Re: Putting down (humanely, of course!) Bill Asher, cargo cultist of global warming, was Re: Dual statistical standard on RBT: helmet-hating environmental hypocrisy

On Jul 3, 9:05 pm, "Tom Kunich" <cyclintom@yahoo. com> wrote:
"Still Just Me..." <stillnoEmailh...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in messagenews:tm1r459uu4a6vm38uposh9soqgn9dk9k6i@xxxxxxxxxx

On Thu, 2 Jul 2009 14:09:52 -0700, "Tom Kunich" <cyclintom@yahoo. com>
wrote:
They came in with Bush the First.

Naw, they came with Reagan. Reagan might have had some core
conservative beliefs, but his beliefs were quickly distorted into
neo-con plans. Witness the huge defense build up to benefit the neo's,
as well as the largest deficit spending in history (up to that point).
A true conservative would never have spent like that, but he was under
the grip of the neo's.  He left a huge financial fiasco for Bush I to
clean up.

You are so far out of it I wonder if you aren't an 18 year old. Reagan ENDED
the cold war. He ended an almost continuous threat of nuclear war that
existed from around 1958 onwards.

So instead of giving credit where it is due idiots such as yourself think
that any defense spending was somehow feeding the military-industrial
complex.

I was with some senior politicos and journalists one day while Reagan
was coming towards the end of his second erm and the subject of his
legacy and in particular Star Wars came up. I have a good deal of
credit with this class of person but still found it slow going to
explain that Reagan didn't have to justify SDI, the socalled Star
Wars, from any technical or scientific or even ballistic viewpoint.
How then? they demanded. See, I said, it was a poker game, called guns
and butter. Huh? What would happen if for years you (that's my own
pols now) built up the military machine at the expense of consumer
goods? (They had difficulty with this too. Ireland is a determinedly
neutral country with minuscule military spending. One of the
journalists who'd been in both Moscow and Washington on assignment
helped out.) Okay, we'd be voted out of power with very little
prospect of getting back in. Uh-huh! Or, in a one-party state,
overthrown, maybe shot, a journo said. They nodded; they understand
shootings of political opponents; almost everyone at the table had
relatives murdered in the civil war. Well, I said, Reagan understood
this about the Russians, that they'd stretched guns at the expense of
butter to the breaking point. They didn't have any more money for
guns. All Reagan had to do was find something to outspend them on,
some bottomless pit, and as long as the Russians weren't sure,
couldn't be sure, that it would never work (a pol interjected, But you
can't ever be surel The goddamn techies never tell you everything.)
the Russians had to match Reagan's Star Wars bet, or fold and cut a
deal. The Russian leadership was in effect squeezed between their own
people's legitimate demands for consumption and Reagan's Western
gambler's bluff. Either way they lost; the only remaining question was
whether they lost with blood running in the streets or by negotiation.
Reagan's brilliant victory cost a pittance compared to what a nuclear
war would have cost. (Another point my pols grasped instantly;
everyone in Ireland is against nuclear power and no sane person is for
nuclear war.) At some time from now on, I added, Reagan's superb
gamesmanship will make possible a much reduced American Armed Forces
Budget, out of which the SDI expenditure will soon be recovered, if
that is what the Americans wish.

I wish you luck with explaining something that simple yet that
sophisticated (Ronald Reagan was a sly old ***!) to a moron like
Still Just me if it took me fifteen minutes to explain it to informed
people with open minds. Frankly, I don't think you can succeed, but
I'd be delighted for you to prove me wrong.

Andre Jute
Of course history repeats itself. There's a moron born every minute of
every day.

PS. One wonders what Still Just me and the owner clowns of the same
depressingly ignorant stripe on RBT think of Eisenhower, who coined
the term "military-industrial complex".
.