11% of the population feel Congress is doing a good job.  Isn’t that shocking?  Not that only 11% of the population approve of Congress’ performance, but that there is actually 11% out there who DO approve.  I mean really, people approve of Congress?   Now I know I’m not a mathematician, because my grades in math told me so,  but that breaks down to about 20 million people in the U.S. proclaim Congress is doing a fine job.  20 MILLION?  Are you kidding me?  To put that in further perspective,  about 1 million people went to the theaters to see that craptastic 2003 Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez flick, GIGLI.  If you are one of the 7 billion or so who haven’t seen it, trust me it’s horrendous.  But if you are one of those “trust-but-verify” types and want to watch it, go right ahead, but you’d be wasting less time peddling snow shovels in Miami.  Nonetheless, most people watched the trailer for that movie and collectively said “that’s gonna suck”, as they should have.  But after reading, hearing and watching news reports on congress’ performance, the 11%ers are acting like they just watched 50 Shades of Grey starring Mila Kunis and Bradley Cooper.

How on Earth can anyone look at Congress and go “good job, thumbs up, bravo!”?  I have not met a person who approves of the job they are doing.  No one seems to admit to giving Congress a high-five-chest-bump job approval.  I don’t know, maybe the media is just creating a mythical number so Congress isn’t getting their feelings hurt. Congressional politicians have feelings right?

There are 535 people in Congress, add about 10,000 family and friends of those Congress members and that makes 10,535.  That works out to like .0050% of registered voters.  These 10,535 get a free pass because they have to vote in support of Congress.  They are invested by association. They are like the parents who look at their kids art project, you know, the picture they drew of their family but only in this drawing one arm is twice as long as the other, and they have 14 fingers but only 7 toes, with oval eyes and orange faces.  They tell their kids “awesome work buddy” because they have too, why?  Because they are invested!  But what about everyone else?  After removing those people, that still leaves 11%.  We are still at roughly 20 million people.  Again who are they?  We need a Dateline-20/20-60 minutes-Sherlock Holmes-Nancy Drew investigation to find out who they are.

The great comedian George Carlin (R.I.P.) use to tell a joke about the definition of the word Congress.  Carlin’s definition was this,  CON means to take away, GRESS means to work together, therefore Congress is working together to take things away from us, the taxpayer.  But this Congress is doing so bad they can’t even agree on what to take from us.  At least when Congress was “working” I was at least paying for things I didn’t want.  Now I’m not paying for anything, I’m just paying.  And yes I’m being rhetorical.   I think we need Congressional refs to call penalties like in football.  I want refs throwing flags. Instead of holding, offsides, and false start we could have congressional (with)holding-information, political-flip-flopping and voting-before-the-full-bill-is-fully-disclosed.  If we had Congressional refs, C-SPAN might actually be interesting….maybe.

Finally, one of our earliest presidents, John Adams, once said, “One useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, three or more is congress”.  How sad is it, that this phrase is as accurate now, as apparently it was then.