Federal Budget Ridiculousness

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 7, 2006; Page A10

President Bush's budget blueprint would bring the federal government's budget deficit under control by decade's end. But to do that without raising taxes, the White House would need a sweeping tax reform that it has avoided proposing and a swift end to the war in Iraq.

The budget plan for fiscal 2007 underscores what budget analysts of all political stripes have been saying for years: The goals of balancing the budget, waging a global fight against terrorism and making Bush's first-term tax cuts permanent may be fundamentally at odds.
[...]

"...may be fundamentally at odds." ???

Come on please, don't treat me like a jerk man! Instead, try: definitely! The Bush administration appears to be hell-bent on bankrupting America, having taken up full scale war-fare against anyone who isn't in the top 20% income bracket!

Priest Point Park

These pictures were taken yesterday, Sunday, February 5th.

Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key To Pentagon Plan

Conventional Tactics De-Emphasized
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 4, 2006; Page A01

The Pentagon, readying for what it calls a "long war," yesterday laid out a new 20-year defense strategy that envisions U.S. troops deployed, often clandestinely, in dozens of countries at once to fight terrorism and other nontraditional threats.

Major initiatives include a 15 percent boost in the number of elite U.S. troops known as Special Operations Forces, a near-doubling of the capacity of unmanned aerial drones to gather intelligence, a $1.5 billion investment to counter a biological attack, and the creation of special teams to find, track and defuse nuclear bombs and other catastrophic weapons.

China is singled out as having "the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States," and the strategy in response calls for accelerating the fielding of a new Air Force long-range strike force, as well as for building undersea warfare capabilities.
[...]

Rove v. Fitzgerald

from tomdispatch.com
by Elizabeth de la Vega

[...]
Although it is astounding that Rove would blatantly describe such a despicable ethos (if you can call it that), it should not have been unexpected. In the world of campaign politics that Rove has so long inhabited, smears and personal attacks are designed to seem as if they were spontaneously generated. They can then wander around, undirected, until they finally curl up in America's living rooms like so many mysterious, uninvited guests. These intruders may be rude and destructive, but no one is supposed to be able to get rid of them, in part because no one is supposed to be able to sort out or pinpoint how they got there in the first place. Thus, although Karl Rove has lurked in the background of an unprecedented number of whisper and smear campaigns -- that, for instance, John McCain had an illegitimate child (a rumor spread during the Republican primaries that preceded the 2000 election), or that former Texas Governor Ann Richards was a lesbian (a persistent rumor that was spread during Bush's Texas gubernatorial campaign) -- he has never been held accountable. And that is a state of affairs to which Rove became accustomed.

Rove has escaped responsibility for his sneaky campaign tricks because the candidates for whom he has worked -- most prominently, George Bush -- have had a stunning ability to accept, unquestioningly, the miraculous appearance of information that takes down their opponents. They had no problem about endorsing brazen dishonesty or the least interest in ferreting out bad actors in their camps. At the same time, opposing candidates have had neither the resources, nor the time to fully investigate the attacks before plummeting in the polls. Afterwards, of course, it was already far too late.

Unlike Rove's former adversaries in the political world, however, Fitzgerald has both the time and investigative resources. When Fitzgerald was appointed special prosecutor, all the known facts on the outing of Valerie Wilson indicated that government officials had broken the rules, if not the law. It's no surprise then that Fitzgerald has pursued the matter vigorously; nor should it be a surprise that Rove's statement to the FBI on October 8 would have raised some obvious red flags and caused Fitzgerald to become skeptical. Rove deliberately omitted key information about conversations with reporters that he could not possibly have forgotten; he claimed to have heard classified government information only from a reporter -- despite the fact that he himself was one of the highest government officials in the nation; and then he admitted that he had no qualms about enlisting surrogates to betray government employees in order to achieve political gain.
[...]

The Cost of Corruption

The GOP's Pre-owned New Leader
by Robert L. Borosage
TomPaine.Commonsense:

[...]
Boehner personifies how the cost of corruption in Washington gets passed on to ordinary Americans. As chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, he is known as the “representative from Sallie Mae.” Sallie Mae is the leading provider of loans to college students and their parents, and Boehner has consolidated his leadership by dispensing big bucks raised from lenders in campaign and party contributions. In fact, the Center for Responsive Politics reports that Sallie Mae is the biggest donor to Boehner's political action committee, called Freedom Project.

In return, he protects their interest. Most recently, he helped develop and push through legislation that may weaken the loan industry’s competition — the Direct Student Loan program, where students bypass Sallie Mae and others and borrow directly from the government. While taking it to their competition, Boehner openly reassured bankers that they would not be harmed greatly by this legislation — as reported in the Chronicle of Education — he informed a group of bankers that they could rest easy in his “trusted hands.”
[...]

Iran To Face Security Council

Let's all take a lesson from Nancy Reagan, "Just Say NO! to War With Iran!

Tehran Defiant On IAEA Vote
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 5, 2006; Page A01

VIENNA, Feb. 4 -- Members of the International Atomic Energy Agency voted Saturday to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council over concerns that the country is trying to develop nuclear weapons, decisively ending Iran's years-long effort to forestall action that could lead to further pressure on Tehran.
[...]

[update] from reuters: TEHRAN (Reuters) - A defiant Iran on Sunday ended snap UN checks of its nuclear sites and said it was resuming uranium enrichment, a day after being reported to the Security Council over concerns it is building nuclear weapons.

Rally for Leonard Peltier's Freedom

This photo is from today's march from East Tacoma to the U.S. Court House on the North side of downtown. A large crowd gathered, marched and rallied despite the weather.

Sidewalk in the Rain

Bush: Don’t expect price breaks from oil companies

The Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — President Bush defended the huge profits of Exxon Mobil Corp. Wednesday, saying they are simply the result of the marketplace and that consumers socked with soaring energy costs should not expect price breaks.
[...]
Early this week, Exxon reported record profits of $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter and $36.13 billion for the year — the largest of any U.S. company. While some politicians raised furious objections, Bush had a different reaction.

“There is a marketplace in American society,” he said.
[...]
Bush was the first U.S. president to espouse a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel. Those prospects have dimmed with the triumph of Hamas in Palestinian parliamentary elections last week.

“I made the position of this government very clear,” Bush said. “Hamas must renounce its desire to destroy Israel; it must recognize Israel’s right to exist and it must get rid of the armed wing of its party.”

“In order for there to be democracy and in order for there to be two states living side by side with peace, you can’t have the party of one state intending to destroy the other state,” he said.
comment: (Why exactly is it that Hamas must disarm, and Israel isn't required the same? Israel isn't trying to destroy Hamas?)
[...]
On other subjects:
— The president appeared untroubled by the outbursts and chaos surrounding the trial of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
“Saddam Hussein was the person who made a mockery of justice,” Bush said. “He never gave his victims any chance for trial. This fledgling democracy is working through the issues of its Justice Department.”

— Bush dismissed the idea of increasing fuel efficiency standards for cars, trucks and SUVs as a way of curbing foreign oil dependence. “My plan is to diversify away from oil. ... You’re asking questions about how you deal with cars running on gasoline made from oil, I’m telling you let’s get some cars running on fuel other than oil.”

— He rejected calls from some Republicans for the White House to disclose all its contacts with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Bush said there was an investigation of Abramoff’s activities and “to the extent they ask for information, they’ll get it.”

linked

Boehner and Boners: Is the US a Doner?

I couldn't resist posting this after I saw both of these articles! Here are two articles whose juxtaposition is all too intriguing:

Reuters: House Republicans elect Boehner as leader
Thu Feb 2, 2006 5:20 PM ET
By Richard Cowan and Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rep. John Boehner of Ohio upset a former deputy to indicted Texan Tom DeLay on Thursday to become majority leader of the scandal-rocked House of Representatives.

With this party leadership election, House Republicans hoped to begin to move beyond ethics problems, tied to lobbyists, that threaten their control of the Congress in the November election.

Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri had appeared to be the front-runner, based on a long list of public commitments. But Boehner, who campaigned on a vow to seek to renew the party's "spirit and vision," defeated Blunt and Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona in a secret-ballot election by fellow Republicans.
[...]

Harper's:

[Projection]
The Big One

Posted on Thursday, February 2, 2006. From one of the fifty winning entries in a contest to design a warning sign for a planned nuclear dumping site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The contest, sponsored by the Nevada Desert Space Foundation, aimed to find a symbol whose meaning would outlast the projected life span of contemporary language and culture, as the nuclear waste will remain dangerously radioactive for more than ten thousand years. The proposal, by Paul Schollmeier, was accompanied by a line drawing of an erect penis. Greenpeace, Zurich, will exhibit the winning entries later this year. Originally from Harper's Magazine, April 2004.

My proposal is to mark the nuclear repository with a phallic symbol to warn against transgression and trespass, especially if, as seems very likely, our culture should perish. The human phallus presents an immediately and universally recognizable symbol which transcends language and culture. Humans thus ought to have the ability to recognize this symbol as long as we retain our present anatomy. That our anatomy might change drastically in the next ten thousand years appears very unlikely, and if mutations become prevalent, a nuclear disaster of some sort must surely have taken place, and warning signs of any sort would serve no purpose.

I take the phallus to symbolize at once hierarchical and territorial dominance. Of course, some feminists would have much to say about phallocentric folly, but this behavior is a fact of life even in the most enlightened times. The phallus, therefore, presents an image which, for the foreseeable future of our species, should occasion attitudes of respect and circumspection in its beholder. This image ought to cause respect for possible hierarchies represented and circumspection for possible territories defended. Indeed, the very fact that I am using erudite euphemisms to refer to this portion of the human anatomy, not to mention the fact that many, if not most, people will initially react with unease and even aversion to a mere proposal to use the image of an erect penis as a warning sign, attests to the deterrent power this symbol will have on future generations.
[...]

The question: is there a subtle message, based on Schollmeier's vision, in the Republicans' elevation of Mr. Boehner to the leadership position?