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Doesn’t this strike anyone as odd? Am I the only one that feels that this is a huge waste of time and resources? Bush Seeks Big Jump in Missile Defense Spending

The administration seeks to boost funding for its controversial missile defense program by 13 percent to $10.2 billion next year from $9 billion requested for fiscal 2004.

Think about this for a moment. Who posesses these types of missles? According to the “National Institute for Public Policy (some conservative think tank, i believe) Here is the list. They are arguing for a missile defense system, so I’m sure they’re going to make it look as scary as possible:

Countries that supposedly have ICBMs:
• Iraq (whoops, apparently not, cross them off)
• Iran
• North Korea
• China
• Russia

Now, China and Russia would never use them against us. Why? They’re both in the UN (permanent members of the UNSC), and they are both major trading partners.

Iraq obviously doesn’t have this capability (why did we go there again?), Iran and North Korea both would bring a world of hurt upon themselves if they launched them at us.

My point is this. Missile defense does nothing to stop terrorists. We face basically zero threat of someone launching a full-scale, state-sponsored attack on us.

What we do face is a lack quality intelligence processing, and a lack of following the immigration standards that are already in place. It is becoming clear now that the terrorists who hijacked the planes were here on expired visas, fake passports, etc. We need to be able to better process the information that we have available to us.

Combatting terrorism is not like playing the game Risk. It is not a matter of bettering your odds by increasing the size of your army. The way to combat terrorism is to promote good will towards your country. Promote development of undeveloped societies. Use our enormous economic powers for building up those less fortunate in the world.

Think of how this $10 billion dollars we’re spending on a missile defense system could be better used. What if we simply matched the aid we give to Israel, and give it to the government of Palestine. Take a true neutral stance in the Middle East, and bring the different sides to the table. And stay there. Create a Palestinian state. Truly work towards peace.

I won’t even get into all the different positive things we could spend $10 billion on here at home, but it’s clear that we could do better than to spend it on some foolish and false sense of security that will only anger our allies and embolden our enemies.

You know you love it in Minnesota when you look at the weather channel homepage, it says it feels like -46 degrees, and you thought to yourself “It didn’t feel quite that cold on the way into work today.”

All I want to know is… what is going to be the “smoking gun” so to speak that will wake up the American public?

Earth to Americans! Bush and his cronies lied to you. Repeatedly.

The Bush Administration is now saying it never told the public that Iraq was an “imminent” threat, and therefore it should be absolved for overstating the case for war and misleading the American people about Iraq’s WMD. Just this week, White House spokesman Scott McClellan lashed out at critics saying “Some in the media have chosen to use the word ‘imminent’. Those were not words we used.” But a closer look at the record shows that McClellan himself and others did use the phrase “imminent threat”

Read the whole article here… In Their Own Words: Iraq’s ‘Imminent’ Threat

This op-ed in the nytimes is along the lines of a previous article I had posted about framing the issues. The Dead Center, have a look!

I hope that Mr. Edwards and the others will stay on message ó and movement. After all, Democrats have seen what the Republican Party has been able to accomplish over the years. The conservative movement has developed dedicated sources of money and legions of ground troops who not only get out the vote, but also spend the time between elections persuading others to join their ranks. It has devised frames of reference that are used repeatedly in policy debates (among them: it’s your money, tax and spend, political correctness, class warfare).

Okay, so for the third time in two days I went to Chipotle for a free burrito, or as it would turn out, three free burritos.

You see, by now I had chatted with just about everyone of Chipotle’s employees. When you’ve spent 2 of the past 48 hours simply waiting for a free burrito, you have some time to chat with people. So by this evening, I was instantly recognized by a few employees. One of them made an announcement to the entire store, (“This man is dedicated!”) and handed me a free burrito coupon. I arrived at the order counter, and another employee says, “Ever been to Chipotle?” I say, “Oh buddy, you have no idea!” Chit chat, etc. he gives me another free burrito coupon.

So it’s been a pretty good day for the eatin’

But I’m sure glad they’re closed tomorrow to prepare for their grand opening on friday…

I need a day off.

Bush in Denial An excellent editorial in the New York Times:

Rather than addressing the alarming failures of American intelligence, Mr. Bush and his aides have gone from talking about weapons to talking about weapons programs, and then, in the State of the Union address, “weapons of mass destruction-related program activities.” It is time to stop refining the spin and make a serious attempt to find out where and how American intelligence went wrong.

Petition CBS to air this ad during the Super Bowl

Musicplasma visual music search

Will Orkut be the first social networking site I actually use?

That is all for now.