Senator Kennedy has another "hissy fit", my comments thereon, sent to the man.

[alan]

Heard on a couple of news broadcasts this A.M. that this Medicare Bill, of which I'm no great fan, has been passed in the Senate.

Re this, I also heard your quoted objections to the manner in which the bill was treated in The House, that being, "rammed through The House in the dead of night", which unfortunately seems to be the way important legislation is all to often handled by our "elected things".

With a view to your comments, above appearing, the following thoughts come to my mind, respecting a couple of old adages, adages that you are likely familiar with. Re Shakespeare on the virtue of the wife of Julius Caesar, "Me thinks that the lady doth to much protest her innocence". Another is the following, "It depends on whose ox is being gored", the foregoing revolving about the following.

Re passage of The Brady Law in 1993, which you were a strong supporter of, it was literally rammed through The Senate, "in the dead of night", and it's passage involved the presence of no more than six (6) or so of 100 Senators. Trusting to my memory, which matter of fact, is pretty good respecting technical points, one doesn't remember hearing a peep of objection from you, re the manner in which Brady was "rammed through The Senate, in the dead of night".

On Medicare legislation, poor thing that it might be, at least a majority of the members of The House were present, which is one whole hell of a lot more than can be said for The Senate, and it's passage of Brady, as well as the deafening silence that one heard from the Senior Senator from Mass.

In the event, unlikely, that I get any response, I will post that too, for the interest of readers.

 

[critter]

Poor baby is upset cause he didn't get his way! He may burst a blood vessel-looked on tv like he already had!

 

[Lone_Gunman]

I called Ted Kennedy's office yesterday and told them I supported his opposition of the medicare drug bill. Now, Kennedy and I opposed the bill for different reasons, but that wasnt the point.

It is sad that this bill has passed. This is going snowball into a taxpayer's nightmare. Basically the Republicans are buying votes from medcare recipients by passing this terrible piece of legislation. The current taxpayers, and subsequent generations, will pay the price for this bill. I hope the baby boomers are happy.

Bush supports this bill and will sign it into law. He is a just another big government liberal. Up until this I have been a supporter. Yesterday I took a Bush/Cheney 2004 bumpersticker off my vehicle. He's lost my vote.

 

[Pilgrim]

Basically the Republicans are buying votes from medcare recipients by passing this terrible piece of legislation. The current taxpayers, and subsequent generations, will pay the price for this bill. I hope the baby boomers are happy.

Essentially, screw posterity!

Pilgrim

 

[Al Norris]

Lone_Gunman, some of us baby boomers aren't happy with this at all.

 

[Raistlin]

My wife and I read in the paper this morning about the details of this bill. What caught our eyes was the prescription drug coverage. It seems folks who don't buy that much medicine and folks who buy a very high amount are covered; those in the middle (where my in-laws are) get zero coverage - they have to pay full price.

( that noise you hear is the sound of price-gouging pharmecutical company executives laughing their collective arses off at this bill... )

 

[Art Eatman]

Here I am, 69 years old (going on 16) and I don't care for bribery aimed at me or any other batch of "victims". My deal is that I always thought it's my responsibility to take care of my old age myownself.

Seems the whole deal, nowadays, is to buy votes to gain or maintain political power, and to heck with the "good of the nation". Which is why I've gotten to be mostly a one-issue campaigner/voter, focussing more on the gun issue than anything else. The "anything else" seems to be mostly a waste of time, given how many people want to feed at one publicly-paid trough or another.

So, RKBA...

Art

 

[marvl]

While it's a lousy piece of legislation, consider:

(1) Most legislation is lousy, just business as usual.

(2) It's a good 2nd Amendment bill, as it makes the Republicans look good.

 

[Jonesy9]

The drug companies got everything they want, it cost the an estimated $139 million in lobbying fees alone to get this bill, campaign contributions were not included.

All the deatils aren't even out yet and our reps were not afforded the opportunity to even read the entire bill. Likely if they had read it, it would not have been passed and the leadership knew this. There is so much wrong with this bill that it deserves it's own thread.

That some Republicans had the cojones to oppose the bill wasn't enough because others bowed to heavy pressure from Bush. One spineless rep from MI caved because the leadership threatened to support a candidate running against his son for a local office. So much for putting the country first. That the leadership needed to break all the parlimentary rules and keep the roll call open till daybreak is disgraceful and something they used to oppose when the Dems tried to do it.


Alan's "sourgrapes" attitude makes no sense to me. Kennedy cannot protest the absolute degradation of democracy during this farce of Medicaid legislation because he supported the Brady Bill and was silent during possible parlimentary trickery then? They are politicians, they are hypocrits. But the GOP's hypocracy is far more galling than Senator Bridge Divers to me. I also know of no way that Brady could have been passed by 6 legislators.

I was too young to be following politics when Brady was passed so do not remember much about it.


Absolute power corrupts absolutely and the GOP is now power mad and spending this country into oblivion. If my state had any Republican reps I'd be voting against them because one party control by the GOP is looking to be VERY detrimental to this country in the long run.


Now we have Republican staffers in Sen. Hatch's office getting busted stealing confidential computer files from the Dems and releasing them to the press. So much for the loyal oppostion that makes our system great.

The political discourse in this country has been seriously degraded and unfortunately, lately my GOP has been the bigger violator. Nothing is debated on it's merits anymore, only trickery and deception is used to further agendas that are frequently not in this country's best interests.

Our founding fathers would be very disappointed in both sides these days.

 

[alan]

Jonesy9:

The following excerpted from your post:

Alan's "sourgrapes" attitude makes no sense to me. Kennedy cannot protest the absolute degradation of democracy during this farce of Medicaid legislation because he supported the Brady Bill and was silent during possible parlimentary trickery then? They are politicians, they are hypocrits. But the GOP's hypocracy is far more galling than Senator Bridge Divers to me. I also know of no way that Brady could have been passed by 6 legislators.

Re this, please note the following.

1. My comment re "Senator BridgeDiver" was not sourgrapes, as you described it, I simply attempted to draw attention to what the guy said, and to what he has been a party to in the past. By the way, so far as I can tell, nobody else has detected the "sour grapes" you mentioned. Possibly, if they had, they didn't think it worthy of mention.

2. As to the following, "I also know of no way that Brady could have been passed by 6 legislators", you might consider the following, re Senate passage of Brady. As memory serves, the Senate had virtually adjourned for some holiday recess, there were just a few hangers on remaining. Senator Dole proposed UNANIMOUS CONSENT for Brady. As I said, there were somethimng like 6 or so Senators present at the time, and the motion for this UNANIMOUS CONSENT was carried, which resulted in Senate passage of Brady. Quite possibly, this stunt hurt Dole's run for the presidency, but that is speculation. Anyhow, that is one way that "the people's business" is sometimes carried out in the halls of The Congress and Senate.

A couple of additional points re congressional goings on.

1. As I remember, a single senator can place a "hold" on a bill, quite possibly, killing it.

2. Then we come to "voice votes" as opposed to "roll call votes" where names are called and the named persons respond yes or no, notes being taken. With voice votes, how does one actually determine who won. Back in 1986, with what came to be known as the "machine gun ban", originally proposed by Hughes of New Jersey, there was a voice vote. Tip O'neil, called it for the ban. A poll was of members was requested, which O'neil denied, ruling that the ayes had it. Of course, he was as anti gun as the proverbial summers day is long, which might have had something to do with how he called it. One never knows about that sort of thing, does one?