, I cant figure out this kind of thinking. Using terms that simply describe the political philosophies of people, none of which imply anything evil at their real roots, as dirty words is really bizarre. It's as thoughtlessly bad as labeling George McGovern a hippie or George Bush Sr a wimp.

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

While we're fussing over semantics, why are the rank and file "hardcore Dem Party folks" but "Republican Party toadies"? And I too would much rather think of La Follette than Franken when I hear "progressive."

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'hardcore --- folks' & '--- Party toadies' are completely interchangeable. I was just trying to round out the vocabulary.

 

I don't know how Al Franken fits into 'progressive' at all.

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

He's on Air America Radio, AM 850, CHICAGO'S PROGRESSIVE TALK. Not liberal, dirty word. PROGRESSIVE TALK. WE'RE PROGRESSIVE.

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Hasn't Air America gone bankrupt yet?

 

If ghosts were real, La Follette would be punching Franken in the eye & shaving him bald.

[Special K 0]

Al Franken is very rarely funny, and is totally negative. He's a bad, very liberal commentator. And his 'dialogue' skits suck.

 

The thing is, he's hardly a blip on the map.

 

THen you take: O'reilly, Limbaugh, Savage et al.

 

Just as bad on the other side of the map; the difference is, they're the most listened to talk show hosts in the nation! And they're fucking trash-throwing abominations!

 

Didn't Ann Coulter have one or more #1 best sellers? She's a vile, vicious, hateful bitch.

 

That's the difference.

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I dont get why anyone would listen to, let alone believe wholeheartedly in, any of it. Is the American Retard really that big of a demographic?

[SuperJerk 0]

Most of the time the reason for people's chosen ideology is psychological, not factual. If seeing other people getting extra help from the government makes you bitter and resentful, you're a conservative. You'll pretty much believe anything that reinforces this view.

 

Also, I find Al Franken's books to be very funny. I also find "The Onion" funny, so it could just be that the voice in my head that I hear when I read has awesome delivery.

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Teddy K is chewing up the opposition to the minimum wage increase & washing them down with Cutty Sark on the floor of the Senate.