Merry Christmas Senator Shelby!

If you ask most folks in Alabama if they want smaller government and less spending, the answer you’ll get is an unequivocal, “YES!” Most Alabamians, regardless of party, are fiscally conservative at heart. We have even produced a few blue dogs who are terrified they will lose their seat in 2010 and treading lightly with our tax dollars. That being said, I have to ask myself, “Why do we continue to vote in a fiscal RINO to represent us in the US Senate?”

When it comes to bringing home the bacon, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) does it better than most. A senior member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, Shelby is in a position to procure millions of taxpayer dollars for Alabama – and he certainly has utilized that power.

In the $787 billion ill-fated stimulus act that passed in February, Shelby came in second only to Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) in landing pork with a whopping $114.5 million in solo earmarks and his name attached to another $104.9 million in additional earmarks. Some of the pet projects for the state were $30 million for the University of Alabama for a “science and engineering teaching and research corridor” and another $25 million for the Tuscaloosa Federal Building. Shelby was the only sponsor of both. He was also one of six Republicans that voted to invoke cloture which ended the debate on the bill, and thus ended the filibuster more conservative senators had mounted to stop it.

Had Shelby not voted to invoke cloture, this bill would have never made it to the floor for a vote. The Congress was ready to approve a resolution that would have funded the government through September had this bill not passed.  The resolution would have held the budget at the allocated spending level and removed all of the earmarks. Instead, John Q. Taxpayer got stuck funding over 9,000 new earmarks.

Now he’s done it again.

In a carbon copy of his actions in February, Shelby joined with the Democrats and two other RINOs to end the Republican filibuster of the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending measure and clear the way for the final vote on legislation that is projected to increase federal spending by an astonishing 12%.

Under this measure, Medicare and Medicaid will get an increase of about 10% along with other federal benefit programs. There are also increases to the budgets of the Veterans Health Administration, the National Institutes of Health and, one that will raise suspicion among the Patriot movement, a $680 million increase over 2009 budget to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

There are other things included in this legislation that are certain to garner the ire of the right. It ends the ban on abortion funding and allows medical marijuana in the District of Columbia. The nationwide ban on using federal funds for needle-exchange programs for drug users was also lifted. The bill includes a challenge to GM’s decision to close some 2,000 car dealerships, renews a federal loan program for steel companies and calls for a 2% pay increase for federal workers. Shockingly, it will also allow Gitmo detainees to be transferred to the US to stand trial.

And then there’s the pork.

There are over 5,200 earmarks for lawmakers’ pet projects totaling nearly $4 billion. According to Shelby’s own website, the Senator received $10.25 million for a Health and Sciences Center at the University of Alabama, $12 million for the Missile and Space Intelligence Center Explosive Ordinance Exploitation Complex at Redstone arsenal, $27.8 million for the Von Braun Complex at Redstone Arsenal, $45 million for Alabama’s drug courts and the list goes on ad nauseum.

Alabama, when are you going to wake up and realize that Shelby is part of that one party system with two PR departments? He is one of the Good Ole Boys and a DC old-timer. With Alabama’s unemployment rate hovering around 11% and climbing and a 4.9% decline in job growth, do we really need to worry about continuing to fund the war machine in Huntsville or worry about NASA research projects?

There are people in Alabama, in Shelby’s own hometown, that are hurting right now. These people don’t want a handout – they want a job. There won’t be any holiday shopping for them this Christmas season. Santa won’t be visiting their children. There won’t be all the trappings and trimmings of Christmas dinner at their table. Some of these folks are barely hanging on to their homes, if they haven’t already lost them. They are struggling to just hold on and ride it out until the GOP is back in control – because they trust them. They trust Richard Shelby. And he has failed Alabama families miserably.

Keep these families in your prayers. With Senators like Richard Shelby looking out for them, it isn’t likely to get any better.

You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch.
You really are a heel.
You’re as cuddly as a cactus,
You’re as charming as an eel.
Mr. Grinch.

You’re a bad banana
With a greasy black peel.

You’re a monster, Mr. Grinch.
Your heart’s an empty hole.
Your brain is full of spiders,
You’ve got garlic in your soul.
Mr. Grinch.

I wouldn’t touch you, with a
thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole.

You’re a vile one, Mr. Grinch.
You have termites in your smile.
You have all the tender sweetness
Of a seasick crocodile.
Mr. Grinch.

Given the choice between the two of you
I’d take the seasick crocodile.

You’re a foul one, Mr. Grinch.
You’re a nasty, wasty skunk.
Your heart is full of unwashed socks
Your soul is full of gunk.
Mr. Grinch.

The three words that best describe you, are as follows, and I quote:

STINK, STANK, STUNK!

You’re a rotter, Mr. Grinch.
You’re the king of sinful sots.
Your heart’s a dead tomato splotched
With moldy purple spots,
Mr. Grinch.

Your soul is an appalling dump heap overflowing
with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable
rubbish imaginable,
Mangled up in tangled up knots.

You nauseate me, Mr. Grinch.
With a nauseous super-naus.
You’re a crooked jerky jockey
And you drive a crooked hoss.
Mr. Grinch.

You’re a three decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich
With arsenic sauce!