Lee Terry, I have decided you must not really exist. Now I know I supposedly saw you at the AFP “Running on Empty” (a title that writes it’s own jokes) stop, but as far as I know that could have just been somebody claiming to be you. And I know that at Wednesday’s hearing you supposedly introduced yourself, but the video is so grainy and your appearance so brief, that you could just as easily have been Sasquatch.
The scary thing is that the abominable snowman might actually be a less a figment of my imagination than you are, and with dread I am beginning to suspect that he (real or not) might make a better congressional representative. Let’s take a look at the evidence, shall we?
First order of business: at Wednesday’s hearing on pipeline safety you barely stuck around long enough to get your mug on camera. When Waxman accused your bill of trying to short-circuit the approval process, like a petulant child you pointed the finger at the regulatory agencies themselves. This is the congressional equivalent of, “I know you are but what am I.” After all, when the regulatory agencies haven’t even been able to study the effects of diluted bitumen, a presumably necessary part of any approval process for a pipeline that will TRANSPORT diluted bitumen, it is at best embarrassingly ignorant to paint Waxman’s insistence on more time as an obstinate political maneuver.
And then, just like that, you were gone. I didn’t hear or see you for the rest of the hearing. This would be bizarre behavior in someone who actually represents a state likely to be the most seriously affected by the Keystone XL, so either you’re a lackey off to do more of TransCanada’s bidding, or you’re something else. Like some sort of shapeless, overfed wraith that floats through the aether occasionally haunting us real people and attacking any attempts to make the world a better place because you are jealous of our more tangible existence.
I mean in all seriousness, even if you genuinely believe that the Keystone XL will be a boon to the country and even our state, as a Nebraska representative how do you not investigate the possible consequences for the Sandhills and the aquifer? In other words how do you not take a position comparable to Sen. Johanns? (By the way shame on you for spreading misinformation about his position on this issue.)
Why does it take some guy who hails from Texas to inquire about the risks to the freshwater that lies primarily within OUR state? Are your physical manifestations so precarious to maintain that you can’t risk to ask such definitive questions? Must your rhetoric mirror the amorphous lack of substance that seems to characterize your existence? Why not ask how they would plan to deal with a spill in an underground fresh water source, because I have to tell you a solution to such a spill seems fraught with difficulty to say the least.
And so now we come to my argument for why I would rather have Bigfoot, whether he’s real or not, as the congressional representative of Nebraska’s second district. Let’s say Bigfoot does exist. Being a creature that lives outdoors and depends on the environment for immediate survival I can only imagine he would be opposed to anything that would jeopardize it. Not to mention that from his apparent aversion to attention one might infer he wouldn’t want a bunch of annoying creatures running around and digging things up.
And, of course, if Bigfoot wasn’t real, he’d never be able to push legislation that endangers us and our state, and he wouldn’t use emotional rhetoric about national security and jobs to try and bully us into a policy that’s directly opposed to our own interests.
Rep. Lee Terry, please leave us alone. Take your incorporeal shenanigans to some other state, country or dimension. Go bother some tweens messing around on a Ouija board. I really don’t care. Just stop terrorizing all of us simple Nebraskans that actually have to inhabit the physical world you seem so intent upon undermining. Please?
