Stupid Votes is online!

Hello! Let me introduce myself. I am Joe Space Tourist, or rather, that is what I call myself here. I call myself that because of the other website I run by the same name. That website is primarily about space tourism, but I find myself ranting frequently about political issues.

In particular, one of my biggest pet peeves is the amount of time and resources that are wasted by congress, and how few people are aware of it. It's incredible how much time they waste voting on resolutions to say how awesome the American flag is or holding hearings on baseball games. These things have no place in our congress; they have bigger fish to fry, and they already have far too little time to take care of the nation's business between all of the vacations and fundraising. Sometimes they do it to hide earmarks. Sometimes they do it to avoid discussing embarrassing issues. And sometimes they do it for no reason that is apparent to me. In any case, it makes the government less effective and less transparent. And if they're going to waste their time with this junk instead of doing their jobs, they should be fired.

So my mission here is to make more people aware of this travesty, and to provide a few good laughs in the process. I'll keep a tally on the left of the worst offenders: the people who introduces stupid bills, the people who hold stupid hearings, and the like. I may think of a few creative ways to track other statistics too.

And I will start with the eleventy-first congress, which convened yesterday. The stupid votes don't usually start popping up when a new congress has just convened and everyone is actually paying attention, so it may be a bit of time before I post the first. But when it happens, I'll be right here to make fun of them.

Enjoy!