Modern Failure

Well it looks like Washington, DC may finally get a vote in Congress. Earlier today legislation passed the Senate which would provide full voting rights to delegate from DC who currently sits in the House of Representative. Most experts agree that it will pass the House easily.

This is good news for anyone has spent time in DC since maybe now they will change their license plates.

Seriously, these things are confusing! Taxation without representation? It took me months to figure out that wasn’t a typo. So are you happy now DC? Good. Now shut up.

If anyone has been paying attention to the congressional budget recently, they would have noticed that it was increased by 10% for the next fiscal year. Now, this may strike some people, such as those with brain power, as maybe not the best idea in the world considering the current economic crisis that I heard we might be in. In fact, the Department of Labor reported approximately 235,000 layoffs nationwide in January.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was asked about this recently in a press conference, and said, “We had a situation — you should direct that question to Senator McConnell because we had trouble organizing this year. He wanted to maintain a lot of their staffing even though they had lost huge numbers. And the only way we could get it done is to do what we did. So you should direct that question to Senator McConnell.”

So let’s look at this objectively for a moment. Seems like the Republicans are to blame. Maybe. But maybe this is just that weasel-faced rascal Harry Reid up to his old tricks again blaming the other side of the aisle. So what do they have to say about it?

A top level Republican aide responded, “I just don’t know how they can get away with blaming us for that 10 percent figure. Republicans aren’t getting a dime more in committee money for staff than we got last year.”

Well here we go. See? Those evil Democrats were just being douche-bags again. Isn’t that just like them?

Wait a minute. Did he say, “Republicans aren’t getting a dime more in committee money for staff than we got last year”?

Yes, I believe he did.

Okay, for those of you missed something because, honestly, I almost did, it’s time to do a little math. Please bare with me.

Sadly for them, the GOP lost about 20% of their seats overall in the last election. One would assume that would lead to around a 20% drop in Republican staffers and hence an equal drop in their requested funding. You see where I’m going here.

As they said, they’re not “getting a dime more” than last year… THEY SHOULD BE GETTING MUCH LESS THAN THAT!

Sorry about that, I’m calm now.

It just strikes me as funny that the party of budget cuts and fiscal conservatism should fail to notice this kind of thing. Maybe I’m expecting too much. Maybe it was a mistake. Maye we should just get them a calculator. Yeah, let’s do that.

Apparently Ingrid Newkrik, the president of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), has rewritten her will. Why did she do this, you ask? Is it because she wants to donate all her money to puppies or spotted owls or a cat named Miffy? No, she wants her body to be mutilated, cooked, dismembered, and turned into a fashionable leather handbadg. All so that we might better understand the plight of the animals. I guess I didn’t realize how many elephants were getting the feet chopped off to make umbrella stands, post 1896.

I almost have nothing else I can say except that if you really wanted to help somebody why not donate your body parts to people. There’s plenty of people out there who need good body parts. I get that PETA thinks animals are people too, but that’s stupid. They’re not. That’s why we call them animals and not people. Duh.

Until cows start figuring out how to give back to society, I’m going to keep eating them. So deal with it.

It was recently brought to my attention by our good friends over at the Huffington Post, that the current economic downturn has had some surprising ancillary effects on other aspects of our lives. Specifically, a dramatic decrease in shark attacks.

I repeat, shark attacks.

In fact, shark attacks are currently at lowest they’ve been in five years world wide. Apparently there is some very simple logic that can be used to explain this phenomenon; when the economy is bad, people go to the beach less, therefor less of them get eaten by sharks. The simplicity of it all is astounding, yet I never would have come to that conclusion on my own.

This got me thinking, what other seemingly unrelated occurrences could be attributed to the economy. After some good ole thinkin’ time, I created the following list. (Note this list was not made with “science” or “facts” but my own brain logic)

- The global disappearance of bees is actually due to the housing market crash and that many of bees homes have been foreclosed.

- The cancellation of ABC’s Pushing Daisies was in fact caused by a lack of government subsidies for the American Association of Daisy Farmers.

- The reason we’ve yet to invent Cylons is because of budget constraints, not that we don’t have the technology, or that creating intelligent killer-robots is a bad idea.

- My parents kicked me out of their house because they couldn’t afford to support me anymore, not because I was stealing their prescriptions and selling them on eBay.

- The real reason TV networks picked up crap shows like Night Rider for a second season is because creating new pilots is expensive… that’s actually true.

So remember, the next time you find yourself thinking, “Why is my dog biting the mailman?” or “Why is my toast burnt?” just blame the economy.

Well it looks like President’s Day came and went once again and I still have no idea what I was supposed to do. I got off work, which was sweet, but I didn’t know what to do with my day.

On most days when I don’t have to go to work it’s because there’s something else I’m supposed to do. Examples being honoring our veterans on Veterans’ Day, honoring fallen soldiers on Memorial Day, and honoring… laborers? on Labor Day. This is usual done with Red Tag Auto Sales and some sort of Dateline Special.

Yet today I found myself lost.

I assume I wasn’t suppose to honor the current President because I’m pretty sure that’s what the Inauguration was for. And it can’t be that I was supposed to honor the last president because well… I’m just not going to do that. My best guess was that I was supposed to play Skate 2 on Xbox and eat Chinese food.

So congratulations presidents, consider yourself honored.

It was brought to my attention today that when I posted the cartoon of Boston mayoral hopeful Sam Yoon, yesterday, it came up on Google Alerts and prompted many of his staff members to say “Who is Doctor Awesome?” (I have an anonymous inside source).

I guess that means his staff are probably also reading this right now.

Sorry for messing with your  Alerts, but honestly, I could use the extra readers, so I may or may not be continually giving your man shout outs.

Also, apparently Sam Yoon is following me on twitter. That just makes me smile.

My roommate just pointed out that during my stimulus package blog I forgot to make a sexual innuendo about stimulus packages and hookers. Please feel free to insert your own (that’s what she said).

So earlier this afternoon the United States House of Representatives passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the Economic Stimulus Package. The bill passed with a vote of 246 to 183.

These numbers are significant for a couple of reasons, the first and most obvious is that it means not a single Republican voted for it. Not one.

This confuses me.

While I understand that the bill cost $787 billion, and apparently numbers that big give our GOP friends quite a headache (because thinking is hard), it actually included $275 billion for tax cuts. I repeat, $275 billion for TAX CUTS!

If no Republicans were going to vote for it, why the hell did the Democrats include that much money for tax cuts. Aren’t tax cuts pretty much the exact opposite of the standard Democratic platform? Did I miss something?

A note to the Democrats: IF YOU HAVE ENOUGH VOTES TO DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, YOU DON’T NEED TO PLACATE THE REPUBLICANS! JUST DO IT!

Which of course, brings me to the second significant thing that the vote taught us today. Namely:

IF YOU HAVE ENOUGH VOTES, YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT!

I mean seriously, Democrats, you need to start thinking outside the box here. You can get any piece of legislation passed that you want. You could have taken that $275 billion and done so much with it, and no one could stop you. To help you in the future, I’ve compiled a list of the top 5 things you could spend $275 billion on.

5) 27.5 billion iTunes downloads. Which should get almost ever album they’ve got on there, give or take one Jonas Brothers CD.

4) 5 billion pony rides. Your children and your children’s children would really appreciate it.

3) Tickets to every Bruce Springsteen concert on his next tour. You may even have enough left over for a t-shirt.

2) HOOKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1) Seriously, hookers. It’s not like you aren’t already spending your own money on them. Just let Uncle Sam foot the bill. In fact, I bet you could totally get one of the hookers to dress up like Uncle Sam. That would be hot.

So, Boston City Councilman Sam Yoon recently declared his candidacy for mayor. The Phoenix had this picture along with the article. It’s just too goddamn cute. I can’t say anything else about.

Seriously, I have no more words.