Bush's budget plan for 2006

• Domestic security at the Homeland Security Department and other agencies would go from $30.6 billion in 2005 to $29.6 billion in 2006, a 3 percent drop.
• The Veterans Affairs Department would fall 3.4 percent from $29.7 billion in 2005 to $28.7 billion.
• The Defense Department would grow 5.2 percent to $422.7 billion in 2006, and the Justice Department would increase 4.3 percent to $19.5 billion in 2006.

Is this really a budget that will protect the United States? A lot of people like Bush because he is allegedly "strong on defense", yet he cuts the nations front line defense? Homeland Security controls the coasts, the borders, the airports. Bush may say he's interested in protecting the country, but only so far as it promotes the interests of his rich friends. I wonder how the Department of Defense will spend that money. Lucrative new defense contracts perhaps?

CNN.com - Sources: Major terror attack possible this summer - May 26, 2004:

Although there is no specific target, time or date for the possible attack, the information is the culmination of intelligence that has been known and gathered over time -- and it is the assessment that is new, the sources said.

Given this administrations past with non-specific threats, it looks like they might not be able to protect us against this one, right? It seems that there isn't actually any new intelligence to spur this warning, just a desire to remind the public that they need to be afraid and that the Bush administration is doing a fantastic job of protecting us.

I played about 7 hours of $2/$4 Hold'em at Foxwoods on Saturday. The whole day was really a test of patience. I swear it took about an hour for me to get a hand worth playing. The day didn't get much better, although I was really proud of my restraint and discipline because it could've been a lot worse.

I bought in with $100, and at one point I was down to about $30 before crawling my way back to $130 or so. I ended the session down at $65. I was about 2 or 3 big pots from coming out a winner.

There was one old guy who was with us the whole time. He was basically a calling station, but would bet or raise when he had a decent hand. At one point, I put him on kings-up while I had aces. When two Queens fell on the turn and river I thought I had him beat, but alas it was trip-Kings v. aces up. Oh well. I lost a bit of money on that one. Most players there were pretty much calling stations. They would stay in with outrageous draws. Winning Low Limit Hold'em was a great book for poker like this. Many of the situations it describes happened quite a bit.

I had a few great hands throughout the day. I got AA once, and flopped a full house (ATT). I wasn't too afraid of quads, and so took the guy sitting next to me for about a $60 pot. Overall most people were pretty respectful when I entered a pot, although not enough to bail out if I started raising. Maybe next time I'll concentrate more on changing gears as the day goes on.

I can't wait for the next session. Hopefully next time Laura will be able to come, and next time I'll make sure to take many more breaks. Sitting at a poker table for 7 hours is a lot harder than it sounds.

Well, it seems like we've given up hope for buying a condo for now. We're anxious to move out of our current dwelling into something cheaper, so we started looking for 2 bedroom apartments around town. We've got an appointment to see one tonight. Its in Arlington, near Russ and Jeff. Looking at apartments is so much less stressful; yet the pace of the search makes things stressful all over again. Hopefully things will work out a little better this time.

Well, it all fell apart once again. This time, there wasn't anything really wrong with the condo. In fact, I really liked the place and was pretty excited over the prospect of living there. However, problems started cropping up in our relationship with the seller's agent and we started feeling as though something wasn't completely right.

In fact, things started off on the wrong foot. When we first met the Realtor, he didn't mention who he worked for. Naively, I assumed that he was working for us, and had to ask him directly before he admitted that he was not. After Laura and I decided to put an offer on the unit, the forms and documents he gave us were woefully incomplete, and sloppily prepared. For example, a lead paint disclosure document was never filled out by the seller, the offer form he provided was missing vital information like the appliances included.

In the end, it was a dispute over a referral fee that sunk the deal. When we first met with the Realtor we mentioned that we had a referral from another Realtor. He said that was fine and asked the other agent to fax his office. However, citing dubious reasons, he refused to honor the referral. It got to the point where the selling agents were demanding that we indemnify them in the purchase and sale against any claims from other Realtors!

This combined with all the previous shady behavior made us realize that no matter how much we liked the condo, these were not people we wanted to do business with.Virtually everything that came out of his mouth turned out to be misleading our outright false. At this point I'm just glad I don't have to deal with the whole issue anymore. Next time we're making sure we have our own representation, and hopefully we can deal with people who are more knowledgable and a lot less slimey.

We had the first round of the home inspection on Monday. We used the same inspectors that found the Mold of Doom, Jackson Home Inspection. The inspector found a few problems in the basement, and raised a bunch of questions that I forwarded to our lawyer. Hopefully those can get taken care of so we can sign off on the purchase and sale this week!