THE EARMARK

Remember how, back in 2008, we all voted out the Republicans because they were greedy, corrupt, and disrespectful of the voting public?  Well give them this much: At least they were good at it.

If you want to see politicians who are simultaneously a) corrupt and b) really bad at it, look no farther than New York state, where elected Democrats are tarnishing every institution of disciplined corruption that the Gambino family worked for decades to establish.

To illustrate our point, here’s a list of all the corrupt Democrats that New York has had to endure in recent months… plus the corrupt Republicans they could learn from.

Corrupt Democrat	Act of Corruption	Republican Who Did It Better
Eliot Spitzer, ex-governor	Hard to believe this was 2 years ago.  Spitzer rode a wave of self-righteousness all the way to Washington, DC, where he washed up aboard The Mayflower… and then paid several thousand dollars for rough sex.	David Vitter, who one-ups Spitzer’s hypocrisy by trying to criminalize the very prostitution industry he patronized so faithfully.
David Paterson, current governor	Allegedly used state police to intimidate the victim of his wife-beating aide. And he forced the Yankees to give him free World Series tickets.	Rudy Giuliani knows more about exploiting the Yankees.  He also knows how to get way more out of thuggish police officers.
Hiram Monserrate, ex-State Senator	Beat the crap out of his live-in girlfriend.	Ousted Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA) beat the crap out of his live-in mistress.
Charlie Rangel, U.S. Representative	Despite chairing the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, he appears to not have declared a taxable asset since the Carter administration.	Ex-Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who’s paying back taxes on lobbying gifts in the form of hand-made license plates.
Eric Massa, U.S. Representative	Propositioned a male aide in his Capitol Hill offices.	Actually, Massa even beats the Republicans in this category.  Not even Mark Foley was slick enough to use the excuse: “I’m just a salty old sailor.“

For those of you looking for a heartwarming story from the dreary, rainy Vancouver Olympics, here’s a pretty good one: An irate airline passenger nearly landed a punch on Mitt Romney, just below the venture capitalist’s stylishly gray temples…

An airline passenger “took a swing” at former Republican presidential candidate and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney aboard an AirCanada flight from Vancouver to Los Angeles on Monday, after Romney asked the passenger to return his seat back to the upright position while awaiting take off.

Now before you rush to sell off your shares in Bain Capital, keep in mind that Romney and his billion dollar mane eluded the passenger’s fists.  Although there are probably a lot of people that wish they hadn’t.  Among them…

So Alaska governor Sarah Palin is stepping down on July 26, and pundits are struggling to figure out why.  Is she running for president?  Is she going to cash in Mike Huckabee-style with a show on Fox News?  Or will she ride her VP loser status to international acclaim, just like Joe Lieberman and John Edwards?

The answer is no, no, and no.  If you ask us, Palin is obviously stepping down in anticipation of a major scandal becoming national news!   The only question is what scandal?  We’ll get the ball rolling with a couple speculations, but feel free to add your own in the comments section!

Take yourself back to Election Day 2008 and ask yourself what, at the time, would seem more plausible?

a) June 30, 2009 would be the day Norm Coleman conceded his Senate race.

b) On this same date, Joe the Plumber would still be in the news.

Fortunately both are correct answers!  Well, we’ve already heard about Norm, but good ol’ Joe (whose watch stopped running 14 minutes and 59 seconds after he bought it) dropped another nugget of wisdom on our proverbial front lawn over the weekend.  It comes in the form of this remark about the Founding Fathers’ economic ideology…

Referring to the Constitution as “almost like the Bible,” Wurzelbacher said of the Founding Fathers: “They knew socialism doesn’t work. They knew communism doesn’t work.”

The only problem here is that the Constitution was completed in 1787, while communist ideology did not formally exist until the 1848 publishing of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.  Translation from the original Plumber-ese: Not only were the Founding Fathers economic visionaries, they were able to time-travel!

Now in truth, said Founding Fathers were mostly against the economic system wherein a king gets everyone’s possessions, declares ill-conceived wars, and generally acts like a lunatic.  Yet it seems to us that this king-based system fits in nicely with Joe’s own political dispositions, as it very clearly does not involve “spreading the wealth around.”

Joe concluded his comments by praising the Founding Fathers for never betting on baseball, never spamming anyone online, and never abusing crystal meth.

Former Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) came to his senses today in the wake of a unanimous decision by the Minnesota State Supreme Court.  Following the Court’s ruling that Democrat Al Franken’s victories in the general election, recounts, trial motions and judicial panels were all valid and legitimate, Coleman finally found it in his heart to concede defeat in the 2008 election, 239 days after it occurred…

“The Supreme Court has made its decision and I will abide by the results,” Coleman told reporters outside his St. Paul home.

Coleman, appearing relaxed and upbeat, said he had congratulated Franken, was at peace with the decision and had no regrets about the fight, which started almost immediately after the Nov. 4 election.

“Sure I wanted to win,” said Coleman, who called the ruling a surprise. “I thought we had a better case. But the court has spoken.”

And while this concession was actually due almost eight months ago, it’s vastly preferable to a lengthy appeals process and a potential trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, which Coleman chose to waive.

Continuing forward on his own personal calendar, Coleman then departed the press conference to shovel his driveway and shop for a Thanksgiving turkey.

To hear Elizabeth Edwards tell it, her husband’s former campaign aide, Andrew Young, abetted more bad behavior than anyone this side of Rush Limbaugh’s pharmacist.

Although she opts to not identify Young by name in her bestselling book Reslience, Edwards still considers the ex-staffer guilty of everything from enabling husband John’s affair with a hack filmmaker to stealing her dead son’s baseball card collection.

Further stirring the pot is the fact that Young himself has a book coming out, and in it he claims to have viewed a sex tape made by his former boss and the aforementioned hack Hunter.  (Well, we’re just glad she successfully completed at least one film in her directing career.)  Comedy Central’s Mary Phillips-Sandy suspects the onscreen pillow-talk contained a lot of sultry references to regional health care markets.  But we won’t cite specifics because this is a family website.

What Young doesn’t mention is whether or not he personally was in those sex videos, as he has previously claimed to have knocked up Hunter himself.  Perhaps the two of them acted out a stolen baseball card fetish.  Or maybe they engaged in auto-erotic asphyxiation with one of those LiveStrong bracelets the campaign seemed to stock by the gross.

Either way, that baby has a lot of awkward family reunions awaiting her.

Item! The word in Washington is that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is about to announce his pick for his vice-presidential running mate! This will be McCain’s most important decision of the campaign. Whoever serves as his #2 will have the responsibilities of:

* Serving as President of the U.S. Senate.

*Being dispatched to dinner functions in countries whose cuisine gives McCain gas.

* Running the country each night from 7 to 8 pm while McCain is watching Matlock.

Washington Insiders have narrowed down McCain’s choices to five front-runners and the Pages are pleased to give you our Official Vegas Betting Odds on each of them:

Name	Why He’ll Get It	Why He Won’t	Page’s Betting Odds
Tim Pawlenty Governor of Minnesota	Evangelical Christian from a potential swing-state.	Who wants a vice-president who can’t even score with his own wife?	2 : 1
Mitt Romney Former Governor of Massachusetts	Only candidate who can carry the hedge fund and polygamy votes simultaneously.	Americans might be intimidated by such a brilliant, accomplished, righteous, wealthy, handsome family man. (Source: Mitt Romney)	Six : Half-Dozen
Charlie Crist Governor of Florida	Having an obviously gay man on the ticket could help McCain cut into a traditionally Democratic voting bloc.	His dark orange tan clashes badly with the McCain campaign’s blue-and-white theme colors.	69 : 1
Joe Lieberman Senator from Connecticut	Brings valuable experience in the field of losing vice-presidential campaigns. Comes with his own theme song.	Dogged by insidious Washington whisper campaign that he is a Jew.	666 : 1
Bobby Jindal Governor of Louisiana	Introduced an Amber Alert for senior citizens in his home state, so he’ll be ready to respond when McCain wanders off during a G-8 Summit.	America may not be ready for a Catholic vice-president.	1.132 billion : 1