When John McCain starts ranting about government spending as the root of all that is wrong with the world, I have to say this image comes immediately to mind (apologies to Keith Olbermann...)

Perhaps you'll recall this nugget from a debate last year, a standard line from his speeches over the past year:

"We didn't lose the 2006 election because of the war in Iraq; we lost it because we in the Republican Party came to Washington to change government and government changed us. We let spending go out of control. We spent money like a drunken sailor, although I never knew a sailor drunk or sober with the imagination of my colleagues."

Now I'm not going to sit here and dispute his characterization of the Republican majority, nor am I going to underestimate the disgust Republicans felt with their own at their lack of fiscal discipline; I saw it myself among Republican family and friends. But John McCain literally blames everything on profligate spending, including, yes, Hurrican Katrina:

McCain also criticized earmarks for projects in New Orleans that didn't help protect the city from Hurricane Katrina, saying a congressional earmark helped to dig a channel outside New Orleans that helped speed the hurricane into the city.

...and the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis last summer.

Republican John McCain said Wednesday that the bridge collapse in Minnesota that killed 13 people last year would not have happened if Congress had not wasted so much money on pork-barrel spending.

Now, I'm all for calling out misplaced priorities in government but what McCain is missing here is that what is really at the root of the failures that led to the breaching of the levees in New Orleans and the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis was one of the classic tenets of conservatism: its utter refusal to see government as a means to better the lives of the many (i.e. investing in infrastructure that redounds to the benefit of the common good) but rather as a means to better oneself and the few.

Sure, John McCain insults his own party in what passes for straight talk, but to me it's a perfect example of the denial John McCain is living in. I mean, what other option does someone who has staked his entire political life on the war have other than to convince himself that it didn't contribute one iota to the decimation of Republicans from congress in 2006? And what other option does a self-proclaimed conservative have other than to convince himself that the disintegration of our infrastructure under Bush was an exception to conservative governance, rather than a symptom of it. Otherwise he'd have to admit what's been evident to most Americans for a long time: that conservatism as a governing philosophy is an unmitigated failure.

For Anyone who wondered why California only gained one congressional seat in the 2006 election, and gained nothing else, the following article will give you the straight scoop:

    http://www.sdcitybeat.com/article.php?id =5664

Art Torres, the party chair, would clearly prefer to give back $4 million in UNSPENT money on election day, so that lame-duck house speaker Fabian Nunez can wine and dine lobbyists and consultants.   He sure doesn't want to give the money to assembly district candidates because that might disrupt the cozy spoils system the CDP has with Republicans (The CDP gave money to only 2 out of 32 challengers in Republican-held AD seats).  Bob Mulholland, the welfare queen of the Sacramento consultant aristocracy, encapsulates the CDP thinking best when he expresses this tender concern for Republican campaign budgets:

    "As soon as you send in 10 or 20 or 50 thousand dollars],
      the other side says `Incoming!' and they pour the money in."

Gosh, we sure don't want Republicans to WORK to win their seats, do we?   Better to let them win!

As noted by Adam Conner on Breaking Blue, the DNC has posted the state-by-state costs to pay for Bush's War. Through the magic of Excel, it is made clear that the states that supported Kerry in 2004 - hereafter called "so-called Blue States" - shouldered a significantly greater amount of Bush's War than those who went for Bush - hereafter called "so-called Red States."

By my calculations, 19 so-called Blue States have paid $207.1496 (55.18% of total), while 31 so-called Red States have paid $168.2247 (44.82% of total). That's a difference of $38.9249 Billion (10.37%), or almost $40 Billion. I could list a slew of reasons why this is unfair - exacerbated by rampant fraud and fatcatting of, shall we say, otherwise illiberal individuals - but my guess is that you by and large don't need me to tell you. State-by-state numbers below the jump...

Note: I think "Bush's War" might be a nice way for Dems across the nation to frame the war in Iraq. I know it's not precise enough - no credit given to Cheney et al. - but that's message framing for you.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about a new Republican proposal to give Bush a line-item veto.  At the time, I had a few major concerns.

First, one man's pork is another man's Department of Education.  Giving an executive the power to line-item veto is, as the Supreme Court has said, giving him the power to legislate.  What, after all, should keep Bush from using the line-item veto to further erode spending on programs that benefit Americans to make room for more corporate welfare and Republican pork?  This is no outrageous claim, but a logical follow-up to bills such as S.1932.

Second, even though this new Republican proposal requires Congress to approve the President's cuts, the idea is based on the good faith of Congress.  What if there was a situation in which the executive and legislative branches were controlled by the same party, and the legislature gave up the task of oversight in order to advance the interests of the party?  Or, what if the executive and legislative branches were controlled by different parties functioning in a highly partisan environment and either branch used the new rules for partisan rather than good government ends?

It seems that my concerns were not too far off.  A new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that the new line-item veto proposal does much more than its proponents have been saying.