bush

Oh, Really?

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USA Today would have you believe:

Sen. John McCain’s presence on a panel charged with investigating U.S. intelligence gathering will give the group immediate credibility because of his willingness to criticize the Bush administration, key lawmakers say.

I also have several bridges for you.
More then a few countervailing views can be found. For instance this from Brad DeLong:

He has the most partisanship and the least ethics of anyone to sit on the federal bench in my lifetime (save possibly his masters Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas). And he is there to blow up the Commission if it reaches any conclusions that the Bushies do not like.

and there is more at Orcinus.
Not only is it stuffed with stooges this diversionary commission isn’t even chartered to look at the administration’s use of the intelligence it received.

Who is Lying?

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Mark Kleiman considers part of Tenet’s testimony:

But that’s separate from the question of whether the President deceived the American people about the nuclear threat from Iraq. The Director of Central Intelligence just told us, unemphatically but also unequivocally, that he did.
The least you can say about this is that it can’t be right for Bush and Tenet each to keep his job. If Tenet is lying, he should be fired. If Tenet is telling the truth, Bush should be replaced.

This isn’t quite the spin I heard on talk radio today while I spent a few hours on the local freeways. They seemed to be able to only find parts of the testimony that painted bush positive.

Strange Budget Choice

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Why would the folks putting together bush’s budget propose eliminating funds for building decontamination research?

an Environmental Protection Agency acknowledgment that his proposed cut “represents complete elimination of homeland security building decontamination research.”
The agency said in the documents that Bush’s proposal will “force it to disband the technical and engineering expertise that will be needed to address known and emerging biological and chemical threats in the future.”

This certainly seems inconsistent with the image the bushies seem to be trying to project. A mistake perhaps? Or simple blundering?

awol Disclosure

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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

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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.