This Should Fuel Cynicism

HOW DEMOCRATS WILL WIN BACK THE SENATE

Hillary Worries About Gore

According to the Political Wire, Hillary Clinton has recently intensified her attacks on the Bush administration in an attempt to match those of potential Democratic challenger, Al Gore. Gore has become more involved in criticism of the president recently, and many are beginning to speculate that if he runs in 2008, he'll be to the left of other Democratic candidates, especially in light of the war, which many Democratic Senators and Representatives supported.

Five years ago, Democrats would have never guessed that "Al Gore" and "liberal" would be used in the same sentence. At least outside of the Rush Limbaugh studio. Gore was simply the boring moderate, trying to establish himself as a New Democrat, yet strangely, not attempting to take credit for any of the accomplishments of the Clinton era.

The Race Begins

Fernando Ferrer has officially captured the nomination of the Democratic Party for the mayorship of New York City today, receiving 40.15 percent of the votes. Although his main opponent, Anthony Weiner, seemed to be a serviceable politician, whether Ferrer can defeat a rich, popular incumbent remains to be seen.

Republican Qualms About Bush

Mister Snitch has documented an assortment of quotes from various Republicans and conservatives who are worried about President Bush's approach to Katrina, and more specifically, his enthusiasm for huge spending increases. NJConservative then sums up Snitch's analysis in one post, in which he accuses the Bush administration of overspending on all the topics that Democrats like to bring up: Katrina, Iraq, unvetoed appropriations bills.

It's good that people are examining spending on sensitive topics such as Katrina and Iraq. A continuation of this trend would be to look into spending cuts in the military. Are they needed? Nobody ever knows because it's taboo to bring it up, especially by liberals. The only aspect of the military that civilians, such as myself, understand, are soldier's salaries, which should obviously be raised in times of war and adjusted for inflation. Nevertheless, there's massive spending on defense initiatives that simply aren't necessary. Our military spending currently exceeds the next ten military spenders combined. This byte from the Times, comparing the Tsunami spending with defense spending, puts the problem in perspective.

Put another way the [tsunami spending] was half the price of a new f-16 fighter jet.

Isn't that ironic? Although Bush later increased the support for the Tsunami past the original $15 million, the unenthusiasm shows a lack of interest in beating terrorism or other global problems without the use of firearms.