John McCain has been famous lately for stumping against pork, saying he will dust off the old veto pen, and that "their names will be known my friends."  Fantastic.  So then John, if you're willing to veto any bill that contains pork and the like as President, why are you willing to vote for those bills as Senator?  I mean seriously... look at what's in the bailout bill which was passed last night:

* Sec. 105. Energy credit for geothermal heat pump systems.
* Sec. 111. Expansion and modification of advanced coal project investment credit.
* Sec. 113. Temporary increase in coal excise tax; funding of Black Lung Disability Trust Fund.
* Sec. 115. Tax credit for carbon dioxide sequestration.
* Sec. 205. Credit for new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicles.
* Sec. 405. Increase and extension of Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund tax.
* Sec. 309. Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa.
* Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility.
* Sec. 501. $8,500 income threshold used to calculate refundable portion of child tax credit.
* Sec. 503 Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.

Now I suppose you could parse out the language and say none of that technically qualifies as pork... but then... just keep digging... because I have a hard time believing that a bill that went from 3 pages, to 110 pages, to the current 451 page incarnation doesn't have anything worse than that.  Sec. 108 contains a new credit for steel industrial fuel.  Sec. 211 gives an extra benefit to bicylce commuters.  Even if this is the worst of it, and there are no endowments of cash for Opera Houses, or grants for studying the habits of toenail clipping among the elderly, does it matter?

Clearly all of these things incur additional cost onto the bill (around an extra $100 million), and none of them have to do with the financial crisis.  The lack of geothermal heat pumps are not the reason that homes prices are dropping.  So if this bill was bad enough for the House to vote it down once, what would it say about the House if they approve essentially the same thing they rejected... but with all these "sweeteners".  If a bill can't pass on its own merits, then why should it pass with this crap attached?  Isn't that the essense of pork?

So what does it say about a man who has promised to veto any bill that contains these types of provisions, but still votes for them?  You can always argue that this is a special case... but they are all special cases.  Most of the pork that has been passed in the last 8 years has come attached to so called "must pass" bills, usually for war funding.  If McCain is willing to vote for this bill (and by extension wouldn't veto it), then why would he veto a war funding bill filled with pork?