Great Saves! In Congress, Everybody is Saving Something



Posted: Saturday, January 22, 2011

by Walter Rhett
Charleston Perlo

This is the year of the save! In Congress, despite the rancor, everybody is saving something. The last civil meeting of an American legislature was in Richmond during the birth of the Confederacy ("we are passing through one of the greatest revolutions in the annals of the world") and its decorum lasted all of a week. South Carolina actually refused to elect its number one fire eater, the father of Secession, Robert Barnwell Rhett, because the people felt he would be too boisterious and extreme.

Earlier in the US House in 1856, a SC House member took umbarge about remarks regarding his cousin in the Senate, and walking to the Senate chamber with a metal tipped cane used to discipline dogs, viciously caned a MA member, salvagely striking his head, nearlly killing him on the floor. It took the gentleman a year to recover from his injuries. The SC House member avoided censure and won re-election.

The US Congress' own exaggeration doing the healthcare repeal was more poisonous than a blow fish and just as colorful with its calls to save the republic from saving children, the unemployed, the uninsured, the adult unemployed uninsured children, and the elderly. The vote ended up saving them from a panel that, in the name of costs and crushing jobs, wanted to vote away a better option for saving lives and securing wellness. Funny how those national panels are only concerned with costs and crushing jobs rather than saving lives; sounds like somewhere we have visited before. It is silently obscene that my state ranks 47th in life expectancy and its representatives of a particular ilk (ain't calling no names!) voted revocation after transparently debating for two days and offering no substitutes to assure those who wanted and voted for better. Instead, we came to the brink of getting worse.

What Congress lacked the web more than made up for. To paraphrase early Bogart (1949, “Knock On Any Door”), go to any social media site. What doesn't make you blush will bring tears to your eyes.
 

Walter Rhett Walter Rhett attended Ohio State and writes from Charleston, SC. He writes about national and global affairs with an eye on Southern history and culture and enjoys listening to his readers.

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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Jennifer Stewart
 1 year 111 days ago.
153 fans.
Well said, Walter, and your last sentence is beautiful. They're cutting their noses off to spite their faces, though.
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