From The News and Observer:
The Senate is expected to pass an emergency spending bill this week to provide $71 billion for military costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the bulk of it going to Iraq.
Well, that bill, loaded with pork or not, HAS to pass. It has to. It’s an emergency!
If only somebody, anybody, had the foresight, back in the heady days of March, 2006. (or in March, 2005) (or in March, 2004) Remember those times? We were still in shock from Hurricane Katrina rocking New Orleans a mere six months before. We were in the first, crazy days (or at least the first, crazy three years) of the Iraq war. There was no possible way to predict what those things might cost back during January, February and March. Back when then President submitted his budget. Back when the Senate approved it. [In the case of the war, the same goes for last year’s budget, and the year before’s. Things always seem so much easier over the winter…]
We took an educated guess. Gave it shot, based on how very, very little we knew about the costs and possible contingencies back in those days. They were simpler, more trusting times.
But now, here in early May, we realize that we were a bit off-base. Again. I mean, oops, of course - but now we’ve got an emergency, and we suddenly need to spend about $100 billion that we had absolutely no idea that we’d need. It happens. Emergencies happen. Fact of life. If we had time to be embarrassed by the miscalculation, believe me, we would be. Realizing so quickly that we’d missed the mark by a tenth of a trillion dollars… well, that’d give us pause. It probably will at some point. But not now. There’s no time for that. Because, darn it, we seem to have gotten ourselves into one of those fiscal emergencies. Again.
Fanny Roborat
54 comments
Linkmeister
May 3, 2006 at 4:55 pm
1I, um, oh, never mind. These idiots are just too ridiculous.
Enjoy the show at GWU tomorrow night. Knock ‘em dead.
Ken the Llama
May 3, 2006 at 6:14 pm
2Meanwhile, did you hear GWB say today that he would veto any bill to prepare for/fight avian flu if it exceed $92.2 billion because he believes in the value of “fiscal discipline”?
“If they spend more than $92.2 billion plus pandemic flu emergency funds, I will veto the bill. It’s important for there to be fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C.” [full text]
Now, I’d hope that would be enough money, but still. We can spend as much as we need to on killing people, but there’s a cap on saving lives.
David
May 3, 2006 at 6:39 pm
3A tenth of a trillion here, a tenth of a trillion there, pretty soon…
I think Bush also said the states should not look to the federal government for help if there is a bird flu pandemic. Apparently it ain’t the federal govenment’s problem in Shrub’s world. Stephen Colbert actually went easy on the bastard.
SeattleDan
May 3, 2006 at 7:27 pm
4“Fiscal Discipline”. I tell ya, the guy just slays me, just slays me. Who writes his material,anyway?
Well, as I’m not enjoying the tax breaks for the rich, looks like I’m gonna have to pony up some dough for this “emergency”.
Maximum Bob
May 3, 2006 at 7:27 pm
5Maybe it’s just me, but this Bush guy doesn’t seem all that good with money.
siobhan
May 3, 2006 at 7:28 pm
6It’s just you, Bob.
Sharon
May 3, 2006 at 8:25 pm
7Bob, he promised to run the government like he ran his companies, and that’s the one promise he’s kept in the last 5+ years. I’m waiting now for all the Bush uncles and family friends and Saudis to bail us out again.
Oh. Wait. If the Saudis have to bail out the entire government, they might want something in return. Ya think?
Ann
May 3, 2006 at 10:03 pm
8SeattleDan, you might want to rethink keeping the finch in your store! Or maybe get it fitted with a tiny little surgical mask…
SeattleDan
May 3, 2006 at 10:34 pm
9Good idea,Ann.Not only will she not transmit diseases, it will be a muzzle. And as Ann can attest, my finch likes to chirp and yak!
David
May 4, 2006 at 1:21 am
10Quoth the mouthy bookstore finch with the tiny little surgical mask, “Nevermore, M@#%er F&*)er.”
Auros
May 4, 2006 at 3:26 am
11It’s not like they included an estimate of the year’s costs for the war, rolled into the regular budget, and then added another request later… No, they said, “It’s too hard to estimate it,” threw up their hands, and put a big fat ZERO in there, perhaps on the theory that it’s better to find yourself scrambling to sell more bonds, than to save up for a rainy day. They seem to apply that theory everywhere else, so that’s almost as plausible as the idea that they just do this to make their deficit numbers look a little less insane.
Murray
May 4, 2006 at 10:20 am
12A tenth of a trillion? No it’s more like 100,000 millions.
The Republicans KNOW that Americans are idiots and get a chuckle out of diddling with them. How else would you explain this shit?
Mary
May 4, 2006 at 10:35 am
13Corruption and treachery, Murray. Corruption and treachery.
Here’s more proof: Dick DeVoss- of your hometown- is running for Governor and is campaigning to get rid of the gas tax to lower the cost of fuel. Is this guy an idiot or what? People don’t remember the 70s so let’s just make easier for them to be gassholes. Don’t even think of telling the Big 3 to get their acts together ‘cause Japan is whooping their behinds once again. NO! Get rid of the gas tax. What a maroon!!! ;-D
Sharon
May 4, 2006 at 11:14 am
14The Big 3 are probably expecting another bailout from the feds. This story is a few years old, but some things never change.
“WASHINGTON, February 2, 2001 — As their top lobbyist, Andrew H. Card Jr. led a $25 million lobbying campaign on behalf of the “Big Three” U.S. automakers, often fighting against higher environmental standards.”
tess
May 4, 2006 at 11:35 am
15I’m trying very hard to say something witty right now, but seeing as I’ve been awake now for 23 hours and trying desperately to memorize about 2 dozen chemcial reactions, I might be a touch, well, incoherent. But I will say this much:
“The gov’t is not in the business of saving lives, it is in the business of protecting national interests, such as those represented by lobbying groups who give great gifts. It is the responsibility of the individual to protect their own health (within the rigid bounds of evangelical Christian blather), so if they are so careless to find themselves being raped, or perhaps being exposed to a scary strain of avian flu, or on the recieving end of a semiautomatic or mortar shell, they have no one to blame but themselves for a predicament that is no doubt of their own making.”
Sharon
May 4, 2006 at 12:05 pm
16It’s not enough to submit to warrantless wiretapping. Now to add insult to injury, FCC requires broadband, Internet phone companies to pay wiretap access costs.
Three guesses as to who that cost is going to be passed along to.
David
May 4, 2006 at 12:18 pm
17tess,
Wickedly said. Love it. And remember to take your ginko biloba…
Sharon,
That is just too good. Of course, only the people at the bottom ever actually pay for anything, including with their lives in war, so there is at least a kind of honesty in it. On the other hand, it is double dipping, since our tax dollars already pay for wiretapping.
I’m looking forward to my phone bill including a wiretap access charge as well.
David
May 4, 2006 at 1:55 pm
18Ginkgo, dammit, ginkgo.
Sharon
May 4, 2006 at 2:32 pm
19Gekko Balboa is that memory enhancer, right?
Or was he the lead character in the ‘Rocky’ movies? I always get confused.
Harold
May 4, 2006 at 2:39 pm
20Emergency spending bills to fund an ongoing war have always been my favorite sort of spending bills.
Adam, George Will seems to agree with you in the latest issue of Newsweek (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12554975/site/newsweek/from/RSS/), only he starts by blaming Clinton and ends by demanding that we start drilling in ANWAR right now.
Jim
May 4, 2006 at 3:56 pm
21No sharon,
You’re mistaken. Gekko Balboa is the actor in those GEICO commercials. The short dude in the creepy lizard costume.
Sue
May 4, 2006 at 3:58 pm
22Sharon,
I think he’s the mascot in those Geico commercials.
David
May 4, 2006 at 4:14 pm
23You guys seem to be thinking of Geeky Bile Boa, heralded for “I’ll turn your ass yellow if you piss me off.” Obviously you’ve been off you meds au natural.
ghani
May 4, 2006 at 5:16 pm
24David,
So if the gov is paying for the wiretapping you arn’t paying for it?
Sharon
May 4, 2006 at 5:51 pm
25Sue, I’ve seen the GEICO gekko commercials. I was just garbling it for humorous effect.
cooper
May 4, 2006 at 7:23 pm
26Apparently Bush’s star has fallen so far that even Scott McClellan is now dissing the President’s Spanish - perhaps in yet another attempt to CBA. Seems after Mr. Bush’s disapproval of the National Anthem being sung in Spanish, stories are appearing about Bush joining in during the 2000 election, singing the National Anthem in Spanish in hopes of cementing the hispanic vote in the southwest.
Also, it appears he has trouble with Spanish, too.
David
May 4, 2006 at 7:41 pm
27ghani,
Oh, yes, I’m (we’re) paying through the nose/out the ass, both in dollars and in civil liberties, for these un-American illegal wiretaps.
Short quote from Talking Points Memo regarding what we’re ponying up another tenth of a trillion for:
“It is with a special anguish that I now read George Packer’s New Yorker dispatches on Iraq. But I thought George captured the moral dimension of our current national predicament in one sentence in his piece in this week’s Talk of the Town, where he describes the president’s strategy as “muddling through the rest of the Bush Presidency, without being forced to admit defeat, until January of 2009, when the war will become a new President’s problem.”
This really is the issue. Brazen it out, burn off men and money, not admit there’s any real problem and then pass it off on the next guy who will take the blame.
The president lacks the courage to change course. The whole country is paralyzed by his cowardice.”
The emperor actually has no cojones, just a simple-minded, egomaniacal messiah complex.
cooper
May 4, 2006 at 8:11 pm
28oops… here’s the link for #25. As they say, stupid in politics, stupid in deciding, stupid in covering up your military service, stupid in balancing the budget, stupid in drinking and snorting coke and not going through rehab, stupid in reading, stupid in eating pretzels, - stupid in Spanish.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/04/AR2006 050401156.html
Sharon
May 4, 2006 at 11:38 pm
29Don’t hold back, cooper, tell us how you really feel.
I read somewhere that the anthem was sung in Spanish at one of the 2001 inaugural balls, but darned if I can find it now.
siobhan
May 4, 2006 at 11:53 pm
30El idiota no puede pronunciar “nuclear”.
El no puede hablar inglés muy bien. ¿Por qué pensaría usted que él podría hablar español? Su speechwriters quizás alcahuetee a la multitud, pero él debe pronunciar las palabras.
Esto significa que él enajena tanto los conservadores como los inmigrantees. ¡El es un unidor, no un divisor! ¡Y él es el Decisivo!
“The Decider” sounds much better in Spanish. He oughta changes sides.
Disclaimer: I’m mediocre in Spanish, so all of this is via freetranslation.com. You get what you pay for.
siobhan
May 4, 2006 at 11:54 pm
31Oops. I meant to capitalize “Idiota”. Hope that didn’t diminish the the luster of the office.
hedera
May 5, 2006 at 12:13 am
32One of the multifarious problems with the Iraq war is that the administration insists on financing it “off budget”. They’ve never included it in the regular budget.
This is the sort of thing that brought down Enron, if anybody remembers that. Sharon is dead right, he’s running the country exactly the way he ran the unfortunate commercial enterprises which were unlucky enough to have him as their CEO.
Sharon
May 5, 2006 at 12:31 am
33“Enron”? Nah, we don’t remember anything about that. We do rememeber that California had an energy crisis a few years ago because they’re all socialists and wouldn’t go along with deregulation.
Or something like that.
siobhan
May 5, 2006 at 12:33 am
34With the Rangers, didn’t he decide to trade Sosa? But now he can’t part with Rumsfeld?
Ugh.
Hey, did anyone listen to Paul Rieckhoff on Fresh Air today? He was talking about the problems of using contractors - specifically Halliburton - in Iraq, and how it something that really needs to be examined on many levels. He said “If Congress has time to look into steroid use in baseball, they can find time for this.”
SeattleDan
May 5, 2006 at 1:09 am
35Not to change the subject too much,but SeattleTammy and I have been listening to the new Bruce Springsteen CD “The Seeger Sessions” all night.It’s brilliant and I cannot recommend highly enough. Great arrangements,great vocals.great harmonies,great Protest.Do youselves a favor and listen to this.
cooper
May 5, 2006 at 7:32 am
36hedera, well said!
While we’re talking about songs sung in Spanish, here’s one that has been translated into English for our viewing pleasure. I think I saw it here first several months ago. Ladies and Gents, I present “El hijo del idiota de un asshole”
ericblumrich.com/idiot.html
cooper
May 5, 2006 at 7:34 am
37Well, My Stars! That doesn’t link, try this one - www.bushflash.com/buddy.html - or copy and paste…
cooper
May 5, 2006 at 7:42 am
38What our children’s hard earned tax dollars are paying for in these times of dire emergency - http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A8983E3D-39C9-41B0-91BE-581EE78 61C09.htm
- and with that I’ll shut up and go to work.
cooper
May 5, 2006 at 7:57 am
39Apologies, the link in 33 is incorrect, conspiratorial, and all hits are probably tabulated by the NSA. The person in my organization that put that link up has been dealt with in the usual manner and he will be pooping more efficiently in the future, as soon as the wounds heal. Cut and paste the link in #32 for the translated song of the hour! Perdóneme.
Sharon
May 5, 2006 at 8:01 am
40Speaking of where all our money is going, today’s column by Thomas Friedman is worth reading, if you have TimesSelect. If not, check your local library. Here’s the heart of it:
In case you haven’t noticed, all the oil-rich bad guys seem to be having a fine and dandy time these days.
Iran, awash in oil money, thumbs its nose at U.N. demands for it to desist in its nuclear adventures and daily threatens to wipe Israel off the map. President Vladimir Putin of Russia, awash in oil money, jails his opponents at home and cozies up to America’s opponents, like Iran and Hamas, abroad. Sudan, awash in oil money, ignores the world’s pleas to halt its genocide in Darfur. Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, awash in oil money, regularly tells America and his domestic opponents to take a hike.
And Nigeria, Uzbekistan, Angola, Saudi Arabia, Chad and Syria, all flush with oil or gas, are comfortably retreating from even baby steps of democratization.
There is a pattern here.
Indeed there is a pattern. We’re spending billions on oil, billions on the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, billions to rattle sabres at Iran, and what are we getting in return? $70/barrel oil, and going up. They say insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. By that standard, we are living in an insane country.
Sharon
May 5, 2006 at 8:12 am
41Y’know, reading that quote from Friedman again, I’d almost be willing to allow drilling in ANWR, IF at the same time this country started on a serious road to actual and total energy independence, and by that I mean taking steps like raising the gas tax so high (not all at once) that it makes mass transit look more appealing to more people, subsidizing alternatives to the same extent that we now subsidize highways, mandating higher fuel efficiency, heavily taxing SUVs, trucks, and all “passenger” vehicles over 3000 lbs., etc.
But of course that’s not going to happen while the oil and gas cartel occupies the White House.
siobhan
May 5, 2006 at 9:39 am
42My thoughts on ANWR? Of course I don’t want to see it drilled. But getting beyond that, why drill it now? It’s effectively a “strategic petroleum reserve”. For those in favor of drilling, why not wait until later, when the issue isn’t going to be cheap oil, but available oil period. Besides, if we hold off on drilling for another 20 years, the permafrost will be melted and it will be that much easier to turn the bit…
siobhan
May 5, 2006 at 10:33 am
43Cooper. Thanks for “El hijo del idiota de un asshole”. Made my morning. Woulda thanked you sooner but had to send it to all my friends first.
cooper
May 5, 2006 at 11:48 am
44siobhan, my pleasure. Good point on ANWR being a strategic petroleum reserve. Also, the migratory path for whatever caribou are still alive at that point, will have shifted north by several hundred miles, well off of ANWR by then.
Sharon, thanks for the Thomas Friedman link. He and Robert Siegle were conversing on this point yesterday on ATC.
cooper
May 5, 2006 at 11:59 am
45The State of Kansas, after setting us straight on Intelligent Design (and really steaming the Great Spaghetti Monster), decides to tackle yet another progressive issue - http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/05/kansas.marriage.ap/index.html
Sharon
May 5, 2006 at 12:28 pm
46ROFL! Wow, that IS progressive. Soon we’ll have to stop asking “What the matter with Kansas?”
Harold
May 5, 2006 at 3:15 pm
47Porter Goss just resigned.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-White-House-Shake-up.html?ex=114 7492800&en=391336726a7c06c2&ei=5009&partner=MSN_NYTHOME
Sharon
May 5, 2006 at 4:02 pm
48I guess his work there was done.
“He had particularly poor relations with segments of the agency’s powerful clandestine service. In a bleak assessment, California Rep. Jane Harman, the Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, recently said, ‘’The CIA is in a free fall,'’ noting that employees with a combined 300 years of experience have left or been pushed out.”
cooper
May 5, 2006 at 4:28 pm
49Re Porter Goss, anyone want to bet on the reason Mr. Goss is leaving his post? One intriguing possibility that has been buzzing through the internet for a week or so is he may have been identified as one of the participants in the many Duke Cunningham parties with prostitutes given out like party favors. Also, the #3 man @ the CIA, brought in by Goss, has rather meager intelligence credentials but does have ties to Duke Cunningham. The White House lapdogs, including NPR, are spinning this as a personal conflict between Goss and John Negroponte, who is getting more face time with the President than Goss is and this supposedly was burning Mr. Goss’s bacon. Perhaps - time will tell.
Ann
May 5, 2006 at 6:02 pm
50Adam’s latest post is about the Fed, unemployment rates, and inflation, but I just have the tune to “The Idiot Son of an Asshole” running through my head, so it’s all good. Plus, much as I loathe ANY form of scatological humor, Cooper’s phrase “pooping more efficiently in the future” kinda made me giggle.
Can I go home now?
David
May 5, 2006 at 6:21 pm
51“Plus, much as I loathe ANY form of scatological humor…”
Ann, you and my older sister. I think she sees the images so powerfully that she finds them revolting. She is, however, a very forgiving soul, fortunately for me.
No, you can’t go home now. There is no escape from FA.
Maximum Bob
May 6, 2006 at 1:15 am
52Why is Porter Goss leaving now? Well, we tend to get a bit shorter as we age, and Goss no longer comes up to the clown’s hand on the “You Have To Be This Incompetent To Work Here” sign at the White House.
Stephen
May 8, 2006 at 10:03 am
53If I can drop back to oil. What good would drilling in ANWAR do? It was my understanding we have enough oil, just not enough capacity to turn it into gas. Am I wrong on that?
Seems to me that is the easy way out. Shouldn’t we fix the problem rather than just throw more oil at it?
Sharon
May 8, 2006 at 1:22 pm
54Stephen,
Yes, refining capacity is a bottleneck, even if we were pumping all the oil use. And I agree that we need to start yesterday to develop new energy sources.
There is one school of thought that says we should use more oil, not less, so as to use it up faster and bring the Day of Reckoning closer. I’m not sure I agree with that strategy, but maybe that’s what all those folks in the SUVs are trying to do.