True Believers, Please Rise (Boeing Deal, Brooks, NYT)

[northzax]

True Believers, Please Rise
By DAVID BROOKS

Published: October 28, 2003

Congressional Republicans need to schedule a meeting with the mirror this morning. The agenda item is their soul, and the questions to be addressed are: Why did I run for Congress? Was it to engage in the same pork barrel politics that marked the last decadent days of the Democratic majority?

The occasion for this meeting is Speaker Dennis Hastert's effort to ram through an Air Force tanker deal for the Boeing Corporation. This deal isn't just shady — it's the Encyclopaedia Britannica of shady. It's as if somebody spent years trying to gather every single sleazy aspect of modern Washington and cram it all into one legislative effort.

It's sort of awe-inspiring when you stop to think about it.

from The Times of course.

My favourite line (from farther on) "none of this may be illegal or even wrong, but is this the type of thing that makes you proud top be an American?"

[joeybee12]

1. The answer to his first question is, of course, yes

Repukes have always engaged in pork barrel politics--it's his fantasy to think that once they were pure and untainted.

[Faygo Kid]

2. Disgusting

Saw it on Sunday, in the NYT. Typical of the Repukes. Money talks, I guess, bull**** walks, and if it isn't money, it's always the latter, to this crowd. Once upon a time, there were principled Republicans (yes, it's true). There are none now.

[ixion]

3. Democratic Majority for the last decade?

That's not really correct. Typically, during a dem prez, the repugs have the majority. If the dems had a majority in the last decade, that would have given them the trifecta, which is not the case.