Earmark This
You know what I want money for? 7 million dollars for an overhead projector that will show bear DNA paternity results.

Words cannot express how much I love the Colbert Report intro. It's so funny to me, mainly because it's supposed to be a satire of news program intros, but news programs have gotten so over-the-top that it ceases to be satire and just looks normal. The only thing they'd have to change to use it "for real" would be to take out the "multi-grain" text. And insert a new show title. My ultimate favorite part is the screeching eagle at the end. ::loves::

Remember how I sounded off a few posts ago about McCain's obsession with earmark spending, specifically the bear DNA example he couldn't stop talking about? Well, he was equally obsessed about earmarks at the Tuesday debate. This time, he kept referring to Obama earmarking 3 million dollars (or however much it was) for "an overhead projector." Whoa! 3 million for an overhead projector!!! That's insane!!! Obama has to die!!!! Anyway, McCain is really pissing me off by giving earmark examples that just sound incredibly wasteful when you give an extremely simplifed and dumbified sentence about it...but if you actually look into what it really was, it's not that bad.

Take this "overhead projector" thing. When I hear 'overhead projector', I think of those little boxes attached to the ceiling in class that shine the professor's Powerpoint presentation onto a giant screen for all us students to copy down. You know, the ones that always seem to be malfunctioning at the beginning of class until the professor finally realizes that something just isn't plugged in.

In that case, yes. 3 million dollars would seem like the government's buying a 5 million dollar toilet seat. The thing is, it wasn't a fucking overhead projector. It was...one of those things in planetariums that...makes the planetarium work. I will call it the "star-shiner." Now this I can imagine costing 3 million dollars. And it's educational. And doesn't seem like a good example at all of wasteful spending. Read for yourself.

So shut up, McCain. I also appreciate Obama's criticism of McCain's earmark obesession, pointing out that the amount of spending wasted on earmarks is really not that much in the grand scheme of things. Yet as far as I can tell, McCain's whole platform rests on 1) I'll get rid of earmarks, 2) I'm a maverick and will do all kinds of unpopular things, and 3) Change (ripped off wholesale from the Obama campaign).

It's funny how many weird things I missed about the debate even though I watched it (except the first 20 minutes). I didn't even notice when McCain called Obama "that one." While noticing that McCain looked awkward walking around, I didn't notice the extend of his meandering and how he kept getting in background shots and crossing closeup in front of the camera. Hahaha!!! So thanks to both The Daily Show and the SNL special Thursday edition for pointing that out to me (the wandering thing...I found out about the "that one" thing from 8 billion other sources).