Now that the AARP has announced they are in favor of the Prescription Drug Act, AKA the GOP Vote BUYING Big Government Scheme, there is clearly no other choice.
This bill must be stopped. I don’t undertsand why I should pay for Bill Gate’s viagra.
Republican Stupidity
Fiscal Conservatives, My Ass
This disgusts me to no end:
Confounding President Bush’s pledges to rein in government growth, federal discretionary spending expanded by 12.5 percent in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, capping a two-year bulge that saw the government grow by more than 27 percent, according to preliminary spending figures from congressional budget panels.
The sudden rise in spending subject to Congress’s annual discretion stands in marked contrast to the 1990s, when such discretionary spending rose an average of 2.4 percent a year. Not since 1980 and 1981 has federal spending risen at a similar clip. Before those two years, spending increases of this magnitude occurred at the height of the Vietnam War, 1966 to 1968.
Sickening.
Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit
The investigation of strip club owner Michael Galardi and numerous politicians appears to be the first time federal authorities have used the Patriot Act in a public corruption probe.
Government officials said Tuesday they knew of no other instances in which federal agents investigating allegations such as racketeering and bribery of politicians have employed the act.
“I don’t know that it’s been used in a public corruption case before this,” said Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the Justice Department.
An attorney for one of the defendants in the Galardi case said he researched the matter for hours Tuesday and came to the same conclusion.
“I have discussed this with lawyers all over the country, and if the government has done this before, then this is definitely the first time it has come to light,” said Las Vegas attorney Dominic Gentile, who represents former Clark County Commissioner Lance Malone, Galardi’s lobbyist.
This is how you lose my vote with lightning speed.
Perp Walk
If Josh Marshall is right about the CIA being convinced White House officials blew the cover of Valerie Plame out of retribution, it is indeed time for a perp walk.
Cheney On The Hot Seat
I have been ignoring all the usual scandal mongering by the Dems, but via Oliver I see something that if true is outrageous and utterly unacceptable (not to mention illegal):
Despite receiving this letter, Cheney still claimed to Congress, a few weeks later, on August 2, that responsive documents had been produced.
Of course, Cheney is a busy man. Yet there can be no question as to whether he was aware of the July 18, 2001 letter from the Comptroller complaining about the 77 pages of documents’ being unresponsive: He even attached it to his own August 2 letter to Congress, as part of a chronology. And again, he personally signed that August 2 letter.
Nor can there be any question that Cheney knows what it means to produce responsive documents – and not to do so. In the same paragraph of the August 2 letter in which he claims he was responsive to the Energy Task Force request, he makes a lesser claim with respect to another GAO request – stating that there, he had merely “provided substantial responses.” (Emphasis added.)
Plainly, Cheney knows the difference between being responsive; offering a substantial response; and sending insulting non-responsive materials, featuring unexplained phone bills, columns of unidentified figures, and a pizza receipt.
Stay tuned.
Fiscal Conservatives
This just about ruined my damned day:
The Congressional Budget Office will release new budget forecasts Tuesday that will put next year’s red ink near $500 billion. Sinai’s own forecast put the figure even higher, as high as $535 billion. Absent any serious change in policy, private sector economists say deficits will remain in that range through the decade, then escalate sharply with the retirement of the baby-boom generation.
“I see absolutely nothing that’s going to bring the deficit back to balance in the foreseeable future,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s.
Ev Dirksen is rolling in his grave.
Over The Top Rhetoric
As much as I like Misha (he is much tamer in person), I simply can’t share these sentiments and find them distasteful:
I heard this on the news this morning and had almost popped the cork off of a bottle of sparkly when I heard that it was the U.N. HQ in Baghdad.
Oh well, it’s a start, I suppose.
I dislike the incompetence and the disgusting nonsense that goes on in the UN, but I simply don’t find anything worth celebrating in this case. Innocent people were killed by assholes- no matter what the UN has or has not done, these people did not deserve this. Their deaths are every bit as tragic as the lives lost on 9/11, and there is nothing positive that comes from the actions of murderous Islamo-fascists.
I also think it is important to note that while a lot of bile comes out of the UN, I don’t think anyone doubts that the goals of the organization, in most cases, are rather admirable. My main opposition is that the organization has showed itself incapable and unwilling to make the necessary decisions and engage in the necessary actions to reach those goals.