not to be overly political, but...

this is not about super tuesday. this is a personal rant/vent based on some stuff i've read recently that has confirmed my feelings for some time. it sparks from the budget that President Bush introduced yesterday. it is a $3.1 trillion budget. it is the largest budget ever and it calls for a number of things- the most noticeable of which are increases- in military spending and tax rebates. i like tax rebates because i like money in my pocket. but beyond those increases, it calls for tightening everything else- especially reductions in medicare and medicaid- medical plans for elderly and poor people. how much do we have to spend on those increases if we have the biggest budget ever and it still tightens up just about every other kind of spending?

our country- forget the war on terrorism, forget normal military spending without wars. just on Iraq, our country spends more money than the entire education budget. And he wants to approve yet more money for that while scrimping even more for education. and it's not just education, but education is one of the most important things we can focus money toward- as it becomes more and more obvious that America's students are not keeping up with the world and that more and more are not getting high school educations by dropping out, failing out or otherwise.

all this has led me to these personal questions that i vent here- not believing that i am very highly read anyway. "How can we as Christians still support this man as president?" Just because he is a Christian (whether it's true or not) does not mean he is doing the right thing. How can we overlook his poor record on the home-front- education, environment, helping the poor and needy. his sole focus now seems almost to be overseas on this war we were supposed to have won years ago.

and just this morning i read an article that adds to this- our president signed an exemption for the Navy from an environmental bill that bans sonar usage in a particular area due to its ill effects on whales. he claims to be environmentally concerned, but when push comes to shove, it appears he is not really. a judge said it was not legal for him to sign the exemption and that the Navy must abide by the guidelines set out. do we honestly want to support a president who feels that because he is president, he can, by virtue of his position, overstep laws and circumvent the rules? that sounds more like the tyrants and kings of the middle ages than the President of the United States in the modern age.

please don't take me wrong- i still support the office of the president, and on a personal level, i do not believe President Bush is evil. But to support a man for president based solely on his religious leanings is, as I've said so many times in the past, a ridiculous notion. there are too many things associated with the office of president that would compromise the true faith of most Christians that would need to be decided as president, and while a man can do it well, we cannot vote for him because of that. we must support his politics- and in this case, i do not.