If you cant beat em. Shut em in the house!

PELOSI LOWERS THE BOOM
Wed May 16 2007 14:43:59 ET

After losing a string of embarrassing votes on the House floor because of procedural maneuvering, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has decided to change the current House Rules to completely shut down the floor to the minority.

The Democratic Leadership is threatening to change the current House Rules regarding the Republican right to the Motion to Recommit or the test of germaneness on the motion to recommit. This would be the first change to the germaneness rule since 1822.

In protest, the House Republicans are going to call procedural motions every half hour.

As it happens, Chief Deputy Republican Whip Eric Cantor explains Pelosi's attempt to shut the minority out of the legislative process in an exclusive NRO podcast.

Cantor explained it this way on his blog earlier:

... bottom line — the Democrats are preventing their Members from having to vote on the tax increases that they are trying to impose on the American People.

The Republicans have been using a House procedure in an attempt to get Democrats on the record supporting the tax increases that, under their own pay-as-you-go rules, will be required to pay for their new spending. It's really slowed Nancy's roll, and so today she tried to take away the Republicans' ability to do it. This would have been the first change to the rule in 185 years.

In the podcast, he explains that Republicans essentially shut down the House this afternoon until Pelosi backed down, but warns that she plans to try again after Memorial Day — something to monitor closely.

The democratic party is dying. They have become a joke and the alternative is no better. A new party needs to emerge and challenge the GOP.

House Democrats Just Blinked



House Democrats wanted to change the rules to make it easier to raise taxes. They wanted to hide their Members from a direct vote on the tough issues. They wanted to change rules on minority floor rights that have been in place since 1822. They failed.

Today, House Republicans stood united and successfully fought against the House Democrats’ ill-advised rule changes, by reducing all business on the House Floor to a crawl. We used a creative set of motions and other parliamentary techniques to bring the fight.

In the end, House Democrats lost and the American People won.

U luv Isabelle said:

The democratic party is dying. They have become a joke and the alternative is no better. A new party needs to emerge and challenge the GOP.

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there wont be another party

but

the DIMZ have shown what they are

STINKY PUSSY


Nancy Throws Out Thomas Jefferson's Procedures — Rejects Procedural Issue On Books Since 1822


The RS Insider can add a bit of meat to the story Drudge is reporting about Nancy Pelosi’s decision to revoke minority rights…

After losing a string of embarrassing votes on the House floor because of procedural maneuvering, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has decided to change the current House Rules to completely shut down the floor to the minority.

This happened today after the Democrats changed a rule to prevent Republicans from offering a motion to recommit on the PAYGO provisions of their legislation. The bottom line: Democrats don’t want their members to have to vote on the tax increases that they are trying to slide into bills, and Republican motions-to-commit put them in the awkward position of having to actually cast those votes and go on the record.

This is ironic, because in 2006, Nancy Pelosi promised to do the exact opposite. Excerpts:

“Minority Leader Pelosi says a Democratic majority next year would place a heavy emphasis on bipartisanship -- and would offer the Republicans minority rights often denied Democrats now.”

"[I would like] to come as close as you can in the political reality to a bipartisan management of the House"


“Pelosi…intends to stand by a proposal she offered House Speaker Hastert two years ago to enact a Minority Bill of Rights.”


“It includes … a commitment to moving legislation through regular order…”

“"I would consider the role to be speaker of the House, not speaker of the Democrats" [Pelosi] said.”


“Pelosi said her time as minority leader has been spent "learning in the minority how you don't want to be treated, and that's how we would not want them to be treated."”

“In perhaps the biggest break from the current practices of GOP leaders, Pelosi said she would be willing to lose votes on the floor.”

"I certainly would not say that we can't bring things to the floor because we'll lose…”

The Motion to Recommit rule has been on the books and unchanged since 1822. The Rules Committee website says “The motion to recommit is the prerogative of the Minority party.” Thomas Jefferson prepared a rules manual for his own use as President of the Senate, and the House still uses it for guidance.


At the beginning of Jefferson's Manual he quotes the Speaker of the House of Commons from 1728 to 1761:

"It was a maxim he had often heard when he was a young man, from old and experienced Members, that nothing tended more to throw power into the hands of administration, and those who acted with the majority of the House of Commons, than a neglect of, or departure from, the rules of proceeding; that these forms, as instituted by our ancestors, operated as a check and control on the actions of the majority, and that they were, in many instances, a shelter and protection to the minority, against the attempts of power."

The rules of the House are there to protect the Minority from the tyranny of the Majority. But Nancy Pelosi is in charge now, and the Rules are being eliminated. You do the math

Any basic Parliamentarian will tell you that Parliamentary Procedure exists for the minority to be HEARD and the majority to prevail.

The rules are there for a reason.

Shame on the Speaker for trying to muzzle Members.

great example of what DICTATORS do

a stab in the heart of a democracy

yet'

the press, print and electronic BARELY mentioned it at all

though its a huge story

When the Repoz were in power, and the DIMZ didnt wanna vote on issues

and the Repoz wanted to force em to vote

The press dubbed it as the NUK LEE R option

Now

NOTHING


In a related story, the DNC is threatening to SUE bloggers that are negative towards their candidates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

busybody said:

In a related story, the DNC is threatening to SUE bloggers that are negative towards their candidates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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On what grounds?

Wonder if the Electronic Frontier and the ACLU will jump onboard that one.

Libel and Slander

Its really an attempt at INTIMIDATION

The fact that someone like you

shows how THAT news made NO NEWS

when in fact its a PATTERN of INTIMIDATION by the DIMZ

that includes the above

Where to start with that?

1) people who live in glass houses?....no.

2) Since when is so-called political debate libel? (They better be careful which Pandora's boxes they force open.)

3) Don't go messin' with the Men in Pajamas.



and what do you mean by "someone like me"?

Most bloggers are mere little people who do it as a hobby

they cant afford to defend themselves

ANYONE CAN SUE

Someone like you?

Someone who watches and understands and is in tune with the happenings of the day

NOT

Like so many of LIT LOONS

Including BLUESBOY!

busybody said:

Most bloggers are mere little people who do it as a hobby

they cant afford to defend themselves

ANYONE CAN SUE

Someone like you?

Someone who watches and understands and is in tune with the happenings of the day

NOT

Like so many of LIT LOONS

Including BLUESBOY!

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The DNC suing Men in Pajamas is going to cause them a lot more pain than they can imagine. They're being very very very shortsighted if they think that dog will hunt.

I've been dealing with personal crap lately and truly haven't paid much attention to what's going on. I see the headlines at yahoo, get emails from the WP and NYT and thread post notifications from here. Hell, I haven't even seen the WEATHER reports, much less paid attention to much of anything else that's going on. I'll try to do better. Just a lot on my plate.

As for Bluebie, well....the only hard and fast rule in this house is that he and I NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER discuss politics. EVER. I am comforted by the fact that he has never and probably will never vote in any election. You can imagine that in my family that is considered grounds for excommunication. *nods*

You should have seen his ex-wife and her husband trying to talk to my father -- WHAT WAS I THINKING putting them in the same room at the same time????? To their credit, they were very gracious in recognizing there wouldn't be anything good coming from that encounter and they moved along. My party survived intact after that.

Nancy Pelosi in black leather.....mmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!

I've been telling Laurel since 2000, that while the Right does try to enforce a bit of morality, it is the Left that will do anything it can to shout down or ad Hominem an opposing viewpoint because, as per Rand, nothing they do is based on reason, it is based on the altruistic desire to make people's lives better with the positive interference of Government; they are socialists at best, but more comfortable with Stalinism...

someplace said:

The DNC suing Men in Pajamas is going to cause them a lot more pain than they can imagine. They're being very very very shortsighted if they think that dog will hunt.

I've been dealing with personal crap lately and truly haven't paid much attention to what's going on. I see the headlines at yahoo, get emails from the WP and NYT and thread post notifications from here. Hell, I haven't even seen the WEATHER reports, much less paid attention to much of anything else that's going on. I'll try to do better. Just a lot on my plate.

.

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getting emails from WP and the Times assures you of NEVER EVER knowing what is going on!

silly!


Wanna know what is really goin on?

READ MY THREADS!

You know, George Bush came in wanting to change the tone and I think he still does. Nancy gave us this great speech about how non-partisan and gracious she was going to be...


The only good thing is that in less than two years this President and this loathsome Congress will both be gone.

busybody said:

getting emails from WP and the Times assures you of NEVER EVER knowing what is going on!

silly!


Wanna know what is really goin on?

READ MY THREADS!

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You KNOW I have to keep up with Deal Book and that kind of thing. As for the rest, it's all about balance.

They've flip-flopped from the minority party of Dialog with Saddam to the shut-up-the-minority gang.

Look at how much of a hurry they are in to grant Amnesty so they can put as much time between it and the election as possible so you'll forget about their 12 to 20 million new voters.

They canceled Bono's AID aid and they canceled the fence to protect our border and now they are dead set on rewarding those who purposely break our laws and cut ahead of the people obeying the law.

And who is going to pay for it all?

The rich?

The REPOZ are as bad as the DIMZ

BUT

The Repoz at least pretend

The DIMZ are in your face

WE ARE WITH THE ENEMY, WE WILL SHUT YOU OUT AN UP. ANY MEANS NECESSARY!

well

isnt this special?


Murtha accused of rules violation

By: Patrick O'Connor
May 17, 2007 09:45 PM EST



John Murtha, a key ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, shouted at an opponent, the GOP claims.


Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) threatened to deny any further spending projects to a Republican who challenged him over an earmark, his antagonist has charged -- a potential violation of House rules.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) had challenged money that Murtha inserted into an intelligence bill last week.

Rogers turned the tables later that night by saying he would propose a reprimand of Murtha for violating House rules.

The Republican is planning to insert a transcript of their exchange in the Congressional Record to document the potential violation.

The privileged resolution will also require a House vote to reprimand Murtha for his comments, according to a copy received by Politico. Rogers is expected to file it on Monday.

It does not call for an investigation by the ethics committee.

'The way I do it'

According to the draft resolution, Murtha shouted at Rogers on the House floor Thursday for offering a motion last week to expose $23 million Murtha requested in an intelligence bill.

Murtha had requested the money to prevent the administration from shuttering the National Drug Intelligence Center in Johnstown, Pa.. in Murtha’s district.

“I hope you don’t have any earmarks in the defense appropriations bills because they are gone, and you will not get any earmarks now and forever,” Murtha told Rogers on the House floor, according to the draft transcript given Politico.

“This is not the way we do things here -- and is that supposed to make me afraid of you?” Rogers replied.

“That’s the way I do it,” Murtha said.

Members are not allowed to threaten earmarks or tax provisions.

The showdown occurred on the Republican side of the aisle, in the so-called Ohio Corner, in front of numerous GOP lawmakers who witnessed the episode, one member present said.

Murtha could not immediately be reached for comment.

If it took place as alleged, Murtha’s tirade would violate House rules.

Lawmakers “may not condition the inclusion of language to provide funding for a congressional earmark, a limited tax benefit, or a limited tariff benefit in any” legislation, according to House rule XXIII, clause 16.

According to the Senate minority leader,

While most of the media were busy covering the latest developments on the Iraq funding bill or the bipartisan immigration proposal, congressional Democrats on Thursday quietly passed a budget creating the framework for the largest tax increases in American history.

Until Thursday, the largest tax increase had been in 1993. That’s when Bill Clinton proposed a monstrous budget that even he would later admit had contained too many tax hikes. The Democrats lost the House of Representatives the following year for the first time in half a century. Clinton, speaking at a Texas fundraiser soon after Election Day, pinned the blame squarely on the hikes: “It might surprise you,” he said, “to know that I think I raised them too much too.”

Despite what happened to Democrats as a result of that tax hike, the budget they submitted their first year back in control of both houses of Congress — and pushed through Thursday on a party-line vote — provides a framework for tax hikes a full three times larger than the one that put them in the minority back then. This budget reverses more than a decade of Republican tax relief. It means a tax hike on every single American — working, retired, rich or poor — and, even as it aims to raise nearly $1 trillion with new taxes, does absolutely nothing to rein in spending or shore up an entitlement system badly in need of reform.

Everyone takes a hit. Forty-five million working families with two children will see their taxes increase by nearly $3,000 annually. They’d see the current child tax credit cut in half — from $1,000 to $500. The standard deduction for married couples is also cut in half, from the current $3,400 to $1,700. The overall effect on married couples with children is obvious: Far from shifting the burden onto the wealthy, the Democratic budget drives up taxes on the average American family by more than 130 percent....

L.A.Times: Opinion Should Be ‘Elite Enterprise’, Bloggers ‘Yammering’, ‘Like Finger-Painting’

Sometimes you read something by a member of the MSM that is just so elitist, someone whose arrogance is so amazing, that it is hard to believe it was written by a member of a democratic society.

We MSM watchdogs love to poke our fingers in the eyes of the homogeneously leftist elitists in the media establishment assailing them for their pervasive assumptions of their own superiority. We don’t often, however, get to see them come right out and say that they truly do think they are better and smarter then the rest of us mere commoners. Usually they are sly enough not to show their arrogance so obviously, leaving it unsaid but broadly hinted at. But, once in a while their egos get the better of them and they let that upturned nose snort just enough at the rest of us to let us know where our “place” in life is.

This is one of those times.

Enter the L. A. Times’ Richard Schickel to tell bloggers that they just don’t “bring anything to the party” where it concerns opinion, social criticism and reviews. Schickel is sniffing at all the uneducated, boobs who dare to imagine they have the moral right to write and publish their views on the internet for all interested parties to peruse.

How DARE those lowly bloggers encroach on what Shcickel feels is the job of a cultural elite who’s right it obviously is to publish opinion and shape our culture.

In “Not everybody’s a critic”, Schickel’s impertinence about how stupid bloggers, and by extension the common American, really are reaches a height that is just short of Olbermannesque with its shrillness.

After relating how the “most grating words” he’s read lately in a newspaper were those praising the plethora of bloggers who review books and post their opinions and social criticisms on the web, Schickel lays it on the line.

Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author's (or filmmaker's or painter's) entire body of work, among other qualities.
Amusingly, Schickel goes on to sternly remind us that the “best criticism” is that “conveyed without a judgmental word being spoken”, amusing for the simple fact that our erstwhile critic seems to have cast that good advice to the four winds in his own criticism of the blogosphere.
The phrase “physician, heal thyself” comes so immediately to mind.

So, in the spirit of Schickel’s admonition not to say any “judgmental words”, I think I’ll let him do a little of it for me. The following will be a listing of some more of the “non-judgmental words” that Schickel unleashes like a shotgun blast at his hated, uneducated internet masses:

Most reviewing, whether written for print or the blogosphere, is hack work…
Your publisher kindly forwards the clippings, and you are appalled by the sheer uselessness of their spray-painted opinions.
I do think, however, that a simple "love" of reading (or movie-going or whatever) is an insufficient qualification for the job.
Inevitably, blogging was presented as an attractive alternative — it doesn't take much time, and it is a method of publicly expressing oneself (like finger-painting, I thought to myself, but never mind).
How simply nonjudgmental of you, Mr. Schickel. Bravo.
Our cultural snob also decries the unseemly “democratic” nature of the internet a place where every “car parts” employee can write a review.

…a purely "democratic literary landscape" is truly a wasteland, without standards, without maps, without oases of intelligence or delight.
Gosh, we is all juss so stoopit.
And now let us see what our kindly Mr. Schickel imagines might be the importance of his own handiwork:

The act of writing for print, with its implication of permanence, concentrates the mind most wonderfully. It imposes on writer and reader a sense of responsibility that mere yammering does not. It is the difference between cocktail-party chat and logically reasoned discourse that sits still on a page, inviting serious engagement.
I just love it when these people imagine only their work rises to the level of “logically reasoned discourse” and only their efforts rate “inviting serious engagement”. All I can say is that we Americans cast off the idea of the divine right of Kings and the controlling, elite classes that accompanies a Royal Court several hundred years ago. Unfortunately, there is a class of American who imagines that they sit above the floatsam and jetsam of their fellows, a class of cultural elitists who feel they have a divine right to guide the lower classes by the nose for their own good, a right born not of any royal lineage but one spawned instead from their own self-proclaimed superior intelligence.
And we nit wit bloggers should just shut up and let them tell us what to think.

Not that I will be inclined to “convey” any “judgmental word” for Mr. Schickel’s beau ideal for cultural criticism. After all, it would be wonderful if I, too, could be considered a member of the superior classes.