Our spending on defense quite literally exceeds that of all other countries on the planet combined. And that's without counting intelligence and homeland security monies.

We are amazingly wealthy. Defense spending as a percentage of GDP is, therefore, a rather odd metric. We're simply much, much wealthier than we were in 1950.

In other words the Bush administration claims we are in a war for Western Civilization but is only willing to allocate less then 0.5% of GDP
to fight the war. In Korea it rose from 3.6% to 14.2% and in Vietnam it jumped from 7.4% to 9.5%.

How do you expect to win a war when you do not give the troops the resources they need to win?

Maybe it is because if Bush were honest about the true cost of the war -- remember one of the first casualties was his economic adviser Larry Linsey for trying to make an honest estimate -- he would have to give up his tax cuts.

Are we losing the war because his tax cuts are more important to Bush then winning the war?

a strong defense, lower taxes, less government, and family values

Those pillars are like sunshine and puppies; no one’s against them

Really????????cDems are for a strong defense, lower taxes, less government?????????????? Come visit Massachusetts my friend.

First, I’d love to see the Democrats run against those four pillars in 2008.

Those pillars are like sunshine and puppies; no one's against them. The questions that divide the parties turn on the costs that have to be borne to secure 'em.

Better to say that they're necessary, but not sufficient.

You can't have lower taxes, for ex, when you're spending $4 billion a week on a stupid war in Iraq.

And I'm heartened to see that it looks like Pelosi, Reid, et. al. understand this. So far the talk has been of reconciliation and bipartisanship. They seem to understand that if the Dems are perceived as not doing anything useful, they'll be voted out too.

As for Podesta, I chalk this up to residual euphoria--I mean, cmon, we haven't really won a national election for ten years! There's a large backlog of "We're number one!" chants that have built up...

The entire election, for the republican base, was about the fact that the current crop of republicans are really NOTHING about conservativism and all about pork spending and ‘scandal’ coverup.

Real Republicans take their garbage out in public and kick it to the curb. The current batch only does so when forced to and then wants to scuffle around and make excuses for covering crap up in the first place. In other words, the current republican crop looks too much like Ted Kennedy.

The fact that the Democrats ran the gammit on the election by electing mostly conservatives (I think) proves my point.

I also think you are right that the democrats did a nice job of connecting all the GOP races to the Bush white house and to Iraq policy. Now that the dems are in control of at least some portions of government, they are going to have to step up and do something-they can't just point at the GOP and say "no" anymore or "we don't like that idea."