Why Congress is Less Popular Than Cockroaches and Nickelback

Public Policy Polling (or better known as Triple-P, as it's said on the street) recently polled Americans to see how they viewed congress. The results were...less than stellar for Congress. Most prominently, they rated below Nickelback, the bane of ears everywhere, and yes, even cockroaches. Yes, the little critters that only come out in the dirtiest, smelliest, and grimiest of areas. Yes, those bugs. Now, why is that?

There are a multitude of reasons why Congress is rated lower than Nickelback, the one band everyone agrees to hate. Pat Carney, the drummer from the fantastic band, 'The Black Keys', went as far to say, "and I don't like to see it [rock and roll] f**king ruined and spoon-fed down our throats in this watered-down, post-grunge crap, horrendous s**t." So, you know it's bad when you've become more hated than a band that represents everything that is wrong with rock 'n' roll these days.

Currently, we have divided government. The House of Representatives is led by the Republicans and the Crier-in-chief, John Boehner. The Senate, on the other hand, is ruled by the Democrats and their backbone-less leader, who looks like the old guy at the bus stop, Harry Reid. That's one of the main problems. Harry Reid controls what bill comes to the floor, just as John Boehner has the same power in the House. So, essentially they are playing "red rover, red rover, send the bill over," but every time, the kid gets clothes lined and nothing gets done.

The filibuster (pronounced Fill-a-buster, which sounds like a euphemism for something) is a parliamentary tactic to essentially stop a bill from passing. It has now been abused in the U.S Senate over the past 4 years or so. The minority, currently led by Mitch McConnell, who I'm pretty sure is at least part-fish, have used the filibuster to even stop debate on a bill from happening. It has essentially changed the required amount of votes to pass a bill from 51 (a simple majority) to 60, or better known as a super majority, which is a majority that has been exposed to toxic nuclear waste.

That extra 'P' added to artisan-ship really changes it. I mean, without the 'P', it's not a word, but that's really neither here nor there. First, it's simply a highly skilled craftsman organization (I would imagine, since the word 'Artisanship' is itself, imaginary), but once you add the 'P', it really takes on a different meaning: a highly skilled organization that specializes in the art of looking busy, but in reality, just failing on an epic scale. Wow, that really got away from me there.

Well, anyway...here's what I mean by increased partisanship. Many of the more moderate Senators and Representatives have been pushed out (mostly on the Republican side because of the rise of the Tea Party). If they even dare utter the word "compromise," they'll instantly be challenged in their primary for the next election cycle. So, it creates a cycle of more and more conservative members of Congress, who are less and less willing to compromise. So, what do you have then? It's a little thing known as a clusterf**k.

Short answer is yes. There's no hope. Let's just all wait for the end of the world, while listening to R.E.M (that song is already stuck in your head, isn't it?). Here's our possible solutions, though.

1. Hope that cockroaches somehow invade Congress and take over. At least they would be more productive. Not sure how they would handle the 'Yea' or 'Nay' votes, though.

2. Nickelback takes over the airwaves and plays their music non-stop. Eventually, all our brains would turn to mush, which would be equivalent to the brain activity level currently in Congress. So, I guess we wouldn't mind as much. Ignorance is bliss, after all.

3. The Cockroach party is formed. Then, they could join in with the Occupy Wall street protesters and round out their drum circle. I mean, the cockroaches were already there anyway...might as well fight the establishment while you're crawling around human waste and tents.

4. We force the Congress to take part in a Hunger Games-ish tournament to the death. Let's just call it our form of term limits.

5. Obama bypasses Congress and ups his use of executive orders to include ordering pizza, ordering new toilet paper standards, and criminalize the action of someone mixing up 'Obama' and 'Osama'. That's about as much good as executive orders are anyway.