Wonkette
The Senate passed the $410 billion omnibus stimulus package tonight after a week of widespread grandstanding and feigned horror over $7.7 billion in earmarks — which is simply a means of allocating streams of existing funds — split between 95 Senators. And yet here’s John McCain, going nuts about earmarks and earmarks only because he is too stubborn, ignorant and stupid to learn budgetary policy, or any domestic policy, really, that can’t be easily tagged as unethical or dishonorable. And if you don’t know the difference between a hyphen and a dash, then you do not deserve to sit in elected federal office, Twitter rules be damned. [Washington Post]
Let’s Bork the pork, my friends.
All this grandstanding might get McCain the grudging respect of Jonathan Krohn, that 14 year old kid who simply “wowed” em at CPAC. One can hope…
John who?
w/o pork? Is that a dinner order?
Go wrap your lipstick around a pig’s dick and leave Barry alone, pink man. You don’t know shit.
Spending bill, not stimulus bill. (Or “Appropriations” bill?)
Its the missing apostrophe that gets to me. I mean, it’s.
At least Cindy can enjoy a drug-addled peaceful existence in Arizona while Anger Maverick proves why there should be an age limit on Congress members.
bhosp: Or, FY 2009 budget? As in “no more ‘the government’s gonna shut down!’ bullshit.”
OMFG!!!!! Hold on fellah’s, I’ve got to warn my gang brothers vatos in Charlotte!
I confess I have sometimes failed to differentiate between a hyphen and a dash. I also once wrote ‘who’ for ‘whom’ and I do not always observe the “awhile/a while” usage rule.
*resigns in disgrace*
DangerousLiberal: Yeah, it’s (or it should be) even less controversial than the stimulus.
saggyboobedhag: Better known as Meghan’s dad.
W/o? That’s secret Panamanian Canal Zone sleeper cell talk!
When did McCain become Kosher?
Walnuts is getting about as tiresome as Joe the Plumber. He needs to start talking about FIVE AND A HALF YEARS again. At least he was less annoying then & you could muster some respect for him.
“…difference between a hyphen and a dash” Don’t tell Walnuts, but there’s also something diabolical called the ‘em dash’.
BillyClubb: That 14 year old kid is studying latin and arabic. I’m STILL waiting for Coulter to declare her love and go for a swing.
McCain has threaten to suspend his campaign until the pork is taken out.
Pork was all he ate for FIVE AND A HALF YEARS. Give him a break, cretins.
No, not now, my friend. Too little, too late.
goldfishswirling: The minute that kid loses the big V, he becomes a raving liberal, starts a jam band, also.
John, if you cut out all the pork, how will Jesus bring the people their truck nutz?
I just want WALNUTS! to note that this was the bill to fund FY 2009. Which started in October.
2008.
This is left over pork.
I also hate him.
Oh noes! We’re all going to the poor house because of earmarks that constitute 1.8% of the budget. Too bad McCain didn’t earmark some money to pay some guy to date Meghan.
Can we have pulled pork sandwiches to celebrate?
Or some kogi spicy pork.
Did his principles consultant tell him to be an annoying dipshit, or is he doing this all on his own?
What fucking year does this guy live in? We’re facing the meltdown of global capitalism and old man McCain is bitchin about pork, aka federal money directed to specific projects which create jobs. Does he read the same Washington Post articles about the world economy which make me want to move into a cabin in the Yukon Territory? What a joke.
SayItWithWookies: No no. He only meant to say it once, but he keeps forgetting that he already did.
CampbellBrown’sBaby: Ditto. Put a cork in your porker McPuddles.
I’ve never understood the pork problem. Representatives are sent to DC to try gain support for projects in their districts. That’s how appropriations work. And the problem with that in a pre-Depression would be…..?
This is a leftover non-issue from Reagans-speak. Like socialist, liberal, tax and spend, relativism, and a host of other memes which lost their relevance long ago. omg! “pork!” I guess the New Deal was full of pork. Just make sure we’ve got good beer and salty snacks to go with that pork!
tunamelt: You’re making me hungry! I had Ramen noodles for din-din. Threw in some frozen peas and it was like real food. Almost. Should have used whirled peas.
Funny how Meghan wants a pork, and her dad is so darn against it.
The Pork, isn’t that Lindsay Graham’s cute nickname Dubya gave him?
And good luck with that Johnny.
Why is “President” capitalized, but “everyone” isn’t? Does dub-nuts* think Obama is a deity?
*All repubs get a hip-hop name in Michael Steele’s new plan for the party!
I want to punch McCain in his pork.
Madeline: “everyone” is not married to a beer heiress. “everyone” is not as important as Walnuts. “everyone” is some fucking Tee Vee camera or reporter that will catch a small blurb and turn it into a career. There is no “everyone,” therefore it doesn’t deserve an initial caps.
Pour Maalox over shaved ice. Add splash of vodka and Kahlua. Shake and strain into jelly jar.
Serve with moist towelette.
So will this help or hurt Meghan’s chances for a date?
We’re missing the obvious here. Hook Jonathan Krohn up with Meghan. She gets laid, he turns liberal, and her father gets less irritable and stops running a “let’s pretend” shadow government.
Back in the day, twittering meant something completely different to Walnuts.
Is “Twitter” one of the settings on Cindy’s Personality Control Pad 2000?
tunamelt:
We could have a Wonkette pig roast!
The man can’t masturbate because of 4 years of Communist torture folks. Twittering is the only way he can climax. Please, leave him alone.
I’ve been blaming our Internet girlfriend Meghan McCain for being ignorant of the proper placement of a hyphen versus a comma but it turns out she learned it from Papa Bear McCain.
Shit man, that wasn’t even proper use of an em dash! And fuck hyphens; they’re so anal-retentive.
Texan Bulldoggette: em dash a do wop a do wop a
do do wop a do wop a do wop a do-o-o
yeah yeah
MGBYG: Yes. Along with Bitter, Scatter and Slattern.
slinkimalinki: Ah, the lost art of scatting Morse code. That was how famed superspy/singer Lucy “Midnight” Holloway used to communicate with her Soviet handler undetected in Berlin jazz clubs. Those were the days.
EM DASH
AnglRdr: Left over pork.
Tricky Noses for everyone!
Edywin: Oh I’m sure his horny Viet Cong captors weren’t about to let that strapping American prisoner get blue balls.
Colander: Not to be critical, but I believe the captors would, in fact, practice the policy of keeping prisoners “chaste.” It would be they who never worried about blue balls with a perfectly good sperm receptacle in their custody, and one trained to be a pilot on top of that.
The only real question about the time McCain spent in Hanoi would involve whether he developed sympathy for his captors or hated them until the very end. It is one thing to be broken physically and mentally from prolonged torture. It is quite another for a prisoner to develop affinity for the torturers.
Though there are doubts about the length and severity of his torture, he definitely emerged a broken man. Even a man or woman broken from torture can still cling to core self conscience and refuse to ever empathize with the torturers. Everyone spills their guts, but only the cowards open their hearts.
I took the time to write this because I strongly believe that the Arizona Senator’s experiences in Viet Nam shaped him into the man he is today. He used the power of his political connections to ruin people’s lives, cover up his wife’s drug addiction (much to hr detriment), but WORST OF ALL he used that power to cover up how much of a groveling coward he became in Hanoi. He left people behind. He crossed over to the other side. He received preferential treatment while his fellow prisoners got the worst of the torture. And then he conveniently revised the past by sinking governmental inquiries into what really happened.
John McCain is a fucking tick drinking blood from the diseased body of the rotting corpse the GOP has become. This bigoted grub worm has the nerve to attempt to inject himself into a dialog about our economy, all because of his false sense of entitlement. If he had any real power left he would use it to betray his fellow Americans for his own benefit, just as he did in Vienam. Just as he has done his whole life.
I will drink a car bomb and spit over my left shoulder when McCain passes. And the sooner the better. May the devil come and get you five minutes before you die, Johnny Boy.
Stupid Stupid Stupid
Missed a couple of mistakes on a thread full of writers.
There’s a real chance (I’m not saying VERY real, but realer than Jim Cramer’s stock recommendations) that McCain will lose his Senate seat when he comes up for reelection. The Rs that run the GOP in AZ are ultra-wingnut and they will mount a primary candidate against McCain. In fact, I suspect most of his anti-Obama posturing solely is for this crowd’s benefit. But Walnuts could call Hopey a Socialist every day; it will never be enough for them. He should have let Palin turn in his concession speech in Phoenix; they all like her a lot more than they like him.
If he does pull through the primary, he better have a lot of money left, because the Ds will take a second swing at him. If Napolitano had remained in the governor’s office, she would have wiped him out. The problem is, while the Ds in Arizona have lots of young talent, there’s no clear leader.
I check the Letters column in the Tucson paper every day, and it’s filled with vitriolic anti-McCain sentiment. And please keep in mind that only the very old (which we are rife with in Southern AZ) read newspapers, so these writers are Walnuts’ peers. Why are they stewing? BECAUSE WE GET NO PORK, thanks to McCain and Kyl. People here — young, old, legal, illegal, and meth-addled — want a recovery, they want govt. spending, and they want their fair share of it. McCain can Twitter himself to death; his ideals hold little weight here where downtown is still mired in the ’70s, we are the nation’s #1 in school drop-outs, and it takes hours to drive to Phoenix on atrocious I10.
Finally, aside to Chascates, Cindy Lou doesn’t live in Arizona. She shows up here on occasion to dispense with official entertaining duties, but both before and since the campaign she lives in a mansion in Southern California. She and Walnuts have an understanding that works for them. It seems to involve her paying the bills and him letting her frolic. He doesn’t appear to mind pork if it comes in Neiman Marcus bags.
2druk2phluq: You’re too hard on yourself — I liked it. I do think McCain was a spoiled, entitled asshole before the Hanoi Hilton and is largely the same now. I think it was Rolling Stone that ran a pretty interesting bio during the race with that premise.
And his economic pronouncements are mystifying, especially in light of his admission that he doesn’t know (or even seem to care) much about the economy. Of course they’re probably faith-based, like all the other idjits who insist that tax cuts are the only way to counter the slowdown. Clear evidence of failure has no discernible effect on such thinking.
2druk2phluq: Yeah, what you said.
Jukesgrrl: Perhaps he could run for President of Panama.
http://www.nolanchart.com/article1582.html
JOHN MCCAIN IS A SECRET PANAMANIAN ISTHMUSIST!!
goldfishswirling: No pork for Björk? The Swedish Model looms (only it’s Icelandic, which figures).
Let’s all chip in and send Walnuts a subscription to the Bacon of the Month Club!
If McCain was serious about no earmarks, he should start with his own state delegation. Send a spending bill forward with no earmarks for Arizona, then start preaching.
I’ll never forget the time that McCain called the Tennessee Valley Authority “a bunch of goldarned pork,” and tipped over FDR’s elevated chair at the 1935 State of the Union address so that everyone could see that he was just a tiny little patrician cripple.
If John McCain couldn’t get 46% of America to vote for him then how is he going to get “everyone” to call on Obama to veto this budget.
McCain has sponsored pork for Arizona. If you asked him about what he defines as pork and he answered honestly he’d say “anything in a Democrat’s bill.” No way has he stayed in the senate this long without making deals to support other senators’ pork and by bringing home a little pork to Arizona. He is a big hypocritical pork butt himself.
Actually McCain makes it a principle that Arizona won’t suffer from wasteful federal spending; keeping funding for things like building roads, funding scientific research, or training people for jobs out of the hands of his constituents. Which is why most folks in Arizona think he is a dork.
GOLD PANNING? ROCK HOUND?
In the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, a “forfeiture” provision would let the government confiscate “all vehicles and equipment of any person” who disturbs a rock or a bone from federal land that meets the bill’s broad definition of “paleontological resource.” The seizures could take place even before a person and even if the person didn’t know they were taking or digging up a “paleontological resource.” And the bill specifically allows the “transfer of seized resources” to “federal or non-federal” institutions, giving the government and some private actors great incentive to egg on the takings.
(…)
Subtitle D of the bill called the “Paleontological Resources Preservation Act.” The provisions in this subtitle make it illegal to “excavate, remove, damage, or otherwise alter or deface or attempt to excavate, remove, damage, or otherwise alter or deface any paleontological resources located on Federal land” without special permission from the government.
A “paleontological resource” is broadly defined in the bill as “any fossilized remains, traces, or imprints of organisms, preserved in or on the earth’s crust, that are of paleontological interest and that provide information about the history of life on earth.” Penalities for violations include up to five years in jail, and, as previously stated, all vehicles and equipment “used in connection with the violation” are subject even before trial “to civil forfeiture, or upon conviction, to criminal forfeiture.”
Among the problems, critics explain, is that the language is so broad that merely picking up rocks under this bill could be found guilty of “excavating” or “removing” a “paleontological resource.” There are numerous rocks, stones, and other objects of nature that contain fossilized imprints and, in the bill’s language, “are of paleontological interest and that provide information about the history of life on earth.” In fact, it is likely the most rocks that people pick up would meet this definition.
So people from mining companies to amateur geologists known as “rockhounds” to children gathering stones on field trips could be at risk for unintentionally violating this bill should it become law. The law does purport to allow an exception for a “resonable amount” of “casual collecting,” but then practically negates that excepion by saying that the “reasonable amount” shall be enitirely “determined by the Secretary” of Interior or Agriculture.
DangerousLiberal: That kid’s never going to lose the big V, unless you mean Valedictory Honors, in which case, yeah, he’ll probably become a pot-smoking Phish Tour kid, which will be fun to watch. Phish is the worst band on Earth, also.
daisy chain: Phish totally sucks, but they’re back, either because of Trey’s legal bills or because he’s jonesin’ for that sweet, sweet China White. Also, http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30330