Not So Funny

The Neighborhood knows that Mr. Rogers shows up on Fox and MSNBC with great regularity. Once the camera light comes on, he starts in with the scary, drama-filled and highly conditional phrases (See Iran, evidence-based medicine, tanning salons).

Mr. Rogers' latest rant: advocating the death penalty for alleged Wikileaker Army Pfc. Bradley Manning.

That's right -- the guy who kept his mouth firmly shut when the Vice President of the United States and assorted other turd blossoms deliberately exposed the identity of a covert CIA operations officer as political payback is now baying for the blood of someone who leaked information about the not-so-great inside story of the Afghan War.

Thanks to Mr. Rogers' penchant for drama, residents of MI-08 can also see their congressman on Comedy Central.

Too bad there's nothing funny about a hyper-partisan, hypocritical representative.

Hamster Wheel

Mr. Rogers has certainly earned his month-long (paid) summer vacation! He was running full-tilt on the D.C. hamster wheel, squeaking about health care, fiscal responsibility and Wall Street compensation.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Rogers wasn't sure he'd even bother offering an amendment to the health care bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee. He persevered, though, and managed to stick a snake-oil provision into the final version of the E&C bill (Hey, he doesn't use evidence to make decisions, so why should doctors?). Then he voted against the bill -- even though it would have helped families, seniors and thousands of small businesses in the 8th Congressional District.

Mr. Rogers also voted against the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2009, which requires new tax and mandatory spending to be budget-neutral.

Then, he voted against the Corporate and Financial Institution Compensation Fairness Act of 2009. This bill amends the SEC Act of 1934, giving shareholders an advisory vote on golden parachutes and other megabucks types of executive compensation, and "preventing perverse incentives in the compensation practices of financial institutions." (Don't know about you, but if I was a BoA shareholder, I'd think this was a REALLY good idea.)

Mr. Rogers is also squeaking about extending unemployment benefits. He thinks it's a good idea, but he's said that before and then voted against it.

Now that he's home for vacation, it sounds as though he's made time to see the new Harry Potter movie: when asked about the idea of transferring prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to Standish, he noted that among those prisoners are "some pretty bad actors" trained in "black arts." Who knew that Draco Malfoy would want to hang out in Arenac County?

Seriously, though, Mr. Rogers doesn't represent the people of Standish. The prison is an economic mainstay of the city, providing badly-needed jobs and tax revenue. He's shown zero interest in helping create jobs here in the 8th Congressional District, though he has spent quite a bit of time on employment security for incumbent GOP Congressmen.

Yep, Mr. Rogers is putting in some serious time on the hamster wheel. The only problem with hamster wheels? You can run as hard as you want, but you don't actually go anywhere. And you make a lot of noise in the process.