It's only an Earmark if you don't live down river of the levee

[Johonny]

Republicans have blasted the $410 billion measure as too costly. But the reason for GOP unity in advance of a key procedural vote was that Democrats had not allowed them enough opportunities to offer amendments. And, to the embarrassment of Obama — who promised during last year's campaign to force Congress to curb its pork-barrel ways — the bill contains 7,991 pet projects totaling $5.5 billion, according to calculations by the GOP staff of the House Appropriations Committee. Longtime pork barrel spending critic Sen. John McCain, who opposes earmarks, offered an amendment to the spending bill Tuesday that would have frozen spending at 2008 levels through the 2009 fiscal year, which ends September 30. McCain's amendment failed to pass Tuesday,

I guess I have a different definition of embarrassment. 2 trillion to find out that Saddam didn't have the weapons the UN inspectors said he didn't have seems dare I say embarrassing. Actually it's more a grossly inhuman waste of life and capital. ~1.3 % of the spending bill on earmarked projects, most that appear to be dear to some subset of American populous, seems more like a big who the * cares. You know what's embarrassing, holding up the United States budget several days so your minority party can waste more of the peoples time (and money) offering amendments that are simply more of the reject ideas of the past 25 years. Here's a genius idea. The country is in the worst recession since the great depression, why not limit domestic government spending just like Hoover did and see how that works out. Even worse is to live in Arizona right now knowing 98 senator are working their butts off to make sure their state related items are federally funded while your senator refuses to bring federal dollars back to your state on principal. Someone might want to inform McCain it's his job to make sure the needs of the people of his state are met even if it's dare I say an earmark.