The 112th Congress opened its session by the reading of the US Constitution (redacted version). Sounds nice and patriotic, to remind them of their grand purpose for being in Washington, DC. But they managed to make a mockery of it, much to the delight of Jon Stewart.
As Stewart pointed out, each rep got to read an average of 17 words. And before reading, each was introduced with an average of 30 words. :rolleyes: Add to that, the time for everyone to walk up and back to the podium, and you have a multi-hour snorefest.
(It was made interesting when a heckler interrupted whoever was reading the requirements for the presidency by shouting, “Except Obama! Except Obama! Help, Jesus!” :dubious: )
As a teacher, when I have the class read aloud, I can conduct it so everyone who wants to read can read at least a paragraph, I have them read from their seats, and I don’t intro each student. A group of 7[sup]th[/sup] graders I taught could’ve gotten through the reading in 1/3 the time.
My first thought was, “I wonder how many of these guys have actually ever read the Constitution?” Granted, a large proportion of them are lawyers… but you can get through ConLaw without reading the source document pretty easily. Should we have to pay these folks to get a primer in what it means to be an elected representative?
Eh, Congress wastes plenty of time on symbolic gestures, I don’t really see the harm in one more. Its not like they’re sitting on some awesome legislation that would lower the unemployment rate to 4% that they could pass if only they weren’t wasting time on this.
Editing out all the slavery bits was pretty silly though.
I’m really looking forward to the gutting of regulatory agencies, depletion of Medicare and the robbery of Social Security in order to pay for whatever programs the Pubs want to fund.
I note with interest and disgust this morning that the Pubs exempted the health care repeal from this offset in the new House rules. Coincidentally, the CBO has determined that repealing health care will increase the deficit by $250,000,000,000. Boehner’s comment: They’re entitled to their opinion. Really? What’s your degree in, moron?
Yes, they want to spend our money helping the scum in Afghanistan that will only grow up to kill us and treat that money like it is defending the USA, I hope people will wake up and see that is where to save budget money, get out of Afghanistan! I know we went in looking for Ben Laudin, but everyone agrees now he is no longer there, why did we stay? Why do we want to build enemies an infrastructure for free? The place has no value to anyone civilized and nothing to offer us, save the budget money there for pete sake!
What about this whole thing they’re calling their bid to repeal health care: “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law”
Why stop there? I think it needs to be called the “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law brought to us by that Anti-American Muslim Kenyan Negro President and his Pork-Barrel Bleeding-Heart Money Spending Democratic Party who want to set up Death Panels to kill your parents and eat your babies”?
That was his nice way of saying “government cost accounting is complete horseshit, but I’m one of the people feeding the horse so I don’t want to say anything too mean.” And if you believe health care repeal (not that it could possibly happen this congress) will actually result in a net cost of $250B to the government, we should talk turkey about some great investment prospects of which I’ve recently become aware.
