PORKBUSTERS UPDATE:

Republican leaders left behind just enough spending authority to keep the government operating through mid-February, less than halfway through the 2007 fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Democrats have signaled that when they take control of Congress in January they will extend that funding authority for the remainder of the year based largely on the previous year’s spending levels, which will result in many cuts in programs.

The Democrats also will do something that is certain to anger many lawmakers but cheer critics of excessive government spending: They will wipe out thousands of lawmakers’ pet projects, or earmarks, that have been a source of great controversy on Capitol Hill. In the past, lawmakers have peppered individual spending bills with earmarks benefiting special interests. But the funding resolution the Democrats intend to pass in lieu of spending bills will be devoid of earmarks.

Sounds good to me! It’s early yet, but the Democrats are looking good so far.

DATING IN DC: “Some DC men might take offense at the mere mention of the possibility that most of us are ‘vanilla pansies.’ I, on the other hand, very much hope that it’s true. The higher the percentage of vanilla pansies among my male competitors on the DC dating scene, the better the market outlook for me!”

Unless, of course, vanilla pansies are what the market values. Though I doubt that.

A RUMSFELD ROUNDUP at BlackFive. (Via Op-For).

UPDATE: Rumsfeld: Weakness is provocative. “It may well be comforting to some to consider graceful exits from the agonies and, indeed, the ugliness of combat. But the enemy thinks differently.”

I, NANOBOT.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Things are coming to a head.

DANIEL DREZNER HAS THOUGHTS ON GRAND STRATEGY in tomorrow’s Washington Post.

THE EMILY LITELLA CAMPAIGN: Evan Bayh won’t run after all.

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus: “The solid centrist Dem alternatives to Hillary are dropping out, one by one. Funny how that happens!”

STEPHEN GREEN IS NOT DEAD: “I started losing weight a few months ago. Nothing serious, just enough to get friends asking if I’d lost any weight. I denied it at first, but then I had buy all new Levi’s in a waist size I hadn’t worn since the late Eighties.”

A FINAL “SNOWFLAKE” from Donald Rumsfeld.

I JUST NOTICED THAT THE LONESOME COYOTES have some downloadable music on the Web. Check it out if you’re interested in Texas Swing. I saw them open for Asleep at the Wheel some years ago, and though Asleep at the Wheel put on their usual first-rate show, the Coyotes committed the unpardonable sin of upstaging the headliner.

IN THE MAIL: The latest book from cartoonist gods Cox and Forkum, Black & White World III. A perfect Christmas gift for anyone who’s tired of Ted Rall or Doonesbury.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER REMINDS AMERICANS that it’s not all about us. “We traditionally flatter ourselves that we are the root of all planetary good and evil, whether it is nuclear weapons in North Korea, poverty in Bolivia, or disco attacks in Bali.”

WEB SURPASSES NEWSPAPERS, and this trend bodes poorly for the financial future of newspapers. I saw a discussion of this on Kudlow last night, and the New York Times guy was arguing that it wouldn’t hurt them because overall readership — paper plus online — was up. He didn’t have much of an answer when Larry Kudlow asked him if the Times was coming out ahead financially on that shift, though. If it were, I think the stock price would be trending up, instead of down.

U.S. UP, ISLAMISTS DOWN, according to the Washington Post’s Global Power Barometer. Make of that what you will (“not much” is my take), but the animation is kind of cool.

ILYA SOMIN: “Why the Texas ten percent plan is worse than traditional affirmative action.”

HEY, I’M A “pinko agit-propster.” You’d think it would pay better.

JUST FINISHED WATCHING NUMB3RS, and Buzz Aldrin had a cameo at the end. He looked good!

Buzz wrote a children’s book recently, and for good reason.

FRANK KEATING for President?

SPACE REF REPORTS that the FAA has just released its final rules governing commercial human spaceflight. I predict that the requirement that rocket pilots possess an airplane pilot’s license will one day be seen as silly, like requiring that jet pilots first learn to fly blimps.

DO WE NEED A BIGGER ARMY? Gen. Peter Schoomaker says that we do:

Schoomaker said the Army began the Iraq war “flat-footed” with a $56 billion equipment shortage and 500,000 fewer soldiers than during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. . . .

The burden on the Army’s 507,000 active-duty soldiers — who now spend more time at war than at home — is simply too great, he said. “At this pace, without recurrent access to the reserve components, through remobilization, we will break the active component,” he said, drawing murmurs around the hearing room.

The Army, which had 482,000 soldiers in 2001, plans to grow temporarily to 512,000. But the Army now seeks to make that increase permanent and to continue increasing its ranks by 7,000 or more a year, Schoomaker said. He said the total increase is under discussion.

Back in 2004, in the face of good news about recruitment and retention, I observed: “Nonetheless, I suspect that it’s a good time to be looking at enlarging the military and adjusting the force structure.”

That hasn’t been the plan, and I guess it depends on what we intend to do next. If we’re planning to cut-and-run from Iraq and hunker down, then we don’t need a bigger Army. (The problem isn’t holding onto the troops we’ve got — As Army Secretary Francis Harvey said when we interviewed him, recruitment and retention are going well. That’s a separate question from the one of how big an Army we need, but I’m afraid that if we stress the troops we’ve got too much, retention will slide, something we discuss in that interview; Harvey was sanguine, me not quite so much.) My own preference would be for a bigger Army than we’ve got, so that the stress on the troops will be lower, and we’ll have more capacity in case we need it in Iran or Saudi Arabia. The Administration hasn’t seemed to feel that way. I’m a lot less of an expert than the people running the Pentagon (I hope!) but it seems to me that returning the Army to its pre-Clinton Administration size isn’t such a bad idea.

There’s also this problem:

Compounding the problem, the Pentagon has restricted repeated involuntary call-ups, leading to deeper and deeper holes in Army Guard and reserve units. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, hundreds of thousands of reserve soldiers have been mobilized for Iraq and Afghanistan. So when a unit is called to deploy, the only soldiers who can go are volunteers and new soldiers. The remainder are often drawn from dozens of units across the United States.

Short of a very large increase in Army size, this problem won’t go away entirely — certainly an extra 30 or 50 thousand soldiers won’t make a big difference, and returning to the pre-Clinton size Army isn’t going to happen in less than several years. I had something about these issues back in 2001, in the context of Afghanistan — see this, too — but it indicates that force structure and rotation methodology matter as well as total Army size. I’m certainly not prepared to second-guess the Army on this, as repeated involuntary callups raise issues of their own, but obviously people have to weigh the costs and benefits. Are they weighing them properly? Beats me. I would have expected — in fact, I did expect — more problems with recruitment and retention than we’ve seen over such a long period of hostilities, so that suggests that they know more than I do. As they should!

UPDATE: This question — how big should the Army be — is only loosely related to the question of whether we should, as John McCain wants, send 35,000 more troops to Iraq, except insofar as this wouldn’t be such a big issue if we had a bigger Army to begin with. Whether 35,000 more troops will make a difference or not is unclear to me, and it’s a matter on which the generals themselves seem to be divided. But if we had a bigger Army, such questions would be purely a matter of utility, and not so much of institutional strain.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

Interesting that you would post this today.

Tonight my husband and I had “the” talk – and I can assure you that the spouse or loved one of any member of our military who has deployed, knows exactly what “talk” I mean.

My husband is past active duty Army, and is currently a member of the Army National Guard with one deployment under his belt. He has recently volunteered for another deployment. He’ll mobilize in the next few weeks.

Tonight we had the “If I don’t come home” discussion. We’ve had this discussion before, and knowing my husband, I’m sure we’ll have it again.

We’ve been married for 17 years, I know this man as well as I know myself. I know if I threw a hissy fit, he wouldn’t volunteer. He’d wait until his entire company was activated again…

But I can’t do that.

In his own words. “I’m a soldier, it’s who I am, it’s what I do”

Who would I be to ask him to be something that he’s not?

In our civilian life, we’re comfortable. We own our own business, we have two great kids, our home is ours, free and clear..I love our life..

But being a soldier is who he is.

Don’t ever underestimate our military. Sure, it would be great to have more troops, I’d be thrilled if he never had to deploy again. But my husband isn’t the exception, he’s much closer to being the rule. I’ve seen it over and over again, and these soldiers never cease to amaze me.

They’ll do whatever it takes – the question is – will the rest of the country?

Just some Grunts’ wife.

I’m sure they will, but it’s wrong for the rest of the country to presume on that. Meanwhile, though I linked it before, this post by Porphyrogenitus is worth noting, too. And Major Dave Lange notes another problem:

One more problem with increasing the size of the Army: where do you put all those troops? A good number of the bases where troops were stationed during the Cold War simply aren’t there anymore. Ft. Ord, CA, the former home of the 7th Infantry Division, for example, is now part of the Cal State University system. And the bases in Germany that once housed elements of 5 divisions are, or soon will be, gone, with a just a couple of exceptions.

Even going halfway back to the roughly million-man Army we had during the Cold War would mean adding another 250,000 troops, requiring another 5-10 major installations. Not sure where you’re going to find that-and when you do expect enviro-socialists to protest turning the habitat of the southern tigerspotted swamp tree newt into a tank range. And people who don’t want to live next to the sounds of gunfire and artillery, or low flying helicopters.

Like our other problems, this is not insoluble — but it requires people to work on solving it.

MICKEY KAUS: “Lt. Col. Bateman’s post on Media Matters ‘ Altercation–disputing Associated Press in the ongoing controversy over the alleged burning of six Sunnis in Baghdad–seems quite damning. Eric Boehlert’s response–‘Hey, I’m not defending the AP on this, just attacking the AP’s attackers!’–seems quite weak. “

JON STEWART AND DENNIS MILLER: Video. “I wish this could take the place of Hannity and Colmes.”

A CURE FOR DIABETES?

In a discovery that has stunned even those behind it, scientists at a Toronto hospital say they have proof the body’s nervous system helps trigger diabetes, opening the door to a potential near-cure of the disease that affects millions of Canadians.

Diabetic mice became healthy virtually overnight after researchers injected a substance to counteract the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Dr. Michael Salter, a pain expert at the Hospital for Sick Children and one of the scientists. “Mice with diabetes suddenly didn’t have diabetes any more.”

Don’t get too excited yet, but let’s hope this pans out. If it does, we’ll have to wonder what else we’ve been missing in diseases we thought we understood.

1.5 MILLION WITHOUT POWER in the Northwest. They probably can’t read it, but here’s a blackout survival guide and some guidelines on home generator safety, from Popular Mechanics.

Some former neighbors of ours lost a child due to carbon monoxide from an improperly located emergency generator back during the Memphis blackout a few years back. Generators are good, but they’re dangerous if not used properly.

Earlier posts on this topic here and here. Also here.

IRANIAN ELECTIONS MARRED BY BOMB BLASTS: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “Perhaps the government of Iran should move to Okinawa.”

That works for me.