Cats and Dogs Living Together (Unifying Contempt for Don Young Edition)

If you thought a meeting of minds between Pat Robertson and Hugo Chávez was weird, how about new BFF Daily Kos and The Club for Growth teaming up to condemn the defeat of the Coburn Amendment, which would have paid for post-Katrina reconstruction by scrapping pork such as Rep. Don Young's (R-Alaska) infamous bridge to nowhere. Kos calls the 82-15 smackdown of this minimal act of fiscal responsibility "unconscionable."

Comments

[scape]

Kos calls the 82-15 smackdown of this minimal act of fiscal responsibility "unconscionable."

"Unconscionable": otherwise known as "politics as usual".

[jf]

Funny how the Kossacks have (like so many other lefty blogs) an ad pimping Sherrod Brown's campaign, even though I can guarantee that he'd have voted no (he's my Congressman, and I despise him). He's running against Mike DeWine (who I can't say I much care for, either), who voted no.

If this issue means that much to Kos, I'm sure that Sherrod Brown ad will be coming down real soon.

[Tom Crick]

Why does eighty-two percent of the Senate hate the American taxpayer?

[jf]

Argh, DeWine voted YES. Stupid stupid me. The rest of the post still applies, although it reads better had I gotten DeWine's vote right.

[Shem]

"We must find a way to meet the inevitable needs that will arise after future disasters," he said. "We cannot continue deficit spending."

-Rep. Don Young

I picked the wrong week to quit huffing glue, that's for damn sure.

[Johnny Clarke]

Ah, republicans. Just as soon as they got their fat hands on the taxpayer credit card they were burning plastic like a teenage girl at the mall. So...who's going to pay for all this? But hey, bush never raised taxes so that means something, right?

[Larry Edelstein]

Stopped clocks, twice a day.

[scape]

Congressional Philosophy: The right to rebuild your city ends where my bridge begins.

[Jason Ligon]

There is no hope. The bridge is politically meaningless at the national level. It doesn't have a huge constituency. It doesn't have a PAC dedicated to its preservation.

Near unanimous approval from both sides. It is just depressing.

[joe]

What's a BFF?

[Jason Ligon]

joe:

Best Friends Forever. It's a Southpark reference. When Kenny was put in a Schiavo like state, Cartman went to the Supreme Court and argued for Kenny's right to die. He was not family, but he was a BFF, and as we all know, that trumps everything.

[Phil]

Best Friends Forever.

[Adam]

BFF = best friends forever

[Jason]

This tops it all - from CongressDaily:

"But it was Stevens who brought the most emotion to the debate, railing in heated and boisterous floor speeches against the amendment. The Alaskan who is also a former Appropriations Committee chairman, threatened to filibuster the spending bill and resign from the Senate.
?????'This is not the Senate I've devoted 37 years to," Stevens said. "This is the first time I have seen any attempt of any senator to treat my state in a way different from any other state. It will not happen. It will not happen.'
?????Stevens, who turns 82 next month, warned that he would filibuster the bill for days, even at the expense of his health.
?????'The amendment may pass, but if it does, the bill will never pass. If it does, I'll be taken out of here on a stretcher," he said. Earlier he stated: "Praise God I have the energy to do what I may have to do to prove to the senator from Oklahoma I mean what I say.'

...

"Stevens and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, defended the bridges as vital to the local economies. Since Alaska has a high concentration of wilderness and other protected areas that can be difficult to traverse, the bridges are needed 'to tie together two areas inaccessible otherwise,' Stevens said.
?????Coburn had earlier countered that people can take a seven-minute ferry ride between Ketchikan and Gravina every 15 to 30 minutes and that the money used to pay for that bridge could buy all residents of Gravina Island their own Lear jets."

[R C Dean]

Argh, DeWine voted YES.

Which makes Kos running ads for his opponent even worse, no?

'The amendment may pass, but if it does, the bill will never pass. If it does, I'll be taken out of here on a stretcher,"

Sadly, this was too good to be true.

[linguist]

Argh, DeWine voted YES.

Why don't you like DeWine? I haven't lived in Ohio for a few years so I don't know if he's done something awful, but he always seemed to me to be one of a very few people who are actually trying to do good. (Just look at him! He's a NERD!)

BFF = Best Friends Forever...not originating with South Park, though. While you little boys were playing with your Tonka trucks or whatever, girls in elementary school in the '80s actually wrote notes to one another with "BFF" all over them. Sometimes, we'd write it on our hands, after we traded little braided bracelets. I think South Park was making FUN of this stuff 🙂

[crimethink]

Well, it looks like Sen Stevens, like the President, isn't above taking the Lord's name in vain. Disgusting.

As if this fucking bridge is an integral part of God's will.

[Hakluyt]

crimethink,

Doesn't your God work through history?

[God]

Look, I get seasick, and so I don't like ferry rides, allright? If I just pop the bridge into existence, it's gonna confuse everyone, so I'll let Ted do My work for Me.

[joe]

"Which makes Kos running ads for his opponent even worse, no?"

RC, didn't you used to write lengthy posts about not being a one issue voter when people pointed out that Kerry was more fiscally conservative than Bush?

[thoreau]

There is no hope. The bridge is politically meaningless at the national level. It doesn't have a huge constituency. It doesn't have a PAC dedicated to its preservation.

Jason-

I think the reason why Congress will defend the bridge is that "First they came for Don Young's pork, but I didn't represent Alaska so I said nothing. Then they came for Robert Byrd's pork, but I didn't represent West Virginia, so I said nothing. Then they came for my pork, and there was nobody left to defend me and as a result I lost my re-election bid."

[Hakluyt]

thoreau,

Well, more to the point, deals have been struck and minus Young's own personal say-so, those deals would unravel if Young's pork was taken out. So, yes, there may be some future-looking component to this, but its the here and now of currently operating deals that is likely more important.

[B.P.]

Cranky, old, free-spending, obstructionist legislators threatening to die of fillibuster? Wow, this coulda been a great two-fer.

[ChrisO]

Funny, when it's a stupid spending proposal in a rural nowheresville, lefties go all fiscally conservative, but when it's a stupid spending proposal to benefit their pet urban constituencies, the lefties get all blubbery and accuse those opposed of being heartless racists.

Since Kos is now on record as opposing wasteful federal spending, I'm sure he'd have no problem supporting a bill to eliminate the departments of Commerce, Education, and Energy. 🙂

[R C Dean]

RC, didn't you used to write lengthy posts about not being a one issue voter when people pointed out that Kerry was more fiscally conservative than Bush?.

Not that I recall, no. Of course, I don't really believe Kerry is more fiscally responsible than Bush, unless you equate "fiscal responsibility" with raising taxes rather than cutting spending.

[rationalvoice]

Brown is spending money advertising and trying to get blog grassroots support. that doesn't mean most readers and commenters at Daily Kos support him. Paul Hackett a Marine and Iraq war veteran, NRA member, calling for US withdrawal from Iraq has more support at his site and across the blogs than Brown.

[joe]

"Funny, when it's a stupid spending proposal in a rural nowheresville, lefties go all fiscally conservative, but when it's a stupid spending proposal to benefit their pet urban constituencies, the lefties get all blubbery and accuse those opposed of being heartless racists."

I like the way you don't have to actually know anything about any of the projects to make this argument. $300 million bridge to an island with 50 people living on it, mass transit expansion on Manhattan Island - hey, one's in a rural area and one helps those urban types, and that's all you need to know. Typical porker mentality.

[Hakluyt]

joe,

Maybe if the "Big Dig" had been under-budget, uncorrupted, lacking in all manner of cronyism, etc. we could take you seriously. 🙂

[ChrisO]

I like the way you don't have to actually know anything about any of the projects to make this argument. $300 million bridge to an island with 50 people living on it, mass transit expansion on Manhattan Island - hey, one's in a rural area and one helps those urban types, and that's all you need to know. Typical porker mentality.

Umm, Joe, I was writing generally there, rather than in reference to any specific project. In no way do I support the Bridge to Nowhere (great song title, BTW). I would argue that it is no more or less egregious than most of the other domestic-spending crap that the feds do, a large percentage of which lefties seem to support.

Pork, almost by definition, is supported by the locals for whom it is appropriated. People in Wyoming shouldn't be paying for Manhattan mass transit anymore than Manhattanites should be paying for a bridge in remote Alaska.

Moreover, my point didn't concern simply "pork" as it is traditionally defined. Redistributionist welfare payments are really nothing more than a non-geographic form of pork, as are various corporate subsidies. As I see it, the evolution of the 'modern left' (stated rudely and with some exaggeration) is from "any and all domestic govt. spending is good" to "any and all domestic spending that benefits my specific coalition members is good, and anything else is either pork or heartless racism." In that, the left has begun to approach the idiocy of the modern right, for which fiscal conservatism no longer exists. Some choice there, eh?

[Lowdog]

Where can we see who voted yea or nay?

[Hakluyt]

Lowdog,

Here: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00262

[Lowdog]

Thank you, Hakluyt.

At least I had one rep vote yea.

[Hakluyt]

Lowdog,

Yes, my state state was one for two as well. I just sent an e-mail of thanks to Sen. Burr, and I will soon be sending an less friendly e-mail to Sen. Dole.

[Hakluyt]

"Certainly, it was not out of suspicion of bribery and corruption that they required all such petitioners for their favour to appear ungirt and open, without any close garment; as it was much later, and many ages after this, that buying and selling crept in at their elections, and money became an ingredient in the public suffrages; proceeding thence to attempt their tribunals, and even attack their camps, till, by hiring the valiant, and enslaving iron to silver, it grew master of the state, and turned their commonwealth into a monarchy." - Plutarch - http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/coriolan.html

Oh gaius marius, where are you? 🙂

[trotsky]

Coburn's an interesting character. I read this via Scripps Howard News Service:

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., astonished his colleagues by telling George Washington University College Republicans that the outcome of the 2006 elections doesn?t matter. ?It?s OK if the Republicans lose control. . . . In the long run . . . one (election) cycle won?t make a difference, two cycles won?t make a difference.??

[Handsome Dan]

Stevens, who turns 82 next month, warned that he would filibuster the bill for days, even at the expense of his health.
?????'The amendment may pass, but if it does, the bill will never pass. If it does, I'll be taken out of here on a stretcher," he said.

Aw, MAN. Not only was the bill wasn't worth voting for on its own merits, but we could've been treated to the sight of one of these numbskulls actually falling on their sword for the cause of the Glorious Bridge to Nowhere! Way to go, Senate...

By the way, does anyone out there know if this has actually ever happened? Is the MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON scenario - someone yaps and yaps for hours and even days straight, pausing only to collapse in a lifeless heap - destined to remain the stuff of legend?

[Britton]

Nice to see both my AZ senators voted to kill that bridge.

[Lowdog]

Britton - actually, McCain abstained...so only Kyl voted yea.

Just goes to show where McCain's coming from...ie gutless.

Hakluyt - I'm waiting for my response from my Congressman, JD Hayworth after I bitched to him about something a couple of weeks ago. I can't remember what the issue was now, but I said something about fiscal conservatives, and then threw in the shot that it was too bad that I had to preface "conservative" with "fiscal". I enjoy reading their stupid responses.

Although whenever I've written Jeff Flake, he's always been pretty cool and reasoned in his responses, even when I'm not in his district.

[Maurkov]

Tom Crick at October 20, 2005 11:20 PM,

Fleas do not hate the dog; You're asking the wrong question.

[Ted]

Trotsky --

Coburn's best quote is still this one:
"Lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that's happened to us?"

[crimethink]

Hakluyt,

Yes, God does work through history, but that doesn't mean that anyone who makes history can claim to be serving God's will. As far as morality goes, it is intention that matters, so just because one's evil deeds are twisted to serve God's purpose, does not make one right with God.

But in any case, what pissed me off about his statement was the false piety bordering on blasphemy. Like the Pharisee in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, he inserts an empty "praise God" into what is really a praise of himself, and then attempts to link God to his porkiferous ways.

[lee]

Lowdog, do you actually think your letter is read much less answered by your Represenative HIMSELF!?! Perhaps some lowly minion in his office!