Un-frickin-believable.
Right now, on CNN's FRONT PAGE, they are running a story with the following headline:
Biden, Obama helped keep "Bridge to Nowhere" alive.
To which I ask: So Friggin' What?
Because CNN and the Sunlight Foundation who is pimping this story have utterly and completely missed the point. They may want to walk backwards to find it, because it clearly went over their head.
First, the details of the story:
Although Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden routinely mocks his Republican counterpart, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, for her onetime support of the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," Biden and his running mate voted to keep the project alive twice.
Both Biden and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama voted to kill a Senate amendment that would have diverted federal funding for the bridge to repair a Louisiana span badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina, Senate records show.
And both voted for the final transportation bill that included the $223 million earmark for the Alaska project.
An amendment offered by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, would have stripped the money appropriated to connect the Alaskan coastal city of Ketchikan to its airport on sparsely populated Gravina Island and diverted the money to Louisiana.
But Biden and Obama and 80 of their colleagues rejected the measure, an amendment to a massive 2005 transportation bill that funded thousands of projects across the country.
OK, let's start with the bloody obvious, CNN. The "routine mocking" you cite from Joe Biden on Palin's onetime support on the "Bridge to Nowhere" is the fact that PALIN HAS CONTINUALLY LIED AND SAID THAT SHE WAS AGAINST THE BRIDGE TO NOWHERE!
I mean, do your job if you are going to be THAT misleading, CNN. It's got nothing to do with whether Biden or Obama supported it.
It's got to do with the fact that Palin lied about saying she DIDN'T support it.
Then, this whopper of a quote from the Sunlight Foundation:
"That is probably the most disturbing element of this and the campaigning on the Bridge to Nowhere," said Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation, a taxpayer watchdog group. "Because, yes, they had a chance to vote specifically against the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska to redirect the money to people, to bridges and infrastructure damaged by Hurricane Katrina going in to New Orleans, and they chose not to."
The final version passed the Senate 93-1. Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who has made his opposition to congressional "pork-barrel" spending a cornerstone of his campaign, did not vote on either the Coburn amendment or the final bill.
Really? THAT is the most disturbing thing about this story? Are you KIDDING ME???
Let me inform Mr. Allison what is "disturbing" about this story. What is disturbing is that Palin has been cast as a "reformer" and the central cog in that narrative is that SHE opposed the "Bridge to Nowhere," when in fact she did not.
The reason the bill passed 93-1, by the way, is because nearly every state in the union gets transportation money. Every single one. And nearly every Senator wants to say they helped their state with some sort of infrastructure spending.
And while we are on the subject of earmarks, let's get something straight: McCain is the one running against earmark spending. Obama's only beef with earmarks is that everybody knows where the cash is going. Which is why HE posts all the earmarks his has put into bills on his website.
Because, frankly, for all the talk about earmarks, a lot of them a hell of a lot of good. They fund good programs, help fund hospitals, schools, museums, and the like.
McCain is the one running on an anti-pork platform. Not Obama.
And when you run against pork, and claim you didn't take pork like Palin did, you better be DAMN sure you never did take pork. That's when the issue of credibility comes into play.
Credibility, CNN, not of Obama or Biden for voting for a bill, but of the folks who claim to have opposed something when they actually didn't.
Cripes...what a lousy, shameful smear, CNN. You and the Sunlight Foundation should be ashamed.