To be fair, he's only one man with one lawn... versus lots of kids.

MorningBreath: It's also worth pointing out, however, that Maj. Leader Harry Reid (NV), a Democrat, sets the agenda. In fact, today he delayed the equal pay vote to later in the day, which gives both Clinton and Obama time to return from campaigning in Indiana.

Your point?

(assuming you have one)

So, politicians are lazy bastards not fit to run a merry-go-round.

Waiting for someone to make a point.

But McCain has topped both candidates, missing a staggering 58 percent of his votes during the 110th Congress, according to the Washington Post's congressional votes database.


Way to do your job, Johnny... a chip off the old GOP block...



"A week without you
Thought I'd forget
Two weeks without you and I
Still haven't gotten over you yet


Vacation
All I ever wanted
Vacation
Had to get away..."

thatvoiceguy: To be fair, he's only one man with one lawn... versus lots of kids.

he needs to get that bumbot from the colbert report last night.

I've noticed that in Fark headlines, the answer to these types of questions is usually C. So I'll guess McCain, even though answers A and B are more plausible.

thatvoiceguy: To be fair, he's only one man with one lawn... versus lots of kids.

8 lawns actually. And a trolopy coont of a wife.

He's understandably busy.

I have no problem with this - personally, I think we're all better off if he doesn't vote.

He worked SO HARD campaigning; his long-fought battle to win the nomination against insurmountable odds has left him WEARY and in need of rest. You would be tired too if you had to deal with the stress of the McCain-Huckabee battle royale that emerged the last several months.

Saw Tim Johnson on the news recently... man, you can really tell that he's had some brain damage. Hopefully he continues to recover.

Edsel
man, you can really tell that he's had some brain damage.

Just because he's a Democrat is no reason to get harsh....

/no, I really couldn't pass that up....

Alzheimer's.

/There I said it

baka-san: So, politicians are lazy bastards not fit to run a merry-go-round.

Waiting for someone to make a point.

I wouldn't say lazy so much as 'running for President takes that much time commitment'. I've heard arguments in previous threads of this nature that basically amount to one of a couple things:

1. 'Don't spend so much time campaigning, do your job.' These people don't realize that that is simply what it takes to be elected President. You either campaign to the bitter end, or you lose. It is that simple.
2. 'Resign to run.' I'm more inclined to hear these guys out, but usually the ones making this argument aren't the ones whose elected official is running themselves. I don't often hear the home-staters telling their own candidate to get back to DC and do their job.

So let's meet argument 2 halfway. When an elected official officially announces their candidacy for President, a referendum will be given to their constituents within a short but reasonable timeframe. Within a month should do the trick. The referendum would be presented more or less in this fashion:

"Realizing that a campaign for the Presidency requires a candidate to miss a large amount of votes, are you willing to forgive (name of candidate)'s anticipated absences and release them from their commitments as (office held) in order to run a serious campaign?"

If their constituents say yes, fine and dandy. If, however, their constituents say no, the candidate will have one week to either:

A: Withdraw from the campaign.
B: Resign from their current office in order to run for President.

Failing to make a decision within that time will result in the automatic implementation of option B.

Here's something that's been bothering me about this sort of thing:

Why do Senators need to be on the floor of the Senate to vote? What's the point of that? It would be a trivial matter to give every Senator some sort of cell phone/laptop device they could take with them that would allow them to vote from anywhere. When is our law making process going to catch up with our technology?

When the other party is in charge, it's fairly normal to not vote if your side isn't going to get majority anyway.

It's true for both sides of the aisle. They both suck equally loud.

Neeek: Here's something that's been bothering me about this sort of thing:

Why do Senators need to be on the floor of the Senate to vote? What's the point of that? It would be a trivial matter to give every Senator some sort of cell phone/laptop device they could take with them that would allow them to vote from anywhere. When is our law making process going to catch up with our technology?

How do you know it's the Senator making the vote and not someone who simply has his cellphone?

That's why.

AmStatic1: When the other party is in charge, it's fairly normal to not vote if your side isn't going to get majority anyway.

It's true for both sides of the aisle. They both suck equally loud.

While I agree that both parties suck, I don't see anything particularly egregious about this practice. It'd be one thing if there was ever any actual substantive debate or deliberation in Congress, but nowadays it's nothing more than behind-closed-doors manipulation of the rules by the few powerful Congresscritters and speeches to empty chambers for the CSPAN cameras. Hell, even committee hearings are little more than an empty farce or stupid "gotcha!" soundbite game 90% of the time. If the outcome of a bill is already known, I see no reason why a Congresscritter can't go do more productive things rather than sitting around doing jack shiat while the Byzantine process inches along just so they can get a vote on the record. I wholeheartedly agree that critters doing this to get out of having to state a position should be skewered, but aside from that I don't really see the harm as long as the Rep./Senator is willing to state their position on the bill and is reasonably informed on what's going through the Congress.

Gosling: How do you know it's the Senator making the vote and not someone who simply has his cellphone?

That's why.

Well, you'd think the Senator would let someone know if that happened. And installing a voice ID system would be equally trivial.

Though I'm not too excited about the idea. I still cling to hope that one day Congress, or at least the Senate, might return to actually being a deliberative body.

Gosling: How do you know it's the Senator making the vote and not someone who simply has his cellphone?

Um, I really don't care if Senators has someone else vote for them (staffers and the caucuses make most of those decisions anyways), and if someone steals it or something, the Senator can just report that is what happened and rescind the votes.

And if it's a serious concern, issue each Senator a password they have to enter for each vote. Or attach a fingerprint scanner. The security issues are pretty easy to solve.

Hey, preparing to be President takes a lot of time.

/Dems...shoot themselves again

Neeek: Gosling: How do you know it's the Senator making the vote and not someone who simply has his cellphone?

Um, I really don't care if Senators has someone else vote for them (staffers and the caucuses make most of those decisions anyways), and if someone steals it or something, the Senator can just report that is what happened and rescind the votes.

You don't. Congress does. The constituents sure as hell will. Passwords can be stolen. Fingerprints can be stolen. Voices can be recorded. Doesn't matter what the security measures are, there's only one way to outright guarantee that the proper person is voting, and that is to have the Senator there in person.

video voting with fingerprint ID, Voice matching, Retinal scans, passwords and a stool sample. Easy as pie.

What's even more interesting is that with something over 500 votes taken in the Senate during this congress, I can't think of anything significant they've accomplished.

It's just so Maverick of him though, dont you think?

Oops.

And by the time this makes it onto the prime-time news shows, the narrative will have morphed so that they can make McCain's lack of votes look "independent" immediately followed by biatching about how few votes Obama and Clinton have cast in the same time period.

I mean, for consistency's sake...

Elephantman: i wish more Democrats would miss Votes

Do us a favor bigotroll and find a bridge. Natural instinct should kick in thereafter.

Say what you will about the usefulness of congress but until he resigns it is still his job. If he cannot do it he owes it to the people of Arizona to resign. If I missed 58% of my meetings at work I would be fired. I thought Republicans were supposed to be against no-show jobs?

/Cuts both ways

It's not fascism when we do it.


/Variation on a theme

Churchill2004: I still cling to hope that one day Congress, or at least the Senate, might return to actually being a deliberative body.

Too bad we'll never see a law passed restricting the ability to vote on any given measure to the people that were actually in the building while it was being discussed.