Month: May 2003

The amazing thing is that he is regarded as a fiscal tightwad. In fact, he presided over one of the biggest binges on government spending in history. Josh Claybourn gets it right. As Stephen Moore put it earlier this year,

President Bush’s $2.25 trillion budget released Monday is almost 30 percent larger than the budget he inherited three years ago. Since the Republicans took over Congress in 1995, the budget has grown by 50 percent… [T]he discretionary budget has grown by nearly 15 percent in Mr. Bush’s first two years in office – more than it did in President Clinton’s first four years in office. In fact, Mr. Bush is on a pace to be the biggest spender in the White House since Lyndon Baines Johnson. It’s not just Democrat obstructionism – in fact, discretionary spending has, after an initial decline, been rapidly expanding since Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994. In their first three budgets (fiscal 1996-98), the Republicans increased domestic spending by $183 billion compared to a $155 billion increase in the three years prior to Republican control of Congress.

Daniel Gross puts the boot in at Slate as well:

According to Brian Riedl, federal budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, overall discretionary spending rose 13 percent in 2002 and will jump 21 percent in fiscal 2003, to $885 billion. Yes, the Pentagon accounts for a lot of that increase. But in Bush’s first two budgets, according to Riedl, even non-defense discretionary spending has risen from $320 billion to $421 billion. Daniels made a particular point of coming down hard on earmarks-the budgetary vehicles that members of Congress use to drive pork to their districts. But earmarks too have soared in the past two years. According to Riedl, in fiscal 2003 there were 9,000 earmarks worth $22 billion, up from 6,500 in 2001.

This is Daniels’ and Bush’s legacy: one of the most recklessly big spending administrations in recent history, higher deficits and mounting debt. I’d be far more sanguine about further big tax cuts if the Bushies had shown even the slightest interest in restraining spending. They haven’t. They need to.

More slipperiness from Raines’ apparatchik. Yesterday, he again questioned the president’s truthfulness. This time he went after Bush’s military record:

[N]obody seemed bothered that Mr. Bush, who appears to have skipped more than a year of the National Guard service that kept him out of Vietnam, is now emphasizing his flying experience. (Spare me the hate mail. An exhaustive study by The Boston Globe found no evidence that Mr. Bush fulfilled any of his duties during that missing year. And since Mr. Bush has chosen to play up his National Guard career, this can’t be shrugged off as old news.)

Actually, that Boston Globe story was indeed followed up by an investigative story a short time later:

Two Democratic senators today called on Gov. George W. Bush to release his full military record to resolve doubts raised by a newspaper about whether he reported for required drills when he was in the Air National Guard in 1972 and 1973. But a review of records by The New York Times indicated that some of those concerns may be unfounded. Documents reviewed by The Times showed that Mr. Bush served in at least 9 of the 17 months in question… On Sept. 5, 1972, Mr. Bush asked his Texas Air National Guard superiors for assignment to the 187th Tactical Recon Group in Montgomery “for the months of September, October and November.” Capt. Kenneth K. Lott, chief of the personnel branch of the 187th Tactical Recon Group, told the Texas commanders that training in September had already occurred but that more training was scheduled for Oct. 7 and 8 and Nov. 4 and 5. But Mr. Bartlett said Mr. Bush did not serve on those dates because he was involved in the Senate campaign, but he made up those dates later. Colonel Turnipseed, who retired as a general, said in an interview that regulations allowed Guard members to miss duty as long as it was made up within the same quarter. Mr. Bartlett pointed to a document in Mr. Bush’s military records that showed credit for four days of duty ending Nov. 29 and for eight days ending Dec. 14, 1972, and, after he moved back to Houston, on dates in January, April and May. The May dates correlated with orders sent to Mr. Bush at his Houston apartment on April 23, 1973, in which Sgt. Billy B. Lamar told Mr. Bush to report for active duty on May 1-3 and May 8-10. Another document showed that Mr. Bush served at various times from May 29, 1973, through July 30, 1973, a period of time questioned by The Globe.

This is dated November 3, 2000. Doesn’t Krugman have Nexis? Let’s see if he has to run another correction or if Howell will bury it on page 3.

It was inevitable, wasn’t it?

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “What was really amazing was the speed with which the Americans adapted themselves….They were assisted in this by their tremendous practical and material sense and by their lack of all understanding for tradition and useless theories.” – Erwin Rommel, 1943. One reason I’m optimistic about Iraq.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “I see no difference between the invasion of Iraq and the invasion of Poland by Hitler in 1939,” Ritter told the Berliner Zeitung. Hitler had used self-defense as an excuse to send his troops in, and U.S. President George W. Bush had done exactly the same thing in 2003. “It was the same lie,” Ritter was quoted as saying. (Original interview in Der Spiegel, translated by blogger xlrq.)

A RELIGIOUS RIGHT WALK-OUT? The true hardliners are appalled that the Republican leadership didn’t use the Santorum debacle to hound gay people – and their families – even more. The theocrats are threatening to walk out of the party. And where exactly, ahem, would they go? I’m not sure Howard Dean is looking out for Phyllis Shlafly’s vote. Just her son’s will do. (Via Coldfury.)

I’ve never thought of it as a moral issue, unless you’re bankrupting your family. Here are two unimpeachable sources on the morality of gambling. First, Dr Johnson:

I mentioned a new gaming-club, of which Mr. Beauclerk had given me an account, where the members played to a desperate extent. Johnson: “Depend upon it, Sir, this is mere talk. Who is ruined by gaming? You will not find six instances in an age. There is a strange rout made about deep play: whereas you have many more people ruined by adventurous trade, and yet we do not hear such an outcry against it.” Thrale: “There may be few people absolutely ruined by deep play; but very many are much hurt in their circumstances by it.” Johnson: “Yes, Sir, and so are very many by other kinds of expence.”

My feelings entirely. Then there’s the issue of the glee with which some poor sinners have embraced the news that Bill Bennett is, in some respects, Mr. Vice:

Homer: You know, Marge, for the first time in our marriage I can finally look down my nose at you. You have a gambling problem!
Marge: That’s true. Will you forgive me?
Homer: Oh, sure. Remember when I got caught stealing all those watches from Sears?
Marge: Hmm.
Homer: Well, that’s nothing, because you have a gambling problem! And remember when I let that escaped lunatic in the house ’cause he was dressed like Santa Claus?
Marge: Hmm.
Homer: Well you have a gambling problem!

That’s enough gambling wisdom for one day.

MUSIC STORE: I spent this afternoon procrastinating on a column by browsing through Apple’s new downloadable Music Store. Apart from the beagle, I think my iPod is my most treasured possession right now (although, of course, no one ever really possesses a beagle; you’re lucky if you get to associate with one). Basic review: kinda slow my end and limited choice. No Madonna? Barely any Mozart. Palestrina scarcely present. Only very old Pet Shop Boys. I guess it can’t accommodate everyone’s taste. But I did download a lovely piano version of Faure’s requiem. iTunes is a godsend, of course, and I’m sure the system will only get smoother and more comprehensive. I also feel far more, er, virtuous, actually paying for the stuff. A B+, I’d say. Worth a try. (And, no, I didn’t get payola for the plug.)

While they’re providing cover for Saddam’s henchmen, they’re sending bottles of expensive wine to Blair. What two-faced slimeballs. I liked this extract from the BBC story:

Wine merchants praised the French president’s choice. “Chateau Mouton Rothschild is at the very top end of the market,” said UK fine wine merchant Tom Lorimer of Lea and Sandeman. “If he had given our Prime Minister anything less I would have called him up myself to reproach him.” The choice of 1989 vintage, however, while generous, is not the best money can buy, even at $200 a bottle. “If I were Jacques Chirac I would have gone for 1982 – an outstanding year,” said Mr Lorimer. “It is the sort of wine that Saddam Hussein was probably stocking in his palace wine cellars before he lost his country.”

Ouch. I wonder what vintage Chirac used to send to Saddam.

It’s beginning to look as if Canada will not take the “separate but equal” route of “civil unions” for gay citizens, but adopt marriage rights for all. Good news for liberals who support civil equality. And good news for conservatives who don’t want a soft-marriage option for gays that would have to be open to straights as well. (Via Discountblogger.)

The Labour Party kicks him out.

Check out this marvelous little gem from the BBC. It’s about Qusay Hussein’s theft of $1 billion from Iraq:

It is not known if the money was the personal assets of Saddam Hussein, but the paper says the withdrawal was more than double the amount estimated to have been looted as the regime crumbled.

Saddam’s “personal assets”? Like he was an entrepreneur or something. Everything that monster owned was stolen from his people. They still don’t have a clue at the BBC, do they?

There was some excuse for the anarchy that broke out immediately upon the liberation of Iraq. We didn’t want to look like an imperial power or an occupier; and some of the pent-up frustration after decades of tyranny was probably foolish to try and restrain. But a month later, those excuses are wearing thin. I’m told that new troops are arriving daily. I know that it will take time to find a credible new government able to represent all the myriad factions in the country. But chaos is still chaos; and anarchy, as Hobbes understood, is an evil that undermines even the posibility of a civil space. This quote today from the Washington Post is worrying:

“We’re glad to hear what Mr. Bush is saying about the future, but the future is a long time. We want the present,” said Mustafa As Badar, an executive at an oil drilling company. “We want them to handle this like Americans.”

Exactly. Iraq needs order. We’ll get criticized for being too heavy-handed whatever we do. So why aren’t American troops in large numbers being deployed to keep the peace, restore order and exercise credible authority? If we do not show our commitment now to the country, what message are we sending a future Iraqi government about our commitment to a stable and long-lasting democracy?

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “I feel far more vulnerable and frightened than I ever have in my 50 years on the planet. It is the United States government I am afraid of. Meanwhile, here in our great democracy, Americans go along with the program or remain silent, too afraid of the Muslim bogeymen thousands of miles away to recognize the Christian ones in our midst. Fearful that we will be verbally attacked, or shunned, or lose our livelihoods if we dare question the meanness that characterizes our government and, increasingly, defines our national character. I do not feel safer now than I did six, or 12, or 24 months ago. In fact, I feel far more vulnerable and frightened than I ever have in my 50 years on the planet. It is the United States government I am af raid of. In less than two years the Bush administration has used the attacks of 9/11 to manipulate our fear of terrorism and desire for revenge into a blank check to blatantly pursue imperialist objectives internationally and to begin the rollback of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and most of the advances of the 20th century.” – Jill Nelson, MSNBC.

BUSH AND BLAIR:- Some insight from Peter Stothard, who has observed the two men working up close together. Money graf:

To watch Bill Clinton and Tony Blair together was to watch two men who would talk together, closely, intensely, for hours. Bill Clinton engaged instinctively with that liquid part of Tony Blair’s intelligence that is seeking new policy, new answers. But certainty was not part of that process. The fluid never froze. The Third Way never was. George Bush and Tony Blair speak in a different way, more like businessmen doing a deal, keeping a certain distance. Both reached the same conclusion after the attacks of September 11: that terrorism, terrorist weapons of mass destruction and terrorist states were linked. Once they had agreed that single point it was a fixed point.

Hence the bond. Hence the war. In retrospect, we were lucky to have both of them.

THERAPY AND LIBERALISM:- “There is a nasty strain of therapeutic liberalism which tries to impose its righteousness by dismissing opponents as ‘sick’ or in the hands of some compulsion. The e-mail you quote is a good example. Consider the lifestyle of Winston Churchill. He began the day in bed with a scotch and soda, then consumed a bottle of champagne for lunch followed by several double brandies. He drank beer in the afternoon, then repeated the lunch intake at dinner, before moving on to the port. He sipped Johnny Walker Red during the evening while he wrote his ‘prayers’ (‘pray explain…’). He was willing to take this policy to extremes. At a lunch with Ibn Saud, where alcohol and tobacco were barred for religious reasons, Churchill refused to comply, advising the King ‘my rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.’ I’ve never seen an accounting of Churchill’s alcohol intake, but if you add up what is admitted in various biographies, he had to be drinking the equivalent of a bottle of scotch or more a day. He also chain-smoked and gambled beyond his means. Like Bill Bennett, he defended his behaviour…’I’ve taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.’ Hitler would have agreed.” – all shades of reader opinion on Bill Bennett and gambling and virtue, on the Letters Page.

FISH AND PAIN: Can they feel it? New research suggests that fishing causes genuine, if short-lived, pain to the fish. Does this change the ethics of angling? I wouldn’t think so. Is pain even something we can talk about across species? I’d say it is. More grist for Matthew Scully. And more guilt for conflicted meat-eaters like yours truly.

EURO-ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH:- The “father” of the House of Commons, i.e. its longest-standing member, reiterates his view that a Jewish cabal has too much power in Washington:

The Labour MP Tam Dalyell yesterday scornfully brushed aside accusations of anti-semitism but stood by the allegation that has landed him in political trouble, that “there is far too much Jewish influence in the United States” and one over-influential Jew in Tony Blair’s entourage… “The cabal I referred to was American,” [he added] and named seven hawkish advisers to President George Bush – six of them Jewish – as urging a strike against Syria. “It’s the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs combined with neo-Christian fundamentalists. I think a lot of it is Likudnik, Mr Sharon’s agenda, and when it comes to an attack on Syria this is a very serious matter.”

What “attack on Syria?”

CHOMSKY ON FRODO: It’s a post-modern take on the Lord of the Rings. Enjoy.

REPUBLICAN HUBRIS WATCH: A reader emails:

“I was visiting relatives in Des Moines, Iowa, this past weekend. I noticed in several different neighborhoods the following yard sign: ‘I stand with President George W. Bush and our Troops.’ This is, as far as I can tell, an official GOP yard sign. I saw it in many different yards, and I saw it plastered to the front window of the GOP headquarters downtown. The coloring and lettering are identical to the official ‘President Bush’ bumperstickers I’ve seen. If that’s not hubris and an attempt to politicize the military, I don’t know what is. The implication is clear: those who support Bush support the troops, and those who don’t support Bush don’t support the troops. If that is the GOP message for 2004, hubris is truly ascendant.”

Is this an official sign? If it is, it does strike me as pushing the limits.

UPDATE ON THE SOCIAL RIGHT:- Since I wrote early yesterday afternoon that very few theocon
s or social conservatives had criticized Bennett, many of them have. I’m sorry I hadn’t read Jonah Goldberg’s piece when I wrote that, but reading it later, its criticism of Bennett is so slight it would be easy to have missed. But now Rod Dreher, Ramesh Ponnuru, James Dobson, those perpetually Concerned Women of America, among others, have all added their two mildly censorious cents. Good for their consistency. Dobson’s lugubrious absolution is a particularly fine specimen.- The other defenses, mixed with criticism, strike me as fair enough. I don’t think my own position, pace Ramesh, is that far off theirs’ either. I defend Bennett’s right to privacy; I don’t think he’s done anything seriously wrong; he’s not a hypocrite; but he’d be in a stronger position if he hadn’t set himself up as the millionaire arbiter and promoter of virtue. But on this last theme, Ramesh makes a good point: there’s something slippery about this idea of a general moralizer. It blurs all sorts of distinctions. Is it possible, for example, to be a social conservative in one respect and not another? Could you coherently, say, smoke pot and yet also think divorce is not something that should be too easy to get? Or believe that honesty is critical in public life and yet be a big-time gambler? I’d say yes. Unfortunately, Bennett’s public persona is about the most vulnerable there is in this respect. He set himself up as Mr Virtue and made a fortune out of it. I still think it’s a bum rap; but you can see how he made himself a pretty easy target for this kind of thing.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY:- “Who the hell are these people? Is it a public broadcasting corporation? Everyone knows how ghastly and biased their coverage was.” – Tory leader, Iain Duncan-Smith, on the BBC.

EGGING GALLOWAY:- Some people demonstrate their disregard for the traitor. Still amazing to me that this story was buried in the American press.

LEO-CONS:- Nice of the New York Times to have found a photograph of me when I looked about 17 to plug into their chart of alleged Leo-cons, a cabal centered around the teachings of Leo Strauss. This idea crops up every few years or so. The average Guardian writer thinks he has stumbled across something truly sinister when he finds out that a bunch of Washington types all studied political philosophy from “Straussians.” So what? Bill Kristol and I were lucky enough to learn vast amounts from Harvey Mansfield at Harvard. Does that mean we agree about everything? Of course not. Does it mean we adhere to the same political philosophy in its entirety? C’mon. Try another angle.

REVERSING CIRCUMCISION:- An angle I hadn’t thought of. And a point that’s worth repeating:

Reiss says that if you want to experience the difference in sensation on the glans (or head) of the penis when you have the protection of the foreskin, you can conduct a test. Lightly rub a finger down the palm of your hand, and then rub it in the same fashion on the upper side of the hand. The difference in sensation is the difference circumcised and uncircumcised men feel on the head of their penis, he says.

Don’t you think that’s a difference people should actually be able to consent to?

“While opinions differ as to whether gambling is a vice, few would regard it as a virtue. This is why the news of Bill Bennett’s fondness for high-stakes gambling is so disappointing. As the nation’s leading critic of America’s virtue deficit, Mr. Bennett, like it or not, bears a greater burden regarding his personal conduct than the average citizen. The same is no less true for all of us who promote virtue in the public square. While, as Mr. Bennett says, he has done nothing illegal, the sheer scale of his gambling activities are troubling. Reports that Mr. Bennett does not dispute suggest he has wagered millions of dollars over the last decade and that casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City extend to him “high-roller” status… Again, while we have no reason to doubt Mr. Bennett’s word, gambling is not as benign as he suggests. The gambling industry attracts and fosters such other vices as prostitution, substance abuse, spousal abuse, divorce, and family abandonment. Some gloating pundits, of course, have pounced on the story to accuse Mr. Bennett of being a moralizing hypocrite. The truth is, however, Mr. Bennett has simply shown himself to have feet of clay. We are, after all, made of dust. Christians are called upon to be good stewards of God’s blessings.” – from the Family Research Council‘s email.