[LTCJ]

Perhaps you weren't paying attention when war was declared on Spetember 11, 2001, but I can assure you that we certainly noticed the declaration here in Washington. If you feel that foregoing any spending and surrendering the world to Osama bin Laden's boys is your preferred option, please feel free to explain as well how you do plan on defending the national security of the United States.

I noticed, sport. On 9/12/01, I went in on my day off and pulled my retirement papers off my CO's desk. And I realize that knowledge of the Constitution is a bit lax there in Washington, but foreign nationals may commit acts of war but it is the solemn duty of one branch of the national government to request, and another to Declare it.

[As to how I would have handled discretionary defense spending, I would have started by boosting Army manpower by about two corps, going through munition stocks like there was no tomorrow, and made getting pee stains out of linen the second biggest problem from Tripoli to the Philippines. Oh, and the Guard and Reserve biggest current problem would now be shortage of politely worked preprinted rejection letters. Thanks for asking.]

If you had bothered to read the piece (I am serious), you would have noted that it did discuss non-defense discretionary spending. My guess, though, is that you are more concerned with non-defense, non-discretionary spending. "Entitlements" such as Social Security and Medicare fall under this category. See my above post for a quick discussion of that.

And if you hadn't been preoccupied with masking what some have quoted as more like double your figures for discretionary non-defence spending by waving a rather threadbare set of Colors at us, you wouldn't have had the point go over your head that I was giving the embarrassingly anemic defense discretionary spending figures a pass. It is discretionary non-DoD spending that has gone up like it was managed by a drunken sailor under Bush. THAT is the point.

[TastyManatees]

>"It is discretionary non-DoD spending that has gone up like it was managed by a drunken sailor under Bush."

O.K., here you go (from the piece):

"3. All other discretionary spending increased from the previous Administration's final 2001 budget of $331 billion to a whopping $381 billion budgeted for 2004. This difference amounts to approximately $50 billion, or 15%. Over three years.

See the response above for a discussion of the dishonesty of the tactics currently being used to characterize NON-discretionary entitlement spending (Medicare) as somehow overshadowing defense spending.

Please forgive me for my irate tone a few posts back. I didn't mean for it to come out as insulting as it did, but the post I was replying to seemed a little bit like a thinly-veiled attack on the propriety of defending this nation from attack. I think I was mistaken in that initial read, and I apologize.

Tasty Manatees