The US government defunds ACORN, but not Blackwater. I guess that’s what ACORN gets for helping brown people instead of killing them.

The most successful socialist institution in history is the NFL: revenue sharing, a salary cap, and the worst team gets the first round draft pick.

(Posted without comment since I know exactly two things about the NFL: jack and shit.)

I managed to find a copy online. Click here to see it.

One of the most pervasive lies Republicans have told (and had perpetuated by their friends in the media) about Obama’s stimulus bill is that it contains an earmark for a high-speed rail between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. This is simply false, and they know it’s false, hence my use of the word “lie.”

The lie itself has even morphed into several new versions, including the latest by Fox News’ Megyn Kelly: “It’s a super railroad, of sorts — a line that will deliver customers straight from Disney…to the doorstep of the Moonlight Bunny Ranch brothel in Nevada.”

Pure. Unpasteurized. Straight-from-the-tap. Bullshit.

And Republicans have been plugging this bullshit for weeks. Ostensibly, they’re doing it to criticize what they view as “pork” in the stimulus bill. If there really is pork in the bill, why not simply point to it instead of making up lies about nonexistent trains from Disney to a brothel? The text of the stimulus bill is available online. Show us, page and paragraph, these alleged pork provisions. Show us the earmarks for this train from Disney to a brothel…for Nancy Pelosi’s marsh mouse…for ACORN.

They can’t. Because it ain’t there.

Here’s the kicker. Louisiana’s Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, the Mr. Rogers of the GOP, has bellyached about pork (of the train, and non-train variety) several times on TV in the last week or so. In fact, in delivering the Republican response to Obama’s address to Congress, Jindal had this to say:

While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes … $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a ‘magnetic levitation’ line from Las Vegas to Disneyland.

OOPS!

Louisiana’s transportation department plans to request federal dollars for a New Orleans to Baton Rouge passenger rail service…The high-speed rail line, a topic of discussion for years, would require $110 million to upgrade existing freight lines and terminals to handle a passenger train operation, said Mark Lambert, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.

This is Jindal’s own state of Louisiana we’re talking about here.

Classic. Just fucking classic.

6 of the top 10, 3 of the top 5, and 2 of the top 3 earmark recipients in the FY2009 budget omnibus bill are Republicans.

Combined, the top Republican earmarkers (those in the top 10) total over $454-million, compared to about $313-million for the Democratic earmarks.

Silly me, I thought all Republicans thought earmarks were bad.

link

Bob Cesca asks a very good question:

There isn’t any mention of a high-speed rail project connecting Disneyland and Vegas in the recovery bill. Nothing. The Republicans made it up. We seriously have to ask at this point: have the Republicans said anything that’s actually truthful?

Just off the top of my head, I can think of three Republican talking-points about the stimulus bill:

1. money for a high-speed rail project between LA and Las Vegas
2. money for an endangered mouse in San Francisco, and
3. money earmarked for ACORN

None of those things appear in the bill. They are all lies perpetuated by members of the Republican Party and their friends in the media.

Makes me wonder…what else have they lied about?

I find it amazing that Republicans, who doubled the debt of the country in eight years and produced no new jobs doing it — gave us an economic record that is totally bereft of any productive result — are now criticizing [Obama] for spending money. … This stimulus is our bridge over troubled waters. He did the right thing.

- Bill Clinton

link

I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax.

John Cole at Balloon Juice, referring to a budget stimulus discussion between conservative blogger Instapundit, uber-wingnut Michelle Malkin, and Joe “Are my 15 minutes up yet?” Wurzelbacher (aka, NOT Joe the NOT Plumber).

…imagine the reaction if Rhandi Rhodes was penning editorials in the NY Times dictating the course of policy for the Democrats, and the Democrats were embracing her pearls of wisdom. I can’t believe the Republicans are going to gamble their future [on Limbaugh] like this, but then again, nothing they do surprises me.

Balloon Juice

This is interesting as well:

BTW- the best part of the Limbaugh stimulus is that he supports a 900 billion dollar stimulus, so I expect that means he will shut up about the size and cost of the bill, as it is clear that he doesn’t care that it costs that much, but what bothers him is that his share isn’t big enough.

Ken Starr’s Clinton/Lewinsky investigation divided the country, took several years and cost millions of taxpayer dollars.

But we’re being told that an investigation into the Bush administration’s torture policies (you know, where actual laws were broken) would be “too partisan,” “take too long,” and “cost too much.”

Now, I know the country is in a financial bind right now; we clearly aren’t as well-off as we were during Clinton’s term (*sigh*). But surely an issue as important as the torture of another human being by agents of the United States merits at least a look-see.