March 4th 2009
McCain Tweets Against Earmarks
You remember Barack Obama? The presidential candidate who looked into our souls and told us he was against earmarks … even as he had his own earmarks in bills? You remember the president who looked into the soul of the TV camera during his Not The State Of The Union speech and told us there were no earmarks in the stimulus bill, even though there were piles of cash stashed there just ripe for earmarking as soon as no one was looking?
You remember John McCain? He also railed against earmarks … and he’s still at it. Not only that, but the man who was ridiculed for not being able to send emails was all a’Twitter yesterday as he railed. Here’s the count, courtesy of Maureen Doud:
• $2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York. “quick peel me a grape,” McCain twittered.
• $1.7 million for a honey bee factory in Weslaco, Tex.
• $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa.
• $1 million for Mormon cricket control in Utah. “Is that the species of cricket or a game played by the brits?” McCain tweeted.
• $819,000 for catfish genetics research in Alabama.
• $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi.
• $951,500 for Sustainable Las Vegas. (McCain, a devotee of Vegas and gambling, must really be against earmarks if he doesn’t want to “sustain” Vegas.)
• $2 million “for the promotion of astronomy” in Hawaii, as McCain twittered, “because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy.”
• $167,000 for the Autry National Center for the American West in Los Angeles. “Hopefully for a Back in the Saddle Again exhibit,” McCain tweeted sarcastically.
• $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii. “During these tough economic times with Americans out of work,” McCain twittered.
• $200,000 for a tattoo removal violence outreach program to help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past. “REALLY?” McCain twittered.
• $209,000 to improve blueberry production and efficiency in Georgia.
I never thought I’d be quoting Doud as the source for some Obama Drama, but here we go:
In one of his disturbing spells of passivity, President Obama decided not to fight Congress and live up to his own no-earmark pledge from the campaign.
He’s been lecturing us on the need to prune away frills while the economy fizzles. He was slated to make a speech on “wasteful spending” on Wednesday.
“You know, there are times where you can afford to redecorate your house and there are times where you need to focus on rebuilding its foundation,” he said recently about the “hard choices” we must make. Yet he did not ask Congress to sacrifice and make hard choices; he let it do a lot of frivolous redecorating in its budget.
Thanks, Maureen. Well said.
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