I don't know about willfully blind, but I think Obama and his supporters are being willfully inconsistent. The implication up until now has been that since we need spending so badly and so immediately a critical look at the budget and priorities has not been possible. That excuse was also used to justify Obama's continued acceptance of earmarks.

Now in an area of the budget that doesn't fit with the Obama wish list, it is suddenly possible to be fiscally responsible. The conclusion has to be that Obama can review budgets critically when he wants to, and that much of the anti-earmark talk and “going through the budget line-by-line” was just so much campaign rhetoric.

I do believe Fred Ive lived to see it all coming from the left hand part of the stage. Whats that Fred? The fat lady has a friend joinning her?

If you believe that large scale domestic stimulus is worthwhile to boost the economy, then very little of the domestic budget looks like pork.

As usual, I disagree with you.

I think you can believe that “large scale domestic stimulus is worthwhile to boost the economy” (admittedly, I do not, but that is not germane to my point), while acknowledging the first stimulus bill (and there WILL be more) and the current budget proposal is chock'o'block FULL of pork.

I would in fact go so far as to say that you would have to be willfully blind in supporting the President and the current Congress to even think that “very little of the domestic budget looks like pork.”

The article says that money is not being “spent on slushy stuff”, why not apply that logic to the budget as a whole?

The key is to define what is pork and what is not. And that depends on overall priorities. If you believe that largescale domestic stimulus is worthwhile to boost the economy, then very little of the domestic budget looks like pork.

On defense matters, if you believe in a counterinsurgency-focused military and less in a missile-defense/large scale warmaking machine, you will find the missile defense program to be pork.

We watched the USSR spend 10 years in Afghanistan, pull out and go belly up.

Now we are in Afghanistan going on 10 years shortly and we are in desperate straits.

La..la..la..la..la..la

Whats that fred? Yep I hear the fat lady tuning up too.