I will send you a budget that ... stays on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009

Did he really just say that?!? Seriously? This is the party of fiscal responsibility and restraint. You have the largest deficits in the history of the country and your goal is only to reduce them by half in four years? Ug.

Even though I felt physical pain several times (that could have been from eating too much) I thought it would be good of me as a politically minded guy to watch the State of the Union tonight.

I don't even want to get into social security (I guess I will anyway.) The voodoo math just doesn't make sense. Sure, social security will pay out more then it takes in starting in 2018. Of course, it's been taking in more then it's given out since the payroll tax was raised in the 80's. Theoretically, it has a pretty big "personal savings account" of it's own. But we're not talking about taking that away are we? While I'm at it, where does that 4% come from? Aren't we using all the money right now? Doesn't that mean we have to come up with 4% of the payroll tax from somewhere? Sure, personal savings accounts have a nice flair - but the numbers have to add up in end and I haven't seen anyone explain how they can add up in any credible way.

Then we moved on to fun social stuff. Right after he railed on gay marriage (and my least favorite right wing euphemism - "activist judges") the President said:

Because one of the deepest values of our country is compassion, we must never turn away from any citizen who feels isolated from the opportunities of America... Now we need to focus on giving young people, especially young men in our cities, better options than apathy, or gangs, or jail.

My immediate thought: Let them get married! I mean, I know lots of gay guys who live near me in the city who feel isolated from the opportunities of America. I know, silly me. But I actually said it out loud to the TV. This is such a good example of how rhetoric can go all kinds of ways, words are funny like that.

As is typical I'm stirred up by the domestic stuff. The foreign policy stuff just doesn't get me going in the same way. I'm not sure why this is. I think part of it is foreign policy is a much squishier area. Domestic policy is so much more guided by core values and morals. I have serious disagreements with Bush's core values and morals when it comes to Domestic policy. But the reality is we mostly agree on core foreign policy values and morals. I'd love to see peace in the Middle East, a reduction in terrorism, brutal dictators unseated and people's freedoms increased. Sure, I disagree with how the President has chosen to reach some of those goals, but I don't feel I know enough about it to be sure I'm right and he's wrong. I probably would have gone a different route, but I can see the theory behind his plan - I get where he's coming from.

But with the domestic policy we're operating off of different foundations, so everything just grates on me. His whole approach to fiscal policy just makes no sense to me, I can't even comprehend it. I can comprehend some of the domestic values involved (abortion, gay marriage, medical research) but I can't understand why they're important enough to legislate against them and to restrict other people's rights to do such things? I can't reconcile those views with the rest of the rhetoric about reducing government's restrictions on our freedoms. It seems like they don't mean reducing restrictions on freedoms, just reducing restrictions on things we want to be able to do (while increasing restrictions on things we don't like.) That doesn't jive with me.

Unfortunately the Democrats didn't do much better with their response. Senator Reid did some hand waving about social policy without saying anything. Then he pulled out a couple of scary numbers about social security and called the President's plan some names. That's not going to get it done for me. I know Perot caught a lot of crap in '92 for all his charts and dry explanations. But sometimes you just gotta break out some real figures and be boring. I wonder if anyone will actually spend to time to break it all down. I've read some good articles about it, but haven't heard anyone in the polical realm talk about social security with any substance. I think it's sad that the politcal debate in our country can't dig into these complex issues - how can we hope to make the right choices when we don't trust our people to even understand the problem space?

Ug, enough of that. I'm going to go watch Groundhog Day (Bill Murray is a comic genius) and try to be more cheerful...

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