While the nation recovers from Super Bowl Sunday and discusses the crucial issues of which commercial was best and whether our children will ever recover from being exposed to 1.5 seconds of Janet Jackson’s breast amid three hours of ritualized violence, there is a lot of actual news taking place. Here’s your summary of what’s being crunched (and in some cases hidden) in the 24-hour news cycle between the the big game and the big primaries:
- President Bush’s budget is here, and it’s a lulu. It amazingly manages to slash vital programs while maintaining the Bush administration’s rich history of hundreds of billions of dollars in red ink. It features cuts in the funding of the Small Business Administration and the E.P.A. and a whopping 49% cut in the budget of the General Services Administration, which concerns itself with frivolities like environmental protection and, yes, Leaving No Child Behind.
Absent from the budget is the cost of keeping our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, not one thin dime has been budgeted for that, which means that if Iraq and Afghanistan send all our troops home in prepaid taxicabs tomorrow morning, the Bush budget will be more or less accurate. This hopeful ploy allows the administration to claim to have budgeted a little more frugally than last year while assuring that just as much money will be spent. After all, who’s gonna vote down an emergency spending plan for Our Boys Overseas, even if the “emergency” in question seems a little disingenuous (”Hey, the 101st suddenly says they need food and fuel - whoa, we didn’t see THAT comin’!”)?
- Responsible Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has ordered the evacuation of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, finally reversing the dangerous and contentious movement championed by irresponsible rabble-rouser Ariel Sharon. Sharon is no doubt already on the horn with his American spokesman William Safire, who will soon write a column that extols the virtues of humans-as-game-pieces while unsubtly preening over being the journalist who has the ear of world leaders like Ariel Sharon and… um… Ariel Sharon.
- President Bush is now calling for an investigation into the intelligence failures that caused the Iraq war. The results will answer Bush’s burning question, “What didn’t I know and when didn’t I know it?” Expect the investigation to give us an impartial look at why this was all the fault of Bill Clinton. [”If he hadn’t made us spend two years impeaching him, we might’ve noticed that every one of the CIA’s 720 sources was named ‘Chalabi.’”]
- Lagging in the polls, Howard Dean is getting mean. It’s an understandable strategy - there’s no chance that there would be any headlines between now and tomorrow reading, “Howard Dean Shows Himself To Be A Nice Guy With Good Ideas” - news just doesn’t work that way. But this round of attacks on Kerry is too shrill and too vague (”John Kerry - he took money from people who advocated stuff”) to have much impact, particularly from an electorate that would be only too glad to see November’s election be cast as one between “the pol and the poltroon.” Much as I’ve enjoyed Dean’s campaign, I’ve gotta file this one under “He wasn’t going to ask me to be his running mate anyway.”
Fanny Roborat
17 comments
Murray
February 2, 2004 at 4:39 pm
1*Sigh*
This budget is just as phony as the SOTU address. There is nothing here that passes the 2- second-think-about-it-test. The Republicans argue all of this with a straight face and America argues about Janet and Justin. Was it planned? How do we punish them? (Of course this, looking like the most boring part of the game, was when I was out getting something to eat).
Once again we are feeling the fallout of slipping down the rabbit hole into Bizzaro Land.
sue
February 2, 2004 at 4:55 pm
2Listening to the news over the weekend (not, of course, during WWDTM), I was thinking what an alarmist buzz-word “special interests” has become - and, no, I don’t claim to have thought of it first. I’m sure much nimbler brains than mine have plowed this furrow. But, really, aren’t the Girl Scouts of America a special interest group?(thin mints, merit badges - they’re interested in all that stuff!)It’s easy to charge that Kerry - and anybody else - took money from “special interest groups” if you don’t have to be too specific.
It may turn out that someone bought him a box of Tagalongs.
adam
February 2, 2004 at 5:04 pm
3Sue -
Yeah, that’s sort of what I’m getting at here. Dean doesn’t name Kerry’s special interest contributors because, I suspect, of that very problem.
Not to say that special interest money hasn’t corrupted our government - it has. But it’s important to pay attention to the details - who’s giving the money, why they’re giving it, and what they appear to have received in exchange. “Details,” however, aren’t exactly a big part of national politics.
tom
February 2, 2004 at 5:36 pm
4…wait, was I dreaming this morning when I heard someone say on NPR that Shrub was going to convene a special commission to look into his own intelligence failures?
Humbly presented for your viewing and hearing enjoyment:
http://homepage.mac.com/webmasterkai/kaicurry/gwbush/dishonestdubya.ht ml
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Bob
February 2, 2004 at 6:06 pm
5Thanks for the political news, but let’s get back to the important stuff: are we going to impeach Justin Timberlake?
Though, come to think of it, we can’t accuse him of a cover-up.
Murray
February 2, 2004 at 7:43 pm
6I think that special interests are bad when there are only a few. The best possible number would be infinity. If you are beholding to everyone and no one in particular isn’t that way better than the other way around?
Matt
February 2, 2004 at 9:28 pm
7A special interest is a group you don’t agree with. When you ask the government for something, it is “grass roots organization”. When someone else does it, it is “special interest lobbying”.
It’s the American way.
craig
February 2, 2004 at 10:28 pm
8About the budget:
What else would we expect from the “MBA President” who is good friends with those financial wizzes who brought us Enron? You’re just jealous that you didn’t think of an off balance sheet Special Purpose Entity to fund “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” (Remember, we don’t have wars any more. They’re “Operations.” It takes the whole Congress to declare War, but Dr Frist can prescribe an operation all by himself.)
About the Intelligence Investigation:
I love your synopsis of “what did I know and when did I know it.” But you have to really appreciate the timing of the flip. Early enough to take the issue off the table during the election while at the same time, late enough to ensure that no conclusion can be reached prior to Election Day.
Jay
February 2, 2004 at 10:43 pm
9Most people, it seems, have accepted the hypothesis (sp?) that because the U.S. could not find WMD, the pre-war intelligence was wrong. But what if the pre-war intelligence was right, and Saddam Hussein as his final desperate act of defiance scattered the material throughout the Middle East? Can we say for sure that we had enough border monitoring in the early days of the war to ensure that this didn’t happen? Are we really safer if all of those poisons are now in the hands of Hamas, Hezbollah, perhaps Al-Qaida? No wonder Bush wants to delay the report as long as possible.
Bryan
February 2, 2004 at 11:37 pm
10Intelligence is a wonderful excuse. To see intelligence you have to have a clearance and a need to view it.
The government controls clearances and decides who has a need.
The world was told that the intelligence said there were WMDs in Iraq, but the world isn’t allowed to see the intelligence. The world only has the word of Bush and Blair that such intelligence exists.
The groundhog might have returned to his burrow because he saw his shadow, but I’m betting it was the noise of all the cameras. Intelligence is like that, there are at least two ways of looking at any particular piece of information.
Bush and Blair are the “intelligence failures”.
Zoot
February 3, 2004 at 1:57 am
11Appearing concerned with whether or not the intelligence was flawed is blatantly ignoring the real issue, which is that the policy of preemptive aggression is insane. It’s like, “Did we blatantly break the law and set a horrible precedent under accurate pretexts, or inaccurate pretexts? We must know!” Considering the possibility that breaking the law was perhaps not the best step forward for the world is apparently outside of the realm of discussion in polite circles.
Monsieur Felber, you rule so hard.
Murray
February 3, 2004 at 10:55 am
12Zoot
We have been breaking the (international) laws for a long time. This is just the first time that it was given a justification.
Why did we go to Viet Nam? What legal justification did we have then? Tompkins (sp?) Bay?
We invaded Granada only to take the heat off the bombing of our Marines in Lebanon. (A war we almost lost because the Cartography division where my father-in-law worked was not given enough time to produce maps, so they used Holiday Inn maps and got lost for 3 days looking for the medical students).
We invaded Panama and deposed a sovereign leader on charges here in the US. (The drug traffic is worse now under the puppet we installed, but he does what we want).
We mined the harbor in Nicaragua because we were afraid of the Sandinistas. Regan said that they were only a 2 day’s drive from Brownsville TX.
Illegal wars are nothing new. Bush has learned from his father and Regan that we can throw our weight around with impunity. The American public doesn’t care as long as we win.
lovable liberal
February 3, 2004 at 12:08 pm
13Jay, what if the moon is made of green cheese? I mean, have you been there? How do you know it’s not a dairy product? This is why W wants to go there, I’m sure.
Anonymous
February 3, 2004 at 3:06 pm
14Jay,
Let’s take your hypothesis to an even scarier conclusion. There were WMD. The CIA found them. And is keeping them for its own use/distribution when it sees fit. (For example, the next time Russia decides to invade Afghanistan, rather than arm Osama bin Laden with Stingers, give him a couple of chemical weapons.) Obviously, the perfect cover is to ‘prove’ that the WMD never existed - which is what the left wants to hear.
No, I take it back. Your scenario is scarier. We’re still safe in my scenario. Only a government that believes in pre-emptive strikes would use WMD on its own citizens.
tess
February 3, 2004 at 4:44 pm
15i leave for a few days and suddenly the discussion turns serious!
oh well, may as well have a few digs in: jay, what about another idea? that maybe it’s really really hard to find WMDs in iraq after almost a year of looking around because they really aren’t there? we went in under the initial assumption that saddam had tons of weapons lying around, and suddenly the justification goes to weapons programs, and now it’s weapons programs-related activities. considering our justifications keep changing, wouldnt’ it be fair to say that it’s the acknowledgement of our present administration that we really had nothing to worry about and we’re not entrenched in reconstructing a country that really wants nothing to do with us, and that we’ve lost a lot of credibility in the process? and what will our creditors say when we keep asking for more money without guarantees we can pay them back?
i’m rambling, but mostly because i’m feeling awful brain-dead and tired.
eva
February 3, 2004 at 6:14 pm
16“What did I know and when did I know it?” Good one Adam. I keep thinking about that line and cracking up- thanks for giving me something to keep laughing about….
Jerry
February 9, 2004 at 4:06 am
17Murray, you must be blessedly young, but at least you are thinking! That’s ‘Tonkin Gulf.’
For a quick overview, see
http://www.fair.org/media-beat/940727.html
Vietnam was the ‘ricebowl of Asia’ which had to be denied to the commies. And, uh, oh yeah, it also happens to be the ‘oil and gas, coal and lignite, phosphates, iron ore, gold, tin and graphite and also produces lead, zinc, antimony, pyrite, wolframite, manganese, kaolinite, limestone, marble, salt and a variety of non- metallics and precious stones bowl of Asia.’
Sadly, 40 years and 100,000 American lives later (yeah, I know: 55,000KIA, but those are prompt battlefield deaths, and no stats cover the epidemic of suicide by vets [and no, that wasn’t because we protestors managed to meet every returning vet and spit on him])those resources are open to the world with the US having invested $1.2 billion.