Congress has lost its mind...

[tw]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Shakedown Street
Nancy Pelosi and House Dems hit up lobbyists in a sleazy scramble for cash.

Some people have this long list of wacko extremist publications. You know by his name that he will only quote another wacko extremist agenda.

Meanwhile, a reality you will never see TheMercenary discuss. Republican sleaze balls doing it for even larger cash. What he routinely forgets to post due to a poltiical agenda - due to being an enemy of moderates:

Already a prominent presence as an analyst on Fox News Channel and a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Rove is also playing a leading role in building what amounts to a shadow Republican Party, a network of donors and operatives that is among the most aggressive in the Republican effort to capture control of the House and the Senate.

He has had a major hand in helping to summon the old coalition of millionaires and billionaires who supported Mr. Bush and have huge financial stakes in regulatory and tax policy, like Harold C. Simmons, a Texas billionaire whose holdings include a major waste management company that handles some radioactive materials; Carl H. Lindner Jr., a Cincinnati businessman whose American Financial Group includes several property and casualty insurance concerns; and Robert B. Rowling, whose TRT Holdings owns Omni Hotels and Gold’s Gym.

Their personal and corporate money — as well as that of other donors who have not been identified — has gone to a collection of outside groups Mr. Rove helped form with Mr. Gillespie, including American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which in turn are loosely affiliated with similar groups staffed or backed by other operatives and donors with ties to Mr. Rove.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

Does the guy actually get the royalties from those 10,000 sales? Not to mention free publicity?

Man I hope so!

[xoxoxoBruce]

He should, the books were sold. Probably for list price, too.

[classicman]

[classicman]

Pelosi Barricades Self in Office, Refuses to Hand Over the Gavel

WASHINGTON – Events took a strange turn Thursday when Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the soon-to-be former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, barricaded herself and small number of her staff in her office in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C. It remains unclear whether the staff members inside the office with her are active participants in the action, or whether they are being held by Pelosi against their will. Crying and shouts of “Never!” and “My blog will always be called ‘The Gavel!’” could be heard coming through the wall in the hallway outside the blocked door.

Capitol police say that Pelosi began blocking the door to her office shortly after dawn Thursday morning. It’s unclear exactly what sparked Pelosi’s move, but Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley was reportedly seen leaving her office a few minutes before the sound of furniture moving and hammers were heard to echo from inside her office. Quigley is among a growing number of Democrats seeking a new direction, or just some sign of a grasp of reality, in his party leadership after its defeats last week. He had reportedly met with Pelosi to urge her to step aside, or at least stop referring to herself with the pronoun “we.”

“That time of morning it’s usually quiet in the building,” said Capitol police spokesman Sgt. Dan Hillen. “But we started getting reports of what sounded like someone remodeling their office so we went to check it out. We found that Speaker Pelosi’s office doors were locked from the inside. Our officers knocked, but no one answered or opened the door. We did hear someone inside, who we now believe to be Pelosi, whisper, ‘Cheese it, it’s the cops!’ before uttering a long, loud shush. There were also sounds of muffled crying. We retrieved the keys to unlock the door, but met resistance from inside. Those inside have apparently moved quite a bit of furniture and at least one sculpture into the doorway, and something large and wooden has been nailed across the doors to keep them from opening.”

Hillen speculated that the object nailed across the door might be the giant gavel that Pelosi famously toted across Capitol Hill when she became speaker.

Link

Read the rest - Its hilarious - Bwahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

[TheMercenary]

What if we burn her out?

[TheMercenary]

THE LAST FEAST: 6,488 EARMARKS
Tue Dec 14 2010 19:40:02 ET

Washington, D.C. *– U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) delivered the following statement today on the floor of the U.S. Senate:

“Mr. President, at 12:15 p.m. this afternoon, my office received a copy of the omnibus appropriations bill. It is 1,924 pages long and contains the funding for all 12 of the annual appropriations bills for a grand total of over $1.1 Trillion. It is important to note that the 1,924 pages is only the legislative language and does not include the thousands of pages of report language which contain the details of the billions of dollars in earmarks and, I’m sure, countless policy riders.

“While we continue to uncover which earmarks the appropriators decided to fund – thanks to a new online database – we at least know what earmarks were requested by Members and how much those projects would cost the American people if they were all funded. Taxpayers against Earmarks, www.washingtonwatch.com and Taxpayers for Common Sense joined forces to create this database. According to the data they compiled – for fiscal year 2011 Members requested over 39,000 earmarks totaling over $130 billion. Absolutely disgraceful. I encourage every American to go to the website www.endingspending.com study it, and make yourselves aware of how your elected officials seek to spend your money.

“In the short time I’ve had to review this massive piece of legislation – I’ve identified approximately 6,488 earmarks totaling nearly $8.3 billion. Here is a small sample:

$277,000 for potato pest management in Wisconsin
$246,000 for bovine tuberculosis in Michigan and Minnesota
$522,000 for cranberry and blueberry disease and breeding in New Jersey
$500,000 for oyster safety in Florida
$349,000 for swine waste management in North Carolina
$413,000 for peanut research in Alabama
$247,000 for virus free wine grapes in Washington
$208,000 beaver management in North Carolina
$94,000 for blackbird management in Louisiana
$165,000 for maple syrup research in Vermont
$235,000 for noxious weed management in Nevada
$100,000 for the Edgar Allen Poe Cottage Visitor’s Center in New York
$300,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii
$400,000 for solar parking canopies and plug-in electric stations in Kansas

“Additionally, the bill earmarks $727,000 to compensate ranchers in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan whenever endangered wolves eat their cattle. As my colleagues know, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Gray Wolf program is under intense scrutiny for wasting millions of taxpayer dollars every year to ‘recover’ endangered wolves that are now overpopulating the West and Midwest. My State of Arizona has a similar wolf program but ranchers in my state aren’t getting $727,000 in this bill.

“Mr. President, I will have much more to say about this bill later this week. I assure my colleagues – we will spend a great deal of time talking about this bill and the outrageous number of earmarks it contains. But for now let me just say this: it is December 14th – we are 22 days away from the beginning of a new Congress and nearly three full months into fiscal year 2011 – and yet we have not debated a single spending bill or considered any amendments to cut costs or get our debt under control. Furthermore, the majority decided that they just didn’t feel like doing a budget this year. How is that responsible leadership?

“This is the ninth omnibus appropriations bill we have considered in this body since 2000. That is shameful and we should be embarrassed by the fact that we care so little about doing the people’s business that we continuously put off fulfilling our constitutional responsibilities until the very last minute.

“One thing is abundantly clear to me – that the majority has not learned the lessons of last month’s election. The American people could not have been more clear. They are tired of wasteful spending. They are tired of big government. They are tired of sweetheart deals for special interests. They are tired of business as usual in Washington. And they are tired of massive bills – just like this one - put together behind closed doors, and rammed through the Congress at the last moment so that no one has the opportunity to read them and no one really knows what kind of waste is in them.

“Let me be clear about one thing – if the Majority Leader insists on proceeding to this monstrosity - the American people will know what’s in it. I will be joined by many of my colleagues on this side of the aisle to ensure that every single word of this bill is read aloud here on the Senate floor.

“I encourage my friends on the other side of the aisle to rethink their strategy and move forward with a short-term continuing resolution to fund the government into next year when a new Congress takes over – a Congress that was elected by the American people on November 2nd. “The majority may be able to strong arm enough members into voting for this omnibus – but they will not win in the end. The American people will remember – and I predict that we will see a repeat of November 2nd in the very near future.”

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash2n.htm

[TheMercenary]

OOps.....

Yep, they lost their minds.

http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=174&load=3751

[skysidhe]

So, the bill passed without the pet projects and earmarks? If it's really true, how did that happen. You'd think they'd be stalling for more, as usual. I can't believe my eyes, or maybe I am hoping for some measure of fiscal responsibility that I am not reading correctly. I do understand that an across the board tax cut isn't fiscally responsible to some, but to lighten the load by dropping earmarks would be something I haven't seen.

[TheMercenary]

Nice.... God I am so glad she is out as speaker.

Nancy Pelosi’s final days as Speaker of the House were spent at the exotic Four Seasons Resort Hualalai at Historic Ka’upulehu in Kona on the island of Hawaii.
Escorted throughout her trip by a mini security motorcade that included Secret Service and Hawaii County Police officers, Pelosi was seen at St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Kailua-Kona, where she received Communion. Parishioners greeted her warmly, Hawaii Reporter was told. Two police SUVs were on guard outside the hotel during her week long stay.
Pelosi, who traveled to Hawaii by private plane, spent the holidays in Kona last year at the same hotel in an elaborate suite that reportedly rents for $10,000 a night.

http://www.hawaiireporter.com/pelosi...-with-the-bill

[ZenGum]

An opinion piece on the ABC.

The US Senate is a complete joke (and what to do about it)

...But just in case the filibuster isn’t enough to grind the Senate to a halt, some clever geezer also invented “holds”. Thankfully, like most old-time senators, he was probably shot in a duel....

[Shawnee123]

I don't get it. Republicans want to get rid of filibustering? I'll admit ignorance, but didn't it serve them well? I'm not starting an argument here, I am just curious as to why all of a sudden they're concerned about it? Any of you political-knowledgeable folks out there able to explain it?

Filibuster reform

In the Senate, a move is under way to change the filibuster -- the procedure in which 60 votes are needed to move a bill from debate to a final vote. Changing the filibuster rule has drawn both support and ire. Many wonder, why change it now?

Julian Zelizer, a historian and CNN.com contributor, says changing the rules is not necessarily a bad thing.

"Some opponents of reform will certainly ask, given the recent coverage of the historic 111th Congress, whether procedural changes are really needed. Shouldn't senators just leave things alone?" he said in a recent CNN.com commentary. "The answer is no. The past three decades of congressional history have been marked by a filibuster frenzy."

He added: "Whereas senators once reserved filibusters for big issues such as civil rights, now they are willing to filibuster, or threaten to filibuster, everything that comes their way. In short, the filibuster has become a normalized tool of partisan conflict."

That partisan conflict was on full display in the last Congress with Republicans filibustering a number of Democrats' legislative items, such as the health care reform bill.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/01/...ess/index.html

[TheMercenary]

No, the current Demoncrats want to get rid of it to stop the Republickins from preventing legislation from moving to a vote that would otherwise require debate (simple majority), but to stifle the debate process and move to straight up or down vote on legislation they require 2/3rds majority to do that. Hence, Republickins filibuster to prevent a up or down vote without debate and no opportunity to propose amendments. If they have no filibuster the simple majority in the Senate will pass everything they want by a simple majority vote, a margin of 51 or greater. The problem is that if the Dems lose the next election and lose the control of the Senate the Repubs will hammer a bunch of stuff through, like judges, etc, and other things that are only handled in the Senate and the Dems will not be able to stop them. It seems that the last 20 + years have been nothing more than sticking it to the other guys when one party or the other gets in power.

[glatt]

The filibuster is generally a good thing. It's a form of power sharing. The Republicans have been abusing it, but that reflects more on them than on the filibuster itself. I think the Senate would be worse off if it didn't exist.

Any majority party that bans the filibuster would be very foolish and short sighted. In this political climate, majority parties don't stay in that position for very long. The electorate hates them both and isn't giving anyone much time to fix anything.

[Lamplighter]

Looks like a trend is starting...

Reuters
By David Lawder, Andy Sullivan and Glen Somerville
WASHINGTON | Thu Jan 6, 2011 7:52pm EST

Republicans acknowledge debt limit should rise
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans acknowledged on Thursday they will have to sign off
on more deficit spending to avoid a debt default that would roil financial markets
and bring the government to a grinding halt.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70113W20110107
Reuters

Republican bid to scrap healthcare hits snag
Republican efforts to scrap President Barack Obama's healthcare reform took a hit
on Thursday when budget analysts said repeal would add billions of dollars
to the federal budget deficit.

And I heard a TV talking head say that Speaker Boenher stated
today that President Obama was, indeed, and American citizen !!!