For those coming in late...

And who might think that only a few Congressmen are national embarassments, I refer you to the most recent Rolling Stone. Also, their old Abramoff article's up there, too, and will also make you cry, in a totally non-partisan, what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-people kind of way.

Highlights from the most recent article (slightly paraphrased because they don't let you copy-paste, the bastards):

Of the 111 rules introduced in the first session of this Congress, only twelve were open [eleven were] appropriations bills, which are traditionally open. That left just one open vote... In the second session of this Congress? Not a single open rule, aside from appropriation votes.

This year, the second session of Congress will set the allt-ime record for fewest days worked: ninety-three... House members will collect $165,000 paychecks for only three months of actual work... the current Congress will not only beat but shatter the record for laziness set by the notorious "Do Nothing" Congress of 1948, which met a combined 252 days total... This Congress- the Do-Even-Less Congress- met for 218 days, just over half a year, total.

And my favorite:

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 meaningnless to be investigated fully- but under Bush, no evidence of corruption or incompetence is shocking enough to warrant congressional attention. One suspects that Bush would have to drink the blood of Christian babies to inspire hearings in Congress...

The number bear this out. From the 1950s through the Republican takeover 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 Bush took office? Zero... Republicans spent more than $35 million investigating the Clinton administration. Including independent counsel, the taxpayers spent more than $150 million, including 2.2 million to investigate former HUD secretary Cisneros for lying about improper payments he made to a mistress. In contrast, today's Congress spent barely half a million dollars investigating the outright fraud and government bungling that followed Hurricane Katrina, the largest natural disaster in American history.

Vote however you want, folks, but don't kid yourselves that Congress has done its job "more or less ok", or "about as crappy as it always does". It's failed miserably, the Republicans in particular, and much worse than in years past. This is more than mere Democratic sniping on my or RS's part- there's actually a real problem here, and people need to deal with it instead of supporting the party-line and replying that it's "business as usual"- because it's not. We passed "business as usual" about ten miles ago, now we're headed towards "majorly incompetent, lazy, corrupt, and generally souless bastards", who, incidentally, we're all paying for. Has anyone wondered that perhaps one of the reasons the country is so polarized because so many of our government representatives are MAJOR ASSHOLES who spend their time stabbing each other in the back and stealing as much money as they can get away with?

And yeah, this goes for the Dems, too.

(Incidentally, I'm always amazed that with his writing style and flare for the crotch-kicking dramatics, the editors let Matt Taibbi write in the magazine at all. Then I remember that he is an editor, which explains everything. Maybe there's hope for my literary career after all.)