CapitalGainsandGames



Secretary of Defense Robert Gates yesterday became the latest member of the Bush cabinet to say something that can easily be proven wrong to support the White House.

As reported in the Washington Post, Gates said that a delay in getting the funds requested by the president for Iraq and Afghanistan would soon force him to start laying off employees and ceasing operations at bases.

Gates should know better, and should know that someone would quickly call him out on this.



One of the great numbers from the 1978 Broadway musical The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas and the movie based on it was "Texas Has a Whorehouse In It," a supposed expose by a less-than-reputable newscaster about how he was absolutely shocked to discover a brothel that everyone knew knew was there.

 

f you saw the movie you'll almost certainly remember Dom DeLuise in this big production number with a chorus backing him up. It was outrageous, and outrageously funny.



I knew, but I didn't really know.

 



Peter Baker of The Washington Post had a good story today about the latest battle in the appropriations war between the Bush White House and Democratic Congress. The story talks about some of the parallels between the current situation and the standoff in 1995 that led to a government shutdown.

 



My column on nationaljournal.com this week explains why the debate is proving to be so difficult in spite of the fact that Congress is talking about providing a tax cut.

 

 The veto gives the president the appearance of being a super hero.  He's faster than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and able to thwart the powerful U.S. Congress.

 More about this later when the Senate votes on overriding the president's veto of the water bill, but the White House's position that an override is no big deal is nothing but spin.  In fact, an override here will likely make it much easier for overrides on other bills.



My adopted home state (30 years or so after I left, I'm still a New Yorker at heart) of Virginia produced election results yesterday that have to be very disturbing for anyone who thinks that Republican prospects in 2008 are still strong.  As a result, substantial increases in the Democratic majorities in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate became more likely yesterday.

 

Not only did the Democrats win enough seats to take control of the Virginia state Senate, but one of the GOP losses was the wife of Congressman Tom Davis.

 Here's my latest column from NationalJournal.com.



The evidence continues to mount: Blackwater, that is, the reliance on contractors to do what should be done by the military, is the direct result of the Pentagon’s, or White House’s disastrous federal budget policies.