As the Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand down, President Bush has said. Well, look who are climbing to their feet:
See Streiff at Red State for more from his steady stream of great military insight.
Ordinarily I think fighting pork is a waste of time, since it’s only 1% of the federal budget. But when guys like Senator Stevens of Alaska rub it in our noses, it’s soooo easy to just join the mob.
So now I’m all-out rooting for Senator Coburn to stick it to Alaska. Just because it’ll make me feel better.
Well, my brother’s gone to a college where they, well, give great structure to his life. No, it’s not military, it’s religious. So while he’s spending time doing that, I’m taking good care of his Nintendo DS.
I’m on world 4, having completely done the first three worlds. By complete I mean complete: all coins, all secret levels. So far I’m pleased with the game. The sound effects from Mario 64 and later games don’t fit in well, but the SMB 1, SMB 3, and Super Mario World influences dominate.
Oh, and a few of the ‘minigames’ are alright. I guess when you throw enough of them at the player, a few have to stick.
The inflation picture’s looking just fine since the Fed’s string of interest rate hikes ended. Yes, it appears that part of the problem is that a combination of higher gas prices and a bursting housing bubble may be threatening to slow down the Bush boom, but reasonable growth with modest inflation is better than many outcomes.
Last thing we need is an economic slowdown ahead of the 2008 election…
If Hurricane Katrina’s strength was Bush’s fault, was Tropical Storm Ernesto’s weakness to Bush’s credit?
The California State Assembly has passed SB840, a bill that would ban health insurance, the purchase of medical care, and create a socialized medicine system in this state.
I’m just appalled. This is such a ridiculous, mind-boggling attack on freedom and quality of life. And on top of that, Pat Cleary cals it California’s Economic Death Wish.
Fortunately Phil Angelides even refuses to endorse SB840, and Governor Schwarzenegger will have a chance to veto this thing once the Senate re-passes it.
I’m still nervous. This is a nightmare.
Finally, Ramon Martinez hits his first career walk-off homer on the first pitch in the bottom half of the inning.
The Dodgers stay up by 3 over the Padres, the Reds fall behind the Padres by a half game in the wild card, and I’m going to bed.
I sure have been picking good games to watch, though. “Good morning, everybody,” Vin Scully says. You don’t hear him say that at the end of the game very often.
Derek Lowe is relieving for the Dodgers in the 14th inning, and the Reds walk him to start things off in the bottom half. This is inexcusable because Lowe has a hand bruise right now, and might not even be able to grip the bat particularly well.
It’s getting late. Just win it guys.
Well, I’m in on the Red State fantasy football league, improbably enough. Having already seen drafted Larry Johnson, Shaun Alexander, LaDanian Tomlinson, Tiki Barber, Peyton Manning, Rudi Johnson, Clinton Portis, and Ronnie Brown, I went with Edgerrin James.
I even had some reasoning for it. Thanks to my brother, who loves to talk about USC and loves to hate any QB who replaces Kurt Warner, I know who they have at that position in Arizona this year. So, I’m hoping the old guy and the rookie will leave that team needing to run a lot this year.
Of course I’m probably just fooling myself thinking I can reason effectively about the NFL, but we’ll see.
If fighting pork is not the right way to get the base unified for victory in 2006, then what is? I’ll tell you.
Zero baseline budgeting: This reform idea was part of the Contract with America, but unfortunately seems to be an element of that package that failed to pass. Because today we are still stuck with a broken baseline budgeting system that makes it easy to spend upwards of two trillion dollars ($2,000,000,000,000) a year without turning off the autopilot.
There are other budgetary reforms possible, such as earmark reform, but even opponents of so-called pork cannot point to such spending as being a significant part of that two trillion. Further, pork spending is a highly emotional matter on both sides, straining needlessly our party unity in a time of war. So zero baseline budgeting should not only be a more effective spending check, but it should be better politics, too.
Renewed immigration enforcement: Mike Pence has proven that the anti-illegal immigration wing of the party is not unified behind Tom Tancredo, so proponents of unskilled laborer immigration should know they can get that at any time. Therefore, the Republicans should be free to prepare for such a reform immediately by renewing our commitment to enforce the laws on the books today.
Neither the failure of the Senate to pass H.R. 4437 nor the House failure to pass S. 2611 has the effect of wiping out previous immigration laws from the books. Until such time as a new bill passes, the existing laws should be enforced as a show of good faith. After all, why bother to change the law if we know it won’t be enforced anyway?
Win the War: This should be obvious, but this year we are seeing too many Republicans run against the President on the War on Terror at home, in Iraq, at Guantanamo Bay, and in the rest of the world.
We need to talk as aggressively about the last five years as we did in 2004. Imagine if the Democrats were in power these last two years, and we were now reading stories about all those planes exploding in the air. We would be reading about how people died in the explosions, how some survived that but died in the succeeding crashes, how others survived that but drowned in the ocean, and lastly the few who could be rescued out of the water after all that. Can we afford to stop the war and live through something like that?
Fight judicial activism: Again, this should be obvious. Does anyone think that the fight against the ‘living Constitution” is over now that Justice Alito is hearing cases?
President Bush can help the Congress on this by making an aggressive series of Judicial nominations, and the Senate leadership can help itself by doing what it can to force votes on each and every one of them.
We can do this. We can win, and we can win together.