Showing posts with label U.S. Congress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.S. Congress. Show all posts

Monday, April 10, 2017

PARODY: White House and Congress are a huge oyster bed


That's right. It was just discovered by an unknown scientist with a secret lab in Keokuk, Iowa, whose father once knew Ernest Hemingway. It was Hemingway's early work, A Movable Feast, about his life in Paris from 1921 to 1926, that got the father interested in oysters. The story goes, once you've lived in Paris, no matter where you go, you take it with you. During his writing on this particular day he decided to close up shop and order a dozen Crassostrea angulata, special offspring oysters from the sinking of a ship from the orient in a Portuguese harbor, along with a carafe of dry white wine.

And then when returning to the writing of his book, he professes his love for oysters in a sentence that his readers will never forget...
"As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and make plans."
What Hemingway did not mention in his book was that those slimy little creatures that slide down your throat like a body does in a water slide, did not have a brain. None of them do, only two ganglia or masses of nerves around their body, but no central brain. However, they are able to survive around higher mammals, even though they have no consciousness. Now there is some difference between lack of consciousness and being unconscious. The term unconscious is sometimes used to refer to people who are, well, just stupid.

The father, let's call him Clyde, was talking to Ernest one day in Key West and brought up the fact that oysters did not have a brain. "Get out of town," Hemi retorted, "sounds like some people I know in Washington." The father always made notes of his conversations with Hemingway, and they were kept in an old trunk in the Keokuk house's attic. He put an asterisk by this particular notation, knowing full well that someday it would become famous. And then along came Clyde, Jr. His father knew he had to get him out of Keokuk for an education because Clyde Jr. was smart.

He decided on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, that claimed 45 Rhodes Scholars, 81 Nobel laureates and 38 MacArthur Fellows. Should be a good enough school for junior, the father thought, and he was right when the son graduated magna cum laude. But Clyde Jr. was tired of the big eastern cities and yearned again for the Midwest. He returned to Keokuk and got a job working for a local doctor who also did research and seemed to be happy for the present. Then, one day after his father had died, he was rummaging through an old trunk in the attic. And there it was.

His father's journal, "My Talks With Ernie," whom Junior knew to be Ernest Hemingway from conversations with Dad. And he sat down right there and started reading. It was fascinating, he thought, Hemingway's love of oysters, and his dad's discovery through his reading that they had no brain. And the writer's comment about them reminding him of people he knew in Washington was just hilarious. He thought about who was in the White House now, Donald Trump. He reflected on a Congress that was, well, a Congress. BINGO! And then he had an epiphany.

 Junior had written his master's thesis on the octopus and their high level of intelligence. He had actually seen one unscrew the lid of a glass jar from the inside and perform various other feats of agility. What if I crossed an oyster with an octopus, what would I get? Probably a Donald Trump or a Mitch McConnell. He almost fell off the old rickety chair laughing to himself. And then it occurred to him, what if I crossed Mitch McConnell with Donald Trump, what would I get? I would no doubt get an oyster. He shrieked again with laughter, this time falling to the floor from the chair that collapsed.

Junior went right out and bought a dozen oysters, ate eleven of them and took number twelve to his basement laboratory. There he began an experiment that would eventually change the way people thought of politicians. He began to research connections between the oyster and legislators and uncovered a bombshell. A study had been done a few years ago that wasn't common knowledge for obvious reasons. Office holders, local/federal and oysters shared a common gene, a lack of consciousness. The gene that allows oysters, and politicians to survive in their own shell.

Clyde Jr., had finally answered the age-old question of just how politicians in general, more specifically Donald Trump and the Republican Congress, are able to perform their duties with absolutely no concern for what the American public really wants. Just close the shell and all is fine. Now, all thinking Americans today know why we are ignored, which doesn't help things, but at least we know. The President and Congress are our oyster.

Thanks to Ben Guarino of The Washington Post for the background for my post.


Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Bernie Sanders Sayings




Do the elected officials in Washington stand with ordinary Americans - working families, children, the elderly, the poor - or will the extraordinary power of billionaire campaign contributors and Big Money prevail? The American people, by the millions, must send Congress the answer to that question.

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Dems should stand ground on allowing CDC gun violence research


For the last 17 years the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has not been able to compile data on U.S. gun violence prompted by pressure from the National Rifle Assn. on its Congressional Gun Whores, mostly Republicans. Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, have said this week that the Omnibus budget must not pass any longer with this restriction, and although not an ultimatum, seems firm enough to create a fight the gun control folks can win.

There is only one reason the NRA, led by Wayne LaPierre, would stand in the way of this kind of research. It will prove what a disaster the open gun market has been for the United States, which has been sponsored by LaPierre and the NRA, and just how much blood is on the organization's hands.

Saturday, December 5, 2015

New York Times berates Congress over inaction on gun laws


The New York Times front page editorial starts with, "All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California." Although, perhaps, not meant, but possibly implied, this would not apply to the members of Congress who are the cowards of the NRA's controlled minions of gun control opposition. They call these gun whores, "...elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms." WOW!

They talk about how civilians in the U.S.can go out and buy weapons of war, assault rifles like those used by the two terrorists in the San Bernardino killings. Sane thinking would tell any intelligent human being there is something very wrong with that except, of course, a gun nut. And the NYT attacks the nucleus of the problem which is the 2nd Amendment, saying, "No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation." With this in mind, the right-minded people of this country should stand up and demand that the 2nd Amendment either be better defined or abolished altogether.

And it would help if someone ran the NRA's head, Wayne LaPierre, out of town...on a rail.


Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Hispanics Would be Out of Their Minds to Vote Republican


President Obama does the right thing but the courts and Congress kick him in the teeth. He issued two Executive Orders to protect the parents of American citizens and so-called “DREAMers” brought to the U.S. as young children. Their names are Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) and an expansion to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). They were enacted to protect some 4 to 5 million undocumented immigrants that the President has been trying to coax out of the shadows. Their obvious concern is deportation.

What still amazes me is why this country doesn't understand that if these people were to be deported, restaurants would be unmanned nationwide, there would be no one to work the farmers' fields, the landscaping business would be down the tube, and there would be no one to clean the homes of the rich. And if they are not going to be deported, why not take the step to legalize their residency and provide a path to citizenship. The gutless Republican Congress won't do it but Barack Obama had the balls to take these Executive Actions that the conservative courts are now shoving down his throat. Amanda Sakuma on MSNBC said these folks will probably have to wait until the summer of 2016 before the courts decide their fate.

Jordan Fabian of The Hill reports there will be no emergency request from the Justice Dept. to lift the order blocking the Executive Action. Instead, it will concentrate on an appeal to the 5th Circuit Court in July. Every Latino in this country should take note who is behind the drive to push these people back in the shadows...the GOP.

Monday, April 6, 2015

NOTHING HAS CHANGED SINCE THE THE LATE 1800s



It is amazing that someone with the intellect of Mark Twain could make a statement like this using one of my favorite words for many politicians, especially Republicans. In the late 1800s, when the writer would have likely said this, Republicans were in control of the U.S. Congress. I bring this up since President Obama will soon be asking Congress to cooperate in the outcome of the Iran nuclear talks. Will they forget their stupid ideology and at least negotiate or follow Mark Twain's supposition?

Thursday, June 19, 2014

TEA PARTY TRIES TO OUT-DUMB HILLARY CLINTON

Tea Party numb-nuts caught Hillary Clinton in a bit of a compromising position in the making of a
complex statement on gun control. Now, to begin with, have you ever read one of the Tea Party site posts chocked full of typos and grammatical errors, along with their regular tirade of misinformation? I do because it always makes such good copy,
 like this one. Hillary said, "We cannot let a minority of people – and it’s, that’s what it is, it is a minority of people – hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people." If TPers can't see the deeper meaning in this statement then they are denser than I thought. What Clinton is saying is what she has said all along on gun control; a small group of the radical gun culture is terrorizing the public and Congress and we can't allow this to happen. Which is dead on. Understand now?

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