Earmarks!
Is there anything so very wicked... as EARMARKS?
If your member of Congress has ever proposed or approved an earmark, your member of Congress has basically ass-raped a kitten and then smashed its cute l'il head in with a shovel and then stole its credit card number so as to buy Doobie Brothers concert bootlegs.
Senate Democrats unveiled earlier this afternoon a 1,924-page omnibus spending bill to fund the government through fiscal year 2011. Aides to GOP legislators on Capitol Hill have already begun poring over the $1.1 trillion package, describing the proposal as “a total mess” to Fox News.
Kitten rape!
Or not.
See, the thing about "earmarks" is, they are negligible in regards to overall federal spending; one of the reasons people elect representatives and senators in the first place is to represent their district and/or state in the sense of getting the federal government to spend money in it; and also, whenever you actually look at these Wacky Earmarks, they usually end up seeming pretty cheap and actually kind of reasonable.
But back to the kitten rape:
UPDATE: According to a tally by Sen. John McCain’s office, the legislation includes 6,488 earmarks totaling nearly $8.3 billion. In a speech from the floor of the Senate, McCain blasted the bill, asking is his colleagues if they had been “stricken with amnesia” for appropriating such wild earmarks only weeks after a swift electoral rebuke for Democrats.
“Enough with the spending, enough of mortgaging our children and our grandchildren’s futures. The phenomenon of the Tea Party — taxed enough already — they were against the spending, the earmarking,” McCain, who is looking to force the bill be read in its entirety from the floor of the Senate, said. “What is going on here? Are we tone deaf? Are we stricken with amnesia? WHY ARE THESE CLOUDS YELLING AT ME! WHAT IS IT WITH THIS ONION ON MY BELT ANYWAY! MR. PRESIDENT, WE HAVE TOO MANY STATES, PLEASE ELIMINATE THREE! DEAR SICKOS AT MODERN BRIDE....”
So it seems Red State lurves John McCain again. How pleasing.
Anyway, McCain and his "staff" (yecch) have been diligently patrolling kitten anuses:
The senator’s aides — as well as the senator himself on Twitter — have begun circulating what they deem the most outrageous and wasteful spending measures in the bill. Some choice selects:
$247,000 - Virus free grapes in Washington State
$413,000 - Peanut research in Alabama
$125,000 - Fishery equipment for the Guam Fisherman’s Cooperative Association
$349,000 - Swine waste management in North Carolina
$277,000 - Potato pest management in wisconsin
$246,000 - Bovine tuberculosis treatment in Michigan and Minnesota
$522,000 - Cranberry and blueberry disease and breeding in New Jersey
$500,000 - Oyster safety in Florida
$400,000 - Solar parking canopies and plug-in electric stations in Kansas
$165,000 - Maple syrup research in Vermont
Every single one of these horrible awful earmarks looks to me as if it is cheap and reasonable and well targeted to the health of local economies. These are exactly the things the federal government needs to spend money on.
The "earmarks" nonsense is yet another example of how the right wing is profoundly anti-democracy. And also of how they are horrible nose-fucker shitnozzles.