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Speaker of the House Starts Blogging
Bjimba writes "Denny Hastert, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, has just started his own blog on the official speaker.gov site. I don't know if he'll keep up with it, but from reading his initial post, it seems clear that he's not employing ghostbloggers."
While its simply an opinion, his blog seems like he says it like it is and is more genuine than any speech I'll see on T.V.
Smart man.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
Looks OK, Sir, I just editted out the part about letting all those filthy stinking liberals in New Orleans rot in their own stew.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Better hope he's not Catholic cause his Sunday school teacher might object to him blogging!
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
I know I'd sure like to comment on Hastert's mention of fiscal responsbility. It's refreshing to know that cutting money to find deadbeat dads is top on the Republican's fiscal responsibility list.
Flame Warning Heaven forbid we cut corporate welfare to the most profitable corporations in the country. I wonder how many of them are actually headquartered in the country? Returning to anti-flame levels
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
If they think they can rebuid NOLA and the other towns hit hard by hurricanes in the gulf for only $62.5 billion, AND still keep taxes down, then I'd say we need to be doing pee tests on the House Leadership. Still, Mega Points for actually attempting to blog, but he's missed the feedback section in his implementation, I think on purpose. Can't have any nasty liberals leaving him messages, can we?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Seems Denny's partial to amateur wrestling and Johnny Cash. Don't call him Sue.
Creating weblog entries on a regular basis often requires one to post thoughts, ideas, and opinions that have not been thoroughly thought out. They're like email, too easy to write, and impossible to recall. How many of us have sent an angry email and later wished we had not.
If we expect our policiticans to start web-logging their daily thoughts, we're going to have to be a lot less hard on them about what they say. Our politicians, like the rest of the human race, are going to have ideas that, when fully thought out, are really bad. In maintaining weblogs some of these bad ideas are going to see international publication.
Will we allow our politicians to recant later, and say "well, yes, I guess that article I wrote was racist/imperialistic/unconstitutional, now that I look at it again, please don't hold it against me?" More importantly, will the news media be willing to let things like that die or pass unnoticed?
(Yes, I used the preview button once, No, I didn't give this post a lot of thought.)
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
I should certainly hope that a member of congress could submit a single page of text without spelling errors. I'm sure that many slashdot readers have written longer error-free posts to their own blogs. Why should the lack of errors indicate that it's been "scrubbed" by a staffer?
It would be nice for all our government officials to start public blogs. Keeping in touch with the people and getting feedback is highly important in our sort of society.
I have noticed that his blog does not have any sort of RSS/Atom/XML feed and that makes it difficult to keep up with his latest posts.
Another thing is that there are no places to post public comments. I wouldn't mind if the comments ended up being moderated but I believe there should be atleast some way to post comments on his blog. He could spend a few minutes of his day responding to the people or he could get a staff member to pick out a few good ones each week and he could reply. That would send a very good message to the people.
Right off the bat, this Republican Senator did something his Repblican colleagues probably won't like -- he criticized oil companies. From his blog:
"Today, energy companies started reporting their 3rd quarter earnings, and while Americans paying were record prices at the pump, energy companies were making record profits. This is America. And Republicans don't believe in punishing success. But what are these oil companies doing to bring down the cost of oil and natural gas?"
Welcome to blogosphere, Senator.
Sun and Fun
I've been saying for years that we should be trying to /. US governement sites other than NASA!!! That, or Microsoft depending on what you dislike more.
Honesty may be the best policy, but by process of elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
The democrats won't let them build new refineries because that might kill some migratory bird, and the republicans allow them to ship the stuff out to make a few cents more on the barrel because they refuse to legislate more stringent regulations into the system...
It's a free market and all, but sometimes you have to wonder if they're not a little bit more evil than they should be.
Just so Rush Limbaugh can be right there shouting, "FIRST!!!11"
Right, because the anonymity of the Internet brings out only the best in people, especially when they have an opinion!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
As for Katrina, he said rebuilding seven feet under sea level didn't make any sense. Frankly, it still doesn't if you approach it with common sense, but emotional and cutural importance seem to have rendered this argument silent.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
A future Hastert blog:
:-(
:-( [sigh]
OMG!!!! What a day!
Georgie said that he didn't think that I was doing enough to kill the McCain amendment in conference committee. Then I got a call from Dick, and he said that I needed to get the troops in line for the upcoming appropriations bill. They both are so mean sometimes! WTF!!! I just want to do fun speaker stuff like bang my gavel and shout "THERE WILL BE ORDER IN THE HOUSE!" at freshman congressmen, but these guys make me feel really underappreciated. I told Tom about it, and he said that I should just chill out and not worry about them.
I was feeling really depressed until I got a call from Condi, who said that she wanted someone to go shopping with her. I had an excellent time with her. We went to The Mall and bought a few odds and ends. She really cheered me up when she did an impression of John Kerry. She spoke in a monotone voice and pulled the sides of her eyes down to look like a basset hound and she said "GLOBAL TEST! GLOBAL TEST!" and "I VOTED FOR IT BEFORE I VOTED AGAINST IT!" ROFLMAO!!!! After we were done laughing, some lady next to us was shopping for flip-flops! Can you believe it! LOLLERSKATES!!!!
hastert's colleague in the senate, barack obama, has been doing an excellent podcast for several months now.
Think about it. His blog is hosted on www.speaker.gov -- a US government website. As such, anything that even remotely looks like suppression of free speech would be taboo. The blog would immediately be "crap flooded", essentially DDoS'd by a rain of shit, and he'd be legally unable to remove any of the messages. Crap-flooding contains no useful information, but it is still "speech" and because the web site is a formal entity of the United States Government there would be nothing he could do to stop it.
Not everything boils down to Liberals vs. Conservatives, you know.
You missed the point.. his point wasn't it would cost more that 62.5 billion its the fact we can't pay for 62.5 billion or the 200+ billion it will cost for all gulf states to come back to normalcy without raising taxes..
All the republicans are doing is making my daughter or your son and your daughter pay for the messes he is creating..
Sure.. prez can't control the weahter, but could do a hell of a lot better job in managing the infrastructure and support that has made our country what it is. Obviously he doesn't care.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is the junior senator from the same state as Hastert. He doesn't seem to feel the need to write at a 6th grade level. This post, "Tone, Truth, and the Democratic Party," was written for the crowd over at Daily Kos, and cross-posted on his own blog. The folks over at Daily Kos seemed to be up to the "challenge" of reading it; Obama's post generated over 800 comments.
I'm not saying that this is because the Kossacks are a "sophisticated" audience, like the New York Times or WSJ audience that you mention. It's just that they didn't seem to have any problem with it. Also, I'm not sure which style is ultimately better at getting one's message across to the people; Hastert's simple, direct style, or Obama's more sophisticated one. President Bush seems to have been very successful with a simple, direct style. Maybe, as you say, that is ultimately the best way to communicate with the "or'nary American".
I guess if people really don't want to read at more than a 6th grade level, Obama's got 'em covered with his podcast. If what you say is true, maybe political podcasts will become more and more common, since even a poor reader can just listen instead. Talk radio would be the example here...
The issue with his comment's was his timing. People were still stranded, and I recall his comments being a bit distasteful when I first heard them. The time for that debate was later, after folks had been rescued.
He didn't say the Bible actually said anything about condoms (or even about anything). He said that the so-called religous right will claim that it does - and what's worrisome is that'll be enough for most people.
Martin Luther published one translation of the Bible into German and everyone read it, because the peasants then knew that once they read the Bible for themselves, they would know if the clergy were lying to them. Today we have a bazillion translations of the Bible, many even available online, and we trust the religious right to tell us what it says - to tell us what He says. Is that wise for us, to hand our religion to a political group?
You say "I'm sure it speaks of pre-marital sex." Are you sure because you know for a fact it does, or are you saying "I'm sure" because society has implied that it does, so you think it does? (I know it does because I've seen a few of the passages, but I've heard reasonable arguments that question the translation, and even the passages themselves don't condemn it that strongly IIRC.)
Believe me, the religous right has read the Bible cover to cover, and that's how they know how to wield it. A religious left can as easily read it and use it to their ends too. The Bible doesn't have much to say as far being on the right or on the left (except perhaps Joshua 1:7).
Educated rebuilding is the smart thing to do, but it's far too costly and angers too many people, so that's precisely why it won't happen.
Theoretically, a tornado can happen at any point on the earth, but we can at least mitigate that sort of localized damage. Only hurricanes (periodic on the coast), earthquakes (periodic in certain areas), and tsunamis (rare) can cause the widespread damage the U.S. clearly can't cope with.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
How exactly do you propose to qualify "small, trusted set of smart people"? Will these people be elected or appointed, and if so by whom? To whom are they accountable? Your argument goes round and round in circles, and nicely sums up one of the eternal dilemmae of human civilisation. All this without even starting to examine what exactly the "right thing" is.
Keep in mind, there are no natural disasters. There are only disasterous human miscalculations with respect to the stability of our natural environment. I think it should not be outside the pale for a politician to question whether putting things back the way they were with a few band aids slapped on is a good thing or not.
Y'know, there is Truth, but it has many facets. If you walked up to a young child at his father's wake and said, "Y'know, your father was too fat. He'd probably still be alive if he didn't eat so much," you're telling the child the unquestionable Truth, and by some ideologies, the we should Always Tell Children the Truth. But it's only one facet of the Truth. You could focus on how much the father loved the child, and how as a result the child will always be taken care of because his family loves him soo much too. Those are also undoubtedly facets of the Truth too.
The facet of the Truth you fasten on to in a particular time and place reveals a lot about you, your values, and your priorities. In particular it reveals whether the humanity and suffering of other people is a reality for you, or whether they're just props in your narcisssitic self-narrative.
There will come a time when we ought to make painful decisions about the future of New Orleans, and it will be soon. But it is wise to be circumspect in this matter. Much of the fate of the city will be determined by the collective effect of the decisions of its refugees. A wise policy is to see to the immediate needs of the victims, see how things develop, and react in a practical, efficient yet humane way. By rashly betraying a premature position on this, Hastert has not only solidified a "rebuild everything at any cost movement", he'll probably have to jump on board in order to show that he is not unfeeling. The best interests of the victims will in any case be lost in the shuffle.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
While having liberals pick up their Bibles to shut up the wacky people on the right may be an effective strategy, I'll be saddened if it ever comes to that. Religion already gets way too much clout in people's decision-making processes. I'd much prefer logic and reason taking over. How about a discussion on whether the Bible, or anyone citing the Bible, or any other religious book, have any basis in reality or should have any bearing on how our country is governed? We need an awakening in this country of scientific, rational thought grounded in empiricism, not more knee-jerk religious zealoutry.