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Human Body Hacks

Human Body Hacks

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Tips and tricks for those moments when your body is bugging you.

  • Sinus Congestion? – Relieve sinus pressure by alternately thrusting your tongue against the roof of your mouth, then pressing between your eyebrows with one finger. You may look like Felix Unger, but the motion loosens congestion by making the vomer bone rock back and forth. This bone runs from the nasal passages to the mouth. After about 20 seconds, you’ll feel your sinuses start to drain. (Here’s another one that works for me: Get some Swiss Kriss, a laxative tea. Don’t drink it, but boil some in a pot of water. Being careful not to burn yourself, breathe in the scented steam. Side benefit: it empties your pores too – a great, cheap facial.)
  • Toothache? – If you can’t get in to see the dentist right away, rub ice on the V-shaped webbed area between your thumb and index finger on the back of your hand. The nerve pathways at the base of that V stimulate an area of the brain that blocks pain signals from the face and hands. If you don’t have ice, you can rub that area too – if it hurts just a little, you’re doing it right. Adding ice to the mix reduces toothache pain by as much as 50 percent more.
  • Tickle in your Throat? – Play with your ears or clean out that ear wax. When the nerves in the ear are stimulated, it creates a reflex action in the throat. This can cause a muscle spasm that relieves the tickle.
  • Burned your Hand? – If you singe the skin on your hand, clean the skin and apply light pressure with the finger pads of the other hand. Ice will relieve your pain more quickly, but this method might prevent blistering because it brings the burned skin back to a normal temperature.
  • Can’t Hear That? – Lean in with the correct ear. Your left ear is better at picking up music. Lean in with the right ear to hear that mumbler friend of yours – it’s better at following the rapid rhythms of speech.
  • Gotta Go? Fantasize. Thinking about sex preoccupies your brain, so you won’t feel as much discomfort if you’ve gotta pee. For various reasons, this probably works better for men. Women can also vigorously scratch or rub the back of your leg for a few moments – you may interrupt the message from your bladder to your brain just long enough for you to make it to the toilet. Well, it’s better than the old grab-your-crotch method.
  • Heart Racing Jitters?– Blow on your thumb. The vagus nerve, which governs heart rate, can be controlled through breathing. It’s a variation of “stop and take three slow, deep breaths.”
  • Relief for sudden pain – Coughing during an injection can lessen the pain of the needle stick. It causes a sudden, temporary rise in pressure in the chest and spinal canal, inhibiting the pain-conducting structures of the spinal cord. Um, don’t try this at the dentist.
  • Dinner Repeating? – Sleep on your left side and you’ll be less likely to suffer from acid reflux. The esophagus and stomach connect at an angle. When you sleep on your right, the stomach is higher than the esophagus, allowing food and stomach acid to slide up your throat. When you’re on your left, the stomach is lower than the esophagus, so gravity works for you.
  • Dizzy? – If you had a bit too much to drink, put your hand on something stable. The cupula (the part of your ear responsible for balance) floats in a fluid of the same density as blood, but rises as alcohol dilutes blood. Give your brain a second opinion on where to find grounding, using the sensitive nerve endings of your fingers. You’ll feel more in balance this way than by putting your foot on the floor.
  • Stitch in your side? – Exhale as your left foot hits the ground. Most runners exhale as the right foot hits the ground, which puts downward pressure on the liver. This tugs at the diaphragm, causing a stitch. I guess you’re out of luck if you get stitches on the left side.
  • Nose bleed? – Put some cotton on your upper gums — just behind that small dent below your nose — and press against it, hard. If your nose bleed comes, like most, from the front of the septum (the cartilage wall that divides the nose), this will work.
  • Ice Cream Headache? – Press your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth, covering as much as you can. The more pressure you use, the faster that headache will go away. Because your mouth is cold, your brain thinks that your body is freezing. It compensates by overheating – causing the ice-cream headache.
  • Tingly Hands? – Rock your head from side to side. In less than a minute, the pins and needles will be gone. Loosening your neck muscles relieves compression in the bundle of nerves in your neck. If your feet or legs are tingling, you’ll just have to get up and walk around.
  • Strengthen Your Vision – Every few hours during the day, close your eyes, tense your body, take a deep breath, and, after a few seconds, release your breath and muscles at the same time. Tightening and releasing major muscle groups can trick involuntary muscles – like the eyes – into relaxing as well. It’s good for stress too. Try a long body stretch with your eyes closed. You can also help prevent eye strain by exercising your eyes – if you stare at a computer screen all day, make sure to focus on something far away every so often. Play with depth of field.
  • Know When to Fold ’em – Have someone hold one arm straight out to the side, palm down, and instruct him to maintain this position. Then place two fingers on his wrist and push down. He’ll resist. Now have him put one foot on a surface that’s a half inch higher (a few magazines) and repeat. This time his arm will cave. By misaligning his hips, you’ve offset his spine. Your brain senses that the spine is vulnerable, so it shuts down the body’s ability to resist. Now, how to get a burgler to put one foot on some magazines…
  • Just Got to Remember This – Giving a speech? Going to an interview? Meeting the complicated in-laws? Review what you need to remember before you go to sleep. Anything you read right before bed is more likely to be encoded as long-term memory. Right, so I’ve got thousands of novels burned into my brain. I have always read non-fiction in the daytime and fiction at night – guess I should have done the other way around. People given a mathematical problem before they went to bed had higher chances of solving it the next morning, too. Experiment to see if the morning brings your solutions to you. Think carefully about the problem before going to sleep, then let it go – and let your brain work on it while you get some rest.
  • Need a creative solution? Free your mind. Get out of the box – in all ways. Maybe you should take a little walk to the church on the corner. People tend to think more freely and abstractly in rooms with higher ceilings, and tend toward more detail-oriented specifics in more confined rooms with lower ceilings. So if you’re in a high-ceiling loft trying to do some accounting, you might want to cocoon? I’m going to refrain from further comment on this today (ex-JWs take note), except just to invoke the word “mountains.”
  • Mood Hack – Let your thoughts and emotions be whatever they are, but play with the focus of your attention. You ignore almost all sensations and perceptions most of the time. Give your little toes the gift of your attention for a moment – wiggle them. Move your focus through your body, and especially notice your breathing. When you focus on it, your breathing automatically slows down and you breathe more deeply. Spend a few minutes moving your focus around through your toes and up to your head. Scrunch up your face. Smile. Stretch. Focus on the sensations you feel. Then focus on different aspects of and objects in your immediate environment. Try it. You’ll like it.

From Men’s Health and LifeHacker. The last one is mine, from lots of sources that I couldn’t possibly trace today.

Where are we going?

Where are we going?

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I have to share something, since it not only turned into a running gag throughout the night but also prompted an increasingly rare brainstorming session for me today.

We were visiting last night with our friends Kim and Stephen before going off to what turned out to be a late dinner (Atlanta Fish Market, I had sushi and a huge bowl of steamers). Ben was going to spend the night there (our children have been friends for almost their whole lives). They have a big back deck, and we sat out there, and talked, and sipped two of their killer-delish Cape Codders (with cranberry-raspberry juice and mandarin orange vodka – mmm).

I will not be able to convey exactly why this became so very funny. It stands by itself, but for me much of the hilarity – and charm – flowed from the manner of Kim’s delivery. I will always see her face and hear her voice in my mind’s eye when I think of this.

She said that she had seen the funniest bumper sticker ever.

She leaned forward and, with eyes wide, she said:

“Where are we going?”

(pause… beat, beat)

“And why are we in this handbasket?”

Laughter gently roiled up, built, cascaded. Kim’s face looked like it was going to implode. Then both of us burst into uncontrollable, almost hysterical laughter. It may have started out as soft giggling, but it went right into the entire-body-flailing and very rare kind of laughter that feels like a catharsis of the soul.

From then on, it only took “where are we going” for us to start giggling again. John and I continued it later, too.

Thank you Kim! I’ve put that one away as a nugget of gold for when I need a good laugh.

(I’ve made some graphics. Right-click and save, no hotlinking please.)

Sunshine basketNone of us knew the etymology of the phrase “hell in a handbasket,” and I couldn’t stop speculating about it. It’s really a very odd idiomatic phrase. It rolls with the alliterative ease that its content suggests, so it’s one of those examples of textured language that I always love.

My own brainstorming came up with this:

Since it generalizes from the specific onto a widespread and or/universal diagnosis, it works as as shorthand/catch-all diagnosis. It is a very curmudgeonly phrase, associated more with older, conservative people than with the young. To me, it signals a lack of flexibility with respect to cultural change. The “hell” part is self-explanatory.

Basket There is a sense of ease in the “being carried” – not unlike the “slippery slope” metaphor – and the pace seems fast. The “going” has already been in progress for a while, and the speed is increasing. We’re already past the point where stopping would be possible.

It is never a command (“you go to hell in a handbasket”), but always a description of perceived conditions (“this country is going to hell in a handbasket”). USA Handbasket

Although it is a reactive statement, it also functions as an implicit critique of passivity with regard to the condition being criticized.

There is a cognitive dissonance for me in the visual image of a handbasket.

A handbasket – a small basket with a handle – is something that is typically used for gathering flowers, or berries, or garden veggies, or Easter eggs. I imagine a very carefree, happy little girl, carrying something through the woods – like Little Red Riding Hood? Little Red Riding Basket

One of the things that made the bumper sticker amusing was the idea of a wide-eyed someone asking the “carrier” where they were going. The context of the bumper sticker suggested the automobile as the conveyor, so it was a surprise to have it switched out for the handbasket. Then there was also the implication of children asking “where are we going?,” like “are we there yet?”. Multiple surprises.

Moving on. What would be of an appropriate size to be conveyed to hell in a handbasket?

A baby, like baby Moses being carried down the Nile? (Do you remember that weird song “There’s something in the bag – Mommy, Mommy?”?) Some human parts? The heart, the head, the hands?

Or, looking at the other end of the scale problem, perhaps the being doing the carrying is… very large?

Another interesting consequence of the passive construction is that agency is completely unspecified. Who is carrying the handbasket? That’s an interesting question. I have no answer.

So, what – something or someone – a huge demon, perhaps – is skipping through the woods, conveying “this world” or “this country” to hell – in a handbasket? Athena carries One of the gods – or goddesses? The more you think about it, the stranger it is. The scale is all off (at least for Western thought, it is).

So then I went to search. There’s not really that much hard evidence on the etymology – but post if you’re aware of anything else of interest.

From Word-Detective

Clues to the origin of “going to hell in a handbasket,” meaning “deteriorating rapidly or utterly,” are, unfortunately, scarce as hens’ teeth. The eminent slang historian Eric Partridge, in his “Dictionary of Catchphrases,” dates the term to the early 1920’s. Christine Ammer, in her “Have A Nice Day — No Problem,” a dictionary of cliches, agrees that the phrase probably dates to the early 20th century, and notes that the alliteration of “hell” and “handbasket” probably contributed to the popularity of the saying. Ms. Ammer goes a bit further and ventures that, since handbaskets are “light and easily conveyed,” the term “means going to hell easily and rapidly.” That seems a bit of a stretch to me, but I do think the addition of “in a handbasket” (or “in a bucket,” as one variant puts it) does sound more dire and hopeless than simply “going to hell.”

From Yaelf

This phrase, meaning “to deteriorate rapidly”, originated in the U.S. in the early 20th century. A handbasket is just a basket with a handle. Something carried in a handbasket goes wherever it’s going without much resistance.

James L. Rader of Merriam-Webster Editorial Dept. writes: “The Dictionary of American Regional English […] records ‘to go to heaven in a handbasket’ much earlier than […] ‘hell,’ which is not attested before the 1950s. The earliest cite in our files is from 1949 […]. ‘In a handbasket’ seems to imply ease and and speed […]. Perhaps part of the success of these phrases must simply be ascribed to the force of alliteration. DARE has a much earlier citation for another alliterative collocation with ‘handbasket’ (1714), from Samuel Sewall’s diary: ‘A committee brought in something about Piscataqua. Govr said he would give his head in a Handbasket as soon as he would pass it.’ I suspect that ‘to go to hell in a handbasket’ has been around much longer than our records would seem to indicate.”

I would think that the metaphor would be more directional, more path-oriented. “Going to hell in a handbasket” implies that we are going the wrong way. It’s not under our own steam, as it were, but simply being carried along by…something…a larger agency or force. I guess that’s the danger in “going with the flow.”

So the timeline goes from “head in a handbasket” to “heaven in a handbasket” to “hell in a handbasket”… hmm.

I wonder if the history of the phrase had anything to do with beheading… I know that there was a basket to catch the head as it fell off from the stage of the guillotine. Before that, swords were used. Beheading is a quick way to the afterworld. No-one seems to have made this connection. I wonder.

Here’s another thought, the most literal: “Hand Basket” = a basket full of hands. The possibility certainly haunts the shadowy corridors of interpretation. “Handbasket” is an unusual word, somehow. Thieves’ hands, perhaps? I wonder how far back this expression really might go.

I’m not sure how the meaning of “deterioration” would have come into it, exactly, unless someone actually was carrying around a head, or a basket of severed hands – in a hot climate. And who carries them? And how quickly? Hmmm.

What happens to the heads or hands? Would they have been burned, by any chance? City dump, fiery pit, anything like that?

WTF – Atlanta Smoke

WTF – Atlanta Smoke

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Either way you interpret “WTF,” it was my first thought this morning.

“Do you smell a wood fire?”
“Is our house on fire?”
“Where’s the fire?”
“WTF??!?!?!”

The whole backyard was full of smoke. I went outside, and couldn’t find the cause.

I turned on the news. Weather report: Hazy, sunny, and smoky. Yeah, and? Only in Georgia would they simply describe the conditions without any explanation at all.

On the way in to work (I’m on break right now, foregoing coffee to post this), I kept almost hearing the reason that Atlanta is bathed in smoke. The radio in my car has some sort of wiring problem. It is very, very irritating. I hear parts of the news, parts of a song – it fades out for five or six seconds at a time, almost certainly when I really wanted to hear that bit.

Smoky conditions… later today … the fires … smoke covers the areas of … watch out for … arggghhhh.

Finally, I found out by searching the web as soon as I got in. The smoke comes over 250 miles, all the way from the more than 50 wildfires raging in South Georgia! Southeasterly winds brought in the smoke, and an inversion (warm air on top of cooler air) pushed it to ground level. The smoke is visible all the way into South Carolina.

From Firehouse.com:

Thick Smoke Chokes Atlanta

Thick smoke settled over Atlanta Tuesday morning causing eyes to water and traffic to slow down. Winds from the southeast carried smoke from wildfires burning in South Georgia and North Florida. The smoke appeared almost like a London fog. …There is a code orange air quality warning in effect for the area. That means the air could be unhealthy for sensitive groups. National Weather Service meteorologist Robert Beasley says the smoke from the big wildfire in the Okefenokee Swamp began showing up in Thomaston in Upson County, about 50 miles south of Atlanta, between 4 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. Tuesday. Smoke also is affecting Columbus in west Georgia. Beasley says the smoke is lowering visibility to three to five miles. He advises people with respiratory problems to stay inside. Beasley says the wind should swing to the east later today and pick up speed — clearing the smoke out of the metro area. He says a backdoor front moving through the area tomorrow should bring fresher air off the Atlantic and from the Carolinas. As Beasley puts it, “This morning should be the worst of it” as far as the smoke goes. The service issued a statement urging motorists to use low-beam headlights when driving through the haze and for people with respiratory problems to remain indoors. The forecast calls for no rain for the next seven days.

Stay inside, run air conditioning. Unhealthy air. I wonder how it looks closer to the fires if it’s this bad here. Comment if you’re close to the fires. More than 345,000 acres have been scorched so far.

See photos.

May She Be the New Jesus (so to speak)

May She Be the New Jesus (so to speak)

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I have something to say about the recent Supreme Court decision that upheld the ban on late-term abortions, whether or not the pregnancy endangers the woman’s life.

I’m a pragmatic contextual ethicist with a spiritual sensibility, and I cannot be silent. I cannot pretend that I don’t understand the next step in this game. If you stop for a moment to think about it, what will be required next is blindingly obvious.

A dead woman.

All you vultures will sit there and watch it happen. Obviously, a pregnant woman will not be able to bring a case where a pregnancy is endangering her life. The system just doesn’t move that fast. The situation is even worse than that. Not just any dead pregnant woman will do.

She has to be the right woman, doesn’t she?

I’m just cynical enough to realize that any number of women will die before anyone squeaks, before this debate will have a chance to heat up in America.

Don’t you understand that the simple death of a pregnant woman isn’t enough?

In this climate, the woman’s life will have to be perceived as “mattering” before anyone will risk the fight. She’ll have to be perceived as a true and noble victim, above reproach from any quarter. She won’t be a drug addict, and she won’t be poor. She’ll have to be married, I suppose, and maybe even a fundamentalist (that family will get the ultimate wake-up call!). She’ll be white… ya think?

Will the anti-choicers be so comfortable, even then, with the women-controlling agenda? Will they understand then the consequences of their ineffective abstinence-only pseudo-education, their hypocritical opposition to birth control and family planning, their avoidance of the contributing issues of poverty and ignorance and rape and domestic violence and drug addiction and all the rest?

Maybe it’s possible to oppose abortion in theory, because they haven’t thought it through to the moment when some “special circumstance” involves their kith and kin, when their daughter or sister or cousin or wife or mother or aunt or friend stares at death? Or will they be as fanatical as Jehovah’s Witnesses, who refuse blood transfusions even to save a life?

I hope you hold this fatal reality as a heavy, heavy burden upon you. In many places, abortion is already legal, safe, but unavailable even in the first two trimesters. Here in Georgia, a pregnant woman now has to look at an ultrasound first, as though she were unaware of the reality, as though she were a child in need of a lesson from her superiors. Now, even saving the life of the woman isn’t enough to satisfy their heartless cause? What’s next, stoning?

Will you ignore her pleas (and perhaps those of her partner) as her death approaches? Will you continue to prioritize the life of a fetus over the life of a grown woman then? When she is dead, will you offer to support the motherless babe – if it lives? Will you offer to shoulder the burdens of whatever medical or economic issues may arise?

The legal system has no right to override the choice of a woman or the advice of her medical team, but that hasn’t stopped them from sentencing some pregnant women to death with this ruling. The ones who swung the new and harsher Supreme Court were male, of course, but these days there are actually women who would have done it (more’s the pity).

One woman will be chosen to represent all those women who will die because of this unethical ruling. She won’t want to be chosen. She will not have chosen this destiny for herself. You will have chosen it for her by allowing this country (in this way as in so many other ways) to become what it is today.

She’ll be your corpse, and her blood will be on your heads.

You will have killed her by intervening in realms where you don’t belong: entering into the arena of an individual woman’s hard choices, disrupting her rightful ability to decide what is best in her own unique circumstances, overriding the medical expertise of her doctor and medical team, stepping between a woman and her God, and disregarding the support (one can hope that all women have some support) and advice and help of her friends and family. You may create a widower or an orphan. You may induce trauma in cases where the man, who was at least equally responsible for the pregnancy, may well feel responsible for her death as well. Or you may reward a rapist, who will walk away unscathed, triumphant.

You will have killed her with all your little misrepresenting slogans. You will have killed her by refusing to be accountable to reality, by making it impossible to talk about this issue in any realistic way, such as one that actually takes into account the wide range of circumstances that a pregnant woman may be facing. Roe v Wade was the attempt to find a solution, and you’re on your way to overturning it.

You will have killed her by refusing to face a set of controversial and difficult issues as responsible adults, citizens and leaders. This is bigger than your little power struggles. You should be listening to a wide range of women’s experiences, in order to put together an understanding of the different kinds of situations that women actually face – including their regrets and their gratitude. Choices are hard, and situations are complex. We should be teaching contextual ethics, not inhuman dogmas.

Heartless cads you are, on both sides of the debate, if you cannot step back into the complexity of reality and the range of what matters in human experience.

When you’ve killed this resonant symbol of a woman, you will not be able to say that you did not know what it is that you did.

You’ll refer to her by her first name when you use her and punditize her and sling her name around in your mouths – as if you knew her, as if you cared.

I hope she has the presence of mind to cry out “why have you forsaken me?” as she dies, and I hope her husband and family distribute the video all over the world. I hope her image becomes an ikon.

Keep on the lookout for her corpse. It may take a while for the acceptable sacrifice to appear, the one who will be pristine enough to satisfy all of your many requirements – and yet lack the resources to leave the country.

Sooner or later one will come who will reanimate this issue – with her death.

May her resurrection in the public sphere be powerful.

May it blast you like the proclamations of the ancient prophets.

Pass it on.

Dump this Congress – 109 Reasons Why

Dump this Congress – 109 Reasons Why

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Great List!

109 Reasons To Dump The 109th Congress
from The Progress Report Issue 11/07/2006, by Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney, Amanda Terkel and Payson Schwin

We need a new Congress — here’s why:

1. Congress set a record for the fewest number of days worked — 218 between the House and Senate combined. [Link]

2. The Senate voted down a measure that urged the administration to start a phased redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq by the end of 2006. [Link]

3. Congress failed to raise the minimum wage, leaving it at its lowest inflation-adjusted level since 1955. [Link]

4. Congress gave itself a two percent pay raise. [Link]

5. There were 15,832 earmarks totaling $71 billion in 2006. (In 1994, there were 4,155 earmarks totaling $29 billion.) [Link]

6. Congress turned the tragic Terri Schiavo affair into a national spectacle because, according to one memo, it was “a great political issue” that got “the pro-life base…excited.” [Link]

7. The chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works thinks global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” [Link]

8. The House leadership held open a vote for 50 minutes to twist arms and pass a bill that helped line the pockets of energy company executives. [Link]

9. Congress fired the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the lone effective federal watchdog for Iraq spending, effective Oct. 1, 2007. [Link]

10. The Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee thinks the Internet is “a series of tubes.” [Link]

11. Congress established the pay-to-play K Street corruption system which rewarded lobbyists who made campaign contributions in return for political favors doled out by conservatives. [Link]

12. The lobbying reform bill Congress passed was a total sham. [Link]

13. Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) shamefully attacked Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) on the House floor, telling him that “cowards cut and run, Marines never do.” [Link]

14. Congress passed budgets that resulted in deficits of $318 billion and $250 billion. [Link]

15. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said Donald Rumsfeld “is the best thing that’s happened to the Pentagon in 25 years.” [Link]

16. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) baselessly announced that “we have found the WMD in Iraq.” [Link]

17. Congress passed a special-interest, corporate-friendly Central American trade deal (CAFTA) after holding the vote open for one hour and 45 minutes to switch the vote of Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC). [Link]

18. Senate conservatives threatened to use the “nuclear option” to block members of the Senate from filibustering President Bush’s judicial nominees. [Link]

19. Congress stuck in $750 million in appropriations bills “for projects championed by lobbyists whose relatives were involved in writing the spending bills.” [Link]

20. The typical Congressional work week is late Tuesday to noon on Thursday. [Link]

21. Congress has issued zero subpoenas to the Bush administration. [Link]

22. Congress eliminated the Perkins college loan program and cut Pell Grants by $4.6 billion. [Link]

23. Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA) paid $500,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging that he strangled his 29-year-old mistress. [Link]

24. Congress decreased the number of cops on the streets by cutting nearly $300 million in funding for the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program. [Link]

25. In a debate last year over the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee abruptly cut off the microphones when Democrats began discussing the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. [Link]

26. Just two out of 11 spending bills have made it out of Congress this year. [Link]

27. 1,502 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since Congress convened. [Link]

28. The House Ethics Committee is “broken,” according to the Justice Department. [Link]

29. The FBI continues to investigate Rep. Curt Weldon’s (R-PA) willingness to trade his political influence for lucrative lobbying and consulting contracts for his daughter. [Link]

30. Congress failed to protect 58.5 million acres of roadless areas to logging and road building by repealing the Roadless Rule. [Link]

31. Congress spent weeks debating a repeal of the estate tax (aka the Paris Hilton Tax), which affects a miniscule fraction of the wealthiest Americans. [Link]

32. The percentage of Americans without health insurance hit a record-high, as Congress did nothing to address the health care crisis. [Link]

33. Both the House and Senate voted to open up our coasts to more oil drilling, “by far the slowest, dirtiest, most expensive way to meet our energy needs.” [Link]

34. Congress stripped detainees of the right of habeas corpus. [Link]

35. The House fell 51 votes short of overriding President Bush’s veto on expanding federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. [Link]

36. Only 16 percent of Americans think Congress is doing a good job. [Link]

37. Congress confirmed far-right activist Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. [Link]

38. Congress spent days debating a constitutional amendment that would criminalize desecration of the U.S. flag, the first time in 214 years that the Bill of Rights would have been restricted by a constitutional amendment. [Link]

39. Congress raised the debt limit by $800 billion, to $9 trillion. [Link]

40. Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) hid bribe money in his freezer. [Link]

41. Congress passed an energy bill that showered $6 billion in subsidies on polluting oil and gas firms while doing little to curb energy demand or invest in renewable energy industries. [Link]

42. Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) used his seat on the House Appropriations Committee to steer earmarks towards to one of his closest friends and major campaign contributor. [Link]

43. Congress passed a strict bankruptcy bill making it harder for average people to recover from financial misfortune by declaring bankruptcy, even if they are victims of identity theft, suffering from debilitating illness, or serving in the military. [Link]

44. The House passed a bill through committee that that would “essentially replace” the 1973 Endangered Species Act with something “far friendlier to mining, lumber and other big extraction interests that find the original act annoying.” [Link]

45. Congress failed to pass voting integrity and verification legislation to ensure Americans’ votes are accurately counted. [Link]

46. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) distributed a memo urging colleagues to exploit 9/11 to defend Bush’s Iraq policy. [Link]

47. Congress repeatedly failed to pass port security provisions that would require 100 percent scanning of containers bound for the United States. [Link]

48. Ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) declared an “ongoing victory” in his effort to cut spending, and said “there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.” [Link]

49. Congress allowed Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) stay in Congress for a month after pleading guilty in the Jack Abramoff investigation. [Link]

50. Congress didn’t investigate Tom DeLay and let him stay in Congress as long as he wanted. [Link]

51. The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating the Senate Majority Leader’s sale of HCA stock a month before its value fell by nine percent. [Link]

52. Congressional conservatives pressured the Director of National Intelligence to make public documents found in Iraq that included instructions to build a nuclear bomb. [Link]

53. Conservatives repeatedly tried to privatize Social Security, a change that would lead to sharp cuts in guaranteed benefits. [Link]

54. Congress is trying to destroy net neutrality. [Link]

55. Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) accepted contributions from disgraced lobbyist Mitchell Wade and MZM, Inc., her largest campaign contributor, in return for a defense earmark. [Link]

56. Former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA) was sentenced to eight years federal prison for taking $2.4 million in bribes in exchange for lucrative defense contracts, among other crimes. [Link]

57. Congress passed a $286 billion highway bill in 2005 stuffed with 6,000 pork projects. [Link]

58. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) abused his power and suspended a Democratic staffer in an act of retribution. [Link]

59. Congress failed to offer legal protections to states that divest from the Sudan. [Link]

60. The Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK) tried to earmark $223 million to build a bridge to nowhere. [Link]

61. Congress spent days debating an anti-gay constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. [Link]

62. Congress isn’t doing anything significant to reverse catastrophic climate change. [Link]

63. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) secured a federal earmark to increase the property value of his land and reap at least $1.5 million in profits. [Link]

64. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) used a video tape “diagnosis” to declare that Terri Schiavo, who was later found to be blind, “certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli.” [Link]

65. Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) resigned in disgrace after ABC News revealed explicit instant messages exchanges between Foley and former congressional pages. [Link]

66. Half of all Americans believe most members of Congress are corrupt. [Link]

67. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) said that gay marriage “is the most important issue that we face today.” [Link]

68. The House voted against issuing a subpoena seeking all reconstruction contract communications between Cheney’s office and Halliburton. [Link]

69. Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) told a Virginia-based volunteer firefighting team they had done a “piss-poor job” in fighting wildfires in Montana. [Link]

70. The House voted against amendments prohibiting monopoly contracts and requiring congressional notification for Department of Defense contracts worth more than $1 million. [Link]

71. Congress failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform. [Link]

72. During a floor debate on embryonic stem cell research, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) held up a picture of an embryo drawn by a 7-year-old girl. Brownback explained that one of the embryos in the picture was asking, “Are you going to kill me?” [Link]

73. Sen. George Allen (R-VA) used the slur “macaca” to describe an opposing campaign staffer of Indian descent, and has been repeatedly accused by former associates of using racial epithets to refer to African-Americans. [Link]

74. Congress refused to swear in oil executives testifying about high prices. [Link]

75. Against congressional rules, ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) accepted expensive foreign trips funded by Jack Abramoff. [Link]

76. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) went on the House floor to unveil a fence that he “designed” for the southern border. King constructed a model of the fence as he said, “We do this with livestock all the time.” [Link]

77. Ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) threatened the judges who ruled in the Terri Schiavo case, saying the “time will come” for them “to answer for their behavior.” [Link]

78. Congressional conservatives wanted to investigate Sandy Berger, but not the Iraq war. [Link]

79. Rolling Stone called the past six years “the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch.” [Link]

80. Not a single non-appropriations bill was open to amendment in the second session of the Congress. [Link]

81. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) claimed that supporters of Bush’s Iraq policy “show the same steely resolve” as did the passengers on United 93. [Link]

82. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) appeared with prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying opponents of Bush’s judicial nominees as “against people of faith.” [Link]

83. Under the guise of “tort reform,” Congress passed legislation that would “undermine incentives for safety” and make it “harder for some patients with legitimate but difficult claims to find legal representation.” [Link]

84. Despite multiple accidents in West Virginia and elsewhere, Congress passed legislation that failed to adequately protect mine workers. [Link]

85. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) said “if you earn $40,000 a year and have a family of two children, you don’t pay any taxes,” even though it isn’t true. [Link]

86. Monthly Medicare Part B premiums have almost doubled since 2000, from $45.50 in 2000 to $88.50 in 2006. [Link]

87. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) inserted a provision in the Defense Appropriations bill that granted vaccine manufactures near-total immunity for injuries or deaths, even in cases of “gross negligence.” [Link]

88. Congress appropriated $700 million for a “railroad to nowhere, but just $173 million to stop the genocide in Darfur. [Link]

89. Congress included a $500 million giveaway to defense giant Northup Grumman in a bill that was supposed to provide “emergency” funding for Iraq, even though the Navy opposed the payment. [Link]

90. Ex-Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), who has since pled guilty to talking bribes, was put it charge of briefing new lawmakers “on congressional ethics.” [Link]

91. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) can’t tell the difference between the Voting Rights Act and the Stamp Act. [Link]

92. Three days before Veterans Day — House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Steve Buyer (R-IN) announced that for the first time in at least 55 years, “veterans service organizations will no longer have the opportunity to present testimony before a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committees.” [Link]

93. Members were caught pimping out their offices with $5,700 plasma-screen televisions, $823 ionic air fresheners, $975 window blinds, and $623 popcorn machines. [Link]

94. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) skipped a vote on Katrina relief to attend a fundraiser. [Link]

95. Congress made toughening horse slaughtering rules the centerpiece of its agenda after returning from summer recess this year. [Link]

96. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) wants to send 20,000 more troops into the middle of a civil war in Iraq. [Link]

97. Katrina victims were forced to take out ad space to plead “with Congress to pay for stronger levees.” [Link]

98. Congress passed the REAL ID Act, “a national ID law that will drive immigrants underground, while imposing massive new burdens on everyone else.” [Link]

99. Congress extended tax cuts that provided an average of $20 relief but an average of nearly $42,000 to those earning over $1 million a year. [Link]

100. Congress received a “dismal” report card from the 9/11 Commission — five F’s, 12 D’s, nine C’s, and only one A-minus — for failing to enact the commission’s recommendations. [Link]

101. Congress won’t let the government negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs for people on Medicare. [Link]

102. Congress has left America’s chemical plants vulnerable to terrorist attack. [Link]

103. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) “threw the senatorial version of a hissy fit” when he threatened to resign unless the Senate approved funding for his bridge to nowhere. [Link]

104. Congress didn’t simplify the tax code. [Link]

105. Seventy-five percent of voters can’t name one thing Congress has accomplished. [Link]

106. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), has “raised campaign contributions at a rate of about $10,000 a day since February, surpassing the pace set by former Representative Tom DeLay.” [Link]

107. Congress failed to ensure Government Accountability Office oversight of Hurricane Katrina relief funds, resulting in high levels of waste, fraud, and abuse. [Link]

108. When a reporter asked Rep. Don Young (R-AK) if he would redirect spending on his bridge projects to Katrina victim housing, Young said, “They can kiss my ear!” [Link]

109. There were just 12 hours of hearings on Abu Ghraib. (There were more than 100 hours of hearings on alleged misuse of the Clinton Christmas card list.) [Link]

Election Information – VOTE

Election Information – VOTE

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