Is This The Way You Do Your Budget?

COUNTING THE DAYS

DAYS REMAINING IN THE * REGIME 3 YEARS, 347 DAYS

DAYS SINCE DEMOCRACY DIED (12/12/00) 4 YEARS, 58 DAYS

WHERE'S OSAMA BIN-LADEN? 3 YEARS, 112 DAYS

DAYS SINCE ENRON COLLAPSE = 1170

Number of Enron Execs in handcuffs = 19

Number of Enron Execs convicted - 2

Other Arrests of Execs = 54

~Bu$hInc & GOP got their huge tax cuts & the military industrial complex continues to expand....so now they want to curb the deficit by cutting every social program they can find,until there is nothing left to cut (gut).
All guns, no butter for the masses~
In Bu$h's America, "Get rich, or get out of the way."

By John F. Harris washingtonpost.com Highlights
Feb. 7, 2005

In 1992, Ross Perot likened the federal budget to a patient spurting blood in an emergency room. "Step one is to stop the bleeding, and we are bleeding arterially," the independent presidential candidate declared at one of that year's debates.

It has been a while since Americans routinely heard metaphors like that. But signs are blossoming that deficit politics is finally making a comeback -- with big implications for the expansive second-term agenda promoted by President Bush.

Concern by fellow Republicans about borrowing as much as $2 trillion in transition costs, for instance, is one of the big problems facing his plan to restructure Social Security to allow individual investment accounts.

Mounting concerns
And as Bush prepares to release his proposed fiscal 2006 budget today, some Republican lawmakers and fiscal experts are warning that the arguments he invoked in his first term for tolerating big deficits -- mainly the twin demands of war and recession -- are no longer sufficient to justify mounting debt. In last week's State of the Union address, the president himself promised a new austerity in domestic programs.

• $2.5 trillion budget plan cuts many programs

snip~
It's not only budget numbers that are chastening the GOP. Public opinion may be doing the same. A Washington Post-ABC News poll last month found that 58 percent of people disapproved of Bush's handling of the deficit issue, while 39 percent approved. The same survey found 62 percent registering doubt that he will make much progress on the issue during a second term.
continue~
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6924966/

The aim of the Republican Revolution is to fundamentally change government funding and redistribute your wealth. It is not about abortion or homosexual rights or marriage boundaries. This is a deep cultural divide and a long term pattern of change successfully hidden in the racket of everyday political splatter such as seen nightly on cable news shows and the Sunday morning drone. If you can't see that on Wall Street everyone can't win, then you have lost already because privatizing Social Security is moot. The issue is already settled. The funding issue that is hidden will be balanced on this question, "Will you give everything you have to live even just one more day with a loved one?" Think about it don't read the next line. Think about the question. Ask your spouse. Ask your parents. Are you willing to give everything you have"?

Most of us are of modest means. Are you prepared to answer that question and still be able to keep a roof over your head? In 2020? 2025? 2030. We may all hate the IRS and scum sucking lawyers but they are the ones who sue and enforce tax laws to keep the corporations from sucking the economic life out of ordinary citizens. You think this is about your social security. It is not. This is about who is going to get your money, not about you keeping it. And, can you stop them in time.

The question will come. It will feel like there is a gun to someone's head. Unless we ignore the nonsense and begin to work on the real solution, "How can I best take care of my family, how can I help my neighbor?", I assure you in the end they will take your house. So while it may look like gay marriage, our joy in the company of each other becomes unsettled, and while it may look like homeland security, we have made enemies around the world where our security and welcome as visitors is compromised at least for my lifetime. A permanent tax cut, won't be permanent. And the new social security plan brought forth by this White House will pit the haves against the have-nots. All the little extras we enjoy as Americans passed on to us by the so called greatest generation will be lost to this current round of unbudgeted war making and unfunded federal mandating. And that is the fundamental change brought to you by the Republican Revolution.

Finally, Note to Casey L. Morris: There is a modern equivalent of like father, like son working here, Fuzzy Math, Son of Fuzzy Math. Love to all and God Bless

Iran and US in 'heated exchange' at Saudi anti-terror meet: report
http://tinyurl.com/5ydtt

and..
Kay Warns U.S. Not to Repeat Iraq Mistakes in Iran

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. official who declared the White House's hunt for illicit weapons in Iraq to be a failure driven by faulty intelligence has warned the Bush administration against repeating its mistakes in the current war of words with arch-foe Iran.

"There is an eerie similarity to the events preceding the Iraq war," David Kay, who led the search for banned weapons of mass destruction in postwar Iraq, said on Monday in an opinion piece in The Washington Post.
http://tinyurl.com/4ocu7

Fabulous,

You are too right in your assessment of where we find ourselves. I see you are new here and would like to officially welcome you to the DPC blog.

We hope you will come by often and bring your articulate self with you. You can also bring your fun self, your annoyed at government self, and most especially, your I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

If I remember correctly, you were a VERY early supporter of JK, long long long before anyone I knew was. I remember you campaigned for him many long hours in New Hampshire, long before he won Iowa. I admired your ability to see the maturity in his views then as I do now.

I look forward to your contributions now that you have found your Kerry group on the web.

Can you fill us in on what your Democracy cell is doing now?

Feeling Fabulous:

Yes, the thought of Fuzzy Math 41 and Fuzzy Math 43 did come to mind.

Also, what comes to mind is the line from Forrest Gump, "My Momma said, 'Stupid is as stupid does.'"

~fuzzy math, continued~

Bush's Deficit Plan Is All in the Math

By Joel Havemann LATimes Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The budget President Bush will present to Congress today will show the federal deficit cut in half by the time he leaves office in four years.

At least technically it will.

Achieving that goal relies on where the budget math starts and stops, how things get counted and what gets left out.

http://tinyurl.com/6o7y7

Kerry on Imus. Girls Gone Wild in Iraq. Why Dean has more in common with Newt Gingrich than Bill Clinton. Joe Trippi believes Dean will quit DNC chair to run in 2008. New attacks on Bush published involving steroids and baseball.

These stories, and more, at the Unofficial Kerry Blog:
http://kerryblog.blogspot.com/

Posted by: on.to.victory4Dems at February 7, 2005 03:01 PM

On.to.Victory,

Small coincidence here. I had sent a note to this reporter complimenting him on a budget story, and received a nice note in reply just this morning. I think it helps to give positive reinforcement for objectivity and good reporting.

The right-wing express.

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21192/
[snip]
"Progressives have different values, this is the 21st century, the conservative infrastructure is in place and will continue to grow, and so we have to do it all differently," Stein adds. "We must build from both the ground up and from the top down. We must be technologically sophisticated and new media, narrowcast-savvy. We must build institutions capable of great flexibility to deal with the rapid pace of change in the world. We need a new generation of leaders able to integrate the local/global complexity of the world to manage our institutions in 2010, 2020 and beyond."

Have I told y'all yet today how much I HATE these wingnuts??!!

RNC asks stations to kill 'false TV ad'
MoveOn.org defends accuracy of Social Security spot.

By JAMES WENSITS
Tribune Political Writer

SOUTH BEND -- At least part of the Social Security debate focused on the 2nd Congressional District again Friday, as the Republican National Committee sent letters to local television stations asking them not to air what it calls a "false TV ad" promoted by MoveOn.org.

Washington, D.C.-based MoveOn.org immediately issued a statement defending the accuracy of its ad, which began airing on local stations Tuesday and which is critical of the president's plan to revamp Social Security.

snip....

Kevin Sargent, vice president and general manager for WSJV-TV, said he viewed the RNC letter as threatening.

The last two paragraphs of the letter said:

"As an FCC licensee, you have a responsibility to exercise independent editorial judgment to oversee and protect the integrity of the American marketplace of ideas, and to avoid broadcasting deliberate misrepresentations of the facts. Such obligations must be taken seriously and I urge you to decline to broadcast this advertisement.

"This letter places you on notice that the information contained in the above-cited advertisement is false and misleading. Your station should act responsibly and refrain from airing this advertisement."

"When a letter says 'this letter places you on notice,' " Sargent said, "that's kind of threatening."

http://www.southbendtribune.com/stories/2005/02/05/local.20050205-sbt-MWKA-A1-RNC_asks_stations_to.sto

I'm a little surprised that it took them this long to get around to this:

The Republican National Committee is set to begin a prolonged attack against newly installed Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) aimed at weakening his support in his home state as well as on the national level.
Drawing on a blueprint used successfully against former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), the RNC will send a 13-page research document today to roughly 1 million people -- a group that includes journalists, donors and grass-roots activists -- detailing Reid's alleged obstructionism among other topics.

"This is the initial salvo in the upcoming discussion that we are going to be having with Sen. Reid," said RNC Communications Director Brian Jones.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/7/142129/5541

Posted by: Bob Evans at February 7, 2005 03:14 PM

~Bob E~
You are so correct, we all need to send positive reinforcement to writers in the print press, with inquiring minds. I am encouraged by the number of news articles I am running across recently, that are voicing some skepticism a la bu$h's agenda...we need MORE of that!
I like to hunt & search the net for timely news articles & post them here and elsewhere, where thinking people may lurk :)
I think it was DiAnne who said in yesterday's thread:
"there are two problem groups -
those who believe the false news
those who ignore the news entirely"

In my opinion, NO truer words have ever been written here!!!
I happen to be blue, in a red suburbian community in a southern red state...I personally know many people who fit either or BOTH of these categories, and my mission is to help wake them up!
So I email lots of intriguing progressive stuff, so they can at least be aware that 50% of America is NOT going to "get over it" & go away quietly!
So, thanks to all who post links to interesting items, we take them from here & there and spread them everywhere!
Getting some people to actually "think" beyond a Faux-news sound-bite is not always easy, but it is my goal, ESPECIALLY with the people I know who fit into DiAnne's 2 categories!

This is a laundry list of Progressive articles.

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=270767

From the RNC vs. MoveOn article posted by nancyjane:

"The advertisement in question falsely and maliciously makes reference to 'George Bush's planned Social Security benefit cuts of up to 46 percent to pay for private accounts ...' "

In his State of the Union address, the president said that "Social Security will not change in any way" for Americans 55 and older."

The RNC letter said that "what MoveOn.org calls 'Bush's planned Social Security benefit cuts' is actually a plan that would hold starting Social Security benefits steady in purchasing power, rather than allowing them to nearly double over the next 75 years as they are projected to do under the current benefit formula."

Fuzzy math, once again. Indexing to inflation and not allowing benefits to "nearly double" means exactly what the add says, i.e., a reduction of almost 50%.

SCARY stuff. Both this, as well as the story about the planned RNC attack against Reid.

Trying to do to many htings at the same time... "what the add says" - "add" should obviously by "ad"

News on a subject near and dear to the hearts of DCP'ers:

Election Officials Work on Making Changes
By ROBERT TANNER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Flaw-proof election machines. Easy-to-read ballots. Registration systems that catch double-voters or dead voters still on the rolls.

For top state election officials meeting here, the pressure is on to make sure the election changes demanded after President Bush's disputed 2000 victory are in place by the Jan. 1 deadline imposed by Congress.

The goal is to have the changes ready for the November 2006 midterm elections, but many secretaries of state who gathered in Washington on Monday for four days of meetings think there are too many obstacles in their way. And they worry the federal government is undermining their authority with an assistance commission that is starting to act like a regulatory agency.

"A lot of states are still trying to sort out how to get to the deadlines," New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron said. "That's a major, major challenge. We're probably a year behind schedule."

The three-term Democrat predicts it won't be until the 2008 presidential election that all the improvements Congress demanded are up and running everywhere.
[SNIP]

MORE good details in the rest of the story:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=536&ncid=536&e=4&u=/ap/20050207/ap_on_go_co/election_worries

~Sen Reid is not the only target~
According to this from NY Metro mag, an effort is out to "swift boat" Hillary:

New PAC Attack Tries to Sink U.S.S. Hillary
Wannabe Swift Boaters seek to “stop her now.”
Arthur Finkelstein, the political guru who helped create George Pataki, now wants to Swift Boat-ize Hillary Clinton. Senior New York Republicans say he’s creating a political action committee called “Stop Her Now”—all you need is the pronoun with this crowd, apparently—which will attempt to raise more than $10 million nationwide to use against Her during Her 2006 reelection campaign. The PAC will “bloody her up long before her presidential run,” vows a top state Republican, adding the model is indeed the Swift Boat Vets.

Stop Her Now will bludgeon Clinton with ads, whether or not the New York GOP has found a candidate to take her on, which is looking increasingly difficult. Jeanine Pirro, the sex-crime-avenging Westchester D.A., is reportedly considering it. But Pirro aides have whispered that she would rather run for attorney general. Still, one senior GOPer says that some Republicans are urging a Hillary challenge instead, arguing that Pirro’s convicted-tax-evader husband, Al Pirro, makes it tougher for her to replace the squeaky-clean Eliot Spitzer (and Hillary is saddled with Bill’s past).
—Greg Sargent
http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/11028/index.html