Why Does Dennis Hastert Hate Working Families?

Given the hot, urgent legislative agenda that Denny Hastert is attempting to shove through the House on behalf of George W. Bush -- with permanent tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations at the top of the Christmas list -- it does not go without notice that the Speaker has absolutely nothing to say about protecting the pensions and retirement dreams of working Americans.

You know, the backbone thingee of our society? The middle class? Remember those poor, miserable bastards who live from one payday to the next, Denny? Remember way back when you were one?

Scratch that: we know you never had to worry about that.

It is not hard to ask this very pointed question, given the rest of the agenda Hastert and Frist will be pimping for the remainder of their political careers:

• Destroying Social Security for everyone under 50
• Converting Social Security as a form of poverty insurance into a risky investment scheme worthy of the Junk Bond Traders Hall of Fame
• Derailing passenger rail service by eliminating Amtrak funding
• Paving the way for an oil-centric energy policy for another generation
• Giving permanent tax cuts to people who don't need it, and don't demonstrate that they're doing anything to ensure our societal improvement with what the receive in their welfare payoff.

We live in an amazing time, when our leaders have been able to convince others that sharp-elbowed, unrelenting assholes, and unindicted torture co-conspirators are diplomats -- statesmen at the right hand of our President.

Where there is a bizarre fascination and fear of sodomy and gay people, but at every turn the government is sodomizing average people who are just trying to make a living.

Where Hooverian policies that failed miserably and sucked our economy into grave depression, and McCarthyism that wielded the ugly spectre of fear of the unknown and political hackery like a hammer on anyone that got in its way, have resurfaced, bearing the laurel wreath of victory.

Where Denny Hastert's call to Big Oil to start producing more domestic oil and to stop our dependence on foreign energy sources (while sounding like a call to help Americans) is nothing more than a shill for Big Oil that will pave the way for more destruction of peerless public lands and undisturbed paradises for drilling and refinery development that won't pay off for consumers for years (if ever).

Why does Denny Hastert hold onto these twisted views of reality? Why is he so eager to bury the greatest society on earth by destroying the middle class?