Hold on! Before you attempt to correct my mangled grammar, hear me out. If President George Bush (43) can ask America, with a slew of cameras rolling: “Is our children learning?”, then I believe that I can now take GWB’s Presidential grammatical lead and state with the absolute certainty of his ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner that indeed... “I IS disgusted!”
So, what is the cause of my angst this morning (and every morning these days)?
Our Founding Fathers have GOT to be spinning in their graves over the current political state, and exceptionally low quality, of our Congress (and lets throw in the SCOTUS for good measure)!
Since we can’t do anything about SCOTUS today, we’ll just have to live w/the four bad pennies, roberts, scalia, alito, and thomas {sic} and hope that they slow-down in their brutal assault against us average Americans for now.
Perhaps a mandatory retirement age of 75 or so would be appropriate as we are living way too long these days to function effectively under such major legal workloads as an 80 year old Justice is faced with. I can’t locate mortality rates for the late 1700’s, so consider the fact that Life Expectancy for a male in America in the year 1900 was 49 years of age. I would imagine that was considerably lower back in 1787, when the Constitution was signed. I say our Founding Fathers never imagined a 2014 mortality rate of over 81 years for an American male today.
One thing I would do to improve today’s Court is to immediately recommend to Elena Kagan that she stop defeating our Progressive agenda with her habit of recusing herself from the myriad of cases that she was once involved with as Solicitor General under President Obama. As Solicitor General she specifically represented the President, however, as a Supreme Court Justice, now she specifically represents America - so there is NO conflict. No more recusals, Justice Kagan! We need your vote.
Anyway, lawyers are trained to separate minor issues such as which side of the case they’re on.
Now, as far as the House is concerned, here’s some food for thought…why would the creators of the Constitution only give House members a mere two year term?
Answer: It’s so that ‘everyman/everywoman’ type folks can take turns serving their nation. Our Founding Fathers NEVER envisioned 50 year, 25+ term, professional House members!
One Problem: Here is a single glaring example of how Congress is not doing the ‘Peoples’ work as envisioned by those who lived and died to found our nation:
In 2012 (and this is before the Sandy Hook murders of all those very young children) only 13% of all Americans thought that there should be NO registration of guns in America Gun Registration Poll and yet, Congress refuses to answer to the Will of the People and pass any laws relating to this issue as they are too busy answering to their Corporate Masters and cash-wielding/vote-threatening Lobbyists instead!
(Yup... I'm talking about YOU, and your "so what if 31,000 Americans are killed by guns every year" NRA, Wayne LaPierre)
So, to that end, someone once suggested that our Congresscritters be required to show up to the Chamber with their corporate logos sewn onto their suits like NASCAR drivers. Can you see it now? Very colorful ‘NRA’…‘Koch Industries’… and ‘Halliburton’ patches! At least it would be more honest than the current system of ‘dark’ and hidden money bribes.
Oh, gosh, did I actually use the word ‘bribes’? You bet I did! This is one remaining ‘bipartisan’ vestige left to being a member of Congress today, which the republicans AND the dems share… they’re BOTH corrupt and are very happy to be bought and paid for with any amount of cash, no matter how big or how small!! Of course there are a few exceptions such as Saunders, Warren and Franken and a couple more but, hey, I just realized that all I've just mentioned are Senators, NOT House members! My bad.
‘We The People’ currently have ZERO input in how Congress is run and what, and how, the issues that are important to us are dealt with. Our national priorities are completely ignored by these arrogant members of congress who, BTW, if memory serves me well, are supposed to be working for US, not the other way around!!
(FYI: If you look up the words ‘Lazy Criminal Bastards’ in the dictionary, you will see a group photo of Congress!)
The question is: How did we end up with such a gaggle of poor quality legislators? I suspect that part of the answer lies in the brutal scrutiny the Press bestows upon potential candidates, so why would a respectable, intelligent, human being want to put themselves, and their families, through all of this grief? Not to mention the ‘tea party’ philosophy of electing people to all of these positions of power who HATE our gov’t and actually want to DESTROY it.
“We want to shrink the US Gov't down to the size of a bathtub so that we can then DROWN IT!!" (Grover Norquist - 2012)
Bachmann on the ‘House Intelligence Committee’? Congressmen who deny the very math of Economics on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee? Science deniers who really, really believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old - that the Sun revolves around the Earth - that there is NO such thing as 'Climate Change' - that Jesus rode around on dinosaurs and that evolution doesn't exist have populated the United States House Committee on Science, Space and Technology for years now!
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!? You can’t make this stuff up!!
(Personally, I can’t figure out why republicans hate America so much?!? I think we're a wonderful conglomeration of people, no?)
Listen, I can go on all day about this so let me end with this, which sums up what we have to deal with on a daily basis re: the utter failure of the House.
Our last several (John Boehner/Eric Cantor) Congresses (the 110th,111th, 112th, & 113th) have accomplished LESS than any other congresses in our nation’s illustrious history. And yet they all point to their legislative accomplishments over this multi-year period, which encompass the singular effort of re-naming hundreds of Post Offices so that they can say that they’re passing laws:
“We’re workin’, we’re workin’!” they say.
Let’s take a look at the actual facts:
The House has passed HUNDREDS of laws renaming Post Offices since Obama was elected President, Dedicated Post Offices however, there have been only FIVE postal facilities built in the last century (the 21st), with exactly ZERO built since 2006 Built Post Offices!!
So, renaming these Post Offices, which ALL pre-date President Obama’s election by years, was a superfluous and futile endeavor of the boehner congresses as 100% of these facilities were already in existence for years and were ALREADY NAMED by previous congresses!!
It was all a big fat ruse and a complete waste of our time and OUR tax dollars! And it is important to note that all this was going on as America was swirling down the drain of the toilet while we lost every record of ‘exceptionality’ that we ever held as we all fell far behind the rest of the world!!
Some partial, immediate, solutions? Take private money out of ALL of our elections and make Lobbying Congress, especially from former elected officials and former gov’t appointed officials, COMPLETELY ILLEGAL!
If these Congresscritters need advice from private industry in the future, let them invite the appropriate non-governmental experts to speak to them in (mostly) open, and transparent, hearings.
Two: Gerrymandering is the very definition of 'vote-rigging' and I'm completely SICK of it!
And, three… OCCUPYCONGRESS!
(Vote ‘em ALL out in 2014!)
REMEMBER TO GET THE VOTE OUT!!!
Because when Democrats vote, Democrats… WIN!!
Nuff’ Said!
Have a great weekend, everyone!