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A note to Congress, or let’s just say a majority of it’s members:
Please consider euthanasia. You have become a tumor on the heart and brain of this nation. It is time to end our suffering. You are killing this nation, the environment, human rights and world peace. Have mercy on us; take your wealth that you have accumulated via special interest groups and lobbyist and vacate the Capital. Make room for some people who still have some ethics.
The right wing lemmings have been calling the UN irrelevant yet it is Congress whom has signed over perhaps it's most important role to a person who “can't think properly and wants to plunge the world into holocaust”, George Bush, the right to declare war. I ask you, is Congress relevant anymore? They stand by as our Constitution is shredded, while the environment is destroyed, while our surplus is distributed to the wealthy, while we drop bombs on human beings and while the world becomes a more horrible place by the minute (mostly due to the policy of the Bush administration).
We blame Bush and his right wing nuts; we blame the lemmings who blindly follow him; we blame the media for cheering him on, yet we ignore the fact that all checks and balances incorporated into our government have gone by the wayside. Executive power is becoming absolute while Congress sleeps in. They have hit the snooze button and have missed the most important wake up call of their existence.
Democrats are foolish enough to believe that the criminal conduct of our government will cease if their party can control the majority. The truth is that we are ruled from outside our elected government. The elected officials are elected because the people who really control our government permit them to run. Once elected Congress does not legislate in the best interest of the citizens; they legislate for their controllers be they coprorations,
Is anyone as frightened of what is happening as I am?
In Congress, a Whole Lot of Half-Truths - Members of Congress tell the truth -- the whole truth -- only about a quarter of the time when debating major legislation on the floor of the House and Senate. - Instead, legislators mostly rely on half-truths, misleading exaggerations or outright inaccuracies when debating the nation's business, according to two political scientists who have studied the quality of debate in Congress. Congress watches its power ebb - From controlling budgets to deciding when and why to go to war, Congress appears less relevant today than at any time in decades. The Senator Votes Nay - Robert Byrd Opposed the Iraq War, and He's Not About to Yield - "What is happening?" Robert C. Byrd asks. "What is happening to us?" - Our nation is in peril, he says, threatened not by foreigners but by the Bush administration, which he describes as warlike, arrogant and elitist -- "an administration of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy." Bush Rides Into Credibility Gulch - Did the secret services on both sides of the pond hype, “sex up” or spin intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to please their hawkish masters and justify a war? Did Teams Blair and Bush cook the books? - CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer says Congress has three choices: It can avoid the job altogether, hold circus hearings or do the job right. TVNL asks: Will CBS talk about this on TV? TVNL bets on option 2; it will be a circus. The media will portray Bush as a hero. The American people and the people of the world will remain the victims of the administration that has lied to the American people more than any other in history, thanks to the media and their Bush PR campaign. Where Are WMDs? Where's Congress? - Is Congress going to have the guts to do a proper autopsy on the Iraqi WMD controversy? In his latest Against the Grain commentary, CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer hopes for the best and predicts the worst, given that the lawmakers have chosen closed hearings Senators Reluctant to Criticize Bush on Iraqi Weapons - Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee say they are not aware of any specific evidence that President George W. Bush intentionally misled the public about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program in the weeks and months leading up to the war on Iraq. - TVNL points out: It is their damn job to investigate this!!! “They are not aware of any specific evidence!” What the hell is that? Do I really have to explain how outrageous this is? Did thay say that about Clinton’s sexcapade? Britain stirs, America sleeps - The only member of the United States Senate who voted against granting war powers to President George W. Bush, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, holds that lies were told by the president to justify the Iraq war, and that eventually truth will out. Profs protest fed. input in curriculum - A bipartisan bill proposing to give the federal government expanded oversight over the nation's federally-financed international studies programs has drawn sharp criticism from Yale professors. If the bill, which is working its way through Congress, passes, one of the institutions it will affect is the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, or YCIAS.- YCIAS Director Gustav Ranis said the bill, if passed, would threaten Yale's academic freedom.- "I think it is a very dangerous precedent to have congressional supervision of what we teach and how we teach it in international affairs," Ranis said. - TVNL Comment: Big brother is here! The High Costs of Rising Incivility on Capitol Hill - "Civility and incivility run in cycles in Congress, and this is one of the low points," said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University. "Benjamin Franklin once said that Congress should be a mirror image of the American people, and it is, in the sense that Americans are terribly divided and their elected representatives are unable to transcend those divisions." - TVNL Comment: Ahh yes, Bush is a uniter, not a divider. The entire world is more divided than ever before thanks to the leadership of the Bush/PNAC administration and their radical right wing neocon agenda which leaves no room for compromise. You are either with them, or against them; it is this approach that had divided us. GOP Puts Its Mark on Congress and Deficit - A full year of Republican dominance of government has left a legacy rich in conservative triumphs: cutting taxes, building a muscular defense, restricting abortion. - But the year has also brought an extraordinary expansion of government power and spending that showed Republicans were willing to deep-six their party's traditional commitment to fiscal conservatism and limited government. Congress helps itself to another pay raise - A HAPPY NEW YEAR? For US senators and representatives, it certainly is: As of Jan. 1, their salary is $158,100 -- an increase of $3,400 over the amount they collected last year. - That comes to six raises totaling $24,500 since January 1998. And why does Congress feel it deserves them? That's hard to answer. Congress isn't talking. Computer reportedly seized from Frist's office - Democrats say their computers were infiltrated by GOP staffers - Federal investigators reportedly have seized a staff computer in Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's office in a probe to find Republican aides who improperly accessed Democrats' memos on opposing judicial nominees. - TVNL Comment: This makes Watergate look like a kid’s prank yet the media says nothing. Infiltration of files seen as extensive - Senate panel's GOP staff spied on Democrats - Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe. Congressman under fire for job offer - Drug industry offer follows Tauzin's work on Medicare law - A congressman who played a leading role in drafting legislation that introduced a prescription drug benefit to Medicare is under fire for considering a job offer from the pharmaceutical industry -- which stands to benefit from the new law. - Louisiana Rep. Billy Tauzin, a Republican, spent months negotiating the bill to overhaul Medicare, often meeting in the basement of the Capitol with a small group of lawmakers, administration officials and industry groups. Congress' Family Values - Members of Congress may have failed to stem the loss of millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs over the last few years, but they've shown extraordinary ingenuity in devising employment opportunities for their nearest and dearest. As The Times has reported over the last year, at least 11 House members and 17 senators have relatives who lobby or consult Congress on issues that members have favored through legislative or other action. Cornyn bill rearranges presidential succession - Legislation introduced this month by Senate Republicans, including Texan John Cornyn, would dramatically change the way presidential succession works. - Should the president become incapacitated along with the vice president, members of Congress would be ineligible for the top leadership position in favor of Cabinet members. Byrd's 'sheep' analogy riles House colleagues - Several members say Speaker Johnnie Byrd's remark that they are "looking for someone to tell them what to do" is insulting. - "They're like sheep in a way," Byrd said of House members, more than two-thirds of whom are Republicans. "They're looking for someone to tell them what to do." House Passes Legislation Setting Space Tourism Guidelines - Out-of-this-world vacations moved a step closer to reality Thursday with House passage of legislation setting guidelines for the future space tourism industry. - TVNL Comment; This is not a joke. This is what your Congress is busy working on while our Constitution rots in the hands of the Bush/PNAC administration. Senate Partisanship Worst in Memory - Key Legislation Languishes as Democrats and Republicans Jockey for Power - TVNL Comment: Bush was supposed to be a uniter, not a divider. What exactly has he united other than uniting the planet against America? House strikes truth from the record -In a party-line vote, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 219-187 to strike from the record the words of Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL) after she spoke about Florida's stolen 2000 presidential election during a floor debate on a foreign aid bill on July 15. - Brown made her remarks after Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN) introduced an amendment to H.R. 4818 stating that "none of the funds made available in this Act may be used by any official of the United States Government to request the United Nations to assess the validity of elections in the United States." Free Pass From Congress - During the Clinton administration, Congress spent millions of tax dollars probing alleged White House wrongdoing. There was no accusation too minor to explore, no demand on the administration too intrusive to make. - When President Clinton was in office, Congress exercised its oversight powers with no sense of proportionality. But oversight of the Bush administration has been even worse: With few exceptions, Congress has abdicated oversight responsibility altogether. - They have failed to probe allegations that administration officials misled Congress about the costs of the Medicare prescription drug bill. And they have ignored the ethical lapses of administration officials, such as the senior Medicare official who negotiated future employment representing drug companies while drafting the prescription drug bill. - The House is even refusing to investigate the horrific Iraq prison abuses. One Republican chairman argued, "America's reputation has been dealt a serious blow around the world by the actions of a select few. The last thing our nation needs now is for others to enflame this hatred by providing fodder and sound bites for our enemies." - Compare the following: Republicans in the House took more than 140 hours of testimony to investigate whether the Clinton White House misused its holiday card database but less than five hours of testimony regarding how the Bush administration treated Iraqi detainees. Lawmakers to Get Federal Pay Raise - The cost-of-living raise would be the sixth straight for members of the House and Senate, boosting the salaries of lawmakers, now $158,100, by about $4,000 in the new calender year. House's Author of Drug Benefit Joins Lobbyists - Representative Billy Tauzin, a principal author of the new Medicare drug law, will become president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the chief lobby for brand-name drug companies, the trade group announced Wednesday. - Mr. Tauzin, 61, is the latest policy maker to move from government to industry. - Thomas A. Scully, the administration's main negotiator with Congress on the drug bill, got a waiver of federal ethics rules that permitted him to negotiate with potential employers while he was still running the Medicare program.
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