So, I'm a die-hard Democrat, but (oh no, you think this can't be good!), but I have a Republican/libertarian friend who I send links back and forth with. He sends me stupid things about how Democrats don't use the word "terrorism" in their debates, and I send him exact dates and a link to the Colbert Report (thank you for that Word, Stephen!). It's all well and good, and usually I feel like I won the argument. This time, however, he sent me a link to the Club for Growth's 2007 rePORK card (despite the name, I'm pretty sure it's the first one, feel free to correct me). I was looking around for the right answer this time, and I couldn't find one. Honestly, this is a heckuva lot of pork, and the Democrats supported all of it down the line.
None of these items appear to be bridges to nowhere, so that's good. Some of these, though, are still troubling. If the Club for Growth is to be believed (a pretty big step), there's $1 million in there for a "Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure in Johnstown, Pennsylvania" which does not actually exist.
I'm well aware that Republicans have become notorious for spending like bandits, and that there's a lot of FUD out there about Democrats going crazy raising taxes and spending pork on stupid stuff, but only one Democrat voted to can more than 20% of these projects, and some of them are just stupid (some seem pretty useful to me, but some I agree with are just pork).
So I'm soliciting feedback, that I might be able to devise some sort of solid rebuttal to my friend as to why this report isn't what I'm seriously beginning to think it is. Is there something sneaky being done to me here that I don't quite understand, or is this just one of the downsides to being a Democrat?
One thing that does bother me, though. Unless my Daily Kos search skills fail (and that's quite likely the case), nobody else has talked about this. If there's a response, we need to come up with it. If there is no response, we need to hold out guys responsible. We can't just ignore the stupid things our own guys do. Stuff like this makes for easy attack ads when the next elections come around. Murtha especially looks bad here.
Republican linkage follows:
Clubb for Growth link -- http://www.clubforgrowth.com/...
"House of Corruption" by Bob "Plame" Novak -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...