Pete Olson Home After Cardiac “Event”

My congressman or the congressman who votes against nearly everything that I hold near and dear, Pete Olson, is home this weekend, after having experienced a cardiac “event” while lifting weights in the House of Representative's gym.

This brings up two things. I never knew that they had a gymnasium built and equipped especially for the use, free I imagine, of US Congressmen. If I want to lift weights, I have to go into my back yard and lift piles of the facade bricks that were left behind after the builders finished with my house all those years ago.

That is what is free for me.

But the congresspeople we elect, who pull down over four times what a 1^st year teacher in Texas earns yearly, have their own exclusive gym.

Well, if we pay them that much, I expect we want them to be healthy, right?

The other thought that this event evokes is “Whaaaaat?”

Pete Olson doesn’t look like he has an ounce of fat on him. Sure he has had lots of years of high living in Washington DC to compound any health issues, but the last thing you expect to hear about, as a result of all of that, is a heart that beats too slowly.

So slow that it needs a pacemaker to speed it up.

Whatever.

Whatever the case, all we need right now, despite the fact that he doesn’t vote my way most of the time, is an ailing congressman.

For two reasons.

In 2010, when CD 22 switches political colors again, we don’t want a sympathy vote for the Republican. We want Pete Olson to be hale and hearty for his knife-edge defeat in the next election cycle.

By the same token, we don’t want the voters to be making their decisions based on which of the two candidates can best serve in office based on their health. Some would say that any advantage that gets a Dem in office is good enough. I would respond that the advantage you have in 2010 is a non-advantage in 2012.

Just ask any ex-congressman who ran against a write-in candidate in 2006.

So I just wanted to wish Pete Olson a speedy recovery. May he be fit and well by the time the next election cycle comes around.