I Will Do Maureen Dowd’s Job Today
What turns off voters is the detached egghead quality that they tend to equate with a wimpiness, wordiness and a lack of action — the same quality that got the professorial and superior Adlai Stevenson mocked by critics as Adelaide. The new attack line for Obama rivals is that he’s gone from J.F.K. to Dukakis. (Just as Dukakis chatted about Belgian endive, Obama chatted about Whole Foods arugula in Iowa.)(N.B. with fucking arugula farmers he did, you insufferably shallow superannuated cheerleader. Feh.)
Maureen’s problem is that she only knows two or three stories, and so everything she encounters has to be wedged into one of those narratives. She’s pulling out her unused Gore bon mots on Obama, but when the hell is she going to get to use the metric ton of bile she’s got saved up for Hillary? Huh? You Obama supporters didn’t think of that, did you? Is she bitter? Oh, a tad.
Maureen was duly mocked for her bullshit, but it looks like she hasn’t learned: in fact I think she’s at it again:
he’s truly mad that trusts in the promise of a presidential candidate to quell earmarks…
Before the Senate resoundingly defeated a McCain amendment on Tuesday that would have shorn 9,000 earmarks worth $7.7 billion from the $410 billion spending bill, the Arizona senator twittered lists of offensive bipartisan pork, including:
• $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….
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.
Today, in my free time, I will attempt to do as much of Maureen Dowd’s job as I can: I will call as many of these places and ask why they need this money. I’ll bet almost all of them have some actual important reasons for needing these funds, just like the fake controversy over fruit fly research. I’ll try to update throughout the day.
