Nothing To Rant About

Is it just that I have nothing to rant about or I just don't care?

Oh, I care alright. Well, just enough to vote and write my elected officials when something tees me off. You all know that I don't have a teevee, so I get my news from the newspaper, the internet and NPR. I know the President made a his State of the Union speech this past week, but I don't really care to read it. Much less comment on it.

But this AP wire on "Cheney Says Budget Will Be Tightest Yet" just reminded me why I voted Libertarian:

"We are being tight," Cheney said. "This is the tightest budget that has been submitted since we got here."

That shouldn't be hard since we've been running a deficit since Bush took office. But what price this new budget? Will they be buying a few less B1 bombers and M16A2 tanks? Umm, no:

Cheney said the budget proposal President Bush was submitted Monday increases spending on the military and homeland security.

So where are the cuts going to be taken?

The budget seeks savings from about 150 programs, including Amtrak, environmental protection, American Indian schools, farmers' subsidies and Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor and disabled.

Umm. Well, maybe the Liberal Media are blowing this all out of proportion? Thanks to Google I found the "Budget of the United States Government Fiscal Year 2005" on the White House website. Reading though it, all that is promoted is "Enchanced Security, Restraint Elsewhere" (ohh, I just had a flashback to the cold war: lets cut back on social programs so we can make more bombs! weee!). And indeed, picking around through the site, some tables state that while we spend $402B on Defense (not including the $30B for "Homeland Security") we spend $386B on other areas of the government. For the past four years the spending for other areas of the government was a bit more (not much) then the defense spending.

If only I could run my budget like the United States government does. I'd be putting more then half of it into buying myself personal security guards, hiring some thugs to go beat up people that irrate me, installing overly expensive and yet surprisingly uneffective security alarm systems, and buying every weapons system that I could get my hands on. Then I might think about a little for rent, maybe some for presents for my family members' birthdays, Christmas, etc, just enough for food, and to hell with heath benefits. And I would spend twice as much as I make. Weeee!