It may be very near Christmas, with everyone taking off from work, and being preoccupied with , uuh, Holiday Cheer, but the country is still facing major issues, and the important work of barstool punditry does not cease. Baltimore’s Drinking Liberally chapter will be meeting as scheduled tonight at the Laughing Pint.
Firstly, we’d like to say thank the little baby Jesus that most of that War on Christmas nonsense is well buried beneath a mountain of yellow snow where it belongs. Those fuckers at Fox have tried to sneak in a few War on Christmas stories this month, but for the most part they fall on deaf ears these days. Better than that, they all sound pretty ridiculous at this point.
Secondly, we’d like to point out that every year some asshole congressman in the leadership (from either party, either house) likes to make a big blustery show of saying something along the lines of “I don’t care if we have to extend the session all the way through Christmas night, we’re going to stay in Washington and get this bill passed for the American people.” And every year it’s bullshit. Congress will always vote itself pay raises, always be in the business of pork barrel politics, and always always always take a nice vacation at Christmas.
We don’t even have a problem with any of this. It’s all fine by us. It’s the way the world works. But for Christ’s sake don’t insult people by pretending it’s not. We’d love to see congress in session through Christmas. For any reason. We’d eat that shit up like fruitcake and gingerbread. To hell with the yule log, at next year’s party we want to see a miserable John Boehner gavel his way through an all-night floor debate- preferably on some intriguing, fascinating, crucially important legislation like which font should be used in the Federal Register.
Finally, the biggest story this week, and one of the biggest of the year is the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. We watched it live on TV and all we could think of was “Jesus H. Christ was that so fucking hard?” Seriously, was that really so fucking difficult to do? It wasn’t. Giving people basic human rights, dignity and respect is as easy as a bunch of guys sitting in a room pushing a button marked ‘yea.’ The whole thing is over quickly and quietly and the country is better off than it was an hour ago.
We still don’t know what the hell took so long, but all things considered we’re going to miss this congress. It was fun while it lasted, and at the end of the day we’re a lot better off than we were two years ago. It’s been nice seeing laws get passed and business get done, but we’re not holding our breath for any more of that in the next session.
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Laughing Pint is located at 3531 Gough St. in Highlandtown.