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Nobody asked me, but...
 According to a fellow Republican, the Bush administration may suffer from 'Deficit Attention Disorder.' YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSOnce again, I acknowledge my debt to the wonderfully gifted New York sportswriter Jimmy Cannon, who from time to time wrote a column full of insightful and sentimental one-liners he called "Nobody Asked Me, But ..." As soon as the airline pilot announces in sub-zero temperatures that the departure will be delayed because "federal regulations" require de-icing the wings of the aircraft, the true-blue, anti-government conservative would yell: Take off immediately, or I'm de-planing! Even before he signed his new $43 million contract with the New York Mets, relief pitcher Billy Wagner had qualified for the Bush administration's middle-class tax cut. Those persistent House Republicans just again voted to cut capital gains taxes on stocks and dividends. Regardless of your politics, you have to admire the GOP's unflinching commitment toward closing the dangerously widening gap between the Rich and the Super-Rich. If congressional Democrats fail to embrace and champion a reform program that bars members' accepting any gifts, trips or goodies from lobbyists and forbids former members of Congress from lobbying their former colleagues for five years, then we will have conclusive evidence that these Democrats are brain dead. One overlooked, key difference between the U.S. war in Vietnam and the U.S. war in Iraq is that, in Vietnam, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney both had a clear "exit strategy." Recently seen bumper sticker: "I Never Thought I'd Miss Nixon." The Supreme Court argument over whether military recruiters ought to be barred from campuses because the services' "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy violates law schools' anti-discrimination policies finds me squarely on the side of the U.S. military. Tell me: Who is going to fight for the country? Sir William Francis Butler made the case well: "The nation that draws a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man will have its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards." What about the uninterrupted string of unbalanced federal budgets? One Republican friend offered an explanation: The Bush administration suffers from a chronic case of Deficit Attention Disorder. The majority party's failure to deal with those budget deficits proves once again that no problem is too big to run away from. Forty percent of American voters go to church at least once a week. George W. Bush beat John Kerry among this group by 20 percent. That translates into an 8 percent advantage overall for Bush over Kerry. Does anyone want to tell the Democrats that only two of their presidential nominees in the last 40 years have won the White House and that both of them -- Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton -- were publicly comfortable with their religious faiths and values. If Patricia Clarkson is in the movie, then you will find me in the theater. Do you think one of the reasons for the popularity of pro football might be that Donald Trump never played the game? After watching the "gold rush" by U.S. companies to Iraq feverishly seeking to carve up the billions in rebuilding funds for that sad country, you're probably not surprised at the reports of billions in cost overruns and ill-gotten profits. Why were there no similar problems in the rebuilding of Japan after World War II? Perhaps because no American companies were contractors in that enterprise. Alan Alda as the Republican presidential nominee on "West Wing" is the best GOP standard-bearer since Ronald Reagan in 1980.
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