The Great Grandstanding
Posted by Ross

So I get this e-mail from MoveOnPac, whatever that is, I guess what moveon.org used to be. It's Eli Pariser's thing. I never really read anything more than the headline. And so, in that tradition, I'm only going to comment on the headline of that e-mail.

It reads:

"Tell Congress to stop grandstanding on the Schiavo tragedy"

Yeah, I get it. Republican congressmen are douchebag opportunists who are seizing on the one last bastian of the right. Because that's what mobilizes the "base." You know, that "base" that makes up like 30% of the country.

The only reason, in my profound ignorance, I even spew out a statistic like 30% is because in Robert Sheer's column in the LA Times yesterday, he cited a stat that said 70% of those polled disapprove of what Congress, and subsequently old El Presidente himself, are doing by inserting their ideology on a family tragedy that has been handled perfectly well by the courts.

Which, of course, pisses off the Pat Robertsons of the world. Because, didn't ya know, Pat Robertson hates the judicial branch of our government. And this is coming down to a show-down with the executive and legislative on one side, and the judicial on the other.

Don't you think it's just the slightest bit heartening that the old fail-safe "checks and balances" is working pretty darn well?

Let the Congress grandstand. They're the Congress for fuck's sake, that's what they do!

And let them lose. Let all those mean, nasty bastards who have been dumping toxins into the ground, and sending us off to war, and creating propoganda-disguised-as-news, let them lose one for a change. Let them really see what happens when you latch onto a "base" that's about 100 years out-of-step with the rest of planet earth.