In Case You Have Wondered Why Our Diplomacy Sucks

This post was planned to be a screed along the lines of:

When will the party of Hoover stop lying to us? They are not the party of "fiscal responsibility," as any brief inspection of the history of Federal deficits since 1980 will reveal. They are not the party of "small government;" the most expensive Federal department (HEW, now HHS and Education) and the most intrusive Federal Department (DBP) were created by Republicans.

I changed my mind. When I was researching the creation of cabinet departments, I came to this page, which also gives the budget amounts for FY 2007.

First off, the `07 DoD budget includes not a fraking dime for the Wars of the Chimperor. Those have all been fought off-budget and entirely on credit.

Second, look at the amounts for each department. The Department of State was budgeted for just under ten billion dollars for everything they have to do around the world. That is less than the cost of one month's worth of operations in Iraq. State received less money than any other Federal department, except Commerce.

[Other than acting as the government-paid arm of the business lobbying interests and running the Weather Service, I don't know what the hell they do over at Commerce. The Patent & Trademark Office, sure, but that is fully funded (and more) by the exorbitant fees charged by the USPTO for everything.]

If we are going to make a dent in addressing the foreign relations and diplomatic problems that were buried in the huge pile of shit left behind by the Tsar of the Baboons, it would seem to me to be a good idea to divert some resources from figuring out how to kill people to figuring out how to not have to kill people.

(Update: Frigging typos, I need to puffredd batter)