What did they THINK they were voting for?

Funny how government programs look mighty good when it's YOUR programs that are being cut:

Across the country, local governments, nonprofit groups and scores of farmers, to name but a few, are waking up to the fact that when Congress stamped out earmarks last week, it was talking about their projects, too.

Tensions are particularly acute in districts where new conservative lawmakers, many of whom criticized throughout their campaigns the practice of quietly inserting earmarks into spending bills, are coming face to face with local governments and interest groups who were counting on federal dollars to help shore up their own collapsing budgets.

The issue is hardly limited to Republican districts. Democrats, led by President Obama — who recently said earmarks were a bad thing — also agreed to give up the practice. Last week, Senator Daniel K. Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee who has long cherished earmarks, announced that they would be banned from this year’s appropriations bills. But he was not happy about it.

“The reality,” Mr. Inouye said, “is that critical needs in communities throughout the country will be neglected: roads and bridges in disrepair, job training programs shuttered, and vital resources for national defense and law enforcement cut off, to name just a few.”

Many citizens, even those who sympathize with cuts in spending, insist that not all pork is cured with the same untoward salt. “I do agree we have to cut from somewhere,” said Steve Tribble, the county judge executive of Christian County in Kentucky, where a planned road project is now imperiled. “I am against some earmarks,” he said. “Not the good ones. I can promise you this is not a road to nowhere.”

Why doesn't Steve Tribble come out and admit that HIS area's spending is good, it's all that OTHER spending in OTHER areas that's bad.

These Tea Party morons have been handed the keys to half the government and they haven't got a freaking clue how things really work. It's idiots who scream about government spending and then fuss when their local program is cut. It's people screaming about keeping the government's hands off their Medicare. It's uninsured people who are opposed to universal coverage. They voted for deficit hawks, and now that they have 'em, they're complaining about cuts.

I have no sympathy for them. They voted for this, let them live with it. It's just a shame that those of us who can put two ideas together have to live with it too.

Let's not hear any more about fiscally responsible Republicans, shall we?

Republicans always like to talk about how they are the party of fiscal responsibility, and how opposed they are to earmarks. Perhaps, then, one of them would like to explain how holding up the President's nominations until you get the earmarks you want is fiscal conservatism:

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary "blanket hold" on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

"While holds are frequent," CongressDaily's Dan Friedman and Megan Scully report (sub. req.), "Senate aides said a blanket hold represents a far more aggressive use of the power than is normal."

The Mobile Press-Register picked up the story early this afternoon. The paper confirmed Reid's account of the hold, and reported that a Shelby spokesperson "did not immediately respond to phone and e-mail messages seeking confirmation of the senator's action or his reason for doing so."

Shelby has been tight-lipped about the holds, offering only an unnamed spokesperson to reporters today to explain them. Aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid broke the news of the blanket hold this afternoon. Reid aides told CongressDaily the hold extends to "all executive nominations on the Senate calendar."

According to the report, Shelby is holding Obama's nominees hostage until a pair of lucrative programs that would send billions in taxpayer dollars to his home state get back on track. The two programs Shelby wants to move forward or else:

- A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: "Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals." Federal Times offers more details on the tanker deal, and also confirms its connection to the hold.

- An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: "[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won't build" the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based "at the Army's Redstone Arsenal."

Though a Shelby spokesperson would not confirm that these programs were behind the blanket hold, the Senator expressed his frustration about the progress on both through a spokesperson to both CongressDaily and the Federal Times.

A San Diego State University professor and Congressional expert told the Mobile paper "he knew of no previous use of a blanket hold" in recent history.

I guess a corollary of the IOKIYAR rule is "It's not an earmark, it's a vital program, if you're a Republican."

When your governor takes it, it's pork. When Bobby Jindal takes it, it's a necessary program

And when Bobby Jindal opens his mouth, hypocritical horseshit comes out:

The morning after listening to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's rebuttal speech, where he railed against a stimulus package "larded with wasteful spending," to the president's state of the nation address, I walked into the office and sent out a Tweet:

"Did anyone else think Gov. Bobby Jindal sounded like a cross between Mr. Rogers and a used car salesman in his rebuttal to Obama's speech?"

The more I learn about this new Republican savior, the more he sounds like a used car salesman.

It was no surprise when Jindal went off on the supposed earmarks in the stimulus package. Many have written about the lies that Jindal repeated about supposed stimulus pork, which ran the gamut all the way from miserly mice to voracious volcanoes. But it turns out he was being disingenuous and hypocritical at the same time.

In fiscal year 2008, his last hurrah as a U.S. congressman representing Louisiana before taking over the governor's mansion, Jindal scored big in the pork contest. He, sometimes in concert with other lawmakers, ended up bringing home $97,913,200 in bacon. That put him at the number 14 spot in Taxpayers for Common Sense's annual tally of the most successful appropriators in the House.

Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, told me that Jindal has every right to change his mind about earmarks now, but "facts are facts."

"He definitely did well... in the House," said Ellis. "Clearly he was not concerned about the earmark process, or not concerned enough to say 'no' at that point."

Ellis also pointed out that Jindal's place on the list is more significant than some others.

"There's only one other lawmaker that's ahead of him that wasn't on the appropriations committee," Ellis said.

That didn't seem to be weighing on Jindal during his prime-time speech.

Hypocrisy seems to be the name of the game among the so-called rising stars in the Republican Party. From Sarah Palin's family values/unwed pregnant teenager dichotomy and her own lies about the "bridge to nowhere" to Bobby Jindal's love of earmarks for his own state, these prospective 2012 candidates are only arguably good at talking the talk, but they sure as hell don't walk the walk.