And yet people keep voting for them. Makes as much sense as an Anarchist running for Governor.

No, brother. This is not a question of ideology. This is a question of bureaucracy. It doesn’t matter what party was in charge, what matters is the the federal government’s singular ineptitude in efficiently and properly executing large-scale operations of any kind, be they in war or peace. The government accomplishes things by simply flooding the problem with enough time and money that enough people get their fill and make something happen. And even that’s never a forgone conclusion. No performance reviews, no oversight, no regulation (they ARE the regulation, remember?), no incentive to improve, no risk of being fired (short of, oh, a felony committed during work hours). The problem with that kind of a “business model” is that it bankrupts the country, as we see today. Do you also believe this recession is of Republican doing? If you do, I’d ask you to stop being naive and examine the problem apart from your Democrat/liberal echo chamber. I don’t say that to be rude. It’s unrealistic and irrational to believe our government and its problems stem from the attitudes of one ideology, one party (inevitably the “other” party).

Think about it.

http://www.truth-out.org/article/matt-taibbi-the-great-iraq-swindle

One of the best journalists working today. Along with Jeremy Scahill

http://www.counterpunch.org/scahill01252007.html

With topological accuracy like this I’m guessing that the missing money went to Iran by mistake.

http://tinyurl.com/2actu3s

War Games: The Story of Aid and War in Modern Times

Certain people are just “getting their tax dollars back.”

The next time some asshole politician bitches about anything on Wikileaks, I’m pointing them to THIS.

Ridiculous ineptness like this is WHY Wikileaks exists- someone in government DOES know where the money went, and they aren’t talking. The rest of them are admit to being effectively either too inept to figure it out, or are in cahoots with the bastards that “misplaced” the money.

I don’t care who you are- Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, The US GOVERNMENT- NO ONE loses 8.7 Billion dollars!!!! That is not a small amount by any relative standard. Especially an 8.7 Billion dollars that was specifically set aside for a major issue. The moment we start allowing for loss at a government level with casualness simply due to it’s scale compared with the rest, we enable cronyism and thieves to work in government.

I call absolute heinous bullshit on these people!

::end enraged voice::

When they said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, they left out government accountants.

This makes my blood boil!!!

That’s completely beside the point I was making. I never said that government can’t accomplish things. And you’re talking about a radically different federal government of seventy years ago.

The reason the “bureaucracy does not work” is because of intentional sabotage by ‘small-government-is-best” (or is that “no-social- controls-on-big-business”?) politicians…who like the opportunities for graft that come along with the “privatization” of essential government functions.

That’s a very lazy argumentative tack. You provide no support for your claim that there is a systematic trend of intentional sabotage by corporatist interests on the federal government. My argument is exactly the same as yours, but mine actually has support: a system without regulatory oversight on its operations is ripe for corruption, indifference and conflict of interest. That describes both corporations AND the federal government, but here we are expecting the federal government to be the ones regulating the corporations. Who do the federal regulatory bodies answer to? More politicians with even LESS oversight. You see how this is a problem?

Small government is a rip-off…you NEED economies of scale.

Let’s be clear: I’m not arguing for the abolition of the federal government. I would simply argue for a very strict justification and restriction on the expanse of power of the federal government–something that is functionally nonexistent in the game-plans of politicians of nearly every stripe. It is abundantly clear that the federal government has no idea how to properly run or enforce large operations (like Medicare, like a war, like border security). Why are we so pissed at the federal government for botching a war in Iraq/Afghanistan and then so quick to trust them with our physiological well-being? I don’t get it.

if you’re gonna have big businesses like Exxon or lockheed-Martin, you’ll need big government to protect little people from their right-wing-admitted tendency to think of their own pockets first, before thinking of what’s good for society as a whole.

I agree. But your extreme of pervasive regulation is just as bad as no regulation all. You’re simply trading several selfish, bloodthirsty corporations for one selfish megalith of a government. You don’t want either, believe me.

But if you think democracy ought not to be allowed, I think that you could be less…dis-ingenuous about it.
Why not just say that Government ought not to protect people from big business, ever?

I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.

And yet people keep voting for them. Makes as much sense as an Anarchist running for Governor.

Ponies? We bought everyone in Iraq ponies so they’d like us?

W is another Nixon in that Republicans hate him and what he did for entirely different reasons that Democrats. Their post-war plan for Iraq was to give control over to the UN, but one bombing (killed a UN official that was a close friend to the Secretary General at the time) made the UN refuse to take over the reconstruction. The US backup plan was:

*crickets*

Seriously, there was no backup plan. I swear the W stands for WTF.

Why do you think the man was always so smug about his “legacy”?

Small government is a rip-off…you NEED economies of scale.
if you’re gonna have big businesses like Exxon or lockheed-Martin, you’ll need big government to protect little people from their right-wing-admitted tendency to think of their own pockets first, before thinking of what’s good for society as a whole.

But if you think democracy ought not to be allowed, I think that you could be less…dis-ingenuous about it.
Why not just say that Government ought not to protect people from big business, ever?

Last I checked, if you question anything about the Government when it pertains to the Military, you are a traitorous, socialist liberal who has no idea what it’s like to fight for everyone else’s freedom.

The armed forces and their string of command fight every single day for your freedom to even make comments on this message board.

At least that’s what I’ve been told.

Literally, every single day the armed forces are eagerly blowing off hundreds of thousands of dollars of ammunition at middle eastern enemies and civilians (and sometimes each other), all fighting for blog commenters.

Show a little respect guys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzAduXFyISU