My Own Personal Congressvarmint
Cap’n. Pete Olson, who insists on having a picture of himself working on The Love Boat on all his campaign literature, is my own personal congressvarmint.
He’s Phil Gramm’s Mini Me. Pete was elected after Tom DeLay stepped down to live out his life in shame and humiliation for surrendering and retreating on Dancing With The Stars.
We don’t hear much from Pete because he’s kinda dumb but smart enough to keep his mouth closed. He just kinda takes up air and votes when Mitch McConnell nudges him.
So, having him take to writing stuff is not a blue star idea. Cap’n. Pete is all outraged over President Obama mentioning that no man is an island unto himself.
Pete is, dammit. And so are the Purse Party Ladies!
Yeah, you got that right – the Purse Party Ladies. Confronting the President, he teaches ….
In our capitalist system, businesses are created by an individual or group of individuals who have an idea for a product or service that others will want to purchase and, yes, so they can make a profit. This fundamental truth of our opportunity society is what built America, not government, bureaucrats, or mass armies of community organizers.
Do you really need examples? If so, consider the woman who starts selling homemade purses that she thinks women will want to buy, or a cook who decides to open a restaurant to feed people meals that he thinks they will appreciate.
Purse Parties. That’s the ticket to wealth in America!
Thank you for the nice lecture, Mr. Government Teat Boy. Yeah, I called him Government Teat Boy.
Pete Olson has never held a private sector job in his whole entire life. He served in the Navy, which is real nice, so taxpayers paid for his education. From that day on, he’s worked as an aide to Phil Gramm and John Cornyn. Then they got him elected to congress. Never once has he had a job where I didn’t pay his damn salary. Hell, without me that man would be starving in the dark.
That son of a motherless goat needs to start giving damn purse parties so he can learn that cloth does not magically appear on your doorstep every morning, your buyers have to get there on public roads, and you are not gonna become Oprah, or even Phil Gramm rich, by selling damn purses.
“Mass armies of community organizers…” that was real cute, Mr. Government Teat Sucker.
You know, Cap’n Pete never saw combat in the military which is a good thing because he’s got more gall than guts.
Thanks to Kathleen and Steve for the heads up.
Seven words.
1Term limits. Term limits. Term limits. Thanks!
I’d like to see more engineers and fewer doofuses (doofi?) in public office. Somebody with experience in making things that actually work knows something about “state of the art” — as Charles Fort put it, it don’t steam engine ’til it comes steam engine time. Government involvement has pushed ahead the state of the art like you wouldn’t believe: microprocessors, the Internet, you name it. And, no, I’m not in the market for homemade purses; and with regard to his restaurant analogy, take away the Interstates and what you’ve got is “sometimes ham, sometimes Spam, sometimes dig for taters.”
2Nothin’ like being lectured to about real life by folks who make a living at the government trough…Pete The Pirate, “Calamity John” Cornyn and Captain Oblivious (the Governor).
3I wonder the same thing about many Congressvarmints. McTurtle McConnell of the Senate has ALWAYS been a “govt worker” but is worth $130,000,000. How did that happen?
4Also has had national health care his entire life, on account of that’s what military and government health care programs are.
5Ooops–his entire adult life, anyway.
6I particularly enjoyed the Purse Party part mention of compensation – “may make 10-20% of purses they sell……yeppers, we will all be rich by the weekend.
7I see that Rep. Olson is on the House Science Committee. I wonder if they have discovered the Earth is round yet?
8Does Pete have DOD approval to wear uniform in campaign pictures? There are rules that prohibit this http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/134410p.pdf
4.3.2. Members included in subparagraph 4.3.1. may NOT, in campaign literature (including Web sites, videos, television, and conventional print advertisements):
4.3.2.1. Use or allow the use of photographs, drawings, and other similar media formats of themselves in uniform as the primary graphic representation in any campaign media, such as a billboard, brochure, flyer, Web site, or television commercial. For the purposes of this policy, “photographs” include video images, drawings, and all other similar formats of representational media.
4.3.2.2. Depict or allow the depiction of themselves in uniform in a manner that does not accurately reflect their actual performance of duty. For the purpose of this policy, “photographs” include video images, drawings, and all other similar formats of representational media.
9Well,Juanita,think how much worse off you might be if you lived where I do,in Terror Babies-Numbnut Gohmert’s district. I would gladly trade with you; at least yours stays quiet until prompted by his controllers.
10Ya know, I wonder what they did to poor Pete! Did he command a nuke sub and it nuked his brain too? He was near the top of our class (I made it into the top 25%, but I am THE laziest student that ever was unless I like the subject) and he was a nice guy too, and dated nice smart girls.
I suspect he got a virulent case of religion. Sigh.
11No, I don’t think it’s anything that happened to him in the Navy. Physically, anyway. I asked the hubby (who spent a lot of time in fighter squadrons with scads of officers) if Naval officers could *really* be that dumb. “Yep,” hubby replied.
Then again, Pete graduated from Rice. I just can’t square that with the idiot I see at his town hall meetings and in his flyers. You’re probably right about a bad case of right-wing religion.
12The Texas Republican Delegation is like a candybar…. Chock Full of Nuts.
13OK, it’s hanging out there, like, oh, the big elephant in the room…Didn’t Monica Lewinsky make purses???? Smack me. I find it funny.
14Sgt. Mike, No offense intended but I’ve never understood the purpose of term limits. Isn’t the fact that we can vote the varmints out at any time a default means of term limits? My problem with term limits – more in the past when there was more emphasis on finding a common good – is that it would mean that good candidates who have developed job experience would be forced out as well as the idiots (nowadays mostly reactionary RINOs).
15@ english teacher: You cranked me up!
The reality is that incumbents win their races with mind numbing regularity.
My less extreme view is that political office should not be a career unto itself, rather it should be a public duty of limited duration performed as an interruption in an otherwise productive career, rather like a sabbatical.
My extreme view is that no one under about 60 should be legally qualified to hold any public office, and then after a lifetime of working.
16Thanks for your answer, Sgt. Mike.
It’s a question that I’ve had since the talk about term limits first began. Today I decided I’d finally ask the question in the safety of Juanita Jean’s.
I agree with you that it should not be a career in an ideal world but in an ideal world, voters wouldn’t be so lazy and would vote out those that no longer serve their best interests. But I guess that would require critical thinking skills and real commitment to democracy and our republic.
I would also add to your views that no politician who has not experienced war directly be allowed to vote to send our young people into combat. I grew up in the Vietnam era but the hypocrisy and arrogance of Bush and his cabal vis-a-vis Iraq and Afghanistan was nauseating.
17@ english teacher:
18Re War experience:
Couldn’t agree more.
My sainted father, USMC 12/1941-12/1969, thought War experience should be a Constitutional requirement for election as POTUS. He therefore decreed JFK was the perfect POTUS. In large part because he read in some bio or another that Lt Kennedy agonized over the letters he wrote home to try to explain what happened to the grieving mothers of the sailors lost in the wreck of PT109. The act of writing those letters changed the Lieutenant and according to Dad made the President reticent to send service members into harm’s way absent a clear national purpose. Even as POTUS JFK remained emotionally a Naval junior officer.
I don’t know about war or, even military, experience (at least until same is completely open to all, and stating my preference that we stay out of wars whenever possible, which we haven’t done lately), but certainly some kind of public service, per a favorite book of mine that I believe is often misinterpreted (meaning *military* service was *not* required to vote): http://www.amazon.com/Starship-Troopers-Robert-A-Heinlein/dp/0441783589
19Ah, I see I didn’t read closely enough the first time, a common failing of mine….
“no politician who has not experienced war directly be allowed to vote to send our young people into combat.”
Yep to that.
I also just realized that I was being more extreme than anybody (not to mention somewhat off topic) with my reference to _Starship Troopers_, which proposes that completion of a term of public service (“term” being two years or until the end of a declared emergency, whichever is longer) be required even to vote.
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