It's the old fear that the Dumbs... err.. Dems will not be seen as strong on defense... Plus, of course, the wide dispersion of defense contractors for pork barrel purposes.

I spent my entire youth waiting out the fake war with communism. Now, I look forward to going into dotage with a fake war with terrorism. Those war guys sure know how to get the bucks.

I'll be voting against all sitting federal electeds in the next primary. Just for meanness.

Just imagine what 300 billion could have done for the crumbling road and bridge infrastructure here. What do we get instead? Privatization. Could the transportation woes be erased by adding a few cents to the gas tax? Sure. About 5 cents a gallon should do it. What do we get? $4.00 a gallon gasoline by the end of the summer, with record profits to the oil companies and record tax subsidies to the bastards on top of it.

Would a small slice of war profiteering fund NCLB? What do we get instead? Advanced urban combat weapons systems with cute little machine gun toting "transformers", Active Denial ray guns to quell the coming summer demonstrations, and no further inquiry to defense sleaze.

Alberto's scalp is a parallel track, no less important, in stopping the bloodless coup and the toppling of our government engineered by Rove and carried out in every department and agency.

So much to do, and so little time.

Maybe Harold is putting on his thinking cap to give new marching orders to the "wonkers" at Progressive Policy.....ya think?

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran

Oh, Max, you're so antediluvian. But of course, not everything new is good.

Which brings me to my big knock on the great progressive hope, my own Senator Obama. I say Senator because he seems to have forgotten that part of his job description and is now doing the job of Rock Star Prez Candidate. Nonetheless, he's still getting paid to be a Senator.

My wife works for Cook County Hospital. (I refuse to call it by its official name, it's now named after to political hacks who are now destroying it). I don't mind that Obama endorsed these people, they are Dems and the Republican opponents were no better. I'm not sure they'd have been much worse.

Under the Todd Stroger adminstration there is a 17% budget cut and it's cutting bone, not fat. My point is that nobody even EXPECTS Senator Obama or any other Democrat to lift a finger in support, much less find finds. Illinois Democrats at the state level have all embraced the "Read My Lips - No new taxes" mantra. So the hospital is toast.

So good point, Max. What do we need this kind of Democrats for?

Max, love your posts, but hope you don't mind my saying that you've been hitting the caps lock key a lot recently.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

I always cap my headlines, hardly ever the text. Maybe I shouldn't.

Switching gears, have you seen my old friend Harold, can you tell me where he's gone?
--
Senator Ford was busy over the weekend taking calls from Don Imus who was getting advice on how to extract himself from some outrageous comments he made about the Rutgers women's basketball team on the Imus radio show.
Bernard McGirk, the show's producer, and Imus referred to the ladies of the team as "Nappy headed hos".
Ford was able to explain to why people were upset about the hair comment. Ford was as confused as Imus as to why people were upset about Imus calling the women a garden implement.
Imus will be appearing on Al Sharpton's radio program later in the day.

I think the $14 billion is above baseline and so takes inflation into account (CBPP says its 12 billion- http://www.cbpp.org/3-22-07bud2.htm).

Regardless, point well taken about progressive blogosphere, which does not have to deal with the realities of vote-getting if it doesn't want to. i wonder how many bloggers directly depend on discretionary funding? or understand that they do if they do? know anybody who does or did? have any compassion for those who do or did?

i also wouldn't get mad at "the democrats" categorically for the paucity of domestic funding. blaming specific groups (blue dogs, new dems) of deficit-obsessed and overly cautious dems who also happen to control the budget committees may be more accurate. but you have to wonder when the supposedly more liberal leadership will put some heat on them.

Who says that voting Democratic = wanting more domestic spending? A lot of the people I talk to want the Dems in charge because they'll actually try to match revenues to expenditures, not because they want to keep flinging out the pork. If I thought a Democratic Congress meant big increases in discretionary domestic spending, I'd have stayed home.

Edit: that wasn't clear. My real point is that there's no reason to expect that a narrow Democratic majority means there's any constituency for increased domestic spending without bringing in populist Republicans. Which would have all kinds of unfortunate consequences, no?

You're right about the amount being over baseline, but the same article you link says ultimately it will be $14 billion, not $12. I appreciate the correction.

It's still a pee-hole in the snow.

It's been argued that we get more pork because there is less open debate about increased spending needs for national priorities. For fear of engaging this, pols from both parties do the back-room garbage.

Regarding pork, I took a brief look at the 2005 earmark list and actually could not find anything goofy, like my favorites -- the National Packard Museum (Ohio) or the Statue of Vulcan (Montgomery, AL).

Give 'em a break, Max!

The last thing we need is the 110th "tax and spend" Congress going into November 2008.

Post-2008 -- with a Democrat in the White House -- we'll all be social democrats.

"...From blogs we know everything about Monica Goodling except the details of her gynecological exam...."

Have you been taking comedy lessons from Don Imus?

But Hoppy you don't understand. Max wants a SYMBOLIC domestic initiative. He doesn't care if it is politically possible to pass, or not.

We should stop spending almost $500 billion per year on "defense." We spend more on defense than the next top 10 industrial nations combined.

We're not going to fight WWII again, there will be no more Island hopping in the pacific or D Days in Europe. Why do we need the number of carrier battle groups we have? The number of Army divisions and reserves? Do we need the Air Force we have?

We're in IRAQ because we had a military that could go to IRAQ. If you give some of these politicians and general officers this kind of military they're going to want to use it. No one buys billion dollar stealth air craft to watch them lay dormant somewhere. Vietnam, Beirut, Granada, Panama, Desert Storm, all "wars" that never needed to be fought.

Star Wars?

Our $500 billion defense budget didn't keep us from being attacked on 9/11, nor did it protect the USS Cole. Iraq is showing not how strong we are, but how weak in the way 21st century battles will be fought.

Our military allowed us to kick the Taliban out of Afghanistan, now we can't allow them to return, can we?

Other industrialized nations have swapped National Health Care for $500 billion annual defense budgets.

For FY 2008, the Bush administration has requested $647.3 billion to cover the costs of national defense and war. This includes the Defense Department budget ($483 billion), some smaller defense-related accounts ($22.6 billion), and the projected FY 2008 cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and counter-terror operations ($141.7 billion). However, it does not include non-DOD expenditures for homeland security ($36.4 billion) or the Veterans' Affairs budget ($84.4 billion). Nor does it include the request for supplemental funds for outstanding FY 2007 war costs ($93.4 billion).

Its frikkin insane.

That's one conceivable justification -- they're saving up for a fiscal banquet when they take over the WH. But in the run-up if the rhetoric is all fiscal constipation, it dims expectations for a 180 degree turn in 2009.

Are we so scared of the "tax and spend" label that we won't do a thing to save the baby that Grover Norquist continues to try to drown in the bathtub?

Well how about, "don't tax but spend" as the Republicans have done for six years? Or if we can't stomach that, then how about looking for some choice Republican pork to cut (like, say, abstinence-only sex ed programs) and make a public show of it, then using it to fund something more worthwhile.

Something, anything to show there is a difference.

Because, no, I don't believe that "with a Democrat in the White House we'll all be social democrats." The DLC and related octopi haven't given up at all.

While we were having a great time bashing Rep. Ford last week, over the weekend, look what waltzed right in the tpmcafe door: The Democratic Renaissance Project, a research group claiming to be "working to reestablish a Democratic vision for America." In an article called "The Coming Fight Over No Child Left Behind" the author accepts as a self-evident premise that teachers union's criticism of NCLB cannot be trusted.

Some social democrats. They take Republican spin as the starting point of their analysis. And this is from the liberal wing of the party. The Democratic left and the "netroots" need to be about something other than Obama's "audacity of hope". Hope is not a program.

Harold was wasting his time.