Here’s a follow-up to my earlier post on “this administration’s budget priorities”:http://www.globalspin.com/mt/archives/000499.html. A recent “PIPA study”:http://www.globalspin.com/mt/archives/000499.html shows that most Americans have similar budget priorities, but those priorities are very different from the budget proposed by the President and Congress.

_ìThe American public as a whole takes a fairly coherent position. They favor redirecting a portion of defense spending to deficit reduction and social spending and look for savings by cutting spending on large-scale Cold War style capabilities…î_

Fancy that. We all agree, red-staters and blue-staters alike. So why aren’t our representatives being representative?

Does anyone else see a trend in the recent US nominations to world-facing positions? First Condi as Secretary of State, then John Bolton, “a guy who hates the UN”:http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=18728, as UN ambassador, and now “Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1439192,00.html. Honestly, it’s like making David Duke the ambassador to Kenya.

Peter Bosshard (from the article) put it best:

_”In his career, Wolfowitz has so far not shown any interest in poverty reduction, environmental protection and human rights. His election as World Bank president would most likely exacerbate the current backlash against social and environmental concerns at the World Bank, and would initiate a new era of conflict between the Bank and civil society.”_

The 2006 budget proposed by the Bush administration is truly sickening. This “article by Molly Ivins”:http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/H022105B.shtml says it so well that I’m too disgusted to comment.

For a friendlier version of how easy it would be to change our budget priorities, “Ben Cohen explains it with cookies”:http://www.truemajority.org/fun/.

OK, so let me get this straight. We’re spending “$9 billion a year on a ‘missile defense’”:http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-02-17-rumsfeld-missiledefense_x.htm which a) doesn’t stop missiles even in simple testing and b) wouldn’t deter anyone from developing or deploying missiles. If that’s the case, I have a “bullet defense” here that consists of waving a pen vaguely in the direction of a loaded gun. How much is that worth? Do I get extra points if having the pen constitutes a treaty violation?

Why is “Dick Cheney smiling”:http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apwashington_story.asp?category=1151&slug=US%20Iran?

See “Iraq”:http://www.globalspin.com/mt/archives/000470.html for details.

Let’s hope America (and Congress) won’t be fooled so easily this time…