Beau Elliot
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So I see House Speaker John Boehner is out. Well, you probably saw it, too, given that the news of his departure was everywhere in the news and on the social media. (Myself, I prefer the asocial media, but I’m just that way.)

Technically, he’s not out yet; he’s going to stick around till the end of October, but then, bye-bye. Apparently, according to too many observers to name, he’s going to hang around to prevent a government shutdown by the hard-core right-wingers in the House. At least for now.

Well, that’s nice of him. It’s probably better that the people we elect to serve in government actually serve in government rather than closing up shop. I know it’s a novel idea, especially for Republicans, but for most of us, when we get hired to do a job, we do it. As opposed, say, to staying at home and dabbling around in the asocial media.

Why is Boehner going to resign? you ask. He has been the House speaker forever.

Well, I don‘t know what goes on in his mind (luckily for me, no doubt) or, for that matter, why he’s addicted to the tanning booth. But you’ll notice I did give him credit for having a mind.

And he hasn’t been the speaker forever, it just seems that way because life slowed to a crawl during his tenure. Just like it seems the Republicans are always shutting down the government, or threatening to do so, if they don’t get their way. But they aren’t always doing that. Some days, they try to kill Obamacare, other days, they try to prove that there’s a vast conspiracy in the Obama administration that caused the fatal attack in Benghazi, and then on the few days that are left, they delight in mixing up climate and weather.

Which is kind of like mixing up the Red Sox and Yankees (hint: the Red Sox are climate, the Yankees are weather).

What is clear (so little is these days) is that Americans don’t like their Congress; its popularity is at a historic low (14 percent like it). And a recent Gallup Poll shows why.

Gallup first asked respondents five questions to see how much they knew about Congress and discovered that the more Americans knew, the less they like the body: Among people who were informed, 66 percent said they had a poor or bad view of Congress; among those uniformed, only 29 percent had such views.

Hmm. And it’s not as if the questions to answer were rocket science (Gallup via Washington Post):

• Do you happen to know how many U.S. senators there are from each state?

• Would you happen to know which chamber of Congress — the House of Representatives or the Senate — is responsible for confirming federal judges?

• For how many years are members of the U.S. House of Representatives elected — that is, how many years are there in one term of office?

• Do you happen to know which political party — Democratic or Republican — currently has the most members in the U.S. House of Representatives?

• And do you happen to know the name of the majority leader in the U.S. Senate?

Only 17 percent could answer four or five of the questions correctly, which leads one to wonder if the other 83 percent had been smoking what Carly Fiorina seems to have been smoking.

Oh, well. Soon, Boehner will be gone. But Congress will stick around, and the rest of us will just be stuck.