Eggs seem mighty expensive lately, don't they? Profiteering under cover of a national emergency is a crime, isn't it? I believe prices are only allowed to go up 10% in a situation like the one we find ourselves in today. I don't think anyone is enforcing that. As for Congress... well, it's filled with scoundrels and thieves. And the White House...
Outside of Mississippi, not many people know who GOP backbencher Steven Palazzo is. He beat the odious Blue Dog Gene Taylor in southeast Mississippi's deep red district (R+21) and then faded away, except for one ugly incident. His district-- which includes Biloxi, Pascagoula and Gulfport, his hometown-- was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Over 200 people died and dozens are still listed as missing. Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties looked like war zones and the economic consequences are still barely calculable, tens of billions of dollars just in Palazzo's district.
Sunday morning we asked what it's like to be a Blue Dog in America today. And the picture that emerged was far from pretty. When looking at the natural progression from Blue Dog-- the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- to plain old Republican, we focused on the freak from Kansas who led the anti-gay and anti-Choice forces of hatred and bigotry in her badly afflicted state, Janice Pauls, finally finding her natural home in the GOP.
As of June 30, Mississippi senior Senator Thad Cochran had only raised $773,953, not much for a U.S. Senator. It gave rise to some talk that he might be thinking of retirement. He was born in 1937 and by the end of his next term he'd be 82. Elected in 1978, he's the second most senior Republican in the Senate. And, for a mainstream conservative like Cochran, a Cruz-ified Republican caucus can't be much fun. But when you realize that the last time he was up for reelection he only spent $518,625, you have to reconsider his lackadaisical fundraising as proof he might be retiring.
Steven Palazzo has represented southeast Mississippi (MS-04-- Gulfport, Hattiesburg, Biloxi, Laurel) since the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse of 2010 when he beat longtime incumbent Gene Taylor. Unless you live in some blood-red hellhole, you probably never met a public official as right-wing and extreme as Palazzo.
