apropos of anything

Really, y’all, I am so confounded I don’t know what to do or where to turn. I am completely kerflummexed, far more than Miss Cornelia ever was.

Here’s what I don’t understand, see. Does our Congress, the body whose members we regularly elect to represent us and make decisions on our behalf in exchange for prestige, benefits, and a healthy salary, think it has nothing to do? It’s the only possible explanation I can come up with for their recent behavior, yet I simply cannot fathom how they might believe they have no work to be done.

Let’s examine their recent workload, shall we? Steroids in baseball and Terri Schiavo. I

	I love the game, but it’s not what I pay my Congressmen to discuss. And if they want to talk to Mark McGwire, they can do it on THEIR OWN TIME.

repeat: steroids in baseball and Terri Schiavo. The presence of performance-enhancing drugs in a SPORT that serves to ENTERTAIN, and the players’ union’s refusal to stand up and act like mature adults about it, is apparently a subject of concern for our national policy makers. I’m dumsquizzled, I tell you. Has Republican Representative Tom Davis of Virginia’s 11th district read his Washington Post lately? Does he not see all the other pressing issues that might warrant his time? Heaven forbid we discuss our looming energy crisis, the state of our health care system (drugs from Canada are bad, unless they’re helping fill the shortage of flu shots during a public campaign for the presidency), or hell, even the war on terror, when we could be getting to the bottom of something obviously FAR more important: sporting events.

And then there’s the Terri Schiavo case, which is sad and complicated in itself. I feel for Schiavo’s parents; nobody wants to watch their child starve to death, and anything else would be considered euthanasia — thereby, illegal. However. This should never have become a federal issue. Congress had no right nor reason to get involved, and if any of them had a modicum of ethics, they’d shrug off the PR value of this case and send it back to the state of Florida where it belongs. And also, where it has already been decided. Repeatedly.

It’s not just the items Congress’s agenda that bamboozles me, though. I can’t comprehend some of their recent decisions either. Do any of them, even the Republicans, really think drilling in the Alaskan wildlife refuge is the best way to solve our energy problem? Truly? Are they seriously that dumb, or have they zero ability to see past the end of their own noses? I knew in November that some Republican leaders saw their congressional victory as an opportunity to pass this legislation, but… I thought perhaps, just maybe, even Republicans would have a shred of sense or a smidgen of heart. I didn’t realize they were all secretly Death-Eaters.

What’s absolutely maddening about this energy fiasco is that our supposed leader would rather plump the pockets of his (already plump) oil buddies than promote legislation in support of the people who put their faith in him. And also those of us who didn’t but are stuck with him anyway. Alternative. Fuel. Sources. It’s the only way to go as we continue to suck the earth dry at a much faster pace than it can handle.

It’s all so clear to me. Why it’s not as clear to them, I don’t know. It’s befuddling.