Sorry I didn’t get the TUNA joke. But you may be interested to read that the tuna story, like so many other charges against Pelosi, turned out to be a bunch of BS!

Of course, all that really matters is that our dumb media passes this type of nonsense along.

Frankly, there is no excuse not to pass ethics reforms. From what I understand, the House passed it in the first week of the new term. It’s the Senate that’s dragging its feet. Presumably it’s because of Republicans like McConnell who threaten to filibuster. But the Dems should be able to get a 60-vote majority anyway.

Unless the alleged threat of Republican filibuster is just an excuse. It could be that Democrats are not really any more ethically pure than the people they replaced. Why is that possibility so hard to allow for?

Didn’t you hear? When the minimum wage bill was passed American Samoa did not have to adhere to it.

Turns out that Star kiss has a big processing plant in American Samoa and that their corporate headquarters is located in Nanny Pelosi’s home district.

House Republicans yesterday declared “something fishy” about the major tuna company in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district being exempted from the minimum-wage increase that Democrats approved this week.

The MOST ETHICAL CONGRESS IN HISTORY Got off to a blazing start with Nanny Pelosi’s first act being so overwhelmingly abetted by special interests. Amazing huh?

Thanx!

George and Jason, here’s a link for the Iowa thing:
http://www.centrists.org/pages/2004/07/7_buck_trust.html

I favor the Iowa model. Sorry, I can’t find a link to it right now.

It’s a humungus task, however, as the politicians look at it with a “what’s in it for me’ bias. The rules from state to state also vary greatly, as I understand it. Even so, count me in, 100%.

I think one way to make our Congress more accountable would be to end the gerrymandering of our Congressional districts.

True, but how? Robert Bork, in his book The Tempting of America shares an anecdote from early in his judicial career when he was tasked with resolving a deadlock in redistricting in (I believe) Massachusetts. Within days of the tasking, he was approached by a computer expert who promised to be able to produce a faultless gerrymander on whatever criteria Bork wanted. Bork rejected him and did the redistricting purely on geographic grounds. His redistricting plan was rejected by the legislature because it failed to gerrymander enough.

This bipartisan legislative imperative to gerrymander is exacerbated by two decades of court decisions that mandate gerrymandering in the name of crafting a quota of racially controlled legislative districts. In short, the institutional barriers that support gerrymandering are formidable and difficult for reformists to access.

That was a very earnest comment and I agree with you. However, I stand by my earlier sarcasm, which I was using to make the very same point you are making. No one is served by the toxic lack of trust in our politics.

I think one way to make our Congress more accountable would be to end the gerrymandering of our Congressional districts. This is something I write about frequently in the comments–not that I expect you to keep up with all the comments in all the threads here at TMV.

Domajot–

I also wonder where the “centrist” position on the war is to be found.

MvdG–

By the way, according to an AS/Ipsos poll dated May 11, Nancy Pelosi has a 45% approval rating.

I don’t think that the best approach is to play games (even sarcastically) about which party will or won’t benefit in the next election. Doing that just means making the same trivial-thinking errors that dominate in the media these days. I think the better approach is to consider ways to either reinvigorate or reform institutions generally to make them more trustworthy and accountable.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of ideas in this area either. I just don’t see any benefit to casting everything in partisan terms any more. Neither party is likely to spontaneously become a fountain of reformist ideas — both parties benefit too much from simply trading turns at the trough.

So, where is this ‘centrist’ position to be found while the ‘principled’ Republicans bide their time to weigh their chances in the next election? Maybe the Dems have no choice but to wait until ‘centrist’ joins them.

The country is divided and confused, and Congress mirrors the country. I, too, would like someone to wave a magic wand to make us all love one another, but someone told me the Fairy Godmother wasn’t real.

Aside to Somebody: Save the TUNA?

Nancy “SAVE THE TUNA” PELOSI
Harry “THE WAR IS LOST” REID
Barack “IM SO CONFUSED” OBAMA

There is no wonder their approval rating is lower then Bush’s.

* CNN/ORC (5/4-6, n=1,208 adults): “Do you think that the U.S. war in Iraq is lost, or don’t you think so?”

41% lost
55% don’t think so
4% don’t know

* Quinnipiac (4/25-5/1, n=1,166 registered voters): “Do you think that the U.S. war in Iraq is lost, or don’t you think so?”

41% lost
49 don’t think so
11% unsure

From your site.