Ding, dong...

Pombo Defeated (Tracy Press) "In a night that saw Democrats sweep to power in the House of Representatives, little-known challenger Jerry McNerney unseated Tracy's Rep. Richard Pombo from his perch as one of Congress' more powerful chairmen."

Just one of many reasons for joy over the last few hours.

By the way, Blogger® users may have noticed yesterday that Blogger was super slow. I'd guess that's because at least 99% of its bandwidth was being used at Tryst Coffeehouse in Adams Morgan, where CNN had set up an "E-lection Nite Blog Party." And quite a party it was, according to Wonkette.

Unintentionally Hilarious Resources Committee Web Pages--vol. 2!

I love that "Unintentionally Hilarious Resources Committee Web Pages" is now an actual, multi-post category on this blog.

It's going to take a few posts to plow through all of the BS on the Resources Committee's "Earth Day" website, which purports to expose environmental nonprofit fundraising and lobbying as "big business" by posting environmental groups' CEO salaries, lobbying expenses, and annual revenues. Apparently we're all living like princes drinking martinis in our high-rise offices. Clearly the Resources Committee Web Team has not been to my phat group house recently. The martini part is pretty accurate though, if you want to call straight shots of Smirnoff a "martini."

More to the point--the enviro lobbying expenditures page is what makes this website an UNINTENTIONALLY HILARIOUS RESOURCES COMMITTEE WEB PAGE. That's because the expenditures posted for enviro groups are so ridiculously small compared to the lobbying expenditures of the special interests we are commonly lobbying against. To wit:

The Resources Earth Day site looks at the past 5-7 years of expenses for a slate of major enviro groups, and comes up with a grand total of $31,599,114 in total lobbying expenditures. In contrast, the oil and gas industry alone spent $220,732,499, or seven times that amount, lobbying Congress over just the last 5 years. Agribusiness spent $353,316,615. The chemical industry spent $112,066,610. (Source: Opensecrets.org)

And these are just three of the industries that commonly advocate for dangerous and harmful policies that environmental groups must fight against, from weak standards for securing chemical plants against terrorist attack, to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, to weakening the Clean Air Act or the Endangered Species Act.

File under: Unintentionally hilarious Resources Committee web pages

Sure. Meets it in a dark alley and gets the crap kicked out of it, maybe.

[This is from Pombo's new "OceanAction" web page on the House Resources Committee website.]