Robert at Interstate 4 Jamming notes that the Republan Party of Florida is not only not going to have a straw poll, but they intend to charge candidates $100K to debate at a forum co-sponsored by Faux News.

This is a bit outrageous and jacks up the cost of the election. I don’t think it’s illegal, because parties can pretty much do what they want within their own ranks, but requiring this kind of money to get heard in a state like Florida that is already expensive to campaign in, is not a high point in the democratic process.

Update: Robert reports that today the Republans reversed their fee decision. Apparently a lot of people complained after reading the newspaper report.

There hasn’t been a single Department of Defense funding request that hasn’t been approved by Congress during the Shrubbery’s residency and yet the Department of Defense doesn’t have the money to pay it’s electric bills or to repair equipment that has been damaged.

Given the way they have repeatedly tried to cut benefits, I’m sorry to say that Lurch’s post, Abusing Veterans, that provides links the recent Washington Post series, doesn’t surprise me in the least. This didn’t just happen, these people have been ignoring the people and infrastructure since they came into office.

As Scout highlights, they hire people like Michael J. Wagner, until recently Chairman of the Military Veteran and Family Assistance Foundation, who was working on his own private Phoenix Foundation while accepting a government paycheck. These people don’t care about the “vulgar peasants” who fight wars.

On All Things Considered Mara Liasson did a report on the John McCain campaign, McCain Back to Square One: South Carolina, and during a gathering at Spartanburg a woman got up and essentially accused Congressional Democrats of wanting to cut off the troops’ paychecks while they were fighting in Iraq. It isn’t the Democrats who are asking people to pay for the body armor that was cut off during their evacuation from the battlefield, or to pay for their meals in the hospital, or to repay allowances that weren’t stopped when they were evacuated state-side, or who failed to pay the National Guard and Reservists in war zones for months, that was the Republans in charge of this disaster. That’s how the Republans support the troops.

Everyone needs to understand that these people have no problem forgiving KBR for billions in overcharges, but a corporal who lost limbs is supposed to come up with thousands that the government claims it overpaid him while he was in the hospital. In case you are wondering, they don’t pay interest when they underpay you.

The only reason this administration can’t have an escalation of 20,000 people and follow the rules that Jack Murtha is proposing is because they have mismanaged the Department of Defense since they came into office. While you go to “war with the army you have”, if you are competent you immediately begin building the army you need.

[Updated to extract an “ic” for an “ic”. If you listen, McCain has the same pronunciation problem as the Shrubbery.]

The last day before the beginning of Lent on the Gulf Coast that once belonged to France, it is Mardi Gras, “Fat Tuesday”: Laissez les bon temps rouler!

It was first celebrated in Mobile, Alabama, but the big show is in New Orleans, and it is a holiday in the state of Louisiana, because people wouldn’t show up for work anyway, so why fight it.

The tradition is to serve King cake, which is generally a circle of cinnamon bun dough with a white frosting on top sprinkled with sugar colored purple, gold, and green. If that weren’t bad enough, they put the figurine of a baby in the dough, and whoever finds it in their piece is supposed to be lucky. Actually if you find it and don’t choke on it, I guess you are lucky. You should use a small ceramic figurine, as some of the cheap plastic versions melt in the oven [yummy].