Category: Politics

Inquisitive minds may want to know what NASA’s budget looks like now, since Bush proposes redirecting 11 billion dollars of the budget to a moon mission. I’m way into the moon mission; I just wanna know where the money is coming from. I found 2004 budget information here.

This is not an exhaustive examination of the budget, it’s just a summary based on their request. That said, onward. Hm, this is long — follow the link for the bulk of the discussion and information.

According to the usual anonymous sources…

Bush administration officials say regime change in Iraq had been U.S. policy since 1998, when President Clinton was in office, and insist removing Saddam by force was a last resort.

This will come as a surprise to John Bolton, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz — some of whom, I believe, have a role in the Bush administration. They may even be Bush administration officials. If they are to be trusted, Clinton “failed to provide sound leadership” and was “unwilling either to adopt policies that would remove Saddam or sustain the credibility of its own policy of containment.” In fact, he “placed us on a path that will inevitably free Saddam Hussein from all effective constraints.”

The killer combo is the War College report on the foolhardiness of war on Iraq plus the unsurprising revelation that Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq from day one.

The first story confirms that Iraq is a distraction from the dangers of Al Qaeda. The second story explains why Bush would allow himself to be distracted. It’s time to give up on the claim that Bush knows things we don’t about Iraq’s danger to the United States.

Further, it’s time to stop claiming that Saddam’s defiance of the UN justified the invasion. Even if you still believe that Saddam was hiding WMD from Blix, it doesn’t matter. What’s more important: deposing Saddam (and remember that the UN had inspectors on the ground looking for WMD), or dealing with Al Qaeda? Even if you think Iraq was important, do you think it was more important than the people who blew up the World Trade Center?

Phil Carter has some nice additional commentary on the War College report.

Say what you will about Dean’s mythical temper (Real Video, will likely go away soonish), but I can’t see how he was out of line here. You get up at a Democrat’s stump speech, you call the candidate pompous and mean-mouthed, and then you try to interrupt him when he responds to you — perhaps just maybe you ought to expect to be told to sit down.

For your contemplation, I offer a letter from a soldier in Iraq.

The IMF, noted tool of the socialist movement, notes that the US is looking like it might take down the world’s economy. That’s warming news.

The RNC wants MoveOn to apologize for letting an ad comparing Bush to Hitler slip into their contest.

Enh. I don’t particularly think MoveOn needs to apologize; they can if they want to, and people can form whatever opinion they care to form as a result of that decision. The only person who has the right to ask for an apology here is Bush. Last time I heard, he was a big boy, and surely doesn’t need us to act on his behalf. After all, cowboys do their own work.

I also don’t think that the RNC needs to do any kind of equal opportunity witchhunt. They can focus on liberals who compare conservatives to Hitler, and the DNC can focus on conservatives who compare liberals to Hitler. That’s fair enough.

However, the irony of this cartoon in conjunction with this op ed is pretty great.

A couple of weeks ago, the Sunday Mirror ran an article claiming that Bush and Blair were arguing. The Mirror is a tabloid and not exactly trustworthy; however, there were elements of the story which might prove true later on:

Presidential advisers in Washington wanted Mr Bush to be the sole leader to make a Christmas visit to troops in Baghdad and urged Downing Street to postpone any visit.

The US refused to co-operate on security arrangements for a Christmas visit by Mr Blair, who is going to spend the festive season with his family in the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh.

As it turns out, Blair just visited Iraq. Not, mind you, over Christmas, but very close — which fits the Mirror story, since Bush didn’t want him visiting over Christmas itself.

Phil Carter notes new rules for military tribunals (PDF), including a right of review, and does a far better job of analyzing them than I would. So go read him.

Truth is, I don’t much care what Dean supporters will do if he loses the primaries. I think Dean’s veiled threats are pretty childish; they’re also stupid. He’s not gonna tell his supporters to stay home, and the vast majority of them will vote for the Democratic nominee anyhow. I also agree with Atrios on this one, in that the real question is what happens to Dean’s campaign machine.

In the ideal Democratic Party world, he keeps running it on behalf of the primary victor. In our world, he probably tunes it down and keeps it humming so as to keep himself well-positioned for 2008/2012, unless of course he gets the VP nod, which is what he’s angling for when he makes threats about taking his toys and going home.

Whatever. For me, the interesting question is what Dean does with his apparatus if he wins. Dave Winer has been kvetching about Dean for some time now (hm, I wonder why the search function doesn’t catch the first link, there… oh, because Dave didn’t write his own search, he just lets Google do it for him). What it boils down to, excepting the whinging about Dean not using Dave’s software, is that Dean isn’t doing things other than campaigning with his grassroots.

I think that’s reasonable during the election. But what will he do afterwards? He’s got all these people who badly want to make the country a better place, and he has the tools he needs to point them in a specific direction. Will he send ‘em over to be distributed proofreaders? Will he encourage them to run SETI@Home? Will he ask them to join house-building projects?

In my minarchistic view, Dean’s grassroots is the sort of organizational structure that has the potential to enable the kind of government structure I want to see. I don’t fool myself into thinking that Dean’s going to use it like that after the election, but even from the political junkie point of view, I’m damned curious about his intentions.