Hastert Launches A Partisan Policy

[johnnyrocket]

The GOP is pure scum...exponentially worse than any Democrat in a position of power.


In scuttling major intelligence legislation that he, the president and most lawmakers supported, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert last week enunciated a policy in which Congress will pass bills only if most House Republicans back them, regardless of how many Democrats favor them.

Hastert's position, which is drawing fire from Democrats and some outside groups, is the latest step in a decade-long process of limiting Democrats' influence and running the House virtually as a one-party institution. Republicans earlier barred House Democrats from helping to draft major bills such as the 2003 Medicare revision and this year's intelligence package. Hastert (R-Ill.) now says such bills will reach the House floor, after negotiations with the Senate, only if "the majority of the majority" supports them.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/washpost/a15423_2004nov26

[Plausible]

1. I'm not surprised and

the big question is what can and will the Democrats do.

[Old and In the Way]

11. They could say no.

If there's a stitch of party discipline left, they should vote "no" as a bloc. When things screw up, they point to their bi-partisan support, Democrats provide convenient cover for these scumbags (see Joe Libermann and Zell Miller). Make these miserable bastards accountable for their legislation.

What's to lose? It's not like the Republicans are interested in consensus building. Best thing is to fight for voter verified paper ballots and work on getting to know their consituents for the 2006 fight. And "just say no"....or just be absent on quorom calls...tie 'em up in Parlimentary procedures for the next 2 years.

[cornermouse]

36. One little question.

What good is it going to do to have voter verified paper ballots as a back up when the "winner" is announced and the election is apparently going to be conceded on the basis of exit polls and computer based ballots prior to looking at the paper ballots?

It seems to me that the voter verified paper ballots are going to be nothing more than a pacifier for the public.

[ima_sinnic]

48. you took the words out of my mouth

"voter verified paper trails" mean nothing when recounts are obstructed and illegitimate elections called "mandates" with absolutely no questioning by media or legislators. in addition, by 2008 if not 2006 the idea of "free elections" will be a distant memory anyway, after BushCo set their New World Order of empire and plunder in place.

[Xipe Totec]

52. This policy is putting heat on moderate Republicans

Perhaps some of them could be persuaded to switch party affiliations. One day Hastert could wake up and find himself the minority leader...

[The Zanti Regent]

53. I've given up. The only way out is secession

I'm working for California secession

http://moveoncalifornia.org/index.html

[UpInArms]

2. I certainly hope that this makes every major and minor

media publication and outlet in the country.

It will be exciting to see Hastert take a great portion of the responsibility for the looming failure of this government and the country.

[alfredo]

3. It won't matter if they fail. They control the media

and they control the voting machines.

[UpInArms]

4. but they don't control reality

and that is where people truly live and die.

[NYC Liberal]

7. People may KNOW what's happening,

But what can they DO?

[UpInArms]

10. have you been here?

http://www.thepen.us/e-fraud.html

[GoddessOfGuinness]

14. Write letters and send emails

National media:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x816939

Local media:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cu/cu.php?az=blaster

[alfredo]

8. With people like Rush, they have been controling reality

by defining reality

[UpInArms]

12. ah, the alternate universe theory

where the earth is flat and only 4500 years old.

Yes, they may flood the airwaves with lies, but when it all falls apart people will know who they have been told is in charge (the GOP) and this mal-administration will not come out unscathed.

The wheels of justice grind very slowly, but they grind very finely.

[johnnyrocket]

13. Hell, the media will even have liberals on...but simply

portray them as lunatics. It's truly a miserable time to be a part of the reality-based community, our side is losing on every front...and at this point we haven't figured out what's it going to take to crack their armor.

[UpInArms]

15. my personal vow

has been to investigate every person or business that I deal with to understand if they have supported this fascist regime in any way -

acquaintance or business that does that?

Gone from my life.

They can live with only themselves - in their echo chamber - thinking that all is well.

Boycotting businesses or people that cause me and mine (my country, my friends, my family) harm is giving me some solace in these dark times.

[Stand and Fight]

40. Oh we've figured it out...

The question is whether or not our elected representatives have figured it out. You're right, it is truly a miserable time to be a part of the reality-based community. It does not appear that the people at large have any interest whatsoever in exploring the truth. I cannot say how much it saddens me when I hear people speak of the news, and I know they are talking about the MSM. As we all know here the MSM could dig up truckloads of dirt to cause this president to be impeached -- even by his support base if they knew just how dirty the SOB is, but so long as Georgie W. has the media on his side, we are in a hopeless position.

There's an old adage that says that "He who has all the gold controls the world." Ladies and gents, in this day in age, gold is information and and the ability to release it to the masses. Bush has all of that and more as his propaganda machine cranks day and night. The Bush administration is Rumpelstiltskin weaving simple stray into gold.. The media is the spindle....

There as an age of light as far as information as concerned, and we've obviously entered into an information dark age. Pray God, that it does not last as long as I fear it will. Ever heard of historical amnesia? Well, our nation has got a bad case of it, and the prognosis is most grim.

[okieinpain]

44. we are not losing, quite simply they are evil. they will do things

that you would not find moral nor in the best interest of the country. the only way to stop this is for dems to return the favor in kind.

now will the dems do this is the real question.

[alfredo]

17. But the longer they have control, the worse

our situation will be. I don't want us to have to resort to what the Ukraine is doing. I guess I am too a old to man the barracades.

[Dr Fate]

25. Nope. They will always have their Emmanuel Goldstien: The Democrats.

And the national DEMS have groomed themsleves for this quite well.

[Arianrhod]

21. No.

They control a very small segment of reality. There is a segment equally as large as theirs (us), and another segment that agrees with us but is unable to vote. When they come online in the next couple of years, we will blow the Republican Party off the face of the map.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/11/25/new_silent_majority/index.html

IMV, the key for implementing a true Progressive (not Democratic; I think our current Party has sold out) agenda is to actualize the young generation. They are the nation's salvation.

[DBoon]

47. Obligatory 1984 quote

Ch 3.

...The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings. Over the body but, above all, over the mind. Power over matter -- external reality, as you would call it -- is not important. Already our control over matter is absolute.'

For a moment Winston ignored the dial. He made a violent effort to raise himself into a sitting position, and merely succeeded in wrenching his body painfully.

'But how can you control matter?' he burst out. 'You don't even control the climate or the law of gravity. And there are disease, pain, death --'

O'Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand. 'We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation -- anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature.'

[Stand and Fight]

39. They don't control reality?

They don't control reality? I'm not trying to be a flame maker or anything, but quite obviously they do if they control the media. The MSM is where the majority of 'murkins get their news -- it does not matter if that news is often critically missing key parts because they don't know it anyway. If the Republicans don't control reality, why is it that so many people continue to believe that there are in fact WMDs in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11, or that Iraq had ties to the 9/11 terrorist? Where people truly live an die... I don't think so, I have had talks with Republicans and work and they will rattle off things like "President Bush is a good man or morals / He is our leader and it is unpatriotic to question his word / President Bush has never lied to the American people about anything." If this is not controlling reality, then I don't know what is, because the Bush administration has got people believing all of their most blatant lies.

[NYC Liberal]

5. It's officially a one-party government.

[Rose Siding]

46. It's a one-party govt that just silenced any of its moderate voices

[Xipe Totec]

54. One Party, Red States. Can An All Red Flag be Far Behind?

With a Hammer and Sickle on the upper left corner...



Long live the USSR, the Union of Sniveling Sanctimonious Republicans!

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. So soon we will truck the democrats away and just run

the country as a totalitarian state, Hannah Arendt woudl have a field day with these fascists!!!!!!!!!!

[Erika]

9. Welcome to the rule of King George

No one who disagrees with him will have a voice. He wanted a dictatorship and he got it based on the far right fringes and those greedy enough to want their tax cuts continued.

[madrchsod]

16. the democratic party put about 10 cents

into Zamora`s run against fat Denny. maybe Ruben wasn`t the best candidate but he was the only one. so i`m stuck with fat Denny till he quits. screw the democrats who weeping over "Denny`s new rules"...they got what they deserve. at least they could have done more to scare him into representing the rest of the people in his district,oh well,i guess i can`t expect much from a party that rolled over and died.

[Dr Fate]

24. Most nat. Democrats forgot how to "tell it like it is" a long time ago...

...so they have marginalized themselves.

Now they act like they did not see see this comming?

I did. The writing has been on the wall for YEARS- but National DEMS still want to play Mr. Nice Guy and never call BULLSHIT when they see it.

DEMS did this to themselves.

[dorktv]

34. That guy got $.10? Wow...I had a party official actively

working against me! I wonder what it would be like to get that kind of help.

[okieinpain]

45. yep your right. if they didn't have a good candidate, why not run

a really right wing repug as an independent. you know one of those nut cases that make the repugs look bad.

unless the dems are ready to use fire they are going to have to live with this shit. myself I say they know who's in the closet, who's having affairs. I say announce the shit on the house floor. tell the repugs you'll stop when they do.

research house rules, find any and everything they can to bring the government to a stand still, hell they only picked up 4 seats in the house and those probably came from texas redistrubution. so what do we have to lose.

[moondust]

18. The Grand Overreaching Party continues.

The media may talk endlessly about the "political pitfall" of the majority overreaching (tyrannizing) as if it means something but will any of the spineless boobs report it for what it is as it happens? Forget it!

To marginalize the representation of roughly half of any body politic is plainly overreaching and wholly undemocratic.

[johnnyrocket]

19. Saddest part: A huge swath of the population still thinks the GOP..

is the minority party victimized by the bad old Democrats.

It's truly mind blowing...an alternate universe from which the GOP abuses their power without regard ( or consequences )

[Erika]

22. Bush has No concerns about being undemocratic

His "his way" or the "hiway" policy leaves no room for dissent, and he could care less. He's in it for the power and pay off to his friends. The heck with the average American. He's already reduced average family income by $1,500 a year knowing that health benefits, safety nets, and pension cuts are being made.

[Arianrhod]

28. We are making a mistake by depending on the media.

The media is every bit as co-opted as the Democratic Party is. We can't win there; it isn't even a possibility. We should therefore be looking at alternatives.

Flyers, posters and handouts still work. Talking to people on buses, in airports, in bars, in schools still works. Find a way to get a speaking engagement at a local public school, and talk about how the education system was meant to benefit everybody, and how participation in democracy helps the students personally.

IMV, the key to putting the country onto a progressive track is to fire up the young generation, those who will come of voting age during this administration. They are on our side; they will vote with us.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/11/25/new_silent_majority/index.html

And with them, we so outnumber the Republicans that we can put their Party to rest for generations.

[whathappened]

43. have you ever tryed

to talk to these freeper bots , they have one brain cell and no where to to reprogram the one cell , this is terrable , they watch fox and what ever they say is the work of god coming out of the boob tube

[Arianrhod]

55. Yes, I know.

I've been arguing with Freepers, Dittoheads, Creationists, Dominionists, Reconstructionists, and other regressives for 15 years now. They drive me up the wall.

That's why I quit arguing with them. It does no good. It will change no mind. (Well, once in a great while, you find a radical who is on the verge of not being quite so sure, and you can sometimes persuade him that he is right to question his beliefs.) All arguing with them does is entrench them deeper in their madness.

Karen Armstrong says that attacking Fundamentalists and terrorists is counterproductive. She says that, historically, every time one of these rabid groups is attacked (or even perceives that it is being attacked), it gets more and more violent. Same is true with Freepers.

We are now in a situation in which withdrawing and recouping makes sense. My recommendation was not so much to talk to Freepers on buses, but to talk to rational people on buses. The point is that, if we are waiting for the media to come around to our view, there won't be many of us around when it finally happens. We have to find alternative ways of spreading the Progressive message. In the 60s and 70s, we used the underground press, collectives, co-ops, communes, Zap Comix, and student activism. It was working, until the Vietnam War ended and we all quit, "getting on" with our lives. That was our big mistake.

It can work again. This time, though, we need to see it through.

[Arianrhod]

32. Another idea.

While the network news media praises * to the skies, television shows on the same networks have been blasting the Republicans for decades. From All in the Family in the 70s to Will and Grace and The Family Guy (a Fox show!), tv sitcoms in particular have championed the Progressive cause. They openly show gays as decent, hardworking and well-loved human beings; they mock conservative values, trash institutionalized religion, and even have taunted * himself. ("Did G W Bush give up when he got less than the popular vote? No way!"--Family Guy.)

It is a fact that most people pay little attention to the news. That's why they're so easily duped by Fox and Limbaugh. But their subconscious value foundation comes from the messages they digest most easily--sitcoms and music.

I suggest a letter-writing campaign to the network entertainment producers, lauding them for their wonderful shows and asking for more like them. Heap praise on those shows that promote Progressive values; boycott the sponsors of those that do not. Buy CDs of those artists who support Progressive values, and boycott those who do not.

Let's saturate the airwaves with a social consciousness that works against what O'Reilly is spewing, on a deeper and more meaningful level.

[moondust]

42. Case in point.

Five days after the election amid endless media analyses of "moral values" and the great gay marriage rejection, CBS's Cold Case ran an episode that was ALL ABOUT gay relationships within families and the gay scene of the early 1980s. It was done quite matter-of-factly, dealing with the "realities" of the issue in the course of a murder investigation. That one hour program was much more meaningful and instructive than the whole week's worth of talking head blather.

Good point.

[Arianrhod]

56. More meaningful, indeed. Thanks for pointing it out. n/t

[bushnboots]

20. Saddam Hastert...or Baghdad Dennis?

This smacks of Saddam Hussein's style. Could we use some kind of preemptive tactics in response? We sure as hell don't need UN approval.

[Dr Fate]

23. Democrats deserve this treatment.

If they cant make waves and start being blunt about these Republicans-then they basically marginalize themselves anyway.

Hopefully a handful of them will start punching these Repubs. in their throats-and start taking their message to the people and learning how to manipulate the media... I'm very close to giving up-

[Erika]

27. Start with yourself?

I refuse to patronize GOP businesses, and that's hard in this state.

I email every article on how Bush is marginalizing the middle class and cutting benefits for those who need them, while he is maximizing benefits to the rich in the form of increased tax cuts to all my former GOP friends.

I'm letting them know that they voted for him at the cost to this country. I forward www.icasualties.org continuously. This was Bush's war, paid by our service people, with benefits to Bush's buds. It also drains our taxes and reassigns them to corporate globalists.

[Dr Fate]

30. I've been working for Democrats for years.

I've organized, ran GOTV,campaigned and raised money in GA & CA- so I've seen the red & the blue.

The folks on the ground are the real deal. But those at top are idiots- no, really.

The national DEMS in power are chumps and they act like they did not see any of this coming. Hell- I'll bet some of them didnt!!

They refuse to listen to their base/ground troops, and they are fucking idiots, most of them.

[talk hard]

26. Hastert is a thug

[mrbassman03]

29. What do small rodents have to do with domestic policies?

Oh, Hastert, not Hamster... maybe I was a little out of context.

[VivaKerry]

31. What disgusts me the most is: the dem leadership will say:

we will work with them the best we can. (a la Pelosi).

The first 4 years of bush was merely a primer, a precurser, just a dollop of what is in store for us.

We are so FUCKED. So royally fucked.

[Erika]

33. Quit Acting Like A Victim

I got so sick of the GOP whining like helpless babies while Clinton was in that I could hardly stand it. Everyone one of us can protest by not patronizing GOP businesses and letting everyone know the damage Bush is doing to our country. Move by move, step by step. His refusing to attend the landmine convention and cutting Pell grants is just one example. He speaks out of both sides of his mouth.

[AndyTiedye]

35. We are Being Run Out of Town

They are telling the House Democrats that they might as well not show up,
as they will be completely ignored for the forseeable future.

They are specifically working to prevent any across-the-aisle
alliances from forming, by freezing the Democrats out entirely.

They will do the same thing in the Senate, if they can strip away
our ability to filibuster at the start of the next session.

Then they will have true one-party rule.

[Stand and Fight]

41. Sadly true.

I fear that you have hit the nail right on the head. Pushing the Democrats in the House and Senate into a corner, so that once the next election comes up the Republicans can trumpet the fact that no major piece of legislation was promoted by Democrats. They'll be able to lob charges of Democrats not being active, of being ineffective in debates... The people will buy it wholesale because they don't follow the news like we do. They will have a quasi-one-party rule with a good amount of Democrats in office, but come 2006 -- if things keep going downhill -- they will have a historically unbalanced House and Senate majority. All of this is headed in one direction, and I shutter at the thought of what the master stroke of the Republicans will be. How shall they deliver the death blow to the terminal Democrats?

[Piperay]

37. That will make it kind of hard to blame

the Democrats when the repuke policies fail. :shrug:

[Erika]

38. It won't matter

Red states vote Republican. Period. They don't care about where the leadership is going. If there is a "R" next to the name, they vote Republican. They are brain washed sheeple who have lost the capability to think. If Osama or Hussein ran with an "R" next to their names, they'ld be voted in. If Jesus ran with a "D" next to his name, he'd stand no chance of election. You are not talking about thinking people.

[Hotler]

49. Nice!. fucking nice!

I'm surprised they're not struck dead by lightning when they say the word "democracy". I bet the neo-cons have no reflection when looking in the mirror.

[GOPFighter]

50. This is great!

Really, this is great.

The Republican Party is more and more out of control. They are like a party on drugs. They are living in a fantasy world. They don't realize that almost half the electorate hates their guts and this number is growing! The Republicans are about to learn that they are totally responsible for the war in Iraq, the huge - and still growing - deficit, the sluggish economy. They will also have to explain to their extremist RW supporters why, now that they control all three branches of government, they can't ban all abortions, get a constitutional amendment passed to ban gay marriage, allow churches to endorse candidates, and enact school vouchers nationwide.

The Republican Party is in trouble and we've got to get ready for the 2006 election to exploit their failures.

WhoooHoo!

:kick:

[Deja Q]

51. Sick & sicker. Should be majority of all. Not majority of the majority.

x(

_|_

America is truly dead at this point.

[arwalden]

57. Republicans: Vile, Corrupt, Disgusting.