I lived on farm when I was kid and used to slop hogs. It is very messy to watch.

Well hopefully some of that pork is for my levees at least.

You are getting waterwings. Sorry.

That get up is a great improvement for Landrieu.

Figures.

Well maybe we can get Lieberman to do an investigation into the 8/29 Federal Levee breach in New Orleans?

Since the Dems let him keep his plum chairmanship.

Any self respecting hog would undoubtedly bristle at being compared to a congress-critter.

This is all VERY discouraging.

I think the stimulus bill is too small. As such, I see these earmarks as a welcome addendum to the stimulus bill.

Earmarks are not necessarily pork. One of the jobs of senators is to bring home federal monies to the states they represent. And a lot of good, local projects get funded this way (see the post on Mormon cricket control in Utah). Pork is wasteful spending, not targeted spending. Sure, the Bridge to Nowhere was both local and wasteful, but a lot of pork is spent funding the military-industrial complex projects for world domination that we don’t need.

I won’t defend these budgetary hypocrites, and their antics are a joke. But the debate needs to go beyond the GOP puke funnel framing of calling earmarks “pork”, it’s another example of letting conservatives define the debate. Earmarks can be good or bad, but the idea itself isn’t.

finely some sense is showing up, light in the future.

Hey, Landrieu, you can join Bobby and starve your state.

No pork for you! No stimulus for you!

I think it is amazing that these people had the power to do something under the Bush Administration and chose to do nothing. Now with Obama in office, they are trying to somehow pin the blame on him, conveniently forgetting their role in the previous administration. CNN actually reported today (with Taxpayers for Common Sense) that “pork” is less in the Obama bills than there has been in the past. They also reported that some earmarks are worthwhile and should be included in some of these bills. I think the main issue is transparency and while it’s easy for these people to yell “pork,” it’s not so easy to to find out if they are in fact the “pot calling the kettle black.” If other MSM outlets continue to closely scrutinized these hypocrites and honestly report the Earmark issue, this oinking should and could be shut down for good.

McCain is strutting around with self-importance on this issue, but he should beware: this can easily come back to bite him, his fellow Repugs, the Blue Dogs and even some Democrats in the butt. This is why I don’t understand why they keep pushing this Earmark issue. It’s kind of foolish of them to do so. Instead of pointing fingers at each other, everyone should sit down and create the transparency that everyone is craving for. Okay, I guess that would be too easy for them to do.

We also need to remember that these people ran as Blue Dogs for a reason: they are really moderate Repugs who don’t feel comfortable being associated with the Limbpublican party. You can be sure that if the Repugs are able to salvage their party back to the center, a lot of these folks will switch back their affiliation in a blink. In other words, their agenda is not what it appears to be. They are trying to straddle a fine line between “them” and “us.” It will be interesting to see if they succeed at this game, or if the game self-destructs in their face. Unless these people honestly deal with how Earmarks are handled, in the end, it’s the taxpayers that will lose out.

So-called “New Democrats”, arguably not Democrats at all, have been learning from their GOP litter mates. Calling themselves “centrists” is choice. Every reader of stories imagines themselves as the protagonist, never the antagonist. The self is always reasonable; it’s the other who’s a charlatan. Then again, there’s reality.

Tauscher (and, presumably Landrieu) is hip deep in bankers’ poo and rolling in it. She is advocating for their interests, not for those of her constituents or most Democrats or other Americans. On this issue, she and her New Democratic colleagues are not centrists, they are as partisan as Karl Rove. They do NOT represent what most Americans who voted for a Democratic administration want.

It is their opponents who need to speak out in the halls and corridors, in print and on the air, in strategery meetings and in smoke-filled rooms. That Democrats self-destruct from their own entropy, in or out of office, seems inevitable. That it should happen uncontested is not.

The fifth column.

When they are hungry, self-respect doesn’t enter into it.

I can’t believe that Mary Landrieu has thirteen friends. As an at-least-occasional C-Span watcher, her walks into the chamber to vote is damned near painful to watch.

She walks in alone, casts her vote, glances around wistfully, no one speaks to her or acknowledges her existence, and then – she once more trudges back out the door. Alone.

what did you think that you were going to get from a one party system with its two branches: the rigorously fascist branch and the less rigorously fascist branch?

it is pitchforks and firebrands time, mes amis.

after all, the fema camps are already prepared for the insurrection. shouldn’t we vouchsafe their predictions?

to the tumbrils.

When we speak of ‘Federal dollars” let’s remember that those dollars are coming from the people of the various parts of the republic. Anyone know where one can find a breakdown of how much each state gets ‘back’ in comparison with the amount that state sends in? I know that Alaska is one of our welfare states, but what about the rest of ‘em. I suspect that California and New York (just based on population) send most into the national treasury……do they get a fair share back? Point me in a direction where I can find this out. Thanks.

must read from democracy now! today:

“Sold Out”: New Report Follows Lobbying Money Trail Behind Deregulation that Helped Cause Financial Crisis

In a new report, Robert Weissman of Multinational Monitor points to twelve deregulatory steps that led to the financial meltdown. It also does an analysis of the amount of money Wall Street poured into Washington in campaign contributions and lobbying over the last ten years. Their answer? A staggering $5.1 billion over the past decade.

my bold.

and sad to say, it’s not just the “moderates” and right wingers.

Exactly and her appearances in committee – especially Homeland Security (Katrina non oversight) are appalling. I will never understand how Louisiannans could be so self loathing as to reelect her.

One would hope, assuming it doesn’t get “diverted” the way so much post-Katrina aid did.

But she’s so cuuuuute!

She’s really the DINO version of Sarah Palin, except a touch more competent at public speaking. That soft-spoken voice and well-preserved pixie face have taken her a long way.

Oh, exactly. And these people would be the first and loudest to scream if their earmarks were cut.

The simple fact is that all the earmarks, theirs and other folks’, are only about $7 billion of a $410 billion budget bill. It’s not even two percent. But the hypocrites will rail against it even as they take it.

Here’s a breakdown of federal spending per dollar of federal taxes from 2005.

One persons pork, is another persons bacon…

STFU all of you Blue-dog pieces of shit!
Now you get all cost concious on us? NOW? After you gave Bush everything he wanted, off budget? NOW you gotta watch after our dollars.
It’s like you’re guarding your sisters virginity after you’ve fucked her.
I can’t take listening to you anymore.
STFU! I will do everything in my power to help any Liberal running against these stupid assholes.

Thanks for that.

Democracy Now

Wall Street poured into Washington in campaign contributions and lobbying over the last ten years. Their answer? A staggering $5.1 billion over the past decade.

So, how’s that working out for them now?

Can you imagine, they paid for this mess. How much wealth was lost on Wall St.? Idiots. Now they oppose plans to fix things. Idiots.

Oh, and if the Gang of Fourteen was so against all earmarks and pork, then why did this vote to kill some earmarks in the bill fail? Some of these people had to have voted to preserve those earmarks — simple math says so.

Click on the database highlighted in first sentence for a download of a 2.4MB .xls spreadsheet with all the info you’ll ever need about money and marks.This Was Posted In An FDL Thread Somewhere.

Here’s The Home Page.

And a hat tip to who ever it was, likely in an Oxdown Diary, methinks . . . nice catch and thanks for sharing.

What pisses me off the most about this earmark bullshit is the opportunity cost. While everyone is wasting time on the red herring, real problems exist that might need solving.

None of them has offered an opinion as to which particular pieces of spending should be cut. Until they do, they can STFU.

watertiger is upstairs!
Rush Limbaugh Invites President Obama to a Pants Party

To pork or not to pork that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to slobber
Oer the slops and earmarks of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The porkfest and the trillion dollar natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
And must earn our dough: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
And survive whenst off ye suckling sweet public tit
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.– Soft you now!
The fair Nancy! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins and earmarks be unremember’d.