1160 Amoebas Gone Wild

1160 Amoebas Gone Wild

(New Roses PA.) -- Most polls show that most people have no confidence in Congress.  Most polls also show that most people are fine with the particular moron they elected to represent their district.

It’s YOUR district that’s in trouble, not ours...

But now that federal representatives can be awarded tenure, it’s time to worry.  Gerrymandering should be called gerry-meandering.  Take Pennsylvania’s sprawling 5th CD.  

If you woke up tomorrow with a skin rash of similar shape, you would run in panic to the nearest dermatologist.

If you came upon an amoeba of that shape, you’d send it to rehab.  (Bet you didn’t know there are amoeba rehab centers almost everywhere.  They try to keep low profiles.)

One fine spring Sunday finds “our” congressman in a place the displaced Native Americans who lived there called Chinklacamoose, which was shortened to “Clearfield” when it passed through Ellis Island -- or more accurately, Ellis Island passed through it.  

This is a guy who’s tall in both directions, up and down and also side to side.  He looks like a stereotypical middle American congressman.  He’s posing for pictures wearing a red t-shirt over his congress uniform (they wear those on Sundays too, especially when they want you to think they spent the morning in church.)  The t-shirt says “NRA, Stand and Fight.”  That would be fight for them, not against.

You can see the gun on his hip, right beneath that roll of ...um … tall.  This image doesn’t exactly gel with the sign at the gun shop where the rally was and which said “History Repeats:  The Redcoats are coming and they want your guns.”  Maybe the Congressblob should have looked for a shirt that wasn’t red.

Must have been a slow Sunday.  The paper featured the item on Monday.  He already has the gunslinger vote.  Plus, he has tenure. But you can’t stop these people from continuous campaigns.

Shrapnel:

--The New York Observer reports a new flap over slave labor on the plantation for writers.  It says The Atlantic magazine invited reporter Nate Thayer to contribute an article but wouldn’t pay for it.  The worst offender in this category -- the Huffington Post -- invited him to participate in one of its TV shows, and then withdrew the invitation when he said he’d bring up the pay issue during his appearance.

--The same article cites a report on the website http://jimromenesko.com/ that the University of California at Berkeley is trying to do the same.  It’s soliciting free work.  But only from authors whose work has appeared in publications like the New York Times, Smithsonian and National Geographic.  

--Getting people to work for free is not exactly a new idea, as anyone who knows anything about the civil war or Nazi Germany can attest.  What’s next?  Some major museum commissioning paintings and not paying for them?

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013