Introductions are in order

Welcome to my political blog of ranting and snarkery. Insert smirk here.
My intent with this blog is to insert some positive and constructive suggestions to all the yelling taunting and screaming going on in the current political scene. Oh, I'll add my own yelling and taunting, but I will endeavor to add items of merit to the 'discussions.'
My primary outrage is directed at the current shabby lack of ethics: the corruption as highlighted by Congress Quid Pro Quo-ing with K Street and the Lobbyists, the open lying with BushCheneyCo.'s push into Iraq and methodical destruction of the Constitution's checks and balances, the bullying of media talking heads declaring 'evil' and 'treason' toward anyone showing a modicum of independent and logical thought... Yeah, fun times.
Just today, for example, the House passed a reform bill that essentially had no teeth to it. The New York Times article gives better detail on what is and isn't in the package:

After Mr. Abramoff's plea, Mr. Dreier and (Speaker Hastert) endorsed the idea of barring members of Congress and their aides from accepting trips paid with private money. But the bill the House passed Wednesday would not ban the trips. Rather, it calls for the House ethics committee to draft trip rules by June 15. Before then, privately financed trips will require advance approval from two-thirds of the ethics panel.

Unlike the measure approved by the Senate, the bill does not address the "revolving door," the Capitol Hill term for lawmakers and aides who leave Congress to become lobbyists. The Senate bill aims to rein in that practice by requiring lawmakers and senior aides to refrain from lobbying former colleagues for two years, instead of the current one year.

And there could be so much more added to create genuine reform and end the cycle of greed and mismanaged spending that have turned the last 5 years of Congressional budgeting into one of the biggest deficits this nation has ever seen, one that is threatening the fiscal stability of the United States well into the 21st Century. But noone's pursuing any of that.

Finding genuine reformers in elected office is viciously rare these days: the only way to get elected anymore is with stockpiles of money, and the only way to get those stockpiles is to suck up to whatever special interests and their lobbyists can cough up that dough for you. And those special interests/lobbyists are going to expect their money's worth once you get in. Expecting Congress to reform itself is like expecting Paris Hilton to become a nun (wait, is she Catholic btw...?).

No, in this regard, the American people - the middle class (what's left of it), the poor, the average American that doesn't have $2 million to donate to the Congressman's wife-run charity - are going to have to make the reforms themselves.

And the only way to do that is to get a Constitutional Convention going.

more to follow...