"I voted against the surge before I voted for it."

This is the only reason for the non-binding resolution: so that later on when everyone's running for office again they can say that they voted against the surge before they voted for spending the money on it.

The next thing that will happen, after the Pres ignores the Congress' resolution and goes on with his surge plan, is that he will ask Congress for the money to pay for it. These politians know that if they vote against the money (the infamous "power of the purse") they will be branded as "anti-military" and "not supporting the troops". The power of the purse may be what the Framers intended for Congress to wield, but it is political suicide when applied to military concerns.

So the only way out is to first pass the "We don't like the surge" bill and then pass the spending bill, and when asked on the campaign trail in a couple of years they can say,

(everybody sing along now)

"I voted against the surge before I voted for it."

Very good.

These are not the corruptions you are looking for...

Ever hear of Stuart W. Bowen, Jr.? He joined the Bush gubernatorial campaign in 1994 and followed Bush & Co. to the White House (after a 35-day stay in Florida watching over the recount).

Sensing a political lackey? Oh, it gets worse. Before his latest job, he spent 9 months working for a "Washington law firm with a client, URS Group, that sought and won Iraqi contracts." [Herman].

His latest job was heading the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction-- "lead investigator of the billions of dollars... spent rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure" [Herman].

Scared yet? Hillary and California Dem Henry Waxman were. Clinton voiced concern that Bowen would "lack the independence needed to fully monitor the way American taxpayer dollars are spent on Iraqi reconstruction," when it was first set up. Waxman for his part had a report published entitled The Politicization of Inspectors General, in which Bowen got his very own section*. "The report concluded that Bush has a habit of putting politically-connected people with little to no auditing experience in key spots as inspectors general." [Herman]

But here's the thing: once the administration had effectively cut off oversight by Congress, they had to do something. So they put in a lackey and went back to letting Halliburton and others rip off the country. (That's admittedly a simplification, I encourage you to use the net to fill in the blanks about how this all came about.)

OK, if you're a freedom-lover, you're probably already a little spooked about the fox getting a baby fox to guard the henhouse. Luckily, the baby fox didn't really get it, and he actually did guard the henhouse. Bowen released reports that--gasp!-- actually tracked down the free-flowing money being tossed about in Iraq and uncovered what the Australian news org The Age headlined as "Huge Fraud".

Was it enough? Did he actually track where the money went and find the crooks and prosecute them. Um, well, he might have. Even if you're horrified at another example of cronyism, today's news is worse:

the Republican-led Congress has moved quickly to address the problem: It's denying Bowen authority to monitor the $21 billion in reconstruction funds included in the latest Iraq funding bill.


Thanks to Ken Herman of the Cox News Service for his 2005 article"Former Bush aide oversees Iraq reconstruction spending" for the background info, and Tim Grieve's post at Salon.com's War Room for tipping me off to the latest news.

*"...because the slot he now holds is not under the Inspector General Act that created the other posts at federal agencies." [Herman]

(originally written in Nov 06, finally published today!)

The State of The Union Address

Hi there to all of you in Blogland! Sorry that is has been so long since I posted. I have a sewing machine now, you know how it is.

Today I want to address a few lines from the State of the Union. If you read other pol blogs, then you've probably seen many takes on this speech. Personally, I couldn't listen to his grating condescension, so I waited until it posted on the net, here, and read it today.

In reading the SOU, a few lines jumped out at me. Perhaps they aren't the big issues (most of the big issues were treated with more rhetoric that may or may not ever pan out), but here they are, in the order of where they came in the speech.

In the coming weeks, I will submit a budget that eliminates the federal deficit within the next five years.

Really? Because, you know, you and your cronies took a surplus and created a devastating deficit. And after SIX years of this chaos, you say you can fix it all in one budget and five years? With what, your magic wand? And why haven't you whipped that sucker out before and spun some budgetary magic? Oh, wait, you have. Just one line before, the Pres claimed that he had already put forth a plan to cut the deficit in half by 2009, and "[we] met that goal three years ahead of schedule." but many sources say that is smoke and mirrors-- it's based off of highly inflated numbers, and doesn't include the cost of our wars. The Washington Post said in 2004, "...in an independent analysis of that budget, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded it would not fulfill that promise. The deficit in fiscal 2004, which ended Sept. 30, was $413 billion. Under Bush's plan for spending and taxes, the deficit would be $258 billion in 2009. If anything, that may understate the size of the deficit in coming years because it does not include any additional costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." I've heard even better explanations of why this whole thing is a sham, but that's the one I found today.

Next, there is the matter of earmarks. These special interest items are often slipped into bills at the last hour -- when not even C-SPAN is watching. (Laughter.) In 2005 alone, the number of earmarks grew to over 13,000 and totaled nearly $18 billion. Even worse, over 90 percent of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate -- they are dropped into committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk. You didn't vote them into law. I didn't sign them into law. Yet, they're treated as if they have the force of law.

Oh, he's such a funny guy. And that "laughter" comment is embedded by the White House transcribers, not me. Oh, White House...

But, to the point. Read that over again, I'll wait. Now, doesn't that sound like something really bad has been happening in Congress? And the poor President, his hands are just as tied as our poor voter hands are. But wait-- he is, after all, the head of the GOP. And the GOP had an unprecedented stranglehold on Congress in this 2005 of which he speaks. The 13,000 , or worse, $18 billion in earmarks? Proposed by K Street Project Republican-only lobbyists, and generated by his GOP Congress. So I'm sorry, who is the victim here? It's like the date rapist claiming someone put something in his drink.

And what is he talking about when he says 90% of them "dropped into committee reports...[and] are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk"? (Actually, I really don't get that one, if someone wants to enlighten me, there's that comment section just begging for your posts!) Either they are in the bill or they're not. Or perhaps it's like making a budget for office supplies and putting $50 of paper clips on the list, but then only submitting the total to your boss? I don't know, it sounds very fishy. I know that the earmarkers do try to hide things, but... Well, I still don't get what he was trying to say.

I will say this about earmarks: not all of them are bad by definition. Maybe there are people that really do need a bridge built to them. But what I really don't like and would like to see changed is that any old earmark can go on any old bill. Let's at least stick to one topic! Don't stick a Girl Scout Museum earmark on a transportation bill. Don't stick a bridge-- to Nowhere or Somewhere-- on a farm bill. At least if we had this in place, we would get a better sense of where we spend our money. We would look at the bill, now with earmarks, and say, "OK, this totals $X for transportation," or "$Y for farm subsidies", or "$Z for cultural grants, we can/can't afford that," as opposed to hiding one transportation earmark in the farm bill and one cultural earmark in the transportation bill and never really getting a sense of what we're spending.

If you grocery shop at one of those Super Targets or Wal-Mart Supercenters, you know the havoc this can wreak on your budget. "$1000 for groceries this week! Zut alors! But almost nothing on car repair, that's great." "Oh, honey, I also got car seat covers, an oil change, and new tires at Wal-Mart." "Well, crap, now I have to rethink this whole thing, give me all your receipts..."

All I'm asking is that the earmarks go on the right bill. And then we can say, "We can't pay this much for transportation, let's look at the earmarks and see what can be cut this time, maybe we can build that bridge next time." There is probably a better argument for getting rid of earmarks, but for now this would be a start.

To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred, and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and to come and kill us.

Now, obviously, we're back to the war on terror. I think that there must be some secret agreement between WH speechwriters and Best Buy, because I swear they want me to throw something heavy at the TV!!! Why, you ask? Isn't what the POTUS is saying a reasonable response? Well, yes, and that is why I am so angry! Because here is what Karl Rove said just last year: "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Rove said.

[And then there were more brilliant observations which were eaten by Blogger. I'll try to get this finished asap-- tune back in!]