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    Wednesday, December 30, 2009

    What? Me Veto? Obama breaks yet another promise...

    Back in August, the Commander-in-chief told the VFW:

    "If a project doesn't support our troops, we will not fund it. If a system doesn't perform, we will terminate it. And if Congress sends me a defense bill loaded with that kind of pork, I will veto it."

    This week, the Earmarker-in-Chief decided to blow that popsicle stand and broke his promise as he signed into law the 2010 Defense Appropriations Bill .  The price tag: $636 billion of appropriations and $4.2 billion of pork.

    Worthwhile projects in the defense appropriation?
    • $5 million for a visitors center in San Francisco
    • $23 million for indigent health care in Hawaii
    • $18 million for the Edward Kennedy Policy Institute in Massachusetts
    • $1.6 million to computerize hospital records in Oakland
    • $47 million for anti-drug training centers around the country
    • $20 million for the World War II Museum in Louisiana
    • $3.9 million grant to develop an energy-efficient solar film for buildings
    • $800,000 for minority prostate cancer research
    • $3.6 million for marijuana eradication in Kentucky
    • $2.4 million for handicap access and a sprinkler system at a community club in New York
    While Mary "Name Your Price" Landrieu and John "Effing" Kerry boasted of their earmarks, Congress cut $300 million from a successful counterinsurgency program used by Army field commanders.

    Among actual military appropriations that the services did not ask for:
    • 2 destroyers the Navy doesn't want
    • 10 C-17's the Air Force doesn't need
    • Development of a new jet engine that no one cares about
    This is what "change" is all about.  Seems the usual business is what we're getting.

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