Hey folks,
I’m back. So what did the Dems. accomplish today? Other than getting on TV and in the Mass Media Drones to suck up the spotlight and try to convince you that they are in charge of Iraq? They passed H.R. 4. But they fell short to override the President’s veto.The Bill, H.R.4 passed by a vote of 255-170, short of the two-thirds margin that would be needed to override the veto. The legislation still must pass the Senate, where it could undergo significant changes or be defeated. What else?
The Senate, meanwhile, regained momentum on ethics legislation after running aground Thursday on an effort to shine more light on special-projects earmarks. Senators voted 87-0 Friday for a measure that would deny pensions to members of Congress convicted of serious crimes.
The House drug legislation directs the secretary of Health and Human Services to bargain directly with drug companies, altering a fundamental provision of the 2003 law that created the Medicare drug benefit for seniors.
Basically, they did nothing. As for the Drug bill, this is more Government control in your life. On the surface, it may sound good, but it’s really not. Like Ron Lewis R-Ky said,"If passed, this bill would allow the federal government to get into the medicine cabinets of millions of Medicare beneficiaries across the country."
Couple that with the warning from,
Merck & Co., the giant pharmaceutical company, said in a statement: "Congress should be cautious of making changes to this successful program that would direct the government to interfere with price negotiations and could lead to price setting and restrictions on access to medicines."
These people, the LWL, are completely clueless as to what they are doing. They are pushing these things through without given anyone time to read them before they vote. Embryonic stem cells is another that will be vetoed if passed.
Then you have this story that just makes me laugh when I read it. It’s a Reuter’s piece about the time ticking by for the Democrats’s first one hundred hours. They are even starting to make excuses for them.
The clock is ticking for House Democrats, but it's hard to tell what time it is.
On Friday, for example, the House was in session for a little more than eight hours. Only five of them, however, ticked off on new Speaker Nancy Pelosi's 100-hour clock for quickly passing a six-bill agenda that Democrats promised voters last fall.
With passage of a bill to make the government negotiate for lower Medicare prescription drug prices, Pelosi, D-Calif., is two-thirds of the way done — in under a quarter of the allotted hours, according to her count.
Hold it. Wait a second. According to her count? Maybe she can’t count. OH, it’s like sports. Continued,
That's because just as the official clock for a basketball or football game stops for time-outs and commercial breaks, Democrats aren't counting the minutes spent on business unrelated to those six designated bills.
STOP!!!! {Laughing, banging hand on desk} So six months from now, they can STILL claim that they got everything done in one hundred hours? Try that with YOUR boss next time he tells you he wants something done in an allotted time. Think it will float?
So while the House had been in session for nearly 56 hours since the 110th Congress was sworn in Jan. 4, the clock on Pelosi's Web site suggested that less than half that time — 23 hours, 34 minutes — had elapsed by the close of business Friday.
{Laughing again}
"We're just counting the legislative hours," Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill explained.
Regardless of which clock is used, Democrats appear well on their way to accomplishing their promise. They have only two bills to go and both are scheduled for votes next week. Aiding their endeavor is Monday's Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday, when neither clock will be running.
Finished are new rules on ethics, lobbying and budgeting — part of the Democrats' 100-hour promise in November but not included on Pelosi's clock. Also completed are the passage of four bills: anti-terrorism measures, a minimum-wage increase,and expanding federally funded stem cell research, in addition to Friday's Medicare measure.
The final two bills are cutting interest rates on some student loans and recouping more money from oil royalties and redistributing it to renewable energy technologies.
Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner R-Ohio, said the clock — no matter how time is kept — is irrelevant.
"The clock is just a distraction to the hypocrisy they've exhibited and continued to exhibit in the first 100 hours," Kennedy said, referring to House Democrats' refusal to allow the GOP minority a chance to offer amendments or have any role in writing the bills. Democrats had leveled the same criticism that Republicans, then in the majority, denied them those opportunities.
No time was run on either clock Monday, when many lawmakers attended the BCS championship football game in Arizona between Ohio State and Florida.
OH I can’t take it. These people are the apodeme of hypocrisy. They are nuts. Not to mention Looney. They want to do what they want, when they want, but yet claim that they did what they said, when they said they would. But they do not even know what the hell they are doing.
How long will the sheep follow these people? Believe what they say?
Then you have infighting going on. The party has never been truly united. Now that they are in power, they will eat their own to become the most powerful. They pass the Minimum Wage increase, then Speaker Pelosi grants an exemption for Starkist Tuna. A Major company that just happens to be in her district. {I wonder it that fits in the "Ethic Reform"} Then tells Rangel to get to work on the tax increase for those making over $500,00.00 a year. This didn’t sit well with Rangel. According to the New York Post - RANGEL RANKLED BY FELLOW DEM PELOSI Rangel yesterday swatted down a tax hike that Pelosi has floated, and he made an end run around her decision to bypass House committees in a rush to bring bills to a vote.
"There's a lot of tension there," one Democratic lawmaker said of the relationship between Rangel and Pelosi.
Rangel, who took over the powerful Ways and Means Committee after 36 years in Congress, smacked down the idea Pelosi raised on Sunday of repealing tax cuts for those earning more than $500,000 per year."We haven't gotten that far to be talking about tax increases," Rangel told The Post. "She hasn't discussed it with me . . . We haven't gotten into tax policy."
Pelosi had said nixing tax cuts for half-million-dollar earners "might be more important to the American people than ignoring the educational and health needs of America's children."
But Rangel, whose committee handles tax policy, dismissed Pelosi's idea as unlikely to happen, since the speaker didn't bother to vet it with him in advance.
"Saying it to me in private is far more important than whatever she says nationally," he huffed, referring to her weekend TV appearance.
The next two years of this will be fun, scary, sad, and most definitely interesting to watch. This may seem completely outrageous to you, but it really is not. It IS who they are. It IS what they do. They can’t help it. Liberalism is a quest for tyranny. But that is for another time. They have no problem telling you what you can and cannot do, but the rules do not apply to them. Not even with each other. It’s all about the power void of accountability. It’s all about them. Plain and simple.
Peter
