Kennedy and Kerry and Stevens and earmarks

[question everything]

From CNN Situation Room from yesterday

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The people's trust in their government is undermined by congressional earmarks.

GRIFFIN: The problem is the government. And most in this room last night are also addicted to earmarks. These are the people that brought you 11,700 earmarks in this spending cycle. And this is the president who signed them all into law. The president's threat to veto spending bills packed with pork and his executive order to ignore other earmark requests only applies to next year. This year's nearly $17 billion in earmarks are a done deal.

Like what? Airports were big this year, just not big airports. The two senators from Massachusetts got about $8 million in upgrades for the small airports near their vacation hopes on Cape Cod and Nantucket. Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who didn't get his "bridge to nowhere," did get an airport in nowhere. Actually, Akutan, Alaska, the site of a major seafood processing plant whose owner gives money to Senator Stevens' campaign. There's money for a museum run by a congressman's wife. There's money for a museum for a mule. There's money for a museum shuttered all but two days a year.

(snip)

GRIFFIN: And Wolf, the watchdog groups I've been talking with today say all the president's really doing is kicking this can down the road. Democrats can literally just stall next year's spending bill until Bush is out of office. And keep in mind, Wolf, even though the Republicans were standing up and cheering last night, as Ed Henry already reported, they are just as addicted to these earmarks as any Democrat in that chamber who didn't stand up and applaud.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0801/29/sitroom.01.html

[ursi]

1. I laughed my arse off when I found out about Ron Paul's pork for Texas

what a conservative!