your congress at work

California congresswoman Anna Eshoo scored a major legislative coup today when a large bipartisan majority in the House approved her bill requiring television commercials to be no louder than the program on which they're broadcast. "In my 17 years in the House of Representatives," Eshoo tells the LA Times, "I've never carried a bill which has been received with so much enthusiasm." That's pretty sad. I was going to visit her web site to peruse her other accomplishments, but I guess that statement pretty much sums things up. "Don't be such a wiseacre, Mr Hoback," said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who is introducing an identical bill in the Senate. "And my bill is not identical to Ms Eshoo's. I call mine the 'Commercial Advertisement Loudness Migration Act of 2009'. Get it? The CALM act. Pretty good, huh?" Senator Whitehouse became annoyed when I suggested that 'Mitigation' would be a much more sensible choice than 'Migration' for the completion of his acronym. "What the hell do you know about the real America, anyway? Are you going to sit there and tell me you've never had the bejesus scared out of you when one of those Miracle Ear ads comes on? Still, I suppose you're right, mitigation is a better choice. I'll propose an amendment when my CALM bill hits the floor." "The thing is, those loud commercials are decreasing the quality of life for millions of Americans. You're sitting there trying to relax after a hard day at work, or God knows, a hard day of looking for work, which can be mighty hard to find right now with unemployment at ten percent. That's a damn shame. Somebody should do something about it. Hey, don't look at me, I'm busy taking care of the American people, who as I said, are sitting there trying to relax, and then all of a sudden the TV is blasting out some lewd advertisement about ExtenZe making your pecker bigger and you spill your drink all over your pants. I've got two kids in the house, and if they have to be exposed to that sort of thing they should at least be exposed to it at a reasonable volume."