Social and Fiscal Responsibility

President Bush said in his State of the Union that the government must spend more wisely, showing fiscal restraint...HOGWASH!!! All the president is doing is spending slightly more than last year, and putting the money into white elephants, mostly the war in Iraq. Instead of focusing on protecting our citizens with police grants (money to help local departments hire more officers), he's investing in discretionary (ie: defense) spending. All in all, it's $2.5 trillion for the year, and that doesn't even include the $80 billion he has asked for the Iraq war.

Now don't get me wrong, democracy in Iraq is a wonderful thing. On March 15, 2003, I blared "Bombs Over Baghdad" (a killer OutKast song, BTW), but the toll is enough. Over a quarter of a trillion dollars has been spent there, when he could have better used it inside our borders. Bush's legacy is foreign policy, no doubt about it. What worries me though, is how can he "help" other countries when there is so much to do here??

The war on terror is just like the war on drugs to me. Lots of money spent, lots of rhetoric, but little, if any, concrete results. President Bush should focus more on crony capitalism, protecting the lives of Americans, and not be a man that focuses on imperialism. Under Bush's watch, the USA Patriot Act stripped citizens of the civil liberties. Now he's for a Constitutional amendment on same-sex marriages. What's next, he's gonna tell me when I get married, I'm only allowed one child, and it must be male??? This does reek of authoritarianism, and it disgusts me. The only good things he's done (in my eyes) was the tax cuts (but without the necessary spending cuts), trying to reform the tax code, and privatize a portion of Social Security.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld talked of the "shock and awe" strategy in Iraq. Send a shock and awe to the government by standing up for personal freedom and fiscal responsibility in the voting booth. You ask "how?" I say: VOTE LIBERTARIAN!