Isifhan Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 Did not see this posted. Take it for what it's worth, but I found it extremely interesting yet at the same time depressing. Very long read but a good one nonetheless. If even 1/4 of what this story is, is true what have our "leaders" become? http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12055360/cover_story_time_to_go_inside_the_worst_congress_ever There is very little that sums up the record of the U.S. Congress in the Bush years better than a half-mad boy-addict put in charge of a federal commission on child exploitation. After all, if a hairy-necked, raincoat-clad freak like Rep. Mark Foley can get himself named co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, one can only wonder: What the hell else is going on in the corridors of Capitol Hill these days? These past six years were more than just the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch. These were the years when the U.S. parliament became a historical punch line, a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula -- a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater, a Burkina Faso with cable. To be sure, Congress has always been a kind of muddy ideological cemetery, a place where good ideas go to die in a maelstrom of bureaucratic hedging and rank favor-trading. Its whole history is one long love letter to sleaze, idiocy and pigheaded, glacial conservatism. That Congress exists mainly to misspend our money and snore its way through even the direst political crises is something we Americans understand instinctively. "There is no native criminal class except Congress," Mark Twain said -- a joke that still provokes a laugh of recognition a hundred years later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexey Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 This is a very scary read. If this is true then I cannot believe Democrats allowed this to happen... All things considered, I find it hard to believe that things are really as bad as this article makes them seem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnLockesGhost Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 I really, really don't get the whole Mark Foley obsession. Yeah, he's kind of a creep, but does he really deserve such vilification. He's a gay guy hitting on post-pubescent young men, ages 16 and 17. And he didn't even have sex with any. He's not a pedophile, but a ephebophile. As a straight guy, I can say I've looked at some 16 and 17 year-old girls and thought, "I wish I was still in high school." Does that make me a "creep?" I'm not going to the mat for this guy, just think the whole thing is way overblown. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Sir Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 I really, really don't get the whole Mark Foley obsession. Yeah, he's kind of a creep, but does he really deserve such vilification. He's a gay guy hitting on post-pubescent young men, ages 16 and 17. And he didn't even have sex with any. He's not a pedophile, but a ephebophile. As a straight guy, I can say I've looked at some 16 and 17 year-old girls and thought, "I wish I was still in high school." Does that make me a "creep?" I'm not going to the mat for this guy, just think the whole thing is way overblown. Did you proceed to IM them and ask if you made them horny? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnLockesGhost Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 Did you proceed to IM them and ask if you made them horny? Like I said, he's a creep. They laughed him off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burgold Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 Did you try to sneak into their dormrooms while drunk in the middle of the night? Or take them on overnight vacations? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kilmer17 Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 Congress: Rolling Stone worst "music/hipster" magazine ever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EersSkins05 Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 Billy, do you like movies about gladiators? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thiebear Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula. I'm guessing if you did a chart with Caligula on the left and Congress on the right... The Rolling Stones magazine will be found to be exaggerating a skosh... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexey Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 I really, really don't get the whole Mark Foley obsession. Yeah, he's kind of a creep, but does he really deserve such vilification. He's a gay guy hitting on post-pubescent young men, ages 16 and 17. And he didn't even have sex with any. He's not a pedophile, but a ephebophile. As a straight guy, I can say I've looked at some 16 and 17 year-old girls and thought, "I wish I was still in high school." Does that make me a "creep?" I'm not going to the mat for this guy, just think the whole thing is way overblown. There is something unsettling about him being in charge of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burgold Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 As to most corrupt Congress ever. Remember, it is not just Foley... It's Frist, Delay, Bey, Cunningham, the refridgerator guy, and that's just off the top of my head. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hooper Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 Gotta love that this year Congress worked all of 98 days -- a full two months less than the legendary "do-nothing" congress. Right and left, these guys are all terrible. They're bickering with each other, constantly campaigning, and nothing important ever gets done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Isifhan Posted October 31, 2006 Author Share Posted October 31, 2006 These are the things that get me: On bi partisan meetings: GOP chairmen routinely call a meeting, bring the press in for a photo op and then promptly shut the proceedings down. "Take a picture, wait five minutes, gavel it out -- all for show" is how one Democratic staffer described the process. Then, amazingly, the Republicans sneak off to hold the real conference, forcing the Democrats to turn amateur detective and go searching the Capitol grounds for the meeting. "More often than not, we're trying to figure out where the conference is," says one House aide. [/Quote] On Open Rules Of the 111 rules introduced in the first session of this Congress, only twelve were open. Of those, eleven were appropriations bills, which are traditionally open. That left just one open vote -- H. Res. 255, the Federal Deposit Insurance Reform Act of 2005. In the second session of this Congress? Not a single open rule, outside of appropriation votes. Under the Republicans, amendable bills have been a genuine Washington rarity, the upside-down eight-leafed clover of legislative politics. [/Quote] On how many times congress is meeting To me this is just unacceptable Democrat or Republican. In the Sixties and Seventies, Congress met an average of 162 days a year. In the Eighties and Nineties, the average went down to 139 days. This year, the second session of the 109th Congress will set the all-time record for fewest days worked by a U.S. Congress: ninety-three. That means that House members will collect their $165,000 paychecks for only three months of actual work. Congress has arranged things now so that the typical workweek on the Hill begins late on Tuesday and ends just after noon on Thursday, to give members time to go home for the four-day weekend. This is borne out in the numbers: On nine of its "workdays" this year, the House held not a single vote -- meeting for less than eleven minutes. The Senate managed to top the House's feat, pulling off three workdays this year that lasted less than one minute. All told, a full fifteen percent of the Senate's workdays lasted less than four hours. [/Quote] On how that affects appropriations bills In fact, Congress leaves itself so little time to pass the real appropriations bills that it winds up rolling them all into one giant monstrosity known as an Omnibus bill and passing it with little or no debate. Rolling eight-elevenths of all federal spending into a single bill that hits the floor a day or two before the fiscal year ends does not leave much room to check the fine print. "It allows a lot more leeway for fiscal irresponsibility," says Hughes. A few years ago, when Democratic staffers in the Senate were frantically poring over a massive Omnibus bill they had been handed the night before the scheduled vote, they discovered a tiny provision that had not been in any of the previous versions. The item would have given senators on the Appropriations Committee access to the private records of any taxpayer -- essentially endowing a few selected hacks in the Senate with the license to snoop into the private financial information of all Americans. "We were like, 'What the hell is this?' ?says one Democratic aide familiar with the incident. "It was the most egregious thing imaginable. It was just lucky we caught them." [/Quote] On providing oversight to the Executive Branch In fact, the Republican-controlled Congress has created a new standard for the use of oversight powers. That standard seems to be that when a Democratic president is in power, there are no matters too stupid or meaningless to be investigated fully -- but when George Bush is president, no evidence of corruption or incompetence is shocking enough to warrant congressional attention. The numbers bear this out. From the McCarthy era in the 1950s through the Republican takeover of Congress in 1995, no Democratic committee chairman issued a subpoena without either minority consent or a committee vote. In the Clinton years, Republicans chucked that long-standing arrangement and issued more than 1,000 subpoenas to investigate alleged administration and Democratic misconduct, reviewing more than 2 million pages of government documents. Guess how many subpoenas have been issued to the White House since George Bush took office? Zero -- that's right, zero, the same as the number of open rules debated this year; two fewer than the number of appropriations bills passed on time. [/Quote] These are just in the first few pages of the articles. Regardless of your political affiliation you have to question why this is happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnLockesGhost Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 Gotta love that this year Congress worked all of 98 days -- a full two months less than the legendary "do-nothing" congress.Right and left, these guys are all terrible. They're bickering with each other, constantly campaigning, and nothing important ever gets done. "Do Nothing" sounds like a great party platform. subtitled: "the less we do, the less we mess up" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwbiggs Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 I say again....vote out all incumbents...let them know we know and aren't going to stand for the :bsflag: anymore!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tizzod Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 The writer could have done a little better as far as leaving out all of his expletives and personal anger. Kinda is too personal then, I think. Loses a little credibility. At least to me. I'd like to see some sort of rebuttal to that, though, if there was a way to do it. I had already decided long ago to vote out the incumbents anyway, so....here's hoping we may be able to do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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