Cynical Nation

I guess I wasn't the only one pissed off at the 50 congressmen who voted against HR 627 after all. According to Citizen Smash, a certain Daniel Dow of California (a sergeant in the U.S. Army, by the way) faxed Pete Stark, his representative, to express his disapproval of Stark's "nay" vote. To Dan's surprise, the congressman called to leave the following message on his answering machine:

Dan, this is Congressman Pete Stark, and I just got your fax. And you don't know what you're talking about. So if you care about enlisted people, you wouldn't have voted for that thing either.

But, probably someone put you up to this, and I'm not sure who it was, but I doubt if you could spell half the words in your letter, and somebody wrote it for you. So I don't pay much attention to it.

But I'll call you back later, and let you tell me more about why you think you're such a great God-damned hero. And why you think that this general and the Defense Department who forced these poor enlisted guys to do what they did, shouldn't be held to account. That's the issue.

So if you want to stick it to a bunch of enlisted guys, have your way. But if you want to get to the bottom of the people who FORCED this AWFUL program in Iraq, then you should understand more about it than you obviously do.

Ah well, at least that "personal touch" hasn't been entirely lost. All I get from my congressman is a franked, mass-produced newsletter showing him shaking hands and cutting ribbons.