Like political minutiae

[stilltrucking]

Hoyer Elected House Majority Leader
By Lois Romano and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 16, 2006; 12:06 PM
Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) was elected as new House majority leader this morning, defeating Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi's candidate, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.).
Hoyer won overwhelmingly -- 149 to 86 -- despite heavy lobbying by Pelosi for Murtha.
The showdown divided the Democrat House caucus only a week after their party won a majority of seats in the Congress that begins meeting in January, and it prompted numerous complaints that Nancy Pelosi and her allies used strong-arm tactics and threats to try to elect Murtha to the job.

From today's washington post front page 111606

Robert NOvak also in the Washington Post
It was assumed that Hoyer would be given the No. 2 position of leading a Democratic majority -- until Jack Murtha announced his candidacy. Never before during his 32 low-profile years in the House could anyone have imagined Murtha seeking any leadership role. He has been a backroom distributor of federal pork who disdained public exposure, and he was in the headlines only as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1980 Abscam scandal. Murtha became an unlikely hero of the left last year when he called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

No credit given for a shrewd move
Murtha screwed, he saw it coming probably.
I hope she knows what she is doing. They say it is highly unusual, very unusual for a speaker to do what she has done with murtha. I hope she is playing politics and playing it well, cause rome is burning as we speak.

[jimboloco]

It showed that she is not afraid to take risks
Fortunately, she did not harm anybody whilst doing so.
Hoyer was able to help get a number of Democrats elected to the congress
and so got support.

Who voted, the current democrats and/or the ones coming in next january?

[stilltrucking]

I hope she knows what she is doing. She picked another one with ethics issues to head the intelligence committee.

Powerful civil rights groups are pressing Pelosi to pick Rep. Alcee Hastings, the No. 2 Democrat in seniority. But critics and newspaper editorials from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, as well as a raft of columnists, say that choice would guarantee a public relations disaster for Democrats, who have pledged to end the "culture of corruption" in the capital.

Hastings, a Florida lawmaker and former federal judge, was removed from the bench on corruption charges nearly 20 years ago. Pelosi was among the overwhelming majority of House Democrats who voted for his impeachment.

Even so, the Black Leadership Forum, a coalition of groups including the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus, has sent a letter to Pelosi saying the forum expects her to select Hastings along with other veteran black lawmakers who are in line for top posts. Most of those wishes have been fulfilled, but the intelligence spot is still open

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/n ... intel.html

Maybe there are no more Clean Gene McCarthy's. I been reading about Pelosi on some conservative blogs. She is a very wealthy woman which is no supprise. Congress is a club for millionaires. But what suprised me is the winery she owns, no Cesar Chavez there, no unions. But some people say it is another Swift Boat campaign..

I suspect that over the next two years we will continue to hear a great deal about the "vineyard baroness" slash Speaker of the House. I suspect the issue of union labor will continue to arise. That's fine. That's politics. However, it would be nice if those doing their best to do some smearing of Pelosi would get their facts straight about the wine industry and grape growing.

http://fermentation.typepad.com/ferment ... si_ri.html

I grew up thinking Eisenhower was a boob president. But I like him more and more. They say he was a shrewd politician, I hope Nancy is too.

Maybe Ike's brother Milton wrote all his speaches about the miliary industrial complex. But no matter who wrote them they were right on.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the seat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” Dwight D. Eisenhower.

http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/Histor ... LLABUS.pdf