by James Glaser
November 2, 2005

I think yesterday's fiasco in the Senate tells us that we would be better off if we fired everyone in Washington and started over. Politicians on both side look like well dressed Crips and Bloods, with a speaker at the microphone, and everyone standing behind with stern looks on their faces, like they are ready to back their leader up in the rumble.

Majority Leader Bill Frist said, "The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership." It seems that the Democrats pulled out some seldom used rule, to stop everything, and get all the Senators into a room with no cameras and no microphones so they could talk back and forth without anyone grandstanding to get a sound bite for the evening news.

Bill Frist seems to forget that he is in charge of the Senate, and if the Democrats took over, they took it from him.

So, all day the Senate was not working, and both sides were name calling.... like kids on a playground.

We are at war. We have a real national debt problem. We have tens of thousands of illegal aliens crossing our borders every month. People in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana are hurting from storm damage. Every night a plane load of wounded American troops come home, and on some nights we get a plane load of flag draped coffins. These plane loads come in at night, because Washington believes, "out of sight-out of mind".

Gas is costing close to 3 bucks a gallon and diesel fuel is even higher. Over forty million Americans do not have any health coverage, and the number of Americans living in poverty is rising. We are the richest nation on the globe, we have over a million Americans living on the street, and many of them are children.

I'm sure you can think of other problems. None of these, other than the war are new, and many Senators and Representatives have been in Washington for years, many for decades, with the same problems facing them term after term. Half of our government can't seem to talk to the other half, and working together is a thing of the past.

We need to start over with new faces. Old grudges hang on, and voting in a few new faces does nothing to make major changes. Our politicians no longer work on the nation's problems. Now all they work on is getting reelected. The Republicans have the House, Senate, and the White House and still they get nothing done. The Democrats snipe and complain, but offer no plan of their own, because they want failure, so they have a shot of taking over after the next election.

Neither side cares about our country nor our citizens, and that is why the same problems hang on year after year. They don't want to solve things, because that is what they run on. It is all about money and power. Those in Washington are having the time of their lives, and every elected official feel, oh so important They get good pay, lobbyists fawn all over them telling them what ever they want to hear, and people treat them like they are something special.

We need working people in Government. People who know what it is like to live and work in America today. People who have to take that extra job to make ends meet. We need "normal" people. Get rid of the lawyers and the millionaire doctors. Get some people who have felt what it is like taking your child to the emergency room, because you don't have insurance. People who feel it is a real treat to take the family out to eat. People who have only one house, and people who think buying a new car is a big deal.

We need people in our government who have lost their job to India or China. People who have lost their job to illegal Mexicans, who sneak in to our country. People who know that the illegal people coming here are no longer taking the jobs Americans don't want, but are now taking the plumbing job or carpenter job you were hoping to get.

We need people in Government who actually have a loved one in the service, and who know the price we are paying so President Bush can feel powerful.

We need a whole new government!