Open Congress

I placed a link on my side bar, but I think I should emphasize it here. It takes you a site called Open Congress. There, you can actually see all bills introduced in either house of Congress, their status, who is sponsoring it, who voted on it, etc. You can read the entire text of the bill or just see what riders are attached to it. You can track them for later.

This is an important site. We have to begin getting involved. We have sat silent for too long. As a result of this site, I have been able to become familiar with several key bills. I was then able to write to my congresspeople and voice my concerns, backed by actual knowledge of the legislation, and not just what I have heard from various sources.

Please take a few moments to look at the site and become familiar with it. Our founders would really appreciate it.

A Little Frightening...

As you know, the President vetoed the bill in which Congress legislated Congress to be the President. Bush commented that this seemed a little unconstitutional. Harry Reidiculous replied, basically,

to hell with the Constitution. We are the Congress, dammit, and it is our job to be president if we want to.

I am paraphrasing, of course, because mr. reid is a Mor(m)on who would say "heck" and "darndiddlydangit" instead. For you skeptics out there, who just have to have "the facts", here is what he actually said, after "bristling" at the claim:

"We are not going to be submitting our legislation to somebody at one of the law schools to look for its constitutionality. We have an obligation, under the terms of the Constitution, to legislate," he said. "That's our job."

I think I summed it up pretty well.

So do these...



These folks don't seem to think we have a constitution.





See that feller over yonder? He assures me that we still have a constitution.







Whaddyall think?








I am saddened this day to find that we do, in fact, have a constitution.

Resolved. Senators are Morons.

The Senate is getting all worked up over a non-binding resolution to remind us that they don't like Bush, therefore, they don't like his troop build-up plan. McCain called the plan 'intellectually dishonest.' I'm gonna have to agree with McCain on this one. I guess the Democrats ran out of things to legislate after graciously providing a pay raise for the five Americans who have been working at the same minimum wage job for the last 12 years and never got a raise. So now they have nothing to do but run around pecking the ground and pushing through meaningless resolutions that will have no affect short of sorting the morons from the imbeciles. So, once all the vital negotiations are completed, our overpaid and under worked senators will be able to overwhelm the media with little sound bites about how they support our troops but have no faith in their abilities to succeed. (Huh?)

Wow, can you imagine when they make the movies about this one. "Men!" says Mel Gibson, "We need to take this sector. Our illustrious Senate has so graciously allowed us to pay you, and they send their support, but they just want me to remind you that they have no faith in you. Well not you, really. They have no faith in us, your commanders. Especially your commander-in-chief. They want you to know that we are incompetent, but at least they support you. So go forth into battle, boys. Raise your voices high! This is obviously a failed mission, so if you don't succeed, don't worry about it." And then the music crescendos... well, sort of. Wow! What a blockbuster.

Odds N Ends

Wow! Christmas is past, the New Year has come and gone, the Hogs beat themselves in the Citrus (okay, okay "Capital One") Bowl, and I have been taking it easy. Obviously, with no blogs to show for my month long vacation, I haven't been paying much attention to the world. Just enjoying my family and exploring some of the things I hadn't much time for during the past six months. I tell you, it is nice to do that every and then. I kind of feel retired.

But, life's fixing to start up again.

I haven't gotten any responses to my last post, so I assume I must be on the right track.

Democrats have taken over again. Big woop. Take a look at this link. I think it about sums up what we can expect. Someone at work (not a liberal, he says, because that is a label and not very accurate) was talking about when the Republicans controlled Congress. I just had to laugh. I really don't remember that they ever really "controlled." Sure, they might have had the majority in both houses, but they never really knew how to control. Maybe they tried, I'll give them that, but come on... think "filibuster". Now the Dems are swearing that they will extend the invitation to "work together." I wonder if they each sat in front of the mirror in the bathroom and practiced saying those two words over and over again until they could maintain a straight face.

My interests right now are actually more towards smoking. I like it. I am hoping to get to do it more often. Ohhh, the flavor, the relaxing on the porch. Yep. I wanna be a smoker. So, after a couple of failed attempts, I have decided to get help. Now, I think I can do it. My wife is pretty supportive of it, too. She likes the flavor. Of course, I need to get some better stuff. I've been upgrading some, working on a homemade lighter, figuring out how to best maintain the perfect smoke. I have found a support group, and expect to soon be smoking with the best of them.

Thanks for tuning in. I'll keep in touch.

Foley's Folly

Dennis Hastert should resign. It is, after all, his fault that Foley sent crude emails to a page. I mean, his name is Foley. Come on! Wasn't there some Saturday Night Live guy named Foley? Oh, it was Farley? (Close enough.) You know, Saturday Night Live... "SNL". Young page boys. Connect the dots. Jeesh, Hastert, you should have seen that one coming from a mile away.
You should have taken Foley's computer away from him last year, and hired an independent Democrat to conduct all of Foley's computer transactions. And then you should have hired a babysitter to sit with Foley at all times, and to read all of Foley's outgoing mail to be sure that the man did not attempt in any way to interact with young people. Heck, you should have just canned Foley right then, when it first came to your attention that Foley was inquiring into the well-being of a page who had been affected by Katrina. That should be enough to tip anyone off that he is a pervert looking to entice young men into a sexually explicit relationship. If you can't make that connection, then you just shouldn't be Speaker of the House.
So bye, bye Denny, you should have made that connection. At the very least, you should have gone to the House Democrat majority leader and at least told her then that there was some scandal going on in the House, and you think that maybe it was better if she just took over as speaker right then and there. That would have been the right thing to do.
Or maybe you should have just convinced Foley that if he wished to pursue that course of action, he needed to go ahead and jump sides then, so he wouldn't be held to the same standards as real people. In fact, if you had given him that advice, he could still have his seat right now. None of this would have come to light. And if it had, it would have been a mild, quiet little talk w/ Ms. Pelosi, and then maybe some public apology, and the calls for forgiveness would have gone out to have pity on this poor man who has been forced to suppress his pedophilia his entire life, and now that he is a Democrat, he is finally free to be what he has always been.
Yeah, Dennis. With all those options, you chose instead to confront the man and warn him to refrain from any further communications with the pages. You chose, instead, to remind him that that was a violation of the Congressional rules and that he must stop such actions immediately. You chose instead to heed the wishes of the parents of the page, and not pursue this publicly. Shame on you, Dennis Hastert, for your reasonable attempts to nip this in the bud right away.
Thank you, Washington Times, for being the first to call for his resignation. One with such an impeccable record of cleaning your own house of perverts should certainly be the first to throw stones inside your glass house.
And, of course, thank you, ABC News, for sitting on this information for so long, when the well-being of a young, high-school page was in jeopardy. Of course, we understand that the release of this information, which you had obviously had for quite some time (and which evidenced that a young high-school page was in jeopardy) only coincidentally came to light just as Congress was wrapping up its final session and getting ready to head into the campaign season. Being the responsible journalistic types that you are, this information (which you sat on for so long while the well-being of a young high-school page was in jeopardy) was of course made public with the sole purpose of informing the public that a young high-school page's well-being was in jeopardy, and something needed to be done right away (or months after it came to your attention that a young high-school page's well being was in jeopardy). There's a reason more people get their news from ABC News than from any other source. It is always so fresh!

Proletariat wins again!

Cool! We got a minimum wage increase! The economy is saved! And all is good in the world. The millions of parents who are still on their first job (you know the one they started at sixteen, and have never left, even though the only wage increases they have received in the last twenty years came from the government) can rejoice because now they can afford their rent. The government has felt their pain, and at long last has again forced those nasty business-type folks to give generously of their means to help their poor, exploited labor force. Of course, those poor folks won't be able to do anything more with their newfound wealth, since every store they buy from is also feeling generous and providing the same increase to their poor exploited laborer, and then kindly recouping their losses from their customers.

And those union guys can finally get that raise to bring them into the $65-$85 an hour range, since thier contracts are based on the minimum wage rates, and naturally they have really been struggling, what with raising 2.8 kids and having to pay an additional $20 each month of their own insurance. Now they can finally upgrade to the sparkly fishing boat with black specks in the carpet and get rid of that old trowler they have been shamefully forced to use for weekend recreation. Problem now is, do they strike over whether to be allowed to wear shorts to the company picnic at Six Flags, or over the more pressing matter of pushing for Fishing Days in addition to their Holidays, Sick Days, Vacation Days, Personal Days, Birthdays, Floating Holidays, Boss's Days, Union Employee Appreciation Days, and the monthly Company Picnic. If they're going to buy a boat, they at least deserve the courtesy and respect of the company to allow them time to use it.

Sadly, those of us who have not been paid minimum wage since junior high, yet have failed to securely latch onto the back end of the union bosses, find ourselves a few steps backward. After having worked for several years and earning our wage increases, and seeing our paychecks slowly reflect some contrast with the minimum wage, we have once again been slapped back down by those caring, feeling politicians. (Present company excluded, of course. I have been on a two week, unpaid vacation, waiting on my used-to-be-higher-than-minimum-wage job to start, after having recently moved the family here to Fayetteville.)

I shouldn't complain, though. I should rejoice. The Proletariate has scored yet another victory against those selfish bourgiousies. Go Proletariate. Yea, team! I guess, in a way, this has only brought more exclusivity to the work force. The logical argument is that a rise in the minimum wage will cut jobs, because now that a store owner has to pay an extra $2 an hour per employee, he can either raise his prices, or cut one employee for every four to make up the difference. (Or both) But he is not going to do that. No, he has a better idea. Now, he can pay less than he was paying originally by hiring illegal immigrants. In fact, he won't even have to pay their social security any more. (And you thought it was just that Americans were too good for those jobs.)

So here is the scenario. Almost all minimum wage jobs are held by teenagers, or adults who either can't hold a job long enough to get the raise after sixty days, or were teenagers just yesterday and are entering the workforce for the first time. Somehow, Congress is under the impression that those are the people who are supporting a family and deserve a raise (I guess they must have reviewed all those employee evaluation reports). Banking on all other economic factors remaining unchanged, they have mandated employers to give them more money. After an intense nationwide search, they have found the one person who actually was supporting a family on a minimum wage job, and can now claim to have championed the worker. Meanwhile, on the other side of our Southern Border, someone who really is supporting a family on less than a dollar a day is gearing up for a crossing, knowing that there are now millions more jobs in America offering eighty times more than what he was earning in Mehico.

Thanks, Congress! Check's in the mail! Shhhh....