Is Dickie "Oink! Slurp! Gobble!" Shelby high-living, self-important garbage? Sure, but what's your point?

Oink! Slurp! Gobble! Dickie Shelby has an important role to play -- to make the world safe for even lowlier right-wing scum.

by Ken

So why shouldn't Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby be chairman of the Banking Committee? Just because he's an ideologically scumbag who spends his available time stuffing his maw with deluxe eats paid for either by gummint or campaign contributors? I guess the argument for surrendering control of the Senate to Republicans would go something like:

"It's Time to Let the Other Crooks Slop Their Gizards"

Surely the banksters Dickie Oink could become responsible for overseeing must be drooling at the prospect of being overssen by their high-living whore.

This Washington Post "In the Loop" report by Colby Itkowitz dates back a few days, but now comes with a "response" -- I think when you read the "response" you'll see what I feel obliged to put the word "response" in quotes) -- from Senator Shelby's office. I guess the senator's office realized they couldn't simply leave the item uncommented on, but the comment is so grotesquely unresponsive that maybe that would have been wiser. To the extent that this is a response, the response is, "Who says Out Dickie doesn't share the loot?"

Or maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe the folks in DC Land have become so blasé about the kind of high-living shitbagging reported here that they think all that's necessary is a pro forma response that makes it "asked and answered." Maybe it would be different if the senator was actually a candidate in this cycle, and might thereby suffer some embarrassment if this sort of thing became known among his constituents. Short of that, however, maybe they think nobody gives a rat's ass.

In The Loop
Sen. Shelby eats and travels in style on campaign and PAC funds, but doesn’t share

By Colby Itkowitz

Sen. Richard Shelby, who could become chairman of the Senate banking committee if the GOP wins the Senate this election, enjoys top-dollar restaurants and swanky hotel stays. And since 2008 he’s reimbursed himself and his wife from his campaign and leadership PACs more than half a million dollars to live the high life.

The Alabama Republican was recently called out by the Wall Street Journal as a stingy lawmaker who hoards contributions and doesn’t share with his more vulnerable colleagues. Now an analysis by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) shows that Shelby is spending that money to treat himself and donors to upscale dinners at Washington establishments, such as The Palm, Bobby Van’s Grill, The Source, Charlie Palmer’s Steakhouse, Citronelle, Bourbon Steak and the Capital Grille.

And where does Shelby rest his head when traveling for campaign events? In New York City, he has expensed stays 32 times at the Michelangelo Hotel, where, according to its Web site “flair meets function. The eclectic meets the everyday.” He has stayed at the “legendary seaside resort” Hotel del Coronado in San Diego and at the four-star Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans, CREW reports.

“I don’t think most of Senator Shelby’s constituents are spending so much time in the lap of luxury. Here he is raising money and spending it mostly on himself,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW.

Shelby’s office did not immediately return requests for comment.

Spending contributions this way is not illegal, but it does raise eyebrows. Shelby is sitting on $17 million, according to his last FEC filing, and isn’t up for reelection until 2016. Also, he’s won reelection without breaking a sweat for the last two decades. In 2010, he won with 84 percent of the vote.

“When you start looking at how much money he’s spending, it’s significant for a guy without a race,” Sloan said. Shelby is “asking for money, and people think they are giving money to promote a certain agenda. But they are promoting a senator’s cushy lifestyle.”

UPDATE: Shelby’s communications director sent us this response:

“Senator Shelby has always actively supported his Republican colleagues’ reelection campaigns as well as the NRSC’s efforts to raise funds in order to help Republicans win back the Senate.  Just like virtually every other Member of Congress, Senator Shelby travels and attends fundraising events – and he does so in order to help the NRSC and contribute to his Republican colleagues.  Specifically, Senator Shelby has donated the maximum amount from his Leadership PAC, Defend America, to 30 Republican Senate candidates this election cycle. Senator Shelby has also both attended and headlined NRSC fundraising events, including one event that he personally organized this past week in Huntsville, Alabama, that raised approximately $800,000.”

I make no apology for Democratic shitbags, but Republican ones are not only more common -- I'm inclined to say universal -- but shittier. There are hardly any life forms more vile than those Republicans from the Deep South, and Shelby is nothing but high-living, America-hating garbage.

I wonder if people like Shelby understand, though, behavior like this is not okay with their right-wing base. Of course they're listening to every-bit-as-vile shitbags like Rafael "Ted from Alberta" Cruz, but they're coming to understand how they have been betrayed by garbage like Shelby. Not that it will help degarbagify the Senate or anyplace else. The Right just sends scummier shitbags into battle.

#