What's Wrong With the Manhattan Project National Park 160
Lasrick writes Dawn Stover describes the radioactive dirt behind the creation of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, from its inclusion in the National Defense Authorization Act (the park legislation wouldn't pass otherwise) and lack of funding for national parks in general to the lack of funding for cleanup at Superfund nuclear sites like Hanford. And then there is how the Parks Service is presenting exhibits: at least some of them are described in the past tense, as if nuclear weapons were a thing of the past. Here's the description of the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in South Dakota: "Nuclear war loomed as an apocalyptic shadow that could possibly have brought human history to an end." Can the National Park Service be ignorant of the fact that missiles remain on station, nuclear weapons are still being stockpiled, and saber rattling did not end with the fall of the Berlin Wall?"
If this is the only way ... (Score:2)
Re:If this is the only way ... (Score:5, Informative)
It's hard to believe the National Park Service isn't a historical society of some sort when conservation and preservation of historic sites is their remit.
16 USC 1: "The service thus established shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments, and reservations hereinafter specified, except such as are under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Army, as provided by law, by such means and measures as conform to the fundamental purpose of the said parks, monuments, and reservations, which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."
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which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein
That is not a mandate to educate people on the current geopolitical situation, which the poster is ranting on about:
Can the National Park Service be ignorant of the fact that missiles remain on station, nuclear weapons are still being stockpiled, and saber rattling did not end with the fall of the Berlin Wall?"
Re:If this is the only way ... (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe because the original poster can't seem to parse simple tenses...
"Nuclear war loomed as an apocalyptic shadow that could possibly have brought human history to an end."
is perfectly fine. The situation today is nowhere near what we had during the cold war, firmly placing the cold war in the past. It may come to pass that the situation will change again, but that is in the future and not completely determined so has no bearing on the sign that is there today.
Russia / NK can saber rattle all they want, they won't actually DO anything though. Both try to influence world politics through threats that they will never carry out since they know they would lose just as much as anyone they attacked, if not more.
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I know, for a fact, that you have been on /. in the past bitching about various riders on bills and how awful they are. But now that it's a project that you deem "worthy", well, the ends justify the means. Not surprised at all, fag.
I'm not even an American, you ignorant clod.
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You mean like the current executive mandate for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to focus on issues surrounding climate change, rather than, say, Aeronautics and maybe Space?
Can you provide the document that says that NASA's focus is now on climate change and no longer on aeronautics and space?
I think it might be in a file cabinet right next to the current occupant's Kenyan birth certificate.
Yes, I can document NASA's task change. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, I can document NASA's task change.
Under the auspices of the White House OSTP (Office of Science and Technology Policy), the NTSC (National Science and Technology Council) created CENRS (Committee on Environment, Natural Resources, and Sustainability) as a response to a presidential mandate in 1989 (in case you were wondering, this was under president George H.W. Bush).
The CENRS created as part of itself the SGCR (Subcommittee on Global Change Research), which is the steering committee for the USGCRP (U.S. Global Change Research Program), which consists of 13 organizations:
- Department of Health and Human Services
- U.S. Agency for International Development
- Department of the Interior
- Department of Commerce
- Department of Defense (Acting)
- Smithsonian Institution
- Department of Agriculture
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration http://www.globalchange.gov/ab...
From their web site.
As part of this, as a result of a presidential budgetary mandate by President Obama that an additional $1.8B (for a total of $2.4B) be earmarked for the Earth Observation Satellites (effectively canceling the asteroid capture mission - this i a redirection of existing budget, not an increase of funds):
http://www.nasa.gov/about/obam... [nasa.gov]
Obama's April 15th 2010 speech at Kennedy:
"We will increase Earth-based observation to improve our understanding of our climate and our world -- science that will garner tangible benefits, helping us to protect our environment for future generations."
http://inhabitat.com/obama-giv... [inhabitat.com]
"NASA’s about to lend a heavier hand in the fight against climate change. The news that President Obama would be rearranging NASA’s budget to focus more on what can be done to stop global warming was met with some opposition, but we’re elated that he’s bringing some of that cash down to Earth."
See also:
http://inhabitat.com/obama-giv... [inhabitat.com]
http://spectator.org/blog/5978... [spectator.org]
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-... [whitehouse.gov]
http://inhabitat.com/new-nasa-... [inhabitat.com]
Meanwhile, actual NASA budgets have remained flat, so these monies have come from actual space and aeronautics programs, rather than new budget:
http://www.behindmyback.org/20... [behindmyback.org]
"NASA’s investment in the 13-AGENCY CCSP is 58% of the total amount of the President’s 2009 Budget Request for CCSP."
= most of the money is coming from NASA.
See also this report, which indicates that 37% of the 2014 NASA budget went to the Earth science program, supporting climate change research - and NOT space or aeronautics research:
http://www.law.umaryland.edu/m... [umaryland.edu]
But you know... feel free to argue with the congressional record, newspapers, NASA itself, and President Obama's speech at Kennedy.
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And why not? We've got satellites and probes looking out into space, a nifty new launch/return capsule, and little robots on Mars. Having some devices looking back on the planet is a fine thing.
And after all, if you don't "believe" in AGW, those NASA satellites will be proving you right any day now. You should be supporting the effort.
I want AGW to be wrong. I want us to be able to pump as much methane and CO2 into the atmosphere, and have
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I see that as an additional tasking, not a change in direction.
And why not? We've got satellites and probes looking out into space, a nifty new launch/return capsule, and little robots on Mars. Having some devices looking back on the planet is a fine thing.
Let NOAA do that; it's *their* job. It's *not* NASAs job.
Note that one of those articles I linked to had the NOAA administrator pissed off that NASA instruments were taking up space on his orbital platforms, and disrupting his people's ability to do their job, which, among other things, includes monitoring climate and climate change.
Those who ignore history... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can the National Park Service be ignorant of the fact that missiles remain on station, nuclear weapons are still being stockpiled, and saber rattling did not end with the fall of the Berlin Wall?
This shows a disturbing lack of understanding of how the world was then, vs. how it is now... we are vastly less likely to face a large scale nuclear assault than we were during the cold war. Even if a city or two is eventually hit by a terrorist nuclear weapon (likely), it's NOTHING like was was being nearly expected at the time.
Heck, Russia con indiscriminately shoot down passenger jets now without repercussion, it's not like nuclear weapons are going to go flying over just abut anything.
Re:Those who ignore history... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. I still remember being a young teenager and kid in the 80s and how prior to Gorbachev (That guy really should be considered a hero to *everyone*, Russians and Americans. Forget Reagan, it was Gorbachev that ended the cold war.) there was a genuine feeling that we where all gunna die.
I still remember the nuns at school (catholic primary school) making us kids pray that reagan and whoever it was at the time (Gromeyko? Andropov?) wouldnt hit the button and nuke us all after a bunch of sabre rattling over Afghanistan. She literally told us about the whole drop to the floor, roll into the corner and stuff.
I never expected to make 20. And here I am at 40. Its a whole different world.
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My favorite punk song every, on my mp3 rotation list.
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I would like a copy of that song that doesn't sound like it was recorded using a Radio Shack computer tape deck.
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Re:Those who ignore history... (Score:5, Interesting)
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There are museums to remember all kinds of things that people would rather forget - I think the Manhattan Project is more worthy of a museum than most things, and would be a great asset to future generations.
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Absolutely. Imagine if this Disney Mentality had been around in the aftermath of WWII? The holocaust would be turned into a fable within just a few generations.
If something is both historically significant, AND uncomfortable -- it absolutely should be remembered and preserved. Else we wind up whitewashing the past -- which may make us feel better, but robs future generations of important lessons =/
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Even if a city or two is eventually hit by a terrorist nuclear weapon (likely), it's NOTHING like was was being nearly expected at the time.
I have to say, you really think that would happen? Considering the most successful attack done by terrorists so far still had many things go wrong, I just don't see that sort of group being able to pull off a nuclear detonation, nevermind that ground-level nukes are extremely limited in yield and impact versus airborne ones. Plus, if terrorists manage to trigger one, the only chance they'll have at a second one is within the few days after, because the entire planet is going to mobilize to get their sorry a
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Even if a city or two is eventually hit by a terrorist nuclear weapon (likely), it's NOTHING like was was being nearly expected at the time.
I have to say, you really think that would happen? Considering the most successful attack done by terrorists so far still had many things go wrong, I just don't see that sort of group being able to pull off a nuclear detonation, nevermind that ground-level nukes are extremely limited in yield and impact versus airborne ones. Plus, if terrorists manage to trigger one, the only chance they'll have at a second one is within the few days after, because the entire planet is going to mobilize to get their sorry asses to Allah or whoever else is the extremist religion of choice at that time.
While in general, terrorists have been largely incompetent, they by and large haven't had real goals that would be achieved by the attacks they have staged. For example, the 9/11 attacks didn't really state a goal, they didn't really have a clear result from which we could infer a goal, and credit was never actually claimed by a group with a preexisting set of stated goals.
I expect that eventually, we will have to face a "Heavy Weather" [Bruce Sterling] style terrorist scenario, in which the emergent goals
Incorrect. (Score:2)
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/putcall.asp
No airline stock was shorted prior to 9/11.
Per the Snopes Article:
"The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the "9/11 Commission") investigated these rumors and found that although some unusual (and initially seemingly suspicious) trading activity did occur in the days prior to September 11, it was all coincidentally innocuous and not the result of insider trading by parties with foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks."
We aren't debating whether the puts occurred, we are merely debating the reason for the puts.
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The most likely danger is that someone acquires a weapon from a state, either through theft or state sponsored terrorism. We have seen state sponsored terrorism before, from places like Syria and the US.
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Certainly, the chances of a nuclear weapons attack have lessened significantly, but the danger is still very real.
Over 10 thousand nuclear weapons still exist, held by 9 different countries (assuming Israel still has them). That list includes North Korea and Pakistan. I don't have to say anything about North Korea. Pakistan can almost be called an active war zone. Putin appears to be deliberately antagonizing the States, and has just had his primary income source taken away from him. Incidents have c
But all we are talking about now is an "incident" (Score:2)
Some experts place the probability of a nuclear incident in the next 10 years at 29%
I think it's more like 80%. But we are talking about a smaller attack against one city.
Back then we were looking at ALL LARGE CITIES in the U.S. and Russia being wiped out, with the remaining best case being a nuclear winter, the worst case being that plus a lot of radiation making the whole Earth unlivable. That scenario was not unlikely at the time; that kind of thing is not going to happen anymore. We have moved well p
Nothing wrong. (Score:3)
It's going to be a blast.
From The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously ? I read the rant and it sounded like a caricature of the old point counterpoint skits on saturday night live. I really expected him to end with we should have "vegetarian native americans running the country".
I mean look at this
Preserving a history that dates back thousands of years is apparently of less value to the United States than preserving the mid-20th century apparatus of war.
When he talks of the less important history, he means land that might have historical sites and will be surveyed before it is put to other uses. The " Mid 20th century apparatus of war" is from WWII and the Cold War, two of the most significant events in human history and arguably shaped the world we live in now.
Oh how naive ... (Score:2)
You expect the government to take responsibility and act respectfully towards its citizens by telling them the truth?
LOL.
Bill Riders (Score:2, Insightful)
its inclusion in the National Defense Authorization Act (the park legislation wouldn't pass otherwise)
You guys seriously need to fix your shit. Having bill riders is a fundamental government fail.
In the civilized world, a bill has a strictly defined topic, and anything not directly pertaining to that topic simply isn't allowed to be attached.
This is nothing new (Score:3)
Big deal. Would you dredge up and dispose of the USS Arizona? Would you sell off Gettysburg to real estate developers? The point is that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. The Manhattan Project has tremendous historical significance and peaceniks need to pull their heads out of the sand and remember why we went to such lengths.
One way to fix it (Score:2)
Re:Hey, Lasrick. (Score:4, Insightful)
The sky is falling.
I just checked and it already hit the ground...
There it is, just laying on the dirt. It's still pretty thick though...
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Only a halfwit (or a Republican) would think that there was any possibility of any nuclear weapons ever being used again.
If we have them, it's an eventuality, not a possibility. That's the entire argument against keeping them around.
The argument for keeping them around is that the positive deterrent effects are worth that eventuality. Arguably nuclear weapons prevented the US/Europe from invading the Soviet Union as much as they kept the Soviet Union from invading Europe/US.
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Due to the ridiculous outcome and backdown over the Cuban missile crisis I'd say there's not much of an argument, instead it looks like the USSR were aware that they had already bitten off more than they could chew and had to work hard to sustain their empire at it's current size.They had Kennedy's balls in that crisis, and squeezed with an offer and a worse offer unt
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I used balls because in hindsight there was so much ridiculous posturing when the s
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All up it there are some that suggest that the nuclear deterrent value against the USSR is overstated since they did whatever they wanted to anyway
That's definitely not true. The Soviet plan was to spread communism by force ('liberation'). And there were certainly people in the US who wanted to destroy the communist threat completely (Von Neumann, for example). He was a smart man, but in retrospect that would have been a clearly awful decision.
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Eh, not quite. The world revolution rhetoric died with Lenin [wikipedia.org] and was definitely buried with Stalin [wikipedia.org] for good.
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Seriously ? That's quite insane seeing as we had more deliverable weapons than them throughout the early coldwar by the time they pulled ahead it was because we had a completely absurd number of weapons and couldn't come up with a justification for maintaining what we had. (Over 20,000 deliverable weapons enough to nuke everything nuke it again, and yet again just to make sure it has a really nice glow). That didn't even include our chemical and biological stockpiles.
Also if Kruschev had Kennedy by the ball
Remember what the topic is (Score:2)
Think a little bit about what ICBM stands for and you'll get a bit of an idea why they didn't care about a deal that meant they couldn't site in Cuba. Then think about what was offered in the first private offer and how much less was in the public offer the next day - the offer that Kennedy decided he had to take.
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Look you can spin this how you like but the bottom line is the Soviet Nomenklatura thought Kruschev got rooked. The removal of the Jupiter 2 missiles was if anything a win for Kennedy. The damn things were liquid fueled and were destabilizing because they would only be useful as first strike weapons, you had to fuel them with Liquid Oxygen before launching.
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Consider Kennedy was worried that his Military would act on it's own, and were willing to ride out a projected 50 to 100 million American Casualties.
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And if that isn't enough to bring it home to you. Removal of the missiles from Cuba was a major strategic setback for the USSR, while losing the Jupiter 2 missiles was a non issues for us. We had the George Washington class subs carrying far more fire power with considerably better survivability. Jupiter 2 Missiles were still stationed in Italy, and Thor missiles in England.
Losing the Cuban missiles left the Russians with nothing comparable.
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Bullshit - it was tit for tat posturing and it was most likely over before any missiles could even get off the boat.
That is my point. An overwhelming nuclear "detterant", yet people were still played and the political outcome didn't end up as one sided as the military threat.
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They lost that option in exchange for the US having to make some changes - seriously, take a look at the two deals offered.
If the detterant really did deter then there would be no deal, especially not the one accepted, and the USSR would just have had to scurry off with nothing in exchange. Is that clear enough to understand yet? The cries of "me big atomic man, you run away" were not enough to scare away the limping atomic midget in co
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Bullshit - it was tit for tat posturing and it was most likely over before any missiles could even get off the boat.
No No No my brother not only were the missiles off the boat they were operational and the Soviet troops on the ground were armed with tactical nukes.
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/... [gwu.edu]
That was their throw weight against our eastcoast population centers. Their other delivery system at the time was using Turboprop bombers on one way missions to the continental U.S. Admittedly their might not have been much left for them to come home to, but using men in a suicide mission as primary planning is poor.
While at the
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I get the feeling you weren't alive at the time. I remember just how big a loss everyone thought the Russians took and it turns out the "Secret Parts" just make it larger and larger.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi... [bbc.com]
BTW the missile gap myth wasn't promulgated to win an election but to increase defense funding all three of the services which were fighting each other for funding, against Eisenhower and a Republican congress that were looking to keep the budget surplus.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/da... [forbes.com]
http://ei [eisenhower...ership.com]
Look above to see what the topic is (Score:2)
So? What part of "not as good as the first offer" do you not understand? What part of not unconditional do you not understand? There was vast s
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It's even on wikipedia FFS
Yes I get that you are showing off your patriotism but there is no need in this situation.
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You're not getting that the situation was dynamic very fluid. Kennedy was desperate that the situation would get out of his control, Kruschev realized that he screwed the pooch with his own power base.
Just the same the whole incident destroys the idea that Russians were doing whatever they wanted without fear of our nuclear deterrent. What they wanted was forward nuclear deployment capability in the western hemisphere. They took steps to get it, and were backed down from their position. Removing the Jupiter
It's so simple so why play games (Score:2)
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If there was fear it would have been an instant cave-in instead of a drawn out situation and a deal resulting in the US removing the missiles from Turkey and Italy (which IMHO was a huge backdown).
I am sorry while the above statement looks plausible, it's so far from what happened you might as well be talking about another planet. You really need to hit a site or two that details the history of the crisis. Neither side fully knew what was happening and there was very poor communication between the parties. Also you might want to play a little game of count the warheads and see for yourself just how small a thing that "Huge Backdown" was.
I hate to make a bandwagon argument here but you have to realiz
Look I don't know if you can get this online (Score:2)
This is off my bookshelf don't know if you will be able to find it online.
One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and
Kennedy, 1958–1964, Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali,
(New York: Norton, 1997), 354
This quote is from a post crisis speech by Dimitry Polyansky Deputy Chairman of the council of ministers for the soviet union
" “You insisted that we deploy our missiles on Cuba. This provoked the deepest crisis, carried the world to the brink of nuclear war,and even frightened terribly the organizer of this very danger. Not having any other way out we had to accept every demand and condition dictated by the U.S This incident damaged the international prestige of our government, our party, our armed forces, while at the same time helping to raise the authority of the United States."
If you don't want to search the web or grab a book on this, there's plenty of good documentaries available on the crisis. It may well be the most studied event in super powe
I suggest you read it yourself or at least the wik (Score:2)
Although you've been insulting my intelligence eno
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Bombs Away LeMay ?
You're lack of understanding is beyond monumental. LeMay thought we could win a nuclear war. Kennedy despite his problems as president realized the best we could do was not lose as badly as our enemies.
It would also do you some good to understand our system of government is and was different than the Soviet Unions. Denouncing the First Secretary was not something that was done, until the person in power was done for. For a general to complain in our system is not only protected but often
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(I was not born yesterday)
BTW you may not have been born yesterday, but to anyone that was alive at the time of the crisis it's pretty obvious you weren't.
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So what happened?
1/ Missiles were placed in Turkey and Italy.
2/ In response the USSR placed missiles in Cuba.
3/ Both deployments were withdrawn.
That's reality. Do you dis
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The logic is laughable.
By your reasoning, if we had a deal where I throw away a penny and you throw away a dollar, I would be the loser because I threw away a penny,
What's more you can't tell people I threw away a penny, and I get to brag see I made that idiot toss away dollar.
Even if you were five, ten or twenty years old in 1962 how does that make you in some way an insider
Well it hardly makes me an insider but it does give me a hella better viewpoint than some wet behind the ears pup, who thinks the Soviet Union didn't care about western nuclear arsenal. It also means I that I understand the difference
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I am laughing myself silly.
You are attacking a horrible president on what was undeniably a success for him. Nevermind the geopolitics where we came out by far the winner, convincing our allies we were willing to go toe to toe with the Soviets, from a military/strategic position we went from trading U.S. cities for Russian cities, back to trading European cities, for Russian cities.
You speak of denying reality, if Russia felt they had Kennedy by the balls why aren't the missiles still in Cuba ? Why d
So a dead pilot was a penny? (Score:2)
The missiles in Italy were a penny?
The missiles in Turkey were a penny?
Hands off Cuba was a penny?
A dead pilot was a penny?
The barely established expeditionary force of the USSR in Cuba was a dollar?
You make me sick reading to your attempt to brainwash the kiddies. What an utterly nasty little prick you are. You do not deserve the protection of the military folk whose lives you consider just something to throw away and ignore - so much for you ultra-
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Actually the missiles in Italy and Turkey were belly button lint. They were dangerous, and nearly incapable of performing their jobs. Hell their warheads were armed by an electrical storm.
The dead pilot was our fault. He was invading the airspace of sovereign nation.
You do not deserve the protection of the military folk whose lives you consider just something to throw away and ignore - so much for you ultra-patriot America has never done anything wrong bullshit - it's done something wrong in giving birth to you.
Now you are just name calling and being silly, I'll just take that for what it is, your best admission that you are wrong on this matter but don't want to own up to it.
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Ja? So that's what it takes to turn a failure into a glorious victory for the Fatherland?
Obviously not. How pathetic.
Next up Crashmarik telling us how 2008 was a good year for the financial sector, 2000 was great for tech and Jim Jones a wonderful example for Christianity.
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Next up Crashmarik telling us how 2008 was a good year for the financial sector, 2000 was great for tech and Jim Jones a wonderful example for Christianity.
This is really bad form for discussion but, seeing as you have opened the door. You are the only person I have ever heard argue that The Cuban Missile Crisis was an example of a Russian victory. Matter of fact most people would say that the crisis was JFK's greatest victory in office.
You might wonder why the rest of the world disagrees with you, or you might not. Just some food for thought.
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So? Not a democracy was it? It took two more years before someone else could sharpen the knives enough to get rid of him.
I missed this one - you are two years out (Score:2)
Now that lie really depends on the reader getting 1962 and 1964 mixed up. What an utterly slimy weasel trick. You should be ashamed of yourself for giving Kennedy credit for something that happened the year after he died and almost exactly two years after the end of the Cuban missile crisis. What's with the lying cheerleading bullshit? Haven't you got anythin
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I really think Republicans would have much better luck with my generation if they realized that everything I know about Reagan is shit my dad said. My 8th birthday was a few months into Bush I's term, so I really truly have absolutely no memory of what Ronald Reagan actually did. I was in my early teens when Ken Burns the Civil War was on TV; so Buchanan, Lincoln, Johnson, and Grant are much more real to me then Ronald Reagan. Hell, add Jeff Davis to the list.
Re:How dare you talk down about Reagan like that! (Score:5, Informative)
everything I know about Reagan is shit my dad said.
Perhaps your dad knows what he is talking about?
You might close the mouth and open the ears, you might learn something...
Reagan wasn't perfect, he was human like anyone else, but he did stare down the USSR with one hand and held out an olive branch with the other, giving Gorbachev something to take hold of.
The USSR was going bankrupt, Reagan unveiled program after program, from Star Wars (not real) to the Stealth Bomber (very real) and it made the Russians take note that they could not keep up and win a military solution, so perhaps peace was worth a try.
Yes, Reagan ran up a large debt doing it, but what would war have cost? It was cheap by comparison, and the really bad debts didn't come until Bush Jr and Obama anyway, we were fine up until Clinton's term ended.
---
It would also be worth a read of WWI and WWII history, as well as what really lead to those wars, which requires a study of history going back a few hundred years... and it is a shame that I find most people have no idea whatsoever about the history of humanity, then are surprised when we keep doing the same stuff.
Re:How dare you talk down about Reagan like that! (Score:5, Insightful)
The US, post-Soviet Russia and post-Communist China are all following the same path to rule by oligarchy. The differences in how control is concentrated are not important to the continuing concentration of power in each system. In Russia, the economic oligarchs are only allowed to slavishly support Putan, or they are jailed or exiled and their wealth stripped. In China the oligarchs are either Party members themselves or the families of Party members. The rest of the rich know that they must participate in the endemic corruption. They were only allowed to succeed because they embraced corruption from the beginning.
In the US the oligarchs have, for the most part, taken over the government and the country is run for their benefit. Examples are too numerous to mention, but I'll highlight a few.
The 2008 market crash. The reason it was so horrific in the first place was that the Bush administration effectively suspended all regulation of Wall Street and Alan Greenspan got to fulfill his Libertarian fantasy. The result, unsurprisingly, was an epic failure. Lack of effective oversight is the wet dream of every oligarch. That's why they love secret unlimited secret campaign contributions, another gift to oligarchs the from the politicians and judges they own.
The bailout from the crash was another astonishing transfer of wealth to the ultra rich. Instead of calling Wall Street to task and making those responsible pay up, the oligarchs were rewarded instead. Many of them are have far more now then they did before 2008, and everyone else is worse off. The new stock market highs are the proof of that. Meanwhile, the job recovery is still lagging, and the jobs that are being generated pay significantly lower then before the crash. This is a mass transfer of assets from the general population to the rich. Again there is no other rational explanation.
An earlier example is Medicare Part D, brought to your pocketbook by Big Pharma and Billy Tauzin [wikipedia.org],
I'll even make a prediction: when the FCC announces what they will call "Net Neutrality" rules, it will be the end of the internet as an open platform. It will become just as closed, structured and overpriced as the current cable industry. Just like Wall Street and Big
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The mid to late 70's was NOT prosperous for the middle class. Interest rates were nearly 20% and inflation was huge as well. The US was suffering simultaneously from low productivity and high inflation. Reagan's solution was to boost productivity by cutting taxes and regulation. And, while it took a couple of years, it worked.
Yes, this led to a situation ripe for growing inequality, but the real problem is that self-described "conservatives" think that since Reagan's recipe for fighting "stagflation" worked
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Much of that inflation dates back to massive spending and debt from the Vietnam War and the creation of OPEC spiking oil prices, neither of which Jimmy Carter have much to do with. LBJ and Nixon are the ones to blame, if you were alive then you would remember the failed attemps at wage and price controls under a Republican administration, Nixon. Carterâ(TM)s presidency was doomed before it started because of the mess he inherited, and there was very little he could do about it.
Interest rates were 20%
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Volcker kept ratcheting up interest rates to stop inflation and it wasn't working because while it brought down demand, it also brought down productivity because it became more and more expensive to borrow for capital investment. Reagan's policies were designed to combat the problem of low productivity. An increase in payroll taxes also served to dampen demand which also helped reduce inflation. I still contend that these were the right policy decisions at the time.
Reagan is not to blame for the fact that l
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Carterâ(TM)s presidency was doomed before it started because of the mess he inherited, and there was very little he could do about it.
I don't know about that, I think Carter handled a lot of things very poorly. Look at how badly he handled things that were exclusive to his administration, such as Iran-Contra.
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Iran-Contra was Reagan's scandal.
Oh...you're one of those...
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Today the US (along with most of the world) is dealing with unhealthily LOW interest rates and inflation. Large businesses are sitting on giant piles of cash while many households have unhealthy levels of debt.
I don't think interest rates have much to do with that. Usually when people borrow the way that they do, they're just dumb. In my state, there's no such thing as usury, which means you can charge whatever interest rate you'd like on any kind of loan. Some people are so desperate to borrow money that they go to those title loan companies that have upwards of a 300% interest rate.
Which by the way, I don't have a problem with this. If they lived in places with usury laws such as New York, then instead of going
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That requires a level of sophistication among the general populace that simply doesn't exist.
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That's the conservatives' charitable interpretation. We still don't know whether Reagan actually believed Star Wars was going to work.
The "testicular history of the cold war" posted above, puerile though it is, makes a good point about provoking a crippled Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was falling apart economically on its own years before Gorbachev took office. Was it really smart to provoke a politically and economically unstable -- but militarily capable and having a superpower-level nuclear arsenal
Re:How dare you talk down about Reagan like that! (Score:4, Insightful)
The Soviet Union fell peacefully and dissolved into new, mostly stable and democratic governments. Well, stableish, democraticish. About the best the world could hope for, really.
No, it was horrible and should never have happened...
But no one wants to hear it...
What SHOULD have happened was at the end of WWII we should have rearmed and reequipped the Germans and turned on Russia and removed Stalin, who was just as bad, if not worse than Hitler.
Look at Germany today? Imagine if Russia today was just like Germany?
Now THAT would be better... and we had the chance to do it, we had the nuclear bomb, Russia did not, and we blew it.
We could have skipped the entire cold war, and a lot of nasty stuff that happened since, so before you say "oh but more people would have died", my reply is that those deaths would have prevented many others along with a lot of suffering in the past 70 years.
The world would be a very different place. Consider that if we had gone into Russia, China's civil war might have ended differently, with the communists losing...
Patton was right. He was maybe a little crazy, not very diplomatic, but he was right...
Re:How dare you talk down about Reagan like that! (Score:4, Insightful)
And you think the US overextended itself in Vietnam and Iraq...
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The US did not overextend itself in Vietnam.
In Vietnam we really didn't fight a war to win it.
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If you think that remotely compares to the situation as it then existed at the end of WWII, you have no idea what you're talking about.
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"oh but more people would have died"
let's be clear hear, when you say "more", that means LOTs more..
going against the Russian war machine on the european continent in 1945 would have been absolutely no joke; they were churning out more war material, including the then world beating IS3 tank at the end of the war, than we were..
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Let's not exaggerate. The US and Britain combined were manufacturing more war materiel than the Soviets, and the cutting off of Lend-Lease would have had a large effect. The IS-3 was a good heavy tank, but the war in Europe had shown that a relatively small number of very good heavy tanks wasn't going to win the war.
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Okay, suppose Churchill and Truman decide to re-arm the Germans and keep going East. Some consequences:
First, the US and Britain were, and are, democracies. The Soviet Union was an ally, although an uncomfortable one. A dictatorship, like Nazi Germany, can change sides on a dime (there's an example in 1984). Democracies don't do that. A little popular unrest in Britain and Churchill loses a vote of confidence. It would take longer in the US, but it would be a hot issue in the 1946 midterm elections
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The political will for a drawn-out war simply was not there.
I didn't say it was... I said it should have been. :)
Regarding your issues, they are all reasonable, but I point back to, "we had the nuclear bomb and Russia didn't", that would have ended it 1946 regardless of anything else.
To get a world in 2015 where there was no cold war, no testing of thousands of nuclear bombs, no communist Russia or China? Yes, I think it would have been worth it.
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I don't think the political will necessarily should have been there. That would imply things about the Western Allies that I don't like.
The war against the Soviet Union would have had to start in May, because the West had stronger pressure to draw down their armies than the Soviet Union did. The Trinity test was in mid-July, and the first real nukes in early August. They would not have an immediate decisive impact. The Soviet Union was able to set up highly sophisticated air defense systems (the Sovi
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My Dad made an earnest attempt to explain how Animal Farm was a parable of the struggles between Stalinists and Trotskyists when I first read it, so if you;re in the "Reagan Greatest President who Ever Lived" School you really don't want me to take his word as gospel.
I've probably got a better handle on the era then most people who lived through it, because I'm not only a history major I also debate this shit extensively online. I've picked up a lot of info on Iran-Contra, the "Was it Reagan or Volcker" deb
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Fair enough, then let me help you out...
Both the Republicans and Democrats are full of it and both need to go...
Does that make it easier? :) Voting for either one of them just keeps the current situation the same.
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Yup. When the Soviets were pushed to that extent, they had two choices: fold or attack. I'm very happy that Gorbachev chose to fold. I don't see that it was a given.
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Gorbachev did the right thing for the human race, and for that he won the Nobel Prize. Frankly, well deserved in my opinion.
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I agree completely.
Re:How dare you talk down about Reagan like that! (Score:5, Funny)
What's it going to do, start to exist or something?
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:D more chance of someone giving us free beer
In Soviet Russia, free beer is wodka!!!!