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.
Federal spending in 2005: $2.154 trillion
Federal budget deficit in 2005: $0.318 trillion
Total pork spending in 2006: $0.029 trillion
Does anybody else see the problem with making pork a priority, at least if one is serious about significantly reducing either the budget deficit or the size of government?
If anything hurts this party, given the state of the Democrats today, it’s going to be that we slam each other to the ground trying to climb on our respective high horses of True Republicanism. I’ll let the religious right police their own, and for my part I’ll make this reminder to the small government wings of the party: ending pork will not shrink our government or the deficit appreciably, so cut the hyperbole and find something substantive to work on that doesn’t involve regular potshots at our Congressional majorities.
Source for spending and deficit: CBO. Source for pork spending amount: CAGW.
I’ve been tired the last few days, and haven’t managed too keep up with the Dodgers well. Apparently they’ve kept on losing, though have stayed in first thanks to matching Padres losses.
I hope this isn’t another massive downswing…
Via Robert A. Hahn, it seems that UN troops acted as a Hezbollah intelligence service, broadcasting Israeli troop movements for them. Says The Weekly Standard:
UNIFIL–the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a nearly 2,000-man blue-helmet contingent that has been present on the Lebanon-Israel border since 1978–is officially neutral. Yet, throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old.
Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah “fired rockets in large numbers from various locations” and Hezbollah’s rockets “were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations” are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.
No wonder the IDF was having trouble winning the war! Israel needs to warn the new French-led forces, though, that if they try this again, they’re going to be treated as they deserve to be: as enemy agents at war. And mean it.
Well, not in November, but as soon as we can give the seat to another Republican, California CD 45 needs change. I recently received some mail from Rep. Mary Bono that shows to me a complete disconnection from the principles of 1994, which were what caused me to vote for her and her late husband to begin with.
This mailing, which says that it is a “PUBLIC DOCUMENT • OFFICIAL BUSINESS” and that “This mailing was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense,” is nothing but a self-contradictory campaign ad. On page two she has the nerve to say this:
Ensuring Fiscal Discipline
In an effort to control federal spending, I was pleased to vote in favor of the Legislative Line Item Veto Act of 2006. The measure gives the president increased authority to remove unnecessary or wasteful earmarks from spending bills. Congress must stand for fiscal discipline and reform. I am pleased that this measure will increase transparency and accountability in federal spending and discourage wasteful and unnecessary spending.
While on the back page, which is prominent in the original, folded-up mailing, she starts singing a different tune. I can’t bring myself to type up all this pork, so here’s a scan instead:
Two million dollars for Salton Sea research? Give me a break. At least Rep. Lewis got his constituents in Banning a swimming pool for a tenth of that! The Salton Sea is barely in our district! It’s mostly down south in Imperial County.
Anyway, does Bono really think that any members of Congress will call their own pork anything but “responsible” just as she calls hers? What a joke. Does anyone in Riverside County, California want to challenge this RMSP spender in the next primary? Please?
Apparently the International Astronomer’s Union has declared that Pluto is now the Dwarf Planet Pluto of Anaheim or something.
This whole thing is stupid. “Planet” isn’t at all a useful scientific definition. No benefit is gained by this arbitrary classification vs just keeping the OLD arbitrary classification intact. If any government money goes to the people who have been fighting this whole issue, we ought to revoke the amount spent on this stupidity.
Jacques Chirac’s foreign policy is a miserable failure. Tony Blair’s Iran policy is a miserable failure. So is what’s left of what Gerhard Schröder was up to. Diplomacy has failed in Iran because there is no credible threat of force to back up the will of the free world.
If only western Europe had helped out in Iraq, maybe Iran would be undergoing the same process Iraq and Afghanistan are now. But no, the corrupt anti-Americans had to side with the murderous dictator in Iraq, so now another murderous dicator in Iran is continuing to develop nuclear weapons.
What a rip-off.