Our Topsy-Turvy Nation

You just HAVE to look at this. These are the new rankings on Congress-org. The rankings represent how powerful senators and representatives are according to “legislative records, committee assignments, news articles and fundraising documents”, according to the Washington Post.

Go here:

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/power_rankings/index.tt

Make note especially of the map further down the page. The map is color-shaded telling what areas of the country seem to have the most influence. Scarily, the parts of the country that have the most influence also seem to be the one’s with the lowest populations, are very isolated and, presumably, have the most rightwing (Christian Right) ideals. Scary. I always find it interesting to see some sort of actual calculation which backs up what we have been thinking all along: the country has been hijacked by crazies.

The most powerful man in the Senate, according to the website, is Bill Frist. Wikipedia says of him...while in medical school, Frist obtained cats from animal shelters, under pretense of adoption as pets, for school research experiments in which he killed the animals. In a 1989 autobiography, Frist described how he "spent days and nights on end in the lab, taking the hearts out of cats, dissecting each heart".

The most powerful man in the House, according to the website is Dennis Hastert. Wikipedia says of him: Hastert generated controversy on 1 September 2005 when he said spending Federal money to rebuild New Orleans from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina "doesn't make sense to me.” Hastert went on to say that "It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed.”