The DC Morning – August 4, 2010

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Study: In Florida, every single candidate running for higher office is a jerk/toad/idiotSharron Angle to journalists: What have you done for me lately?Senators explain how to waste millions of dollars that belong to someone elseDon’t count Linda McMahon out just yetNY Budget fiasco: a curtain-raiser for the rest of America? British artists no longer beholden to monarchy

1.) Florida candidates win big in competition for Persons Most Likely to Let You Down — Residents of the Gunshine State know not to ask too much of their elected representatives. “Please don’t do anything too illegal,” voters think to themselves as they cast their ballots, knowing all the while that this is like telling a bear, “Please don’t crap in the woods”; or saying to the alligator, “Please don’t eat my AKC-registered bichon frise.” And if any voters thought that a hotly contested election would present an opportunity to purge the rascals, well, no. That is not going to happen. “A report from the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is making the case that 2010 won’t be Florida’s year for redemption,” reports The Daily Caller’s Chris Moody. “Candidates hailing from the Sunshine State dominate the group, filling nearly half of the slots. CREW recently added Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Greene, making it so that every major candidate running for the Florida Senate now makes the cut.” When contacted for comment, Florida’s election watchers wearily declined to refute CREW’s findings. “We’re a state of ethically challenged elected officials,” said one political expert. Said another, “This is just a rich political environment for finding out something extremely unflattering about someone running for office.”

Share: 2.) Sharron Angle does not understand how journalism works — The journalism industry may be in the dumps–or, as with Newsweek-HiFi Interactive, in the process of getting dumped–but it’s safe to say that things aren’t as bad as long-distance runner Sharron Angle needs them to be. In an appearance yesterday on FOX News, Angle told Carl Cameron, “We needed to have the press be our friend…We wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported.” Unfortunately for Angle, this isn’t Pyonyang, and there is no punishment for reporters who depict you as a hapless, weird, and slightly dense Senate candidate. We have a free and independent press here, and that means we’ll tell you when we want to be co-opted.
Share: 3.) List of 100 worst stimulus uses very well may cause heart attacks — While both Sens. Tom Coburn and John McCain “conceded that the stimulus plan has had some positive effect on the economy,” they continue to insist that “any benefit was due solely to the sheer size of the package, and that its effectiveness had been blunted due its poor design and spending choices,” reports CNN. Their examples? “Monkeys on cocaine. New windows for a closed visitor’s center. Modern dance as a tool for software development.” Pretty soon, hair-splitting deficit defenders will begin to pour from the woodwork like bull ants in a rotten log. Their arguments will be anchored, in one or another, by the claim that things would have been so much worse without the stimulus. As you listen to them pontificate on the virtues of being owned–lock, stock, and both barrels–by the Chinese, remember this: “Ranked second on the senators’ list was a University of North Carolina at Charlotte project that received $762,372 in stimulus finds to develop a computerized choreography program, the report said.”
Share: 4.) Wrestling mogul inches closer to lying veteran in Connecticut poll — “A new Quinnipiac poll in Connecticut finds Linda McMahon (R) has pulled to within 10 points of Richard Blumenthal (D) in the U.S. Senate race, 50% to 40%. McMahon has picked up 7 points in less than three weeks,” writes Political Wire. According to Quinnipiac’s Doug Schwartz, “The McMahon-Blumenthal Senate race in Connecticut could be a real smackdown, as the Republican has the money and momentum, cutting into Blumenthal’s lead month to month.” Ha, he said “smackdown!” Incidentally, McMahon’s Republican competitor is so upset about being smacked around by the WWE mogul that he’s come out with a new ad in which McMahon is featured repeatedly kicking a man in the nuts.
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5.) Can all of America look forward to NY’s ridiculous budget woes? — “Senators passed a $1 billion tax bill to put the finishing touches on the state’s $134.4 billion budget [last night] and end a four-month standoff over how to close a gaping deficit,” reports the New York Post. “The long-awaited action, which came after a day of false starts as two Democratic lawmakers withheld their votes in an attempt to negotiate deals, gives taxpayers the fourth-latest state budget in history and latest since 2004. It also clears the way for lawmakers to collect more than $5 million in back wages withheld since the April 1 start of the fiscal year.” Pretty soon, all of America can look forward to these sorts of standoffs. Because we. are. broke.

Share: 6.) British government finally decides to cut back on centuries-old patronage system — “Cash-strapped and desperate to slash the largest budget deficit in Europe, the new ruling coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is moving to close the curtain on an era of what they describe as excessive government patronage,” reports the Washington Post. “The coalition is preparing to cut arts funding so dramatically that it could sharply reduce or sever the financial lifelines for hundreds of cultural institutions from the National Theatre to the British Museum.” Is the British government anti-art? Of course not! Everybody knows British people are mucho sophisticated! Do they realize that in this day and age, artists do not necessarily have to work for kings if they don’t want to? It’s true!
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