The word “sucks” is apparently not appropriate to use on air at ESPN. At least that’s what an “Important Reminder” memo from a couple of VPs at ESPN said. The memo is posted on JimRomeneski.com.

Reading that memo got me thinking about how often I had used the word “sucks” here at The Western Word (TWW). As the creator and owner of TWW, I try to make it a tasteful blog, and I try to keep the “salty” language to a minimum. All comments are approved by me.

So I did a quick search, and I used the word “sucks” 19 times since this blog started January 2005. Each time I used the slang meaning for suck, “to be repellent or disgusting.”

Today, we can make that 20, so please accept my apologies.

Gallup recently released a poll that shows “Americans’ job approval ratings for Congress in 2013 averaged 14%, the lowest annual average in Gallup’s history.”

In shorter terms, Congress sucks at their job. That’s really the best way to describe it.

Of course, my members of Congress from (insert your state here) don’t suck. It’s the (insert Democrats, Republicans, Progressives, Tea Party) fault.

In reality, the only numbers that really matter are from the state that the member of Congress represents. These are the people who have the opportunity to vote for or against the member of Congress.

In November Public Policy Polling did some polling in Montana. They asked “Do you approve or disapprove of (Insert Candidate’s name) job performance? You can see the results HERE and HERE.

Representative Steve Daines who is running for U.S. Senate has a job approval of 37%, a disapproval of 42%, and 21% said they were “not sure.”

With his approval of only 37%, he’s got some work to do. The good news is there are 21% who are not sure about his work.

Although he is not a member of Congress, Governor Steve Bullock has a job approval of 47%, a disapproval of 28%, and 26% said they were “not sure.”

Bullock has the highest job approval, but 26% said they are not sure.

U.S. Senator Max Baucus came in with a job approval of 38%, a disapproval of 53%, and 9% were “not sure.” Baucus announced that he was retiring at the end of this senate term (Jan. 2015).

People who follow Baucus know that although he is not running, he wants to go out of office with better numbers than these.

U.S. Senator Jon Tester has a job approval rating of 44%, a disapproval of 50%, and 6% were “not sure.”

Tester just got through with a tough election. The 50% disapproval can be fixed easily. Unless he really screws something up, or gets tired of the grind, Tester could be in the U.S. Senate for a long time.

As you can see, Montana’s Congressional delegation is far from the 14% approval rating for all of Congress. So it’s the other states’ members of Congress who must be dragging down the overall numbers (That last line was a joke).

## Merry Christmas ##