Hop On The Bus, Gus? Yes, You Will, (Sen.) Bill (Nelson)

Florida's Sen. Bill Nelson has taken on the mantle of "Champion of Smelly Houses" by jumping on the Chinese drywall bandwagon with both feet. Today was Day 2 of the great Chinese hell-hole tour, designed to demonstrate once again that, when an issue has been identified and the bad guys are ones that everyone hates anyway, our fearless congressional protectors will swoop down, pluck the low-hanging fruit of sound bytes and milk the situation for all it's worth.

Coming down firmly against the use of Chinese drywall in homes is like coming out for law and order, apple pie and motherhood--whose going to argue against that position? Oh, sure, the builders might get a little pissed off, seeing as how you were more than happy to take their campaign donations in elections past, but they can recognize grandstanding when they see it.

And you don't have to look very far to see it these days. Every other day, it seems, there's video of another politician venting his righteous indignation about the money being wasted in the bailout, yet these very same 'statesmen' are the ones elbowing for a better spot at the money trough with their unabashed laundry list of earmarks. And the political furor over the executive bonuses paid out by AIG is fanned by our trusty legislators, railing that they have never witnessed such magnitude of greed.

What they don't tell you is that the bonuses totaled less than 1/10 of 1% of the bailout. Why, these guys piss away that much in campaign literature disguised as 'informational mailings.'

Nelson is even coming down with sympathetic symptoms when touring the homes. And he single-handedly wielded "a screwdriver to scrape off some of the black corrosion to reveal the copper color underneath" with complete disregard for his personal safety. My God, this man's a saint!

Well, one more day of this and he can go back to the usual ways of Washington and forget about this issue, secure in the knowledge that Super Senator has once again made the world safe for mankind. Maybe he can get a Capitol Hill hearing of his own, especially since he's already pointing fingers at the interim head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission for not knowing about the Chinese drywall problem in advance.

Of course, when the houses were springing up like crabgrass, value and prices were rising and the money was flowing, it wasn't a problem........

"I have been to 'Ground Zero' of this national threat and I can report to the American people that, even after all my years in politics, I can still smell this crap." Sen. Bill Nelson