Chupacabra Report

News that gets my goat..

-Texas Senators John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison both voted to spend $1.75 billion to build more F-22 fighter planes, planes that the Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Pentagon don’t want. According to the Pentagon, the F-22 costs over $44,000 an hour to fly, and initially requires 30 hours of maintenance for each hour of flight; more with wear and tear. Although this wonder plane is unable to fly in the rain, it has yet to see duty in the arid Iraq or Afghan theatres of war. This raises the question of what is this plane for, other than as a make-work project for Lockheed Martin/Boeing, who has farmed-out the manufacturing process to so many Congressional districts that the spare parts are not interchangeable.

-I hope you’ve been following “The Family,” the C Street row house owned by a group variously known as “The Fellowship,” or “Youth With A Mission,” that serves as a low-rent boardinghouse for adulterous Republican authorities on family values Mark Sanford, John Ensign, and Chip Pickering, as well as nutcase Oklahoma Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. Apparently the owner of 133 C Street SE can offer budget accommodations because, as a religious organization, they pay no property tax on the 1.84 million-dollar row house. I guess these guys are all for a “wall of separation” in this case.

-Seventeen out of twenty Texas GOP Congressmen voted against putting Congress’ pay-as-you-go budget rules into permanent law and giving presidents power to sequester funds when congress breaks those rules. I’d say the Republicans ought to finally give up all pretense of being the party of fiscal conservatism. Furthermore, after hearing them bandy about the word “treason” all these years whenever somebody disagrees with them, I wonder if they’re actually practicing it, betraying this American republic in favor of plutocracy, a government of, by, and for the moneyed. And that goes for you too, Blue Dogs. Rather than standing with your constituents or for your principles, it appears that you're filling your campaign coffers.