Re: Disgusting GOP Reprisal Tactics

Republicans broke one rule after another in order to ram the Medicare
Destruction Bill through Congress last weekend.

For Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services to be on
floor of the House was a violation of the rules - the only people
allowed on the floor of the House of Representatives are current and
former congresspeople.  The rule for time allotted for a vote is 15
minutes.  They have stretched it to 17 minutes on occasion, to allow
House members time to make it from their offices to the floor.

Even house republicans who supported the bill (without threat of
blackmail or extortion) were shocked by the assaults on the rules. 
Notice, however, that they did nothing to intervene, which makes them
just as complicit in the offense.

http://www.aei.org/news/newsID.19527,filter./news_detail.asp

To lay this off just on House republicans would be a mistake.  This
was a White House operation, with Bush's signature style all over it. 
During the 2000 election campaign Gail Sheehy wrote an article for
Vanity Fair  on George W. Bush and what we could expect of him if he
won the election, based on how he behaved in his personal life with
family and friends.

>>From http://gailsheehy.com/Politics/politicsindex_bush3.html

     Even if he loses, his friends say, he doesn't lose. He'll just
change the score, or change the rules, or make his opponent play until
he can beat him. "If you were playing basketball and you were playing
to 11 and he was down, you went to 15," says Hannah, now a Dallas
insurance executive. "If he wasn't winning, he would quit. He would
just walk off.... It's what we called Bush Effort: If I don't like the
game, I take my ball and go home. Very few people can get away with
that." So why could George get away with it? "He was just too
easygoing and too pleasant."

     Another fast friend, Roland Betts, acknowledges that it is the
same in tennis. In November 1992, Bush and Betts were in Santa Fe to
host a dinner party, but they had just enough time for one set of
doubles. The former Yale classmates were on opposite sides of the net.
"There was only one problemmy side won the first set," recalls Betts.
"O.K., then we're going two out of three," Bush decreed. Bush's side
takes the next set. But Betts's side is winning the third set when it
starts to snow. Hard, fat flakes. The catering truck pulls up. But
Bush won't let anybody quit. "He's pissed. George runs his mouth
constantly," says Betts indulgently. "He's making fun of your last
shot, mocking you, needling you, goading youhe never shuts up!" They
continued to play tennis through a driving snowstorm.

     "George would say, 'Play that one over,' or 'I wasn't quite
ready,'" says Bush-family friend Bo Polk Jr.

     It is something of an in-joke with Bush's friends and family. "In
reality we all know who won, but George wants to go further to see
what happens," says an old family friend, venture capitalist and
former MGM chairman Louis "Bo" Polk Jr. "George would say, Play that
one over,' or I wasn't quite ready.' The overtimes are what's fun, so
you make your own. When you go that extra mile or that extra point ...
you go to a whole new level."

What that "whole new level" is is outside of democracy.  With Bush's
family and friends, they all knew "in reality" who won the game just
as we all know who won on the Medicare bill.  But in our "reality,"
Bush's game-playing has real life consequences, carrying the force of
law.  "Do-overs" come at a high cost of time, money and lives, for
millions of Americans.

Jim-Bob <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> From The Chicago Sun-Times, 11/27/03:
> http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak27.html
>  
> GOP pulled no punches in struggle for Medicare bill
> 
> BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement
> 
> During 14 years in the Michigan Legislature and 11 years in Congress,
> Rep. Nick Smith had never experienced anything like it.
> 
> House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Health and Human Services Secretary
> Tommy Thompson, in the wee hours last Saturday morning, pressed him to
> vote for the Medicare bill.
> 
> But Smith refused. 
> 
> Then things got personal.
> 
> Smith, self term-limited, is leaving Congress.
> 
> His lawyer son Brad is one of five Republicans seeking to replace him
> from a GOP district in Michigan's southern tier.
> 
> On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give
> his son $100,000 in return for his father's vote.
> 
> When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they
> would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress.
> 
> After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, Duke Cunningham of
> California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead
> meat.
> 
> _____________________________________________________
> 
> These right-wingers are filth, have ya noticed?
> 
> Harry