[liberallarry]

In the late '40s an awful lot of rural hospitals were built with Federal aid - under Hilburton-something.

[Alas Babylon!]

Well, I would vote against my federal tax dollars going to build firestations in the USA. That is what I pay state and local taxes for. Now, perhaps I'd see it otherwise, if the state and local taxes were cut because the Feds are giving cash, but lets be real, that isn't going to happen.

It's ironic to me that the same Democrats who are tearing into the President for the federal budget deficit are also tearing him up for not spending federal funds to build local firehouses. Building new firehouses would be a totally new mandate for federal spending, as it isn't being done to this date. Yet that would either require new taxes to fund it, or an increase of the federal deficit. So I guess the Democrats haven't thought it through yet. Do they want a budget surplus/lower deficit, or new taxes? Will they tell us, or hope we won't wonder how it will be paid for?

Me, I'm thinking they're hoping we won't wonder. After all, didn't they just tell us hope is on the way?

[browardchad]

In the late '40s an awful lot of rural hospitals were built with Federal aid - under Hilburton-something.

Snide non-sequitur.

As Hitchens says, this is not a zero-sum game.

Now if Kerry really wanted to get a rousing cheer from his dimented audience last night, he should have said that money spent in Iraqi schools should be spent instead on U.S. teachers' salaries. That really would have had his NEA audience howling at the moon.