Buffoon, Political, Clueless, un-self-aware dolt to boot, 1 ea.

I know, I know. I'm breaking The Rulez. I'm attacking the messenger. Sometimes, however, the message is just so breath-takingly dumb I can't resist.

K-Lo posted this on The Corner on Friday:

Don Young is on the floor talking about bridges. He just said, "I don't do this often, but I am saying, I told you so.

I hadda go find the context, so I went to that useful resource, the Congressional Record.

The issue at hand: AUTHORIZING ADDITIONAL FUNDS FOR EMERGENCY REPAIRS AND
RECONSTRUCTION OF INTERSTATE I–35 BRIDGE.

Mr Young rose to speak in support.

I don’t do this often when I say I told you so. As chairman, with Mr. OBERSTAR, we tried to put the money in to identify the weaknesses of the bridges and to repair them, and we were unsuccessful.

We ended up with a $286 billion bill instead of a $375 billion bill. Mr. and Mrs. America, I believe it is time for us to wake up. We have to repair our outdated infrastructure, especially our bridges. You have heard statistics, 11,000 and on and on, how many are deficient. But there are about 500 in the same shape as the bridge in Minnesota right now that are a potential death trap to constituencies.

We have to, as a Congress, grasp this problem and, yes, lo and behold, I would even suggest fund this problem with a tax. May the sky not fall on me, but with a tax. Make it a 3-year tax. Make it a 5-cent tax, and they will say we can’t do that. But I would suggest respectfully that the American people will understand the importance if we fund it and if we address the issue of the bridges. We should do this.

And maybe this is a wake-up call, and I hope The Post is wrong, that we all don’t go back to sleep and watch football this fall and forget this tragic accident, because if we do so, then we are not fulfilling our obligation and our duty.

Well and good, sir. Perhaps we will need to raise taxes to pay for this *long simmering* problem you guys have been ignoring, with such stalwarts as the Senator from West Byrdinia preferring to build new, that they might get their name on it, vice reducing the new builds in order to maintain the already-built - or, one might note - un-needed and un-wanted (well, un-needed and un-wanted except by powerful development interests) bridges to nowhere... One wonders, however, how many bridges $223,000,000 would repair...

Here at the Castle we welcome your seeming conversion, if not your un-self-aware rhetoric.

Lord, what an opportunistic self-serving pristine example of why people are just *so* pleased with the Congress.