You have to give BushCo credit - they're creative! They've managed to come up with new ways to obscure and even cover their tracks on just about everything:

The Bush administration's novel approach to budgeting for and financing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has made it very difficult to discern the true costs of the conflicts, a new report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments concludes.

Historically, the United States has covered the costs of war through the annual appropriations process. Supplemental appropriations were used to cover only initial, unanticipated phases of major conflicts. But the Bush administration relied exclusively on supplemental appropriations to cover the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan until 2008 -- seven years after U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan and five years after they entered Iraq.

The reliance on supplemental funding creates a misleading picture of overall requirements, said Steven Kosiak, vice president of budget studies at CSBA and author of the report, during a briefing on Monday. "A sound budgeting process forces policymakers to recognize the true costs of their policy choices," he said.

I think it's only a matter of time before we discover they've not only mislead us about the number of civilian deaths, but also lied about the number of wounded and dead American troops.

I expect we'll start to hear a lot about those and other coverups, once the new Obama administration is sworn in.

Minnesota Monitor:

In an supplemental budget request, Ramsey County Sheriff Bill Fletcher is expected to ask for considerable funding to pay for security during the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

Fletcher, who narrowly won re-election in 2006, expects to arrest between three and five thousand protesters during the GOP's presidential nominating convention in September 2008. According to a source close to the policy-making process in St. Paul, the unconfirmed amount of $4,432,804 includes more than $80,000 for chain link fence to build outdoor holding areas for protesters. According Dave Verhasselt, spokesman for Ramsey County Manager David Twa, the Saint Paul Police generally have jurisdiction over arrests, and the Sheriff over jailing once arrests are made.

Verhasselt (who could not cite specific numbers but indicated a request "between three and four million" dollars) also said that discussion of arrest numbers at this point is purely speculative.

Protesters are a part of every large political convention, and the scope of Fletcher's projection seems to split the difference between recent examples. In 2004, six protesters were arrested at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, while approximately 10,000 were arrested during the RNC in New York City. According to sources close to the budget process, however, the St. Paul Police Department has already begun working with groups interested in expressing peaceful opposition to the RNC, and Fletcher's request appears, on its surface, to conflict with that process.

Ryan responds to the WATB complaints by the Repubs over the the new spending bill that was just passed.

Download | play Download | play (rough transcript)

Ryan: ...on top of all that they [Republicans] leave the new democratic majority an absolute budget catastrophe for us to deal with. And over to course of those 14 years the republican congress and the republican president borrowed more money, more money from foreign interests than all of the previous presidents combined. So now we're going get lectures from the republican majority on how to run the budget process. Now we're going to get lectures from the most incompetent, ineffective congress in the history of this institution, Mr. Speaker, the history of this institution.

Continue reading »

Barack Obama: "We need some adult supervision on the budget..."

Obama was on Face the Nation today and talked about Katrina.

Download | play -WMP

Download | play -QT

Bittorrent-WMP

Bittorrent-MOV

Obama questions if there is an awakening on race and poverty by the President and his administration. Bob asked if we should raise taxes to pay for the damage. (rush transcript)

Obama: This I think is where the problem comes in. You can't fight a war in Iraq that's costing upwards of 200 billion dollars and rebuild Katrina-rebuild N.O. and respond to the aftermath of Katrina-and try to deal with all the other domestic needs that we have, and- then cut taxes for the wealthiest 1% of Americana. I mean there was talk right-immediately after the hurricane that the republicans in the senate were still going to push forward with the repeal the estate tax which is mind boggling I think. We need some adult supervision of the budget process...