Monthly Archives: February 2004


awol Disclosure

bush needs to clear up his military record now. He can not afford to have it haunt him through the next 9 months which it will without complete transparency.
The story has legs. See this the Washington Post here and here; see this Daily Howler piece.
It is not at all clear how w got the pass last time around. Yea, Gore wasn’t a combat veteran but his record shined more brightly then w’s. If bush end’s up facing a Kerry or Clark this will be an issue whether the candidate pushes it or not.
bush needs to provide his entire record in unredacted form to the public immediately. Starting a policy of truth and transparency now may be all he can do to salvage his administration.


Let’s Balance the Budget

Dwight Meredith takes a shot at balancing the budget for w and the punch line is:

Okay, we have cut all of the fat. Waste, fraud and abuse have been eliminated. Perhaps we nicked a little muscle along the way. The problem is that we have cut only $385 billion out of a deficit of $521 billion.
The other problem is that the only discretionary spending left in the budget is for Defense and Homeland Security.
I am not kidding. We have eliminated all federal government discretionary functions except Defense and Homeland Security and the budget remains more than $130 billion in the hole.

Of course, w has no interest in balancing the budget and could hit his target of reducing the deficit by 50% by making some of the cuts Dwight enumerates but there does not appear to be any such proposal in this years budget.
The federal budget situation is a mess and there is no meaningful excuse that the current administration and its republocrat accomplices in congress can offer up to cleanse themselves.