HYPOCRISY ALERT: House Teabaggers Want Earmarks Back

Jay Sherman and Jonathan Allen report at Politico:
Hypocrisy alert: House Republican freshmen are begging their leaders to bring back a certain type of earmark so that they can help companies back home in an election year.

In a letter to Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, 65 House Republican freshmen — or roughly three-quarters of the class — asked that the House consider a miscellaneous tariff bill jampacked with special provisions to suspend duties on various foreign goods, even though it runs counter to the earmark ban Republicans campaigned on in 2010 and instituted when they took power.

The push is a sign that freshmen who arrived in Washington talking up their anti-pork principles are now worried about what — if anything — they’ll have to show constituents when they hit the campaign trail. And, in typical Washington fashion, they think they’ve found a loophole that will get them past the ban... >more

Gingrich Campaign Jumps Shark With New TV Spot

"Last Conservative Standing" campaign ad is video equivalent of gory highway accident that you can't help slowing down to take a look at



Honestly, we really really couldn't take our eyes off this. We had misgivings and hesitated to play it at first, but once it started rolling, we were spellbound with a perverse awe. If we could establish a George Hutchins Award for wretched, smarmy campaign advertising, we'd give the inaugural award to this ad. It's got everything and then some, and the music -- oh, that beat-to-death treacly piano music -- really ties it all together.

It's stuff like this that made us abandon all hope for this country, and to dedicate ourselves to doing whatever small things we could do, ourselves, to speed its collapse. C'mon, just look at this motley trash: you've got your frat bro making little flourishing gestures he learned from watching pundits on TV; you've got your pasty fat soccer mom; you've got your grumbly-voiced Teabagger posing in front of the flag on his lawn; you've got your College Republican groupie chick; you've got your doughy teenaged brat camped in his bedroom, slouched in the glow of a monitor; basically, you've got the Real America -- not the loving, diverse, rainbow-hued I Too Sing America of addled Liberal fantasies, but the real, honest-to-Dog, SUV-driving, KFC-fattened, Our Troops-supporting, torture-loving, yellow ribbon-encrusted, rock-stupid Real Goddamn' America. Tough shit, Liberals; this is the way it is.

Teabagger Of The Day

Arizona Crank Nabs First Award Of '12 "Election" Season


Axel Grease reports at Mock, Paper, Scissors:
You can rest assured that between now and November our amigos from the Nestea-set will say, enact, produce, legislate and just fart out some of the most insane and ridiculous stuff since Mitt Romney added an elevator for his wife’s 378 Cadillacs.

Today’s Winner – Arizona State Senator Judy Burges, a Republican (what else!) from Skull Valley, AZ!

Ms. (a term I use loosely) Burges is pushing a bill in Arizona (which is quickly surpassing Oklahoma as the state with the most insane and fascist legislators) that will “wipe out any environmental program administered or funded by the government to prevent social engineering … including where we live, what we eat.” ...more