You can’t tell? Seriously? Good god man, get your irony meter checked. It’s busted.
Good one, septimus! 
Looks like our resident conservatives are asleep at the wheel.
We need a Hostage Czar.
Sorry, I’m fresh out. See me Monday.
Liberal Representative introduces clearly unconstitutional legislation:
Rep. Jared Polis (D-TheOnion) is pretty fair at parody.
You want Brilliant Liberal Idea of the Day, 12A, next door.
…you malodorous toffee-nosed git! Sorry, this is 12 C… Don’t think anything of it, everybody makes mistakes, especially you, shit for brains!..
Can you clarify what, precisely, you think is stupid here? Because I don’t think having a single point person in the government who is responsible for dealing with hostage situations is a bad idea at all, although of course the devil is in the details. (Or do you have a reflexive dislike for the overworked and loaded term “czar”?)
Are there enough hostages to make such a thing worthwhile?
Are any of them actually not due to the idiocy of traveling to a war zone like this couple?
Are the hostages still being held due to various agencies not co-operating?
The sponsoring Congressman is the dead hostage’s Rep. I’d say it’s grandstanding more than anything. Why no rush to have a Czar before the hostage was killed? It’s been 4 years since he was captured.
What the hell would he do? Show up at this office at 9 am and start waiting for the phone to ring? Might just as well stay home and wait, if the call comes in after office hours, they’ll most likely call her at home. But, OK, call comes in, a hostage. What is he empowered to do about it?
Start negotiations? We have a “no bargaining” policy, yes? Order the Defense Dept to attack? Ah, no, not the Commander in Chief. Call the President, ask him for such an order, assuming he doesn’t already know? What would the Hostage Czar’s job description be?
I heard on the news today that as a result of the latest tragedy, the US government will start “looking the other way” if families want to make private efforts to get their loved ones back.
I could do that. I’m great at looking the other way. And I’m available.
Me, too, Tony. Let’s hope they don’t pay us on commission…
And that worked out so well.
Well, the US does sort of negotiate with hostage takers, especially those that aren’t terrorists. Mostly we just do it to stall for time while we get ready to kill or mentally break down the terrorists, so it never really means anything, but we do at least try to get the hostage takers talking.
I’m totally on board that this is a terrible idea though.
The sheer stupidity of this post boggles the mind. SocSec is self-funding. The official Pentagon budget is higher today than it was in 2005. And meanwhile, Veteran’s Administration, Post Office etc. are suffering due to cuts and deliberate sabotage by the Republiopaths. Public education is crumbling. America’s poor are worse off than any time in recent decades.
And despite GOP dogma, many government agencies do a fine job. (Though priorities are often different from the dog-eat-dog damn-the-consumer private practices that right-wing idiots love so much.)
As for roads:
[QUOTE=Road Infrastructure | ASCE's 2021 Infrastructure Report Card]
Forty-two percent of America’s major urban highways remain congested, costing the economy an estimated $101 billion in wasted time and fuel annually. While the conditions have improved in the near term, and Federal, state, and local capital investments increased to $91 billion annually, that level of investment is insufficient and still projected to result in a decline in conditions and performance in the long term. Currently, the Federal Highway Administration estimates that $170 billion in capital investment would be needed on an annual basis to significantly improve conditions and performance.
[/QUOTE]
Adaher is an enigma. Unlike most of the idiots of his ilk, he often seems to rise above idiocy to just imbecility or even moronity. Yet he never learned that SocSec is self-funding; and he thinks that if you cut infrastructure spending, the infrastructure crumbles immediately.
Since the thread is “Stupid liberal ideas” and I’m considered a liberal, let me submit one of own stupid ideas:
I’ve defended Adaher in the past, claiming he wasn’t as stupid as most of his ilk. I was wrong.
This recent post proves that Adaher is very [SIZE=“5”]stupid[/SIZE] indeed.
When calling someone stupid, you shouldn’t make basic errors in your posts. Military spending has been cut in the exact same sense that domestic spending has been cut. So I’ll submit what probably isn’t a stupid liberal idea of the day, but a stupid liberal idea that’s pretty much universal and a constant throughout the years:
Military spending should be measured in absolute terms. If military spending increases by 1% year over year, that’s a 1% increase in spending.
Domestic spending should be measured in terms of budget projections. If budget projections say a program will increase by 5% year over year, but it instead is increased 3%, that’s a cut in spending which will do serious damage to the program.
You just fell for that weird double standard, and you’re a smart liberal. Consider your ignorance fought.
Here’s another one that liberals don’t get, since you mentioned it about roads:
The market allocates goods where they are wanted very efficiently. The government does not. It allocates goods where they are wanted the most politically. So instead of maintaining roads, new roads are built, and instead of creating more capacity where it’s needed, they build roads where you’ll see a car every thirty minutes or so if you’re walking down it. All depends on who has seniority on the appropriate committees, who needs help with their reelection, which party is in power, etc.
Sure, government agencies CAN work well. If there’s no political incentive competing with the ability of the agency to do its work. THen there’s the other incentive problem, lack of accountability if the agency is failing(ahem, VA).
Yes. If there is good-spirited legislative oversight. Instead, GOP deliberately handicaps programs by enabling complaints intended at sabotage etc. And we get idiocies like environmental protection agencies forbidden to use the word “climate change.”
[QUOTE=adaher]
Military spending has been cut in the exact same sense that domestic spending has been cut.
[/QUOTE]
I have no idea what this mumbo-jumbo means. If you think my fact was incorrect, post a cite. Otherwise shut up.
Name an agency that you think has been cut, and I’ll compare that agency’s budget to the Pentagon’s.
And legislative oversight is generally used to make sure that agencies do their missions with the needs of elected officials and their contributors in mind first.
The Pentagon budget is at its lowest point as a % of the total budget since 1998:
As for domestic spending, most discretionary agencies have dropped slightly at about the same rate:
The main driver of this seems to be an ever increasing share of the budget going to mandatory spending(SS and health care programs).