It must be nice to view this political mess in such simplistic terms. I think I need to try that sometime... Damned Republicans. Damned Democrats. Just get one out the office and everything will be okay.

What budget surplus?

How is a budget "surplus" possible when the national debt is $5 T (trillion) and counting. I may be naive, but if I make $10 more in a year than I can manage to spend, it doesn't mean that this money is "surplus" if I still owe $500,000 on my house... I will grant you that it's better than owing another $10 at year's end.

In light of this, just where did this "surplus" come from? You, me? Damned, I wish Congress would figure out a way to spend every dime I send them so we wouldn't have to have these kinds of debates! Would it be soooo bad if we as a nation asked Congress to spend less or demand that the same kind of scrutiny that is being applied to Enron's accounting be applied to the federal agencies and Congress's accounting practices :-) ? Now that's what I want to see...

If you really want to see this man out of office, hope that he is ineffectual at providing security at home with the increased military budget. The politics of G.W. are sort of secondary. We have been drawing the lines in the sand since after WWII, both Democrat and Republican - first with the Cold War and then with economic colonialism. Now is the time to pay for this. We can either pay by paying lip service to talkers (the UN, etc...) or by brutally wiping out terrorist regions and our other perceived threats. We've been talking for 50 years. History dictates that military action is the way nations survive. In the final analysis, the Roman Empire did not fail because of moral weakness or lack of democracy - or DEFICIT SPENDING. It fell because it was militarily weak. They were conquered. This is the history of all nations - they either fight or cease to exist.

Many of us understand this (about 80% of the American population) in one way or another. In other words, the political jingoism is really not gonna work this time. Most of us know that now is the time for the military complex to be advanced. Had Reagan not built the military up (yes, I was in the Service then and a Russian linguist to boot), we wouldn't have busted the Soviet Union and had that precious Clinton surplus (remember the "peace dividend"?) anyway. All history is a matter of perspective, YMMV, but the world is an extremely dangerous place. Look at our history. What is the Seal of the US. An eagle with an olive branch in one talon and arrows in the other... "Out of many, one". We were arrogant then and now.

Think about it.