Hi Peter,

>>I wouldn't want you to remain uninformed so here is a brief snippet.
"As President, I will bring American troops home. I will remove us from the entangling alliances that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson warned us about. I will see to it that America has a proper defense against any missile attack. We will be far safer than we are now, while spending far less money on the military."<<

Thank you! His take on the purpose of our military is a bit too isolationist for my tastes. While I do believe that our military forces are in places that they don't belong, there are regions of the world where our country's interests are best served by a US military presense.

>>Excuse me, but you don't really believe that its only the Dems. Governemnt spending on what you call entitlements is a two party process. These entitlements grew during 12 years of Reagan-Bush.<<

Every cent of federal spending is done by the congress. Reagan and Bush both had democrats controlling congress during their terms. If either of these men had pulled a Clinton, and vetoed spending bills to the point that it would have shut down the government, Reagan and Bush would have got the blame for it. Clinton did it several times, and Newt Gingrich got the blame for it. There's something very wrong with that picture.

>>Where in Mr. Bush's campaign does he state that he is against federal funding of education,<<

I don't think he's against federal funds going to the nations schools, but I do know he wants to give the individual states control of those funds, instead of trying to administer the nations schools from DC. I think he'd be happy to abolish the Dept. of Education, and let local decisions be made by those that such decisions directly affect.

>>where does it state that he will abolish Social Security (without replacing it with another program)<<

Social Security was supposed to suppliment a person's retirement savings. Now people think it should BE a person's retirement savings. If that's gonna be the case, then each individual should be able to determine how at least a part of the money taken from his or her paychecks should be invested. That's a Bush platforrm plank. Abolishing the SS system entirely would be impossible at this point, too many people are actually living off of it. A side note, I personally would remove the cap on the $ figure where you quit paying into the fund, and I wouldn't tax SS benefits.

>>and medicare and medicaid, and Farm subsidies, and government grants to businesses.<<

That won't happen. But if you want to see constraints put on some of these programs, Bush, with republicans controlling both houses will make it happen. ...it's kinda funny how Bush wants tax cuts for everyone, Gore wants them only for the people who jump through his set of hoops, then Gore wants prescription drug benefits for everyone eligible for medicaid (the requirement? you got old) giving people like Ross Perot this benefit, and Bush wants such benefits to be needs based. ...I don't get it!

>>In your last post you acknowledge that programs supported by both the Dems and Reps. don't have constitutional authorization. I think there is a closet Libertarian in you just dying to get out.<<

There are a number of Libertarian positions that I do support, but I believe the office of the presidency is not the place to start trying to effectively introduce a third valid party into our electoral system. You need to start electing Senators and Representatives and Governors first. Just my opinion.

Bob