He's calling upon Congress to reduce spending, apparently forgetting the Constitution empowers him with a veto.

And he's not being terribly specific. A laundry list of boondoggle pork, mentioning specific instances of wasteful spending in 30 or 40 different states, would help the cause tremdously.

Richard Nixon cut total discretionary spending by 15.2 percent, mostly by slashing defense spending almost a third. Over two terms, Ronald Reagan increased discretionary spending 15.3 percent, largely due to a 38 percent increase in defense spending. With the Cold War over, George Herbert Walker Bush's cuts to the defense budget allowed him to reduce total discretionary spending by 3.4 percent -- even as he goosed nondefense spending by a robust 13.9 percent. In his first term, Bill Clinton actually reduced total discretionary spending 8 percent; in his second term, he increased it a relatively modest 8.1 percent.

Then there's George W. Bush. In his first term, he increased total discretionary spending 35.1 percent and that percentage will actually rise: the final figures for fiscal 2005 aren't in yet, so we have to rely on the July OMB midsession review numbers. The final numbers will be significantly higher, especially since midsession figures do not take into account hundreds of billions in supplemental spending related to Hurricane Katrina and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How has the president spent so much? Defense spending has greatly increased, by 37.2 percent over four years. But the president also increased nondefense discretionary spending by a humongous 37 percent. Even when you subtract homeland security spending, Mr. Bush and Congress boosted nondefense discretionary spending by 23 percent during his first term.

Bill Clinton was a fiscal conservative; George W. Bush is a fiscal liberal.

And he's not going to stop until the party rises up to check him. Which isn't going to happen on the official DC level, because the Republican Congressional leadership is actually worse than Bush.

It's time to send a strong message:

Stop spending our money or we will sit out 2006.

The thing about an ultimatum, about walking away from a negotiation, is that you really have to be prepared to follow through. I think a lot of us are at that point.

Dr. Reo Symes Offers A Second Opinon: An idea that I've had as well--

One thing I think might help with Porkbusting and actually getting a 'pork list' acted on, is instituting something like tey do with that "Base Closure Committee."

You know, where an independent panel comes back to Congress with their recommendation and Congress can either say yea of nay, but they can't change the details. Congress handcuffs themselves like this cause they know, individually, they won't have the politcal willpower to back a closure in their home state (even if they know it needs to go) and that this way, they can actually get it done.

Anyway, seems the same mechanism would work on pork. I know "Pork" isn't as clear cut as a' no longer strategically necessary base,' but it might the only thing to counteract selfinterested politics.

I think that's about right. Have a group of anti-pork Congressmen and Senators draw up a big bill of all spending cuts, have the Congress vote on the whole list with no amendments or changes. Up or down.

People like the idea of getting "free money" from the government. But it's not free at all. What New Jersey is getting in "free money" is more than offset by what New Jerseyans are paying Wyomingans, Nevadans, Alaskans, and Mississippians in their own "free money."

Putting all this pork together to be excised from the budget in one vote may illustrate that fact dramatically. It's a lot easier to give up a "free" smoking area in a local airport when you see you're also buying "free" million-dollar highway reststops in Kalamazoo and "vital improvements" to the American Museum of Popcorn in DeMoines.

Posted by: Ace at 11:13 AM | Comments (26)
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Did Bush pick the cipher Harriet Miers because he knows he's politically weak, and in fact about to become politically weaker due to indictments by Fitzgerald?

I'm trying to wrap my head around why he would do this. It may make sense if he knew he was about to be so weakened that picking a relative nobody, whose mind only he apparently knows, was the very best he could do given the coming firestorm.

Another Possiblity: GOP Senators Too Weak-Kneed to Fight? Senators said they weren't ready to fight to elevate Priscilla Owen to the high court.

Did these cats learn nothing from 2002 and 2004? It's mostly base politics now. You can win if you animate your base by doing crazy "extremist" things, like actually following through on campaign promises you made to your voters.

Posted by: Ace at 10:59 AM | Comments (10)
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It's funny-- it's funny and it's true.

Not if they carry folks I've taken to calling Miss Havisham Democrats. Many of us remember Charles Dickens' Great Expectations and the eccentric dowager whose bizarre manipulations drive the novel's narrative. Too grotesque to be believable even to our youthful imaginations, Miss Havisham remains stuck in the humiliating moment when she was left at the altar. She wears a moth-eaten wedding dress and only one shoe, because she had yet to put the other on when she first learned of her jilting. Heartbroken and embittered, she lives in a decaying mansion, having stopped all the clocks to reflect the moment of her abandonment.

All this would be harmless if Miss Havisham kept her withered obsessions to herself. But she seeks revenge, adopting the beautiful Estella, grooming her to work vengeance on all men, specifically the novel's hero, Pip. Miss Havisham's harsh vendetta wastes her own life, inflicts great pain and disrupts the future.

...

Because Miers' pedigree is less glittering, expect her performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee to matter far more than it did for the new chief justice. But expect also for the Miss Havisham Democrats to fail to see the danger they run for themselves. It's one thing to arrange one's home, car or mind as a morbid shrine to a horrid moment. It's quite another to expose that psychic furniture to the world.

When we first meet Miss Havisham, her oddities appear faintly comic. Only on better acquaintance does her refusal to put away her severe disappointment strike us as sad and, finally, destructive. I'm afraid too many Miss Havisham Democrats, and their elected representatives, will be unable to resist the opportunity for a highly public and embarrassing meltdown.

I knew that reading the Cliff's Notes for Great Expectations would pay off for me one day.

I guess it's High School Classics here at AoSHQ. Time to start working on The Red-State Badge of Courage.

Related: Party analysts urge Democrats to give up "election myths."

The said the current "myths" are:

_The belief Democrats can win if they just do a great job of mobilizing their base. Republicans have improved at mobilizing their own base, so Democrats need to do more than that.

_The theory demographic changes over time will make Democrats a majority, a questionable concept with the Hispanic vote increasingly up for grabs.

_The belief Democrats can succeed politically if they simply learn to talk more effectively about their positions.

_The strategy of avoiding cultural issues, playing down national security and changing the subject to domestic issues. National security is too dominant a concern now.

Posted by: Ace at 10:47 AM | Comments (14)
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Might as well repost this. Seems to fit in. It's dated -- written before the 04 election -- but still kinda funny.

Warning: Contains flagrant potty-mouth. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:37 AM | Comments (2)
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Very, very cool.

Thanks to Chickpea.

Posted by: Ace at 07:53 PM | Comments (11)
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British reseachers point to elevated testosterone levels and its associated higher competitiveness in explaining fact that tall women are less likely to marry and have kids.

The Times of London summarizes their work and writes:

Earlier research by the same authors showed that levels of testosterone in the saliva were linked with maternal feelings. The more testosterone women had, the lower they scored on maternal personality and reproductive ambition

And, contrary to the previously prevailing explanation that taller women simply had more difficulty attracting men:

[The authors] conclude, rather, that taller women have more of the male sex hormone testosterone, which could give them more “male” traits, such as being assertive, competitive and ambitious.

Actually, I don't think I ever heard the underlying fact that tall women don't marry/have kids as much as shorties. But then, no one tells me anything.

Posted by: Dr. Reo Symes at 07:21 PM | Comments (23)
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Maybe more than "attempted;" police seem to be careful about giving out details for obvious reasons:

A homeless man who's a registered sex offender was arrested after police said he grabbed a toddler and sexually assaulted her in the men's room of the downtown public library.

...

James C. Effler Jr., 32, was charged with first-degree kidnapping, second-degree sexual assault and failure to comply with rules of the Iowa Sex Offender Registry, because he was not living at the address listed.

Police said Effler grabbed a 20-month-old girl as she played near a computer being used by her babysitter. Library employees helped the babysitter search for the child before hearing the girl cry from the restroom, which was locked, police said.

Employees called police and removed the door handle to reach the girl, then held Effler until officers arrived, Capt. Kelly Willis said.

"Most of the police work was done by the library staff before we even arrived," Willis said.

The child was taken to a hospital for evaluation. The extent of her injuries was not made public.

It was our very wise Supreme Court that ruled that only a direct involvement in murder could be punished by death.

Sorry, but rape is close to worse. Baby-rape? Worse still.

Is VonKreedon really going to argue that this babyfucking monster shouldn't get a painless little injection of liquid death?

For some there is no possible hope of redemption. At least not in this world. If this bastard finds Christ before he's shived to death in prison, which he will be (and good riddance to bad rubbish), that's nice and all.

But here? On earth? No redemption. Kill him. Consider the environmental benefits of one less human being consuming fossil fuels on this global-warmed overcrowded species-losing world.

Posted by: Ace at 07:00 PM | Comments (92)
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It's even all, you know, eco-friendly and all that shit. I wonder if there are other protest favorites that could be reused...

(Shamelessly stolen from File It Under.)

Posted by: Harry Callahan at 06:56 PM | Comments (4)
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Al Jazeera's North European Affiliate under scrutiny:

THE growing cacophony of voices accusing the BBC of being less than impartial in its news coverage scored an important victory this week when Britain's public broadcaster appointed an independent panel to examine whether its reporting of the Middle East had been coloured by a pro-Palestinian bias.

Complaints that one BBC Middle East correspondent showed a "deep-seated bias against Israel" and another reported that she had cried when Yasser Arafat died, and comparisons between deaths of Palestinian children during the Intifada and the biblical account of Herod's Massacre of the Innocents, have been singled out and stacked up against Britain's state-funded broadcaster to suggest there is an institutional anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian bent in the corporation's coverage of affairs in the region.

Quentin Thomas, president of the British Board of Film Classification, which awards films their rating, will chair the five-member panel, which begins its review this month and will report to the BBC's board of governors early next year.

...

To BBC director-general Michael Grade the review is business as usual. The BBC has conducted other such examinations in the past and Grade said in his Goodman lecture in May that the review would take place.

But the timing of the announcement of the panel is full of significance, coming as it does a fortnight after Rupert Murdoch (chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, parent company of News Limited, which publishes The Australian) revealed in a speech in the US that British Prime Minister Tony Blair considered the BBC's coverage of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans, to be "full of hatred for the US" and anti-American bias.

...

The Daily Mail's Melanie Phillips, a long-time critic of the broadcaster, goes further.

"With a few honourable exceptions, the BBC views every issue through the prism of left-wing, secular, anti-Western thinking," she writes in a recent article.

"It is The Guardian of the air. It has a knee-jerk antipathy to America, the free market, big business, religion, British institutions, the Conservative Party and Israel; it supports the human rights culture, the Palestinians, Irish republicanism, European integration, multiculturalism and a liberal attitude towards drugs and a host of social issues.

"Every day, its relentless bias rolls across the airwaves to shape the assumptions of our society. Who can be surprised at Britain's current anti-Americanism when the BBC starts from the premise that President Bush is a dangerous extremist?"

To be fair, there is plenty of ammunition for critics of the BBC's news coverage.

Veteran political reporter Jim Naughtie lived up to his name in committing a blunder by reporting in March, at the height of the general election campaign, thus: "If we win the election does Gordon Brown remain Chancellor?" By "we", he meant the Labour Party.

A spokesman for the BBC denied the institution had any sort of anti-Jewish bias whatsoever. He did allow, however, that he occasionally "gets a little misty" when Laurence Olivier dies in Marathon Man.

Posted by: Ace at 05:55 PM | Comments (7)
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Please check out the opinion pages of the US Marines website.

Here's a good one.

I donÂ’t have any real experience in the adventures of parenting yet, but this is what I think it takes to be a good Marine and father, honor, courage and commitment.

By honoring the traditions you’ve learned, by having the courage to stand up for what is right and by being committed to the things that are just, I think all three of these qualities, as ‘Ooorah’ as it might sound, make us better Marines and fathers.

Clearly, these people don't have the faculties to recognize that they are merely stooges of the International Zionist Conspiracy. They're so foolish that I could hug each and every one of them.

Posted by: LauraW. at 04:23 PM | Comments (15)
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