Increasingly irritated with the coverage of the electoral campaign, I nevertheless resigned myself to watching yet another McCain/Palin stump speech in rural Virginia today where Palin railed against the undue lipstick-related sexism being thrown her way and underlined her and McCain’s stance on earmark spending, otherwise known as pork barrel spending.
The irony.
Today Palin repeated the lie that’s dominated the McCain campaign for the last two weeks.
I championed earmark reform also to help Congress stop wasting money on those things that do not serve the public interest. I told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks for that Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska.” If we wanted that bridge, we’d build it ourselves.
Which sounds great. Except she omits the fact that the Gravina Island Bridge, while never built, still allowed the $223 million earmarked for the bridge to be used for other projects in the state of Alaska. Moreover, Palin endorsed the project while running for governor in 2006, claimed to be an opponent only after Congress killed its funding, and still, I repeat, took the $233 million.
The small picture is this:
I think the Republican preoccupation with earmark reform reveals a truly bizarre view of what is wrong with the federal government and how its dysfunction might best be fixed, as if pork-barrel spending were the main problem with Republican governance over the last decade. Still, this is the field where McCain and Palin have chosen to fight, and this is what they are choosing to lie about, so it seems fair that they pay some political price for that.
Agreed. When McCain/Palin propose and defend some Ponzi scheme to bolster the “fundamentally sound” American economy, I do think they ought to pay some political price for it. And consider, the even bigger picture is this:
The total national debt, as I write this, is $9,679,000,000,000.00 (nine and a half trillion).
The Budget for 2008 is close to $3,000,000,000,000.00 (three trillion).
Our budget deficit for this year is going to range in between $400-500,000,000,000.00 (four hundred to five hundred billion, give or take a few billion).
The total value of wasteful earmarks in 2008 (according to CAGW) will be approximately $18,000,000,000.00 (eighteen billion).
In other words, when McCain talks about earmarks, he is talking about 3% of our annual budget deficit, .6% of our annual budget, and a number too small to even report when discussing our national debt. Or, put another way, he is talking about two months in Iraq, something he wants to keep going indefinitely.
Which illustrates quite well that when McCain takes us seriously and discusses actual issues, not diatribes in some idiotic culture war, he still can’t take us seriously.
That is lipstick on a pig.
And I do believe this type of shit is exactly what Obama was referring to with his comment!
Very well put. I don’t have much else to say because this whole campaign and the Palin choice is making me so sick, its just driving me more into my work.
I honestly can’t express how much I hate this story. I know people like to famously whine “I’m going to move out of the COUNTRY if so-and-so gets elected!” And I always laughed at those people. But… I’m kinda looking at the UK jobs my company has. I know, I’ll probably never actually do it. But damn. I hate Sarah Palin and I hate that stupid drummed-up sexism allegations are obscuring the real feminist issues in this campaign.
And I hate John McCain and don’t want to hear another fucking word about his soldier’s honor.
Mary, did you hear? McCain was also a POW.
Hee. Where’s that BREAKING NEWS graphic when you need it?
ROFL! :D
When did american politics devolve to the point that outright, intentional lying became acceptable? Maybe its always been this way and I haven’t noticed.
This is beyond spin. At least spin has to have some kernel of truth underpinning it.
Great post. You might also be interested in this clip with Stephanie Cutter discussing McCain’s hypocrisy on women: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ3A3FuaI-E
@Peter: american politics became irrelevant when the NSA was created. This is just a big show to spend all of our extra energy on. It’s kind of like running your kid around in the daytime so he sleeps soundly at night. Most people won’t figure that out, but if a few do, most other people won’t listen. Our shamocracy is a lipsticked pig, all dressed up in human clothes. It’s a spectacle, and nothing more.
For years I listened to the Republi-Nazis and their chorus of right wing propaganda whores rail about liberal political correctness.
In reality these big tough macho bullies are nothing but a bunch of drug addicted whiny lying wimps. Oh, oh the liberals said something we can twist and make it sound like they said something nasty. Oh Mommy, oh mommy.
Reality bites and Republi-Nazis are the main PC freaks
I have outrage fatigue. I didn’t sleep well last night because I can’t get this 2004-style Rovian nonsense out of my head.
There are clips on YouTube of John McCain using the phrase “lipstick on a pig” himself. It just boggles the mind. It would be painful for me to try to contort myself into such a ridiculous position: pretending to not understand a phrase that I have used many times, and feigning outrage over it. Even Megan McCain admits that she’s heard her dad use the phrase before. I was reading Townhall and a bunch of writers there think this whole mess is a bunch of bullshit, too. I know it’s been all over the news but in reality, I don’t think people are buying it. I think people are tired of these goddamn manufactured scandals.
When Mitt Romney comes to Barack Obama’s defense, I think it should be pretty clear to everyone that the McCain campaign has blown this totally out of proportion.
Manda — Mitt Romney? I heard that Mike Huckabee came to Obama’s defense! Did they both defend him over this bullshit? Because if that’s the case, I just might die in a fit of laughter over how fail McCain and his scandals are.
Sorry, Cara, you are correct – it was Huckabee. For me, all the big name Republicans have just gotten jumbled together into one big ball of stupid. Pretty soon I’ll be confusing John McCain and George W. Bush…. not that it would be so off base to do so.
… but Romney has been quoted multiple times as using the phrase.
DAMN. I was really hoping it was both of them ;)
McCain doesn’t understand economics. He’s only been in Congress for thirty-odd years, so I’m sure he’ll start boning up any day now. The only thing he understands is his particular morality–service (undefined) good; earmarks bad. Earmarks actually are bad, and I wouldn’t mind if Pelosi and Reid killed them, but that’s not a real economic policy. That this guy was deemed acceptable to the wingnuts means they’ve pretty much given up the ghost on being “fiscal conservatives.” That was always the way to bet, but it’s nice to see them admit it.