said very first thing i was told is that he was a 75th lineal descendant of confucius. like any normal stupid american i burst out laughing and tell i was informed in all seriousness that they do keep track of these things in china. a sweet man his breeding was more impressive than his brain but his highly ambitious wife pushed and prodded and until she got him up to the position of minister as of finance. anxious to be loved he happily supplied chang kai-shek with all of the money that he wanted for his army. there were two major books ringgit -- written about madame chang when i started my. one was by a an extraordinary writer and journalist who published something like 50 bucks and wrote to innumerable articles for "the new yorker." the story goes that she had gone to china where like a lot of other people became addicted to opium. john gunther, a friend of hers and author of the inside books if you remember those books suggested that hawn write a book the book the that would earn her a enough money and she didn't and it was admiring portrayal but the second big book

h., was that he was the 75th lineal descendent of confucius. like any normal stupid american, i burst out laughing. until i was informed in all seriousness that they do keep track of these things in china. a sweet man, he was rather more impressive than his reign, but his highly ambitious wife, the eldest of the siblings, pushed and prodded until she got him up to the position of minister of finance, displacing her brother, the economist. anxious to be loved, h. h. happily supplied with all the money he wanted for his army. there have been two major books written about madame chiang when i started mine. one was by emily hahn, an extraordinary writer and journalist who publish something like, excuse me, 50 books and wrote innumerable articles for "the new yorker." the story goes that han had gone to china where, like a lot of other people, she became addicted to opium. john gunther, a friend of hers, and author of the inside books, i don't know if anybody remembers inside asia, inside europe, inside were ever. anyway, suggested that hahn write a

the fact that 2,560 years had passed since the birth of confucius and we hadn't acknowledged it, i really think that could have waited a little bit longer in terms of the importance of the work that we are doing. so here we are again doing what our colleagues across the aisle have been so good at this session. short-circuiting the legislative process so we can jam through another major spending bill without the benefit of members or more importantly the citizens of this country having the opportunity to read it. this rule enables us to take up the next rule and that rule allows us to consider more than $1 trillion in spending, all done almost in the blink of an eye if you put it in the context of the birth of confucius. but let us not be fooled by this attempt to say that something is a crisis. . the reason we are doing this on the spur of the moment is becauseure speaker because our speakers and other members will leave today to go to copenhagen to talk to people about climate control, and they're going to emit much, much carbon on their way to do that which really is sort of hypocritica