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."

His words seem genuine

[phaetonic (621542)]

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.

Re:His words seem genuine

[yog (19073)]

He sounds genuine but he doesn't say very much of substance, only that he doesn't plan to spend as much as $250 billion for hurricane damage.

The web could be used to powerful effect to outline one's policy stands and to encourage comments and feedback from his voters. This would be a true virtual town meeting.

Unfortunately, this will probably never come to pass because of the many who abuse the system and ruin it for everyone else. I have seen many forums degenerate from high quality postings by the origi

Re:His words seem genuine

[Clockwork Apple (64497)]

They are always happy to reach out with their message, but its a one-way street.

From the blog:
"This is the future. And it is a new way for us to get our message out."

We need some folks in office who listen to the folks they talk at.

C.

Re:His words seem genuine

[russellh (547685)]

What I want politicians to do is listen to a small, trusted set of smart people and do the "right thing", regardless of whether it's popular or not.

You mean, like, a monarch who listens to his courtiers?

Oh. awesome.

Yes, it sounds good to say that you as a leader should not swayed by popular opinion and should follow your core set of principles. But.. what happens when those principles are unpopular? Well, guess what: you lie to the people. If you're confident enough, you'll tell yourself that It's For Their Own Good. Lots of people think they're doing the Right Thing.

But unless you want dictatorship, the masses have to be trusted. The great unwashed masses, as you call them, are actually reasonably smart and moral. They are not a mob. They are you. You are saying you do not trust yourself. You want a strongman to make the tough, unpopular decisions that you and your neighbors cannot. Well, Saddam is available.

No comments?

[Frodo Crockett (861942)]

Smart man.

Uh oh...

[47Ronin (39566)]

Better hope he's not Catholic cause his Sunday school teacher might object to him blogging!

Notice no comment section

[Safe Sex Goddess (910415)]

I think blogs without user comments are destined to failure.

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

Re:Notice no comment section

[Daniel Dvorkin (106857)]

Yep. And in this context, without comments it's not much of a blog at all; it's just another vehicle for delivering political addresses.

Re:Notice no comment section

[Daniel Dvorkin (106857)]

If it offers insight into the day-to-day thinking of someone who makes decisions which can initimately affect the lives of millions of people, I'm all for it. I'm just deeply skeptical that that's what it is; it feels like another type of campaigning to me. Offering some visible means of feedback would go a long way toward alleviating that skepticism.

Re:Notice no comment section

[Marxist Hacker 42 (638312)]

I suspect three little people named Glenn Reynolds, Cory Doctorow, and Joshua Micah Marshall may disagree with you on the "blogs without comments are doomed to failure" bit.

Who are they and why should we pay any attention at all to their opinion?

Pretty good, but the Republican Playbook is bogus

[Marxist Hacker 42 (638312)]

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?

Re:Pretty good, but the Republican Playbook is bog

[goldspider (445116)]

Right, because the anonymity of the Internet brings out only the best in people, especially when they have an opinion!

Re:Pretty good, but the Republican Playbook is bog

[pclminion (145572)]

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?

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. Cra

New Political Reality

[Thunderstruck (210399)]

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.)

Re:New Political Reality

[Daniel Dvorkin (106857)]

I will gladly give politicians a break for saying dumb things in their blogs if they later admit that they said dumb things, but that's a big if. I have the nasty feeling that their campaign advisers will tell them never to back down, because it will be seen as a sign of weakness. The sad thing is, those advisers are probably right. It seems like consistency to the point of insanity ("doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results") is valued by a large portion, perhaps a majority, of the electorate over reasoned views that may evolve over time in response to new information or a changing situation.

RSS feed missing.

[thenetbox (809459)]

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.

Re:RSS feed missing.

[tmortn (630092)]

I also wrote suggesting much the same. I imagine by the time this is done he will know all about the slashdot effect :-) Or at least his staff will.

On the down side I got am automated response that said current franking rules don't allow personal responses to non-district people. Might put a serious cramp on a comments section if he can't legally respond at all except to those voiced from people living in his district. I would have to say that is a rather poorly thought out rule considering his position as he now has responsibilities with a nation wide scope... the same applies to reps with certain committee responsibilities that engender decision making responsibilities that impact far more than just a rep's constituency.

Better Late Than Never

[Sundroid (777083)]

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.

Re:Better Late Than Never

[Joe the Lesser (533425)]

Republicans don't believe in punishing success.

Unless of course, success gets you a intern under your desk.

Needs reader comments

[Slashdoot (926440)]

Just so Rush Limbaugh can be right there shouting, "FIRST!!!11"

This should get good

[stinerman (812158)]

A future Hastert blog:

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. :-( [sigh]

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!!!!

blog? bah.

[jpmatth (926485)]

hastert's colleague in the senate, barack obama, has been doing an excellent podcast [senate.gov] for several months now.

Re:Right it's him

[Humorously_Inept (777630)]

Technically, it may be OK. The problem I have with his blog is the style it's written in. He writes like an elementary school student. Someone should teach him about varying sentence length and structure. Reading his blog is like reading an incoming telegraph. He's got a case of stop and go traffic going on there. Robots might appreciate it but humans probably would not. This has been a demonstration.

Why's that unusual?

[ThePyro (645161)]

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?

Re:Yes, let's hope you support him

[lpangelrob (714473)]

Dennis Hastert is a representative of north central Illinois, namely DeKalb. The votes couldn't have "not gone his way", because New Orleans is in Louisiana. The people in his district were the ones who elected him.

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.