Lame duck pretty lame

Well, the rat-bastards of the 111th Congress have finally packed up and gone home. My main concern was extending the Bush Tax Cuts, and that did happen. The rest is less important. But I do have a couple questions.

First, why do we allow Russia to dictate our missile defense policy? Russia's basically sort of a third-work nation, and they aren't the only other people in the world with atomic weapons. I'm tempted to say that Russia is rather more civilized than Iran or North Korea -- but foreign policy and governments are run by people who may or may not be reflective of the population. I think most individuals, on their own, are decent people no matter where they're from. However, give someone a taste of political power -- in the USA as well as overseas -- and they seem to go completely crazy, begin entertaining visions of their own infallibility and perfect wisdom, and become obstructions to human life on the planet. So I was going to say maybe Russia is a more trustworthy caretaker of nuclear weapons than Iran or North Korea -- who appear to be the more dangerous threats -- but probably not, after all. I mean, Russia appears to be so dead broke it's selling nuclear technology to North Korea and Iran. And I don't think the START treaty will stop that.

But I don't see why Russia should have anything at all to say about what we do with domestic defense. And I suspect no one's going to pay any attention at all to that treaty. The whole thing is, maybe, giving Hillary Clinton a little pat on the back for all her bad hair days as Secretary of State, then shunt her back to the hinterlands of upstate New York.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed. Well, if the soldiers don't mind, I don't. Do the soldiers mind? Does anyone really know? Anyone ask them? Seems some of the top command was not convinced, but do they speak for the soldiers, the actual "boots on the ground"? I don't know.

1st Responders aid I already talked about. Not against it, just question the excesses of it. As the bill passed, its funding was reduced from $6.2 billion to something like $4 billion. Apparently the feds don't recognize any spending figures in units of less than a billion. That's a very bad habit. It tends to devalue money and only generates a terrific amount of fraud and waste.

Something I found really interesting was that the lame duck congress also passed legislation that makes it illegal for a TV advertisement to blast at a higher volume than the rest of the TV show.

God knows, that's an issue that was keeping me awake at night. I mean, I got down on my knees every night, hoping that even a politically divided congress could come together to save the nation from the scourge of noisy TV commercials.

But you know what? I have a TV that you can set to modulate the sound -- all the sound. Congress had nothing to do with it. Wonder if, in the raucous and hysterical public meetings they held (joking) about this controversial proposal, the thing about the TV sets was ever brought up.

Why is this any of congress's business? What a bunch of douchebags, you know? But they can all go home and remind their constituents: "Ah, but TV commercials now can't be any louder than the other content." Think that will win them any votes?

That's enough for now. A few more things I want to write about, but they deserve their own titles.

Save the Republic.