About that 14 percent approval

Let's see now.

Public Policy Polling has found that root canals are more popular than Congress. So, are we supposed to be surprised?

A Gallup poll provides some details:

Congress gets approval from 14 percent of voters. 81 percent disapprove.

Six percent of Republicans approve of Congress, 15 percent of Democrats.

Last year's average approval rating was 15 percent -- the lowest since Gallup began keeping track in 1975.

Oh yeah, rank-and-file members (both House and Senate) are paid $174,000 a year. Teary-eyed House Speaker Boehner gets $223,500 a year.

Meanwhile, back in the dentist's chair for the root canal, it's not so bad.

A new year's quote

Here is an excerpt from a Jan. 1 article by Mark Morford:

Behold: The GOP’s relentless, shameless four-year onslaught of racism, birtherism, isolationism and gross antipathy, during which they called the president everything from a communist to a Nazi to a fundamentalist Muslim, failed to rally sufficient numbers of the undereducated and the paranoid to nosedive the nation back into a sinkhole of conservative bile. It was easily the most methodical, coldblooded personal attack in modern political history, and it failed ugly. Hugs all around...

Did you feel it? The tipping point? The grand flip from white male-dominated, paranoid n’ reactionary cultural stasis to female-empowered, minority-voiced, messier-than-thou, barely controlled chaos? The 2012 election ushered in nothing short of a new phase, era, chapter in the increasingly weird American experiment, one in which the old, scared white guys of the world, while far from being completely sidelined, are at least no longer assured of their unimpeded dominance and political authority. Not only do the Mitt Romneys of America no longer hold all the reins, they never will again. A wobbly, rainbow-coalition future beats an uptight, monochromatic past any day...

The adorably ignorant cluster of global-warming deniers is now even tinier, more ignorant, and less worth giving a moment’s irritated glance than ever. Hurricane Sandy wasn’t a wake-up call, she was a mission statement, an attack plan, an overt strategy for Mother Nature’s violent reclamation of our despoiled world, given how we apparently can’t seem to take care of her properly. Since we’ve waited far too long to take major action to heal the planet, Mother Nature will do what she does best: devastate our overblown egos and rinse the place clean. No one is actually ready...