Is that you Rocky? ;) You need to brush up on your history just a little bit. Particularly that part that defines the role of government. I don't remember NASA, NOAA or the EPA being things the federal government was to be responsible for. I don't believe rebuilding low lying coastal cities that were damaged by hurricanes as a role of the federal government. The role of the government is to defend and protect it's citizens from harm. The role of the government is to stay out of the way of it's citizens as they freely persue their own forms of happiness, provided it does not violate the rights of others to do the same. All the other crap you mentioned is simply the talking points of the far left. IF all George Bush did in his 8 years was to keep this country and it's people safe, then he did exactly what the framers had intended. And in less than 15 minutes, you can thank a veteran for giving you the right to say what you want. And I will thank them for giving me the right to respond. Happy Veterans day to the rest of you who served! Quoting stormcrow60@xmission.com:

Without the "government" you would not have NASA. Without the "government" you would not have NOAA. Without the "government", you would not have the EPA or any other federal entity that worked fairly efficiently and prudently before the Bush administation hired their "anti-science" hacks to head said government entities. The plan of the Bush administration all along was to gut these federal entities to show the American people how ineffectual the federal government is. Look at FEMA and Hurricane Katrina for a perfect example of this type of right wing ideology. The worn out right wing argument of telling the "government to get out of the way" is not only wrong, but foolish. Another perfect example is the almost $1,000,000,000,000.000 of U.S. tax payers money that has been transferred from public hands into private hands. Now the same greedy, right wing, venture capitalists who have run our economy into the ground based upon their diatribe of deregulating the markets, and telling the "government to get out of the way" are now running to the seek the shelter of that same "government" to bail them out of the economic mess they have created. Its funny, that right wingers called Obama a socialist when he introduced his tax plan. But those same right wing ideologues did not complain when they went "hat in hand" to beg for a government bail out. This is occuring again and again. Look at GM and Chrysler and Ford. These companies are just a small example of the massive bailout hoax that is being perpetrated upon the American people. The free enterprsiers are a joke. They want to live their ideology so bad, yet they will unabashedly make like the corporate welfare queens they truly are and run to the federal government for help. Socialists indeed! True free enterprise is dead and has been dead for decades. And as far as the planetary probes that another person had mentioned, these probes would not have been funded if left to the vestiges of the Bush administration. Thanks for your time.

Jon