Down, Down, Down

When nobody likes the job you are doing…then you go on “SUMMER BREAK 2007.” The United States Senate is in “Summer Recess” until noon September 4, 2007. That’s 32 days.
The House would like to leave – if they ever get the voting machines to work.

Most people would want to get the heck out of town if their poll numbers were like this: A recent UPI/Zogby Poll shows just 3% of Americans approve of how Congress is handling the war in Iraq; 24% say the same for the President.

Also in the poll: 55% believe that if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq it would be a defeat.

OUCH – It must really suck to be a member of Congress these days…except for the pay, free travel, free food, free drinks, etc.

They must be proud

Democrats passed something they are proud of: “Congressional Democrats Hail Ethics Bill Approval”

Note to Congressional Democrats from Jack the Blogger (JTB): Already, lawyers and lobbyists are reading the bill line by line and devising methods to get around it. They always do this and so far they have succeeded in finding the holes in all the ethics and campaign finance bills passed. This one will be no different.

Free Speech

On the (Bill) O’Reilly factor, which shares my 6:00-7:00 pm time slot with “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” (more Olbermann recently) there’s been a lot of “talking” about the Daily Kos website.

I read Daily Kos every day. While I disagree with some of the stuff on the site, and I thought the photo O’Reilly showed from Daily Kos was distasteful, I do find the site informative and funny sometimes. Besides the founder of Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas, is a veteran, so he can’t be half bad if he served his country around the same time that I did. I also visit a host of right and left leaning blogs originating here in Montana and from D.C.

This is the internet, Bill. It’s free and mostly unregulated. If you see something YOU don’t like, then you have the freedom to not visit the site. By the way, this is the same freedom for which people like Mr. Moulitsas and I enlisted in the military, something I don’t believe you did.

The Blame Game Begins

Since the bridge collapse in Minneapolis earlier this week, there are already some hints that the Democrats will blame the decades-old decay of the bridges and infrastructure in the United States on the War in Iraq. Yes, the War in Iraq.

It seems that Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, was first to fire off some blame toward the Bush administration when she said the Iraq war may have crimped funding for domestic projects such as road and bridge construction. She’s a freshman.

According to my crack research team (me), the latest highway bill was signed into law August 2005. It was funded at $286 Billion dollars. It was $30 billion more then Bush requested. It had around 6000 pet projects inserted in it. Every state received at least a 19% increase in the Highway bill from the 1998-2003 version. Of course, there has been a steady increase in funds in every highway bill.

I remember seeing stories written from Max Baucus’ press releases, who has been on the Senate’s Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee for many years (He’s the Chairman now), about Montana getting a cool $2.1 billion in Highway funds which he said was a 44% increase.

So, the “blame game” that has started really has no merit.

There are almost 153,000 bridges in the USA that are either Structurally Deficient or Functionally Obsolete according to this REPORT by the U.S. Department of Transportation. There are little over 594,000 bridges in the USA. Minnesota’s bridges are in better shape then most states, including Montana.

Seems to me a few less “pet projects” and few more infrastructure repairs (you know the things that aren’t pretty in a press release and for winning elections) and some more spine from the members of the Senate and House Transportation Committees might have helped.