Wampum

The Senate just voted out (unanimously) H.R. 5631, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2007. The total weighs in at $447.4 billion, which includes a $70 billion emergency supplemental "bridge" fund -- $20 billion above the Pentagon request -- for wartime operations -- the Afgan and Iraqi debacles.

The total would have been higher but for John McCain's principled stand against torture. Or the facade of same.

We can blog about the IITF until our fingers grow shorter by a knuckle, but none of the White (or Black) bloggers, or the White (or Black) pols, or (Heavens Forfend!) the White (or Black) main stream media is ever, ever, ever, ever going to figure out that John McCain's saving the RNC access to a not insignificant slice of a cool 100 billion.

The two "sides" of the constitutional torture kabuki have 100% of the White (and Black) mindshare markets, so no one, other than Tribes with assets "in trust" and Individual Indian Trust claimants, knows that John has another iron in the fire. If he can escape oversight, and all right-minded Whites (and Blacks) are in agreement that no oversight is necessary when it comes to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs ... then that's $8 billion, not $100 billion, for just the IITF claimants -- Eloise Cobell et alia. On the order of $90 billion saved for a higher purpose.

Every penny skimmed off the float goes to the RNC. The Dems should go for equity of access to stolen Indian money, either the traditional bipartisan every-White-gets-paid form, or the Daniel Webster - Henry Clay no-stealing-from-Indians form. Their failure to do so means the RNC has more "found money" than the DNC, for as long as the grass grows, for as long as the oil flows, and especially for as long as the coal glows.

Webster and Clay came within one vote of preventing the Indian Removal of 1830, which would have prevented the Mexican War, which would have prevented the Civil War. Modernly, its a basic political intelligence test, and we haven't seen one-vote margins since ... the 30's.