Brief political interruption

Y'all know I very rarely speak of anything political. I'm completely liberal on social issues, well and just mostly completely liberal. I read with interest about the president's new budget plan. I find it most interesting that even his fellow Republicans are against this. He's managing to piss off some very powerful lobbying groups, such as AARP. As shocking as this is, I don't know that I 100% disagree with him on his stance about entitlement benefits.

Bush, not on the ballot, took a different view. "Unconstrained spending in the nation's large entitlement programs poses a serious threat to the federal budget and to the health of the economy," the budget said. (Ok that's a direct quote from this article, but interestingly enough I'm pretty sure the budget didn't actually say anything.)

Now I'm not necessarily a fiscal conservative, well maybe I am. I am in the sense that I'd much rather see the money going to support the people it is supposed to support and not just for more layers bureaucracy or to make benefits excessively complicated. (Medicare Part D anyone? I work in benefits, I have to know these things, it is ridiculous.) If we were able to simplify I think the budget cuts would work so much better.

The other thing I read was the justification for eavesdropping power for the president. Now 99% of the time I don't care about what the president is up to with regards to these types of things. If the president wants to listen in on my phone conversations with the Chinese food place that's fine. If he wants someone in the CIA to monitor my IM chats with Michelle, whatever, I have nothing to hide. They can know about my scandalous emails with my coworker about one of several coworkers we find attractive. But now that I've thought about it further, I should care. It isn't just about me and that I have nothing to hide, but anyone who could be unfairly targeted because of their race or religion or their political ideologies. I also found it interesting that there is a special court to decide these things. If the administration isn't doing anything wrong, why hasn't this gone to that court? Why do they balk at it going there now? The whole thing troubles me for many reasons. I don't ever want to be one of those people who believes the government is out to get us or that big business is inherently evil. I know my govenrment does things that I don't approve of and most likely does things that I have no knowledge of. Things that we (as a nation) hate when another country does them. I'm not so foolish to believe everything is rosy and peachy, but I'd like to think that my elected leaders do have the nation's best interest at heart. I suppose it is a matter of whose best interest we're really talking about. And that's where things get dicey. This is an interesting article about the issue (seemingly) free of bias, just outlining the facts.