Infographic: Where Did the Money to Rebuild Iraq Go?
People complain about corporate bailouts here in the US, but at least we know who got them and what they spent it on. Sure, it’s mostly managerial bonuses, but at least we know. Not so much with the Iraq reconstruction money. Nobody - not even the pentagon - knows what happened to nearly all of it. And that’s just the money earmarked specifically for rebuilding. They also shipped over pallets of cash and essentially handed it out to anybody with an empty duffel bag and a good story. No receipts, nothing.
The bailouts here could have been handled better, but they seem remarkably well planned and managed in comparison to this bullshit.
We’ve spent almost 300 billion dollars waging a war on (at most) 100 terrorists in Afghanistan. We’ve spent more than double that fighting terrorists in Iraq that didn’t even exist until we created them. That’s over a trillion dollars pissed away on practically nothing. And don’t get me started on the absurd cost of security theater right here in the US. Fuck it already. Just fuck it. Some planes crashed into some buildings a decade ago. A few common-sense improvements to airline security have long since insured that it can never happen again. Eerybody involved is either dead, captured, or vanished. Get over it. Stop sending good money after bad and move the fuck on.
Happy birthday, Iraq war! Seven great year of waste, fraud and abuse. Sure, we may have pissed away close to a trillion dollars, lost nearly 5k American soldiers, and killed almost 100k civilians, but at least we got rid of all those WMDs, right? I know I feel safer. (via HuffPo)
Now look at this and this, and then this. Our priorities are well and truly fucked.
Fucking-A right, Doug Stanhope. Fucking-A right.
Following in the grand tradition of Heavy Metal Parking Lot, I was overjoyed to find Sarah Palin Parking Lot. How dumb are people willing to wait in line for 8 hours to meed a vice presidential failure and gubernatorial quitter? This dumb. (via Boingboing)
You think the socialist takeover of healthcare is bad? There are already several “social” services that need to be delivered back into the hands of caring, private corporations. Anything less would be un-American. (via MADATOMS)
“Anti-divorce” proponent is a master of dry sarcasm.
John Marcotte doesn’t think California’s prop 8 did enough to protect traditional marriage. He’s trying to make sure that nobody can sully the sacred pact of marriage by getting divorced. His goal is to get this anti-divorce legislation into the 2010 ballot as a voter initiative. He should have no trouble getting all the people who voted for prop 8 to vote for this legislation as well, right?
We’re going to set up a table in front of Wal*Mart and ask people to sign a petition to protect traditional marriage. We’re going to interview them about why they thing traditional marriage is important, and then we’ll tell them that we are trying to ban divorce.
People who supported Prop 8 weren’t trying to take rights away from gays, they just wanted to protect traditional marriage. That’s why I’m confident that they will support this initiative, even though this time it will be their rights that are diminished. To not support it would be hypocritical.
…
Sometimes other people need to sacrifice in order to protect my ideas about traditional marriage. It’s just a fact of life. It’s not about their soul-sucking sham of a marriage, it’s about what we value as a society.
Classic. (via Boingboing)
What if I told you that the US could save about 15 thousand lives a year, pay for universal health care without raising taxes, and be a lot more mellow? Someone in a position to know the facts has crunched the numbers, and it turns out it’s really easy. Mexico did it just last week. (via Digg)
