..the downtown of Kentucky’s largest city also has a spectacular redeveloped waterfront featuring bike paths and open vistas, the spanking-new KFC Yum! sports arena, and a medical complex of several hospitals that employ nearly 20,000 people, treat tens of thousands and conduct cutting-edge research.

…

He has driven $62.4 million in federal funding to this city in the past three years, the largest chunk by locale of the $458 million that he earmarked from 2008 through 2010, according to data tallied by the Center for Responsive Politics.

…

Seeking reelection in 2008, he ran ads that bragged about the bacon he brought home, and the numbers flashed on the screen: $280 million for universities, $70 million to fight crime, $1 billion for parks and conservation.

Days before the election, McConnell shrewdly announced that he had secured $75 million to build a new Veterans Affairs hospital in Louisville. After he won, he told reporters that the strategy helped him survive that year’s Democratic wave.

More importantly: How can we ensure that Kentucky will witness the construction of a Noah’s Ark-themed amusement park if you go around saying stuff like this:

Banning earmarks is another small but important symbolic step we can take to show that we’re serious, another step on the way to serious and sustained cuts in spending and to the debt.

Earlier this month voters across the country said they are counting on Republicans to make tough decisions. They gave us a second chance. With this decision, I’m telling them that they were right to put their trust in us. And it’s my fervent hope that it will help demonstrate to the American people in some way just how serious Republicans are about not letting them down.

If the Yum! Center tanks, who else will bail us out but you?

… Katharine Weymouth, the publisher of The Washington Post — one of the most powerful people in DC — invited top officials from the White House, the Cabinet and Congress to her home for an intimate, off-the-record dinner to discuss health care reform with some of her reporters and editors covering the story.

But CEOs and lobbyists from the health care industry were invited, too, provided they forked over $25,000 a head — or up to a quarter of a million if they want to sponsor a whole series of these cozy get-togethers. And what is the inducement offered? Nothing less, the invitation read, than “an exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will get it done.” [AlterNet]

Aw fuck, Moyers! Can’t you just let well enough alone? No?

The invitation reminds the CEO’s and lobbyists that they will be buying access to “those powerful few in business and policy making who are forwarding, legislating and reporting on the issues…

“Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No.” The invitation promises this private, intimate and off-the-record dinner is an extension “of The Washington Post brand of journalistic inquiry into the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard.”

Let that sink in …

Yeah, sink in like a fat kid in the ball pit — who do you think you are, Bob Woodward? This is the post-Bush era; there is no corruption! (And anyways, we’re sure Weymouth was just collecting donations for her failing non-profit organization, The Washington Post)