Sen. Robert Byrd on Michael Vick

Part I

Part II

Part III

(25 Minutes of this!!!)

The voters in West Virginia should be forced to watch every second of his ramblings on the Senate floor as penance for electing this windbag over and over.

If Michael Vick is guilty of what he's accused, he does indeed deserve eternal damnation should he fail to be contrite and understand the evil of his actions and inactions. But, this is not a subject worth 25 minutes of rambling, paper shuffling, crazy old coot ramblings on the Senate floor.

It's strangely compelling to watch, Sen. Byrd in full coot mode, I'd love to see a reality show follow him around as he goes about his business in DC. I think it would be instructive, and maybe help cure voters nationwide of favoring incumbents over and over again.

And let's not forget, that man up there rambling is 4th in line for the Presidency. He's 3 heartbeats from being President (to extend the ' heartbeat' cliche a little farther than normal).

As an added bonus, here's the actual indictment (PDF) of Vick, love the a/k/a for each defendant:

PURNELL A. PEACE,
a/k/a "P-Funk" and "Funk,"

QUANIS L. PHILLIPS,
a/k/a "Q,"

TONY TAYLOR,
a/k/a "T,"

MICHAEL VICK,
a/k/a "Ookie"





(OOKIE!!!)

(got tired of Ron Mexico, I guess)

UPDATE:

Here's a stupid YouTube trick. Play all three at once. Given the lengthy pauses and disjointed nature of his narrative, it makes just as much sense all at once as it would in order. He's elevated rambling old cootism into sophisticated performance art.

Bravo maestro, Bravo.

Cable Channel, and or DTV Secondary Channel That I'd Love to See

Inspired by this Althouse post (which was in turn inspired by my comment at a different post, blogging is so incestuous)

Cable providers and DTV Public Broadcasting System stations should be required to carry one channel that has every moment of CSpan coverage involving their local Congressfolk (both Senate and Congressional variety). Every speech in front of an empty chamber, every rambling moment in front of a committee. Chop it up, so it's just the local Congressfolk (or Congresscritter if you prefer) windbagging away.

It would be the best anti-incumbent measure ever devised.

For example, there's Sen. Byrd, as punishment for electing him once again, all citizens of West Virginia should be forced to view at least 2 hours of his 'greatest hits' each week. It would be their pennance for electing and re-electing their potentate of pork.

I bet if folks watched my local critter, Rep. Henry Waxman might face a real primary challenger for a change. CSpan could facilitate this adopting a YouTube like interface where each hearing has 'tags' coupled with bloggingheads style dings so you can specify exact moments, that way creating these compilations would be a snap, or even automated through an RSS feed.

Of course, the incumbents don't want to make it too easy to watch them make their saussage, it might make them ex-incumbents sooner than they'd like.

If Google is so committed to being mostly not-evil as they claim, they should donate the engineers, time, server capacity, and expertise to CSpan and make this happen as soon as possible.

They've got billions, they can afford to waste a few million on helping us become better watchdogs on our government.