Weirder election than Battlestar Galactica's

"Bob" wrote in message
...

SS won't go bust.

Too many seniors vote.


Correct observation, wrong reason.

Bob wrote:


LBJ escalated the Vietnam War for only one reason - to ship as many
blacks into combat in order to reduce their number back home. Of
course, they were expected to die and not come back.

An assertion with no supporting evidence to back it up. Produce
documentation from a reliable source.

If LBJ had intended our forces to be a means of genocide he would have
sent in millyuns and millyuns, not a mere half million.

In any case it was a bad idea. The survivors brought their weapons and
knowhow back home.

Bob Kolker

Bob wrote:

On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 08:36:31 -0500, "Robert J. Kolker"
wrote:


When social security finally goes bust they will blame the president
sitting at the time, not the man who brought it about.


SS won't go bust.

Too many seniors vote.

There are two ways for the system to go belly up. One way is run out of
money. The other way is to inflate the money. Either way is a failure
and the sitting administration will bear the blame.

Bob Kolker

On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 02:29:45 -0500, "Robert J. Kolker"
wrote:

Because once we got to the moon, we did not stay there. That was the
failure. Going there wasn't so bad. But coming back with nothing to show
for it was tragic.

There was a lot more going on in the Defense Establishment than the
Moon landing. NASA. along with the entire science/engineering
establishment, from academia to national labs to private defense
industry, was being gutted from 1970.

Nixon hated academics because they were mostly leftist, so he saw to
it that their empire would collapse. Remember the infamous Mansfield
Amendment? It said that no military money (the largest source for
funding the defense industry including academia) could be spent unless
the project had direct applicablility to national defense. Spending on
basic research plummeted.

The National Laboratories lost half their scientists and engineers in
the 1970s. Ph.D.s were driving taxicabs. Any college student with an
ounce of common sense shunned the technical areas and went over to the
professions.

Any wonder that most of the graduate students are foreigners today.
And is it any wonder these foreigners get a good education compliments
of the US taxpayer and then go home build WMD to point at America.

I think the Cylons will reconsider their Plan to use humans as a
source of their offspring. They need to search the Universe for signs
of intelligent life, because humans are incapable of it - at least in
a political setting.


--
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant:
It's just that they know so much that isn't so."
--Ronald Reagan

On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 02:36:44 -0500, "Robert J. Kolker"
wrote:

By doing a better job than NASA, of course. NASA isn't the only way into
space.

It should be done privately. That is elementary and axiomatic.

Unfortunately capitalism requires minimal seed capital for huge
ventures. But I agree that now is the time for private enterprise to
get into the space business.

Is it any surprise that the first entrepreneur to go into space on a
privately funded space craft was a Texan.


--
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant:
It's just that they know so much that isn't so."
--Ronald Reagan

On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 02:40:42 -0500, "Robert J. Kolker"
wrote:

Which doesn't in the least explain how *Morton Thiokol* "let Challanger
fly". Again, please provide the legal authority for *Morton Thiokol* to have
done anything.

If the team at Morton Thiokol had courage ( it didn't) they should have
spilled the whole thing to the press.

No one would have listened.

NASA engineers have been exposing serious flaws in the design of space
vehicles since day one and no one listens.


--
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant:
It's just that they know so much that isn't so."
--Ronald Reagan

On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 13:27:31 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Steven
P. McNicoll" made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:


"Andy" wrote in message
...

I think he has a point. Without public support the project might not have
done as well. Whatever else he was, Kennedy was popular, and we as a
country went thru with it. (still amazes me)

Certainly none of the broad mission statements for space - by
presidents - in the last couple decades have accomplished much.

Of course Kennedy wasn't the instigator of the idea. But he was willing
to popularize it, and it took wing. Intended or not, he had a huge part in
it. Kinda like Gore and the internet, but with less splashy theatrics ;-)
and Gore didn't get to bed Monroe...


Kennedy wasn't even all that interested in going to the moon or a civilian
space program of any kind.

I never claimed he was. Nonetheless, he initiated the moon program.

On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 02:38:31 -0500, in a place far, far away, "Robert
J. Kolker" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

Scott Hedrick wrote:


Why don't you simp,y "propose" it, and avoid the use of taxpayer dollars at
all?

It costs money that private industry does not have. You need the
Government to "seed" the thing. That is how the transcontinental
railroads got built.

The transcontinental railroads were built largely with private money.

Scott Schuckert wrote:

Individuals capable of being placed in politial office are NOT like us.
They do not have an interest in spaceflight, technology, the future of
the human race, or providing hopes and dreams for future generations.

Nor are most of your fellow voters and taxpayers "like us" in that
sense. It may be satisfying to point your finger at the politicians,
but what you describe sneeringly as "maintaining power... appeasing...
handing out plums" is exactly what democratic electoral politics gives
them every incentive to do.

If you don't like the results, you could (1) persuade more voters to
share your views, (2) work for the election of politicians who share
your views, or (3) **** and moan on USENet. The comparative utility of
the options is left as an exercise for the reader.

Which part of "people get the government they deserve" don't you
understand?

h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

The transcontinental railroads were built largely with private money.

And the Cumberland Road, Erie Canal, Panama Canal and interstate
highway system with public money. No one-ideology-fits-all
prescription covers all cases.