Our Clown Alley Congressmen

KIDS BEHAVING THIS BADLY WOULD BE PUNISHED!

At one time Texas sent men and women of honor and integrity to Congress.  These were men and women of stature who earned the respect of the world, not just their fellow Texans and Americans. Men and women such as Barbara Jordan, Ralph Yarborough, Mickey Leland, Sam Rayburn, Lloyd Bentsen, and Lyndon Johnson just to name a handful.

You might not always have agreed with them and on occasion you might take them to task for their political postures, but you always had respect for them--mainly because they demonstrated self-respect and obvious respect  for the offices they held.They understood the gravitas of the moment and the decorum expected of them.

Not so with our current collection of Clown Alley congressman.  As unattractive and motley a bunch of fools and damned fools as you would ever want to be subjected to.  There was a time when Texans would horsewhip such fools and send them over to Arkansas where they belonged--now we just elect them to congress.

Here's a sampling:

Jeb Hensarling (R), who was reported (Washington Monthly on August 26, 2009) to have responded to Senator Edward Kennedy's death in this way,  "While Americans should honor the legacy of the Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Republicans won't allow healthcare reform to proceed in the late senator's honor."

"Certainly people honor Sen. Ted Kennedy for all of his work," Hensarling, a top House Republican, said during an appearance on CNBC. "But at the end of the day, this is a democracy, and I think the voice of the people have [sic] been heard quite loudly in the month of August." Hensarling said health care reform should die "if anybody's listening to the American people."

Hensarling apparently was in Arkansas or some other foreign county for the 2008 elections in which Americans overwhelmingly voted for Democrats who were promising to bring about health care reform.  Fools and damned fools!

Randy Nuegebauer (R), who during the debate preceding the passage of the health reform legislation shouted out "Baby Killer" at Democratic congressman Bart Stupak who was explaining why he had shifted postions and would support the legislation. Nuegebauer later trotted out some lame, tortuously convoluted excuse that he really wasn't yelling at Stupak, he was yelling at the legislation...it is not known if the legislation deigned to yell back.  Fools and damned fools!

Louie Gohmert (R), who like a misbehaving and out of line kid at a middle-school assembly waved a sign "What Plan" during President Obama's address to a joint session of congress on health care reform.  And, just like an errant teenager, Gohmert launched a tortuously laborious  "explanation" in self defense of what he really meant by by his rudeness and thoughtfully ignorant behavior.  Had he have pulled that sort of crap at my  school, Mr. Harlow would have given him a week's worth of detention!  Or maybe swats too!  Fools and damned fools!


Joe Barton (R), who recently apologized to BP for the dreadful way they were being treated and what he termed "the strong-arm tactics of the White House" in getting them to agree to set up a $20-billion fund to indemnify people and business for their losses and for clean up and recovery of the environment related to the catastrophic oil spill coming from their rig in the gulf.

Barton, like Nuegebauer and Gohmert, quickly came force with some half-ass, quasi-apologetic explanation for his foolishness.  Even the BP executive testifying to a house committee to whom Barton rendered his apology looked at him like he'd just bitten the head off a living chicken.

Fools and Damned fools!  Blithering idiots.  Braying jack-asses. Utter disgraces to their party, to their state, to their nation, to themselves and to all humanity.