CHART: “The American checkbook: Dollars spent by U.S. government in fiscal year 2005,” by David Stuckey and Sam Ward, USA Today, 24 January 2006, p. 1A.

ARTICLE: “Expanding Bush Budgets Irk Conservatives: With Next Blueprint Looming, a Look at How Defense, Entitlements Fuel Increases,” by Jackie Calmes, Wall Street Journal, 24 January 2006, p. A4.

OP-ED: “’We Must Change Policy Direction’: A recipe for a competitive, and solvent, America,” by Robert E. Rubin, Wall Street Journal, 24 January 2006, p. A20.

The QDR reveals that the Leviathan is still king, but that there’s a new crown prince in the kingdom, and it’s called the rising SysAdmin force. Some will be dismayed by this, but I am quite pleased by how far the SysAdmin has come in this first great judging of the threat post-9/11 (and no, the last-second rewrite of the last one doesn’t count).

Rumsfeld loves all his children, and who can blame him? The men upstairs aren’t reigning in the spending, because they say we’re a nation waging war.

But when do we become the nation also waging peace?

Our defense budget is in the mid 400 billions, but we spent on national security last year almost $700 billion ($677b in all, counting all those supplementals). Yes, HHS and social security were almost $600 b each, and I’m pretty sure they’ll go up in coming years, so maybe—just maybe—we’ll have to figure out how to wage peace more efficiently cause we can’t keep spending as much as we do on wars we will not wage against enemies of our imagination. Defense is up almost 9% a year on average since 2000, and China’s the belligerent big spender on defense, when their double-digit percentage increases place it way south of $100b?

Rubin’s got it right. We can’t manage this deficit build-up. It’s not sustainable. Bush can’t—and frankly doesn’t need to—tell us where this is going. He’s writing checks other administrations—and generations--will end up cashing. Get me that happy ending, and get it ASAP. The Long War must be the Expanding Peace marked by the growing Core.