There they go again, the Greedy Old Pigs fighting for the right to protect their Sugar Daddies with back room deals. Reid should accept their conditions, then secretly tape the proceedings and release the results via a leak during the election cycle. Can you imagine what juicy nuggets these evil dimwits would let slip? Could keep the Dems from losing some seats.
There seems to be only one means to achieve bi-partisan support for a bill – lard it with pork. Or make it a pork-only bill, with cash for everybody’s constituents!
Case in point – 5 members of the GOP, hearing the “Woo pig sooie!” siren call of pork-barrell spending, crossed the aisle to vote for the so-called Jobs Bill.
The Repugs used this to good effect in the early post-9/11 days of the Shrubya Preznitcy to bring Democrat pigs to vote on their bills – Remember those bipartisan bamboozles such as the Agribusiness Handout of 2008, the original Agribusiness Handout of 2003, and perhaps the most odious piece of legislation ever, the Big Energy Handout of 2003?
That must be why the Health Care Bill stalled out…insufficient pork!
Al Franken, aka Stuart Smalley, aka "GOP's Worst Nightmare"
Poor, poor Repugs! With #59 Arlen Specter firmly in the Dem camp, the GOP’s last hope for obstructing the people’s will through the non-stop reading of phone books on C-SPAN rests on Norm Coleman’s increasingly desperate and ridiculous legal appeals for the Senate seat that is all but Al Franken’s at this point.
Now if only the Dems would do something about that loser Harry Reid…
The GOP mavens have decided the best way to hit Obama is to ask why he hasn’t visited Iraq by putting up an Obama Iraq clock.
An interesting question, going beyond the classic strawman When did you stop beating your wife? and reaching into the Why haven’t you visited my wife after I beat her? territory.
The simple retort is for Obama to say:
If as John McCain, George Bush, and the GOP say Iraq is doing fine, there’s no reason for me to go there. So which is it?
Is this the best they can do? They’ve reverted to schoolyard taunts ever since Rove left.
As the energy bill wends its way through the Greedy Old Pig-party controlled Congress, it’s rapidly shedding any vestige of public interest and looking more like the same-old same-old. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. (who heads up the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources) has managed to whack out the bill’s renewable portfolio standard (mandated that U.S. utilities purchase a meagre 10% of energy from renewable sources, eliminated a ban on toxic MTBE additives (and put in legislation to protect MTBE polluters from lawsuite), put back in the caribou-killing plan to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and open more protected federal lands to exploration and drilling.
For the one self-style Libertarian that peruses this blog (are you reading this Gun Buddy?) who doesn’t care much about nature and stuff, but always rails on about corporate welfare and government waste, The Greedy Old Pigs have sequestered themselves in a smoke-filled room behind locked doors to go about the business of slingin’ pork in earnest, including:
* $33 billion in tax credits and incentives for for oil, gas, nuclear, coal and electric utilities
* $1.1 billion for making a hydrogen fustion reactor (what’s 1 billion more after we’ve already wasted $10 billion on perpetually ‘around the corner’ fusion energy?)
* $800 million in ‘targeted pork’ to build a Minnesota coal-burning power plant (watch Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn flip-flop and vote yes to drilling the ANWR now. )
* $125 million in loan guarantees for Healy Clean Coal Plant – to retrofit the failed ‘clean coal’ experiment back to a traditional coal plant!!!!
* $1.3 billion in new loans to the money-losing Bonneville Power Administration – sure, enterpise is ‘free’ when the taxpayers foot the bill!
* price subsidies (of as-yet unknown cost) for the to-be-developed Alaska Gas Pipeline
Energy Bill? Energy Scam is what this is! Trash the America of tomorrow – today!
English professor and liberal gadfly Jack Gillis emailed this to me (and several others) the morning after the State of the Union address:
——————————————————–
Quote from Bush’s speech:
“A simple chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen generates energy, which can be used to power a car producing only water, not exhaust fumes. With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free.”
Let’s do some math. In 1992, Al Gore published a book in which he predicted the replacement of the internal combustion engine in 25 years (probably by a hydrogen engine), for which comment he was cruelly, deceptively and dishonestly excoriated by the GOP. 1992 + 25 = 2017.
Last night, Bush said substantially the same thing except he said “the first car driven by a child born today.” If Learner’s Permits are granted at 15 1/2 (as in most states, I think), 2003 + 15 = 2018.
So, according to the GOP logic, calling for hydrogen cars by the year 2017 is “Banning cars!” “Destroying freedom!” “Absolutely flaky!” but calling for hydrogen cars by 2018 is “Visionary!” “Brilliant!” “Bold!”
