Hitchin' A Ride

I've been listening to a lot of Green Day since I bought their new CD/DVD, Bullet in a Bible, package on Tuesday. I probably wouldn't have ever gone back to listening to Green Day (as I haven't for about the entirety of the ten years since Dookie) if not for the fact that American Idiot is such a brilliant album. If you're George Bush or a staunch supporter, then I'm sure you don't agree with me.

From Friday's Congressional Minutes:

11:31 P.M. -
Mr. Shuster asked unanimous consent to discharge from committee and consider.
Considered by unanimous consent.

H. Res. 571:
expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately
Motion to reconsider laid on the table Agreed to without objection.
On agreeing to the resolution Failed by recorded vote: 3 - 403, 6 Present (Roll no. 608).

So, you'd think that it was a Democrat who brought up House Resolution 571, right? Seeing how they're the ones who are always talking about the war, and how the President really has to have an exit strategy for someone other than Harriet Miers (yes, she's going to be a joke in twenty years, just like Bork).

No, it was California Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican from the 52nd district, near San Diego. In other words, it was a fucking stunt. The Republicans concoct this plan, here, to get the Democrats to look like they're supporting the war by putting forth the most goddamn ridiculously worded resolution the possibly could. According to the Washington Post:

Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) drafted a simpler resolution calling for an immediate withdrawal of troops, saying it was a fair interpretation of Murtha's intent. Members were heatedly debating a procedural rule concerning the Hunter resolution when Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) was recognized at 5:20 p.m. Schmidt won a special election in August, defeating Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett, and is so new to Congress that some colleagues do not know her name.

She told colleagues that "a few minutes ago I received a call from Colonel Danny Bubp," an Ohio legislator and Marine Corps Reserve officer. "He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message: that cowards cut and run, Marines never do."

And then it got ugly. For the record, she retracted her statement from the Congressional Record after ... well, to call it a madhouse wouldn't just be a clever pun. Here's the play-by-play, also from the Washington Post:

Dozens of Democrats erupted at once, pointing angrily at Schmidt and shouting repeatedly, "Take her words down" -- the House term for retracting a statement. For a moment Schmidt tried to keep speaking, but the uproar continued and several GOP colleagues surrounded her as she sat down, looking slightly dazed. Presiding officer Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) gaveled in vain for order as Democrats continued shouting for Schmidt to take back her words. Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.) yelled "You guys are pathetic!" from the far end of the Democratic section to the GOP side.

Just as matters seemed to calm a bit, Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) suddenly charged across the aisle to the GOP seats, jabbing his finger furiously at a small group of GOP members and shouting, "Say Murtha's name!" Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), who had led the chants for striking Schmidt's comments, gently guided Ford by the arm back to the minority party's side.

At 5:31, when order was finally restored, Schmidt rose again and said softly, "My words were not directed at any member of the House." She asked that they "be withdrawn" from the record.

No shit, one of our guys charged the other side, like it was going to erupt into violence, like the 'Vince McMahon's X-SPAN' channel from a 2001 issue of The Onion, complete with bone-crunching political coverage. For those of you who don't pay as much attention as I do, congressman Murtha said earlier in the week that we should bring home the troops "at the earliest practicable date." And it's not like the guy's a pansy or anything, seeing how he got two purple hearts as a Marine in Korea and Vietnam.

I think we should be the last country to teach Iraq democracy. We're awful at it. If you read the congressional minutes, you'll see that the majority of the actions these guys go through from day to day are tantamount to political masturbation. Here, read what happened during the last day in the House of Representatives. It's crap; complete and utter fucking garbage. These guys spend time working on laws to help people like I spend time working on my screenplay.

There are things that they work on every year in Congress that I think should just be a given. They hammer out numbers and haggle over how much money goes to this or that, and they do it with everything. There are some things that shouldn't be argued or haggled, they should just give it an absurdly high number and then just recoup what's left at the end of the year and roll it forward for the next year. I think health care for veterans should be like that. I think veterans should get the same health-care plan that members of Congress get, or vice-versa. I think that if a congressman had to go through the bullshit that a veteran has to go through for health care, they'd probably pull out their checkbooks and kick another ten or twenty billion dollars into the program.

But then again, I'm a liberal. I'm a Democrat in the heart of Denny Hastert's district, which is to say that my opinion really doesn't matter around here. But, free speech is still in operation, at least until the new Supreme Court reinterprets "free" as meaning, "without charge," so I'm perfectly within my rights to say, Republicans: That stunt you pulled today was bullshit, and I think the people who concocted it, and the people who went along with it, and the people who profited politically from it should rot in fucking Hell, you goddamn cocksuckers.

Was that too blunt?


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