THE EARMARK

Quickly, what do Carrot Top and U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) have in common?

That’s easy enough.  Both men…

• Perform in public using props.
• Have appeared on Comedy Central.
• Must have been beaten mercilessly by their childhood companions.

But that’s not all!  If Cantor has his way, they’ll also have this in common: Neither man will have any of his ideas included in Barack Obama’s health care bill…

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor released a statement today attacking President Obama for including four Republican ideas in his new health care proposal, which will be released tomorrow…

“If the President simply adds a couple of Republican solutions to a trillion dollar health care package that the American people don’t support, it isn’t bipartisanship - it’s political cover.”

The nerve of President Obama!  When Cantor and his fellow Republicans were imploring him to include Republican submissions in a health care resolution, they didn’t actually mean he was supposed to include Republican submissions in a health care resolution!  What about the prop comedy??

See while Cantor the legislator might want conservative ideas included in a new health bill, Cantor the prop comedian will suffer in a bipartisan Washington.  Will he still get to perform that “southern accent” he spends countless hours perfecting in the mirror?  What about a new routine based around his favorite punchline– “the Democrat party”?  And what’s he going to do with that giant stack of paper he likes to mug with for cameras?

And most importantly… how can a struggling comedian afford to buy health care in this climate?

A new Gallup poll released last week offers both good news and bad news for President Obama.

The bad news?  Obama is statistically tied with a generic Republican in the 2012 presidential election.

The good news?  Many Republicans surveyed believe that “generic” candidate should be either John McCain or Scott Brown.

To rephase: That’s one candidate who’s fresh off a 2008 loss, would be 85 by the end of his second term, and might lose his Senate primary to Atilla the Hun.  And a second candidate who has spent more time buck naked in the pages of Cosmo than he’s spent on Capitol Hill.

Among GOP frontrunners, McCain and Brown trail only Mitt Romney, whose entire governing experience consists of a single term as governor, and Sarah Palin, who didn’t even make it that far.

And that’s your top four: Romney, Palin, McCain, Brown.  This leaves us with just one question:

WHAT, no Ronald Reagan?  Or at least Curt Schilling, Barry Goldwater or Joe the Plumber– all right-wing heroes.  And what about Rudy?  It’s only been nine years since 9/11.  Hell, even Joe Lieberman should be on this list.

As for professional GOP campaigners like Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Louisiana Robot-in-Chief Bobby Jindal, the message is clear: They’d best either lose an election or irrationally quit their jobs pronto if they plan to be flipping pancakes in New Hampshire come January 2012.

For those of you out there who are not glued to Sarah Palin’s Facebook page (and we can’t imagine what else you’re doing with your time), you may have missed her discovery that Barack Obama intends to kill her infant child via the “Death Panel” established by his health care legislation.

Here at The Earmark, we oppose the establishment of an all-powerful federal cabal that has complete authority to vote on life or death decisions for ordinary Americans.  We prefer that the free market have that role.

But considering that we hear the Death Panel’s members are already assembling (Paula Abdul has already cleared her schedule), we’d like to forewarn you about its soon-to-be victims.

Death Panel Victim	Why The Panel Will Vote for Death	Why The Panel Will Vote for Life
Trig Palin	US Weekly has already offered his mother $300,000 for the first photos of his euthanized corpse.	John McCain’s advisers are privately pushing him as an Attorney General candidate.
Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY)	Severe dementia, Alzheimer’s, and Tourette’s Syndrome have destroyed Bunning’s quality of life and contributions to society.	You never know, the man may have one more perfect game left in him.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney	Romney is Obama’s most formidable GOP rival for 2012. If the Death Panel knocks him off, that title will fall to the nation’s second-most viable Republican: Tom Tancredo.	Since Romney is a synthetic non-human super-predator, any attempts to kill him will hopelessly backfire.
Plumbers making over $250,000 a year	Under Obama’s socialist wealth-redistribution plan, these plumbers must be taxed at the levels they were under Reagan until they perish.	Many of them are needed for their cutting-edge journalism and authorship of bestselling books.

The problem with traditional awards like the Pulitzer and the Nobel is that they’re all but off limits to the likes of Ann Coulter, active Klansmen, and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).

That’s why we’d like to thank the good people at the Southern Poverty Law Center for coming up with an award that even that crowd can win…

To the Oscars, the Grammys and the Emmys, you can now add a wonderful new distinction: the Dobbies.

Awarded by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Dobbies, named after CNN commentator Lou Dobbs, honor the year’s greatest declaration of bigotry, chauvinism and plain stupidity.

Although it would be hard for a Dobbie winner to “out-bigot” the award’s namesake, we think that there are several prime candidates for this year’s honor…

- Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) Posey gets a nod for introducing the infamous “birther bill” that seems to be getting more attention in the House than healthcare reform.  Dobbs himself would sign on as a co-sponsor, but he can’t bring himself to run for Congress because of all the Mexicans working there.

- Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) In terms of sheer volume (both definitions), Bachmann’s contributions to the field of stupidity have been unrivaled in 2009.  Whether calling for a violent revolution, warning of “flying imams,” predicting White House-sponsored “re-education camps,” Bachmann has proved that there is truly nothing she won’t say… unless, of course, it is true.

- Rep. Spencer Bauchus (R-AL) You can’t truly understand bluster, paranoia or stupidity until you read Bauchus’s list of 17 confirmed socialists in the United States Congress.  Rep. McCarthy’s Bauchus’ quest for a Dobbie might be derailed, however, by the fact that he basically stole his whole act from the aforementioned Bachmann.

- President Barack Hussein Obama (D-Kenya) Obama is the clear-cut winner of this award, given that he brazenly ran for president and won despite being a Kenyan spy that was planted into the United States sometime in the early ’80s to savagely attend college and then become leader of the free world, all in the name of Islamo-Fascism and rampant Mexican infestation as they come over here like savages, STEAL our jobs, rape our women, and pray to their heathen leader, Señor Allah!!

Sorry to eliminate that last entry, folks.  But using our powers as editors, we decided that Lou Dobbs wasn’t allowed to submit a nominee in his own contest.

Today is President Obama’s 48th birthday and all we can say is…. how convenient!

Given that we’re in the midst of a health care squabble, 2 wars, 10% unemployment, and more swine flu, we find it awfully interesting that “officials” would declare today, August 4th, to be the President’s birthday.  Bringing out the sympathy votes right before Congress adjourns, huh?

And how equally interesting that these same “officials” would declare Obama’s age to be 48, when anyone with a brain knows that:

The 48th state was Arizona…

Arizona’s capital is Phoenix…

Phoenix is home to the NBA Suns…

The Suns once had a player named Stefano Rusconi…

Rusconi is from Italy…

Italy is the traditional home of Commedia dell’Arte…

A popular Commedia character is Il Capitano…

It is said Il Capitano wears a mask man obeys…

“A mask man obeys” can be rearranged to spell…

MOMBASSA, KENYA!

Ha!  In their hasty quest to buy some political cover for their Dear Leader, these nebulous “White House Officials” have backed themselves right into what Lou Dobbs, that Holocaust Museum gunman, and 28% of the Republican Party have known all along!  And that is…

Our so-called “president” is a secret agent spy from Kenya whose Islamo-Fascist parents sowed the seeds for world domination by planting birth announcements in two Hawaii newspapers, bribing every hospital official in the state, paying off a midwestern farm family to move to Hawaii to raise their boy, sending him through two colleges and a law school, and financing his run for the presidency with $750 million worth of tainted money earned by selling African uranium to Saddam Hussein!  In other words John McCain rightfully won the election but since he’s practically dead let’s install Sarah Palin in his place given that she resigned in anticipation of this very moment!!

(deep breath)

(wipe spittle)

Now let’s all sing and watch Obama blow out the candles.

Health care reform?  Who needs it?  Certainly not House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), whose heart is beating harder than ever, thanks to dreamy “Young and the Restless” star Peter Bergman!

The hunky Bergman stars in Boehner’s new YouTube video about health care, which also features theme music from the daytime soap and de-contextualized clips of President Obama discussing policy.  Grrrowl!

A sample portion includes the President, discussing medical procedures, saying, “You know what? I’d make a lot more money if I take this kid’s tonsils out.”

Now we’re with you: A gratuitous tonsillectomy is obviously grounds for impeachment — and yet that soap underscore that Boehner inserted is so damn sexy, we’re just going to have to give Obama a pass.

Oh and one other problem: The quote — like all others in the ad — is taken completely out of context, since Obama was paraphrasing a doctor’s profit logic under the current system.  In other words, the president is advocating the exact opposite of the hypothetical doctor he’s quoting.

We at The Earmark are surprised that Boehner — a highly public figure in his own right — would want to cast the first stone in this game, since the same thing could come back to bite him personally.

For example, Democrats could cite the time that Boehner posted his own golf scores online when he was supposed to be in Washington leading a pro-oil sit-in.  Now we all know that Boehner was posting his scores to demonstrate what he didn’t want to see congressmen doing during a debate of national significance.  But take that golf story out of context and you’d think that Boehner was just a smug, detached Marie Antoinette type who went on to golf at several more Ohio country clubs in neglect of his Washington duties.

But we all know Boehner would never do that.  No sir!

By the way, if the Democrats did ever want to make such an ad, we think “The Bold and the Beautiful” would make for an incredibly sexy theme.

Bad news for those of you hoping to trade in a gas-guzzling Bentley and get $4500 toward a spiffy new Chevy Aveo.  The government’s much-hyped “cash for clunkers” program is about to crumble like a Ford Festiva in an elevator door.

The program’s principal sin?  Being way too successful…

The government plans to suspend its popular “cash for clunkers” program amid concerns it could quickly use up the $1 billion in rebates for new car purchases, congressional officials said Thursday…

Through late Wednesday, 22,782 vehicles had been purchased through the program and nearly $96 million had been spent. But dealers raised concerns about large backlogs in the processing of the deals in the government system, prompting the suspension.

So barring further notice, this program is finished.  And while some will lament its demise, others will applaud it.  Let’s examine who wins and loses based on this news…

WINNERS

• Personal friends of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his predecessor, Hank Paulson.  If “cash for clunkers” had survived, these folks would have received a mere $32 billion for bonuses.
• Personal friends of the House Ethics Committee, who will now get to keep their ethical earmark money doled out by ethics-minded congressmen.
• Personal friends and relatives of Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA), whom the aforementioned Ethics Committee is investigating, only not really.  More cash for this crowd, too.
• Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) who opposes all forms of federal stimulus, opting to save the money for a time portal to 19th century Belgium.

LOSERS

• Ford Motor Company, who passed on federal stimulus money with the idea that they’d gain sales from this particular program.  For the eponymous family running the show, this is even worse than owning the Lions.
• The majority of President Obama’s cabinet, who all need to ditch that fleet of foreign cars they collectively drive.
• Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who thought this would be his big chance to unload an armada of hideously-painted PT Cruisers.

With the August recess looming on the horizon and no imminent health care reform, it appears that Congressional Summer 2009 will be mostly remembered for Michael Jackson, Perry Mason, and disturbingly ceaseless “birther” movement.

The latter topic has been a particularly big hit of late, from an angry mob screaming at Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) and to Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) hiding in a House supply store to avoid admitting that President Obama is a citizen.

But the most significant development on the topic has been the rise of the “birther bill,” introduced by Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL).  (The St. Petersburg Times speculates it was Posey’s ploy to finally get on Keith Olbermann’s show, but we suspect the congressmen just wants to keep Panamanians like John McCain out of the White House.)

Ultimately though, this bill is about President Obama, and it turns out that Posey isn’t the only representative who wants to waste our nation’s time questioning the man’s citizenship.  The Posey bill now has 11 co-sponsors, with the latest, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), signing on yesterday…

“I don’t know if it’s true or not,” Gohmert told the Washington Post’s Sleuth in a telephone interview Wednesday evening. “But I read that Lou Dobbs said [Obama's] original birth certificate was destroyed.”

Really Rep. Gohmert?  You’re a United States congressman — one of 435 elite individuals leading the people’s house of Congress — and you’re getting your news from Lou Dobbs?  Did you pick out the spittle first?

As long as you’re watching, Congressman, you might want to pick up a few nutrition tips from ol’ Lou as well.  We understand he has a few spare boxes of race-baiting waffles lying around the bunker.

At least that would steer the conversation back toward health care.