Mamacita says:  I’m not much of a political blogger, nor have I any desire to be one, but today’s antics by our elected representatives bring to mind the phrase “taxation without representation.”

It also brings to mind this old piece of political advice: “People elected you to be their honest representative.  Don’t let them down.”  But that’s behind the times.  Apparently now it’s more like “Every man for himself” in D.C.  Or maybe “Many Americans have lost their jobs to foreign soil, will soon be homeless, and trusted the bank to take good care of their money.  But who cares as long as I’ve got mine, hahahahahahah!”  Shame on all who voted for it.  Shame.

I mean, what do most big-time politicians know about ordinary people?  They know nothing about us, and they don’t care to know.  Mortgage?  Debt?  Insurance?  Medicine?  Education?  What do big-time politicians care about such mundane things?  Will those things put lots of cash into their own pockets?  No?  Then big-time politicians don’t care about those things.  And from what little I’ve heard, the more a politician talks about how much he cares, the less he really cares.

1.  Integrity is telling myself the truth.  Honesty is telling the truth to other people. –Spencer Johnson

2.  Honesty is the best policy.  If I lose mine honor, I lose myself.  –Shakespeare

3.  If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.  –Marcus Aurelius

4.  To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful.  — Edward R. Murrow

5.  The trite saying that honesty is the best policy has met with the just criticism that honesty is not policy.  The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.  — Robert E. Lee

6.  In politics, nothing happens by accident.  If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.  –FDR

7.  Politics is the diversion of trivial men who, when they succeed at it, become important in the eyes of more trivial men.  –George Jean Nathan

8.  The incestuous relationship between government and big business thrives in the dark.  –Jack Anderson

9.  There is little place in the political scheme of things for an independent, creative personality, for a fighter.  Anyone who takes that role must pay a price.  –Shirley Chisholm

10. When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are the legislators.  –P.J. O’Rourke

11.  Policies that emanate from ivory towers often have an adverse impact on the people out in the field who are fighting the wars or bringing in the revenues.  — Colin Powell

12.  If you ever injected truth into politics, you would have no politics.  –Will Rogers

13.  Trade is much superior to piracy.  You can rob and kill a man but once, but you can cheat him again and again.  –Louis L’Amour

14.  Private and public life are subject to the same rules; and truth and manliness are two qualities that will carry you through this world much better than policy, or tact, or expediency, or any other word that was ever devised to conceal or mystify a deviation from the straight line.  —  Robert E. Lee

15.  If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.  –Dale Carnegie

16.  Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.  –Winston Churchill

17.  Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.  –Einstein

18.  Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. –DDE

19.  A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.  –Henry Ford

20.  He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money. –Benjamin Franklin

21.  Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.  –Thomas Jefferson

22.  If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.  –JFK

23.  The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.  –Martin Luther King Jr.

24.  Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.  –Abraham Lincoln

25.  You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. –Golda Meir

26.  No man is above the law and no man below it.  –Theodore Roosevelt

27.  I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: “Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest.” I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have.  –Harry S Truman

28.  Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.  — George Washington

29.  A politician thinks of the next election – a statesman, of the next generation. –James Freeman Clarke

30.  What has destroyed liberty and the rights of men in every government that has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating of all cares and powers into one body. –Thomas Jefferson

31.  It’s not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It’s the customer who pays the wages. –Henry Ford

32.  No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots, will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.  –Walter Lippman

33.  Beware the politically obsessed.  They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up.  It leaves them somehow misshapen.  — Peggy Noonan

34.  There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.  –Will Rogers

35.  Government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles.  A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world shall last his days.  —  Ralph Waldo Emerson

36.  The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy.  –T.H. White

37.  Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.  –Richard Armour

38.  Reporters thrive on the world’s misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.  –Russell Baker

39.  The most important political office is that of the private citizen. —Louis D. Brandeis

40. An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. —T. S. Eliot

41.  It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence. —Mohandas Gandhi

42.  When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale. —John W. Gardner

43.  Life without liberty is like a body without spirit. —Kahlil Gibran

44.  We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy. —Martin L. Gross

45.  We would all like to vote for the best man, but he is never a candidate. —Kin Hubbard

46.  Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct. —Thomas Jefferson

47.  Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation. —Henry A. Kissinger

48.  Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks. —Doug Larson

49.  I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. —Will Rogers

50.  Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself. —Mark Twain

Political?  Nah.  Opinionated?  Perhaps.

Disgusted?  Definitely.

The Founding Fathers, and the Founding Mothers, too, are turning over in their graves.  And no, Virginia, the Constitution is not now nor will it ever be outdated.

The inmates are running the institution.  God help us all.

You may quote me.