Need More Vacation?

After swearing it off  a hundred times, I still read The Savannah Morning News print version most every day.

The news is mostly bad and always exaggerated, the columnists are one sided, one dimensional exercises in pompous thinking (except for Bill Dawers who is eclectic and wonderfully diverse), and the sports section is woefully thin.

But ... I love Stacy Jennings who does the marketing for the paper and she cornered this market years ago so I still read the thing.

This is what I learned today.

Apparently Congress is going on a five week vacation and feels good about the things they've accomplished so far this year.

You may need to take a moment and read the last sentence again.

I know I did.

If you didn't already know, members of Congress get 239 vacation days each year.

This gives them plenty of time to raise money to run for office again.

Who gets 239 days of vacation?

No wonder they spend all of their time raising money to run for office again!

Sure they have to kiss the asses of people with money, and get photo ops with people who don't giving the impression they're working but ... Hell! 239 FREAKING DAYS OF VACATION????

Now my friend Jack Kingston will say it's not really vacation.

He just has to get out of Washington to get real again.

He's got to reconnect with the people.

Of course the way you get real and reconnect is to have political fund raiser.

When not busy raising money, members of Congress are overwhelmed spending the gifts Lobbyist gave them ... going to Braves games, Georgia football games, Kenny Chesney concerts and such.

Jack will be the first to tell you, it's a lot of work!

It's hard to be everywhere at once.

Well, everywhere except Washington.

Or to quote Mark Twain, "Suppose you're an idiot. Now suppose you're a member of Congress. But I repeat myself" or "It can probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."

Republicans or Democrats?

They're all the same.

They just want to hold on to what they got.

Mark Twain got sick of it all and jumped on a steam ship and sailed away. After years of doing politics, I have too. They can have their vacations, raise their money and enjoy their perks while not doing a damn thing other than naming buildings and bridges after themselves, attending free conferences in exotic places and scrambling for television time.

I don't care.

I've taken a permanent vacation from them.

Oh, and have a good time Jack ... John ... Johnny ... the rest of you.