Obey Earmarking
Anyone else remember when Obey was decrying Republican use of special interest earmarks to buy votes and pay off lobbyists.
Guess what Dave Obey did in trying to get his Supplemental Appropriations bill passed - not tough to guess, he used earmarks.
Even $25 million for spinach farmers. What do spinach farmers and funding the ongoing War in Iraq have to do with each other? Answer: absolutely nothing unless you're either trying to buy votes or repay a lobbyist.
So which is it Dave, vote buying or special interest payoff (actually it's probably a combination of vote, the person(s) whose vote was bought is probably paying off a special interest lobby)?
Guess what Dave Obey did in trying to get his Supplemental Appropriations bill passed - not tough to guess, he used earmarks.
Even $25 million for spinach farmers. What do spinach farmers and funding the ongoing War in Iraq have to do with each other? Answer: absolutely nothing unless you're either trying to buy votes or repay a lobbyist.
So which is it Dave, vote buying or special interest payoff (actually it's probably a combination of vote, the person(s) whose vote was bought is probably paying off a special interest lobby)?
posted by ObeyOut2006 at 3:16 PM
1 Comments:
From OBEYOUT'S favorite paper, The MJS:
By Mike Nichols March 11, 2007
Is "Hell" A Cuss Word Anymore?
It's just where we're headed if people like Dave Obey can't be blunt without having to apologize .We beg and beg and clamor and pray for forthright politicians who will tell it like it is, say "no" to people's faces instead of acting like weasels and sycophants; and what happens when they do?
They get hoisted up onto "YouTube" and TV news runs a 10-second sound bite that makes them look crazy. They are labeled unhinged potty-mouths and forced to apologize for cussing or shouting in order to be heard.
Witness the overblown kerfuffle involving Congressman Dave Obey.
Obey has apologized for yelling at some anti-war activists the other day.
He was busted on tape saying "hell" three times, referring one time to "liberal idiots" and suggesting some guy trying to debate how we got out of Vietnam - something Obey knows a little about - was maybe "smoking something illegal."
His biggest sin, though: stopping in the first place.
Obey is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and he's a little busy right now trying to end a war. The woman who stopped him in a hallway, Tina Richards, at first only wanted to know whether he had seen a "poem" by her son, who served in Iraq.
A poem? What the hell do I know about a poem? is what you'd expect a busy person responsible for billions of dollars and on his way to a meeting to say.
Not Obey.
"I honestly don't know," he replied, sounding tired, as anti-war activists taped him. "I'm so buried in appropriations bills."
Richards went on to tell him that her son had tried to commit suicide and it took six months to get an appointment at the VA.
Obey, who is himself a liberal Democrat but is not Bill Clinton, didn't emote with a quivering lip. He did, however, talk in a reasonably empathetic voice until the Missouri woman changed the subject with a truly baffling question.
She asked if he was going to be voting "against the supplemental."
That's shorthand for the supplemental spending bill on Iraq.
"Absolutely not," he responded, pointing out a somewhat significant fact. "I am the sponsor of the supplemental."
"To continue the war?" asked Richards.
This is an irksome refrain for Obey, who has been targeted by anti-war protesters lately.
Obey, as he said to Richards, hates the war; voted against it to start with. Voting against the supplemental, he pointed out, though, would deny funding for things like body armor and veterans hospitals - which actually seems pretty germane to what she appeared concerned about in the first place.
Voting for it would set timetables for redeploying troops.
"We're trying to use the supplemental to end the war," Obey told Richards. "But you can't end the war if you vote against the supplemental. It's time these idiot liberals understand that."
Richards didn't like that. She later called Obey's mention of idiot liberals "really inappropriate."
Mark Jefferson, executive director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, then accused him of using "the worst cuss words in the book," and called him "Dirty Mouth Dave," which (I'll just apologize for this right now in order to expedite things) seemed even more idiotic.
I'm not even sure "hell" is a cuss anymore.
It's just where we're headed if people like Dave Obey can't be blunt without having to apologize.
Online at: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=575944
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