Just Read It

Matt Taibbi strikes again...

"In her runs for Congress, Bachmann discovered — or perhaps it is more accurate to say we all discovered — that a total absence of legislative accomplishment and a complete inability to tell the truth or even to identify objective reality are no longer hindrances to higher office."

From Minnesota to you: We're Sorry

At least, some of us are.

Michele Bachmann is running for fucking president

While this must be mercilessly mocked, it must also be steadfastly taken seriously. She was elected and re-elected, and we should have learned by now never to underestimate the vacuity, susceptibility, and short-term misguided thinking of the American voter.

Though this might be a good time for me to think about getting cable, just for Comedy Central.

Earmarks built my...

earmark: a provision in Congressional legislation that allocates a specified amount of money for a specific project, program, or organization.

National Writing Project, Reading is Fundamental Program, Center for Civic Education Programs, MN National Guard Counter-Drug Support program, Central Corridor Light Rail Program, Camp Riley Combined Arms Collective Training Facility, Upper Mississippi River System Program, National Rural Water Association, Northstar Commuter Rail Line, breast cancer research program, Lewis and Clark Rural Water System, Procurement Technical Assistance Centers, Ultra Light Utility Vehicles for the National Guard, MN National Guard Reintegration Program, Highway 14 construction projects, Hastings Bridge over the Mississippi, Aircraft deicing apron, Wind energy, waste water treatment, City of St. Paul to provide tutoring, mentoring and other educational programs and resources for after-school programs, Minnesota Humanities Center, St. Paul, MN for teacher professional development, which may include honoraria, Sheriffs Youth Programs of Minnesota to expand SYP's program for at-risk youth, Metropolitan State University, St Paul, MN, to expand nursing education, Olmsted County Community Services, to implement and sustain a performance based child protection system preventing child abuse and neglect, Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota, Credit Counseling Capacity Building, St. Paul, MN, fire trucks in Eagan, Children's Hospitals & Clinics, for equipment, City of St. Paul to replace the warning siren system that is used to warn the public about tornadoes, terrorism, and hazardous material emergencies...

To name just a few things, in the state of Minnesota, in the past three years. Every state has them; every state gets them; they are sponsored by republicans and democrats, and they are often how we pay for things as a government and a people. Are there bad earmarks? Probably. Just like how the majority of people are good, with a few bad ones. Stuff that's bad stands out. Good stuff doesn't. Good stuff just is, and we rely on it. It does not make news when a bridge doesn't fall down, every day, all over the country.

Mostly, earmarks are only bad when the other guy gets them or when they don't make sense to us, on the surface. That fruit fly research sounded ridiculous, until we found out that it could lead to new understanding in the root of autism spectrum disorders.

This seems like another non-issue, like voter fraud. It certainly is not going to make or break the budget or the deficit. After all, earmarks don't change the amount of money spent or appropriated, they direct it to certain projects, institutions, or organizations. But like every other non-issue, it will get people whipped up into a frenzy, even as they cut themselves off at the ankles.

Famously, the republicans in the Minnesota Congressional Delegation undertook a moratorium on earmarks last year, leaving the democrats to request funds for the republican districts, as was the case when Congresswoman McCollum submitted requests for Congressman John Kline's district. Did you know that, 2nd District?

This is what people don't get: earmarks do things. They build things. They put people to work. They retrain people. They help soldiers re-enter society. They support our teachers, our firemen and women, our police. When a representative declines an earmark or does not request one, in the name of political grandstanding, that individual is doing no harm to him or herself, but does harm constituents. The brilliant thing in the rhetoric is that the constituents don't even have to know.

Now, Congresswoman Bachmann wants to redefine earmarks to not include transportation projects, so she can ask for funding for her district, and not be asking for earmarks.

I see.

Now that you have the ball, the goalposts are over there.

Black Hole of Stupid

Minnesota has a grand tradition of intelligent, thoughtful politicians. Eugene McCarthy, Elmer Anderson, Hubert Humphrey, Paul Wellstone, and Walter Mondale leap to mind. We have a lot to be proud of.

It's something we have to remember on a day like today, when Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty, two of our less-than-thoughtful politicians, gather with celebrity Sarah Palin and talking head Sean Hannity in downtown Minneapolis for a rally and fundraiser. I am uncertain if the time-space continuum can handle the weight of the white hot rhetoric that will erupt from the convention center. Certainly, the fabric of fact-based knowledge has already been fraying and is in danger of being reduced to dust by the claims of the Teabaggers and the far right, and an event such as this might just do us all in, leaving the entire populace of Minnesota as jibbering, paranoid idiots, convinced that census takers are going to show up at our homes, make us gay marry, go through our wallets, and tell our children to eat their vegetables or Czar Obama will put them into an interment camp where they will have to pray to Mecca five times a day.

Did I miss anything?

The woman who is running against Michele Bachmann, Tarryl Clark, has a site set up where you can make a photo of yourself with the Dynamic Duo. They call it the 10,000 dollar photo because that reputedly what it will cost to have yourself photographed with these two women, which is certainly money well spent.

 babywhumpus isn't too happy about it.

Later, if my stomach can handle it, I will try to write about the sad and sorry state of women in politics.

Atheist Crusade

OK, I skipped this over yesterday because Ms. Bachmann exhausts me, but it popped up again today in my news searches, and now, exhausted, I guess I'll say something.

41 representatives and 3 senators want a lawsuit stopped. In July, The Freedom From Religion Foundation filed that lawsuit because in that same month, the House and Senate decided that it would be a good idea to have "In God We Trust" and "one nation under God" engraved in the Capitol Visitor Center.

Now, the American Center for Law and Justice says that lawsuit is a "crusade" that "serves no purpose other than to waste judicial resources at a time in our Nation’s history when those resources are needed in cases involving real threats to American liberties."

I am too tired to say anything other than Who is wasting what time now?