So much for hope. So much for integrity.

Our congress makes me sick. The Republican-controlled congress attempted to drown us all in earmarks, and also gave us Abramoff, Foley, Cunningham, et. al. Then we elected enough Democrats to take back the majority...and I foolishly allowed myself a moment or two of hope.

The Iraq pull-out bill, just passed last week by a slim margin, had about $20 billion of earmarks attached. It was pure and simple vote-buying; it is the consequence of no-integrity representatives saying, "sure, I will vote for the bill, as long as I get an earmark for my district."

I guess it should not be a surprise, but these were the same folks who were just screaming about the lack of integrity of the earmark-happy Republicans. Courtesy of The Wall Street Journal, here are a few examples that are in the $20 billion total: $74 million for peanut storage; $25 million for spinach growers; and $283 million for dairy farmers. Um, dairy farming...yeah, that has a lot to do with the war in Iraq.

It seems that if these folks had any integrity at all, they would vote their conscience of the Iraq war instead of literally selling their vote to the Democratic leadership.

This still matters, even though Bush will simply veto the bill, and there is no possibility for an override. It matters because so many of our recently elected representatives have just shown that they too, like so many others before them, are a bunch of educated prostitutes who wear nice clothes and speak well.