A semen stain on America

Such a wise statement on the lawn of the whitehouse today on a sign held by a, let's just say less-than-enthused citizen. It simply said: "Would someone please give him a blow job so we can impeach him!"

Libby's sleepin' wit da fishes

Because I'm the guy who writes all the boring news stuff I have to write something about this freaking complicated leak case now that Libby's been indicted. (That can't be how indicted is spelled, hmm spell check says it is so.) Patrick Fitzgerald tried to make a baseball analogy about what's been going on but it was a bit too vague. So I thought I'd try to make it a little more entertaining but putting it in a more identifiable context, through the eyes of a Sopranos fan. Somehow the mafia just seems to work here, don't you think? But I can't seem to get this down right. So anyone who's a Sopranos fan, help me out here. http://www.hbo.com/sopranos/cast for cast list. This is what I've got so far:

Tony Soprano (The boss): Cheney
Uncle Junior (The guy who thinks he's boss): Bush
Andrea (talked to feds trying to help her mafia husband Christopher and was shot in the head): Valerie Plame
Christopher (forced to lose his wife and has shown signs of disloyalty in the past): Joe Wilson
Dr. Melfi (Tony's shrink, trying to get honesty out of him from the beginning): Patrick Fitzgerald
Silvio Dante (Tony's Consigliarie and owner of Bada Bing gentlemen's club): Karl Rove
Ralphie Cifferetto: (Captain who earned a lot but who talked a little too much, now he's "missing."): Libby
Livia (Tony's mother, still influential from beyond the grave): Barbara Bush

Obviously it's not an exact match and I'm missing some people. So help me out. I'm taking this thing to Broadway!

Finally!

If all goes according to plan, the Davis-Bacon Act (isn't that a typing program?) will be reinstated. This is the act temporarily suspended by Bush so that workers in the gulf region would be paid the national minimum wage instead of the prevailing wages of the region thereby keeping more money out of the hands of the people actually working down there, trying to get a life going again in this torn region. I wrote about this earlier, one of the most despicable things Bush had ever done in his presidency domestically was taking that money away from the people who need it most and were the ones who were actually working there. They're wage cuts paid for the obscene money handed over to the Royal Caribbean cruise ships that housed Katrina victims and to the unbelievable ill planned trailer parks being built to house these people, away from everyone else in their own modern day ghetto. Apparently what brought Bush arround were republican congressmen from the industrialized northwest whose constituency is still largely unionized. See the unions still can do some good! Just watch out cause Bush said he wants to "push the envelope" for cost cutting so he won't have to raise any taxes to pay for all this reconstruction. Let's see how he gets the money out of the poor and gives it to the rich next...

A little behind schedule

Only 12 and a half years after the fact, a jury has found The Port Authority, those guys who own the WTC site and handle NY,NJ transit negligent in the 1993 terrorist attack on the WTC. Not 9/11, the February 1993 van explosion in the lower parking level. There are tons of lawsuits pending waiting on such a fault to be declared. I guess we'll all just have to wait till 2013 for justice to be had for 9/11.
On a separate note on the same issue, the jury, in some weird way, has found the Port Authority 67% guilty and the terrorists only 33% guilty for the attacks. That's a majority of the blame for falling asleep on the job and a minimal amount of blame for the actual bombers who actively decided to cause us harm. Does anyone else see the problem here?
"Well officer she was in the bad part of the neighborhood and in a skirt so she was at the wrong place at the wrong time so I should only be found 33% guilty of robbing and raping her." So keep wearing that hood home from work concha and Em, I hope we get you a new place soon.

It's a good thing '77 is a drink cause here come the 7's

Cause I can't please Ms. Brown with a root for the Texans, here's what she's been asking for...

7 things I want to do before I die:
1. Get the obvious over with, write a book
2. Write for The Daily Show
3. Find "her"
4. Have a conversation with Steve Martin
5. Finish my dad's book with him
6. Learn to ride a motorcycle
7. Get a job


7 things I cannot do
1. Sing
2. Play any instrument
3. Keep a beat
4. Dance (at least without alcohol or I dance like everyone in O Brother Where Art Thou)
5. Any other musical related activities most Jews just can't do
6. Survive if Jason comes after me
7. Art Direct

7 things I say most often
1. Uh huh
2. Washup
3. Holy Guacamole
4. No it isn't
5. Did you know...
6. Actually...
7. WTF mate

7 things that attract me to the opposite sex
1. Red Hair
2. Brains
3. Boobs
4. Booty
5. Face of a Botecelli, body of a Degas
6. She takes an interest in everything
7. She's actually paying attention to me?

7 celebrity crushes
1. Natalie Portman
2. Jennifer Connelly (pre-anorexic days, Dark City, Career Opportunites!)
3. Julie Delpy
4. Carmen Electra
5. Jessica Simpson (with tape over mouth please)
6. First crush - Sussana Hoffs of The Bangles (I'd still walk like an Egyptian)
7. Second crush - Bernadette Peters

I've finally been replaced

Every year I'm always the guy that gets the best presents for my brother's birthday. Back in '95 I got him an "mp3 player." How weird. No one knew what it was, but bam! And I've been awesome at it since. Until this year. This year I got my bro a waffle iron for his new apartment. A great "accoutrement" to make Sundays with his girl a little more fun. But guess what his girl got him, guess!... A freakin guitar signed by Dave Matthews. I mean my god! There is no way I'm ever competing with that. At least until some agency wants to pay me 6 digits. I hereby bequeath to you, Mary, the title of best present giver to my brother.

Stop copying me West Wing!

On tonight's episode of West Wing, apparently Russian spy's killed the President of Kazakistan or one of those Risk countries because it was cozying up to China when it came to natural resources by building an oil pipeline to China instead of it's Soviet fatherland. Therefore nuclear war is about to break out between Russia and China over oil. And after reading my previous blog right below on China and India going to war over oil the West Wing writers obviously read it and made the show in less than 24 hours cause it was such a good idea. What's up with that writer guys? I would have gladly given you the idea if you had just asked politely.

Don't confuse capitalist democracy for pro-American

Since the defeat of the USSR and the end of the cold war, most Soviet satellite countries have turned to democracy and most of those have been pro-American. Poland and Ukraine are probably the best examples. And without their Soviet northern neighbors, China has slowly shifted to a capitalist country while still retaining its communist title. It's still an overbearing government with many restrictions and though a tipping point has been reached for a booming economy, don't be surprised if corruption and big brother go hand in hand with all this new free capital. But what made me write this blog is what has been going on in India. A communist leaning country during the cold war, it has recently become a free market that has, like China, grown exponentially. But this summer President Singh met with Bush and came away with a junior membership in the nuclear nation club. (Every nuke nation before 1974). And with very little in return, things they should be doing anyway, they will now be a nuclear superpower instead of a rogue nuclear state. Bush's plan is to please India in case China turns sour. It's going to be really amazing to watch China and India, neighboring countries, become economic super powers at the same time. We're even helping India develop it's space plans which will actually make it capable to hit us with a nuke. It can already hit all it's neighbors just fine. And I don't know Bush thinks he's doing by trying to feed one growing beast (India) in hopes it will scare another beast we're feeding (China) so they both won't go after us, all the while loosening the leash. With China's arsenal growing daily, India is on a path to have literally hundreds of nuclear warheads by the beginning of the next decade. A nuclear arms race is what speed up the defeat of the USSR by basically bankrupting them into defeat. But that will hardly work on two countries who's economies are growing faster than any country before them, AT THE SAME TIME! There is very little in common with these two countries so it might seem like I'm jumping the gun here to assume they'd aim their guns at each other but this is the century that will be framed about who can get what resources from where first. Alternative energy sources can only go so far so fast in a world built on fossil fuels. And this goes for our own country too which will only grow in oil consumption as it's percentage of world fuel share shrinks. The oil grab will be furious and out of control and it's really going to be a matter of making sure that there are as few nukes and as many safety nets as possible before we all realize we've grown too big for this planet. It almost feels like it's 1905 and Germany has just developed it's plan "just in case" it has to go to war with France and England and the in turn have developed thier own plan "just in case" as well. Let's make sure our "just in cases" are peaceful solutions when our Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand get's blown up.

I just read the sweetest review of anything I've ever read. It was A.O. Scott's NY Times review of Steve Martin's Shopgirl. About 5 years ago I read a cute little novella by Mr. Martin called Shopgirl and thought not as much of it. His comedy is smart and forward and to the point without many layers. You just have to know where he's coming from and you get it. His collection of short funnies in Pure Drivel were hillarious and forced me to write out of sheer respect for the written word that Steve Martin put into me. But Shopgirl is retrospective, introspective, speculative, ironic, sardonic, whispy, unsure, but still from the same brain. This is true with The Pleasure of My Company, his new book where he dares write 50 or so more pages thereby leaving novelladom behind for an actual book.
But back to my point of this little blog. I was halfway through reading this glowing review when I realized what A.O. Scott was doing, the same thing I do when I am in awe of something, try to bring myself up to its level. Not in quality necessarily but just in a sense that how can I talk about something so great unless I convey greatness in every word I speak? Ever in search of the right words I never seem to find I either shut up or never stop talking searching for the right thing to say worthy of the experience just had. And that's what I noticed A.O. Scott doing as he kept delving into the movie's layers that he called so timidly put together they were like a house of cards. It's as if he were reviewing a desert so delicatly made, if you even breathed wrong while tasting it you'd miss alltogether what the chef's purpose was. I love that feeling that A.O. Scott seemed to be having, and that, beyond any words he actually wrote or I read in the book is why I am greatly anticipating seeing one of my favorite writers put his little words on the big screen.

President Bush has furthered the real conservative movement despite himself.

Although Bush has taken conservatism and turned it on its head through bigger spending, nation building, and sticking the government's nose where it doesn't belong, a movement is happening. It is the same movement that would be happening had a true conservative leader of the free world been our president now. The point of conservativism is to let others, the local governments and the private sector rule as they see fit. The federal government should only be there when it absolutely has to be, because we, the people, can do it better. But it is because of Bush's incompetence in some areas, and negligence in others, and not his leadership that the private sector and local governments have stepped up to the plate. Governers are taking a more active role than they ever have before, joining forces to pass higher minimum wages and stiffer emmission standards where Bush has wither let them slide or weakened them further. The One Campaign along with the Live8 concert moved the G8 summitt in a much more productive direction. And people like Bill Gates and ex-president Clinton are taking on world health and peace problems with a furver worthy of the man who should sit behind the desk of The Oval Office. Of course I am no conservative, in the true or Bush sense of the word. I believe our government can act and be productive as many great individuals and NGO's do. But there are positive points to be made about what conservatives fight for every day. And it makes it even harder to understand why anyone in our country, conservative or liberal would not want this president gone now.

We've waited long enough.

The Republicans have finally fallen on their asses. It took 10 years of absolute power corrupting absolutely but finally Delay, Frist, Rove, Libby, Abramoff, Brownie, and a few others are finally caught red handed. The reason they got into power in '94 in the first place was because they had a plan. And all we here now is where is the Democrats plan? Well I'm tired of waiting so I'm just going to say what I want them to say and hopefully someone will listen and get our country back.

Taxes - We got 22 million new jobs and the longest sustained year over year growth our country has every had under a tax system that charged us a lot more. For everyone who can afford it, say $200,000 and over (like Kerry's plan, yes he had a few good ideas), set the taxes back to where they were. And this part I hear said a lot on the campaign trail but it never gets done, close every single freakin loophole there is. Rewrite from scratch if that's what it takes. Apple wrote OSX from scratch and created a much more stable system, it was a tough switch but it was worth it. (Can you tell I'm on a Mac?) There are too many companies unpatriotically not paying their taxes because they have a PO Box in the Caribbean. There are too many rich folks living off dividends that, through these loopholes because of the tax lawyers no one else can afford but them, they pay fewer taxes than the guy I just bought my gum from.

Voting - The Electoral College has outlived it's purpose. We need a direct democracy. I get the point that campaigning won't be necessary in the small, rural areas because they won't be worth as many votes. But I think just the opposite will happen. A Republican's voice doesn't count in NY and CA, but it would when every vote counted. And how about all the Democrats in Oklahoma and Kansas that just don't vote because they know which way their state will go? And it works for the third parties too. I think we'll see a lot more people vote when they realize it's worth something.

Healthcare - Enough with the communistic fears of universal healthcare. Every GM car costs an extra $1500 because of the healthcare the company owes. Imagine a country where every company doesn't have the added cost burden of healthcare. The money can go into higher wages, more R&D, and of course, where it all goes now, to the three guys on the board with $5,000,000,000 bonuses. And with universal healthcare all the costs of the middleman disappear. All the money that the HMOs are making is the money that would be saved on healthcare costs. We have a pass the buck mentality where hospitals charge $6 for two Advil because, "Hey, the patient's not paying for it." Oh yes, we are. And the newest deterrent to healthcare for all is that we'll all use it too much, thereby burdening the system. I get that, but I'd rather have more than less healthcare. The lost productivity hours due to untimely sicknesses, which is in the hundreds of billions of dollars, would more than make up for it.

Iraq - Yes, getting out answers today's problem. But if we all seriously think about it, we know that when the troops go home, the terrorists won't. We are an attraction to terrorists, we are fueling the flames there that lead the jihadists to fight. But there is no stability yet. If you break it you buy it. It's that simple. And we all know we broke it.

Katrina - No more no-bid contracts to the big companies. Find as many local companies as you can. Use conglomerates as a last resort. No-bids in Iraq are bad but really there are only 5 or so companies in the world that can do what Haliburten and Bechtel are doing. Which reminds me, the Army Core of Engineers should stop outsourcing so much stuff and do it themselves like they used to. Hundreds of millions overcharged for gasoline would just not happen if the Army was fueling itself. It's more of a choice in our own back yard. And money for "Jim's Fix It Shop" is guaranteed to stay local instead the 5 cents of every dollar that ends up in Halliburtin's headquarters. And treat these people as refugees, because that's what they are. If we want New Orleans to basically disappear, fine, but if we want it to stay, we need to get all the people back who want to come. That means a lot of New Deal type of spending. Long term infrastructure building. It'll will cost in the beginning but it will pay for itself in the long run. I still don't get how FEMA is getting away with paying double to Royal Caribbean for housing people on their ships. And why are the buying 150,000 trailers that will only be temporarily used when there are millions of hotel rooms that are empty. And that money just goes right back into the economy too. Can anyone say giant RV surplus sale?

Energy - No single alternative energy source will work. We need mandatory solar panels on all available govt buildings. Wind farms and solar panels may not be as cheap now as they will be but a massive govt. buying spree will bring the price down automatically and on top of that, no matter what they cost, they will pay for themselves in time. Imagine free power. FREE! (minus maintenance, I know. And with the prices down after the govt. spending, they will be cheap enough for individual buying. Tax breaks to car companies to make every car made a hybrid to be sold at the same cost as their gas counter parts. There's enough room in America for enough wind farms to give us twice the amount of power this country uses on it's own. And that's not including solar, geothermal, dams, and biofuel. Corn ethanol won't work but sugar will. Sugar can create an ethanol twice as powerful as corn and it's cheaper to make. And all the waste from all the cows we farm can be locally used for energy as well. Ethanol and any biofuel loses a lot of it's productivity when it's shipped cause that takes energy too. But, focusing locally takes a big chunk of the problem away. We have the technology today to trap a lot the carbon dioxide burned from that and from coal and use it to get more oil out of our own ground. With carbon dioxide, we can pump it into the ground and force more oil up, it's a technology already in use today in some areas of Texas. And alternative energy can be the source used to make the hydrogen we'll need for the hydrogen fuel cell cars we'll use in a couple decades. All this will not only make us energy dependent but even an energy exporter. Imagine Saudi Arabia having to kiss up to us when they run out of oil.

Education - Basically just quoting Tom Friedman here: We need our moonshot. I'm a geo-green too. By encouraging education by actually focusing on it like we did when JFK told us we were going to the moon, we can create the next generation of scientists we'll need to compete with China and India and any other post-industrial nation in the future. And I guess I can just go along with no child left behind since it was a left wing idea to begin with anyway, we just need to do what Bush never did with it, fund it. We're a competitive nation, and we do well when we compete. We just haven't seen any one to compete with since '91. But they're out there, and they're winning.


That's not everything but that's enough of a platform for me to start with. Anyone got anything to add?

Fucking Cowards

Right after 9/11 Bill Maher lost his show because he disagreed with everyone saying that hijackers were cowards. He said something to the effect that if someone is willing to die, kill themselves, and goes through with it for the cause they believe in, that is hardly cowardice. And I totally agree with that. He lost his show when sponsors pulled out by the end of the week but he's back on HBO and he has never taken back what he said. He's a complete idiot sometimes and rarely are his writers funny but I agree with him here and he's one of the best advocates for the 1st amendment. So right on Bill!.
But then... here we go again. Today I heard on three separate occasions, two real, and one on The West Wing, suicide bombers "committing acts of cowardice." What the fuck! It just strengthens their side when we go overboard and basically lie because it makes us feel better. Oh they're cowards for not only risking their lives but actually killing themselves. And we're so brave because we decided not to have a draft after 9/11 and not to sacrifice anything during this wartime and just sit around on the couch as before but with a little code yellow sign at the bottom of the Fox News ticker.
We're all against them, what the hell does adding something stupid to the mix do to help this situation? These fuckers are brutal and brave. They're fighting for a cause we don't believe in but they sure as hell do and bravery is not something that takes sides. They suck, I want them all dead, I want our side to win and theirs to lose, but for God's sake they are not cowards, now pick another freakin' word!

The new iPod is the reason why we must trade with China

The scary thing about free trade is that you lose control. But really the only way to gain control is to lose it. We have been trading heavily with China since they entered the WTO in the late 90's under Bill Clinton. The point to outsourcing is to lower costs here by sending work abroad to lower cost wage earners thereby boosting those smaller economies. The problem is that we are hemmoraging jobs waiting for those other countries to have enough of our money to buy some of our stuff thereby balancing out the whole thing and creating a larger customer base for our products. And all we do is worry about the jobs we're losing instead of the jobs we should be making. The untold part of the freetrade story is that in order for this to succeed we have to keep inventing. If inventions stopped today and we lived in the economy we have now forever, then free trade would just not work. But we are no longer a textile industry, or even an industrial state at all. We're even moving past the service industry. But every time jobs would move down the ladder we'd have new jobs waiting. And Apple is a great metaphor for the larger picture. First there was the iPod and it was good. But then people started wondering what the hell apple could do to stay on top, then it got smaller and then it got better battery life, then it got color. Today apple introduced the video iPod and people are scooping them up. So if we could just believe that our economy will keep bettering itself the way we believe apple does then free trade just becomes a no brainer. The industry of tomorrow is what we need to prepare for. America's industry needs to start acting like Apple's R&D department. That means investments in education, science, math, grant projects, missions to mars, whatever the horizon hints at we'd better go there or some guy in India is going to call up customer service and hear some guy with a Brooklyn accent saying, "Yeah, how can I help you."

Why am I just learning about this now?

Apparently in November of 2001, yes two months after 9/11 when we were all supposed to shut up and throw rocks at people who didn't have 50 American flags hanging out of their taxi cabs, Bush signed an executive order that prohibits any presidential papers from becoming public unless that president (or his estate) and the sitting president agree to it. An executive order means it can only be overturned by a president and the congress didn't get to consent or pass anything. Before this, any non-security related paper became public and would usually be part of the presidential library 12 years after that president had left office. Now Clinton won't have his papers released in 2013 unless the sitting president allows it, which could be his wife possibly. What kind of a bind does that put any new president in who could overturn it but has ties to previous presidencies? It's a horrible bind but one that MUST be overturned on January 17, 2009, period! Of course Bush did it just in time to protect Reagan and the Iran Contra problem not to mention anything his daddy did while he was VP also not to mention anything his daddy did while he was P for that matter.
Ok, so just to recap - Reversed Clintons order on less arsenic in the water; signed into law the 1st and 3rd biggest tax cuts ever with most of the money going to the rich. 3 of his 4 tax cuts were after we were at war; dismantled more environmental safeguards than any president; gutted the EPA, FEMA, and countless other services in the name of "streamlining;" got rid of the Superfund so now taxpayers must pay to clean up GE's and ExxonMobile's messes instead of the companies themselves; spent more money and grew the government twice as fast as the Democrat Bill Clinton and even faster than the Great Society President Lyndon Johnson. So now we have the biggest trade deficit and the largest debt ever which keeps breaking it's own record every year. Has not vetoed a single bill including the new energy bill with billions in pork that could be used in the south or Iraq right now. Came back from Texas to sign a bill to protect a brain dead woman but wouldn't lift a finger to stop the congress from gutting govt services until a new budget for fiscal year 2006 is signed when recess is over next week; brought up Harriet Meirs for the Supreme Court because she's an evangelical Christian that he knows and is down the hall from; and now is threatening to veto a spending bill on Iraq for $50 billion because it has a provision to make torturing people illegal. HE WANTS TO VETO A BILL BECAUSE IT ENDS TORTURE! Cheney is working like a ghost in the night trying to make sure it doesn't get out of the House so Bushie won't have to sign anything. And all of this is leaving out that regardless us all thinking there were WMDs in Iraq, or that Saddam was a bad guy, or that the terrorists were coming to get us, there were 2 days, repeat 2 days left on the weapons inspections in Iraq and Bush came on TV and said we're attacking. And leaving out we listened to the civilian Rumsfeld who said go in with fewer troops instead of listening to the actual soldiers who said we need at least twice that many and then firing one of them cause he said so out loud and that it wasn't going to cost $2 billion like Cheney said it would. And forgetting Rove and Libby leaked to the news that a guy had a wife in the CIA undercover because he said there were no WMD's in Iraq. AND THEY'RE GETTING AWAY WITH ALL OF THIS. He's in office till '08 unless we can impeach him. We probably can't take back that Senate in '06 cause there just aren't enough seats up in competitive areas and we have NO CHANCE of taking back the house for years to come because of Delay's redistricting among other non-competitive inducing tricks played by both parties. Anybody got any non-assassination ideas?

Apparently they were prepared for Katrina

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan it has been brought to my attention that the cronies on the right were actually prepared for the devastation of Katrina and all the mess it was going to cause. The reason for this is because Joe M. Albaugh, the crony of Bush who ran FEMA before Brownie took over, who was a lobbyist for the companies who won no contract bids to fix Katrina, was already making deals with those companies to help with those "bids" before the hurricane had hit. So apparently they do know how to help at the right time, they just decided to help themselves.

What's with the 80's?

I understand how we've got the whole 80's retro thing going on. We've been doing retro for a while now. Did the 50's pretty quick, the 60's almost as quick. The 70's stuck around for a while and now here we are in 2005 acting like it's 1985. And all that I guess everybody knows. The problem that I run into is, even before 1985 we were focused on 1985. 1984 was that distant point in the future and became a classic. The 50's was a time of looking to the future. And for some reason we'd all been thinking there'd be flying cars by the 80's. So what was it about Reagan, Hair Bands, Wall Street, and Crack that we collected around? We stopped talking about the future in fiction by the 80's and started showing what we could already do or what some genius could do that meant it was not far from mainstream like Back to the Future and Wargames. And I guess originality stopped after that cause Grung was punk and then came back the boy bands and Britney and the rest is history, or rather our present. This really doesn't make sense, but come one, does anyone pick up what I'm layin' down?

Oh Crap! They got me!

So probably the first comment that is going to be left on this blog is from an advertisement. Now this is the part here where I'm supposed to say "Now don't get me wrong, I love advertising, I'm a copywriter, I'm supposed to love this stuff." But fuck that! Some dude has figured out that if he automatically posts comments on everybody's' blogs that say "Hey man your site is cool, it's like in my top three, I read it all the time. But you should really check out my site, it's about sex toys or how to refinance your house and get a bigger penis at the same time." Or even better, "I think I should try writing blogs seeing as how good you are at it, all I had before was this sex site." Which is of course a hyperlink to Tammy, I mean I uh... don't know if it's Tammy cause I've NEVER hit that link, it could be Cammy or Sarah, or Desire with that accent on the e that I can't make in this template.
I guess we should just band together and figure out a way to stop these fuckers from even being in the advertising category so I don't have to think about how I do the same thing and infiltrate every single spare space of air left to my fellow human being.
Oh.. yeah... uh.. and Bush sucks or China's economic plan to do something er other...

I can't believe I'm posting a forward!

You'll all probably have this within a few days anyway in your email but I just couldn't pass posting a freakin' email forward on my blog cause it's just so freakin' apt:

The government today announced that it is changing its emblem from an Eagle to a CONDOM because it more accurately reflects the government's political stance. A condom allows for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while you're actually being screwed.

And this forward came from my mother no less!

Cut and run, literally

As in the past 9 years, Congress has not been able to come up with an operating budget in time for the new fiscal year (October 1). So on September 30, the house passed a stop-gap measure as they have for the past 9 years to keep paying everyone on government payroll and prevent a government shutdown (like the one we had in 1996). It all seems simple enough but that's not what the House Republicans did this year. Nope, this year they changed the funding for this limited period until a full budget is passed. The House's stop-gap measure calls for a 50% cut in every state in social services spending except for the 13 smallest states which are receiving a 75% cut. They dropped it on to the Senate for approval and left for a week long recess. Of course the more moderate Senate was left in a bit of a bind having to either sign the bill or get Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert to call the entire house back for a new vote on a new, less destructive bill. Which of course would be quite an unprecedented thing to do if all the Congressional Republicans didn't rush back to Washington to join Bush, on Palm Sunday no less, to sign their Terry Shiavo law. Of course the Senate did no such thing, called a vote, passed the stop-gap measure and left themselves.
It has long been my view that the economic conservatives in power have had a "starve-the-beast" mentality where if they cut enough taxes and make sure that enough social programs go bankrupt that it won't be economically feasible to save them when the chickens come home to roost and people, all of a sudden, realize they have no social security, no welfare, no unemployment benefits, nothing! And all of this while the Bush administration has increased non-military spending even more than Lyndon B. Johnson did during his great society. That's twice as fast as Bill Clinton's government ever grew. Where is this pork building, no bid contract giving, behind the door lobbyist dealing money that we're borrowing from China going?