"And that solves that!"
I now know why all of the bullshit keeps going on in this country! Around 60% of this country's Senators are over 60 years old (59 out of 98, to be precise)!
The oldest?
1.) Robert Byrd (born in 1917)
2.) Ernest Hollings (born in 1922)
3.) Ted Stevens (born in 1923)
4.) Frank Lautenberg & and the two Senators in Hawaii (a three-way tie in 1924!)
Why isn't there a cut-off age for running for the Senate? If you lived through the Great Depression, than you're too damn old! Look, I'm not saying that these guys don't know how to do their jobs (except Ted Stevens of course, he's a fucking idiot)... I'm just saying if you are old enough to remember first-hand when Swing Dancing first came out, and you thought that Elvis was just some young whipper-snapper back in 1953, it's time to hang it up, Grandpa.
I think that if you don't want to be mic'ed by CSPAN during a Congressional hearing for the sole reason that you don't want the crinkling sound of your Depends being picked up in the background... it's time to retire. I know that someone out there is probably thinking, "Hey, it's not cool to make fun of people who're incontinent and elderly!" My response to that is simple: Yes it is.
You know why? Because when you reach senility, you know longer care if you shit your pants in public anymore! Hell, I'm looking forward to it... at what other point in your life is it acceptable to smell like fresh feces while waggling your genitalia in public at complete strangers? When your a little kid, and an old man.
My main complaint here is this: We should be encouraging young people to be members of Government, and in order to do that, we need to put a limit on how fucking ancient you can be while holding office in the Supreme Court, The Senate, The Congress and The White House, and here's how I'd do it. You want to be President, guess what? You can't be over the age of 45. After the age of 45, you're so set in your ways that new ideas and ways of doing things are nearly impossible for you to fathom, let alone act on. The two greatest Presidents we've had in the last 50 years were Clinton and Kennedy, and they were both in that age-bracket at the time.
You want to be in The Congress, Senate or the Supreme Court? If you don't make it by 35, your time is up. And once you make it in one of these positions, you have the same term limits as the President does: two sets of four years at the maximum. The last thing that this country needs is people towing the party lines and taking up an important place of power and changing absolutely nothing for 40 or more years. No more "As-long-as-I'm-alive-I-have-this-job" bullshit in the Supreme Court, either. You either contribute or you're out... you're not the Pope, you're a Judge.
Also, here's a big idea that the Canadians have right: Presidential Recall. If you're nothing but a fuck-up, guess what? We replace you with someone who'll do the job the way it's supposed to be done. Matter of fact, I'll posit the idea that the whole Administration will be removed at once, just to make sure that this shit doesn't happen again. And do you wanna know how we'll implement this plan? You vote again, but this time you vote to either keep the current President in his office, or you replace him with the other party's equivalent (for instance, if you vote to take Bush out of Office, you replace him with Kerry). This would encourage anybody that gets the idea of running for President that He/She better get it right the first time, since if you fuck up... we'll fire you.
And the last thing we need for our State Representatives, Congresspeople or Senators is for them to be filthy fucking rich before or after they get into office. That, in no way, is what anyone would consider to be "Representative Democracy" in this country. If you volunteer to be a public or civil servant, you should just be satisfied with whatever meager monetary pittance that the Government pays you. Also, you will have to submit to three different tests on a Quarterly basis (you know, like the Military has to): Follicle, Blood and Urinalysis. Follicle and Urine tests will cover your past and present drug use, and the Blood test will be for making sure that you aren't an Alcoholic, since the proteins that your Liver gives off into your bloodstream will dictate the condition that it's in. After all, who wants someone representing them that isn't guaranteed to live very long.
And to wrap this up, I have one final thing that will be banned: Lobbyists. That's right, that bullshit is going to disappear. Since when is it okay to have a Politician pimping the people that they're supposed to be looking out for?! A Lobbyist is just a nice word for a "Professional Bribery Representative", and they pay off our elected officials for keeping their interests in mind when a Bill comes to the table instead of us. Bribery is illegal, last time that I checked, so that problem is solved. I know that some Lobbyists do some good, but most of them don't, so why tolerate the 92% of them that are corrupting the Executive, Judicial and Legislative Branches for the sake of the 8% that actually do some good.
And that's pretty much it for now, folks... have a great weekend.
The oldest?
1.) Robert Byrd (born in 1917)
2.) Ernest Hollings (born in 1922)
3.) Ted Stevens (born in 1923)
4.) Frank Lautenberg & and the two Senators in Hawaii (a three-way tie in 1924!)
Why isn't there a cut-off age for running for the Senate? If you lived through the Great Depression, than you're too damn old! Look, I'm not saying that these guys don't know how to do their jobs (except Ted Stevens of course, he's a fucking idiot)... I'm just saying if you are old enough to remember first-hand when Swing Dancing first came out, and you thought that Elvis was just some young whipper-snapper back in 1953, it's time to hang it up, Grandpa.
I think that if you don't want to be mic'ed by CSPAN during a Congressional hearing for the sole reason that you don't want the crinkling sound of your Depends being picked up in the background... it's time to retire. I know that someone out there is probably thinking, "Hey, it's not cool to make fun of people who're incontinent and elderly!" My response to that is simple: Yes it is.
You know why? Because when you reach senility, you know longer care if you shit your pants in public anymore! Hell, I'm looking forward to it... at what other point in your life is it acceptable to smell like fresh feces while waggling your genitalia in public at complete strangers? When your a little kid, and an old man.
My main complaint here is this: We should be encouraging young people to be members of Government, and in order to do that, we need to put a limit on how fucking ancient you can be while holding office in the Supreme Court, The Senate, The Congress and The White House, and here's how I'd do it. You want to be President, guess what? You can't be over the age of 45. After the age of 45, you're so set in your ways that new ideas and ways of doing things are nearly impossible for you to fathom, let alone act on. The two greatest Presidents we've had in the last 50 years were Clinton and Kennedy, and they were both in that age-bracket at the time.
You want to be in The Congress, Senate or the Supreme Court? If you don't make it by 35, your time is up. And once you make it in one of these positions, you have the same term limits as the President does: two sets of four years at the maximum. The last thing that this country needs is people towing the party lines and taking up an important place of power and changing absolutely nothing for 40 or more years. No more "As-long-as-I'm-alive-I-have-this-job" bullshit in the Supreme Court, either. You either contribute or you're out... you're not the Pope, you're a Judge.
Also, here's a big idea that the Canadians have right: Presidential Recall. If you're nothing but a fuck-up, guess what? We replace you with someone who'll do the job the way it's supposed to be done. Matter of fact, I'll posit the idea that the whole Administration will be removed at once, just to make sure that this shit doesn't happen again. And do you wanna know how we'll implement this plan? You vote again, but this time you vote to either keep the current President in his office, or you replace him with the other party's equivalent (for instance, if you vote to take Bush out of Office, you replace him with Kerry). This would encourage anybody that gets the idea of running for President that He/She better get it right the first time, since if you fuck up... we'll fire you.
And the last thing we need for our State Representatives, Congresspeople or Senators is for them to be filthy fucking rich before or after they get into office. That, in no way, is what anyone would consider to be "Representative Democracy" in this country. If you volunteer to be a public or civil servant, you should just be satisfied with whatever meager monetary pittance that the Government pays you. Also, you will have to submit to three different tests on a Quarterly basis (you know, like the Military has to): Follicle, Blood and Urinalysis. Follicle and Urine tests will cover your past and present drug use, and the Blood test will be for making sure that you aren't an Alcoholic, since the proteins that your Liver gives off into your bloodstream will dictate the condition that it's in. After all, who wants someone representing them that isn't guaranteed to live very long.
And to wrap this up, I have one final thing that will be banned: Lobbyists. That's right, that bullshit is going to disappear. Since when is it okay to have a Politician pimping the people that they're supposed to be looking out for?! A Lobbyist is just a nice word for a "Professional Bribery Representative", and they pay off our elected officials for keeping their interests in mind when a Bill comes to the table instead of us. Bribery is illegal, last time that I checked, so that problem is solved. I know that some Lobbyists do some good, but most of them don't, so why tolerate the 92% of them that are corrupting the Executive, Judicial and Legislative Branches for the sake of the 8% that actually do some good.
And that's pretty much it for now, folks... have a great weekend.
posted by Todd Tobin at 9:46 AM
9 comments
