Government

Stay informed (or drunk dial Congress) with these funny federal shutdown sites

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drunkdialcongress.com: It’s just like college—only instead of dialing a douchey ex for no reason, you’re talking to a legislator about the Panda Cam.

With the government shutdown still in place, there’s a lot of talk being thrown around about our lawmakers—that they aren’t doing their jobs, that they’re acting like children, that they’re getting drunk on the job. But what are you doing?

Are you calling in complaints to your congressperson’s headquarters? Are you staying informed? Are you raising an American-produced Budweiser to toast Capitol Hill’s massive fail?

If you need help staying engaged in all the political mayhem, we scoured the Internet for a few websites that should do the trick:

www.isthegovernmentshutdown.com

Not exactly politically inclined? If you’re still insanely clueless about our government’s status, isthegovernmentshutdown.com is definitely for you.

The site features the burning question’s answer (hint: It isn’t “no”) and tweets from current members of Congress, so you can acquire all your political knowledge in carefully crafted 140-character posts—likely sent by somebody’s unpaid intern.

www.drunkdialcongress.org

Drunk Dial Congress will help you out with that Budweiser toast we mentioned earlier. The site encourages constituents to knock back a few before speaking their mind to a randomly selected congressperson. (It’s just like college after too many shots at the bar, only instead of dialing a douchey ex for no reason, you’re talking to a legislator about the Panda Cam.)

The site also features talking points (like that Panda Cam) and drink recipes (among them: the Bad Representative and the Sleepy Senator), so you don’t even have to be versed in the issues (or mixology) to take part—though we’d recommend knowing what you’re talking about.

www.fuckyoucongress.com

No member of Congress is actually going to take your drunk rant seriously, so if you want to inspire actual change, you might want to skip ahead to this gem.

First and foremost, the website features chuckle-worthy news commentary with direct links to the major media outlets supplying the stories. Here’s one example, linked to a Huffington Post article on the furloughs required by the shutdown: “Hold on, we’re receiving a very special transmission directly from the Mars Curiosity rover. This is incredible, let’s see what it has to say. The transmission is coming in now. Here we go, it says, “F*CK YOU CONGRESS.” Wow, harsh words for a robot. Guess you shouldn’t have furloughed the employee running its mission.”

F*ck You Congress also includes a tweet-your-representatives feature, as well as a call to action section encouraging users to “do more than f*ck around” by educating themselves, voting and lending a hand to three organizations: TurboVote, Sunlight Foundation and Rootstrikers.

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