Monday, September 29, 2003

Obnoxious Man

Soo is getting annoyed with me more frequently. She calls me Obnoxious Man. I imagine myself as a superhero, like Batman, cruising the earth searching for peaceful conversations where I can intrude myself and launch a vitriolic tirade.
I’ve started sending emails to Congress, it’s actually quite hard to find the personal email address of each individual congressperson. If you want to send one email to YOUR representative it’s quite simple, our wonderful government has established a web site and all you have to do is type in your area code, and bam you’ve got a box where you can write your message, point and click, don’t be a dick. You don’t get their personal email address, of course, it goes to some flunky, some aide that scans them looking for anything interesting, the odd email from lunatics in the sticks. And representatives only answer mail from people in their own district. Emails bounce back with a canned response:

Thank you very much for contacting my office about an issue that I know concerns you greatly. Please know that I have acknowledged and registered your opinion, and I greatly appreciate hearing your views.
If you reside in the 5th Congressional District and have included your name, address and zip code, you will receive a more detailed response shortly. If you have not included this information, please resend your message or visit my website at http://www.house.gov/ackerman/pages/contact.html to log in your commments.
As a matter of Congressional Courtesy, I can only respond to correspondence from within my own district.
Thank you once again. Your comments are an integral part of the political process, without them I would not be able to make the decisions that affect our community and our nation.

Kind of gives you a warm fuzzy feeling, eh?
This is what I’ve been sending:

You have a voice
I have no choice
But to send email
And see how you fail

To George W. Bush

"It is the function of the citizen to keep the
government from falling into error."

- Robert H. Jackson, Associate Justice of the U.S.
Supreme Court, American Communications Association v.
Douds, 1950


Since taking office, President Bush has signed into
law bold initiatives to improve public schools by
raising standards, requiring accountability, and
strengthening local control. He has signed tax relief
that provided rebate checks and lower tax rates for
everyone who pays income taxes in America. He has
increased pay and benefits for America's military and
is working to save and strengthen Social Security and
Medicare. He is also committed to ushering in a
responsibility era in America, and has called on all
Americans to be "citizens, not spectators; citizens,
not subjects; responsible citizens building
communities of service and a Nation of character."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html

"With the drafting of the U.S. Constitution in 1787,
the country's Founding Fathers created a new system of
government. The idea behind it - quite revolutionary
at the time - appears at first glance to be simple and
straightforward. The power to govern comes directly
from the people, not through primogeniture or the
force of arms, but through free and open elections by
the citizens of the United States. This may have been
tidy and direct as a theory, but in practice it was
far from inclusive. Complicating things from the very
beginning was the question of eligibility: who would
be allowed to cast votes and who would not."
http://www.usembassy.de/usa/etexts/outusgov/ch8.htm


And then I add my “Primogeniture” poem (see above).

Let’s see who they send out to visit me next.

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