Hogs feeding at the trough

The lameness, ignorance and stupidity of Congressmen groveling for money from special interests in order to buy votes for re-election is never a pretty sight. So it's been the last two days as a majority of Republican members joined the Democratic majority in passing a massive, bloated, pork-laden Farm Bill by veto-proof margins.

It was a travesty so bad that clerks left 34 pages out of the bill passed by the House, and the distinguished solons didn't even notice. It had to be brought back after passage and a White House veto for a second vote on the correct bill, because everybody was so greedily responding to the special interests who wrote the bill, that they didn't even read it.

It's a pox-on-both-your-houses situation, as even normally conservative Republicans joined in lighting the Christmas tree. Everything that's wrong with the American system of government at the moment was in full evidence on the Farm Bill. It was ladden with earmarks by individual solons, sops to whoever coughed up the most campaign dollars. Rather than considering the larger issues of foreign trade and making U.S. farm products competitve, they ladled on the subsidies for farmers who are already making record profits out of high grain prices.

It was a farce to even call it a Farm Bill. It was mainly a welfare bill, with the vast preponderence of the money going for food stamps and federal feeding programs.

Barack Obama didn't bother to show up on the floor of the Senate to vote for the bill, but did announce he favored it. Support was so overwhelming, his vote wouldn't have made any difference. Hillary Clinton favored the bill. Two of the four members of the House GOP leadership supported the bill. Party loyalty was so weak, Republicans weren't encouraged to join in to uphold President Bush's veto, and didn't.

That's why the party's in deep trouble in this election: the lack of basic principle, the failure to stand for anything and show no party discipline whatsoever. Quite justifiably, the real Republicans--the base--are ashamed and sitting on their hands this election year. That's the real disaster.