Demagogue

What do you really know about Bush's new Pentagon budget? Probably not as much as Slate's Fred Kaplan, who passes along observations like these:

It's not $481.4 billion, as the Defense Department is claiming. No, a squint through the fine print of the White House and Pentagon budget documents reveals that the true request for new military-spending authority comes to $739 billion.

... The budget requests $3.1 billion for a new aircraft carrier, $2.7 billion for a new Virginia-class submarine, and $3.4 billion to complete construction of two new DDG-1000 (formerly "DDX") cruisers.

It's hard to leave the cruisers half-built, but do we really need another nuclear-powered carrier and submarine? The U.S. Navy is not stretched beyond its capacity (unlike, say, the Army); there is no maritime mission it can't fulfill; no other country has a navy that's remotely threatening.