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Nov. 14th, 2007 @ 08:20 am On bended knee
Current Mood: working
My governor held a prayer vigil yesterday, and even though I work only a few miles away, I didn't join a group protesting against the empty gesture.  I'd like to think that not raising my voice to jeer has more to do with meetings and deadlines, but its probably a combination of apathy and a respect for the first amendment.  I have strong doubts that a delusional and corrupted sense of piety will bring an end to the drought, but how Sonny chooses to spend his lunch hour is his own business, for the most part.

What I have done is written notes to my State Representative and State Senator in the General Assembly asking that certain exemptions from outdoor watering bans be reexamined and removed.

To be honest, I'm more concerned with a proposed sweeping tax reform that seems terribly regressive.
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Nov. 14th, 2007 @ 12:49 pm Whip it good!
Current Mood: grumpy
With my son feeling a little under the weather, I'm home at one in the afternoon on a Wednesday watching C-SPAN.  What else would I be doing?

Senator Dick Durbin, the Majority Whip, is tearing into Saxby Chamblis' arse.  

When I tuned into the U.S. Senate feed, Slacks-bie was moaning about the fate of the Farm Bill, with a recess looming.  He spoke at length about the importance of the Farm Bill (even his grandstanding fell short of weighing the full measure of the Farm Bill), and then he criticized Democrats for refusing to get the bill out of committee.  

A few minutes later, Senator Durbin spoke from the floor of the Senate and listed more than a half-dozen bi-partisan or outright Republican amendments to the Farm Bill that Senator Chamblis had refused to bring before the Agriculture committee, leaving Senator Harkin with the distinct impression that Senator Chamblis didn't wish to have a filibuster-proof Farm Bill before the full Senate.

Agriculture is a key element of the economy of my state, and so many of those rural voters overwhelmingly support the Republican party in spite of their best interest.  I wonder whether their blind devotion will waver with the spinrg plantings being delayed by political maneuvering.  Probably not at all, which is a shame.

Both of my Senators upheld the President's veto of the S-CHIP legislation a few weeks ago, and Saxby has more than four million in his war chest already for next year's elections.  The cost for the war in Iraq may have already cost us more than trillion-and-a-half dollars, but the President, who so many of the same rural voters of this state still support, vetoed the Health and Education Bill, claiming that it was rife with pork.

Avoiding solutions, delaying important decisions, and running up the profits of military contractors like Haliburton and Blackwater, this is why Saxby has raised more than eight times the amount of the next closest Democrat for the '08 election, WTF? 
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