From PJStar.com:

What do child predators, wildfires, crops and shrimp have to do with U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Sorry, there’s no punchline to that setup. The answer is, of course, nothing. Which is why we’re not laughing at an attempt last week by certain congressional Democrats to tie a supplemental military funding bill to a bunch of unrelated matters.

In the Senate’s version of the war legislation these “domestic add-ons,” as they’re being called, included $50 million to track kiddie predators, $350 million to fight Western fires, $400 million in rural school assistance and $75 million to prop up commercial fisheries. Another add-on was a provision awarding extended work permits for hundreds of thousands of immigrant farm laborers.

The House’s version, meanwhile, had $5.8 billion for New Orleans’ levees. It also tacked on a measure to extend unemployment for Americans whose benefits have run out, and another to block the Bush administration’s attempt to cut Medicaid.

Look, our objection is not to these domestic priorities in and of themselves. Each one is an important issue worthy of due congressional consideration.

But they absolutely do not belong next to the $165 billion necessary to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through the rest of President Bush’s term.

Indeed, riddling the war legislation with add-ons was a purely political move. For some Democrats, it was a dare to Bush — if he wants his war bucks, he’ll have to choke down a spoonful of unrelated spending, as he did last year to the tune of $17 billion. For some Republicans, it was an opportunity to support the war and bring home the bacon to constituents. GOP Sen. Richard Shelby, for instance, eagerly sent out a press release to Alabamans bragging about fishery assistance.

Tomfoolery like this is why Americans can’t stand politics. And it’s a disservice to the thousands of Americans serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the fate of their funding gets hung up on Capitol Hill.

So bizarre are the political motivations involved and so entangled are the defense/domestic add-on measures that some fiscally conservative House Republicans actually helped anti-war House Democrats defeat the military funding.

Congress should let war spending — and child predator spending, and Medicaid spending, and school spending, etc. — stand or sink on their own merits.

The entire premise of this article is wrong, and if this is the depth of his or her understanding of rather common methods and processes, the author of this opinion piece should probably never write about Washington politics again. Ever.

Really, I wish every budget problem could be analyzed by devaluing it as a cheap political game. First off, if you think Congress never gets anything done now, could you imagine if they had to make a separate bill for each individual funding request, then debate and vote on each? No thanks. That’s what the House and Senate Appropriations Committees are for.

The fact of the matter is, if Congress tried passing any of these on their own (or even attached to another, less important bill), there’s a chance Bush would veto them but a better chance they’d never get called to the floor. Since this particular bill is one that needs to pass no matter what, it’s their best chance of getting the requested funding. What Congressional Democrats (and even a healthy number of Republicans) have finally realized is that the only way to pass much-needed spending is to attach it to something the president wants.

The hypocrisy of this article struck me as well. Bush is the one who started playing hardball by vetoing everything that came to his desk. Now that Congress is playing hardball, it’s suddenly unfair? The article even states that these attachments are important. What, then, does it tell us when both parties feel it is necessary to add them to a war spending bill to get the funding they need? It tells me that the president can’t be reasoned with and needs to be led by the proverbial carrot to make any progress. You may have noticed similar problems Illinois lawmakers are having with the governor.

Unfortunately, the Journal Star’s new website doesn’t have a category titled “Abject Filler and Other Banalities,” so this article ended up in the Opinion section. That’s the unfortunate drawback of opinions; you don’t have to be informed to have one.

“Like all fascists, the terrorists cannot be appeased: they must be defeated.” - George W. Bush

Holy crap, Bush compared the Republican Party to terrorists?

…

Response from Vonster in 3… 2… 1…

Not really. But I still say we could kick their ass without breaking a sweat.

…is good enough for the rest of us.  It has been a day or so, and I’m already tired of the GOP’s calls for Governor Spitzer of New York to resign.  I’m tired of hearing Limbaugh’s fanatics calling for him to resign.  Sure, we can all agree that what he did was sleazy, reprehensible, disgusting, dishonest, etc.  What gets me is for Republicans, that’s par for the course.  They want the Democrats to hold themselves to a standard that the Republicans themselves don’t live up to.  They don’t even expect it of themselves.

Politicizing the DoJ.  Pre-emptive war.  Violating the Geneva Convention.  Advocating the use of torture.  Suspension of Habeas Corpus.  Completely ruining the credibility of the United States throughout the world–completely conceding our moral authority.  The list goes on and on.  I could fill a small encyclopedia with the crimes of the Bush Administration.  Hell, anyone who’s paid attention during his presidency could.

That’s basically my case for it.  Not a single Democrat should resign for any reason as long as Bush and his administration continue to stay in office.  If we’re going to hold politicians accountable for their crimes, we can’t pick and choose.  Moreover, when you consider the weight of the crimes committed by Bush & Co., Spitzer’s crime is a drop in the bucket by comparison.