You know why? Because they've been handed the means to win every single funding argument for the next ten years in the court of public opinion, and you just know they won't have the cojones to use it.
Oh, sure, the Dems -seem- to be growing a big pair of Rocky Mountain Donkey Eggs, with Nancy Pelosi calling Bush "incompetent", and all, but that's just the hyena mentality. Dubya's already given himself a bad leg and a wicked case of the mange, so that's why you see the Pelosis of the world closing in.
But seriously. Whenever something Republicans usually bitch about comes up for funding, the Dems now have comebacks of EPIC proportions. Let's say, for example, that the government wants to take some tax money and give it to poor people so they can eat. Republicans hate it when poor people eat, so they start blathering on about bootstraps and personal responsibility and "welfare cheats" abusing the system who in reality make up a tiny fraction of the people receiving the service.
And then, some brave Democrat, possibly possessed by the soul of Paul Wellstone, only having been dead and out of Minnesota for a couple of years, the Wellsoul no longer has any compunctions about being friendly and nice, and says, "Where do you fucks get off trying to tell other people, either the Congress or people on welfare, how to spend money? You're the people who gave $340,000 a month to Ahmed Chalabi so he could lie to you, spy for the Iranians, and plot to overthrow whatever half-assed government you install in Iraq. $340,000 a month for like THREE YEARS. That shit adds up. So get your ass back on the golf course with your cronies and let the grownups do the real work.
It would be GLORIOUS. But it'll never happen. Even if they took out the "fucks" and the "shit", which these days don't get said nearly enough on the Senate floor.
Compared to what those idiots spent on Ahmed Chalabi, midnight basketball seems like a pretty smart investment, if you ask me.
And after about five years, when the Chalabi thing starts losing its bite, and the Republicans are all up in arms because we want to send men to Mars, and they're cranky because there's no evidence as yet that Jesus ever went there, so we should spend that money right here on Earth, once again, the pissed off, dead soul of Paul Wellstone, having been made even more ornery by yet another half-decade being all dead and stuff, takes over the body of someone... I don't know. Someone with some seniority. Not Joe Lieberman. That'd just be fuckin' creepy, even for the pissed off soul of Wellstone. Doesn't matter who, anyway. And the newly possessed senator stands up and says...
"Spend money here on Earth? Let's see, you guys spent some money here on Earth a few years ago, didn't you? You gave it to Halliburton, so that they could go to the most dangerous roads on Earth, pay innocent people to drive back and forth on them, and those trucks were fucking EMPTY. Empty trucks! Your buddies at Halliburton risked innocent drivers' lives needlessly so that they could bilk us for $1,000 a trip. So sit your pasty ass down. We're going to Mars, and I guarantee there won't be any empty spaceships making the run.
Man, what I wouldn't give to see that one day. But I won't. None of us will. And it's a shame, because it sure sounds nice. But Democrats are DUMB.