You conservatives forget that the military is a government agency, and so is the undermanned, underpowered border patrol, and NASA. You don't support those agencies of the gov't?

NASA did get their men to the moon and back, and the government and computer experts came up with the Internet, not commercial computer people, who did make it into something more.

We all want a better military and a well-funded border patrol and how is that not fundamentally the same as a border inspection of incoming food and goods?

So the government must do a good job in the area where that good job is needed and we can point to examples of where the government has done well in an overall sense, the examples above, and the negative consequences that are the result of not having that agency work well. (9-11 ring a bell?)

The government is supposed to do things for the people, run its institutions, its RES PUBLICA, its "things of the people".

We do need protection from foreign or domestic products that don't meet rational standards agreed upon, and we can't have it both ways.

The market can't police itself because the most responsible people and corporations would be penalized competetively by having to divert resources to this while the less principled would go on doing what they do: look for the maximization of profit without regard to the long-run safety and health of the people or our environment.

Never been in the military? My grandparents and mother escaped the communists in Yugoslavia at the end of World War II and the inefficient US military protected and fed them, not an armed posse from General Motors and Ford, though those companies supplied weapons.

My neighbor's dog died because of the Chinese food poisoning episode.

Yes, gov't sucks but not as much as Chinese commie uninspected food and Tito's men gunning for you because you are against communism. My great-grandmother didn't make it and starved to death, by the way.

Bush and the Wall Street republicans don't want fences and don't want real ID so they can continue to knock down the price of labor and increase consumer demand, and the leftists want to come up with a whole new group of "oppressed" clients that they can represent. So, of course, the "gov't", the mix of Wall Street country club republicans/democrats and the voice-of-oppression left, can't ( or really WON'T) fix anything in that area.

When you look at vaccinations and public health, the improved quality of air in our cities, and our less polluted waters, you can see the results of well-done regulation.

So I say, (no offense taken) that whoever said I wasn't in the military must be very young and very ideological and have little actual knowledge of history (no offense intended).